Sometimes a quick visual inspection of the interior of the computer can lead to the cause of the problem. Double-check the cabling, cards, memory, etc. to make sure that everything is secured in place. Even if the cards appear to be fine, I've seen it where they sometimes need to be removed and reseated. Don't forget about cooling as well. Make sure that the system has adequate cooling, that the existing fans/heatsinks are not clogged with dust and have good mobility with the flick of a finger. Double-check the fans are operational with case open and system is powered, and most motherboards have basic temperature monitoring for the CPUs and speed monitoring for the fans. On the motherboard, make sure to check the capacitors. Over the years (as recently as a couple weeks ago), I've had to replace motherboards because the capacitors had gone bad:
Some people have already mentioned it, but it needs to be stressed, a *good* power supply is mandatory and if necessary a UPS. The power supply can be perfectly operational and even pass with a power supply tester (also a good investment), but if the power being supplied to it is not consistent (brown-outs) or simply not adequate to drive all the components (e.g. video cards, # of drives, etc.) that can cause problems. In one case by simply swapping the cheap power supply out for a good quality one that I had as a spare from an older system resolved the problem.
Inproper BIOS settings can also cause problems. Memory/CPU voltages or speed may be incorrect? Conflicting on-board video/audio still enabled when add-in video cards and audio cards have been added?
I still haven't even gotten to the software debugging side of things...
I only just got one of these (Explorer 8000) last Friday. In the few days I've had it, it's been doing some really quirky things with the scheduled recordings. After having this only for four days, I've gotten in the habit of double-checking my recording schedules since on more than one occasion I've noticed the times or the programs have changed. That, or it refuses to save some (but not all) schedules if certain recording options are used. I don't know if this bug is cause of the problem, but I'll wait until after Feb. 29th to see if it starts behaving better. More likely buggy code...
It's sad that this Y2K bug wasn't caught. And make no doubt, this *is* a Y2K bug. In one of the companies I worked for, the Y2K date testing started with Sept. 9, 1999 (9999 - some programs used four nines as a exit/quit/terminate), with dates right through to Feb. 29th, 2004.
The y2k non-guarantee was put up many years ago, because nearly every organisation on the planet was being hounded with the "are you y2k compliant?" question. Mozilla is just as non-compliant today as they were then, which is to say that nobody has found any issues.
The term 'Y2K Compliant' is something of a catch-all for many of the dates that were tested, not just Jan. 1, 2000. When a company I was working for was doing Y2K testing, we were testing dates from Sept. 1999 ('9999' was used in some systems for 'exit' or 'quit') through to February 29th, 2004 - which has yet to occur. As such, don't be surprised to see Y2K Compliance mentioned for a little while yet.
Besides the one recent example of the SQL worm cited in the article, CNN made no mention of other security problems. This isn't to say that they aren't there because they obviously are, but it just seemed like they based their whole thesis of security shortcommings on one recent incident. It would have been nice to see some kind of list, or maybe a timeline of sorts with other MS security flaws. The article seemed like some kind of publicity plug for "TruSecure Corp."
Perhaps, but you probably don't know who Russ Cooper is. What makes this article a little more damning for Microsoft is that Russ Cooper is the editor for the NTBugTraq Windows Adminstration and Security mailing list with about 30000 or so subscribers.
As if I need another reason to switch from Rogers Cable. At least this article answers my question about whether Rogers was planning a competitive product for Bell ExpressVu Satellites PVR system. Rogers sales reps are less than upfront about this, stating that there's always a possibility they'll offer this service in the future. Now I know for sure given Ted Rogers reaction to PVR in this article. If Video-On-Demand is anything like their Digital cable pay-per-view offering, I think I'll jump ship and get ExpressVu with PVR instead.
I remember playing Wasteland on the ol' C64. It was one of the few games that I got hooked on and actually finished. It was very similar to the Bard's Tale genre of games, being a text adventure with a few graphics thrown in. I'm feeling nostalgic about it right now and wish I still had a copy.
This is the first time I've ever heard about Meantime. I did a quick Google search on it and found this tidbit of info about the game:
It's too bad that the sequel fell through, it would've been interesting for sure. Fallout is a great (if unofficial) sequel. One of the first things I remember thinking about after hearing about it was 'Cool, it's just like Wasteland!' Little did I realize then how much of a connection the two games actually have.
