So if this happens, we might see "a fine assortment of ginsu kitchen lasers (as seen on TV)."
What next, then? Do it yourself home eye surgery?
You know that some leet/. h4x0r is going to purchase the "LaserKraft 4500 Cheese Slicer" (as seen on TV), hack the control module, install linux and program it, maybe attach a PDA to it so that all one must do is input their contact lens perscription and lie down on the table.
As I was checking in for Jury Duty one day, I had my laptop bag open and sitting on the counter top as I scanned my summons - thereby clocking in for the day - when my bag took a humpty-dumpty right off the counter top and landed on the left corner hinge with a gut wrenching CRUNCH!
Upon examination, the left hinge was broken, the front bezel, and the screen didn't light up.
Boy was I upset. I had to sit in a jury room all day with no laptop.
Once home, I took the laptop apart and discovered that I'd broken the FL inverter board(what causes the screen backlight to illuminate). Now, this is a Toshiba Laptop, and I had taken the thing into be serviced - so I called up the service center and asked them to order in some parts for me. They did, and I replaced everything myself - becoming intimately familiar with my laptop in the process.
Once I got the FL inverter board replaced, the screen still didn't light.
I called the Toshiba Service Center (Compar in Minneapolis, great guys) and they said, "It's gotta be the fluorescent bulb..."
Huh? Fluorescent bulb?
They explained to me that the way the screen illuminates is there is a tiny fluorescent bulb that runs along the bottom of the screen. You have to remove the LCD panel, take off the tape and some screws and you'll be able to access a tiny fluorescent bulb that is the thickness of a #2 pencil lead (about 1mm dia) and it is the length(width) of the screen. Turns out the FL inverter board is nothing but a high-tech ballast. They told me that they weren't sure if they could replace the bulb without replacing the screen - but just about any bulb from any screen, provided it was the same length, would work.
Now, my friend had a DELL laptop that he'd stepped on and cracked the LCD, but the backlight still worked. It too was a 15" screen, so I took out his old bulb and put it in my screen, but his bulb was about 3mm to long! SO, I pulled out my Dremmel and cut away the metal & plastic on the LCD panel so the fluorescent bulb could extend beyond the side of the LCD Panel. It only extended about 1mm out from the edge of the panel. When I put the screen back into its mounting, it barely fit. I had to cut the wires to the bulb, and solder on the ones for my old broken bulb, but when I powered it up, I had my laptop back.
It was only then that I noticed that the piece of glass that runs behind the LCD was cracked (NOT the LCD panel itself) but the glass that distributes the light emitted from the bulb. All that means is that the upper left corner of the screen has a wavy shadow. I can live with that.
All told? The drop cost me just under $200 to repair, and the income earned from jury duty wasn't even enough to cover half of it.
Oh, and the trial I heard? Some guy that was charged with being a male prostitute (ouch!). The entire time I was in trial, I was thinking of Goatse. Damn you Slashdot.
Yes, you are correct about flourescent bulbs. The FL inverter jumps the voltage from the battery level up to about 50,000 volts (at a couple milliamps) but enough to illuminate the bulb.
Perhaps I didn't explain it very well. The bulb was too long for the screen, so I removed the bits of plastic and metal at one side of the screen so that the bulb stuck out about 1.5mm from the side of the LCD display panel.
That sticking out made it so the screen barely fit back between the hinges and the mounting hardware.
As I was checking in for Jury Duty one day, I had my laptop bag open and sitting on the counter top as I scanned my summons - thereby clocking in for the day - when my bag took a humpty-dumpty right off the counter top and landed on the left corner hinge with a gut wrenching CRUNCH!
Upon examination, the left hinge was broken, the front bezel, and the screen didn't light up.
Boy was I upset. I had to sit in a jury room all day with no laptop.
Once home, I took the laptop apart and discovered that I'd broken the FL inverter board(what causes the screen backlight to illuminate). Now, this is a Toshiba Laptop, and I had taken the thing into be serviced - so I called up the service center and asked them to order in some parts for me. They did, and I replaced everything myself - becoming intimately familiar with my laptop in the process.
Once I got the FL inverter board replaced, the screen still didn't light.
I called the Toshiba Service Center (Compar in Minneapolis, great guys) and they said, "It's gotta be the fluorescent bulb..."
Huh? Fluorescent bulb?
