Boldly going where fools fear to tread, Futuremark announced today the release and immediate availability of 3DMark06 by means of a front-page article on Slashdot.
Weighing in at a suicidal 575 megabyates, 3DMark06 expands benchmarking from beyond the graphics subsystem to include an array of hard drives, CPU and server failover tests for overall performance measurement of current and future web serving systems when the ever-loving fuck being Slashdotted out of them.
The notion of a backdoor in Windows isn't new. Perhaps the WMF vulnerability was one of the vectors used by Magic Lantern, which was the code word for at least one of the FBI's keylogger programs. Magic Lantern was notable in that antivirus providers participated with the Feebs in a gentleman's agreement to not look for it.
It's certainly a dumb enough solution that the IT-challenged FBI might go for it.
On relative dumbness and smartness, I'd expect smart spies, namely those who work for two other notable three-letter-agencies, to use somewhat more interesting techniques. If it were me, I'd take advantage of equipment I had in place at critical infrastructure points to conduct MITM attacks between a PC and Windows Update servers, in order to transparently install my spookware on only those machines that specifically identify themselves - by means of GUID or whatever other stuff I could glean from the Windows Genuine Advantage and other DRM-related bitstreams - as belonging to my target population.
Paranoid? If you're not paranoid, you're not thinking far enough ahead.
Leela: Bender? My God, you're a mess!
Bender: Leave me alone.
Leela: Look at the 5:00 rust. You've been up all night not drinking, haven't you?
Bender: Hey... what I don't do is none of your business.
Leela: Please, Bender, have some malt liquor. If not for yourself,
then for the people who love you.
> The year of the HTPC will return when I see reasonable-priced PCs that are 2" tall, use 100 watts, and work with my existing universal remote control.
In other words, the year of the HTPC will be the year of the car PC.
Rant: It's 2006 already! Why is it that I'm still having to grab a cheap-ass $20 "SD-based player" with minimal/no support for playlists/etc, cut it up into little bits, solder some extension wires to a SecureDigital card slot from Digikey, and spend a weekend or two applying wood or plastic veneer to the front of the resulting contraption in order to get "looks like it was built-in" MP3 support for my car without trying to hide an entire mini-ITX case in there? I should be able to buy a head unit with 1GB of flash onboard, a USB port, and just load the goddamn car straight from my laptop!)
> Do we really need laws to keep kids from buying whiskey on the internet? What ever happened to parental supervision?
Because parental supervision supports the terrorists, and parental supervision hates America. Now get your checkbook out, citizen! It's for the children!
It's like thunder, (Boom!)
Fast as lightning, (ZzzzowZzowZowwww!)
These cover versions are frightening,
Ya better knock, knock, knock, knock, knock...
On wood.
Baby.
Oooh, ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh!
All we have to do is wrap some magnet wire around Eddie Floyd (who wrote the original in 1966), and smother Amii Stewart in bar magnets.
Play the Amii Stewart 1978 disco version to spin Eddie Floyd's corpse up to several million RPM in one direction, and play the 2004 Rachael Stevens techno cover to get Amii spinning in the opposite direction at relativistic velocities, and you'll never lack for electricity again.
(It's only when you need to knock on wood that you realize the entire world's made of aluminum and plastic.)
> And you only have to move a radioactive source just a teensie bit closer to get a built-in metronome. > >
Soon, you too will be "glowing" with your musical talent...
What the hell's wrong with this thing? It only plays remixes of one track by Kraftwerk!
Radioactivity - It's in the air for you and me...
Radioactivity - Discovered by Madame Curie...
Radioactivity - Chain reaction and mutation...
Radioactivity - Contaminated population...
> > They even upgraded the three-finger salute ("Zee bird, boss! Zee bird!"). Isn't anything sacred anymore?!
> > Well... a few generations of procreation within your family tree may yield the ability to manipulate a 5 finger stick.
I knew a guy who could manipulate five joysticks at once.
He was born with five cocks. Not only was he a great gamer, but as a fringe benefit, he said his pants always fit like a glove.
> "The FBI is fast-tracking the hiring of IT professionals, reports Computerworld. Computer scientists, engineers, IT specialists and IT project managers are wanted to develop systems to support FBI analysts and agents working in the field.
