For TV's they detect the local oscillator frequency from the superhet tuner being leaked back up the aerial feeder and out of your aerial. A faraday cage won't help, because you would have to enclose your aerial too and you've wouldn't receive any pictures!
Really... why? Google's search results are good. MSNBot is pulling as many pages from my site as GoogleBot, but only bringing me 2% of the visitors that Google does.
Google has a number of advantages, like:
Repeat the search on USENET, Images and Froogle
No heavy graphics
Spell checking
Indexes and converts PDF and other formats.
Also, it returned results from the United Kingdom, even though the UK only box wasn't ticked!
Also, the layout and the sponsored links are a blatant ripoff of Google.
I still say that this is the same thing as Challenge/Response.
Is there any other challenge/response system that allows for the unimpeded receipt of third party emails? Is there any other challenge/response system that avoids challenging every unique correspondent?
Yes. TMDA. Bite me. In fact, bite me >here< (but you'll have to be quick, this address expires in three days).
You may be right in some sense given that it's IE's security problems that often drive users to switch, but Firefox does stuff that IE doesn't do, like tabs and popup blocking. If it was a straight IE clone but more secure then you'd be right. As it happens, many people who switch to Firefox find the extra features a real benefit. So it *is* good, and IE is worse than just dangerous and insecure, it's an outdated, featureless relic. Don't even get me started on it's level of standards compliance.
I rather suspect they mean that they had the site operators embed a small (possibly 1x1 pixel transparent) gif hosted on their own servers and checked the logfiles.
I've also been working on a C3 web kiosk based on Gentoo which a full X and Firefox setup from a 32MB flash drive. Because of all the performance gains from building from source, it flies.
I run fastdiscs.com and only use Taiyo Yuden, because after exhasutive testing I found them to be by far the most reliable. It's no good to me to have to handle returns of faulty discs, that hits me in terms of time and leaves a bad taste in peoples mouths. Since I changed to TY, not one single faulty CD returned, and I burn hundreds every week (on Plextor drives, if you are interesed).
In my day, if you wanted bitmapped graphics you had to learn assembler and code them yourself.
No, really. You did! I was coding 6502 assembler when I was 7 years old because of this. I get the feeling that the yoof of today would just find this vaguely amusing and make jokes about punch cards and so on. (No, wait, they won't know what a punch card is!)
if you're going to try and recoved data with dd, make sure you dd from the partition itself, ie:/dev/sda4 and use 'conv=sync,noerror' to make sure you don't end up with an image shorted than 250MB due to dd missing out the bits it can't read rather then replacing them with zeros. You may be able to mount the resulting file loopback and see what's left.
The XBOX PC is just a 733MHz Pentium III with 64MB of RAM. 733MHz is extremely weak by today's expectations. 733MHz is not enough to run PC games today, barely enough to run Windows XP and certainly not enough to do anything practical, but play XBOX, or is it?
Depends what your expectations are. I'm sat here on my 500MHz P3 laptop, which does everything I need it to. That includes highly practical things like web development, graphics work and my business accounts and marketing. I have to admit that it would suck with only 64MB though, so they're barking up the wrong tree by saying that it's the CPU that's useless. Sure it would be nice to have a brand new super 3l33t boxxx, but I have better things to blow two grand on right now.
Yeay... Linux encourages people to pirate Windows just the same as Windows encourages people to pirate PhotoShop. Whatever.
Given that your OS is basically a collection of drivers, the OS should be free. The drivers are free (of charge) after all, aren't they? So where exactly is the value in an OS? It's the hardware manufacturers who write the drivers, not MS.
The value is in the applications. That's where there's room to innovate, and lets face it, Microsoft do produce a pretty good office suite.
Windows 95 for the most part performs the same job as Windows XP. In fact, apart from the incompleted Win32 API, so does Windows 3.1. What benefit does XP give me over '95? It still only runs my I/O devices and storage. Following the 95, 98, NT4, Win2k, WinXP upgrade path has cost hundreds of dollars. What have you gained?
