Unless you don't update AV definitions, this is a nonissue. The AV definition files dated 5/16/16 rev24 included an updated av engine component that fixes this vulnerability. By the time I heard of this issue, our SEPM server had already downloaded the defs with fixed engine and 3/4 of our enterprise was already up to date.
The SHA-1 hash is available on any official downloads (Vista, Office 2007, etc) from Microsoft. That includes TechNet, MSDN, and Connect (Beta testers) download links. For reference, b71e04564ca22e4d9928e59298eff87cf62b382b is the SHA-1 hash from the TechNet Plus download of Vista x86 (one DVD includes all versions except Enterprise).
I don't know who Vitaly Friedman is, but his submission (quoted in italics) is verbatim from the intro to the article about this on ArsTechnica posted yesterday.
I clicked on one of their flash-based banners offering a free Xbox. The process was very similar to what was described in the article, but I only had to do one offer from each of three pages of offers. I signed up with a throwaway email account, signed up for AOL, Blockbuster's Netflix thing, and Video Professor. When I signed up, nothing was said about how long you had to stay signed up, just that you had to stay signed up until they received notice from the partner that you had. So after about a week, all three were confirmed that I had signed up, and I was free to cancel them. AOL was easy enough, although they really try to hold on to you, almost getting abusive when you try to cancel. Now I get tons of CDs in the mail asking me to come back. The Blockbuster thing was actually nice, as I was able to use it to compliment my NetFlix for the 2 weeks I had it, getting a total of 6 movies in the mail, plus two coupons for in-store movies. Cancelling was painless and no billing whatsoever. Finally, Video Professor was interesting. I got a set of CDs of Access training. Opened them, looked at them, and called up to return them after it was confirmed. They tried to pressure me to keep subscribed, offered to let me keep these free instead of paying the $59.99 and then send me out another set of trial CDs. Eventually they relented and gave me the RMA number. I did have to actually pay to return these, as they were more than first class postage.
So I mailed in my "certificate" to IncentiveRewardCenter and a few weeks go by, no change in status on their website. Thinking it's a scam, and they just tossed it, I figured what the hell, I'll make sure they didn't. I re-sent in my redemption certificate, proof of delivery and signature required. Within a week, they had mailed me a check for $149.99. The check beat the postcard from Florida with the signature from TheUseful.com by a day also. So in conclusion, I am happy with the way it turned out. For the investment of a bit of time documenting everything, postage of one set of CDs to Utah, and a registered letter to Florida, I got 6 DVDs from Blockbuster to copy and a check for $150, which helped pay some Christmas bills. The check was actually better than getting an Xbox, new or refurbed.
Maxim Stuff Playboy Maximum PC Wired Business 2.0 Reason Liberty Skeptical Inquirer (but I don't plan on resubscribing, not what I was expecting) Weekly World News (cubicle art!) and about 5-6 IT Industry rags that I get at work.
I believe that the first MP3 I downloaded was Metallica - Breadfan. I was just so stoked that I could find rare Metallica tunes, since the singles that they were B-sides on were long out of print, and Garage Days was impossible to find. I remember spending about an hour figuring out how to create a self-extracting, floppy spanning zip file so I could package a pre-1.0 WinAmp and the Metallica song onto about 5 floppies and give it to another Metallica fan where I worked.
When I read the article text submitted by SoDaLaS, I realized I had read it before. Look for [H]ardOCP's news about the Athlon XP 3200+ posted yesterday at 11:50am.
Last night I was watching one of the many Law & Order episodes stored on my TiVo, and I noticed that the defense attorney sat down at the conference table with McCoy and set down his Starbucks coffee. The camera lingered on it for a couple seconds before moving on to focus on the convo between the two. At at least one other point I saw the cops carrying a Starbucks cup while they were doing their job. These are the kinds of ads that you can't FF through, and I think eventually you'll see more of them. If they become too obvious or obtrusive, they might finally turn me off of TV for good.
