"I wonder why no other country, even those technologically [more] advanced, have produced anything remotely comparable to Intel and AMD processors yet."
Well, let's just say, in Soviet Russia, CPU processes you!
Hmm... "fessed up"? Funny way of putting it, considering that companies actually taking responsibility seems to be somewhat of a rarity. My first thought was, "hey, that's great, they're acknowledging the problem and will fix it". Compare this to your own likely experiences of finding companies turning the other cheek and ignoring issues. I realize every company does it at one time or another, but I'm glad to see this issue actually being addressed, and not swept under the rug like one might expect.
Hell yeah. Their simultaneous releases go back to around 2001 or 2002 or so, with the release of Warcraft 3, which for me brought a feeling of "it's about time". I still remember how much I hated waiting forever and ever for the Mac release of Warcraft 2 (Dec 1995 for DOS/Win, Sept 1996 for Mac OS). By the time the game came out for Mac OS, most of my friends were already long since onto other games. So much for modem multiplayer games with my friends!
Either way though, I'm really glad that Blizzard has, since WC3, maintained consistent simultaneous Mac/Win releases. Actually, it seems kind of funny to say, but being able to say "WoW runs on OS X" is a strong positive aspect when explaining to friends some of the advantages of using a Mac.;)
"... just a few leaders can guide a swarm effectively by creating a bias in the swarm's movement that steers it in a particular direction"
Wow, did this remind anyone else somewhat of Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex and the Laughing Man and Individual Eleven cases? Plus there is plenty of discussion throughout the series about how subtle influence by a select few can affect the whole of society, unnoticed. I know it's a bit different, but it's kind of unreal to be hearing about this in the news after having only just recently watched the two seasons of Stand Alone Complex episodes...
Hahaha I love how the moderation for this post has gone up and down so drastically. It started out at my usual 2 points, went up to +5 insightful for a short time, down to +1 insightful with a bunch of "flamebait" and "overrated", went back up to +4 insightful this morning, and now just got a bunch of "overrated", so it's back down to +1 insightful. I'm anxious to see what happens next!:D
No kidding hey, it's to the point where I don't even need actual desk lamps or anything to see at night - all the various electronics create a nice friendly blue aura that offers more than enough light to navigate around. It's pretty creepy though, like some kind of sci-fi movie where everyone's lives are taken over by sentient technology. Then again, in a way it's actually kinda cool, like Ghost in the Shell or something.
Whatever, either way, enough of the obnoxiously bright LEDs!
My firewire audio interface has such a bright LED on it, you'll actually cast a shadow by walking past it. If I don't block the LED's path of light, there'll be a huge circle of blue light on my wall. What the heck? Still, pretty funny in its absurdness.;)
I definitely have a sense of humour, don't worry. The thing is, Halloween was over a week ago, and there's no indication at all in the article that it's actually supposed to be funny. I'm reading this article, wondering how in the hell editors at Archaeology magazine are actually cool with publishing an article rambling on and on about zombies!
Yeah, apparently I'm not the only one continuously thinking "what the f?" while reading this article, despite peoples' insistence that I just have no sense of humour. Sorry, it's just not funny when it's completely portrayed as some fucking factual scientific article, and is getting reposted in the Science section of other websites as though it's some worthwhile read.:P
No man, I actually have a pretty huge sense of humour, but... the whole article both in the Archaeology magazine and on Slashdot are both written in a fully serious tone with no actual indication that it's a joke. The fact that the article itself is long as hell is pretty amazing considering the detail they go into, rambling on about pure nonsense. 100% Onion material, not the kind of shit I'd expect to find in the latest issue of Archaeology magazine.
Uhh, am I just missing something here? Is this article a joke? Why is this posted on Slashdot? Is there some kind of long-running inside joke about this fictional "solanum" virus? Plus the site TFA is hosted on is apparently a publication from The Archaeological Institute of America...?? What the fuck. Sure, zombies are cool and all, but if I wanted to read some fantastical BS about arbitrary urban legends and whatever memes, I'd just read The Onion or browse through peoples' blogs. Woot, let's write about a bunch of fictional shit and post it in a serious tone so as to mess with people, in the middle of an otherwise factual and educational publication!
While I haven't reported phishing specifically, I've reported spam (both of which are unsolicited emails, by the way, with phishing actually being notably more harmful), and gotten a response nearly every time that the issue will be pursued (although in these cases I contacted the ISPs that owned the IPs that were sending out emails, and this was in the late 90s where the net wasn't full of millions of zombified PCs so it was easier for ISPs to pursue).
Either way, sure, I imagine a lot of the time you'll get lame "too bad" responses, but phishing is still considered illegal all over North America and Europe. Please see here for a bit of text about the legal response to phishing attacks. Note the guy mentioned at the end facing a potential maximum of 101 years in jail for phishing thousands of AOL users.
