Shrug, mine is all black. It needs re-shading as it was a rush job, they were busy and I price haggled for it (done by Ink Smith's in Tacoma, WA).
Personally, it didn't hurt that much though, it did get annoying after awhile, but I can't say it was really painful. I keep meaning to go back for more, but I never get around to it. Hell, my friend was with me when I got mine done, and he got a dragon wrapped around a sword on his forearm. It was multicolored, about 4 or 5 times the size of mine, took them 3 hours, and I didn't hear him complain, although I think he might have taken a break midway though it.
He thought getting a tattoo on his arm hurt? Weakling. I have a tattoo of a wolfpaw on my chest, right next to my nipple, supposedly one of the most painful places to get a tattoo, and seriously it wasn't that bad. Granted it's not a very large tattoo (only about 2 half inches, by 2, I'm guessing), but I'd say this guy is really whining far to much over it (his wife was there to support him through it. God pussy; I would have talked her into getting one too).
Cool tattoo, though.
Not much of a surprise. Nintendo sucks. For the reasons mentioned in the article and Nintendo's company policy of only making games with a non-mature rating. Hence no blood, no guts, no cursing, no sex, no excessive violence, the things that make video games fun. Personally, I'd love to see this whole attitude of video games are for kids, they need to be censored, that is the video games industry in the US, go bye bye and never be seen again. The key to making that happen is either getting the mainstay's holding up that attitude (Nintendo), out of the way, or getting them to change their view points. Obviously Nintendo is going to HAVE to change if they want to stay in business. They can't keep selling Mary Kate & Ashley Olsen and Pokemon GBA titles forever, but Nintendo is still very much a household word and a lot of parents think Nintendo when they think video games.
That said I think the ESRB is the right idea. I think we do need a games rating system so parents know which ones are good to buy for kids. I think that it's a good thing the ESRB isn't government run, but I don't think Walmart should be holding the video games industry hostage stunting it's growth by refusing to sell adult titles. The ongoing decline and ultimately negation of Nintendo in the video gaming market is the first step towards a change in attitude about video games, and a less censored future.
I disagree to a point. There are people who attempt to exploit the game, in many muds. However, they do tend to get dealt with quickly. When I was playing on Aardwolf the imms implemented a change that automatically gave a prize to the player who killed the 1 millionth mob every 1 million mobs. So of course that was ripe for abuse.
A player, who shall remain nameless (idiots should not be recognized by name, but by their actions), would begin summoning loads of low level mobs when the count got close to 1 million (there was a counter everyone could watch). And when he had a load of about 15 to 20 of them in one room, he'd wipe them all out at once with a high powered AoE-like spell, called Gas Breath. He got the prize, the imms subsequently figured it out, deleted his pfile and removed the feature/changed summon to prevent it's abuse.
Aardwolf has had a constant problem with people attempting to pull this sort of shit. Go figure:P
Haven't seen anything like an age restriction on a mud yet, but then again I haven't really been on the scene for a couple of years now. Care to cite some examples? Besides, that it would be pretty stupid to have an age restriction. There's no good way to verify it, beyond maybe, an actual phone call for verification. I doubt the average mudadmin wants to go through that, for every mud player, and it's probably not terribly effective anyway, if the kid could manage to sound older. Video conferencing might be effective for verification of age, but these sorts of operations don't have that type of money and coordination, not to mention time or motivation to pull that off on a regular basis.
The only way, to really tell is to watch each player and look for the one's that say something or act underaged. To much time and effort again. Pay to play would be fairly effective, except that one of the big reasons why people are coming back to muds is because they're usually free.
Oh yes, for the guy way way back there, who didn't have telnet access, there's a java client buried somewhere on Mudconnector's site. I haven't used it recently, but it'll connect you to any listing on the site.
I started with the internet on text based muds. In fact I've spent the majority of my time on the net playing with them. Most are free. Some, however, manipulate you into paying cash for other things, or they except donations.
