They are always on. There must be a loop of tape or RAM or something. They used ATM cameras in the Sniper case in the US recently, as well as several of the "Forensic Evidence" TV shows on Discovery Channel. At the time there was no transaction taking place yet the recording was done.
More than likely your buttcheeks got taped over when nothing significant happened. You'd have to moon the camera and then report a crime for anybody to see it.
This reminds my that my old room-mate used to write "blowjobs" or "dildos" on the memo line of all his checks. The bank eventually wrote a letter asking him to stop, as it caused too much laugher and disruption at the processing area.
{2400baud}Too bad you never jumped over to where the cool people were on Beeline you pipsqueak.{/2400baud}
I was just wondering if one of you guys would show up in this thread.
Madison WI had at least two multi-line BBSs for about 5 years, SD][ and Beeline with multi-room chat, message boards and a ascii games such as snake, tank war, and a beta of an Ultima type game. Of course, since almost every-one was a local call away, there were lots of real-world gatherings as well. Lots of fun.
Heh. I assume you are honestly asking and not bragging about how little SPAM you get to make me jealous...
Here are the vectors for getting on lists that I know of;
- using a valid email address in newsgroups - using a valid email address on a web page - using a valid email address in form properties in a web page - using a valid email address on a mailing list or web-forum - using a valid email address for domain registration contacts - using a valid email address to sign a web page up for a search spider - having an email address that can be "brute forced" (i.e. almost all of them) - your pal puts an email address in an "e-vite" or "e-greeting" - getting a virus that spreads via email
And above all, being naive about the workings of the Internet, when only a few weeks of ignorance will permenently get the address out there "in the wild". Just about everybody is this at one at one time or another.
Some people cannot avoid having email addresses hung out there on the Internet, so getting on the lists is more or less inevitable if you are doing business or communicating on the Internet in any meaningful way. Since I cannot ignore what comes in the boxes I run, I MUST sort through whatever arrives. That makes SPAM a big issue for me.
Your usage of your email addresses is probably typical (not on web pages and so on..) but you are probably fortunate to both be clueful about it and not dealing with your email address publicly available out of necessity.
Note that El Al (Isreali Airlines) has some pretty good security processes that could be applied towards tourism at the Space Elevator. USA flights into the Twin Towers were (are) insecure because people did not think they were a target and nobody thought five guys with boxcutters could do much; NOT because it is impossible to make them secure.
Though, the Space Elevator would make a great tourist spot, recording the sounds and vibrations the thing makes might be cool, as well as BASEE jumping. (Bridge, Antenna, Span, Earth, Elevator)
One of the eye-witnesses in Texas stated that it appeared the contrail had a spiral characteristic that might mean the craft was tumbling during or before re-entry. This may imply that it was not a catastrophic explosion, rather some other event that went wrong.
Part of the insulation on one of the boosters apparently came off on takoff (gaining orbit) and struck a wing. The wing was checked during flight and said to not be damaged.
Heh. I just did looked for their methodology too, and it looks like one must actually go out and purchase a copy of the "Dec. 15, 2002 issue of the American Chemical Society journal Environmental Science and Technology" to find out how they measured.
What they IMPLY is that the process involves going back and looking at all the infrastructure required to keep the microchip industry producing, not just the process itself, but the trucking of raw goods, fuel used by the people to get to work, etc. They don't appear to discount the fact that some of the electricity is probably nuclear reactor based, and that some of the materials are re-used, etc. In short, junk Science. (And the fact that the news web sites couldn't come out and say what the method was makes me think it is bunk in the first place.)
Might as well just say "industrial revolution is bad", "chemicals are bad" and "if you eat twinkies you are bad".
This is just nothing more than pseudo-environmentalist hype, the same sort of mis-guided thinking that blames soccer moms driving SUVs for terrorism. (I dont like them either, but I tend to blame terrorism on, oh let me see...say.. the terrorists.)
Really, how much spam is done by dialup these days? They either use broadband or pay some nuts to spam for them.
I would guess quite a lot of spam originates from dial up. One of the hobbies/pastimes at my workplace is "Public Speaking Spam" where the message is read out loud in the most artful or expressive way possible. (Spoken word poetry sort of..)
One of the things we think the "Make money on your computer while you sleep" spams are about, is downloading a program that accepts messages, and then dials in and sends spam. The unsuspecting (or not) user is duped into participating in a spamming network by these things. The messages are a recruitment tool to get more users to sign up to help send spam.
