Mark & Mike have always been an elusive pair although I have seen and spoke to both of them within the past couple of years. I'm not sure either was aware of, or even remotely interested, in the project, particularly given the lengths that Mike Berry (aka Wayne Michaels) went to in order to obfuscate his identity back when he was still working for an unnamed Big Blue company.
I did come into contact via e-mail with Scott Baker (wrote Land of Devastation door) a few years ago and he was his usual taciturn self. ""
formerly SysGoddess of
My Secret Garden RBBS 1:380/5
"Does anyone else remember when Lucas tried to excuse EP1 by saying, "Some people don't understand that I make movies for children"?"
" Ever read "Hansel and Gretel"? "Jack and the Beanstalk"? "Harry Potter"?"
Or ANY of the other (Harry Potter notwithstanding) original, unsanitized Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales? Little Red Riding Hood, The Tale of the Three Little Pigs or Snow White and the Seven Dwarves if made into movies in their original unsanitized versions would likely earn R ratings and the outcry of most parents.
" Young anakin is actually DARTH VADER!!!"
Yeah, but that was only after knocking up former Queen Amidala. So was it bad sex that drove him to the dark side?
It also requires companies and websites to disclose whether their systems will install spyware.
Even when companies & websites do openly disclose that they will install spyware (not their choice of wording of course) the average user doesn't read EULAs or privacy statements and probably wouldn't understand or care if they did read it.
Essentially it will/would require users to accept some form of personal responsibility in reading and evaluating such statements and since most of them can't even be convinced to click on Help to help themselves or learn something it's a lost cause.
The proposed $1K fine is a mere drop in the proverbial bucket and is not a sufficient penalty to deter a company from engaging in such practices.
And finally, I don't believe a case of this type could be successfully litigated, particularly since the preservation of evidence would certainly not be the goal of any end user who found themselves infected with such software. This would leave them pretty much without any proof and the entire thing would devolve into an embarassing display of ignorance and hubris.
"a self-described "elder statesman" in the piracy scene, started ripping and trading in the ancient days of the late '80s."
Elder statesman? He sounds like a poseur or wannabe that might have known someone who might have sortof known of someone else that was a courier for one of the second rate cracker networks who distributed their warez to ftp sites, newsgroups and other BBSs in their network.
It's somehow strangely comforting to know that not much has changed since I ran a dial-up BBS as well as the fact that Wired is still doing retreads of old news.
Apparently you missed the brouhaha made by some of the major news outlets last summer over finding valid credit card numbers by doing a google search. It wasn't so shocking then, nor is it now given the indiscriminate way search engines dredge up their data.
You use a hosts file (c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts, and no, I don't know why the fsck it's there either) to redirect IPs to the loopback addy (search around google, there's lots of good hosts files if you trust the poeple making them:)
Or you could simply enable this function in Spybot S&D. Tools/Hosts File
"I got hired by my one of my employer's customers to run their IT department, and my verbal and written communications skills were cited as part of the reason. Does that count?"
Obviously they were aiming quite low given your demonstrated 'ability.'
The first part of the problem was that they were on AOL in the frst place. It causes a slew of its own annoying popups pimping all of its additional services & partners. And the average AOL user is not exactly technically saavy.
200 data miners is a relatively small load count compared to what I've become accustomed to seeing lately. Most of mine range in the 400-600 range with a couple harbouring over 1,000 distinct pieces of adware, malware or spyware.
Yes, anyone can. But remember, these are usually the same lusers who allow adware,malware, spyware, virri & worms to proliferate on their systems to the point that they come to a screeching halt and THEN they call the exterminator.
How many times have you seen a user simply click away ANY sort of alert or popup that shows up even when it's their firewall or antivirus telling them that there's a problem or that the incredible new POS 1000 spyware they installed for its cute icons is now trying to phone home with their personal information?