They explained to me that the way the screen illuminates is there is a tiny fluorescent bulb that runs along the bottom of the screen. You have to remove the LCD panel, take off the tape and some screws and you'll be able to access a tiny fluorescent bulb that is the thickness of a #2 pencil lead (about 1mm dia) and it is the length(width) of the screen. Turns out the FL inverter board is nothing but a high-tech ballast. They told me that they weren't sure if they could replace the bulb without replacing the screen - but just about any bulb from any screen, provided it was the same length, would work.
Now, my friend had a DELL laptop that he'd stepped on and cracked the LCD, but the backlight still worked. It too was a 15" screen, so I took out his old bulb and put it in my screen, but his bulb was about 3mm to long! SO, I pulled out my Dremmel and cut away the metal & plastic so the fluorescent bulb could extend beyond the side of the LCD Panel. It only extended about 1mm out from the edge of the panel. When I put the screen back into its mounting, it barely fit. I had to cut the wires to the bulb, and solder on the ones for my old broken bulb, but when I powered it up, I had my laptop back.
It was only then that I noticed that the piece of glass that runs behind the LCD was cracked (NOT the LCD panel itself) but the glass that distributes the light emitted from the bulb. All that means is that the upper left corner of the screen has a wavy shadow. I can live with that.
All told? The drop cost me just under $200 to repair, and the income earned from jury duty wasn't even enough to cover half of it.
Oh, and the trial I heard? Some guy that was charged with being a male prostitute (ouch!). We found him guilty. I dunno why he even fought the charges - he could make a killing on the inside. The entire time I was in trial, I was thinking of Goatse. Damn you Slashdot.
I predict that LEGO will not have realized/appreciated their target market/customers until after they've pulled the line.
Once the market dries up, there'll be an outcry for more intelligent toys for kids.
I, for one, will not allow a video game console in the house. Kids that I grew up with had a console in their house, and they're all pretty much deadbeats or just trying to make a living.
I, on the other hand, grew up with computers in the house, and legos to play with. Erector Sets and the old 160-in-one electronic project kits. I've got a great career, and I can fix anything. I owe so much in my life to the toys I played with when I was young. This is opposed to toys that are given to kids that just occupy their time and teach them nothing in return.
My kids aren't old enough yet to play with such toys, I guess I'll have to stock up before they all disappear.
The article will start out something like:
First, there was leak-gate where a CIA operative was outed by a staffer in the Bush White House.
Now we have Leak-gate 2.0. Leaks in outer space. Why coudn't Bush have just left well enough alone? Nasa doesn't need any more problems, Dubya! Especially after you pushed the top secret self destruct button thats under your desk in the Oval Office, just so your home state could get some press coverage when peices of Columbia came raining down almost a year ago. You shoulda left that button connected the way Clinton had it, to call in the interns.
Where is Bin Laden?
The capture of Saddam Hussein DOES NOT make the world any safer...
Sony used to be renowned for the quality of every single device they produced. That is why, back in 1996 I shelled out nearly $1,000 for a then state-of-the-art Sony SVHS VCR. That thing still works as well today as it did when I bought it.
The reason they had that level of quality was they pre-tested and stress tested each component that went into the production of their consumer electronics. They spent literally billions of dollars on test equipment from companies like Aetrium and others.
As soon as Sony (and other electronics manufacturers as well) started seeing serious competetion coming from cheap Chinese imports, the easiest way to add to their bottom line was, among other things, to cut out the pre-testing.
The failure rate of each individual electronic component is pretty small, but when you have several thousand components that go into a VCR or camcorder, each component having a.001% chance of failing, the combined failure rate of all the components amounts to 1-2%. Now, when a particular component fails, the unit may not die, but something marginal like picture quality will suffer.
Sales at companies that sold test equipment plummeted - I know from personal experience.
Nowadays, a Sony VCR is pretty much just as crappy as a cheap Chinese import. The premium you pay goes to marketing, product design and adding sometimes unique and hopefully useful features - which usually backfires and winds up being a bloated and unusable product.
The lower cost leads to higher failure rates in a shorter time span, but now the technology has become disposable and it is not uncommon to replace these cheap items every 3-5 years instead of 5-7.
Think about it: When was the last time you actually took an electronic item in for repair?
I bought a camcorder last year. The tape handling sucks, it will casually eat the occasional tape. The batteries that came with it? Lets just say that I've had erections that have lasted longer. Its not a problem with the battery, but something about the unit is just sucking the juice.
