Undercover at DEFCON

Bad idea, Ms. Unethical Reporter Lady. 

It takes a crook to catch a crook.  In this case the “criminals” and “hackers” at DEFCON caught you.  Adage proved.  BTW, Youtube is slower than molasses today, so be patient.

Posted by JimK at 02:59 PM on August 05, 2007
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Categories: Technobabble (Technology),  The Fourth Estate
Tags: DEFCON NBC fourth estate journalism ethics hacking

Recovery

Have you ever thought you were SO smart, putting valuable data on an external drive that hardly gets used, so you don’t think it will fail, so you put backups of other data on that same drive as well as your ten years of “My Documents” stuff like hundreds and hundreds of photos you can never replace?  Then one day you think “Well this isn’t smart.  What I could really use is an online backup service just to make sure it’s all safe” so you join one with an unlimited data plan, but it takes forever and hogs the CPU because it compresses the data before sending it off, so a lot of the time you just don’t let it run.  Then one day you wake up only to find one day that that extra-important drive failed and you only got a chance to back up like, 5% of it?

No?  I’m the only one?  Well fuck me sideways.

14% complete on the data recovery, allegedly 65,968 files awaiting recovery, but I won’t know until sometime tomorrow.  This takes for-fucking-ever.

Back up your shit.  Buy a whole new external drive, copy everything on to it, then unplug it and just put it in a drawer.  Don’t be stupid like me.

Posted by JimK at 12:54 AM on July 29, 2007
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Categories: Technobabble (Technology)

Bacteria Torture Tests Demonstrate Evolution

SHHHHHHH! No one tell this to the Republican candidates.

Over time, the bacteria have evolved. They are twice as large as their common ancestor. They are also quicker to reproduce, dividing 70 percent faster.

The bacteria have also evolved solutions to the torture tests devised by Dr. Lenski. He created 12 identical lines of E. coli and then fed them short rations of glucose. Out of sugar by afternoon, most would die; Dr. Lenski transfered the few survivors to a fresh flask.

The bacteria evolved quickly, reproducing faster. Evolution tended to follow the same path in the 12 different sets of bacteria.

Dr. Lenski’s work with captive bacteria has also provided us with more information about antibiotic resistance. Antibiotic resistant bacteria have become a serious problem around the world; the costs of new anti-biotics have skyrocketed in a sort of pharmaceutical arms race.

In a 1998 paper, Dr. Lenski demonstrated that once bacteria have adapted to antibiotics, the resistance gene remains in the population long after the antibiotics are withdrawn. Simply suspending the use of antibiotics becomes a less effective tool over time.

Other scientists have been working in this area as well. Bacteria adapted to 68 degree cold were forced to adapt to 104 degree heat. E. coli are forced to adapt to a new diet of glycerol (found in soap). As the organisms adapt, scientists learn more about how evolution works.

Sweet.

Posted by JimK at 11:37 PM on July 01, 2007
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Categories: News,  Politics,  Technobabble (Technology)
Tags: evolution science politics

Games stuff - Test Drive Unlimited and Dead Rising

Yuck.  Both of them.  Let me explain:

More

Test Drive Unlimited was just...boring.  It was GTA without any fun stuff.  I sent it back to Gamefly in 24 hours.

Now, Dead Rising.  I wanted so badly to love the game.  There’s a lot to love.  I liked the story.  I didn’t mind the animation.  I liked the missions.  I liked the photography aspect.  I liked almost everything about it.  Except.

Except the horrible control system.  It’s awkward.  Very, very awkward.  It’s the opposite of fluid.  It gets in the way.  I couldn’t take it after awhile.  I sent it back after a week of trying to love it.  I still think about it though, and I might rent it again after I get my fill of Gears (and Splinter Cell, and Transformers and Darkness and Overlord, and...).

Anyone else have trouble with it?

Less

Posted by JimK at 06:37 PM on June 29, 2007
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Categories: Entertainment,  Gaming,  Xbox 360,  Technobabble (Technology)
Tags: Test Drive Unlimited Dead Rising Xbox 360 Gaming

Safari for Windows

You know what?  It’s kind of ridiculous that every piece of software Apple makes for the Windows world is such a piece of garbage.  It does not inspire me to want to switch.  It just irritates me.  Apple released Safari for Windows yesterday, and it’s just horrible.  Forget the fact that on a Mac, you need to buy a third-party app just to make it a single-window browser.  You can’t even buy your way to basic tabbed-browser functionality in the Windows version.  It eats memory like Firefox on steroids.  It renders text in awful, bloated, looks-bold-but-isn’t ways.  It does stick to standards, but if that;s all I want I have Opera, and that’s faster, extensible and it works.

