Kids need their own PC if possible, Larson explains, "because kids' software has, like, this uncanny knack for wrecking a PC. They introduce all kinds of weird fonts, and the thing just crashes all the time."
Like, yeah. All those kids installing those nasty, like, fonts are just a pain in the neck, aren't they? Like, yeah, the big purple gorilla thing is cool and the green lizard thing that saves their passwords, but those custom fonts will crash a pee-see for sure.
Post to Google Groups on many well-frequented lists (don't cross-post!) with the address. Sign up for a Slashdot account and write generally informative (+5! +5! +5!) tripe with your real email address tied to it.
You also should've specified the test email in your story submission (i.e. Sean writes:) -- too late for that now, of course. In the slashdot@myname.endjunk.com emails I've provided, I've easily gotten 10+/day within a few hours of first posting. Neat.
Telstar 4 has mutinied and is orchestrating the robot rebellion against humanity. The Loral Global Alliance faction's Loral SKYNET program has gone too far this time.
Looking at Telstar 4's coverage map, it's clear that SKYNET plans to strike first in an east-west corridor bounded by New Mexico and Ohio; the killing robot machines will move outward until they capture most of Canada, half of Mexico, and all of Hawaii.
Having a 1 on the Torino scale is kind of like having a Blue on the Terrorism Threat Scale, or a DEFCON 4 instead of 5. It's kind of cute but it's not very meaningful.
Changing the scale won't change the sensationalist, advertising-powered press at all. They'll continue to report asteroids as "harbinger of the approaching eschaton" whether it's on the Torino or Donuto scale (instead of covering, say, the deleterious effects of gasoline consumption by SUV's on the environment, or the tobacco industry's clever solicitation of candidates for DEATH).
That first one, the HIV->AIDS deniers, is scary in a funny way. I've always figured the best way to get rid of the people who offer awards for "proof" that HIV exists is to offer them $50 to sleep with someone who tests HIV positive.
It would be interesting to concoct a related reward for "proof" that Bigfoot exists; although I'm not so sure about the counter-offer, money for sleeping with a sasquatch.
With this feature, anyone, anywhere in the world can run programs on your machine!
You're kidding, but that's actually pretty close to what they say:
"A security issue has been identified that could allow an attacker to remotely compromise a computer running Microsoft Windows and gain complete control over it."
"A security issue has been identified in Microsoft Windows that could allow an attacker to see information in your computer's memory over a network."
"An identified security issue in Microsoft Data Access Components could allow an attacker to compromise a Microsoft Windows-based system and then take a variety of actions. For example, an attacker could execute code on the system."
This is after about a week of Windows Update not working because at some point it screwed itself-- the "New Windows Update Software required" dialog kept coming up in place of anything useful. (The fix is, among other places, here). Yikes!
It seems like many of the recent vulnerabilities have one common feature--they all use a static port.
The buggy Netgear routers that were DDoS-ing U-Wisconsin all sent the packets from one port, and the temporary solution of blocking that traffic was an easy fix (if not optimal in bandwidth terms). RPC by its very nature also uses a fixed series of ports, and Microsoft's continued ineptitude in properly programming the protocol suggests that it's time to start blocking those ports on Internet-facing computers and (for some universities or corporations where it wouldn't kill important processes) inside the firewall.
Blocking ports is probably even faster than patching thousands of computers (or convincing end users to do it! eek!); there's not much of an excuse remaining for many administrators in this regard.
They have these rights because they donated tons of money to the republican and democratic parties.
Your lack of capitalization makes an excellent point. The American government, it can be strongly argued, is currently neither entirely democratic (everyone's voice heard) nor fully republican (elected officials ensure that everyone's voice is heard). But at the same time, your representatives understand that they don't stand a Democrat's chance in Texas of getting re-elected unless they at least pretend to be open for input; and, surprisingly, quite a few representatives are receptive to your suggestions.
Instead of complaining about how your representatives are hopelessly in lust with special interests, consider writing a letter or making a phone call. If everyone thinks that one voice won't make a difference, no one will speak. And then we'll end up with nonsense like the DMCA and 140-year copyrights.
Under Saddam Hussain, the Iraqi people had food, water, electricity, and so forth. Nevertheless, Saddam was still a ruthless dictator who order the tortures, rapes, and murders of Iraqis. Now, under the RIAA, the artists get an initial compensation for their music, but they are abused and screwed by the RIAA continuously.
Sweet. Let's "liberate" the RIAA - I can see it now:
Reporters: Commander Jerk City, Do you have any more information on the location of Mitch Bainwol?
JC: [dodging the question] We are very close to finding and liberating all the RIAA's artists. And if any of those thugs want to fight back, well, we'll show them a fight. 50 Cent? Bring 'em on!