After watching my waistline steadily increase from 128+ oz of Mt. Dew a day while I was at college, I switched to diet pops, which has helped greatly. Now I have gone even more extreme, and my prefered libation is Caffeine-Free Diet Coke. I think it tastes just like the real thing, while the diet caffeine-free pepsi tastes so watery. If they made diet caffeine-free Code Red, I'd drink that, but I am enjoying my non-caffeinated lifestyle now.
Those were Bolians, not Tholians. Tholians are evidently energy based or somehow hard for people to look at. The big tapestry that hangs in Quark's is supposedly a portrait of a famous Tholian general.
Re:Small util for Windows to listen on port 80?
on
Code Redux
·
· Score: 1
Thank you very much for this, I have no programming experience and I knew it had to be something relatively simple to do:) I'd like to file a bug report though, you have old and new swapped. the worms that use a series of N's are the old ones, and the worms that use X's are the new ones. I just thought it strange that in the last 10 hours my linux box got 22 new and 2 old attempts, while my windows box on the IP next to it got 47 "old" attempts and only 2 "new" attempts in about 16 hours. All in all, great program though. I used it on my machine at work and found that our main internal webserver was infected with the new strain, if its available to the Internet as well as the intranet we have a problem (but not mine to fix).
Small util for Windows to listen on port 80?
on
Code Redux
·
· Score: 1
Has anyone written a small little daemon that runs on win32 to listen to incoming requests on port 80 (or any configurable port) and just log the IP and string sent by the remote computer? I would like to have something like that to see how many times my windows box has been hit, even though its not vulnerable, and especially I'd love to install it on my work computer to see if code red is floating around the corporate network at all.
Heh, I still have a huge 3-ring binder with printouts of as much of the core code I had access to of the MUD I was a wizard on (EotL), circa 1995 or 1996, somewhere around then. I have no idea why I keep lugging the hefty book around, maybe I think that someday I'll actually have a use for ThingCode and MonsterCode and whatnot in a project of my own:)
Synthe AKA Nardo
Do You Want Smaller Government?
on
Should You Vote?
·
· Score: 1
This is an email that Harry Browne sent out to his mailing list and the Libertarian mailing list. It explains why voting Libertarian is not throwing away your vote.
-----------
Do You Want Smaller Government?
by Harry Browne
Libertarian Candidate for President
The most important political question you can ask
yourself is simply this:
Do you want smaller government?
Do you want an end to the welfare state, to
government destroying our health-care system, to
government at all levels taking 47% of the
national income in taxes, to government intrusions
into your life and your business?
Do you want smaller government?
Stop Supporting Big Government
If you do, the first step toward getting it is
obvious:
You must stop supporting those who are making
government bigger.
You can't go east by moving west. It's a physical
impossibility.
You can't make government smaller by rewarding
those who make government bigger. It's a political
impossibility.
Only when you begin asking for what you really
want do you have any chance of getting it.
Al Gore wants to make government bigger. He's
proposed a long list of new government programs.
George W. Bush wants to make government bigger.
He's proposed an equally long list of new
government programs to show that he's as
compassionate as Mr. Gore -- as though having
government spend your money somehow demonstrates
compassion.
Pat Buchanan says he wants a return to
constitutional government. But he's made no
specific proposals to reduce government, while
proposing to have government fix what he thinks is
wrong with America. For one thing, he wants to
tell you what kind of car you can drive.
And Ralph Nader wants to tell you whether you can
drive a car at all. But that's the least of his
many plans to make government much bigger.
What Smaller Government Means
I am the only presidential candidate offering
specific proposals to make government smaller --
much smaller:
* I want to get the federal government
_completely_ out of every area where it's made
such a mess -- health care, education, law
enforcement, welfare, foreign aid, corporate
welfare, highway boondoggles, farm subsidies. Not
only are these programs unconstitutional, they do
tremendous damage to our lives.
* I want to make the federal government so small
you won't pay _any_ income tax. (The tariffs and
excise taxes already being collected are enough to
finance the constitutional functions of
government.)
* I want to free you immediately and completely
from the Social Security system. I want to sell
off government assets to finance private
retirement accounts for anyone now dependent on
Social Security -- so you and I and every other
American can immediately stop paying the 15%
Social Security tax.
