Hi all!
I hope I'm not duplicating here, so if you've seen this before, you can hit
the delete key, but I found this on the Access Comp List.
sharon
Subject: heads up! some bad stuff is going down
Houdy yall,
Sorry about the length of the post I'm going to send you but as for our
safety its better to be live chickens than dead ducks. If any of you are on
visually
impaired e-mail lists beware of a message that may be making the rounds with
the following subject line.
"A new public domain sound editor." It claims to be speech friendly and have
several of the capabilities of sound forge.
I subscribe to the pc_audio e-mail list and have seen several reports back
from users who have downloaded the program only to have truly nasty things
happen
to them.
You'll be able to see what I found beneath my signature.
This is not about spreading fear it's about us protecting ourselves from the
very shady. I'll be keeping you all abreast of things as they develop.
Tony
"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage
to change the things I can, and the weaponry to make a difference."
- coda from Immortals Anonymous
This is the first message that started the nasty chain of events.
Here's an item which was posted to the blind Cool Tech list which should be
very interesting.
Matthew
Hello all,
I have written a new sound-editing application called Audio Magic. It is an
alternative to Sound Forge 8, but it is in the public domain and it is
freeware. It does not yet have all of Sound Forge's features, but we are
only on the very first beta release at this point, and I would like all of
your feedback on how I could improve the interface. I am a JAWS user myself,
so I have tried to make the interface to the application as accessible as
possible. You will not need JAWS scripts to make use of the program's
features; the program will communicate it's information to JAWS without any
other files needing to be installed. This program is also a lot faster than
Sound Forge in terms of saving files, etc. It includes features such as
changing pitch, reverb, noise reduction (coming in next beta), etc. It can
currently save in MP3, WMA, OGG and Real Media formats. More support is
coming soon and people will be able to write plug-ins to support other
formats if they wish. If you would like to try it out, you can go to
http://audiomagic.roachhost.com
and download the latest beta version from there. You can read the user's
guide and other documentation after you've got the program installed.
Documentation will also be available online by the time the final product is
released. If you feel any changes need to be made to the documentation, let
me know that as well. Hope you all enjoy the program.
Thanks,
Daniel
Joker Dog
[log in to unmask]
Message 2:
This was the first sign of trouble.
Downloaded the software to my desktop, but can't get it to open.
--
Message three:
This is from a good friend of mine from the Pc-audio list and a good source
about all of this. He gives great advice here and explains what happened to
him when he went for something that promised pie in the sky.
Hello everyone,
I would urge you all to be very careful when downloading and installing new
software, especially if claims are being made that might sound too good to
be
true. At the same time, I don't want to be the guy who wrongly trashes
someone's reputation. I'll just lay out the facts and everyone will decide
for
themselves:
* Fantastic claims of a new accessible sound editor may be too good to be
true.
* The e-mail address is "jokerdog" on the fastmail.fm domain.
* The domain name is roachhost.com.
* The software has already been reported to have crashed one person's
computer!
In late November of last year, I accepted a person's claim that he had found
a way to defeat Google's visual verification to make it accessible to blind
users. I downloaded and ran an executable file that promptly trashed not
only my computer, but also all the data on a backup drive connected to
another
computer on our network here in the Accessibility Command Center! Watch out
my friends!
Darrell Shandrow - Shandrow Communications!
Technology consultant/instructor, network/systems administrator!
A+, CSSA, Network+!
Visit
http://www.petitiononline.com/captcha
and sign the Google Word Verification Accessibility Petition today!
Information should be accessible to us without need of translation by
another person.
Blind Access Journal blog and podcast:
http://www.blindaccessjournal.com
____________________
Message 4:
This is the second report of trouble.
Hi, can someone please help me.
I downloaded the program
then I ran the install file. nothing happened, but I could hear the hard
drive working hard.
so I shut down & restarted & now windows can not start because windows
root\system32\hal.dll is currupt or missing. please reinstall a copy of this
file.
I need help. I am sending this mail from my laptop.
could someone send me the hal.dll file and tell me how to install or copy it
to the system32 directory?
Thanks,
Rob
Additional comments who have downloaded the program:
it crashed a friends computer. He is missing some new desktop icons and
start menue options are now missing. A hell a lot of work to do!
---
it just crashed my computer and a friend's shane davidson.
---
Hi Rob,
I fear you'll find that file not to be the only one missing. My only remedy
to the Google trojan was a complete reformat and reload of everything; even
my backups were destroyed!
Darrell Shandrow - Shandrow Communications!
Technology consultant/instructor, network/systems administrator!
A+, CSSA, Network+!
Visit
http://www.petitiononline.com/captcha
and sign the Google Word
Verification Accessibility Petition today!
Information should be accessible to us without need of translation by
another person.
Blind Access Journal blog and podcast:
http://www.blindaccessjournal.com
-----
Hello, so the excecutable program file has a virus in it? I didn't try the
software yet. Perhaps we should e-mail the author of the program.
Thanks a lot.
---
I'd like to ad here that I just downloaded this software but it came in way
to fast so I think it could be a Virus so I'd say bookmark his page and
drop him email to see if he is actually working on a piece of software but
I having read that it's crashed a computer I'll install it on a virtual
drive here and see what the story is. I'll report right here if it's false
software or whatever but Please be careful. I have several machines here
and since I image my drives I can test software and let you know the truth.
Many of the older
members of this list will know my main menu reviews. I build my machines
from scratch and I install all the tools I need to test any software to see
if it's accessible for the Blind Community. I'll check this all out for
you.
djc's Jukebox:
http://paulmerrell.net:9212
Saturday Evenings 9 to
midnight Eastern.
My Journal
http://livejournal.com/users/djc1
email Or Msn:
[log in to unmask]
I C Q Number Is: 4781694
---
Goodness me it sounds like a virus to me.
---
I ran it through my virus checker and it came back with no virus found but
that doesn't mean anything. 2 things tipped me off as to Jokerdog's
Identity. The Jokerdog I know is a blind person and I honestly believe that
he would never do such a thing. I don't believe he even knows programming.
This guy signed his message Daniel and I have no idea who this person is
but perhaps he's sighted. I'm sorry that people have run in to trouble and
this is a good reason to backup your machines so you can roll back incase
of an emergency like this.
djc's Jukebox:
http://paulmerrell.net:9212
Saturday Evenings 9 to
midnight Eastern.
My Journal
http://livejournal.com/users/djc1
email Or Msn:
[log in to unmask]
I C Q Number Is: 4781694
----
Jokerdog referes to the robert betz website where you download accessible
games. We have all used his games at one time or another. I don't think he
created this file but I have emailed him with a copy of the email we
received on the bct list. We will see. I would not run this file.
-----
I feel stupid. What's a good program to back up onto cd? I have a second
hard drive, but who knows when this is going to crash. thanks.
---
I'm oviously upset by this and I just set this guy a note and all I said in
it is to please give me his phone number so I can call and chat about his
software. I bet he won't even answer but I'll keep you posted. I don't care
where he is in the world I'll call anywhere and I'll record every word and
I'll make it available to you as a Podcast. I'm totally blind and I sure
don't like when someone plays a game with the Blind Community.
---
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