Posts by Douglas

Consumer revenge site returns after DDoS attack

How to stop the zombies

Most, if not all DDOS attacks come from Zombies, that were almost always compromised due to the PC owner's system being unsecure, or the user doing stupid things like opening attachments from people they don't know, not having a firewall or a filtering proxy, and not scanning for viruses.

My proposal: create an international treaty, whereby all zombie IP addresses captured in a DDOS attack can be traced back to accounts at ISP's or corporates, and the owner of the PC in question either pays a nominal fine (about the same as a small speeding fine) or gets their IP blocked from Internet access for a week or two. Most of the proceeds of the fine should go to the affected parties to compensate them for loss of business.

It is almost impossible to block a DDOS at the destination network, at least not without bogging down the equipment. We need stop it as close as possible to the source.

Making users liable for incidents involving their machines will give them a definite incentive to use and maintain them properly, or get someone else to do so if they are unable.

Erratic fleshies sabotage, wreck innocent flying robot

Good incentives

There's no better incentive to not crash a plane... than being inside the damn thing when you're flying it.

I do like the trap door over a spiked pit idea, though.

Do I sense a potential for a new kind of BOFH here?

Good incentives

There's no better incentive to not crash a plane... than being inside the damn thing when you're flying it.

I do like the trap door over a spiked pit idea, though.

Do I sense a potential for a new kind of BOFH here?

Museum drops Watson talk in race row

@Ferry Boat - I will!

I am just saving up the airfaire, then I am going to claim my Isle.

As for the following comment:

"I'm sorry, but if you reference such a website then everything you say becomes invalid"

Well, I have another web reference you may want to check out.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/guilt-by-association.html

Nazism's links to evolution

Some food for thought in this debate - read the following article which discusses the link between evolutionary thinking, and racism, discrimination, and, taken to its natural conclusion, genocide.

http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/5043/

If you read Watson's comments in the light of this article, I'm sure you will see clearly how destructive evolutionary propaganda is.

Ballmer: I will buy 20 web companies a year

Perhaps he really meant...

10 "Web 2.0" companies.

Astronomers detect red giant survivor planet

Because every wobble in brightness of a star...

is of course a new extrasolar planet.

Adobe and BEA team on RIAs

Reg doing press releases now?

Dear Lord, please don't let El Reg turn into CNet, where every third news item is a press release for some company, releasing a product no-one cares about, and dressing it up in the same tired "NEW TECHNOLOGY!" bull.

"...deliver rich online applications on the desktop outside the browser..." - so now an internet enabled desktop app is news?

Perhaps this is the kicker: "...which lets developers re-use skills in Flash, HTML, AJAX and Java..."

Why not just use the technologies mentioned, instead of buying a brand new product, which "lets" you use them?

Dino-killing asteroid traced back 160m years

Bloody amazing.

I had a similar success recently.

I saw two vehicles that had collided on the road the other day. Looking at the scraps of metal, using my pocket calculator, I was able to calculate that the driver of one vehicle left for work at 7:32 am and 20 seconds, had 3 tots of brandy before he left, and was suffering from tennis elbow.

Hey Mr Policeman - this car is stolen!

How to blow your foot off

The computer games industry is currently annoying their customers just as much with copyright protection technology.

When will monoliths like MS etc. realise that people with pirated copies are having a better user experience with their products than those with legal copies.

There is no "Genuine advantage" to using genuine MS software any more.

Linux (and other O/Ses) are currently failing to gain significant market share because users see learning the new UI as a barrier to entry. What MS is currently doing is making their user experience unpleasant enough, that users will eventually be pushed out of their inertia into trying other OS's.

Well done, MS, your users are beginning to weigh other options, that they would never have thought of if you didn't keep treating them like guinea pigs in your copyright protection experiments.

I'll bet Linus and co. are smiling.

Spamford Wallace banished from MySpace

What about *real* spam

I think he should be jailed and force fed meals consisting only of spam for 2 months, and made to clean his cell if he happens to "lose" any.

Talk about the punishment fitting the crime.

Computer program to take on the Unabomber

What is intelligence?

My humble opinion:

1. Being aware of yourself as a person / entity

2. Having memory

3. Being able to process sensory input, recognize patterns previously learned, and fit it into memory as part of world view / understanding

4. Ability to weigh ideas / objects / images / actions etc and give value to them

5. Ability to learn and use languages, modes of communication.

6. If the "intelligence" is embodied in a machine or vehicle of some kind, ability to learn optimal movement and balance.

The search for alien life

So if you can't hit your target...

You just throw the dart, then paint the bullseye around it.

You gotta love it when the "scientific" community goes nuts about underwater ice, dried up rivers etc on Mars, and then, just when a mission is about to collect actual samples and test them, suddenly publish a survey which says that "life may not need water after all" (my paraphrase).

I especially love the quote from the University of Washington: "Our investigation made clear that life is possible in forms different than those on Earth..."

Fascinating - when do we get to see it? Or are we, as usual, talking about some fudging with mathematical formulae and theoretical models?