If you just type “microsoft.com”, “windowsupdate.com” or any other domain+tld, you go to bing because Microsoft things the URL address bar is a search engine query bar. Instead you will have to type out “http://www.windowsupdate.com/”. Apparently Microsoft thinks you’re the kind of internet moron that likes to type the entire URL including the protocol and www subdomain. I’m sure every techi knows what I’m talking about. All techies have those “special” friends that like to dictate letter by letter “h, t, t, p, colon, slash, slash, w, w, w, dot, etc…” instead of just saying the domain and tld (ie. google.com). I usually just ignore people until I hear them say the first “dot”.

I get dedicated IP addresses where I live. This is great compared with sitting behind a NAT unless you’re installing windows. As soon as it’s installed and you plug in the ethernet cable you have anywhere from 5 seconds to 5 minutes before your computer is compromised and you are required to re-install. This means you must start updating VERY QUICKLY. I was doing such a re-install with keyboard only. Navigating was a bit slow, but what really ticked me off was trying to go to “windowsupdate.com” and getting the Bing page with a million links to tab through to find the proper link to the updates. Of course by the time i found it, i got a 404 trying to reach it. I opened up the command line and, ran netstat -n and saw I was already compromised. There were thousands of connections open trying to compromise other machines. The backdoor that was installed was blocking the windows update site. If Microsoft and Bing hadn’t wasted my time maybe my windows update would have saved me from having to re-install AGAIN… Re-installs are sure fun!

I do hope everyone involved with this project at Microsoft dies of some kind of really painful slow cancer. Something that makes you bleed out of your ass would do.

Holiday Blowout! Premium performance you NEED at a value price!

You get a 100Mbit/s burstable port with a 10Mbit/s dedicated bandwidth commitment. The bandwidth is measured at 95th percentile utilization. We also offer these plans as unmetered bandwidth for the same price. Just let sales@acronoc.com know when you order!

Visit our site to order these special deals today!

—

Intel Core2 Duo 2.4GHz 2M Cache

- 1024MB DDR2 RAM

- 250GB Hard Drive

- 10Mbit/s Dedicated Bandwidth

- 100Mbit/s Burstable Port Speed

- 24/7 Support

- 99.9% Uptime Guarantee

Month to month cost: $99.95/mo Order Here: http://acronoc.com/performance.html

Use coupon code HOLIDAYC2D when ordering!

Need more bandwidth? A custom server or setup? Just contact sales@acronoc.com!

—

Visit our site to order these special deals today!

—

Intel Core2 Quad 2.4GHz 8M Cache

- 1024MB DDR2 RAM

- 250GB Hard Drive

- 10Mbit/s Dedicated Bandwidth

- 100Mbit/s Burstable Port Speed

- 24/7 Support

- 99.9% Uptime Guarantee

Month to month cost: $124.95/mo Order Here: http://acronoc.com/hardcore.html

Use coupon code HOLIDAYC2Q when ordering!

Need more bandwidth? A custom server or setup? Just contact sales@acronoc.com!

—

All servers are fully customizable! Not sure what kind of service you need? Interested in Houston Texas colocation, VPS, SAN storage or our support services? We are thrilled to offer services! Just contact sales@acronoc.com today!

—

Intel Atom 330 Dual-Core Blowout! Get Intel Atom performance for an amazing price!

Month to Month Plan

- Intel Atom 330 Dual-Core 1.6GHz

- 1024MB DDR2 Memory

- 250GB Hard Drive

- 1000GB Bandwidth Transfer

- 100Mbit/s Port Speed

- 24/7 Support

- 99.9% Uptime Guarantee

Month to month cost: $49.95/mo Order Here: http://acronoc.com/business.html

Use coupon code HOLIDAY330 when ordering!

—

VPS Blowout! Our VPS servers utilize premium hardware from Dell! Your VPS will perform!

Alpha Plan

- 384MB RAM

- 50GB Disk Space

- 250GB Transfer

- 24/7 Support

- 99.9% Uptime Gurantee

- OpenVZ

$19.95/Mo ORDER TODAY!

Beta Plan

- 512MB RAM

- 75GB Disk Space

- 400GB Transfer

- 24/7 Support

- 99.9% Uptime Gurantee

- Virtuozzo

$29.95/Mo ORDER TODAY!

Gamma Plan

- 768MB RAM

- 100GB Disk Space

- 500GB Transfer

- 24/7 Support

- 99.9% Uptime Gurantee

- Virtuozzo

$39.95/Mo ORDER TODAY!

Delta Plan

- 1024MB RAM

- 125GB Disk Space

- 1TB Transfer

- 24/7 Support

- 99.9% Uptime Gurantee

- Virtuozzo

$49.95/Mo ORDER TODAY!

