I wonder if you somebody could make a browser patch/feature to ignore images under size X by Y (for example, any 1x1 pixel). Of course, this wouldn't work for images without size tags (since you can't get the size without checking the image), but at least it might work for pixels.
Of course, a feature for ignoring images not linked from the originating domain would work just as nicely in most scenarios.
Good news from the inquest against hacker Adrian Lamo
For those that don't really like Lamo, consider this in the large scope that it is, overall, a victory for everbody's rights against rampant abuse-of-power.
Back in the day... it wasn't really a noticibly big deal that my 80MB hard drive wasn't a real 80MB, because even then a few MB wasn't a big deal. However, with an 80GB drive, we're suddenly talking about a whole whack of stuff you could store in those missing bytes.
So I'd say that yes, it matters, and with larger storage becoming more available, it matters more.
Since I can map a function to CTRL+ESC, but it is not activated by the windows key without special codes to interpret it. Ditto for the rest of these functions.
Windows key and CTRL+Esc etc do perform the same functions in windows, but one is not necessarily calling the other
I believe you can map for these keys in nix though?
You go to a bar, or a club. You get carded, and somewhere it records that you were attending the premesis. Now, maybe you just came to dance, or even eat (pubs). Maybe you buy a drink for your girlfriend or a pitcher for your baseball team.
You drive home, you're not impaired.
You get into an accident, it wasn't avoidable.
Cops determine you were at the bar. If applicable they also determine you bought X amount of drinks.
You lose your license, are charged, and generally flushed through the system.
Who doesn't think this is possible or even likely to happen? Maybe you think that the added protection for the masses is worth flushing one individual down the drain. Maybe you don't think it can happen to you.
Got news for you people, it can happen to anyone... and even if you come up innocent you may still have to fight the system in an incriminating situation.
If they're worried about guns, there are these things called Metal Detectors. Yes, they are a pain in the ass too, they can have false positives.... but they don't run the potential of having my personal info sold out or me slammed in court/jail.
I live in BC, Canada. I used to live in Greater Vancouver, and enjoyed the bars there. Once, I was confronted by a bouncer simply because I was wearing black gloves at the bar and it was "making people nervous." Do I really want to run the gamet that somebody/something might not cause me problems in the system? No.
Now the question is, do you, and what are you willing to do to protect your freedom and privacy?
You can justify pretty much anything with at least some benefits. Hell, even SiteFinder was useful to some people, but we all know what it did to the masses.
Anything that groups together the general public as having the potential for mass-violence and then cards and categorizes them thus is not a good thing, despite fringe benefits.
However, it's mind-bending that their Outlook weren't patched(it's a very old exploit) and that he uses the preview pane in Outlook, on his work related computer. I know that they are backed by Microsoft, and thus probably gets all the MS toys, but they still forgot to patch them.
I find it more mind-bending that they are still using outlook. Proprietary hard-to-port mail format, tons of bug, too integrated into the OS... it's also a little disconcerting to see that they used it on a machine with a available net connection and available production code. This isn't one mistake, it's a bunch of little silly silly things that add up to one big oops.
Realistically, they could have had their production machine live if they needed email, but done the following:
Proxy www requests, with password validation (no sneaking through port 80)
Restrict SMTP/POP ports to communication with their mail server(s) only (why would they need elsewhere)
Block all other unneeded ports.
In a properly configured network, even getting infected with a trojen isn't the end of the world if it has no way to escape. While many may sneak by on known ports, simply restricting them to appropriate hosts and/or proxying them with passwords (not saving the password in winblows) would help a lot.
And immediately assumed it was the daily/weekly Verisign or SCO article. My mistake... though I suppose cracking might apply to an RIAA article instead.
I could make a special-toed boot specially designed for kicking people such as McLaughlin in the arse. I will of course, have features that makes it optimal for aiming directly towards that great rectal divide.
Then, when McLaughlin tries to press charges, I'll just state that my device is an innovation, and just because it damages the way he works doesn't mean it isn't useful to somebody...
Of course, I wouldn't have the power to force the masses to use such a device... but really I think that a swift-kick-in-the-arse is probably a lot more useful for many people than sitefinder ever was.
Wouldn't you hate for your box to suddenly erase all your stuff simply because you had to move it across the room or replace some hardware, and the deadman device thought you were a thief, instead?
Maybe instead you could powder it with a fine coating of hallucinagen or something equally amusing (watch the fan doesn't blow it).
RIAA Lawyer: Your honour, the defendant is obviously guilty of stealing the.... ooooo looook, prettttyyy purrrple butterrrflieesss...!!!!
