August 25, 2004
Dozens Charged in Crackdown on Spam and Scams
By SAUL HANSELL
ederal and state law enforcement agencies have quietly arrested or charged dozens of people with crimes related to junk e-mail, identity theft and other online scams in recent weeks, according to several people involved in the actions.
The cases, which have been brought by law enforcement offices around the country, are expected to be announced by Attorney General John Ashcroft in a news conference in Washington on Thursday.
Federal authorities have stepped up their efforts to crack down on junk e-mail messages, or spam, since Congress passed a law last December criminalizing fraudulent and deceptive e-mail practices. The law subjects spammers to fines and jail terms of up to five years.
So far, the law has had little noticeable effect. Spam represents 65 percent of all e-mail, up from 58 percent when the law was passed, according to Symantec, a company that makes a widely used spam filter.
The new cases are also expected to involve charges of credit card fraud, computer crime and other offenses that carry significant penalties. Many of the cases were developed by an unusual investigative team that combined federal law enforcement officials and executives from industries that do business through the Internet. Nearly two dozen investigators work in an office in Pittsburgh operated by the National Cyber-Forensics and Training Alliance, a nonprofit organization with close ties to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Much of the financing for the efforts, known as Operation Slam Spam, comes from the Direct Marketing Association, a trade group that wants to promote what it sees as the legitimate use of e-mail marketing.
"We felt that the key to the new law was enforcement," said H. Robert Wientzen, who recently stepped down as the president of the marketing association and is still involved in the antispam campaign. "We want spammers to realize that spam is not a free game for them and that they face real penalties if they continue."
The operation has built a database of known spammers, drawing from law enforcement agencies and from private companies that are investigating and bringing civil suits against some of the biggest users of junk e-mail messages. It has also deployed online decoys to catch spammers and has purchased products advertised in spam messages so that the financial records can be traced to the ultimate source of the message.
As the cases have been developed, the Pittsburgh group has used its information to persuade prosecutors to devote some resources to bringing cases against junk e-mail companies and other abusers of the Internet.
Law enforcement agencies have only recently taken an interest in fighting the spam problem. It is a series of small crimes, often without clear victims, that is hard to investigate.
But prosecutors and investigators are starting to become more aggressive as the volume of spam continues to increase and as the messages that spammers send are being used more often to perpetrate other crimes, including identity theft and credit card fraud.
And the authorities have become increasingly concerned about the spammers' use of computer viruses to hijack millions of desktop computers, using them to relay their messages and hide their true identities.
The Justice Department announcement expected on Thursday is meant to highlight several different government actions related to computer crime. The department has conducted a handful of similar operations in the past, calling them cyber sweeps, but the crackdown to be disclosed this week is thought to be the biggest by far.
Microsoft slammed over misleading Windows Linux claims
Compared a mainframe to a dual 900MHz Xeon kit
By INQUIRER staff: Wednesday 25 August 2004, 08:24 THE UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has upheld a series of public complaints over an advert in a magazine comparing the cost of Linux versus Microsoft Windows.
An advert it ran compared the two operating systems to each other, but Windows was running on a measly dual 900MHz Xeon configuration, while Linux was running on a z900 IBM mainframe.
The advert appeared in an IT magazine and was headed: "Weighing the cost of Linux vs Windows? Let's review the facts".
The ad contained a graph comparing the cost in US dollars between a Linux images running on two z900 mainframe CPUs and a Windows Server 2003 image running two 900MHz Intel Xeons chips.
The ad claimed: "Linux was found to be over 10 times more expensive than Windows? Servers". It said that "in a recent study audited by leading independent research analyst Meta Group, measured costs of Linux running on IBM's z900 mainframe for Windows-comparable functions of file serving and Web serving. The results showed that IBM z900 mainframe running Linux is much less capable and vastly more expensive than Windows Server 2003 as a platform for server consolidation.*"
The ASA said the asterisk linked to a footnote that said: "Results may vary outside the United States". The people who complained challenged whether such a comparison was misleading, because the operating systems were run on different hardware.
In its adjudication, the ASA upheld the complaints. While the ASA said the advertisers wanted to compare how competing file set ups were audited by Meta, it took expert advice. The IBM z900 running Linux was 10 times more expensive than running the Windows OS. It would have been possible to compare the two OSes on similar hardware.
And the ASA ruled readers would infer the ad compared Linux and Windows OSes only.
The ASA said: "Because the comparison included the hardware, as well as the operating system and therefore did not show that running a Linux operating system was ten times more expensive than running a Windows operating system, the Authority concluded that the advertisement was misleading." µ
Kill Microsoft Word Why the Popular Word Processing Program Should Be Scrapped
Commentary By John C. Dvorak PC Magazine
Aug. 24, 2004
-- When is the last time anyone talked about Microsoft Word? Here's a program on its last legs that should probably be discarded and rethought completely. It has become a kludge. This is apparent with the latest version in Office 2003.
Let me start out with a couple of my current complaints. My biggest annoyance with the current version is that it keeps reinstalling features, which requires me to reinsert the master disc over and over. I'm not sure if this is a trick to check with Microsoft's database to make sure I'm a registered user or if the program is just stupid.
Here's the scenario. I get a.doc file as an e-mail attachment. I click on it and Word boots. Then I'm told I need to add a feature to read the file. It's always the same feature, apparently. I say Yes to adding the feature. It installs it, then loads the file from the e-mail. The next time I click on the e-mail, the same thing happens, and so on. Obviously the feature is never actually added.
While that was an eye-roller, within six months a more ominous error cropped up. Now when I start Word I get a message saying, "An error occurred and this feature is no longer functioning properly. Would you like to repair this feature now?" It never says what feature it wants to repair. I click Yes and it asks for the disc, and then it repairs the feature -- at least until the next time I start Word, when I get the same message.
If I stop repairing, I get another dialog that says, "The document contains macros. Macro language support for this application is disabled. Features requiring VBA are not available. Would you like to open this document read-only?" Whether I click Yes or Cancel makes absolutely no difference, as there is no document involved! I merely started the program. After bypassing these roadblocks, the program runs fine.
I suppose I should reinstall Word, but other people have told me they have the same problems. So why bother?
