Recent Posts

1501

Living Room / Bad-Actor ISP Shutdown by FTC

« Last post by Josh on June 05, 2009, 09:14 AM »

Remember last autumn, when the McColo takedown made the spam go away and brought sweet, sweet (relative) peace to all our inboxes for a while? It's not likely that the closure of Pricewest will have that sort of direct effect on most of our lives, but a district court judge's ruling to have the plug pulled on the ISP will certainly improve the Internet in other ways.

The ruling was made at the request of the FTC, which has a long history of history with Pricewest. The ISP is believed to have engaged in a variety of offenses -- botnets, yes, but also malware distribution, fake pharma sites, investment scams, and some of the very worst kinds of pornography. (Yeah, they had that. Yeah, they had that too.) Takedown requests made to the ISP -- operating under a variety of names, including 3FN, Triple Fiber Network, APX Telecom, APS Telecom, and APS Communication -- have been either ignored or dodged by shifting the content to another bank of IP addresses under Pricewert's control.

The takedown is just one step in the process of getting rid of an alleged bad actor. For now, the ISP is offline and its business assets have been frozen. Guilt or innocence will be decided in a court of law, and of course the ISP's upstream provider and data centers will have some thoughts on whether they want to do business with this outfit again.

Source

1502

Living Room / Re: StrongWebmail apparently hacked after issuing $10K challenge

« Last post by Josh on June 05, 2009, 08:17 AM »

A lot of people will criticize sites like this for claiming to be unhackable, however, in the end I feel this is very beneficial for many sites as it draws attention to the site and any possible vulnerabilities. It is also, I would imagine, cheaper than hiring an external company to test and instead rely on people who would do this type of thing for fun.

1503

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 7 evaluation

« Last post by Josh on June 04, 2009, 04:04 PM »

W7 should run the same, regardless of version, on the same system. Ultimate would actually be expected to run slower due to the added services running at startup if any performance difference were to be noted.

1504

Living Room / Re: What annoys you to no end?

« Last post by Josh on June 04, 2009, 09:16 AM »

I think this was mentioned already but....Review sites which post review articles in multiple pages without a central navigation system requiring you to click next on every page. I HATE THIS! I will boycott any site that uses this method!

1505

Living Room / Re: What annoys you to no end?

« Last post by Josh on June 03, 2009, 06:22 PM »

Restaurants which offer discounts, 5$ off, for filling out a survey and then say you have to visit in XX number of days. If I take the time to fill out your survey, give me the coupon and let me decide when I want to go!

1506

Living Room / Re: Where did your DC user I.D come from?

« Last post by Josh on June 03, 2009, 08:57 AM »

I am honestly not sure where this came from. I just picked letters using the randomization formula from mouser's prize picker for the monthly giveaways. This is the result!

1507

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Ad Muncher: keeps the brain intact while surfing the Net - beats AdBlock!

« Last post by Josh on June 02, 2009, 04:48 PM »

Well, here is the issue with point releases causing problems with other features. When you rewrite the filtering engine to process rules differently, thus making older versions not work with list updates, this to me indicates time for a new POINT release. Would it not?

1508

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Ad Muncher: keeps the brain intact while surfing the Net - beats AdBlock!

« Last post by Josh on June 02, 2009, 01:41 PM »

As I said innuendo, I am in agreement with you. Make point releases, release new versions when you push out changes to the list structure. Don't force users to use beta code, regardless of how many times you claim it as reliable. Ad Muncher has caused me headaches in the past that are only resolved after exiting ad muncher. This is when a NO or MINIMAL filtering on URL filter does not work. It is at that time that murray gets involved because Jeff claims the problem is with something else but then Murray confirms its a bug in the way AM handles the data it receives.

1509

Living Room / Re: What annoys you to no end?

« Last post by Josh on June 02, 2009, 12:18 PM »

People who break their air conditioner while working on book cases for the plethora of books they save....oh wait....that's mousey

1510

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Ad Muncher: keeps the brain intact while surfing the Net - beats AdBlock!

« Last post by Josh on June 02, 2009, 12:10 PM »

Innuendo, I respect that they have hired another developer, but the problem with that is now, as you said, he has to play catch up and learn the code. Also, after talking with Murray, I am sure that he will have to triple check all code as the last developer they hired didn't know his stuff and caused many issues with actual releases.

