A Colorado University student was arrested for a barcode scam after trying to buy an iPod for $4.99 (with a fake barcode) at a Colorado Target store. Apparently the scam was successful once and he came back a second time. Basically he used a barcode printing program to duplicate the barcode for a cheap item, then pasted the “new improved” barcode over the legitimate one. According to the article, he sought out female checkers that he guessed would be less likely to pay attention to the electronics at such a low price.
Tag: time
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Risk using Google Maps shut down.
I’m afraid it was something I expected would happen, *(although you always hope a company will look on such imitation as a form of flattery and be cooperative/excited about the new application of an old game idea…), but the implementation of the strategy game Risk using Google Maps has been shut down by a cease and desist letter from lawyers retained by Hasbro.
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The challenge of online content
The Open Source blog at zdnet has an article today on the Wikipedia. “Is Wikipedia a threat or a menace?” is the title… (which doesn’t give leeway for it to be a good thing I guess…) Anyway it raises an interesting point. Over the last few days there was a lot of press about (from the article above) “John Siegenthaler, a former Kennedy aide who found that his own entry falsely called him a suspect in his boss’ murder.” Now the Wikipedia is an online collaborated encyclopedia. Anyone can sign up and start editing whether it’s fact or not. There is a great responsibility to this…
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Another Google analytics update
It still looks like Google Analytics may be adding those that requested to be emailed when signups were available. I’ve noticed the last couple days the stats are MUCH more recent. It’s currently 20:00 hours “Google time” on December 1, 2005 and I see stats for my site through 15:00 “google time” in the analytics summary. So that’s pretty good, if it can be within 6 or so hours I’d say they’re doing pretty well.
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Home Linux terrabyte backup system
This is something I’ve wanted to build for some time. I hadn’t actually thought about a terrabyte of storage, but… linux journal has the article on making your own home network backup storage solution using an old pc, linux and relatively cheap discs. The concept of any backup system is redundancy so that a single failure doesn’t take out your data.
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More phishing… Paypal is the target this time
Well, truth be told, your money is the target. Phishers are using information on a real class-action settlement to try to lure people in to entering sensitive information. The FBI is warning on these emails. Essentially they cite a (real) class-action settlement (with links) and claim that in order for PayPal to ensure that you receive payment, enter your information here….
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Sony class-action suit picks up researcher Mark Russinovich as an expert witness
News continues on the Sony mess…. (Expect to hear about this for some time…) The researcher that informed the world about the Sony DRM rootkit, Mark Russinovich, has joined the class-action suit against Sony and First4Internet as an expert witness on the matter.
Russinovich said he opted to join the suit because he “wanted to make sure that a message was sent loud and clear to Sony and hopefully to the rest of the industry. And if a technical expert is required to back up the suit, then that’s what I’m willing to do to make sure that message gets driven home.”
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Microsoft Outlook – duplicate email messages Part II
This is part II, click here for part one of the saga…
Okay, so I revisit to install Microsoft Office 2003 SP2 and hope that solves it. Somewhere along this time, I had also found a suggestion of removing the entire mail PROFILE and creating a new one. *(The theory being that previous account information may still be in a profile in spite of the mail account being deleted.) Again two or three days go by and just when you thought it was fixed, duplicates AGAIN…. This time I had log information though, finally a second piece of log information to work with. -
Microsoft Outlook – duplicate email messages Part I
This will likely be a multi-part story because it turns out the solution was one of the more obscure things I think I’ve run into AND I thought it was worth “dumping” everything I found out in the process here for my own reference and anyone else wandering through. I have a customer that uses Microsoft Outlook 2003 and has selected to “leave messages on server”, then delete them when they’re deleted from the recycle bin. This normally works well, although I do recall one (or two) instances in the past when he got duplicates.
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Viruses and worms can come in from many directions
For a long time, email was the primary vector for viruses, before that floppy discs carried bugs from pc to pc. Then came network worms exploiting windows security vulnerabilities which led to the rise of firewalls and the increase in viruses piggy-backing into the system through browser bugs. But, any program that listens for data coming from the network could be an entry way for good traffic, or bad. The Securityfix is talking today about November being a record month for Instant Messenger worms.