Reading this article reminds me of a.pdf I saw a while back at a parody site called Dumbentia.com.
Scary and so very true...
Wonder how scratch-resistent it is? Or not.
on
Real PDA Wristwatch
·
· Score: 1
Cool geek toy factor aside, you have to wonder how practical it is to have a touch screen PDA as a wrist watch. No matter how careful you are with a watch, you're going to eventually end up scratching the face. And that'll happen with normal watch faces that are *meant* to take a beating. Scratching a touch screen PDA that small would be disasterous, forget about using the stylus afterwards (if the screen itself is still functional). Maybe they should think about bundling some watch-sized Fellowes Screen Overlays with it, or at least have a transparent, protective flip-cover.
You might want to check out nVidia's Detonator 40 download page ( XP/2000, 95/98/ME ). Here's a blurb on Detonator 40:
Detonator 40 is the beta graphics driver for all NVIDIA
Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). Detonator 40
supports 2D graphics, DirectX 8.1, OpenGL 1.4, nView
Desktop Management software version 2.0, NVRotate.
NVKeystone, Digital Vibrance Control and includes a
new control panel and the CineFX emulator. Through
NVIDIA's Unified Driver Architecture, Detonator
software supports all GPUs below in a single driver.
Note the nView _2.0_ in that description. Perhaps it has what you're looking for.
I subscribed to Bell Call Privacy up here in Canada, which blocks calls without Caller-ID numbers or allows you to program numbers to screen out. I have to say that I am less than impressed with the results. The reason I got call privacy was so I could stop the relentless telemarketer calls I was getting in the evenings and early Saturday morning. These days the calls all come from long distance numbers (about a half dozen all within the same PBX). If you try to screen out the number, the Call Privacy service rejects it! I called up a Bell operator to find out what was going on, and apparently these numbers showing up in Caller-ID belong to cell phones and that the service doesn't allow these to be screened out! Um, excuse me? So basically I'm paying for a service that is only effective at blocking my work phone and my friends number...
I think it's time to try out that sit.wav (do a google search for sit.wav, it's the three-tone 'the number you have dialed has been disconnected' sound). I know it's been mentioned here before with the Telezapper. This month's Wired talks about it, and apparently you only need to use the first tone at the beginning of your message in order to fool the telemarketer auto-dialers.
Having recently removed this little blight (RealOne player) from my girlfriends computer I'm going to disagree about it being a 'more reasonable' player. Granted, the DVD playback capability is a nice feature but I can't overlook the rest of the bundled 'features'. For instance, the file association hijacking is still there - worse than ever. It takes over as many media formats as it can and has a background app that continually monitors file associations even when the RealOne player isn't running. My girlfriend had used this program to download, organize and play various MP3's. One of the tactics Real uses to try and ensure users don't switch to another format is to change the filenames and extensions so no other programs recognise them. For instance:
Some_Audio_File.mp3 ---> NBKJY12767.mpga
Now imagine a directory with about a hundred of these. Looking for a particular file? Guess what, you'll have to load RealOne in order to figure out what's what! Thankfully the ID3 tags were left intact so all I had to do was run a ID3->filename conversion. It would have been much worse if they were.wav files... I had a few other issues with the RealOne player, but this one in particular stands out. To top it off, she didn't even use RealMedia files. One RealOne uninstall and Winamp2 install later, she's much happier...
The weird thing about CIBC blocking usage of Mozilla for PC Banking is that this policy is somewhat recent. Before they started blocking 'unsupported' browsers, I was using Mozilla and had been using it for my online banking since SSL was properly supported in the Milestone (pre-1.0) releases. I never had any problems checking my accounts or making bill payments. However, I did experience a problem with their E-Docs (online bill statements) feature, which pointed your browser to another secure website, authenticating the new site SSL session against the original site SSL session. Mozilla couldn't make the transition. I'm not sure of the underlying reasons why though... This probably didn't become an issue for CIBC until more and more people started using Netscape 6.x.
"It's already Bill's waterloo, and has been for years. MSFT has, for a long time, harvested the top CS and ENGG people from waterloo to work for them. This is a 'formalisation' of that relationship which has existed for a long time. It's pretty common knowledge when you get to the end of high school in Ontario, if you're a computers/engineering type person (like I was) that this is the case. All your upper CS/physical science teachers know about it through their former students who went to UW."