The majority of muds are very unique as well. Most are built over a codebase like Circle, Diku, Merc, Rom, LPmud, etc. so you can see similarities in the way they play, particularly if you play alot of them. Most muds are very small. Achaea and Aetolia, a couple of the best muds out there, (and produced by the same company; it's a rarity to have a company produce any text based mud), are essentially free, but require you to pay to advance your skillsets after a certain point. Despite being very good MUDs they're also very small. 50 to 100 people on at a time usually. The most populous muds, I know of, Realms of Despair and Aardwolf get, perhaps, 300 to 500 people on at a time. That's fine, because most MUDs can't even handle that much traffic. Typically they are single man operations being run by an admin, off his own paycheck. Usually, he will get people off the web to help build new area's, create new code, and run the MUD, though this is 95% of the time on a purely voluntary basis. The MUDding community is filled with stories of shitty admins (known as Imm's, Imp's, etc.) who hop on for a few days or weeks then are never seen again, ruin the mud, fuck things up, or just turn everything to shit.
In my time, I probably looked at, played in depth, skimmed through, or maybe just barely glanced at probably hundreds of MUDs. These days I don't do much with them, though. My recommendations for play: Aardwolf, Achaea/Aetolia. MUDs based on the Godwars codebase are fun, but usually the imm/player immaturity, lack of imm creativity, and general laziness/stupidity ruin the concept of most GW muds (pure player killing and fuck plot).
Oh yes, also, Dawn of Demise could have been a good mud, except one of the head coders, Gangien is a worthless piece of shit.
Who the hell has an N-Gage? Anybody? Yoo hoo? N-Gage community! Are you out there? Nope no sign of life on this platform.
Right now I'd put PSP in the lead probably with DS right behind it. Hell, I actually thought about buying a PSP the other day, except that I already have loads of PC and ps2 games most of which are as of yet, unfinished. Add to that, that all I could find at the story were the PSP movies, I ended up deciding just to skip it. I've got loads of movies that I don't have to watch on a handheld screen.
But back to the N-Gage. How did they ever assess that it's even a player here?
Usually tigerdirect.com. They tend to offer good deals. I shop thinkgeek now and then, but mostly only when I'm bored. Generally when I'm shopping online I'm looking for specific items I can't find in a store location, and thinkgeek isn't terribly good for specific stuff.
Lol, kudos to the kids. Did the school really think they could just give out laptops and the kids wouldn't mess with them? I can't say I blame them. I wouldn't want my school peering over shoulder at what I'm doing either, illegal or not. Beyond that with a weak shit, dictionary style, patterned password like 50Trexler they need to be hacked. Serves the school right for being stupid. I know as for me personally, I never let a factory install, or any previous install stay on a pc I just got.
What is with all the hype surrounding blogs? Frankly, it's a bit on the annoying side. Maybe I don't understand the concept completely, but what I thought a blog was for, was a daily, hourly, whatever, type write up, for either a specific topic or subject, or as in the case of Livejournal one's personal life.
Just before the whole blogging craze kicked into a gear awhile back, a friend of mine got a LiveJournal account, and I considered getting one, too. It'd be cool, I thought. Then I realized the truth of the matter; I'd post a little bit, nobody but maybe a couple of friends of mine would read it, I'd forget about it, and it would ultimately be abandoned.
I suppose I don't understand how this replaces standard means of writing such as talking about one's day, using for example, the essay. Personally, I would rather read something in an essay style writeup, and be able to read right then and there what happens next rather than wait a day, a week, or whatever for the next installment in said chronicle. True there are some definite possibilities for suspense in something like that, but it's not enough to get me blogging.
For the record, I don't blog, I have read some articles on blogs, about things which I am interested in, but I don't subscribe to or read any on a regular basis, nor do I post to them. I don't think I have any friends who blog either, although, I could be wrong on that one.
Just another sign of a dying company. Agreed there are some other good points here, such as Sony not wanting to give money to their competitor, but personally, I think it's mainly because of MS' core flaws: security, consumer listening, crappy product in general.
Security never would have really been a problem in the past, except that now, you got ps2's on the net, you've got them on game networks, hell you could probably tinker with a group of ps2's and get them to run an office network (why you'd want to I don't know), who really thought Sony wouldn't start thinking about security for the ps3? I haven't heard about any yet, but I'm sure somebody is working on a ps2 virus, hacks are probably fairly common at this point, lacking anti-virus and password support, and so far as anyone can tell any real security support at all. Hell Xbox hacking has already been done for that matter, I'm sure ps2 has, too.
Consumer listening: It's a well known facts that Microsoft doesn't really listen to consumer's. Find an obscure, but useful security flaw in Windows that nobody else knows about. Report it to Microsoft. See what happens. 95% likely, nothing st all. You're lucky if you even get a response from them (I've seen this sort of thing happen before).
