Out with the old, in with the new

As I've mentioned before, I'm getting a new system to support the next generation (and hopefully beyond) of computer games.

Well, the video card I had originally ordered (the nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra Express, 256MB DDR3) is hopelessly backordered, so in the interest of getting my computer before Half-Life 2 comes out (not to mention actually enjoying my copy of Doom 3), I've jumped ships.

Yes, that's right folks, I have gone over to "the dark side". (Perhaps I should have mentioned ATI vs. nVidia in the geek debates I wrote about earlier today.)

I had originally selected the nVidia card because of its more robust support for OpenGL-based games and a preference (familiarity?) with the Detonator/ForceWare driver line. I knew the ATI card would have a slight performance advantage for most DirectX games, but I figured that the OpenGL-based Doom 3, Quake 4, and games from iD licensees would likely be the games I'd be more into. Plus, I have heard horror stories about some of my favorite games that I've played effortlessly on my nVidia hardware being, to use a polite euphemism, less than 100% compatible with the Catalyst drivers for ATI cards.

However, Desiree's (admittedly old-ish) nVidia 4600Ti recently conked out on her, causing random intermittent reboots. (Driver problems were ruled out and the problem stopped when the card was replaced with an older one.) Plus, while Doom 3 is by all accounts impressive as a technology display (I wouldn't know - I use a 4600Ti currently as well), most reviewers have not given it high marks for gameplay.

My decision was made easier by the fact that I've found fun in some unexpected places - I have really been playing a lot of Joint Ops - and I realized that a good game can come from anywhere, not just an iD licensee. Most developers are going to opt to use DirectX due to the low barriers to entry. While OpenGL is technically superior (never doubt the Carmack when it comes to 3D programming), Microsoft is continually making it more and more compelling (and easy) to use DirectX - especially when you're not trying to crank out the extreme performance of an FPS because you're making games in other genres I like just as much, like RTSs and MMORPGs.

And, oh yeah, Half-Life 2.

So my new baby will be sporting an ATI Radeon x800 XT PCI-Express, 256MB DDR3. I guess it was time for a change!

High-performance personal computing

With Doom 3 upon us and Half-Life 2 quickly approaching, it's time to take a stab at that Sisyphean task of keeping the deck up-to-date and able to play the latest and greatest (at high resolution with antialiasing and anistropic filtering enabled, of course).

My next leap:

Component	Current system	New system
Motherboard	i850E PCI	i925 PCI-Express
CPU	Intel Pentium 4 (2.66GHz, 512KB cache, 533MHz FSB)	Intel Pentium 4 550 (3.4GHz HT, 1MB cache, 800MHz FSB)
System memory	512MB Rambus RDRAM @1066MHz	1GB Dual-channel DDR2 SDRAM @533MHz
Video card	nVidia GeForce 4 Ti4600 (128MB DDR RAM)	nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra Express (256MB DDR3 RAM)
Disk	40GB EIDE disk (5400 RPM, 2MB cache) 40GB EIDE disk (5400 RPM, 2MB cache)	160GB Serial ATA disk (7200 RPM, 8MB cache)
Optical Drives	4x DVD±RW	52x32x52x CD-RW 12x DVD±RW
Sound card	Sound Blaster Audigy Gamer	Sound Blaster Audigy 2

Unfortunately, due to constraints on the PCI-Express motherboard and 6800 Ultra Express, it looks like I won't have the new box up, running, and scaring the crap out of me in Doom 3 until mid-to-late September.

DOOM 3 hardware guide

As a follow-up to my earlier post about DOOM 3 video performance, here is [H]ard|OCP's full DOOM 3 hardware guide.

DOOM 3 video performance

[H]ard|OCP not only had the good fortune to benchmark DOOM 3 video performance, but they did it on-site at id HQ, away from the influence of hardware vendors who are always tempted to cheat on these things.

In my opinion, the most significant finding (after being shocked at how thoroughly nVidia kicks the living crap out of ATI, that is) is that DOOM 3 will play pretty well on systems that no one ever thought the game would even launch on. Hooray - more targets for deathmatch!

I'm definitely looking forward to [H]ard|OCP's more comprehensive DOOM 3 hardware guide which will consider more than just video cards and look at different component configurations... they claim that the first version of the guide will be out next week.

JavaHMO

A new - and better? - server for TiVo's Home Media Option, JavaHMO. Via MESH DiaWebLog.

Password press

Catching my attention - a (surprisingly thoughtful, for CNN) piece on the declining usefulness of simple passwords and alternatives - including strong password enforcement on public websites and two-factor authentication.

