while the gps system may be a precise locator, the majority of slashdot readers are already carrying locating devices, namely their mobile phones. its a little less fine grained but surely its pretty obvious that we are all being watched as a matter of routine. Phone records can be used to show where you were at a particular time. RF tagging also allows your location to be logged and cctv camera's routinely record you.
Is there a right to walk/ drive the streets without being casually identified. can/should your phone be used to identify that you attended an antiwar demonstration along with several 1000 other people. should your presence there be used to blacklist you?
Will you be black listed , noted as deviant because of your political and social beliefs? now probably not, in the future, who knows.
privacy is not something that can be taken for granted.
we used to live in a world where not much was recorded about individuals, now it is trivial to keep track of anyone and everyone this is a reality of living in the 21st century.
A lot of people reading this will just think this is paranoid and funny but Cell phones do log on to the network locating you to within a particular cell and in a city this can be a very small area. RF tagging is implimented and there was a store embedding RF tags within store cards. And in the uk at least CCTV is used on the streets of most if not all citys and within many factorys, shops and banks and hotels.
can it be used against an individual is without doubt. Will it be used against you as an individual perhaps, but privacy is a thing of the past unless you activally seek it.
My translation lots of people saying your product sucks, who viguard can not identify. Thier decision lets take out our fustration on the one person we can identify.
Personally I think Viguard is damaging itself, by it's actions. Postings on usenet, might cause a few questions to be asked by potential and existing customers but not many. The response of Viguard to these postings ensures that the company is seen as inept and poorly managed by as large an audience as possible. They have publically committed suicide.
How to corrupt the files of a program and to be astonished that it does not function any more: tests of the Guillermito apprentice-byte on ViGUARD 2002.
To corrupt the files of a software while being an administrator of its machine, to show that it does not function correctly any more then, is not a search for fault. This is the case with any software. When that becomes an argument to disparage a software and personnel of a company during 4 years, one then leaves the ground of the "technique". For these reasons, the assertions known as "technical" diffused on Internet about ViGUARD 2002 by a certain "Guillermito" concern the misinformation. It is vital for a company of safety to have increase and remarks concerning its products. It is for that that TEGAM International encourages the increase and remarks concerning its products. That was always the case. The company is organized to accomodate and treat these increase within a framework deontologic. It is disconcerting to note that the denigrations of ViGUARD come people who are not users and do not have any experience of current use of it. It is also disconcerting to note that technical assertions were published without to have contacted the editor as a preliminary.
Technical explanations:
Any program whose files were bidouillés, will not function any more or will be buggé. The argument is striking. On the nonprotected operating systems, any file can be modified, and this is valid for any software. Any antivirus, firewall, software of safety, or software in the total direction, will not function correctly any more if it is corrupted in memory or on the hard disk. This has nothing to do with ViGUARD. The proof: remove or modify the files of one of your programs in C:\Program Files... eh well it will not function any more! The evidence is made almost tous.les.jours with viruses and towards which decontaminate without sorrow the antiviruses on platforms Windows 95, 98, ME (Examples: Klez, Optix, Maldal, etc.) This is however not regarded faults of the antivirus (or of the firewalls), but as gaps related to the nonprotected operating systems. Because contrary to systems such as NT4, Windows 2000 or Windows XP, on which there is a concept of safety which precisely make it possible the programs (firewalls, antivirus or others) to protect their own programs, files and keys of register, on nonprotected systems such as Windows 98 there does not exist safety on this level. This rumour induces the reader in error. To suppose that the exploration of ViGUARD is made with a view to evaluation of functionalities of safety, it is disconcerting to note that devices implemented with an aim of countering desactivations and modifications of the software, were overlooked. More especially as to our knowledge, only ViGUARD has these countermeasures: - to suppose that an anti-ViGUARD virus tries to close the process of ViGUARD on a nonprotected system, t
ok but i want some real world data I have belkin 54g well did have untill my wireless router died. (Belkin is sending me a replacement as it has a life time warranty and PcWorld didn't want to do it itself due to being 1 year and 11 days since I bought it. nice one belkin:) )
It claimed a 1000 feet range well I thought well maybe I can use this, best I could do was about 100-200 feet. about 400 feet short of what i was hoping.
an 800% increase in coverage sounds good but i guess they are talking about area not straight line distance.
hopefully the next slashdot article will actually show the practical figures not the theoretical ones.
I was going to mod as insightful then i found my last mod point had disappeared.
What would be nice to see is if this version of windows acknowledges the existance of a drive other than C: and allows you to seperate data fom OS and programs.
If you accept as fact at some point you will be forced to reinstall or restore your windows operating system why has it been made so difficult to keep your data safe on the d: drive
In an ideal world restoring a ghost image of your C: drive would leave all your data intact and any downloaded upgrades ready to be installed as soon as the relevent application realises they are available.
that would include the windows service packs too a major irritation running windows update to install what you installed a few months previous.
I think there is a fine line between what is a virus and what is spyware. have you ever been in task manager and tried killing a process thats being guarded by another process you can only kill one at a time and which ever one you kill first gets brought back just in time to restore the 2nd one as you try to kill it. safe mode normally stops that game but now you have files which rename themselves before a reboot!
The Spyware doesn't stop you going onto the internet untill you try to remove it.
what are you going to do if you find that attempting to remove spyware kills your net connection and you have to reinstall windows. which also means because of the registry you need to reinstall all your applications get all the updates again search for all your documents, templates, export all your email and address book
lot of work isnt it? or you can put up with the high jacking and random adverts and diverts, and data mining.
maybe the best defense is to use ghost and maintain a clean image of your c drive and have the disipline to store all user files on d: so a simple restore of the ghost image undoes the damage. still email is going to be a problem with outlook and outlook express unless you have an email program which stores your email and addresses outside of the c drive so when you restore your mail is still accessable your still going to have some pain.
spybot search and destroys teatimer is useful in that you should know when somethings playing with your system settings but most of the time you are hoping its the program you are using that is causing the change and not something malicious.
thing is like many of us i have tried to educate the people I support to run adaware and spybot S&D regularly. what situation does it put them in when they do this and lose their net connection?
Well if Microsoft is doing anything to help against spyware it has got to be of some use.
