You are currently browsing the Chris Raynes . com archives for May, 2008.

CAPTCHA Scripts Get Hacked - Affects Google, MS Live, gMail, Hotmail

Posted: 21 May 2008
My past opinion was that Google, Yahoo and Microsoft had sufficient resources to protect my computer when I connected to one of their properties. That may not be true!

I use both Yahoo mail and gMail to handle most of my email communications since I thought their platforms were well protected by industrial grade spam and virus protection. After all, these are the “big guys” with vast resources.

It appears as though spammers have found a way around Google’s CAPTCHA routines on Blogger after having hit gMail and Hotmail.

Websense Security Labs ThreatSeeker™ technology has discovered that spammers, in their recent tactics, have targeted Google’s well-known blog publishing system “Blogger” aka “Blogspot”, following the streamlined Microsoft’s Live Mail Anti-CAPTCHA, Google’s Gmail Anti-CAPTCHA and Microsoft’s Live Hotmail Anti-CAPTCHA operations.

The big problem now is the new danger of going to a blogspot.com web site which may be set up by a spammer. The site may redirect you to the spammer’s web site or another web site that they want to advertise.

This little detour might also give the spammer the ability to drop some nasty software or spy bot on your system (depending on your security settings.) Since Blogger and gMail are usually considered safe spots by most anti-virus software, it’s possible that the AV software will not perform its most thorough security checks for traffic coming from either location.

The highlighted article is a little techie, but it shows the lengths to which spammers will go to “make their buck.”

Color Coordinate Your Web Site

Posted: 15 May 2008

For those of us who can’t come up with a pleasant color scheme to save our socks, there’s an online tool that may help save your “visual bacon.”

It is called “ColorSchemer” and it allows you to pick a primary color and will then generate a 16-color matching palette showing the actual colors, hex color notation and RGB values.

It also has “Lighten Scheme” and “Darken Scheme” buttons that change the entire palette one color at a time.

The online version is free and there is also a commercial version with a color wheel that looks like it makes color selection a lot less frustrating.

Check it out at ColorSchemer.com

Bill Gates, 11 Things You Won’t Learn In School

Posted: 13 May 2008

Love him or hate him, he sure hits the nail on the head with this! To anyone with kids of any age, here’s some advice.

Bill Gates Picture

 Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.
Rule 1 Life is not fair - get used to it!
Rule 2 The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
Rule 3 You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
Rule 4 If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
Rule 5 Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.
Rule 6 If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
Rule 7 Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
Rule 8 Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
Rule 9 Life is not divided into semesters You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.
Rule 10 Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
Rule 11 Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.

If you can read this - Thank a teacher!
If you are reading it in English - Thank a soldier.

Illegals Cost US Taxpayers Billions

Posted: 10 May 2008

Well friends…Here’s a quick look at what illegal aliens are costing us (us as in the American Taxpayer which is the foundation of the U.S. government.) This is such a depressing topic, I have to tip my hat to Newsvine.com for their article "Estimated 30 Million illegal aliens and the cost to U.S. taxpayers," by Curtis Low.

I can not imagine why the presidential candidates (and my representatives) are not talking about this? Why isn’t this covered more thoroughly in the media? Add up these amounts.  The total is $421,790,000,000.  That’s $421.79 billion. 

With the US population somewhere around 304,025,000 people, that means each man, woman and child will have to pay $1,387.00 in ADDITIONAL federal taxes to offset the yearly cost to the government and economy.  And, if your neighbor is unemployed or on welfare, you’ll have to pay his share and your share too!

14 Reasons to Deport Illegal Aliens…
No Description Annual Cost (bil)
Source Link
1.
$11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year.
 11.00
2.
$2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens
 2.20

3.
$2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens.
 2.50

4.
$12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English!
 12.00

5.
$17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.
 17.00

6.
30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens
  

7.
$3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens
 1.09

8.
$90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare and Social Services by the American taxpayers.
 90.00

9.
$200 Billion Dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens
200.00

10.
The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that’s two-and-a-half times that of white non-illegal aliens.. In particular, their children, are going to become a huge additional crime problem in the US
  

11.
During the year of 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens that crossed our Southern Border, also as many as 19,500 illegal aliens from Terrorist Countries. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroin and marijuana, crossed into the U. S from the Southern border. Homeland Security Report.
  

12.
The National Policy Institute, ‘estimated that the total cost of mass deportation of illegal aliens’ would be between $206 and $230 billion or an average cost of between $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period.
 41.00

13.
In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances back to their countries of origin.
 45.00

14.
The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One Million Sex Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The United States
  

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