* I want to end the nightmare of Prohibition by
stopping the insane War on Drugs. At least 90% of
the invasions of your civil liberties over the
last 30 years have been justified by the Drug War.
You may have no interest in drugs, but the
government still snoops in your bank account,
monitors your email, and claims the power to
search and seize your property without due
process.
* I want to restore completely your unconditional
right to keep and bear any weapon necessary to
defend yourself and your family. We can't end gun
violence with new laws or by enforcing the laws on
the books now. The gun laws are the principal
_cause_ of gun violence, so we must repeal those
laws.
* I _don't_ want to appoint Supreme Court judges
who are "strict constructionists" or who divine
"original intent." I want to appoint judges who
can read the plain language of the Constitution --
who understand that when the Constitution says
"Congress shall make no law," it means _Congress
shall make no law_. I want judges who will strike
down government programs that are not authorized
by the Constitution.
In short, I don't want to slow the growth of
government. I don't even want to stop the growth
of government. I want to _reduce_ government
dramatically -- to the limits imposed by the
Constitution.
What Freedom Means
I want you to be free to live your life as _you_
want to live it -- not as Al Gore or George Bush
thinks you should.
You're the one who gets up every morning and goes
to work for 8, 10, or 12 hours a day. How dare
politicians like George Bush or Al Gore presume to
decide how much of what you earn you should be
allowed to keep?
I want you to be able to keep _every_ dollar you
earn -- to spend it, save it, give it away as
_you_ think best -- not just the crumbs the
politicians leave for you.
I want you to be able to use your own money to put
your children in a school of your choice --
private, religious, or home school -- without
having to beg the state for a voucher or plead
with the Board of Education for improvement.
I want you to be able to use your own money to
start your own business. Or to support your church
or favorite charity in a way you've never been
able to do before.
I want you to be free. I want to get government
out of your life.
Isn't that what _you_ want?
How to Get to Smaller Government
If so, why would you vote for someone who's moving
in the opposite direction -- someone who's made it
clear he intends to make government bigger, not
smaller?
I'm the only candidate who's running solely for
the purpose of making government smaller. I'm the
only candidate who doesn't presume to know what
charities your money should go to, or how much of
your income belongs to the politicians.
How You Can Win
Can I win?
Probably not. But if you vote for anyone else, you
won't win either. Your candidate might win, but
_you_ won't get what you want. Government will
continue to get bigger, more expensive, more
intrusive, and more oppressive -- and you will
have given your approval to this.
No matter what your reason for voting for Mr. Bush
or Mr. Gore -- to keep Al Gore out of the White
House or to ward off the Religious Right -- your
vote will be interpreted as an endorsement of
every big-government proposal your candidate has
made.
Even though we Libertarians may not win this year,
every vote I get will be an endorsement, a
statement, a declaration on behalf of smaller
government. No one can misinterpret a vote for me
as a vote for more government.
And if I get even one million votes, it could
change politics in America forever. It could cause
the press to pay more attention to
smaller-government proposals, it could encourage
other voters to abandon the big-government
parties, and it could attract millions of
non-voters who have given up on any hope of
getting smaller government.
Please don't let the old parties destroy your
future by scaring you into voting _against_
someone this year.
Raise your sights. Vote in a way that could lead
to a free America with a constitutional government
before the end of this decade.
For once, vote for yourself instead of a
politician. Vote for freedom.
Vote Libertarian.
---
Harry Browne is the Libertarian candidate for
president, and the author of The Great Libertarian
Offer. More of his articles are available at
http://www.HarryBrowne2000.org/lw
If I recall correctly, the gentleman that has these deeds shopped around for a bureau of land management office that would let him file the mining claims on the moon. Eventually he found the mining office in my hometown, Spokane, WA, who was perfectly willing to file the forms and take his money. I thought his name was Budnick or something though, maybe a different guy (or a different piece of extraterrestrial real-estate). His name is the basis of our newspapers yearly stupid news awards, the Budnicks.