Think about what you can do on a vanilla install of XP. You get a few demo applications (Solitaire, WordPad) and a web browser. We already take it as read that web browsers are free, so is your copy of XP a complete waste of money.
So there's the Windows API. That's the key to the application base. When Linux+WINE gets to the point where you can run any Windows application, the Windows application base will be a free for all. There will be absolutely no reason to run Windows at all. Microsoft just keep heading this off by changing the API and trying to keep bits of it secret. They can't do this forever.
(As a side note, would it not be possible to write some tool to map out the Windows API and produce functional equivalents in pseudocode? Look for entrypoints in all the DLLs, make calls, determine the outcome. IANA Windows developer though, so who knows?)
I've seen lots of site that return search results based on bits of the broken link instead of 404's.
Suppose you have broken link http://somesite.com/foo/bar.html, some sites return a list of search results from within 'somesite.com' matching 'foo' or 'bar'. Quite clever, and much more useful than a plain old 'page not found' error.
This just takes that one step further by doing the searching at the referring end instad.
As one other poster pointed out, running 'strings' on the executable reveals itself it be 'xProxyBot'.
Some other strings give a few clues about what it does:
Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run - It installs itself in the registry.
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible) - It grabs stuff of the web and tries to look like IE in the logs.
SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot - Tries to get started in safe mode too.
It installs itself in Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run as 'w32.exe'. I don't see it doing very much though. I've let it loose on a VMWare '98 session. No opened ports (unless it responds to portknocking), no attempts at outbound communication, maybe '98 is too old for it!
You compromise the web server you get more info, or go for the user and get the one time score.
No, you compromise a webserver, you gain access to the backend database, which may include enough personal information on enough people to enable identity theft on a massive scale.
But it's not something that's known to happen often, is it?
As the owner of an online store (see.sig), I get to see the nasty end of online fraud more often than the average Joe.
I get at least one purchase made by a stolen card every week, and in some instances I've been able to trace the owner of the card details.
In every single case, they've told a tale of how their PC got trojaned a few weeks back and they had to get it cleaned up. They're always quite shocked to learn of the real effects of what happened. Up until then, they just see it as an inconvenience and something you just have to put up with once in a while, like unblocking the kitchen sink.
Sometimes though, they review their credit card statements and find other small purchases that they're overlooked, then realise that they had been screwed little by little over a long period.
In every case, they've been more than happy for me to send them a copy of TheOpenCD or Knoppix so they can either install Moz or use Linux at least for their online stuff.
The recent activities of the botnet barons and phishers have certainly caught the attention of the mainstream press though, which is great publicity.
Ah, yes. Of course you're sensible enough to run FireFox though, judging by your sig. If you're stuck with Windows, then it's probably your safest first step.
One other thing though, my job is pretty varied. One thing that's a real bonus for me is the array of software I have access to practically instantly. No trawling for shareware or forking out for apps I'll probably only use once or twice. I can have them on all my machines too, for the same low price;-)
Lots of people are happy with Windows, yourself included. It appears to me that that's because you have a clue what you're doing.
The two groups I referenced either don't have a clue, or think they do when they don't. Nice to meet you too.
Viruses for Linux expected? Well, I suppose they're talking about the fabled Linux is ready for the desktop event we've been anticipating for half the last decade.
Some news for you: I happen to do work on my PC. This includes office type tasks, communication by email and sometimes IM, web browsing, software development, graphics work and a load of other stuff. I have to make sure my data is safe in case of nasties like a hard disk failure, which happenned a few months back (easy - DVD-R root fs + rsync'ed/home). I expect to be able to jump on and off my PC because I work from home to make childcare easier.