It is important to not confuse the scope of the whole idea (keeping X from being accessed) with method 'security' or method 'obscurity'.
You can achieve security by using a password that is obscure, if your password is involved in a system of being changed frequently and being complicated enough to serve as a barrier. Just because the adjective 'obscure' is used, does not mean that keeping X private is done through obscurity.
The password is obscure in that with only a handful of characters, in a user / pass PAIR, the obscurity of it (difficulty to brute force) can approach infinity. Which in turn is a secure method of preventing X from being accessed.
If you follow the scope the article is talking about your example of the URL is obscurity, that there is no barrier to accessing X as long as you know in general where the holes are and that the URL exists. Remember any dorko with unsecured IIS could thwart some of the worm scripts just by not using the same path names the worm assumed were in place. (Don't put your idq files in the scripts directory! Duh!) Renaming folders without closing the hole made the obscurity of IIS install unique, only that one server has that pathname used, therefore a worm is ineffective against it. That is obscurity, but is still sure as heck is not secure, as anybody who knows the pathname can get right in.
Though, I think the article missed something by not adding that security can be enhanced by obscurity, and obscurity can be enhanced by security. Using BOTH is the best way to keep the baddies from getting X. That's what the government does, only a few people know (obscure or secret) and those that do have to use security (password, fingerprint or whatever) to access information X.
The problem is, to the uninitiated, obscurity looks like and seems just as good as security After all, who is going to guess that I wrote my PIN number on the other card! Rather than noting that the best way to keep a PIN number secure is to not use birthdates (be obscure) but also memorize it and not write it down (secure).
The article clearly states that only the process running the worm is shut down. Though there is a reboot to replace the process, the web server, web services and anything else you might be running would come up when the machine comes back up.
I think you are sort of miss-placing the blame for that hypothetical innocent loss of life in the upcomming war. (Obviously there will be some non-combatant deaths, there always are.) Yes it will be tragic when they do die. But you confuse executing a war with resolve and not caring about the few that die that dont need to.
Entertain for a few minutes, the possability that maybe that Saddam and his cronies actually have the power to stop the lost innocent lives if maybe they do as the UN asks. Or mabye if he was not attempting to get nuclear weapons, or maybe had he not used mustard gas on his own populace...
Think for a little while that though the USA has had bad moments of unleashing destruction against civilians (Japanese and German) that maybe this time the intent is to not do so?
How about the fact that the USA is pushing the high technology smart and precision weapons, spending billions and billions dollars on them, weapons that allow strategic and tactical goals of war to go on with less loss of civilian life?
The USA could bomb the whole place flat with regular, nuclear or thermobaric bombs, twice or three times without the new techonogy. Yet that has not been done.
And, whatever you do, please do not forget the Muslem extremists specfic and intended goal is to destroy civilians, women, children and soldiers simply for what they are and where they are born, what their religion is an the fact they dont beat their daughters for going outside without full robes.
Yes, civilians will die. The most saintly person in Iraq could be killed by a cranked up air force pilot dropping bombs in the wrong place. But the air force, army, and whatever the Brits send are there because the alternative will be worse.
Blame the USA for a few dead civilians if you want. We'll still keep coming to rescue your pussy European ass anyway.
However, I do know that the Win2k and later series OSs from Microsoft do contain what is called "DNS Client". This client has the job of doing DNS caching. (And a bunch of other stuff I think.)
Restarting the thing can be a quick way to do what would otherwise require a reboot.
The Win98/ME/95 series stuff had a client too, but it couldnt be cleared without rebooting. Though I think it's timeout was not as long.
So yes there is caching going on, one of the main reasons why my first question to my clients is "when did you last reboot?"
The perfect match between biological weapon and porn collection... puts a whole new meaning to the phrase "Infected by Anna Nicole Smith" don't ya think?
Open Source software downloaded by a simple handshake or sneeze!
Then, when Microsoft gets in on the new industry (2 years too late as usual) all life on earth will be wiped out by an unchecked buffer overflow in blank bacteria media as it is sequenced by default when accessed by any device.
Seriously though, I wonder what the maximum storage capacity of something like that would be? How much data could be packed into a bacteria sequence? Would there be a really high read/write time to sequence the DNS? What about seek time? "Godammit come back here you bug!"