...to receive an application for these and other exciting careers, just pick up your phone, call your mother, and ask for one! No Ph.D in mathematics? Can't hack it as a cryptanalyst? Can't manage to configure a web server without leaving cookies on until 2035? No problem! NSA's loss is our gain!
> Apple had worked out a totally wireless, paperless checkout process, called EasyPay.
Wireless sniffer software: free as in speech
Pringles can: $1.59
parking spot downtown: $6/h
iPod: $100
Rest of my Christmas shopping: priceless.
> Once scanned, they advise you that the receipt will be in your inbox within an hour (since I'm already a registered Apple customer, they didn't even need to take my email or other information).
Since I'm not already a registered Apple customer, any clerktrooper asking me for my email, snail address, or any other data not required to complete the transaction when I try to purchase products gets the old Jedi Mind Trick: you place an appropriate number of Federal Reserve Notes (or other bits of nicely-decorated paper) in your hand, wave your hand in front of the clerk, and you say "You don't need to see my identification".
If it works, the clerktrooper realized they're more interested in the pretty paper in your hand than the toy - so you leave the paper behind and walk out with a shiny new toy.
If it doesn't work, you keep the pretty paper and leave a confused clerktrooper holding the toy.
It's a self-reinforcing system. The Empire demands that clerktroopers ask for identification -- but clerktroopers who follow orders and resist the Jedi Mind Trick ultimately find themselves scheduled for termination. The tighter the Imperial grip, the more sales slip through their fingers.
> What about a laptop user visiting the site repeatedly from an Afghanistan ISP, then suddenly one day the same laptop (same cookie) starts visiting from a Washington area ISP.. far fetchned, but might be interesting to know under some circumstances.
If NSA needs a cookie to figure that out (and if Abdul is visiting nsa.gov from Afghanistan and DC), then neither Abdul nor NSA are doing their respective jobs.
I'm going with neglect on the part of the website administrator here. Stupid default settings in applications, plus benign neglect in the brains of users, equals embarassment. Always has, always will. Unless...
~adjusts phase coil on tinfoil hat~ If, however, I was trying to divert attention from a serious abuse I'd performed, I'd release a story exactly like this. It's got the word "cookie", which is about as high-tech as Joe Sixpack ever gets about security, so he can get all upset -- and it's simultaneously a non-issue, which means everyone from the Blogosphere to Dan Rather can trot out an "expert" to tell Joe Sixpack that if this is the NSA at its most dastardly, then he has nothing to fear even if he's got something to hide ~readjusts phase coils~ and the story I'd release would be the same, whether or not I was NSA, looking to divert attention from the fact that I wanted to trawl through the set of data originally destined for/dev/null ~tweaks fnord emitter~ or whether I was the Party official who ordered NSA to do stop dumping all that good stuff into/dev/null, and where NSA complied with my orders only under protest.
> Can someone tell what the heck Joss Whedon's comment is supposed to be? What I read was too weird to be understandable on Slashdot. Either way, sounds like Firefly/Serenity is history and/or J.W. had a massive brain fart without knowing it.
> Static, talking heads are even more boring on the internet than they are on TV. Nielson backs up his ideas with data from a study done on eyetracking while watching web video. One of Nielson's caveats: 'keep distracting elements out of the frame of your shots. If there's a road sign in the video, for example, users will try to read it and will thus miss some of the main content.'"
...and that goes double for a pair of tits. Unless, of course, the tits are the content. There's such a thing as taking this approach too far -- our studies found that in contrast to heads, static talking tits were even more distracting than bouncing (but otherwise silent) ones.
> Notice how the entire article is already loaded into the page but it's broken up into 3 column sections that shuffle to a new page of text when you click the 'next page' button (which is triggered by clicking anywhere on the first or third columns), without reloading the html page (and without reloading a bunch of ads and all the 'extras' including the useful tools).
I'm sorry, but WTF?
1) If Javash^Hcript is disabled, nothing renders.
2) "without reloading the HTML page..." -- ah, I see, I download the entire article, and rather than using this perfectly functional mousewheel, or this perfectly functional scrollbar, for this one site, I have to click "next" half a dozen times -- in order to still never be able to view the entire article at once. In other words, you've added state to a web page that has no state. This is an improvement?
