she called me at work,
you have a crazy neighbor
who bought a new mac.

it is my own fault...
fixing someone's internet
always a bad idea.

though to help a friend
i will always come fix shit
if pie is involved.

like you she complains,
slow internet really blows goats.
(don't live in the sticks)

real bad idea: crazy lady
wants to change network settings
to fit her simple mind.

over the cell phone
skip can be an ass sometimes
when asked to tech support.

you gave her my number.
i will kick you in the nuts.
now i'm back to work.

< redrocket> this is why isc2 isn't getting any of my cash, check this spam:
< redrocket> Earn 32 Continuing Professional Education (CPEs) credits anytime, anywhere for only $556.50 (65% off standard prices)!
<@bob> OMG WHAT A DEAL
< redrocket> it's a scam for money and they're workin it...
<@bob> dude im way cooler NOT having gotten cissp
<@bob> its like
< redrocket> hey i know let's start an organization and test people into it
<@bob> im 2 l33t for that
<@bob> 31337 cert
<@bob> we test them on like
< redrocket> i'm way cooler for not having paid for it too
<@bob> their ircwarrior skills
< redrocket> yah
<@bob> special guest instructor aempirei
< redrocket> and charge them $$$/year, and sell "points" so they can retain their certification
< redrocket> that's the way to be...
<@bob> its such a scam

lol. from andrewteman, execs are asking us to enjoy their products now more than ever. i guess i need to uninstall adblock... i'm missing out on some damn funny ads.

from: http://andrewteman.typepad.com/worldchamp/2005/01/mcdonalds_wants

McDonalds Wants You To F*ck It's Sandwiches

This stuff never gets old. Nothing is better than when a giant company makes an attempt to be cool with their marketing, only to do something that is completely moronic causing the very audience it is chasing to mock them. One of my favorite examples of this is a Wal-Mart commercial I saw some weeks back that contained a fake family made up of some wildly talented African American actors who were working hard to show us that not only do black people shop at Wal-Mart, but it is very cool to do so. In an attempt to gain some street cred, the Bentonville company has one of the actors use the line "Wal-Mart has everything I need. No diggity." I am not making this up. (incidentally, if anyone has this clip...PLEASE send it to me).

Clearly this is not an isolated incident as evidenced today when I headed over to Page2 on ESPN.com. I instantly was hit with a great McDonalds ad that can be seen below. Although I firmly believe that McDonalds is not advocating hot man on sandwich action, it is quite obvious that they did not do their homework on urban slang. If they had, it is likely that they would have realized "I'd Hit It" is not exactly the catch phrase to use when selling fast food.

[11:31] < lorax> but why worry about that when you can just drive over nature like it's not even there?
[11:31] < void> at least according to hoffman. but then again, he'd know.
[11:31] < sp> hummers are suburbans with new plastic
[11:31] < void> hummers are the ultimate in dick extension devices.
[11:31] * void looks around
[11:31] < lorax> I thought that was a $100 bill.
[11:32] < void> maybe $100 canadian.
[11:32] < sp> hummer: because there's too many porches in your neighborhood
[11:32] < void> down here all $100 will get you is crabs.
[11:32] < graver> shit you should see our new 100s
[11:32] < void> sp: HA
[11:32] < void> i'll stick with my tiny 2wd truck.

[22:04] < wcu> http://member.melbpc.org.au/~lborrett/computing/petals-bg.htm
[08:17] <@vicod1n> http://www.ns.nie.edu.sg/faculty/chewsf.htm
[11:22] < skp> identify the rapper cause he's knee deep in the vag

i wish my ipod had 802.11 and could browse playlists of other ipodders nearby, even listen to whatever they're listening to... see someone freaking out down the street and wonder "wtf is she listening to". japan would probably make it into another dating thingie where you are systematically matched up with the oposite sex when your playlists matchup a bit.

my wife and i just moved to a new house, and we've notices some interesting goings-ons: a week ago this huge package arrives for some random person... "must be a previous owner" we think, setting it asside as we leave. a few hours later when we come home the package is gone. we had planned to stick a note on it for the post man and have it returned, but apparently someone was expecting it. we don't know what exactly it was, but the return address had something like "mini-bikes" in it.

this week we get some annoyingly yellow stickers from UPS saying they have something for us, and we should come by and pick it up. hrmm not expecting anything... though we did notice the neighbors unloading some shiny new mini-bikes from their truck.

some crazy credit card scam to equip pre-teen biker gangs? i don't really care, but what worries me is they're using my address for this crap.

1. 200gig HDD $129 (compusa)
2. ATI TV Wonder VE video capture card $50 (compusa)
3. Color nightvision security camera $60 (fry's)
4. motion or zoneminder on slackware $time

luckily the ati card from compusa is running the BT878 chipset (already in the 2.4 and 2.6 kernel) so it wasn't an issue to get the card up and happy. i've used quad cards before but the input hopping pissed me off so it'll be one card per input. i'm running this on an old P2 400mhz box i had lying around and it seems to be happy. here's some tips for the hard parts:

install mysql

install mp3lame

install ffmpeg:
./configure --enable-mp3lame && make && make install
cp libavcodec/libavcodec.a /usr/lib/

install zoneminder:
./configure --with-ffmpeg --with-mysql=/usr/bin --with-webdir=/var/www/htdocs/zm --with-cgidir=/var/www/cgi-bin/zm --with-webuser=apache --with-webgroup=apache --with-lame
perl zmconfig.pl && perl zmconfig.pl -noi && make && make install

zoneminder seems to get it's paths screwed up often... so if you're missing pictures or can't get the video stream make sure it's going to the right place in /cgi-bin/ ... tail -f /var/log/apache/error_log if you're missing something on the webpage.

also i failed to notice debug messages spit out during ./configure for zoneminder. it wasn't finding the libraries it needed so watch for that.

ended up having to fix mysql perms for zmadmin and zmuser since they didn't get write perms into their own db. the website was only streaming... it couldn't show pictures or thumbs or anything.

also had to dig to figure out how to edit detection zones. you have to click on the number under "zones" on the main page and define some. he's put a ton of work in on this part so the zone config is super cool. really though the zoneminder software freaking rocks...if i had a paypal account i might send this guy some cash.

since i didn't want to deal with cambalooza and java i can't use IE... but mozilla works just fine.

having been to a ton of trade shows i have to say the gaming industry probably has the most fun. here's my report from GDC 2004 San Jose:

i live in san mateo, so i figured i might as well stop by the game developers conference... blizzard was going to be there, and maybe if i impressed them with my amazing social skills and whatnot they'd realize what a great beta tester i would be and give me a key or something. so that was my premise for going to gdc.

unfortunately it costs $150 to $200 for just an expo pass (unless you're a student) so obviously there's no way i'm gonna spend much cash to play xbox in san jose. it's time to get your forgery skills out... i crafted myself a student id from some random college, glued it to the front of my safeway card, and bingo i'm a student.

oh yah i also have this job. take a sick day. i get on my kawasaki and ride down the 101 to the convention center, where parking is imposible. they don't give motorcycles a break, you have to pay the full car price. so i pull around the back and park by an air conditioning vent. hopefully security doesn't have me towed.

enter the conference. i get in line for my badge, adrenalin pumping simply because now it's time to see if my new student id passes the test. guy takes my drivers license and student id, looks at them for a second and *poof* i'm in. sweet. now what to do for the next three hours until the main floor opens...

the doors open and i make a straight line to the blizzard camp. having already checked the map i know exactly where they are. first one up to the booth! make small talk with the guy there... d'oh he's from blizzard north, recruiting for jobs and whatnot. i don't want a job, i want a beta. so i ask him if they're having any raffles or any beta give-aways today and he says, "huh. that would have been a good idea". crap. nope they have no betas here to give away. well can i take a picture of your huge orc? sure:

[14:45] <@dmuz> A 13-year-old Hong Kong boy flew into a rage and threatened his parents with a kitchen knife after his
father pulled the plug on his computer game, police said on Monday.
[14:45] <@dmuz> http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/fun.games/03/16/boy.videogame.reut/index.html
[14:49] < LordMael> hah
[14:49] < smellypooface> my grandma tried to stab me with a butter knife when i wouldn't pause my game of pong to take
out the trash
[14:49] < smellypooface> on the atari 2600
[14:49] < smellypooface> it had no pause
[14:50] < smellypooface> but i doubt it was pong... probably more like indiana jones or something
[14:50] < LordMael> lol
[14:50] < LordMael> battle tanks!

today started out great: woke up early, it was a beautiful day so i rode my bike to work. "it's early, i should try that secret parking spot i noticed last week" i thought, "it's right acrost from the office so i wouldn't have to walk the three blocks to get to work". i parked my bike and double checked the no-parking signs. they're always confusing... but after a minute of reading i believed myself to be safe. i looked both ways before crossing the street, there's a bus coming but i've got plenty of room to run.

so i ran across the street, red biker jacket, black chaps, harley boots, ipod in pocket. i felt something happen as i'm about to reach the curb, but there's a bus coming so i don't stop to look back until i'm safely there. oh damn. just like in the movies. slow motion. a distinct decision tree forms in my mind. choose your own adventure:

1) stand there and watch. hope the tires of the bus miss your iPod.
2) run into the street, look death in the face and snatch your iPod out from in front of the bus. risk your life for $400.

i stood transfixed on my favorite toy, silently praying the four sets of tires would miss. although i didn't look up at the driver, i could feel his grin. iPod all borken and bent out of shape. (pictures here) ebay: slightly used ipod (like new)...

whatever. it's still a good day (i got a sweet parking spot) so i'm working, and decide to show off my sweet parking job to a fellow bike-riding coworker. we walk to the windows and i point to my bike, sandwiched between a DPT scooter and a towtruck. damn.

i've never ran so fast. the elevator has never been so slow. it was too late, the bike was already up on the truck and he wasn't going to give me a ride to the impound lot. choose your own adventure:

1) freak out and try to get your bike down. punch the guy and pull the levers. note the meter maid is behind you... you'll probably also have to take her out. she's already wrote you a parking ticket, so you'll need to steal her little scanner so they won't be able to track you down.
2) hail a taxi and get to say "follow that towtruck"

i got to the police station on 7th and bryant before they had "registered" my bike... so i had to wait a while until it showed up on their computers. an hour and $181 later i'm back at the office. time for a soda.

[09:57] < skp> so all i have to do is adopt a child for every three days of PTO i want? cool
[10:01] < amolitor> That's awesome
[10:02] * amolitor wonders where he can find 84 children to adopt
[10:02] < skp> heh yep
[10:05] < terlin> can you adopt the same child more than once?
[10:05] < terlin> ya know, to show how MUCH you love him/her?
[10:06] < skp> i guess you could un-adopt and re-adopt the same child every three days
[10:06] < skp> i wonder if this stuff is online...
[10:07] < terlin> if you un-adopt them, they feel like you don't love them anymore.
[10:07] < skp> it's paperwork only... they'd never know
[10:07] * terlin weeps for un-adopted children around the world
[10:07] < skp> it's like a -NOHUP kill
[10:08] < terlin> I'm going to tell some social worker that I want to kill -NOHUP my adopted child.
[10:08] < terlin> what would they say?
[10:08] < terlin> ...after they had me arrested, I mean.
[10:08] < skp> you wouldn't use that terminology with a non-tech
[10:08] < terlin> but then it wouldn't result in the same hilarity
[10:09] < skp> true s/hilarity/jailarity/

[11:17] < lemonparty> lol i don't wanna pay the ISC2 anything
[11:17] < lemonparty> what have they done for me lately?
[11:18] < lemonparty> i dunno if i'm going to keep my membership... it's like uhmm what's the word... useless?

amy rocks. she heard this audio clip of howard dean's scream and thought "that'd sound cool to a metal soundtrack". here is her remixed version.

i've always lusted after monster cable's voltage stabilizers such as the AVS2000... but they're soooooo damn expensive. in short, they act as a battery-less UPS system that makes minor corrections in the power flowing to your components. since normal ac power can fluctuate between 80 and 140 volts, these cool little toys ensure a consistent 120V output.

a normal surge-protector can only prevent too much power from reaching a system. a few years ago the power coming into my house went really low (brownout) early in the morning, for probably about 30 minutes or so. ended up frying a ton of my equipment. yah, low power can be as painfull as high power. then you watch the lights dim as the refridgerator comes on...

so i found a good option to spending $1000+ at monsterpower: APC makes a similar product, the Line-R which, at $40, is perfect. really it'll save me money on not having to buy a large VA UPS, since i'm prefectly content putting a monitor on this, and leaving just the workstation on a UPS.

excerpt from apcc.com:

Protect your sensitive electronic equipment from brownouts and overvoltages with APC's Line-R automatic voltage regulator. Uncorrected voltage fluctuations gradually degrade the life of electronic components, potentially causing premature failure. The Line-R not only adjusts voltages to safe levels, but also provides surge protection against electrical surges and spikes - even lightning.

Features & Benefits
Protection
Automatic Voltage Regulation (AVR) Automatically steps up low voltage and steps down high voltage to levels that are suitable for your equipment.
Lightning and Surge Protection To prevent damage to your equipment from power surges and spikes.
Resettable circuit breaker Easy recovery from overloads; no need to replace a fuse.
Convenience
Status Indicator LED's Displays input voltage level (low, normal, or high).
Transformer Block Spacing Connect bulky transformer block plugs without covering up other outlets.

so it seems there's a bit of a pissing match between the founder of valentine one and the author of radartest.com. what it boils down to is personal preference, since the valentine-1 and the passport seem to come out even in both range and detection. consumersearch.com seems to have fairly unbiased thoughts on the topic as well.

i stay with the valentine since it does really help to know where the radar is coming from, and no other detector has directional indicators. also it seems that in car and drivers latest test the valentine one rocked. in the end, i love my valentine enought to buy another one for my next car, even though it's $100 more expensive than anything else.

why police radar instant-on POP mode is prone to errors.

why valentine one radar detectors are spiffy.

an excerp from consumersearch.com:

While we're used to seeing heated competition among makers of radar detectors (particularly between Valentine and Escort), we didn't anticipate the head-butting we observed among reviewers of radar detectors. Whether you're reading test results at RadarTest.com, SpeedZones.com or Car and Driver magazine, you'll notice some none-too-subtle jabs at the other reviewers in the field. Not surprisingly, all three claim to offer the most unbiased testing of radar detectors, albeit with somewhat different methodology and policies.

Some reviewers accuse Car and Driver of having a decided bias in favor of Valentine; others accuse SpeedTest.com of fostering potential bias because it charges manufacturers a testing fee, and RadarTest.com gets the Inquisition treatment for accepting sample products from manufacturers for evaluation. In our research, we found all three of these charges to be mitigated by other factors.

Car and Driver, for example, bases part of its glowing review of the Valentine One on a set of features that other reviewers just don't care about that much (some lighted directional arrows and a bogey counter). SpeedTest.com does collect a standard fee from manufacturers, but due to the amount of critical information we found on this site, we find it hard to believe that SpeedZones would be taking payoffs for good reviews—in fact, testing for some models (whose manufacturers presumably ponied up the testing fee) receive downright poor scores. Finally, RadarTest.com (as well as SpeedZones.com) does accept sample products from manufacturers for testing, but both organizations also separately purchase blind samples to make sure manufacturer-supplied units haven't been 'juiced.'

And generally, all three reviewers get similar results from radar detectors. In fact, performance of individual models at all three sites usually fell within a pretty narrow range, and no reviewer's test results varied so much from another reviewer's that we suspected any hanky-panky. Although RadarTest.com, SpeedZones.com and Car and Driver may want you to think differently, we felt that all three publications took a well-reasoned, insightful stab at evaluating radar detectors and laser jammers in the most conscientious way they knew how.

We did find one topic with virtually no dissention, that laser/radar jammers from Rocky Mountain Radar (*est. $180 to $400) don't work. In lengthy articles at RadarTest.com and SpeedZones.com, Rocky Mountain Radar models fail to jam any radar or laser aimed at the test vehicle (attempting to jam radar guns is illegal in all states, but jamming laser guns is perfectly legal in states where radar detectors aren't prohibited). Rocky Mountain Radar claims to mix white noise with the oncoming beam from a laser or radar gun, deflecting back only confusing noise to law enforcement, thereby making a vehicle 'invisible' to laser and radar speed measurement. In measured testing, Rocky Mountain models, including the Phazer II, Eclipse and Mini-D models, did show some capacity for radar and laser detection—but no jamming ability whatsoever. See the articles at SpeedTest.com and RadarTest.com for more commentary and analysis on Rocky Mountain Radar if considering one of those units.

i finally decided to buy a monster power ac line conditioner the other day after reading these articles and asking around:

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/building_gaming_opteron_2003_Part1/page9.asp
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/2d_picture_quality_quicklook/page2.asp

and i wanted to simply say it makes the biggest difference i've ever seen. i plugged my home workstation and tv/amp/tivo etc into it and immediately could tell the picture was clearer on both the tv and monitor. i've never had any complaints about my home audio quality... but there was a serious improvement there too. i bought the least expensive model: HTS 1000 MKII

it was $89 from avstreet.com (use froogle) and can support up to 1875W of equipment, which means it's getting my workstation, monitor, tv, amp, tivo and everything else nearby.