A religion that has trade secrets is a little frightening. And if you believe even a fraction of what the Xenu people have to tell, it's more of a public service than anything else to expose the nonsense propaganda that this organization spreads.
The story doesn't explain what the bill sets out a 'beacon' to be, but basically the intent is to (within a year of the bill's passage) develop a US standard for a magical 'beacon' one can set on a computer that will prevent people from installing P2P software on it. While it's a great idea IF YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT COMPUTERS (hey, parents can keep kids from using evil Kazaa! and workplaces can prevent employees, too!) it's a stupid act. Stupid act. Anyone who votes for this act should it ever come up in Congress should be publically ridiculed in every venue available.
I see it's time to start the letter-to-Congress process...
There's a whole herd of assen cluttering up my boxen, that's for sure.
On a slightly less topical note, has anyone recently received a spam/troll email en titled "Legal Reminder from the RIAA", claiming to be from "D. Gephardt", and containing information supposedly written to an evil MP3 file sharer? I've seen several copies of this irksome post making the rounds, and can't decide whether it's legitimate RIAA FUD or trollish double-FUD. Mm, fear-uncertainty-doubt.
A forger would have a hard time copying the variations in speed that the actual person uses even if the forger traces the same path or tries to "get good" at the signature.
Yeah, your kid brother would find it difficult to replicate your computer's behavior with another computer.
Paul Hatch, a SCO spokesman, wrote in a statement to The Tech, "To clarify, the individuals reviewing the code had been involved with MIT labs in the past, but are not currently at MIT. Unfortunately, due to contractual obligations, we cannot specifically name the individuals."
I get the sudden impression of a trio who tried out for the role of the Lone Gunmen on the X-Files and failed miserably, crawling through MIT's underground tunnels.
"Quick, it's the campus cops! Run!"
"But we haven't finished copying UNIX code into/src/kernel!"
"That's okay, we'll just grep some BSD code and put it in Symbol font. They'll never know the difference!"
I am applying to college this fall, looking for a degree in computer engineering (or software, maybe. heh) so I can go join the rest of the madding crowd in the unemployment lines.
The portions of this report available free didn't really surprise me -- MIT and Berkeley were already on my "apply here!" list, and maybe Stanford just for fun. But I have a bunch of others in mind -- Carnegie-Mellon, Harvard, CWRU, maybe Ohio State (tuition would be cheap or free as I live in state).
This story should generate some more interesting suggestions as to what I should look into--particuarly because we have to pay money to see more than the top 3--and I'm very interested in input from the techie crowd, particularly those who have already gone through the college circus.
Well, yeah, with Dreamcast games like Alien Front Online, or with more or less any game since the birth of the console, the read-only nature of the media is a problem. It's hard to issue a patch for a game cartridge or CD, and recalls would be expensive.
The idea a multiplayer game that only has one server to connect to should stir strong feelings of hatred and scorn in any sensible geek. The sheer idiocy of coding in an IP instead of a domain name should be obvious.
The RPC vulnerability this worm exploits was patched at least three weeks ago. Maybe if people would get it through their skulls that Windows ships with a BIG WINDOWS UPDATE LINK in the Start Menu for a REASON, and maybe if people would at least check for new, fun things weekly, these viruses wouldn't spread quite so far. The news outlets that focus on the "horrific" damage instead of the easy fix are doing their subscribers a disservice.
Besides, even if you don't care about security, you must at least admit it's fun to see a new "This vulnerability could allow an attacker to execute malicious code"-patch every week. I wonder what'll happen when Microsoft's numbering system overflows...
Better have a high-quality surge suppressor...
on
Aquarium Modcase
·
· Score: 5, Funny
First off, it seems somehow a bad idea to use a number which lots of other people know about when your SSN might be used as a unique identifier. (It isn't and shouldn't be, but organizations do it anyway). "Sorry, it looks like you've already registered for classes!"
Besides that, I can't imagine that you'll get much in the way of credit if most of your transactions are conducted under a fake SSN. Goodbye house, goodbye car.
The alternative -- and a much better solution, imo -- is simply to tell the nice representative that you don't want to disclose your SSN because you've had trouble with identity theft in the past, and you'd rather they use another unique identifier. If they refuse, bollocks to their business anyway. Most colleges and large organizations that ask about SSNs are more than willing to provide you with another UIN; ask first, then use Richard Nixon's Social Security number.
Slashdot Mirror
Kids need their own PC if possible, Larson explains, "because kids' software has, like, this uncanny knack for wrecking a PC. They introduce all kinds of weird fonts, and the thing just crashes all the time."