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if they bought Adobe. They've made some pretty big acquisitions of software developers in the past, the most relevant to me being their acquisition of eMagic, the developers of Logic Audio. Now Logic is one of Apple's key "Pro" applications, and they used the Logic technology to build their included-with-every-new-Mac "GarageBand" software (thus increasing the value of their platform - now you can produce music with every new Mac).
Considering that the vast majority of graphic design houses are running Macs, this does feel like another area where Apple could buy the company and bring further integration and a more "consistent experience" with the software, all the while further increasing the value of their platform.
That said, Adobe has a LOT of technology, history and a huge customer base (covering more than just Mac platforms, too). In my opinion, realistically, Adobe would be too big of a load for Apple to take on especially considering their own recent growth and increasing business responsibilities.
This basic "social engineering"-based trojan is old news.
I remember back when I ran a Hotline server (with fully legal files of course) from around 1997-2001, and people would try to "hack" my server by uploading these well-disguised "utilities" that were actually AppleScript applets that, when executed, would secretely add a maximum-priveleged admin account to the HL server. Someone would upload one of those and go "Hey dude check out this sweet [game/app/whatever], it's pretty cool!"... Of course, I always highly scrutinized user uploads and managed to catch them every time (fortunately), but the trojans were pretty damn convincing in terms of seeming genuine. Legit-looking application icon and detailed info with copyright etc. for whatever program the applet was masquerading as.
I'm sure a lot of other former Hotline server admins will remember the exact same thing, and I'm sure a lot of people unsuspectingly ran these malicious apps back in the day, not realizing how easy it was to disguise an app and conceal its actual purpose.
Anyway, needless to say, this type of trojan is old news. The only good thing about all the "OMFG" news-reporting is that users will be a little more vigilant about what they download and run, hopefully. Besides that, it's a complete non-item.
"I don't even have to point at an analogy, just at parallels - Napster. Kazaa. Both were very successfully litigated against for complicity in copyright infringement, no?"
Actually, those aren't true parallels. There's a key difference here. While Bit Torrent, Kazaa and Napster were all closed-source (AFAIK) and written by specific vendors/developers, Bit Torrent is the only one of those three that doesn't use a centralized service - hosted by the developer - that is required to use the software. Kazaa and Napster required you to connect to their respective services, thus opening up huge liability to their developers for running the service.
"Mere existence isn't enough. Has the comic you read won an award? Published an anthology? Those are pretty good indicators of notability."
Frankly, who cares? I don't. What if I want to know some details on [whatever web comic] someone just mentioned to me? Maybe I want to know a handful of relevant links? Google is going to give me a bunch of irrelevant crap I don't want.
On Wikipedia I can enter a word, name, phrase, and I'll get some information and some relevant links. I don't care for a damn second how "notable" the item in question is. I just want to know some information on what I typed in. Why is it such a huge deal if it's not that notable? Is there some huge scarcity of storage space for this data? I can see no reasonable excuse for having such strict and overzealous "notability" requirements.
I pretty often look up local bands to see some info about them. Of course none of them are even there. It would be nice if I didn't have to sort through a bunch of shitty, image/video-loaded Myspace pages in order to check out the local music scene. I'd love to read a few little blurbs about local bands on Wikipedia. Why is that such a problem? Actually, the real question is, is that even a problem at all?
IN FACT, I'll argue right now that the LESS notable something is, all the more reason to keep the article and get people to contribute whatever info they might have! Why even BOTHER running an online encyclopedia-style site if you're going to shut down articles that happen to pertain to not-widely-known subjects? I can understand extremely trivial stuff like "The QX935 is a $0.39 alarm clock from Bill's Dollar Store in Urbana, Ohio", but even then, maybe someone found an old "QX935" sitting around and are wondering about its origin?
I guess it's all a question of what the intention of Wikipedia is. They do have the text "edit an article and help make Wikipedia the best information source on the Internet", which implies to me that the more information available, the better. The whole "notability" rule seems to contradict this core concept, though.
I'd like to see Apple sue Logitech for this, actually. Of course it won't happen, but wow. Look at the bad press being caused by this shit. I'm fucking pissed and I'm not even using Leopard.
People really do buy bread? I see tons and tons of it every time I visit the supermarket! It's like they just stock it on the shelves for show, and no one ever buys any at all!.....;)
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, sorta like saying 5 MILLION CENTS.
... ;)
Dude, I went to the store yesterday and they were selling a bottle of pop for a full ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY CENTS! Talk about extreme!
"I wonder why no other country, even those technologically [more] advanced, have produced anything remotely comparable to Intel and AMD processors yet."
Well, let's just say, in Soviet Russia, CPU processes you!