Plus you get to learn that eBay has a VP of "Rules, Trust, and Safety". While I'm sure it's a powerful position, it does have a little bit of an 'elementary school field trip chaperone' ring to it.

MT3.0 reconsidered

In response to Six Apart's challenge regarding how people use Moveable Type and why the licensing doesn't work for them, I've rethought my previous post a bit, specifically the call for unlimited users/weblogs at the lowest price point, which was a bit unfair and not really what I want anyway.

First, though, an answer to the question at hand:
The way that I use Moveable Type is to power a primary personal, non-commercial weblog (this one) with 2 authors and a second personal, non-commercial weblog with 1 author. The second weblog (which is inactive and likely to be decomissioned) is at a completely different URL using a completely separate installation of MT. I had also been playing around with the idea for a group (non-commercial) weblog for members an online gaming group - this would probably have 4-12 active authors and probably many more defined but not active. Given the new licensing structure, I wouldn't do this within MT but probably a free/open-source tool or another commercial tool without author limits.

As I mentioned in my previous post, for my level of usage, I'd expect to pay around US$50 for a license. Stupid Evil Bastard agrees in his excellent post on the current MT3.0 licensing issues in which he explains the rationale for that price-point.

My feeling is that the restriction on authors is much more of a problem for people than the restrictions on weblogs (especially using 6A's new definition of weblog). For whatever reason, the fact that extrasonic would qualify for a free MT3.0 license if it weren't for the fact that my wife and I are defined as separate authors is irksome to me. Again - I don't expect the move to MT3.0 to be free for me, but for my MT3.0 price to go from free with one author to US$70 now (and US$100 soon) just to add a single author seems a bit outrageous. And for the personal grouplog with 4-12 authors I'd been planning? Forget about it - it'd cost me US$150 now (or US$190 soon). There's no way that a non-commercial site for a gaming group to share links and short posts about games is worth that much to me.

MT3.0

Well, everyone's heard the news - there will be a cost associated with certain versions of Moveable Type 3.0.

There's been a lot of uproar over this, and tubedogg at Gamewhore has some good thoughts (and some good links to other people's good thoughts) about the problems with the new licensing scheme for Moveable Type.

There's been a lot of debate about this, but my feelings can be summed up prettty succinctly:

• Six Apart have every right to charge for new versions of their software, for premium features, and for support.
  
• I would have been happy to pay a reasonable (i.e. less than US$50) price for v3.0 of Moveable Type provided that I could use it in exactly the same way I'm using v2.6x. Specifically: no commercial use, no premium features, no support from Six Apart, unlimited authors, unlimited blogs.
  
• The US$100 cost to upgrade to v3.0 just so my wife and I can continue to be separate authors on our weblog is prohibitive, and I won't be paying it. I'll stay on MT v2.6x until I can find a suitable replacement.
  
• To encourage users to take advantage of features in your free software, only to use the degree to which users have exploited those same features as the basis for your new pricing scheme is shady at best. That strategy gives me the whole "the first one's free" crack-dealer vibe and makes me disinclined to want to do business with people who pursue it.

Anyhow, those are my $0.02.

Another blog for your perusal

On some random clickthrough mess, I ended up at loonyblog., and boy am I glad I did - not only did I find another great weblog to read, but I also learned that I will soon be able to own the entire first season of Batman: The Animated Series on DVD.

Yay me!

(Now go read the blog.)

Just because you're paranoid...

...doesn't mean you don't need a USB microdrive locked to your thumbprint.

[Found via DiaWebLog.]

Case modding insanity

For gamers, making modifications to your computer's case started out as another form of bragging rights at LAN parties, i.e. "my computer looks cooler than your computer". But as Apple in general and the iMac in particular made people start thinking about the industrial design of objects that people were looking at more and more frequently, it became more and more of a general aesthetic and style issue. Now it's to the point where it's a full-blown hobby.

Hell, even I have a digital temperature guage on the front of my case and a very apropos fan grill which was thoughtfully given to me by my brother-in-law.

I've seen the teddy bear computer case, a case made from the cardboard box that WinXP comes in, and many many others. Still, I hadn't realized the art/science/hobby had been elevated to the level where a case had been made out of a life-sized anime girl sculpture.

Welcome to the neighborhood

Updated the Blogroll, as we're doing a lot more reading and a lot less posting these days. Specifically, we're reading about gaming or geekishness (or gaming geekishness). Check out:

• Chris Brooks
• cyborgirl.com
• Geek Style
• the-inbetween.com
• jay Is

Hey Microsoft, back off, eh?

