Computer Humor

Fancy new 5 MB hard drive, small enough to fit on an airplane...

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 08:09:43 PDT

by Grant McWilliams.

Hacked Gadgets had a short article on past hard drives showing how far we've come.

Here's the latest technology 5 Meg (yes, not Gig) hard drive being loaded onto a plane in 1956.

Here's what looks like an Oompa Loompa defragging his disk.. You know,
to improve performance.

Grant

Verizon's wonderful address search

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 13:12:52 PST

by Grant McWilliams.

I'm moving and I needed to check Verizon and Comcast's sites for available internet connections. After typing in a few addresses into Verizon's search form without it being able to find the address I decided to put my own address in there since I've had Verizon in the past and this is the error message I got.

The best value in broadband.

Overview

Plans

Explore

System Requirements

FAQs

Addresses Found

We found the following addresses that match with the information you entered. Please verify your exact address by selecting it below. If your address is not shown, you can choose the last option and try again.

Please select your address

	None of the above, I'll try again.

Phish being auctioned on Ebay.

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 02:28:13 PST

by Grant McWilliams.

So this was a pretty lame phishing attempt. I guess some people don't have the red flags in their head but when someone emails me the same thing three times in one day it's pretty obvious a machine's doing it.

Notice the link in the status bar... All of the links in the message were legit except for the one for details for the item number. That link starts out as cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAP.dll ....
This would be fine if that were the actual URL but it's not. The actual URL is in my status bar and is adsl-71-133-232-2.dsl.scm01.pacbell.net:82/https.signin.ebay.com/reg.php.

Nice try but really lame.

Grant

The best phishing attempt so far!

Mon, 22 Jan 2007 09:08:34 PST

by Grant McWilliams.

Apparently I'm collecting these things. This is by far the best one. Most of the others are aimed at the weak minded but this one threw me for a loop for a second.

Ok so I get this email saying that someone on Yahoo personals has said something about me. First it's in the SPAM box which is a clue. Only twice has a legitimate email ended up in my gmail spambox. Skeptical I put my mouse over the link to yahoo's site to see where it leads. Notice the URL in the status bar at the bottom. It looks just fine at first but look what the whole URL is once I paste it into a text editor.

http://mail.google.com.accounts.servicelogin-service.config7sf23.cc/ServiceLoginservice91r&=mail&passive=true&rm=false&continue=http3A2F2Fmail.google.com2Fmail2F3Fui3Dhtml26zy3Dl.html

What's the domain name? It's .cc which can be anything but I know one thing it's not google's. A ping on the domain names returns the ip and a whois on that returns this.

inetnum: 210.51.189.0 - 210.51.189.127
netname: dongfanghutong
country: CN
descr: BJ SIDC of CNC
admin-c: CH140-AP
tech-c: TJ35-AP
status: ASSIGNED NON-PORTABLE
changed: cncipaddr@china-netcom.com 20040723
mnt-by: MAINT-CN-BJIDC
source: APNIC

route: 210.51.0.0/16
descr: CNC Group CncNet
country: CN
origin: AS9929
mnt-by: MAINT-CNCGROUP-RR
changed: abuse@cnc-noc.net 20060330
source: APNIC

role: CNCIDC hostmaster
address: No.1,Beihuan Donglu,BDA,Beijing,China
country: CN
phone: +8610 6787 5599
fax-no: +8610 6787 8624
e-mail: cncipaddr@china-netcom.com
trouble: send spam and abuse reports to tech-group@china-netcom.com
trouble: Please include detailed information and times in UTC
admin-c: TJ35-AP
tech-c: TC254-AP
nic-hdl: Ch140-AP
notify: cncipaddr@china-netcom.com
mnt-by: MAINT-CN-ZM28
changed: hm-changed@apnic.net 20040226
source: APNIC

person: Tao Jiang
nic-hdl: TJ35-AP
e-mail: bjidc-ipaddr@china-netcom.com
address: No.1,Beihuan Donglu,BDA,Beijing,China
phone: +8610-67875599-7274
fax-no: +8610-67878624
country: CN
changed: cncipaddr@china-netcom.com 20040227
mnt-by: MAINT-CN-BJIDC
source: APNIC

China! I doubt that Google has a lot going on in China right now and even if they did they wouldn't use that login server for someone here would they. Anyway if you click on the link you get a google login page where you're supposed to re-enter your password and after you do it sends you to Yahoo personals. I put in the wrong password and it still sent me to Yahoo personals!

