A lot of the phishing scams I receive nowadays are real messages, such as ebay alerts, with the link pointing back to a phishing site that appears to be the real thing but actually is used to steal passwords. Other include fake announcements from banks, etc, again where everything is fairly close to the real thing exempting the actual web address linked.
So how would it differentiate between these and the emails from the original site. While some of the bank ones are most likely just make up to look legit, the ebay and others are copied from modified messages.
I wouldn't have any problem with this provided that it:
a) Lets me do offline authentication in a non-cumbersome manner.
b) Lets me do (a) for, say, an officeful of machines... again in a non-cumbersome manner
c) Is accurate, and doesn't decide to accuse me (or my users) of pirating a copy that's actually legit
d) Doesn't require me to call microsoft, and either sit on hold, talk to some guy with a thick foreign accent, or talk to a bloody voice-agent...
e) For corporate, see (d), but I never want this to happen.... talking to VA's for multiple machines again and again sucks
f) Allows me to move to different hardware without breaking a-e
g) Doesn't decide that my copy is suddenly illegitimate for stupid reasons (like the date being wrong, like XP currently does)
h) Doesn't send any of my personal information home
I highly doubt that anyone could accomplish the above, because the simple fact is that anti-piracy and convenience are generally mutually exclusive, and strong anti-piracy seems to always end up with a stronger inconvenience to the customer (while the good pirated copies run just fine without).
And they're still detectable. That's what security bootdisks are for, possibly with regular MD5 filesums sent to a secure medium (read-only storage or write-once location).
I'd have to agree 101% with that. I had my machine consistently crash in windows XP, and I would honestly have to absolve Microsoft of blame in the face that creative's shitty drives seemed to be the cause. Running linux with open drives had no such issues (and for cards of similar cost, I *do* recommend creative labs cards for linux, or at least SBLive, because the Open-Source drivers are pretty decent and do handle hardware mixing). When I later tried it on other windows machines, they crashed as well until I found a third-party driver (tons of functionality, and more stable).. though offhand I can't remember the name (I use it at work on some machines, not home).
See, what many people are going to the trouble of setting up adblock for is it to block the ads that annoy them. Just like commercials, some ads can be useful, or at least amusing (heck, I tend to dislike most commercials, but I *collect* the funny ones)
For most like myself, we don't want to see "punch the money and win a **free Xbox-360 (**after subscribing to our paid services)" or ads for feminine hygeine products (when one is male) etc.
Same to spam. I subscribe to a few tech sites, because I want their ads (most isn't all that good, but every now and then I see something nifty I wouldn't have otherwise noticed). Plenty of other sites send me spam for sex pills, lame porn, or other things that I couldn't even decipher if I wanted the product. Even if I find a product that's interesting I won't buy it from the spammers because I know they've sent it to 1,000,001 other people who aren't interest in said tech-product.
Advertising doesn't necessarily suck. Intrusive, untargetted, or massive advertising does, and that's why many people block flash. If ads were all for things like $25 off a hard drive just as yours was about to crash, or some other product when you were actually looking for it, then perhaps people would consider blocking less. The problem is that it's really damn hard (and costly) to target advertising properly and non-intrusively to an individual, so most go with the cheap route of flashing gifs, boxing monkeys, or CI4L1S ads in the browser/inbox/etc of a gazillion people in hope of a fractional amount hitting paydirt.
I'm not sure that sticking a pod of surveillance cameras in their rooms, proxies and loggers on their computers, and GPS's in their lunchboxes is the solution to kids who go over the edge. I think perhaps those that were indicating parenting was responsible would agree that raising one's children tends to entail more of spending time with them, periodically but non-intrusively checking up on them (you can stop by to check what they're doing online at times, without bugging the machine), and in general engaging in a more interactive parental relationship.
Sure, you might catch something by bugging their PC/room/whatever, but it's no exactly a nourishing form of interaction.
Simple solution, escalate. If your parents spy on your computer, then install tools that block their favorite pr0n sites, block out the bad channels/movies on the TV with a password, and hide all their toys and dirty magazines. After all, they wouldn't want to set a bad example and risk exposing you to something naughty, would they?
Neither are most adults. A lot of people think they're quite craft or informed. I've seen a smug parent install various filters/etc on the machine, only to have an equally smug kid trick them or bypass them.