With the popularity of any OS, it is quike likely that you are going to get an increase in script-kiddies, etc using that OS and thus hacking at it.
Also, while you might get credence for hacking secure webservers... the major ones are fairly tight, and it might actually be easier to simply look up the hack-of-the-day and write an exploit. Even linux is vulnerable to this if they catch you before a patch. By hacking many windows boxen... said script kiddy can at least say "See all that, I did it! Look at how leet I am" to all his friends just before the FBI come and haul him away...
For those who have played blood, one of the most amusing points was the "deathmatch voice" - which announced various game happenings, coupled with the standard death announcements.
For example, plugging somebody from behind with your double-barrelled shotgun would as some times pop up the phrase "Player gave player2 anal vengeance" (or something to that effect, I can't look up the exact phrase as it would look odd here at work).
That in itself (coupled with the player names we used) would have been amusing enough: as seeing "Master Bates boned yer momma" inevitably lead to giggles of geekish delight, but throw in the voice yelling out "reamed," or the aforementioned "anal vengeance," and you had a recipe for hilarity. I really wish there were comparable games today, but current FPS either aim at being overtly realistic, or just a gib-fest, and totally miss the humour that Blood (and, though good, to a less extend Duke3d) portrayed.
How about sending emails for a generated hash arguement. For each email, your server can call the sender back and ask.
HASH:ERLWEKJFILKJ:jdoe@yourserver.com
Sending server replies: true/false as to whether they actually sent the email. Hashes shouldn't be too much overheard to calculate (basically it could be based on a numerical index), and we'll quickly find out whom the spammers are. There's a bit of extra network overhead in calling-back, but not much and it would be a relatively small amount of data to be sent.
MAIL FROM address which doesn't match your domain; ie, if you're coming from a01.nastyspammer.com, you're not going to be able to say "MAIL FROM: niceguy@yahoo.com
Or, if your POP3 provider doesn't allow SMTP access (as I don't, because my customers are roaming and as a free service I don't feel like making special SMTP rules for 'em), then yes, you would use this.
I myself use my ISP's mailserver to send most of my email, since I have about 3-4 email accounts, and not all of them have decent SMTP servers.
Some people, though, get off by mislabelling both so that others will download it. Put up what you prefer, but label it appropriate. Many people don't have a problem with other people enjoying their variety of pr0n (be it by preference or fetish - so long as it is legal), but it's really a pain when you download a 125MB file only to find it is something else.While I accept pr0n for "alternative preferences" than my own, it's definately not a turn-on. With the illegal stuff, it's even worse, because now it's been on my hard-drive, and were it to be found it would look bad even if it hadn't been what I was looking for.
It's an assumption, but perhaps this is what the parent was discussion, as I have noticed the behavior of posting such material mislabelled is becoming too prolific in P2P lately.
One thing to consider is that google does seem to sort users by location. Being in Canada, I end up at google.ca, though I'm not sure if this alters my search results so much as it likely redirects me to a local, faster server?
Despite how much this company sucks, many formidable alternates have been mentioned by slashdotters. I'm wondering about one thing: what is the best way to destroy data. Here, we have two forms. a) Data and drive to be destroyed: Almost anything goes, the drive is to be disposed.
I'm thinking big magnet, hammer, and some strong acid should make the thing pretty much a goner?
b) Data to be destroyed/removed, drive to be re-used: Not everyone wants to get rid of that 32GB SCSI or 200GB IDE drive when sensitive data is to be wiped. Maybe it's just being upgraded and the original disk moved to a less secure location. What are the best ways (likely software) to maintain the usabillity of the drive, but ensure that most cannot recover old data?
Oh, and lastly, I was thinking of perhaps a mechanism to destroy disks upon having a system compromised. Many people might think "illegal data," (which could apply, I suppose), but I'm thinking more about big companies who have somehow had their data/drives ripped off... in which case it would be nice to nuke said drives before thieves can steal important/private customer/corporate data. Would also be useful if the RIAA comes-a-knockin'
For how many frames do these dotted scenes appear? I assume it's a rather short measure, in hopes that most audiences will overlook or not even see them. Wouldn't it be simple to add logic to most ripping/encoding apps that scenes that are suddenly blank with a few red spots, lasting for 1 second are simply ignored or cut off.
Can corps get together to form something alike to a class-action suit?