Rather than think in James Bond terms, I like to think of it in Cyberpunk 2020 terms. Nowadays it seems all I have to do is pull out my Chrome Book 1, flip to a random page, and there's next weeks new techno-gizmo to be announced:)
This Ask Slashdot was about the most intelligent discussion of the state of the net and the future of it that I have seen in a long time. I was hoping for some decent insight from the l0pht guys, and instead I recieved some of the most insightful thoughts of the year. I really hope that somehow the Powers That Be can convince l0pht to do something like a monthly (or even quarterly or semi-annually) article for/. .
From what I understood in the news article, the error was not at the shipping company, but in Redmond. Some clerk either mislabled the prototype with this NY guy's address, or their computer system misprinted the address. The shipping company delivered the package to the address that was specified. If anyone is to blame here it should be the MS shipping clerk or database admin, not the shipper, not the person who recieved the final unit.
Would cash be worth anything if anyone could just download a fifty and print it out?
Cash is intrinsically worthless, as it is a small piece of paper with a little bit of ink on it. The only reason it has value is because the government says it does. In the past, the value was backed up by the fact that there was a real amount of real gold sitting somewhere that was represented by that piece of paper. Now, the only thing backing up that piece of paper is the word of the government, make of that what you will.
The only way to preserve the value of things like cash is to make sure that no one can duplicate it.
Until the science of thaumaturgy(sp) becomes widespread and cost efficient, gold (or other valuable metals) are an effective solution. That of course implies that each person also has the equipment and knowledge needed to verify that this heavy yellow coin is in fact gold, but we're speaking of ideals here anyways.:)
Does it matter if the person was of importance? Although I don't condone their ideas or actions, I think the Branch Davidians would have a bone to pick with the US Government, as would Randy Weaver's wife and son, who were both shot at Ruby Ridge by FBI sharpshooters as they had their backs turned.
There is a project I stumbled upon that is purporting to do just this. The site is Artemis Society International and they state that they want to do a privately funded lunar colony, similar (but not exactly like) the D.D. Harriman project in "The Man Who Sold The Moon," by Robert Heinlein.
Slashdot Mirror
Unless you don't update AV definitions, this is a nonissue. The AV definition files dated 5/16/16 rev24 included an updated av engine component that fixes this vulnerability. By the time I heard of this issue, our SEPM server had already downloaded the defs with fixed engine and 3/4 of our enterprise was already up to date.
The SHA-1 hash is available on any official downloads (Vista, Office 2007, etc) from Microsoft. That includes TechNet, MSDN, and Connect (Beta testers) download links. For reference, b71e04564ca22e4d9928e59298eff87cf62b382b is the SHA-1 hash from the TechNet Plus download of Vista x86 (one DVD includes all versions except Enterprise).
Who is John Galt?
I don't know who Vitaly Friedman is, but his submission (quoted in italics) is verbatim from the intro to the article about this on ArsTechnica posted yesterday.
I clicked on one of their flash-based banners offering a free Xbox. The process was very similar to what was described in the article, but I only had to do one offer from each of three pages of offers. I signed up with a throwaway email account, signed up for AOL, Blockbuster's Netflix thing, and Video Professor. When I signed up, nothing was said about how long you had to stay signed up, just that you had to stay signed up until they received notice from the partner that you had. So after about a week, all three were confirmed that I had signed up, and I was free to cancel them.
AOL was easy enough, although they really try to hold on to you, almost getting abusive when you try to cancel. Now I get tons of CDs in the mail asking me to come back. The Blockbuster thing was actually nice, as I was able to use it to compliment my NetFlix for the 2 weeks I had it, getting a total of 6 movies in the mail, plus two coupons for in-store movies. Cancelling was painless and no billing whatsoever. Finally, Video Professor was interesting. I got a set of CDs of Access training. Opened them, looked at them, and called up to return them after it was confirmed. They tried to pressure me to keep subscribed, offered to let me keep these free instead of paying the $59.99 and then send me out another set of trial CDs. Eventually they relented and gave me the RMA number. I did have to actually pay to return these, as they were more than first class postage.
So I mailed in my "certificate" to IncentiveRewardCenter and a few weeks go by, no change in status on their website. Thinking it's a scam, and they just tossed it, I figured what the hell, I'll make sure they didn't. I re-sent in my redemption certificate, proof of delivery and signature required. Within a week, they had mailed me a check for $149.99. The check beat the postcard from Florida with the signature from TheUseful.com by a day also.