Crappy product: just like everything else Microsoft has ever produced, Linux can probably do it better. Better use of memory, better coding, better process management. Just name something that Microsoft does better with Windows over Linux. Come on, I dare ya.
Re:Slashdot - News for wanna-be h4x0rs. Stuff tha.
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PHRACK Final
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I'm down with that assessment.
Re:Gone....for the moment
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PHRACK Final
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I actually read an e-book awhile back, which was concerned with the early history of hacking and phreaking, and to a large degree Phrack (The Hacker Crackdown).
Good reading. Apparently, Knight Lightning had a major involvement in said crackdown, and ended up choosing to make his living in a totally different industry altogether. As the book mentioned it, I believe it was civil rights lawyering. It's an older piece of work about '93 or '94 I think, so it's kind of out-of-date. For hacking history, however, it's good reading. Not sure what happened to Taran King, I'd kinda wondered about that myself. The text is available for free, and it's not terribly hard to find it. Google it if you're interested.
Ah, I'll stick to 2600, I think. I've read a bit of Phrack, and I've always noticed that they're more focused on hacker community than on actual hacking. I mean hell PWN, the general attitude, some of the content of the articles... Aside from one, maybe two notable exceptions, their articles aren't terribly informative (IP Spoofing De-mystified was a good read when they printed it; you can still find copies of the article all over the web). Besides some nostalgic hacker will probably acquire the license, or otherwise reproduce the magazine in about 10 to 15 years anyway.
Their latest OS is two years overdue. They've cut off or pre-released pretty much everything that was new in the OS (WinFS/Avalon got killed, Indigo got pre-released, nobody wants/cares about Palladium, anyway.
Xbox 360 has backwards compatibility--if you're willing to buy all those old Xbox games all over again. The graphics, so far don't look to be a huge step forward, and it's running in the overpriced range at near $400 (fuck that, I'm not buying one; hell I gotta ps2, I never bothered with the first Xbox).
Yeah, they got cash reserves. Maybe with the latest of flops this company is hinging on, they'll boot Bill and Steve for some people with some goddamned business intelligence. Listen to your damn customers, don't make crap, stop being stupid. That's the guide plan for the Microsoft.
Some thief who also happens to know something about malicious hacking steals your wallet/password list which conveniently states not only your password, but probably also the computers that each one goes to. Another telltale sign that MS is run by fucking morons. Here's the solution. This is not a solution for the casual user, because the casual user typically wouldn't follow this anyway. Create a difficult password (mine are usually 10 to 14 characters, randomly created entirely from my head, contain at least a couple special characters, and a couple of caps. If I'm working on a desktop, I also throw in alt+255 as well). I memorize these usually very difficult passwords, and use usually one or two for everything. Personal comp gets one, and because it's a work computer, that one gets a totally different one. Websites usually get a very simple one, because frankly I don't really care if someone breaks into my fileplanet.com or gamespot.com account. Nothing terribly interesting in there.
Does anyone seriously expect Microsoft to have a hit with a console that only has pseudo-backwards compatibility, mediocre graphics improvements for games, and a near $400 price tag?
Just a countermeasure to potential RFID card theft, but be warned it might also have the potential to damage the card if it uses an exposed chip. Wrap the card in tinfoil when you're not using it. No signal gets out, no RFID theft. You'd probably need a damned strong reader to get by something like that.
Personally, I'm going to avoid the Real ID as long as possible, but if I have to get one I'm going to use the same solution on that.
Right except one thing, I think: Classic Disney no longer exists, period. Disney these days is all about the gold. Anything they can do to make a buck, they do it. It's really sad and disgusting, especially for a company with such a bright history. Thank the light, Michael Eisner is retiring in a year or two.
Fun Facts: -Did you know Disney hired a convicted pedophile to direct their movie Powder? -Disney's movie Hidalgo is an action, horse racing...myth. It's entirely fictional presented as historical fact. -It's a known fact that Disney is an exploiter of children for sweatshops and child labor.
So discrimination based on how someone looks isn't discrimination because it's not in the laws? My bad, I'm thinking spirit, not letter of the law. Aside from that I don't frequent trade shows, so I've been under the impression that this whole concept was women pitching a sales product, while looking pretty for the customer. The last trade show I went to was small, didn't feature any booth babes at all, and was largely a waste of time. Picked up a job offer at least, that's about all it did for me.