Like, yeah. All those kids installing those nasty, like, fonts are just a pain in the neck, aren't they? Like, yeah, the big purple gorilla thing is cool and the green lizard thing that saves their passwords, but those custom fonts will crash a pee-see for sure.
sigh
Post to Google Groups on many well-frequented lists (don't cross-post!) with the address. Sign up for a Slashdot account and write generally informative (+5! +5! +5!) tripe with your real email address tied to it.
You also should've specified the test email in your story submission (i.e. Sean writes:) -- too late for that now, of course. In the slashdot@myname.endjunk.com emails I've provided, I've easily gotten 10+/day within a few hours of first posting. Neat.
Telstar 4 has mutinied and is orchestrating the robot rebellion against humanity. The Loral Global Alliance faction's Loral SKYNET program has gone too far this time.
Looking at Telstar 4's coverage map, it's clear that SKYNET plans to strike first in an east-west corridor bounded by New Mexico and Ohio; the killing robot machines will move outward until they capture most of Canada, half of Mexico, and all of Hawaii.
Save us, Terminate SKYNET!
Having a 1 on the Torino scale is kind of like having a Blue on the Terrorism Threat Scale, or a DEFCON 4 instead of 5. It's kind of cute but it's not very meaningful.
Changing the scale won't change the sensationalist, advertising-powered press at all. They'll continue to report asteroids as "harbinger of the approaching eschaton" whether it's on the Torino or Donuto scale (instead of covering, say, the deleterious effects of gasoline consumption by SUV's on the environment, or the tobacco industry's clever solicitation of candidates for DEATH).
Here's the printable page.
Hee hee, barnyard masturbator...
I welcome C# and it's buddies to the OpenSource world.
looked suspiciously like "I for one welcome our new C# overlords." the first and second times I read it.
That first one, the HIV->AIDS deniers, is scary in a funny way. I've always figured the best way to get rid of the people who offer awards for "proof" that HIV exists is to offer them $50 to sleep with someone who tests HIV positive.
It would be interesting to concoct a related reward for "proof" that Bigfoot exists; although I'm not so sure about the counter-offer, money for sleeping with a sasquatch.
Does a borate ion normally take the shape of a swastika???
Yes.
With this feature, anyone, anywhere in the world can run programs on your machine!
You're kidding, but that's actually pretty close to what they say:
"A security issue has been identified that could allow an attacker to remotely compromise a computer running Microsoft Windows and gain complete control over it."
"A security issue has been identified in Microsoft Windows that could allow an attacker to see information in your computer's memory over a network."
"An identified security issue in Microsoft Data Access Components could allow an attacker to compromise a Microsoft Windows-based system and then take a variety of actions. For example, an attacker could execute code on the system."
This is after about a week of Windows Update not working because at some point it screwed itself-- the "New Windows Update Software required" dialog kept coming up in place of anything useful. (The fix is, among other places, here). Yikes!
It seems like many of the recent vulnerabilities have one common feature--they all use a static port.
The buggy Netgear routers that were DDoS-ing U-Wisconsin all sent the packets from one port, and the temporary solution of blocking that traffic was an easy fix (if not optimal in bandwidth terms). RPC by its very nature also uses a fixed series of ports, and Microsoft's continued ineptitude in properly programming the protocol suggests that it's time to start blocking those ports on Internet-facing computers and (for some universities or corporations where it wouldn't kill important processes) inside the firewall.
Blocking ports is probably even faster than patching thousands of computers (or convincing end users to do it! eek!); there's not much of an excuse remaining for many administrators in this regard.
They have these rights because they donated tons of money to the republican and democratic parties.
Your lack of capitalization makes an excellent point. The American government, it can be strongly argued, is currently neither entirely democratic (everyone's voice heard) nor fully republican (elected officials ensure that everyone's voice is heard). But at the same time, your representatives understand that they don't stand a Democrat's chance in Texas of getting re-elected unless they at least pretend to be open for input; and, surprisingly, quite a few representatives are receptive to your suggestions.
Instead of complaining about how your representatives are hopelessly in lust with special interests, consider writing a letter or making a phone call. If everyone thinks that one voice won't make a difference, no one will speak. And then we'll end up with nonsense like the DMCA and 140-year copyrights.
Under Saddam Hussain, the Iraqi people had food, water, electricity, and so forth. Nevertheless, Saddam was still a ruthless dictator who order the tortures, rapes, and murders of Iraqis. Now, under the RIAA, the artists get an initial compensation for their music, but they are abused and screwed by the RIAA continuously.
Sweet. Let's "liberate" the RIAA - I can see it now:
Reporters: Commander Jerk City, Do you have any more information on the location of Mitch Bainwol?
JC: [dodging the question] We are very close to finding and liberating all the RIAA's artists. And if any of those thugs want to fight back, well, we'll show them a fight. 50 Cent? Bring 'em on!
YHBT. YHL. HAND.