There is a new extreme piece of spyware which seems to have surfaced in the last month. http://forum.iamnotageek.com/t-78554-1.html is the start of a very interesting thread concerning what seems to be the latest generation of spyware. some of the things that it does include generating randomly named dll's restarting processes that have been killed, runs IE even in safe mode, drags in a whole raft of other spyware to confuse things and leaves the PC it infects after unsuccessful removal unable to connect to the internet.
This thing is really nasty.
I am pretty sure I was dealing with a case of this yesterday. When adaware was installed and ran on a pc with XP service pack2 It triggered a Reboot due to a failure in dcom with a 1 minute countdown. The worst part was after cleaning with adaware the Pc was unable to connect to the internet unable to get an address from the router.
Manually configuring a network address and setting 192.168.2.1 as the gateway got the network working to the lan pc's. The router could be pinged successfully but it wasn't possible to reach 192.168.2.1 through firefox netscape or IE to check the router status. and after several hours of trying this pc refused to connect to the internet.
After banging my head against this brickwall over a period of about 12 hours the only solution was to reinstall XP.
This is the worst spyware I have ever seen, according to the thread the initial attack seems to have occured after a search for the song "over and over" by nelly although a precise location of the source of this infection isn't known.
If you have to deal with spyware on a regular basis check this thread out because you are not going to solve this one just by running adaware and spybot S&D.
This latest spyware really should be submitted as a story on slashdot it is very new, very nasty and it is going to infect a lot of Pc's.
Please mod this up or investigate this yourself and Post about it. because this is going to be a major disruption to Pc users everywhere, especially with it's defence of blocking the Pc's internet connection when you attempt to remove it.
first of all who's professional? Some readers of slashdot may be professional but I am certain a lot are not. your asking a lot of a readership that has a number of posters who just post for creating havoc if you read slashdot at -1 you will soon see that comments on slashdot pump through the site like raw sewage with the occassional gem which moderators reach in and retrieve.
While you may be able to run a windows operating system without getting infested with spyware it seems to be the case that many people can't. perhaps if people could be educated into looking for "open source" instead of "free" when looking for a tool or utility then they might improve their Pc's health.
Spyware often uses two parallel processes to maintain control of a pc, when you go to kill one process the partner process restarts it. these tricky beasts can be killed by booting in safe mode and finding the programs on the harddrive and deleting them. These are the most common ones I have to deal with once I have educated users to run spybot and adaware to remove the easy stuff.
It doesn't help that users like to run things like kazaa instead of kazaalite as an alternative and seem clueless and overly trusting of the files they download- often not even running an up to date antivirus program such as avg (free edition).
Finally while windows is a mess of worms trojans and spyware, suggesting that these same users run linux instead, is pointless they struggle hard enough with windows. linux isn't friendly to clueless users ect...
Maybe a Mac is the real answer for these people but few will migrate to another o/s or buy new hardware so the problem will remain.
perhaps it might help if it was possible to launch linux from within the windows environment. similar to the experience of running amiga os under emulation. then users can venture into linux as and when they find applications to run under linux and don't have to reboot into windows to run something which doesnt have a linux alternative.
To be objective you can't look at windows and say it is not vunerable to these problems (no matter how well you look after your system). It is equally valid to say Linux isn't a pain free alternative yet.
The standard practice seems to be with dictators is to wait for them to die, or be overthrown by their own people, maybe with some funding of rebel forces.
the official reasons given for going to war, were only ever an excuse. Getting rid of saddam always was a good idea but there is a fair size list of regimes to change maybe iraq is a pilot scheme.
like a lot of people I thought that saddams removal would reduce suffering in iraq and bring the whole of the iraq people a safe and free society.
maybe it is only with a grip like saddam had, that iraq was able to function, and factions which were in fear of saddam kept quiet and a relative peace was imposed by his reign.
It certainly seems that by offering power to the iraqi people every faction wants to be in control and will do anything to get it. Ameriican plans where and are still not capable of bringing peace to iraq. There is no easy solution, with un peace keeping forces at least there is a sense that they are there to reduce the suffering and limit the extremists however with national forces going in there has to be a sense that its for the benefit of the nations supplying these forces. I think the usa is viwed as corperation run and the war was for corperate gain, a bloody corperate hostile takeover.
no wonder the iraqi's still fight when they see the usa attempting to asset strip their country.
would it have been better to leave saddam in power? I don't know. I struggle to see the future peaceful iraq and unless the iraqi people can see that, there will be no peace.
perhaps what is needed is a welfare state guaranteed minimum income levels for iraqi's, well supplied health service, a work program to restore the damaged buildings and infra structure. let the iraqi's rebuild iraq make sure everybody knows they have a next meal. Iraqi oil revenues could pay for this same as britains oil fields paid for 4 million unemployed in the uk in the 80's.
The usa philosophy will not allow for this kind of social system to exist in the usa, I don't think an iraqi welfare state is concievable to american goverment. it goes against the american philosophy everyone provides as much as possible for themselves.
Consider this if you got iraqi's working to rebuild the damage done by the war you would have close to maximum employment and maybe the iraqi people would be able to consider buying a house, getting their children in to good schools buying nice clothes providing for their familys... instead you have desperation and hopelessness.
skype is pretty good generally and having an old bell type telephone sound coming from your nearly sleeping laptop is kinda cool although it often finishes up with skype user places call, ends call, you call 'em back:)
The quality is generally pretty good and will normally go for a few hours before needing to place the call again.
the instant messaging is great for placing urls when searching for useful sites with your friends.
the file transfers can be terribly slow 0.5 kbs the help documentation blames it on firewalls nat routers... and also claims the transfer wouldnt be possible by other means -not true in the slightest as my mac using friend uses ichat to connect to my aim client on the pc and file transfers are quick.
but the file transfers on skype claim to be encrypted end to end so it might be slow but worthwhile.
They havent integrated video yet which would be nice. cross platform messaging in general seems to be limited usually to text only(aim to ichat the video option doesnt seem to work). even when voice is available with msn to msn for example the delay is noticeable and skype really doesnt have a noticeable delay at all.
hopefully skype will evolve to include video chatting and conferencing options. I would probably use skype out if i could buy vouchers and that i couldnt buy a normal telephone calling card as cheap or cheaper.
