Looking at the “all ages” shelf in Borders, which seems to be almost entirely made up of novels about vampires and dragons, I noticed that the cover to the Vampire Academy novel Frostbite looked awfully familiar. I walked over to the DVD section of the store and picked up a copy of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 2.
This may be the most recognized image from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I just could not believe that the cover designer would copy the layout so closely.
One of the great ironies of phishing is that, these days, identity theft via the web tends to work by preying on people’s fear of identity theft. It doesn’t help that most people don’t really understand the technology. The typical phishing message looks something like this:
Dear so-and-so. In order for us to protect your account from identity theft, we need you to give us all the critical information that we already have. Otherwise, your account will be locked.
These typically use actual bank logos and link to a website that imitates the bank’s real site as closely as possible. The days of “Pease entr yore acccccount infomation hear KTHXBYE” are long gone.
But the one I saw in the spamtraps today was just astonishing in its brazen use of buzzwords to add authenticity:
Dear Wilmington Trust Banking Member,
Due to the high number of fraud attempts and phishing scams, it has been decided to implement EV SSL Certification on this Internet Banking website.
First we have the scare tactic (always ironic in a “there are treacherous people about” sense). Throwing in EV SSL certificates makes it seem a bit more authoritative, since it’s something a lot of companies have started doing, and people may have heard about it in the news.
The use of EV SSL certification works with high security Web browsers to clearly identify whether the site belongs to the company or is another site imitating that company’s site.
It has been introduced to protect our clients against phishing and other online fraudulent activities. Since most Internet related crimes rely on false identity, WTDirect went through a rigorous validation process that meets the Extended Validation guidelines.
And here they talk about EV certs and how much safer they’ll make your account!
Please Update your account to the new EV SSL certification by Clicking here.
And here’s where they demonstrate that they figure the typical mark doesn’t actually have a clue what EV SSL certificates are. Various real businesses have converted from standard SSL to Extended Validation SSL, and the users didn’t have to do a thing.
Now, you might need to upgrade your web browser or switch to one that will show you a green bar (Firefox 3, IE7, Opera 9, etc.), but you’d still be able to access your account even if you didn’t. Unless the site started blocking other browsers like PayPal briefly discussed back in April. Even then, there would still be nothing that would require you to log into your account and make a change.
Anyway, let’s continue:
Please enter your User ID and Password and then click Go.
This one’s presumably a simple phish, just obtaining login credentials to give the thief access to the account through the web.
(Failure to verify account details correctly will lead to account suspension)
And of course the implied threat: Do this or you won’t be able to get at your money. Again, a typical phishing tactic.
On a side note: My favorite spam topic of the last week is “Refinance your ARM today.”. Yeah, I know what ARM stands for, but I keep imagining Cyborg, or perhaps the Six Million-Dollar Man, trying to refi a loan that covers the gadgets in his arm.
Somehow, we’ve found ourselves watching a lot of shows on Fox this fall. And two out of three are returning, so we can be confident that they’ll actually finish out the season. The third is Fringe, and I’m still trying to decide whether I want to keep up with it.
So far it basically seems to be The X-Files as done by J.J. Abrams, with a corporate conspiracy replacing the government conspiracy. Which is fine, except I wasn’t particularly interested in The X-Files. I think I saw about 5 episodes plus the first movie.
One thing I’m not thrilled about is the implication that everything they investigate is going to be part of “The Pattern.” It seems awfully convenient that all the weirdness stems from one lab’s experiments back in the 1970s, with (presumably) one partner causing and the other investigating the weirdness. I’d actually prefer it if they sometimes ran into things that were weird and bizarre, but came from other people’s work.
They also seem to be big on body horror, which is not my favorite topic to watch on a weekly basis. Though that could just be the first two episodes.
The most interesting character so far is the mad scientist Dr. Bishop, played by John Noble. Oddly enough, I didn’t recognize the actor until the second episode.
The pilot episode actually got to a point about 2/3 of the way through where I wanted it to end. I found myself thinking, “Okay, the story’s done, you can wrap up the episode now.” Kind of like The Talented Mr. Ripley, it just kept going. Still, it was a pilot, and it was trying to do setup, so they get a pass.