That's what I do. No games, no dicking around with software I don't have a use for. (Oh yeah, I post on/. though;-)
I use Linux (or one of the BSDs on my production boxes) because it just works. I can get what I need done and get away without being bothered by the 'computer'. No rebooting, no intrusive update process ie: Windows Update popping up messages asking me stuff while I try and work, no downtime due to viruses, no wasted web browsing sessions due to popups, no wasted email time due to spam, worrying about if my keystrokes are being logged when I buy stuff online.
Contrast this to my two groups of friends who continue to use Windows:
The first group are not generally computer literate. They've mostly given up on their computers as unusable. Spam, viruses, trojans, popups, crashes, reboots. Poor sods. They really want to get stuff done, but the 'computer' just gets in the way.
The second group is probably the user I was when I was about 13 or 14. They have to have the latest, greatest cracked or keygened software, but they don't actually know how to use it or have any real need for it. They're like the trophy hunters in the jungle of Adobe, Microsoft, Corel and friends. "D00d I scored pshop cs last night, r0xx0rz!! how do i put my sisters head on britneys bodey?". They don't seem to care about getting 0wn3d, and thing they're enlarging their l33t sysadmin skillz when they end up reinstalling.
The reality is, I'm too busy to have to do battle with my PC when all I really want to do is get my work done then kick back with a beer and chill. Linux makes this a possibility for me in a way proprietary software can't.
Ready for the desktop? Of course it fscking is! (Hey, my wife uses it on her PC, and she's totally non-techie)
Sadly, it got pulled. The last I heard of the project was this (quoted from a private email, but it's relevant and I'm sure he won't mind):
It was working fantastically well. Loads of donated clients running as LTSP
terminals, squid, samba, and apache servers handling internet connectivity,
logins, home directories, login authentication, profiles and policies
(superbly hand crafted for lockdown and high performance), intranet, issue
tracking for tech support, cups printer servers in every room with a web
interface to allow the teachers to control what the kids can print... 100%
uptime etc etc. In short, the best setup I've ever seen in any school - and
I've been in loads in my 20 years as an educational software developer.
Then the headmaster, against the advice of all the IT teachers, technicians,
myself and sundry LEA advisers, decided that the school would do the Thomas
Telford GNVQ in IT - essentially an MS office training course. So the whole
lot was ripped out (Julian Old is now using the salvaged the client machines
as a beowulf cluster up at Leeds Met) and replaced with hundreds of thousands
of pounds worth of windows servers, licences and MS office software. You will
not be surprised to learn that all the technical staff in the school resigned
(to move to more enlightened schools), I withdrew my support, and that the
new system is so flaky it is next to useless. The promised increase in exam
grades (the kids, according to the Telford brochure, are virtually guaranteed
to get at least a 4 C grade GCSE equivalent from the course) has actually
resulted in a massive reduction in performance from the kids.
Yup, I have the torrent running now, and will probably keep it up for the rest of the week at least. It's nice and fast at the moment so lets keep it that way. Just a small plug...;-) If you <can't | don't want to> download it, you can mail order it from me.
Slashdot Mirror
In the langaue of the current tv license rules, that should be Using a device capable of accessing the BBC website and viewing the content
For TV's they detect the local oscillator frequency from the superhet tuner being leaked back up the aerial feeder and out of your aerial. A faraday cage won't help, because you would have to enclose your aerial too and you've wouldn't receive any pictures!
- The 20GB Hitachi in my laptop (8 months old)
- The 120GB Maxtor in my colo server (12.001 months old)
- A 2 month old 120GB WD in my media centre PC
- The warranty replacement of the 120GB WD drive, after 2 weeks
- An 80GB Maxtor in my Sun U5
- An ancient 2.5GB drive in my firewall
Any ideas anyone? Different makes, different machines, mostly on UPS's.Google has a number of advantages, like:
- Repeat the search on USENET, Images and Froogle
- No heavy graphics
- Spell checking
- Indexes and converts PDF and other formats.
