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Comment Potential cause for the blue-screens (Score 5, Informative) 658

It seems like someone's figured out what was causing the bluescreens... from the MS forum thread:

I had an Eee PC with XP Home brought to me with this same problem. I rolled back KB977165, rebooted and the system worked fine. I reapplied KB977165 and the rest of the updates available at Microsoft Update, and the problem returned. I replaced %System32%\drivers\atapi.sys with a clean version from a XP SP3 distribution folder and rebooted... voila! Problem solved.

For reference, the SHA1SUMs of the atapi.sys files:

Non-working:
bb3e36ad0c8ed6daab38653ea4a942d74b9f4ff6

Working:
a719156e8ad67456556a02c34e762944234e7a44

If anyone wants to look at the non-working atapi.sys:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpatrickwbarnes.com%2Fpub%2Fatapi.sys

I will be looking at this more in-depth. If I find anything more, it will be posted in a follow-up comment at the ISC:
http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=8209

UPDATE :
I uploaded the non-working atapi.sys file to VirusTotal, and this is the result:
http://www.virustotal.com/analisis/85aa49f587f69f30560f02151af2900f3dc71d39d1357727ab41b11ef828a7ff-1265925529

Apparently, this update problem is the result of an infection.

Comment Re:ha ha suckers!!! (Score 1) 658

Not to brag or anything, this is for information purpose only:

I installed the patch on Tuesday but I hadn't rebooted yet (I know, I know... ;-).

TFA got me nervous so I figured I might as well find out right now and reboot. I was quite happy that it rebooted without any problems so far ;-)

My windows box is a winXP SP2 running on a HP Pavillion a1450n, AMD Athlon dual core.

As a side note, I never managed to install SP3 on that machine although I have tried 3 times with a 4-5 months interval between each try, figuring I would give MS some time to fix stuff ;-) I managed to roll back to SP2 every time by going into the windows special boot menu and choosing "Last good known configuration" or something like that.

Censorship

Microsoft Tries To Censor Bing Vulnerability 275

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft's Bing search engine has a vulnerability with its cash-back promotion, which impacts both merchants and customers. In traditional Microsoft fashion, the company has responded to the author of the breaking Bing cash-back exploit with a cease & desist letter, rather than by fixing the underlying security problem. It is possible for a malicious user to create fake Bing cash-back requests, resulting in not only fake cash-back costs for the merchant, but also blocking legitimate customers from receiving their cash-back from Bing. The original post is currently available in Bing's cache, although perhaps not for long. But no worries, the author makes it clear that the exploit should be painfully obvious to anyone who reads the Bing cash-back SDK."

Comment Re:Whitewashing (Score 2, Interesting) 483

Uh... I'm running Windows 7 and I can tell you that it definitely is NOT a service pack. Even if I didn't read any pro-Windows 7 articles or have any prior knowledge, just the fact that it has a different UI and a lot of changes tells you something about it... Microsoft don't make major changes in service packs any more (though Vista SP1 was an exception), because people told them that they wanted only stability, performance and security fixes, not new UIs or ways of doing things.

Comment Re:Microsoft needs to fix the defaults of Windows (Score 1) 144

Actually, Outlook and Outlook Express already have options to read mail in plain-text. Now, whether those options should be checked by default (they're currently not), is another matter...

I don't quite recall everything clearly, but I remember a lot of people were unhappy when Windows Mail (the successor to Outlook Express) was removed in Windows 7, because they were no longer able to use their HTML templates. Sure, you don't use HTML email, but that doesn't mean no one should use it.

I agree with you on the other two points.

Comment Naming after American/ragtime composers FTW! (Score 1) 1397

I have the following on my home LAN (or soon to be, in any case):

Joplin (named after Scott Joplin) - a Debian lenny/testing laptop that I just rescued from being stuck in a closet for the better part of a year
Confrey (named after Zez Confrey, composer of Kitten on the Keys) - a HP desktop that currently runs the Windows 7 beta smoothly :)
Gottschalk (named after Louis Moreau Gottschalk) - the laptop I'm typing this on (running Vista SP2 beta)

At other times I've had Bolcom (for William Bolcom) and Lamb (for Joseph Lamb) on the network...

The only things right now that don't follow this convention are my home server and my work laptop (as well as my XBox360, but I don't think you can give it a name), but we'll see what we can change there. :D

Unix

Why Do We Name Servers the Way We Do? 1397

jfruhlinger writes "If you use a Unix machine, it probably has a funny name. And if you work in an environment where there are multiple Unix machines, they probably have funny names that are variations on a theme. No, you're not the only one! This article explores the phenomenon, showing that even the CIA uses a whimsical server naming scheme." What are some of your best (worst?) naming schemes?

Comment Re:No, I agree with you. (Score 2, Informative) 749

As someone who's currently on an H1-B work visa within the US, allow me to correct some parts of your comment and the comment you replied to.

1) Mexican migrant workers don't come in to the US on H1-B visas. They most likely come in under H-2 or H-3 (seasonal/agriculture). H1-Bs are meant for specialty occupations (IT, finance, etc)
2) H1-B visa holders don't pay any less taxes than Americans do. We have the same amount of taxes deducted from our pay (FICA, federal and/or state) as Americans do. Plus, we get to pay sales tax too just like everyone else!
3) While it's true that some people live very frugally in the US and remit money regularly, I think you'll find that's changing, especially in the software industry. For an example, consider how many SUVs and sport cars there are in Redmond or Silicon Valley (where there are a *lot* of people on H1-B visas).

I don't doubt that something needs to change, but I think you're looking in the wrong place for it. I believe that paying out bonuses is not fundamentally wrong even in these times, but the banks/Wall Street shouldn't be using bailout money to do it.

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