They all missed that scientists would build a worldwide, high speed network for the reliable transmission of pornography to all corners of the planet, from Communist China, to the Soviet Union to the Arab world.
It's been said that porn has been responsible for ALL technological advancements. VHS, DVD, Blu-Ray, all for porn. The internet, graphical displays, web browser, usenet, ftp, etc. I'm drawing a blank at the moment for other examples, I'm sure/. can fill in the blanks for more.
It's not that I don't believe there are paid shills on the Internet, but you're linking to a blog of a guy who believes Paul McCartney is dead and has been replaced by a CIA agent. It's hardly a credible source.
Honestly I didn't really look at what the rest of the site had.
There is something odd about that "confession" as it can be found verbatim on a number of other websites. So, on one hand it negates your concern about the Paul McCartney "issue" but on the other hand it seems to be spammed to several sites.
Not that the latter necessarily takes away validity...
And of course it's your honest opinion, you were most likely paid for this.
Seriously, just get out.
How far we have come where the marketing campaign for a new product of this scale involves paying someone a living wage to "go out to websites like slashdot and pretend to be a real person who is excited about this new project."
A google search will reveal many others. This is big business??!??!? I wonder if I could be a paid shill... it would have to be for something I actually liked though. Meh.
No, there's no way it should or could cost that much or take that long. It's absolutely ridiculous.
Chances are, it was originally designed to run in a DOS window on a Pentium II MMX with 128 megs of ram or some such nonsense. Army Logistics Upgrade. That's got quagmire written all over it!
Someone got a SCHWEEEEET deal and now they're bummed out they just got busted.
I bet this is one of those things where once a month they fax in some kind of status report that never gets read and it's really just one guy sipping an umbrella drink on some beach in the Bahamas somewhere, checking his bank account once an hour just because he can't believe it's real.
So we all want to paint with a big brush today, huh? Try this on for size while we're doin' comparisons...
Android is more like windows than linux -
Want to know why?
2 reasons - it's a total 180 from iOS or OSX, and secondly, I've never had to run a freakin command line interface to get simple crap to work on android.
How do you trigger a recording before the panic button is pressed?
It'd be like a black box they put in newer cars. It's always recording, but "discards" all but the 5 minutes before and the 5 minutes after an event. Probably has a scratch area in memory and moves designated content to a retention area for later review when an event happens.
The thing is, it is ALWAYS recording, obviously, because the device doesn't know WHEN an event will happen.
Sorta like the naked body scanners at TSA checkpoints. Always recording, but "discards" the images after the operator checks you for "weapons". They don't necessarily "discard" anything, wink wink. The naked body scans of the hot chicks get "discarded" alright, "discarded" for further "analysis" or "training purposes."
The reports of ordinary people getting beat up, arrested, hassled, yelled at and harassed for videotaping or photographing cops - especially cops who were not really doing anything strange let alone those who WERE using excessive force - were very chilling indeed.
Of course, that is assuming this actually does anything.
I've seen three Windows 7 crashes - caused by overheating graphics cores, all on the same computer.
I've never seen win7 crash except for my laptop - and it's BSOD'd maybe 4 times (maybe 5) in probably 3 years. I traced the problem to a buggy ATI graphics driver clashing with the AV which WAS on there at the time. It seems fine now, I just use MSSE because I run every browser in a sandbox and don't do stupid things.
Well then you can't blame the software for a hardware failure. I was running my original Windows 7 installation until a few days ago, when I decided to start fresh. 3 years without any significant problems, it's been the smoothest experience so far. I distinctly remember the day it launched, my coworkers asked about it, and they had to ask twice when they heard me speak the words "Windows 7 is fucking awesome". This, coming from a guy running a heavily-modified Gentoo-KDE workstation, bragging about 300-day uptime with XP relegated to a tiny VM on a side monitor.
3 years later, well, I still think Windows 7 is great. Does what I expect from Windows, nothing more, nothing less. Runs fast, supports all my hardware, sleeps/resumes without a hitch, uptime is dependent on whether I care to install monthly updates. Pretty much my only gripe is I wish the default shell were Bash instead of CMD (and Cygwin still sucks).