2775 joule rating provides a high level of surge absorption.
$250,000 Connected Equipment Warranty.
Extra-long 8ft PowerLine® 200 AC power cord.
24k gold contact plug for maximum corrosion resistance and power transfer.
12 outlets for AC surge protection.
3 ultra-low loss, protected coaxial connections for cable TV/HDTV.
1 pair of protected phone/network connections for satellite/TiVo/phone/network surge protection.
Monster Clean PowerTM Stage 2 v.2.0 circuitry filter dramatically reduces electronic noise.
Tri-Mode power protection circuitry with audible alarm and auto disconnect.

searched google and got this:

Besides how to u tell the difference as of revision, i had sent in my Radeon 9700 Pro, ATI found it defective so they sent me a new one but, still cant run AGP 8X, My Mobo is Asus P4S8X SIS 648 POS chipset. Do U know what dont hear anything about abit boards on here, good or bad, maybe they are the better board maker considering ASUS has been way too busy with releasing new boards and not Fixing the problems of the older ones by like making revisions and such.

rant found on gamemethod.com that makes tons of sense, and an interview from wtfman.com:

The game development business model:
1) Come up with an innovative design, if that fails use the tested and true models.
2) Make sure to try to be different, new races, new graphics, new concepts.
3) Attract as many players as possible, even players from a non-MMOG background.
4) Make entering the world easy and acceptable, a good interface and tutorial.
5) Retain those newbies, and turn them into a constant revenue stream.
6) Bend over backwards and ruin the game to keep your customers.

Here’s an all too common scenario:

Community: “Hey, we just wanted to compliment you guys on the archery system, it’s great! On a side note that healing bug is terrible, its ruining gameplay, could you please fix it?”

One week goes by….

Two weeks go by…

Dev’s : “We are running a community poll, Do you think we need more colored robes?”

Another week goes by…

Dev’s: “The patch has the following fixes: We noticed players were having too much fun with archery, this caused an imbalance for players who did not have the archery skill, so we had to fuck up archery completely, we’re sorry. We also attempted to fix the healing bug...

Community: “Omfg, wtf”

Here’s a generalization of the instant thrill player who jumps into an MMO: He doesn't have much time, so he hates to have his fun disrupted. He works during the day and has to take care of other matters at night so he can only play an hour a day, but he wants to become up the ultimate rat slaughter, all hailed throughout the kingdom for his abilities to slaughter rats. He plays a bit, but realizes that he’s not doing so well, another player “Pow3rGamer” has all day to play and he’s just destroying the rats, he’s a virtual genocide. The player says, “Damn, this isn’t fair. I really want to be a rat destroyer, but I don’t have time! And his pockets jingle with lose change amounting to $9.99” The developers ears, which are normally plugged with wax and other crap hear his $9.99 in change (a month) jingling in the players pocket and the developer gets down on his knee's and fixes the game for the player. They add “Power rat poison” It only works for the first hour a day that you play, but it allows you to kill 10x the rats that you normally could. The player is happy, he is now a masta rat slaughter, killing 10x the rats he used to. But after a few months he realizes he didn’t work for any of it. He realizes the game has evolved into a great Rat killing machine, nothing more. As time rolls on the players will sit back and say to themselves, "at level 1 I use a wooden sword to kill a rat, at level 10 I will use a broadsword to kill a rat warrior, and at level 20 I will use a golden sword to kill a rat queen" and he will think to himself, "How is this progress? How is this accomplishment? I'm doing the same thing over and over, my progress is a function of the amount of time I put in... where is that cancel button again?"

Developers and businessmen are trying to mold the MMOrpg genre that was built on the backs of hardcore DND (dungeons and dragons) and MUD (multi user dungeons, text based mmorpgs) gamers into a genre that can be played by everybody, only an hour a day, and you get the same rewards for your time and feeling of accomplishment. Bullshit. The sense of accomplishment in DND doesn’t come from the fact that you got that “+5 sword of Rat slaying”, instead it comes from trials and tribulations you and your character took along the way. The rewards are gained on the path, not at the end. People play MMOrpg’s now with the mentality of “when I get there…” and it’s sickening. This entire mentality is built from the design of EQ where you needed to “get there” to get the next shiny sword, EQ was about the end game, or more precisely a multitude of small steps to “get there” instead of a living breathing world in which your character resided. The end-game mentality further ruined Mmorpgs for some time, they were no longer worlds, but rather overcomplicated chat rooms where you could perform actions over and over until you “got there.” As a newbie in Shadowbane you are tossed into a ass-backwards “world” with a “kill everything” mentality. Lo’ and behold, your first targets to be bashed are some ants that are only a few steps from your spawn point. After you bash a total of five ants you “advance” to you next level, where you proceed to bash more ants. The fun of Shadowbane isn’t about bashing the ants, but it’s in the end game where you can have town vs. town combat. The leveling (*aka* tread-milling) process in Shadowbane is completely unnecessary to the game design as a whole, a fundamental waist of time because of the “end game” mentality. Shadowbane also failed on its attempt to deliver good town vs. town combat because of some of the crappiest game design ever, which totally disregards everything we know about the way people play; they are lazy. Why would a guild spend the time and effort to raid a town while the defending towns’ guild members are online? Well, they don’t. They raid the town at 4am. The next day you log into 7 protected buildings, and a shitload of rubble. Terrible game design lead to many guilds waking up realizing, “wtf, I just wasted a four hours a day for the last month putting this town together, and it got blown up overnight… where’s that cancel button?”

Aparently, being silly is the way to stop telemarketers:
1) You know, I'd really love to talk, but the Viagra is just starting to kick in.
2) I just finished stuffing my mother-in-law into a trash bag and am way behind schedule.
3) I'm sorry, I can't take this call, I'm too busy telemarketing a competing product.

this very well designed website will surely help.

wow. who knew there are so many types of lightbulbs.

=== mirrored from clickondetroit.com ===

What Type Of Bulb Suits You?
Shira Kantor, Contributing Writer

That plush burgundy sofa looked so luxurious in the store -- but in your home, it looks dull.

Perhaps it's time to re-evaluate your home lighting techniques.

The familiar yellowish-hued incandescent bulb has typically dominated home lighting, along with the truer to natural light, but harder to handle halogen bulbs.

Now, with the introduction and increased availability of some new types of bulbs, designers and lighting consultants say that scenario is poised to change.

Susan Livingston, a consultant with Cartier Lighting in Minneapolis said people are becoming much more conscious not only of how much, but also of the type of light they use in their homes.

"There is a new appreciation for fluorescents," Livingston said.

Updated fluorescent lights are made with electronic ballasts, as opposed to flashy magnetic ballasts, Livingston said, so they don't flicker or make noise. And the whiter light fluorescents provide "lifts colors" and looks more natural.

The New Bulbs
The standard amber-toned incandescent is somewhat arcane, as far as bulbs go. Xelogen bulbs -- a combination of xenon and halogen -- are growing in popularity for their efficiency and their more accurate lighting.

Halogen lights usually last a couple thousand hours, crushing the incandescent, which only lasts a few hundred. Xelogen bulbs, however, last up to 10 times the halogen, and unlike halogen bulbs, can be touched with bare hands without affecting the bulb's performance or lifetime.

"Xelogen gives you the crispness of halogen, and it doesn't degrade as rapidly as incandescent," Livingston said.

Neodymium bulbs, too, create a closer to sunlight effect, by filtering out red- or amber-toned light.

Incandescent bulbs enhanced with the earth element neodymium, adding a lavender tone, last almost twice as long as a regular incandescent light bulb. But the neodymiums also produce less light per watt, and cost about two to three times as much as a standard incandescent bulb.

Because the light bulb filters out reds and yellows, colors appear sharper under neodymium light. It even increases the contrast between print and paper, so reading is made easier.

Light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, are also beginning to surface in home lighting. They're the lights commonly used in exit signs, and because of their low voltage, longer life span, and color-control option, LEDs are gaining popularity -- albeit slowly.

"It's been in the works for quite a while," said Kim Kuerbs, a representative at Citilights in Minneapolis, Minn. "But it's just starting to catch on."

LEDs light up in "pretty much the whole spectrum," Kuerbs said, and all within one bulb.

They last about 10 times the length of a regular incandescent bulb.

Mixing Light Sources

Blending different types of lights is a growing in popularity.

"Contemporary lighting is picking up quite a bit," Livingston said. And it's showing up with older fixtures, like European colored glass.

"High-tech lighting blended with dark colored lights or colored glass is in," Livingston said. "Blending old things and new things."

Another trend in home lighting is to mix several light sources within a room. Sconces -- single lamps often found on the wall or floor -- are being matched with recessed fluorescent lights hidden in the ceiling.

"Layers of lighting are popular," Livingston said. "People will have some low key lights and also a real high-pump type of light."

Indirect and direct layered lighting also helps bring about a more natural sunlight effect.

"Typically, in winter, you want to have several sources of light," Livingston said.

And because of the warmer feeling amber-toned lights give, both Livingston and Kuerbs agree that incandescent bulbs -- though "old" -- are welcome during winter.

"It's good for when you want to cuddle up," Livingston said.
Show Your True Colors

The overall message, though, is that right now, colors reign.

Whether it's the fun and funky color that LEDs and even fiber optic lights -- although far less common residentially -- can bring to a home, or the accentuation of "real color" with neodymium or fluorescent bulbs, color is at the forefront of current lighting trends.

gator (now claria) is spyware (software that didn't install, didn't ask for and forces itself onto my machine. tards at gator/claria are trying to get all websites calling it's software "spyware" to go away using legal strongarming. well guess what? they can blow me. gator/gain/claria software is spyware. simple. other things to call it would include: malware, snoopware, adware, trojan, virus or simply crap.

=== mirrored from news.com ===
In an effort to improve its corporate reputation, adware company Gator has launched a legal offensive to divorce its name from the hated term "spyware"--and so far its strategy is paying off.

In response to a libel lawsuit, an antispyware company has settled with Gator and pulled Web pages critical of the company, its practices and its software. And other spyware foes are getting the message.

"There is this feeling out there that they won the lawsuit, and people are starting to get scared," said one employee of a spyware-removal company, who asked not to be named. "We haven't been sued, but we've heard that other companies are being sued for saying this and that, so we've changed our language" on the company Web site.

Gator often distributes its application by bundling it with popular free software like Kazaa and other peer-to-peer programs. When downloaded, Gator's application serves pop-up and pop-under ads to people while they're surfing the Web or when they visit specific sites. Ads can be keyed to sites so that a pitch for low mortgage rates, say, can appear when a surfer visits a rival financial company's site.

The distinction between such "adware," which can report back to its creator with information about the computer user's surfing habits, so as to allow for supposedly more effective ad serving, and "spyware," which similarly monitors surfing habits and serves up ads, is sometimes a hazy one, and lies at the heart of Gator's libel suit.

Gator maintains that its software differs from spyware in that people are clearly notified before they download it, and in that they do so in exchange for a service, like the peer-to-peer software.


Related story
Web sites prey on rivals' stores
It's called getting "Gatored,"
and some Web sites are out to stop it.

Spyware, the company maintains, is surreptitiously installed and gives the unwitting computer user no benefit.

But critics of adware companies question how clearly such downloads are marked--PC users may suddenly be deluged with pop-ups and have no idea where they're coming from--and protest that companies like Gator are collecting information without sufficiently accounting for what they do with it.

The defendant in the Gator libel suit, PC Pitstop, offers software to cleanse computers of spyware and other undesirable code, and until signing a preliminary settlement with Gator on Sept. 30, vociferously targeted Gator's application.

In settling the suit, which alleged false advertising, unfair business practices, trade libel, defamation and tortious interference, PC Pitstop apparently removed several pages from its Web site that referred to Gator's application as spyware--along with many that went beyond that to urge action against Gator itself.

Executives for both companies declined to discuss settlement terms, citing a confidentiality agreement. But Gator advised a reporter to "go to their new site and draw your own conclusions" about what PC Pitstop did to comply with the settlement.

PC Pitstop used to publish pages on its Spyware Information Center titled "Is Gator Spyware?" the "Gator Boycott List," and the "Gator Quiz." Those pages are now gone. But as of Tuesday, they could still be found in the Google cache, which keeps copies of missing or unavailable Web pages for a limited time. (By Wednesday the cache of those pages had expired.)

"PC Pitstop believes that Gator products degrade the quality of a user's PC experience," read the cached PC Pitstop page urging a boycott of companies advertising through Gator. "This belief is based on our hands-on use of Gator products and experience with hundreds of systems in our forums....Although Gator Corporation likes to make a distinction and call their products 'adware,' other sources make no such distinction. Independent research has shown that they collect extensive information and have not clearly explained how the information is used once it reaches the Gator servers."

A Gator executive said the suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, was part of a larger strategy to educate spyware-removers about the company's software--and to put an end to the practice of calling it "spyware."

"If we find anyone publicly calling us spyware, we correct it and take action if necessary," said Scott Eagle, Gator's senior vice president of marketing.

In addition to going on the offensive against detractors, Gator has spent significant time in court defending its practices against the charges of companies that run Web sites that Gator has targeted with its ads.

Gator in February settled litigation brought against it by the New York Post, The New York Times, Dow Jones and other media companies. The Washington Post, L.L. Bean and Extended Stay America have sued the company, and their consolidated lawsuit will be decided by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation in Washington, D.C.

Meanwhile, the courts have smiled on a company that operates a similar ad network. Last month, WhenU survived a legal challenge brought against it by moving company U-Haul after WhenU served ads for U-Haul's competitors on top of U-Haul Web pages.

Eagle declined to comment on other specific spyware-busters, such as the New York City-based Enigma Software Group or InterMute, in Braintree, Mass. Those companies have advertised that they can rid computers of Gator--but their Web sites no longer mention the software. Eagle said he could not talk about ongoing actions.

Enigma Software Group could not be reached for comment. InterMute, which previously has spoken openly against Gator, declined to comment.

"Companies like Gator are the Goliath that average computer users are up against in the war for online privacy," Ed English, CEO of InterMute, said last month in an interview with CNET News.com.

Gator said it would take on its critics on a case-by-case basis.

"There are going to be detractor sites," Eagle said. "What we can do is focus on education and getting the word out there. We have discussions on this topic whenever we need to."

For its part, PC Pitstop said that, whatever the terms of its settlement, it continued to target Gator's software on people's computers.