I agree, Microsoft has always had a strong presence at UW. When I was at UW during the mid 90's, I noticed a few rooms in the MC (Math and Computer) building labelled something to the effect of 'Microsoft OS Research' or the like. Also, UWaterloo has a huge co-op program and more than a few CS jobs posted each term were for Microsoft. Not to mention, there are more than a few Waterloo Alumni with high level MS job positions - it's only natural that Alumni support their own univeristy when hiring:
As for the courses in C#, well I'm sure Microsoft is doing what it can to build acceptance for it. The thing you have to keep in mind about programming courses at Uwaterloo though is that they're more concerned about teaching proper programming theory than the practicality of the language you're using. You can learn any programming language given time, but it's the programming practices that are more valuable in the long run. I took Civil Engineering for a while, and the language we had to use in that course was FORTRAN77/87. Not a very useful language these days, but it taught the basics about programming. I was more than a bit miffed when they switched over to teaching C in CivEng a couple years later though...
I've seen a few pages on google where no cache was available which leads me to think that there's a way to disable caching also.
There is a way to automatically disable caching pages by Google, not to mention a whole slew of options to prevent or remove indexing and archives. Have a look at this page:
They give the individual user many options to control what Google can and can't do with their content. If you wish to prevent the Googlebot from archiving/caching a web page, you would use this technique:
If you want to prevent all robots from archiving content on your site, use the NOARCHIVE meta tag. Place this tag in the <HEAD> section of your documents as follows:
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOARCHIVE">
If you want to allow other indexing robots to archive your page's content, preventing only Google's robots from caching the page, use the following tag:
<META NAME="GOOGLEBOT" CONTENT="NOARCHIVE">
You would think that if the author of the NYT article was so horrified about Google indexing and caching pages, they might have given a more informative and _HELPFUL_ solution than:
Google says its search engine reflects whatever is on the Internet. To remove information about themselves, people have to contact Web site administrators.
I agree totally, spamgourmet.com is great. I've been using this for a while now and I use it anywhere that requires you to enter in a valid (e.g. getting software eval keys) e-mail address. Like jarrell says, after you've setup a forwarding address at spamgourmet.com, you can create e-mail alias' whenever you need and it's as simple as:
<watchword> - a virtual e-mail address identity; you create these on-the-fly <#> - the number of e-mails received by the watchword alias that will be forwarded to your real e-mail account before being sent to spam limbo <spamgourmet userid> - the userid that is created on spamgourmet.com that relates to your real e-mail address
At this point it's zero maintenance, but some people probably wonder what will stop spammers from figuring out how the system works and create their own watchwords. Well, if that ever happens, this site also gives you advanced control over your account, where you can restrict what watchwords are useable, re-configure the number of forwarded e-mails to be allowed (more or less), and if that's not enough - create a prefix (kinda like a passphrase, which determines if the e-mail can pass (and you can change this whenever required).
<prefix>.<watchword>.<#>.<spamgourm et userid>@spamgourmet.com
And hey, it's free (as in beer). Here's some stat's for anyone who is interested:
"Now the even stupider part of this scenario is the actual seizing of equipment. "The cable modem is illegally modified, so we'll confiscate all your computer equipment. Even the Apple-IIe over there, it might hold evidence!".
Taking unrelated computer equipment (printers, joysticks, etc.) does seem excessive, but I can see several reasons why they would take the computers. For one, the cable modems would likely need to be uncapped by the computer(s) directly connected to it, so they'd be looking for evidence to support that such as uncapping instructions or applications. Otherwise, without contradictory evidence the accused can simply say that they had nothing to do with the crime, or that the modem was already uncapped when they got it from the provider. They won't let the accused keep their computers simply because their evidence would disappear with a few mouse clicks.
"Let's say I splice some wires off of my neighbor's phone line and rack up his bill with 1-900 charges, will the cops come and take all my phones away ? Nah, they'll just cut the wires and arrest me for fraud or something, or maybe the neighbor will just take me to small claims court. Another example: if I drive away from a pump station without paying for the fuel, will the cops seize my vehicle ? Hell no, they'll just charge me with petty theft and again I will be open for a lawsuit by the gas station."
