Have you called your phone or cable company recently? Near the end of the conversation, the operator will try to sell you something. They will not let you go without a fight. It's very annoying to have to put up with this crap when _you called them_, to resolve a billing despute, problem with your service, etc.
I needed a copy of a bill AT&T claimed to have sent me, but I never recieved. The woman I spoke with would not "put the order through" without asking me "a few quick questions", ie: Do you have a cordless phone? Do you surf the web? AT&T is having a special on DSL (etc etc). I was afraid to hang up, because I didn't want the drone to get pissed, and not send me what I needed.
Watch this become more and more common as the telemarketers try to find a new way to make a living...
I paid $700 for a 70 Meg "Hard Card", which was a hard drive that fit into an ISA slot. My IBM PS/2 286 couldn't take a 2nd hard drive, so it was my only option. At the time, my harddrive was 20 MB, so 70 seemed like "more than I could ever need".
Anyway - fast forward to the year 2001. I'm playing around with an "old" 266MHZ system I'm about to sell to a coworker, when I find my old HardCard in a box of old crap. I stick it in the ISA slot, turn the computer on -- and it works! With all my gay little files from when I was 12 years old. 16-color porn, anyone?
Anyway.. it starts to smell like smoke.. I hear a "crackle" noise.. and turn around to see the hardcard is ON FIRE. And it looks like it's been on fire for a while. It's melting. And I'm still copying the files on it over to my C:\ drive! Ack! Can I copy 70 MB before it turns into a pile of melted GOO? . ..
The fumes get too intense, and I leave the room to find something to put the fire out with. I come back, and the copy is complete. I saved the data! I put the fire out... wait a few hours.. and turn the old 266 box back on. The hardcard works. It still works! To this day. And it dosen't catch on fire anymore.
Worth the $700 IMHO. Try that with an IBM Deskstar.
I grew up on BBS's; I think I was 12 when I first started calling boards. Chinet was my first exposure to Unix, although I didn't really understand what it was, at the time. ("It looks like DOS.. except you can dial into it... weird!")
I like to think of myself as an "old timer" (most computer geeks I deal with weren't into BBS's/too young), but this really puts things in perspective for me - because I recently just turned 25, myself!
If you had told me, back when I was 15, that BBS's would be all but gone, yet everyone would own a computer - and be connected to one another - I'd have thought you were crazy. I can't wait to see what it's like 25 years from now!
"Two guys who worked on SNL and the Conan show...".. as what, janitors? I'm sorry, but this just wasn't funny. Not even a little. If it really took two people to write this, then it's a sad, sad day for geek humor.
Now THIS is funny. Well, sort of. More worthy of front page then this trash, though!
I think MS Works is far easier to use than Word, Excel, etc. My mother could figure out the word processor in Works - but Office is a bit too complex.
A simple, small, easy to use word processor that's geared at newbies is what Linux needs. Something that's not so intimidating as Office, something your mom could figure out, without having to ask you "What are all these things(icons) for?"
I wonder why MS hasn't put more effort into Works! That's a HUGE market - Office is the WRONG choice for 1st time computer users.
If the spammer sent the spam to you, I think you can pretty much do whatever you want with it. I have no idea where email I've sent will end up - maybe in an email program, or maybe on a webpage. Maybe to someone's pager. If I'm afraid it's going to be automatically posted to a website, or displayed on a huge billboard in Time's Square, then I shouldn't send it unsolicited. "Email" is just a protocol for sending data; if you send data that you claim copyright on, to someone/someplace totally random, you're pretty much giving up your rights for control over that work.
Of course, "IANAL", and you should get one ASAP if you are really worried.
My friend, who always wants to borrow money from me, just got this yesterday. He says it's the ONLY computer he was able to put together without ANY problems on the first try. All the drivers loaded without problems (Win XP), and it was up and running in less than an hour. He had/has the Cappuccino, too, and it was a nightmare. The sound was flakey and the drivers were crap.
He notes two things: One, it's REALLY QUIET, and two, the on-board video is pretty bad. But he loves it. He's using it for recording live music, to carry around with him, not play games on.
I can't help but feel like the end of the "build-it-yourself computer" era is near. Things are getting smaller and smaller. Parts are getting cheaper and cheaper (except RAM..). When I had a job last year repairing PCs, people would bring in E-machines with their cheap, hard to replace power supplies, and Gateways that didn't even have a serial or PS/2 port, and only supported "half height" PCI cards. While there will always be people that want a huge tower and everything "custom built", what happens when the typical desktop PC is a small black box that's warranty voids as soon as you (after finding the "secret screwdriver") open it?
Eh, I feel old, and I'm only 25.