Try securing a school computer and see how many clever tricks the kids come up with to get around it. Although to be fair, in the day of google and the internet script-kiddies tend to abound, but back about 7-10 years ago my classmates and I found many an interesting workaround. Heck, some pretty clever security has been baffled by some remarkably simply tricks.
Is America's Army open source? Perhaps we can give the source to both, let the two happily modify it for "training" or whatever stupid purpose they come up with, and then in the end we have a really good, open, free FPS:-)
One participant was heard to comment "what do you mean there's no respawn in the live exercise??!" before stalking off the field. Others were seen to be having difficulties in climbing ladders with carrying several kilograms of weapons and explosives, while still more were seen attempting to bunny-hop their way across open fields.
So the question I would pose is: Is this just a scientific interest, or is a buckyball/buckyegg that doesn't following the pentagonal rules more useful (easier to produce, different/useful properties, etc) in some way than the regular variety of buckyball?
Well, you'd definately have to be using a sattelite network or something similar instead of fibre. Does anyone have an idea on what the round-trip latency would be in terms of data to the moon (maybe not a viable idea for google, but possibly for future space-stations, etc).
Also, if a company *did* want to put up a lunar installation, they could probably just have current access locally, and dump their logs offplanet. The gov't could request info, but only for the last few days in their jurisdiction.
First of all, this is a royal pain in the ass, but there are ways to make it work:
Have a server that contains your files, with a validation code or password protected directory. Send the validation code by mail. Being that I've seen people listing $5.00 shipping for web-only or non-tangible items, it should be pretty to list a $2.00 postage fee or whatever it is to send the thing by registered make.
Again, it's a pain in the ass, but it's a good method of verification.
Secondly, make a small claims case. Unless paypal wants to send a lawyer to meet you in your jurisdiction, you'll probably win by default.
Perhaps, and a lot of companies love an arguement like that. It's not worth your time to fight over $30, but when 500 people find it not worth their time then that comes to:
$30
x 500
=
$15,000 (profit)
I'm fairly sure that phone companies use a similar tactic. Locally, Bell is one of the worst. My previous co-worker, with astounding dedication, would usually end up donating about two lunch-hours a day on the phone fixing his bill. He would go over it monthly, and discovered that (during about a 7 month period, I no longer work there) that he was being billed for calling his "companion phone" (two phones on the same plan are supposed to be able to call each other for free), or for minutes during his free time. Usually it came out between $3-8.
Now that takes a lot of work, and really it's not a large amount for most people. But as the problem was entirely consistent and recurring, I would assume that it happened to more people than just him. The company would be pocketing the profits, and not bothering with the expense in fixing any computer "issues" that caused it (assuming it was a bug, and not an intentional 'issue').
With the numbers that is:
$3/month
x 12 months
x (perhaps) 100,000 customers
=
$3,600,000
If you go with $7/month it's $8,400,000
So yeah, it might not be worth the $3 to most people, or even $30 to you... but it's really quite lucrative for the company and when you don't complain (and when I say complain, I also mean lodging BBB, FTC, etc, complaints) it's worth a whole lot of cash to them to keep on screwing the 'customer'
Republicans: Suck for reason X, and sometimes Y
Democrats: Sucks for reason Z, and sometimes Y
The fact is, that both parties have policies that are terrible. Yes, the Republicans have some pretty terrible ideas, that the democrats oppose. Similarly, the democrats have some craptastic ideas that the Republicans oppose. Some ideas, the opposing party will go against because that's what they do (oppose) - despite the merit of the idea itself - and making their opponents look back supposedly makes them look better.
Furthermore both parties share some extremely shitty ideas, many of which center around making themselves more powerful, and the people less so.
Lastly, the parties are made up of people. Both parties have candidates that really suck, but GWB happens to be one of those that - IMHO - sucks to an extent that it's often just short of, say, certain ex-German leaders between 1939 and 1945. On a regional basis, you'll see candidates from either side that can be extremely good, extremely bad, or flip between good and bad.
