Please Mod Parent up!

And one time, at downtime, I wrote this really long enlightening commentary on Slashdot and when I hit the submit but#carrier lost

For example, I enjoy playing poker tournaments. One of the tournaments I play on a regular basis starts at 00:00. At around 2 a.m. my ISP seems to choose his preferred downtime windows as this is out of his support window. I can't even call my ISP and complain at that time.

I currently circumvent these downtimes that might occur once every month or so by switching to my iPhone hotspot. But on the one hand side this means loosing at least two or three hands. This is especially cruel if I happen to have great cards and have just bet a significant amount of chips and then my line goes #carrier lost. On the other hand side this compromises my VPN solution that I implemented to circumvent the human rights violating data retention laws in my county.

I am sure there are other sane reasons for private redundant internet lines if not for the disturbing moment where your lolcats video starts to hang or where your wanking is suddenly interrup#carrier lost

This is just wrong. There is the possibility to suspend your account; however facebook has also added the possibility to permanently delete your account. I just tried it: logging in with my old fb account informs me that the email address I entered is not associated with any accounts. My account is deleted, once and for all.

Sure, anybody can social engineer your friends into telling them private information about you. However, the big difference here is the tool (Facebook) that enables the attacker to automate this process in the form of a self replicating social engineering worm affecting millions of users without you having to be specifically targeted by a social engineer.

Do you see the problem here?

...since it depends on the commons sense of all your friends. What could possibly go wrong?

I permanently deleted my facebook account a few weeks ago: a worm was spreading very fast through facebook and for over a week I could not notify facebook about the issue.

The worm spread via event invitations containing a link to a site that social engineered the people into copying Java script code into their browser so that it would steal their account credentials and propagate further. And facebook does not provide you with any means of contacting anybody at all, let alone from the security team! Instead, you are dependent on those buttons that let you report inappropriate messages or such. Only those event invitations did not have such buttons. I wasted dozens of hours trying to notify them about the scheme but finally gave up and deleted my account.

I learnt one thing: the privacy concept of facebook is fundamentally flawed as your own private data that you share with friends and family is dependent on the common sense of these friends. It needs only one of them to be stupid enough to follow complex procedures of copying JavaScript code because they think they could find out who viewed their profile or such to completely compromise your privacy.

I for one am outta there. And if you look closely enough, you find a hell of a lot worms and security vulnerabilities in facebook.

It was awesome until the game crashed in level 2 on me:

Error: R_DrawColumn: 201 to 205 at 58
FAILURE in loop iteration: SDL_Quit! :-(

Can't even load my savegame. But thanks for the nostalgic glimpse into old times. Ahh, those were the days...

Try the Fukishima Dai-ichilli some time. There, fixed that for you.

That's how this looks in a telnet port 25 session from a DSL line:

telnet mx2.hotmail.com 25

220 bay0-mc3-f21.Bay0.hotmail.com Sending unsolicited commercial or bulk e-mail
to Microsoft's computer network is prohibited. Other restrictions are found at h
ttp://privacy.msn.com/Anti-spam/. Violations will result in use of equipment loc
ated in California and other states. Mon, 21 Feb 2011 17:47:40 -0800
EHLO mine.home.net
250-bay0-mc3-f21.Bay0.hotmail.com (3.12.0.56) Hello [xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx]
250-SIZE 36909875
250-PIPELINING
250-8bitmime
250-BINARYMIME
250-CHUNKING
250-AUTH LOGIN
250-AUTH=LOGIN
250 OK
MAIL FROM: i@home.net
550 DY-001 Unfortunately, messages from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx weren't sent. Please conta
ct your Internet service provider. You can tell them that Hotmail does not relay
  dynamically-assigned IP ranges. You can also refer your provider to http://mail.live.com/mail/troubleshooting.aspx#errors.

Now if you've got a dynamic IP or a static IP in a dynamic IP range or maybe even a static IP from a static IP range from a larger known-to-be-dynamically-assigned IPs...

It is reportedly very unlikely that the bionic arm was involved since for driving it was said the he used a conventional prothesis. At least someone from the bionic company said so on TV when he was interviewed about this.

I married two weeks ago and we both kept our surnames. However, if I ever need to get rid of my electronic track, I will change my last name to hers instead. In fact I would have already done so if that would not have me required to change a lot of documents (unnecessary work :P) AND if $myfirstname.$herlastname@gmail.com (or anywhere in fact) would not have already been taken. Really! With my first name being Joe, do you think I could ever have met a girl where my lastname would not have already been taken as an email address?!

Your EFF donation link is broken. Instead, use this link. I am a bit worried that I was the first to point this out...

There, I fixed that for you: http://slashdot.org/submission/1266460/Elgato-offering-vuvuzela-filter-to-EyeTV-users?art_pos=2

To the german speaking people: the Pirate Party Austria has published a letter that you can send to your MEPs. The list of austrian MEPs can be found here. The list of german MEPs can be found here.

STOP written declaration 29 NOW! This declaration wants every search engine query in the EU to be tracked and watched!