Blackmoor Vituperative

A major spammer who was accused of sending up to 25 million e-mails per day has settled a lawsuit with Microsoft and the state of Texas.

The settlement has cost Ryan Pitylak $1 million, as well as the seizure of many of the assets he accumulated during a short-lived career as one of the world’s worst spammers.

At the peak of his spamming activity, the 24-year-old Texas resident was listed as the world’s fourth most-prolific spammer by antispam group Spamhaus.

Now Pitylak is claiming something of an epiphany, saying he has seen the error of his ways and will dedicate his efforts to trying to rid the world of nuisance e-mail. He has even taken to referring to himself as an “antispam activist” in an apparent change of heart of epic proportions.

(from ZDNet, Spammer settles suit for $1 million)

Well of course he’s seen the error of his ways — his business has been shut down, and his only hope of recovering from this catastrophe is to switch gears and try to leverage his experience as a scumbag spammer into a consulting gig.

Maybe he really has learned his lesson. One million dollars is a lot of money to most individuals. But I’m still not sure that’s as good a deterrent as the alternative.

I currently work at Circuit City as a programmer/analyst. From time to time I make suggestions intended to bring my department into compliance with widely-known best practices concerning security, server administration, the development process, and so forth. Thus far, not a single one of these suggestions has been recognized as addressing a valid concern, much less implemented.

So it was with some interest that I read that Circuit City’s online forum was hacked to infect users with spam bots. To be fair to Circuit City, in this instance I do not believe they were any more irresponsible than most companies who run web sites — including my own. The patch for their forum software was released on 2006-05-17. Their forum was hacked on 2006-05-30. That’s less than two weeks.

Of greater concern to me is that the people who are the real victims of this hack, the visitors to Circuit City’s web site, would only have been affected if they were stupidly, inexplicably still using Internet Explorer as their web browser. What the hell is wrong with you people? For crying out loud, switch to Firefox already!

Alex Toth, creator of Space Ghost and a giant of 20th century cartoon design, died at his drawing table on May 27, 2006.

And now a word from Gary Gygax…

Hi,

Do you buy books online, use Google, or download to an iPod? Everything we do online will be hurt if Congress passes a radical law next week that gives giant corporations more control over what we do and see on the Internet.

Internet providers like AT&T are lobbying Congress hard to gut Network Neutrality–the Internet’s First Amendment and the key to Internet freedom. Net Neutrality prevents AT&T from choosing which websites open most easily for you based on which site pays AT&T more. BarnesandNoble.com doesn’t have to outbid Amazon for the right to work properly on your computer.

If Net Neutrality is gutted, many sites–including Google, eBay, and iTunes–must either pay protection money to companies like AT&T or risk having their websites process slowly. That why these high-tech pioneers, plus diverse groups ranging from MoveOn to Gun Owners of America, are opposing Congress’ effort to gut Internet freedom.

You can do your part today–can you sign this petition telling your member of Congress to preserve Internet freedom? Click here:

http://www.civic.moveon.org/save_the_internet

I signed this petition, along with 250,000 others so far. This petiton will be delivered to Congress before the House of Representatives votes next week. When you sign, you’ll be kept informed of the next steps we can take to keep the heat on Congress.

Snopes.com, which monitors various causes that circulate on the Internet, explained:

Simply put, network neutrality means that no web site’s traffic has precedence over any other’s…Whether a user searches for recipes using Google, reads an article on snopes.com, or looks at a friend’s MySpace profile, all of that data is treated equally and delivered from the originating web site to the user’s web browser with the same priority. In recent months, however, some of the telephone and cable companies that control the telecommunications networks over which Internet data flows have floated the idea of creating the electronic equivalent of a paid carpool lane.

If companies like AT&T have their way, Web sites ranging from Google to eBay to iTunes either pay protection money to get into the “fast lane” or risk opening slowly on your computer. We can’t let the Internet–this incredible medium which has been such a revolutionary force for democratic participation, economic innovation, and free speech–become captive to large corporations.

Politicians don’t think we are paying attention to this issue. Together, we do care about preserving the free and open Internet.

Please sign this petition letting your member of Congress know you support preserving Internet freedom. Click here:

http://www.civic.moveon.org/save_the_internet

Thanks.

OpenOffice.org has released a statement concerning the so-called “macro virus” affecting OpenOffice. They say the same thing I said on Wednesday: it’s not a virus. It’s much ado about nothing.

Apparently there is a big hullaballoo in Europe over Microsoft wanting to add “Save as PDF…” as an option in the next version of Microsoft Office, with threats of lawsuits being tossed back and forth between Adobe and Microsoft.

To me, this is a big “so what?” Switch to OpenOffice (which has been able to “Save as PDF…” for years). Case closed.

Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) is what the media robber barons and their shills are attempting to use to control and restrict the ability of this and future generations to create and enjoy all forms of artistic endeavors: music, literature, films, art, you name it. DRM is one of the most serious threats to human cultural advancement since the Vatican, Charles IX, and various other European rulers tried to control all book publishing in the sixteenth century. This is not a small problem, and it is not going away.

David Berlind at ZDNet relates a story of a Dutch DRM trainwreck, one of a collection he is gathering for posterity.

Microsoft is starting a game of hide-and-seek with malicious code writers.

Windows Vista Beta 2, released last week, includes a new security feature designed to protect against buffer overrun exploits. Called Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), the feature loads key system files in different memory locations each time the PC starts, making it harder for malicious code to run, according to Microsoft.

“It is not a panacea, it is not a replacement for insecure code,” Michael Howard, a senior security program manager at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post announcing the feature. “But when used in conjunction with other technologies…it is a useful defense, because it makes Windows systems look ‘different’ to malware, making automated attacks harder.”

(from ZDNet, Vista plays hide-and-seek with hackers)

This has to be one of the dumbest things I have ever heard of. If today was April 1, or if I read about it on the Onion, I would know that this is a joke, but I think ZDNet and Microsoft are serious about this.

In other news, here are 20 Things You Won’t Like About Windows Vista. Take the article with a grain of salt, though: this pundit has been duped into believing the hype that Apple has a user-friendly user interface (which could not be further from the truth).