I should have, but still couldn't believe the crap I've been reading about MikeRoweSoft.com.

Microsoft is *suing* a high school student because of his domain name, which is also his real name (Mike Rowe). They say:
1) People will get confused if they get to his site...i.e. we're all so stupid we think that the Microsoft we see EVERYWHERE could also be spelled MikeRoweSoft.
2) He uses his site to sell his web design business. So we idiots, having stumbled on the site, will forget that Microsoft doesn't actually create webpages for people. No other communication with Mike Rowe will tip us off that he isn't a huge software monopoly in Washington, and we'll give MikeRoweSoft money unintentionally...money Microsoft, and not a high school senior getting ready for college, surely needs.

And, can you believe it...they offered him $10 for the domain! No shit he was insulted. It costs more to register the damn thing. I would have told them to shove it too (and I would have asked for more money).

Mike Rowe...sorry you have to go through this crap at your age, but hopefully you'll get something out of it.

Crack-Extort-Go to jail

Let's say you find some unpatched security holes on the BestBuy.com website because you are an unimaginative script kiddie. What should you do? Obviously, you should threaten full public disclosure of the vulnerabilities, then change your mind and ask for US$2.5 million or else you'll exploit the holes yourself.

That was the thinking of AOL user Thomas E. Ray III, at least until the FBI busted him for extortion. What a moron.

Google goes public

US$4bil is a lot of cash, and it's roughly the amount that Google plans to get by selling off a third of their company in stock during their newly announced IPO.

A year-old-article at Wired points out that Google's overriding philosophy up to this point has been "don't be evil". But the author, Josh McHugh, also notes that while Google has been able to stick to its principles and still be profitable, some of the decision to continue to adhere to the "no evil" policy will be taken out of their hands by their new shareholders. The following excerpt from the Wired article illustrates this well:

As a private company, Google has one master: users. As a public company, there are shareholders to worry about. And more than happy users, shareholders want ever-greater profits... Such pressure could cause Brin to rethink other policies, like his decision to refuse all alcohol and tobacco advertising. The fact that Google accepts advertising for adult content sites is an intriguing commentary on Brin's morality: Cigarettes and booze are evil; porn is not. It's a policy that would become progressively harder to defend were Google to go public.

If the company is profitable, then why open up ownership to others who may not care about your principles? The obvious answer is cash - the most common reason for a profitable company to issue an IPO is to fund growth (i.e. use the money to invest in the company in order to be even more profitable than it already is). On the other hand, if you're not profitable, then you use an IPO to stay alive long enough to play out your strategy and survive to profitability.

Despite Google's profitability, this IPO seems more about survival than about growth. I believe Google senses a threat - one that starts with "M" and ends with "icrosoft" - and is about to embark on a technological arms race in order to secure its position as the search engine of choice for the forseeable future.

Microsoft plays dirty - there's no question about that. Consider the fact that most error pages displayed by Internet Explorer take you to the MSN search engine, and you'll think "hmmm... anti-competitive?" Now, what if I told all of you non-IE users that the default Internet Explorer home page is http://www.msn.com/ ? Nothing inherently wrong with that, I suppose. But what if I went on to explain that the index page for msn.com has a little piece of markup in it that looks like this:

<body onload="document.all.S1.focus">

That tag means that if you try to start typing a URL in the "Address" bar of IE while the default home page is loading, the focus is changed to the MSN search engine text field on www.msn.com and you "accidentally" end up searching for whatever URL you were typing. This has the triple effect of providing business intelligence to Microsoft about the web pages users are trying to navigate to manually when their browser first opens, increasing consumer awareness of the MSN search engine, and artificially boosting the engine's Nielsen//NetRatings to make the service more attractive to advertisers. It's no wonder, then, that this searchenginewatch.com article says that "even MSN admits some people may not realize how they ended up doing a search at its service."

So how do you fight a competitor that has no history of or interest in playing fair? You can try to fight fire with fire, but frankly Google (or just about any tech company) has no chance to out-weasel Microsoft. So it won't do that, instead sticking to its #2 truism: "It's best to do one thing really, really well." Google's core competency is not mudslinging, so the only option it has is to rise above dirty tactics and just be better. Period. I imagine that the bulk of their newfound US$4bil is going to go straight into R&D, and specificially, natural language processing. My recent work on creating a self-authoring weblog uses Bayesian analysis to help determine what to post. As you might expect, I wanted to see what (if anything) others were doing regarding Bayesian analysis of HTML and XML documents, and look who pops up as the first paid advertiser when you search for the word "Bayesian" on Google?

