"It would be far better to monitor the botnet, find the computers involved and then help them clean their computer and prevent another infection."
While your hippie-friendly Midwestern almost passive-aggressive method might be nice, it won't work. I'm betting 99% of these botnet computers are just average joes who wouldn't understand what a botnet is. If their computer gets trashed, blame it on the malicious bot. If their computer gets trashed, hey, one less botnet on the network! They should have backed up their system botnet or no botnet.
1. Don't put social security numbers on your laptop. Remember, the more social security numbers that are left on your laptop, the higher chance it will get stolen and make the front page news!
I've had zero SSNs on my laptops, and they have never been stolen out of my car nor home.
I'm typing this on an ASUS EEE PC and loving it. All my linux-centric frustrations seems to be unable to happen on this tiny machine. Guess it doesn't support it.:)
Want my suggestion? Go for more generic names in the apps. In Windows, it's "add/remove programs". In Linux, the closest thing I can think of is the oddly-named "synaptic". If you tell grandma to run "synaptic" to install something, it just creates more confusion.
Stop prefixing things with "K" just because it's for KDE or whatever. Stop with the ultra-shortened names for full-blown applications, with 3-4 decimal points for versions.
Don't tread into copyright infringement with exact names for things, but moreso something a bit more streamlined. "GIMP" is guilty of over-acronymizing(with a recursive acronym in the acronym), and just sounds goofy. Perhaps a tiny bit of marketing at least on the app names will help things a bit.
I bought an EEE PC a month ago. Just last week I enabled the expert desktop mode after some fiddling around with a stubborn synaptic(ugh just purge the finicky entries, won't you?). I find it a lot easier to use than my Ubuntu server sitting downstairs(on a 700Mhz Athlon). Is it the speed? No. Ask me where I can set the mouse wheel scroll speed on the Ubunutu machine, and I won't know. Easily found it via the large-size Control Panel equivalent on the EEE.
Initially, I balked at the idea of having Linux run on such a nice piece of hardware, thinking I would switch to Xp instantly. Nope, I will keep it, even after years of frustration trying to use Linux as a workstation before. I'm not running it out of Linux advocacy, I'm running it since it actually freakin' works this time. Actively using google's apps already(gmail, etc), it was a nice little touch to have them linked already on the little frontent.
Sure, I can't quite get gcc running yet to compile downloaded apps, but I'm doing just great everywhere else. Hooking it up to a keyboard, mouse & monitor makes it a nice little workstation.
When we get tickets that say, "There are arrows in the porter" when the person (a manager, no less!) is trying to say "There are errors in portal" then yes, the user IS an idiot.
Here's what you do for that. Mark the ticket "not reproducible" with a note saying: "Checked porter for arrows. No arrows found. Could not reproduce." and mark it as resolved. Spoken Broken English is one thing, but written broken English? Take it as a literal, just for fun.
Not really. The internet as a whole has a limited attention span. A few years from now, you will have to check archive.org's intercept of the forum posts(or blog entries) and so forth. By that time, we will have had moved onto the next criminal, viral video, or RickRolling. The whole interweb isn't going to focus on said car thief for months & months.
This story is not unlike the guy who got his Xbox 360 & Mac laptop burglarized, and some kid tried to sell the box back to him. He got it all back for free, with the help of the community. Did a lot better than the police could.
A bunch of seeing, hearing & knowing Internet users(with free time) has quite a bit of investigative power over the police in some situations. They are too busy persecuting students for wearing a mohawk to school, or other equally pointless stuff.
HD movies On Demand are HORRIBLY lacking. I'm betting you need premium channel subscriptions to get the good movies.
On Comcast HD on demand, one of the movies was Larry the Cable Guy's "Delta Farce" for Chrissake. I mean nobody's going to watch it in regular resolution, why would anyone want the HD version? There's only a handful of movies available at any given time, and they expire(and some free ones come back x months later). Netflix has it beat(I assume. I don't subscribe to it). Comcast apparently is just sitting on their asses when it comes to HD movie selections.