If you havent tried it yet do so before your favourite name gets taken:) and then use a head set.
it's not just in Britain Ireland too has these difficulties
its not the banks which are being difficult but european anti money laundering laws.
with countrys with an id card it may not be so difficult to prove who you are although a passport is a pretty reliable indicator. The difficulty is that you have to provide proof of an address.
Does your id card maintain a record of where you live certainly i doubt your address is updated once you leave the country.
in ireland faced with the same problem i found my employer was able to write a letter to the bank to allow me to open a bank account so i could be paid
the problem comes when your presence in a country isnt for legitimate employment maybe some companys might find reasons to write a letter for you but do you really want to work for such a company.
In all likelyhood the only reason not to is as an excuse not to employ you. If on the other hand money laundering is your aim you may well find that these restrictions in bank accounts being opened might well be a hindrence and is the reason these europe wide laws were put in place.
finally can i ask how an id card from one country helps open a bank account in another if it doesnt have your current address.
whatever happens changing country even where they have Id cards will involve some delay and problems with opening a bank account. I don't see how the id card helps you initially as this will not be issued imediately on entry. perhaps as long as three months to process.
where the id card could help is to obtain access to services open to residents and tax payers allowing checks to be minimised as the id card provides enough evidence by its existence and issue date to avoid people repeatedly providing the same evidence to different authoritys.
having an id card which is basically saying the goverment accepts you to be a real identifiable person could be useful.
There are two possible area's where violations can occur where the card contains information unrelated to your id. if it contains your credit history your education details your police record your voting patterns your political leanings how you shop and what you buy. your ethnic origin religion and sexual preference and partners then this card can violate your rights by allowing access to unrelated information.
second where your id card gives access to the whole of the record of who you are instead of to seperate databases which grant access to appropriate records.
finally how about making it so that only your physical card can allow access to your records without an order from a judge and you have the right to view all information retrieved about you as it is being retrieved.
I actually read the article and it said it would be brought in gradually with passport renewals
Which is interesting for me since I do not hold a uk passport I have an irish one (benefit of dual nationality) it seems the uk goverment can't make me have a card
when the EU was enlarged in May, working rights were granted to citizens of the new member states, however Mr Blunkett felt this was a perfect opportunity to trial his new ID card Scheme.
Each person has to register within a month paying a 50 pound fee sending their passport and a letter from their Employer.
This scheme has had problems mainly relating to the processing of applications, taking too long to return passports, failure to recognise that some workers are students and will work here in the summer only- much as students do all over the world.
however, there is a second process which has to be gone through too which is the issuing of a permanent National Insurance number.
Having provided the necessary evidence to the goverment once, to get the id card issued you would think that issuing a national insurance number should be automatic. Nationality proven, identity proven, a legitimate job but no it seems the goverment doesn't trust its own ID card scheme and requires a second round of applications and interviews this time with the DWP department of work and pensions. they require passport, letter from employer.. basically the same information and evidence that was required for the workers registration scheme.
As was explained to me by the WRS Manager this scheme Establishes Nationality it doesn't establish Identity.
The scheme is improving however now they will check and return passports on reciept and record the recorded delivery number which is issued by the royal mail so now they will be able to know what they have done with peoples passports.
The issueing of permanent National Insurance Numbers is quite critical for non uk nationals,the employer in this country has the responsibility of ensuring someone he employees is legal and a number of employers are not prepared to take on someone without a permanent NI number, with the existence of a National database of legal non uk nationals being created it and the issue of the ID card it should make it easier for non uk nationals to find work but since the goverment will not recognise it as being proof of ID who will?
As a further example, where the Id card should make a difference is the provision of a general practioner (family Dr), as people employed in this country and paying taxes and national insurance the Id card could be used to establish that this person is entitled to treatment under the NHS.
currently there is complete confusion about how and when somebody is resident and eligible for treatment in the UK and no clear guidelines have been issued to GP's how to proceed.
(correction in one part of the country at least the NHS trust is looking to see if they can use the ID card as one simple proof of entitlement to NHS treatment. )
Now they are aware of its existence it could simplify an administrative nightmare for the NHS.
maybe soon there will be a positive side to the Id card scheme at least in one area. There are many other area's that could also benefit such as library services and provision of education to migrant workers children. simply by simplifying the red tape.
I know some people might say why should britain provide its goverment provided services to migrant workers, well since these people pay uk taxes and pay UK National Insurance payments contributing to UK society why should they be excluded from the services they contribute to?
I started this post with a negative view of the Id card scheme, but if it can simplify the procedures to gain access to services or conversely be used to deny them to people wishing to abuse uk services then it may have a positive use.
The Id card doesnt in itself give anymore information than you are a legitimate member of uk society with rights given to uk residents.
sure there may well be a lot of data held about an individual all referenceable to the Id card but it doesnt mean that all your records will be available to any agency at random.
certainly the data protection act is in place to prevent abuses of this kind.
does this mean they are selecting light colours / frequencys to route across the physical network? you want to send to computer1 blue light routes more directly too it with less relay points. switching paths by frequency could really speed things up especially if the frequency used represented the path between computers. and the breaks in transmission the data
An alternative solution might be the adapdtec viedeoh hardware mpegII encoder with built in TV tuner. cost about 100 sterling add in the cost of a seperate burner then the price is competetive.
I can't quite see the advantage of this device as a stand alone unit. Pirating videotapes maybe, simplicity?
I just can't see the point if you can't edit without using a PC why would you want to buy this device?
getting raw camcorder footage direct to dvd without editing is just going to mean ripping it again from the dvd to edit out all the worst shots.
"If you feel that copyright has no place in our society, then add your voice and pocketbook to the fight to legislate it out or reform it. Simply deciding to commit criminal and civil copyright violation is not some noble protest -- you want a copy of something you don't have a right to, or to provide a copy to someone else that they don't have a right to"
The phrase civil disobedience has no meaning for you then? If a law is broken repeatedly by enough people it becomes unenforceable.
A quality product will always generate sales and illegal copies only reenforce sales of good products and conversely reduce sales of poor quality products.