"PC Pitstop detects a variety of situations that we would consider problems, including certain software that we didn't think was in the best interest of the end user," said Dave Methvin, chief technology officer for the Web-based start-up. "We currently detect and recommend removal of Gator."

ongoing photoshop battle here in the office

first pic of amrit:

second pic of amrit:

his reply:

my backpack's got jets, i'm boba the fett. i bounty hunt for jaba hut, to finance my vette (thanks joe) track used on adult swim after one badass sealab episode. check the mp3 here

lyrics from http://one.mcchris.com/lyrics.html

cruisin mos espa in my delorian
war's over I'm a peacetime madalorian
my story has stumped star wars historians
deep in deabte buffet plate at bennigans
rhyme renegade sure to penetrate
first and second defense I won't hesitate
got a job to do darth's the guy that delegates
got something against skywalker someone he really hates
I don't give a fuck I'm after solo
For all I care he could be hiding at yoda's dojo
Got make the money credit's no good
When the jawas run the shop in your neighborhood
Think you can cook I got a grappling hook
Let's make this quick cuz I'm really booked
I'm a devious degenerate, defender of the devil
Shut down all the trash compactor's on the detention level

chorus
My backpack's got jets
I'm boba the fett
I bounty hunt for jaba hut
To finance my vette
I chill in deep space
A mask is over my face
I deliver the prize but I still narrow my eyes
Cuz my time I don't like to waste.
Get down

I'm a question wrapped inside an enigma
Get inside the slave one find your homing signal
From endor to hoth, ripley to spock
I'll find what you want, but there's gonna be a cost
Say my name is boba fett I know my shit is tight
Start not acting in right, you're frozen in carbonite
Got telescopic sight, flame throwers on my wrist
You still don't get the jist, spiked boots are made to kick
Targets are made to hit, you think I give a shit
Yer mama is a bitch, I see you in the sarlaac pit
You just flipped my switch integrity been dissed
You scratchin on my itch you know I shoot the gift
Got bambinas at cantinas waitin to lick my lusty lips
So I'll let you get back inside you're little space ship
Give you a head start, cuz I'm the sportin kind
Consider the starting line the sneaky smile I hide inside
Hope you have hyper drive, pray to stay alive
Don't try to slip me a five cuz I never take a bribe
To the beat of a different drummer, bad ass bounty hunter
Let no man put asunder or else they be put under
As in six feet, got an imperial fleet
Backin me up gonna blow up any attempt to defeat
They gotta death star, got four payments on my car
Hand it over to hammer head at mos eisley bar
He used to carjack, now he's a barback
Just goes to show how you can get back on the right track
As for me that's not an option can't say that with more clarity
Me going legit would be jar jar in speech therapy

chorus

Slice you open like a tan tan, faster than the autobahn
Or a motorbike in tron, do the deed and then I'm gone
Jaba has a hissyfit, contact calrissian
Over a colt, the paln unfolds, no politic is legit
Back in the day when I was a slave
Living live in the fast lane like in a pod race
My mean streak tweeked I became a basket case
So this space ace split that place poste haste
Took up a noble cause called the clone wars
Cuz life's not all about girls and cars
Getting fucked up in fucked up bars
See I'm not a retard or gay like de barge
I'm large and in charge with a face so scarred
A cold black heart that's been torn apart
The sith wish that they had a dick so hard
Cuz it's long long ago in a pussy far far
Call me master cuz I'm faster than pryor on fire
I no longer have to hot wire
I'm a hunter for hire with no plans to retire
And all the sucka mc's can call me sire

chorus

happy day. someone finally stuck a dvd burner on a TiVo. Saves me the trouble of downloading the .ty files, converting and burning them. Problem is the damn things probably sell for $1000++ and that'll keep me from owning one.

The Pioneer Elite DVR-57H includes a 120-gigabyte hard disc drive while the Pioneer DVR-810H boasts 80 gigabytes of storage space. Both models are powered by the TiVo service and offer the ability to:

-- Schedule and record programs while playing a DVD.
-- Play programs from the hard drive while recording from the hard drive onto a DVD.
-- Watch a program from the beginning while the recorder simultaneously finishes the recording.
-- Transfer content at high speeds from the hard drive to a DVD for long-term storage.

===== slashdot article here =====
--------- article extracted from biz.yahoo.com --------------

Pioneer Introduces World's First DVD Recorders With TiVo(R) Service
Wednesday June 25, 8:05 am ET

LONG BEACH, Calif., June 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc., a leader in digital home entertainment products, is revolutionizing home video recording with the introduction of the world's first DVD recorders featuring the TiVo service. These new recorders offer consumers the control provided by the easy-to-use TiVo service integrated with advanced DVD recording for the option of short-term storage on a hard drive or long-term archival of broadcast programming on DVD-R/RW discs.
(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20020628/PIONLOGO )

The Pioneer Elite DVR-57H includes a 120-gigabyte hard disc drive while the Pioneer DVR-810H boasts 80 gigabytes of storage space. Both models are powered by the TiVo service and offer the ability to:
-- Schedule and record programs while playing a DVD.
-- Play programs from the hard drive while recording from the hard drive
onto a DVD.
-- Watch a program from the beginning while the recorder simultaneously
finishes the recording.
-- Transfer content at high speeds from the hard drive to a DVD for
long-term storage.

Both DVD recorders offer DCDi(TM) by Faroudja progressive scan circuitry for outstanding image quality when watching DVD movies.

"Pioneer is setting the standard for value-added DVD recorders by including the TiVo service with these two new products. Unlike many of the original DVD recorders, we're offering effortless operation with maximum benefit," said Russ Johnston, senior vice president of marketing for home entertainment at Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc. "Consumers will not see this type of innovation from any other manufacturer in the near term."

TiVo Service and Recording from Television

Both the DVR-57H and the DVR-810H offer consumers the TiVo Basic(TM) service with no monthly fee upfront. Consumers will get DVR functionality such as; pausing live TV, recording from the program guide, manual repeat recording by time and date and three days of program guide data. Consumers can upgrade their TiVo service at any time, to include features such as a fourteen-day program guide, Season Pass(TM), WishList(TM) and Search by Title.

Both DVD recorders come equipped with a 181-channel cable TV tuner for instant one-touch recording to the hard drive. Once the content is stored on the hard drive, consumers can transfer the content on to a DVD-R/RW disc and navigate the DVD menus using the friendly TiVo interface. This is the first product to seamlessly integrate DVD-R/RW and TiVo service functionality in one easy to use product.

When a disc is inserted, the recorder automatically searches for available recording space. There is no tedious process of finding blank space to begin recording as exists with today's VHS recorders. Through automatic menus and easy navigation with the sophisticated TiVo user interface, consumers can simply locate and play a desired portion of the broadcast material instead of fast-forwarding and rewinding through videotape.

Transfer Home Movies to DVD

Both units are equipped to transfer old videotapes to longer-lasting DVD-R or DVD-RW discs for more permanent storage. By connecting a VCR via analog inputs to the DVD recorder, transferring content becomes a snap. Unlike videotape, DVD will not degrade over time when exposed to heat and humidity. Transferring home movies from tape to disc will preserve them for future generations. DVD-R discs are best for archiving because they are write-once discs (like CD-R) and cannot be accidentally erased. Once a consumer has transferred their videotape collection to DVD, the VCR is obsolete.

Create New Home Movies

The DVR-810H and DVR-57H offer analog inputs, enabling consumers to connect a camcorder to the DVD recorder for basic transferring functions. Once the content from the camcorder is stored onto the hard drive, users have the ability to edit the content before burning it to DVD. The newly created DVD-R disc can be played back on most other automobile, home, portable DVD players and DVD-ROM computer drives.

The DVR-810H and DVR-57H will be available in the fall 2003 with a manufacturer's suggested retail price of $1,199 and $1,800 respectively.

Pioneer's Home Entertainment Division is the leading manufacturer of plasma and projection televisions, DVD players and DVD recorders, A/V receivers, CD players and CD recorders, speakers and other audio and video accessories. Its focus is on the development of new digital technologies including Digital Network Entertainment. The company markets its products under the Pioneer and Pioneer Elite brand names. When purchased from an authorized dealer, consumers receive a limited warranty for one year with Pioneer products and two years with Pioneer Elite products.

Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc. is headquartered in Long Beach, Calif., and its U.S. Web address is www.pioneerelectronics.com . Its parent company, Pioneer Corporation, is a leader in optical disc technology and a preeminent manufacturer of high-performance audio, video, computer and cable equipment for the home, car and business markets. The company focuses on four core business domains including DVD, display technologies, Digital Network Entertainment and components. Founded in 1938 in Tokyo, Pioneer Corporation employs more than 34,000 people worldwide. Its shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: PIO -News ).

For further information, please contact: Aaron Levine of Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc., +1-310-952-2401, aaron.levine@pioneer-usa.com ; or Julie Jaqua, +1-323-761-7405, jjaqua@gcigroup.com , for Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc.

Unverified MAIL-FROM auth. Broken PGP auth. Keeping expired domains. Claiming they own domain names, and allow customers to use them as a "service". Redirecting the InterNIC neutral site to themselves. $150 during the domain "holding period". The Domain Registry of America scam. The CA screwup. The current DNS wildcard scandal. Verisign needs it's powers revoked completely, it should never be able to hijack the major namespaces again.

==== petition to icann ====

To: ICANN
We internet users, who either own domain names or have an interest in the domain name system, wish to object to the Verisign Sitefinder system. We believe that the system:

1. breaks technical standards, by rewriting the expected error codes to instead point to Verisign's pay-per-click web directory, and threatens the security and stability of the Internet;

2. breaks technical standards affecting email services, and other internet systems;

3. is anti-competitive, providing Verisign with 20 million eyeballs per day for "free", while not paying for the domains they are resolving. All other market participants pay at least $6 per domain per year (wholesale);

4. violates trademark rights of domain holders, by typosquatting on their .com and .net domains; and

5. violates the authoritative nature of DNS, turning it instead into a "best guess" system filled with uncertainty, thereby destroying the coherence of the DNS for Verisign's own short-term profit.

We hereby demand that ICANN immediately:

a) insist that Verisign cease giving incorrect answers to any query in .com and .net, and should instead follow the IETF standards;

b) if Verisign refuses, should redelegate the .com and .net zones to registries that are more willing to follow the DNS standards;

c) for greater certainty for all gTLD registries, pass a resolution stating that "gTLD Registry operators WILL return NXDOMAIN for ALL DNS queries for which there is not a REGISTERED domain name"; and

d) that Verisign be reprimanded for their monopolistic abuse of the DNS system, and return all audited gross revenues from their Sitefinder system to stakeholders, via a payment to the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) of ICANN in the name of the Non-Commercial constituency

[Supporting documentation can be found at the sites below]

http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/
http://www.opensrs.org/archives/discuss-list/0309/date.html
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/16/0034210
http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/registrars/
http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/ga/
http://log.does-not-exist.org/
http://www.icann.org/correspondence/lynn-message-to-iab-06jan03.htm
http://www.icann.org/correspondence/iab-message-to-lynn-25jan03.htm
http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/ga/msg00336.html

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

The diamond industry is in fact even more concerned about gems made using chemical vapor deposition than it is about Gemesis stones, though Gemesis poses a more immediate threat. The promise of CVD is that it produces extremely pure crystal. Gemesis diamonds grow in a metal solvent, and tiny particles of those metals get caught in the diamond lattice as it grows. CVD diamond precipitates as nearly 100 percent pure diamond and therefore may not be discernible from naturals, no matter how advanced the detection equipment.

To grow single-crystal diamond using chemical vapor deposition, you must first divine the exact combination of temperature, gas composition, and pressure - a "sweet spot" that results in the formation of a single crystal. Otherwise, innumerable small diamond crystals will rain down. Hitting on the single-crystal sweet spot is like locating a single grain of sand on the beach. There's only one combination among millions. In 1996, Linares found it. This June, he finally received a US patent for the process, which already is producing flawless stones. The price per carat: about $5. read the article (diamond wafers are set to replace silicon in breasts ooh i mean semiconductors)

---- from the wired story:

"This is very rare stone," he says, almost to himself, in thickly accented English. "Yellow diamonds of this color are very hard to find. It is probably worth 10, maybe 15 thousand dollars."

"I have two more exactly like it in my pocket," I tell him.

He puts the diamond down and looks at me seriously for the first time. I place the other two stones on the table. They are all the same color and size. To find three nearly identical yellow diamonds is like flipping a coin 10,000 times and never seeing tails.

"These are cubic zirconium?" Weingarten says without much hope.

"No, they're real," I tell him. "But they were made by a machine in Florida for less than a hundred dollars."

Ian White
A microwave plasma tool at the Naval Research Lab, used to create diamonds for high-temperature semiconductor experiments.
Weingarten shifts uncomfortably in his chair and stares at the glittering gems on his dining room table. "Unless they can be detected," he says, "these stones will bankrupt the industry."

Put pure carbon under enough heat and pressure - say, 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit and 50,000 atmospheres - and it will crystallize into the hardest material known. Those were the conditions that first forged diamonds deep in Earth's mantle 3.3 billion years ago. Replicating that environment in a lab isn't easy, but that hasn't kept dreamers from trying. Since the mid-19th century, dozens of these modern alchemists have been injured in accidents and explosions while attempting to manufacture diamonds.

Recent decades have seen some modest successes. Starting in the 1950s, engineers managed to produce tiny crystals for industrial purposes - to coat saws, drill bits, and grinding wheels. But this summer, the first wave of gem-quality manufactured diamonds began to hit the market. They are grown in a warehouse in Florida by a roomful of Russian-designed machines spitting out 3-carat roughs 24 hours a day, seven days a week. A second company, in Boston, has perfected a completely different process for making near-flawless diamonds and plans to begin marketing them by year's end. This sudden arrival of mass-produced gems threatens to alter the public's perception of diamonds - and to transform the $7 billion industry. More intriguing, it opens the door to the development of diamond-based semiconductors.

Diamond, it turns out, is a geek's best friend. Not only is it the hardest substance known, it also has the highest thermal conductivity - tremendous heat can pass through it without causing damage. Today's speedy microprocessors run hot - at upwards of 200 degrees Fahrenheit. In fact, they can't go much faster without failing. Diamond microchips, on the other hand, could handle much higher temperatures, allowing them to run at speeds that would liquefy ordinary silicon. But manufacturers have been loath even to consider using the precious material, because it has never been possible to produce large diamond wafers affordably. With the arrival of Gemesis, the Florida-based company, and Apollo Diamond, in Boston, that is changing. Both startups plan to use the diamond jewelry business to finance their attempt to reshape the semiconducting world.

But first things first. Before anyone reinvents the chip industry, they'll have to prove they can produce large volumes of cheap diamonds. Beyond Gemesis and Apollo, one company is convinced there's something real here: De Beers Diamond Trading Company. The London-based cartel has monopolized the diamond business for 115 years, forcing out rivals by ruthlessly controlling supply. But the sudden appearance of multicarat, gem-quality synthetics has sent De Beers scrambling. Several years ago, it set up what it calls the Gem Defensive Programme - a none too subtle campaign to warn jewelers and the public about the arrival of manufactured diamonds. At no charge, the company is supplying gem labs with sophisticated machines designed to help distinguish man-made from mined stones.

Ian White
"I was in combat in Korea and 'Nam. You better believe that I can handle the diamond business," says Gemesis founder Carter Clarke, center. His lieutenants have 27 diamond-making machines up and running -- with 250 planned -- at this factory outside Sarasota, Florida
In its long history, De Beers has survived African insurrection, shrugged off American antitrust litigation, sidestepped criticism that it exploits third world workers, and contended with Australian, Siberian, and Canadian diamond discoveries. The firm has a huge advertising budget and a stranglehold on diamond distribution channels. But there's one thing De Beers doesn't have: retired brigadier general Carter Clarke.

Carter Clarke, 75, has been retired from the Army for nearly 30 years, but he never lost the air of command. When he walks into Gemesis - the company he founded in 1996 to make diamonds - the staff stands at attention to greet him. It just feels like the right thing to do. Particularly since "the General," as he's known, continually salutes them as if they were troops heading into battle. "I was in combat in Korea and 'Nam," he says after greeting me with a salute in the office lobby. "You better believe I can handle the diamond business."

Clarke slaps me hard on the back, and we set off on a tour of his new 30,000-square-foot factory, located in an industrial park outside Sarasota, Florida. The building is slated to house diamond-growing machines, which look like metallic medicine balls on life support. Twenty-seven machines are now up and running. Gemesis expects to add eight more every month, eventually installing 250 in this warehouse.

In other words, the General is preparing a first strike on the diamond business. "Right now, we only threaten the way De Beers wants the consumer to think of a diamond," he says, noting that his current monthly output doesn't even equal that of a small mine. "But imagine what happens when we fill this warehouse and then the one next door," he says with a grin. "Then I'll have myself a proper diamond mine."

Clarke didn't set out to become a gem baron. He stumbled into this during a 1995 trip to Moscow. His company at the time - Security Tag Systems - had pioneered those clunky antitheft devices attached to clothes at retail stores. Following up on a report about a Russian antitheft technology, Clarke came across Yuriy Semenov, who was in charge of the High Tech Bureau, a government initiative to sell Soviet-era military research to Western investors. Semenov had a better idea for the General: "How would you like to grow diamonds?"

A few hours later, Clarke was looking at a blueprint for an 8,000-pound machine that used hydraulics and electricity to focus increasing amounts of pressure and heat on the core of a sphere. The device, he was told, re-created the conditions 100 miles below Earth's surface, where diamonds form. Put a sliver of a diamond in the core, inject some carbon, and voilà, a larger diamond will grow around the sliver.

Ian White
Apollo's Robert Linares, looking through a chemical deposition chamber. His patented method produces flawless crystals of diamond.
General Electric managed to do this in 1954 by using a 400-ton press to crush the hell out of carbon. GE's machine economically produced diamond dust for industrial uses, and by the early 1970s the company had even managed to manufacture stones as large as 2 carats. But that effort took so much time and electrical energy, it was more expensive than buying a mined diamond. The Russians claimed their machine was relatively cheap, took no more energy to run than a dozen lightbulbs, and would produce a 3-carat stone in a few days. And the General could have it for just $57,000.

