(((They used to be some of the tightest malware coders in
the business, but nowadays they're getting sloppy.  They're
rentiers; all they have to do is clip coupons from the
income, then come in on holidays to juice-up the
social-engineering messages.)))

(((They're the ISP for black globalization.)))

Link: Storm botnet takes advantage of Valentine's Day | 21 Feb 2008 | ComputerWeekly.com.

Several researchers suggested this Valentine's Day was the first example of botnets being hired by criminals on a large scale. In effect, Storm is becoming the virtual internet service provider for the criminal class, they say. (...)
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, an IT security company, said Storm's owners are now showing less care in coding, despite the huge number of variations they have brought out. This was a symptom of Storm's maturity as a product. "It is almost as if they always have another version in the pipeline. It is now about driving cost down and getting the job done," he said.

Cluley said what distinguished Storm was the "ferocity" with which its developers have combined different techniques to make Storm a means to make money. They do this by renting it to criminals who sell pornography or counterfeit products, extort money from banks and gambling companies whose website they block, and who steal personal details to commit fraud, among others.

Almost all the Storm traffic comes from as many as a million home PCs connected to broadband networks, researchers said. The chances of cleansing them all are remote. That means Storm may have become pervasive, said Mark Murtagh, technical director of Websense.  (((Especially since other estimates of Storm have
ranked it as high as 50 million.)))

Its pervasiveness, its persistence, its technology and its management make Storm impossible to defeat purely with technology, researchers say. Because Storm depends on people clicking to connect to an insecure website, users will have to stop doing that, and law enforcement and police have to trace and arrest the Storm gang, they say.

But there is no globally enforceable legal injection against developing products such as Storm, Murtagh said. "We have to hope that the criminals break some other law connected to pornography, paedophilia, counterfeiting or gambling so that the police can act."  (((Oh what hokum.  This is like expecting to bust Don Corleone for reading PLAYBOY.)))

Researchers note that Storm's owners "have a life" outside computers. All Storm attacks to date have related to social events such as Valentine's Day, New Year, and news. "The Olympics promises to be huge (for Storm)," said Hubbard. Then there's Easter, the US election, and ad hoc news events....
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Five page ready site for Rs.2050/ or US$55 « Jdcexpress.com Weblog

Yahoo! is being sued by shareholders for attempting to avoid Microsoft’s proposed $44.6 billion takeover.

Two Detroit pension funds have filed a lawsuit against the internet giant, saying it shouldn’t have been so dismissive towards Microsoft’s approaches.

According to reports, five other lawsuits have also been filed against Yahoo! saying the company didn’t have the best interests of shareholders and pension-holders at heart when failing to negotiate Microsoft’s offer.

The Detroit lawsuit reads: "Yahoo's directors cannot 'just say no' indefinitely to legitimate acquisition offers. Likewise, Yahoo's directors cannot pursue transactions that do not require shareholder approval for the primary purpose of making Yahoo unattractive to Microsoft.

"Regardless of their emotional ties to Yahoo and their desire to retain their positions as directors at the company, the Yahoo directors owe fiduciary duties to Yahoo and its shareholders," it continued.

Yahoo! is understood to be willing to negotiate with Microsoft, however, and has been rumored to be in talks with other companies, including Google and News Corp, over alternative deals.

Yahoo! was unavailable for comment.

Xerox is out with a promotion to support its color printers...called Incredible Inc, the very punny promotion and website has all of the little things that agency people laugh about - the four superheroes represent the four printer cartridge colors, the promotion name is a pun and so is everything on the site that borders on funny, and funny names for the characters - but leaves me completely cold.

Adrants calls it "objectively lame".

And it is because it is trying so hard. The program website has all of the bells and whistles from fantastic web design and animations to video comic book-style stories. There is a game that consumers can play, a sweepstakes to enter, bios to read and an e-mail to a friend button. There is everything except a strong business reason why.

This whole program sounds an awful lot like the vanity projects, those projects that would look cool in a book but don't actually make sense from a strategic or business perspective, that certain Creative Directors that I may or may now know always try to sell in to a client.

The market for color printers is, obviously, split between the consumer market and the business market. Based on the setting of these so-called adventures, I can only assume that Xerox is targeting the business market. The business market, as well all know, has only a few buyers - usually one per company - and it is hard to imagine that they would spend a lot of time poking around this site when considering their purchase decision. Why? Because there is no information on it.