I think the end result is that the governmental body as a whole needs a massive overhaul. Despite what many people think, getting Bush out isn't going to magically fix the government, nor would removing the Republican party as a whole. There will still be a massive stain of corruption, bribery, undercutting of personal rights, and many other things used to enrichen and empower those in control. The one thing you might see is an impeachment of Bush or something of the like - to satisfy the public and make then believe "something" is happening - but that still won't fix the problem.
Today's politicians have no fear of consequences, and when you have massive power and no fear, the end result is often rather predictable.
I already bought a dual-core S939 Opteron this year, I simply have no need for AM-2. There's probably a few people out there who jumped on the dual-core bandwagon (I know a few myself), at which point there's really not a big benefit to jumping to the AM2 systems... since we're not even using all the power of the dual-cores 90% of the time.
How pure of water do you need, and how hard is it to purify? I'd imagine that while a plant to purify enough water for even a small city would be considerable, it wouldn't be a stretch to have a smaller plant purify water for a fusion reaction. That would mean that you can tap water sources that wouldn't be viable for human consumption, no wars needed. Plus you can power your purification systems from the reactor once it's running.
For the actual smokers, it might depend on whether they're trying to quit (which on some sites, is an option). People trying to quite might be more likely to date a non-smoker (or another trying-to-quit'er). Most people I know who smoke say the hardest thing is when significant other is lighting up in front of you, second being your friends...
a false positive indicates a healthy person is sick. A false negative indicates a sick person is healthy. Obviously the former scenario is a lot more preferable
Rather OT, but sometimes being diagnosed as sick with X-condition, then being treated, is just as bad as being diagnosed healthy-when-sick. There are quite a few cases where misdiagnoses has had a person taking expensive and sometimes potentially damaging (if you don't have the condition in question) medication, operations, or more. Pills and medications aren't a magic bullet, and sometimes in a healthy person they'll cause serious harm. There are also plenty of cases where the situation is like the opposite of a , the supposedly "sick" person will develop actual symptoms, either from improper medication or the psychological aspects thereof.
But to topic, WGA causes harm to legitimate users. It diagnoses them as "sick" when they are not. This can cause the user to blame their PC supplier (who did in-fact supply a legit copy), or call their technician (in my case, I've had to spend time, at my hourly rate, to *fix* systems where WGA failed). In the end, if costs the supplier reputation, the customer time, and the customer/company money.
Did you know that WGA will fail if the date setting is wrong? WTF! There is nothing illegitimate about having a bad clock setting. Sure, it's incorrect, but sometimes there are reasons for that (testing apps for date-errors, etc), and it's just plain wrong to declare an entire machine as invalid due to an incorrect clock. Last time I dealt with this it required several reboots and continuous runnin of the WGA check after the clock was fixed before it finally realized the "problem" was fixed. Does that sound reasonable to you?
I've had various machines that I service go to the microsoft page at various intervals. And yes, you could sniff the packets, but if there's encrypted data chunks that you can't decypher it's not really going to help you much.
In various studies of public washrooms, they have found that the toilet seats (other than those that somebody 'caught the edge of' while dropping a brown bomb) are usually the cleanest in terms of germs. Now the toilet paper dispensors, walls, etc tend to suffer from splashback in small amounts of fecal matter (yuck), and the really bad culprits tend to be... guess what... the antibacterial soap dispensors (since it's what you touch after you wipe but before you're disinfected), the paper towel dispensor winders, and other related items.
As far as actual succeptibility to germs, I find that my job (working in schools) tends to expose me to tons nasties and the only time I really get sick is when my immuno-response is down due to my body being worn out from seasonal allergies, overwork, etc.
First of all, I'd have to say thanks for all the firsthand information!
Secondly, it seems that currently it only supports windows, which is too bad as I could see a lot of hackers of the other OS's finding this a usefule device. Open drivers (not just a programming API) would be a nice thought too
My primary beef with the device would be the aforementioned serial converter, which would really such on a fullsize keyboard, as well as the flicker issue. Hopefully they'll fix it up for the full-sized keyboard device, in which case I might actually buy one (if somebody comes up with a driver for my OS).
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A lot of the phishing scams I receive nowadays are real messages, such as ebay alerts, with the link pointing back to a phishing site that appears to be the real thing but actually is used to steal passwords. Other include fake announcements from banks, etc, again where everything is fairly close to the real thing exempting the actual web address linked.