When I inquired about warranty repair I was told that the unit had a 90 DAY WARRANTY! And YES, it was purchased NEW, not a refurb. I was, needless to say, shocked - but what else should I expect from our new, disposable goods economy.
We outsource security all the time, and we have our outsourced IDS products, etc.
One of the first things I say when I meet with a company is tell them that it's not the IT persons fault that the company is insecure. Network security is a relatively new field that ALL companies in existance are trying to get their arms around. I do NOT want to put anyone out of a job just for the sake of getting some consulting dollars. I feel that it is my responsibility to train the internal staff to be more aware of security issues rather than to terminate everyone and outsource it all.
How can anyone thats not even on-site on a daily basis make the network more secure? When it comes to real security, you need to start with the folks that know the network the best. If they're resistant to change, then fire them. If they're willing to learn, train them.
Network insecurity is fundamentally a management problem. Security inititaves must come from the top down, not the bottom up. I have never met a network administrator yet that has set out to create an insecure network. They likely were ignorant to the threats - therefore they needed training, which should have been ordered by management. Otherwise, you have security aware employees that are trying to push security up the chain to management, and management is completely unresponsive.
I recently blasted a luddite CEO for not paying enough attention to his IT department. His company was compromised by a hacker and I came in to clean things up. I asked him; "Do you realize that your business relies 100% on what goes on in that server room?"
Things are now changing in that company. We've now established data owners on the executive committee (Those that will hang if the data they own gets compromised), and now the IT department actually has a budget. 80% of the time I spend doing my security consulting is with executives, the remainder is with the tecnical staff giving them direction and training/pointers.
Anyone that preaches anything different is trying to sell a magic fix for security, which doesn't exist.
He's a CCIE that works for Center7. I may not know the exact details but I believe that he was setting up IP filters as the traffic was converging through their multiple ISP links.
I've been in the computer industry for a long time. I remember when going to lunch I would never expect to overhear another casual conversation between 'regular people' discussing computers & technology. I was taken off guard at first when I started hearing people discuss, in passing, subjects that my friends and I had been debating for years. It was interesting to see the culture that I had adopted was now becoming mainstream.
I didn't realize how mainstream computers and technology had become until lunch one day back in 1997 or 98. My buddies and I stopped off at a local cafe and taken a booth. Sitting behind me was a mother and her pre-school child and I half listened to their conversation as I started into my burger & fries.
She was asking her son if he could remember his ABC's. He said "YES!", quite confidently, and started right in: "ABCDEFG..." followed by a pause, where the mother helped by hinting the letter 'H' "HIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWWW dot XYZ"
It may not have been the first time, but it was certainly the most memorable time that I'd expelled Cherry Coke through my nose.
A very good, long-time friend of mine works for the ISP that hosts SCO group in Lindon, Utah. The ISP is Center 7.com and is right next door to the SCO Group.
He said that it was interesting to read about the DDoS attack in the press, when it was he that was managing and re-directing the traffic from the DDoS attack.
So yes, according to my sources, which I deem to be reliable, the DDoS attack did happen. For the record though, every single other claim SCO has made I believe to be complete BS.
I've been in the computer industry for a looooong time. I remember when going to lunch I would never expect to overhear another casual conversation between 'regular people' discussing computers & technology. I was taken off guard at first when I started hearing people discuss, in passing, subjects that my friends and I had been debating for years. It was interesting to see the culture that I had adopted was now becoming mainstream.
I didn't realize how mainstream computers and technology had become until lunch one day back in 1997 or 98. My buddies and I stopped off at a local cafe and taken a booth. Sitting behind me was a mother and her pre-school child and I half listened to their conversation as I started into my burger & fries.
She was asking her son if he could remember his ABC's. He said "YES!", quite confidently, and started right in: "ABCDEFG..." followed by a pause, where the mother helped by hinting the letter 'H' "HIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWWW dot XYZ"
That was the first time in my life that I expelled cherry coke through my nose...
Hill Air Force Base is located in Ogden, Utah. Up at the AFB is the rather impressive Hill AFB Museum that has several aircraft from past to present.
Well, Hill AFB was going to be the proud recipient of the Enola Gay, The WWII aircraft that dropped the first Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima.
Well, the copy editor at the Ogden daily newspaper, the Standard-Examiner replaced the word "Gay" with "Homosexual" so the headline read 'Atomic Bombers Upset Over Enola Homosexual Exhibit.'
Go ahead and mod this one down because it contains the truth.