It used to be the case hype was enough to generate initial sales, now the buying public is more critical, and will choose to buy quality over hype.
legal, illegal it changes nothing and copyright holders should be aware that the people downloading copies of thier products are also the same people buying their products.
The result of punitive action only ensures that the customer will never buy the product ever and might even work to undermine the copyright holders sales still further. Revenge is a very strong motive.
The licience fee is used to fund the bbc. their are a huge number of stations which recieve no funding from the licience fee. In my case the TV I watch is produced in Poland and available freely, however to watch this I must fund a broadcaster who's broadcasts have no interest for me.
I would have no problems with the BBC being subscription only and encoded. however the bbc has no intention of limiting it's availability in any format thus legitimising its claim that to own and use broadcast recieving equipment == recieving the bbc
if the bbc is so good then it can stand on its own merits encript the signal compared to the price of cable or satellite subscription services the bbc subscription of 112 a year is extremely good value if you want it.
If you can't afford it or don't want it you shouldn't be criminalised for choosing not to subscribe.
it would be just like microsoft liciencing every PC because it might be used to run windows...
At this moment in time apple seem to be focusing on getting labels to contribute.
presumably any label which isn't on Itunes will be because they demanded unfair terms from apple.
which implies they are a bunch of greedy shit heads who put the money ahead of the music and not being on itunes will negatively effect thier music sales.
the next step has to be apple offering a standard contract to anyone who wants to sell thier music directly through Itunes.
I would be tempted to sell these at 90 or 98 cents as a symbolic difference that the artist gets paid not the leeches.
now the labels are hooked it is time for the artists to avoid the labels and put control of the music back to the artists and cut out the middleman
I have a couple of laptops a tecra 520cdt and a satellite 4090 also a nec
The Nec is dead but has provided a 32meg sodimm for the satellite a 400Mhz processor for my linux box and my worst system is now running at 333mhz using a cryrix m2 that came with the nec. one day i will sell off the drives, keyboard, battery,mouse.
the 4090 came short a few pieces of plastic and no expansion memory I have used phone e-topup cards to create a ram cover a hdbay cover and a retainer for the keyboard. A Vhs video case was carefully cut down and now holds the battery in place.
The psu is the one from the tecra.
I decided i wanted the tecra running unfortunately the nec psu is too gutless and too high a voltage for the toshiba to run from. i had to modify a connector to fit the back of the tecra achieved by taking a dremell drill lead which had a similar coonector with a 2.5 mm dia hole in the end and drilling it out to 3mm (just enough metal to be successfull). the over voltage of the nec it didnt like, and a hp printer psu was the right voltage but under powered (1 amp).
I finally thought of an old cb psu 13.8 volts, 3amp officially but measured as 14.1 took the dremmel lead and connected to that and now this powers the tecra.
I bought the 4090 with one aim in mind I have an adaptec videoh hardware mpegII encoder this now sits on the 4090 usb port and uses my wireless lan card to record mpegII streams to my my main system upstairs (nice and quietly)with realvnc I can remotely control the laptop from anywhere in the world, The only thing i would like to impliment is remote control of my satellite and cable systems. via the laptop ir port but this seems to be impossible.
I would love to hear from anyone who has successfully used a laptop as a remote control for tv ect.
for case cracks ect I would like to suggest a hot glue gun this stuff is fantastic. I have even used it for holding the banisters to my stairs fantastic strength.
firstly What has been reverse engineered the game or the server? It seems they have reverse engineered a server not the game have they produced a game that works with the battlenet server?
secondly For anyone else but the defendants they are not guilty of reverse engineering anything are they?
battlenet is made available is purely an option for users of the software. where does it state you have to use battlenet servers clearly using it on the net is optional. I think users of the alternative server system are not guilty of reverse engineering anything.
thirdly has it been proved that the EULA was agreed to within 30 days of purchasing the software.
IF the software was purchased and not opened for 31 days then surely it isn't possible for you to avoid a 1 sided agreement since the 30 day time period had already passed.
fourthly who agreed to the EULA anyway If I install the software on your machine then surely you never agreed to the EULA.
which is even more harebrained. so how do you measure that one? Do you get the cleaning staff from an agency to save on costs? perhaps you spin off the people using the software into a seperate company?
What if an agency employee uses the software is the agency now liable for licience fee's too?
I think the option look elsewhere for a solution may be the best choice.
But the poor suffering artists. I hear so many people say.
Would be pretty cool if the tape from the mixing desk after a show finished up on the bands website a moderate price set for the download fee. wouldn't you love to have something better than your fading memories to treasure after the show. The bands would make a solid profit.
Think of some of the shows you've seen over the years wouldn't you like to be able to rekindle your memories.
It doesn't happen, why not because the Record labels might lose sales. not the artists not the people who actually make the music.
however on a plus point not all bands are signed. these bands could release live show recordings not as polished performances fans would understand.
all it takes is a simple store format that can take cash for downloads. every band should be taping off the mixing desk and making each show available for download.
whats the problem?
wish it had been an option when i was younger the number of shows i know i enjoyed but what the music was like I hae no idea;)
boy am I sick of seeing that one!
effective spam filtering would be more use than the space maybe one day hotmail will actually let users ban domains more effectively
at the moment they give the choice of randomusername@randomletters.foo.com or *@ra ndomletters.foo.com and *@*.foo.com is whats needed for this one and they will not let me block it
at least hotmail popper lets me use thunderbird as a mail client instead of outlook.
Slashdot Mirror
while the gps system may be a precise locator, the majority of slashdot readers are already carrying locating devices, namely their mobile phones. its a little less fine grained but surely its pretty obvious that we are all being watched as a matter of routine. Phone records can be used to show where you were at a particular time. RF tagging also allows your location to be logged and cctv camera's routinely record you.
Is there a right to walk/ drive the streets without being casually identified. can/should your phone be used to identify that you attended an antiwar demonstration along with several 1000 other people.
should your presence there be used to blacklist you?
Will you be black listed , noted as deviant because of your political and social beliefs? now probably not, in the future, who knows.
privacy is not something that can be taken for granted.
we used to live in a world where not much was recorded about individuals, now it is trivial to keep track of anyone and everyone this is a reality of living in the 21st century.