I mean, granted most of these companies are competing, but in "the enemy of my enemy is a friend," perhaps they could at least agree that the RIAA is mutally bad for business. At the least, they could probably create some 3rd-party organization of which they are all members, pool resources, and fun some lawyers to send the RIAA back where they belong.
The combination of many RFID's though makes it very easy to catalogue large amounts of information quickly.
With the garbage-scanning example: yes, you could go peek into somebody's house and take inventory, but doing an entire neighbourhood simply by attaching an RFID reader onto your local garbage truck means scanning and profiling your trusting citizens is not only fast, it's cheap and convenient. Remember, if cost and time aren't prohibitive, it make such an idea much more lucritive for the guberment... whether or not it's right or even legal may not come into effect until afterwards when your local newspaper or slashdot finds out what is happening.
Do those thieves think of themselves in the same way you do, or do they view themselves are better than those who are dumb enough to leave valuables in a car (digital camera), not lock up, use decent alarms, etc etc?
Maybe most of them view themselves as we view ourselves... there are just more people using P2P than jacking cars.
And no, I don't believe that it is the same between P2P and robbery. Car jacking, household robbery don't involve physical damage or loss.
However, if you count "professional pirates" they're not much better than common thieves. That guy in the street selling ripped copies of movie X 2 days after (or even before) it was out in theatre? It's organized crime, and while it lacks the smash-and-grab bad image of common thievery, you'd better believe that it still includes some of the less savory parts.
The real problem is that some can't equate the difference between these and common P2P'ers, and throw them in the same basket under the name of "piracy"
This, with a little research saying that Americans typically eat dinner from, oh, 5:00 PM to 7:30 PM, would allow them to perhaps avoid those area codes during that time. It still gives them three other time zones to mess with at pretty much any given point.
Actually, often telemarketers will call around meal times just for the ensurance that more people will be at home (eating dinner, just before, or just after).
Most people would say "that's dumb, who would answer them when eating," but remember these are the same people that believe that DNC registrants want to receive calls...
FYI, for all who don't know. Telephone "slamming" involves switching your phone/long-distance carrier without your pre-authorization (it's illegal, call the FCC if it happens and make sure all charges are backbilled). I'm assuming credit-card slamming as mentioned above is the same, but swapping you to a new Visa/Mastercard carrier.
Slashdot Mirror
No matter if it hurt a newspaper or a private citizen: precedent.
I wonder if you somebody could make a browser patch/feature to ignore images under size X by Y (for example, any 1x1 pixel). Of course, this wouldn't work for images without size tags (since you can't get the size without checking the image), but at least it might work for pixels.
Of course, a feature for ignoring images not linked from the originating domain would work just as nicely in most scenarios.
Good news from the inquest against hacker Adrian Lamo
For those that don't really like Lamo, consider this in the large scope that it is, overall, a victory for everbody's rights against rampant abuse-of-power.
Back in the day... it wasn't really a noticibly big deal that my 80MB hard drive wasn't a real 80MB, because even then a few MB wasn't a big deal. However, with an 80GB drive, we're suddenly talking about a whole whack of stuff you could store in those missing bytes.
So I'd say that yes, it matters, and with larger storage becoming more available, it matters more.
Since I can map a function to CTRL+ESC, but it is not activated by the windows key without special codes to interpret it. Ditto for the rest of these functions.
Windows key and CTRL+Esc etc do perform the same functions in windows, but one is not necessarily calling the other
I believe you can map for these keys in nix though?
You go to a bar, or a club. You get carded, and somewhere it records that you were attending the premesis. Now, maybe you just came to dance, or even eat (pubs). Maybe you buy a drink for your girlfriend or a pitcher for your baseball team.
You drive home, you're not impaired.
You get into an accident, it wasn't avoidable.
Cops determine you were at the bar. If applicable they also determine you bought X amount of drinks.
You lose your license, are charged, and generally flushed through the system.
Who doesn't think this is possible or even likely to happen? Maybe you think that the added protection for the masses is worth flushing one individual down the drain. Maybe you don't think it can happen to you.
Got news for you people, it can happen to anyone... and even if you come up innocent you may still have to fight the system in an incriminating situation.
If they're worried about guns, there are these things called Metal Detectors. Yes, they are a pain in the ass too, they can have false positives.... but they don't run the potential of having my personal info sold out or me slammed in court/jail.
I live in BC, Canada. I used to live in Greater Vancouver, and enjoyed the bars there. Once, I was confronted by a bouncer simply because I was wearing black gloves at the bar and it was "making people nervous." Do I really want to run the gamet that somebody/something might not cause me problems in the system? No.