Also, it returned results from the United Kingdom, even though the UK only box wasn't ticked!Also, the layout and the sponsored links are a blatant ripoff of Google.
Trojaned windows media files anyone? ;-)
Is there any other challenge/response system that allows for the unimpeded receipt of third party emails? Is there any other challenge/response system that avoids challenging every unique correspondent? Yes. TMDA. Bite me. In fact, bite me >here< (but you'll have to be quick, this address expires in three days).
You may be right in some sense given that it's IE's security problems that often drive users to switch, but Firefox does stuff that IE doesn't do, like tabs and popup blocking. If it was a straight IE clone but more secure then you'd be right. As it happens, many people who switch to Firefox find the extra features a real benefit. So it *is* good, and IE is worse than just dangerous and insecure, it's an outdated, featureless relic. Don't even get me started on it's level of standards compliance.
I rather suspect they mean that they had the site operators embed a small (possibly 1x1 pixel transparent) gif hosted on their own servers and checked the logfiles.
I've also been working on a C3 web kiosk based on Gentoo which a full X and Firefox setup from a 32MB flash drive. Because of all the performance gains from building from source, it flies.
IBM Thinkpads have had RFID in them for a while now, to prevent them being taken out of specific areas.
This is absolutely correct.
I run fastdiscs.com and only use Taiyo Yuden, because after exhasutive testing I found them to be by far the most reliable. It's no good to me to have to handle returns of faulty discs, that hits me in terms of time and leaves a bad taste in peoples mouths. Since I changed to TY, not one single faulty CD returned, and I burn hundreds every week (on Plextor drives, if you are interesed).
In my day, if you wanted bitmapped graphics you had to learn assembler and code them yourself.
No, really. You did! I was coding 6502 assembler when I was 7 years old because of this. I get the feeling that the yoof of today would just find this vaguely amusing and make jokes about punch cards and so on. (No, wait, they won't know what a punch card is!)
Could most kids today get their PS2 to draw a mandelbrot set? Does Windows XP provide the tools to acquire and use this knowledge? No.
if you're going to try and recoved data with dd, make sure you dd from the partition itself, ie: /dev/sda4 and use 'conv=sync,noerror' to make sure you don't end up with an image shorted than 250MB due to dd missing out the bits it can't read rather then replacing them with zeros. You may be able to mount the resulting file loopback and see what's left.
Given that your OS is basically a collection of drivers, the OS should be free. The drivers are free (of charge) after all, aren't they? So where exactly is the value in an OS? It's the hardware manufacturers who write the drivers, not MS.
The value is in the applications. That's where there's room to innovate, and lets face it, Microsoft do produce a pretty good office suite.
Windows 95 for the most part performs the same job as Windows XP. In fact, apart from the incompleted Win32 API, so does Windows 3.1. What benefit does XP give me over '95? It still only runs my I/O devices and storage. Following the 95, 98, NT4, Win2k, WinXP upgrade path has cost hundreds of dollars. What have you gained?
Think about what you can do on a vanilla install of XP. You get a few demo applications (Solitaire, WordPad) and a web browser. We already take it as read that web browsers are free, so is your copy of XP a complete waste of money.
So there's the Windows API. That's the key to the application base. When Linux+WINE gets to the point where you can run any Windows application, the Windows application base will be a free for all. There will be absolutely no reason to run Windows at all. Microsoft just keep heading this off by changing the API and trying to keep bits of it secret. They can't do this forever.
(As a side note, would it not be possible to write some tool to map out the Windows API and produce functional equivalents in pseudocode? Look for entrypoints in all the DLLs, make calls, determine the outcome. IANA Windows developer though, so who knows?)
Suppose you have broken link http://somesite.com/foo/bar.html, some sites return a list of search results from within 'somesite.com' matching 'foo' or 'bar'. Quite clever, and much more useful than a plain old 'page not found' error.
This just takes that one step further by doing the searching at the referring end instad.