So in conclusion, I am happy with the way it turned out. For the investment of a bit of time documenting everything, postage of one set of CDs to Utah, and a registered letter to Florida, I got 6 DVDs from Blockbuster to copy and a check for $150, which helped pay some Christmas bills. The check was actually better than getting an Xbox, new or refurbed.
Maxim
Stuff
Playboy
Maximum PC
Wired
Business 2.0
Reason
Liberty
Skeptical Inquirer (but I don't plan on resubscribing, not what I was expecting)
Weekly World News (cubicle art!)
and about 5-6 IT Industry rags that I get at work.
I believe that the first MP3 I downloaded was Metallica - Breadfan. I was just so stoked that I could find rare Metallica tunes, since the singles that they were B-sides on were long out of print, and Garage Days was impossible to find. I remember spending about an hour figuring out how to create a self-extracting, floppy spanning zip file so I could package a pre-1.0 WinAmp and the Metallica song onto about 5 floppies and give it to another Metallica fan where I worked.
When I read the article text submitted by SoDaLaS, I realized I had read it before. Look for [H]ardOCP's news about the Athlon XP 3200+ posted yesterday at 11:50am.
Last night I was watching one of the many Law & Order episodes stored on my TiVo, and I noticed that the defense attorney sat down at the conference table with McCoy and set down his Starbucks coffee. The camera lingered on it for a couple seconds before moving on to focus on the convo between the two. At at least one other point I saw the cops carrying a Starbucks cup while they were doing their job. These are the kinds of ads that you can't FF through, and I think eventually you'll see more of them. If they become too obvious or obtrusive, they might finally turn me off of TV for good.
After watching my waistline steadily increase from 128+ oz of Mt. Dew a day while I was at college, I switched to diet pops, which has helped greatly. Now I have gone even more extreme, and my prefered libation is Caffeine-Free Diet Coke. I think it tastes just like the real thing, while the diet caffeine-free pepsi tastes so watery. If they made diet caffeine-free Code Red, I'd drink that, but I am enjoying my non-caffeinated lifestyle now.
Those were Bolians, not Tholians. Tholians are evidently energy based or somehow hard for people to look at. The big tapestry that hangs in Quark's is supposedly a portrait of a famous Tholian general.
Thank you very much for this, I have no programming experience and I knew it had to be something relatively simple to do :) I'd like to file a bug report though, you have old and new swapped. the worms that use a series of N's are the old ones, and the worms that use X's are the new ones. I just thought it strange that in the last 10 hours my linux box got 22 new and 2 old attempts, while my windows box on the IP next to it got 47 "old" attempts and only 2 "new" attempts in about 16 hours. All in all, great program though. I used it on my machine at work and found that our main internal webserver was infected with the new strain, if its available to the Internet as well as the intranet we have a problem (but not mine to fix).
Has anyone written a small little daemon that runs on win32 to listen to incoming requests on port 80 (or any configurable port) and just log the IP and string sent by the remote computer? I would like to have something like that to see how many times my windows box has been hit, even though its not vulnerable, and especially I'd love to install it on my work computer to see if code red is floating around the corporate network at all.
Heh, I still have a huge 3-ring binder with printouts of as much of the core code I had access to of the MUD I was a wizard on (EotL), circa 1995 or 1996, somewhere around then. I have no idea why I keep lugging the hefty book around, maybe I think that someday I'll actually have a use for ThingCode and MonsterCode and whatnot in a project of my own :)
Synthe AKA Nardo
This is an email that Harry Browne sent out to his mailing list and the Libertarian mailing list. It explains why voting Libertarian is not throwing away your vote.
-----------
Do You Want Smaller Government?
by Harry Browne
Libertarian Candidate for President
The most important political question you can ask
yourself is simply this:
Do you want smaller government?
Do you want an end to the welfare state, to
government destroying our health-care system, to
government at all levels taking 47% of the
national income in taxes, to government intrusions
into your life and your business?
Do you want smaller government?