So how would it differentiate between these and the emails from the original site. While some of the bank ones are most likely just make up to look legit, the ebay and others are copied from modified messages.
I wouldn't have any problem with this provided that it:
a) Lets me do offline authentication in a non-cumbersome manner.
b) Lets me do (a) for, say, an officeful of machines... again in a non-cumbersome manner
c) Is accurate, and doesn't decide to accuse me (or my users) of pirating a copy that's actually legit
d) Doesn't require me to call microsoft, and either sit on hold, talk to some guy with a thick foreign accent, or talk to a bloody voice-agent...
e) For corporate, see (d), but I never want this to happen.... talking to VA's for multiple machines again and again sucks
f) Allows me to move to different hardware without breaking a-e
g) Doesn't decide that my copy is suddenly illegitimate for stupid reasons (like the date being wrong, like XP currently does)
h) Doesn't send any of my personal information home
I highly doubt that anyone could accomplish the above, because the simple fact is that anti-piracy and convenience are generally mutually exclusive, and strong anti-piracy seems to always end up with a stronger inconvenience to the customer (while the good pirated copies run just fine without).
And they're still detectable. That's what security bootdisks are for, possibly with regular MD5 filesums sent to a secure medium (read-only storage or write-once location).
I'd have to agree 101% with that. I had my machine consistently crash in windows XP, and I would honestly have to absolve Microsoft of blame in the face that creative's shitty drives seemed to be the cause. Running linux with open drives had no such issues (and for cards of similar cost, I *do* recommend creative labs cards for linux, or at least SBLive, because the Open-Source drivers are pretty decent and do handle hardware mixing). When I later tried it on other windows machines, they crashed as well until I found a third-party driver (tons of functionality, and more stable).. though offhand I can't remember the name (I use it at work on some machines, not home).
See, what many people are going to the trouble of setting up adblock for is it to block the ads that annoy them. Just like commercials, some ads can be useful, or at least amusing (heck, I tend to dislike most commercials, but I *collect* the funny ones)
For most like myself, we don't want to see "punch the money and win a **free Xbox-360 (**after subscribing to our paid services)" or ads for feminine hygeine products (when one is male) etc.
Same to spam. I subscribe to a few tech sites, because I want their ads (most isn't all that good, but every now and then I see something nifty I wouldn't have otherwise noticed). Plenty of other sites send me spam for sex pills, lame porn, or other things that I couldn't even decipher if I wanted the product. Even if I find a product that's interesting I won't buy it from the spammers because I know they've sent it to 1,000,001 other people who aren't interest in said tech-product.
Advertising doesn't necessarily suck. Intrusive, untargetted, or massive advertising does, and that's why many people block flash. If ads were all for things like $25 off a hard drive just as yours was about to crash, or some other product when you were actually looking for it, then perhaps people would consider blocking less. The problem is that it's really damn hard (and costly) to target advertising properly and non-intrusively to an individual, so most go with the cheap route of flashing gifs, boxing monkeys, or CI4L1S ads in the browser/inbox/etc of a gazillion people in hope of a fractional amount hitting paydirt.
I'm not sure that sticking a pod of surveillance cameras in their rooms, proxies and loggers on their computers, and GPS's in their lunchboxes is the solution to kids who go over the edge. I think perhaps those that were indicating parenting was responsible would agree that raising one's children tends to entail more of spending time with them, periodically but non-intrusively checking up on them (you can stop by to check what they're doing online at times, without bugging the machine), and in general engaging in a more interactive parental relationship.
Sure, you might catch something by bugging their PC/room/whatever, but it's no exactly a nourishing form of interaction.
Simple solution, escalate. If your parents spy on your computer, then install tools that block their favorite pr0n sites, block out the bad channels/movies on the TV with a password, and hide all their toys and dirty magazines. After all, they wouldn't want to set a bad example and risk exposing you to something naughty, would they?
Neither are most adults. A lot of people think they're quite craft or informed. I've seen a smug parent install various filters/etc on the machine, only to have an equally smug kid trick them or bypass them.
Try securing a school computer and see how many clever tricks the kids come up with to get around it. Although to be fair, in the day of google and the internet script-kiddies tend to abound, but back about 7-10 years ago my classmates and I found many an interesting workaround. Heck, some pretty clever security has been baffled by some remarkably simply tricks.