Business Series (starting @ 61.95/mo!) coupons:

WHT50PERCENT – First month 50% off any business series server!
WHT500GB – Free 500GB hard drive upgrade on compatible servers. Available while supplies last!

Performance & Hardcore Series (starting @ 169.95/mo!) coupons:

WHT20PERCENT – Discount 20% off monthly cost of a premium server. Applies to price of “Base Model” of each server only. Extras (RAM, Bandwidth, cPanel, etc..) will not be discounted.
WHTCPANEL – Free cPanel license with your premium server!

As you can see we have some pretty special deals available this month while supplies last!

Visit: http://acronoc.com/ and order a server today!

Coupons expire 06/30/2009 or when supplies run out. Order now!

[[ Dmitry's TMP Security Script ]]
Checking if /dev/tempFS exists… it does not.. creating!
204800+0 records in
204800+0 records out
209715200 bytes (210 MB) copied, 0.70351 seconds, 298 MB/s
mke2fs 1.39 (29-May-2006)
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=1024 (log=0)
Fragment size=1024 (log=0)
51200 inodes, 204800 blocks
10240 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=1
Maximum filesystem blocks=67371008
25 block groups
8192 blocks per group, 8192 fragments per group
2048 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
8193, 24577, 40961, 57345, 73729

Writing inode tables: done
Creating journal (4096 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

This filesystem will be automatically checked every 37 mounts or
180 days, whichever comes first.  Use tune2fs -c or -i to override.
/dev/tmpFS has been created!
Backing up current /tmp!
Setting up /etc/fstab and mounting!
Restoring old /tmp data and cleaning up!
Checking if /var/tmp is a symlink… it does not.. creating!
Backing up current /var/tmp!
Setting up /var/tmp as symlink to secured /tmp!
Restoring old /var/tmp data and cleaning up!
Making sure /dev/shm is secured in /etc/fstab!

Download the script and try it out. I recommend using it on a new or unmodified CentOS/RHEL install.

Download Script

The best thing about Little Bear Custom Holsters is that the holster features are personally customized when you order. These are not off the rack prefab holsters you see at your local gun store (which can cost more!) You can even have your choice of color and various exotic skins. Mine is HASTAE style, with kydex clips, saddle tan color, horsehide back and gatorskin front. David from Little Bear Custom Holsters has great communication skills and answers emails incredibly quickly. From order to receiving my holster took about 34 days. This may seem like a long time to wait for your holster, but it’s well worth it considering it’s custom work!

Little Bear Custom Holsters “HASTAE” style holster for my Springfield Armory XD-45 4″ TC Pistol:

SMART showed no failures and all the values were perfectly fine. No pending sectors, 117 value for error rate, the drive was like new! Naturally I assumed this was a problem with Windows Vista, cursed Bill Gates’ name three times and started to research the problem. My friend Sanjin suggested that I check the firmware of my drive to see if it was SD15, it was.

After an hour of research I found a lot of useful links such as:

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r21737309-AVOID-seagate-ST31000340ASSD15-drives

Which describe this as a firmware related problem that can cause the drive to brick on power cycle. From my research of this firmware problem it seems that Seagate has upset may of it’s customers through poorly handling this issue. Many people on the Seagate and DSLReports forums have claimed long hold times that lead nowhere. Forum posters operating retail locations claimed to see very high (up to 40%) failure rates based on returns/exchanges of the 7200.11 drive models!

It seems for most people the drive would just disappear all together, even from the BIOS. I was lucky enough to have my BIOS continue to recognize the drive which according to the forum posts on dslreports and Seagate’s site meant I could still flash new firmware.

Eventually Seagate did acknowledge the problem and issued a firmware fix SD1A for drives that had not yet failed.  Some reports on forums indicated that the “fixed firmware” bricked drives that had not yet failed instead of preventing future failure. Seagate’s site was of little help to me as I couldn’t even find links to their firmware updates. In fact many people on their own forums were asking “Where can I download it?” as the knowledge base articles referencing firmware updates seemed to include no information on how to actually get the update.

My friend Sanjin found a copy of the SD1A ISO from his personal system. I figured since my drive was already semi-bricked it couldn’t get much worse. I burned the ISO to a CD and rebooted to the CD with only the failing drive pluged in. After a few key strokes the firmware was updated. I powered down the system per instructions and upon startup the BIOS showed a 1000GB drive!

