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SpamTown :: Current Spam-Blocking News And Information
Welcome to Spam Town. We don’t make spam, we learn to live with it.
i may do this more often…
http://www.jinx.com/scripts/stickers.asp?affID=-1
some of the best are..
Social Engineering Specialist
because there is no patch for human stupiditystop laughing.
computers are cool now.talk nerdy to me
this is NOT my boyfriend’s computer
it is pitch black.
you are likely to be eaten by a gruei was young, i needed the gold pieces
that last one reminds me of something i have been saying for years: “you can’t buy love, happiness, or experience points”
and i saw a t-shirt the other day that says “it is now safe to turn off your computer”…
personally, i would like a dreamcast sticker, a pso t-shirt, and i have had this idea recently that i want a t-shirt with the last words of final fantasy ix on it, white words on black just like they appear on the screen… maybe a pic of zidane and garnet on the back or the game logo or something…
of course, the problem is that i don’t wear t-shirts, but, i could hang it on my wall or something…
http://features.engadget.com/entry/1882345133499767/
there is much to agree with in both the article and the comments thread…
as an added bonus, there is a great anti-microsoft rant in a user comment…
among the highlights:
If you told a stranger to Earth what they get away with on the desktop, they’d think their babelfish was broken.
great debate going on over in a fark thread about it, with plenty of evidentiary pics 🙂…
(needless to say, being fark, and being fark’ers discussing women, the discussion gets a little raw at times, you were warned…)
the article the thread is about strangely declares jane fonda’s barbarella the honor…
personally, my first choice would have to be milla jovovich as leeloo in the fifth element…
also on my list would definitely be zev (and xev) from lexx and padme, the star wars inamorata for this generation…
and, not that i have exactly sat and watched an episode of the show all the way through, but, as an honorable mention, gabriella from xena is cute…
and, though a video game, not only is space channel 5 unquestionably sci-fi (imdb agrees), ulala is unquestionably a sci-fi babe…
/haven’t seen nicole kidman in anything sci-fi yet
it’s been reported all over the place, here is how Nybble covers it…
_________FIRST MOBILE PHONE VIRUS_________
http://snipurl.com/77lqThe first ever computer virus that can infect mobile phones has been discovered. The virus – called Cabir – is a proof-of-concept worm that replicates on Symbian phones. This worm repeatedly sends itself to the first Bluetooth-enabled device that it can find, regardless of the type of device. For example, even a Bluetooth-enabled printer will be attacked if it is within range. The worm spreads as a .SIS file, which is installed into the APPS directory.
If the virus succeeds in penetrating the phone, it writes the inscription ‘Caribe’ on the screen and is then activated every time that the phone is turned on. There is no payload, apart from the vastly shortened battery life caused by the constant scanning for Bluetooth-enabled devices.
as far as symbian devices go, i don’t see how this could ever become much of a problem… the Symbian OS started life as the EPOC OS, which is what the psion model 5 and up used, and, unless symbian has changed it drastically for the worse, it should simply be a matter of deleting the errant files…
i have had more than a couple applications i installed wreak varying degrees of havoc on my 5 and all i had to do was hit my System/Apps folder, get rid of the application’s subfolder, then go to Apps/Install and get rid of the .sis installation file… worst case scenario might involve searching for any files the app tries to hide (can’t really hide things very well with such a transparent directory structure) and/or running a spy prog to find all running apps… hell, just popping up the list of openly running apps should be enough…
given that these are the sorts of tasks any user should know how to do, plus the fact that this new app running and draining battery power should be very noticable, i just don’t see how this could ever be a real problem…
maybe i am missing something…
How Film Is Transferred to Video
i dug this up since it covers the whole original aspect ratio vs. pan&scan thing covered the previous post…
some damn good info and pretty much covers all one needs to know, though, as usual, i am not sure it adequetly explains the point of anamorphic video…
in a nutshell, your tv only has a certain number of scan lines to display the image… and those scan lines cannot come anywhere close to matching the resolution of a frame of film…
widescreen films on video have black bars at the top and bottom, taking up sometimes as much as half of your screen and thus half of those precious scan lines that weren’t enough to properly show film even when you were using all of them…
