What is Up with BBot

BBot 6 has been waiting to be released for a long time now and it is widely known that this release hopes to be much faster than previous versions which tended to be somewhat of a drag. I am happy to say that Bikcmp and I have worked together on this yesterday and we rewrote 90% of the bot making it more compatible with other backends (like Twisted) and improving the API.
But don't forget speed, speed is always important to us and I must say that it is functioning quite well so far.

BBot 6 is almost done and hopefully it will be out before Monday. If you would like to follow the progress in real time, join #spam on irc.fossnet.info (port 6667 or 6670 for SSL) for live commit reports.

The Probelms With Education

We all know that there are numerous problems with education, especially in the area of math, and here is a presentation summing up some ways to get students interested in math and help them understand the big picture better.

Math is not linear on Prezi

Normally I try to keep my blog accessible to most people, but this is a sad exception, Flash Player 9 required

Comments welcome!

How we agree to make our lives worse!

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I have just finished reading this shocking article about the various failings of airport securty. Think about it, millions of Americans and people all over the world take off their shoes and walk through metal detectors, x-ray scanners, and experience privacy-invasive pat-downs, but the entire system is broken! You owe it to yourself to read this article and you owe it to the world to do something about it:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/11/the-things-he-carried/7057/1/
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Hi Altnet, Nice to Meet You!

Recently, I had the joyous experience of removing the Altnet virus from a clients computer, and what a joy it was! Not only was the virus kind enough to stick around while in safe-mode, but it also disabled my clients anti-virus software. Lucky for me, no anti-virus software that I had my hands on could remove it so I had to go in and do it by hand.

I removed the Altnet key from HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Altnet in the registry as well as a few others related to the virus. I recommend just doing a search for "altnet" on your registry.

I also deleted "C:\Program Files (x86)\Altnet Music Plugin" which appears to be related to the Kaza music player. However, I did grab the file and move it to an external drive for future inspection (currently underway).

I ran the executable in conjunction with InCtrl5 and found a lot more things that were created, but I did just update IE as well, so I am still looking through it all. While searching the internet for more info about: {3DA165B6-CC41-11d2-BDC6-00C04F79EC6B} I found a whole ton of forum posts about people being unable to delete it. I suspect that this is part of the Altnet virus so I would advise seeing if you have any of the symptoms I described above. I also uncovered that HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/AMPMDM is also related and should be deleted as well.

I am currently working on writing a rule for Spybot Search and Destroy and I will post a download link when I finish. I am also working on my own anti-virus software, LitmusAV

Firefox Auido API

I just watched this awesome demo video about the Firefox Audio API.

More info about how this works can be found On the Mozilla Wiki. This feature will be included in Firefox 4, but it is already in the beta version you can download now.

We Haven't Lost Yet!

Common Democrats! We can still save America from slipping back into a recession! We need your vote. I'm looking at you, people on the West Coast. Republicans are sweeping up places in the House, we need to stop this! Get out there and vote.
The Senate is a close call. If we want to have control, the Senate is our best shot.
As I post this, its 44 Democrats to 37 Republicans. We are still in the lead, and we can do this! Just 6 more and we will have half. The Republicans still need 13 if they want to push us back into a recession. We can do this.

Remember, your vote counts.

Please make sure to read my post below.

America Needs Your Vote - Republicans are at it again

Well, another election day is upon us, and Republicans are using their dirty tricks to confuse voters at the polling place. More information can be found here: http://www.ourvotelive.org/report/12380 and an even worse one here: http://www.ourvotelive.org/report/12665.

Republicans have also been using scare tactics to try to keep minority parties away from the polls. Every citizen has the right to vote! This can not be stressed enough. We need your votes, so don't be scared. The website I linked to above along with various other groups are documenting abuse by the Republican party. They won't do it when they know we are watching. If you see someone being abused, report it! This can be done at http://www.ourvotelive.org/ or by calling 866-OUR-VOTE.

I would like to clear up one last misconception before you go. The Republicans have blamed job loss on Democrats and their Stimulus Package. This is WRONG! Democrats were handed the worst economy since the Great Depression and were told to clean it up. Now that thats finally happening, Republicans what to go right back in and mess it up again. They could have fixed this mess faster if Republicans didn't undo all their work once they got re-elected. Also, the Stimulus Package was an INVESTMENT and we MADE MONEY FROM IT! Don't be fooled, it didn't increase the National Debt, it was used to bail out businesses who have paid back their loan and more!