A lot of people reading this will just think this is paranoid and funny
but Cell phones do log on to the network locating you to within a particular cell and in a city this can be a very small area.
RF tagging is implimented and there was a store embedding RF tags within store cards.
And in the uk at least CCTV is used on the streets of most if not all citys and within many factorys, shops and banks and hotels.
can it be used against an individual is without doubt. Will it be used against you as an individual perhaps, but privacy is a thing of the past unless you activally seek it.
It appears from what viguard are saying the court case is in response to annonymous postings on usenet. http://www.viguard.com/en/news_view.php?num=89
My translation lots of people saying your product sucks, who viguard can not identify. Thier decision lets take out our fustration on the one person we can identify.
Personally I think Viguard is damaging itself, by it's actions.
Postings on usenet, might cause a few questions to be asked by potential and existing customers but not many. The response of Viguard to these postings ensures that the company is seen as inept and poorly managed by as large an audience as possible. They have publically committed suicide.
http://www.viguard.com/fr/news_view.php?num=88
this is in french and is a reply from Viguard and here is a machine translation
by http://www.worldlingo.com/wl/translate of the french page.
MISINFORMATION ON VIGUARD
How to corrupt the files of a program and to be astonished that it does not function any more: tests of the Guillermito apprentice-byte on ViGUARD 2002.
To corrupt the files of a software while being an administrator of its machine, to show that it does not function correctly any more then, is not a search for fault. This is the case with any software. When that becomes an argument to disparage a software and personnel of a company during 4 years, one then leaves the ground of the "technique". For these reasons, the assertions known as "technical" diffused on Internet about ViGUARD 2002 by a certain "Guillermito" concern the misinformation.
It is vital for a company of safety to have increase and remarks concerning its products. It is for that that TEGAM International encourages the increase and remarks concerning its products. That was always the case. The company is organized to accomodate and treat these increase within a framework deontologic. It is disconcerting to note that the denigrations of ViGUARD come people who are not users and do not have any experience of current use of it. It is also disconcerting to note that technical assertions were published without to have contacted the editor as a preliminary.
Technical explanations:
Any program whose files were bidouillés, will not function any more or will be buggé.
The argument is striking. On the nonprotected operating systems, any file can be modified, and this is valid for any software. Any antivirus, firewall, software of safety, or software in the total direction, will not function correctly any more if it is corrupted in memory or on the hard disk. This has nothing to do with ViGUARD. The proof: remove or modify the files of one of your programs in C:\Program Files... eh well it will not function any more!
The evidence is made almost tous.les.jours with viruses and towards which decontaminate without sorrow the antiviruses on platforms Windows 95, 98, ME (Examples: Klez, Optix, Maldal, etc.) This is however not regarded faults of the antivirus (or of the firewalls), but as gaps related to the nonprotected operating systems. Because contrary to systems such as NT4, Windows 2000 or Windows XP, on which there is a concept of safety which precisely make it possible the programs (firewalls, antivirus or others) to protect their own programs, files and keys of register, on nonprotected systems such as Windows 98 there does not exist safety on this level. This rumour induces the reader in error.
To suppose that the exploration of ViGUARD is made with a view to evaluation of functionalities of safety, it is disconcerting to note that devices implemented with an aim of countering desactivations and modifications of the software, were overlooked. More especially as to our knowledge, only ViGUARD has these countermeasures:
- to suppose that an anti-ViGUARD virus tries to close the process of ViGUARD on a nonprotected system, t
What an idiot, would i buy a mobile phone from pitronix anyway?
but on the otherhand I just clicked through to pitronix web site. Ok I am not going to buy anything but some people might.
Even better for pitronix they might not even have to pay anything for the plug that bidding for space on this guys forehead if someone outbids them.
So the question has to be on which body part are you prepared to sell advertising space and who could you see bidding for space on it?
ok but i want some real world data I have belkin 54g well did have untill my wireless router died. (Belkin is sending me a replacement as it has a life time warranty and PcWorld didn't want to do it itself due to being 1 year and 11 days since I bought it. nice one belkin :) )
It claimed a 1000 feet range well I thought well maybe I can use this, best I could do was about 100-200 feet. about 400 feet short of what i was hoping.
an 800% increase in coverage sounds good but i guess they are talking about area not straight line distance.
hopefully the next slashdot article will actually show the practical figures
not the theoretical ones.
http://secunia.com/internet_explorer_command_execu tion_vulnerability_test/
is a test page containing a link if you left click on it and a window opens your vulnerable (it didn't do anything in Firefox)
I was going to mod as insightful then i found my last mod point had disappeared.
What would be nice to see is if this version of windows acknowledges the existance of a drive other than C: and allows you to seperate data fom OS and programs.
If you accept as fact at some point you will be forced to reinstall or restore your windows operating system why has it been made so difficult to keep your data safe on the d: drive
In an ideal world restoring a ghost image of your C: drive would leave all your data intact and any downloaded upgrades ready to be installed as soon as the relevent application realises they are available.
that would include the windows service packs too a major irritation running windows update to install what you installed a few months previous.
maybe that is too much to ask.
I think there is a fine line between what is a virus and what is spyware.
have you ever been in task manager and tried killing a process thats being guarded by another process you can only kill one at a time and which ever one you kill first gets brought back just in time to restore the 2nd one as you try to kill it. safe mode normally stops that game but now you have files which rename themselves before a reboot!
The Spyware doesn't stop you going onto the internet untill you try to remove it.
what are you going to do if you find that attempting to remove spyware kills your net connection and you have to reinstall windows. which also means because of the registry you need to reinstall all your applications get all the updates again search for all your documents, templates, export all your email and address book
lot of work isnt it? or you can put up with the high jacking and random adverts and diverts, and data mining.
maybe the best defense is to use ghost and maintain a clean image of your c drive and have the disipline to store all user files on d: so a simple restore of the ghost image undoes the damage. still email is going to be a problem with outlook and outlook express unless you have an email program which stores your email and addresses outside of the c drive so when you restore your mail is still accessable your still going to have some pain.
spybot search and destroys teatimer is useful in that you should know when somethings playing with your system settings but most of the time you are hoping its the program you are using that is causing the change and not something malicious.
thing is like many of us i have tried to educate the people I support to run adaware and spybot S&D regularly. what situation does it put them in when they do this and lose their net connection?
it's a nightmare and its coming to a pc near you.