Wow, this is probably the first honest and thoughtful yet believable post I've seen on the tubes actually giving win7 the praise it deserves. I also was running xp at home and linux at work until win7 came out, and now I have it in both places. Just can't justify the "hassle" of setting up and configuring linux - which always takes a lot of time for *me* (maybe not a more leet haxxor) because win7 really does just work in a very non-annoying fashion.
There are few people who are both brilliantly creative AND also type A. I know of one who made his mark, Steve Jobs.
Oh dear, I was with you until then.
Jobs "brilliantly creative"?
Please: what did he ever create?
Steve Jobs wasn't creative? Seriously? He may not have INVENTED much from SCRATCH - that's what you are getting at I know - but he was creative. His designs, his style, his attention to detail, the feel - his cult of MAC. That's what he created.
A dullard would have never succeeded in those areas. You know, a dullard. The opposite of creative. Jobs was many things but not a dullard.
In my experience from being around the technologically astute, the problem solvers, the artistic, the inherently naturally talented people I would have to agree.
The issue is that many of those types of people aren't "type A" personalities. They aren't cut-throat leaders and the corporate project manager types. They will create masterpieces, they will design complex and game-changing inventions and they will fix things no-one else understands. But they do it at the behest of someone else who is paying the money or running the project.
They are in their place when they are creating and doing. Their talents would be wasted running the show. Obviously when pressed into service they can, will and do lead - brilliantly, but they don't seek it out.
When these talented people are busy seeing the big picture in order to lead they don't have the time to focus in on the minutia they are so good at seeing. When they are in "the zone" they can't be bothered to see the big picture, it is just a distraction at the time.
There are few people who are both brilliantly creative AND also type A. I know of one who made his mark, Steve Jobs.
Sounds expensive just to distribute malware/viruses at say even a few bucks a stick compared to traditional methods like email which proven to be quite effective by the gullible. I just don't see this being common practice though it possible it could be a targeted attack in an attempt to penetrate the company specifically.
CD-Rs with something intriguing sharpied on the front would be a lot cheaper that's for sure. The cheapest flash drives are maybe what, $3? $2? CDr can be had for cents. A malware campaign using this tactic would only use USB flash if they were zeroed in on the target(s) or as someone else said if they had gov't level funding.
A sow-them-to-the-wind campaign would rather use CDr I would think.
Any pen testers out there that can attest to this?
So this was... legal malware? Can someone clue me in on the history of this utility? As far as I can tell, this looks like proof-of-concept/research malware designed to be used for testing purposes, but that's the best I can gather.
Dark Comet was simply a very robust and functional Remote Admin Tool. You know, like Teamviewer or Logmein Pro or.... Take your pick.
The thing is, it was free and it was totally customizable in how you compile the client side service. Meaning, you could make the runtime executable glom itself into explorer.exe or iexplore or whatever persistence method you wanted. It could automatically add itself to the registry in different ways to guarantee it running.
Also it reportedly could respond well to having the service "crypted" meaning to encrypt and encode the compiled program to be undetected by security software.
In other words, it wasn't just a Remote Admin Tool, it was a RAT. RATs can be used for botnets, spying, stealing, so on.
The guy was a very good programmer and he created a very nice pistol. Apparently he couldn't stand to see it become the next Saturday Night Special.
I deal with malware all the time, I own an IT business. So, of course I checked out Dark Comet, Poison Ivy, Blackshades, etc, to see how these things work. A commercial offering is Cybergate RAT. There's tons of them, but Dark Comet was noteworthy in that it was clean and free, was around a long time, and actually worked well.
A guy could legitimately deploy a RAT in order to support a client base. The problem is that these "aggressive" programs get flagged as malware all the time.
Mainly because they get used as malware all the time.
A side note - Cybergate is a commercial offering that will provide a clean version of the product that will NOT get flagged by antivirus software.
Microsoft's goose is cooked anyway. People do 80% of their online work with their smartphones and live the other 20% on a tablet.
The only people who NEED a full blown PC with Windows are people who.... You know, I'm not sure anymore. Developers? IT people? Engineers? Video editors? Beats me.
I would have recommended a Roku or AppleTV with Netflix and Hulu Plus.... but Hulu Plus just started running political ads. Arrrgghh. Amazon Prime is a nice to have, but not needed. I rarely find something there that Netflix doesn't have.... unless you want reality tv stuff or those "dirty job" type shows. Amazon Prime streaming seems to have those in spades.
This.