A religion that has trade secrets is a little frightening. And if you believe even a fraction of what the Xenu people have to tell, it's more of a public service than anything else to expose the nonsense propaganda that this organization spreads.
The story doesn't explain what the bill sets out a 'beacon' to be, but basically the intent is to (within a year of the bill's passage) develop a US standard for a magical 'beacon' one can set on a computer that will prevent people from installing P2P software on it. While it's a great idea IF YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT COMPUTERS (hey, parents can keep kids from using evil Kazaa! and workplaces can prevent employees, too!) it's a stupid act. Stupid act. Anyone who votes for this act should it ever come up in Congress should be publically ridiculed in every venue available.
I see it's time to start the letter-to-Congress process...
The Recording Industry Assn. of America
There's a whole herd of assen cluttering up my boxen, that's for sure.
On a slightly less topical note, has anyone recently received a spam/troll email en titled "Legal Reminder from the RIAA", claiming to be from "D. Gephardt", and containing information supposedly written to an evil MP3 file sharer? I've seen several copies of this irksome post making the rounds, and can't decide whether it's legitimate RIAA FUD or trollish double-FUD. Mm, fear-uncertainty-doubt.
$10,800 USD seems a bit low
On the contrary! That's 15.45 Linux desktop licenses. Hey, imagine a Beowulf cl--just kidding.
A forger would have a hard time copying the variations in speed that the actual person uses even if the forger traces the same path or tries to "get good" at the signature.
Yeah, your kid brother would find it difficult to replicate your computer's behavior with another computer.
Your neighbor hacker would find it a challenge.
(and probably not a particularly hard one)
Paul Hatch, a SCO spokesman, wrote in a statement to The Tech, "To clarify, the individuals reviewing the code had been involved with MIT labs in the past, but are not currently at MIT. Unfortunately, due to contractual obligations, we cannot specifically name the individuals."
I get the sudden impression of a trio who tried out for the role of the Lone Gunmen on the X-Files and failed miserably, crawling through MIT's underground tunnels.
"Quick, it's the campus cops! Run!"
"But we haven't finished copying UNIX code into /src/kernel!"
"That's okay, we'll just grep some BSD code and put it in Symbol font. They'll never know the difference!"
My girlfriend's Sims get more action than we do.
AND they own all this cool stuff in their house.
On the bright side, those bastards can't own cars, so I guess it evens out. Plus, my girlfriend can't turn off my Free Will. (usually)
I am applying to college this fall, looking for a degree in computer engineering (or software, maybe. heh) so I can go join the rest of the madding crowd in the unemployment lines.
The portions of this report available free didn't really surprise me -- MIT and Berkeley were already on my "apply here!" list, and maybe Stanford just for fun. But I have a bunch of others in mind -- Carnegie-Mellon, Harvard, CWRU, maybe Ohio State (tuition would be cheap or free as I live in state).
This story should generate some more interesting suggestions as to what I should look into--particuarly because we have to pay money to see more than the top 3--and I'm very interested in input from the techie crowd, particularly those who have already gone through the college circus.
Well, yeah, with Dreamcast games like Alien Front Online, or with more or less any game since the birth of the console, the read-only nature of the media is a problem. It's hard to issue a patch for a game cartridge or CD, and recalls would be expensive.
The idea a multiplayer game that only has one server to connect to should stir strong feelings of hatred and scorn in any sensible geek. The sheer idiocy of coding in an IP instead of a domain name should be obvious.
The RPC vulnerability this worm exploits was patched at least three weeks ago. Maybe if people would get it through their skulls that Windows ships with a BIG WINDOWS UPDATE LINK in the Start Menu for a REASON, and maybe if people would at least check for new, fun things weekly, these viruses wouldn't spread quite so far. The news outlets that focus on the "horrific" damage instead of the easy fix are doing their subscribers a disservice.
Besides, even if you don't care about security, you must at least admit it's fun to see a new "This vulnerability could allow an attacker to execute malicious code"-patch every week. I wonder what'll happen when Microsoft's numbering system overflows...
Fishy go BZZZT!
First off, it seems somehow a bad idea to use a number which lots of other people know about when your SSN might be used as a unique identifier. (It isn't and shouldn't be, but organizations do it anyway). "Sorry, it looks like you've already registered for classes!"
Besides that, I can't imagine that you'll get much in the way of credit if most of your transactions are conducted under a fake SSN. Goodbye house, goodbye car.
The alternative -- and a much better solution, imo -- is simply to tell the nice representative that you don't want to disclose your SSN because you've had trouble with identity theft in the past, and you'd rather they use another unique identifier. If they refuse, bollocks to their business anyway. Most colleges and large organizations that ask about SSNs are more than willing to provide you with another UIN; ask first, then use Richard Nixon's Social Security number.