Personally, I believe the next evolution of humanity is coming, and quickly. My personal belief on the matter is that we're getting close to reaching a sink or swim point in human history (note this is only a belief, no concrete evidence, no solid proof; mostly just my view on this).
Why? Well figure this: if we could have destroyed ourselves ages ago, we would have. Easily. The only reason the human race as survived is because we've never had the capacity to destroy the entire human race before. Sure, the Black Plague devastated Europe. But it didn't touch North America, Africa or Asia, etc. The Human Race carried on. But nukes, and whatever worse technologies we come up in the next few years, have the capacity to kill us all like nothing else. Nukes are one of the only things I can see with the capacity to destroy the entire human race.
So go figure for all the U.S.' attempts at disencouragement of nuclear proliferation, the wrong person or country, is eventually, more than likely, going to get nukes and kill all or most of the world's population. Even if that country doesn't manage to get everyone, in the ensuing chaos, most everyone will likely kill themselves, kill each other, or die of starvation, disease or a devastated environment. There's not a whole hell of a lot of hope for us as the Human race.
That's the sink point. Now for the swim point. The one where we have a chance at saving some remnant of the Human race. I believe that space exploration and colonization is ultimately our salvation. If we can get people to Mars in the next 10 to 20 years, hell get a colony started, begin terraforming it, then the Earth might still be screwed, but the Human race will still survive. Sound ambitious? It is. It's probably our only hope as well.
The other option is for the Human race to grow the hell up, quit fighting and get rid of nukes altogether. Like that's ever gonna happen.
And the qualifications for Booth Babe are?
Ah, lemme think on that one...how about knowing something about the product they're pitching at you? Generally for a good presentation I'd suggest putting engineers, companies reps, salesman, who are actually employed within the company on the booth. In fact, I'd actually like to know how they get away with this in the first place. Hiring someone with no relevant jobs skills, and no knowledge of the product based on how they look IS discrimination. I guess they just plead ignorance if anybody asks.
Wouldn't that be discrimination?
Uh, no. Say I apply for a job at NASA, and they reject my application because I have no education in or of rocket science. Is that discrimination? No, because I'm freaking useless to them, for their purposes. Sysadmin maybe; rocket scientist, no thanks.
Well, the best solution may be the illegal one. Find a wifi hotspot, free is best if possible, but if you have to pay oh well. If it's a pay for use hotspot, either take the time and effort to hack it and create an unrestricted account, or if you're lazy just snag some else's (provided you don't have to worry about encryption of course). Use MAC changing software (in the past I've been satisfied using SMAC 1.2) and avoid spending large amounts of time at the hotspot to avoid notice. To this end I suggest buying or constructing a wireless antenna so that you can access the hotspot from some distance out of sight. To avoid raising the ire of the general public as possible, I'd suggest hacking the hotspot itself. Make sure to keep it low key, don't drop any virii, trojan's, etc. if you can help it, or do anything that might set sysadmin's on a hunt for a hacker in their vicinity (because even if they can't find you, they can probably still shutoff access to the hotspot). Finally, operate behind anonymous proxies, or proxy-chains, encrypt EVERYTHING (I'd suggest buying a large encrypted harddrive and putting everything except the OS on it). If you're looking to run a website use free services, like Angelfire or, shudder, Geocities, even though that will indeed make you look very much like an amateur. Finally keep the 'Freedom computer' you're using to do all this, seperate from everything else. Don't use it for anything, but you're illegal activites. Play you're games, movies, office documents, whatever you've got, SOMEWHERE ELSE. Obviously, this is not a cheap method of operation. You will need a decent sized cash base to purchase hardware and software. It's also probably not completely fullproof either. Avoid buying anything online that is going to require you to give out your credit card number, or any sort of verifiable ID (of course in some countries card fraud would be a neglible offense compared to some of this stuff so weigh the risk). Avoid anything that might give away your real ip/MAC, either locally or remotely. Don't associate with the clerks/other people at the hotspot, don't get involved with anything in the area. If you can don't even be seen in the area at all. Keep the lowest profile you can. All of this dialog is written with the utmost paranoia. Adjust to suit the level of persucution of freedom in your country. For maximum effect (which I'd personally recommend if your living in a repressive country) I'd suggest closely following these guidelines. Oh btw, if there is someone planning this sort of thing somewhere, I'd suggest running through your plans step by step (numerous times) to check for problems that may get you caught. This was just a quick write-up, I've probably missed a few things, so use commonsense as well.