DVR is not video on demand. Netflix, Hulu, Amazon prime etc is the future. My family does it, we have Netflix and recently got a HD tv with internet (NF, AP, YT etc). So we can have netflix on the tv, on a Roku box we've had for a while, on pc and the Wii. There is a limit on concurrent devices, but we routinely have more than one stream at a time with AP/YT/NF.
Indeed - skip the first Star Trek movie and go directly to Star Trek II - The Wrath of Khan! My favorite Star Trek movie by far, so much so that the Khan bellow is my ringtone on my phone.
As for series - start off with TOS, then I'd do ST:Enterprise, then ST:TNG, then Voyager and DS9.
You know, they say the latest ST movie is the easiest for non-trekkies to watch.
For me, my wife likes Voyager the best. Then TNG. She never got into the others. DS9 was my favorite for some reason but she can't stand it. Calls it a geek soap opera. WhatEVER! lol.
I once saw an old lady get scammed with this type of stuff but with one glaring exception - it wasn't over the internet.
It was over the phone and fax. I don't know how they got ahold of her initially but the phone number she had to call and fax was in Puerto Rico. To call PR isn't an international number from the US but certainly is long distance.
So instead of visiting dodgy websites and so on they had her doing it by fax. They faxed her a document with a very cheesy looking bank letterhead and so on.
It was quite sad. I worked at a place for a while that had a fax service and she was coming in every day looking for her fax from her benefactors. She was doing this for weeks. I tried to get her help, even called the local police and they talked to her, but she was insisting that it was real.
We asked her "Did you send these people money?" and she refused to answer.
If you actually have HOURS, I guess it would be in this order: People, backups, any critical physical documents, most expensive device, next most expensive device, then the next most expensive device....
As far as how to transport said devices... if you only have hours it would probably come down to back seats and trunks. If you can go and rent a truck from the place down the street, cardboard boxes and moving blankets.
If you have more time than that and you can actually source bubblewrap and such, you don't have an emergency.
If you have minutes, obviously grab the backup tape(s) as you all run to the shelter or whatever. This is what offsite backups and "paperless offices" are for. SHTF you just run because the information is safe.
It'll cost you a fraction of the price of the Lenovo or any other branded equivalent, look prettier for the kids and work fine with whatever distro you specify.
These things are commodities now, especially in an elementary school setting. Why pay a premium?
As I see you're already at +5 I'll just reply to say thanks for the links, the molo site looks very interesting indeed...
No, there's much more missing than just the large screen and keyboard: Office applications, for one. A web browser is not enough.
And as we've just seen in the/. stories discussing Windows 8, a mobile UI is NOT a good idea for a laptop/desktop.
Perhaps regular readers of/. won't be the target market for this device, but I think it's a fantastic idea. People live on their phones, they have all their contacts on it, email, texting, facebook, and all their music. They take pics and movies on it. There are mobile office apps, google drive and dropbox.
If it was possible to get home and (easily) dock your smartphone to this device to give it a real qwerty KB, a large screen so you can rest your tired eyes, and charge it at the same time? Hook it up to your home stereo speakers and keep playing that song you were listening to on the way home? How about HDMI to the widescreen?
If all your stuff is on the smartphone, why have redundant devices? I think it's a stellar idea for a lot of people, and I wish I'd thought of it!
With "Teh Cloudz" our data will gradually migrate to be in ONE PLACE for simplicity - why not one device? Simplicity is the new killer app. Being simple sometimes takes more engineering than just being high tech.
Slashdot Mirror
They all missed that scientists would build a worldwide, high speed network for the reliable transmission of pornography to all corners of the planet, from Communist China, to the Soviet Union to the Arab world.
It's been said that porn has been responsible for ALL technological advancements. VHS, DVD, Blu-Ray, all for porn. The internet, graphical displays, web browser, usenet, ftp, etc. I'm drawing a blank at the moment for other examples, I'm sure /. can fill in the blanks for more.
You joke....
O_o
This is not a joking matter!
What went wrong with doom3? shudder
It's not that I don't believe there are paid shills on the Internet, but you're linking to a blog of a guy who believes Paul McCartney is dead and has been replaced by a CIA agent. It's hardly a credible source.
Honestly I didn't really look at what the rest of the site had.
