Category: Computer

Aleynikov Wants Deferred Prosecution

No Comments

Sergey Aleynikov is the programmer alleged to have taken Goldman Sachs’ high speed trading computer code, and his lawyers are asking prosecutors for a delayed prosecution, which basically means that if he keeps his nose clean, he gets a dismissal in a few years.

It sounds to me like he is going to get it, based on the refusal of Goldman Sachs to turn over his personnel file.

I’m wondering if this was a case where GS was worried about his competing with them in this market in his new job, and decided that filing a dodgy complaint with the FBI would shut him down, and then realized that if they turned over personnel records, that they would out themselves for some sort of crime.

Background here (or it will be when “the Google” fixes the blogger search function).

But I Bought My PC a Week Ago!!!!!

No Comments

Damn

A quad-core, Blu-ray, Windows 7 desktop for $650

by Rick Broida

Update: Sorry, folks, looks like the discount code has expired.

If you’re in the market for a new desktop that’s equally well-suited to games and movies, HP has a ridiculously good deal going. It’s the HP Pavilion Elite e9110t, which you can get for $649.99 shipped after a few configuration tweaks and a coupon code.

The tiger in the tank, Intel’s 2.33GHz Core 2 Quad Q8200 processor, roars along with 6GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive, and a 512MB GeForce G210 video card. Those are some kick-ass specs.

Other highlights: a Blu-ray drive with LightScribe-DVD capabilities, an 802.11n Wi-Fi adapter, and a 15-month subscription to Norton Internet Security 2009 (aka the good version).

There is, of course, no good version of Norton anything!!

Perhaps best of all, the system comes with Windows Vista Home Premium but is eligible for a free Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade come October 22.

By the way, this is a new Pavilion, not a refurb, so you get HP’s full one-year warranty. Here’s how to put it all together, courtesy of DealNews:

1. Ctrl-click this link to open the product page in a new tab.
2. Click the Customize & Buy button next to the $649.99 option.
3. Click the Memory option and choose the free 6GB upgrade.
4. Click the Primary CD/DVD Drive option and choose the Blu-ray player.
5. Click the Networking option and choose the Wireless-N LAN card and external modem.
6. Click Review & Buy, then apply coupon code DTM4558.

Presto! That should get you out the door for $649.99. In an ideal world, this system would also have a TV tuner (which you can add for $80), but it’s still one of the best desktop deals I’ve ever seen.

HP’s various discounts on this system end Aug. 15, so you’ve got a little time if you want to shop around. I’ll be mighty surprised if you can find a better configuration for the money.

I suppose that this is unavoidable…..But I’m still pissed off.

Something Smells Very Fishy Here

No Comments

Remember that guy who allegedly stole Goldman Sach’s proprietary high speed trading software? You know, the stuff that ran on their co-located servers in the exchanges, and so as to engage in front-running the entire market?

Well, it looks like there is a no jail time deal for Sergey Aleynikov in the offing about this.

Goldman Sachs has apparently folded like a bunch of overcooked broccoli, after the defense got a ruling saying that said that they were to be given access to all relevant personnel records.

So, Goldman Sachs, that great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity,* the folks who think, probably correctly, that they own the United States of America, acted like a prison bitch when confronted with the possibility of his reviewing his own personnel file???

Something is very wrong here.

What on earth are they hiding?

FWIW, any tips received will be kept in strictest confidence.

*Alas, I cannot claim credit for this bon mot, it was coined by the great Matt Taibbi, in his article on the massive criminal conspiracy investment firm, The Great American Bubble Machine.

Of Flop Sweats and Vista

No Comments

Well, I’ve been off for a few days. I got a cheap HP tower at a computer show, and I’ve been making it work.

OK, so I got myself a brand new HP/COMPAQ DC7900 tower.

Intel® Core2® Duo® CPU E6550 at 2.33 Ghz, 4 g RAM, one 80 & one 500 G hd, and an integral video on the mb.

On the physical level everything went together with an ease unimaginable a few years ago, without the level of tools, PITA and knuckle scraping that would have been required.

I added the 200 G HD and modem from the old machine, and added a floppy drive, and copied the files off the old 5 G HD.

This required an IDE to SATA adaptor for the HD, a floppy cable (witg a twist), and power adaptors from SATA to IDE and floppy, found local at CyberGuys.biz.

I can do this, but I really hate it. As soon as I crack the case, I start to sweat profusely….and stink.

The machine has 3 (whisper quiet) fans (!), one on the power supply, one exhaust for the case, and an inlet fan blowing over the plumbing (!) of the heat sink.

It appears very solidly built.