Now the question is, do you, and what are you willing to do to protect your freedom and privacy?
You can justify pretty much anything with at least some benefits. Hell, even SiteFinder was useful to some people, but we all know what it did to the masses.
Anything that groups together the general public as having the potential for mass-violence and then cards and categorizes them thus is not a good thing, despite fringe benefits.
However, it's mind-bending that their Outlook weren't patched(it's a very old exploit) and that he uses the preview pane in Outlook, on his work related computer. I know that they are backed by Microsoft, and thus probably gets all the MS toys, but they still forgot to patch them.
I find it more mind-bending that they are still using outlook. Proprietary hard-to-port mail format, tons of bug, too integrated into the OS... it's also a little disconcerting to see that they used it on a machine with a available net connection and available production code. This isn't one mistake, it's a bunch of little silly silly things that add up to one big oops.
Realistically, they could have had their production machine live if they needed email, but done the following:
Proxy www requests, with password validation (no sneaking through port 80)
Restrict SMTP/POP ports to communication with their mail server(s) only (why would they need elsewhere)
Block all other unneeded ports.
In a properly configured network, even getting infected with a trojen isn't the end of the world if it has no way to escape. While many may sneak by on known ports, simply restricting them to appropriate hosts and/or proxying them with passwords (not saving the password in winblows) would help a lot.
And immediately assumed it was the daily/weekly Verisign or SCO article. My mistake... though I suppose cracking might apply to an RIAA article instead.
threatens that stifling 'innovation'
I could make a special-toed boot specially designed for kicking people such as McLaughlin in the arse. I will of course, have features that makes it optimal for aiming directly towards that great rectal divide.
Then, when McLaughlin tries to press charges, I'll just state that my device is an innovation, and just because it damages the way he works doesn't mean it isn't useful to somebody...
Of course, I wouldn't have the power to force the masses to use such a device... but really I think that a swift-kick-in-the-arse is probably a lot more useful for many people than sitefinder ever was.
Wouldn't you hate for your box to suddenly erase all your stuff simply because you had to move it across the room or replace some hardware, and the deadman device thought you were a thief, instead?
Maybe instead you could powder it with a fine coating of hallucinagen or something equally amusing (watch the fan doesn't blow it).
RIAA Lawyer: Your honour, the defendant is obviously guilty of stealing the.... ooooo looook, prettttyyy purrrple butterrrflieesss...!!!!
With the popularity of any OS, it is quike likely that you are going to get an increase in script-kiddies, etc using that OS and thus hacking at it.
Also, while you might get credence for hacking secure webservers... the major ones are fairly tight, and it might actually be easier to simply look up the hack-of-the-day and write an exploit. Even linux is vulnerable to this if they catch you before a patch. By hacking many windows boxen... said script kiddy can at least say "See all that, I did it! Look at how leet I am" to all his friends just before the FBI come and haul him away...
If they come for your drive, then trust me, they will also be asking for your key.
For those who have played blood, one of the most amusing points was the "deathmatch voice" - which announced various game happenings, coupled with the standard death announcements.
For example, plugging somebody from behind with your double-barrelled shotgun would as some times pop up the phrase "Player gave player2 anal vengeance" (or something to that effect, I can't look up the exact phrase as it would look odd here at work).
That in itself (coupled with the player names we used) would have been amusing enough: as seeing "Master Bates boned yer momma" inevitably lead to giggles of geekish delight, but throw in the voice yelling out "reamed," or the aforementioned "anal vengeance," and you had a recipe for hilarity. I really wish there were comparable games today, but current FPS either aim at being overtly realistic, or just a gib-fest, and totally miss the humour that Blood (and, though good, to a less extend Duke3d) portrayed.
How about sending emails for a generated hash arguement. For each email, your server can call the sender back and ask.
HASH:ERLWEKJFILKJ:jdoe@yourserver.com
Sending server replies: true/false as to whether they actually sent the email. Hashes shouldn't be too much overheard to calculate (basically it could be based on a numerical index), and we'll quickly find out whom the spammers are. There's a bit of extra network overhead in calling-back, but not much and it would be a relatively small amount of data to be sent.
MAIL FROM address which doesn't match your domain; ie, if you're coming from a01.nastyspammer.com, you're not going to be able to say "MAIL FROM: niceguy@yahoo.com
Or, if your POP3 provider doesn't allow SMTP access (as I don't, because my customers are roaming and as a free service I don't feel like making special SMTP rules for 'em), then yes, you would use this.
