This seems to fit well with the russian "bulletproof hosting" offered to botnets in russia. I suppose those are their clients after all, looking for new exploits to grow their nets.
It's not surprising at all, and I'm sure it's nothing new. I'd imagine a new zero day exploit could result in hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional revenue for the botnet operators.
There's no reason for them to sell it to anyone but the highest bidder.
CERT's job isn't to get people to work for free and donate exploit examples to them all day long, their job is to identify and describe exploits in the wild. Heck this group is keeping them in business.
If they ask you "what's in it for me?" and you don't have an answer, then quit complaining about how they react.
There are two additional angles to this. First angle is that the checker almost always checks for the presense of one specific file at a specific path. UT 2004 checks for the background picture that shows up in the CD's first file window. If that file exists, it assumes the disk is in the drive.
UT takes things one step further though, it only searches mount paths that claim to be DVDs. If you create a disk image for this, you will have to image at least 600mb of data to make it post as a DVD and not a CD. I found a "no cd" disk image that was a hacked compressed image, 48k, that showed up as a big empty DVD with one file on it.
Fortunately, in one of their more current updates, the silly requirement for the disc was removed and now I can play in peace. The problem I had was that when you started to play, the disk spun up and stayed spun up. This was to prevent you from ejecting the disk and inserting it into another machine to launch the game, to prevent passing a disk around at a lan game I suppose. But that's just paranoid. The problem is, this is a laptop (yes I know not the best gaming choice) but laptops don't do so well keeping a disk spun up. The entire deck vibrates because the disk is at high speed, and the machine gets a lot warmer. Those were the reasons I sought the "no cd crack" disk image.
Disk Utility doesn't do a good job at posting media type on disk images. In most cases it posts it as a generic media, which is usually not what the software is looking for. (UT would not go for this) Toast however, is very sly at mounting images and does a very good job of spoofing a CD, DVD, or whatever, when it mounts an image. So for most games nowadays that require CDs, you have to use Toast to mount the image to get the monkey off your back.
So unless you know how to hack a disk image, you're stuck with a 700MB.dmg (assuming you can FIND what file it wants, otherwise you will need 4.7gb for the whole DVD) in addition to the 9gb the game already occupies on your HD. Silly. If you're going to do that crap, RUN it off the CD, don't just require it because you're paranoid about piracy and waste my HD space.
This article seems counter intuitive. Power lines in the US are higher voltage, lower current, than local transmission lines, to reduce power loss on their primary feeds. Higher voltage means lower current, for the same power transmitted. Isn't it current passing through a resistance what causes power loss? So lowering current (and in turn raising voltage, so the power transmitted remains the same) the proper way to reduce power loss via transmission? Or am I missing something?
The only draw-back is the plants only absorb CO2 during the day.
More to the point, they only absorb CO2 in the presence of light, while they are combining it with CO2 from the air and H2O from water they've drawn up (mostly at night iirc?). This produces what they need, but a spare O from each reaction. Two of these gives us our O2 which they then release at night iirc. (not sure why at night)
So it becomes a matter of either supplying them with light at night, or storing the CO2 during the night ("buffering" it) for consumption during the day. I'd bet storing CO2 would be the easier route to go. They already do this for helium by storing it in a natural geological formation. Or store it just the same as we do now with the above ground natural gas tanks.
You can buy a shit load of grid tied windmills for 1.8 billion dollars
I must say you have a very good point there.
I wonder why they don't find something more constructive to do with all that CO2? Plants use water and sun to split CO2 and release O2, why can't we either make something that does that, or use plants to do it for us? I don't know, something like a giant version of what looks like a waste treatment plant. (with the large covered pools)
Is the rate of absorption too slow for that, where they'd need an unreasonably large biomass, or what's the problem?
Pumping CO2 undergound to get rid of it is about as forward-thinking as landfills. Burying it doesn't make it go away, it just makes it resurface well after you're dead. (and your elections are over)
In 1997 I travelled back from Japan, and brought with me a boxed Samurai sword (not sharpened).
How exactly does one sharpen a folded metal (annealed) sword after the fact? I thought they were sharpened by microscopic fracture of the blade during creation?
I also developed a slight twitch when I read "but providing 3 million amps of power per shot". Though railguns typically run really low on voltage and really high on current anyway. Getting 3 million amps to move with even a very small voltage is pretty hefty.