And yeah, I think I'll be getting a Shuttle as my next case. LOOKS AWESOME!@!$
Good idea, but this is about 500 years early. I don't think, even with an unlimited supply of money, humans could put a "station" into space, keep it in orbit longer then ~20 years, and have it GROW food to sustain an existing population, let alone new children. And also include a way to get back to Earth once the "disaster" is over. And somehow have enough energy for the needs of the crew, for many generations... etc etc. I think it would be easier to build a base on Mars -at least it's got something to build ON, and it's not going to crash back into Earth because they "ran out of fuel".
In conjunction with the FBI, 17 Buckeye cable users were served warrants, seven of whom had their possessions taken, face fifth-degree felony charges...
This was the FBI, not the local police. That's why this is overkill.
Just disable background downloading from the appropriate menu. No need to edit the registry, hex edit files, do backflips down your stairs, or sacrifice chickens.
I'm sorry. Did you read my post? The option is there, but you cannot click it! It's not greyed out - it's just unclickable! Odd. You have to know a "secret key combo" - SHIFT+4+CLICK, in order to bring up another window that confirms the choice.
And all of this is besides the point - Quicken resets your choice the next time you load it. So you'd have to do this every time you load Quicken.
You cannot, in Quicken 2001, disable background downloading, period.
Get Etheral (or a software firewall) and try it! "Disable it", come back in a week, and notice how it's not anywhere close to being disabled.
As I said in my original post, this method is only temporary, despite what they say. Check back in a few weeks and Quicken will have mysteriously re-enabled "background downloading"! Why would they do that? I don't know. Perhaps it was an "accident"? A bug? Perhaps it's spyware? I don't really care - take a look at how many steps there are in that helpfile, including that "secret key combo" SHIFT-4, and ask yourself: do you trust these guys with your financial information?
If you're going to use a Linux desktop to manage your finances, you are probably best using something open source - GNUCash, Kapital, whatever. Yes, you can go out of your way to "disable" something that shouldn't be enabled in the first place, and yes, you can take the chance that there isn't *another* undocumented "background downloader", but why bother? They aren't just "downloading" in the background, they're UPLOADING. That's a no-no in my book, for any software, especially financial software.
Lastly, for those that say "just use a firewall": Quicken hooks into IEXPLORE.* when you run it, and makes an HTTP connection with it to some IP that I didn't bother looking up. Zonealarm, TPF, etc, will grant this connection because it's IEXPLORE, not Quicken.exe (or whatever). And you could block the IP, but who's to say that's the only one it uses?
My main point of all this: If you use Linux, use an open source finance program. Try it out, at least. Then you don't have to worry about any of this.
Quicken is spyware - or something worse. There are a few DLLs that run in the background, one which contacts Intuit's site every once and a while. It's totally random, and using Ethereal, you can see that it's sending small encrypted packets. It runs all the time, not just when you are using Quicken.
There is no obvious way to disable this. There is an option hidden away in the configuration to "disable background downloading", but you cannot select it! You have to use a "secret key combo" that Intuit's tech support gives out over the phone - "SHIFT-4-CLICK" - in order to select this option.
But here's the kicker - the next time you run Quicken it re-enables this "background downloading" again! If you remove this DLL from the Windows registry, Quicken adds it again the next time you run it.
Intuit says these DLLs are harmless programs that "keep your software up to date and bug free", but the fact that it is IMPOSSIBLE to remove, and so difficult to detect, makes me wonder what this is REALLY doing.. and I'm not being paranoid, just curious. It's my computer, not theirs!!
Because it's closed source, we'll never know what it's doing.
I have not seen much talk about this on usenet, etc. Adaware does not catch it.
Look here here for some google hits on the topic. I have not found a thread where someone else has noticed that the SHIFT-4-CLICK method is only *temporary*, and that it comes back again later behind your back..
Anyway, just wanted to rant about this. I find it disturbing that my (former) financial software has such a great need to send stuff in the background without my permission!
It the wake of recent customer complaints, AT&T has started offering coupons to offset the monthly increase, but only for the next six months.
They planned on doing this from the very beginning. This is not in response to customer complaints. They knew this would be unpopular and came up with the coupon idea ahead of time.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you called your phone or cable company recently? Near the end of the conversation, the operator will try to sell you something. They will not let you go without a fight. It's very annoying to have to put up with this crap when _you called them_, to resolve a billing despute, problem with your service, etc.
I needed a copy of a bill AT&T claimed to have sent me, but I never recieved. The woman I spoke with would not "put the order through" without asking me "a few quick questions", ie: Do you have a cordless phone? Do you surf the web? AT&T is having a special on DSL (etc etc). I was afraid to hang up, because I didn't want the drone to get pissed, and not send me what I needed.
Watch this become more and more common as the telemarketers try to find a new way to make a living...
*sigh*
I paid $700 for a 70 Meg "Hard Card", which was a hard drive that fit into an ISA slot. My IBM PS/2 286 couldn't take a 2nd hard drive, so it was my only option. At the time, my harddrive was 20 MB, so 70 seemed like "more than I could ever need".