Messy Markups
My irritation with Word began last year when we were finishing Online! The Book for Prentice-Hall. The editing required a lot of markups using Word, since the publisher seemed enamored with Word's markup capability, whereby you can track changes. This was great, except that between the various versions of Windows (Word 97, Word 2000, Word XP, Word 2003, and a couple of Mac versions) used by the authors and editors, we had a huge mess.
This was laughable -- actually, a nightmare. I concluded that the program is out of control and needs to be scrapped. Users should all be given some new program for an upgrade charge of $10 -- just to get everyone on the same page.
Meanwhile, let's not forget the historical issues with Word. Let's list a few.
Previous Problems
The ever-changing.doc format. Even saving to older.doc formats or.rtf seldom gets perfect results. I'm always amused by the warning that things will change if I save in some format or other, yet after the save absolutely nothing has changed.
Dubious HTML creation. How hard is it for Word to create a simple brain-dead HTML file without embedding a ton of junk? It can't seem to handle any moderate formatting either. The newest version can create some sort of XML file too, but for what purpose I have no idea. Because its HTML creation is so poor, though, why would I trust it to do anything fancier?
Plain-text conundrum. Users of plain-text editors know that Microsoft has never been able to get Word to generate a simple ASCII file without issues. First, there is no option to create a plain ASCII file. Instead, we can create a variety of so-called "plain text" files, none of which seem to be plain text.
End of the Line?
With the newest version of Word, when you want to save plain text you get a d
Lockout: The Self-imposed, Computer-aided Work Enforcer Software for Slackers: The 1-Step Self-Help Program to Increase your Discipline & ProductivityTM Introduction
Are you a slacker? So am I. Do you browse the Web, read the news, and write email all day in stead of working? So do I. Does it make you feel miserable and apathetic? Do you tell yourself to stop browsing the fucking Web and get some bloody work done? Do you have absolutely no discipline? I know your pain.
But recent technological advancements have made it possible... There is a cure for your disease!
Years of slacking at the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology have resulted in a brilliant 461-line Perl script (which includes 130 lines of comments for free!) that makes it all possible! Your productivity will dramatically increase!
Today, I present Lockout: The Self-imposed, Computer-aided Work Enforcer. This program will help you get some work done by not allowing you to browse the Web. It won't allow you to do anything but work. It's a miracle! Your colleagues will respect you, your Ph.D. adviser will compliment you, and your boss, if you have one, will probably not notice the difference! It's amazing! Scroll down! Read more! What do I need?
Linux, of course, you dumbass dipshit. This sounds too good to be true!
It is, you fool! If you do this wrong, or if Lockout fucks up, you're screwed: you'll end up not knowing your own root password. In that case, only God, single-user mode, Knoppix, or tomsrtbt can bring salvation. (The good news is that nothing bad ever happened to me as a result of Lockout.) Give it to me! Give it to me! I want to download it!
I knew it! You can download it for free and read the instructions in the file itself.
Updates: - 08/22/2004: Version 0.2 released. Many more ways to specify time. New "lockout status" command. See help. - 08/10/2004: Permission of file that contains copy of root's crypted password depended on root's umask. This security risk was fixed by explicitly setting mode to 0600 in sysopen(). - 08/09/2004: Fixed non-lethal bugs: less anal crontab check and fixed broken time parameter check. How does it work?
Well, we can't really tell you, but, basically, it does anything you want! For example, it can change your firewall to disallow outgoing connections to port 80. Or it can disable incoming email. And you'll get an outgoing email blocker for free if you download now! How does it really work?
The real secret is that Lockout will first run a script that you write (to put up a different firewall configuration, to remove yourself from/etc/sudoers, or anything else that you believe will impose labor on yourself). After that, Lockout will change your root password (for a specified amount of time) to something random so that you can't secretly undo all those productive settings and be a lazy slacker again. When time is up, Lockout changes the root password back to its original and runs a script that undoes the other settings (firewall,/etc/sudoers, etc.) so that you can finally continue your peaceful slacking. What if the machines crashes?
Lockout copies the crypted root password (obtained using getpwent()) to a magic file before changing the root password to something random. A cron job runs every minute to see if time's up and, if so, puts the original crypted password back (using usermod -p). So no essential data is lost across crashes and reboots. What if I suddenly really need to become root?
A @reboot entry in root's crontab file ensures that rebooting your machine will put the original root password back in place. Worst case scenario is that you have to reboot your computer. Well, that's not really true: worst case scenario is that things fail badly and you end up not knowing your root password. Who are you?
I am Thomer M. Gil. When I'm locked out of my web connection and still trying to slack, I hack on Thomer's Music Vault,
DVD Industry Insider Report - August 20, 2004 Posted Friday, August 20 2004, by clint
DVD Industry Insider Report - August 20, 2004 The Scoop on Emerging DVD-R9 / DVD+R9 Hardware, Technologies and Standards
Recently we were asked why we didn't get more excited about the hardware that will deliver 8.5GB single-side writing capabilities to DVD.
Maybe we were a little negligent because the engineers at Philips, Pioneer and Matsushita have done a great job of proving the technology. But only a few firms (such as NEC, Toshiba and Matsushita) produce the laser diodes which are bought by the true burner manufacturers that are then bought by the PC manufacturers and branded product producers. After they are all done, you can buy the new burner, produce your great DVDs and send copies to friends & family...
[DiscLayers]Compared to the present DVD+/-R media you use (see image at right) the new dual-layer discs are a beautiful work of art and technology.
The media chemists and scientists deserve a tremendous amount of credit for developing the two dye layers and special UV adhesive that bond the two breath-thin resin layers. Moving those specifications onto the high-speed media production line demands a lot of quality production attention. During the early stages only the name brand media manufacturers will have the equipment and talent necessary so you don't produce more coasters.
Dual Standards, Dual-Layer
Because neither side has yet to blink, there will still be two different versions of DVD-R9 media (+/-). By the time you read this the DVD+R9 media spec will be a matter of record. The DVD-R9 specs will still be making their way through committee and DVD Forum approval.
One format won't be better than the other (unless you ask someone deeply committed to one camp or the other). However, it is a lot easier for two companies to work on a common goal and have six others agree than have multiple camps reach agreement and then get the coliseum of interested parties to agree.