There is something odd about that "confession" as it can be found verbatim on a number of other websites. So, on one hand it negates your concern about the Paul McCartney "issue" but on the other hand it seems to be spammed to several sites.
Not that the latter necessarily takes away validity...
And of course it's your honest opinion, you were most likely paid for this.
Seriously, just get out.
How far we have come where the marketing campaign for a new product of this scale involves paying someone a living wage to "go out to websites like slashdot and pretend to be a real person who is excited about this new project."
Good grief. FacePalm.
There are shills everywhere though... http://plasticmacca.blogspot.com/2012/04/confessions-of-ex-internet-shill.html
A google search will reveal many others. This is big business??!??!? I wonder if I could be a paid shill... it would have to be for something I actually liked though. Meh.
No, there's no way it should or could cost that much or take that long. It's absolutely ridiculous.
Chances are, it was originally designed to run in a DOS window on a Pentium II MMX with 128 megs of ram or some such nonsense. Army Logistics Upgrade. That's got quagmire written all over it!
Someone got a SCHWEEEEET deal and now they're bummed out they just got busted.
I bet this is one of those things where once a month they fax in some kind of status report that never gets read and it's really just one guy sipping an umbrella drink on some beach in the Bahamas somewhere, checking his bank account once an hour just because he can't believe it's real.
So we all want to paint with a big brush today, huh? Try this on for size while we're doin' comparisons...
Android is more like windows than linux -
Want to know why?
2 reasons - it's a total 180 from iOS or OSX, and secondly, I've never had to run a freakin command line interface to get simple crap to work on android.
Thus - Windows.
Big enogh brush for y'all?
How do you trigger a recording before the panic button is pressed?
It'd be like a black box they put in newer cars. It's always recording, but "discards" all but the 5 minutes before and the 5 minutes after an event.
Probably has a scratch area in memory and moves designated content to a retention area for later review when an event happens.
The thing is, it is ALWAYS recording, obviously, because the device doesn't know WHEN an event will happen.
Sorta like the naked body scanners at TSA checkpoints. Always recording, but "discards" the images after the operator checks you for "weapons". They don't necessarily "discard" anything, wink wink. The naked body scans of the hot chicks get "discarded" alright, "discarded" for further "analysis" or "training purposes."
How about a ban on stupid trailer-park dumbass kids who ruin it for the rest of us?
Hey, Govmint - Trade ya some Buckyballs fer some LAWN DARTS!
All joking aside, this really is a good thing.
The reports of ordinary people getting beat up, arrested, hassled, yelled at and harassed for videotaping or photographing cops - especially cops who were not really doing anything strange let alone those who WERE using excessive force - were very chilling indeed.
Of course, that is assuming this actually does anything.
I've seen three Windows 7 crashes - caused by overheating graphics cores, all on the same computer.
I've never seen win7 crash except for my laptop - and it's BSOD'd maybe 4 times (maybe 5) in probably 3 years. I traced the problem to a buggy ATI graphics driver clashing with the AV which WAS on there at the time. It seems fine now, I just use MSSE because I run every browser in a sandbox and don't do stupid things.
Well then you can't blame the software for a hardware failure. I was running my original Windows 7 installation until a few days ago, when I decided to start fresh. 3 years without any significant problems, it's been the smoothest experience so far. I distinctly remember the day it launched, my coworkers asked about it, and they had to ask twice when they heard me speak the words "Windows 7 is fucking awesome". This, coming from a guy running a heavily-modified Gentoo-KDE workstation, bragging about 300-day uptime with XP relegated to a tiny VM on a side monitor.
3 years later, well, I still think Windows 7 is great. Does what I expect from Windows, nothing more, nothing less. Runs fast, supports all my hardware, sleeps/resumes without a hitch, uptime is dependent on whether I care to install monthly updates. Pretty much my only gripe is I wish the default shell were Bash instead of CMD (and Cygwin still sucks).
Wow, this is probably the first honest and thoughtful yet believable post I've seen on the tubes actually giving win7 the praise it deserves. I also was running xp at home and linux at work until win7 came out, and now I have it in both places. Just can't justify the "hassle" of setting up and configuring linux - which always takes a lot of time for *me* (maybe not a more leet haxxor) because win7 really does just work in a very non-annoying fashion.
There are few people who are both brilliantly creative AND also type A. I know of one who made his mark, Steve Jobs.
