I'm missing where the fraud comes in. If he had performed the same actions botless would it be so? If not, he's only guilty of using a bot... hardly a case of fraud but certainly a case for banning.
Ah, thanks for the correction. I'd assumed OSX had a standard proc-style interface to ACPI, but it's always nice to be corrected in a non-flaming manner:-)
Are there any systems that could be setup to locate clients (say in a LAN) attempting to propogate worm infections, and then pass on an autopatch or something similar to clean it out (using whatever exploits/backdoors the worm opens or got in with).
Alternately, how about something that would deny those machines access to the network, perhaps by having a master password on local routers and commands capable of directing traffic from infected machines (on infection ports at least) to the bit-bucket.
I run as my home servers a bunch of PC's based on VIA's epia motherboard. The max power consumption per unit is about 40W, and the heat output is negligable. My Nehemia built-in support for memory cards (great as a boot device, use a 1GB card, 1GB+ RAM for ramdisk/tempfiles) and a PCMCIA card, as well as integrated sound, ethernet, firewire, USB, DVD acceleration, basic GL acceleration (no Doom 3, but Neverball plays fine) and an onboard 1Ghz CPU. Between VIA and the Epia sites I've had little problems finding drivers for all the hardware, though initial configuration was a pain.
Now onward to the house part... I'd recommend having the standard panels for adjusting your temperature/lights, and having the touchscreens/etc tie in as a secondary interface. Any computer can fail... and it's nice to have the standard stuff in place.
Conduits are your friend, seal the ends to comply with gas-transmission issues after you've run wire, and don't forget to run an extra wire-string to pull through future wiring.
I've seen interesting projects on motion-sensor type device that weren't too pricey. One of those would be neat for activating lights on entry, etc.
If you have a central "server" location (really, an Epia or two should work fine), you could setup the other machines to PXE-boot... in which case all you need is an (Epia again is my preference, just due to low power use and integration) motherboard with RAM and a display unit... no drive just share it off the central server.
Too bad you probably don't live near me, I'd probably work for free or near-free just to play with a project like this (and/or have it on my resume).
Well, for the visual updates a dropped packet might not be as critical as in the transfer of data that moves the equipment. For that, I'd assume that they've got some decent error-checking or CRC going on.
I've had some pretty racy popups show up in my time, not to mention the crapola that tends to surprise unwary newgroup visitors.
There's this thing call "temp files" and another called "cache." Guess what, you can have some pretty nasty stuff in there without knowing it, or ever having gone looking for it. The law applies to everyone, so if somebody who *does* have such content by intent can be nailed on it, the same precedent applies to those who can later be railroaded on similar charges despite being innocent.
Indeed, because according to the article the repair dude found what 'might' be illegal material, and passed it onto the police. Maybe it was girls that were about 19... but he wasn't sure. The police then investigated without a warrantee to secure evidence for a warrant.
For the grandparent's car analogy... if the mechanic saw white powder in a trunk (hey, maybe from groceries and some flour leaked), reported to the cops that the user *might* have transported cocaine, and they went over your car with a fine-tooth-comb to find some evidence that drugs of some sort had been in the vehicle, perhaps... would you be fine with that?
Part of such information is in essence useless because it can be very specific to given parts of the industry. There are areas where linux is still growing and tends to have less stability or support than the more tried-and-true counterparts. Certainly webservers running apache, etc have a good track record, but I've had my share of media apps die horrible deaths when trying to interface with new hardware.
The same applies to windows, but a big point against it there is that windows vendors (and particularly MS) tend to like obsoleting their products in favor of selling new products, with the new products often being required for compatability reasons with other products, but offering little else new in the way of functionality to most users.
Certainly RedHat might fall into the above scenario, but that tends to be the case with anything that becomes a product-based money-making venture... with their more recent push towards support-based revenue they've been churning out less "new versions" and more "updates"
No, it's grouped with the stuff that's removed. The quicktime taskbar is annoying though, as it tends to automatically reassert itself whenever quicktime runs - whether you want it to do so or not.