The other issue I have with the slow development is the constant promise of all of these features which keep getting pushed to the right. Please notice, it took nearly 1.5 years AFTER Vista's release to get support for it. Windows 7 came out and they decided to not make the same mistake and jump on board early. Fine, good plan. But what about the other features which were promised for 4.73, in beta since Jan09? What about all of the users who don't have a version of ad muncher installed that is set to check for BETA updates? Unless you specifically know about the forums, irc channel, or the beta's, a normal user would not know to update. I did a test and did not update my father only to see if he noticed ad's starting to appear. Within 2 weeks of no updating, he reported to me that he started getting intermittent ad's which only increased as the month went on. It was at that time I told him to upgrade. Had I not been around, he would have assumed the product stopped working. Yes, releasing two lists can be counterproductive, but if you push out a new list format, RELEASE A STABLE VERSION so that users can take advantage of it. Don't force something onto any machine with the beta tag. My dad took 15 minutes of explaining as to why I was putting something that was labelled as a "test version", his understanding of the word beta, onto his machine. I understand that the code is stable and likely will not cause issues, but that is not something most users understand.

As I said, I support what the developers are doing but I feel they have promised too much and are taking too long to deliver what they promised. If this were someone serving as a project manager, they would have been fired in my line of work. I will hate to see when they try and venture into linux territory come 5.0's 5 year from now release. Development on the Windows version will probably come to a halt.

1511

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Ad Muncher: keeps the brain intact while surfing the Net - beats AdBlock!

« Last post by Josh on June 02, 2009, 05:32 AM »

I think they are over-promising features which they simply cannot deliver. Murray keeps throwing the excuse, as does Jeff, that they are a two man operation. If that is the case, then perhaps they need to stop saying "This will be ready in version x.xx" or "This will be ready in the next beta" when the next beta isn't actually released for 5 months. Please note that 4.73 has been in beta for 6 months now, Jan 28 2009, meaning that registered users of 4.72 have not been receiving updates since then and are being given no notifications that they need to update to a BETA version in order to receive what they paid for. I don't care how stable an author claims code to be, if it's beta code don't stop support for the latest STABLE release.

And yes, I too have noticed that your AOL issue has gone unresolved despite at least 2 other reports coming in about it. Jeff claims "I do not have an AOL account so I cannot verify". At least that was the answer I got when I tried troubleshooting with him. Pretty poor excuse. They have released debug builds for people to test and find bugs on in the past, I do not understand why they didn't for this one.

Also, please note this quote from Jeff on their forums:

Yes, v4.74 will support filtering of 64 bit applications. A lot of work was done on this before work on Windows 7 support was added to 4.73

We will continue this work on 4.74 as soon as 4.73 is completed.

-Jeff

64 bit support is supposed to be what 4.73 was about.

1512

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Ad Muncher: keeps the brain intact while surfing the Net - beats AdBlock!

« Last post by Josh on June 02, 2009, 05:00 AM »

vegas, from what I have read this will come later but will likely incur another charge to be able to use. And yes, I too am very disappointed at the extremely slow pace of development. Here are just a few of the "promised" features from AM:

• 64-bit extensions
• HTTP 1.1 Support
• Per-Site Filtering
• Regex filters
• Per-Site/Filter Statistics
• gzip support
• USB Drive capabilities

I am also disappointed that during this development, read slow development, they choose to alienate users who choose to stick with the latest stable release by not providing them updates. Yes, I have never had a problem with an AM beta, but I know several people who fear the word beta regardless of how stable the author claims it to be. Ad Muncher is one of those tools which, even in final release, can cause a page not to load just by having it enabled due to a bug which might exist. This has happened to me on numerous occasions and turns on to be a programming error such a hung mutex or something similar. I personally feel that updates should be provided for the latest stable release until the next one is put out. If the beta is as stable as they say, release it as a new point, or dot, release and remove the beta tag!

They at least learned their lesson about future OS development as they added Windows 7 support PRIOR to it's release as opposed to how they added vista support 1 year after vista's release. 64 bit computing has been out for a while and AM still has no support for it. USB support is a feature which should be HIGH on the priority list given that you can use firefox and opera with ad blocking capabilities on ANY MACHINE you choose. I was given permission back in the day to use AM on a USB drive by Murray but this proved to be more of a pain in the butt as you have to reactivate ad muncher every time you plugin the USB device.

I am actually starting to like/learn ad block and how to use it's filters and am getting pretty satisfied with it's performance as well. This is all being spurred by the extremely slow development pace this team has. Sorry AM, I am moving on.

1513

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Ad Muncher: keeps the brain intact while surfing the Net - beats AdBlock!

« Last post by Josh on June 01, 2009, 03:09 PM »

CodeTRUCKER: Did you intend to post something?

