Mark Russinovich was doing a routine test this week of computer security software he’d co-written, when he made a surprising discovery: Something new was hiding itself deep inside his PC’s guts. A SonyBMG CD had used a sophisticated cloaking technique that involves a rootkit
— something not dangerous in itself, but a tool often used by virus writers to hide all traces of their work on a computer
Oxford University student Kostydin Yankov, 19, died when he was sent flying through the air by a trebuchet and missed the safety net. He was part of an extreme sports club at the university — via Darren Barefoot
Anyone who’s been on a Yahoo mailing list with an absentee list owner knows that they tend to be a spam magnet. I’ve ditched several that became spam lists because Yahoo refuses to appoint new list owners, block the spam, remove the spam or even cancel the spammers Yahoo accounts.
For a company that seems to welcome spammers with open arms, it was a bit of a surprise a couple of days ago to find my Yahoo account had been deactivated.
If I didn’t have a couple Yahoo Groups set up I would have killed the account and created a new one, but having seen Yahoo’s laxness in hosting Groups, getting my account reactivated seemed the best option. Once that was sorted I could create a backup Yahoo account (you have to be a Yahoo account holder to own a Group) on my Yahoo Groups in case they screwed up again.
Trying to contact Yahoo about anything is almost impossible. You have to just through the hoops of their useless help
section before you can find a contact form, and even then it’s only after answering that no, this useless response didn’t help.
Firing off a request for help results in an automated reply full of the same garbage that I’d just told the service wasn’t helpful. Right at the bottom was a section telling me to reply to the e-mail if I needed more help.
Forget about prompt action. These guys aren’t getting back to you for at least two days. If you’re lucky. And don’t expect help then either.
Despite the names of the supposed Customer Care Specialist
— Monique and Pablo — the e-mails were routed through an Indian outsource centre in Haryana and, judging from the canned responses, I have serious doubts if they even came in contact with a human at all.
There were several repeated e-mail asking for my details, before I was informed that: You have been deactivated due to abuse
. What the fuck? A request for details was promptly sent off. I did point out that if my Yahoo address had been spoofed in spam that it’s pretty bloody easy to check whether the e-mail had actually come from me or a mail server in Kazakhstan. This time it resulted in a blank response.
Oddly enough, my account was magically working again this morning.
I still have no idea why my account was deactivated or what the supposed abuse was, but am far from impressed at lack of help offered by Yahoo. This is a company that needs to get a serious clue about customer service, how to recognise false-positives and how to handle genuine abuse of the system.
Taking a leaf from Lucie’s book, this is the pre-emptive anti-moronic comment note:
- I do not work for Yahoo
- I cannot turn your deactivated account back on
- I have no idea why mine was turned off, nor why it was turned back on
- The only way to get it turned back on is to contact Yahoo through their silly anti-help pages; most of which are inaccessible if you don’t have a working Yahoo account
- If you leave stupid comments that indicate you haven’t bloody well read this article before you dribbled on your keyboard, the resident webmonkeys will point, laugh and possibly throw shit at you
ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope says a key national counter-terrorism body was not informed of the latest terrorism threat. Perhaps because the supposed threat is yet another fantasy from John Howard in his campaign to force his dodgy police state powers through the Senate with an unhealthy dose of fear attached. Mr Stanhope says the ACT was excluded from a telephone hook-up this week in which the matter was discussed by the Prime Minister and state premiers
Excavations at a hill site above the town of Visoko, just north of Sarajevo, have been going on for several months and initial analyses have confirmed the original claim that this is Europe’s first pyramid and a monumental building, similar in dimensions to the Egyptian pyramids
— via Unjournaled
The Hippo Water Roller is a simple tool for transporting water from water-holes to homes, an alternative to the traditional barrels-on-heads. The Hippo Water Roller is like a barrel with a handle that you push ahead of you like a steamroller’s drum — via Boing Boing
Jon Stanhope, Chief Minister of the ACT, had his web site hijacked. Stanhope was the brave soul who recently posted the Government’s draft, but draconian, anti-terrorism legislation on his web site — via journoz
A worm found spreading via AIM is carrying a nastier punch than usual. The unnamed worm delivers a cocktail of unwanted software, including a so-called rootkit. A rootkit is a tool designed to go undetected by the security software used to lock down control of a computer after an initial hack
Google plans to hire programmers to improve OpenOffice.org, a demonstration of its affinity for open source initiatives and one the company believes also shows sound practical sense. Google believes it can help OpenOffice — perhaps working to pare down the software’s memory requirements or its mammoth 80MB download size