One country sueing a global internet site is like sueing the satellite company for broadcasting globally advertising that might be unwanted in a particular region. If somebody is watching a US channel and gets an ad for someplace in Vegas, do they sue HBO?
From my understanding, the country portals function to filter results through a quicker server and perhaps with more local relevance... if Australia can sue over google having generic ads then next will we see middle-eastern countries sueing over the ability to search out individuals online without headscarves?
From symantec, it almost sounds like the worm is trying to decrudify your system. It attempts to kill the realplayer, quicktime, gator, and many spyware/malware/adware toolbars. It alsocleans them out of the registry, and deletes their files.
Too bad it also opens an FTP, IRC connection, and many others, but I do wonder if it's a variant on code originally intended to clean rather than infest?
I also quite like how MS directs you to complain to the Internet Fraud Complaint Center Web site, I'm sure they really appreciate all the extra phonecalls about infected operating systems...
Canada is doing the same think. A local business in Vancouver, around for a decade (and long before the games were coming near here) was attacked by the olympic committee over having the olympic rings logo over the"Olympic Pizza" restaurant.
It's big-business greed at it's very best, especially since the coming of the olympics will ensure that the Whistler skihill will be inaccessible to anybody but the rich, as the cost of attending the olympics is beyond many average folk, and the rates in the area are already skyrocketing in anticipation of the games.
Olympics were around long before trademarks, and used to be for the people... now they're only for big-business and rich people, go figure.
The majority of movies I've seen this year have been been decent to good. None have really been downright bad (ok, I'll admit that I didn't really like HHGTG in comparison to the book... some things are better in print):
Batman begins
War of the worlds
Fantastic Four
Wedding Crashers
Chocolate Factory
There are plenty of others as well... maybe I'm just better at avoiding sucky movies lately but I haven't felt cheated nearly so badly as I didn seeing some of the trash that came out the previous few years.
This is also exactly why the registration and management needs to be more global. I'm sure that Germany, France and many other countries have no problem with.xxx TLD's... why should the US determine policy for what is a global communications medium?
And all you need is a handset, since in most places you can call emergency numbers (aka 9-1-1) even if the general phone service is disconnected. Applies to cellphones as well, actually...
I just had to comment on the use of real-world objects in terms of fantasy elements. The +5 car of pimpin' and the +3 rolex of higher occupation is a pretty interest wrapper around the concept of how we objectify personal worth around the ownership of material possessions.
The world is changing now to include more 'virtual' phenomenoa, ranging from video games, to 'virtual classrooms' to people being married from meeting in chatrooms... so why should a "+10 sword of dragonsbane" have any less interpreted value than your "golden-chained-emblem-of-blingbling." Certainly neither are any real indication of personality, ability to provide, or anything else.
For a personal example... I have a new car because of an insurance settlement... certainly I don't have a bad job but even if I were jobless I could have had the car from which people might interpret I was "well-off."
Just a curiousity, as I've been discussion this with various people...
How many times a year do you go on vacation, and for how long? Do you save more in being able to move more people over the cost of gas... or would you do better to have an efficient vehicle that moves your family in normal instances, and rent an SUV on the 2-3 weeks of holidays per year (this is assuming 2-3 weeks of holidays, although with relatives I'd be lucky to start sane for one).
Lots of things have valid, practical reasons for their existance... but that doesn't mean the majority of people are using them for said practical reasons.
I swear there's just something in the brains of certain people that kicks out in these scenarios. You'll get the skier who goes out-of-bounds despite all the warning signs, the couple that gets mauled trying to pet a raccoon in the park (despite warning signs) and the parents that buy their kids mature/adult rated games (despite warning labels).
And guess what, the skier will try to sue the skihill, the couple will sue the park, and the parents will sue the game manufacturers. Nothing short of a high-voltage capacitor in the game box will be enough to save parents from their own stupidity... and even sometimes that wouldn't be enough.