I know the classic demonstration against "volts of power" is to point out the incredible voltage in a static shock when someone thinks that level of voltage should blow up a tank or something. But what's a good analogy to the "amps of power" misinformant? Chewing on battery cables?
six pages has become the norm for a "spam the crap out of a popularinteview" hasn't it? Even if the interview is only 20 sentences, we can squeeze at least six sets of banner hits out of it cant we?
This one did better than most, I think we got at least ten sentences per page. The entire interview would probably have fit on one printable page. They make the column width for the actual text take up not even 1/2 the width of the page and start you out with a 1/2 page of banner to make you have to scroll by sentence 6, to try to detract your attention from the silliness.
Idiots. And then they whine when we start blocking the crap.
Well we've already seen this principle applied to prohibition. Eventually majority rule won over the moral minority.
I expect at some point in the future we'll see this applied to prostitution as it has in Las Vegas, and eventually maybe even to drug use.
The problem with drug use isn't so much what it is, but what people will DO to feed their habit, it's easy to show it increases crime. Although this is also true of alcohol, it's to a much lesser extent. Smoking is at the other side of alcohol, something that has always been legal and is addictive, but mitigated by age.
Extortion however, isn't something the majority of people would participate in so I don't think that applies.
I think this all gets into a case of whether what you are doing, others simply don't WANT you to do, vs things that you do that can have a direct negative impact on them. If too many people started killing and robbing because they couldn't get their nicotine fix, we'd see tobacco in the same league as crack because now you're infringing on someone else's rights in an attempt to exercise your rights.
I'm all for any law that helps remove a reasonably large risk on my rights. But I'm all against any law that is being passed to help prevent someone from doing something simply because someone else doesn't like them doing it.
I view copyright law not as a method of preventing infringement on someone else's rights, but rather as a way to provide incentive to creativity. It has nothing to do with rights, its just a government-sponsored incentive. And it should be treated differently. In a completely free market there is no such thing as copyright, and there is no reward for creativity. If you think of something and I think of a better way to market it than you, I win. This stifles creativity, and so copyright tries to help insure me some incentive for my creativity. The entire idea of making it illegal is taking the wrong approach. Instead of providing me with incentive, you're going after others. Sort of the difference between negative reinforcement ("punishment") and positive reinforcement. ("reward") Ask any expert and they will tell you rewards are more effective and cheaper than punishments.
I wonder if anyone has tried to bring up the notion that the legality of an action should be decided by the majority of the people. Once a P2P site gets to a certain point, doesn't the sheer size of its membership say something about whether or not it should be legal?
I used to take $40 out of the ATM every time I deposited a paycheck. Last year or so I've tried my hardest to use my bank's ATM/visa card as much as possible. I'm down to taking out a 20 about every 3 months. This means everything I buy I have a receipt for, and gets recorded in my checkbook. This goes into my computer, and gets categorized, so I can even tell you for example, how much I spent last year on transportation. (gas and vehicle maintenance) If you're paying everything in cash, you have to count that money and watch your budget all in your head. Maybe you're good with things like that, but that's not something I can do.
Also, my bank is a credit union, which means lots of good things. First, my card pulls from my savings account (as a "sharedraft") so I earn interest on every penny I have available to spend at any time. How much interest are you earning off that wad of 20's in your wallet?
Next, when I use the card as a visa, I don't pay any more, but my credit union takes a 2% cut from the retailer. I see that at the end of the month in the form of a dividend. That's sort of like the discount you have to ask for, but I don't have to ask for it, I always get it as long as I use it as a visa card.
I don't see much of an advantage in using cash nowadays unless you are paranoid about leaving a paper trail for someone trying to watch what you spend.
they aren't really feeding off each other, just more off YOU. Both thieves get a crack at your cc#. Would you rather have rung up $4000 on your card, or $8000?
you waste a lot of money paying for battery replacement in your electronics don't you?
I need a new battery in my watch now, the light isn't very bright. The battery in it is about 8 years old. Not bad life I think. But it's a big one, CR2032, about the size of a nickel.
This watch is the replacement for one I damaged some years ago. That one fell over 3 stories down onto asphalt and broke the flex band (yes, really) into 5 pieces, busted the backlight, and silenced the alarm. Other than that it still kept time. Casio DW-5600, highly recommended. The new model has a "g-shock" guard on it to prevent exactly what busted my last one, so I think this one's indestructible? Mmmm they still sell them I guess... http://reviews.pricegrabber.com/watches/m/376230/ Mine doesn't have the blue backlight, it's got a bulb, soold school!
is that it's only OK for the experts to give testimony if the ones in power agree with the experts?
citing 'the chilling effect that would occur if agency employees believed their frank and honest opinions and analysis expressed as part of assessing California's waiver request were to be disclosed in a broad setting.'"