Let's hope that Google's soon-to-be shareholders understand that Google's marketshare thus far has been derived from treating the users correctly and being the best damn search technology on the web - and in order for those shareholders to see real value over the long haul (i.e., win a fight with Microsoft on its way to true market dominance) Google simply has to continue to be better than the rest, both in terms of customer satisfaction and technology.

E-mail spam deconstructed

A combination of boring year-end meetings, the need to exercise my script-fu, and a rediculous amount of spam led me to the following idea and analysis - what are "people" (I use the term very loosely when referring to unsolicited bulk e-mailers) really spamming me about?

I use a spam filter that I wrote for myself and Desiree. Normally, I'm not a big fan of security through obscurity, but I'd rather not expose my methods here. However, like many spam filters, once mine has flagged a message as potential spam, it is sorted into its own "quarantine" area for later examination. When I took a look at this "spam trap" yesterday and extracted the false positives (there were 3), a little over 1500 spam messages remained, which seemed like a perfect sample size for some analysis.

Surprisingly, my spam broke down into a relatively small number of categories. Read more to see the results!

In the time it took to get my analysis method defined and executed, I received around 50 more spam e-mails, so the final sample size ended up being exactly 1550. This was the amount of actual spam (i.e. potential spam minus false positives) that I received from ~9:00pm Central time on Monday, 08 Dec 03 and ~3:30pm Central time on Tuesday, 16 Dec 03.

When talking about this with Desiree, she pointed out that my spam may differ from other people's spam in some important ways:

• I have used my current e-mail address to register multiple domains
  
• I have used my current e-mail address in posts to Usenet
  
• I have used my current e-mail address to participate in multiple mailing lists which have since been archived on the web
  

In other words, I have (unintentionally) made it extremely easy for spammers to harvest my address. This might make the composition of my spam different from, say, Desiree's, which is largely the result of using her current e-mail address to register at various web sites.

With that disclaimer, on to the analysis:

•Advertisements for porn-related services (13.5%)

•"Dating" services promising sex (2.3%)
•Paris Hilton-related porn (3.1%)
•Miscellaneous porn sites (8.1%)

•Advertisements for money making/money saving products or services (23.7%)

•Stock "tips" and other investment advice (2.3%)
•Debt reduction schemes (4.1%)
•Loans - mortgages, auto, home equity, refinancing (8.1%)
•"Make money fast" - MLMs, grants, eBay, gambling, and one Nigerian scam (9.2%)

•Advertisements for miscellaneous products (25.0%)

Most frequently mentioned: software (including spamming tools and spam blockers), novelty gifts, discount items, insurance/warrantees, cable descramblers, college degrees, sex toys

•Advertisements for medical/health-related products or services (36.2%)

•Weight loss (4.3%)
•Viagra, penis enlargement, other sexual enhancements (15.2%)
•Miscellaneous prescription medicine - Ambien, Celebrex, HGH, Phentermine, Valium, Vicodin, Xanax, etc. (16.7%)

•Unknown (1.6%)

Messages which could not be classified based on their headers and content (including link structure, although no links were followed). This includes "misfires" by spammers - spam sent out in error with missing or malformed content.

More ForceWare

NVidia has new drivers - go get 53.03 at the NVidia site.

UPDATE: The release notes for 53.03 lists the following in its "Issues Resolved" section:

Windows XP: Rendering corruption in Battlefield 1942 Desert Combat.

Hopefully this means that the problems that I experienced earlier will be fixed!

Photoshop created for Star Wars/Oh how I hate you Steve Jobs

Hate is a strong word, yes. But, just one look at him in his little black turtle neck makes me want to go postal. Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly an Apple fan, and use several Apple products a day. But it aches me to the bone to know that my using them puts money into that whiny bastards' pocket.

But that wasn't my original reason for posting. Dan sent me a link on how Photoshop was created for and because of Star Wars.

It's a nice little story but while reading it my wandering eyes noticed a headline to the right. The headline read: Jobs to be Future Disney Chief?
Eisner sucks, but Jobs...well, there aren't enough sufficient negative terms to describe him. Poor Walt's probably spinning in his grave.

Dr. Who #4

Go watch it!

Dr. Who #3

Oops...looks like Dan forgot to post about the third installment of Scream of the Shalka.

If you haven't already given it a look, you should, it's very very good and Richard E Grant really makes a good online Doctor. :)

I hate everyone

get a fucking life

The wrong reason, but definitely the right move

Dell has announced that they are moving most of their customer support out of India.