All Philips and MKM (Mitsubishi Kagaku Media)/Verbatim had to do is develop the hardware/media technologies, make certain it could be inexpensively and reliably produced and the +RW Alliance was off to the races. Most of the rest of the members don't care which way the wind blows...as long as it blows.
On the other hand, Pioneer, Toshiba and Matsushita/Panasonic (two of the three don't play well together) had to hammer out their differences, go through a series of different working group studies and get the 200+ members of the DVD Forum to agree.
Dictatorships just seem to reach consensus faster than democracies!
Despite the fact that there are differences (incompatibilities) between the two approaches there are some similarities.
Both have two thin substrates joined by specially designed UV bonding materials. When the laser is through writing to the first layer, it increases power slightly and begins writing to the second layer. When you are playing the dual-layer DVDR9 disc (+ or -) you'll have to look hard to notice the switch over from one layer to the other.
The result is a full 8.5GB or 4 hours of DVD-quality (16 hours of VHS -quality) video. Some manufacturers may refer to the capacity of 4 hours of SP and 16 hours of EP so make certain you understand the playback quality you want before you begin writing your write-once discs.
The other big similarity is that the DVD specification requires that players and drives read dual-layer discs. If you encounter one that will read "standard" +/- discs but won't read DVD+/-R9 media it means the manufacturer had a design flaw which they should correct at no charge.
DVD+R9
Cross-section of a dual-layer DVD+R disc
The big hurdle was to keep the new write-once discs compatible with existing player standards.
MKM was able to deliver compatibility by designing media that uses a thin layer silver-alloy as a reflector in the upper layer. This has produced reflec
DR16.7.1 has been released!. This is the biggest release since DR16 first debuted! In this release dependencies have changed from Imlib/FreeType to Imlib2/FreeType2. The old default themes (which made the distribution almost 18M in size!) have been replaced with "Winter" by rephorm. The distribution has been split into 3 diffrent packages: programs (source), docs (Edox), and themes. A long long list of bugs have been fixed (including some very old nagging ones that weren't easy for kwo to squash). And probly of most interest to the end user: "Theme Transparency". Get the files source and RPMs in the usual place.
If your wondering what happened to DR16.7.0, it was halted last minute by several bugs that were only reproducable by a small number of us but were major bugs none the less. You can see the changes since the initial release here.
Ports for Solaris are avalible now and the DarwinPorts port is ready. Gentoo Portage will be updated shortly.
Bryan Ajuluchukwu, a freshman economics major, is one of more than 170 students living on the third floor of Grant Towers who is testing a new downloading service. The service, called Ruckus Network, allows for those students to download music and movies.
Ajuluchukwu, who heard about Ruckus from his roommate, said he would definitely recommend the program to other students.
It was better than other programs because its legal, Ajuluchukwu said. This is a good idea for the university to do for the students so we have some entertainment.
Ruckus is a digital entertainment and downloading service that will provide music, movies, TV shows, local content and community features to students free of charge, said Joseph Marone, Ruckus account representative for NIU. NIU pays $5 per student per month and is allowed unlimited access to the media for the testers.
On Thursday, Ruckus will be available for testing to residents in the third through sixth floors of all Grant Towers, said Keith Kruchten, president of the Residence Hall Association.
Marone said NIU is very important to Ruckus development.
This is the first time weve opened this program up to a school. We want to make sure students enjoy it.
Still in the pilot testing process, the program is not only tested by students, but also developed and designed by graduate students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Marone said.
From Aug. 12 to Aug. 19, more than 20 NIU community advisers and Grant Towers staff tested Ruckus, and on Aug. 19, 170 students were added to the testing. By Aug. 26, a total of 700 NIU students will be linked to Ruckus.
On Sept. 1, about 2,500 students in all Grant Towers will have limited access to the network. The full model of Ruckus will be open to all Grant students in October, Kruchten said.
The network is located at www.betaruckus.net.
Ruckus is tethered so students can still download music and movies without officially owning, buying or burning downloads, said Marone.
He said students can share playlists and compare theirs with other students likes and dislikes.
Kruchten also said even though the program is limited, students have been very impressed with what has been available thus far.
* Reiser4 is the fastest filesystem, and here are the benchmarks.
* Reiser4 is an atomic filesystem, which means that your filesystem operations either entirely occur, or they entirely don't, and they don't corrupt due to half occuring. We do this without significant performance losses, because we invented algorithms to do it without copying the data twice.
* Reiser4 uses dancing trees, which obsolete the balanced tree algorithms used in databases (see farther down). This makes Reiser4 more space efficient than other filesystems because we squish small files together rather than wasting space due to block alignment like they do. It also means that Reiser4 scales better than any other filesystem. Do you want a million files in a directory, and want to create them fast? No problem.
* Reiser4 is based on plugins, which means that it will attract many outside contributors, and you'll be able to upgrade to their innovations without reformatting your disk. If you like to code, you'll really like plugins....
* Reiser4 is architected for military grade security. You'll find it is easy to audit the code, and that assertions guard the entrance to every function.
V3 of reiserfs is used as the default filesystem for SuSE, Lindows, FTOSX and Gentoo. We don't touch the V3 code except to fix a bug, and as a result we don't get bug reports for the current mainstream kernel version. It shipped before the other journaling filesystems for Linux, and is the most stable of them as a result of having been out the longest. We must caution that just as Linux 2.6 is not yet as stable as Linux 2.4, it will also be some substantial time before V4 is as stable as V3.
NEW DELHI: Just when the antitrust
case went in sleeping mode, Microsoft managed to get into yet another fiasco.
This time the software giant is hit by information misrepresentation or shall we
say goof up.
The lack of multicultural savvy attitude cost the
software giant millions of dollars.
Microsoft products have been
banned in some of the biggest markets, including India because of eight wrongly
colored pixels, a bad choice of music and a bad English-to-Spanish dictionary.
Tom Edwards, head of Microsoft's geopolitical strategy team told a
conference in Glasgow, how one of the biggest companies in the world managed to
offend one of the biggest countries in the world with a software slip-up, CNet
Asia reported.