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Shrug, mine is all black. It needs re-shading as it was a rush job, they were busy and I price haggled for it (done by Ink Smith's in Tacoma, WA). Personally, it didn't hurt that much though, it did get annoying after awhile, but I can't say it was really painful. I keep meaning to go back for more, but I never get around to it. Hell, my friend was with me when I got mine done, and he got a dragon wrapped around a sword on his forearm. It was multicolored, about 4 or 5 times the size of mine, took them 3 hours, and I didn't hear him complain, although I think he might have taken a break midway though it.
He thought getting a tattoo on his arm hurt? Weakling. I have a tattoo of a wolfpaw on my chest, right next to my nipple, supposedly one of the most painful places to get a tattoo, and seriously it wasn't that bad. Granted it's not a very large tattoo (only about 2 half inches, by 2, I'm guessing), but I'd say this guy is really whining far to much over it (his wife was there to support him through it. God pussy; I would have talked her into getting one too). Cool tattoo, though.
Not much of a surprise. Nintendo sucks. For the reasons mentioned in the article and Nintendo's company policy of only making games with a non-mature rating. Hence no blood, no guts, no cursing, no sex, no excessive violence, the things that make video games fun. Personally, I'd love to see this whole attitude of video games are for kids, they need to be censored, that is the video games industry in the US, go bye bye and never be seen again. The key to making that happen is either getting the mainstay's holding up that attitude (Nintendo), out of the way, or getting them to change their view points. Obviously Nintendo is going to HAVE to change if they want to stay in business. They can't keep selling Mary Kate & Ashley Olsen and Pokemon GBA titles forever, but Nintendo is still very much a household word and a lot of parents think Nintendo when they think video games.
That said I think the ESRB is the right idea. I think we do need a games rating system so parents know which ones are good to buy for kids. I think that it's a good thing the ESRB isn't government run, but I don't think Walmart should be holding the video games industry hostage stunting it's growth by refusing to sell adult titles. The ongoing decline and ultimately negation of Nintendo in the video gaming market is the first step towards a change in attitude about video games, and a less censored future.
I disagree to a point. There are people who attempt to exploit the game, in many muds. However, they do tend to get dealt with quickly. When I was playing on Aardwolf the imms implemented a change that automatically gave a prize to the player who killed the 1 millionth mob every 1 million mobs. So of course that was ripe for abuse. A player, who shall remain nameless (idiots should not be recognized by name, but by their actions), would begin summoning loads of low level mobs when the count got close to 1 million (there was a counter everyone could watch). And when he had a load of about 15 to 20 of them in one room, he'd wipe them all out at once with a high powered AoE-like spell, called Gas Breath. He got the prize, the imms subsequently figured it out, deleted his pfile and removed the feature/changed summon to prevent it's abuse. Aardwolf has had a constant problem with people attempting to pull this sort of shit. Go figure :P
Haven't seen anything like an age restriction on a mud yet, but then again I haven't really been on the scene for a couple of years now. Care to cite some examples? Besides, that it would be pretty stupid to have an age restriction. There's no good way to verify it, beyond maybe, an actual phone call for verification. I doubt the average mudadmin wants to go through that, for every mud player, and it's probably not terribly effective anyway, if the kid could manage to sound older. Video conferencing might be effective for verification of age, but these sorts of operations don't have that type of money and coordination, not to mention time or motivation to pull that off on a regular basis. The only way, to really tell is to watch each player and look for the one's that say something or act underaged. To much time and effort again. Pay to play would be fairly effective, except that one of the big reasons why people are coming back to muds is because they're usually free. Oh yes, for the guy way way back there, who didn't have telnet access, there's a java client buried somewhere on Mudconnector's site. I haven't used it recently, but it'll connect you to any listing on the site.