Is America's Army open source? Perhaps we can give the source to both, let the two happily modify it for "training" or whatever stupid purpose they come up with, and then in the end we have a really good, open, free FPS :-)
One participant was heard to comment "what do you mean there's no respawn in the live exercise??!" before stalking off the field. Others were seen to be having difficulties in climbing ladders with carrying several kilograms of weapons and explosives, while still more were seen attempting to bunny-hop their way across open fields.
So the question I would pose is: Is this just a scientific interest, or is a buckyball/buckyegg that doesn't following the pentagonal rules more useful (easier to produce, different/useful properties, etc) in some way than the regular variety of buckyball?
Perhaps something like:
G(.)(.)gle
(all in pink, of course)
Well, you'd definately have to be using a sattelite network or something similar instead of fibre. Does anyone have an idea on what the round-trip latency would be in terms of data to the moon (maybe not a viable idea for google, but possibly for future space-stations, etc).
Also, if a company *did* want to put up a lunar installation, they could probably just have current access locally, and dump their logs offplanet. The gov't could request info, but only for the last few days in their jurisdiction.
First of all, this is a royal pain in the ass, but there are ways to make it work:
Have a server that contains your files, with a validation code or password protected directory. Send the validation code by mail. Being that I've seen people listing $5.00 shipping for web-only or non-tangible items, it should be pretty to list a $2.00 postage fee or whatever it is to send the thing by registered make.
Again, it's a pain in the ass, but it's a good method of verification.
Secondly, make a small claims case. Unless paypal wants to send a lawyer to meet you in your jurisdiction, you'll probably win by default.
Perhaps, and a lot of companies love an arguement like that. It's not worth your time to fight over $30, but when 500 people find it not worth their time then that comes to:
$30
x 500
=
$15,000 (profit)
I'm fairly sure that phone companies use a similar tactic. Locally, Bell is one of the worst. My previous co-worker, with astounding dedication, would usually end up donating about two lunch-hours a day on the phone fixing his bill. He would go over it monthly, and discovered that (during about a 7 month period, I no longer work there) that he was being billed for calling his "companion phone" (two phones on the same plan are supposed to be able to call each other for free), or for minutes during his free time. Usually it came out between $3-8.
Now that takes a lot of work, and really it's not a large amount for most people. But as the problem was entirely consistent and recurring, I would assume that it happened to more people than just him. The company would be pocketing the profits, and not bothering with the expense in fixing any computer "issues" that caused it (assuming it was a bug, and not an intentional 'issue').
With the numbers that is:
$3/month
x 12 months
x (perhaps) 100,000 customers
=
$3,600,000
If you go with $7/month it's $8,400,000
So yeah, it might not be worth the $3 to most people, or even $30 to you... but it's really quite lucrative for the company and when you don't complain (and when I say complain, I also mean lodging BBB, FTC, etc, complaints) it's worth a whole lot of cash to them to keep on screwing the 'customer'
Republicans: Suck for reason X, and sometimes Y
Democrats: Sucks for reason Z, and sometimes Y
The fact is, that both parties have policies that are terrible. Yes, the Republicans have some pretty terrible ideas, that the democrats oppose. Similarly, the democrats have some craptastic ideas that the Republicans oppose. Some ideas, the opposing party will go against because that's what they do (oppose) - despite the merit of the idea itself - and making their opponents look back supposedly makes them look better.
Furthermore both parties share some extremely shitty ideas, many of which center around making themselves more powerful, and the people less so.
Lastly, the parties are made up of people. Both parties have candidates that really suck, but GWB happens to be one of those that - IMHO - sucks to an extent that it's often just short of, say, certain ex-German leaders between 1939 and 1945. On a regional basis, you'll see candidates from either side that can be extremely good, extremely bad, or flip between good and bad.
I think the end result is that the governmental body as a whole needs a massive overhaul. Despite what many people think, getting Bush out isn't going to magically fix the government, nor would removing the Republican party as a whole. There will still be a massive stain of corruption, bribery, undercutting of personal rights, and many other things used to enrichen and empower those in control. The one thing you might see is an impeachment of Bush or something of the like - to satisfy the public and make then believe "something" is happening - but that still won't fix the problem.
