The net’s authority over domain names is set to pull the plug on an Estonia-based seller of domain names that security researchers say has been a refuge for cyber-criminals for years.
ICANN told the EstDomains on Tuesday that it was revoking its accreditation since it learned the company’s president Vladimir Tsastin had been convicted in February [...]

Filed under: news, spam | 2 Comments »

The trouble with credit cards isn’t being able to accept them… The trouble is when you do start trying to accept them, the fee’s eat up all your profits.
Setup fees, traction fees, value of the transaction fees, monthly account fees. What the hell, I found that I could make use of a fed credit union [...]

Filed under: apple, cool | 2 Comments »

All the stocks and bonds you think you own are actually owned by a company you’ve probably never heard of, a company owned by the same people who own the US Federal Reserve.
Originally paper stocks certificates were issued as evidence of ownership by companies to investors purchasing shares. But as trading volume exploded in the [...]

Filed under: offtopic, politics, ugh | No Comments »

We don’t see it in our Gmail settings (yet), but Webmonkey reports that Gmail Labs has added a very useful opt-in feature for sending text / SMS messages to mobile phones using the built-in Chat functionality.
Turning the option on in your Gmail account settings apparently enables you to send an SMS as soon as you [...]

Filed under: google | 1 Comment »

Please note that HD DVD was done completely right. Blu-Ray killed HD DVD through studio bribes and in the process, killed the format. I and others said a year ago that if HD DVD wins the content war then HD disc media will have a future and if Blu-Ray wins it will not. Yeah, I [...]

Filed under: copywrong, high definition, offtopic | No Comments »

You already know that with a little URL-hacking, you can skip to a certain time in YouTube clip embedded on your blog. Now you can do the same within the comments on a clip at the YouTube site. The TechCrunch blog describes how:
To specify a point, append a tag to the end of your video [...]

Filed under: cool, youtube | No Comments »

Deuce is premiering next month on 2 separate occasions…

The $5.00 Haircut, featuring Deuce Skurcenski, after the jump…

Filed under: offtopic, youtube | No Comments »

Pizza Party is a free text based software package for ordering pizza

Filed under: cool, howto, linux | No Comments »

With the success of Fedora in Linux distributions, Fedora 10 is perhaps the most anticipated operating system from their library. A faster and advanced distribution is what is proposed by them. Fedora 10, codenamed Cambridge, is set for release on November 25, 2008. So before you go on and download this new Fedora version, let [...]

Filed under: free open source software, linux | No Comments »

A 15-year-old high school student in New York State has been charged with three felonies after he allegedly accessed personnel records on his school’s poorly configured computer network and then notified his principal of the security weakness.
The unnamed student of Shenendehowa Central School was charged Thursday with computer trespass, unlawful possession of a personal identification [...]

Filed under: .edu, pwned, security | No Comments »

A friendly tipster has been telling us that Verizon has settled on a firm launch date for the BlackBerry Storm 9530: November 4th. This would put the Storm launch two days after Verizon employees complete their Storm training, and right in line with famed rumor-monger Boy Genius’ ‘first week of November‘ time time line.

Filed under: crackberry, offtopic, verizon | No Comments »

Some background on the “bet” from the Star Tribune…
In July, St. Paul software developer CodeWeavers came up with the gimmick to make its products available free for a day if any one of five positive (but seemingly unlikely at the time) things happened during Bush’s last six months in office: gas drops to $2.79 a [...]

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Video the Vote went to Jackson County, WV, in response to numerous reports of machine vote flipping. The local county clerk showed us the machines in question, but the demonstration left us with serious questions, as the machine continued to malfunction even after it was calibrated.

Filed under: hax, news, politics, security, youtube | No Comments »

Team Twiizers, the group behind almost all of the Wii Homebrew scene, has released an update to the Homebrew Channel (and installer) that allows for installation on a Wii with the most recent update installed. While the team still recommends against installing the Nintendo update, those who accidentally updated or purchase games that require the [...]

Filed under: exploit, hax, pir8 | No Comments »

This tutorial will explain how to add a Linux/GNU server/desktop to Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Active Directory.We are going to use Likewise Open. Likewise Open is a free, open source application that joins Linux, Unix, and Mac machines to Microsoft Active Directory and securely authenticates users with their domain credentials. We will be using Ubuntu [...]

Filed under: free open source software, howto, linux, micro$oft | 4 Comments »

A while back, the BBC approached Canonical about providing seamless access to unencumbered BBC content for all Ubuntu users (in the UK and elsewhere). We agreed to approach this by way of a plugin for our primary media player, Totem, and asked Collabora Multimedia to do the plugin development work.

Filed under: free open source software, linux, news | No Comments »

I use GNU Screen extensively to manage my work. Here are a few tips and shortcuts I’ve collected or developed…
1. Adding a status bar to screen. If you use screen inside screen, or screen on more than one machine, having a status bar is essential so you always know where you are. I have the [...]

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The GreenDot Project aims to train software to recognize a person by the unique fingerprint of body language. New York University computer science professor Chris Bregler tells me that the GreenDot Project “is DOD funded for some biometrics application, but we also applied it to lots of public figures, including the current Presidential candidates.”

Filed under: obama, offtopic, politics | No Comments »

Yet another hack for RKE? We, as the designers for secure systems, should keep developing our systems and protect the Achilles’ heel (security weakness) relatively.
The modern vehicles are equipped with various access control systems to prevent being stolen. The manufacturers promote many products such as immobilizer, RKE (Remote Keyless Entry), PKE (Passive Keyless Entry) for [...]

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You know those new, super-secure, RFID-enabled passports the US is issuing to its citizens? They’re manufactured and assembled offshore, in sometimes-unstable regions, the blanks are shipped around using unsecured couriers, and they’re sold to US citizens at an 85% profit. I feel safer already.
Each new e-passport contains a small computer chip inside the back cover [...]

Filed under: privacy, security, tsa sucks, ugh | No Comments »