Owens L'ill Slice of the Web

So, I just had a sudden message from an infrequent MSN contact.. It went like this:

Danger.. Phishermen at work.

Looks like a phishing attempt… no reputable site would ever ask for your MSN username and password.. The alarm bells went off for me immediately. I’m sure http://ImageStoriez.com/ is a scam.. Now who do I notify? :-S

My other concern is that this probably means that one or the other of us has had their MSN account or system compromised in order to send the initial IM to me in the first place. So who has the infected machine.. is it their end or mine.. or is it somewhere in between? Irritating stuff.. and all just because the world is stuffed full of antisocial greedy people and ruled by a profit at any cost motive.

The Diana enquiry report came out. Drunk driver trying to outrun paperazzi, in probably the worlds safest car, three people were not wearing seat belts. They died, the one who belted up survived, that says more about this than any conspiracy theory.

Thinking of conspiracy, I feel really sorry for Mohamed Al-Fayed, I don’t blame him about his reaction because the British establishment -is- crap enough to have murdered her, but in this case an accident is the most plausible explanation.. And Al Fayed is a man who has lost his son and is in terrible grief, he has my deepest sympathy.

..the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.
- Nazi Reich Marshal Hermann Göring during the Nuremberg Trials.

“Ah, but that doesn’t matter in today’s politics. All you have to do is find a single instance of someone from the other side doing something similar to what you’re doing, and that makes it magically okay for you to continue doing it.

There are no ethics anymore. Instead of people striving to be ethical, they just strive to find other people being unethical so they can excuse their own unethical behavior.”
Too True.. from a /. discussion.

Cingular tries to patent selecting emoticons (:-O) on a mobile phone.
The worlds patent systems are really, really broken.

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha! Darn..

Lindows is a Linux based Operating System, with a name amusingly similar to Microsoft windows. Microsoft, unable to bear the thought of competition, has been suing them all over the place, claiming that they ‘own’ the word ‘Windows’. Which is funny since 1) my apartment has ‘windows’ (south facing, lovely view..) and it was built before Microsoft was even founded. And 2) ‘Windows’ on computers have been around for a long time, ‘X-Windows‘ interfaces on Unix predate Microsoft’s adoption of the word windows by years. My Unix based FreeBSD server has ‘X-Windows’ for one of it’s interfaces, it’s still a very active technology.

When Microsoft tried to use the courts to destroy Lindows in the US, they failed.

So they went shopping worldwide for a more sympathetic court. And found one, not just sympathetic, but pathetic. In Amsterdam (where I live) unfortunately, so now Microsoft is trying to bully http://www.lindows.com/ out of existence. The Lindows CEO might be annoyingly brazen, but he’s still putting up a good fight. Go for it Michael!, don’t let our language fall into corporate hands..

From Hans Blix, regarding the period just before the Iraq invasion:

He says of Mr Bush and Blair that it was “probable that the governments were conscious that they were exaggerating the risks they saw in order to get the political support they would not otherwise have had.”

He’s written a book, I don’t think it’s likely to end up on Blairs coffetable..

“…Could someone please explain how cricket is structured, as an American I understand very few foreign sports…”

Yes, as an Englishman I think I can provide a few pointers on the structure of cricket. Its rules are as follows;

Conquer 1/3rds of the World and humiliate the inhabitants.

Teach them your cherished sport with the intention of exhibiting your cultivation prowess and superiority.

Spend the fading years of your power being trashed by barbarian hordes of antipodeans and South Africans.

Fade into political and sporting oblivion…

- Seems pretty fair to me Seen here on /.

This company created a ‘CD anti-piracy’ technique that relies on windows ‘autorun’ feature to install a piece of malware when you put the CD in the PC’s CD drive. This can be by-passed by simply holding the ‘Shift’ key of your PC when you put the CD in the drive (this temporarily disables autorun), or just disable autorun completely (like I do).

So, Some academics looked at this marvellous innovation in anti-piracy software, and realised that it was hopeless and can be by-passed by anybody with half a brain-cell. They published their results, and now Sunncomm is threatening to sue them for millions of dollars.

Is corporate america sad or what?

Scientologists or the Catholic Church? Actually they’re both dangerous and wrong.

A amazing crock of nonsense! No wonder they want to stop you seeing it until you’ve had years of prior brainwashing.