moonbuggy

`Hekili_Manu: Ok. So I called my bank’s fraud dept about that hotels.com letter I got since I apparently used them twice with two different cards. I forgot completely that when I signed up you can assign your own security question online. [..]’

`Firewall Leak Tester, a company that provides tools to test the quality of personal firewall software, has released a utility called RemoveWGA that blocks Microsoft from “phoning home” from Windows PCs on a daily basis.

“Once the WGA Notification tool has checked your OS and has confirmed you had a legit copy, there is no decent point or reason to check it again and again every boot,” the company said in a note explaining its motive for releasing the tool.’

`Tokyo’s futuristic image as the world’s most technologically advanced broadband internet-enabled city is under attack from a vicious but decidedly low-tech foe: urban-dwelling jungle crows.

Their destructive and unpredictable behaviour during the annual May to June mating season is always highly problematic for the Japanese capital. But this year the aggressive ink-black birds have created a new headache by developing a seemingly insatiable taste for fibre-optic internet cable.

[..] An initial burst of activity involving a network of traps around the city and a squadron of experienced crow-catchers met with success, with about 11,000 crows captured.

Unfortunately, crows from the countryside around Tokyo flew in to replace their ensnared comrades, and the population remained constant. ‘

`The people in the pictures below have my friend’s T-Mobile Sidekick. Instead of doing the honorable thing when finding someone’s phone in a taxi, they instead kept it. [..]

When my friend realized that she had left the Sidekick in the taxi she asked me to immediately send a message to the phone saying that we would give a reward for the phone. There was no response. After a day of waiting, she had to go to the store and spend over $300 on a new Sidekick. When she put her SIM card in, she saw that the person(s) that had taken the phone had not only signed on to AOL leaving their name and password in the phone, but they had taken pictures of themselves.’

`The outsourcing revolution has come to an unlikely place: the drive-through window at your local McDonald’s quick-service restuarant (that’s “fast food joint” in English). No longer just a way for companies to cut costs on their helpline or offer inexpensive tutoring over the Web, outsourcing is now seen as way to make the drive-through experience more efficient, which translates into more cheeseburgers sold. [..]

The system is currently a trial project that serves 40 McDonald’s in the US (including Hawaii). When a customer rolls up to the order board, their conversation is actually routed across the Internet to someone working in a California call center. Call center employees are specifically trained to be fast, polite, and to upsell—or, as Joseph Fleischer of Call Center Magazine describes it, “advising the customer on getting more out of the product.” The employee then enters the order into a computer, which routes it back over the Internet to the local McDonald’s, which assembles the requested items.’

`A council planning department was hit by chaos — after computers banned “erection” from emails.

The word is one of the most commonly used terms in applications for building works.

But it was also included in a list of obscene expressions to be filtered out by software used by Rochdale Council, Greater Manchester. [..]

A Rochdale Council spokesman said: “The software is not designed by the council and we don’t control which words are blocked. We will be apologising to the resident.”’

`Police in Germany have charged 3,500 users of a file-sharing network in the biggest single action against the illegal distribution of music online.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) – the record industry’s global body – said each could face five years in prison.

They may also have to pay compensation for offering up to 8,000 files at a time for download on the eDonkey site.

The investigation led to searches in 130 locations across Germany.’

`At its worst, when downloading major copyrighted torrents, as much as a fourth of the peers you are connected to can be attributed to various Anti-P2P agencies. There is also a much more serious side to this. Once you’ve established a connection to one of these fake “peers”, your IP has been logged and will most likely be sent to the RIAA/MPAA!

But there is a way to fight back! [..]’

`A student who used images of the concentration camp at Auschwitz in a hoax publicity video for a techno rave will be prosecuted for discrimination, a prosecution spokeswoman said Monday.

The student, identified as the 23-year-old Dickie Thijssen by Dutch media, will appear before a magistrate Wednesday, Jechien de Graaf of the Rotterdam prosecutor’s office said.

If convicted he faces a maximum sentence of one year in prison and a 4,500 euros fine.

Thijssen, who is living in the southwest of the country, apologised extensively on the internet for the offence caused by his video.

The clip, which was widely circulated on the Internet last year, purported to give details of a techno music festival called “Housewitz”, a reference to techno “house” music.’

Followup to Housewitz – Tanzen Macht Frei.

`Welcome to the LeapFish.com Domain Name Resource Center. At our site, you are able to recieve a free domain name analysis and estimated appraisal. You can also find many other domain name resources and interesting articles worth checking out and if you are unable to find what you are looking for, our forums have knowledgeable people who are willing to help with any of your questions.’

moonbuggy.org is apparently worth $11,616.00. I’m rich. Ha! 🙂

`Transferring music from CDS onto iPods and other MP3 players will no longer be illegal after federal cabinet agreed to make sweeping changes to copyright laws.

