The Register have got a well-written analysis of the people involved in the recent “ricin terror” case, with a look at how this relates to Al-Quaeda, ID cards, and politics. It’s worth reading.
Tag: news
Google Wants Your DIY Porn Videos
Got home videos? Send them to Google! That’s the message that Google co-founder Larry Page is trying to put out.
In anticipation of launching a “video search” system, Google wants a stack of material on which they can test their “video spider” – a program which will hunt for keywords (spoken, or on-screen) in video material, so that it’s searchable in much the same way as web pages already are.
Fucking weird.
Black Holes “Almost Certainly Don’t Exist”
A brave physicist claims that black holes don’t exist at all, but what we are interpreting as the existence of black holes – where stars have collapsed into tiny, superdense masses with an event horizon within which matter/energy escape is almost impossible – are actually… dark energy! (yes, yet another dark-matter/dark-energy claim)
It’s a good one, though, and helps explain a lot of things. His theory is that these dark holes, as they’re undoubtedly going to be called by the mass media, attract matter over spacetime on the “outside” of the event horizon, but repel it from the inside, transforming electrons into positrons as they leave, thereby causing radiation (as we see from suspected black holes, but wouldn’t expect) as they collide with matter in the dimensions we’re used to.
In any case, it’s a brave little theory which is also probably wrong. But you can read it on nature.com anyway.
Ceefax On Scatmania
Do you remember Ceefax, that wonderful service from the BBC that seemed so cool until you discovered the internet? Well I do. And so does a Dutch consultant who set up a system, on the web, for searching Ceefax pages.
Well; in any case; I thought that his site was fun (in a nostalgic kind-of way) but hard-to-navigate, so I’ve developed a sensible front-end that’s far more reminiscent of the way Ceefax works: Ceefax Browser On Scatmania. Give it a go.
Norfolk
Claire and I’s grand tour of the United Kingdom brought us yesterday to Terrington St. Clement, near Kings’ Lynn, in Norfolk, where Claire’s dad lives.
As I anticipated, this has resulted in me here, too, helping to repair computers. Claire’s dad’s PC was a mess – Ad-Aware reported 183 malware/adware programs, Norton Anti-Virus reported 10 threats (2 of which were actually installed viruses). I don’t know what the solution is to the problems caused by hundreds of thousands of new people – who do not know about the risks – appearing on the internet, but I hope that somebody works it out soon: even the BBC have started to take notice of the increasing problem of “zombie” networks, particularly in the UK, which lead to denial of service attacks, spam floods, breaches of privacy, and annoying pop-up ads.
And there’s no excuse, really – Windows users can get AVG (anti-virus), ZoneAlarm (firewall), Ad-Aware (anti-malware/adware), Firefox (web browser) and Thunderbird (e-mail client) and be safer by hundreds of orders of magnitude than they are with Internet Explorer and a wide-open pipe. And all of this software is free. With the increase of the awareness of this problem by mainstream news sources, you’d think it would spur people into protecting themselves (just like the coverage of the “War On Terror” by mainstream media made people paranoid about radiological/chemical/biological terrorist attacks). Ah well.
In any case: we’ve been traipsing around North Norfolk, meeting people and eating excessively. I’ve just about recovered from a minor leg sprain I sustained while ice skating in Preston earlier this week, and all is well.
Glad to hear that Sian‘s Troma Night went well (can’t remember where I heard that from). Missing all you Aberites. Hope to see you all soon.
The Starling
I have a hard time believing that this story is true: it’s just too crazy – but the photos are good and hard to forge without more resources than your average internet prankster. So, here’s the tale as it was told to me…
There’s a company in the States that sells automatic car washers as a complete solution, including the washing system, cash box, installation of the building, etc. These are completely automated: you drive up, put your money into the machine, then drive through.
In any case; after the installation of a particular one of these machines, the owner noticed that the return from the machine was not so much as should be expected. Diagnostics were run and the cash processor seemed to be okay, so everybody was at a loss. The owner even went so far as to accuse the supplier’s staff of having keys to his cashbox, and returning to the scene to steal the money.
Eventually, at his wits end, the owner set up security cameras to try to catch the thief in the act. Here are some stills from the footage:
The first image. Yes, that’s a starling that’s just landed on the coin return slot.
And there’s the starling, wriggling in to the coin return slot, where, presumably, it’s pushing it’s way up into the cash box through the return chute.
The starling with some coins!
The starling’s dropped a couple of coins, but is still wriggling to get free of the slot with it’s remaining prize.
Apparently, they later determined that it was not one, but several, birds who were robbing the car wash. Following them discovered a cache of loose change on the roof of the car wash and beneath an exposed root of a nearby tree.
So; what do you think – real or fake?
Opera 8’s Solution To IDN Exploit
I’m sure you’ve all seen the recent Internationalized Domain Name exploit, which affects most web browsers (except for Internet Explorer – shocker! – because it doesn’t yet have the power to support internationalized domain names): if you haven’t, why not visit paypal.com – looks just like the real thing; doesn’t it: the browser bar says you’re at PayPal’s real site, but you’re not. That first ‘a’ in the name is an international character (actually the letter ‘a’ from the Cyrillic character set, which is just slightly different from a Western ‘a’, if you look closely. Of course, this leads to potentially thousands of dangerous phishing exploits, tricking users into exposing their bank account details to random Nigerians.