I myself use my ISP's mailserver to send most of my email, since I have about 3-4 email accounts, and not all of them have decent SMTP servers.
Some people, though, get off by mislabelling both so that others will download it. Put up what you prefer, but label it appropriate. Many people don't have a problem with other people enjoying their variety of pr0n (be it by preference or fetish - so long as it is legal), but it's really a pain when you download a 125MB file only to find it is something else.While I accept pr0n for "alternative preferences" than my own, it's definately not a turn-on. With the illegal stuff, it's even worse, because now it's been on my hard-drive, and were it to be found it would look bad even if it hadn't been what I was looking for.
It's an assumption, but perhaps this is what the parent was discussion, as I have noticed the behavior of posting such material mislabelled is becoming too prolific in P2P lately.
One thing to consider is that google does seem to sort users by location. Being in Canada, I end up at google.ca, though I'm not sure if this alters my search results so much as it likely redirects me to a local, faster server?
Despite how much this company sucks, many formidable alternates have been mentioned by slashdotters. I'm wondering about one thing: what is the best way to destroy data. Here, we have two forms.
a) Data and drive to be destroyed: Almost anything goes, the drive is to be disposed.
I'm thinking big magnet, hammer, and some strong acid should make the thing pretty much a goner? b) Data to be destroyed/removed, drive to be re-used: Not everyone wants to get rid of that 32GB SCSI or 200GB IDE drive when sensitive data is to be wiped. Maybe it's just being upgraded and the original disk moved to a less secure location. What are the best ways (likely software) to maintain the usabillity of the drive, but ensure that most cannot recover old data?
Oh, and lastly, I was thinking of perhaps a mechanism to destroy disks upon having a system compromised. Many people might think "illegal data," (which could apply, I suppose), but I'm thinking more about big companies who have somehow had their data/drives ripped off... in which case it would be nice to nuke said drives before thieves can steal important/private customer/corporate data. Would also be useful if the RIAA comes-a-knockin'
For how many frames do these dotted scenes appear? I assume it's a rather short measure, in hopes that most audiences will overlook or not even see them. Wouldn't it be simple to add logic to most ripping/encoding apps that scenes that are suddenly blank with a few red spots, lasting for 1 second are simply ignored or cut off.
Can corps get together to form something alike to a class-action suit?
I mean, granted most of these companies are competing, but in "the enemy of my enemy is a friend," perhaps they could at least agree that the RIAA is mutally bad for business. At the least, they could probably create some 3rd-party organization of which they are all members, pool resources, and fun some lawyers to send the RIAA back where they belong.
The combination of many RFID's though makes it very easy to catalogue large amounts of information quickly.
With the garbage-scanning example: yes, you could go peek into somebody's house and take inventory, but doing an entire neighbourhood simply by attaching an RFID reader onto your local garbage truck means scanning and profiling your trusting citizens is not only fast, it's cheap and convenient. Remember, if cost and time aren't prohibitive, it make such an idea much more lucritive for the guberment... whether or not it's right or even legal may not come into effect until afterwards when your local newspaper or slashdot finds out what is happening.
Do those thieves think of themselves in the same way you do, or do they view themselves are better than those who are dumb enough to leave valuables in a car (digital camera), not lock up, use decent alarms, etc etc?
Maybe most of them view themselves as we view ourselves... there are just more people using P2P than jacking cars.
And no, I don't believe that it is the same between P2P and robbery. Car jacking, household robbery don't involve physical damage or loss.
However, if you count "professional pirates" they're not much better than common thieves. That guy in the street selling ripped copies of movie X 2 days after (or even before) it was out in theatre? It's organized crime, and while it lacks the smash-and-grab bad image of common thievery, you'd better believe that it still includes some of the less savory parts.
The real problem is that some can't equate the difference between these and common P2P'ers, and throw them in the same basket under the name of "piracy"
This, with a little research saying that Americans typically eat dinner from, oh, 5:00 PM to 7:30 PM, would allow them to perhaps avoid those area codes during that time. It still gives them three other time zones to mess with at pretty much any given point.
Actually, often telemarketers will call around meal times just for the ensurance that more people will be at home (eating dinner, just before, or just after).
Most people would say "that's dumb, who would answer them when eating," but remember these are the same people that believe that DNC registrants want to receive calls...
FYI, for all who don't know. Telephone "slamming" involves switching your phone/long-distance carrier without your pre-authorization (it's illegal, call the FCC if it happens and make sure all charges are backbilled). I'm assuming credit-card slamming as mentioned above is the same, but swapping you to a new Visa/Mastercard carrier.