But beware the trap of downloading from the internet. The Government will increase surveillance and fines on internet piracy in a package to be announced by Attorney-General Philip Ruddock today.

Once the new laws are passed, “format shifting” of music, newspapers and books from personal collections onto MP3 players will become legal. The new laws will also make it legal for people to tape television and radio programs for playback later, a practice currently prohibited although millions of people regularly do it.’

`There was quite a bit of teeth gnashing across the web throughout the evening yesterday as TypePad, LiveJournal, and all the other hosted Six Apart websites went dark; we learned late in the night that the cause was a “sophisticated distributed denial of service attack” against the sites. Digging a little deeper, though, it doesn’t look like this is a particularly accurate description of what happened — but instead of this being a case of the folks at Six Apart trying to cover up some internal issue, it instead looks like they’re being far too gracious in not revealing more about another company, Blue Security, which appears to have been responsible for the whole disaster.’

I’ve been fiddling around with various WordPress features and plugins whilst migrating my blog over from Blogger. I installed Peter Kashou’s Inline Ajax Comments plugin which uses some funky AJAX code to allow expansion and contraction of comments on the main pages of the blog. However, I was a bit annoyed that I couldn’t customize the text of the link that did the expansion/contraction.

It would have been a simple task just to go into the source code and modify the strings directly, but I didn’t like the idea of having to do that every time I decided to change the text in the future. So, I decided to modify the code so that it allows configuration of these strings in the plugins options menu on the WordPress administration page.

The plugin functions exactly as Peter’s plugin did, except for the added configuration options, and by default it will use the same strings for expansion/contraction as the original plugin. The plugin is also called via the functions ajax_comments_link() and ajax_comments_div(), just like in the original.

I figured I’d post it here incase anyone else might want to make use of it. You can download it here.

Someone’s just taking the piss, but it’s pretty funny none the less.

Full story at Something Awful.

(2.3meg Windows media)

`Australia’s top spy agency ASIO is surfing the net for new recruits as part of a $1 million campaign.

The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) has paid for a “sponsored link” on web search engine Google to find budding spies.

Sponsored links enable organisations and companies to have their names and brief messages pop up when a web surfer keys in the name or associated words.’

`A group of Jewish ultra-Orthodox hackers is waging a war against pornographic websites, replacing their content with nothing but the picture of a revered rabbi, an Israeli paper reported Monday.

To fight what they see as an abomination, the ultra-Orthodox “sex commando” has so far targeted only Israeli-based websites, the mass-selling Yedioth Aharonot reported. [..]

Instead of seeing images of sexy girls, anyone who logs onto the site encounters the stern look of the white-bearded Rabbi Menahem Mendel Schneerson, the late leader of the popular Jewish Lubavitch movement.

Below his image appear the words “we, the Da-Net group, have hacked into this site and erased all its abomination.”‘

`In a modest victory for broadband providers, a highly anticipated bill in the U.S. Congress does not include specific rules saying that some Internet sites must not be favored over others. [..]

Under Network neutrality, the companies that own the broadband pipes do not configure their networks in a way that plays favorites. They may not be allowed to transmit their own services at faster speeds, for example, or to charge Net content and application companies a fee for similar fast delivery.
chart

Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, eBay, Amazon.com, Skype and some advocacy groups have been pressing Congress for strict laws requiring Net neutrality, and had been hoping that Barton’s bill–called the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act–would mandate it.’

`A NSW Police blunder has led to a database of email passwords – including those of the anti-terrorism chief and hundreds of journalists – published on the internet.

The names, email addresses and passwords of as many as 800 people who signed up to receive NSW Police media releases are listed on the database.

The list includes the password and email details of two of the state’s most senior counter-terrorism police officers, newly appointed Assistant Commissioner Nick Kaldas and Detective Chief Superintendent Mark Jenkins.

Mr Kaldas is regarded as the foremost terrorism expert among Australia’s police services.’

For the curious, try Google’s cache.

`So, here’s the story… I said to my girlfriend that any stupid website could get tons of hits, simply because people are bored all the time. She said that I was an idiot and couldn’t make a website that could get tons of hits if I wanted to. After a long argument (mostly centered around the fact that she called me an idiot) we made a bet:

If I could not make a website to get 2,000,000 hits, I would agree that I was an idiot; however, if I could make a website to get 2,000,000 hits, she would have a menage a trois (that’s a threesome to you non french-speakers) with me and another girl. I thought she was kidding at the time, but then she said she was so sure of herself, that she would even put it in writing. This of course is an ultra-binding contract.’

At the time of posting he’s up to 2,238,916 hits. It’s gangbangin’ time. 🙂

`Two teenage girls face child pornography charges after posting sexually explicit photographs of themselves on the Internet.

The pornographic pictures of Elizabeth Muller, 19, of North Smithfield, and an unidentified 16-year-old Lincoln girl were discovered on MySpace.com, a social networking Web site, said a spokesman for the attorney general’s office.