Frankly, many of my clients are dumber than rocks when it comes to computers and even years of trying to help them be proactive and educate them has been an utter waste of my time and theirs.
Most just want their computer to work, like their refrigerator. Sure, you're supposed to vaccuum under and behind the refrigerator to prevent build-up of dust mutants and other nasties that will shorten the life of the motor but only rarely do they actually perform any preventative maintenance. Computers are no different to the masses. They simply want them to work without having to know how to actually operate them or perform any preventative maintenance.
"But then I also don't install every single new screen saver, password saver or other cutsie-poo program that comes down the internet pike like a hell of a lot of other people do too."
Amen. I have clients on whose computers I routinely find as many as 1,000 individual pieces of adware/malware/spyware on multiple appointments. They will install every POS thing they see advertised in a popup or spam but won't install the bloody OS or anti-virus updates if prompted because "we weren't sure if it was legit." Lusers all.
In nature this would be referred to as survival of the fittest and they would be culled from the population. One can only wish.
"the sypware that i got installed was hosted at rackspace.."
That should have been your first clue. Rackspace has long been known among anti-spam groups as one of the worst spamhauses there is. Hearing that they host spyware comes as little surprise.
Event Data Recorders have been in vehicles for a number of years and have even been reported on in the mainstream news & popular press. OnStar was/is only a recent manifestation of this technology.
Item number 1 is a given in many cases.
Item number 2 is also a given.
Item number 3 is likewise a given and one I wholeheartedly agree with.
However... have you actually read & taken the time to understand the full text of the policy? I believe that your example may have been considered.
In regards to your opinion, I agree regarding revoking the certification of any registrar who engages in such a practice, as well as requiring notice from the registrant or admin contact. For now, however, the policy is what it is and is an important first step, IMHO.
The original poster(s) need to stop with the kneejerk reactions or take the time to actually read and comprehend the actual policy.
If you go read the ICANN Policy on Transfer of Registrations between Registrars http://www.icann.org/transfers/policy-12jul04.htm it's quite explicit regarding the circumstances in which a registrar (aka Network Solutions, Dotster, Tucows, GoDaddy, etc - not the Registrant, billing or technical contacts) could deny a move request as well as under what circumstances they could not deny such a request (Nonpayment, No response from the Registered Name Holder or Administrative Contact, etc).
I'm no rocket scientist but the policy clearly intends to prevent Registrars from hijacking the domains of their clients, as some have been wont to do, or simply refusing move requests by passively ignoring said requests.
Here is some of the verbiage of the policy that indicates its clear intention to anyone who is capable of reading above a 5th grade level.
"Registered Name Holders must be able to transfer their domain name registrations between Registrars..."
"The Administrative Contact and the Registered Name Holder, as listed in the Losing Registrar's or applicable Registry's (where available) publicly accessible WHOIS service are the only parties that have the authority to approve or deny a transfer request to the Gaining Registrar."
Failure by the Registrar of Record to respond within five (5) calendar days to a notification from the Registry regarding a transfer request will result in a default "approval" of the transfer.
In the event that a Transfer Contact listed in the Whois has not confirmed their request to transfer with the Registrar of Record and the Registrar of Record has not explicitly denied the transfer request, the default action will be that the Registrar of Record must allow the transfer to proceed.
This may sound harsh, but about the only way you can get bad credit is to be irresponsible or have your spouse do it to you (either by marrying someone with bad spending habits or by having your spouse screw you over bad in a divorce).
Wow. I wish I lived in your pretend world. Maybe you should come live in the real one sometime. It doesn't take much in terms of medical bills to mount up to a financially catastrophic event particularly in these times when companies no longer offer health & medical benefits to their employees.
Even with insurance, a hospitalization of any length can quickly drain finances and many hospitals demand payment in full and refuse to allow you to make scheduled payments.
