Legal P2P... Soon A Reality

It appears that a few of the major recrod labels are going to offer there catalogs to a Paid P2P service.

I'm staying hopeful but i think the DRM implementations that are sure to follow will be ridiculious.

Pricing also scares me.

How much will it cost? Are you paying by the song, album, MB, GB, month?

Still to early to say if it will be a hit or a miss thus far, but its certainly a step in the right direction.

The LockerGnome article can be viewed here.

The IT Observer article can ve viewed here.

DDoS Spammers

Lycos Europe is apperntly offering a screen saver that, when active, will check the net for a list of known spammers, and then send them DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks.

Basicly, the assumption here is that when your screen saver is active your not using the computer so why not let it do something.

Legal? No.

Funny? Hell ya.

The Lockergnome article can be viewed here.

Winamp Flaw

Are you running Winamp 5.05 or 5.06? There may be a flaw when loding playlist that will allow malicious code to be executed.

The new.com article can be viewed here.

Win2k SP4

Microsoft has decided that SP4 will be the last Service Pack for Windows 2000. There will be an "Update Rollup", which is basicly another way of saying Service Pack but that's about all that's left for Windows 2000.

The Neowin article can be viewed here.

I Killed JFK

I really don't know what to think of this.

JFK Reloaded allows the player to take on the roll of Lee Harvey Oswald. The goal of the game? Yep, you guessed it: kill JFK.

The makers of the game claim its a way to prove or disprove the loan gunman theory.

The gamer that most acurately duplicates Kennedy's assasination can win up to $100,000.

The PC World article can be viewed here.

The "games" website is here.

Is Your Computer Bored?

If your computer is bored you should update your AV and then run a scan. Apparently the w32aegia virus will bring up a dialog box saying your computer is bored and then ask you to play music. Clicking [yes] will cause the virus to look for more .exe files to infect.

The Sophos article can be viewed here.

Widgets for Windows

The Konfabulator has been released for Windows.

This was originaly a Mac OSX app that allowed people to desing, download and use Widgets.

Widgets can do almost anything the porgramer wants them to do. Some of the more popular ones include local wheather, time, media players, etc.

If your interested, check out the official site.

Desktop Searching... Cool or Creepy?

As i'm sure everyone is awayre, Google offers a desktop search utility that will quickly search your hard drive for text type files. The application will search your e-mail, and other text based files for any keyword you specify.

Personally i think this is creepy. The only usefull need i see for this is people that own a business or people that do a lot of writing (free-lance \ professional writing.)

Ask Jeeves appears to be the next search enging to step up an offer a desktop search application.

The Neowin article can be viewed here.

Legal P2P....Let's Talk

Sony is talking to Grokster about the possibility of a fee based P2P network.

This could be awsome, but i think they'll screw it up.

In order for this to work it will have to be really fast (bit torrent fast at least), offer a wide range of content and not cost to much. Why pay for something you can get for free?

I mostly use P2P downloading as a way to try before i buy. If i like something i try to put the cash down for it (whenever possible). Why would i pay for something i've already downloaded. In the case of music, i want to support the industry and i want the booklet and the cd. Nostalgia i guess....

Just a few more question: Why Grokster? Who the heck wants to pay to use the FastTrack network?

The Register article can be viewed here.

AOL To Impelement Fee Based Backup Service

AOL will implement a fee based file backup service for its premium members. It will cost about $10 per Gigabyte.

The PCWorld Article can be viewed here.

No More [desired name]3423123143@hotmail.com

Microsoft Announced that they will be adding some more domains to their hotmail service.

The Neowin article can be viewed here.

Winamp Resurrected

Turns out that Winamp isn't going anywhere... thank God... Huh, hows that for an Athiest boy eh?

The /. article can be viewed here.

40% of AOL Users Don't Have Computers... So Much Explained

Check out this article. It's sad but halarious.

The article can be viewed here.

Sonos

Yet another thing to add to the list of "I can't afford, but would love to have".

The Sonos allows you to send your digital music (MP3) to anywhere in the house via small radio sized "zone players". You can have as many zone players as you can afford. One of the cool parts is that it can all be controled with a wireless hand held remote.

More info can be found here.

Gmail Adds POP3 Support!!

Gmail will be adding POP3 support soon.

What does that mean?
That means that you will be able to download your Gmail messages in POP3 clients, like Outlook Express.

They are also working on refining there SPAM blocking service and are planning to get an Anti Virus that will scan the messages on the server side of things.

The PC World article can be viewed here.

MSN Search - No Porn!

We got bored and decided to look up images of penis' on MSNs new search engine. No real pictures of the male genetalia came up...

We then desided to try searching for breast... notta... Cock... roosters and nothing more...

Now, inside settings there is a filter (like with Google) we turned it off, agreed that we were over 18 but still got the same results...

When will MSN fix this? How long will the kiddies have to go without there search engine porn?

The New Google... Urr... Umm... I Mean MSN Search...

MSN is working on a new search engine. You can try it here.

Thus far it just looks like a Google clone... really nothing exciting...