We've used several "office" applications here in schools and I must say this:
Staroffice was terrible when we brought it in. Hard to use, with incompatability errors and a generally unpleasant interface. For quite awhile it propogated a mindset that anything that wasn't MS Office was frightening
Openoffice.org on the other hand (and perhaps more modern StarOffice versions), is very nice, better interface, decent (and improving) compatability, etc. Kids picked up Impress faster that I have, and design some *very* kickass presentations with it. The built-in PDF export facility from the document editors is nice too...
For those that prefer a slightly nicer interface than OO, depending on your version I've found quite a few people enjoyed Abiword as a replacement for the just word component of office.
Seriously, even as an OSS advocate I really disliked StarOffice, but there were/are better alternatives out there.
How much approx would it cost to build a smaller-scale home-based solar energy source that could, say, power some small pumps or a few energy-sources in the house? Anyknow know of instructions for something like this?
Actually, just for curiousity's sake, how much would it take to have such a thing in space used as a weapon? How much heat would be absorbed by the environment? Having a bunch of smaller focussing reflectors firing at a primary aiming reflector might make an awfully powerful beam...
Maybe I'm missing the point of this... but wouldn't that be better?
I mean, I'd rather start to feel warm or get a bit sunburned and then say "whoa... a bit toasty here... better step back from the "ultrahot-megafocussing-sundish" than accidentally step in front of the ol' microwave blaster and be rendered infertile with nicely-nuked insides within a few moments...
Increasingly unconfortable heat is a natural way of saying "don't go here, pain ahead" (plus any larger birds such as ducks/geese that do stray into the heat area would be nicely precooked for dinner)
Slashdot Mirror
I'm missing where the fraud comes in. If he had performed the same actions botless would it be so? If not, he's only guilty of using a bot... hardly a case of fraud but certainly a case for banning.
Ah, thanks for the correction. I'd assumed OSX had a standard proc-style interface to ACPI, but it's always nice to be corrected in a non-flaming manner :-)
Just a curious question:
Are there any systems that could be setup to locate clients (say in a LAN) attempting to propogate worm infections, and then pass on an autopatch or something similar to clean it out (using whatever exploits/backdoors the worm opens or got in with).
Alternately, how about something that would deny those machines access to the network, perhaps by having a master password on local routers and commands capable of directing traffic from infected machines (on infection ports at least) to the bit-bucket.
laptop:/# cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT1/info
present: yes
design capacity: 6600 mAh
last full capacity: 5312 mAh
battery technology: rechargeable
design voltage: 14800 mV
design capacity warning: 300 mAh
design capacity low: 200 mAh
capacity granularity 1: 32 mAh
capacity granularity 2: 32 mAh
model number: 01NT
serial number: 16412
battery type: LION
OEM info: LGC-LGC
A few ideas here:
I run as my home servers a bunch of PC's based on VIA's epia motherboard. The max power consumption per unit is about 40W, and the heat output is negligable. My Nehemia built-in support for memory cards (great as a boot device, use a 1GB card, 1GB+ RAM for ramdisk/tempfiles) and a PCMCIA card, as well as integrated sound, ethernet, firewire, USB, DVD acceleration, basic GL acceleration (no Doom 3, but Neverball plays fine) and an onboard 1Ghz CPU. Between VIA and the Epia sites I've had little problems finding drivers for all the hardware, though initial configuration was a pain.
Now onward to the house part... I'd recommend having the standard panels for adjusting your temperature/lights, and having the touchscreens/etc tie in as a secondary interface. Any computer can fail... and it's nice to have the standard stuff in place.
Conduits are your friend, seal the ends to comply with gas-transmission issues after you've run wire, and don't forget to run an extra wire-string to pull through future wiring.
I've seen interesting projects on motion-sensor type device that weren't too pricey. One of those would be neat for activating lights on entry, etc.
If you have a central "server" location (really, an Epia or two should work fine), you could setup the other machines to PXE-boot... in which case all you need is an (Epia again is my preference, just due to low power use and integration) motherboard with RAM and a display unit... no drive just share it off the central server.