When coloring in 800,000 pixels on a map of India,
Microsoft colored eight of them a different shade of green to represent the
disputed Kashmiri territory. The difference in greens meant Kashmir was shown as
non-Indian, and the product was promptly banned in India. Microsoft was left to
recall all 200,000 copies of the offending Windows 95 operating system software
to try and heal the diplomatic wounds. "It cost millions," Edwards said.
If this was not
enough, Microsoft used chanting of the Koran used as a soundtrack for a computer
game, which led to great offence to the Saudi Arabia government. The company
later issued a new version of the game without the chanting, while keeping the
previous editions in circulation because US staff thought the slip wouldn't be
spotted, but the Saudi government banned the game and demanded an apology. The
game was then withdrawn.
The software giant managed to further
offend the Saudis by creating another game in which Muslim warriors turned
churches into mosques. That game was also withdrawn.
Microsoft has
also managed to upset women and entire countries. A Spanish-language version of
Windows XP, destined for Latin American markets, asked users to select their
gender between "not specified," "male" or "bitch," because of an unfortunate
error in translation.
Microsoft has also seen its unfortunate style
of diplomacy have an effect in Korea, Kurdistan, Uruguay and to China--where a
cartographical dispute saw Chinese employees hauled in front of the government.
Edwards said that staff members are now sent on geography courses to
try to avoid such mishaps. "Some of our employees, however bright they may be,
have only a hazy idea about the rest of the world," he said.
See what people are saying about Internet Explorer, in the wake of its most recent security issues: New York Times, In Search of a Browser That Banishes Clutter: [nytimes.com]
Ms. Sandlin is so devoted to [Firefox] that she has taped a note to her monitor warning guests not to click on the desktop shortcut to Internet Explorer. "Do not touch the blue E!" the note says.
USA Today, Security risks swell for Microsofts Explorer: [usatoday.com]
Using Microsofts Internet Explorer Web browser to surf the Internet has become a marked risk even with the latest security patches installed.
The Inquirer, US Government warns against Internet Explorer: [theinquirer.net]
The US Government has sent out a warning out to internet users through its Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), pleading users to stop using Microsofts Internet Explorer.
Slate, Are the Browser Wars Back?: [msn.com]
[A]ll-conquering Internet Explorer has been stuck in the mud for the past year, as Microsoft stopped delivering new versions. The company now rolls out only an occasional fix as part of its Windows updates. Gates and company won the browser war, so why keep fighting it?
Neal Stephenson grew up in Iowa and graduated from Boston University in 1981 majoring in geography with a minor in physics. His first published novel The Big U, a college thriller with SF elements, appeared in 1984, followed by Zodiac: The Eco-Thriller (1988). Snow Crash (1992), a cyberpunk classic, made him a star in the SF field. He wrote two thrillers in collaboration with his uncle, George Jewsbury, under the name "Stephen Bury": Interface (1994) and Cobweb (1996), and published solo novel The Diamond Age, winner of the Hugo and Locus Awards, in 1995. Cryptonomicon followed in 1999; also a Locus Award winner, this massive, Pynchonesque novel of history and cryptography proved tremendously popular with SF fans. Later that year he
Photo by Charles N. Brown
www.nealstephenson.com
published In the Beginning...Was the Command Line, a non-fiction commentary on computers and culture. The past seven years were spent on the vast three-volume "Baroque Cycle", beginning with Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning Quicksilver (2003) and followed by The Confusion (2004) and The System of the World (2004). These books, set in the 17th century and featuring historical characters like Leibniz and Newton along with the ancestors of characters from Cryptonomicon, are Stephenson's latest attempt to push the boundaries of SF.
Stephenson lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife (married 1985) and their two children.
Excerpts from the interview:
"One of the defining characteristics of SF is that it's about worlds. You create a world first, and then you tell one or more stories in that world. That's why so frequently in SF, people will go back again and again to the same world and tell additional tales. That's kind of what's going on here. The world of the 'Baroque Cycle' happens to be 99% factual history, or as close as I can come to it, but what readers of this kind of fiction are looking for is the ability to become immersed in a different world. That's why there is a big crossover between historical fiction and SF. For me, the world-building process is part and parcel of writing. It's the only way I really know how to play this game. I guess that's why I feel so firmly that I'm in the SF camp, no matter where my work is set.
"I had been working on a future storyline connected to Cryptonomicon, but in attempting to write it I realized I needed to go back instead. So I did that, and it ended up taking seven years! The 'Baroque Cycle' project was never envisioned to be as big and long as it turned out to be. There's a line from Tolkien where he says, 'This tale grew in the telling.' I'm reluctant to quote that directly because it sounds like I'm copping an attitude, but that's what happened with this: it started out smaller and got bigger. I never slogged. I enjoyed every minute of writing it. Of course, I badly wanted to get to the end, but when I did, I was sad it was over. At various points along the line, I tried various superstitious tactics; at one point I said, 'I'm not gonna cut my hair until this thing is done.' I finally wound up on Christmas Eve 2003. A couple of weeks later I felt this overpowering need to have short hair again, so I just kept whacking until there was nothing left. And I plan to keep it that way."
*
"People keep asking me why I think of the 'Cycle' as science fiction. When I was a kid I used to read these huge anthologies of science fiction stories, and there would always be some oddball stories that were set during the Crusades, or with cave men, or what have you. They weren't overtly science fiction, but there didn't seem to be any doubt in anyone's mind that they belonged. I ma
Though slashdotted, if you actually get through you'd see
Linux has many distributions and sometimes the programs or tools used to perform a certain function can vary from distribution to distribution. This guide tries to be as generic as possible in the description of the features and functionalities. However, in some cases, especially some of the GUI desktop configuration tools, there is no really independent generic tool that can be used and each distribution has its own tool. In such cases, we have tried to illustrate their usage using Fedora Linux
This guide was written on a Fedora Linux system and as such many of the screen shots reflect this. However, this should not be construed as an endorsement of this distribution of Linux over the others on the part of the authors.
Fedora's desktop is used for screenshots and examples, but it isn't a guide to Fedora.