> IHT is an exemplary site. I won't compare their content but as far as design and usability is concerned, they are the #1 Newspaper site on the web today.
In an ideal universe, how many times did you expect me to click "next" to read your Slashdot article? This thread?
The IHT's actually got pretty good content -- but as far as design and usability are concerned, I actually consider them the #1 example of how online newspapers haven't gotten it right. The IHT's UI is proof positive that even when a newspaper isn't trying to maxmimize banner impressions (via the unnecessary and annoying separation of articles into "pages") or gather demographic data (via equally-annoying registration links), they're still stuck in dead-tree mode. In short - IHT Doesn't Get The Web, and that layout of theirs is proof that they never will.
> I have found that after switching to this glass not only do I typically only fill it half full, I rarely even finish it all.
I have found that after switching from 12-oz bottles (in which you cannot even find this BOFHiest of brews), to 22oz/750mL bottles (in which you can), to 3L bottles, even though I only typicallly fill glass your half full, I feel much better even if I rarely finish it all even.
They say beer, it makes you dumb,
It are go good with Slashdot.
Now that I have drunk some beer,
I will click "Submit".
BEER IS GOOD! BEER IS GOOD! BEER IS GOOD! AND STUFF!
BEER IS GOOD! BEER IS GOOD! BEER IS GOOD! Let's go drink some
BEER!
> Adapted from a cheesy '70s Star Wars clone of the same name, Galactica (returning in January) is a ripping sci-fi allegory of the war on terror, complete with religious fundamentalists (here, genocidal robots called Cylons), sleeper cells, civil-liberties crackdowns and even a prisoner-torture scandal.
...and most importantly, instead of being guys in clunky robot suits who sound like they're talking through fans, many of the Cylons are teh hawtness. Who is Number One? She is Number Six, and she beats Seven of Nine hands-down.
Attention authors of lesbian slash fanfic, that is not an invitation to depict... or is it?
> It's better to fight for freedom by _providing_ freedom. The same goes for a whole bunch of other nations as well... *looks at a bunch of European countries wanting to play Stasi as well*
Hey, if the Iron Curtain was so much fun 1960s, well... the USSA can be fun, too.
With apologies to the Beatles...
Oh, flew into Miami Beach econo-class,
Didn't get to bed last night,
TSA guy's rubber glove still up my ass,
Man I had a dreadful flight,
I'm back in the USSA!
They're watchin' you every day, hey,
Back in the USSA!
Been away so long I hardly knew the place,
Gee it's good to be back home,
Leave it till tomorrow to unpack my case,
Honey disconnect the phone,
I'm back in the USSA.
They're watchin' you every day, hey,
Back in the US,
More flak in the US,
No slack in the USSA!
Well the Midwest girls really knock me out
They leave Moscow behind
And DC girls make me sing and shout
'Cuz Washington is always on my mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mind!
Oh, they're sayin' it's for reasons of security,
Naw, it ain't no politics,
And now they've redefined the meaning of "be free",
To shiny boots and big nightsticks!
We're back in the USSA!
They're watchin' you every day, hey,
Back in the USSA!
Oh let me tell you, honey! (Ooh ooh ooh!)
Oh, show me around your desert wastelands way down south,
Hire Chicanos for your farm,
Let me hear your patriotic acts ring out,
Shock and awe your comrades warm!
I'm back in the USSA!
They're watchin' you every day, hey,
Back in the USSA!
Oh let me tell you, honey! (Ooh ooh ooh!)
Hey, I'm back! (Ooh ooh ooh!)
I'm back in the USSA. (Ooh ooh ooh!)
Yes, I'm free! (Ooh ooh ooh!)
Yeah, back in the USSA.. (Ooh ooh ooh!)
> I think as I please >
And this gives me pleasure, >
My conscience decrees, >
This right I must treasure; >
My thoughts will not cater >
To duke or dictator, >
No man can deny-- >
Die Gedanken sind frei!
"The thought police would get him just the same. He had committed--would have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper--the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you."
>Are you listening, Dubya?