This one actually took my paranoia to catch. I'm sure it's getting a lot of people. The question is what do they want gmail accounts for? Probably scanning for important information.

Grant

ballofdirt

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 22:41:06 PST

by Grant McWilliams.

Not really computer humor but website humor nonetheless. The travel blog site ballofdirt.com had this message after I created an account. Funny - Grant

Your account has been created.

An email has been sent to containing your password.

Hotmail Users: please check your junkmail folder if you can't find the email (and click "this is not junkmail") since hotmail apparently can't tell the difference between passwords and penis enlargements... And email us if you'd like an invitation to Google's Gmail, which does know...

Gone Phishing

Wed, 17 Jan 2007 08:07:21 PST

by Grant McWilliams.

I get phishing attempts every once in a while and usually they aren't that entertaining but this one's pretty good actually. Number one I'm not a Bank of America customer so when I saw the heading in my email I knew it was a phishing attempt so I kept it.

At first glance it looks legit outside of the fact that I don't bank with them. The link in the email is correct and it says it will open in a new window which sounds good. The first sign of phishing is when you click on the link the bounding box surrounds the entire message. It's a graphic screenshot of a real message! The next sign is at the bottom. If you look at the URL it initially looks good - www.bankofamerica.com.onlinebankinggid...... Notice it doesn't say www.bankofamerica.com/onlinebankinggid.... That's another dot, not a slash. The domain name is www.bankofamerica.com.onlinebankinggid058020763.monsoc.info. I wonder when we'll start putting filters on Domain name registrations to alert the officials to phishing attacks because that name is very suspect. A .info domain name with .com inside it? Please...

Grant

Found this

Sat, 02 Dec 2006 01:20:49 PST

by terry robinson.

http://www.rinkworks.com/stupid/

For a chuckle

Weird Al - White and nerdy

Sat, 11 Nov 2006 01:22:25 PST

by Grant McWilliams.

By way of complete accident I ran across this video by Weird Al

White and nerdy

Paypal fraud - just too rich!

Thu, 24 Aug 2006 13:06:48 PDT

by Grant McWilliams.

I thought about puting this in one of the more serious forums but I found it too funny for that. I'm sure it will fool many many people and it won't be funny for them though.

Anyway I got three emails sent at the same time with the High Priority flag set on them from Paypal. The email subject was Confirm your account. Paypal doesn't send you three emails at the same time so I immediately knew it was a fake. I normally delete these as soon as I see them but I thought it might be useful to you, my students to see a real fraud in action so I took screenshots.

The email

Looks legitimate doesn't it? They warn to look out for Paypal scammers and tell you not to ever give your password through email and only by logging in can you fix the problem. Notice how urgent this issue is and if you don't take care of it soon will result in you account access to be limited and if left longer will result in further restrictions and even account closure. We all know what a pain it is to set up a Paypal account so nobody wants the thing shutdown right? The message telling you to actually open a browser window and type in https://www.paypal.com/us to ensure you're on the right site is there too but since they've been so kind as to supply us with a link why not click on it? Once you do you are taken to the "Paypal" site seen below.

All you have to do now is login with your Paypal username and password and Paypal will straighten this mess up right away. Of course they've not told you what the mess is but it needs to be cleaned up anyway or your account will close.

Outside of the font in the lower right corner of the email how do you know that this is a fraud? Look at the ip address in the address bar. Does it say https://www.paypal.com/us like the instructions say in the email? No it's just an ip address!

I did a whois on the ipaddress that range is taken care of by LACNIC the Latin American and Caribbean Internet registry. Paypal has offices in Latin America? I did a whois using LACNICS database and the ip is in a group that is controlled by

Diveo Internet de Mexico
address:     Boulevard Magnocentro, 6,
address:     52760 - Huixquilucan - MX

I went to their site and viewed the list of clients they provide services for and Paypal isn't listed. That's strange, you would think a big name like Paypal would be a feather in their cap.

So a person sitting behind an ISP in a Mexico City suburb is spoofing Paypal...

Grant

Re: A day in the life of a CentOS lead

Mon, 27 Mar 2006 14:49:58 PST

by Spencer Thomas.

