Craig Lownes appologises, cops fine and saves championship lead

Well the Saga of the Craig Lowndes comment is over! One of the nicest, friendliest and most competitive guys in possibly the worlds leading touring car series, finally did a back flip and stopped protecting his innocence and admitted to saying something stupid in the heat of the moment! From Carsguide.com.au;

08 November 2006 THE following statement was made by Craig Lowndes.

“Following the inquiry I attended last week with the IPO, Peter Wollerman, in Melbourne, I today advised that I have had time to reflect on the matter and have entered a plea of guilty to the charge of having brought the Sport into disrepute. I also wish to further clarify my position regarding the comments which I made to the media after race three at Surfers Paradise.”

“I recognise that some of the comments that I made were inappropriate, and I therefore now apologise unreservedly to the Stewards and the Officials of the Meeting for any offense that I caused. I do not believe that the Stewards and Officials act in anything other than a manner that is fair, unbiased and in the best interests of the Sport and they have my complete support in their execution of a difficult and often thankless task.”

“My comments were made in the heat of the moment, but I recognise that is no excuse. At no time have I believed that V8 Supercars or any of the Officials that assist us in our championship are trying to manipulate the outcome of the series and I am truly sorry if I have given any of them, or our fans, any other impression. The V8 Supercar Series is the best Touring Car Championship in the world, and I consider myself very fortunate to be able to compete within it. Without the unstinting work – on a voluntary basis – of the Stewards, plus the continuing efforts of V8 Supercars Australia and the Officials, we would not have the series we have today.”

And as a result he has avoided an embarrassing hearing yesterday which certainly would have cost him most of his points lead. Carsguide.com.au also covered the penalty:

November 2006 Ray Kershler

“CRAIG Lowndes’ defiance melted away yesterday and a humble apology to stewards has averted any further erosion of his lead in the V8 Supercar championship. Lowndes was fined $15,000 yesterday for irate comments he made after twin penalties at the Indy meeting last month.”

They Further Explained the situation leading up to these events:

“He had seen a 101-point championship lead reduced to just 30 after Indy and responded unwisely to reporters’ questions about the stewards’ penalties. Lowndes left open the interpretation that the stewards’ decisions had had the effect of ensuring a close finish in this year’s championship. “

“While he clarified his statements the next day, saying he never meant stewards were trying to manipulate the championship, he was charged with bringing the sport into disrepute. After an initial hearing last week before the sport’s prosecuting officer, Peter Wollerman, Lowndes decided to fight the charge.”

“However yesterday, with a further points penalty possible, Lowndes changed his mind and pleaded guilty. He repeated the clarification of his comments but this time the statement also came with a full-blown apology. “I recognise some of the comments I made were inappropriate and I therefore apologise unreservedly to the stewards and officials for any offence I caused,” he said. Of the total $15,000 fine, $5000 was suspended and with no points penalty Lowndes takes his lead into the Tasmanian round of the championship this weekend. The races at Launceston, ahead of the international round in Bahrain and the season-ending Phillip Island round, will decide this year’s V8 Supercar champion. Lowndes’ main rival is Holden driver Rick Kelly although Ford driver Mark Winterbottom also harbours some aspirations from third place.”

I will post the results from the weekend, after the round tomorrow.

Whats with all the spam?

A Slashdot link this morning, explains a few things. A friend of mine, whose husband recently got a tad tiddly and went surfing, ended up turning their computer into a spam-bot. She is NOT impressed.

“…a Network World article about soaring spam levels, confirmed now by researchers, IT managers, and security vendors. So, indeed, it’s not just you: October was a spammy month.

From the article: “Levine’s assumption is this spike in spam levels is a result of a new generation of viruses and zombies that can infect PCs more quickly and are harder to get rid of. In its October report, messaging security vendor MessageLabs says the spike is largely due to two Trojan programs, Warezov and SpamThru.

Others say a new breed of spam messages called image spam — messages with text embedded in an image file that evade spam filters, which can’t recognize the words inside the image — is responsible.”

powered by performancing firefox

WOOPS.Space shuttle delay Y2K all over!!

Touted as one of the worlds most advanced and complicated machines, and the computer cannot tell when the year starts! I mean WHAT!

Slashdot | Computer Date Glitch May Limit Next Shuttle Launch

Monday November 06, @10:28PMNASA Technology writes “Reuters reports that the next Space Shuttle mission may have to be deferred if it gets too close to the New Year because the onboard computers do not handle the changing of the date in the same way as the ground computers. From the article: ‘”The shuttle computers were never envisioned to fly through a year-end changeover,” space shuttle program manager Wayne Hale told a briefing. The problem, according to Hale, is that the shuttle’s computers do not reset to day one, as ground-based systems that support shuttle navigation do. Instead, after December 31, the 365th day of the year, shuttle computers figure January 1 is just day 366.”

powered by performancing firefox

The Hacker Profiling Project

Interesting story on Slashdot yesterday. The one thing I think is, umm, good luck. From what I understand they are prone to change methodology as soon as there is a whiff of getting blocked/cought or new tech comes into play!

“NewsForge is running a story about a project aiming to profile hackers like the police do with common criminals. Not based out of the U.S. per se, this project falls under the auspices of the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI).
Newsforge; What would the project concretely produce as final output?
Stefania Ducci: The final goal is a real and complete methodology for hacker profiling, released under GNU/FDL. This means that, at the end of our research project, if a company will send us its (as detailed as possible) logs related to an intrusion, we — exactly like in the TV show C.S.I. when evidence is found on the crime scene — will be able to provide a profile of the attacker. By ‘profile’ we mean, for example, his technical skills, his probable geographic location, an analysis of his modus operandi, and of a lot of other, small and big, traces left on the crime scene. This will also permit us to observe and, wherever possible, preview new attack trends, show rapid and drastic behavior changes, and, finally, provide a real picture of the world of hacking and its international scene.”

Technorati Tags: Justice, Hackers, Psychology, Issues,

powered by performancing firefox

Aggressive Botnet Activities Behind Spam Increase

Are we going to get MORE? There is now apparantly 4 times more than last year thanks to some Trojan Viruses! On Slashdot I found this

“A spam-sending Trojan dubbed ‘SpamThru’ is responsible for a vast amount of the recent botnet activity which has significantly increased spam levels to almost three out of every four emails. The developers of SpamThru employed numerous tactics to thwart detection and enhance outreach, such as releasing new strains of the Trojan at regular intervals in order to confuse traditional anti-virus signatures detection.”

The original was ineresting to

Australia, previously at the bottom of the list, saw the biggest increase in viruses to rank 12th in October, increasing by 0.4 percent to 1.2 percent (1 in 84.1) of email traffic.Spam: In October, the global ratio of spam in email traffic from new and unknown bad sources was 72.9 percent (1 in 1.37 emails), an increase of 8.5 percent on the previous month. This is the sharpest rise in spam levels since January 2006, when an increase of 9.2 percent was experienced.

[full report available at] http://www.messagelabs.com/Threat_Watch

powered by performancing firefox