Clarke was skeptical. On the long flight back to the States he tried to forget about the offer and sleep, but the light creeping through his window shade kept him awake. If this thing really could make a diamond, he thought, $57,000 isn't that much money. "Hell," he mused, "what could be more fun than trying to make diamonds?" By the time the plane touched down in New York, he'd decided to give it a shot.

Three months later, Clarke returned to Moscow. Bodyguards met him at the airport and took him to a warehouse outside the capital. In an unheated room in the middle of winter, he watched Nickolai Polushin - one of the original Siberian scientists - lift the top half of the machine's sphere. Polushin pulled out a small ceramic cube, smashed it with a hammer, and handed Clarke a small diamond. Everybody smiled. The General eventually ordered three machines and told Semenov to ship them to Florida.

But there were two immediate problems. First, nobody in the US knew how to run them. Clarke solved that by moving a crew of Russians to Florida. ("I felt myself all the time in a sauna," remembers Nickolay Patrin, who now lives full-time in Sarasota.) The second and more fundamental obstacle was that the Russians themselves had not yet mastered the process. In fact, the machines did not reliably produce diamonds.

The General and his newly minted Gemesis needed help. He turned to Iranian crystal expert Reza Abbaschian, head of the University of Florida's materials science department in Gainesville. Abbaschian agreed to try turning the Russians' hit-or-miss method into a rigorously controlled and more reliable technological process. With the aid of some graduate students, he ripped out the analog knobs and dials and installed a computer control system. They upgraded the power supply and methodically tracked the slightest variation in each diamond synthesis attempt. With more than 200 parameters to control, it was painstaking work, and by 1999 - three years after Gemesis was founded - the General needed another infusion of cash.

Abbaschian's efforts had produced some very high-quality stones. So Clarke flew to London to show off a batch to potential investors. Rather than simply present them as a pile of loose diamonds, he went to a jeweler in Hatton Garden, the city's diamond district, and asked if a few of his stones could be set in rings. The jeweler agreed, and Clarke returned to his hotel room at Claridge's. The phone rang. It was De Beers.

According to Clarke, a De Beers executive, James Evans Lombe, was tipped off about the synthetic diamonds within two hours of their arrival at the jeweler's. Lombe asked for a meeting with the General. The De Beers executive drove directly to Claridge's, and the two men sat down in the tearoom to the strains of a piano and violin duet.

De Beers refuses to comment on the meeting - or about anything for this story - but Clarke says he simply placed his diamonds on the table. "When I told him that we planned to set up a factory to mass-produce these, he turned white," the General recalls. "They knew about the technology, but they thought it would stay in Russia and that nobody would get it working right. By the end of the conversation, his hands were shaking."

But De Beers wasn't backing down. Throughout 2000, the cartel accelerated its Gem Defensive Programme, sending out its testing machines - dubbed DiamondSure and DiamondView - to the largest international gem labs. Traditionally, these labs analyzed and certified color, clarity, and size. Now they were being asked to distinguish between man-made and mined. The DiamondSure shines light through a stone and analyzes its refractory characteristics. If the gem comes up suspicious, it must be tested with the DiamondView, which uses ultraviolet light to reveal the crystal's internal structure. "Ideally the trade would like to have a simple instrument that could positively identify a diamond as natural or synthetic," De Beers scientists wrote in 1996, when the company unveiled plans to develop authentication devices. "Unfortunately, our research has led us to conclude that it is not feasible at this time to produce such an ideal instrument, inasmuch as synthetic diamonds are still diamonds physically and chemically."

In the summer of 2001, Abbaschian told the General that they were finally ready to mass-produce diamonds. There was one last decision to make. Each machine was capable of generating a 3-carat yellow stone every three days (colorless takes longer). Given their scarcity, the price per carat was much higher for yellow diamonds - so much higher, in fact, that only the very wealthy could afford them. Plus, colored diamonds have gotten hot in recent years. (J. Lo's engagement ring? Pink diamond.) Clarke decided that he'd make the biggest splash by bringing yellows to Middle America. He'd compete on both price - charging 10 to 50 percent less than naturals - and style. And, if he succeeded with the yellow stones, he could transition into colorless.

The diamond industry fought back. Early last year, De Beers began shipping improved, even more sensitive DiamondSure machines to labs around the world. Meanwhile, industry groups led by the Jewelers Vigilance Committee have pressured the Federal Trade Commission to force Gemesis to label its stones as synthetic.

The tussle goes to the heart of the marketing problem for Gemesis or any maker of synthetic gems: How will consumers feel about them? The mystique of natural diamonds is anything but rational. Part of the allure is their high cost and supposed rarity. Yet diamonds are plentiful - De Beers maintains vast stockpiles and tightly controls supply.

Clever marketing may bring buyers around to manufactured diamonds. After all, there's no chance that they are so-called blood diamonds - stones sold by African rebels to fund wars and revolutions. And they aren't under the thumb of an international cartel accused of buying off foreign governments, despoiling the environment, flouting antimonopoly laws, and exploiting mine workers.

In fact, Gemesis is developing a marketing campaign that portrays synthetics as superior to naturals. The General came up with a proposal to brand the company's diamonds "cultured" - a deliberate echo of the designation given to the wildly successful (and more valuable than natural) cultured pearl. In an ambiguous April 2001 ruling, the Federal Trade Commission said that it was "unfair or deceptive" to call a man-made diamond a "diamond," but offered no opinion on the question of calling it a "cultured diamond."

So, for now, Clarke is sticking with cultured. But in the end, he insists, it won't really matter. "If you give a woman a choice between a 2-carat stone and a 1-carat stone and everything else is the same, including the price, what's she gonna choose?" he demands. "Does she care if it's synthetic or not? Is anybody at a party going to walk up to her and ask, 'Is that synthetic?' There's no way in hell. So I'll bite your ass if she chooses the smaller one."

Wrong, says Jef Van Royen, a senior scientist at the Diamond High Council, the official representative of the diamond industry in Belgium. "If people really love each other, then they give each other the real stone," he says, during an interview at council headquarters on the Hoveniersstraat in Antwerp. "It is not a symbol of eternal love if it is something that was created last week." So goes the De Beers-backed line. And forget the cultured pearl comparison, Van Royen says. Man-made diamonds are more like synthetic emeralds, introduced in large quantities in the mid-'70s. At first, their price was very high, but then the gem labs discovered that the synthetics could be easily distinguished using a standard microscope. The price collapsed and is now less than 3 percent of naturals.

Van Royen is confident the council's lab can pick out synthetic stones. To test him, I ask him to look at a half-carat light yellow Gemesis diamond. A jovial, bearded man prone to nervous laughter, Van Royen takes the rock and peers at it through a 10X jewelers' loupe. "It is very pretty," he admits, giggling. "But so is cubic zirconium." Although Van Royen's lab is outfitted with DiamondSure and DiamondView machines (the Diamond High Council works closely with the Gem Defensive Programme), he instead puts the gem into a more elaborate piece of equipment - a Fourier transform infrared spectrometer that registers the diffusion of light through crystal. Above the machine hangs a large printout that shows six sets of graphs. Van Royen points to one with a distinctive spike toward the right end of the horizontal axis. "If it is synthetic, it should look like this," he says. Sure enough, the machine displays a graph just like the one Van Royen indicated.

But such high-end testing is far from the last word. Only a small percentage of larger diamonds are lab-certified - though the number seems to be growing as the industry becomes more aware of synthetics. Diamonds that are smaller than a fifth of a carat are almost never sent to labs, since the cost would eat up any profit made from them. These modest stones actually represent a significant portion of the market, since jewelry designers regularly use them to create sparkling fields of diamonds on watches, earrings, rings, and pendants. Almost all diamonds of this size are bought, processed, and sold by Indians based in Antwerp and Bombay.

One such group - headed by the Choksi family - bought a $35,000 batch of preliminary Gemesis research stones last year and is currently selling them in India at a 10 to 20 percent profit. I met Sabin Choksi, one of the company's principals, at a jewelry convention in Las Vegas. He admitted that his customers don't know the stones are synthetic, but says they don't care one way or the other. In other words, Gemesis may be fully disclosing the nature of its stones, but already one of its wholesalers is not.

In Antwerp, Van Royen tells me of another threat. There's a rumor of a new, experimental method for growing gem-quality diamonds. The process - chemical vapor deposition - has been used for more than a decade to cover relatively large surfaces with microscopic diamond crystals. The technique transforms carbon into a plasma, which then precipitates onto a substrate as diamond. The problem with the technology has always been that no one could figure out how to grow a single crystal using the method. At least until now, Van Royen says. Apollo Diamond, a shadowy company in Boston, is rumored to be sitting on a single-crystal breakthrough. If true, it represents a new challenge to the industry, since CVD diamonds could conceivably be grown in large bricks that, when cut and polished, would be indistinguishable from natural diamonds. "But nobody has seen them in Antwerp," Van Royen says. "So we don't even know if they are for real."

I take a transparent 35-millimeter film canister from my pocket and put it on the table. Two small diamonds are cushioned on cotton balls inside. "Believe me," I say, "they're for real."

Three days before traveling to Belgium, I had flown to Boston to meet Bryant Linares, president of Apollo Diamond. Linares has been secretive about his company and was suspicious about me. He checked to make sure I was really working for Wired by calling my editor, and he wouldn't say where his company was located other than to tell me to fly to Boston and wait for him at baggage claim.

When I arrive, a preppy, square-jawed man approaches me.

"I'm Bryant Linares," he says. "Follow me."

We get in his blue Saab and begin driving. In a half hour, I realize I'm seeing the same scenery. I ask if we're driving in circles. "We're not taking the most direct route," he allows. For 45 minutes, he questions me about stories I'd written. Finally he seems to decide I'm not a De Beers spy. "You're OK," he says. "There's no need for a blindfold."

We pull up at a suburban strip mall occupied by a fitness gym and a graphic design company. Linares leads the way into the graphics firm's reception area, which looks normal enough. But when he opens one of the interior doors, I catch a glimpse of a man dressed head to foot in Intel-style clean-room scrubs.

"Welcome to Apollo Diamond," Linares says, waving me inside and quickly shutting the door. He hands me a bunny suit, including booties, goggles, and a hair cap, and leads me into a third room. Three men dressed in similar contaminant-control outfits stand around a cylindrical contraption that looks like a heavy-duty coffee urn outfitted with a bolt-on porthole. A preternatural purple-green glow emanates from the window.

I peer through the glass. Four diamonds are growing beneath a shimmering green cloud. "It took me a long time to get to this point," says one of the men standing beside the machine. This is Robert Linares, Bryant's father. In the 1980s, he was a well-known researcher in advanced semiconductor materials. His company, Spectrum Technology, pioneered the commercialization of gallium arsenide wafers, the microchip substrate that succeeded silicon and allowed cell phones to become smaller and handle more bandwidth. Linares sold the company to PacifiCorp, a diversified utility, in 1985 and disappeared from the semiconducting world.

It turns out he took the money and built a secret diamond research lab. "I knew diamonds were going to be the ultimate semiconductor at some point, but everybody thought it was impossible at the time," Linares says. "I had the freedom to do what I wanted after I sold my company, so I spent almost 15 years researching on my own."

To grow single-crystal diamond using chemical vapor deposition, you must first divine the exact combination of temperature, gas composition, and pressure - a "sweet spot" that results in the formation of a single crystal. Otherwise, innumerable small diamond crystals will rain down. Hitting on the single-crystal sweet spot is like locating a single grain of sand on the beach. There's only one combination among millions. In 1996, Linares found it. This June, he finally received a US patent for the process, which already is producing flawless stones.

By January, Apollo plans to start selling them on the jewelry market. But that's just the first step. Robert and Bryant Linares expect to use revenue from the gem trade to fund their company's semiconductor ambitions. Not surprisingly, the diamond industry is hostile to the idea, as the younger Linares discovered four years ago when he attended an industry conference in Prague. He was hoping to find out whether any other researchers - possibly De Beers scientists themselves - had discovered the sweet spot. During a break in the conference, a man approached Linares and told him to be careful. "He said that my father's research was a good way to get a bullet in the head," Linares recalls.

The diamond industry is in fact even more concerned about gems made using chemical vapor deposition than it is about Gemesis stones, though Gemesis poses a more immediate threat. The promise of CVD is that it produces extremely pure crystal. Gemesis diamonds grow in a metal solvent, and tiny particles of those metals get caught in the diamond lattice as it grows. CVD diamond precipitates as nearly 100 percent pure diamond and therefore may not be discernible from naturals, no matter how advanced the detection equipment.

But the greatest potential for CVD diamond lies in computing. If diamond is ever to be a practical material for semiconducting, it will need to be affordably grown in large wafers. (The silicon wafers Intel uses, for example, are 1 foot in diameter.) CVD growth is limited only by the size of the seed placed in the Apollo machine. Starting with a square, waferlike fragment, the Linares process will grow the diamond into a prismatic shape, with the top slightly wider than the base. For the past seven years - since Robert Linares first discovered the sweet spot - Apollo has been growing increasingly larger seeds by chopping off the top layer of growth and using that as the starting point for the next batch. At the moment, the company is producing 10-millimeter wafers but predicts it will reach an inch square by year's end and 4 inches in five years. The price per carat: about $5.

Back at the Diamond High Council, I open the film canister and shake the Apollo stones onto the table. Van Royen tentatively picks one up with a pair of elongated tweezers and takes it to a microscope. "Unbelievable," he says slowly as he peers through the lens. "May I study it?" I agree to let him keep the gems overnight. When we meet the next morning in the lobby of the High Council, Van Royen looks tired. He admits to staying up almost all night scrutinizing the stones. "I think I can identify it," he says hopefully. "It's too perfect to be natural. Things in nature, they have flaws. The growth structure of this diamond is flawless."

Van Royen reluctantly hands the diamonds back. "You have something that nobody else in Antwerp has." he says. "You should be careful - somebody might jump out of the shadows with a mask on." He leans in conspiratorially: "If you want to know how important these diamonds are, talk to Jim Butler with your Navy. He is the man."

Jim Butler is the head of a project known as Code 6174 - the Navy's diamond research arm, which is housed in a guarded facility outside Washington, DC. A civilian scientist, Butler has been been researching CVD diamond and semiconducting for the military for 16 years, long enough to see plenty of failure in the field. But today, he's more optimistic than ever. There have been three long-standing roadblocks to diamond semiconducting - and each of them appears to be on the verge of falling. First, diamond is viewed as wildly expensive, due to the artificial scarcity that De Beers maintains with its lock on the market. Synthesized diamonds created outside of the cartel will greatly reduce that problem. Second, there has never been a steady and dependable supply of large, pure diamonds. You can't depend on mined diamonds, as there is no way to ensure that each stone will have the same electrical properties as the next. Apollo's CVD diamonds solve that.

The third big challenge has been the most daunting for materials scientists: To form microchip circuits, positive and negative conductors are needed. Diamond is an inherent insulator - it doesn't conduct electricity. But both Gemesis and Apollo have been able to inject boron into the lattice, which creates a positive charge. Until now, though, no one had been able to manufacture a negatively charged, or n-type, diamond with sufficient conductivity. When I visit Butler in Washington, he can barely contain his glee. "There's been a major breakthrough," he tells me. In June, together with scientists from Israel and France, he announced a novel way of inverting boron's natural conductivity to form a boron-doped n-type diamond. "We now have a p-n junction," Butler says. "Which means that we have a diamond semiconductor that really works. I can now see an Intel diamond Pentium chip on the horizon."

Still, Butler is frustrated with what he thinks of as myopia in the US computer business. "Europe and Japan have been investing in diamond semiconductor research," he says, citing the Japanese government's announcement in December that it would begin allocating $6 million a year to build a first-generation diamond chip. "Bob Linares has given the US the advantage, but nobody's paying any attention," he says. "If we're not careful, the Japanese or the Europeans are going to claim the diamond niche."

Indeed, Intel's top materials executives weren't aware of the latest research breakthroughs when I spoke to them in June, although they certainly understood the potential for diamonds in computing. "Diamonds represent a seismic change in semiconductors," says Krishnamurthy Soumyanath, Intel's director of communications circuits research. "It takes us about 10 years to evaluate a new material. We have a lot of investment in silicon. We're not about to abandon that."

But someday, that's exactly what chipmakers will be forced to do. Just ask Bernhardt Wuensch, an MIT professor of materials science. "If Moore's law is going to be maintained, processors are going to get hotter and hotter," he tells me. "Eventually, silicon is just going to turn into a puddle. Diamond is the solution to that problem."