I couldn't help but get terribly excited when I heard the news. Maybe I'm jaded because I work in computer customer support and I know there are many, many Americans who would jump at the chance to work for Dell. I was pretty upset to hear that they (and several other companies) farm out their customer support to India. Hence my gladness to see they're bringing some of it "home".

Their reasoning, however, sucks ass. They're not doing it to give jobs back to Americans. They're doing it because the Americans can't understand Indian accents. Don't even get me started on my can't-you-freaking-Americans-even-attempt-some-tolerance-patience-and-understanding rant.

Dr. Who #2

Don't forget to watch the second episode of Scream of the Shalka, and while you're thinking about the good Doctor, you might as well check out this gallery of Doctor Who monsters.

Spybot - Search and Destroy

Without touching on the blog taboo that is work, suffice it to say that I'm a savvy computer user. I'll even push the limit a bit and say I've held more than one job in my career where my sole focus was on information security, especially with respect to the Internet.

As anyone who has read this blog for more than 0.65 seconds knows, Desiree and I are huge gamers - tabletop, console, computer, etc. The "computer" part of that hobby makes it impractical to have anything but a Microsoft Windows OS on my primary desktop computer at home. In what can only be described as a victory of convenience over common (and occupational) sense, I also use Internet Explorer as my main browser on that machine. Since we have a weblog, it wouldn't take very keen detection skills to come to the (correct) conclusion that we browse the web. A lot.

Why am I rambling about all of this? This is a cautionary tale. No, not THAT cautionary tale. Just take it under advisement that even someone who carefully administers a hardware firewall for their home network, updates virus definitions and runs virus scans religiously, and for whom Internet security has been a profession can still fall prey to adware and spyware.

Read more about the subject at Tom Coyote, and grab their recommended (free, but donations requested) malware scan/fix program, Spybot - Search and Destroy. My personal experience is that it has found and fixed many things that my antivirus software couldn't/wouldn't.

I know about monsters - I am the Doctor!

Thanks to Gravity Lens for reminding us that the first episode of the new Dr. Who animated series is now online over at BBCi.

Damn you Macromedia!!

So my work recently purchased the Academic version of Macromedia Studio MX 2004 for me. The box and the CD both stated that it was the Mac and Windows version, so I figured I could use it on my PC at work as well as my laptop when necessary. Knowing I was about to go to Dreamweaver and Flash training, I installed it on my OSX laptop.

After training, I realized it was way too hard to try to do Dreamweaver and Flash on my 15" screen iBook. So I did as was instructed...launched the program on my iBook, went to Help and "released" the activation, rendering the software on my iBook useless.

Then I took the software and installed it on my Windows machine. Went to activate the license and was told that there were "too many activations". I was prompted to call the "Activation Office". They told me I was forbidden from crossing platforms, but they would make an exception. They had to do something manually to release my activation code. They told me to wait 10 minutes and then try again.

I did...."too many activations."

*sigh*

So, I found and read the EULA. It did say that I couldn't go cross platform, but also said I could have the software installed on two machines, as long as only one had it running at a time.

Armed with my EULA, I called the "Activation Office" again. They told me something had to be done manually because I had changed platforms (sound familiar?) and that I should try again in 10 minutes (hmm...).

As of this posting, I've been too much of a wimp to test the activation. I have a copy of Macromedia Studio MX 2004 that I can't use, and I'm getting madder by the minute.

Bad technology

Bruce Sterling's take on 10 technologies that deserve to die.

Oddly, Bruce only wants three of the ten techs he lists - nuclear weapons, land mines, and lie detectors - to die utterly; the other seven he would merely like to see replaced with better alternatives.

I'm not sure that I agree with all of his notions - eliminating prisons in favor of just simply preventing people from doing anything interesting seems a bit absurd as a punishment for violent criminals - but it's an interesting read nonetheless.

But does this mean less pop-ups?

You know the ads - infuriating pop-ups or pop-unders for radio-controlled devices like cameras that had vaguely sexual overtones, not-so-subtly implying that you could secretly record yourself or others during "intimate" moments.

Well, the perpetrators of these annoyances, X10, has filed for bankruptcy protection... since they claim to be the world's largest online advertiser, maybe this will help make the Web a slightly nicer place to browse (but I doubt it).

Detonator == Forceware

The unified GeForce drivers from NVidia formerly known as Detonator are now called Forceware - go get version 52.16 now.