I started with the internet on text based muds. In fact I've spent the majority of my time on the net playing with them. Most are free. Some, however, manipulate you into paying cash for other things, or they except donations. The majority of muds are very unique as well. Most are built over a codebase like Circle, Diku, Merc, Rom, LPmud, etc. so you can see similarities in the way they play, particularly if you play alot of them. Most muds are very small. Achaea and Aetolia, a couple of the best muds out there, (and produced by the same company; it's a rarity to have a company produce any text based mud), are essentially free, but require you to pay to advance your skillsets after a certain point. Despite being very good MUDs they're also very small. 50 to 100 people on at a time usually. The most populous muds, I know of, Realms of Despair and Aardwolf get, perhaps, 300 to 500 people on at a time. That's fine, because most MUDs can't even handle that much traffic. Typically they are single man operations being run by an admin, off his own paycheck. Usually, he will get people off the web to help build new area's, create new code, and run the MUD, though this is 95% of the time on a purely voluntary basis. The MUDding community is filled with stories of shitty admins (known as Imm's, Imp's, etc.) who hop on for a few days or weeks then are never seen again, ruin the mud, fuck things up, or just turn everything to shit. In my time, I probably looked at, played in depth, skimmed through, or maybe just barely glanced at probably hundreds of MUDs. These days I don't do much with them, though. My recommendations for play: Aardwolf, Achaea/Aetolia. MUDs based on the Godwars codebase are fun, but usually the imm/player immaturity, lack of imm creativity, and general laziness/stupidity ruin the concept of most GW muds (pure player killing and fuck plot). Oh yes, also, Dawn of Demise could have been a good mud, except one of the head coders, Gangien is a worthless piece of shit.
Who the hell has an N-Gage? Anybody? Yoo hoo? N-Gage community! Are you out there? Nope no sign of life on this platform. Right now I'd put PSP in the lead probably with DS right behind it. Hell, I actually thought about buying a PSP the other day, except that I already have loads of PC and ps2 games most of which are as of yet, unfinished. Add to that, that all I could find at the story were the PSP movies, I ended up deciding just to skip it. I've got loads of movies that I don't have to watch on a handheld screen. But back to the N-Gage. How did they ever assess that it's even a player here?
Usually tigerdirect.com. They tend to offer good deals. I shop thinkgeek now and then, but mostly only when I'm bored. Generally when I'm shopping online I'm looking for specific items I can't find in a store location, and thinkgeek isn't terribly good for specific stuff.
Lol, kudos to the kids. Did the school really think they could just give out laptops and the kids wouldn't mess with them? I can't say I blame them. I wouldn't want my school peering over shoulder at what I'm doing either, illegal or not. Beyond that with a weak shit, dictionary style, patterned password like 50Trexler they need to be hacked. Serves the school right for being stupid. I know as for me personally, I never let a factory install, or any previous install stay on a pc I just got.
What is with all the hype surrounding blogs? Frankly, it's a bit on the annoying side. Maybe I don't understand the concept completely, but what I thought a blog was for, was a daily, hourly, whatever, type write up, for either a specific topic or subject, or as in the case of Livejournal one's personal life. Just before the whole blogging craze kicked into a gear awhile back, a friend of mine got a LiveJournal account, and I considered getting one, too. It'd be cool, I thought. Then I realized the truth of the matter; I'd post a little bit, nobody but maybe a couple of friends of mine would read it, I'd forget about it, and it would ultimately be abandoned. I suppose I don't understand how this replaces standard means of writing such as talking about one's day, using for example, the essay. Personally, I would rather read something in an essay style writeup, and be able to read right then and there what happens next rather than wait a day, a week, or whatever for the next installment in said chronicle. True there are some definite possibilities for suspense in something like that, but it's not enough to get me blogging. For the record, I don't blog, I have read some articles on blogs, about things which I am interested in, but I don't subscribe to or read any on a regular basis, nor do I post to them. I don't think I have any friends who blog either, although, I could be wrong on that one.
Just another sign of a dying company. Agreed there are some other good points here, such as Sony not wanting to give money to their competitor, but personally, I think it's mainly because of MS' core flaws: security, consumer listening, crappy product in general.
Security never would have really been a problem in the past, except that now, you got ps2's on the net, you've got them on game networks, hell you could probably tinker with a group of ps2's and get them to run an office network (why you'd want to I don't know), who really thought Sony wouldn't start thinking about security for the ps3? I haven't heard about any yet, but I'm sure somebody is working on a ps2 virus, hacks are probably fairly common at this point, lacking anti-virus and password support, and so far as anyone can tell any real security support at all. Hell Xbox hacking has already been done for that matter, I'm sure ps2 has, too.
Consumer listening: It's a well known facts that Microsoft doesn't really listen to consumer's. Find an obscure, but useful security flaw in Windows that nobody else knows about. Report it to Microsoft. See what happens. 95% likely, nothing st all. You're lucky if you even get a response from them (I've seen this sort of thing happen before).