Speaking of Google, although its fixed now, when the MSN Search was publicly being tested, entering the search: more evil than Satan was returning Google as the first result.

This is obviously an attack on Google because of the Google Bomb that was returning microsoft as the result to that search term.

Google Bomb's are in short, a way of exploiting Google's indexing technology.

Google's results are calculating using some secret Google formula. No one knows exacly how a site gets ranked higher than another site. One thing we do know is that the more a site is linked to, the higher up it goes. To take that further, the more a site is linked to, using the same working, the higher up it goes. So, if a whole bunch of websites that are in Google's database, have the words more eveil that Satan linking to Microsoft's website, it would be the 1st result displayed when searching Google for that term.

This is what is known as a Google bomb.

The Vnunet on the "more evil than satan" thing can be viewed here.

Microsoft Uses Warezed Software, Why Can't I?

It turns out that Microsoft used a hacked version of Soundforge to edit the .wav files that shipped with Windows.

This is funny as hell.

The last two lines of the .wav files look like this.

LISTR INFOICRD 2000-04-06 IENG Deepz0ne ISFT Sound Forge 4.5;Sound Forge 4.0

Deepzone is one of the founders of an audio software cracking group.

The /. article can be viewed here.

The warezed .wav files can be found in [WINDOWS direcotry]\Help\Tours\WindowsMediaPlayer\Audio\Wav

Just open any one of the .wav files in Notepad, or any ASCII text editor and scroll down to the last two lines...

WARNING! If you have an older system, this may take a minute or two, your system may appear to freeze... don't worry, it will eventually open...

Canada - P2P Heaven... Not For Long

Canada is going to modify the WIPO copyright treaty, which will demand that ISP's send out notification e-mails and then cancel accounts, when their subscribers brake copyright laws.

:(

The /. article can be viewed here.

Piracy Not To Blame For Poor Record Sales

That's right lady's and gents. Piracy might not be entirely responsible for the recent decline in music sales! Gasp!

The /. article can be viewed here.

I think record sales decliming works like this.

-CD's are over priced...
-Record labels keep releasing the same old same old...
-Over saturation... as soon as some band comes along with a different sound, 1000 more copy cats are signed withing a week...

I openly admit that i download music... that's right... suck my ass RIAA...

I also openely admit that i buy a lot of music.

My music purchasing is limited only by my debts... If i could afford to buy everything i've downloaded and liked, i would... but i can't...

Would cheapers cd's make a differece? Fuck ya....

Anyway... i've been ranting way to much today...

No more winamp = bad
RIAA = Satanic Money Grubbing Whores (that most likely sacrifice small children in the whee hours of the morning...)

R.I.P. Winamp

Man, i'm getting sick of starting posts with R.I.P....

First TechTV goes to hell, and now Winamp will just fade away...

The /. article can be viewed here.

Lexmark Is Watching You

It appears that some Lexmark devices are sending information back to HQ. Creepy...

the /. article can be viewed here.

It kind of makes you wonder who else might be collecting info... M$?

R.I.P. TSS

G4 has decided to fuck up everything that makes it G4-TechTV.

Alex Albrecht has been fired, along with pretty much everyone else on The Screen Savers, Basicly the only people left are Kevin and Sarah.

Alex wrote about it on his blog. The entry can be viewed here.

Now, i would just like to take a moment to sink into grade school mentality and say:

Way to go G4! How smart and well thought out of you.

A lot of people watched TechTV, now a lot of people watch G4-TechTV.
What shows did people watch on TechTV? The Screen Savers, Tech Live, Call For Help, X-Play...

You decided to kill off half of those shows right off the get-go... smooth... but hey, no one complained too much because you kept the screen savers, Leo got to start up another call for help type show, and X-Play fit in just fine with all the other crap on G4. (note: x-play rocks... G4 sucks.)

So now that you have a fairly stable viewing audience who have excepted that Patrick Norton didn't want to move to L.A. and have come to like Alex as a new side-kick for the Screen Savers, you decide to turn up the suck a lot more by firing everyone who works on TSS (except for Kevin and Sarah... anything to do with the fact that Sarah produces and she and Kevin are dating?) you also cancel unscrewed and send those boys packing... along with many more from the original TechTV i'm sure...

Alright so... you've now managed to kill off pretty much everything the original TechTV fans watched on your network. WOW! Good job.
Hey i have an idea for you... Sell TechTV... go back to being just G4 and we can all pretened this never happened...

I will now close with a childish and vulgar rant: Whoever decided to fire everyone and fuck over anyone who still enjoyed TSS in its new form sucks hot stinky ass. I wish someone would kick G4 in the balls. Then i wish that G4 would sell the TechTV name to someone who will do it justice. Anyone over the age of 5 would now that TechTV was the shit for quite a while, and the name has already been established.

What i propose is this:
Someone should buy it out, bring back everything that made the original TechTV great, then if it takes off, they should buy out G4, fire the dumb ass who brought on all these dumb-ass changes, kick him in the balls, laugh and send him packing. All without offering something cold to help with the swelling of his testies.

G4, you may know gaming, but you don't know shit about tech. You're the worst thing that ever happened to TechTV, tech in general, and TV in general.

