SlashNOT

Matthew writes: Hormel Foods, makers of all legitimate SPAM, has voiced its opposition to the current anti-SPAM legislation being considered in Congress.

“This anti-SPAM bill casts far too wide a net. Basically, it makes all unsolicited SPAM illegal and provides for very large penalties against people who serve SPAM without the SPAM having been requested.”

“Of course we’re opposed to this. Can you imagine a hostess serving SPAM being required to get permission from each of the guests before she can deliver a delicious slice of processed pork parts? It is just going to ruin the festive nature of SPAM. Frankly, we’ve been baffled by all the bad press SPAM has been getting.”

Matthew writes: I saw a web of fibers of light beneath the streets, which spread gradually until it reached my house.

When the web of fibers of light was completed, I saw two salesmen, whose shirt’s brightness and glory defy all description, standing on my porch. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said–”Are you happy with your current broadband provider?”

My object in going to inquire of Google was to know which of all the broadband providers was right, that I might know to which to subscribe. No sooner, therefore, did I get possession of myself, so as to be able to speak, than I asked the salesmen who stood on my porch, which of all the broadband providers was best (for at this time it had never entered into my heart that they all sucked)–and to which I should subscribe.

I was answered that I must join none of them, for they all sucked; and the salesman who addressed me said that all their speeds were an abomination in his sight; that their tier two peering arrangements were all corrupt; that: “they draw near to me with their lips, but their actual performance ratings are far from me, they speak of broadband, having a form of Internet access, but they deny the potential thereof.”

Matthew writes: Popular search engine Google was arrested early this evening while apparently attempting to dump the body of Alta Vista, a competing search engine eclipsed by Google’s sudden rise to stardom in the search market.

Details are sketchy at this point, but police reports indicate that Google was interrupted in the act by a Police Officer that noticed a large number of semi trucks parked at Moss Landing, near Monterey Bay.

“There were a lot of trucks there. I don’t know how Google really expected to get away with it. When I walked up, hundreds of servers were being dumped into the bay, along with rack rails, hard disk drives, desktop computers, office chairs, cubicle partitions. Everything was taken apart–dismembered really. It was a mess. Of course, I immediately took Google into custody.”

According to preliminary statements taken at the scene, Alta Vista showed up at google in an incoherent state, dressed to look like google, spewing inconsistent and meaningless search results and thrashing about wildly. According to Google, they struggled over market share, but Google quickly gained the upper hand and overpowered Alta Vista. At the end of the struggle, Google had killed Alta Vista and apparently dismembered the search engine in a panic and called friends to help dump the body.

Dave Oatley writes: BOUTOOME, MA - The world wide web consortium, the body that approves standards for information exchange over the web, today announced approval of a new HTML tag. “The implementation is left to browser developers,” said Hans Reegwerd, “and of course the user will need supporting hardware.” Reegwerd, a w3c committee member responsible for the new tag, says it is long overdue. “Popups and flashing banners are annoying, sure, but users can disable them pretty easily. The BLINK tag was never fully implemented by the major browsers. The MARQUEE tag, while very annoying, is easily defeated with a user-specified stylesheet. And neither of these addressed the need to annoy sight-impaired users. What we were trying to create was a simple way for the author to annoy the user that wouldn’t be so easily turned off.” The consortium’s own browser supports the tag, sending a signal to a force-feedback mouse causing it to leap off the desk and strike the user. When asked if this would be done when the user did something wrong, Reegwerd responded, “That’s one appropriate use, sure.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Michael writes: In the largest ever attack of its kind, a mysterious hacker group calling itself “V3R1S1GN” has taken control of the nameservers at the root of the .COM and .NET top-level domains. On Monday, users who mistyped the names of popular Web sites were surprised to find a cryptic message from the hackers instead of an error message: “W3 4r3 V3r1s1gn 4nd w3 0wn th3 1nt3rn3t! 4ll y0ur d0m41ns 4r3 b3l0ng t0 us!”

Federal authorities are investigating but have not yet determined the source of the attack. “It’s probably the work of spammers,” said one source at the FBI. “This is similar to the crimes Zuccarini was arrested for earlier this year, but he at least had the decency to pay for his mistyped domain names.” While the servers are still corrupted, technical solutions are being deployed to minimize the effects of the attack.

sharp writes: The freenet project has announced that today that the CVS tree now supports slashdot comments as a system for broadcasting data through the network. (From the web site:) “This new method will encode your data with base64 and post it in the first post thread as an anonymous coward. This is a lot faster that P2P because slashdot appearently has a lot of bandwidth.”

Michael writes: According to the Washington Post, recent statistics indicate that 40% of all email traffic in the US is Spam. SlashNOT has obtained exclusive access to the complete data these statistics were based on and thus we present the following summary of the remaining 60%:

Matthew writes: Security experts warn of an alarming increase in the number of anti-spam products available. These packages promise to reduce or eliminate spam, but all to often they are exploited to reduce or eliminate spam.

“At first, spam was a minor annoyance, and then grew into a major annoyance as the amount of spam increased. Now, Anti-spam packages are following the same trend: A few packages, nothing major, and suddenly a deluge. When is it going to stop?”

“We’re considering anti-anti-spam legislation to keep these anti-spam services from proliferating beyond control. Last week, I must have gotten twenty unsolicited e-mail announcements about anti-spam software.

Matthew writes: The White House released a first draft of a Cyber Security Plan this week that is intended to harden the U.S. portions of the Internet against attack in the event of war. The document is too large to cover in detail, but here are the highlights:

1. Everyone stop sending e-mail.
2. Backbone routers on curfew from 9:00 p.m. to 9:00 a.m.
3. Enlist porn industry to help get the word out.
4. Everyone use really hard password: “chrthwiaprl”.
5. Revoke Microsoft Passports of suspected terrorists.
6. Release “Code Orange” worm to automatically lock down Microsoft web servers.
7. Redirect AOL CD mailings to Iraq.
8. Provide Arabic versions of Microsoft Outlook for free to anyone.

Matthew writes: Vice Chairman Ted Turner, the Dear Leader and second in command of AOL/Time Warner, has fled the organization on the heels of an announced 100 billion dollar loss in 2002.

AOL has been dealing with simmering resentment and open revolt by Time Warner employees since the recent hostile takeover of Time Warner. Two weeks ago, AOL leader Chairman Case announced his own retirement and a democratic referendum to select a new chairperson, but this news has apparently done little to stem the bloodletting.

The Time Warner division has kept the company afloat despite the ongoing rebel operations. The AOL division, once the most powerful New Economy company on the planet, continues to hemorrhage both money and subscribers, creating a humanitarian refugee problem the likes of which have never been seen before.

Cox cable, one of the major receivers of AOL refugees, has asked for relief from the FCC as the company struggles to deal with millions of new subscribers. AOL has made very public pleas for subscribers to stay with the company, even going to the unprecedented step of actually asking them to express their opinions. Despite this, millions still flee the uncertainty of the service provider, and its share price is currently nose-diving to all time lows. The U.S. Government is airlifting its regulatory staff away from the ISP and the state department has listed AOL as a “high risk” destination.