That's odd. Gibson co-wrote two episodes of the X-Files, "Kill Switch" and "First Person Shooter". So he doesn't watch TV, but writes for it. Both episodes involved much of the plot in "CyberSpace", Kill Switch had an AI living in a trailer park that could control an orbiting laser platrorm. I didn't see the other one.
Hmm. Post again the next time your wife stands around and watches you get shit and bloody tampons spilled on your slippered feet at 3am. Tampons stop up plumbing, sometimes bad.
On a more postitive note, someone that can make a really strong shredder that fits on the edge of the toilet could make a lot of money. Make em sort through tons of shit and then piece it all back together. Got extra drywall? Shred and Flush!
Why not merge technologies?
on
Tai Chi Robots
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Now if I could get one of the tai chi robots to clean my toilet and do other household tasks, oh, and a better exterior would be nice....
There's a SciFi book by Rudy Rucker called "Freeware", that among other things, had "Jenny-Meat". Jenny was the original host, and had grown portions of her own flesh in vats to sell as food.
It was part of the side "color" to help make a twisted cyberpunk future, not part of the plot. There was no details, just advertisements mentioned.
[I cannot say about any research, but can only report what is in my own mind.]
Along a similar vein, I find speaking on a cell phone to be a very bad influence in my driving. (To the point that my wife thought I am pissed at her the first few times she spoke to me while I was driving, "yes, no, get to the point.") I do not like doing it at all.
Speaking on a phone to a distant person requires holding two contexts in one's head; one for the conversation on the phone and one for the driving environment. Speaking to someone sitting in the car requires a single context to be held in the mind, and appears to be easier to do (and therefore safer) because the person sitting in the care is part of one big context, not two separate ones.
It is the dual context that causes the problem, where the driver has to build the "meatspace" to manipulate ideas in two places at once. I even find that if someone is sitting in the back seat (requiring a bigger context) that my driving gets worse, even if there is no-one in the front seat at the time.
I found that a very similar thing happens when I do online presentations, with audio on phone, on-screen presentation (local and remote), as well as controls to manipulate the environment. It is VERY tricky to set up the parallel threads in my brain to focus on all of it at once, it took several months to do it well. Some of my co-workers have never gotten the hang of it, and still cannot present well with online learning tools because they cannot run both contexts in parallel without making mistakes or forgetting to speak.
I believe the cell phones are similar, the average person just is not wired to deal with the context of driving and the context of the conversation at the same time. (Though I bet people would get less dangerous if they set out to learn how to drive and speak on a cell phone safely.)
Unfortunately, this means that the "hands-free" stuff will not make driving while talking any safer. (I remember some research that said that hands-free and handheld cell conversations had about the same distraction level.)
Though I think the average person will not get good at speaking on a cell phone and will remain a road hazard, bans are likely to get ignored or repealed. I'd probably try something like doubling the fine or penalty for any road violation that occurs while the driver is on a phone, something to make people weigh the risks involved more carefully. (I see my neighbors use driving time as "talk time", always making calls as soon as they get in the car. Why not talk on the front porch for a minute?)
Hmm. Maybe German Telekom is the criminal here? Otherwise, why would they not simply refuse to pay the company that owns that phone line? Is not being an accessory to a crime not a crime in Germany?
[In the USA, you can be arrested, tried, convicted and jailed for knowing about a crime and not doing anything about it; or knowingly providing the tools to do a crime (i.e. give a gun so someone who says "I am going to kill that shopkeeper."]
They are passing on the money from the phone bill to the company that has the phone number are they not?
It sounds to me like there is part of the story that you are either not aware of or not telling about.
If you have a second motherboard with the same chips on it, you can "piggyback" a new chip on the old chip to boot and reflash.
Simply pry out the bios chip on the good mobo, place it on the pins of the old one with trashed bios so the new chip pins contact the old chip pins, boot the PC, get the appropriate utilities loaded, pull the chip off and flash.
Of course, it does not always work, but if you have nothing to lose but time (i.e. mobo already useless) it can save a few bucks.
Slashdot Mirror
They are always on. There must be a loop of tape or RAM or something. They used ATM cameras in the Sniper case in the US recently, as well as several of the "Forensic Evidence" TV shows on Discovery Channel. At the time there was no transaction taking place yet the recording was done.
More than likely your buttcheeks got taped over when nothing significant happened. You'd have to moon the camera and then report a crime for anybody to see it.