Geocities was effectively killed by Yahoo with unrealistic daily bandwidth quoats. You could literally hit refresh a few times on a page, and it would be locked out for the day.
This was purchased software(given to us for free by the vendor). He didn't know the password since it was a few years old, so I did the only thing I knew how. This problem would have been avoided had the security info(ie passwords) was moved over to the new SQL server.
Long story short: I had a SQL client app that tried to connect to the SQL server with a hard-coded password. I needed to know the password to set on the server. Fired up wireshark, found the password, set said password on the server, and it was a go.
I tried that same system with NWA and had a blast with it. Watched 2 movies, beat some other passenger at trivia, and just had fun exploring around with it. I just wish they commissioned a video game hardware company to make the controllers. The controllers needed to be a bit more kid-proof, and having a fire button inside the d-pad wasn't a very good idea. That quickly turned a very long, boring flight from Tokyo to Detroit into a fun one. You sit watching movies & playing games, and time just flies by. I wish they were on ALL airplanes for long, international flights.
As much as I try to read a novel(or a technical manual), the engine noise, etc destroys my reading comprehension. I can however watch a movie or play a marathon of Bejeweled. Oh look at that, flight's over already.
Dictator: I am going to build nukes! All other countries will given into my demands! Get on it. Defense Secretary: Uh yeah, little problem here. Dictator: What? We got the uraniam & stuff. Defense Secretary: No, it's not that. Dictator: Don't worry! Bush is busy in Iraq. What? Defense Secreatary: Uh, it's about the patents. We legally can't build one. Dictator: Oh darn, guess we won't be building one. We still have those bio-weapon plans around?
How about simply throttling the CPU usage Flash can use in Firefox? The whole system can slow down to a crawl just from ONE ad-laden web page. I'm not on some slouch of a computer, but every once in a while I wonder why things are sluggish. I close the suspect tab and everything's back to normal.
To me a secure browser would be non-modular, and be pretty slim on the list of features.
NO activeX NO plug-ins, period. Once you introduce a 3rd party software entry point, it's spoiled No giving out referrer info unless you say so strict cookie control mike's ad blocking hosts file built in, and configurable(or something similar) CANCELABLE javascript. Wha? Any time you get a javascript prompt, you'll have OK, cancel, and "stop all javascript right fucking now". Javscript turn off URL bars, resizing of windows? I don't think so. Leave that to the user.
And I'm betting there's 20 other things I haven't thought of that's mandatory. The web browser has become so fluidic that there's tons of entry points to a user's system now.
That's the one thing that surprised me about computers and televisions.
Way back in the early 80s, most of us hooked up computers to TV sets. Then we went to monitors.
Now we can hook up our PCs to our HTDV television sets since TVs and monitors have almost merged themselves to one. No more fighting with a screwdriver in back to hook up that RF switch(and reaching back to move that slider switch). We plug in the HDMI connector, select the right channel, and we get a nice, crisp, high res display.
Do not, I repeat, DO NOT REQUIRE a smartphone to use said sub-laptop. You are missing the point entirely. The EEE pc doesn't require you to have a pricey smart phone, nor a potentially pricey data plan to use. It has this wonderful concept of not requiring it at all. That's what bewlidered me on the ill-fated Foleo. Why spend so many dollars that is a parasitic device where you can just get a laptop already?
These convergence devices bug me to a certain point. I turned off my wireless data plan and opted for a plain-jane phone when I realized I never used it enough to justify its cost. So with the few poeple like me that are cheapskates when it comes to a cell phone, you lost a customer if your 'top requires it. What if I just want to use existing free wifi spots or just go offline to whip up some notes or play games?
Let's not add a needless layer of complication to the equation. Pricing it to $100 less than a real laptop is just asking for failure. So if you sell off your cell phone, do you sell off the redfly as well?