Ever since the Patriot Act was passed this administration has been getting scrutinized from every single direction imaginable. From privacy advocates, human rights watchers, mass media and left wing conspiracists right on down to right wing conspiracists, NAMBLA and the Council on America-Islamic Relations. Name your group, they've all been watching.
Does anyone care to guess how many violations or abuses that have been uncovered where a private citizens rights have been violated?
Did anyone guess Zero? Because thats exactly how many violations there have been. Zero. Period.
The powers granted by the Patriot Act have helped to uncover and break up Al Queda cells and even prevent the detonation of a dirty bomb in New York by Jose Padilla.
All this hype about Joe Q. Citizen being harassed is nothing but scaremongering.
One day, I was investigating a machine that was suspected of having a trojan horse installed on it.
There were portions of the program, a.DLL file in particular that had been installed as Browser Helper Objects within the registry.
I was curious to find out what exactly a BHO object was, so I searched MS Support site - and here's the link to what I found because I KNOW that if I typed it here, you'd think I just made it up.
From the Microsoft Website:
What Are Browser Helper Objects?
From [the operating system's] point of view, Internet Explorer is just like any other Win32-based program with its own memory space to preserve. With Browser Helper Objects you can write components-specifically, in-process Component Object Model (COM) components-that Internet Explorer will load each time it starts up. Such objects run in the same memory context as the browser and can perform any action on the available windows and modules. For example, a BHO could detect the browser's typical events, such as GoBack, GoForward, and DocumentComplete; access the browser's menu and toolbar and make changes; create windows to display additional information on the currently viewed page; and install hooks to monitor messages and actions. In short, a BHO works as a spy we send to infiltrate the browser's land.
Jeeemany Christmas!!! And people wonder why MS products are so insecure?! This is the ripe playground that MS has created specifically to support the ilks of the spyware.
Every time I try and warn people about an impending crisis - I get libeled as a purveyor of FUD, which pisses me off.
So, I post access to the source code. Sure, the source code may be 'broken' in some subtle way to prevent some 1337 $kr1p7 k1dd13 from compiling and launching it. This code has been circulating the hacking underworld for weeks.
Either way I get lambasted for making the posts, primarily by people with a strong desire to remain ignorant.
Its funny how this comes on the heels of what is now the THIRD version of the MS03-026 vulnerability. As you know, MS03-026 is the RPC/DCOM vulnerability that brought us MSBlaster.
Just after Blaster started clearing up, Microsoft released MS03-039 which is essentially the SAME vulnerability as was -026. They blew it. They didn't fix the problem with the -026 patch, so admin's now had to re-patch all their machines.
Well, here we go again - only this time the exploit code precedes the MS anouncement and corresponding patch. Yes kids, the hacking underworld has perfected the exploit code for MS03-039 and in doing so uncovered yet another hole in the RPC/DCOM service for which there is NO PATCH AVAILABLE!!! (As of 11 Oct, 2003 0100)
And for those of you who think that this is just FUD... here's the exploit soucre code. Simply compile under Linux, then change your shorts.
Network admins: May I suggest you take your sleeping bag and pillow and put it in your car - theres going to be a lot of late nights at the office coming up.
I think they forgot to mention the/. effect as being one of the greatest threats on the net. It should rank up there towards #1 on both Windows & Unix.
Back when media sizes where much smaller (and the information written on the disk was much larger), I spent a lot of time doing data recovery.
It started off as a hobby, sort of. I used to work for the old WordPerfect corporation where we had customers that sent in floppies that had "REALLY IMPORTANT" documents on them that had become corrupted or partially deleted, one way or another.
Data recovery tools weren't as advanced as they are nowadays so it was a much more arduous task. I had to scour the floppies and pull off as much data as possible, mostly using the old debug command under DOS. I was mostly doing it for fun as the WordPerfect corporation didn't want to become file recovery experts. I was just into it for the challenge and to offer a nice service to our customers.
I recovered data off a floppy that had a pencil stuck through it, floppies that had been formatted (easy) partially erased by magnets (tough), and various methods of corruption and deletion - including accidentally saving a blank document over the top of an existing document... OOPS!
I was once asked "How do you recover the data?" and I had a tough time answering, as each case was different from the other. I just told them that "Performing data recovery is like running a sausage mill backwards to manufacture pigs." What comes out of the process doesn't look pretty, but its better than starting from scratch.