Sounds like the good 'ol "you can't handle the truth" argument.
That just isn't true. Look at the bottom of a Macbook Pro and notice the little flap with two little screws -- behind that is where the user can easily replace the memory. The metal flap is
I think you are confusing the coin operated battery latch on the outside bottom of the macbook that I am describing, with the "L" shaped metal cover over the RAM slots inside the battery bay. Not sure how though. Oh you're talking about the MacBook Pro, not the MacBook. That has a pair of slide latches to hold in the battery, and they actually take up a substantial amount of space inside the case.
BTW, (on the MacBook) you can see the underside of the latch if you pull out the hard drive, to get a good gauge for how thick it is. If you want to complain about something, complain about how they didn't make it easy to upgrade the HD in a Pro. THAT you will have a good case for. Easy as cake on a MacBook tho.
I suppose that depends on the vehicle. My truck takes awhile to change the battery in. Lets see, lift hood, remove three bolts, unhook power cables, remove and replace battery, reattach cables, reattach bolts, and close lid.
Besides the order of the bolts and the cover, the whole process appears very similar to the Air, wouldn't you agree?
Or would you prefer your car have a handle sticking out on the front quarterpanel you just pull and out comes the battery?
And I'm going to have to change my battery this month, out in what is currently -15degF with wind, and wrestle a 40lb battery. I think I'd prefer changing one in the Air. Tell you what, you do my truck battery, I'll do your Air.
Slashdot Mirror
This seems to fit well with the russian "bulletproof hosting" offered to botnets in russia. I suppose those are their clients after all, looking for new exploits to grow their nets.
It's not surprising at all, and I'm sure it's nothing new. I'd imagine a new zero day exploit could result in hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional revenue for the botnet operators.
There's no reason for them to sell it to anyone but the highest bidder.
CERT's job isn't to get people to work for free and donate exploit examples to them all day long, their job is to identify and describe exploits in the wild. Heck this group is keeping them in business.
If they ask you "what's in it for me?" and you don't have an answer, then quit complaining about how they react.
There are two additional angles to this. First angle is that the checker almost always checks for the presense of one specific file at a specific path. UT 2004 checks for the background picture that shows up in the CD's first file window. If that file exists, it assumes the disk is in the drive.
.dmg (assuming you can FIND what file it wants, otherwise you will need 4.7gb for the whole DVD) in addition to the 9gb the game already occupies on your HD. Silly. If you're going to do that crap, RUN it off the CD, don't just require it because you're paranoid about piracy and waste my HD space.
UT takes things one step further though, it only searches mount paths that claim to be DVDs. If you create a disk image for this, you will have to image at least 600mb of data to make it post as a DVD and not a CD. I found a "no cd" disk image that was a hacked compressed image, 48k, that showed up as a big empty DVD with one file on it.
Fortunately, in one of their more current updates, the silly requirement for the disc was removed and now I can play in peace. The problem I had was that when you started to play, the disk spun up and stayed spun up. This was to prevent you from ejecting the disk and inserting it into another machine to launch the game, to prevent passing a disk around at a lan game I suppose. But that's just paranoid. The problem is, this is a laptop (yes I know not the best gaming choice) but laptops don't do so well keeping a disk spun up. The entire deck vibrates because the disk is at high speed, and the machine gets a lot warmer. Those were the reasons I sought the "no cd crack" disk image.
Disk Utility doesn't do a good job at posting media type on disk images. In most cases it posts it as a generic media, which is usually not what the software is looking for. (UT would not go for this) Toast however, is very sly at mounting images and does a very good job of spoofing a CD, DVD, or whatever, when it mounts an image. So for most games nowadays that require CDs, you have to use Toast to mount the image to get the monkey off your back.
So unless you know how to hack a disk image, you're stuck with a 700MB
a planetary computer's off-site hot spare would be ... on mars maybe?
This article seems counter intuitive. Power lines in the US are higher voltage, lower current, than local transmission lines, to reduce power loss on their primary feeds. Higher voltage means lower current, for the same power transmitted. Isn't it current passing through a resistance what causes power loss? So lowering current (and in turn raising voltage, so the power transmitted remains the same) the proper way to reduce power loss via transmission? Or am I missing something?