I went on a business trip to Taipei, and bought one on the last day. It's the 4g model with webcam(whichever one that is). After changing it from Chinese to English in 1 minute, I was up & away. The only downside is it can't see my wireless network, but it now sees wireless networks my mainstream laptop can't see around my house. While it can't do everything a laptop can, it is great for taking to the coffee shop for a quick web or email fix.
Voice Command is hilarious. You can amuse your non computer-savy friends by saying "COMPUTER WEB" and it fires up Firefox. Love the crude computer voice it blares out. Just wish it had the "computer" sound from Star Trek:TNG for the added futurism.
I am surprisingly LIKING the hacked-up Linux they used on this. It's even easier to use than Ubuntu. Their simple frontend GUI is actually pleasant to use. I was surprised to login to my linux samba server and have it work on the first try. Just wish I could find the place to change my EEE's computer name/workgroup.
Their wireless connectivity thing is better than Windows, listing connectivity percentages and such, and a text window output of the progress of connecting to the AP. Wish Windows was more like that.
While the keyboard takes getting used to, I like the Function key bindings to various functions(speaker, wireless, etc) to the top row. I have some typing experience on tiny keyboards on its spiritial successor, the Zeos Pocket PC, made 18 years prior. The zeos' keyboard is a bit more "keyboardish"(ie more travel to the keys), but the ASUS one is just fine.
I wonder if some marketing guy had a Zeos pocket pc and thought "hey, let's make an updated version of this!".
It cost me almost NT12000 and to me, is worth every penny. Just wish the bag was a bit bigger to hold the power supply.
Now call me crazy on this one: Don't send SWAT teams based on a FUCKING PHONE CALL. Why would any law enforcement arm be so dumb as to send an army to a house based on a phone call. You would think the cops would be wise as to think maybe not everyonw who calls is honest.
You would think they have enough surveillance & snoop equipment to look into a house they've got a call on to find the house empty, or have no struggle going on.
Can't they just send one officer instead of a whole SWAT team, why not just send one officer in to kindly inquire? That's what they do for prank/hangup 911 calls. This may sound sick, but it would better if 1 cop perished on an actual call than a whole terrorized family from a SWAT team. They put their lives on the line while the families don't.
This reminds me of the gullible managers at a McDonalds that were supposedly called by "police", instructing to strip serach & molest an employee. Haven't we had telephones long enough to realize the other end might not be honest. Proof, evidence, heard of 'em?
The SWAT teams/dispatchers could have solved this problem ages ago. 9/11 isn't some sort of excuse to say "oh we can't take any chances" and turn a family into swiss cheese.
Mike Abary's statments remind me of the incredibly stubborn comments from Sony PR regarding the PS3. Nice to see such comments are made from other parts of Sony, not just the PS3 division. Sony's just jealous of the EEE's success, and the potential cut in their profits. "low price" to sony means $1200 for a UMPC or something.
Nothing beats a fun round of Warlords against 3 friends.
To me, the paddle is an underrated controler that could have had more games made for it. Just as how joysticks evolved to thumbsticks(and then grew a buncha buttons), sadly, the paddle de-evolved to the steering wheel controller. To me, the paddle(with 360 motion, don't put a stop on it!) is a fun peripheral for games. There's one that was released for the Xbox 360 as part of some arcade stick, the Arkanoid controller for the NES, the paddles for the Atari 2600(+ the indy 500 controller), paddles for the Apple//, and countless Pong clones.
I'm surprised Nintendo didn't come up with one for Arkanoid-like games(as well as driving & shoot 'em up) you plug into the Wii port.
Better yet, have a toggleable 8-direction lock on it, so you can play Heavy Barrel & Ikari Warriors-style games, provided the controller doesnt take up both hands.
Slashdot Mirror
"It would be far better to monitor the botnet, find the computers involved and then help them clean their computer and prevent another infection."
While your hippie-friendly Midwestern almost passive-aggressive method might be nice, it won't work. I'm betting 99% of these botnet computers are just average joes who wouldn't understand what a botnet is. If their computer gets trashed, blame it on the malicious bot. If their computer gets trashed, hey, one less botnet on the network! They should have backed up their system botnet or no botnet.