This reminds my that my old room-mate used to write "blowjobs" or "dildos" on the memo line of all his checks. The bank eventually wrote a letter asking him to stop, as it caused too much laugher and disruption at the processing area.
Cuz "Tasty-Wheat" is not all that it is cracked up to be...
{2400baud}Too bad you never jumped over to where the cool people were on Beeline you pipsqueak.{/2400baud}
I was just wondering if one of you guys would show up in this thread.
Madison WI had at least two multi-line BBSs for about 5 years, SD][ and Beeline with multi-room chat, message boards and a ascii games such as snake, tank war, and a beta of an Ultima type game. Of course, since almost every-one was a local call away, there were lots of real-world gatherings as well. Lots of fun.
Heh. I assume you are honestly asking and not bragging about how little SPAM you get to make me jealous...
Here are the vectors for getting on lists that I know of;
- using a valid email address in newsgroups
- using a valid email address on a web page
- using a valid email address in form properties in a web page
- using a valid email address on a mailing list or web-forum
- using a valid email address for domain registration contacts
- using a valid email address to sign a web page up for a search spider
- having an email address that can be "brute forced" (i.e. almost all of them)
- your pal puts an email address in an "e-vite" or "e-greeting"
- getting a virus that spreads via email
And above all, being naive about the workings of the Internet, when only a few weeks of ignorance will permenently get the address out there "in the wild". Just about everybody is this at one at one time or another.
Some people cannot avoid having email addresses hung out there on the Internet, so getting on the lists is more or less inevitable if you are doing business or communicating on the Internet in any meaningful way. Since I cannot ignore what comes in the boxes I run, I MUST sort through whatever arrives. That makes SPAM a big issue for me.
Your usage of your email addresses is probably typical (not on web pages and so on..) but you are probably fortunate to both be clueful about it and not dealing with your email address publicly available out of necessity.
how they plan on filtering out the traffic from the guy down the street that has the Slammer Worm and Nimda from counting against my quota.
Until those lousy cable providers are more proactive against snuffing that stuff out, the limits should be high enough to account for that...
Note that El Al (Isreali Airlines) has some pretty good security processes that could be applied towards tourism at the Space Elevator. USA flights into the Twin Towers were (are) insecure because people did not think they were a target and nobody thought five guys with boxcutters could do much; NOT because it is impossible to make them secure.
Though, the Space Elevator would make a great tourist spot, recording the sounds and vibrations the thing makes might be cool, as well as BASEE jumping. (Bridge, Antenna, Span, Earth, Elevator)
'VCR is [to the movie industry]...as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone.'
and
'I wasn't opposed to the VCR.'
implies
Boston Strangler in a woman's (alone) house is not a bad thing?
Nice guy, or nice logic.
There's more than one way to boil a cat I guess....
Russians have some stuff that will fly, including a capsule that sits up there all the time. (I think.)
Though, they may HAVE to do the next one. Even if it is very dangerous, after all the alternative is have them die up there.
One of the eye-witnesses in Texas stated that it appeared the contrail had a spiral characteristic that might mean the craft was tumbling during or before re-entry. This may imply that it was not a catastrophic explosion, rather some other event that went wrong.
Part of the insulation on one of the boosters apparently came off on takoff (gaining orbit) and struck a wing. The wing was checked during flight and said to not be damaged.
Heh. I just did looked for their methodology too, and it looks like one must actually go out and purchase a copy of the "Dec. 15, 2002 issue of the American Chemical Society journal Environmental Science and Technology" to find out how they measured.
What they IMPLY is that the process involves going back and looking at all the infrastructure required to keep the microchip industry producing, not just the process itself, but the trucking of raw goods, fuel used by the people to get to work, etc. They don't appear to discount the fact that some of the electricity is probably nuclear reactor based, and that some of the materials are re-used, etc. In short, junk Science. (And the fact that the news web sites couldn't come out and say what the method was makes me think it is bunk in the first place.)
Might as well just say "industrial revolution is bad", "chemicals are bad" and "if you eat twinkies you are bad".
This is just nothing more than pseudo-environmentalist hype, the same sort of mis-guided thinking that blames soccer moms driving SUVs for terrorism. (I dont like them either, but I tend to blame terrorism on, oh let me see...say.. the terrorists.)
Really, how much spam is done by dialup these days? They either use broadband or pay some nuts to spam for them.
I would guess quite a lot of spam originates from dial up. One of the hobbies/pastimes at my workplace is "Public Speaking Spam" where the message is read out loud in the most artful or expressive way possible. (Spoken word poetry sort of..)