Not only slashdotted, but diggdotted ;-)

http://digg.com/security/Why_every_city_council_needs_at_least_one_geek_=]

I love the website for the guys town (the one you searched for incompetent jerk on), if you click on the compnay it was designed by, it says

"GovOffice is the nation's leading provider of state-of-the-art web sites for cities, counties and state legislatures. From Town Hall to Capitol Hill – GovOffice provides professional, easy-to-use, interactive websites that give citizens online services and information."

State of the art with cutting edge static ASP scripts, and Microsoft Xhtml clutter (\<html xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt" xmlns:vbscript="http://mycompany.com/mynamespace"\> is just one example (slashes added before the greater than/less than signs so it doesn't get filtered out))

Re: A day in the life of a CentOS lead

Mon, 27 Mar 2006 09:44:52 PST

by Grant McWilliams.

I was trying to find more info on this subject and it seems there sight doesn't have what I'm looking for.

Search of tuttle-ok.gov

Grant

Re: A day in the life of a CentOS lead

Mon, 27 Mar 2006 09:24:50 PST

by Grant McWilliams.

I've been watching this story and it got slashdotted today. CentOSes site is down because it couldn't stand the load. I figured at about the time it got slashdotted the guy in Tuttle will really think the hackers are after him.

Grant

A day in the life of a CentOS lead

Sat, 25 Mar 2006 17:17:32 PST

by Cameron MacDonald.

...and the guy has 22 years of computer experience?

http://www.centos.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=127

Microsoft T.V. dinners

Tue, 28 Feb 2006 09:35:56 PST

by Grant McWilliams.

I've been doing a bit of cooking lately and I thought I'd share my experiences with the various t.v. dinners out there.

Instructions for Microsoft's New TV Dinner Product

You must first remove the plastic cover. By doing so you agree to accept 
and honor Microsoft rights to all TV dinners. You may not give anyone else 
a bite of your dinner (which would constitute an infringement of 
Microsoft's rights). You may, however, let others smell and look at your 
dinner and are encouraged to tell them how good it is.

If you have a PC microwave oven, insert the dinner into the oven. Set the 
oven using these keystrokes:

mstv.dinn.//08.5min@50%heat

Then enter:

ms//start.cook_dindin/yummy\|/yum~yumgohot#cookme.

If you have a Macintosh microwave oven, insert the dinner and press start. 
The oven will set itself and cook the dinner.

If you have a Unix microwave oven, insert the dinner, enter the ingredients 
of the dinner found on the package label, the weight of the dinner, and the 
desired level of cooking and press start. The oven will calculate the time 
and heat and cook the dinner exactly to your specification.

Be forewarned that Microsoft dinners may crash, in which case your oven 
must be restarted. This is a simple procedure. Remove the dinner from the 
oven and enter:

ms.nodamn.good/tryagain\again/again.crap

This process may have to be repeated. Try unplugging the microwave and then 
doing a cold reboot. If this doesn't work, contact your oven vendor. The 
oven itself is obviously on the blink.

Many users have reported that the dinner tray is far too big, larger than 
the dinner itself, having many useless compartments, most of which are 
empty. These are for future menu items. If the tray is too large to fit in 
your oven, you will need to upgrade your equipment.

Dinners are only available from registered outlets, and only the chicken 
variety is currently produced. If you want another variety, call Microsoft 
Help and they will explain that you really don't want another variety. 
Microsoft Chicken is all you really need. Microsoft has disclosed plans to 
discontinue all smaller versions of their chicken dinners. Future releases 
will only be in the larger family size. Excess chicken may be stored for 
future use, but must be saved only in Microsoft approved packaging.

Microsoft promises a dessert with every dinner after '98. However, that 
version has yet to be released. Users have permission to get thrilled in 
advance.

Microsoft dinners may be incompatible with other dinners in the freezer, 
causing your freezer to self-defrost. This is a feature, not a bug. Your 
freezer probably should have been defrosted anyway.

Pigeon's prioritize Google searches

Mon, 23 Jan 2006 08:21:17 PST

by Grant McWilliams.

This is hilarious. Google uses Pigeons to choose which pages get ranked first. It's patented so don't get any bright ideas!

PigeonRank

Grant