Let the real-life game of Darwinia continue.
1. Don't put social security numbers on your laptop. Remember, the more social security numbers that are left on your laptop, the higher chance it will get stolen and make the front page news!
I've had zero SSNs on my laptops, and they have never been stolen out of my car nor home.
Just a little tip from your uncle 'der!
I'm typing this on an ASUS EEE PC and loving it. All my linux-centric frustrations seems to be unable to happen on this tiny machine. Guess it doesn't support it. :)
Want my suggestion? Go for more generic names in the apps. In Windows, it's "add/remove programs". In Linux, the closest thing I can think of is the oddly-named "synaptic". If you tell grandma to run "synaptic" to install something, it just creates more confusion.
Stop prefixing things with "K" just because it's for KDE or whatever. Stop with the ultra-shortened names for full-blown applications, with 3-4 decimal points for versions.
Don't tread into copyright infringement with exact names for things, but moreso something a bit more streamlined. "GIMP" is guilty of over-acronymizing(with a recursive acronym in the acronym), and just sounds goofy. Perhaps a tiny bit of marketing at least on the app names will help things a bit.
I bought an EEE PC a month ago. Just last week I enabled the expert desktop mode after some fiddling around with a stubborn synaptic(ugh just purge the finicky entries, won't you?). I find it a lot easier to use than my Ubuntu server sitting downstairs(on a 700Mhz Athlon). Is it the speed? No. Ask me where I can set the mouse wheel scroll speed on the Ubunutu machine, and I won't know. Easily found it via the large-size Control Panel equivalent on the EEE.
Initially, I balked at the idea of having Linux run on such a nice piece of hardware, thinking I would switch to Xp instantly. Nope, I will keep it, even after years of frustration trying to use Linux as a workstation before. I'm not running it out of Linux advocacy, I'm running it since it actually freakin' works this time. Actively using google's apps already(gmail, etc), it was a nice little touch to have them linked already on the little frontent.
Sure, I can't quite get gcc running yet to compile downloaded apps, but I'm doing just great everywhere else. Hooking it up to a keyboard, mouse & monitor makes it a nice little workstation.
Old: Eve Online Client Source Code Leaked
Revised: Eve Online Client now open source!
When we get tickets that say, "There are arrows in the porter" when the person (a manager, no less!) is trying to say "There are errors in portal" then yes, the user IS an idiot.
Here's what you do for that. Mark the ticket "not reproducible" with a note saying: "Checked porter for arrows. No arrows found. Could not reproduce." and mark it as resolved. Spoken Broken English is one thing, but written broken English? Take it as a literal, just for fun.
Not really. The internet as a whole has a limited attention span. A few years from now, you will have to check archive.org's intercept of the forum posts(or blog entries) and so forth. By that time, we will have had moved onto the next criminal, viral video, or RickRolling. The whole interweb isn't going to focus on said car thief for months & months.
This story is not unlike the guy who got his Xbox 360 & Mac laptop burglarized, and some kid tried to sell the box back to him. He got it all back for free, with the help of the community. Did a lot better than the police could.
A bunch of seeing, hearing & knowing Internet users(with free time) has quite a bit of investigative power over the police in some situations. They are too busy persecuting students for wearing a mohawk to school, or other equally pointless stuff.
"Fuck everything, We're doing three GPUs!"
HD movies On Demand are HORRIBLY lacking. I'm betting you need premium channel subscriptions to get the good movies.
On Comcast HD on demand, one of the movies was Larry the Cable Guy's "Delta Farce" for Chrissake. I mean nobody's going to watch it in regular resolution, why would anyone want the HD version? There's only a handful of movies available at any given time, and they expire(and some free ones come back x months later). Netflix has it beat(I assume. I don't subscribe to it). Comcast apparently is just sitting on their asses when it comes to HD movie selections.
Have you tried Last.fm's music player? That was quite possibly the absolute worst application ever devised.
Myspace has one important asset to this: Eyes. Teen eyes.