Yeah cool... lets set up a coral link so we all get a chance!
Some other strings give a few clues about what it does:
- Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run - It installs itself in the registry.
- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible) - It grabs stuff of the web and tries to look like IE in the logs.
- SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot - Tries to get started in safe mode too.
It installs itself in Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run as 'w32.exe'. I don't see it doing very much though. I've let it loose on a VMWare '98 session. No opened ports (unless it responds to portknocking), no attempts at outbound communication, maybe '98 is too old for it!But it's not something that's known to happen often, is it?
I get at least one purchase made by a stolen card every week, and in some instances I've been able to trace the owner of the card details.
In every single case, they've told a tale of how their PC got trojaned a few weeks back and they had to get it cleaned up. They're always quite shocked to learn of the real effects of what happened. Up until then, they just see it as an inconvenience and something you just have to put up with once in a while, like unblocking the kitchen sink.
Sometimes though, they review their credit card statements and find other small purchases that they're overlooked, then realise that they had been screwed little by little over a long period.
In every case, they've been more than happy for me to send them a copy of TheOpenCD or Knoppix so they can either install Moz or use Linux at least for their online stuff.
The recent activities of the botnet barons and phishers have certainly caught the attention of the mainstream press though, which is great publicity.
One other thing though, my job is pretty varied. One thing that's a real bonus for me is the array of software I have access to practically instantly. No trawling for shareware or forking out for apps I'll probably only use once or twice. I can have them on all my machines too, for the same low price ;-)
Lots of people are happy with Windows, yourself included. It appears to me that that's because you have a clue what you're doing.
The two groups I referenced either don't have a clue, or think they do when they don't. Nice to meet you too.
Some news for you: I happen to do work on my PC. This includes office type tasks, communication by email and sometimes IM, web browsing, software development, graphics work and a load of other stuff. I have to make sure my data is safe in case of nasties like a hard disk failure, which happenned a few months back (easy - DVD-R root fs + rsync'ed /home). I expect to be able to jump on and off my PC because I work from home to make childcare easier.
That's what I do. No games, no dicking around with software I don't have a use for. (Oh yeah, I post on /. though ;-)
I use Linux (or one of the BSDs on my production boxes) because it just works. I can get what I need done and get away without being bothered by the 'computer'. No rebooting, no intrusive update process ie: Windows Update popping up messages asking me stuff while I try and work, no downtime due to viruses, no wasted web browsing sessions due to popups, no wasted email time due to spam, worrying about if my keystrokes are being logged when I buy stuff online.
Contrast this to my two groups of friends who continue to use Windows:
The first group are not generally computer literate. They've mostly given up on their computers as unusable. Spam, viruses, trojans, popups, crashes, reboots. Poor sods. They really want to get stuff done, but the 'computer' just gets in the way.
The second group is probably the user I was when I was about 13 or 14. They have to have the latest, greatest cracked or keygened software, but they don't actually know how to use it or have any real need for it. They're like the trophy hunters in the jungle of Adobe, Microsoft, Corel and friends. "D00d I scored pshop cs last night, r0xx0rz!! how do i put my sisters head on britneys bodey?". They don't seem to care about getting 0wn3d, and thing they're enlarging their l33t sysadmin skillz when they end up reinstalling.
The reality is, I'm too busy to have to do battle with my PC when all I really want to do is get my work done then kick back with a beer and chill. Linux makes this a possibility for me in a way proprietary software can't.
Ready for the desktop? Of course it fscking is! (Hey, my wife uses it on her PC, and she's totally non-techie)
Sadly, it got pulled. The last I heard of the project was this (quoted from a private email, but it's relevant and I'm sure he won't mind):
Yup, I have the torrent running now, and will probably keep it up for the rest of the week at least. It's nice and fast at the moment so lets keep it that way. Just a small plug... ;-) If you <can't | don't want to> download it, you can mail order it from me.