Now see THAT is a good idea. Why can't we do that HERE? probably cost of land. :P
because of course it's often easier to take out the competition than to beat them
In related news it's been confirmed that the two cables near Egypt were not cut by ship anchors."
we DID ask, does anyone remember cutting a cable and doing $350 million worth of damage last week? no one?
see? must have been an accident.
I think you can condense your sig into just two lines
I'm lying.
The only draw-back is the plants only absorb CO2 during the day.
More to the point, they only absorb CO2 in the presence of light, while they are combining it with CO2 from the air and H2O from water they've drawn up (mostly at night iirc?). This produces what they need, but a spare O from each reaction. Two of these gives us our O2 which they then release at night iirc. (not sure why at night)
So it becomes a matter of either supplying them with light at night, or storing the CO2 during the night ("buffering" it) for consumption during the day. I'd bet storing CO2 would be the easier route to go. They already do this for helium by storing it in a natural geological formation. Or store it just the same as we do now with the above ground natural gas tanks.
You can buy a shit load of grid tied windmills for 1.8 billion dollars
I must say you have a very good point there.
I wonder why they don't find something more constructive to do with all that CO2? Plants use water and sun to split CO2 and release O2, why can't we either make something that does that, or use plants to do it for us? I don't know, something like a giant version of what looks like a waste treatment plant. (with the large covered pools)
Is the rate of absorption too slow for that, where they'd need an unreasonably large biomass, or what's the problem?
Pumping CO2 undergound to get rid of it is about as forward-thinking as landfills. Burying it doesn't make it go away, it just makes it resurface well after you're dead. (and your elections are over)
In 1997 I travelled back from Japan, and brought with me a boxed Samurai sword (not sharpened).
How exactly does one sharpen a folded metal (annealed) sword after the fact? I thought they were sharpened by microscopic fracture of the blade during creation?
I was just thinking what an interesting tag it would be to see for this article, "butterflies with lasers"
The Symantec Guide To Home Internet Security
I'll file that on my bookshelf right between the Jeffery Dahlmer's Table Manners and Sensitivity Training by Hitler.
I also developed a slight twitch when I read "but providing 3 million amps of power per shot". Though railguns typically run really low on voltage and really high on current anyway. Getting 3 million amps to move with even a very small voltage is pretty hefty.
I know the classic demonstration against "volts of power" is to point out the incredible voltage in a static shock when someone thinks that level of voltage should blow up a tank or something. But what's a good analogy to the "amps of power" misinformant? Chewing on battery cables?
six pages has become the norm for a "spam the crap out of a popularinteview" hasn't it? Even if the interview is only 20 sentences, we can squeeze at least six sets of banner hits out of it cant we?
This one did better than most, I think we got at least ten sentences per page. The entire interview would probably have fit on one printable page. They make the column width for the actual text take up not even 1/2 the width of the page and start you out with a 1/2 page of banner to make you have to scroll by sentence 6, to try to detract your attention from the silliness.
Idiots. And then they whine when we start blocking the crap.
Well we've already seen this principle applied to prohibition. Eventually majority rule won over the moral minority.
I expect at some point in the future we'll see this applied to prostitution as it has in Las Vegas, and eventually maybe even to drug use.
The problem with drug use isn't so much what it is, but what people will DO to feed their habit, it's easy to show it increases crime. Although this is also true of alcohol, it's to a much lesser extent. Smoking is at the other side of alcohol, something that has always been legal and is addictive, but mitigated by age.
Extortion however, isn't something the majority of people would participate in so I don't think that applies.
I think this all gets into a case of whether what you are doing, others simply don't WANT you to do, vs things that you do that can have a direct negative impact on them. If too many people started killing and robbing because they couldn't get their nicotine fix, we'd see tobacco in the same league as crack because now you're infringing on someone else's rights in an attempt to exercise your rights.
I'm all for any law that helps remove a reasonably large risk on my rights. But I'm all against any law that is being passed to help prevent someone from doing something simply because someone else doesn't like them doing it.