The photos of the two teenagers together were posted on each of their respective Web site accounts, spokesman Michael Healey said. The 16-year-old was arraigned before a Family Court judge Monday on a charge of child pornography and violating a court-ordered curfew, Healey said.’

`Only three things are certain in life. MySpace, Taxes, and Death.

If you have a MySpace account and you die, this is where you will end up.

MyDeathSpace.com memorializes deceased MySpace users and picks up where a regular obituary leaves off.

Click the MySpace Deaths link at the top to view the latest MySpace Deaths!’

`An exasperated father has discovered to his cost that cyberspace is not the ideal arena for family feuds. Two weeks ago Steve Williams became so fed up with his daughter’s messy bedroom that he built a website featuring pictures of his slothful offspring’s lair in an attempt to shame her into action.

But the public humiliation proved a short-lived victory. While it did spur his daughter, Claire, into tidying up her room, it also whet her appetite for revenge. With the help of her father’s friends, the 20-year-old business student has now set up a rival website that displays photos of him in a variety of compromising situations.

“All my friends feel sorry for Claire so they’re ganging up on me,” said Mr Williams, of Whitehaven, Cumbria. “They’ve managed to dig out photos of me drunk and dancing round with a handbag at a party, and also put pictures of my garage on to show it’s not just Claire who’s untidy.

“The boot’s on the other foot now, but I suppose I deserve it.”‘

`German and Japanese scientists recently collaborated to achieve just such a quantum leap in obliterating the world record for data transmission. By transmitting a data signal at 2.56 terabits per second over a 160-kilometer link (equivalent to 2,560,000,000,000 bits per second or the contents of 60 DVDs) the researchers bettered the old record of 1.28 terabits per second held by a Japanese group. By comparison, the fastest high-speed links currently carry data at a maximum 40 Gbit/s, or around 50 times slower.’

`New research says music downloading (or “P2P,” peer-to-peer file swapping) might not be the record industry’s death knell after all. And while that’s an interesting idea, the real surprise is where the new research is coming from: the recording industry itself.

According to a study commissioned by the Canadian Record Industry Association, the record industry’s well-worn argument that music downloading hurts music sales may be misguided.’

`Ben Worthen of CIO has an interesting post about who in the context of the Net Neutrality debate. He worked with Lumeta’s chief scientist Bill Cheswick to create a map of the North American Internet backbone, including 134,855 routers, colored by telecom company (Verizon, AT&T, Qwest, Level 3, Sprint Nextel, cable companies, smaller players).’

`Internet service providers (ISPs) will be forced to block violent and pornographic material before it reaches home computers if Labor wins the next federal election.

Under the policy, announced by Opposition Leader Kim Beazley today, international websites would be banned by the Australian Communications and Media Authority if they contained graphic sexual or violent material, rated R or higher.

The bans would be maintained by ISPs.’

`Download direct from most video sites

You can download from:

Angry Alien, ArtistDirect, Blastro, Blennus, Blip.tv, Bofunk, Bolt, Break.com, Castpost, Dailymotion, DevilDucky, FindVideos, Free Video Blog, Google Video, Grinvi, Grouper, iFilm, LuluTV, Metacafe, Midis.biz, Music.com, MusicVideoCodes.info, MySpace Video Code, PcPlanets, Pixparty, Putfile, REVVER, Sharkle, StreetFire, That Video Site, The One Network, VideoCodes4U, VideoCodesWorld, VideoCodeZone, vidiLife, VIDNET.com, Vimeo, Web62.com, YouTube and ZippyVideos.’

`List of online free tools that help us to program, design, develope, optimize, etc.’

I always like playing with things like these.. Haven’t looked at any of the tools yet, but some of them are bound to be useful for something. 🙂

`In 2005, Web Pages That Suck featured 293 Daily Suckers. Of that total, I considered 117 bad enough to be possible candidates for the “Worst Web Design Techniques Featured on Web Pages That Suck in 2005.” The short list consisted of 57 sites.

After viewing the “winners” you’ll probably say to yourself, “I’ve seen worse web site car wrecks than what’s here.” Contrary to public perception, Web Pages That Suck (WPTS) does not just feature web design car-wrecks. If I just wanted car wrecks, I’d put up only sites created with Microsoft FrontPage. These sites have at least one major problem that’s seen over and over again. Now that you’ve seen them, don’t make the same mistakes.’

`She is 52 years old, married, grew up in the Kansas City suburbs and now lives in Virginia, in a new three-bedroom house.

Anyone who can qualify for a subscription to one of the online services that compile public information also can learn that she is a CIA employee who, over the past decade, has been assigned to several American embassies in Europe.

The CIA asked the Tribune not to publish her name because she is a covert operative, and the newspaper agreed. But unbeknown to the CIA, her affiliation and those of hundreds of men and women like her have somehow become a matter of public record, thanks to the Internet.’