The Safari interface is awkward, the tabbed browsing sucks, and the pop-up blocking is a total failure.  Plus there are already six security exploits, two of which allow code execution on your machine.

Of course, like everything these days, it’s in “beta.” Stay away.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Posted by JimK at 02:59 PM on June 12, 2007
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Categories: Technobabble (Technology),  The Internet(s)
Tags: Apple Safari browsers security

Crackdown orb tip - Shai Gen plaza - Corpse ladder

I was having the worst time trying to get the orb that is located at the top of the pillar, next to the lion statue, right in the middle of the Shai Gen plaza area.  I was playing co-op with juggalo1987 and I helped him get it by shot-putting him up there while he was inside a car.  Problem was, he’s not advanced enough to lift the car and shot-put me up there yet.

I already tried jumping off every building around the plaza and landing on it, but; One, most of the buildings aren’t close enough or high enough.  Two, it’s like threading a needle with gloves and a blindfold on.  Three, you die when you hit the ground, so you have to regenerate and get to a supply point and climb the buildings each and every time you try.

I also tried stacking cars, dumpsters, trucks, the big yellow skips, nothing gets you high enough.  Then I had an idea: shoot harpoon bolts at the wall and jump on them.  The problem there is, your character doesn’t seem to have collision detection with the bolts, and that means the game doesn’t know you’re trying to stand on them.  So what can you pin to things with the bolts, something with which you definitely have collision detection?  Dead people.

And thus was born Corpse Ladder.  Kill someone, throw them at the pillar then shoot their dead body with a bolt.

Click me, I get bigger

Hop from one to the other, grab your orb and go.  It also works at the lighthouse past Funland, and anywhere you can pin a dead body to a wall.

Posted by JimK at 09:41 PM on June 09, 2007
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Categories: Entertainment,  Gaming,  Xbox 360,  Technobabble (Technology)
Tags: crackdown orb hunting

CBS to bring back Jericho? *UPDATED*

Jericho is coming back...maybe.

“Jericho" might not be nuked after all.

Hoping to take advantage of a devoted fan based—and the new multiplatform era—CBS is readying a plan to bring back the drama sometime next season. Net will likely order seven or eight episodes for broadcast.

Eye killed “Jericho” last month, leaving the show off its fall schedule and declaring it dead (Daily Variety, May 16). Normally, that would’ve been the end of things.

But fans of the show revolted, launching a massive online-based campaign to save the show. Their gimmick: Deluging the Eye’s Gotham and L.A. HQ with bags of… nuts. Nearly 20 tons, at last count, according to a Web site tracking electronic orders for the nuts. Protesters even found the cell phone number of a CBS exec, flooding him with calls and forcing him to change his number.

Nice.  That’s gotta be the most successful “save this show” campaign ever, or at least since Farscape got that mini-series to wrap it all up.

CBS execs are no doubt hoping to take advantage of all the buzz surrounding the show’s demise—and likely revival—to help further reshape the net’s image away from the McGeezer web. Net’s just greenlit several new fall shows with very un-CBS themes (vampires, musicals, etc.), and saving “Jericho” fits right into that media gameplan.

What’s more, CBS no longer has to depend solely on primetime broadcast plays for its revenue. Between DVR playback ("Jericho" added nearly 10% more viewers when DVR figures were counted) and the now broadly accepted practice of streaming shows across the Net, CBS could try to make “Jericho” the poster child for a new business model.

Eye’s new CBS Audience Network, for example, distributes full-length episodes (and clips) to partners across the Net, from AOL to Veoh. It’s easy to see episodes of “Jericho”—perhaps with bonus footage?—serving as a key draw for CAN.

CBS wasn’t talking Tuesday, but industry insiders said final details with cast could be worked out by Wednesday or Thursday.

Awesome.  From an LA times article:

“The idea would not be to bring it for eight and out, but to bring it back for eight with the hope that it would keep going,” Barbee said. “They’re making deals with the actors and there’s other logistical stuff to work out too. ‘Swingtown’ [a new drama] was supposed to take over the same stages so it’s a lot about the logistics of how to work out a schedule that works for all of us.”

The good news is, the sets were struck but not destroyed.  They just need a new stage and new contracts and they’re back.  If we lose a character here and there we’ll just have to understand, as long as Jake, Hawkins, Eric, Emily, Jonah, Stanley, Mimi, Gray and Dale are back, we can work with that.  I’d even accept new actors in the roles of Emily, Dale, even Jonah.