I then went on to recovering data from hard drives. After WordPerfect I became a 'consultant'. One Monday morning, one of my customers had their WIN NT 3.51 server hard drive crash. It was a head crash, you could hear the heads riding the platter. An awful noise that once you hear it, you know you're screwed.
I spent 16 hours pulling data from that hard drive, and once I was done (I had pulled as much data as I could) we opened up the drive to discover that the head on the bottom platter had fallen down, and had been riding there over the weekend. It had etched away at the platter for so long that the platter had actually fallen down and was sitting in a pile of HDD shavings at the bottom of the drive. Sheesh!
Over the years I collected numerous utilities for data recovery, but I started getting out of it once LBA mode drives came out and the actual hard drives were being managed internally, rather than by the OS. Not that it made it more dificult, but you saw fewer and fewer hard drive errors because MS was finally removed from their management position over the HDD data.
Slashdot Mirror
What next, then? Do it yourself home eye surgery?
You know that some leet /. h4x0r is going to purchase the "LaserKraft 4500 Cheese Slicer" (as seen on TV), hack the control module, install linux and program it, maybe attach a PDA to it so that all one must do is input their contact lens perscription and lie down on the table.
Then comes the Beowolf cluster...
As I was checking in for Jury Duty one day, I had my laptop bag open and sitting on the counter top as I scanned my summons - thereby clocking in for the day - when my bag took a humpty-dumpty right off the counter top and landed on the left corner hinge with a gut wrenching CRUNCH!
Upon examination, the left hinge was broken, the front bezel, and the screen didn't light up.
Boy was I upset. I had to sit in a jury room all day with no laptop.
Once home, I took the laptop apart and discovered that I'd broken the FL inverter board(what causes the screen backlight to illuminate). Now, this is a Toshiba Laptop, and I had taken the thing into be serviced - so I called up the service center and asked them to order in some parts for me. They did, and I replaced everything myself - becoming intimately familiar with my laptop in the process.
Once I got the FL inverter board replaced, the screen still didn't light.
I called the Toshiba Service Center (Compar in Minneapolis, great guys) and they said, "It's gotta be the fluorescent bulb..."
Huh? Fluorescent bulb?
They explained to me that the way the screen illuminates is there is a tiny fluorescent bulb that runs along the bottom of the screen. You have to remove the LCD panel, take off the tape and some screws and you'll be able to access a tiny fluorescent bulb that is the thickness of a #2 pencil lead (about 1mm dia) and it is the length(width) of the screen. Turns out the FL inverter board is nothing but a high-tech ballast. They told me that they weren't sure if they could replace the bulb without replacing the screen - but just about any bulb from any screen, provided it was the same length, would work.
Now, my friend had a DELL laptop that he'd stepped on and cracked the LCD, but the backlight still worked. It too was a 15" screen, so I took out his old bulb and put it in my screen, but his bulb was about 3mm to long! SO, I pulled out my Dremmel and cut away the metal & plastic on the LCD panel so the fluorescent bulb could extend beyond the side of the LCD Panel. It only extended about 1mm out from the edge of the panel. When I put the screen back into its mounting, it barely fit. I had to cut the wires to the bulb, and solder on the ones for my old broken bulb, but when I powered it up, I had my laptop back.
It was only then that I noticed that the piece of glass that runs behind the LCD was cracked (NOT the LCD panel itself) but the glass that distributes the light emitted from the bulb. All that means is that the upper left corner of the screen has a wavy shadow. I can live with that.
All told? The drop cost me just under $200 to repair, and the income earned from jury duty wasn't even enough to cover half of it.
Oh, and the trial I heard? Some guy that was charged with being a male prostitute (ouch!). The entire time I was in trial, I was thinking of Goatse. Damn you Slashdot.
Perhaps I didn't explain it very well. The bulb was too long for the screen, so I removed the bits of plastic and metal at one side of the screen so that the bulb stuck out about 1.5mm from the side of the LCD display panel.
That sticking out made it so the screen barely fit back between the hinges and the mounting hardware.
Upon examination, the left hinge was broken, the front bezel, and the screen didn't light up.
Boy was I upset. I had to sit in a jury room all day with no laptop.
Once home, I took the laptop apart and discovered that I'd broken the FL inverter board(what causes the screen backlight to illuminate). Now, this is a Toshiba Laptop, and I had taken the thing into be serviced - so I called up the service center and asked them to order in some parts for me. They did, and I replaced everything myself - becoming intimately familiar with my laptop in the process.