Here're some other analogies. Suppose someone assaults another person with a weapon, would you let that person keep the weapon after they've used it wrongfully? Or better yet, your company has been accused of an accounting fraud, can they be trusted not to change or shred evidence once accused?
Sure, the FBI wants to send a message by taking people's computers and equipment. But they do have a reason for taking the computers.
CIBC.. They upgraded their website about a month ago from a perfectly functional version to one that won't allow Mozilla to login. Some weird javascript or something that bumps it back out to the frontpage. When I complained they said they knew and were working on it.
I also noticed this with CIBC's PC banking. I had been using Mozilla to do my online banking for a few months and it worked. The only thing I ever found that didn't work for Mozilla was attempting to use CIBCs E-Docs system for viewing bills online. When I'd click the E-Docs link, it would attempt to transfer me to the E-Docs website and fail for some reason (session authentication?). CIBC always stated on the online banking page that Netscape 6 (and hence Mozilla) was not yet supported. I think they decided to start checking the Browser ID string on logon, redirecting Mozilla based browsers back to the CIBC home page. Annoying.
Granted Microsoft has not always been forthcoming with security alerts but hell even since 98 with WindowsUpdate you can more or less stay on top of these.
Actually, there's been a lot of discussion on the NTBugTraq mailing list in the last few months about how innadequate windowsupdate is. Most of the problems stem from Microsoft having multiple security and patch sites in addition to windowsupdate which sometimes offer patches not found or listed on the other security pages, windowsupdate included. You can download and install everything listed in windowsupdate, but there may be other hotfixes which you still have to download and install from elsewhere. Here's a link to the original posting by Russ Cooper, NTBugTraq Editor:
Slashdot Mirror
Sometimes a quick visual inspection of the interior of the computer can lead to the cause of the problem. Double-check the cabling, cards, memory, etc. to make sure that everything is secured in place. Even if the cards appear to be fine, I've seen it where they sometimes need to be removed and reseated. Don't forget about cooling as well. Make sure that the system has adequate cooling, that the existing fans/heatsinks are not clogged with dust and have good mobility with the flick of a finger. Double-check the fans are operational with case open and system is powered, and most motherboards have basic temperature monitoring for the CPUs and speed monitoring for the fans. On the motherboard, make sure to check the capacitors. Over the years (as recently as a couple weeks ago), I've had to replace motherboards because the capacitors had gone bad:
see -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague
Some people have already mentioned it, but it needs to be stressed, a *good* power supply is mandatory and if necessary a UPS. The power supply can be perfectly operational and even pass with a power supply tester (also a good investment), but if the power being supplied to it is not consistent (brown-outs) or simply not adequate to drive all the components (e.g. video cards, # of drives, etc.) that can cause problems. In one case by simply swapping the cheap power supply out for a good quality one that I had as a spare from an older system resolved the problem.
Inproper BIOS settings can also cause problems. Memory/CPU voltages or speed may be incorrect? Conflicting on-board video/audio still enabled when add-in video cards and audio cards have been added?
I still haven't even gotten to the software debugging side of things...
I only just got one of these (Explorer 8000) last Friday. In the few days I've had it, it's been doing some really quirky things with the scheduled recordings. After having this only for four days, I've gotten in the habit of double-checking my recording schedules since on more than one occasion I've noticed the times or the programs have changed. That, or it refuses to save some (but not all) schedules if certain recording options are used. I don't know if this bug is cause of the problem, but I'll wait until after Feb. 29th to see if it starts behaving better. More likely buggy code...
It's sad that this Y2K bug wasn't caught. And make no doubt, this *is* a Y2K bug. In one of the companies I worked for, the Y2K date testing started with Sept. 9, 1999 (9999 - some programs used four nines as a exit/quit/terminate), with dates right through to Feb. 29th, 2004.
The y2k non-guarantee was put up many years ago, because nearly every organisation on the planet was being hounded with the "are you y2k compliant?" question. Mozilla is just as non-compliant today as they were then, which is to say that nobody has found any issues.
The term 'Y2K Compliant' is something of a catch-all for many of the dates that were tested, not just Jan. 1, 2000. When a company I was working for was doing Y2K testing, we were testing dates from Sept. 1999 ('9999' was used in some systems for 'exit' or 'quit') through to February 29th, 2004 - which has yet to occur. As such, don't be surprised to see Y2K Compliance mentioned for a little while yet.