now, you COULD ditch the bars and use all the scan lines, but, then you lose the shape of the image… in other words, you basically zoom in on the image, but then, of course, you either have to cut off the sides or distort the image, stretching it vertcally…
hence widescreen tv’s and “anamorphic squeeze” buttons on standard tv’s… the proper shape is kept, with little to no scan lines wasted on nothing but black bars…
meh, it might make more sense if you read it again after you read the article at the link… it is not the easiest thing to explain without examples…
i would just like to call attention to this link, since i get a daily kick out
of it…
over there on the menu on the left of this page, under “Links”, is a link that
says “My LJ Feeds”…
this is part of the “Friends Page” features on LiveJournal…
for those not familiar with the concept of feeds, it is a way to gather
content from a site, without going there… this blog of mine has an atom xml
feed, so, you could get my posts in your favorite “feed aggregator” (along
side feeds from other sites), rather than stopping by to see if i’ve posted
anything new or signing up for the email notification…
at livejournal, people set up xml/rss/etc. feeds for various sites, or use
feeds already offered and you can add those feeds to your lj friends page for
a public online aggregator… there are hundreds of choices, everything from
daily comics like garfield and dilbert, to news, weather, movie reviews, all
sorts of stuff…
you just have to see it to appreciate the sheer coolness of it…
since i have few lj friends, i fill it up with these feeds and then i get
stuff from sites i would not otherwise go to everyday, in one convenient
trip… so, you can see the stuff i am interested in and, if you share those
interests, it can make for a good daily visit…
here are the feeds i have on there currently…
some post several items a day, some once a day, some once a week or once a
month, some post rarely, which makes it even handier to have it appear on my
feeds page… and some may be broken, so, i am still waiting for them to post
something…
firstly, i get posts at “syn_promo”, where people publicize cool feeds they
have found or have made…
astronomy photo of the day
ask yahoo
answering trivia and imponderables, using yahoo
blog of death
sort of a big, far-reaching obits page
boingboing blog
coming soon
a movie news site
dictionary.com’s word of the day
engadget
gadget news, reviews, etc.
filmadd
news of movies added to the Internet Archive
filmtease
an unusual movie trailer review site
found magazine’s find of the week
unusual objects people find
aaron swartz’s googleblog
a blog about google
googleblog
the official blog of google.com
penniphile
the writings of penn jillette, mostly new entries to “road penn”
word spy
dealing with new terms, slang, etc. as they enter the language
quote of the day
not as good as refdesk.com’s quotes of the day, but, they have more than one
per day, so it sort of balances out
snopesrecentadd
one of my favorites, posting urban legends as they are added to snopes.com
thinkgeek
various merchandise of interest to those involved in modern technology
and wordsmith’s word of the day
oh, and almost forgot, i also get “ljnifty” where people post various fun
things you can do with livejournal, such as adding feeds to your friends
page…
and i add cool new ones as i find them… and occasionally remove the ones
that get annoying or boring…
anyway, if that sounds interesting to you, as i said, the link is on the menu
on the left side of this page… “My LJ Feeds”
i stop by at least once a day and it is a pretty good collection at this
point, after some tweaking…
now if only i could get scifi.com’s “today in sci-fi history” on there, which
is almost always interesting to sci-fi buffs… (there is a link to this, as
well, over there on the left…)
i would add the fark.com feed, but, it does not have comments links and the
comments threads are at least half the fun of fark…
btw, geez, it seems today is list day on my blog…
admittedly, i am trying to come up with posts to make so i can knock that huge
“april pics” post off the front page…
[moved from my LiveJournal]
well, i am not going to type up a whole report here, but, to save some stuff i will have to explain to people, here are all the notes and screenshots i have taken, with a few comments here and there…
and it is going to be long…
firstly, here is what must be the root of the problem, as described at a PDAStreet forum…
Using a network packet generator and a bit of patience, I have found that:
– when using a modem, any connection attempt to a closed port will freeze the psion. No special nasty SYN packets are needed for that
– when the psion is listening to the port, the freezing doesn’t occur
– when using a direct ppp link, no freezes ever happen, so it is not a problem in just the TCP/IP stack.