Once I got the FL inverter board replaced, the screen still didn't light.
I called the Toshiba Service Center (Compar in Minneapolis, great guys) and they said, "It's gotta be the fluorescent bulb..."
Huh? Fluorescent bulb?
They explained to me that the way the screen illuminates is there is a tiny fluorescent bulb that runs along the bottom of the screen. You have to remove the LCD panel, take off the tape and some screws and you'll be able to access a tiny fluorescent bulb that is the thickness of a #2 pencil lead (about 1mm dia) and it is the length(width) of the screen. Turns out the FL inverter board is nothing but a high-tech ballast. They told me that they weren't sure if they could replace the bulb without replacing the screen - but just about any bulb from any screen, provided it was the same length, would work.
Now, my friend had a DELL laptop that he'd stepped on and cracked the LCD, but the backlight still worked. It too was a 15" screen, so I took out his old bulb and put it in my screen, but his bulb was about 3mm to long! SO, I pulled out my Dremmel and cut away the metal & plastic so the fluorescent bulb could extend beyond the side of the LCD Panel. It only extended about 1mm out from the edge of the panel. When I put the screen back into its mounting, it barely fit. I had to cut the wires to the bulb, and solder on the ones for my old broken bulb, but when I powered it up, I had my laptop back.
It was only then that I noticed that the piece of glass that runs behind the LCD was cracked (NOT the LCD panel itself) but the glass that distributes the light emitted from the bulb. All that means is that the upper left corner of the screen has a wavy shadow. I can live with that.
All told? The drop cost me just under $200 to repair, and the income earned from jury duty wasn't even enough to cover half of it.
Oh, and the trial I heard? Some guy that was charged with being a male prostitute (ouch!). We found him guilty. I dunno why he even fought the charges - he could make a killing on the inside. The entire time I was in trial, I was thinking of Goatse. Damn you Slashdot.
Silly faggot, dicks are for chicks!
Will Muscle Glue remover cause the iron to oxidize and rust away thereby breaking apart the protein strands? Inquiring minds want to know.
Once the market dries up, there'll be an outcry for more intelligent toys for kids.
I, for one, will not allow a video game console in the house. Kids that I grew up with had a console in their house, and they're all pretty much deadbeats or just trying to make a living.
I, on the other hand, grew up with computers in the house, and legos to play with. Erector Sets and the old 160-in-one electronic project kits. I've got a great career, and I can fix anything. I owe so much in my life to the toys I played with when I was young. This is opposed to toys that are given to kids that just occupy their time and teach them nothing in return.
My kids aren't old enough yet to play with such toys, I guess I'll have to stock up before they all disappear.
First, there was leak-gate where a CIA operative was outed by a staffer in the Bush White House.
Now we have Leak-gate 2.0. Leaks in outer space. Why coudn't Bush have just left well enough alone? Nasa doesn't need any more problems, Dubya! Especially after you pushed the top secret self destruct button thats under your desk in the Oval Office, just so your home state could get some press coverage when peices of Columbia came raining down almost a year ago. You shoulda left that button connected the way Clinton had it, to call in the interns.
Where is Bin Laden?
The capture of Saddam Hussein DOES NOT make the world any safer...
And on, and on, and on....
The reason they had that level of quality was they pre-tested and stress tested each component that went into the production of their consumer electronics. They spent literally billions of dollars on test equipment from companies like Aetrium and others.
As soon as Sony (and other electronics manufacturers as well) started seeing serious competetion coming from cheap Chinese imports, the easiest way to add to their bottom line was, among other things, to cut out the pre-testing.
The failure rate of each individual electronic component is pretty small, but when you have several thousand components that go into a VCR or camcorder, each component having a .001% chance of failing, the combined failure rate of all the components amounts to 1-2%. Now, when a particular component fails, the unit may not die, but something marginal like picture quality will suffer.
Sales at companies that sold test equipment plummeted - I know from personal experience.
Nowadays, a Sony VCR is pretty much just as crappy as a cheap Chinese import. The premium you pay goes to marketing, product design and adding sometimes unique and hopefully useful features - which usually backfires and winds up being a bloated and unusable product.
The lower cost leads to higher failure rates in a shorter time span, but now the technology has become disposable and it is not uncommon to replace these cheap items every 3-5 years instead of 5-7.
Think about it: When was the last time you actually took an electronic item in for repair?