HL2 source code stolen

Wired has probably the best summary, but you can check out Gamers With Jobs to see the news as it broke, or any of the various Halflife2.net forum threads for bizzare conspiracy theories and just plain ignorance of the software development process and network security.

The scenario that's been confirmed by Valve's own Managing Director, Gabe Newell, is that the some or all of the Half-Life 2 source code was stolen from Valve's computing environment via the Internet, and that this theft was made possible by a total compromise of nearly all of Valve's systems. The likely initial vector of compromise was a Microsoft Outlook exploit, although Valve can't say for sure at this time.

Read more to get my thoughts on the whole mess.

In my opinion, the theft of the intellectual property from Valve exposes them in three main ways:

• Some of Valve's technology may have been licensed from other technology vendors (the original Half-Life was based on a licensed version of the Quake 2 engine) and not taking all of the "customary" measures to protect that information could result in their defaulting on some contractual obligations, which in turn could result in fines.
  
• The potential for Valve to license the Half-Life 2 engine is moderately diminished. Of course, no one will steal the Half-Life 2 source code wholesale, but by copying individual functions or (even less provable) general approaches to problems might encourage development shops sitting on the fence regarding "build vs. buy" decisions that they have enough information to build their own game engine and don't need to license. In short, the leak educates potential competitors and reduces the number of potential customers.
  
• Enterprising cheaters now have a leg up on how to develop exploits. Knowing exactly how the engine interprets inputs and how it delivers its output could lead to a whole new level of cheating; but on the other hand, plenty of devestating exploits for games have been developed via good ol' reverse engineering so the impact of this is really code-dependant and unknown at this time.
  

Especially potent, widespread exploits may hurt the game's residual sales, but (especially since no graphics or sound resources appear to be stolen and therefore the source can't be compiled into a working build of the game) the leak is unlikely to have an effect on initial sales.

Of course, there's the issue of how and why this happened in the first place. Through the course of my career, I've held various jobs that have put me in the position to see this problem occur over and over again - software development companies whose management believes in the myth of the "computer person". Simply put, this is the widely held misconception that all "computer people" are created equal; i.e. programmer == server admin == storage admin == network admin == deskside support == security expert. As a result, management ends up with programmers to maintain server/storage/network infrastructure as a way to limit operating costs.

This myth is sometimes perpetuated by the rare "computer person" who really is a jack of all trades and is good at several, but the real damage is done by programmers who don't know what they don't know and believe they can design and manage infrastructure implementations or they can figure it out on the fly because "it can't be harder than programming".

This problem is compounded by game programmers with legions of adoring fanboys who have rock star-sized egos. I don't know if this was a contributing factor to what must've been horrible host and network security at Valve, but it does seem to be an industry-wide trend - this op-ed piece at gamesindustry.biz states that:

"[M]any online games companies assume that [developing an infrastructure] can be done with a couple of cracker jack programmers and 3 weeks of effort... but it should occupy your attention for more than ten days and cost more than a thousand dollars."

I'll be interested to see how much more is publicly disclosed by Valve about the compromise, and even more interested to see if/to what extent this serves as a wake-up call to other developers, regardless of the type of software they're developing.

BBC archives going online

Large portions of the BBC television and radio archives are to be made available for free download via the Internet.

Now, when the general director of the BBC, Greg Dyke, says that this is for "everyone", I do hope he means it and isn't defining everyone as just those in the UK. If this does come to pass, then there is so much incredible content here that I can't imagine how we'd realistically be able to consume it all (and that's a good thing).

"Hackers" made me do it

The New York Times (free registration required) has a very interesting piece about a man in the UK who claims a trojan horse is to blame for introducing over 170 pieces of child pornography onto his home computer. The British legal system has accepted this defense and acquitted him. Was this a disgusting prank, or was he deliberately framed - or is there some other, altogether different explanation?

Will this update of "the devil made me do it" excuse make it harder to prosecute computer-related crimes when this defense inevitably begins to pop up in the U.S.? The experts quoted in the Times article seem conflicted, but we can hope that digital forensics techniques (not to mention the law) will start to provide better tools with which to seek justice for these sorts of offenses.

The ever-expanding blogosphere

We don't add links very often, but (if you're reading this from our main page) you may notice that ReidWise.Net now sits up in the upper left hand corner as one of our favorite weblogs. Check it out - chances are that if you like what you read here, you'll like what you read there also.

Traffic simulator

Now you can simulate how irritating your commute is. Hooray for technology!

A weblog that's new (to us)

Every once in a while, we go out looking for new weblogs to read. It happens from time to time.