Geocities was effectively killed by Yahoo with unrealistic daily bandwidth quoats. You could literally hit refresh a few times on a page, and it would be locked out for the day.
This was purchased software(given to us for free by the vendor). He didn't know the password since it was a few years old, so I did the only thing I knew how. This problem would have been avoided had the security info(ie passwords) was moved over to the new SQL server.
Long story short: I had a SQL client app that tried to connect to the SQL server with a hard-coded password. I needed to know the password to set on the server. Fired up wireshark, found the password, set said password on the server, and it was a go.
I tried that same system with NWA and had a blast with it. Watched 2 movies, beat some other passenger at trivia, and just had fun exploring around with it. I just wish they commissioned a video game hardware company to make the controllers. The controllers needed to be a bit more kid-proof, and having a fire button inside the d-pad wasn't a very good idea. That quickly turned a very long, boring flight from Tokyo to Detroit into a fun one. You sit watching movies & playing games, and time just flies by. I wish they were on ALL airplanes for long, international flights.
As much as I try to read a novel(or a technical manual), the engine noise, etc destroys my reading comprehension. I can however watch a movie or play a marathon of Bejeweled. Oh look at that, flight's over already.
Dictator: I am going to build nukes! All other countries will given into my demands! Get on it.
Defense Secretary: Uh yeah, little problem here.
Dictator: What? We got the uraniam & stuff.
Defense Secretary: No, it's not that.
Dictator: Don't worry! Bush is busy in Iraq. What?
Defense Secreatary: Uh, it's about the patents. We legally can't build one.
Dictator: Oh darn, guess we won't be building one. We still have those bio-weapon plans around?
How about simply throttling the CPU usage Flash can use in Firefox? The whole system can slow down to a crawl just from ONE ad-laden web page. I'm not on some slouch of a computer, but every once in a while I wonder why things are sluggish. I close the suspect tab and everything's back to normal.
To me a secure browser would be non-modular, and be pretty slim on the list of features.
NO activeX
NO plug-ins, period. Once you introduce a 3rd party software entry point, it's spoiled
No giving out referrer info unless you say so
strict cookie control
mike's ad blocking hosts file built in, and configurable(or something similar)
CANCELABLE javascript. Wha? Any time you get a javascript prompt, you'll have OK, cancel, and "stop all javascript right fucking now".
Javscript turn off URL bars, resizing of windows? I don't think so. Leave that to the user.
And I'm betting there's 20 other things I haven't thought of that's mandatory. The web browser has become so fluidic that there's tons of entry points to a user's system now.
connected up to a television set.
That's the one thing that surprised me about computers and televisions.
Way back in the early 80s, most of us hooked up computers to TV sets. Then we went to monitors.
Now we can hook up our PCs to our HTDV television sets since TVs and monitors have almost merged themselves to one. No more fighting with a screwdriver in back to hook up that RF switch(and reaching back to move that slider switch). We plug in the HDMI connector, select the right channel, and we get a nice, crisp, high res display.
....the USB ports in front of the cable box are for. It all makes sense now!
And here I was hoping the USB ports were for plugging in game controllers for some sort of gaming-on-demand service.
Do not, I repeat, DO NOT REQUIRE a smartphone to use said sub-laptop. You are missing the point entirely. The EEE pc doesn't require you to have a pricey smart phone, nor a potentially pricey data plan to use. It has this wonderful concept of not requiring it at all. That's what bewlidered me on the ill-fated Foleo. Why spend so many dollars that is a parasitic device where you can just get a laptop already?
These convergence devices bug me to a certain point. I turned off my wireless data plan and opted for a plain-jane phone when I realized I never used it enough to justify its cost. So with the few poeple like me that are cheapskates when it comes to a cell phone, you lost a customer if your 'top requires it. What if I just want to use existing free wifi spots or just go offline to whip up some notes or play games?
Let's not add a needless layer of complication to the equation. Pricing it to $100 less than a real laptop is just asking for failure. So if you sell off your cell phone, do you sell off the redfly as well?
