] This is a clothing label from a small American company
] that sells their product in France.
]
] Here's the translation of the French part of the label.
]
] * Wash with warm water.
] * Use mild soap.
] * Dry flat.
] * Do not use bleach.
] * Do not dry in the dryer.
] * Do not iron.
] * We are sorry that Our President is an idiot.
] * We did not vote for him.

Saw this on Kobi's (baudburn's) blog

Tag: We are sorry that Our President is an idiot.

While not making nearly the noise of its large brother Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird is every bit as good. Reaching 1.0 not too long ago, this mail client is small and quick. I had been using Evolution+Razor+SpamAssassin, but recently perforance issues (ever try to use a Gnome app on the upstream of a Cable modem?) among other things caused me to explore other options. Before Evolution I was using the mail client that came with the full mozilla suite.

While getting the correct SMTP servers associated with the correct email address was a little annoying (the directions online use menu options and buttons that don't exist in 1.0), I am very pleased with the results. I get around 60 emails a day, and after 3 days Firefox is catching all of the spam, without needing to train it on a 60 meg file like Spamassassin. The interface is light and the firefox-like extensions are very cool.

People who liked the mozilla mail client, no longer use the full suite, and are looking for a mail client should check out Thunderbird.

alex crimmins wrote:

]hello, my name is alex. i found your website about the backddor
]password and i have a few questions. i programmed the stuff into
]my ti 84+ and the first program, "fortres", worked fine. the
]second one on the other hand give me the same message when i try to
]use it, "err: syntax". i dont know why it is doing this. i have
]tried it many times, and had my friend jack make sure i programmed
]it right. i even re-programmed it to make sure. and i was also
]wondering when i run the first program is says, "acidus fortres
]cracker?" then i put a number in, i have been using 1 for the
]number, and i was wondering if there is a specific number i need to
]use. please email me back, it would be really appreciated. thank
]you

Dear Alex,

I am not going to tell you the specific number you need to put in. I am sorry the program doesn't work for you. The instructions on how to use the program, as well as the input you need to make it work are well documented on my website and elsewhere on the Internet.

Alex, the very fact you have to ask me this question means you don't have a single clue as to what you are doing. Instead of trying to hack your middle school's computers by reading some article you obviously didn't understand and typing in a program that you have no idea what it does, try something else. Like basketball. Or maybe field hockey. Because Alex, at least for right now, hacking computers is not for you. You are going to get caught. Or run some program which destroys something. Or you'll email someone asking about a program and they will send you something that will crash your machine. Or it will install a keylog to capture your parents banking info and relay spam for some crazy Russian. If you continue blindly doing this, you are going to hurt someone or destroy something, when all you really wanted to do is have fun.

Suddenly Alex, you are yet another 13 year old kid who, while not really wanting to do anything "bad" and really not doing all that much damage, will appear on my local nightly news cast. I'll hear some District Attorney who is eyeing the governors office and wants to make an example of you, telling the talking heads that you are a cyber terrorist. And then my friend, you will get fucked. You will be fucked beyond your wildest dreams. And when John Q Public turns on his TV at night at hears some self-important DA telling them to thank the sweet lord Jesus they stopped the evil Alex before he stole 500,000 credit card numbers and started world war 3, then Alex, John Q Public gets pretty damn scared. And when that happens we get Congress passing poorly-worded bullshit laws. And that effects me.

Alex, you might think I am being an asshole, you might think I am being some 31337 hax0r pig, but trust me I am saving you from a world of hurt. You need to take my email address and you need to rip it up. You need to tell your friend Jack that he needs to stop. Because you don't know what you are doing and from what I can tell you are not smart enough to *not* fuck up your future.

I don't want to see you on the news Alex, so stop the bullshit and start thinking.
Acidus

I just finished a really cool project for my CS Theory class. We were given the information about how the various Autonomous Systems on the Internet were connected for 1997, 1999, 2002, and 2004. The assignment was to find things like what the average number of connections (called degree) nodes had with each other, what the largest number of hops between 2 nodes could be (Called the diameter), average distances, etc.

The cool part was when we investigated how the system reacts to failure of nodes. I have attached the reports here:

http://www.msblabs.org/as-attack/report-100.txt
http://www.msblabs.org/as-attack/report-500.txt

Basically, here is what these reports say:

If 100 or even 500 random nodes failed all at the same time, over 99.5% of the nodes stay connected in 1 mass, and can still talk to each other. If the largest nodes were deliberately attacked and removed, the shit hit the fan.

When 100 ASes are attacked and removed, only 55% of the nodes remained in 1 mass, and the average distances between any 2 nodes as well as the max distance inside the mass doubled. Now only half the internet is reachable (if you were lucky), while the speed tanks and the bottlenecks double.