"SMITH! SMITH, D.P.B., 263124! Yes, you! Bend lower, please! You can do better than that. You're not trying. Lower, please! That's better, citizen. Now stand at ease, the whole squad, and watch me... Anyone under forty-five is perfectly capable of touching his toes. We don't all have the privilege of fighting in the front line, but at least we can all keep fit. Remember our boys on the Iranian front! And the sailors in the Freedom Fortresses! Just think what they have to put up with. Now try again. That's better, citizen, that's much better"
> Poll: Who here wants the internet to be regulated?
>*crickets*
>*hooting owl*
>*tree frogs chirping*
>*leaves rustling in the wind*
>*lone howling wolf in the far-off distance*
*pen scratching on campaign donation check*
*sniffling of cocaine passing from between a pop star's plastic tits past a forest of grey nose hairs*
"The People whose votes actually count have spoken. We're going to manage freedom on the Internet - so that freedom can remain on the march, for the children, to protect us from the terrorists."
> Is it such a good idea to 'Slashdot' a MILITARY website? > >
Lets hope they don't hit back....
Especially if their sysadmin's wearing one of these watercooling vests. If you thought the Bastard Operator From Hell was bad-ass, you should see him when he's overclocked.
> If the article in question is to believed, and they are scanning 1% of all US calls, they probably aren't distinguishing between foreign and citizen conversations. They're simply eavedropping on everybody and then trying to figure out what's going on.
"NSA is now funding research not only in cryptography, but in all areas
of advanced mathematics. If you'd like a circular describing these new
research opportunities, just pick up your phone, call your mother, and
ask for one!"
Slashdot Mirror
>
> Turns out that what they thought was hope was just a candle flame and they all died.
Not a candle flame. More like a leaf on the wind. *CHUNK*
Weighing in at a suicidal 575 megabyates, 3DMark06 expands benchmarking from beyond the graphics subsystem to include an array of hard drives, CPU and server failover tests for overall performance measurement of current and future web serving systems when the ever-loving fuck being Slashdotted out of them.
The notion of a backdoor in Windows isn't new. Perhaps the WMF vulnerability was one of the vectors used by Magic Lantern, which was the code word for at least one of the FBI's keylogger programs. Magic Lantern was notable in that antivirus providers participated with the Feebs in a gentleman's agreement to not look for it.
It's certainly a dumb enough solution that the IT-challenged FBI might go for it.
On relative dumbness and smartness, I'd expect smart spies, namely those who work for two other notable three-letter-agencies, to use somewhat more interesting techniques. If it were me, I'd take advantage of equipment I had in place at critical infrastructure points to conduct MITM attacks between a PC and Windows Update servers, in order to transparently install my spookware on only those machines that specifically identify themselves - by means of GUID or whatever other stuff I could glean from the Windows Genuine Advantage and other DRM-related bitstreams - as belonging to my target population.
Paranoid? If you're not paranoid, you're not thinking far enough ahead.
Leela: Bender? My God, you're a mess! ... what I don't do is none of your business.
Bender: Leave me alone.
Leela: Look at the 5:00 rust. You've been up all night not drinking, haven't you?
Bender: Hey
Leela: Please, Bender, have some malt liquor. If not for yourself, then for the people who love you.
In other words, the year of the HTPC will be the year of the car PC.
Rant: It's 2006 already! Why is it that I'm still having to grab a cheap-ass $20 "SD-based player" with minimal/no support for playlists/etc, cut it up into little bits, solder some extension wires to a SecureDigital card slot from Digikey, and spend a weekend or two applying wood or plastic veneer to the front of the resulting contraption in order to get "looks like it was built-in" MP3 support for my car without trying to hide an entire mini-ITX case in there? I should be able to buy a head unit with 1GB of flash onboard, a USB port, and just load the goddamn car straight from my laptop!)
This is not the Kermit and Miss Piggy sex tape you were looking for.
I saw a pig upon a stair,
A verdant pig that wasn't there,
It wasn't there again today,
Gee, I wish he'd go away.
I never saw a glowing pig,
I never hope to be one,
But I'll tell you this right now,
I'd rather see than be one.
Because parental supervision supports the terrorists, and parental supervision hates America. Now get your checkbook out, citizen! It's for the children!