I bought a camcorder last year. The tape handling sucks, it will casually eat the occasional tape. The batteries that came with it? Lets just say that I've had erections that have lasted longer. Its not a problem with the battery, but something about the unit is just sucking the juice.
When I inquired about warranty repair I was told that the unit had a 90 DAY WARRANTY! And YES, it was purchased NEW, not a refurb. I was, needless to say, shocked - but what else should I expect from our new, disposable goods economy.
Then when the hell will I lose this gene that causes me to eat the whole goddamn bag of potato chips?
One of the first things I say when I meet with a company is tell them that it's not the IT persons fault that the company is insecure. Network security is a relatively new field that ALL companies in existance are trying to get their arms around. I do NOT want to put anyone out of a job just for the sake of getting some consulting dollars. I feel that it is my responsibility to train the internal staff to be more aware of security issues rather than to terminate everyone and outsource it all.
How can anyone thats not even on-site on a daily basis make the network more secure? When it comes to real security, you need to start with the folks that know the network the best. If they're resistant to change, then fire them. If they're willing to learn, train them.
Network insecurity is fundamentally a management problem. Security inititaves must come from the top down, not the bottom up. I have never met a network administrator yet that has set out to create an insecure network. They likely were ignorant to the threats - therefore they needed training, which should have been ordered by management. Otherwise, you have security aware employees that are trying to push security up the chain to management, and management is completely unresponsive.
I recently blasted a luddite CEO for not paying enough attention to his IT department. His company was compromised by a hacker and I came in to clean things up. I asked him; "Do you realize that your business relies 100% on what goes on in that server room?"
Things are now changing in that company. We've now established data owners on the executive committee (Those that will hang if the data they own gets compromised), and now the IT department actually has a budget. 80% of the time I spend doing my security consulting is with executives, the remainder is with the tecnical staff giving them direction and training/pointers.
Anyone that preaches anything different is trying to sell a magic fix for security, which doesn't exist.
He's a CCIE that works for Center7. I may not know the exact details but I believe that he was setting up IP filters as the traffic was converging through their multiple ISP links.
I didn't realize how mainstream computers and technology had become until lunch one day back in 1997 or 98. My buddies and I stopped off at a local cafe and taken a booth. Sitting behind me was a mother and her pre-school child and I half listened to their conversation as I started into my burger & fries.
She was asking her son if he could remember his ABC's. He said "YES!", quite confidently, and started right in: "ABCDEFG..." followed by a pause, where the mother helped by hinting the letter 'H' "HIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWWW dot XYZ"
It may not have been the first time, but it was certainly the most memorable time that I'd expelled Cherry Coke through my nose.
He said that it was interesting to read about the DDoS attack in the press, when it was he that was managing and re-directing the traffic from the DDoS attack.
So yes, according to my sources, which I deem to be reliable, the DDoS attack did happen. For the record though, every single other claim SCO has made I believe to be complete BS.
I didn't realize how mainstream computers and technology had become until lunch one day back in 1997 or 98. My buddies and I stopped off at a local cafe and taken a booth. Sitting behind me was a mother and her pre-school child and I half listened to their conversation as I started into my burger & fries.
She was asking her son if he could remember his ABC's. He said "YES!", quite confidently, and started right in: "ABCDEFG..." followed by a pause, where the mother helped by hinting the letter 'H' "HIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWWW dot XYZ"
That was the first time in my life that I expelled cherry coke through my nose...
Let's see: 581 kph, thats like what, 35 miles-per-hour?
Well, Hill AFB was going to be the proud recipient of the Enola Gay, The WWII aircraft that dropped the first Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima.
Well, the copy editor at the Ogden daily newspaper, the Standard-Examiner replaced the word "Gay" with "Homosexual" so the headline read 'Atomic Bombers Upset Over Enola Homosexual Exhibit.'
What the hell should we call the server then? Oh my gosh, we've got a server room that is chock full of hard drives configured as masters/slaves.
Ever since the Patriot Act was passed this administration has been getting scrutinized from every single direction imaginable. From privacy advocates, human rights watchers, mass media and left wing conspiracists right on down to right wing conspiracists, NAMBLA and the Council on America-Islamic Relations. Name your group, they've all been watching.
Does anyone care to guess how many violations or abuses that have been uncovered where a private citizens rights have been violated?
Did anyone guess Zero? Because thats exactly how many violations there have been. Zero. Period.
The powers granted by the Patriot Act have helped to uncover and break up Al Queda cells and even prevent the detonation of a dirty bomb in New York by Jose Padilla.