Too bad you probably don't live near me, I'd probably work for free or near-free just to play with a project like this (and/or have it on my resume).
Well, for the visual updates a dropped packet might not be as critical as in the transfer of data that moves the equipment. For that, I'd assume that they've got some decent error-checking or CRC going on.
I've had some pretty racy popups show up in my time, not to mention the crapola that tends to surprise unwary newgroup visitors.
There's this thing call "temp files" and another called "cache." Guess what, you can have some pretty nasty stuff in there without knowing it, or ever having gone looking for it. The law applies to everyone, so if somebody who *does* have such content by intent can be nailed on it, the same precedent applies to those who can later be railroaded on similar charges despite being innocent.
Indeed, because according to the article the repair dude found what 'might' be illegal material, and passed it onto the police. Maybe it was girls that were about 19... but he wasn't sure. The police then investigated without a warrantee to secure evidence for a warrant.
For the grandparent's car analogy... if the mechanic saw white powder in a trunk (hey, maybe from groceries and some flour leaked), reported to the cops that the user *might* have transported cocaine, and they went over your car with a fine-tooth-comb to find some evidence that drugs of some sort had been in the vehicle, perhaps... would you be fine with that?
1. Don't shop at (those) stores at all.
How would you know which ones do it? They can make pretty damn small cameras nowadays, not to mention the old camera-behind-the-mirror trick.
Part of such information is in essence useless because it can be very specific to given parts of the industry. There are areas where linux is still growing and tends to have less stability or support than the more tried-and-true counterparts. Certainly webservers running apache, etc have a good track record, but I've had my share of media apps die horrible deaths when trying to interface with new hardware.
The same applies to windows, but a big point against it there is that windows vendors (and particularly MS) tend to like obsoleting their products in favor of selling new products, with the new products often being required for compatability reasons with other products, but offering little else new in the way of functionality to most users.
Certainly RedHat might fall into the above scenario, but that tends to be the case with anything that becomes a product-based money-making venture... with their more recent push towards support-based revenue they've been churning out less "new versions" and more "updates"
No, it's grouped with the stuff that's removed. The quicktime taskbar is annoying though, as it tends to automatically reassert itself whenever quicktime runs - whether you want it to do so or not.
One country sueing a global internet site is like sueing the satellite company for broadcasting globally advertising that might be unwanted in a particular region. If somebody is watching a US channel and gets an ad for someplace in Vegas, do they sue HBO?
From my understanding, the country portals function to filter results through a quicker server and perhaps with more local relevance... if Australia can sue over google having generic ads then next will we see middle-eastern countries sueing over the ability to search out individuals online without headscarves?
From symantec, it almost sounds like the worm is trying to decrudify your system. It attempts to kill the realplayer, quicktime, gator, and many spyware/malware/adware toolbars. It alsocleans them out of the registry, and deletes their files.
Too bad it also opens an FTP, IRC connection, and many others, but I do wonder if it's a variant on code originally intended to clean rather than infest?
I also quite like how MS directs you to complain to the Internet Fraud Complaint Center Web site, I'm sure they really appreciate all the extra phonecalls about infected operating systems...
Canada is doing the same think. A local business in Vancouver, around for a decade (and long before the games were coming near here) was attacked by the olympic committee over having the olympic rings logo over the"Olympic Pizza" restaurant.
It's big-business greed at it's very best, especially since the coming of the olympics will ensure that the Whistler skihill will be inaccessible to anybody but the rich, as the cost of attending the olympics is beyond many average folk, and the rates in the area are already skyrocketing in anticipation of the games.
Olympics were around long before trademarks, and used to be for the people... now they're only for big-business and rich people, go figure.