Something I’ve noticed is that it’s easier for me to suspend my disbelief on things that are completely and totally “out there” than things that are just a little bit past normal. For instance, to bring up some spoilers from episode 2: Continue reading
It seems that Old Navy is branching out into adoption services:
“Hey, what a deal! At that price, you wanna get two?”
Of course some people go the traditional route to save money.
Sometimes, though, you just have to wonder what’s going through someone’s head when they come up with a brand name. 😯
So is Jonathan Swift the CEO?
My desktop computer has been a bit flaky for a few months now. Well, more than that. There’s the problem where it won’t display anything in plain-text mode, but that’s not really a big deal. It was when it stopped running anything higher than 1024×768 that I started getting annoyed.
That turned out, oddly enough, to not be the video card. And not the monitor, since I could display higher resolution from the Windows box perfectly fine. And not my OS, since running a live CD had the same problem.
So I figured it was a motherboard issue. Fine, I’ll upgrade. Eventually. Wait ~4 months, and I’m starting to notice data errors on the hard drive. Great.
You know that old saying about how any project requires at least 3 trips to the hardware store? It applies to computers, too.
I finally got around to looking for a decent mobo/CPU/RAM combo, and a new hard drive. Ordered online. Arrived yesterday. Ran backup last night.
Today I dismantled everything, hampered by the fact that I could not find the box that has all the case components (faceplates so I could remove the ZIP drive which I haven’t used in 3 years, etc.), though I did eventually find the screws. After I installed the motherboard, I started plugging in connectors… only to discover that the power supply didn’t have the right kind of connector.
Off to Fry’s to get a new power supply, after stopping at storage to see if I could find that box with faceplates and stuff. No luck, and power supplies are astonishingly expensive, though I found one that fit my specs and was on sale and had a rebate, so that worked out. (Some of them are 1000-watt monstrosities that cost as much as a cheap computer, and in the words of another customer, “look like they should be in a Chevy.”)
Came back, hooked everything up, moved it back into the bedroom to hook everything up…and couldn’t go into the BIOS to set the boot device. After messing around a bit, determined that the text-mode problem, at least, actually was the monitor. So I’m borrowing Katie’s monitor while I install an actual 64-bit OS. Once it’s at the point where I can let it sit for a while, I’m going to run out to Best Buy for a new monitor. I suspect the resolution problem is different, but at this point I’m no longer inclined to suffer through it.
Still, it’s worth the upgrade (assuming, of course, that everything continues to work once I close up the case), since the old system was single-core, 32-bit, and ran on an IDE drive, and the new system is dual-core, 64-bit, will have more memory, a faster bus, a SATA drive, etc. This should be much faster.
Once it’s done, anyway.
Originally posted at LiveJournal.
If I understand this correctly, it’s apparently okay to compare an entire class of women to pit bulls wearing lipstick, but using a worn-out cliché to compare a candidate’s policies to a pig wearing lipstick is sexist.
So is being called a dog better than being called a pig? Or is it just more offensive to dismiss policies than to make jokes about people?
This is going to be a long two months.
I was looking at Slashdot this morning and found a link to the article on the original iPod launch back in 2001:
“At an invitation only event Apple has released their new MP3 player called the iPod. iPod is the size of a deck of cards. 2.4″ wide by 4″ tall by .78″ thick 6.5 ounces. 5 GB HDD, 10 hr battery life, charged via FireWire. Works as a firewire drive as well. Works in conjunctions with iTunes 2. Here are Live updates”
No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.
It’s funny to see all the comments about how it’s a worthless unmarketable product that no one will buy and represents the point at which Apple will finally slide into irrelevance…when what really happened was that the iPod became the leading digital music player (“iPod” is practically a synonym for “portable digital music player” today, in the way “Walkman” was a synonym for “portable cassette player” back in the 1980s). As Apple’s best-selling product line, it made it possible for them to open retail stores and move into new markets. I’d bet the iPhone wouldn’t exist without the iPod’s success. And of course there’s the iTunes music store leading the digital music market itself.