I view copyright law not as a method of preventing infringement on someone else's rights, but rather as a way to provide incentive to creativity. It has nothing to do with rights, its just a government-sponsored incentive. And it should be treated differently. In a completely free market there is no such thing as copyright, and there is no reward for creativity. If you think of something and I think of a better way to market it than you, I win. This stifles creativity, and so copyright tries to help insure me some incentive for my creativity. The entire idea of making it illegal is taking the wrong approach. Instead of providing me with incentive, you're going after others. Sort of the difference between negative reinforcement ("punishment") and positive reinforcement. ("reward") Ask any expert and they will tell you rewards are more effective and cheaper than punishments.
I suppose the laws are written for the wealthy and the powerful, not for the majority. Nothing new here eh.
I wonder if anyone has tried to bring up the notion that the legality of an action should be decided by the majority of the people. Once a P2P site gets to a certain point, doesn't the sheer size of its membership say something about whether or not it should be legal?
I used to take $40 out of the ATM every time I deposited a paycheck. Last year or so I've tried my hardest to use my bank's ATM/visa card as much as possible. I'm down to taking out a 20 about every 3 months. This means everything I buy I have a receipt for, and gets recorded in my checkbook. This goes into my computer, and gets categorized, so I can even tell you for example, how much I spent last year on transportation. (gas and vehicle maintenance) If you're paying everything in cash, you have to count that money and watch your budget all in your head. Maybe you're good with things like that, but that's not something I can do.
Also, my bank is a credit union, which means lots of good things. First, my card pulls from my savings account (as a "sharedraft") so I earn interest on every penny I have available to spend at any time. How much interest are you earning off that wad of 20's in your wallet?
Next, when I use the card as a visa, I don't pay any more, but my credit union takes a 2% cut from the retailer. I see that at the end of the month in the form of a dividend. That's sort of like the discount you have to ask for, but I don't have to ask for it, I always get it as long as I use it as a visa card.
I don't see much of an advantage in using cash nowadays unless you are paranoid about leaving a paper trail for someone trying to watch what you spend.
they aren't really feeding off each other, just more off YOU. Both thieves get a crack at your cc#. Would you rather have rung up $4000 on your card, or $8000?
you waste a lot of money paying for battery replacement in your electronics don't you?
I need a new battery in my watch now, the light isn't very bright. The battery in it is about 8 years old. Not bad life I think. But it's a big one, CR2032, about the size of a nickel.
This watch is the replacement for one I damaged some years ago. That one fell over 3 stories down onto asphalt and broke the flex band (yes, really) into 5 pieces, busted the backlight, and silenced the alarm. Other than that it still kept time. Casio DW-5600, highly recommended. The new model has a "g-shock" guard on it to prevent exactly what busted my last one, so I think this one's indestructible? Mmmm they still sell them I guess... http://reviews.pricegrabber.com/watches/m/376230/ Mine doesn't have the blue backlight, it's got a bulb, soold school!
Microsoft claims that the decision was made due to 'security concerns'."
So this means they're feeing insecure about their market share?
Go firefox!
is that it's only OK for the experts to give testimony if the ones in power agree with the experts?
citing 'the chilling effect that would occur if agency employees believed their frank and honest opinions and analysis expressed as part of assessing California's waiver request were to be disclosed in a broad setting.'"
Sounds like the good 'ol "you can't handle the truth" argument.
That just isn't true. Look at the bottom of a Macbook Pro and notice the little flap with two little screws -- behind that is where the user can easily replace the memory. The metal flap is
I think you are confusing the coin operated battery latch on the outside bottom of the macbook that I am describing, with the "L" shaped metal cover over the RAM slots inside the battery bay. Not sure how though. Oh you're talking about the MacBook Pro, not the MacBook. That has a pair of slide latches to hold in the battery, and they actually take up a substantial amount of space inside the case.
BTW, (on the MacBook) you can see the underside of the latch if you pull out the hard drive, to get a good gauge for how thick it is. If you want to complain about something, complain about how they didn't make it easy to upgrade the HD in a Pro. THAT you will have a good case for. Easy as cake on a MacBook tho.
I suppose that depends on the vehicle. My truck takes awhile to change the battery in. Lets see, lift hood, remove three bolts, unhook power cables, remove and replace battery, reattach cables, reattach bolts, and close lid.
Besides the order of the bolts and the cover, the whole process appears very similar to the Air, wouldn't you agree?
Or would you prefer your car have a handle sticking out on the front quarterpanel you just pull and out comes the battery?
And I'm going to have to change my battery this month, out in what is currently -15degF with wind, and wrestle a 40lb battery. I think I'd prefer changing one in the Air. Tell you what, you do my truck battery, I'll do your Air.