The JCK Show is one of the biggest events in the jewelry business. It draws every major diamond dealer in the US, most of whom buy their goods from De Beers. This year, for the first time, the General tried to get a booth. He was told that he'd applied too late. He suspected that the industry simply didn't want him there, but he took it gracefully and announced that Gemesis would unveil its stones at a smaller satellite convention down the street.

I head to Las Vegas to check it out. The Gem and Lapidary Dealers Association Show is held in a large room at the back of the Mirage. Here - amid purveyors of quartz-encrusted, electric-powered water fountains ("Be amazed by their magic!"), Lithuanian amber salesmen, Nigerian tanzanite dealers, and Vegas-style cowboys in ostrich skin boots - is the Gemesis booth, which displays more than 1,000 carats of yellow diamonds. The show ends tonight, and JCK starts tomorrow morning, so the last few hours see a whirlwind of recently arrived JCK-bound buyers. Efraim Katz, a yarmulke-clad, heavily bearded gem wholesaler from Miami, literally jogs through the room but pauses in front of Gemesis.

"Diamonds mined in Florida?" he asks a Gemesis rep. "I can't believe it. Give me your number - I will be calling."

Kevin Castro, a jeweler in Cedar City, Utah, comes to a surprised halt. "These are awfully pretty," he says.

I tell him that they are man-made and ask if that bothers him.

"If you go into a florist and buy a beautiful orchid, it's not grown in some steamy hot jungle in Central America," he says. "It's grown in a hothouse somewhere in California. But that doesn't change the fact that it's a beautiful orchid."

"Do you care that it's not from De Beers?" I ask.

"De Beers?" he says. "Nobody cares if it's from De Beers. My clients just want a nice diamond."

silly email blacklist nazis, don't piss on our parade. Check the comparison of spews to scientology and this google cache

SPEWS.ORG is a shadowy internet organization, run by unknown people that provides IP blocklists for mail servers to use to filter out unwanted spam. SPEWS.ORG includes entire class c, b, and a subnets (ranging into the millions of IP addresses) in its blocklists if it means blocking only handfuls of spammers originating from within the subnet. Their blocklist includes entire states and entire service providers for countries ranging from Brazil to China. If you have DSL and are in Sao Paulo, Brazil you cannot send an e-mail to an administrator who is utilizing the SPEWS.ORG blocklist. To get off of the SPEWS.ORG blocklist you are told by the FAQ to post a request in either of two newsgroups frequented mainly by people not affiliated with SPEWS. When you post that you are not a spammer the people on these newsgroups will insist that it doesn't matter because you are supporting a spammer by using their hosting/service. Essentially there is no way to get off the blocklist without either switching ISPs or forcing your provider into doing whatever SPEWS demands of it, which ultimately boils down to SPEWS blackmailing people into fighting whatever ISPs they don't like.

google cache from a dead site --------

why i won't use spews

For awhile, the spam blocking rules configured in the clapper.org email server included data from the SPEWS database . However, in mid-2002, I removed use of the SPEWS database, because I believe the criteria for inclusion in SPEWS is too broad. This document explains why I no longer use SPEWS. (You're free to disagree with my position, of course, and I welcome well-reasoned, polite discourse on the topic. I will not respond to flames, though I will save--and possibly post--them.)

Regarding email blacklists

I am not against email blacklists. My mail server still uses other blacklists to screen and reject incoming mail, including a local blacklist I maintain solely for my own use. Blacklists can be a useful tool in the fight against spam. However, when using blacklists, one must balance the aggressiveness of the blacklist against the risk of rejecting legitimate messages (i.e., false positives). False positives are an unfortunate consequence of using any email blacklist; no blacklist is completely free of them. If you block email using a domain or IP blacklist, you run the risk of rejecting mail from a non-spammer. When using a blacklist, your goal should be to eliminate as much spam as possible, while minimizing the number of false positives. Those two goals are often contradictory, so using a blacklist can force you into a delicate balancing act.

No one blacklist can meet everyone's needs; different sites have different spam profiles. For instance, if you receive a lot of spam via machines in South Korea, and no legitimate email ever comes to you from that country, it might be perfectly safe for you to block all incoming email from South Korea. That same broad blocking policy is probably inappropriate for an ISP, and it's certainly inappropriate for a company that has customers in South Korea.

When using blacklists to control incoming spam, I believe the best approach is to use a local blacklist combined with several narrowly targeted blacklists. The blacklists should:
list the smallest possible set of addresses or domains necessary to accomplish the required block
have simple criteria and procedures for inclusion in and removal from the blacklist
fit well with your site's spam profile

It's especially important to be able to tailor and tune your spam blocking rules to maintain an appropriate balance between rejecting spam and rejecting legitimate email. You must be able to tune these rules on a site-by-site basis. Relying solely on someone else's spam-blocking policies is simply a bad idea.

SPEWS fails to meet those basic criteria.

"It's okay if innocent bystanders get caught in the crossfire."

There's no question that SPEWS is effective. It certainly managed to block spam that my other spam blocking rules did not catch. However, an SMTP server that uses the SPEWS data to block incoming email may also be blocking a surprising amount of legitimate, non-spam email. The SPEWS FAQ acknowledges this problem:

Q16: I'm not a spammer or spam operation... heck I hate spam, but my email is getting bounced by someone using SPEWS, or I can't access a website due to SPEWS based blocking.

A16: You maybe part of the rare "inadvertent blocking" that can occur when a spam friendly provider is listed in spews. Your best option is to try and educate your provider or switch to one who is not listed in SPEWS as spam friendly. SPEWS aims to avoid listing any non-spammer or non-spam support areas if possible - we just want to stop spam.

However, the FAQ is disingenuous here: It seems that part of the strategy of those who maintain SPEWS and those who use its data is to deliberately cause inadvertent blocking (which SPEWS previously called "collateral damage"). By inconveniencing non-spamming customers of spam-tolerant (or merely slow-to-respond) ISPs, the SPEWS enthusiasts apparently hope to bring economic pressure to bear on those ISPs. See, for instance, this article , posted to the news.admin.net-abuse.email newsgroup; in it, the author states, "it's called 'targeted economic pressure.' Only innocent victims would be collateral damage." The author of that article has conveniently redefined "innocent" to exclude anyone who happens to have an address within a blocked IP range.

As it turns out, I don't really have a philosophical problem with that approach, when it's applied by individuals. An individual is free to block access to his email in whatever manner he sees fit. I am free to configure my SMTP server or my mail reader however I choose. It's my computer, after all; I can put up as many "No Trespassing" signs as I wish. But the situation becomes murkier when the entity applying the block is an ISP that has made contractual arrangements with paying customers for email delivery. Many ISPs implement blanket spam-blocking policies without informing their customers of those policies or making any provisions for individual customers to customize the spam-blocking behavior. When those invisible spam-blocking measures include the use of SPEWS, the ISP will often block incoming mail from many non-spammers whose netblocks happen to be listed in SPEWS.

As the above news.admin.net-abuse.email shows, some SPEWS adherents rationalize inadvertent blocking by demonizing the victim. A non-spammer caught in the net isn't "innocent," because he is "knowingly" buying service from an ISP that supports, or at least doesn't actively quash, spammers. This news.admin.net-abuse.email article is another good example of that sentiment. In it, the author writes, "How can you claim to be 'collateral damage' when you are paying money to an upstream provider who supports spamming activities on their network? The money you pay them helps put turds in my inbox. So I don't see you as an innocent victim of SPEWS. Instead, I see you as a menace." This logic is roughly equivalent (in concept, though certainly not in scope) to justifying the bombing of innocent cilivians by saying, "It's necessary to bomb such a large target to put an appropriate level of pressure on their government. Besides, they're not really innocent; after all, they chose to live in that country." Another twist on this reasoning can be found in this newsgroup article . The author essentially argues collateral damage is okay, because an affected innocent bystander will either (a) leave the provider (retaining his "innocent" status) or (b) stay, knowing that he is supporting a "bad" ISP, which renders him no longer innocent.

This line of reasoning is overly simplistic. Despite what SPEWS fans argue, it's not always possible to determine ahead of time that an ISP hosts--or might, in the future, host--someone the SPEWS maintainers decide is a spammer. It's certainly possible to check out the ISP's Acceptable Use Policy, to determine its stance on spamming; however, it can be difficult to determine how well that ISP enforces that policy.

Also, like it or not, it's not always simple or straightforward for people or small businesses to switch ISPs. There are contractual and business issues that may prevent an innocent bystander from switching ISPs. Consider this scenario: Company A establishes a contractual relationship with an apparently responsible ISP and buys (well, rents) a block of IP addresses. Sometime later, the ISP plays host to a spammer and fails to terminate the spammer's relationship quickly enough for the SPEWS maintainers, who add some of the ISP's netblocks to the SPEWS list. Company A's netblocks happen to be in the range of blocked IPs. Because of the large number of organizations subscribing to SPEWS, Company A now finds that a considerable percentage of its outgoing email is blocked. Company A is now faced with the choice of fighting with its ISP (and enduring sporadic blocking of outgoing email while doing so) or switching providers, which has real economic impact.

If you think that situation is farfetched, here is one case where it has happened. Halliburton Systems is a small software consulting firm started in 1982 by Steve Halliburton . Halliburton's company was recently caught in the SPEWS net; with his permission, I've included some excerpts from an email exchange I had with him.

Excerpt #1:

Our address block is 63.220.34.0/24 and is contained within a larger block allocated originally to Cais Internet, later bought out by Ardent Communications. According to the SPEWS "evidence file" number S1352 the entire block 63.220.32.0-63.220.38.255 has been listed because of their displeasure with Cais' handling of an outfit called "fancypleasure" which seems to be located at 63.220.35.98-100.

There is no claim that there has been any problem involving our address block, only that we happen to inhabit the address space originally allocated to Cais. I fail to see that blocking our email has anything to do with their problem either with the "fancypleasure" people or with Cais/Ardent.

In their FAQ, SPEWS says, in effect, that our choice is either to spend our time/money/effort fighting with Cais or move to another ISP. ... Moving is not a simple prospect given that we have long-term contracts and have large complex systems that depend on the IP addresses we have used from our block. Aside from contractual penalties that would result from our moving, our contract is at a favorable price compared to current prices because it is older, so our monthly cost would go up considerably. We would also have to spend time and money making the change, operating two connections in parallel during the switch-over period, and so on.

Excerpt #2:

We have had several cases where our customers have not been able to receive an email service for which they pay us due to ISP filtering using SPEWS. None of these ISPs has made anything other than a token "get lost" response to my complaints.

Excerpt #3 (which describes an interesting reversal of the "collateral damage" economic pressure disincentive):

... The problem I have is with large ISPs who filter their users' email, often without telling them. ...

I received an email this morning asserting the right of an ISP to do exactly that; this was a case where their customer was paying us to send him some information in an email and he wasn't getting it. The ISPs answer to us was "tough luck". When our customer called and told the ISP he was dropping their service, things changed a bit. It turns out our customer had no idea the ISP was filtering anything, let alone our emails and he was quite annoyed. They now say they can "allow" the customer to receive our emails but he was so angry about this that he is switching anyway. I hope my efforts may have this effect elsewhere; here is irony in action: SPEWS causes those who use it to lose business.

The logic SPEWS adherents use to justify this collateral damage is apparently becoming more widespread. See, for instance, some of the following accounts:
Magdalena Donea posted a letter to Declan McCullagh's Politech mailing list, describing her own run-in with SPEWS. You can find her letter at http://www.politechbot.com/p-03741.html .
Noted Princeton professor and security researcher, Ed Felten , posted a couple of articles to the well-regarded Risks Forum , describing some problems he has had with the popular SpamCop service. The articles are at http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/22.19.html#subj7 and http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/22.21.html#subj4 . The second article contains responses Felten received from his first article; some of those responses contain the exact same logic SPEWS adherents use. Felten's rebuttals are interesting to read.
The Politech mailing list itself has been blocked by SpamCop more than once, an apparent innocent bystander in SpamCop's attempts to apply economic pressure on Declan McCullagh's ISP. To read one of McCullagh's accounts of his travails with SpamCop, check out http://www.politechbot.com/p-04121.html . There are some interesting follow-ups at http://www.politechbot.com/p-04126.html ,http://www.politechbot.com/p-04129.html and http://www.politechbot.com/p-04132.html .

It can be very difficult to get a netblock removed from SPEWS

Once a netblock is in the SPEWS database, it can be difficult and time-consuming to get it removed. SPEWS is not a formal organization; it is comprised of an undisclosed group of people who are surprisingly difficult to contact. There are no direct email contacts for the maintainers of the SPEWS data, and determining the identities of the SPEWS maintainers is a nontrivial task. No one will publicly admit to being one of the SPEWS maintainers.

The anonymity of the SPEWS maintainers makes a certain amount of sense, for them. Other blacklists (notably, MAPS ) have found themselves in the middle of time-consuming and expensive legal battles in the past. The SPEWS maintainers clearly seek to avoid that particular distraction. However, their anonymity means you cannot contact anyone official if you have a complaint about an item in the SPEWS database.

The SPEWS FAQ addresses this issue. It suggests posting a message to the news.admin.net-abuse.email newsgroup; however, it also notes (in more than one place) that doing so may not help. Here's a quote from SPEWS FAQ item A41:

Note that posting messages in these newsgroups & lists will not have any effect on SPEWS listings, only the discontinuation of spam and/or spam support will.

In other words, it doesn't matter if you're caught in the crossfire. Until your ISP reforms to SPEWS' satisfaction, you're unlikely to get any response (other than, perhaps, verbal abuse) by posting your message to that newsgroup--and posting to the newsgroup is your only hope of getting your netblock delisted.

SPEWS disclaims responsibility for its own data

The SPEWS position, frequently repeated in the news.admin.net-abuse.email newsgroup, is that SPEWS is just a set of published "opinions." Whether an ISP chooses to agree with those opinions (i.e., use the blocklist) or not is really the ISP's business. The SPEWS maintainers essentially disclaim responsibility for the data they publish. Consider these entries from the SPEWS FAQ :

A10: ... SPEWS is a list of areas of the Internet that some people do not wish to communicate with. Think of it as one group's Consumer Reports review of portions of the billions of Internet addresses. These are the ones SPEWS members have a poor opinion of. SPEWS is not anti-commerce and fully supports the USA's First Amendment and other nation's free speech protections. In fact, the USA's Supreme Court agrees with the SPEWS view. The creators of SPEWS are its main users and who it was designed for, if others decide to also use its data, they are exercising their own rights. No one is forced to use SPEWS.

A12: ... SPEWS is just an opinion report, used by some to filter Internet traffic, others to read for amusement, it was not created, intended, or used to libel or defame anyone.

A17: Unlike other block-lists, SPEWS does not take submissions or nominations. Entries in SPEWS are made by the people who run SPEWS for their own blocking and filtering needs. It is provided to the rest of the Internet as an educational tool, or an opinion to use if anyone wishes.

Unfortunately, that argument doesn't really hold water. SPEWS isn't merely "publishing an opinion." The SPEWS maintainers are compiling a database of alleged spammers, a database they know is used by numerous ISPs to block incoming email messages. Every time a SPEWS maintainer puts a netblock into the SPEWS database, he knows that the entry will cause numerous ISPs to block messages from any machine with an address in that netblock. Disclaiming responsibility for the accuracy of the data doesn't absolve the SPEWS maintainer of responsibility for the consequences of adding the entry to the SPEWS database.

Above, I mentioned Ed Felten 's rebuttal to some SpamCop adherents' arguments. One of those rebuttals addresses this issue:

Argument 3: SpamCop is just a clearinghouse for spam complaints and simply routes complaints that could have been sent even in the absence of SpamCop.

. . .

My response: SpamCop does more than just forward complaints. It anonymizes the complainant's address, thereby making it harder for the ISP receiving the complaint to judge the complaint's credibility. SpamCop puts the complaint on the Web for others to see. And SpamCop tries to find patterns among its complaints, and adds addresses to its block list based on these patterns. All of these factors contributed to my dilemma.

If SpamCop were merely a complaint router, then SpamCop would be ineffectual. It is SpamCop's "value added" that caused me trouble.

Argument 4: Blame the person who erroneously reported the "spam," don't blame SpamCop.

. . .

My response: This is really just a variant of Argument 3, and fails for the same reasons.

SpamCop is ultimately responsible for its reporting, too. The 911 analogy doesn't apply, since the phone company merely receives the report but SpamCop repeats reports and amplifies them. SpamCop took what would otherwise have been a private report, to be dealt with between the reporter and my ISP, and posted it for the whole world to see. And it gave the report increased credibility and force.

