Daily Cup of Tech

There have been several sources on the internet today who are reporting that the torrent files for Vista are available to download the operating system. This is not surprising, especially in light of my earlier post, but I strongly urge you to resist temptation.

It is incredibly easy to track your IP address via bittorrent. You may think, “No problem, I’ll just use the Tor network.” This may seem like the answer but all you will likely do is slow down this already overtaxed system. And, there is no guarantee that this will actually hide your identity. From the Tor website:

…remember that this is development code—it’s not a good idea to rely on the current Tor network if you really need strong anonymity.

Just remember the whole Star Wars bittorrent fiasco that happened last year. I would be willing to bet that Microsoft is as diligent and Lucas Arts.

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I have recently been seeing some low ratings on some of my recent posts. I have no problem with people giving me low rating on any post or article that I put on DCoT. What I would like to ask is that if you do rate an article low (or high, for that matter), please tell me why you have given this article such a rating. I would like the opportunity to at least respond to the reason it was rated the way it was or fix the problem if there are issues with the article. Someone who comes to DCoT, quickly rates a number of posts a 1/5 as an anonymous user and then leaves without commenting on these articles does not help me or the other readers.

Sorry for the rant and thanks for your understanding.

And thanks to all of those who do put in comments.

Tim

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If you think that giving a third party access to information is a good idea, this video may make you think twice.

The gentleman in this video found out what the default password was for the ATM machine. He then tried different ATMs until he found one with the default password. Once he got intot the machine with the default password, he programmed it to think that it was dispensing $5 bills when it was actually giving $20 bills. This means that every time you took out money, you received four times the amount of money you asked for!

“But,” you say, “this must have been an inside job. He must have worked for the ATM company!” You’d think so but he actually got his information from the ATM manual which he fouond via a Google search! And he’s not the only one finding interesting things online via Google!

(For those of you who cannot see the video, you can see it on YouTube.)

Lessons Learned

1. Always change your default password.
2. Never make private information public where it can be scanned and catalogued by others

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This is just going to be a quick entry today but I have something good for you guys tomorrow! In the meantime, the good people at [Geeks Are Sexy] (like we needed to be told that!) have come up with The Dirty Dozen: 12 Suggestions For Making Your Mark In The Blogosphere. A very important read for anyone who is either blogging or interested in blogging.

In other news, Google has just signed a deal to buy YouTube for $1.65 billion. I wonder how this will change YouTube and Google Video?

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My entry is going to be quick today as I lost most of my day to hardware failures and bad customer support.

Today was a living example of how to and how not to provide customer service. To begin with, I got great service from Dell and Telus today and I got horrible service from Wal-Mart.

Dell
I had a hard drive failure in one of my server drives. The short story: Contacted Dell at noon, had a new server and tech installed at 3:PM. Excellent service.

Telus
Was thinking about going to a different carrier for cell phone coverage. The short story: cut my present plan by $12 per month and a free phone on a two year plan that should have cost me $50.

Walmart
Went to get pictures of my three year old at Walmart. Session was to last 15 minutes. The short story: did not get into out 3:40 appointment until 5:00. When asked the problem, was told they were instructed to overbook by manager. When called manager, got answering machine that cut me off after about a minute. Still waiting to see if they get back to be in the guaranteed 24 hours.

Verdict
Will buy more Dell products. Will stay with Telus. Could not pay me to go back to Walmart.

Whew! I feel better. I promise more tech related stuff tomorrow.

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