Besides the one recent example of the SQL worm cited in the article, CNN made no mention of other security problems. This isn't to say that they aren't there because they obviously are, but it just seemed like they based their whole thesis of security shortcommings on one recent incident. It would have been nice to see some kind of list, or maybe a timeline of sorts with other MS security flaws. The article seemed like some kind of publicity plug for "TruSecure Corp."
Perhaps, but you probably don't know who Russ Cooper is. What makes this article a little more damning for Microsoft is that Russ Cooper is the editor for the NTBugTraq Windows Adminstration and Security mailing list with about 30000 or so subscribers.
As if I need another reason to switch from Rogers Cable. At least this article answers my question about whether Rogers was planning a competitive product for Bell ExpressVu Satellites PVR system. Rogers sales reps are less than upfront about this, stating that there's always a possibility they'll offer this service in the future. Now I know for sure given Ted Rogers reaction to PVR in this article. If Video-On-Demand is anything like their Digital cable pay-per-view offering, I think I'll jump ship and get ExpressVu with PVR instead.
You gotta wonder if these people know about VCRs?
I remember playing Wasteland on the ol' C64. It was one of the few games that I got hooked on and actually finished. It was very similar to the Bard's Tale genre of games, being a text adventure with a few graphics thrown in. I'm feeling nostalgic about it right now and wish I still had a copy.
This is the first time I've ever heard about Meantime. I did a quick Google search on it and found this tidbit of info about the game:
Meantime: The Unfinished Official Sequel to Wasteland
It's too bad that the sequel fell through, it would've been interesting for sure. Fallout is a great (if unofficial) sequel. One of the first things I remember thinking about after hearing about it was 'Cool, it's just like Wasteland!' Little did I realize then how much of a connection the two games actually have.
Reading this article reminds me of a .pdf I saw a while back at a parody site called Dumbentia.com.
Scary and so very true...
Cool geek toy factor aside, you have to wonder how practical it is to have a touch screen PDA as a wrist watch. No matter how careful you are with a watch, you're going to eventually end up scratching the face. And that'll happen with normal watch faces that are *meant* to take a beating. Scratching a touch screen PDA that small would be disasterous, forget about using the stylus afterwards (if the screen itself is still functional). Maybe they should think about bundling some watch-sized Fellowes Screen Overlays with it, or at least have a transparent, protective flip-cover.
Oops, forgot the obligatory link to the nView page: nView Multi-display Technology
This page outlines some of the improvements made for nView 2.0 over nView v1.0.
You might want to check out nVidia's Detonator 40 download page ( XP/2000, 95/98/ME ). Here's a blurb on Detonator 40:
Detonator 40 is the beta graphics driver for all NVIDIA Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). Detonator 40 supports 2D graphics, DirectX 8.1, OpenGL 1.4, nView Desktop Management software version 2.0, NVRotate. NVKeystone, Digital Vibrance Control and includes a new control panel and the CineFX emulator. Through NVIDIA's Unified Driver Architecture, Detonator software supports all GPUs below in a single driver.
Note the nView _2.0_ in that description. Perhaps it has what you're looking for.
I subscribed to Bell Call Privacy up here in Canada, which blocks calls without Caller-ID numbers or allows you to program numbers to screen out. I have to say that I am less than impressed with the results. The reason I got call privacy was so I could stop the relentless telemarketer calls I was getting in the evenings and early Saturday morning. These days the calls all come from long distance numbers (about a half dozen all within the same PBX). If you try to screen out the number, the Call Privacy service rejects it! I called up a Bell operator to find out what was going on, and apparently these numbers showing up in Caller-ID belong to cell phones and that the service doesn't allow these to be screened out! Um, excuse me? So basically I'm paying for a service that is only effective at blocking my work phone and my friends number...
I think it's time to try out that sit.wav (do a google search for sit.wav, it's the three-tone 'the number you have dialed has been disconnected' sound). I know it's been mentioned here before with the Telezapper. This month's Wired talks about it, and apparently you only need to use the first tone at the beginning of your message in order to fool the telemarketer auto-dialers.