Foldershare 2

Foldershare 2 is a very secure way to do p2p. Basicly you and your friends can run this app and decide who gets access to your own personal p2p network.

The only real downside i can see to this is that it won't be nearly as fast as other p2p networks.

Anyone want to give this a try?

The Vunet article can be viewed here.

Does Microsoft Own the Internet?

Microsoft is trying to claim IP (intelectual property) rights over much of the protocols used for the internet.

This is pretty scary...

The /. article can be viewed here.

The eWeek article can be viewed here.

Fart Fire

If you think lighting farts on fire is imature, don't click here.

Break Dancing Video

This is a cool clip of some people breakdancing.

It can be viewed here.

Freaken' Nuts

This is a video clip of some guy's doing pop-a-wheelies and other such stunts on their scooters. Its nuts.

Check it out here.

RIAA & MPAA Sitting In A Tree

It appears that the MPAA is following the RIAA's example and is going to sue people using P2P networks to download copyrighted content.

Go MPAA go, we all know how popular suing your viewing audience is. Look how well things worked out for the RIAA...

The Neowin.net article can be viewed here.

Osama Bin-Worm

There appears to be a new e-mial worm out there. This one is saying that it contains a video clip of "more terrorims this year" or sometimes an Ossama Bin Laden vieo game.

The attached file has a password of "cnn".

The e-mail is usulay bi \ trilingual. (English, French and \ or Spanish).

The Neowin.net article can be viewed here.

Software Sales Go Up

Software sales are up by about 5.1 percent, or 10 billion dollars.

Who say's piracy is hurting the market?

The News.com article can be viewed here.

Why Pay For Spyware Protection?

According to this PC World article, free spyware removers are more effective than some of the pay solutions.

In their tests, the pay programs (ranging from $20 - 60) performed no beeter than the free alternatives like Spybot Search and Destroy. Some even isntalled additional Spyware!

IE Feels Firefox's Burn

Microsoft are losing some of the browser market to Mozilla and Firefox. Is anyone surprised by this... No.

I myself recomend trying Maxthon. It relies on IE's core but its loaded with features and, like Firefox has tabbed browsing. If you haven't already i suggest you give it a try now.

The PC World article can be viewed here.

Napster Source Code For Sale?

A group of black hat hackers are selling source code for several applications. Amongst the applications are Napster (the pre-RIAA version) and some Cisco Pix Security firewall application source code.

The PC World article can be viewed here.

TV Tech

Want to know what's in store for Televisions in 2005 and beyond?

Check out this PC World article here.

Microsoft Releases Update Info Before The Update

Starting this month Microsoft will publish a summary of the releases to come out three day's later.

The web site can be viewed here.

For more info check out the the PC World article here.

Digital Photography Gets Even Geekier :-)

When you take a digitial picture, the camera records certain information about how the image was taken, this is called metadata.

In most cases, this information already contains such information as what kind of camera was used to take the picture, when the picture was taken, what setting the camera was on etc. By 2007 this is expected to be even more detailed.

One of the cooler new tag entries might be exact global coordinates of the image. Some cell picture phones are incorporating GPS systems, in which case, the exact coordinate the image was shot in might be recorded. This would in turn allow image viewing software to figure out what country\city the photo was recorded in.

Neeto!

You can view the PC World article here.

Symantec Mobile AV?

Apparently Symantec (the makers of Norton Anti-Virus) are pushing to get their antivirus software for mobile phones widely used.

The PC World article can be viewed here.

Spam Blockers Block Spam Fighter

This one is kind of funny.

AOL and Earthlink (amongst others) we're sending messages from Mailblocks to their customers Spam folder. In some cases customers though they weren't getting messages from anyone.

Mailblocks works by sending the user a "challenge message" and if they accept the challenge they are then allowed to receive messages from the Mailblocks user.

Read the PC World article can be viewed here.

KevinRose.com

If you have a second check out KevinRose.com.

For those of you who don't know, Kevin Rose is one of the hosts of The Screen Savers on G4 TechTV. KevinRose.com is his blog. There is quite a bit of usefull tech info.

ComputerHope.com

I've had this site bookmarked since i was in college.

It's a decent site for novice - mid level computer info.

One section of the site that i find useful is the MS-DOS section. It has info on:

• DOS Commands (alphabetical)
• Hidden or Lesser Known DOS Commands
• Info on Autoexec.bat / Config.sys
• MS-DOS Errors
• MS-DOS Extended Errors

Other useful information includes.

• A Computer Dictionary
• Q & A
• Computer History
• Computer Tips
• Computer Files (Extensions etc.)
• How To Create A Boot Disk
• Info On Batch Files (.bat)

There is a lot more to this page, which is updated from time to time. If your into computers (especially old school computers) check it out.

MyPod

I won an Ipod!!

Playing the Pepsi game really paid off. I actually won an Ipod. Check it out on the winners list (Nov. 1 - 4:00 - 4:59 pm).

I won it off of 4 no purchase necessary entries!!!

Now the waiting game really begins. 3 - 6 weeks eh?