PATH: BS | Technology

U.K. ISP Tiscali "Taken Down By Spammers"

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[Spam]
Spammers have knocked out the e-mail service for many of the customers of internet service provider (ISP) Tiscali, the firm has said.

BSA's take on this is that Tiscali, long having had a reputation for bad security, has allowed their customers' zombied PCs to run rampant, and now have been wholesale blacklisted by many other ISPs around the world, who are fed up with this service provider being a constant source of junk e-mail.

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World of Warcraft Player Gets Griefed For Griefing

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[Mean People]
What happens when you play online computer games and harass someone else's character? Well, you find out quickly if you make the mistake of telling them where you live and that you dare them to do anything about it.

READ MORE | 1 comment since 2007-05-15 16:43:25 | Comment on this Article

Windows Vista Protection System Doesn't Offer Much Protection

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Microsoft Windows latest version, Vista, supposedly provides a "much more secure" environment to make using your computer safer. In Vista, MS has created a new scheme where Microsoft-approved applications are "protected" and cannot be altered or tampered with by other applications. You might think this is a nice security feature, but many feel this was done mainly as a way to integrate DRM (digital rights management) to keep people from playing songs and movies without proper rights.

In any case, Microsoft is playing Vista up as a big, more secure version of Windows.

There's only one problem... Hackers have already figured out how to circumvent Microsoft's security, and they can make their own malware run in protected mode so software like Antivirus programs can't remove it. Oh Goody! Microsoft's new feature can actually make it even harder to remove bad software from your system.

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Webcam Too Much for Small Children, Lactose Intolerant

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[Video]
Oh, you've seen live webcams. Some of them weren't even porn...there were baby pandas to watch, Swiss Alps to check weather conditions on, even live executions in dangerous parts of the world that you really wish you hadn't seen. But you've never seen this kind of live webcam before. It's so suspenseful...so shocking...that you might just not be able to handle this much excitement.

READ MORE | 1 comment since 2007-04-03 10:57:42 | Comment on this Article

Google Rolls Back Map Imagery - Makes Katrina Damage Disappear

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[Environment]
Google's popular map portal has replaced post-Hurricane Katrina satellite imagery with pictures taken before the storm, leaving locals feeling like they're in a time loop and even fueling suspicions of a conspiracy.

Scroll across the city and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and everything is back to normal: Marinas are filled with boats, bridges are intact and parks are filled with healthy, full-bodied trees.

UPDATE: Accused by a Democrat in the U.S. Congress of "airbrushing history," Google said it has now replaced pre-Hurricane Katrina satellite images of the Gulf Coast region with more recent aerial photographs.

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Unpatched Microsoft Security Hole Being Exploited Online

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Reason # 45,234,101 to switch to Firefox: Yet another major vulnerability in Windows which affects Internet Explorer and Outlook. Users can become infected by merely visiting the wrong web site -- no interaction necessary, or under Outlook, viewing a message. Beware!

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A Tale Of Two Registrars And 75,000 Screwed Customers

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What happens when you do business with a seemingly professional domain registration company and then they blip off the Internet and you lose control of your domain? Well, you might be dealing with the New Jersey-based domain company called "RegisterFly" - whose management team tried to oust each other, which resulted in their customers getting shafted and not having access to their domains. The CEO of the company is accused of mishandling funds. The web site has been up and down, and now there are actually two separate versions of the same web site online at .net and .com that look to be run by different groups.

What does ICANN, the authority that's supposed to regulate this industry have to say? Apparently not much other than, "Hey, don't do that!"

READ MORE | 1 comment since 2007-04-17 20:50:30 | Comment on this Article

Cats and Dogs Protect Web Sites From Spammers

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[Eureka!]
If you've been online for any length of time you know that many web sites now have a system called CAPTCHA which is a "human recognition system" that tries to stop automated programs from posting messages online. This is usually done by tossing up an annoying image with distorted numbers and letters and asking a user to repeat the phrase. Sometimes even humans can't read the stupid images.

Enter Microsoft with their Asirra project. They're working on a new human-detection technology which also has the added benefit of promoting animal adoption. In combination with Petfinder, they display images of animals and ask the user to identify the difference between cats and dogs. This system is apparently much harder to defeat than regular CAPTCHA, and you could end up with a fuzzy new companion in the process!

READ MORE | 1 comment since 2008-08-18 16:18:40 | Comment on this Article

MPAA Caught Pirating Software

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The Chairman of the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America). You remember the MPAA right? This is the high-and-mighty organization that is in charge of convincing and threatening people with legal action if they violate copyright or licensing terms of movies and music.

It turns out the MPAA blog is run by a piece of software called "Forest Blog" - a Freeware blog, and one of the few things the author asks is that if you use the software in a commercial environment, pay about $40 for the registration, and don't remove the links to the author's original site.

Of course, the MPAA apparently installed the software, didn't register and removed the links and credits from it before they let their executives use the blog software to rant and rave about the evils of piracy.

To make matters worse, the MPAA ignored the author's initial requests to legitimize the software, until it became public, then they pulled the site and sent him a letter saying the blog they installed was a "proof of concept" and didn't have its own domain, so therefore it wasn't an issue. Even though then, they didn't pay for the software!

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"Vagina Institute" Poorly Disguised Sham

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[Sex]
Finally...a group devoted to serious scientific study of female sexuality. "The Vagina Institute specializes in collecting and processing, data and information about the vulva and vagina." Or is it?

As if the serious grammatical error in the very sentence describing the institute's mission weren't already a dead giveaway that something is up here, it takes about five seconds to figure out that the site is a gigantic fraud...not-very-good porn and, what's more, propaganda for various ineffective techniques to "enhance" women's naughty bits poorly disguised as clinical study of real medical and sexual issues. (URL withheld because we don't want to help its page rank...Google it if you must see for yourself.)

I've got no problem with porn, and hey, the Internet is unregulated...if you want to put up a site suggesting that poontang is ugly and needs dubiously effective, costly fixes at the earliest possible opportunity, have at it. But come on...let's at least be honest about it. The sad thing about this site is that a few women might actually come here looking for information about their vaginas and whether they are "normal," and come away convinced that they need to spend thousands of dollars on "natural, non-surgical solutions" before any guy would ever deign to look at them down there. (After all, everyone knows that looking is the #1 priority for guys when they've got a willing naked woman on their hands.) This site is no different from spam telling you how to make your penis bigger, except that it's not as up-front about it.

READ MORE | 4 comments since 2012-07-08 03:21:40 | Comment on this Article

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