Slashdot Mirror
August 25, 2004 Dozens Charged in Crackdown on Spam and Scams By SAUL HANSELL
ederal and state law enforcement agencies have quietly arrested or charged dozens of people with crimes related to junk e-mail, identity theft and other online scams in recent weeks, according to several people involved in the actions.
The cases, which have been brought by law enforcement offices around the country, are expected to be announced by Attorney General John Ashcroft in a news conference in Washington on Thursday.
Federal authorities have stepped up their efforts to crack down on junk e-mail messages, or spam, since Congress passed a law last December criminalizing fraudulent and deceptive e-mail practices. The law subjects spammers to fines and jail terms of up to five years.
So far, the law has had little noticeable effect. Spam represents 65 percent of all e-mail, up from 58 percent when the law was passed, according to Symantec, a company that makes a widely used spam filter.
The new cases are also expected to involve charges of credit card fraud, computer crime and other offenses that carry significant penalties. Many of the cases were developed by an unusual investigative team that combined federal law enforcement officials and executives from industries that do business through the Internet. Nearly two dozen investigators work in an office in Pittsburgh operated by the National Cyber-Forensics and Training Alliance, a nonprofit organization with close ties to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Much of the financing for the efforts, known as Operation Slam Spam, comes from the Direct Marketing Association, a trade group that wants to promote what it sees as the legitimate use of e-mail marketing.
"We felt that the key to the new law was enforcement," said H. Robert Wientzen, who recently stepped down as the president of the marketing association and is still involved in the antispam campaign. "We want spammers to realize that spam is not a free game for them and that they face real penalties if they continue."
The operation has built a database of known spammers, drawing from law enforcement agencies and from private companies that are investigating and bringing civil suits against some of the biggest users of junk e-mail messages. It has also deployed online decoys to catch spammers and has purchased products advertised in spam messages so that the financial records can be traced to the ultimate source of the message.
As the cases have been developed, the Pittsburgh group has used its information to persuade prosecutors to devote some resources to bringing cases against junk e-mail companies and other abusers of the Internet.
Law enforcement agencies have only recently taken an interest in fighting the spam problem. It is a series of small crimes, often without clear victims, that is hard to investigate.
But prosecutors and investigators are starting to become more aggressive as the volume of spam continues to increase and as the messages that spammers send are being used more often to perpetrate other crimes, including identity theft and credit card fraud.
And the authorities have become increasingly concerned about the spammers' use of computer viruses to hijack millions of desktop computers, using them to relay their messages and hide their true identities.
The Justice Department announcement expected on Thursday is meant to highlight several different government actions related to computer crime. The department has conducted a handful of similar operations in the past, calling them cyber sweeps, but the crackdown to be disclosed this week is thought to be the biggest by far.
A Justice Department spokesman declined to com
Microsoft slammed over misleading Windows Linux claims
Compared a mainframe to a dual 900MHz Xeon kit
By INQUIRER staff: Wednesday 25 August 2004, 08:24
THE UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has upheld a series of public complaints over an advert in a magazine comparing the cost of Linux versus Microsoft Windows.
An advert it ran compared the two operating systems to each other, but Windows was running on a measly dual 900MHz Xeon configuration, while Linux was running on a z900 IBM mainframe.
The advert appeared in an IT magazine and was headed: "Weighing the cost of Linux vs Windows? Let's review the facts".
The ad contained a graph comparing the cost in US dollars between a Linux images running on two z900 mainframe CPUs and a Windows Server 2003 image running two 900MHz Intel Xeons chips.
The ad claimed: "Linux was found to be over 10 times more expensive than Windows? Servers". It said that "in a recent study audited by leading independent research analyst Meta Group, measured costs of Linux running on IBM's z900 mainframe for Windows-comparable functions of file serving and Web serving. The results showed that IBM z900 mainframe running Linux is much less capable and vastly more expensive than Windows Server 2003 as a platform for server consolidation.*"
The ASA said the asterisk linked to a footnote that said: "Results may vary outside the United States". The people who complained challenged whether such a comparison was misleading, because the operating systems were run on different hardware.
In its adjudication, the ASA upheld the complaints. While the ASA said the advertisers wanted to compare how competing file set ups were audited by Meta, it took expert advice. The IBM z900 running Linux was 10 times more expensive than running the Windows OS. It would have been possible to compare the two OSes on similar hardware.
And the ASA ruled readers would infer the ad compared Linux and Windows OSes only.
The ASA said: "Because the comparison included the hardware, as well as the operating system and therefore did not show that running a Linux operating system was ten times more expensive than running a Windows operating system, the Authority concluded that the advertisement was misleading." µ
Kill Microsoft Word
.doc file as an e-mail attachment. I click on it and Word boots. Then I'm told I need to add a feature to read the file. It's always the same feature, apparently. I say Yes to adding the feature. It installs it, then loads the file from the e-mail. The next time I click on the e-mail, the same thing happens, and so on. Obviously the feature is never actually added.
.doc format. .doc formats or .rtf seldom gets perfect results. I'm always amused by the warning that things will change if I save in some format or other, yet after the save absolutely nothing has changed.
Why the Popular Word Processing Program Should Be Scrapped
Commentary
By John C. Dvorak
PC Magazine
Aug. 24, 2004
-- When is the last time anyone talked about Microsoft Word? Here's a program on its last legs that should probably be discarded and rethought completely. It has become a kludge. This is apparent with the latest version in Office 2003.
Let me start out with a couple of my current complaints. My biggest annoyance with the current version is that it keeps reinstalling features, which requires me to reinsert the master disc over and over. I'm not sure if this is a trick to check with Microsoft's database to make sure I'm a registered user or if the program is just stupid.
Here's the scenario. I get a
While that was an eye-roller, within six months a more ominous error cropped up. Now when I start Word I get a message saying, "An error occurred and this feature is no longer functioning properly. Would you like to repair this feature now?" It never says what feature it wants to repair. I click Yes and it asks for the disc, and then it repairs the feature -- at least until the next time I start Word, when I get the same message.
If I stop repairing, I get another dialog that says, "The document contains macros. Macro language support for this application is disabled. Features requiring VBA are not available. Would you like to open this document read-only?" Whether I click Yes or Cancel makes absolutely no difference, as there is no document involved! I merely started the program. After bypassing these roadblocks, the program runs fine.