One of the things we think the "Make money on your computer while you sleep" spams are about, is downloading a program that accepts messages, and then dials in and sends spam. The unsuspecting (or not) user is duped into participating in a spamming network by these things. The messages are a recruitment tool to get more users to sign up to help send spam.
It is important to not confuse the scope of the whole idea (keeping X from being accessed) with method 'security' or method 'obscurity'.
You can achieve security by using a password that is obscure, if your password is involved in a system of being changed frequently and being complicated enough to serve as a barrier. Just because the adjective 'obscure' is used, does not mean that keeping X private is done through obscurity.
The password is obscure in that with only a handful of characters, in a user / pass PAIR, the obscurity of it (difficulty to brute force) can approach infinity. Which in turn is a secure method of preventing X from being accessed.
If you follow the scope the article is talking about your example of the URL is obscurity, that there is no barrier to accessing X as long as you know in general where the holes are and that the URL exists. Remember any dorko with unsecured IIS could thwart some of the worm scripts just by not using the same path names the worm assumed were in place. (Don't put your idq files in the scripts directory! Duh!) Renaming folders without closing the hole made the obscurity of IIS install unique, only that one server has that pathname used, therefore a worm is ineffective against it. That is obscurity, but is still sure as heck is not secure, as anybody who knows the pathname can get right in.
Though, I think the article missed something by not adding that security can be enhanced by obscurity, and obscurity can be enhanced by security. Using BOTH is the best way to keep the baddies from getting X. That's what the government does, only a few people know (obscure or secret) and those that do have to use security (password, fingerprint or whatever) to access information X.
The problem is, to the uninitiated, obscurity looks like and seems just as good as security After all, who is going to guess that I wrote my PIN number on the other card! Rather than noting that the best way to keep a PIN number secure is to not use birthdates (be obscure) but also memorize it and not write it down (secure).
The article clearly states that only the process running the worm is shut down. Though there is a reboot to replace the process, the web server, web services and anything else you might be running would come up when the machine comes back up.
I think you are sort of miss-placing the blame for that hypothetical innocent loss of life in the upcomming war. (Obviously there will be some non-combatant deaths, there always are.) Yes it will be tragic when they do die. But you confuse executing a war with resolve and not caring about the few that die that dont need to.
Entertain for a few minutes, the possability that maybe that Saddam and his cronies actually have the power to stop the lost innocent lives if maybe they do as the UN asks. Or mabye if he was not attempting to get nuclear weapons, or maybe had he not used mustard gas on his own populace...
Think for a little while that though the USA has had bad moments of unleashing destruction against civilians (Japanese and German) that maybe this time the intent is to not do so?
How about the fact that the USA is pushing the high technology smart and precision weapons, spending billions and billions dollars on them, weapons that allow strategic and tactical goals of war to go on with less loss of civilian life?
The USA could bomb the whole place flat with regular, nuclear or thermobaric bombs, twice or three times without the new techonogy. Yet that has not been done.
And, whatever you do, please do not forget the Muslem extremists specfic and intended goal is to destroy civilians, women, children and soldiers simply for what they are and where they are born, what their religion is an the fact they dont beat their daughters for going outside without full robes.
Yes, civilians will die. The most saintly person in Iraq could be killed by a cranked up air force pilot dropping bombs in the wrong place. But the air force, army, and whatever the Brits send are there because the alternative will be worse.
Blame the USA for a few dead civilians if you want. We'll still keep coming to rescue your pussy European ass anyway.
I am not an MCSE, and wouldnt admit it if I was.
However, I do know that the Win2k and later series OSs from Microsoft do contain what is called "DNS Client". This client has the job of doing DNS caching. (And a bunch of other stuff I think.)
Restarting the thing can be a quick way to do what would otherwise require a reboot.
The Win98/ME/95 series stuff had a client too, but it couldnt be cleared without rebooting. Though I think it's timeout was not as long.
So yes there is caching going on, one of the main reasons why my first question to my clients is "when did you last reboot?"
The perfect match between biological weapon and porn collection... puts a whole new meaning to the phrase "Infected by Anna Nicole Smith" don't ya think?
Open Source software downloaded by a simple handshake or sneeze!
Then, when Microsoft gets in on the new industry (2 years too late as usual) all life on earth will be wiped out by an unchecked buffer overflow in blank bacteria media as it is sequenced by default when accessed by any device.