Well if Microsoft is doing anything to help against spyware it has got to be of some use.
There is a new extreme piece of spyware which seems to have surfaced in the last month.
http://forum.iamnotageek.com/t-78554-1.html
is the start of a very interesting thread concerning what seems to be the latest generation of spyware.
some of the things that it does include generating randomly named dll's
restarting processes that have been killed, runs IE even in safe mode, drags in a whole raft of other spyware to confuse things and leaves the PC it infects after unsuccessful removal unable to connect to the internet.
This thing is really nasty.
I am pretty sure I was dealing with a case of this yesterday. When adaware was installed and ran on a pc with XP service pack2 It triggered a Reboot due to a failure in dcom with a 1 minute countdown. The worst part was after cleaning with adaware the Pc was unable to connect to the internet unable to get an address from the router.
Manually configuring a network address and setting 192.168.2.1 as the gateway got the network working to the lan pc's.
The router could be pinged successfully but it wasn't possible to reach 192.168.2.1 through firefox netscape or IE to check the router status.
and after several hours of trying this pc refused to connect to the internet.
After banging my head against this brickwall over a period of about 12 hours the only solution was to reinstall XP.
This is the worst spyware I have ever seen, according to the thread the initial attack seems to have occured after a search for the song "over and over" by nelly although a precise location of the source of this infection isn't known.
If you have to deal with spyware on a regular basis check this thread out because you are not going to solve this one just by running adaware and spybot S&D.
http://forum.iamnotageek.com/t-78554-3.html
This latest spyware really should be submitted as a story on slashdot it is very new, very nasty and it is going to infect a lot of Pc's.
Please mod this up or investigate this yourself and Post about it.
because this is going to be a major disruption to Pc users everywhere, especially with it's defence of blocking the Pc's internet connection when you attempt to remove it.
first of all who's professional? Some readers of slashdot may be professional but I am certain a lot are not. your asking a lot of a readership that has a number of posters who just post for creating havoc if you read slashdot at -1 you will soon see that comments on slashdot pump through the site like raw sewage with the occassional gem which moderators reach in and retrieve.
While you may be able to run a windows operating system without getting infested with spyware it seems to be the case that many people can't.
perhaps if people could be educated into looking for "open source" instead of "free" when looking for a tool or utility then they might improve their Pc's health.
Spyware often uses two parallel processes to maintain control of a pc, when you go to kill one process the partner process restarts it. these tricky beasts can be killed by booting in safe mode and finding the programs on the harddrive and deleting them. These are the most common ones I have to deal with once I have educated users to run spybot and adaware to remove the easy stuff.
It doesn't help that users like to run things like kazaa instead of kazaalite as an alternative and seem clueless and overly trusting of the files they download- often not even running an up to date antivirus program such as avg (free edition).
Finally while windows is a mess of worms trojans and spyware, suggesting that these same users run linux instead, is pointless they struggle hard enough with windows. linux isn't friendly to clueless users ect...
Maybe a Mac is the real answer for these people but few will migrate to another o/s or buy new hardware so the problem will remain.
perhaps it might help if it was possible to launch linux from within the windows environment. similar to the experience of running amiga os under emulation.
then users can venture into linux as and when they find applications to run under linux and don't have to reboot into windows to run something which doesnt have a linux alternative.
To be objective you can't look at windows and say it is not vunerable to these problems (no matter how well you look after your system). It is equally valid to say Linux isn't a pain free alternative yet.
hope you find this post a little more balanced.
The standard practice seems to be with dictators is to wait for them to die, or be overthrown by their own people, maybe with some funding of rebel forces.
the official reasons given for going to war, were only ever an excuse. Getting rid of saddam always was a good idea but there is a fair size list of regimes to change maybe iraq is a pilot scheme.
like a lot of people I thought that saddams removal would reduce suffering in iraq and bring the whole of the iraq people a safe and free society.
maybe it is only with a grip like saddam had, that iraq was able to function, and factions which were in fear of saddam kept quiet and a relative peace was imposed by his reign.
It certainly seems that by offering power to the iraqi people every faction wants to be in control and will do anything to get it. Ameriican plans where and are still not capable of bringing peace to iraq. There is no easy solution, with un peace keeping forces at least there is a sense that they are there to reduce the suffering and limit the extremists however with national forces going in there has to be a sense that its for the benefit of the nations supplying these forces. I think the usa is viwed as corperation run and the war was for corperate gain, a bloody corperate hostile takeover.
no wonder the iraqi's still fight when they see the usa attempting to asset strip their country.
would it have been better to leave saddam in power? I don't know. I struggle to see the future peaceful iraq and unless the iraqi people can see that, there will be no peace.
perhaps what is needed is a welfare state guaranteed minimum income levels for iraqi's, well supplied health service, a work program to restore the damaged buildings and infra structure. let the iraqi's rebuild iraq make sure everybody knows they have a next meal. Iraqi oil revenues could pay for this same as britains oil fields paid for 4 million unemployed in the uk in the 80's.
The usa philosophy will not allow for this kind of social system to exist in the usa, I don't think an iraqi welfare state is concievable to american goverment.
it goes against the american philosophy everyone provides as much as possible for themselves.
Consider this if you got iraqi's working to rebuild the damage done by the war you would have close to maximum employment and maybe the iraqi people would be able to consider buying a house, getting their children in to good schools buying nice clothes providing for their familys... instead you have desperation and hopelessness.
skype is pretty good generally and having an old bell type telephone sound coming from your nearly sleeping laptop is kinda cool although it often finishes up with skype user places call, ends call, you call 'em back :)
... and also claims the transfer wouldnt be possible by other means -not true in the slightest as my mac using friend uses ichat to connect to my aim client on the pc and file transfers are quick.
:)
The quality is generally pretty good and will normally go for a few hours before needing to place the call again.
the instant messaging is great for placing urls when searching for useful sites with your friends.
the file transfers can be terribly slow 0.5 kbs the help documentation blames it on firewalls nat routers
but the file transfers on skype claim to be encrypted end to end so it might be slow but worthwhile.