EDIT:

Now I see you are going back and editing all of your posts. Disregard

1514

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Ad Muncher: keeps the brain intact while surfing the Net - beats AdBlock!

« Last post by Josh on June 01, 2009, 11:39 AM »

Be advised, if you are not running the latest BETA, you are not receiving updates. 4.72, the latest stable release, has stopped receiving updates and you have to upgrade to the beta from http://www.admuncher.com/beta.pl

1515

Living Room / Re: Google demonstrates new communication platform "WAVE": mail, chat , wiki, ..

« Last post by Josh on May 31, 2009, 08:51 AM »

Looks like adobe connect which the army has been using for a few years now https://www.dco.dod.mil

1516

General Software Discussion / Re: What the hell is OpenCandy?

« Last post by Josh on May 30, 2009, 04:22 PM »

As kartal said, that is exactly what I was referring to as well. What if a malware is designed to look for OC's dll files and exploit a known or , up until now, unknown vulnerability in said dll?

1517

Living Room / Re: What annoys you to no end?

« Last post by Josh on May 30, 2009, 04:20 PM »

Drive thru's which block you in so you can't get out when you find out "Our ice cream machine isn't working". ARGH!!!!!!!!

1518

Living Room / Re: What annoys you to no end?

« Last post by Josh on May 30, 2009, 09:10 AM »

Forums which have to give you the "Thanks for posting" or various other confirmation pages after certain activities occur. I don't need to be thanked for posting, just redirect me to my post and don't show me the unneeded middle-man page!!!!

1519

General Software Discussion / Re: What the hell is OpenCandy?

« Last post by Josh on May 30, 2009, 09:06 AM »

Mouser, I can point you to several infections I have had in the past, Pre-SP1 XP, that were only a single DLL that manipulated itself into various exe files once loaded at startup. A registry entry alone, yes, could be harmless unless it is exploiting some feature that is undocumented (as windows has thousands of) and the enabling of such opens up other holes. The dll, while part of the installer, is left behind. If someone discovers an exploit in said dll, or a way to load it with other malware and use it to exploit other holes, then the dll (for installer purposes only) serves another more vicious purpose. I am not saying OC does this, but I do believe NOTHING should be left behind that isnt absolutely necessary.

1520

Living Room / Re: What annoys you to no end?

« Last post by Josh on May 29, 2009, 10:16 AM »

People who use the word INFER when they obviously mean IMPLY!

1521

Living Room / Re: Help me build the ultimate metal playlist

« Last post by Josh on May 26, 2009, 08:35 PM »

Lovin it!

I have added some marilyn manson to my playlist.

His version of sweet dreams is AWESOME, especially the live version. You can sample it with the attached file. Listening to him, along with most bands, live is something of a spiritual experience. Most bands perform so much better live (minus teenie bopper and boy bands). Check it out. I am also getting into a few bands: saxon, exodus and lamb of god, courtesy of itunes LIMITED heavy metal shop.

I am looking for a few good PURE SPEED songs. I want a song that when it comes on, you have to crank your radio up and just speed in your car. I find these songs very hard to find. A very good example would be Metallica's Whiplash or Priests' Jawbreaker. Anyone have any good ideas for this?

1522

Living Room / Re: What annoys you to no end?

« Last post by Josh on May 26, 2009, 04:30 PM »

People who take there time switching into the interstate/highway lanes after entering from an exit. MERGE ALREADY! YOU ARE SLOWING UP PROGRESS!!!


And all of the *#%( DAMNED ICONS that quicken places on my desktop on a clean install!

1523

Living Room / Re: What annoys you to no end?

« Last post by Josh on May 26, 2009, 10:24 AM »

Battlefield 2.

1524

Living Room / Re: What annoys you to no end?

« Last post by Josh on May 25, 2009, 08:25 PM »

HAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Like I said, I have no objection to being eloquent with my vocabulary, but only if the situation dictates it. One place I hate to see it is on a forum where one cannot know the sheer level of education behind the users.

1525

Living Room / Re: What annoys you to no end?

« Last post by Josh on May 25, 2009, 09:40 AM »

Smart phone menu systems which route calls to a call center based on the area code the received call is from! THIS IS HORRIBLE. With the advent of VOIP, you can have an area code anywhere in the country. I have a 910 area code on my phone number but I live in the 301/443 area code district. As such, whenever I call verizon I am routed to Florida which handles North Carolina (910) and they have to transfer me to the Virginia service center. STOP THIS MADNESS. You would think verizon, an internet services company, would realize that some people take phone numbers with them and move around the country, ESPECIALLY THE MILITARY.