I suppose I should reinstall Word, but other people have told me they have the same problems. So why bother?
Messy Markups
My irritation with Word began last year when we were finishing Online! The Book for Prentice-Hall. The editing required a lot of markups using Word, since the publisher seemed enamored with Word's markup capability, whereby you can track changes. This was great, except that between the various versions of Windows (Word 97, Word 2000, Word XP, Word 2003, and a couple of Mac versions) used by the authors and editors, we had a huge mess.
This was laughable -- actually, a nightmare. I concluded that the program is out of control and needs to be scrapped. Users should all be given some new program for an upgrade charge of $10 -- just to get everyone on the same page.
Meanwhile, let's not forget the historical issues with Word. Let's list a few.
Previous Problems
The ever-changing
Even saving to older
Dubious HTML creation.
How hard is it for Word to create a simple brain-dead HTML file without embedding a ton of junk? It can't seem to handle any moderate formatting either. The newest version can create some sort of XML file too, but for what purpose I have no idea. Because its HTML creation is so poor, though, why would I trust it to do anything fancier?
Plain-text conundrum.
Users of plain-text editors know that Microsoft has never been able to get Word to generate a simple ASCII file without issues. First, there is no option to create a plain ASCII file. Instead, we can create a variety of so-called "plain text" files, none of which seem to be plain text.
End of the Line?
With the newest version of Word, when you want to save plain text you get a d
Lockout: The Self-imposed, Computer-aided Work Enforcer
/etc/sudoers, or anything else that you believe will impose labor on yourself). After that, Lockout will change your root password (for a specified amount of time) to something random so that you can't secretly undo all those productive settings and be a lazy slacker again. When time is up, Lockout changes the root password back to its original and runs a script that undoes the other settings (firewall, /etc/sudoers, etc.) so that you can finally continue your peaceful slacking.
Software for Slackers: The 1-Step Self-Help Program to Increase your Discipline & ProductivityTM
Introduction
Are you a slacker? So am I. Do you browse the Web, read the news, and write email all day in stead of working? So do I. Does it make you feel miserable and apathetic? Do you tell yourself to stop browsing the fucking Web and get some bloody work done? Do you have absolutely no discipline? I know your pain.
But recent technological advancements have made it possible... There is a cure for your disease!
Years of slacking at the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology have resulted in a brilliant 461-line Perl script (which includes 130 lines of comments for free!) that makes it all possible! Your productivity will dramatically increase!
Today, I present Lockout: The Self-imposed, Computer-aided Work Enforcer. This program will help you get some work done by not allowing you to browse the Web. It won't allow you to do anything but work. It's a miracle! Your colleagues will respect you, your Ph.D. adviser will compliment you, and your boss, if you have one, will probably not notice the difference! It's amazing! Scroll down! Read more!
What do I need?
Linux, of course, you dumbass dipshit.
This sounds too good to be true!
It is, you fool! If you do this wrong, or if Lockout fucks up, you're screwed: you'll end up not knowing your own root password. In that case, only God, single-user mode, Knoppix, or tomsrtbt can bring salvation. (The good news is that nothing bad ever happened to me as a result of Lockout.)
Give it to me! Give it to me! I want to download it!
I knew it! You can download it for free and read the instructions in the file itself.
Updates:
- 08/22/2004: Version 0.2 released. Many more ways to specify time. New "lockout status" command. See help.
- 08/10/2004: Permission of file that contains copy of root's crypted password depended on root's umask. This security risk was fixed by explicitly setting mode to 0600 in sysopen().
- 08/09/2004: Fixed non-lethal bugs: less anal crontab check and fixed broken time parameter check.
How does it work?
Well, we can't really tell you, but, basically, it does anything you want! For example, it can change your firewall to disallow outgoing connections to port 80. Or it can disable incoming email. And you'll get an outgoing email blocker for free if you download now!
How does it really work?
The real secret is that Lockout will first run a script that you write (to put up a different firewall configuration, to remove yourself from
What if the machines crashes?
Lockout copies the crypted root password (obtained using getpwent()) to a magic file before changing the root password to something random. A cron job runs every minute to see if time's up and, if so, puts the original crypted password back (using usermod -p). So no essential data is lost across crashes and reboots.
What if I suddenly really need to become root?
A @reboot entry in root's crontab file ensures that rebooting your machine will put the original root password back in place. Worst case scenario is that you have to reboot your computer. Well, that's not really true: worst case scenario is that things fail badly and you end up not knowing your root password.
Who are you?
I am Thomer M. Gil. When I'm locked out of my web connection and still trying to slack, I hack on Thomer's Music Vault,
DVD Industry Insider Report - August 20, 2004
Posted Friday, August 20 2004, by clint
DVD Industry Insider Report - August 20, 2004
The Scoop on Emerging DVD-R9 / DVD+R9 Hardware, Technologies and Standards
Recently we were asked why we didn't get more excited about the hardware that will deliver 8.5GB single-side writing capabilities to DVD.
Maybe we were a little negligent because the engineers at Philips, Pioneer and Matsushita have done a great job of proving the technology. But only a few firms (such as NEC, Toshiba and Matsushita) produce the laser diodes which are bought by the true burner manufacturers that are then bought by the PC manufacturers and branded product producers. After they are all done, you can buy the new burner, produce your great DVDs and send copies to friends & family...
[DiscLayers]Compared to the present DVD+/-R media you use (see image at right) the new dual-layer discs are a beautiful work of art and technology.
The media chemists and scientists deserve a tremendous amount of credit for developing the two dye layers and special UV adhesive that bond the two breath-thin resin layers. Moving those specifications onto the high-speed media production line demands a lot of quality production attention. During the early stages only the name brand media manufacturers will have the equipment and talent necessary so you don't produce more coasters.
Dual Standards, Dual-Layer
Because neither side has yet to blink, there will still be two different versions of DVD-R9 media (+/-). By the time you read this the DVD+R9 media spec will be a matter of record. The DVD-R9 specs will still be making their way through committee and DVD Forum approval.
One format won't be better than the other (unless you ask someone deeply committed to one camp or the other). However, it is a lot easier for two companies to work on a common goal and have six others agree than have multiple camps reach agreement and then get the coliseum of interested parties to agree.