All this hype about Joe Q. Citizen being harassed is nothing but scaremongering.
There were portions of the program, a .DLL file in particular that had been installed as Browser Helper Objects within the registry.
I was curious to find out what exactly a BHO object was, so I searched MS Support site - and here's the link to what I found because I KNOW that if I typed it here, you'd think I just made it up.
From the Microsoft Website:
What Are Browser Helper Objects?
From [the operating system's] point of view, Internet Explorer is just like any other Win32-based program with its own memory space to preserve. With Browser Helper Objects you can write components-specifically, in-process Component Object Model (COM) components-that Internet Explorer will load each time it starts up. Such objects run in the same memory context as the browser and can perform any action on the available windows and modules. For example, a BHO could detect the browser's typical events, such as GoBack, GoForward, and DocumentComplete; access the browser's menu and toolbar and make changes; create windows to display additional information on the currently viewed page; and install hooks to monitor messages and actions. In short, a BHO works as a spy we send to infiltrate the browser's land.
Jeeemany Christmas!!! And people wonder why MS products are so insecure?! This is the ripe playground that MS has created specifically to support the ilks of the spyware.
Of Course Windows is more secure than linux, once you disconnect it from the network...
So, I post access to the source code. Sure, the source code may be 'broken' in some subtle way to prevent some 1337 $kr1p7 k1dd13 from compiling and launching it. This code has been circulating the hacking underworld for weeks.
Either way I get lambasted for making the posts, primarily by people with a strong desire to remain ignorant.
Just after Blaster started clearing up, Microsoft released MS03-039 which is essentially the SAME vulnerability as was -026. They blew it. They didn't fix the problem with the -026 patch, so admin's now had to re-patch all their machines.
Well, here we go again - only this time the exploit code precedes the MS anouncement and corresponding patch. Yes kids, the hacking underworld has perfected the exploit code for MS03-039 and in doing so uncovered yet another hole in the RPC/DCOM service for which there is NO PATCH AVAILABLE!!! (As of 11 Oct, 2003 0100)
And for those of you who think that this is just FUD... here's the exploit soucre code. Simply compile under Linux, then change your shorts.
Network admins: May I suggest you take your sleeping bag and pillow and put it in your car - theres going to be a lot of late nights at the office coming up.
I think they forgot to mention the /. effect as being one of the greatest threats on the net. It should rank up there towards #1 on both Windows & Unix.
It started off as a hobby, sort of. I used to work for the old WordPerfect corporation where we had customers that sent in floppies that had "REALLY IMPORTANT" documents on them that had become corrupted or partially deleted, one way or another.
Data recovery tools weren't as advanced as they are nowadays so it was a much more arduous task. I had to scour the floppies and pull off as much data as possible, mostly using the old debug command under DOS. I was mostly doing it for fun as the WordPerfect corporation didn't want to become file recovery experts. I was just into it for the challenge and to offer a nice service to our customers.
I recovered data off a floppy that had a pencil stuck through it, floppies that had been formatted (easy) partially erased by magnets (tough), and various methods of corruption and deletion - including accidentally saving a blank document over the top of an existing document... OOPS!
I was once asked "How do you recover the data?" and I had a tough time answering, as each case was different from the other. I just told them that "Performing data recovery is like running a sausage mill backwards to manufacture pigs." What comes out of the process doesn't look pretty, but its better than starting from scratch.
I then went on to recovering data from hard drives. After WordPerfect I became a 'consultant'. One Monday morning, one of my customers had their WIN NT 3.51 server hard drive crash. It was a head crash, you could hear the heads riding the platter. An awful noise that once you hear it, you know you're screwed.
I spent 16 hours pulling data from that hard drive, and once I was done (I had pulled as much data as I could) we opened up the drive to discover that the head on the bottom platter had fallen down, and had been riding there over the weekend. It had etched away at the platter for so long that the platter had actually fallen down and was sitting in a pile of HDD shavings at the bottom of the drive. Sheesh!
Over the years I collected numerous utilities for data recovery, but I started getting out of it once LBA mode drives came out and the actual hard drives were being managed internally, rather than by the OS. Not that it made it more dificult, but you saw fewer and fewer hard drive errors because MS was finally removed from their management position over the HDD data.
Anyhow, back to work...
Just think of all the partying I could have done thinking the world was going to end.
Oh well, gotta go. Work starts at 8...