When 500 ASes are attacked and removed, the Internet fractures into an unusable mess. Over 11000 little "islands" of 1 or two nodes are created (remember there were only ~17000 nodes to begin with!). The largest single mass only has 1388 nodes. Only 8% of the Internet is reachable, if you are luckily enough to be in that mass. The speed is now 1/5 of what it was as the average number of hops jumps from 3.7 to over 21.

I'm going to do some more reseach on AS systems and how protected they are, but I think I understand what Mike meant about the Internet being taken out without poisoning the DNS trees.

I had written 3 "sub articles" for Make. On about wiring a reader, one about a parallel port adapter, and one about a multi-track modification. They didn't have room for the 3rd one, so I took my photos and whipped together a nice step-by-step guide. Features a cameo by my $10,000 pen!

Stripe Snoop :: Multi-track Modification

] The Eternity Service is a distributed data-haven, it
] takes a different approach to ensuring unpopular content
] can be published. Traditionally unpopular content has
] been surreptitiously exchanged via DCCs in IRC, or PGP
] encrypted email, or FSP, or in funny named directories
] via FTP or via agreed file names in incoming directories
] set drwx-wx-wx. Other kinds of unpopular content have
] been published on web pages for a short time until the
] censor gets to work and threatens the ISP, the
] publisher's employee, and the publisher with law suits.
] Sometimes these web pages get mirrored, if there is
] someone interested, and spoiling for a fight, or if the
] content is only censored by force of law in one
] jurisdiction.

Decius and I were talking about anonymous messaging over the weekend, and he pointed this out to me. I don't know why more people do not use this.

Eternity Datahaven

] Magnetic Stripe Snooping at Home

[ Billy makes the front page of /. Go billy! -k]

I was rather surprised myself. When SS was /.ed in August, I had submitted the link, and it was a slow news day. I imagine this was because of the Make article (and hence the credit to Billy Hoffman).

On a side note I received my copy of Make last week and it really is damn cool. Excellent layout, beautiful graphics. People should check it out.

StripeSnoop on /.

bucy wrote:
] ]
] ] Since that time, the situation has changed. Today the
] ] BIOS is no longer burned in ROM; it is stored in
] ] nonvolatile writable memory that users can rewrite. Today
] ] the BIOS sits square on the edge of the line. It comes
] ] prewritten in our computers, and normally we never
] ] install another. So far, that is just barely enough to
] ] excuse treating it as hardware. But once in a while the
] ] manufacturer suggests installing another BIOS, which is
] ] available only as an executable. This, clearly, is
] ] installing a non-free program--it is just as bad as
] ] installing Microsoft Windows, or Adobe Photoshop, or
] ] Sun's Java Platform. As the unethical practice of
] ] installing another BIOS executable becomes common, the
] ] version delivered inside the computer starts to raise an
] ] ethical problem issue as well.
]
] FSF is starting to make a stink about BIOS now.

Stallman is once again blinded by ideology. Short of DRM BIOSes (Which seem eternally stuck in standards body limbo), what does the bios matter?

I have an old Packard Bell 486-DX2 motherboard I use for hardware hacking. Its small LBX form factor, so everything is on the board and has a lower profile than an ATX. It's BIOS is over 12 years old and will not recognize a drive larger than 504 megs.

And you know what? That doesn't matter. I have a 10 Gig drive attached to it, partitioned in a way so /boot is visible. Linux boots, detects, and provides (while slow) access to the whole drive. I have a ATAPI CDROM attached, which BIOS also doesn't recognize or have any idea how to handle. Linux does, and I've ripped CDs just fine. I even have a ISA/PCMCIA adapter, and, using a USB card, have added USB functionality to this box. BIOS is configured not to panic about the lack of a keyboard, and Linux sees the USB keyboard and mouse just fine.

None of these features are supported by the BIOS, nor do they need to be. Linux doesn't use BIOS functions through interrupts. I would be very surprised if the NT line of Windows used BIOS interrupts. Thus Stallman's whole rant about being locked in to the functionality provided by some proprietary BIOS is totally without merit, and the proof is happily spinning cycles right next to me.

Short of finding me a boot sector, the BIOS and its functionality are obsolete.

RE: FSF - Campaign for Free BIOS

Nice reference for MLA style bibliographies.

Bibliography Style Handbook

] "The only time I saw Bill Gates was at the building
] dedication," said Google founder Sergey Brin. "Gates was
] coming down the hall with the department chairman and he
] asked 'What operating system do you have running on all
] these PCs?' Well of course they were all running Linux,
] but the chairman kind of coughed and said the department
] used many different operating systems."

'What OS do those PCs run?'