I may have missed it, an indictment of the site in itself, but I cannot find any information, except for tangental references in the comic book vignettes, on Xerox printers, why their color is better or a compelling reason to buy. The entire site seems to be these boring characters and their not-funny, pun-driven adventures. It is a mystifying decision for Xerox to go forward with something like this because it doesn't sell, doesn't talk about a product and the branding is weak.

I just don't get it.

While I was reading through my American Libraries Online today, one of the posts caught my eye. It was The Cheat Sheet Cheat Sheet: Top 100 Lists of Web Development Cheat Sheets.

Always looking for a shortcut, I decided to give it a look. WOW! I'm definitely going to have to spend some time looking through all these great links. In fact, I found a couple that I plan to share with my beginner's web design class when they meet for their final session tomorrow.

Hoje os mecanismos de buscas são a chave para o seu negócio na rede, se você não utiliza de publicidade, seja porque não quer ou não tem grana para bancar uma campanha on-line.
Você deve realizar um trabalho perfeito no seu web site com belo conteúdo, boa navegação, sem brechas e aproveitar toda audiência que os mecanismos de busca são capazes de levar para seu site.
Temos uma audiência muito rotativa, se você não tiver tudo sobre controle seu usuário vai escapar, verifique quanto tempo seu usuário navega em seu site, utilize mecanismos que podem ser capazes de medir tempo que seu visitante navega no seu site e até por onde eles estão saindo as válvulas de escape, ou seja onde você está perdendo a audiência. Web Trends, Google Analytics, Web Analyser entre outros, lhe forcecem dados para realizar está analise.
Devemos também prestar atenção no trabalho do pessoal de web, que vai colocar as tags no seu web site com as palavras relevantes para ter um maior retorno no sistema de buscas.

Para ajudar use também o (Google Trends) você pode verificar como os usuários no mundo estão fazendo suas busca.

Agora bom trabalho...

Foto Flickr: christian svanes kolding

Here at uknetweb we are all for pushing the boundaries of web development and coming up with ingenious new ways for customers to interact with businesses online. We have produced a number of European and World firsts for our clients, not driven by technical superiority but from a good understanding of how people do business online.

When we first heard about the dontclick.it project we were excited to see what it had to offer and whether this might just be the start of an entirely new way for websites to work. Driven by my passion (and if I'm honest geeky desire) to search out the best of Web 2.0 projects and emerging internet technologies I first came across dontclick.it through a random Stumble and at first site was pretty impressed.

Not wanting to stop at my own first impressions I felt it was time to let the site do the rounds of the office and see just what the designers, techies and normal polite members of society thought about a site that doesn't need (or allow) to be clicked.

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Berikut ini adalah deskripsi tugas Mata Kuliah Web Design untuk angkatan 2007 Community College Pacitan, sebagai implementasi dan realisasi atas ilmu yang telah dipelajari selama perkuliahan.

Buatlah sebuah website statis berupa company profile sebuah perusahaan swasta, sekolah, atau instansi lainnya, secara berkelompok yang terdiri atas maksimal 3 orang. Website harus memanfaatkan teknologi yang dipelajari sebagai berikut :

• Memenuhi standar XHTML 1.o Transitional (bisa diatur dengan mudah pada Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004)
• Menggunakan Image Slice di Photoshop untuk gambar elemen layout yang cukup besar
• Menggunakan Cascading Style Sheets untuk format tampilan dan konsistensi style antar halaman
• Menggunakan tata penamaan file yang compliant (memenuhi standar) dengan web publishing, di antaranya hanya menggunakan huruf kecil, tidak menggunakan spasi, dan tidak menggunakan karakter khusus selain dash (-), dot (.), dan underscore (_)
• Memperhatikan aspek pemilihan format gambar yang sesuai untuk halaman web, memanfaatkan fitur image optimization (Save for web) di Adobe Photoshop, sesuai prinsip "Image dengan ukuran file sekecil mungkin, namun dengan kualitas gambar yang tetap terjaga"

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Regina Flores Arquitetura

Desenvolvido onde: Freelancer
Trabalho Realizado: Desenvolvimento de Web Site.
Software: Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash
Descrição: Depois de muitos estudo, pesquisas concegui acertar ao gosto da cliente. Apesar de ainda precisar ajustar alguns detalhes foi um otimo trabalho. Funcional e Objetivo.