Nice work, Jericho fans.  This may be the beginning of a whole new way the networks look at viewership.

*UPDATE*

We did it - officially!  See comments.

Posted by JimK at 01:10 PM on June 06, 2007
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Categories: Television,  Technobabble (Technology),  The Internet(s)
Tags: Jericho TV

Adam Mapelson out of the hospital

An update to this story...Brit gamer Adam Mapelson is out of the hospital.

Adam Mapleson, the British gamer who was shot after intervening to help security guards facing armed robbers, has been released from hospital.

A spokeswoman for Southend Hospital told The Reg that Mapleson returned home today after a week of treatment.

He posted on purepwnage as well:

Seeing as I am considerably healed now, but still a little incapacitated (one fat bruised slinged up arm, other than the big cut stapled together chest), I decided to sign up to the forums and express my extreme gratitute to everyone regarding this thread, and the other cople previous ones I managed to glance at.
I was going to leave it a little longer, but seeing as my brother brought me in a keyboard today to plug into this crazy hospital bedside tv/internet point, I decided that I had the strength to write. At least an abbreviated version before I can type with 2 hands again.
It has just blown my mind at how big this has become. It has been a very emotional (what I cant believe has been almost a) week for me. And reading your comments and best wishes has moved me considerably. Like a lot of you have said, teh_masterer’s words are so very true and I hadnt really acknowledge them properly until this happened.
I have been lucky and have recovered (even now) better than I can possibly have imagined. And I have all you to thank for your part to play in that.
Anyway. Before this evil connection decides to clear the message again. I will finish it at that. At least for the the time being.

Adam

Good luck, Adam, and try to explain to others why you did what you did.  We could use your kind of influence!

Posted by JimK at 06:36 PM on June 05, 2007
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Categories: News,  International Events,  Crime and Criminals,  Technobabble (Technology),  The Internet(s),  Gaming
Tags: Adam Mapelson

Crackdown render bug

This was odd...sorry about the quality, I was forced to take photos and video of the screen with my digital camera...Not sure how to screen cap the Xbox without trying to run the video through a capture card.

Can I just say that Crackdown is frigging awesome?  Oh, I’ve said that before?  Well it is.  FRIGGING AWESOME.  Also, I grabbed the Halo 3 beta and hated it, but then I knew I would.  Halo multiplayer attracts the worse kind of online players, annoying to play with and even worse to listen to.

Posted by JimK at 10:54 PM on June 02, 2007
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Categories: Entertainment,  Gaming,  Xbox 360,  Technobabble (Technology)
Tags: crackdown halo 3 xbox 360

Gamer take a bullet for security guard

This story is all over the gaming blogs.  Let me tell you why it is impossible.

1. Almost all forms of guns are banned or severely restricted in the UK, so no gun crime could possibly occur.

2. All gamers are homicidal, self-absorbed maniacs and therefore it cannot be that Adam Mapelson ran to help a woman being menaced by armed thugs.  All reason and ration dictates that he obviously went to help menace her, but due to the fact that murderous criminals and gamers are the same - and cannot get along - they began to fight amongst themselves and the gamer took the worst of it.  Of course he was never shot at all, since...well, see #1.

A HERO commuter who collapsed pouring with blood yesterday after he was blasted in the chest tackling armed robbers on his way to work has regained conciousness, said police.

Brave Adam Mapleson, 24, was gunned down as he raced to help a terrified woman security guard.

Fellow commuters watched in horror as two gun thugs — who had held up the woman as she loaded a cashpoint machine — shot the IT consultant outside his local rail station.

Adam, shot at close range, was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery.

Last night he was fighting for life with parents Michael and Carolyn at his bedside.

But today, a British Transport Police spokeswoman said Adam’s condition had improved.

She said: “Adam is in a comfortable and slightly improved condition.

“He has regained consciousness overnight but remains in the high dependency unit at Southend Hospital.”

In all seriousness, I hope Adam gets better fast.  He’s quite the credit to youth, gamers and general humanity at large.  We could do with a few million more gamers like this, no?  So how do we know he’s a gamer, by the way?  Myspace, of course.  He’s a Half-Life2/Counterstrike/GTA fan.  Sweet.  Hopefully as he recovers. someone will get him an Xbox 360 and a copy of Crackdown to while away the hours.  I’d be honored to run the streets of Pacific City with him.

Posted by JimK at 11:54 AM on May 29, 2007
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Categories: News,  International Events,  Crime and Criminals,  Guns - 2nd Amendment,  Technobabble (Technology),  Gaming
Tags: Adam Mapelson, gamers, gaming, heroes, crime