Stop Supporting Big Government
If you do, the first step toward getting it is
obvious:
You must stop supporting those who are making
government bigger.
You can't go east by moving west. It's a physical
impossibility.
You can't make government smaller by rewarding
those who make government bigger. It's a political
impossibility.
Only when you begin asking for what you really
want do you have any chance of getting it.
Al Gore wants to make government bigger. He's
proposed a long list of new government programs.
George W. Bush wants to make government bigger.
He's proposed an equally long list of new
government programs to show that he's as
compassionate as Mr. Gore -- as though having
government spend your money somehow demonstrates
compassion.
Pat Buchanan says he wants a return to
constitutional government. But he's made no
specific proposals to reduce government, while
proposing to have government fix what he thinks is
wrong with America. For one thing, he wants to
tell you what kind of car you can drive.
And Ralph Nader wants to tell you whether you can
drive a car at all. But that's the least of his
many plans to make government much bigger.
What Smaller Government Means
I am the only presidential candidate offering
specific proposals to make government smaller --
much smaller:
* I want to get the federal government
_completely_ out of every area where it's made
such a mess -- health care, education, law
enforcement, welfare, foreign aid, corporate
welfare, highway boondoggles, farm subsidies. Not
only are these programs unconstitutional, they do
tremendous damage to our lives.
* I want to make the federal government so small
you won't pay _any_ income tax. (The tariffs and
excise taxes already being collected are enough to
finance the constitutional functions of
government.)
* I want to free you immediately and completely
from the Social Security system. I want to sell
off government assets to finance private
retirement accounts for anyone now dependent on
Social Security -- so you and I and every other
American can immediately stop paying the 15%
Social Security tax.
* I want to end the nightmare of Prohibition by
stopping the insane War on Drugs. At least 90% of
the invasions of your civil liberties over the
last 30 years have been justified by the Drug War.
You may have no interest in drugs, but the
government still snoops in your bank account,
monitors your email, and claims the power to
search and seize your property without due
process.
* I want to restore completely your unconditional
right to keep and bear any weapon necessary to
defend yourself and your family. We can't end gun
violence with new laws or by enforcing the laws on
the books now. The gun laws are the principal
_cause_ of gun violence, so we must repeal those
laws.
* I _don't_ want to appoint Supreme Court judges
who are "strict constructionists" or who divine
"original intent." I want to appoint judges who
can read the plain language of the Constitution --
who understand that when the Constitution says
"Congress shall make no law," it means _Congress
shall make no law_. I want judges who will strike
down government programs that are not authorized
by the Constitution.
In short, I don't want to slow the growth of
government. I don't even want to stop the growth
of government. I want to _reduce_ government
dramatically -- to the limits imposed by the
Constitution.
What Freedom Means
I want you to be free to live your life as _you_
want to live it -- not as Al Gore or George Bush
thinks you should.
You're the one who gets up every morning and goes
to work for 8, 10, or 12 hours a day. How dare
politicians like George Bush or Al Gore presume to
decide how much of what you earn you should be
allowed to keep?
I want you to be able to keep _every_ dollar you
earn -- to spend it, save it, give it away as
_you_ think best -- not just the crumbs the
politicians leave for you.
I want you to be able to use your own money to put
your children in a school of your choice --
private, religious, or home school -- without
having to beg the state for a voucher or plead
with the Board of Education for improvement.
I want you to be able to use your own money to
start your own business. Or to support your church
or favorite charity in a way you've never been
able to do before.
I want you to be free. I want to get government
out of your life.
Isn't that what _you_ want?
How to Get to Smaller Government
If so, why would you vote for someone who's moving
in the opposite direction -- someone who's made it
clear he intends to make government bigger, not
smaller?
I'm the only candidate who's running solely for
the purpose of making government smaller. I'm the
only candidate who doesn't presume to know what
charities your money should go to, or how much of
your income belongs to the politicians.
How You Can Win
Can I win?
Probably not. But if you vote for anyone else, you
won't win either. Your candidate might win, but
_you_ won't get what you want. Government will
continue to get bigger, more expensive, more
intrusive, and more oppressive -- and you will
have given your approval to this.