They havent integrated video yet which would be nice. cross platform messaging in general seems to be limited usually to text only(aim to ichat the video option doesnt seem to work). even when voice is available with msn to msn for example the delay is noticeable and skype really doesnt have a noticeable delay at all.
hopefully skype will evolve to include video chatting and conferencing options.
I would probably use skype out if i could buy vouchers and that i couldnt buy a normal telephone calling card as cheap or cheaper.
If you havent tried it yet do so before your favourite name gets taken
and then use a head set.
it's not just in Britain Ireland too has these difficulties
its not the banks which are being difficult but european anti money laundering laws.
with countrys with an id card it may not be so difficult to prove who you are although a passport is a pretty reliable indicator. The difficulty is that you have to provide proof of an address.
Does your id card maintain a record of where you live certainly i doubt your address is updated once you leave the country.
in ireland faced with the same problem i found my employer was able to write a letter to the bank to allow me to open a bank account so i could be paid
the problem comes when your presence in a country isnt for legitimate employment
maybe some companys might find reasons to write a letter for you but do you really want to work for such a company.
In all likelyhood the only reason not to is as an excuse not to employ you.
If on the other hand money laundering is your aim you may well find that these restrictions in bank accounts being opened might well be a hindrence and is the reason these europe wide laws were put in place.
finally can i ask how an id card from one country helps open a bank account in another if it doesnt have your current address.
whatever happens changing country even where they have Id cards will involve some delay and problems with opening a bank account. I don't see how the id card helps you initially as this will not be issued imediately on entry. perhaps as long as three months to process.
where the id card could help is to obtain access to services open to residents and tax payers allowing checks to be minimised as the id card provides enough evidence by its existence and issue date to avoid people repeatedly providing the same evidence to different authoritys.
having an id card which is basically saying the goverment accepts you to be a real identifiable person could be useful.
There are two possible area's where violations can occur where the card contains information unrelated to your id. if it contains your credit history your education details your police record your voting patterns your political leanings how you shop and what you buy. your ethnic origin religion and sexual preference and partners then this card can violate your rights by allowing access to unrelated information.
second where your id card gives access to the whole of the record of who you are
instead of to seperate databases which grant access to appropriate records.
finally how about making it so that only your physical card can allow access to your records without an order from a judge and you have the right to view all information retrieved about you as it is being retrieved.
I actually read the article and it said it would be brought in gradually with passport renewals
Which is interesting for me since I do not hold a uk passport I have an irish one (benefit of dual nationality) it seems the uk goverment can't make me have a card
when the EU was enlarged in May, working rights were granted to citizens of the new member states, however Mr Blunkett felt this was a perfect opportunity to trial his new ID card Scheme.
.. basically the same information and evidence that was required for the workers registration scheme.
Each person has to register within a month paying a 50 pound fee sending their passport and a letter from their Employer.
This scheme has had problems mainly relating to the processing of applications, taking too long to return passports, failure to recognise that some workers are students and will work here in the summer only- much as students do all over the world.
however, there is a second process which has to be gone through too which is the issuing of a permanent National Insurance number.
Having provided the necessary evidence to the goverment once, to get the id card issued you would think that issuing a national insurance number should be automatic.
Nationality proven, identity proven, a legitimate job but no it seems the goverment doesn't trust its own ID card scheme and requires a second round of applications and interviews this time with the DWP department of work and pensions. they require passport, letter from employer
As was explained to me by the WRS Manager this scheme Establishes Nationality it doesn't establish Identity.
The scheme is improving however now they will check and return passports on reciept and record the recorded delivery number which is issued by the royal mail so now they will be able to know what they have done with peoples passports.
The issueing of permanent National Insurance Numbers is quite critical for non uk nationals,the employer in this country has the responsibility of ensuring someone he employees is legal and a number of employers are not prepared to take on someone without a permanent NI number, with the existence of a National database of legal non uk nationals being created it and the issue of the ID card it should make it easier for non uk nationals to find work but since the goverment will not recognise it as being proof of ID who will?
As a further example, where the Id card should make a difference is the provision of a general practioner (family Dr), as people employed in this country and paying taxes and national insurance the Id card could be used to establish that this person is entitled to treatment under the NHS.
currently there is complete confusion about how and when somebody is resident and eligible for treatment in the UK and no clear guidelines have been issued to GP's how to proceed.
(correction in one part of the country at least the NHS trust is looking to see if they can use the ID card as one simple proof of entitlement to NHS treatment. )
Now they are aware of its existence it could simplify an administrative nightmare for the NHS.
maybe soon there will be a positive side to the Id card scheme at least in one area. There are many other area's that could also benefit such as library services and provision of education to migrant workers children.
simply by simplifying the red tape.
I know some people might say why should britain provide its goverment provided services to migrant workers, well since these people pay uk taxes and pay UK National Insurance payments contributing to UK society why should they be excluded from the services they contribute to?
I started this post with a negative view of the Id card scheme, but if it can simplify the procedures to gain access to services or conversely be used to deny them to people wishing to abuse uk services then it may have a positive use.
The Id card doesnt in itself give anymore information than you are a legitimate member of uk society with rights given to uk residents.
sure there may well be a lot of data held about an individual all referenceable to the Id card but it doesnt mean that all your records will be available to any agency at random.
certainly the data protection act is in place to prevent abuses of this kind.
does this mean they are selecting light colours / frequencys to route across the physical network? you want to send to computer1 blue light routes more directly too it with less relay points.
switching paths by frequency could really speed things up especially if the frequency used represented the path between computers. and the breaks in transmission the data
An alternative solution might be the adapdtec viedeoh hardware mpegII encoder with built in TV tuner. cost about 100 sterling add in the cost of a seperate burner then the price is competetive.
I can't quite see the advantage of this device as a stand alone unit.
Pirating videotapes maybe, simplicity?
I just can't see the point if you can't edit without using a PC why would you want to buy this device?
getting raw camcorder footage direct to dvd without editing is just going to mean ripping it again from the dvd to edit out all the worst shots.