Today's politicians have no fear of consequences, and when you have massive power and no fear, the end result is often rather predictable.
I already bought a dual-core S939 Opteron this year, I simply have no need for AM-2. There's probably a few people out there who jumped on the dual-core bandwagon (I know a few myself), at which point there's really not a big benefit to jumping to the AM2 systems... since we're not even using all the power of the dual-cores 90% of the time.
How pure of water do you need, and how hard is it to purify? I'd imagine that while a plant to purify enough water for even a small city would be considerable, it wouldn't be a stretch to have a smaller plant purify water for a fusion reaction. That would mean that you can tap water sources that wouldn't be viable for human consumption, no wars needed. Plus you can power your purification systems from the reactor once it's running.
That would imply that it's something everyone doesn't already know...
For the actual smokers, it might depend on whether they're trying to quit (which on some sites, is an option). People trying to quite might be more likely to date a non-smoker (or another trying-to-quit'er). Most people I know who smoke say the hardest thing is when significant other is lighting up in front of you, second being your friends...
a false positive indicates a healthy person is sick. A false negative indicates a sick person is healthy. Obviously the former scenario is a lot more preferable
Rather OT, but sometimes being diagnosed as sick with X-condition, then being treated, is just as bad as being diagnosed healthy-when-sick. There are quite a few cases where misdiagnoses has had a person taking expensive and sometimes potentially damaging (if you don't have the condition in question) medication, operations, or more. Pills and medications aren't a magic bullet, and sometimes in a healthy person they'll cause serious harm. There are also plenty of cases where the situation is like the opposite of a , the supposedly "sick" person will develop actual symptoms, either from improper medication or the psychological aspects thereof.
But to topic, WGA causes harm to legitimate users. It diagnoses them as "sick" when they are not. This can cause the user to blame their PC supplier (who did in-fact supply a legit copy), or call their technician (in my case, I've had to spend time, at my hourly rate, to *fix* systems where WGA failed). In the end, if costs the supplier reputation, the customer time, and the customer/company money.
Did you know that WGA will fail if the date setting is wrong? WTF! There is nothing illegitimate about having a bad clock setting. Sure, it's incorrect, but sometimes there are reasons for that (testing apps for date-errors, etc), and it's just plain wrong to declare an entire machine as invalid due to an incorrect clock. Last time I dealt with this it required several reboots and continuous runnin of the WGA check after the clock was fixed before it finally realized the "problem" was fixed. Does that sound reasonable to you?
I've had various machines that I service go to the microsoft page at various intervals. And yes, you could sniff the packets, but if there's encrypted data chunks that you can't decypher it's not really going to help you much.
In various studies of public washrooms, they have found that the toilet seats (other than those that somebody 'caught the edge of' while dropping a brown bomb) are usually the cleanest in terms of germs. Now the toilet paper dispensors, walls, etc tend to suffer from splashback in small amounts of fecal matter (yuck), and the really bad culprits tend to be... guess what... the antibacterial soap dispensors (since it's what you touch after you wipe but before you're disinfected), the paper towel dispensor winders, and other related items.
As far as actual succeptibility to germs, I find that my job (working in schools) tends to expose me to tons nasties and the only time I really get sick is when my immuno-response is down due to my body being worn out from seasonal allergies, overwork, etc.
First of all, I'd have to say thanks for all the firsthand information!
Secondly, it seems that currently it only supports windows, which is too bad as I could see a lot of hackers of the other OS's finding this a usefule device. Open drivers (not just a programming API) would be a nice thought too
My primary beef with the device would be the aforementioned serial converter, which would really such on a fullsize keyboard, as well as the flicker issue. Hopefully they'll fix it up for the full-sized keyboard device, in which case I might actually buy one (if somebody comes up with a driver for my OS).
There would be lots of uses. In games you could show icons with the actual functionality of the keys (fire, grenade, teleport, hyderdrive, whatever).
In word processing applications you could show which keys do things such as undo, etc
When you hold shift or caps the letters can switch between upper and lower case
When you press CTRL the associated function keys could change to show their designated function.
Lots of possibilities here, though a lot do depend on the software itself supporting the keyboard.