It's called a rap sheet. Only negative incidents(ie crimes) of your life are posted on it.
Now with ratemycop.com we have a balance.
Yay!
I went on a business trip to Taipei, and bought one on the last day. It's the 4g model with webcam(whichever one that is). After changing it from Chinese to English in 1 minute, I was up & away. The only downside is it can't see my wireless network, but it now sees wireless networks my mainstream laptop can't see around my house. While it can't do everything a laptop can, it is great for taking to the coffee shop for a quick web or email fix.
Voice Command is hilarious. You can amuse your non computer-savy friends by saying "COMPUTER WEB" and it fires up Firefox. Love the crude computer voice it blares out. Just wish it had the "computer" sound from Star Trek:TNG for the added futurism.
I am surprisingly LIKING the hacked-up Linux they used on this. It's even easier to use than Ubuntu. Their simple frontend GUI is actually pleasant to use. I was surprised to login to my linux samba server and have it work on the first try. Just wish I could find the place to change my EEE's computer name/workgroup.
Their wireless connectivity thing is better than Windows, listing connectivity percentages and such, and a text window output of the progress of connecting to the AP. Wish Windows was more like that.
While the keyboard takes getting used to, I like the Function key bindings to various functions(speaker, wireless, etc) to the top row. I have some typing experience on tiny keyboards on its spiritial successor, the Zeos Pocket PC, made 18 years prior. The zeos' keyboard is a bit more "keyboardish"(ie more travel to the keys), but the ASUS one is just fine.
I wonder if some marketing guy had a Zeos pocket pc and thought "hey, let's make an updated version of this!".
It cost me almost NT12000 and to me, is worth every penny. Just wish the bag was a bit bigger to hold the power supply.
Now call me crazy on this one: Don't send SWAT teams based on a FUCKING PHONE CALL. Why would any law enforcement arm be so dumb as to send an army to a house based on a phone call. You would think the cops would be wise as to think maybe not everyonw who calls is honest.
You would think they have enough surveillance & snoop equipment to look into a house they've got a call on to find the house empty, or have no struggle going on.
Can't they just send one officer instead of a whole SWAT team, why not just send one officer in to kindly inquire? That's what they do for prank/hangup 911 calls. This may sound sick, but it would better if 1 cop perished on an actual call than a whole terrorized family from a SWAT team. They put their lives on the line while the families don't.
This reminds me of the gullible managers at a McDonalds that were supposedly called by "police", instructing to strip serach & molest an employee. Haven't we had telephones long enough to realize the other end might not be honest. Proof, evidence, heard of 'em?
The SWAT teams/dispatchers could have solved this problem ages ago. 9/11 isn't some sort of excuse to say "oh we can't take any chances" and turn a family into swiss cheese.
Mike Abary's statments remind me of the incredibly stubborn comments from Sony PR regarding the PS3. Nice to see such comments are made from other parts of Sony, not just the PS3 division. Sony's just jealous of the EEE's success, and the potential cut in their profits. "low price" to sony means $1200 for a UMPC or something.
I mean, spam could potentially be advertising viagra or porn. They're going to hop right on that and filter out spam, right?
Nothing beats a fun round of Warlords against 3 friends.
//, and countless Pong clones.
To me, the paddle is an underrated controler that could have had more games made for it. Just as how joysticks evolved to thumbsticks(and then grew a buncha buttons), sadly, the paddle de-evolved to the steering wheel controller. To me, the paddle(with 360 motion, don't put a stop on it!) is a fun peripheral for games. There's one that was released for the Xbox 360 as part of some arcade stick, the Arkanoid controller for the NES, the paddles for the Atari 2600(+ the indy 500 controller), paddles for the Apple
I'm surprised Nintendo didn't come up with one for Arkanoid-like games(as well as driving & shoot 'em up) you plug into the Wii port.
Better yet, have a toggleable 8-direction lock on it, so you can play Heavy Barrel & Ikari Warriors-style games, provided the controller doesnt take up both hands.