Several years ago, my appendix ruptured, I had emergency surgery and was in the intensive care unit for 3 days and then spent another 10 days in a semi-private room. Even with insurance, my portion of the bill was something like 14K. When I tried to make arrangements to pay monthly the hospital refused and turned me over to the credit bureau.
After several years I'm within a couple of months of finally paying that debt off but in the meantime, that single event nearly wiped me out financially and still has a negative impact on my credit rating despite not missing or being late with a single payment in all this time.
Does this make me irresponsible? Sure, how dare I become ill and then work my ass off for years to pay my debt.
Has this cost me a job? Not that I'm aware of, thankfully, but it is a possibility that I am strongly aware of.
People who do hiring know the difference between the types of people that get lumped into the IT category, so why can't the trade rags, marketing departments, and mainstream media figure it out?
Often I have not found that to be the case and have had to actually explain in very simplistic terms what I do to some bubblehead staffer, office manager or administrative assistant that I had to go through in order to even get to the actual person who screened resumes & conducted interviews.
The reason that the trade rags, marketing departments, mainstream media, etc. can't buy a clue is due to a similar lack of knowledge or desire to pursue same.
Think about it, how often to you see typos, misspellings & poor grammar used in mainstream media and newscrawls - even in hardbound books? I see it quite often, glaring mistakes that would be apparent to a 6th grader. They have spellcheckers and there used to be intelligent living people who proofread & edited things before final printing or release to the public. Apparently proofreaders are in small demand and the imbeciles of the world believe they don't need to use no steenken spell or grammar checker. Besides, they'll draw a paycheck no matter what so why bother?
Pursuit of excellence & pride is at least part of what's missing although in some cases I blame inbreeding.
Horrible grammer and lack of an eigth grade equivalent education should not be rewarded here.
grammer?
eigth?
If you're going to take potshots at someone elses posts on the alleged basis of poor grammar and lack of education then you should at least take the trouble to edit & spellcheck your own post.
Even sadder is that many of the CS grads I have supervised over the past 3-4 years are as clueless as the DeVry/ITT Tech people despite holding a degree. As far as I'm concerned these degrees have been rendered useless by the very institutions that award them.
Last year, I had to send one of my new minions, allegedly a CS degreed fellow, to do some work on a very old network. When I told him to meet the wiring guy & work with him on the cutover from token ring to ethernet he stared blankly at me until I understood that he'd never heard of token ring and had absolutely no clue what I was on about.
Another young allegedly degreed minion asked for clarification on how to get various HP company printers or print servers to print a diagnostics page.
These young guys were hard working and good individuals but they didn't know diddly despite their degrees and were eaten up & spat out by the company ASAP.
"Every one that we get can't do basic HTML programming."
Maybe you should rethink your screening methodology since that sounds as flawed as your would-be employees.;)
Slashdot Mirror
Mike Berry - XBBS
Mark & Mike have always been an elusive pair although I have seen and spoke to both of them within the past couple of years. I'm not sure either was aware of, or even remotely interested, in the project, particularly given the lengths that Mike Berry (aka Wayne Michaels) went to in order to obfuscate his identity back when he was still working for an unnamed Big Blue company.
I did come into contact via e-mail with Scott Baker (wrote Land of Devastation door) a few years ago and he was his usual taciturn self. ""
formerly SysGoddess of My Secret Garden RBBS 1:380/5
"Does anyone else remember when Lucas tried to excuse EP1 by saying, "Some people don't understand that I make movies for children"?" " Ever read "Hansel and Gretel"? "Jack and the Beanstalk"? "Harry Potter"?" Or ANY of the other (Harry Potter notwithstanding) original, unsanitized Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales? Little Red Riding Hood, The Tale of the Three Little Pigs or Snow White and the Seven Dwarves if made into movies in their original unsanitized versions would likely earn R ratings and the outcry of most parents.
" Young anakin is actually DARTH VADER!!!" Yeah, but that was only after knocking up former Queen Amidala. So was it bad sex that drove him to the dark side?