Oh dear, I was with you until then.
Jobs "brilliantly creative"?
Please: what did he ever create?
Steve Jobs wasn't creative? Seriously? He may not have INVENTED much from SCRATCH - that's what you are getting at I know - but he was creative. His designs, his style, his attention to detail, the feel - his cult of MAC. That's what he created.
A dullard would have never succeeded in those areas. You know, a dullard. The opposite of creative. Jobs was many things but not a dullard.
In my experience from being around the technologically astute, the problem solvers, the artistic, the inherently naturally talented people I would have to agree.
The issue is that many of those types of people aren't "type A" personalities. They aren't cut-throat leaders and the corporate project manager types. They will create masterpieces, they will design complex and game-changing inventions and they will fix things no-one else understands. But they do it at the behest of someone else who is paying the money or running the project.
They are in their place when they are creating and doing. Their talents would be wasted running the show. Obviously when pressed into service they can, will and do lead - brilliantly, but they don't seek it out.
When these talented people are busy seeing the big picture in order to lead they don't have the time to focus in on the minutia they are so good at seeing. When they are in "the zone" they can't be bothered to see the big picture, it is just a distraction at the time.
There are few people who are both brilliantly creative AND also type A. I know of one who made his mark, Steve Jobs.
Sounds expensive just to distribute malware/viruses at say even a few bucks a stick compared to traditional methods like email which proven to be quite effective by the gullible. I just don't see this being common practice though it possible it could be a targeted attack in an attempt to penetrate the company specifically.
CD-Rs with something intriguing sharpied on the front would be a lot cheaper that's for sure. The cheapest flash drives are maybe what, $3? $2? CDr can be had for cents. A malware campaign using this tactic would only use USB flash if they were zeroed in on the target(s) or as someone else said if they had gov't level funding.
A sow-them-to-the-wind campaign would rather use CDr I would think.
Any pen testers out there that can attest to this?
So this was... legal malware? Can someone clue me in on the history of this utility? As far as I can tell, this looks like proof-of-concept/research malware designed to be used for testing purposes, but that's the best I can gather.
Dark Comet was simply a very robust and functional Remote Admin Tool. You know, like Teamviewer or Logmein Pro or.... Take your pick.
The thing is, it was free and it was totally customizable in how you compile the client side service. Meaning, you could make the runtime executable glom itself into explorer.exe or iexplore or whatever persistence method you wanted. It could automatically add itself to the registry in different ways to guarantee it running.
Also it reportedly could respond well to having the service "crypted" meaning to encrypt and encode the compiled program to be undetected by security software.
In other words, it wasn't just a Remote Admin Tool, it was a RAT. RATs can be used for botnets, spying, stealing, so on.
The guy was a very good programmer and he created a very nice pistol. Apparently he couldn't stand to see it become the next Saturday Night Special.
I deal with malware all the time, I own an IT business. So, of course I checked out Dark Comet, Poison Ivy, Blackshades, etc, to see how these things work. A commercial offering is Cybergate RAT. There's tons of them, but Dark Comet was noteworthy in that it was clean and free, was around a long time, and actually worked well.
A guy could legitimately deploy a RAT in order to support a client base. The problem is that these "aggressive" programs get flagged as malware all the time.
Mainly because they get used as malware all the time.
A side note - Cybergate is a commercial offering that will provide a clean version of the product that will NOT get flagged by antivirus software.
Microsoft's goose is cooked anyway. People do 80% of their online work with their smartphones and live the other 20% on a tablet.
The only people who NEED a full blown PC with Windows are people who.... You know, I'm not sure anymore. Developers? IT people? Engineers? Video editors? Beats me.
I would have recommended a Roku or AppleTV with Netflix and Hulu Plus.... but Hulu Plus just started running political ads. Arrrgghh. Amazon Prime is a nice to have, but not needed. I rarely find something there that Netflix doesn't have.... unless you want reality tv stuff or those "dirty job" type shows. Amazon Prime streaming seems to have those in spades.
This.
DVR is not video on demand. Netflix, Hulu, Amazon prime etc is the future. My family does it, we have Netflix and recently got a HD tv with internet (NF, AP, YT etc). So we can have netflix on the tv, on a Roku box we've had for a while, on pc and the Wii. There is a limit on concurrent devices, but we routinely have more than one stream at a time with AP/YT/NF.