.
Anyway - fast forward to the year 2001. I'm playing around with an "old" 266MHZ system I'm about to sell to a coworker, when I find my old HardCard in a box of old crap. I stick it in the ISA slot, turn the computer on -- and it works! With all my gay little files from when I was 12 years old. 16-color porn, anyone?
Anyway.. it starts to smell like smoke.. I hear a "crackle" noise.. and turn around to see the hardcard is ON FIRE. And it looks like it's been on fire for a while. It's melting. And I'm still copying the files on it over to my C:\ drive! Ack! Can I copy 70 MB before it turns into a pile of melted GOO? . .
The fumes get too intense, and I leave the room to find something to put the fire out with. I come back, and the copy is complete. I saved the data! I put the fire out... wait a few hours.. and turn the old 266 box back on. The hardcard works. It still works! To this day. And it dosen't catch on fire anymore.
Worth the $700 IMHO. Try that with an IBM Deskstar.
I grew up on BBS's; I think I was 12 when I first started calling boards. Chinet was my first exposure to Unix, although I didn't really understand what it was, at the time. ("It looks like DOS.. except you can dial into it... weird!")
I like to think of myself as an "old timer" (most computer geeks I deal with weren't into BBS's/too young), but this really puts things in perspective for me - because I recently just turned 25, myself!
If you had told me, back when I was 15, that BBS's would be all but gone, yet everyone would own a computer - and be connected to one another - I'd have thought you were crazy. I can't wait to see what it's like 25 years from now!
I wonder why they did it next to water... (hmmm)
asciiartfarts has to be one of the funniest sites on the internet. A little crude, but hilarious.
Here's a few recent favorites.
DEAR FUCKING GOD, that just turned me GAY.
(*shudder*)
Can I give my adoption back? please
That's because most spam includes large amounts of HTML.
My friends do not use HTML in email. Ads for "Crimescene Cocksuckers" does.
Do I get some pictures I can put in my wallet, and a certificate telling me where he lives, where he goes to school etc.
Him? What about Her? Are there any female KDE Geeks to adopt? I'd like a 16 year old asian girl, please!
*cough*
Welcome to my friends list.
Ah yes, Leisure Town... and don't forget these other, classic geek funnies:
ascii art farts
Space moose
Hmmmm, what else am I missing? That's not many. I wish there were more geeks that liked "this kind" of humor...
"Two guys who worked on SNL and the Conan show ..." .. as what, janitors? I'm sorry, but this just wasn't funny. Not even a little. If it really took two people to write this, then it's a sad, sad day for geek humor.
Now THIS is funny. Well, sort of. More worthy of front page then this trash, though!
Shut up, Wesley!
Give Liquid War a try...
http://www.ufoot.org/liquidwar/
It's pretty unique.
Here's some screenshots.
I think MS Works is far easier to use than Word, Excel, etc. My mother could figure out the word processor in Works - but Office is a bit too complex.
A simple, small, easy to use word processor that's geared at newbies is what Linux needs. Something that's not so intimidating as Office, something your mom could figure out, without having to ask you "What are all these things(icons) for?"
I wonder why MS hasn't put more effort into Works! That's a HUGE market - Office is the WRONG choice for 1st time computer users.
If the spammer sent the spam to you, I think you can pretty much do whatever you want with it. I have no idea where email I've sent will end up - maybe in an email program, or maybe on a webpage. Maybe to someone's pager. If I'm afraid it's going to be automatically posted to a website, or displayed on a huge billboard in Time's Square, then I shouldn't send it unsolicited. "Email" is just a protocol for sending data; if you send data that you claim copyright on, to someone/someplace totally random, you're pretty much giving up your rights for control over that work.
Of course, "IANAL", and you should get one ASAP if you are really worried.
My friend, who always wants to borrow money from me, just got this yesterday. He says it's the ONLY computer he was able to put together without ANY problems on the first try. All the drivers loaded without problems (Win XP), and it was up and running in less than an hour. He had/has the Cappuccino, too, and it was a nightmare. The sound was flakey and the drivers were crap.
He notes two things: One, it's REALLY QUIET, and two, the on-board video is pretty bad. But he loves it. He's using it for recording live music, to carry around with him, not play games on.
I can't help but feel like the end of the "build-it-yourself computer" era is near. Things are getting smaller and smaller. Parts are getting cheaper and cheaper (except RAM..). When I had a job last year repairing PCs, people would bring in E-machines with their cheap, hard to replace power supplies, and Gateways that didn't even have a serial or PS/2 port, and only supported "half height" PCI cards. While there will always be people that want a huge tower and everything "custom built", what happens when the typical desktop PC is a small black box that's warranty voids as soon as you (after finding the "secret screwdriver") open it?