"If you feel that copyright has no place in our society, then add your voice and pocketbook to the fight to legislate it out or reform it. Simply deciding to commit criminal and civil copyright violation is not some noble protest -- you want a copy of something you don't have a right to, or to provide a copy to someone else that they don't have a right to"
The phrase civil disobedience has no meaning for you then?
If a law is broken repeatedly by enough people it becomes unenforceable.
A quality product will always generate sales and illegal copies only reenforce sales of good products and conversely reduce sales of poor quality products.
It used to be the case hype was enough to generate initial sales, now the buying public is more critical, and will choose to buy quality over hype.
legal, illegal it changes nothing and copyright holders should be aware that the people downloading copies of thier products are also the same people buying their products.
The result of punitive action only ensures that the customer will never buy the product ever and might even work to undermine the copyright holders sales still further. Revenge is a very strong motive.
The licience fee is used to fund the bbc.
their are a huge number of stations which recieve no funding
from the licience fee. In my case the TV I watch is produced in Poland
and available freely, however to watch this I must fund a broadcaster who's broadcasts have no interest for me.
I would have no problems with the BBC being subscription only and encoded.
however the bbc has no intention of limiting it's availability in any format
thus legitimising its claim that to own and use broadcast recieving equipment
== recieving the bbc
if the bbc is so good then it can stand on its own merits encript the signal
compared to the price of cable or satellite subscription services the bbc subscription of 112 a year is extremely good value if you want it.
If you can't afford it or don't want it you shouldn't be criminalised for choosing not to subscribe.
it would be just like microsoft liciencing every PC because it might be used to run windows...
At this moment in time apple seem to be focusing on getting labels to contribute.
presumably any label which isn't on Itunes will be because they demanded unfair terms from apple.
which implies they are a bunch of greedy shit heads who put the money ahead of the music and not being on itunes will negatively effect thier music sales.
the next step has to be apple offering a standard contract to anyone who wants to sell thier music directly through Itunes.
I would be tempted to sell these at 90 or 98 cents as a symbolic difference that the artist gets paid not the leeches.
now the labels are hooked it is time for the artists to avoid the labels
and put control of the music back to the artists and cut out the middleman
I have a couple of laptops a tecra 520cdt and a satellite 4090 also a nec
The Nec is dead but has provided
a 32meg sodimm for the satellite a 400Mhz processor for my linux box and my worst system is now running at 333mhz using a cryrix m2 that came with the nec.
one day i will sell off the drives, keyboard, battery,mouse.
the 4090 came short a few pieces of plastic and no expansion memory
I have used phone e-topup cards to create a ram cover a hdbay cover and a retainer for the keyboard.
A Vhs video case was carefully cut down and now holds the battery in place.
The psu is the one from the tecra.
I decided i wanted the tecra running unfortunately the nec psu is too gutless
and too high a voltage for the toshiba to run from.
i had to modify a connector to fit the back of the tecra achieved by taking a dremell drill lead which had a similar coonector with a 2.5 mm dia hole in the end and drilling it out to 3mm (just enough metal to be successfull).
the over voltage of the nec it didnt like, and a hp printer psu was the right voltage but under powered (1 amp).
I finally thought of an old cb psu 13.8 volts, 3amp officially but measured as 14.1 took the dremmel lead and connected to that and now this powers the tecra.
I bought the 4090 with one aim in mind I have an adaptec videoh hardware mpegII encoder this now sits on the 4090 usb port and uses my wireless lan card to record mpegII streams to my my main system upstairs (nice and quietly)with realvnc I can remotely control the laptop from anywhere in the world,
The only thing i would like to impliment is remote control of my satellite and cable systems. via the laptop ir port but this seems to be impossible.
I would love to hear from anyone who has successfully used a laptop as a remote control for tv ect.
for case cracks ect I would like to suggest a hot glue gun this stuff is fantastic. I have even used it for holding the banisters to my stairs fantastic strength.
firstly
What has been reverse engineered the game or the server?
It seems they have reverse engineered a server not the game have they produced a game that works with the battlenet server?
secondly
For anyone else but the defendants they are not guilty of reverse engineering anything are they?
battlenet is made available is purely an option for users of the software.
where does it state you have to use battlenet servers clearly using it on the net is optional.
I think users of the alternative server system are not guilty of reverse engineering anything.
thirdly has it been proved that the EULA was agreed to within 30 days of purchasing the software.
IF the software was purchased and not opened for 31 days then surely it isn't possible for you to avoid a 1 sided agreement since the 30 day time period had already passed.
fourthly who agreed to the EULA anyway
If I install the software on your machine then surely you never agreed to the EULA.
no the original article states employee's
which is even more harebrained. so how do you measure that one? Do you get the cleaning staff from an agency to save on costs? perhaps you spin off the people using the software into a seperate company?
What if an agency employee uses the software is the agency now liable for licience fee's too?
I think the option look elsewhere for a solution may be the best choice.
british informative :)
I concur and will meta moderate that way too
Britain needs a space program of some sort and this is as close as it gets.
great that a judge shows some common sense.
But the poor suffering artists. I hear so many people say.
Would be pretty cool if the tape from the mixing desk after a show finished up on the bands website a moderate price set for the download fee.
wouldn't you love to have something better than your fading memories to treasure
after the show. The bands would make a solid profit.
Think of some of the shows you've seen over the years wouldn't you like to be able to rekindle your memories.
It doesn't happen, why not because the Record labels might lose sales.
not the artists not the people who actually make the music.
however on a plus point not all bands are signed.
these bands could release live show recordings not as polished performances
fans would understand.
all it takes is a simple store format that can take cash for downloads.
every band should be taping off the mixing desk and making each show available for download.
whats the problem?
wish it had been an option when i was younger the number of shows i know i enjoyed but what the music was like I hae no idea;)
boy am I sick of seeing that one!
a ndomletters.foo.com
effective spam filtering would be more use than the space
maybe one day hotmail will actually let users ban domains more effectively
at the moment they give the choice of
randomusername@randomletters.foo.com
or
*@r
and
*@*.foo.com
is whats needed for this one and they will not let me block it
at least hotmail popper lets me use thunderbird as a mail client instead of outlook.