Seriously though, I wonder what the maximum storage capacity of something like that would be? How much data could be packed into a bacteria sequence? Would there be a really high read/write time to sequence the DNS? What about seek time? "Godammit come back here you bug!"
That's odd. Gibson co-wrote two episodes of the X-Files, "Kill Switch" and "First Person Shooter". So he doesn't watch TV, but writes for it. Both episodes involved much of the plot in "CyberSpace", Kill Switch had an AI living in a trailer park that could control an orbiting laser platrorm. I didn't see the other one.
Lame web site about the episodes here.
Hmm. Post again the next time your wife stands around and watches you get shit and bloody tampons spilled on your slippered feet at 3am. Tampons stop up plumbing, sometimes bad.
On a more postitive note, someone that can make a really strong shredder that fits on the edge of the toilet could make a lot of money. Make em sort through tons of shit and then piece it all back together. Got extra drywall? Shred and Flush!
Now if I could get one of the tai chi robots to clean my toilet and do other household tasks, oh, and a better exterior would be nice....
Yes, you are correct, it is "Wendy Meat".
Heh. Funny, and a little creepy at the same time.
There's a SciFi book by Rudy Rucker called "Freeware", that among other things, had "Jenny-Meat". Jenny was the original host, and had grown portions of her own flesh in vats to sell as food.
It was part of the side "color" to help make a twisted cyberpunk future, not part of the plot. There was no details, just advertisements mentioned.
[I cannot say about any research, but can only report what is in my own mind.]
Along a similar vein, I find speaking on a cell phone to be a very bad influence in my driving. (To the point that my wife thought I am pissed at her the first few times she spoke to me while I was driving, "yes, no, get to the point.") I do not like doing it at all.
Speaking on a phone to a distant person requires holding two contexts in one's head; one for the conversation on the phone and one for the driving environment. Speaking to someone sitting in the car requires a single context to be held in the mind, and appears to be easier to do (and therefore safer) because the person sitting in the care is part of one big context, not two separate ones.
It is the dual context that causes the problem, where the driver has to build the "meatspace" to manipulate ideas in two places at once. I even find that if someone is sitting in the back seat (requiring a bigger context) that my driving gets worse, even if there is no-one in the front seat at the time.
I found that a very similar thing happens when I do online presentations, with audio on phone, on-screen presentation (local and remote), as well as controls to manipulate the environment. It is VERY tricky to set up the parallel threads in my brain to focus on all of it at once, it took several months to do it well. Some of my co-workers have never gotten the hang of it, and still cannot present well with online learning tools because they cannot run both contexts in parallel without making mistakes or forgetting to speak.
I believe the cell phones are similar, the average person just is not wired to deal with the context of driving and the context of the conversation at the same time. (Though I bet people would get less dangerous if they set out to learn how to drive and speak on a cell phone safely.)
Unfortunately, this means that the "hands-free" stuff will not make driving while talking any safer. (I remember some research that said that hands-free and handheld cell conversations had about the same distraction level.)
Though I think the average person will not get good at speaking on a cell phone and will remain a road hazard, bans are likely to get ignored or repealed. I'd probably try something like doubling the fine or penalty for any road violation that occurs while the driver is on a phone, something to make people weigh the risks involved more carefully. (I see my neighbors use driving time as "talk time", always making calls as soon as they get in the car. Why not talk on the front porch for a minute?)
Anyway, enough rambling about my brain.
Hmm. Maybe German Telekom is the criminal here? Otherwise, why would they not simply refuse to pay the company that owns that phone line? Is not being an accessory to a crime not a crime in Germany?
[In the USA, you can be arrested, tried, convicted and jailed for knowing about a crime and not doing anything about it; or knowingly providing the tools to do a crime (i.e. give a gun so someone who says "I am going to kill that shopkeeper."]
They are passing on the money from the phone bill to the company that has the phone number are they not?
It sounds to me like there is part of the story that you are either not aware of or not telling about.
If you have a second motherboard with the same chips on it, you can "piggyback" a new chip on the old chip to boot and reflash.
Simply pry out the bios chip on the good mobo, place it on the pins of the old one with trashed bios so the new chip pins contact the old chip pins, boot the PC, get the appropriate utilities loaded, pull the chip off and flash.
Of course, it does not always work, but if you have nothing to lose but time (i.e. mobo already useless) it can save a few bucks.