All Philips and MKM (Mitsubishi Kagaku Media)/Verbatim had to do is develop the hardware/media technologies, make certain it could be inexpensively and reliably produced and the +RW Alliance was off to the races. Most of the rest of the members don't care which way the wind blows...as long as it blows.
On the other hand, Pioneer, Toshiba and Matsushita/Panasonic (two of the three don't play well together) had to hammer out their differences, go through a series of different working group studies and get the 200+ members of the DVD Forum to agree.
Dictatorships just seem to reach consensus faster than democracies!
Despite the fact that there are differences (incompatibilities) between the two approaches there are some similarities.
Both have two thin substrates joined by specially designed UV bonding materials. When the laser is through writing to the first layer, it increases power slightly and begins writing to the second layer. When you are playing the dual-layer DVDR9 disc (+ or -) you'll have to look hard to notice the switch over from one layer to the other.
The result is a full 8.5GB or 4 hours of DVD-quality (16 hours of VHS -quality) video. Some manufacturers may refer to the capacity of 4 hours of SP and 16 hours of EP so make certain you understand the playback quality you want before you begin writing your write-once discs.
The other big similarity is that the DVD specification requires that players and drives read dual-layer discs. If you encounter one that will read "standard" +/- discs but won't read DVD+/-R9 media it means the manufacturer had a design flaw which they should correct at no charge.
DVD+R9
Cross-section of a dual-layer DVD+R disc
The big hurdle was to keep the new write-once discs compatible with existing player standards.
MKM was able to deliver compatibility by designing media that uses a thin layer silver-alloy as a reflector in the upper layer. This has produced reflec
Didn't Gnome used to run on top of E?
DR16.7.1 has been released!. This is the biggest release since DR16 first debuted! In this release dependencies have changed from Imlib/FreeType to Imlib2/FreeType2. The old default themes (which made the distribution almost 18M in size!) have been replaced with "Winter" by rephorm. The distribution has been split into 3 diffrent packages: programs (source), docs (Edox), and themes. A long long list of bugs have been fixed (including some very old nagging ones that weren't easy for kwo to squash). And probly of most interest to the end user: "Theme Transparency". Get the files source and RPMs in the usual place.
If your wondering what happened to DR16.7.0, it was halted last minute by several bugs that were only reproducable by a small number of us but were major bugs none the less. You can see the changes since the initial release here.
Ports for Solaris are avalible now and the DarwinPorts port is ready. Gentoo Portage will be updated shortly.
Monday, August 23, 2004
Ruckus starts in Grant with new downloading tool for students
Network may expand to other residence halls if it is successful
Article by:
Michelle Gibbons - Staff Reporter
mgibbons@northernstar.info
Bryan Ajuluchukwu, a freshman economics major, is one of more than 170 students living on the third floor of Grant Towers who is testing a new downloading service. The service, called Ruckus Network, allows for those students to download music and movies.
Ajuluchukwu, who heard about Ruckus from his roommate, said he would definitely recommend the program to other students.
It was better than other programs because its legal, Ajuluchukwu said. This is a good idea for the university to do for the students so we have some entertainment.
Ruckus is a digital entertainment and downloading service that will provide music, movies, TV shows, local content and community features to students free of charge, said Joseph Marone, Ruckus account representative for NIU. NIU pays $5 per student per month and is allowed unlimited access to the media for the testers.
On Thursday, Ruckus will be available for testing to residents in the third through sixth floors of all Grant Towers, said Keith Kruchten, president of the Residence Hall Association.
Marone said NIU is very important to Ruckus development.
This is the first time weve opened this program up to a school. We want to make sure students enjoy it.
Still in the pilot testing process, the program is not only tested by students, but also developed and designed by graduate students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Marone said.
From Aug. 12 to Aug. 19, more than 20 NIU community advisers and Grant Towers staff tested Ruckus, and on Aug. 19, 170 students were added to the testing. By Aug. 26, a total of 700 NIU students will be linked to Ruckus.
On Sept. 1, about 2,500 students in all Grant Towers will have limited access to the network. The full model of Ruckus will be open to all Grant students in October, Kruchten said.
The network is located at www.betaruckus.net.
Ruckus is tethered so students can still download music and movies without officially owning, buying or burning downloads, said Marone.
He said students can share playlists and compare theirs with other students likes and dislikes.
Kruchten also said even though the program is limited, students have been very impressed with what has been available thus far.
© 2004 Northern Star. All Rights Reserved.
Reasons why Reiser4 is great for you:
* Reiser4 is the fastest filesystem, and here are the benchmarks.
* Reiser4 is an atomic filesystem, which means that your filesystem operations either entirely occur, or they entirely don't, and they don't corrupt due to half occuring. We do this without significant performance losses, because we invented algorithms to do it without copying the data twice.
* Reiser4 uses dancing trees, which obsolete the balanced tree algorithms used in databases (see farther down). This makes Reiser4 more space efficient than other filesystems because we squish small files together rather than wasting space due to block alignment like they do. It also means that Reiser4 scales better than any other filesystem. Do you want a million files in a directory, and want to create them fast? No problem.
* Reiser4 is based on plugins, which means that it will attract many outside contributors, and you'll be able to upgrade to their innovations without reformatting your disk. If you like to code, you'll really like plugins....
* Reiser4 is architected for military grade security. You'll find it is easy to audit the code, and that assertions guard the entrance to every function.
V3 of reiserfs is used as the default filesystem for SuSE, Lindows, FTOSX and Gentoo. We don't touch the V3 code except to fix a bug, and as a result we don't get bug reports for the current mainstream kernel version. It shipped before the other journaling filesystems for Linux, and is the most stable of them as a result of having been out the longest. We must caution that just as Linux 2.6 is not yet as stable as Linux 2.4, it will also be some substantial time before V4 is as stable as V3.
NEW DELHI: Just when the antitrust case went in sleeping mode, Microsoft managed to get into yet another fiasco. This time the software giant is hit by information misrepresentation or shall we say goof up.
The lack of multicultural savvy attitude cost the software giant millions of dollars.