We recently discovered a weblog that I found at the URL www.writteninsand.org, although the name and the permalinks seem to indicate ReidWise.Net. However you get to it, it seems to be just about the only weblog that posts about video games as much as we do (without actually being devoted to video games). Plusses - loves Neverwinter Nights, hated the Star Wars Galaxies beta. Minuses - none that we're aware of yet. Sounds just like the type of weblog Desiree and I like to read.

Reid, if you're out there, I regret to inform you that I'm not the "big 'splosions" reader. Although Desiree might have been.

Jobs, Bezos, and Segway

This is more of a general "tech" story than a computing story, and I really don't have any witty or insightful commentary to add - I just liked the article and wanted to post it (even though it's been making the rounds).

It's fascinating for its glimpse of some of the most storied personalities in the tech industry, and the business suggestions (and rationale behind them) made at the meeting described in this article are also worth thinking about. A good read, period.

Bye Bye Synergy

An awfully entertaining piece of freeware coming out of Deloitte Consulting is authoring in the demise of all that annoying buzz word crap that has flowed out of the IT industry since the 1990s.

Microsoft sunsets IE for the Mac

First, Microsoft bought itself legal protection by agreeing to provide Internet Explorer for the Macintosh (thereby propping Apple up as a competitor to weaken monopoly charges). Now that they don't have to invent competitors to stay out of anti-trust court (thanks to Linux), Microsoft will not continue to develop Internet Explorer for the Macintosh and instead recommends Safari for MacOS users.

Of course, the decision to stop development is just as helpful to Microsoft from a legal standpoint as the decision to start - their stated rationale for discontinuing Mac IE development is that web browsers are really part of OS software, a position they've argued when accused of leveraging their Windows market share to strengthen IE's position.

But the real clincher for Microsoft, I would suspect, is that continued support for a MacOS IE would require writing what is essentially a Unix-based version of the browser for the strongly BSD-influenced MacOS X. From a technical point of view, this might require the use of GPL'ed or otherwise open source libraries in order to develop browser code that's stable and performs well - and doing so, from a business perspective, would be immensely hypocritical (not to mention it could place IE's intellectual property at risk). Besides, if Microsoft could develop a browser for a BSD-based system, then why not Linux? MS can't risk legitimizing Unix as a desktop OS - although MacOS X's elegance in providing a consumer-class Unix (a goal it accomplishes even better than its spiritual predeccesor, NeXTStep) has already released that genie from its bottle.

'Hacker kingpin' arrested

A Ukranian was arrested in Thailand under a US warrant (how's *that* for globalization) for allegedly masterminding a scheme to steal your data - pirating Microsoft and Adobe software, adding in a backdoor to harvest and transmit financial information, and then reselling the trojaned software via a bunch of websites (advertised via spam, no less).

While the backdoor was a clever idea, it probably wasn't a significant technical challenge (MS products are so bloated you could hide a small island nation in there), and the rest was just appealing to good ol' human weakness - specifically that part of people that wants something for nothing. Ironically, that same weakness is what got him caught - a true victim of his own success, if he managed to get on the US Secret Service's 10 most wanted list (as the article linked above claims, although I couldn't find him there).

This is less about 'hacking' (should be 'cracking', I assume) and more about social engineering, which of course plays a large part in any scam, online or offline. Calling someone a 'hacker' and a 'kingpin' sells more ads, I guess.

Women in Technology

I came across this commentary in the Chicago Tribune regarding the lack of women in technology.

This person maintains that with the prevalence of technology in our lives, we need more women involved in IT in order to balance out the aggressive influence of men. She used several examples of that which she witnessed at E3 (Con Girls, violent games, etc).

I'll agree that the gaming industry is heavily geared towards men...I'd be a fool not to. Games that are created to appeal to women are usually men's games with a Barbie face. But, really, who decides what appeals to women and what doesn't? Hell, I'm a woman and I love to play Unreal Tournament. Does that make me less of a woman? I don't think so.

But anyway, she claims that women may be interested in games but aren't interested in the IT industry. I can only speak for myself, who was interested in games and the IT industry and currently work in computer support. I do find her belief that women who get into IT do so in conjunction with another interest, personally true to form. I was an anthropology major who worked very hard at finding a medium between computers and anthropology, thereby merging my two loves.

So where's the problem? Maybe Computer Science isn't pushed towards females in school. Maybe there are so many stereotypes about being involved in Computer Science, during very formative and clique-ridden years, that being a part of it for a high school female would spell instant ostracism.