It's like thunder, (Boom!)
Fast as lightning, (ZzzzowZzowZowwww!)
These cover versions are frightening,
Ya better knock, knock, knock, knock, knock...
On wood.
Baby.
Oooh, ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh!
All we have to do is wrap some magnet wire around Eddie Floyd (who wrote the original in 1966), and smother Amii Stewart in bar magnets.
Play the Amii Stewart 1978 disco version to spin Eddie Floyd's corpse up to several million RPM in one direction, and play the 2004 Rachael Stevens techno cover to get Amii spinning in the opposite direction at relativistic velocities, and you'll never lack for electricity again.
(It's only when you need to knock on wood that you realize the entire world's made of aluminum and plastic.)
>
> Soon, you too will be "glowing" with your musical talent...
What the hell's wrong with this thing? It only plays remixes of one track by Kraftwerk!
>
> Well... a few generations of procreation within your family tree may yield the ability to manipulate a 5 finger stick.
I knew a guy who could manipulate five joysticks at once.
He was born with five cocks. Not only was he a great gamer, but as a fringe benefit, he said his pants always fit like a glove.
Wireless sniffer software: free as in speech
Pringles can: $1.59
parking spot downtown: $6/h
iPod: $100
Rest of my Christmas shopping: priceless.
> Once scanned, they advise you that the receipt will be in your inbox within an hour (since I'm already a registered Apple customer, they didn't even need to take my email or other information).
Since I'm not already a registered Apple customer, any clerktrooper asking me for my email, snail address, or any other data not required to complete the transaction when I try to purchase products gets the old Jedi Mind Trick: you place an appropriate number of Federal Reserve Notes (or other bits of nicely-decorated paper) in your hand, wave your hand in front of the clerk, and you say "You don't need to see my identification".
If it works, the clerktrooper realized they're more interested in the pretty paper in your hand than the toy - so you leave the paper behind and walk out with a shiny new toy.
If it doesn't work, you keep the pretty paper and leave a confused clerktrooper holding the toy.
It's a self-reinforcing system. The Empire demands that clerktroopers ask for identification -- but clerktroopers who follow orders and resist the Jedi Mind Trick ultimately find themselves scheduled for termination. The tighter the Imperial grip, the more sales slip through their fingers.
If NSA needs a cookie to figure that out (and if Abdul is visiting nsa.gov from Afghanistan and DC), then neither Abdul nor NSA are doing their respective jobs.
I'm going with neglect on the part of the website administrator here. Stupid default settings in applications, plus benign neglect in the brains of users, equals embarassment. Always has, always will. Unless...
~adjusts phase coil on tinfoil hat~ /dev/null /dev/null, and where NSA complied with my orders only under protest.
If, however, I was trying to divert attention from a serious abuse I'd performed, I'd release a story exactly like this. It's got the word "cookie", which is about as high-tech as Joe Sixpack ever gets about security, so he can get all upset -- and it's simultaneously a non-issue, which means everyone from the Blogosphere to Dan Rather can trot out an "expert" to tell Joe Sixpack that if this is the NSA at its most dastardly, then he has nothing to fear even if he's got something to hide
~readjusts phase coils~
and the story I'd release would be the same, whether or not I was NSA, looking to divert attention from the fact that I wanted to trawl through the set of data originally destined for
~tweaks fnord emitter~
or whether I was the Party official who ordered NSA to do stop dumping all that good stuff into
They don't call it the puzzle palace for nothing.
Firefly was a leaf on the wind. *CRUNCH!*
I'm sorry, but WTF?
1) If Javash^Hcript is disabled, nothing renders.
2) "without reloading the HTML page..." -- ah, I see, I download the entire article, and rather than using this perfectly functional mousewheel, or this perfectly functional scrollbar, for this one site, I have to click "next" half a dozen times -- in order to still never be able to view the entire article at once. In other words, you've added state to a web page that has no state. This is an improvement?
> IHT is an exemplary site. I won't compare their content but as far as design and usability is concerned, they are the #1 Newspaper site on the web today.
In an ideal universe, how many times did you expect me to click "next" to read your Slashdot article? This thread?