Having recently removed this little blight (RealOne player) from my girlfriends computer I'm going to disagree about it being a 'more reasonable' player. Granted, the DVD playback capability is a nice feature but I can't overlook the rest of the bundled 'features'. For instance, the file association hijacking is still there - worse than ever. It takes over as many media formats as it can and has a background app that continually monitors file associations even when the RealOne player isn't running. My girlfriend had used this program to download, organize and play various MP3's. One of the tactics Real uses to try and ensure users don't switch to another format is to change the filenames and extensions so no other programs recognise them. For instance:
.wav files... I had a few other issues with the RealOne player, but this one in particular stands out. To top it off, she didn't even use RealMedia files. One RealOne uninstall and Winamp2 install later, she's much happier...
Some_Audio_File.mp3 ---> NBKJY12767.mpga
Now imagine a directory with about a hundred of these. Looking for a particular file? Guess what, you'll have to load RealOne in order to figure out what's what! Thankfully the ID3 tags were left intact so all I had to do was run a ID3->filename conversion. It would have been much worse if they were
The weird thing about CIBC blocking usage of Mozilla for PC Banking is that this policy is somewhat recent. Before they started blocking 'unsupported' browsers, I was using Mozilla and had been using it for my online banking since SSL was properly supported in the Milestone (pre-1.0) releases. I never had any problems checking my accounts or making bill payments. However, I did experience a problem with their E-Docs (online bill statements) feature, which pointed your browser to another secure website, authenticating the new site SSL session against the original site SSL session. Mozilla couldn't make the transition. I'm not sure of the underlying reasons why though... This probably didn't become an issue for CIBC until more and more people started using Netscape 6.x.
"It's already Bill's waterloo, and has been for years. MSFT has, for a long time, harvested the top CS and ENGG people from waterloo to work for them. This is a 'formalisation' of that relationship which has existed for a long time. It's pretty common knowledge when you get to the end of high school in Ontario, if you're a computers/engineering type person (like I was) that this is the case. All your upper CS/physical science teachers know about it through their former students who went to UW."
m l
I agree, Microsoft has always had a strong presence at UW. When I was at UW during the mid 90's, I noticed a few rooms in the MC (Math and Computer) building labelled something to the effect of 'Microsoft OS Research' or the like. Also, UWaterloo has a huge co-op program and more than a few CS jobs posted each term were for Microsoft. Not to mention, there are more than a few Waterloo Alumni with high level MS job positions - it's only natural that Alumni support their own univeristy when hiring:
UW Alumni @ Microsft Committee: About US
http://www.watmsft.org/aboutus.aspx
Alumni at Microsoft join campaign (article in the middle of the page)
http://www.bulletin.uwaterloo.ca/2002/jun/19we.ht
As for the courses in C#, well I'm sure Microsoft is doing what it can to build acceptance for it. The thing you have to keep in mind about programming courses at Uwaterloo though is that they're more concerned about teaching proper programming theory than the practicality of the language you're using. You can learn any programming language given time, but it's the programming practices that are more valuable in the long run. I took Civil Engineering for a while, and the language we had to use in that course was FORTRAN77/87. Not a very useful language these days, but it taught the basics about programming. I was more than a bit miffed when they switched over to teaching C in CivEng a couple years later though...
I've seen a few pages on google where no cache was available which leads me to think that there's a way to disable caching also.
There is a way to automatically disable caching pages by Google, not to mention a whole slew of options to prevent or remove indexing and archives. Have a look at this page:
Remove Content from Google's Index
They give the individual user many options to control what Google can and can't do with their content. If you wish to prevent the Googlebot from archiving/caching a web page, you would use this technique:
If you want to prevent all robots from archiving content on your site, use the NOARCHIVE meta tag. Place this tag in the <HEAD> section of your documents as follows:
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOARCHIVE">
If you want to allow other indexing robots to archive your page's content, preventing only Google's robots from caching the page, use the following tag:
<META NAME="GOOGLEBOT" CONTENT="NOARCHIVE">
You would think that if the author of the NYT article was so horrified about Google indexing and caching pages, they might have given a more informative and _HELPFUL_ solution than:
Google says its search engine reflects whatever is on the Internet. To remove information about themselves, people have to contact Web site administrators.