The big winner in this process is Firefox Portable. No backup, no reinstall, just copy over the directory, like in the good old DOS.

It’s designed to run off a memory stick, which I don’t generally do, because there is a performance hit doing that.

Running it on a hard drive, there is no performance hit once running, though it loads about 5 second slower.

Honorable mention here goes to Feedreader 3, which can be setup to do the same thing, but the folks at PortableApps.com get the gold medal because they have made this work for a number of other people’s software, including OpenOffice.

The big loser, the 10 yr old HP 6200C scanner. It died over the past few months, confirmed through 2 computers, operating systems, and USB cables, in all combinations, and nothing recognized it.

As to Vista, the machine is blisteringly fast compared to my older machine, so I can’t compare performance, though it seems stable on new and powerful equipment.

Vista dislikes:

  • Downgrading to XP appears to be a labor of Hercules.
  • Too much nannying….I have to tell the computer that I REALLY want to do this a lot.
  • Can’t figure out how to turn off wallpaper, so I used a solid color to approximate it.
  • Had to JFGI* to figure out how a DOS path is set up (setx). I miss autoexec.bat.
  • Still can’t figure out how to share the data drive on the network..
  • It puts up a security warning for F-Prot anti-virus, because it does not like how it talks to the OS. It still works, but it needs to change how it reports that it is running to the OS

In any case, this is the first thing that I’ve posted in about 4 days as a result.

So over the past 4 days, volume was down, but the quality of the writing probably increased.

*Just F%$#ing Google It.

An Idea So Good, that It Can’t Happen Here

No Comments

But it appears that the EU is getting ready to give people the same basic rights with software as they have with other consumer products:

Software companies could be held responsible for the security and efficacy of their products, if a new European Commission consumer protection proposal becomes law.

Commissioners Viviane Reding and Meglena Kuneva have proposed that EU consumer protections for physical products be extended to software. The suggested change in the law is part of an EU action agenda put forward by the commissioners after identifying gaps in EU consumer protection rules.

This would invalidate the bullsh$# license provisions which say, “What, you expected this sh#$ to work? Your problem!”

It would, of course, put Microflaccid out of business.

This Should Get Interesting

No Comments

It appears that now that Bush and His Evil Minions&trade are on their way out, judges are getting rather a bit more aggressive, or maybe the wheels of justice are just grinding slowly, and have caught up with reality, because Judge HenryKennedy Jr. of the US District Court for DC has just told the White House to turn over all computer storage devices in their possession, and to open up their PCs to forensic investigation, in order to support lawsuits involving the Iraq War and the Valeria Plame outing.

The judge wants all the emails.

What’s more, it appears that someone was actually looking for them, because Helen Hong, a lawyer for the DoJ civil division just said that they have found the backup tapes with the emails in question.

It’s always the tapes, isn’t it.

Pass the popcorn.

Tinfoil Hat Time

No Comments

Mike Connel was Karl Rove’s IT guy, and had been described as the GOP’s, “high IQ Forrest Gump” by lawyers investigating allegations of GOP vote manipulation for his presence at almost every instance of voting irregularities, and now he has been killed in a plane crash. He was the only one on the plane at the time of the crash. (see also here)

He was also a source for the Managing Editor for investigative news at Raw Story.

Before his death, his lawyers alleged that he and his family were threatened by Karl Rove.

How utterly convenient.

Your Daily Palin Update

No Comments

Well Palin has now gotten her AG to instruct her employees not to honor subpoenas from the state senate, and the Anchorage Daily News cuts them a new one on this.

McCain doesn’t get it. Sarah Palin is not Cindy McCain, and the press won’t sweep this under the carpet for the “Maverick Straight Talker”.

Heck, they wouldn’t sweep it under the carpet for Cindy McCain these days, they’ve been wringing their hands about how McCain now, and when you have a cover-up this blatant, people will keep looking.

Mindless paranoid secrecy is almost always the worst course of action, which is why it’s so ironic that it bit them on the butt with Sarah Palin’s email.

It seems that she was using Yahoo Email for much of her correspondence with staff, and someone from 4chan hacked into her email (here, here, and here), and then posted what they found on Wikileaks.

Note to self: Never ever piss off anyone from 4chan.

USAF Cyber Command Suspended

No Comments

It looks like the formation of the 8000 man Air Force Cyber Command has been put on hold.

This is probably a good thing. It’s an activity that is best done in a way that benefits all the services, and the USAF would no doubt spend much of the formative years of such an effort with a primary focus on making itself the sole provider of these services.

That’s what happened with drones, and Bob Gates slapped them down on that one too.