(See http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/22.21.html#subj4 for Felten's complete article.)

There's another logical inconsistency in the SPEWS argument. Applying "targeted economic pressure" (in effect, a boycott) only has a chance of working when a large group joins the boycott. The SPEWS maintainers may claim that they only maintain the database for their own use, but if that were true, the stated aim of applying pressure on "offending" ISPs would be a pointless exercise. That kind of pressure only works when a large number of people are using the SPEWS database. In other words, there's no point putting broad netblocks in the database if the database isn't used widely; the SPEWS maintainers rely on the widespread use of the database to apply pressure on ISPs that host spammers.

Conclusion

The SPEWS block list is too broadly targeted. Its overly-broad blocking policy significantly raises the risk of false positives; for that reason alone, I cannot justify using it. Worse, the rationalizations for that policy are typically disingenuous and self-serving. I cannot, in good conscience, use a blocklist whose maintainers deliberately raise the risk of false positives, while justifying their actions with what I consider to be suspect reasoning. I just want to reduce the amount of spam coming into my system; I don't want to join a witch hunt that doesn't mind occasionally hanging innocent people.

Links to Other Relevant Information
http://www. antispews .org/
There appears to be a small, but growing backlash against SPEWS. In October, 2002, a group calling itself " AntiSPEWS " registered the domain antispews .org and put up a web site that states, "Our mission is to get companies to stop using SPEWS as a filtering source because using SPEWS blocks legitimate e-mail from being read by its intended recipients."

original post ---------

SPEWS.ORG is a shadowy internet organization, run by unknown people that provides IP blocklists for mail servers to use to filter out unwanted spam. SPEWS.ORG includes entire class c, b, and a subnets (ranging into the millions of IP addresses) in its blocklists if it means blocking only handfuls of spammers originating from within the subnet. Their blocklist includes entire states and entire service providers for countries ranging from Brazil to China. If you have DSL and are in Sao Paulo, Brazil you cannot send an e-mail to an administrator who is utilizing the SPEWS.ORG blocklist. To get off of the SPEWS.ORG blocklist you are told by the FAQ to post a request in either of two newsgroups frequented mainly by people not affiliated with SPEWS. When you post that you are not a spammer the people on these newsgroups will insist that it doesn't matter because you are supporting a spammer by using their hosting/service. Essentially there is no way to get off the blocklist without either switching ISPs or forcing your provider into doing whatever SPEWS demands of it, which ultimately boils down to SPEWS blackmailing people into fighting whatever ISPs they don't like.

This is a personal issue now for the staff of Something Awful because on July 20th SPEWS.ORG added a fat chunk of a class b subnet being hosted by our provider (Cogent Communications/New Horizons) to their blocklist. This fat chunk happened to include Something Awful, meaning that roughly 10-20% of our outgoing e-mails would bounce. This is a pretty major problem when you consider that registering a SA Forums account requires an email confirmation, and when users fail to get this confirmation because SPEWS has blocked it, they complain to us , and we have no way to explain why they're not getting our emails because, hey, they can't get our emails. One look at their newsgroup told us what the response would be from SPEWS when we requested that they whitelist us; they wouldn't. Those of you who have been reading Something Awful for a considerable length of time might remember that around two years ago Something Awful could not stay on a host for more than a month or two. We were shuttling from ISP to ISP and dumping money down holes that often ate that money and closed completely. At one point we even pre-paid for three months of hosting at one provider and received no service, the host just disappeared off the face of the planet. When we signed on for Cogent we expected the same but were pleasantly surprised to find relatively decent tech support, uptimes, and best of all, a colo facility near to some of our techs who could go on site if need be.

My penis just can't get big enough. It's like eighty feet long after buying into all these transparent enlargement scams.
On an average month Something Awful's servers move over 4 terabytes of information. When you tell John Q. ISP that you need a 100mbit dedicated connection and the ability to shift 4+ terabytes a month downstream he will shit his pants. I know; I cold called about a dozen feasible ISPs years ago when we were looking for a solution to our problems and most did not return my call requesting a quote either because they thought it was a joke or because they knew they couldn't handle it. On top of this what few hosts did return our calls tended to have outrageously expensive prices. We do not live high on the hog here at SA, we have a revenue stream and it's healthy, but we cannot afford most premium collocation services. The whole "free entertainment industry" doesn't really fork out the big bucks.

After being on the SPEWS blocklist for over two weeks I suggested on our forums that the users head on over to the two newsgroups frequented by SPEWS and take advantage of the free newsgroups generously provided to us. Childish? Probably, but we've never been ones to deal with problems and leave our sense of humor behind. Naturally the arrival of over 1500 off topic posts on the SPEWS newsgroups was not well received and our servers were promptly DDoSed while I was signed up for about 100 spam e-mail lists in the span of five minutes. The irony of both of these incidents wholly escaped the SPEWS advocates who claimed it was no doubt some spammers lurking on their newsgroups or even our own users trying to give them a bad reputation. Personally, I don't think spammers or SA users need to do much to earn SPEWS a bad reputation, I think anyone who has dealt with SPEWS knows that it blocks nearly as much legitimate e-mail as it does spam. In fact I received dozens of e-mails from network admins working for companies large and small who said exactly that with most also emphasizing that "only a lazy idiot" - to quote one of the e-mails - would use the SPEWS listing on their network.

Awesome! My FREE PASSWORD IS HERE!
I'm not so sure about that, as funny as it seems to me now. I think a lot of network admins are simply ignorant of the damage SPEWS can do to their company and their users, which is why I am writing this piece. SPEWS provides a blocklist with zero oversight, zero accountability, and zero recourse for average users caught between their ISP and SPEWS.ORG's moral crusade. SPEWS will tell you that you in fact do have recourse and that is to switch ISPs. For Something Awful that is not economically feasible, for users in the nation of Brazil where their entire broadband provider has been blacklisted that is impossible. In addition to all this most of the SPEWS advocates on the newsgroups we so unceremoniously invaded demonstrated a willingness to add IP ranges to their own blacklists and potentially SPEWS for petty personal reasons. Complain about how SPEWS operates? Get added to the blacklist, often permanently, while they pretend that it somehow makes your situation worse.

I personally found the church of Scientology's lawyers a lot scarier than a bunch of arrogant nerds on Usenet, and we sure as hell didn't back down from them. In fact I find SPEWS.ORG's ham-fisted approach to fighting spam eerily similar to the Church of Scientology, so much so that I think it's time for a little compare and contrast.

There are a number of sites devoted to exposing SPEWS.ORG for the travesty and complete madness that it is. While I would love to do nothing more than devote Something Awful wholly to the cause of seeing SPEWS.ORG rendered obsolete and pointless we have a business to run and can't spend all day playing in the nerd sand box with the Usenet cretins. If you would like more evidence I would suggest you check out one of the following sites:
Spews Linked to Spammers
An overly insane but interesting anti-SPEWS site
A Google Cache of one of several anti-SPEWS sites driven under by SPEWS and its cronies
A Register article on the fight against SPEWS
A great Chicago Tribune article on the damage spam-blocking can do
A similar ZD Net article about the same topic
Yet another article about out of control anti-spam policies
Oh, but I am nowhere near done yet. After digging through those sites I did some digging of my own and discovered a number of fun facts about SPEWS and the shadowy cabal behind it.

A Body Thetan is unleashed after you beat it up and it flashes red and gets bigger.
FUN FACT NUMBER ONE: Usenet advocates of SPEWS write anti-spam erotic fanfiction. You thought nothing could top those Pretender/Stargate SG-1 slash crossovers you've read, well time to reconsider. Keep in mind that every single one of them combines sadism with a healthy dose of self insertion. Here's a sample from "Dalliance Hosting" by Peterp@linux-superhost.com.
Sara rang the doorbell nervously. She couldn't believe that just yesterday she had been sending out bulk e-mails promoting her webcam. Now that she had seen the truth she wanted nothing more than to show her gratitude to Peterp however he demanded.

"Kneel before Fenris," said the leather clad man who answered the door.

She obeyed him and he attached a leash to her neck.

"Now you shall service my mighty staff," he sat in a Stanheyser ergonomic leather executive chair, his legs spread, and he unbuckled the clasp on his codpiece.

She was in awe of the sheer size, she had never seen a doohickey so big and as her lips parted to touch his thingy she could hear the cronjobs clicking softly away in the background. They were a hypnotic lull.

"Yes Sara," murmured Fenris/Peterp, "soon you will be mine entirely."

His thing was really, really big. Like at least twenty inches.
I don't know about you but if I had a gasket you could consider it fully blown. I don't think I even have to tell you how much steam is emerging from my starched collar as I pull it away from my neck with my index finger!

FACT NUMBER TWO: SPEWS.ORG was founded and financed by seven men in Southern Russia who formed a sort of commune near the Caucuses. All of them were wealthy American expatriates who fled the country for child molestation in the early nineties. From their bizarre cult-like home they founded two newsgroups and their supposedly anti-spam system in an effort to slowly erode e-mail traffic on the internet until only their own private server remained unblocked. Once every other server on the internet is shut down the seven men plan to begin spamming all e-mail addresses around the world with advertisements for their "Preteen Russian Brides" service. Desperate to receive any e-mail whatsoever, nerds will finally embrace the cause of child molestation completely and the seven will return to America as conquering heroes.

FACT NUMBER THREE: Network admins who use the SPEWS.ORG blocklist are seven times more likely to die unloved and alone than those who either use no blocklist or one of many less draconian SPEWS alternatives.

FACT NUMBER FOUR: Network admins who use the SPEWS.ORG blocklist are thirty eight times more likely to attempt to hot glue a realistic latex vagina to a skateboard and call it by their mother's first name will having intercourse with it than those who either use no blocklist or one of many less draconian SPEWS alternatives.

FACT NUMBER FIVE: One in three people who have permanently blacklisted someone for complaining that SPEWS is unfair have also been arrested for attempting to coerce sex from zoo animals. Nine out of ten of these people have also been imprisoned for failure to pay child support to sea turtles.

Your average SPEWS user.
FACT NUMBER SIX: The anti-spam people on the SPEWS related newsgroups don't just post social security numbers and credit card numbers of suspected spammers, they also post photos of suspected spammers going to the bathroom. That doesn't seem that bad until you realize that they could not have possibly had a camera there, bringing me to the next fact.

FACT NUMBER SEVEN: Proponents of SPEWS to a man worship dark powers and perform occult rituals in the privacy of the basement apartments they are renting from their parents. SPEWS supporters have also participated in no less than 800 leprechaun abductions over the past decade and it is suspected that they can astral project.

FACT NUMBER EIGHT: If you run a network with any significant number of people using the SPEWS blocklist will cause them to be murdered one after another by a mysterious black cloaked vigilante called The Night Shadow. No matter how hard you attempt to track him down he will always be one step ahead and will taunt you by posting photos of the victim on hot-or-not and then e-mailing you through anonymous proxy.

FACT NUMBER NINE: One thousand monkeys on one thousand typewriters are significantly better at differentiating spam from legitimate e-mail than SPEWS is. In fact SPEWS is so horrible that tests run at our Loc Cruces facility indicated Wil Wheaton's severed hand, while completely motionless, is still better at picking legitimate e-mails out of blocked spam.

FACT NUMER TEN: SPEWS supporters are intensely interested in Dungeons & Dragons but they make really shitty players because they always power game barbarians and roleplay their characters by screaming whenever the dungeon master is describing a monster. They also keep up constant pressure to have adventures revolve around rescuing unconscious female elves and demand first pick on all treasure. Hey, don't look at me like that, I'm just telling you what I found out.
That's all fun and games but the bare fact is that a lot of sites you may or may not enjoy have run into trouble with SPEWS and may still be blacklisted by them. I'm sure if it wasn't written in stone already this update has pretty much guaranteed Something Awful's permanent entry into the SPEWS hall of fame. Worth 1000 is also currently in an IP range being listed by SPEWS, Fark has been in the past, and some day your server may be blocklisted too. Getting off that list may be as easy as tracking down one spammer on your own private network, or it could be a task that leads to your business going bankrupt. Hell, your network may even clean up their act but SPEWS might just have a grudge against it and decide to never whitelist it.

We're on the list probably forever, and that doesn't really bother me since thanks to support from web sites who know about the crap we've gone through in the past we can now wholly ignore SPEWS blacklisting. That doesn't lessen my determination to put a stop to this mysterious geek cabal, because your server or ISP might show up on that list next. Boycott SPEWS if you make network admin decisions, boycott companies that use SPEWS if you're in the market for an ISP, and most importantly inform yourself about the anti-spam techniques your ISP is currently using. You vote with your money in the market so use it to vote against SPEWS.

After months of inflationary pressure and exterior expansion, sources close to J-Lo's ass are reporting the beefy rump intends to secede from the union. Man trapped between J-LO's cheeks; Amputates arm to escape: The liberated rump, renamed JaLL-O, will be headlining the Assapalooza Festival in Minneapolis this summer.

The Lopez mainland and expansive rear territory have been “growing apart for some time now,” according to one source. The two entities have diametrically opposing views on expansion; the former wishes to remain conservative to the point of actually liberating unwanted areas back there. The proposed break-away ass, however, seeks near-limitless expansion, and has increased its boundaries extensively over past months.

“That ass is out of control,” said Al Thompson, noted backdoor expert. “I’ve studied asses for over 25 years; this pattern is nothing new. Today, a few inches; tomorrow, it's requesting separate vacations and an extra seat on SouthWest Airlines. These things take on a life of their own once they get moving, and that thing can move .”

While the "Lopez Ass" has been instrumental in gaining their mutual success in years past, the two have recently been witnessed disagreeing over executive decisions such as tea vs. coffee, toast vs. Krispy Kreme, and salad vs. the family val-pack Sarah Lee Bavarian Cream Pie.

While supporters of both factions urge compromise, Ms. Lopez reportedly had expressed willingness to concede the secession with her renowned fat ass. "Booty getting too big for them britches, I say fine, go, who needs you! Jenny from the block ain’t buyin’ no size 16’s."

The Lopez mainland has it’s fair share of sympathizers. “Damn, have you seen the size of that thing?” said Maid in Manhattan actress Natasha Richardson. “That girl got some serious junk in that trunk. She puts any more juice in her caboose and she’ll need a u-Haul trailer to move it around. I say dump that ass, girl.

Ass supporters seem predominately male. “Oooh, that butt has got it ALL!” said Maid costar Rolf Fiennes. “I’ll tell you what, that must be jelly ‘cause jam don’t shake like that!” He further added, "Be sure you put an exclamation point on that because 'damn!'"

The Lopez ass intends to not only secede from Ms. Lopez, but to be paid handsomely for “all attention, accolades and advancements associated with the butt during the course of the Lopez career." The undisclosed settlement, like the ass itself, will purportedly be paid in two large lumps.

BET has announced that J-Lo may be removed from its rotation if the separation is completed, though her ass has not directly contributed to her singing career. Said one network exec, “Ass put butts in the seats, man. Simple as that.

caption: MAN TRAPPED BETWEEN J-LO's CHEEKS; AMPUTATES ARM TO ESCAPE
The liberated rump, renamed JaLL-O, will be headlining the Assapalooza Festival in Minneapolis this summer.

"Pound for pound, forget gold, forget diamonds. There is nothing more valuable on Earth than an inkjet cartridge." If the ink were gasoline, it would cost you $175,000 to fill your gas tank. check the suntimes website

A movie star buys a mansion with nine bathrooms and a koi pond, a CEO buys a Lear jet, and, face it, you're jealous.

But you need not be.

You can splurge with the best of them, and you may not even know it.

Put it this way: Walk over to your home inkjet printer and take out one of the ink cartridges.

Behold it.

A sultan never beheld such treasure.

"I remember how someone once put it," said Tricia Judge, editorial director of Imaging Spectrum magazine, a printing industry journal.

"Pound for pound, forget gold, forget diamonds. There is nothing more valuable on Earth than an inkjet cartridge."

This is a story about the ink you use in your office, your home.

It comes in a cartridge almost as light as a few feathers.

Valuable?

If the ink were gasoline, it would cost you $175,000 to fill your gas tank.

Give or take, depending the tank.

And wait a minute.

Your printer says the ink is running low.

Better go out and buy some more.

***

"People are astounded," John Roberts said. "They're appalled."

Roberts did not go into business to astound and appall people. He runs Pieritz Bros. office supply in Oak Park. The store started selling office supplies in 1895, when typewriters were still viewed with suspicion.