The IHT's actually got pretty good content -- but as far as design and usability are concerned, I actually consider them the #1 example of how online newspapers haven't gotten it right. The IHT's UI is proof positive that even when a newspaper isn't trying to maxmimize banner impressions (via the unnecessary and annoying separation of articles into "pages") or gather demographic data (via equally-annoying registration links), they're still stuck in dead-tree mode. In short - IHT Doesn't Get The Web, and that layout of theirs is proof that they never will.
I have found that after switching from 12-oz bottles (in which you cannot even find this BOFHiest of brews), to 22oz/750mL bottles (in which you can), to 3L bottles, even though I only typicallly fill glass your half full, I feel much better even if I rarely finish it all even.
Attention authors of lesbian slash fanfic, that is not an invitation to depict... or is it?
Hey, if the Iron Curtain was so much fun 1960s, well... the USSA can be fun, too.
With apologies to the Beatles...
Oh, flew into Miami Beach econo-class,
Didn't get to bed last night,
TSA guy's rubber glove still up my ass,
Man I had a dreadful flight,
I'm back in the USSA!
They're watchin' you every day, hey,
Back in the USSA!
Been away so long I hardly knew the place,
Gee it's good to be back home,
Leave it till tomorrow to unpack my case,
Honey disconnect the phone,
I'm back in the USSA.
They're watchin' you every day, hey,
Back in the US,
More flak in the US,
No slack in the USSA!
Well the Midwest girls really knock me out
They leave Moscow behind
And DC girls make me sing and shout
'Cuz Washington is always on my mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mind!
Oh, they're sayin' it's for reasons of security,
Naw, it ain't no politics,
And now they've redefined the meaning of "be free",
To shiny boots and big nightsticks!
We're back in the USSA!
They're watchin' you every day, hey,
Back in the USSA!
Oh let me tell you, honey! (Ooh ooh ooh!)
Oh, show me around your desert wastelands way down south,
Hire Chicanos for your farm,
Let me hear your patriotic acts ring out,
Shock and awe your comrades warm!
I'm back in the USSA!
They're watchin' you every day, hey,
Back in the USSA!
Oh let me tell you, honey! (Ooh ooh ooh!)
Hey, I'm back! (Ooh ooh ooh!)
I'm back in the USSA. (Ooh ooh ooh!)
Yes, I'm free! (Ooh ooh ooh!)
Yeah, back in the USSA.. (Ooh ooh ooh!)
> And this gives me pleasure,
> My conscience decrees,
> This right I must treasure;
> My thoughts will not cater
> To duke or dictator,
> No man can deny--
> Die Gedanken sind frei!
"The thought police would get him just the same. He had committed--would have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper--the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you."
>Are you listening, Dubya?
"SMITH! SMITH, D.P.B., 263124! Yes, you! Bend lower, please! You can do better than that. You're not trying. Lower, please! That's better, citizen. Now stand at ease, the whole squad, and watch me... Anyone under forty-five is perfectly capable of touching his toes. We don't all have the privilege of fighting in the front line, but at least we can all keep fit. Remember our boys on the Iranian front! And the sailors in the Freedom Fortresses! Just think what they have to put up with. Now try again. That's better, citizen, that's much better"
>*crickets*
>*hooting owl*
>*tree frogs chirping*
>*leaves rustling in the wind*
>*lone howling wolf in the far-off distance*
*pen scratching on campaign donation check*
*sniffling of cocaine passing from between a pop star's plastic tits past a forest of grey nose hairs*
"The People whose votes actually count have spoken. We're going to manage freedom on the Internet - so that freedom can remain on the march, for the children, to protect us from the terrorists."
>
> Lets hope they don't hit back....
Especially if their sysadmin's wearing one of these watercooling vests. If you thought the Bastard Operator From Hell was bad-ass, you should see him when he's overclocked.
"NSA is now funding research not only in cryptography, but in all areas of advanced mathematics. If you'd like a circular describing these new research opportunities, just pick up your phone, call your mother, and ask for one!"
"It was a leaf on the wind." *CRUNCH*
Congratulations on getting boobies for this thread.
In other news, Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) to be acquired by Drew Curtis' Fark.com (NASDAQ:FARK).