The majority of movies I've seen this year have been been decent to good. None have really been downright bad (ok, I'll admit that I didn't really like HHGTG in comparison to the book... some things are better in print):
Batman begins
War of the worlds
Fantastic Four
Wedding Crashers
Chocolate Factory
There are plenty of others as well... maybe I'm just better at avoiding sucky movies lately but I haven't felt cheated nearly so badly as I didn seeing some of the trash that came out the previous few years.
This is also exactly why the registration and management needs to be more global. I'm sure that Germany, France and many other countries have no problem with .xxx TLD's... why should the US determine policy for what is a global communications medium?
And all you need is a handset, since in most places you can call emergency numbers (aka 9-1-1) even if the general phone service is disconnected. Applies to cellphones as well, actually...
I just had to comment on the use of real-world objects in terms of fantasy elements. The +5 car of pimpin' and the +3 rolex of higher occupation is a pretty interest wrapper around the concept of how we objectify personal worth around the ownership of material possessions.
The world is changing now to include more 'virtual' phenomenoa, ranging from video games, to 'virtual classrooms' to people being married from meeting in chatrooms... so why should a "+10 sword of dragonsbane" have any less interpreted value than your "golden-chained-emblem-of-blingbling." Certainly neither are any real indication of personality, ability to provide, or anything else.
For a personal example... I have a new car because of an insurance settlement... certainly I don't have a bad job but even if I were jobless I could have had the car from which people might interpret I was "well-off."
Just a curiousity, as I've been discussion this with various people...
How many times a year do you go on vacation, and for how long? Do you save more in being able to move more people over the cost of gas... or would you do better to have an efficient vehicle that moves your family in normal instances, and rent an SUV on the 2-3 weeks of holidays per year (this is assuming 2-3 weeks of holidays, although with relatives I'd be lucky to start sane for one).
Lots of things have valid, practical reasons for their existance... but that doesn't mean the majority of people are using them for said practical reasons.
I swear there's just something in the brains of certain people that kicks out in these scenarios. You'll get the skier who goes out-of-bounds despite all the warning signs, the couple that gets mauled trying to pet a raccoon in the park (despite warning signs) and the parents that buy their kids mature/adult rated games (despite warning labels).
And guess what, the skier will try to sue the skihill, the couple will sue the park, and the parents will sue the game manufacturers. Nothing short of a high-voltage capacitor in the game box will be enough to save parents from their own stupidity... and even sometimes that wouldn't be enough.
We've used several "office" applications here in schools and I must say this:
Staroffice was terrible when we brought it in. Hard to use, with incompatability errors and a generally unpleasant interface. For quite awhile it propogated a mindset that anything that wasn't MS Office was frightening
Openoffice.org on the other hand (and perhaps more modern StarOffice versions), is very nice, better interface, decent (and improving) compatability, etc. Kids picked up Impress faster that I have, and design some *very* kickass presentations with it. The built-in PDF export facility from the document editors is nice too...
For those that prefer a slightly nicer interface than OO, depending on your version I've found quite a few people enjoyed Abiword as a replacement for the just word component of office.
Seriously, even as an OSS advocate I really disliked StarOffice, but there were/are better alternatives out there.
How much approx would it cost to build a smaller-scale home-based solar energy source that could, say, power some small pumps or a few energy-sources in the house? Anyknow know of instructions for something like this?
Actually, just for curiousity's sake, how much would it take to have such a thing in space used as a weapon? How much heat would be absorbed by the environment? Having a bunch of smaller focussing reflectors firing at a primary aiming reflector might make an awfully powerful beam...
Maybe I'm missing the point of this... but wouldn't that be better?
I mean, I'd rather start to feel warm or get a bit sunburned and then say "whoa... a bit toasty here... better step back from the "ultrahot-megafocussing-sundish" than accidentally step in front of the ol' microwave blaster and be rendered infertile with nicely-nuked insides within a few moments...
Increasingly unconfortable heat is a natural way of saying "don't go here, pain ahead" (plus any larger birds such as ducks/geese that do stray into the heat area would be nicely precooked for dinner)
Dude, you'll just have to ditch that dinky Toyota and get a bigger S.U.V...
*ducks*