A subterranean bunker-city under a UK military base is for sale. The city is 100 hectares in area and has 100km of underground roads. It even includes a pub called the Rose and Crown. It was intended to house a Tory PM and 4,000 bureaucrats in the event of a nuclear attack. Already two uses are being considered: a massive data store for City firms or the biggest wine cellar in Europe. More outlandish ideas put forward include a nightclub for rave parties, a 1950s theme park or a reception centre for asylum seekers. The Ministry of Defence has ruled out any suggestion of using it to store nuclear waste or providing open public access because of the dangers that still lurk below — via Boing Boing
Lawyers for Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks say they have uncovered evidence supporting claims that the South Australian may have been the subject of organised torture by American troops. Hicks’s father Terry has detailed allegations of physical and sexual abuse of his son by American soldiers
After more than a year in development, two Sydney-based developers have launched their online solution to the paper-based to-do list using advanced web development techniques. Dubbed Remember the Milk, it lets users create and manage tasks on the web, and even share lists with others. In addition, it’s possible to send reminders via SMS, e-mail or instant message, and view the lists themselves via RSS
Oracle intends to release a free version of its database, a reaction to the growing competitive pressure from low-end open-source databases. Oracle 10g Express Edition (Oracle Database XE), which will be generally available by the end of the year. It is targeted at students, small organisations and software vendors that could embed the Oracle database with an application. The new low-end edition is aimed squarely at free and open-source alternatives to Oracle’s namesake database
Dresden’s rebuilt Frauenkirche, or Church of Our Lady, was consecrated on Sunday sixty years after it was destroyed by Allied bombs in World War Two. The painstakingly restored baroque church and its spectacular dome, originally built in 1743, is a symbol both of the wartime suffering of German civilians and of reconciliation between former enemies. The service of consecration was the culmination of an 11-year, 180 million euro (A$290 million) project that saw the church reborn after lying in ruins for almost half a century
Just in time for everyone’s Halloween fantasy, a horde of undead minions to collect candy for you; How Stuff Works has just put up a new article about How Zombies Work. From Haitian zombies, to Dawn of the Dead it’s more fun with corpses than you’ve ever had, hopefully. It happens in just about every zombie movie — a throng of reanimated corpses lumbers toward the farmhouse, shopping mall, pub or army base where the heroes have barricaded themselves. The zombies aren’t dead, but they should be. They’re relentless and oblivious to pain, and they continue to attack even after losing limbs. Usually, anyone the zombies kill returns as a zombie, so they quickly evolve from a nuisance to a plague
It sounds like an open-and-shut-case. A clear DNA match is made between semen from a serious sexual assault and a blood sample from a man known to police. But he did not commit the assault. Years earlier he had received a bone marrow transplant from the real perpetrator, and in doing so, inherited some of his DNA. Cases such as this are rare, but as forensic DNA databases grow and more people undergo bone marrow transplants, the risk of a miscarriage of justice increases
According to research done by Dr Stephen O’Brien, a mutated gene known as delta 32 found in Black Death survivor descendants, stops HIV in its tracks. In order to be immune both parents have to have the delta 32 gene. In 1996, research showed that delta 32 prevents HIV from entering human cells and infecting the body. O’Brien thought this principle could be applied to the plague bacteria, which affects the body in a similar manner. To determine whether the Eyam plague survivors may have carried delta 32, O’Brien tested the DNA of their modern-day descendents
With iTunes selling a couple of popular TV shows now there has been significant hesitation from other television producers to follow suit and put their content on the Web. It has also sparked activity from the actors unions who want additional compensation for what appears online. But there is also existing content that stands to be revived in this new context, older television shows from the 50s and 60s that have been squeezed out of the traditional broadcast by popular shows of more recent vintage. It was suggested to a producer who is presently digitising 27 episodes of a 1950s show called Captain Zero to offer it up on iTunes for a dollar an episode. Purveyors of old radio programmes have enjoyed a significant revival by embracing web-based technology
The NSA appears to be having its patent applications increasingly blocked by the Pentagon. The fact that the Pentagon is classifying things that the NSA believes should be public is an indication of how much secrecy has crept into government over the past few years
Austar has confirmed it will commence rollout of a broadband network, planning to have broadband in two regional markets by the first half of 2006, with 15 more areas online by the end of 2007
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