by Matt | Jul 5, 2002 | Imported Entry
What a truely sad day. The last great American hero has passed away. Ted Williams died this morning at the age of 83. He was truely the greatest hitter to ever play the game. I don’t think I need to mention my favoritism towards the Red Sox and especially heros of days gone by. John Wayne once said that he spent his entire film career trying to be like Ted. I think that speaks proudly of his character. A true sportsman, a legend, a Boston icon. He will truely be missed by all who so proudly call themselves fans of the greatest game in the world.
ESPN
by Matt | Jul 5, 2002 | Imported Entry
Nifty. I was just named as a first round Shining Lore beta tester. I can officially download the game on the 20th. It’s pretty cool. Check it out.
I’m not exactly sure what I’m planning on doing today. If anyone has suggestions, I’d be open to hearing them. I was thinking about a movie, but I don’t know which one. I was also thinking about food, but I don’t have anything perticular that I’m craving at the moment.
I’m bored. So bored in fact that I’m manually editing my Windows Services settings. If you want to play with every last bit of memory that your system has as well. Read this: The BIG Windows XP Services Guide (Tweaks) @ DeviantPC
That’s about it. Later.
by Matt | Jul 4, 2002 | Imported Entry
What a pile of bull-shit. Now the RIAA is targeting individual users instead of file-sharring programs. At least, that their plan. They still haven’t worked out the details on their attacks since they have the obvious problem of being “a pile of bull-shit.” They claim that CD sales numbers are down for the first time since 1983 and blame file sharring and cd burners for the problem. I have a different idea of what the problem might be… SHITTY MUSIC! How about this: why don’t the record companies stop pushing crappy rap-pop into our faces and start trying to find good, musically talented bands that might actually sell records for the pure fact that they don’t suck. Hmmm, nope, we’d rather support another Brittney Spears album or some Creed B’sides and sit around with our thumbs up our asses trying to figure out why they’re not selling. Come on people! Wake up and listen to the crap that’s on corporate radio and you can instantly tell why it’s not selling. Because it all sucks, it all sounds the same and none of it is worth buying. Come on corporate record guy, put down your lawsuit and do your job. Go find some garage band with talent and help restore some faith in the music industry. Don’t just recycle the same crap, slap an “Eminem remix” sticker on it and try to sell it. Even the mentally retarded 14 year old mall-rats are starting to catch on. And you know you’re in trouble when someone wearing an NSYNC tshirt is calling your bluff.
by Matt | Jul 4, 2002 | Imported Entry
Well, it turns out that the wiring in my house is to blame for my bad connection speeds and shitty cable modem service. Why am I not surprised?
Anyway, Happy Birthday to Chip, whose birthday was technically yesterday but since I didn’t have an internet connection I’m mentioning this now.
Also, it’s the 4th of July, which means hamburgers, potato salad and domestic beer. The beer I will not be participating in. My folks rented Gosford Park and The Majestic, so I’ll probably be watching those later. Of course I’m going to watch the Indiana Jones marathon on AMC first. Hehehe.
Tomorrow it’s back to work all day. I think I’ll be removing shrubbery but then again the crazy lady I’m working for always changes her mind, so who knows.
by Matt | Jul 2, 2002 | Imported Entry
It’s your typical story: man works his ass off, gets married, has a few kids, dies and eventually the kids want nothing to do with the parents or their estate. I’m not talking about me, I’m talking about this semi-crazy older lady that I worked for today. You see, my Dad is on the way to becoming a contractor, or at least a handy-man, and today he asked me if I’d help him out a little. I said sure figuring I would do some light repairs, maybe paint something, stuff like that. I was wrong. Today, I got to mow the grass. Not just someone’s back yard mind you, I cut “their property.” As in “these are the 20 acres of land I own, now please give it a trim.” Sure, 20 acres is a bit of an exageration, but I most certainly cut the equivelant of Fenway park. I kid you not. It took 5 hours and 3 tanks of gas in the mower. My hands hurt so much from the stupid lawn mower that I can’t even make a fist. I’m actually typing this very very slowly with only a few fingers. It was the second most tiring activity I’ve ever been engaged in. A very close second to moving my apartment last month. At least today it wasn’t 100 degrees. It was only a brisk 90. And the humidity wasn’t anywhere near 100%, it was much closer to 80. So, as you can see, I’m a bit on the tired side. I think I’ll go take a nap.
by Matt | Jun 30, 2002 | Imported Entry
On the flip side… this sickens me… The next step in both hardware and software is TCPA. Read this to understand how encompassing this is. Here are exsurps for those who don’t have enough time to read.
2. What does TCPA / Palladium do, in ordinary English?
Its obvious application is to embed digital rights management (DRM) technology in the PC. The less obvious implications include making it easier for application software vendors to lock in their users.
4. How does it work?
TCPA provides for a monitoring component to be mounted in future PCs. The likely implementation in the first phase of TCPA is a `Fritz’ chip – a smartcard chip or dongle soldered to the motherboard. When you boot up your PC, Fritz takes charge. He checks that the boot ROM is as expected, executes it, measures the state of the machine; then checks the first part of the operating system, loads and executes it, checks the state of the machine; and so on. The trust boundary, of hardware and software considered to be known and verified, is steadily expanded. A table is maintained of the hardware (audio card, video card etc) and the software (O/S, drivers, etc); if there are significant changes, the machine must be re-certified. The result is a PC booted into a known state with an approved combination of hardware and software. Control is then handed over to enforcement software in the operating system
11. How can TCPA be abused?
One of the worries is censorship. An application enabled for TCPA, such as a media player or word processor, will typically have its security policy administered remotely by a server. This is so that content owners can react to new piracy techniques. However, the mechanisms might also be used for censorship.
15. So can’t TCPA be broken?
The early versions will be vulnerable to anyone with the tools and patience to crack the hardware (e.g., get clear data on the bus between the CPU and the Fritz chip). However, from phase 2, the Fritz chip will disappear inside the main processor – let’s call it the `Hexium’ – and things will get a lot harder. Really serious, well funded opponents will still be able to crack it. However, it’s likely to go on getting more difficult and expensive. Also, in many countries, cracking Fritz will be illegal. In the USA the Digital Millennium Copyright Act already does this, while in the EU the situation may vary from one country to another, depending on the way national regulations implement the EU Copyright Directive. Also, in many products, compatibility control is already being mixed quite deliberately with copyright control. The Sony Playstation’s authentication chips also contain the encryption algorithm for DVD, so that reverse engineers can be accused of circumventing a copyright protection mechanism and hounded under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The situation is likely to be messy – and that will favour large firms with big legal budgets.
Won’t this be a fun ride…
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