I dunno. When I was in high school I was lucky to have occasional access to an Apple IIe so that I could play Carmen Sandiego. College was small and all about liberal arts. No one who wanted a serious career in IT would go there. I didn't even know how to use a computer until I was looking for a job on campus.

But anyway, the reason I got started on this diatribe is because I was absolutely shocked by some of the responses to the above commentary. For example:
-My God, stay out of IT. Women know enough not to get into it.
Submitted by: Jay
12:27 PM CDT, May 22, 2003

-Girls just dont understand technology.
Submitted by: Tony
12:03 PM CDT, May 22, 2003

What a couple of assholes. Are they jealous? Scared for their jobs?

Detonator 44.03

There are new WHQL'ed Detonator divers for NVidia graphics card owners, which can be found here.

Convergence

Convergence - which most people think of as the consolidation of home entertainment (tv, movies, music, games, etc.) and information (computing, Internet, etc.) technologies - is becoming more and more of a reality, regardless of whether or not it's a good idea.

Sony is leading the charge - they are building IM capabilities into the Playstation 2, and they're teaming with IBM and Toshiba on the "cell" processor, which may serve as the basis for the PS3 and seems to have the potential to serve as the basis for a wide array of internetworked consumer electronics. Only Sony has the breadth of hardware (computers, game consoles, home theater components, etc.) to really see this convergence thing through. This positions Sony very well not only for making a single device that acts as the "digital hub" for a household (to use a phrase coined by another major convergence player, Apple) but also the "spokes" to be attached to that hub.

And what about Apple? If you believe Steve Jobs, then their iLife strategy has put them "so far ahead of anybody, it's not funny." Clearly, they've done more tactically than Sony has - iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, and of course iTunes at the bleeding edge of the portfolio - but Sony has a leg up on Apple in the strategy department. After all, an install base of 50 million PS2s (scroll down to the 15 Jan 03 press release) really sets Sony up for the long haul.

Microsoft won't go out with out a fight, though. Their moves into pervasive computing with WinCE and the palmtop PocketPC are clear (even if the mobile phone portion of the plan is a bit murky), but their acquisition of WebTV, development of the TiVo-esque UltimateTV, and even the Xbox itself shows that Microsoft is definitely interested in having their software appear on consumers' TVs. Adding DVR and other multimedia functionality to the Xbox, as has been widely rumored, is yet another step down this path.

As great as it all sounds, general purpose hardware/OSes/software have historically never fared as well as a system of purpose-built technologies that have a well-understood way to interact with each other. The fact that you're reading this post over the Internet is probably the best example of discrete technologies communicating via standard protocols to achieve the ever-elusive concept of synergy - a whole that's more than the sum of its parts. The true aim of convergence, in my humble opinion, should be to bring open protocols (either new or existing) to consumer electronics - not to try to build a single "set top box" that is all things to all applications.

Smart money is on a redefinition of the home network - TiVo's Home Media Option upgrade has the right idea by adding TCP/IP capabilities to their DVRs via a USB ethernet interface - not the all-in-one approach that has tried and failed so many times. I'll take communication over consolidation any day.

Neat weblog tool

I'm impressed with Ryo Chijiiwa's BlogMatcher... it's helped us find several new weblogs that we'll be checking out (which is more than I can say for newdoor or any of the other "blogosphere" tools).

Probably the most interesting of the blogs that BlogMatcher referred us to is the one it gave the highest score to: Gravity Lens, which has done a much better job of keeping up with comic book news than we have. (Shame on us.)

iTunes sales exceed 1 million?

c|net is running a pretty interesting article about iTunes' success and its implications for digital music.

To me, $0.99/song is the right price for purchasing music online. I'm even ok with the digital rights management overhead. My chief complaint is the format - give me MP3 and I'd be all over this.

Alternatively, you can get me to accept a non-MP3 file format only if you can provide platform-independent software and a variety of hardware that can natively understand the new format.

Solving those problems would bring me into the fold for sure - but with all of my digital music in MP3 today, and with a couple of non-computer hardware devices (soon to include my car stereo) reliant on the format, it'd take a lot for me to convert. Some may call it consumer inertia, but I call it protecting the investment of my time and money into collecting and finding uses for the format of my choice.

Go Apple Go!

Stevie just announced Apple's version of file swapping....for .99 a song.

Not too bad, I suppose...but it is enough to get people to quit using Kazaa? Doubtful.

Detonator 43.45

NVidia Detonator drivers for Win2K/XP can be obtained here. Update now for best DirectX 9 performance.