Crappy product: just like everything else Microsoft has ever produced, Linux can probably do it better. Better use of memory, better coding, better process management. Just name something that Microsoft does better with Windows over Linux. Come on, I dare ya.
I'm down with that assessment.
I actually read an e-book awhile back, which was concerned with the early history of hacking and phreaking, and to a large degree Phrack (The Hacker Crackdown). Good reading. Apparently, Knight Lightning had a major involvement in said crackdown, and ended up choosing to make his living in a totally different industry altogether. As the book mentioned it, I believe it was civil rights lawyering. It's an older piece of work about '93 or '94 I think, so it's kind of out-of-date. For hacking history, however, it's good reading. Not sure what happened to Taran King, I'd kinda wondered about that myself. The text is available for free, and it's not terribly hard to find it. Google it if you're interested.
Ah, I'll stick to 2600, I think. I've read a bit of Phrack, and I've always noticed that they're more focused on hacker community than on actual hacking. I mean hell PWN, the general attitude, some of the content of the articles... Aside from one, maybe two notable exceptions, their articles aren't terribly informative (IP Spoofing De-mystified was a good read when they printed it; you can still find copies of the article all over the web). Besides some nostalgic hacker will probably acquire the license, or otherwise reproduce the magazine in about 10 to 15 years anyway.
Their latest OS is two years overdue. They've cut off or pre-released pretty much everything that was new in the OS (WinFS/Avalon got killed, Indigo got pre-released, nobody wants/cares about Palladium, anyway. Xbox 360 has backwards compatibility--if you're willing to buy all those old Xbox games all over again. The graphics, so far don't look to be a huge step forward, and it's running in the overpriced range at near $400 (fuck that, I'm not buying one; hell I gotta ps2, I never bothered with the first Xbox). Yeah, they got cash reserves. Maybe with the latest of flops this company is hinging on, they'll boot Bill and Steve for some people with some goddamned business intelligence. Listen to your damn customers, don't make crap, stop being stupid. That's the guide plan for the Microsoft.
This is just Disney's latest attempt to jump on yet another band wagon, this time with mmorpg's. Fricking pathetic.
Some thief who also happens to know something about malicious hacking steals your wallet/password list which conveniently states not only your password, but probably also the computers that each one goes to. Another telltale sign that MS is run by fucking morons. Here's the solution. This is not a solution for the casual user, because the casual user typically wouldn't follow this anyway. Create a difficult password (mine are usually 10 to 14 characters, randomly created entirely from my head, contain at least a couple special characters, and a couple of caps. If I'm working on a desktop, I also throw in alt+255 as well). I memorize these usually very difficult passwords, and use usually one or two for everything. Personal comp gets one, and because it's a work computer, that one gets a totally different one. Websites usually get a very simple one, because frankly I don't really care if someone breaks into my fileplanet.com or gamespot.com account. Nothing terribly interesting in there.
Does anyone seriously expect Microsoft to have a hit with a console that only has pseudo-backwards compatibility, mediocre graphics improvements for games, and a near $400 price tag?
Just a countermeasure to potential RFID card theft, but be warned it might also have the potential to damage the card if it uses an exposed chip. Wrap the card in tinfoil when you're not using it. No signal gets out, no RFID theft. You'd probably need a damned strong reader to get by something like that.
Personally, I'm going to avoid the Real ID as long as possible, but if I have to get one I'm going to use the same solution on that.
Right except one thing, I think: Classic Disney no longer exists, period. Disney these days is all about the gold. Anything they can do to make a buck, they do it. It's really sad and disgusting, especially for a company with such a bright history. Thank the light, Michael Eisner is retiring in a year or two.
Fun Facts:
-Did you know Disney hired a convicted pedophile to direct their movie Powder?
-Disney's movie Hidalgo is an action, horse racing...myth. It's entirely fictional presented as historical fact.
-It's a known fact that Disney is an exploiter of children for sweatshops and child labor.
So discrimination based on how someone looks isn't discrimination because it's not in the laws? My bad, I'm thinking spirit, not letter of the law. Aside from that I don't frequent trade shows, so I've been under the impression that this whole concept was women pitching a sales product, while looking pretty for the customer. The last trade show I went to was small, didn't feature any booth babes at all, and was largely a waste of time. Picked up a job offer at least, that's about all it did for me.
Personally, I believe the next evolution of humanity is coming, and quickly. My personal belief on the matter is that we're getting close to reaching a sink or swim point in human history (note this is only a belief, no concrete evidence, no solid proof; mostly just my view on this).