Opera, makers of a stunning web browser that I’m not quite sure I should be abandoning yet, have announced their solution to this problem (which isn’t actually a web browser problem at all, but a specification problem): IDN domain names from outside of places which are expected to need then (e.g. dot-jp, etc.) will be displayed longhand, and secure sites (https) will display their certificate holder’s name – longhand – alongside the domain name in the address bar.
Of course, unless you’re using Opera 8 beta, the only way to be sure you’re safe from this exploit is to manually type in every link you follow.
Rugby Fan Celebrates By Removing Balls
A Welsh rugby fan cut off his own testicles to celebrate Wales beating England at rugby, the Daily Mirror has reported.
Sell Your Body Or We’ll Cut Your Benefits
I’m not going to say anything: I’ll leave that to the people who comment here…
…but here’s a news story from The Telegraph: ‘If you don’t take a job as a prostitute, we can stop your benefits’.
Free Gift For First Hundred Customers
I’m sure that by now you’ll
all be aware of the upcoming opening of Nice ‘n’ Naughty, the latest in a chain of sex shops (the latest of which was opened in Bangor, of all
places), in Aberystwyth. It’ll be opening on Pier Street, on the site of the old Little Amsterdam (who’s web site still states that they have a shop here in Aber, despite the fact that it closed down some months ago) shop
(which I reported on when it opened).
In any case, Nice ‘n’ Naughty is promising a free gift to each of the first 100 Aberystwyth customers, which is kind-of cool, as well as trying to put forward a ‘cleaner’ image than the infamous Little Amsterdam it replaces (so; no drugs, for example, and probably less effort made to piss of their neighbouring shops). If only they have the common sense to employ students (and therefore don’t suffer from the self-inflicted staffing problems Little Amsterdam had) they could be okay.
So: who’s up for a trip to Nice ‘n’ Naughty when they open, next Monday? I’ll try to get their opening hours so we can have a horde of us pounce them when the doors open… and give them a proper Aberystwyth welcome.
Three More “Extremely Critical” Internet Explorer 6 Vulnerabilities
Three more “extremely critical” Internet Explorer vulnerabilities are being reported today. Secunia‘s advice – Use another product.
LiveJournal Sells
Following up yesterday’s rumours, it can now be seen that, officially, LiveJournal has been sold to SixApart. The details look pretty good – the service will remain much as-it-is, nobody will be ‘migrated’ to TypePad or MoveableType, and – better yet – LiveJournal might actually (finally) get some much-needed new features, such as trackback (which can be seen in effect right here, on my post yesterday – this post will be linked as a ‘trackback’ comment, because this post follows it up – with trackback, this kind of thing can be posted cross-journal, too).
LiveJournal May Be Sold
I hear that LiveJournal – one of the world’s biggest blogging communities (and home to most of the blogs syndicated by Abnib) – is to be sold to SixApart, a TypePad/MoveableType-based blog-host.
What effect this will have on holders of existing LiveJournal accounts – particularly paid accounts – is as yet unknown. Nonetheless, I think this could be a very interesting year for LJ bloggers.
Internet Explorer Exploit Of The Day
There’s yet another killer Internet Explorer bug out there, which is manifesting itself in the form of a new trojan, Phel.A. This one only affects Windows PCs updated with SP2 (the supposedly ‘safe’ people) and works by confusing the ‘trusted’ and ‘untrusted’ zones.
I always find reports like this interesting, so I’ve written an exploit of my own. If you’re still using Microsoft Internet Explorer, and you’d like to see why you shouldn’t be:
- Click here to look at a web page I’ve set up [update: link long-dead]. It looks kinda boring, I know, but – if you’re using Internet Explorer, it will slyly put a tiny application in your Startup group.
- Next time you log into Windows, the tiny application will download and install a bigger application.
- Next time after this that you log into Windows, the bigger application will run, and tell you why you shouldn’t be using Internet Explorer.
The information on how to use this exploit is easily available on the web. Before long, we’ll be seeing another wave of web sites that can install software on ant Internet Explorer users’ computer.
If you’re still using Internet Explorer, take a look at BrowseHappy.
Impact – Certain!
I take it you’ve all heard about asteroid 2004-MN4, which NASA have been having a field day over, because recent estimates have said that it’s chance of impact with the earth (on Friday 13th April 2029) could be as high as 1-in-37 (2.7%)… well; I’ve just found a well-hidden page on NASA‘s Near Earth Object Program that makes an impact estimate that’s terrifyingly higher… see a scary estimate (the server’s a little unreliable, you may need to try to connect a few times)…
Also, why not play with Arizona State University‘s Impact Effects Calculator, which estimates the damage that would be done by an asteroid impact with the parameters you provide.
That was funny. Made you look, didn’t I?