@Don Manuel,

First let me be clear about my posts here. As I already wrote above more than once, what I posted is my personal opinion. They are not related to Victor nor to UBCD in any way.

Now, I don't deny that Omniboot may be useful in many ways. In this present topic I was not talking about being useful, but about linking to the original source of information.

Regarding the inclusion in Omniboot (or in any other similar tool) of utilities already included in UBCD, anyone is free to do it, but appropriate credit should be given. Moreover, many of the included utilities are not open source.

UBCD is not mentioned in the credits of other tools. Many different users have had collaborated with/to UBCD during the years. UBCD already includes more than 100 utilities. If it wasn't for UBCD, other collections of utilities wouldn't be able to say that they combine together those same images in one "super-useful-iso" or some equivalent expression. Omniboot is not the only tool stating that "more than 100 tools have been compiled together in one ISO", while in fact most of the work has been performed by others. Listing the same utilities as separated work, while in fact they all come from UBCD (and they also include the same bugs), is also transmitting a false impression IMO.

I also have my own customization of tools; I have also changed my boot menus, and I have contributed to UBCD too, but I would never claim (or suggest, or imply, not even by omission) that I have done most of the work. I repeat that there are several of such collections using the original work done in UBCD, without giving appropriate credit, and even trying to sell (yes, as in money) "their" work.

I shall repeat that tools partly using the work of UBCD may still be useful and of good quality. And authors of different tools may gain from collaborating with each other. Yet, some of those "compilations" are warez, some only copy information posted elsewhere without giving appropriate credit, and some plainly steal the work done by others. I would rather link to original sources of information, and if at all possible I'd prefer to avoid warez (which is NOT the case of Omniboot, but there are some others that indeed incur in this type of behavior).

Now let's keep this forum focused on improving UBCD. There is now a specific topic (started by Victor) for suggestions, comments, whatever, for the next release of UBCD, so hopefully more users will continue to benefit from it.

Well, I would have a lot to answer where I definitely don't agree with your view. But I guess everybody will prefer if I stick to your last sentence
Anyway, I need point out a few things:
Wherever I am able to come up with a solution myself I prefer to act instead to ask others to do it.
I need to confirm, that nowhere within OmniBoot I claim other's work to be mine.
Also in the main content overview any tool that is integrated within the UBCD is indicated as such.

To make it even shorter: please criticize me as much as possible and as you like, but if, please be precise and just.

FYI, Western digital has released new version of Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for DOS ver 5.20. see http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=608&sid=2&lang=en. Also on the overview page of the site, please use the name Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for DOS, since otherwise it is expected for windows.

By the way the captcha used is total turn off - no body wants to learn the complete team structure and history of a software developer in order to post/use the software. Though the software looks great - I am horrified by this experience.

Got it. Thanks!

Point taken, but that's been the most effective way so far to stop spammers! I have tried quite a number of anti-spam methods. Anything that is too easy gets breached. I am sure real humans in third world country spam farms are behind this.

Thanks for reply. I originally thought the people on this forum/developers should be cold, arrogant, intimidating and proud since they are using such a captcha (requiring perhaps subjugation), but it is certainly no more the case.

Perhaps you have tried everything. But was wondering how come banks and mail services get protection from the spams! Do you want to or tried to use the service provided by google (which they use for an additional purpose of digitizing their books mechanically) called reCaptcha: http://www.google.com/recaptcha/learnmore. Or perhaps the carnegie mellon university suggestion: http://server251.theory.cs.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/esp-pix/esp-pix. I got these info from captcha.net.

BTW I am also from a third world country - and I think spamming would not be job by country but perhaps by competitors (unless part of financial scams then it is part of commercial establishments!)!

Tried reCaptcha previously. In fact, reCaptcha is included with phpBB by default. Doesn't work. As far as I know, the spammers are now real humans operating in 3rd world countries where they can paid peanuts for solving these puzzles. You gotta make the questions really difficult and not worth their while in order to stop them. Having simple, google-able questions such as "What is the capitol of Australia?" doesn't work either. I have tried them all!

Just to clarify, this utility has been updated to 5.20 in the 5.2 beta series since 5.2a3.

However, I will update the name to "Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for DOS" in the next release to keep in line with WD's naming convention.

Actually the homepage http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ (still) mentions 5.19. [edited my post: by mistake, I felt that this was removed from the homepage.]


I wonder how do bank web sites, e commerce web site, mail services which must be the hottest target for spammers are able to get by. I wonder if they use IP or MAC id or IMSI etc. based tracking for repeated requests from same person! I am also surprised since the UBCD is offered with a GPL licence, not for the individual 3rd party components but their packaging code into an image and the menu options code etc. (correct me if I am wrong, though), why should anybody target this site (at least a human - there should be some business case - everybody, must get tired simply funding for vandalizing and getting no benefit - unless of course there is some animosity.)

[edit: found licence information on sourceforge.net] Though sourceforge.net mentions about 3 GPL licences for UBCD, but the http://www.ultimatebootcd.com does not seem to mention it (at least cannot be seen in a quick tour). This can be added to the homepage.

(WARNING: Offtopic. I'll try and make it short.)

Not at all. They are, generally, low-priority targets, in part specifically because they have defenses, but also because they offer little of what the spammers are looking for.

You're misunderstanding both spammers' motivations and their habits. (I'm discussing exclusively commercial-link spammers here, not actors involved in phishing or other types of malicious activity.) They operate like car thieves, trolling for targets of opportunity. They don't care at all about the target itself, heck they aren't even interested in who or what the target is, other than that it allows them to achieve their goals. And as Victor said, the best defense is to make difficult and tedious to breach your defenses, enough so that they'll move on to the next, more vulnerable target.

Their goal is to post links to the commercial sites they're spamming for. In part, as free advertising for the site they're linking to that'll get seen by anyone browsing the forum, But even more importantly, to goose the ranking for those sites on search engines like Google, which weight results based on how many external links to them exist on other sites. So, the main reason they avoid things like bank and mail sites is that they don't offer ways for users to post public content that'll get seen by users and search engines.

Their ideal target is a forum site like one, where newly-registered users are allowed to post content containing links. Especially if they're run on well-known, standard forum engines like phpBB, which make their interface predictable and allow them to script much of the spamming work. Then, pretty much all the human spammer has to do is solve a captcha, and the rest is automated.

The only stronger defense, and one that some very-active forum sites have implemented, is to impose a "waiting period" of N days or N posts before new users are allowed to make posts containing links, or even a period of N days after registration before they're allowed to post at all. That often will be enough to run off the spammers, who won't bother to return in N days when they can just as easily move on to the next site that doesn't have such a requirement. But it's also a serious imposition on the real users, far more so than even the most onerous captcha.