Why? Well figure this: if we could have destroyed ourselves ages ago, we would have. Easily. The only reason the human race as survived is because we've never had the capacity to destroy the entire human race before. Sure, the Black Plague devastated Europe. But it didn't touch North America, Africa or Asia, etc. The Human Race carried on. But nukes, and whatever worse technologies we come up in the next few years, have the capacity to kill us all like nothing else. Nukes are one of the only things I can see with the capacity to destroy the entire human race.
So go figure for all the U.S.' attempts at disencouragement of nuclear proliferation, the wrong person or country, is eventually, more than likely, going to get nukes and kill all or most of the world's population. Even if that country doesn't manage to get everyone, in the ensuing chaos, most everyone will likely kill themselves, kill each other, or die of starvation, disease or a devastated environment. There's not a whole hell of a lot of hope for us as the Human race.
That's the sink point. Now for the swim point. The one where we have a chance at saving some remnant of the Human race. I believe that space exploration and colonization is ultimately our salvation. If we can get people to Mars in the next 10 to 20 years, hell get a colony started, begin terraforming it, then the Earth might still be screwed, but the Human race will still survive. Sound ambitious? It is. It's probably our only hope as well.
The other option is for the Human race to grow the hell up, quit fighting and get rid of nukes altogether. Like that's ever gonna happen.
And the qualifications for Booth Babe are?
Ah, lemme think on that one...how about knowing something about the product they're pitching at you? Generally for a good presentation I'd suggest putting engineers, companies reps, salesman, who are actually employed within the company on the booth. In fact, I'd actually like to know how they get away with this in the first place. Hiring someone with no relevant jobs skills, and no knowledge of the product based on how they look IS discrimination. I guess they just plead ignorance if anybody asks.
Wouldn't that be discrimination?
Uh, no. Say I apply for a job at NASA, and they reject my application because I have no education in or of rocket science. Is that discrimination? No, because I'm freaking useless to them, for their purposes. Sysadmin maybe; rocket scientist, no thanks.
Well, the best solution may be the illegal one. Find a wifi hotspot, free is best if possible, but if you have to pay oh well. If it's a pay for use hotspot, either take the time and effort to hack it and create an unrestricted account, or if you're lazy just snag some else's (provided you don't have to worry about encryption of course). Use MAC changing software (in the past I've been satisfied using SMAC 1.2) and avoid spending large amounts of time at the hotspot to avoid notice. To this end I suggest buying or constructing a wireless antenna so that you can access the hotspot from some distance out of sight. To avoid raising the ire of the general public as possible, I'd suggest hacking the hotspot itself. Make sure to keep it low key, don't drop any virii, trojan's, etc. if you can help it, or do anything that might set sysadmin's on a hunt for a hacker in their vicinity (because even if they can't find you, they can probably still shutoff access to the hotspot). Finally, operate behind anonymous proxies, or proxy-chains, encrypt EVERYTHING (I'd suggest buying a large encrypted harddrive and putting everything except the OS on it). If you're looking to run a website use free services, like Angelfire or, shudder, Geocities, even though that will indeed make you look very much like an amateur. Finally keep the 'Freedom computer' you're using to do all this, seperate from everything else. Don't use it for anything, but you're illegal activites. Play you're games, movies, office documents, whatever you've got, SOMEWHERE ELSE. Obviously, this is not a cheap method of operation. You will need a decent sized cash base to purchase hardware and software. It's also probably not completely fullproof either. Avoid buying anything online that is going to require you to give out your credit card number, or any sort of verifiable ID (of course in some countries card fraud would be a neglible offense compared to some of this stuff so weigh the risk). Avoid anything that might give away your real ip/MAC, either locally or remotely. Don't associate with the clerks/other people at the hotspot, don't get involved with anything in the area. If you can don't even be seen in the area at all. Keep the lowest profile you can. All of this dialog is written with the utmost paranoia. Adjust to suit the level of persucution of freedom in your country. For maximum effect (which I'd personally recommend if your living in a repressive country) I'd suggest closely following these guidelines. Oh btw, if there is someone planning this sort of thing somewhere, I'd suggest running through your plans step by step (numerous times) to check for problems that may get you caught. This was just a quick write-up, I've probably missed a few things, so use commonsense as well.
That's not only an insult, it's also discrimination. How about just hiring people who are qualified for the job?