Even when companies & websites do openly disclose that they will install spyware (not their choice of wording of course) the average user doesn't read EULAs or privacy statements and probably wouldn't understand or care if they did read it.
Essentially it will/would require users to accept some form of personal responsibility in reading and evaluating such statements and since most of them can't even be convinced to click on Help to help themselves or learn something it's a lost cause.
The proposed $1K fine is a mere drop in the proverbial bucket and is not a sufficient penalty to deter a company from engaging in such practices.
And finally, I don't believe a case of this type could be successfully litigated, particularly since the preservation of evidence would certainly not be the goal of any end user who found themselves infected with such software. This would leave them pretty much without any proof and the entire thing would devolve into an embarassing display of ignorance and hubris.
Elder statesman? He sounds like a poseur or wannabe that might have known someone who might have sortof known of someone else that was a courier for one of the second rate cracker networks who distributed their warez to ftp sites, newsgroups and other BBSs in their network.
It's somehow strangely comforting to know that not much has changed since I ran a dial-up BBS as well as the fact that Wired is still doing retreads of old news.
Apparently you missed the brouhaha made by some of the major news outlets last summer over finding valid credit card numbers by doing a google search. It wasn't so shocking then, nor is it now given the indiscriminate way search engines dredge up their data.
You are a sick and twisted individual. I like that. ];>
The first part of the problem was that they were on AOL in the frst place. It causes a slew of its own annoying popups pimping all of its additional services & partners. And the average AOL user is not exactly technically saavy.
200 data miners is a relatively small load count compared to what I've become accustomed to seeing lately. Most of mine range in the 400-600 range with a couple harbouring over 1,000 distinct pieces of adware, malware or spyware.
How many times have you seen a user simply click away ANY sort of alert or popup that shows up even when it's their firewall or antivirus telling them that there's a problem or that the incredible new POS 1000 spyware they installed for its cute icons is now trying to phone home with their personal information?
Frankly, many of my clients are dumber than rocks when it comes to computers and even years of trying to help them be proactive and educate them has been an utter waste of my time and theirs.
Most just want their computer to work, like their refrigerator. Sure, you're supposed to vaccuum under and behind the refrigerator to prevent build-up of dust mutants and other nasties that will shorten the life of the motor but only rarely do they actually perform any preventative maintenance. Computers are no different to the masses. They simply want them to work without having to know how to actually operate them or perform any preventative maintenance.
Amen. I have clients on whose computers I routinely find as many as 1,000 individual pieces of adware/malware/spyware on multiple appointments. They will install every POS thing they see advertised in a popup or spam but won't install the bloody OS or anti-virus updates if prompted because "we weren't sure if it was legit." Lusers all.
In nature this would be referred to as survival of the fittest and they would be culled from the population. One can only wish.
Try running a deep scan in AdAware instead of the bog simple smart scan.
That should have been your first clue. Rackspace has long been known among anti-spam groups as one of the worst spamhauses there is. Hearing that they host spyware comes as little surprise.
Event Data Recorders have been in vehicles for a number of years and have even been reported on in the mainstream news & popular press. OnStar was/is only a recent manifestation of this technology.
Item number 2 is also a given.
Item number 3 is likewise a given and one I wholeheartedly agree with.
However... have you actually read & taken the time to understand the full text of the policy? I believe that your example may have been considered.
In regards to your opinion, I agree regarding revoking the certification of any registrar who engages in such a practice, as well as requiring notice from the registrant or admin contact. For now, however, the policy is what it is and is an important first step, IMHO.
They need to sack Stacy then and find a trained chimp who would undoubtedly have better comprehension skills.
If you go read the ICANN Policy on Transfer of Registrations between Registrars http://www.icann.org/transfers/policy-12jul04.htm it's quite explicit regarding the circumstances in which a registrar (aka Network Solutions, Dotster, Tucows, GoDaddy, etc - not the Registrant, billing or technical contacts) could deny a move request as well as under what circumstances they could not deny such a request (Nonpayment, No response from the Registered Name Holder or Administrative Contact, etc).