Indeed - skip the first Star Trek movie and go directly to Star Trek II - The Wrath of Khan! My favorite Star Trek movie by far, so much so that the Khan bellow is my ringtone on my phone.
As for series - start off with TOS, then I'd do ST:Enterprise, then ST:TNG, then Voyager and DS9.
You know, they say the latest ST movie is the easiest for non-trekkies to watch.
For me, my wife likes Voyager the best. Then TNG. She never got into the others. DS9 was my favorite for some reason but she can't stand it. Calls it a geek soap opera. WhatEVER! lol.
OK it's camp, but it is my favorite. The "french-fried brains" look on McCoy's face after using the Teacher helmet: Priceless.
Camp? What'chu talkin 'bout Latent Heat?
Don't you know the most camp TOS ep is Trouble with Tribbles?
OP should do TOS tribbles then DS9 tribbles. It's all about the tribbles! Tribbles tribbles tribbles!
I once saw an old lady get scammed with this type of stuff but with one glaring exception - it wasn't over the internet.
It was over the phone and fax. I don't know how they got ahold of her initially but the phone number she had to call and fax was in Puerto Rico. To call PR isn't an international number from the US but certainly is long distance.
So instead of visiting dodgy websites and so on they had her doing it by fax. They faxed her a document with a very cheesy looking bank letterhead and so on.
It was quite sad. I worked at a place for a while that had a fax service and she was coming in every day looking for her fax from her benefactors. She was doing this for weeks. I tried to get her help, even called the local police and they talked to her, but she was insisting that it was real.
We asked her "Did you send these people money?" and she refused to answer.
Sad.
If you actually have HOURS, I guess it would be in this order: People, backups, any critical physical documents, most expensive device, next most expensive device, then the next most expensive device....
As far as how to transport said devices... if you only have hours it would probably come down to back seats and trunks. If you can go and rent a truck from the place down the street, cardboard boxes and moving blankets.
If you have more time than that and you can actually source bubblewrap and such, you don't have an emergency.
If you have minutes, obviously grab the backup tape(s) as you all run to the shelter or whatever. This is what offsite backups and "paperless offices" are for. SHTF you just run because the information is safe.
Realize that today a lot of banks don't handle the physical money - they only handle digital money, so being a bank robber is soon futile.
To get cash you need to stand in the ATM queue.
The downside is that robbing a supermarket can give a better payoff.
You talking robbing the food or robbing the money?
Nowdays, it could go either way WRT "better payoff."
"This is a stickup - gimme all your doritos! NOW! And don't scrunch the bags or I'll shoot!"
Just spec up a bog-standard set of components with a Chinese manufacturer like Molo http://www.molo-electronics.com/product/Pro158.Html or Elijah http://elijahindustrial.en.alibaba.com/product/539115573-200670129/13_3_inch_wide_screen1_8GHz_DVD_ROM_Bluetooth_Camera_laptop.html.
It'll cost you a fraction of the price of the Lenovo or any other branded equivalent, look prettier for the kids and work fine with whatever distro you specify.
These things are commodities now, especially in an elementary school setting. Why pay a premium?
As I see you're already at +5 I'll just reply to say thanks for the links, the molo site looks very interesting indeed...
they only lack
No, there's much more missing than just the large screen and keyboard: Office applications, for one. A web browser is not enough.
And as we've just seen in the /. stories discussing Windows 8, a mobile UI is NOT a good idea for a laptop/desktop.
Perhaps regular readers of /. won't be the target market for this device, but I think it's a fantastic idea. People live on their phones, they have all their contacts on it, email, texting, facebook, and all their music. They take pics and movies on it. There are mobile office apps, google drive and dropbox.
If it was possible to get home and (easily) dock your smartphone to this device to give it a real qwerty KB, a large screen so you can rest your tired eyes, and charge it at the same time? Hook it up to your home stereo speakers and keep playing that song you were listening to on the way home? How about HDMI to the widescreen?
If all your stuff is on the smartphone, why have redundant devices? I think it's a stellar idea for a lot of people, and I wish I'd thought of it!
With "Teh Cloudz" our data will gradually migrate to be in ONE PLACE for simplicity - why not one device? Simplicity is the new killer app. Being simple sometimes takes more engineering than just being high tech.