It is a pleasant and well-stocked store, with a fine old cat named Huckleberry asleep on the counter next to the cash register.

But it has stayed with the times, which means it must sell, among other things, inkjet cartridges.

"People can't believe the prices they have to pay," Roberts said. "And, frankly, neither can I."

Here is how the business works:

You buy an inkjet printer. It comes with ink cartridges, but they are only partially filled and do not last long. The printer company is giving you a taste.

Then you need more.

The makers of the printers-- Lexmark, Epson, Cannon, Hewlett-Packard--make the ink cartridges.

A typical cartridge costs $3 to $4 to produce, industry sources say.

The price to you is 10 times that.

And you seem to have little choice.

"They sell the printers cheap," Roberts said. "But then you're hooked on their ink. That's when they've got you."

The printer companies beg to differ. They cite research and development costs. They cite many factors.

"We make our cartridges in a clean-room environment with the strictest possible quality-control standards and carefully developed chemicals--this isn't just colored water we're talking about," said Epson spokeswoman Pam Barnett.

Whatever. They've still got you.

Or are there a few things you can do?

***

"The first thing to remember is that your printer lies to you," said an assistant at an office supply chain. "A lot of people see the printer telling them the ink is running out, and they pop in another cartridge. But your printer is lying."

The trick is to squeeze every last drop of ink out of the cartridge.

Ignore the warnings. Keep a replacement handy and keep printing.

The personal best for the writer of this piece is two weeks of printing after the warning.

And when the ink really starts to run out, pop in the new cartridge, right?

No.

"You can still get a few more pages sometimes," the assistant said. "Take out the cartridge and shake it. Then put it back in. Not always, but sometimes, it works."

Good advice when you're using ink that prices out per milliliter, according to one study, at seven times the tab for Dom Perignon 1985.

***

But other than that, they've got you.

Or do they?

"The real answer is competition," said Lester Cornelius. "And we're finally starting to make a little progress here."

Cornelius is chairman of the International Imaging Technology Council, an industry group seeking to open up the market for those who would compete against the expensive guys in the cartridge business.

And don't get Cornelius started about the expensive guys.

"Some of their inkjet cartridges have three colors--and when the ink runs out in one, the cartridge shuts down and you have to throw it out. Amazing. They've been banned in China, you know. China said it's too poor to throw out half its ink."

But they haven't been banned here. And the answer, Cornelius said, is coming from the "compatibles" and the "remanufactureds"--generic cartridges made from scratch and used cartridges that are refurbished, refilled and sold at a fraction of the original price.

The idea started some years ago. It was a nonstarter when it started.

"You had a lot of them coming out of mom-and-pop organizations," said Jenny Popps, who oversees inks and toners for the Office Depot chain.

"They'd just drill a hole in it and resell it. There were some real quality problems."

But customers are starting to notice there are alternative brands that don't come out of somebody's garage.

So now when you walk into an Office Depot, you will find an Office Depot brand of inks for many printers. The Staples chain has developed its own alternative with the help of the Rochester Institute of Technology. Independent manufacturers with no moms and pops in evidence are wholesaling to retailers, too, some for half the price.

The market share for the upstarts is 15 percent and growing.

"A lot of consumers still don't know they have these alternatives," Cornelius said. "But they're starting to catch on."

The trouble is, so are the makers of the printers.

***

"I'll tell you the most hideous thing they do," Cornelius said.

Adds Judge of Imaging Spectrum magazine: "Some of these are almost like a computer virus."

The printer companies have launched a number of counterattacks, even down to threatening to void warranties if some brand of ink other than their own is stuck into their printers.

But none has been so effective as one.

"The hideous thing they do is killer chips," Cornelius said.

There are now computer chips that shut down a cartridge when the ink is low, making it impossible to refurbish and refill. There are killer chips that send a message to the printer to shut down if another brand is installed.

The makers of the printers say this is for quality control, that an inferior cartridge can foul up a printer. The upstarts say it is a question best settled in antitrust lawsuits, a couple of which are now pending in federal court.

But for now, the killer chips are killers.

"We haven't been able to remanufacture any of the cartridges that have killer chips in them yet," said Popps of Office Depot.

***

But there are some rustlings, too, of a counterattack to the counterattack.

Along with the federal lawsuits, there are new laws in Texas, Connecticut and California that ban state agencies from buying products with any devices that prevent recycling.

North Carolina just passed a law protecting people who use alternative brands of ink from having their warranties voided.

The European Union is taking a hard look at killer chips.

And while momentum grows, a new report from the front:

"We're developing killer chips to kill their killer chips," said Bud Linville of Longer Life Products, which makes compatible cartridges in Triadelphia, W.Va.

"This is a war. They have their research and development. We have our research and development."

So just hold on.

"Right," Linville said. "This should all be settled in 10 or 20 years."

***

Connie Huber carried a piece of printed paper and her 10-month-old baby, Evan, into Pieritz Bros. office supply. She smiled. She handed the paper over.

She was there because of the price of ink cartridges.

"The ink is so expensive, I thought I'd do it this way," she said.

This is what she was doing: Taking a special trip to an office supply store to have 35 copies made of a flier for an upcoming block party in her neighborhood.

Probably cheaper than using her home printer, she figured.

And maybe so.

John Roberts made the 35 copies of the block-party flier. He gave them to Connie Huber and her baby.

Any advice, meanwhile, for users of inkjet printers?

"Get a laser printer," Roberts said. "Laser printers have come down in price. The toner isn't cheap, but it's less expensive per page. You'll save money in the long run."

Meanwhile, the writer of this piece picked up a $40 inkjet cartridge and made it do a little dance in the air in front of the baby.

The baby reached out a hand and shoved it away.

Everybody is a critic.

culled from cnn money: A single glazed Krispy Kreme contains 200 calories, 110 of which come from fat (12 grams). Before you finish chewing a second doughnut, you've exceeded the USDA's recommended fat intake for the entire day. If you keep eating, you should know that a box of 12 contains 144 grams of fat, and would likely entail a trip to the hospital.

1 hour and 23 minutes is how long it takes to have at&t switch me to my new phone. DO NOT i repeat DO NOT call at&t unless you have an earpiece in and are ready to be on hold for farking ever.

Microsoft ESMTP MAIL Service, Version: 5.0.2195.5329 ready at
Microsoft ESMTP MAIL Service, Version: 5.5.2650.21 ready at
Microsoft ESMTP MAIL Service, Version: 6.0.2600.1 ready at
Microsoft ESMTP MAIL Service, Version: 6.0.2600.1106 ready at
Microsoft ESMTP MAIL Service, Version: 6.0.2600.28 ready at

really interesting farker discussion on The Matrix: Reloaded

05-22-03 01:18:32 PM BadBatsuMaru
Sorry, but I have to say this one more time... The Architect's speech is mostly irrelevant. He's a full-of-crap salesman. He's sitting there with a pen saying, "Sign here! Listen to me! Kill everybody in Zion! It's what you were meant to do!"

The only thing everybody's actually figured out is that Persephone is the Mother, not The Oracle. But the way The Architect says, "Please!" when Neo suggests The Oracle makes that obvious. It doesn't have to be Persephone, though. That whole kissing thing means they definitely want you to believe that she's a program trying to study humans, but for all we know it could be Trinity (although that's somewhat unlikely as it would screw up the love story and really piss people off).

The Architect is a program. He's 100% computer. He's the MCP a la Tron. Corporate Mofo is trying entirely too hard to draw the plot out of its clever religious metaphors, but they really hit the nail on the head in a few places, particularly:

Understanding why things are the way they are requires an understanding of another holy text: Asimov's Laws of Robotics. The machines, as demonstrated by Smith's need to try to kill Neo even after being "freed," don't have free will. ... The bit about the machines needing human bio-energy to survive, as Morpheus (the dreamer) explained in the first movie, is bullshiat. The machines keep humanity alive but imprisoned, even after taking over the world, because they were created to serve people. In other words, the machines would like to destroy humanity, but they CAN'T. Instead, they need a human to make the choice.

Programs can't kill people. They're not allowed to. They can justify killing someone in The Matrix, because they're not really killing them; they're fooling the mind so that the person is killed by their own mind. But Zion is unplugged. The only way the machines can destoy Zion is by getting a human to do it for them. Therefore, it is The Architect's sole purpose to lie to The One and get him to kill Zion.

I mean, come on! The machines would just kill everybody and build a few nuclear reactors if they could! They don't need people for energy. If that ends up being true at the end of Revolutions, I'm going to go up to Larry and Andy myself and demand all my money back.

Everybody loves the scene where Neo stops the Sentinels in real life. Neo stopped the Sentinels, but he's not in The Matrix, so there have to be many Matrices, one on top of the other! That's what they want you to believe, but it's a little too obvious, isn't it?

There is no Over Matrix, just The Matrix. Smith has new powers over humans because he is linked to Neo. That was explained fairly well, although Smith admits he doesn't understand it himself. This also means that Neo has new powers over machines because he is linked to Smith.

If there was an Over Matrix, the machines wouldn't even have to hassle with Zion, because they would control the Over Matrix. They would only have to make a few Agents appear in Zion. And, if there was an Over Matrix, then how can you explain The Architect noodling around to try and get Neo to give up Zion? Asimov's Laws only control machines in the real world.

Most of the confusion and needless speculation I'm seeing is coming from people assuming The Architect is telling the truth. The Architect wants Neo to think he's a program and his purpose is to destroy Zion, which goes against everything else in the movie. Why believe him? Just because Morpheus is doubting the Prophecy doesn't mean all you suckers have to.

Hell, maybe The Oracle is the Mother. Just because The Architect tried to deny it doesn't mean she's not.

05-22-03 06:46:06 PM Agrippa
More than one Matrix? No, there is only one Matrix. Just so you know, Zion is part of the Matrix. It is part of the control system; those 0.1% that won't accept the Matrix are free from it, though still a part of it.

How else could Agent Smith exist in Zion? How could Neo destroy a sentinal in the real world with his mind? I wonder if his choice will help him wake up in the real real world.

05-23-03 01:32:16 PM Aquigley Synthesis Post!
I watched it again last night...you seriously get a lot more out of the second viewing.

First off, the rave scene is only 5:30 from first drumbeat to final shot of Keanu's ass. To compare, the end credits are 9:30. Crappy scene, but not 20 minutes long.

Second, there isn't any OverMatrix stuff going on. The real world is the real world. Above, someone posted that scenes from Zion and the Nebechudnotgonnaworkhereanymore show up on the monitors behind Neo in the Architect's room. That is not true. All the scenes come from within the Matrix. The reason why Neo can exert some control over the sentinels is the same reason why Smith can control Bane...somehow, some way, when Neo "imprinted" part of his code on Smith, Smith "imprinted" part of his self on Neo. That is the real thing that's messing with everyone's mind here.

If the squiddie-shocking scene didn't happen, no one would have even thought "OverMatrix". The explanation is the cross-mojonation of Smith and Neo.

Finally...I do think the Architect is telling the truth about this being the 6th version of the Matrix. Reason: The Merovingian. Frenchy alludes to the fact that Neo is actually fulfilling his duty to restore order to the Matrix, instead of destroy it like Neo thinks he's doing. "It's the WHY that you do not understand." Also, when they're fightin' and fussin' with the melee weapons, Frenchy says to Neo before leaving, "I have survived your predecessors, and I will survive you." However, Frenchy does seem surprised at the ease in which Neo dispatches his minions...THIS Neo is different than the other 5. Frenchy and the Architect could both be telling the same lie...but they're not building the Merovingian to be a toadie. He's his own man, and he's gonna wipe his ass with silk and cook up some blow job cheesecake as long as he wants to.

Conclusion: No OverMatrix, Smith and Neo gave each other a really virulent strain of MatrixHerpes, this really is the 6th Matrix, and this Neo is different than the other five.

"You know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the Swiss hold the America's Cup, France is accusing the US of arrogance, and Germany doesn't want to go to war. And the 3 most powerful men in America are named 'Bush', 'Dick', and 'Colon'."

dunno where that came from, but it's mildly amusing

thanks cvoid

This modification requires the removal of over 40 screws from your iBook to replace the Hard Drive or CD drive. It is for this reason, I do not recommend this modification. For those who wish to be entertained, here is what needs to be done.

important websites:
xlr8yourmac.com
yourmaui.com

here's my crappy cut and paste from main site (just in case it goes away)
Disclaimer / Caution: This article is for entertainment purposes only. The author nor the site publisher assumes any liability for modifications you make to your iBook, which voids the warranty and may affect short or long term reliability. Incorrectly done modifications may cause immediate system damage or injury.

News

2/16/03- I just found out my email is not being forwarded correctly so until I fix this email me at yourmaui@shaka.com with questions. Sorry to those who emailed recently and did not hear back from me.

1/15/03-Assistance Needed- I now own the 800mhz iBook which has the Toshiba SD-R2212. Many new iBook owners including myself have not been able to burn at 16X speeds. I am looking for test results from those of you who have installed an aftermarket SD-R2212 drive into your iBook. I am trying to pinpoint if this is an Apple firmware problem or a problem with the drive in general. Here is the info I am requesting: time to burn 650mb CD-R, firmware of your Toshiba SD-R2212 drive (found in Apple System Profiler). Please email me at ibook@yourmaui.com

1/15/03- I helped a fellow iBook users with some hard to find parts. He posted some ibook take apart pictures on his website. Feel free to check them out here.

10/17/02- Finally after about a year, I finally updated this web site. Thanks for all the positive feedback. I have been glad to help many of you out with your upgrade questions. A special thanks to Mike from xlr8yorumac.com for posting this link in his FAQ (thanks Mike for letting me use one of the pictures as well. I finally updated with my own).

iBook Hard Drive and CD removal tips:

I received a great deal on an iBook with a standard CD. On ebay I found the UJDA330 CD-RW and decided to update my iBook to that. I later found a combo Toshiba drive SD-R2002 for $120 and could not pass on the offer. So this modification has been done twice now. The second time around, I took pictures. This modification requires the removal of over 40 screws from your iBook to replace the Hard Drive or CD drive. It is for this reason, I do not recommend this modification. For those who wish to be entertained, here is what needs to be done.

Update: 10/17/02: I have updated my second iBook with a Toshiba SD-R2212 combo laptop drive which burns at 16x speed. Now that is fast burning.

Removal of Case Parts:

Starting from the bottom, remove the battery. Then remove nine screws from the bottom case to remove it. Careful when prying the case off, not to crack the plastic. Be gentle.

Once the bottom panel and screws are off, (just as a note, there are 6 screws that need to be removed from the bottom in order for the top case to come off. See image above) turn the iBook over, and remove the keyboard as if you are going to install an airport card or RAM. If you remove the airport caddy, you will see the RAM slot. you will also see where the keyboard is connected. Remove the connector to the keyboard. On the top of the iBook, are four screws, and one covered by a magnet in the top center. A small glasses screwdriver will remove the magnet. Once the screws are removed the top case will come off.

Once the top cover is removed, you will find a metal cover to remove. There are10-15 screws to remove to gain access to the drive components. Careful to match the screws and sizes to the proper hole.

If you turn the case to the back again, you will see two screws holding the CD drive in place. Remove them, and the CD becomes free. On the back of the CD drive, there are two screws holding a bracket in place. Remove the two screws exposing the connector. Remove the mini 50-pin connector and replace your CD drive. Also note on the side of the CD drive is a bracket to hold the CD in place to the bottom screws. Remove it and place it on the new replacement CD drive. Now go in reverse and put it all back together.

On a side note, the image below shows how the Hard Drive pops up. The HD sits in a bracket, in which 4 screws must be removed to get the drive out. Removal of the cable seemed a little complicated.

Performance

When I had the UJDA330 CD-RW in the machine, it burned at 8X speed. It was very fast. Booting from a startup CD worked as well with no problems. I applied the iTunes hack which worked without a problem. I had to modify the CD drive faceplate to keep the iBook look. A little Plastix from the hardware store, and some plastic modifications solved that. When I placed the Combo drive in, the door modification was a little more complicated (and still not completed) I thought I would just buy the door from Apple, but they want to charge $85. Update: My local Apple store sells the combo drive door for $30. It is Apple Service part # 922-4586. This door only works on the Toshiba Combo drives. Below you will see a picture of the CD, DVD, and combo drive bezel doors for the iBooks. Note the picture was taken at an angle and all doors are the same size.