now, i have an app called Sink2, made for just this problem and it has always worked perfectly… it listens on certain ports (default is 80, 135, 445, 4444) and, when a connection is made, it accepts it, and then drops it…
but now, ever since Sasser started, i have not been able to get a solid connection… it can listen on up to seven ports, and i have set it to every port i have seen recommended to block, yet, i still have the problem…
the following will have lots of what sink2 said was happening as well as screenshots, once it occured to me to do that, rather than trying to copy them down… the screenshots do not show what the text describes, btw…
for the record, i am using a Psion 5 (not mx) and the pcmcia adaptor with an ActionTec DataLink 56k card fax modem…
it has always worked perfectly, except when i first got it, it froze a lot because of the reasons he gave up there and those problems vanished when i got sink2…
from may 2nd…
most times, when it happens, sound comes from my modem, like a hissing that sounds different from the carrier one normally hears when the modem connects…
it does not sound like the modem pissed off… it sounds like the speaker coming back on for some reason and that hiss is on the line…and, it doesn’t seem to know it is dc’d… i have to disconnnect and hard reset my modem…
sink2 listening on ports 80, 135, 445, 4444
20:21:28 Connection on port 445 from 4.228.201.193
same thing, same ip at 20:22:46
d/c and was not able to re-connect
when it switches from “initialize” to “recieving data” is when it drops… so, my browser comes online and when it tries to load a page is when it happens… and on my email client, i can download headers, but, when i try to open an email, it drops connection…
interestingly, i just sent an email (so far i cannot here on dc)…
ok, so, i close my mailbox and see if it is there…
hmm…
and now i just got disconnected… and sink2 says…
20:33:16 Connection on port 445 from 4.240.114.249
it just dc’d before it got all the email headers, though, there was one more than before… my modem light is flashing, yet, the client says “getting headers”… now i have to tell it to disconnect from internet, hard reset modem, try again…
mm-hmm… it almost had all the headers, then that odd hiss and i see the modem light is flashing again…
oh, and there is this from sink2…
20:34:57 connection on port 4445 from 4.240.114.249
grrr…hmmm… now it won’t even connect…
also the 2nd…
connection on port 135 from 4.240.162.216
connection on port 445 from 4.46.152.229both icq and telnet were working, then, after a few minutes…
21:57:49 connection on port 135 from 0.0.0.0
and then
21:58:15 connection on port 135 from 4.240.18.137and i heard that hiss again and was disconnected, though both apps think they are connected…
reconnect to icq, no prob, connect telnet, it works for a moment, then the hissing and disconnect…sink2 says…
22:03:03 port 135 from same as last time, 4.240.18.137
and then 22:03:28 on port 4444 from the same ip…
from the 3rd…
connected to telnet for a minute or two and then all this, yet, i did not get disconnected until the very end…
22:36:25 port 445 from 4.240.42.10
22:37:08 port 445 from 4.240.42.10
22:37:26 port 445 from 4.240.42.10
22:37:38 port 445 from 4.240.42.10
22:38:44 port 135 from 4.240.63.82
22:38:49 port 4444 from 4.240.63.82
22:39:17 port 445 from 4.33.115.54
22:39:18 port 445 from 4.33.115.54
22:39:26 port 445 from 4.33.115.54
22:39:31 port 445 from 4.241.42.139and then disconnected…
from the 4th…
today it is acting different…
for one, sometimes when i get dc’d, it tells me i have been disconnected and asks if i want to reconnect…
also, something just happened that was like my connection freezing or something, the modem light was on, but, i could not transfer data, such as when i would send cgaracters in telnet (i have been using telnet to try connecting, juts letting it idle once connected) and i opened icq and it would not connect…
this is sink2 on the 7th…
and now i have made a very confusing discovery…
i can use the old 14.4k modem that i used to use on my psion 3, and it works just fine, all those connection attempts are made, yet, it stays connected… when i try my 56k, it does all the above…
this means nothing to me…
one IS a pc card modem and therefore requires the adaptor, while the other is specifically made for this unit and plugs right in…
but, i don’t see why that would make a difference…
any theories are welcome…
verily, so says this tidbit on yahoo news via i forget who…
heros of mine, they are…
so, i thought of the link in our little orrl thing…
the writings of Penn Jillette
(yes, the big one of Penn & Teller)
Philosopher Warrior Extraordinaire… from his articles for PC-Computing, dating back to 1990, his Excite articles of the late 90’s, plenty of various writings, articles, columns, on a wide variety of subjects, and his wonderful “Road Penn” journal, beginning in april, 2000 and continuing to this day… also has interviews, chat scripts, and more….
jan30,03 – they lost their domain name, so, for now, this link goes to the wayback machine’s archive of the page…
and it still does as their new site seems to no longer have their writings…
(btw, the most recent link there on web archive is to a copy made AFTER a porn site got their domain name, so, go for second most recent or older…)
one of my favorites, of course, is one he did in ’92, i believe, for pc computing, called “We’re All Going to Hell”…
ok, i was wrong…
his writings ARE on the new site…
well, good…