Hmm... "fessed up"? Funny way of putting it, considering that companies actually taking responsibility seems to be somewhat of a rarity. My first thought was, "hey, that's great, they're acknowledging the problem and will fix it". Compare this to your own likely experiences of finding companies turning the other cheek and ignoring issues. I realize every company does it at one time or another, but I'm glad to see this issue actually being addressed, and not swept under the rug like one might expect.
Hell yeah. Their simultaneous releases go back to around 2001 or 2002 or so, with the release of Warcraft 3, which for me brought a feeling of "it's about time". I still remember how much I hated waiting forever and ever for the Mac release of Warcraft 2 (Dec 1995 for DOS/Win, Sept 1996 for Mac OS). By the time the game came out for Mac OS, most of my friends were already long since onto other games. So much for modem multiplayer games with my friends!
;)
Either way though, I'm really glad that Blizzard has, since WC3, maintained consistent simultaneous Mac/Win releases. Actually, it seems kind of funny to say, but being able to say "WoW runs on OS X" is a strong positive aspect when explaining to friends some of the advantages of using a Mac.
"... just a few leaders can guide a swarm effectively by creating a bias in the swarm's movement that steers it in a particular direction"
Wow, did this remind anyone else somewhat of Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex and the Laughing Man and Individual Eleven cases? Plus there is plenty of discussion throughout the series about how subtle influence by a select few can affect the whole of society, unnoticed. I know it's a bit different, but it's kind of unreal to be hearing about this in the news after having only just recently watched the two seasons of Stand Alone Complex episodes...
Hahaha I love how the moderation for this post has gone up and down so drastically. It started out at my usual 2 points, went up to +5 insightful for a short time, down to +1 insightful with a bunch of "flamebait" and "overrated", went back up to +4 insightful this morning, and now just got a bunch of "overrated", so it's back down to +1 insightful. I'm anxious to see what happens next! :D
No kidding hey, it's to the point where I don't even need actual desk lamps or anything to see at night - all the various electronics create a nice friendly blue aura that offers more than enough light to navigate around. It's pretty creepy though, like some kind of sci-fi movie where everyone's lives are taken over by sentient technology. Then again, in a way it's actually kinda cool, like Ghost in the Shell or something.
;)
Whatever, either way, enough of the obnoxiously bright LEDs!
My firewire audio interface has such a bright LED on it, you'll actually cast a shadow by walking past it. If I don't block the LED's path of light, there'll be a huge circle of blue light on my wall. What the heck? Still, pretty funny in its absurdness.
I definitely have a sense of humour, don't worry. The thing is, Halloween was over a week ago, and there's no indication at all in the article that it's actually supposed to be funny. I'm reading this article, wondering how in the hell editors at Archaeology magazine are actually cool with publishing an article rambling on and on about zombies!
Yeah, apparently I'm not the only one continuously thinking "what the f?" while reading this article, despite peoples' insistence that I just have no sense of humour. Sorry, it's just not funny when it's completely portrayed as some fucking factual scientific article, and is getting reposted in the Science section of other websites as though it's some worthwhile read. :P
No man, I actually have a pretty huge sense of humour, but... the whole article both in the Archaeology magazine and on Slashdot are both written in a fully serious tone with no actual indication that it's a joke. The fact that the article itself is long as hell is pretty amazing considering the detail they go into, rambling on about pure nonsense. 100% Onion material, not the kind of shit I'd expect to find in the latest issue of Archaeology magazine.
I was talking about the Archaeology magazine.
Uhh, am I just missing something here? Is this article a joke? Why is this posted on Slashdot? Is there some kind of long-running inside joke about this fictional "solanum" virus? Plus the site TFA is hosted on is apparently a publication from The Archaeological Institute of America...?? What the fuck. Sure, zombies are cool and all, but if I wanted to read some fantastical BS about arbitrary urban legends and whatever memes, I'd just read The Onion or browse through peoples' blogs. Woot, let's write about a bunch of fictional shit and post it in a serious tone so as to mess with people, in the middle of an otherwise factual and educational publication!
While I haven't reported phishing specifically, I've reported spam (both of which are unsolicited emails, by the way, with phishing actually being notably more harmful), and gotten a response nearly every time that the issue will be pursued (although in these cases I contacted the ISPs that owned the IPs that were sending out emails, and this was in the late 90s where the net wasn't full of millions of zombified PCs so it was easier for ISPs to pursue).
Either way, sure, I imagine a lot of the time you'll get lame "too bad" responses, but phishing is still considered illegal all over North America and Europe. Please see here for a bit of text about the legal response to phishing attacks. Note the guy mentioned at the end facing a potential maximum of 101 years in jail for phishing thousands of AOL users.
