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Archive for the 'Computers' Category

OFF is on digg again!

Monday, August 14th, 2006

And this time, it got enough diggs to make it to the front page! W00t! I am SO psyched about this. It might just get it the extra exposure it REALLY needs to go nova. Digg should provide plenty of eager beta testers, and honestly, the program runs great for where it is in it’s dev cycle.

Anyway, PLEASE DIGG IT!!! PLEASE! We need your support!

The Big Hack

read more | digg story

UPDATE: There is another OFF centric story on Digg! Check it out:

Darknets are SO last century. Why not go Brightnet! Why break the law when you don’t have to. Hackers have found a way to share stuff without violating copyright.

read more | digg story

Qunu it?!

Saturday, August 12th, 2006

Have you ever had a REALLY pressing technical question? You know, the kind that Ask Metafilter likely would know the answer to but you NEED that answer now, not later? Then may I recomend to you a REALLY neat new Expert to User service called Qunu. Here’s how the service works (in their own words):

Befuddled user asks Qunu expert, get's answer!

It’s an AMAZING service. It has singlehandedly gotten me able to use Linux (btw: I’m using Ubuntu now; posting from it THIS VERY MOMENT!!!). I’m just stunned at all the free, volentary help offered.

The service sets itself apart (in my opinion) by not having some propritary app sitting on the desktop (an app they would ether have to code for everything from Lunix to OS/2 to Windows and beyond, or write in Java). Instead they were smart enough to integrate with the Jabber network (just like our good friends Google)  so that an expert can just have their favorite Jabber friendly client open, and be ready to accept questions. COOL!

Check it out over at www.qunu.com. You won’t regret it. :)

Oh, and feel free to check this out and Digg it too, on Digg.com!

DEF CON: Wall of Sheep…

Tuesday, August 8th, 2006

This is the COOLEST demonstration of how lax security is for many people. It’s a display at DEF CON that updates in real time as people check their email, or log into myspace (as you can see from the bottom of the pic) or what ever. If it’s not secured (I’d assume one way is to make sure you’re logging into an https:// secured site), then it should show up there.

 Wall of Sheep @ DEF CON

Now tell me: How stupid would you feel appearing on that wall? :D I’m just supprised. It’s the biggest hacker convention around (or at least the most well known), these are the people who made the shirts that say “I read your email”, and STILL people log in unsecured. I’m just shocked.

If any of you out there ever go to DEF CON, and you have two computers, install Hamachi on both, leave one at home, turned on and connected to the internet, and take the other with you. You can then remote desktop into the one at home through Hamachi, and then surf securely knowing that everything going from you at DEF CON to your home is MASSIVLY encrypted.

For more information on security in general, may I suggest the ever popular podcast Security Now!

Thanks to ZDNet for the original pic, and the story.

And of course, feel free to Digg the Story

Good progress on Chipping the 360, and some site maintenance (we’re changing tags!)

Thursday, June 15th, 2006
Team Underdog NME-360 DVD Firmware Patch Mod

>> From gamefreax.de (translated from german):
Right now the dual-firmware mods coming out for the Xbox 360 DVD drives are 30+ wire solutions. These points are not only very hard to solder, but it also requires a lot of known-how to extract the FW from the drive, extract the key, patch, encrypt, write back, install external switch on Xbox 360 so you can switch between the 2 firmwares, etc …We received interesting information about a new DVD mod named NME-360, that will be released soon. This chip will be a universal chip for all Xbox360 DVD drives. It will patch the firmware of the drive on-the-fly. The original firmware on the flash of the drive remains untouched.The chip will recognize independently whether an original or a backup was inserted and switches itself to the corresponding mode (patched FW (on-the-fly) for backups and the normal unpatched FW for originals). That also means you will not have to install an external switch on your Xbox 360 to put the chip off.For the Toshiba-Samsung drive you will have to solder only 4 wires, the Hitachi-LG drive will require 11 wires. The official website of the team, named ‘Team Underdog’, will be launched early next week.News-Source: gamefreax.deDiscuss this news item on our forums: forums.xbox-scene.com(Wednesday 14 June 2006 22:14 EST) - (direct link to article)(Posted by:: XanTium)

Xbox-Scene.com - Xbox 360

Yep, you read that right. There’s a cool chip coming out for the 360 that will AUTOMAGICLY switch to the best DVD firmware for the job. Now, we still can’t run unsigned code (though Devil360.com is working on that), but it’s still a good step toward it, and running backups is no small matter in households with little children (I’m talking to you, Matt).

Now, about that site maintence, first I’ll mention: I’m posting this with the integrated posting tool in Flock. Now, I’ve spoken about Flock before, so I won’t go into the specifics here. Suffice it to say, Flock is now in Beta, and it’s now looking better then ever. There are still a few bugs to be worked out (ok, a crap load), but hey, what do you want? It’s free, OSS, and it’s pretty well integrated. My bigest complaint so far is that I’m not too impressed with it’s integrated blog posting tool, but hey, it’s still being cooked. :)

And as for tags, I’m changing them. Until Blogger decides to support them natively (or until I switch over to another framework), they’re just not worth the hassle. I’ll leave all the old ones (not worth the effort, they are kinda cool), but I just think it’s keeping me from posting more (they’re a pain to set up manualy). So I’ve decided to just let Flock’s integrated tagger do the work for me! Yay!

Oh, and any of you out there with lots of pictures of family, friends, etc., check out Riya.com. It’s got this crazy face recognition tech that enables you to upload bajillions of pics and only have to waste time picking out faces of a few before it figures it out on it’s own (mostly).

Ok, that’s all for today. Thanks for reading!

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Blogged with Flock

Not drunk anymore (FINALLY!), Xblog, CL2…

Sunday, April 30th, 2006

: ;

Ok, so I’m not drunk now. Sweet. I’m friggin’ glad. I’m not sure the drinkie is so hot for me. :D

But, in other notes, MY XBOX 360 CAN BLOG! Granted, it has a boring life (I almost never get to play) but it’s a cool concept none the less. Check out it’s blog at 360Voice.com. It should be pretty cool.

Also, many of you might know that Google.com came out with Google Calendar, a REALLY neat companion to Gmail. It’s a standard style calendaring application, but it’s integration and ease of use really seem to set it apart from the flock.

Ok, that’s all I got for now. Have a good one, everyone!