Microsoft products have been banned in some of the biggest markets, including India because of eight wrongly colored pixels, a bad choice of music and a bad English-to-Spanish dictionary.
Tom Edwards, head of Microsoft's geopolitical strategy team told a conference in Glasgow, how one of the biggest companies in the world managed to offend one of the biggest countries in the world with a software slip-up, CNet Asia reported.
When coloring in 800,000 pixels on a map of India, Microsoft colored eight of them a different shade of green to represent the disputed Kashmiri territory. The difference in greens meant Kashmir was shown as non-Indian, and the product was promptly banned in India. Microsoft was left to recall all 200,000 copies of the offending Windows 95 operating system software to try and heal the diplomatic wounds. "It cost millions," Edwards said.
If this was not enough, Microsoft used chanting of the Koran used as a soundtrack for a computer game, which led to great offence to the Saudi Arabia government. The company later issued a new version of the game without the chanting, while keeping the previous editions in circulation because US staff thought the slip wouldn't be spotted, but the Saudi government banned the game and demanded an apology. The game was then withdrawn.
The software giant managed to further offend the Saudis by creating another game in which Muslim warriors turned churches into mosques. That game was also withdrawn.
Microsoft has also managed to upset women and entire countries. A Spanish-language version of Windows XP, destined for Latin American markets, asked users to select their gender between "not specified," "male" or "bitch," because of an unfortunate error in translation.
Microsoft has also seen its unfortunate style of diplomacy have an effect in Korea, Kurdistan, Uruguay and to China--where a cartographical dispute saw Chinese employees hauled in front of the government.
Edwards said that staff members are now sent on geography courses to try to avoid such mishaps. "Some of our employees, however bright they may be, have only a hazy idea about the rest of the world," he said.
Why is Internet Explorer unsafe?
See what people are saying about Internet Explorer, in the wake of its most recent security issues:
New York Times, In Search of a Browser That Banishes Clutter: [nytimes.com]
Ms. Sandlin is so devoted to [Firefox] that she has taped a note to her monitor warning guests not to click on the desktop shortcut to Internet Explorer. "Do not touch the blue E!" the note says.
USA Today, Security risks swell for Microsofts Explorer: [usatoday.com]
Using Microsofts Internet Explorer Web browser to surf the Internet has become a marked risk even with the latest security patches installed.
The Inquirer, US Government warns against Internet Explorer: [theinquirer.net]
The US Government has sent out a warning out to internet users through its Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), pleading users to stop using Microsofts Internet Explorer.
Slate, Are the Browser Wars Back?: [msn.com]
[A]ll-conquering Internet Explorer has been stuck in the mud for the past year, as Microsoft stopped delivering new versions. The company now rolls out only an occasional fix as part of its Windows updates. Gates and company won the browser war, so why keep fighting it?
well let's see. I am a avid Linux user and I generally do not like MS products. However at every job I have ever had (too many) I have had to use them
I am a computer programmer.
Are ya'll Hiring in Texas?
Thats part of the articule..
Neal Stephenson grew up in Iowa and graduated from Boston University in 1981 majoring in geography with a minor in physics. His first published novel The Big U, a college thriller with SF elements, appeared in 1984, followed by Zodiac: The Eco-Thriller (1988). Snow Crash (1992), a cyberpunk classic, made him a star in the SF field. He wrote two thrillers in collaboration with his uncle, George Jewsbury, under the name "Stephen Bury": Interface (1994) and Cobweb (1996), and published solo novel The Diamond Age, winner of the Hugo and Locus Awards, in 1995. Cryptonomicon followed in 1999; also a Locus Award winner, this massive, Pynchonesque novel of history and cryptography proved tremendously popular with SF fans. Later that year he
Photo by Charles N. Brown
www.nealstephenson.com published In the Beginning...Was the Command Line, a non-fiction commentary on computers and culture. The past seven years were spent on the vast three-volume "Baroque Cycle", beginning with Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning Quicksilver (2003) and followed by The Confusion (2004) and The System of the World (2004). These books, set in the 17th century and featuring historical characters like Leibniz and Newton along with the ancestors of characters from Cryptonomicon, are Stephenson's latest attempt to push the boundaries of SF. Stephenson lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife (married 1985) and their two children.
I knwo for a fact we put my stepmom on Firefox and all of a sudden she quit getting spyware.
I wish we had a study showing how many microsoft programmers use Firefox.
Haven't we already seen this story on slashdot just a few days ago.
Come on now. I guess it must go like this.
EDITOR: muhahahahaw! We will Get them!
INTERN: How so grand master pumba?!?!
EDITOR: We will post a dup and make them all beg for more!!!! MUHAHAHAHAW!
INTERN: Yes sir. by Jolly I belive you have it there. the secret to CmdrTaco's Success!
j/k
Its just a plain bad idea! MOD ME UP!
You all know its a bad idea
Google Cache [66.102.7.104]
Well if they all ran Linux they would be happeir at the IOC and woudl not do this.
I bet if they all used Linux it woudl make for safer skies!
See New GNU/AirPortScanner Knows its a old harmless man and lets him go right through.
Yet stops eveil looking guy in a turbin!
And Makes Coffee!
Please. We have to put up with this studpid crap when we elect republicans to the government
Though slashdotted, if you actually get through you'd see
Linux has many distributions and sometimes the programs or tools used to perform a certain function can vary from distribution to distribution. This guide tries to be as generic as possible in the description of the features and functionalities. However, in some cases, especially some of the GUI desktop configuration tools, there is no really independent generic tool that can be used and each distribution has its own tool. In such cases, we have tried to illustrate their usage using Fedora Linux
This guide was written on a Fedora Linux system and as such many of the screen shots reflect this. However, this should not be construed as an endorsement of this distribution of Linux over the others on the part of the authors.
Fedora's desktop is used for screenshots and examples, but it isn't a guide to Fedora.
Yeah I I'ss reckin they just might think I spelled it wrong. But theyz jsut don't know.
inovating is how we folks who are to lazy to use a spell checker spell it.
So in honor of all of us lasy folk I proudly display my full misspellign incompetence.
hehe
I'm sure they will Call this INOVATION when we all know its just the same old stuff with a web brower on it.
How lame of Microsoft.