No matter what your reason for voting for Mr. Bush
or Mr. Gore -- to keep Al Gore out of the White
House or to ward off the Religious Right -- your
vote will be interpreted as an endorsement of
every big-government proposal your candidate has
made.
Even though we Libertarians may not win this year,
every vote I get will be an endorsement, a
statement, a declaration on behalf of smaller
government. No one can misinterpret a vote for me
as a vote for more government.
And if I get even one million votes, it could
change politics in America forever. It could cause
the press to pay more attention to
smaller-government proposals, it could encourage
other voters to abandon the big-government
parties, and it could attract millions of
non-voters who have given up on any hope of
getting smaller government.
Please don't let the old parties destroy your
future by scaring you into voting _against_
someone this year.
Raise your sights. Vote in a way that could lead
to a free America with a constitutional government
before the end of this decade.
For once, vote for yourself instead of a
politician. Vote for freedom.
Vote Libertarian.
---
Harry Browne is the Libertarian candidate for
president, and the author of The Great Libertarian
Offer. More of his articles are available at
http://www.HarryBrowne2000.org/lw
This is a valid question, not a troll.
Found this on Gateway's website, looks like the beast we're talking about here.
Gateway Micro Server 100
If I recall correctly, the gentleman that has these deeds shopped around for a bureau of land management office that would let him file the mining claims on the moon. Eventually he found the mining office in my hometown, Spokane, WA, who was perfectly willing to file the forms and take his money. I thought his name was Budnick or something though, maybe a different guy (or a different piece of extraterrestrial real-estate). His name is the basis of our newspapers yearly stupid news awards, the Budnicks.
Rather than think in James Bond terms, I like to think of it in Cyberpunk 2020 terms. Nowadays it seems all I have to do is pull out my Chrome Book 1, flip to a random page, and there's next weeks new techno-gizmo to be announced :)
This Ask Slashdot was about the most intelligent discussion of the state of the net and the future of it that I have seen in a long time. I was hoping for some decent insight from the l0pht guys, and instead I recieved some of the most insightful thoughts of the year. I really hope that somehow the Powers That Be can convince l0pht to do something like a monthly (or even quarterly or semi-annually) article for /. .
From what I understood in the news article, the error was not at the shipping company, but in Redmond. Some clerk either mislabled the prototype with this NY guy's address, or their computer system misprinted the address. The shipping company delivered the package to the address that was specified. If anyone is to blame here it should be the MS shipping clerk or database admin, not the shipper, not the person who recieved the final unit.
Would cash be worth anything if anyone could just download a fifty and print it out?
:)
Cash is intrinsically worthless, as it is a small piece of paper with a little bit of ink on it. The only reason it has value is because the government says it does. In the past, the value was backed up by the fact that there was a real amount of real gold sitting somewhere that was represented by that piece of paper. Now, the only thing backing up that piece of paper is the word of the government, make of that what you will.
The only way to preserve the value of things like cash is to make sure that no one can duplicate it.
Until the science of thaumaturgy(sp) becomes widespread and cost efficient, gold (or other valuable metals) are an effective solution. That of course implies that each person also has the equipment and knowledge needed to verify that this heavy yellow coin is in fact gold, but we're speaking of ideals here anyways.
Does it matter if the person was of importance? Although I don't condone their ideas or actions, I think the Branch Davidians would have a bone to pick with the US Government, as would Randy Weaver's wife and son, who were both shot at Ruby Ridge by FBI sharpshooters as they had their backs turned.
In other places on their site, it states:
:)
The goals of the Artemis Project are to:
1. Build a permanent, self-supporting lunar community.
2. Exploit lunar resources for profit.
3. Create an economic environment where regular commercial space flight between the earth and moon is financially viable.
It's as simple as that: no lofty causes, no political agenda; just get to the moon and stay there. What you do once we've got there is up to you.
sounds like a for profit corporation to me
There is a project I stumbled upon that is purporting to do just this. The site is Artemis Society International and they state that they want to do a privately funded lunar colony, similar (but not exactly like) the D.D. Harriman project in "The Man Who Sold The Moon," by Robert Heinlein.