I agree totally, spamgourmet.com is great. I've been using this for a while now and I use it anywhere that requires you to enter in a valid (e.g. getting software eval keys) e-mail address. Like jarrell says, after you've setup a forwarding address at spamgourmet.com, you can create e-mail alias' whenever you need and it's as simple as:
<watchword>.<#>.<spamgourmet userid>@spamgourmet.com
<watchword> - a virtual e-mail address identity; you create these on-the-fly
<#> - the number of e-mails received by the watchword alias that will be forwarded to your real e-mail account before being sent to spam limbo
<spamgourmet userid> - the userid that is created on spamgourmet.com that relates to your real e-mail address
At this point it's zero maintenance, but some people probably wonder what will stop spammers from figuring out how the system works and create their own watchwords. Well, if that ever happens, this site also gives you advanced control over your account, where you can restrict what watchwords are useable, re-configure the number of forwarded e-mails to be allowed (more or less), and if that's not enough - create a prefix (kinda like a passphrase, which determines if the e-mail can pass (and you can change this whenever required).
<prefix>.<watchword>.<#>.<spamgourm et userid>@spamgourmet.com
And hey, it's free (as in beer). Here's some stat's for anyone who is interested:
623 days, 12,314 user accounts
37,907 disposable addresses
146,592 msgs delivered, 799 today
1,268,724 msgs eaten, 5,512 today
"Now the even stupider part of this scenario is the actual seizing of equipment. "The cable modem is illegally modified, so we'll confiscate all your computer equipment. Even the Apple-IIe over there, it might hold evidence!".
Taking unrelated computer equipment (printers, joysticks, etc.) does seem excessive, but I can see several reasons why they would take the computers. For one, the cable modems would likely need to be uncapped by the computer(s) directly connected to it, so they'd be looking for evidence to support that such as uncapping instructions or applications. Otherwise, without contradictory evidence the accused can simply say that they had nothing to do with the crime, or that the modem was already uncapped when they got it from the provider. They won't let the accused keep their computers simply because their evidence would disappear with a few mouse clicks.
"Let's say I splice some wires off of my neighbor's phone line and rack up his bill with 1-900 charges, will the cops come and take all my phones away ? Nah, they'll just cut the wires and arrest me for fraud or something, or maybe the neighbor will just take me to small claims court. Another example: if I drive away from a pump station without paying for the fuel, will the cops seize my vehicle ? Hell no, they'll just charge me with petty theft and again I will be open for a lawsuit by the gas station."
Here're some other analogies. Suppose someone assaults another person with a weapon, would you let that person keep the weapon after they've used it wrongfully? Or better yet, your company has been accused of an accounting fraud, can they be trusted not to change or shred evidence once accused?
Sure, the FBI wants to send a message by taking people's computers and equipment. But they do have a reason for taking the computers.
CIBC.. They upgraded their website about a month ago from a perfectly functional version to one that won't allow Mozilla to login. Some weird javascript or something that bumps it back out to the frontpage. When I complained they said they knew and were working on it.
I also noticed this with CIBC's PC banking. I had been using Mozilla to do my online banking for a few months and it worked. The only thing I ever found that didn't work for Mozilla was attempting to use CIBCs E-Docs system for viewing bills online. When I'd click the E-Docs link, it would attempt to transfer me to the E-Docs website and fail for some reason (session authentication?). CIBC always stated on the online banking page that Netscape 6 (and hence Mozilla) was not yet supported. I think they decided to start checking the Browser ID string on logon, redirecting Mozilla based browsers back to the CIBC home page. Annoying.
Granted Microsoft has not always been forthcoming with security alerts but hell even since 98 with WindowsUpdate you can more or less stay on top of these.
Actually, there's been a lot of discussion on the NTBugTraq mailing list in the last few months about how innadequate windowsupdate is. Most of the problems stem from Microsoft having multiple security and patch sites in addition to windowsupdate which sometimes offer patches not found or listed on the other security pages, windowsupdate included. You can download and install everything listed in windowsupdate, but there may be other hotfixes which you still have to download and install from elsewhere. Here's a link to the original posting by Russ Cooper, NTBugTraq Editor:
So Windows Update is a dog, now what?
You can get a Solaris version (2.5 - 7) of Samba at: http://sunfreeware.com
It's a handy URL to have if you use Solaris a lot.
John.