Category: Society

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Zombie Wars

Found this article about honeypots and zombie wars interesting:

Fake “zombie” computer spies are infiltrating zombie networks and recording online exchanges between the networks and their human commanders.

The fake zombies are deployed by members of the German Honeynet Project, which started collecting data on zombie armies in November 2004 and released the first paper detailing how to spy on zombie networks on Monday.

“With the help of honeynets we can observe the people who run botnets – a task that is difficult using other techniques,” says Thorsten Holz, a researcher at the RWTH-Aachen University, Germany, and founder of the German Honeynet Project.

Zombies are ordinary PCs infected with a piece of malicious code – known as a bot – that instructs the PC to secretly log onto an online chat room and obey the instructions issued by the chat room’s controller. The bot may have been deposited into the computer by a virus such as SoBig or MyDoom, downloaded from a bogus website or inserted by a hacker directly.

Holz’s fake zombies have enabled him to spy on over 100 different botnets, some comprised of up to 50,000 zombie computers – PCs under the control of hackers. But he has noticed a new trend towards groups of smaller botnets, all controlled by the same person. This is probably an attempt to make botnets more difficult to infiltrate by distributing their control over multiple servers

More at the link: Spies infiltrate zombie computer networks

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A touch of SF

You Know You’re From San Francisco When:

1. You’ve been carrying on an affair of “intense eye-contact”for two years with a person who rides home on the same bus and gets off one stop before you. You do not know their name.

2. You bitch constantly about how hard it is to meet people in the city.

3. You take a bus and are shocked that 2 people are carrying on a conversation in English.

4. Someone says TENDERLOIN – you don’t think of steak.

5. You never bother looking at the MUNI line schedule because you know the drivers have never seen it.

6. A really great parking space can move you to tears.

7. You know that anyone wearing shorts in July must be visiting from Ohio.

8. You were born somewhere else. (Ohio?)

9. You assume every company offers domestic partner benefits.

10. You experience “commitment issues” when deciding who to hang out with next weekend.

11. You feel prudish for never having had a threesome. . .

12. You’re tan in spring and fall, pale in summer.

13. You’d like to spend more time exploring Berkeley, but its just so damn far away.

14. You found your current apartment, car, couch, running pals, book group, girlfriend/boyfriend, and booty call all on Craigslist.com

15. Your boss runs in “The Bay to Breakers”….and it’s not the first time you have seen him/her nude.

16. You are thinking of taking an adult class but you can’t decide between yoga, aroma therapy, conversational Mandarin or a building your own web site class.

17. You haven’t been to Fisherman’s Wharf since the first month you moved to SF and you couldn’t figure out how to drive to Coit Tower if your life depended on it.

18. Left is right and right is WRONG.

19. Your monthly house payments exceed your annual income.

20. You dive under a desk whenever a large truck goes by.

21. You can’t find your other earring because your son is wearing it.

22. Your family tree contains “significant others.”

23. Your cat has its own psychiatrist.

24. Smoking in your office is not optional.

25. You pack shorts and a T-shirt for skiing in the snow, and a sweater and a wetsuit for the beach.

26. Rainstorms or thunder are the lead story for the local news.

27. Gas costs $1.00 per gallon more than anywhere else in the US

28. A man gets on the bus in full leather regalia and crotchless chaps. You don’t even notice.

29. Your car insurance costs as much as your house payment.

30. You give a “thumbs up” gesture to a car with a “Free Tibet” bumper sticker – and you mean it.

31. When you drive under an underpass – for one moment you think “earthquake”.

32. You realize the only Republicans you know are your Aunt and Uncle in Texas.

33. You realize there are far more Rainbow flags in the city than California State Flags.

34. You go to your office manager’s baby shower – the parent’s are named Judy and Becky.

35. When your church elects a new Bishop who abandoned his family and two young daughters to fulfill his sexual urges with another man.

36. You’ve lived in the Marina for three and a half years and you’ve been to the Mission once for drinks. You’re main impression is that it’s “dirty”. You won’t go back.

37. You’ve lived in the Mission for three and a half years and you’ve never been to the Marina.

38. You consider “Tom Kha Gai” a staple food.

39. You consider hamburgers a “rare treat”.

40. Through years of practice, you have perfected the art of the helpless looking “sorry, i’m broke” shrug that you use when someone asks you for change.

41. Despite number 5, you still manage to pay $20 each week in “street tax”.

42. You wear foam trucker caps and cowboy hats out regularly in San Francisco, but you wouldn’t be caught dead wearing one in Stockton.

43. At any given time, you are carrying three or more tiny electronic devices, some of which emit noises and/or buzzing at different frequencies, and all of which “simplify” your life.

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McCarthy’s Faithful!

With St.Patrick’s Day just around the corner, I thought I would post some news about one of my favorite bars in SLO…. This is not at all surprising, and if you haven’t had a Car Bomb or a Coors n Whiskey back at McCarthy’s you just ain’t doin it right

Reported in the San Luis Obispio Tribune

Setting the bar

Closing time at MCarthy's: You don' have to go home but you can't stay hereMcCarthy’s Irish Pub in San Luis Obispo serves more Jameson whiskey

In a single room tucked away on a downtown alley, a San Luis Obispo institution sells more Jameson Irish Whiskey than any other bar in the nation.

Visitors to McCarthy’s Irish Pub are greeted by a sign in the doorway — “maximum occupancy 49.”

They’re also greeted by friendly bartenders and regulars toasting with — what else — shots of Jameson.

“It is almost the house drink,” said Dan Donait, who works for Jameson distributor Young’s Market. “You have to get one when you’re there.”

That must not be the case at bigger bars in places like Boston, New York and Chicago, which can’t compete when it comes to selling the popular brand of whiskey.

In San Francisco, the pub Ireland’s 32 holds 125 people. Manager Brendan Daly said he sells one-tenth the Jameson that McCarthy’s does.

McCarthy’s goes through more than 100 bottles a month.

“Well,” Daly said, “that’s a lot of whiskey.”

And there are a lot of ways they drink it at McCarthy’s.

There’s the Irish Car Bomb, for example. It’s made of Guinness beer, Jameson and Irish cream.

And “they drink it in shots,” said Jim McGuire, a West Coast representative of the French company that imports the whiskey. He’s visited the bar for work. “There are lots of shots.”

The drink is also, McCarthy’s managing partner Bill Hales said, “in our Irish coffee.”

Despite all that, it’s not the house whiskey. A coke and whiskey at McCarthy’s comes with the cheaper well version. A shot of Jameson’s costs a dollar more.

But customers ask for it — about four liters a day, the manager says. That’s about 88 shots a night.

The bartenders have helped increase sales too. Ask for a shot, and one of them might raise an eyebrow and say “Jameson?”

Ever since the bar became the state’s top Jameson seller in November, Hales said, the night shift has been pushing it a little more.

“It is amazing that a little bar like that would be able to sell that much Irish whiskey,” Hales said. “But the bartenders really spearheaded this.”

Through increased advertising in magazines like “Maxim,” Jameson sales had jumped in the United States by 30 percent last year, McGuire said. But he’s not seen anything like McCarthy’s numbers.

ABOUT THREE MONTHS AFTER

McCarthy’s took the lead in the state, officials at importer

Pernod-Ricard announced the pub had surpassed sales at bars throughout the nation.

It shouldn’t be too much of a surprise.

There is a tradition of Irish whiskey at McCarthy’s, Hales said.

Founder Joe McCarthy died recently in his 90s and “he was an Irish whiskey drinker, too,” Hales said.

Somewhere, they think, Joe must be smiling as customers order another round.

More pics of San Luis Obispo posted in the Gallery