Thanks for posting something informative & interesting as opposed to the rhetorical "who cares" bullshit other people were posting in response. :)
Like the title of this post says - screw antivirus software, call appropriate law enforcement agencies when you get these phishing attempts!
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if they bought Adobe. They've made some pretty big acquisitions of software developers in the past, the most relevant to me being their acquisition of eMagic, the developers of Logic Audio. Now Logic is one of Apple's key "Pro" applications, and they used the Logic technology to build their included-with-every-new-Mac "GarageBand" software (thus increasing the value of their platform - now you can produce music with every new Mac).
Considering that the vast majority of graphic design houses are running Macs, this does feel like another area where Apple could buy the company and bring further integration and a more "consistent experience" with the software, all the while further increasing the value of their platform.
That said, Adobe has a LOT of technology, history and a huge customer base (covering more than just Mac platforms, too). In my opinion, realistically, Adobe would be too big of a load for Apple to take on especially considering their own recent growth and increasing business responsibilities.
This basic "social engineering"-based trojan is old news.
I remember back when I ran a Hotline server (with fully legal files of course) from around 1997-2001, and people would try to "hack" my server by uploading these well-disguised "utilities" that were actually AppleScript applets that, when executed, would secretely add a maximum-priveleged admin account to the HL server. Someone would upload one of those and go "Hey dude check out this sweet [game/app/whatever], it's pretty cool!"... Of course, I always highly scrutinized user uploads and managed to catch them every time (fortunately), but the trojans were pretty damn convincing in terms of seeming genuine. Legit-looking application icon and detailed info with copyright etc. for whatever program the applet was masquerading as.
I'm sure a lot of other former Hotline server admins will remember the exact same thing, and I'm sure a lot of people unsuspectingly ran these malicious apps back in the day, not realizing how easy it was to disguise an app and conceal its actual purpose.
Anyway, needless to say, this type of trojan is old news. The only good thing about all the "OMFG" news-reporting is that users will be a little more vigilant about what they download and run, hopefully. Besides that, it's a complete non-item.
"What's the sound of a thousand eyes rolling?"
:(
Jeez, I don't know, but it probably sounds pretty damn disgusting. Gross!
"I don't even have to point at an analogy, just at parallels - Napster. Kazaa. Both were very successfully litigated against for complicity in copyright infringement, no?"
Actually, those aren't true parallels. There's a key difference here. While Bit Torrent, Kazaa and Napster were all closed-source (AFAIK) and written by specific vendors/developers, Bit Torrent is the only one of those three that doesn't use a centralized service - hosted by the developer - that is required to use the software. Kazaa and Napster required you to connect to their respective services, thus opening up huge liability to their developers for running the service.
"Mere existence isn't enough. Has the comic you read won an award? Published an anthology? Those are pretty good indicators of notability."
Frankly, who cares? I don't. What if I want to know some details on [whatever web comic] someone just mentioned to me? Maybe I want to know a handful of relevant links? Google is going to give me a bunch of irrelevant crap I don't want.
On Wikipedia I can enter a word, name, phrase, and I'll get some information and some relevant links. I don't care for a damn second how "notable" the item in question is. I just want to know some information on what I typed in. Why is it such a huge deal if it's not that notable? Is there some huge scarcity of storage space for this data? I can see no reasonable excuse for having such strict and overzealous "notability" requirements.
I pretty often look up local bands to see some info about them. Of course none of them are even there. It would be nice if I didn't have to sort through a bunch of shitty, image/video-loaded Myspace pages in order to check out the local music scene. I'd love to read a few little blurbs about local bands on Wikipedia. Why is that such a problem? Actually, the real question is, is that even a problem at all?
IN FACT, I'll argue right now that the LESS notable something is, all the more reason to keep the article and get people to contribute whatever info they might have! Why even BOTHER running an online encyclopedia-style site if you're going to shut down articles that happen to pertain to not-widely-known subjects? I can understand extremely trivial stuff like "The QX935 is a $0.39 alarm clock from Bill's Dollar Store in Urbana, Ohio", but even then, maybe someone found an old "QX935" sitting around and are wondering about its origin?
I guess it's all a question of what the intention of Wikipedia is. They do have the text "edit an article and help make Wikipedia the best information source on the Internet", which implies to me that the more information available, the better. The whole "notability" rule seems to contradict this core concept, though.
I'd like to see Apple sue Logitech for this, actually. Of course it won't happen, but wow. Look at the bad press being caused by this shit. I'm fucking pissed and I'm not even using Leopard.
People really do buy bread? I see tons and tons of it every time I visit the supermarket! It's like they just stock it on the shelves for show, and no one ever buys any at all! ... .. ;)
In the 2030's the family dines in cyberspace. :)
Oh jeez, "Troll"? It was a joke ... Laugh! It's supposed to be funny! :P
Anarchy in the UK!! ;)