I'm no rocket scientist but the policy clearly intends to prevent Registrars from hijacking the domains of their clients, as some have been wont to do, or simply refusing move requests by passively ignoring said requests.
Here is some of the verbiage of the policy that indicates its clear intention to anyone who is capable of reading above a 5th grade level.
"Registered Name Holders must be able to transfer their domain name registrations between Registrars..."
"The Administrative Contact and the Registered Name Holder, as listed in the Losing Registrar's or applicable Registry's (where available) publicly accessible WHOIS service are the only parties that have the authority to approve or deny a transfer request to the Gaining Registrar."
Failure by the Registrar of Record to respond within five (5) calendar days to a notification from the Registry regarding a transfer request will result in a default "approval" of the transfer.
In the event that a Transfer Contact listed in the Whois has not confirmed their request to transfer with the Registrar of Record and the Registrar of Record has not explicitly denied the transfer request, the default action will be that the Registrar of Record must allow the transfer to proceed.
Wow. I wish I lived in your pretend world. Maybe you should come live in the real one sometime. It doesn't take much in terms of medical bills to mount up to a financially catastrophic event particularly in these times when companies no longer offer health & medical benefits to their employees.
Even with insurance, a hospitalization of any length can quickly drain finances and many hospitals demand payment in full and refuse to allow you to make scheduled payments.
Several years ago, my appendix ruptured, I had emergency surgery and was in the intensive care unit for 3 days and then spent another 10 days in a semi-private room. Even with insurance, my portion of the bill was something like 14K. When I tried to make arrangements to pay monthly the hospital refused and turned me over to the credit bureau.
After several years I'm within a couple of months of finally paying that debt off but in the meantime, that single event nearly wiped me out financially and still has a negative impact on my credit rating despite not missing or being late with a single payment in all this time.
Does this make me irresponsible? Sure, how dare I become ill and then work my ass off for years to pay my debt.
Has this cost me a job? Not that I'm aware of, thankfully, but it is a possibility that I am strongly aware of.
Often I have not found that to be the case and have had to actually explain in very simplistic terms what I do to some bubblehead staffer, office manager or administrative assistant that I had to go through in order to even get to the actual person who screened resumes & conducted interviews.
The reason that the trade rags, marketing departments, mainstream media, etc. can't buy a clue is due to a similar lack of knowledge or desire to pursue same.
Think about it, how often to you see typos, misspellings & poor grammar used in mainstream media and newscrawls - even in hardbound books? I see it quite often, glaring mistakes that would be apparent to a 6th grader. They have spellcheckers and there used to be intelligent living people who proofread & edited things before final printing or release to the public. Apparently proofreaders are in small demand and the imbeciles of the world believe they don't need to use no steenken spell or grammar checker. Besides, they'll draw a paycheck no matter what so why bother?
Pursuit of excellence & pride is at least part of what's missing although in some cases I blame inbreeding.
grammer? eigth?
If you're going to take potshots at someone elses posts on the alleged basis of poor grammar and lack of education then you should at least take the trouble to edit & spellcheck your own post.
Last year, I had to send one of my new minions, allegedly a CS degreed fellow, to do some work on a very old network. When I told him to meet the wiring guy & work with him on the cutover from token ring to ethernet he stared blankly at me until I understood that he'd never heard of token ring and had absolutely no clue what I was on about.
Another young allegedly degreed minion asked for clarification on how to get various HP company printers or print servers to print a diagnostics page.
These young guys were hard working and good individuals but they didn't know diddly despite their degrees and were eaten up & spat out by the company ASAP.
psst. Your naivete is showing.
laden or unladen?
"Every one that we get can't do basic HTML programming." Maybe you should rethink your screening methodology since that sounds as flawed as your would-be employees. ;)