TheUnFounded - Slashdot User

Submission + - How should one dealing with a DDoS attack?

Submitted by TheUnFounded on Friday November 02, 2012 @01:36PM

TheUnFounded writes: A site that I administer was recently "held hostage" for the vast sum of $800. We were contacted by a guy (who was, it turns out, in Lebanon), who told us that he had been asked to perform a DDoS on our site by a competitor, and that they were paying him $600. He then said for $800, he would basically go away. Not a vast sum, but we weren't going to pay just because he said he "could" do something.

Within 5 minutes, our site was down.

The owner of the company negotiated with the guy, and he stopped his attack after receiving $400. A small price to pay to get the site online in our case. But obviously we want to come up with a solution that'll allow us to deal with these kinds of attacks in the future.

While the site was down, I contacted our hosting company, Rackspace. They proceeded to tell me that they have "DDoS mitigation services", but they cost $6,000 if your site is under attack at the time you use the service. Once the attack was over, the price dropped to $1500. (Nice touch there Rackspace, so much for Fanatical support; price gouging at its worst).

So, obviously, I'm looking for alternative solutions for DDoS mitigation. I'm considering CloudFlare (https://www.cloudflare.com/) as an option; does anyone have any other suggestions or thoughts on the matter?

Submission + - Lala Shutting Down (lala.com)

Submitted by TheUnFounded on Friday April 30, 2010 @09:35AM

TheUnFounded writes: The popular music listening site, lala.com, is shutting down. No reason is given, just a description of refunds and credits and that May 31st is the last day. The details are behind a login screen which you have to be a member to get past; unfortunately, no new signups are being accepted. As a result, I've included the entire text below:

"You will be able to access and play all music in your Lala collection through May 31, 2010. Any mp3 songs purchased and downloaded from Lala will continue to play as part of your local music library. You can continue to purchase mp3 songs through May 31st using your wallet balance or other payment methods.

As of today, web songs, wallets, and gift cards are no longer available for purchase on Lala. Uploads have been discontinued, and we are not accepting new users for the service.

Refunds and Credits:

Web songs. In appreciation of your support, you will receive a credit in the amount of your Lala web song purchases for use on Apple's iTunes Store.

Wallet balances. If you have an outstanding wallet balance on May 31st, we will also issue you an iTunes Store credit for that amount. If you prefer to have your wallet balance refunded to you via check, you must make that request by May 31st.

Unredeemed Gift Cards. Gift cards can be redeemed on Lala until May 31st. The gift card amount will be added to your wallet balance, and included as part of your wallet balance refund."

Submission + - The Ultimate Lock Picker (wired.com)

Submitted by

TheUnFounded

on Monday June 01, 2009 @02:28PM

TheUnFounded writes: "Marc Weber Tobias can pick, crack, or bump any lock. Now he wants to teach the world how to break into military facilities and corporate headquarters. But Tobias isn't crazy. Far from it. He's a professional lock breaker, a man obsessively--perhaps compulsively--dedicated to cracking physical security systems. He doesn't play games, he rarely sees movies, he doesn't attend to plants or pets or, currently, a girlfriend. Tobias hacks locks. Then he teaches the public how to hack them, too."

Submission + - Google Brain Search (google.com)

Submitted by

TheUnFounded

on Wednesday April 01, 2009 @11:06AM

TheUnFounded writes: "Not sure if you forgot to brush your teeth this morning? Don't know why you're getting those strange looks? Google Brain Search uses Cadie technology to index your brain, thus improving the speed and accuracy of memory retrieval."

Submission + - Google to Launch Web Browser

Submitted by TheUnFounded on Tuesday September 02, 2008 @10:26AM

TheUnFounded writes: I guess it was just a matter of time, really, but Google has stated that they're releasing a browser, and they've even got a cartoon to describe the details. Actual release date: Tomorrow.

Submission + - Desktop/Laptop Sync

Submitted by TheUnFounded on Monday August 18, 2008 @09:56AM

TheUnFounded writes: As I'm sure many of you do, I have both a laptop and a desktop that I use for doing development work. When I'm doing most of my work, I like my desktop — big power, big screens, and a comfortable setup. My laptop tends to sit mostly unused. Of course, when I do need to travel with my laptop then, it's horribly out of sync with my desktop. I use SVN for most of my code, so I can get at a lot of my work that way, but I always have little side projects I've started to test or play with something that's not in the repository. Not to mention just the random files I've got that aren't part of any project, but would be useful to have available on my laptop, or that one extra file I forgot to commit.

Anyway, I'm running Windows (yeah, I know), and I have a few basic requirements:

It needs to be easy to configure. Yes, I could set up 10 different scripts and have it work, but I'm looking for a simple solution. Preferably has a nice GUI, so my wife can have it running on her desktop/laptop setup as well.
Ideally, it will use differential backups. I would like to be able to sync via VPN if I forget to do so before I leave, and bandwidth could be an issue
-2-way syncing needs to work. If I make changes on one machine, and they can be merged, I just want it to happen without any extra work on my end

I've tried a number of applications, but they're all overly complex, difficult to configure, or just do the crappy "bulk copy" syncing. Does any such simple, seamless syncing software exist?

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