Eh, I feel old, and I'm only 25.
And yeah, I think I'll be getting a Shuttle as my next case. LOOKS AWESOME!@!$
Good idea, but this is about 500 years early. I don't think, even with an unlimited supply of money, humans could put a "station" into space, keep it in orbit longer then ~20 years, and have it GROW food to sustain an existing population, let alone new children. And also include a way to get back to Earth once the "disaster" is over. And somehow have enough energy for the needs of the crew, for many generations... etc etc. I think it would be easier to build a base on Mars -at least it's got something to build ON, and it's not going to crash back into Earth because they "ran out of fuel".
I'm sorry, did you read the story?
In conjunction with the FBI, 17 Buckeye cable users were served warrants, seven of whom had their possessions taken, face fifth-degree felony charges...
This was the FBI, not the local police. That's why this is overkill.
You *know* this is gonna be a slick OS when the webpage has a "brightness adjuster".
Just disable background downloading from the appropriate menu. No need to edit the registry, hex edit files, do backflips down your stairs, or sacrifice chickens.
I'm sorry. Did you read my post? The option is there, but you cannot click it! It's not greyed out - it's just unclickable! Odd. You have to know a "secret key combo" - SHIFT+4+CLICK, in order to bring up another window that confirms the choice.
And all of this is besides the point - Quicken resets your choice the next time you load it. So you'd have to do this every time you load Quicken.
You cannot, in Quicken 2001, disable background downloading, period.
Get Etheral (or a software firewall) and try it! "Disable it", come back in a week, and notice how it's not anywhere close to being disabled.
As I said in my original post, this method is only temporary, despite what they say. Check back in a few weeks and Quicken will have mysteriously re-enabled "background downloading"! Why would they do that? I don't know. Perhaps it was an "accident"? A bug? Perhaps it's spyware? I don't really care - take a look at how many steps there are in that helpfile, including that "secret key combo" SHIFT-4, and ask yourself: do you trust these guys with your financial information?
If you're going to use a Linux desktop to manage your finances, you are probably best using something open source - GNUCash, Kapital, whatever. Yes, you can go out of your way to "disable" something that shouldn't be enabled in the first place, and yes, you can take the chance that there isn't *another* undocumented "background downloader", but why bother? They aren't just "downloading" in the background, they're UPLOADING. That's a no-no in my book, for any software, especially financial software.
Lastly, for those that say "just use a firewall": Quicken hooks into IEXPLORE.* when you run it, and makes an HTTP connection with it to some IP that I didn't bother looking up. Zonealarm, TPF, etc, will grant this connection because it's IEXPLORE, not Quicken.exe (or whatever). And you could block the IP, but who's to say that's the only one it uses?
My main point of all this: If you use Linux, use an open source finance program. Try it out, at least. Then you don't have to worry about any of this.
Quicken is spyware - or something worse. There are a few DLLs that run in the background, one which contacts Intuit's site every once and a while. It's totally random, and using Ethereal, you can see that it's sending small encrypted packets. It runs all the time, not just when you are using Quicken.
There is no obvious way to disable this. There is an option hidden away in the configuration to "disable background downloading", but you cannot select it! You have to use a "secret key combo" that Intuit's tech support gives out over the phone - "SHIFT-4-CLICK" - in order to select this option.
But here's the kicker - the next time you run Quicken it re-enables this "background downloading" again! If you remove this DLL from the Windows registry, Quicken adds it again the next time you run it.
Intuit says these DLLs are harmless programs that "keep your software up to date and bug free", but the fact that it is IMPOSSIBLE to remove, and so difficult to detect, makes me wonder what this is REALLY doing.. and I'm not being paranoid, just curious. It's my computer, not theirs!!
Because it's closed source, we'll never know what it's doing.
I have not seen much talk about this on usenet, etc. Adaware does not catch it.
Look here here for some google hits on the topic. I have not found a thread where someone else has noticed that the SHIFT-4-CLICK method is only *temporary*, and that it comes back again later behind your back..
Anyway, just wanted to rant about this. I find it disturbing that my (former) financial software has such a great need to send stuff in the background without my permission!
Where have I seen this before?
http://www.geocities.com/s178.rm/index2.html
Holy shit, I might finally get laid!
Oh wait...
nevermind.
It the wake of recent customer complaints, AT&T has started offering coupons to offset the monthly increase, but only for the next six months.
They planned on doing this from the very beginning. This is not in response to customer complaints. They knew this would be unpopular and came up with the coupon idea ahead of time.
For those of you with low bandwidth connections, here is the trailer, in ASCII:
$ { } & 0
$ @ . . 0
% 1 / ; 1
^ ~ # " 0
@ @ ! . 1
! ( ] @ 0
"THE MATRIX RELOADED"
2003
(and actually, that's pretty much all there is to the trailer)