Aloha, Rick

email questions to: ibook@yourmaui.com

Web site http://www.yourmaui.com

 for website questions email: webmaster@yourmaui.com
yourmaui© 2001-2003 All Rights Reserved

 
js = "1";js = "1.1";js = "1.2";js = "1.3";js = "1.4";

yep. i was just thinking last week how it's about time for a juicy bug in sendmail to appear. guess my wish has been granted. check archives for how to update yoself before the worms appear.

Remote Sendmail Header Processing Vulnerability

Synopsis:

ISS X-Force has discovered a buffer overflow vulnerability in the Sendmail
Mail Transfer Agent (MTA). Sendmail is the most common MTA and has been
documented to handle between 50% and 75% of all Internet email traffic.

Impact:

Attackers may remotely exploit this vulnerability to gain "root" or superuser
control of any vulnerable Sendmail server. Sendmail and all other email
servers are typically exposed to the Internet in order to send and receive
Internet email. Vulnerable Sendmail servers will not be protected by legacy
security devices such as firewalls and/or packet filters. This vulnerability
is especially dangerous because the exploit can be delivered within an email
message and the attacker doesn't need any specific knowledge of the target to
launch a successful attack.

Affected Versions:

Sendmail versions from 5.79 to 8.12.7 are vulnerable

Note: The affected versions of Sendmail commercial, Sendmail open source
running on all platforms are known to be vulnerable.

Description:

The Sendmail remote vulnerability occurs when processing and evaluating
header fields in email collected during an SMTP transaction. Specifically,
when fields are encountered that contain addresses or lists of addresses
(such as the "From" field, "To" field and "CC" field), Sendmail attempts
to semantically evaluate whether the supplied address (or list of addresses)
are valid. This is accomplished using the crackaddr() function, which is
located in the headers.c file in the Sendmail source tree.

A static buffer is used to store data that has been processed. Sendmail
detects when this buffer becomes full and stops adding characters, although
it continues processing. Sendmail implements several security checks to
ensure that characters are parsed correctly. One such security check is
flawed, making it possible for a remote attacker to send an email with a
specially crafted address field that triggers a buffer overflow.

X-Force has demonstrated that this vulnerability is exploitable in real-
world conditions on production Sendmail installations. This vulnerability is
readily exploitable on x86 architecture systems, and may be exploitable on
others as well.

Protection mechanisms such as implementation of a non-executable stack do not
offer any protection from exploitation of this vulnerability. Successful
exploitation of this vulnerability does not generate any log entries.

Recommendations:

For identification of potentially vulnerable systems, Internet Security
Systems has provided the following assessment checks:

Internet Scanner XPU 6.24
MtaDiscovery - (< http://www.iss.net/security_center/static/10961.php >)

Internet Scanner XPU 6.26
SendmailRunning - (< http://www.iss.net/security_center/static/2938.php >)

System Scanner SR 3.13
sendmail-header-processing-bo –
(< http://www.iss.net/security_center/static/10748.php >)

For Dynamic Threat Protection, Internet Security Systems recommends applying a
Virtual Patch for the Sendmail vulnerability. Employ the following protection
techniques through ISS’ Dynamic Threat Protection platform.

RealSecure Network Sensor XPU 20.9 and 5.8:
SMTP_Sendmail_Header_Parse_Overflow -
( http://www.iss.net/security_center/static/10748.php )

All updates listed above are available from the ISS Download center
( http://www.iss.net/download )

For Manual Protection, the affected vendor has offered the following
recommendations:

Sendmail urges all users to either upgrade to Sendmail 8.12.8 or apply a patch
for 8.12.x (or for older versions). Updates can be downloaded from
ftp.sendmail.org or any of its mirrors (try a mirror near to you first), see http://www.sendmail.org / for details. Remember to check the PGP signatures of
patches or releases obtained. For those not running the open source version,
check with your vendor for a patch. Sendmail, Inc., the commercial provider of
the sendmail MTA, is providing a binary patch for their commercial customers.
The patch can be downloaded from Sendmail's Web site at: http://www.sendmail.com /

Sendmail versions that are patched will record the following log entry when
exploitation is attempted: "Dropped invalid comments from header address".

Vendor Notification Schedule:

Initial vendor notification: 1/13/2003
Initial vendor confirmation: 1/13/2003
Final release schedule confirmation: 1/31/2003

i guess i assume too much. people, in my opinion, are intelligent unless proven otherwise. this guy not only jumps right out screaming idiocy, but he performs a triple summersault bellyflop off the tower of maturity as well.

i'm on the lds email list at stanford. somehow every week at least one person sends a message to the entire list asking to be unsubscribed. so i've taken it upon myself to reply in the nicest possible way... straining against the urge to straight out remind the offender what an idiot he is. (appended to the end of every message sent through the list are instructions about how to unsubscribe)

From: "David A. Beecroft"

i thought i was writing him for the u/p info, penis sucker.
how's about you just give it to me, nit-wit, then leave me alone.

--- skip wrote:
> ohhh i see... that explains how you subscribed to
> the list, since you had to log in to the website in
> order to subscribe in the first place. or there's
> always the email address to contact the list admin
> as a second option... but i guess you didn't think
> of that either. -s
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "David A. Beecroft" stripling@yahoo.com
> Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2003 4:07 PM
> Subject: Re: LDS: one extra girl ticket for yosemite
>
>
> > i haven't got the username and password
> > you dingleberry
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --- skip wrote:
> > > you follow the directions that are
> > > appended to the end of EVERY
> > > message... -s
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > From: "David A. Beecroft" stripling@yahoo.com
> > > Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2003 2:34 PM
> > > Subject: Re: LDS: one extra girl ticket for yosemite
> > >
> > >
> > > Oh my GOSH ... HOW do I get off this dang list???
> > > david
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
======================================
> > > To subscribe or unsubscribe, please go to the following web page:
> > >
> > > --http://www.stanfordward.org/subscribe.shtml
> > > ---For other questions, email remove@lists.stanford.net
> > >

Dont you think its kind of ODD how exactly 6 months after the advisory and patch were released that a worm should also be released? Sounds kinda like whoever did release this worm was laughing at the security in part. That or maybe they just wanted to give you all a chance to patch before showing you all up for the lazy all-talk-no-patchin bugtraq bitchez that you are.

From: "sockz loves you"
Date: Thu Jan 30, 2003 6:11:02 AM US/Pacific
To: full-disclosure@lists.netsys.com
Subject: Re: [Full-Disclosure] The worm author finally revealed!

Original Message:
I believe that the author of the worm is the infamous Kevin Mitnick. The timing cannot be a coincidence. Mitnick was let loose on the Internet on Jan 21 and four days later the Internet was brough down. It's obvious that he is the one responsible.
-Solar

Response:
Kevin Mitnick is not responsible for the SQL Worm, DORK. That worm was written by highly skilled hackers, the first version was released in October and the second version two days after the worm hit. The attack has its own timeline that has nothing to do with Mitnick in the slightest. Your suspicions are based on coincidence alone. GET A LIFE OUTSIDE OF HOLLYWOOD, MITNICK-WHORE.

Fucking posers the lot of you! Acting like you have a clue when really you have NOTHING bar what bugtraq and wired tell you. I LAUGH AT YOUR IGNORANCE: h0h0h0h

I think its amusing how all you clueless fucks have reacted to the attack. "OMG A WORM IS KILLING THE INTERNET BLOCK PORT 1434!!!" "BLAME MICROSOFT!" Idiots. I pee on your mothers in their Sunday dresses and hope they catch a nasty infection!

Planned chaos strikes and you all panic and pretend like you know whats going on when really you have no idea. So you talk more, post more, panic more, just so it seems like you're doing something of value, but really... you're not. You're just adding to the bandwidth. You are about as useful to security as free 80s chiq-mullet porn where the girls are wearing those hideous hawaiian shirts and look like they've been attacked by a make-up artist who's just escaped from a mental institution. Those whores... are you.

And what's the most we've seen come out of ISS.net? "We found it first! We named it before you did!" Yet their response came at least a day after I and others first noticed the attack. Or it seemed that long at least. X-Force must have been working overtime to have noticed the attack at all. I think its cute how the most substantial response from ISS to the worm was a flash animation. It says Alert Con 3 on this animations opening page, but I saw it at 4. X-Force panicked. It was funny. "OMG HOW DO WE CLOSE PORT 1434!?!" Emergency Response my ass. And that animation sucked. My 7yo cousin could have done better. SHAME ON YOU.

But whether its called "Sapphire" or the "SQL Slammer"... all silly. The smaller details are unimportant here. Whatever, children. Lets just review the facts.

SQL WORM:
25th July 2002 - Advisory and Patch Released
1st October 2002 - Exploit Released
25th January 2003 - SQL Worm attacks internet

THERE IS A MESSAGE HERE, LOOK CLOSELY FOR THE PATTERN MY MORONIC READERS

Dont you think its kind of ODD how exactly 6 months after the advisory and patch were released that a worm should also be released? Sounds kinda like whoever did release this worm was laughing at the security in part. That or maybe they just wanted to give you all a chance to patch before showing you all up for the lazy all-talk-no-patchin bugtraq bitchez that you are.

I (and MANY others I know) certainly laughed lotz at how much the security industry had failed to measure up to its own standards. Watching whitehats panic about closing port 1434 was amusing given that days earlier they had been reciting the same old "only lazy admins dont patch and they are the ones that DESERVE to die" chants. In my opinion, you all deserve death for what you've done to computer security and the hacker scene. And I hope you're loved ones are too lazy to bury you and that your rotting corpse remains at your computers logged into slashdot as a strong reminder to everyone just how deadly full-disclosure mechanisms can be.

YOU ARE ALL IDIOTS WHO CANNOT PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH

And you all know that this is not the first time you whitehats have almost caused the destruction of the internet. Oh yes, let's blame Microsoft for releasing buggy code in the first place... BULL SHIT. Had your silly full-disclosure shit worked THIS WORM WOULD NOT HAVE CAUSED NEARLY AS MUCH DEVASTATION.

And you KNOW I speak the truth. And you KNOW that this is what the author of the worm was on about too.

You had all better pray that your intelligence and understanding grows fast, lest attacks like these grow in severity until you all realise the correlation. That or you whitehats could just do us all a favour and DIE already. Personally I'm all up for the death. Less morons with computers breathing the air on OUR planet, the better.

I HATE YOU ALL

<3 & p33z
- sockz

*Adjective* Computer Worm *verb* Internet

In the wee hours of *date*, a *adjective* computer worm spread *adverb* throughout the Internet. Dubbed *silly name* because *ridiculous reason that doesn't explain anything about how it works*, and also known as *another random name* and *another random name*, the worm has infected an estimated *number* systems within *length of time*. Experts are calling this worm the most *adjective* since *date in the past*.

The worm exploits a hole in *Microsoft product name* that was first identified *number* months ago by *security company name*. In an attempt to secure the planet, *same company* released detailed information about the vulnerability and how to exploit it. They also mentioned how to fix it, but apparently *noun* listened. Coincidentally, the worm that exploited this hole was also first identified by *same company*. Even more coincidentally, they make a product to protect against *noun*.

"Actually, it's not really a *noun*, it's a *noun*," said *Pete Lindstrom, or some other person seeking publicity*. " A true *noun* works by *random filler that nobody will read*."

The worm's payload *verb* every system by *verb ending in -ing* the *noun*. Comparatively speaking, this is much worse than *another worm* but not as bad as *another worm*. The computers of *place* were hit the hardest. Current damage is estimated at *dollar figure more than the GNP of two-thirds of the world's nations*. " This worm has the potential to *something or other*," said *Pete Lindstrom, or some other person trying hard to come up with something interesting to say ;-)*. " It just goes to show you that *another something or other*."

Though there is no way to protect against this particular bug, experts recommend trying *longshot one* or *longshot two*, neither of which matter, since nobody will do it anyway.

Subject: Pete Lindstrom's parametric worm warning

i'm steve, and i'm a super villan

update server, perl doesn't know about mysql anymore, movable type borken. now fixed, all is happy. back to play ac2.

if [ rain + yellow stoplight + overpass ] ;then [road = slick++] && car = smash ;fi

wait i want to make one more...

while [rain] && [yellow stoplight] && [downhill]
do if [try to stop]
then [car=smashed]
(insurance++)
fi
(slick++)
done

my baby is hurt, her nose is messed up and broken.

am i hot or not

i'm back. had gone to Puerto Vallarta for no apparent reason. random vacation with jen gunyan and amy from utah. took amtrack train from berkeley to utah for about 20 hours, almost missing our flight because apparently trains have no promise as to when they'll get you there.

then jen didn't bring her passport so we almost missed our flight waiting for the local notary to wake up and drive to the airport. somehow we made it to mexico.

sucessfully evaded the time share whores trying to sell their warez, and found the beach. we went by wallmart because my camera needed a battery and my eyes needed sunglasses, though caught the wrong bus back to the hotel. motorista said "sure yah i go there" but he/we misunderstood and ended up 20 kilometers outside the city with amy yelling at the busdriver for our $3 back.

off to swing central. rob and dianne...

1. closed
2. swing out
3. lindy
4. lindy to closed
5. lindy hand around back and spin
6. opposite hands, push left
7. push right, push left
8. forearm grab and spin
9. kick kick turn, kick kick spin
10. normal hands, pull by under arm
11. switch hands, feet together
12. slide feet out, left to right and step left
13. step back and pull forward

openbsd vs. freebsd hrmmm they're not really that different. it's mostly a religous issue. openbsd tends to be more anal about security (generally a good thing). i miss the little things from linux though, take grsecurity for example. very cool kernel patch for linux.

grsecurity 1.9.7-rc4 was released today. Changes include a new optimized hash function, stability fixes for the ACL system, and a new PaX feature: kernel stack randomization. It applies 5 bits of randomization to the kernel stack on each syscall (a fast permutation of the time is used to create the randomness). Since the randomization is applied on every syscall, it makes bypassing by info leak much more difficult or impossible in some cases. This feature won't do anything against holes that allow arbitrary kernel memory reads or writes, yet it is useful against exploits that need an address on the kernel's stack to work correctly. More work is under development by the PaX team related to stopping arbitrary code execution in the kernel. In the future, VM_[WRITE|MAYWRITE] handling will become more strict as well. This means that gdb breakpointing and ptracing won't be allowed for your binaries, so if you're a developer using PaX on your system, you'll have to disable PaX to set breakpoints on the code you've written. Work will begin shortly on implementing the PaX flags under the ACL system.

in the beginning speeding tickets are seen as no more than a monitary annoyance, though quickly one realizes the silly dmv has this nifty point system. first person to 4 points wins.... (apparently they'll jack your license quick if you get 4 in one year) my advise: fight every ticket you ever get. old news i know, but really every time i've fought a speeding ticket i've won simply because the officer didn't show up in court.

obviously the guy swerving through traffic in his hummer won't get pulled over. it's a karma thing. what will happen though is while traffic is going 84mph through the barren wasteland known as nevada, you'll get pulled over for 88mph in a 65.

no i'm not a graphic designer. i admit my skills stop abruptly somewhere in the neighborhood of page curl in photoshop, but i know when a site just plain sucks^TM and i pray every night that the blink tag never returns from it's grave. you know there's about five thousand bed wetting webmasters just itching to use it.

can we maybe have an internet worm to clean servers of crap, taking down ugly and useless websites? please?

oh by the way, here's how to do the little trademark thingie:
this text is trademark^TM

retarted webmasters think that disableing right-click is a good security measure, when all it really does is piss us off and show how juvinile they are... hope they realize that anyone can save their files and download whatever we want anyway. here's a "security script" to prevent right click. funny thing is, simply use another browser (mozilla) and this useless security feature can be turned off by the end user.

if (self != top) {top.location.href = self.location.href}

function click(e) {
var message=" Sorry, that function is disabled.\nThis Page (Pictures & Text) is copyrighted & protected !\n (C) 2002 - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED !";

if (document.all) {
if (event.button == 2) {
alert(message);
return false;
}
}

if (document.layers) {
if (e.which == 3) {
alert(message);
return false;
}
}
}

if (document.layers) {
document.captureEvents(Event.MOUSEDOWN);
}
document.onmousedown=click;

can't edit your blog using my https site? too bad, go use another browser. microsoft felt like giving osx a crappy browser that's not capable of using self-signed ssl certificates.

this means unless a website pays big money for a "real" ssl cert you'll not be able to connect. nothing's wrong with my homemade certificate... just that is isn't from one of the big boys. so if you want to connect to https://www.fif3.com you had better use a real browser

yummy hamburgers. mixed soy sauce in with ground beef goodness...
oooh and then grilled the buns with a little butter on the pan. tomorrow i'll do 25min of cardio to make up for it i promise.

(cached for your pleasure)