While my outcome was eventually positive, I still don’t trust current Seagate 7200.11 drive models. I was really unimpressed with their failure to deal with this issue which has been going on for the better part of last year. I will probably use Western Digital for now as their current models have been working perfectly. I was a big supporter of Segate for a long time and I wouldn’t want to discontinue buying their products indefinitely, but I think I’m going to wait for the next few models to come out over the next year or two and see how they hold up. If there are no major problem I’ll definitely come back to Seagate.

I’m attatching the ISO for the updated SD1A firmware to this post. I recommend you do reasearch before you attempt this firmware fix. I’m in no way responsible for any bricked hard drives. Download below:

moosedt-sd1a-3d4d-16-32mb

Burn it with your favorite software (Nero, Alcohol 120%, etc…)

If passed into law this sort of irresponsible legislature can only create a strain on our economic system and push back research and development. Manufacturers producing routers for the home and small business sector will have to release new models. These new models will comply with the law instead of offering new features that users want to see. The owners of the existing models will have to upgrade. A simple firmware update will not work as most low end router models would have insufficient memory to store two years of access logs. Here is the output from my Linksys RVS4000 “Business Series Security Router” (~$160):

# free
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 62372  47832 14540 0 312
Swap: 0 0 0
Total: 62372 47832 14540

This act would hold liable users whom in many cases posses very little Internet Technology knowledge and skill. How does someone explain to the average internet user why they must go out and buy a new router when theirs works fine? What if the operator is 65 years old and using Wi-Fi for the first time? What happens if they misconfigure their router and have to factory reset it? Routers don’t use hard drives and the access log data would be lost.

Who sincerely believes a Linksys router can consistently do anything over two years except crash? This is a ridiculous bill which I’m confident will get tossed out in it’s current form.

Source: CNET News

12-Cylinder Super Cars ($354,000 – $203,600):

Lamborghini Murcielago, 632-hp, 487lbs.-ft, 6.5L V-12 ($354,000)

2009 Bentley Continental GT, 600-hp, 553lbs.-ft, 6.0L W-12 ($203,600)

So much choice in 6.2L V-8 engines ($142,700 – $30,245!):

2009 Mercedes-Benz CL63, 518-hp, 465lbs.-ft, 6.2L V-8 ($142,700)

2009 Mercedes-Benz SL63 AMG, 518-hp, 465lbs.-ft, 6.2L V-8 ($135,000)

2009 Chevrolet Corvette ZR, 638-hp, 604lbs.-ft, 6.2L V-8 ($103,970)

2010 Chevrolet Camaro SS1, 426-hp, 420lbs.-ft, 6.2L V-8 ($30,245)

8-Cylinder Power ($217,310 – $39,820!):

2008 Ferrari F430, 490-hp, 342lbs.-ft, 4.3L V-8 ($217,310)

2006 Ford GT, modified, 800-rwhp! ($149,995 un-modified base price!)

2009 Audi R8, 420-hp, 317lbs.-ft, 4.2L V-8 ($114,200)

2009 Chevrolet Corvette Z06, 505-hp, 470lbs.-ft, 7.0L V-8 ($73,925)

2009 Dodge Challenger SRT-8, 425-hp, 420lbs.-ft, 6.1L V-8 ($39,820)

Japanese Power ($79,090 – $34,460!):

2009 Nissan GT-R, 480-hp, 430lbs.-ft, 3.8L V-6 ($79,090)

2009 Lexus IS-F, 416-hp, 371lbs.-ft, 5.0L V-8 ($56,610)

2009 Nissan 370Z, 332-hp, 270lbs.-ft, 3.7L V-6 ($34,460)

British Power ($71,825 – $61,000!):

2009 Land Rover Range Rover Sport, 390-hp, 410lbs.-ft, 4.2L V-8 ($71,825)

2008 Lotus Exige S, 220-hp, 165lbs.-ft, 1.8L I-4 ($61,000)

6-Cylinder Power ($124,900 – $41,200):

2008 Porsche 911 GT3 RS, 415-hp, 300lbs.-ft, 3.6L H-6 ($124,900)

2008 BMW 335i, 300-hp, 300lbs.-ft, 3.0L I-6 ($41,200)

Concept Car Previews ($UNKNOWN!):

2010 Dodge Demon, 172-hp, 2.4L 4cyl, FWD ($UKNOWN, ~$24,000)

Dmitry’s “Least Changed Through The Years” Award:

2009 Mercury Grand Marquis, 224-hp, 275lbs.-ft, 4.6L V-8 ($29,270)

Special Cars:

1967 Chevrolet Camaro SS

1958 Chevrolet Impala

Houston Police Department Dodge Charger

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/alltherage/2009/01/shopping-obama.html

I find it pretty hillarious that because the president is black he gets a basketball jersey. At least we have a black guy on the team! Go team USA!