February 24, 2005

Revenge Of The Sith Spoilers

If your like me and are counting the minutes until Star Wars Episode III - Revenge Of The Sith opens on May 25 and are in dire need of a fix here's one for you.
I stumbled across a site which has tons of unreleased screenshots and reveals some key plot points in the next installment of every geeks favorite space opera.
Click here for the site and don't say I didn't warn you.
And if that doesn't help and you still need a Star Wars fix then maybe you should try buying a landspeeder, like the one for sale on Ebay here.

February 22, 2005

First "Spimmer" Arrested

A U.S. teenager became the first person ever arrested and charged for Spimming at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) last Wednesday.
Spimming occurs when an individual sends out spam through an instant message network like MSN Messenger or AOL Instant Messenger.
Anthony Greco, an 18 year old from New York City, had allegedly sent 1.5 million unwanted spim messages over the MySpace.com network, advertising everything from low interest mortgages to porn.
In addition to sending spim across the network, Greco apparently sent an e-mail to MySpace.com and threatened to publicize his spimming methods to other spammers unless the company signed an exclusive "marketing agreement" with him which would then legitimize his efforts.
Greco was then lured to LA under the pretense that he would meet MySpace.com President Tom Anderson and he could then negotiate and sign his "marketing agreement", Greco was immediately arrested upon his arrival at LAX.
Following his arrest Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Hoffstadt told ZDNet.com that Greco was the first person ever charged with Spimming. ""We're just beginning to get the tip of the iceberg," said Hoffstadt. "This could be a new wave as online communities start up".

February 20, 2005

i-Tunes/Napster Trade Shots

The war over which Digital Rights Management (DRM) is better continues as Apple and Napster continue to trade shots.
It all started on Tuesday when Apple CEO Steve Jobs sent an e-mail to record company executives saying among other things that Napster's DRM for it's new "Napster-To-Go" streaming service had a security "gap" and that the gap could be exploited by visiting a webpage for instructions, of course Jobs linked to the website in the e-mail, and concluded by saying "Thought you should know if you haven't heard about this".
Napster CEO Chris Gorog was quick to respond to Jobs claim by issuing an e-mail that pointed web browsers to a site which offered a free program which could then be used to strip i-Tunes Fair Play streaming service of it's DRM.
Now I thought about weighing in on this until I ran across Leo Laporte's comments on his radio show today where he discussed the issue of DRM and said - "Gorog wins this round. All protected music is susceptible to the Napster-To-Go crack - it’s essentially recording the analog output as you listen to the song. iTunes FairPlay has been cracked fair and square by DVD Jon and software to strip out the copy protection is widely available."
Well said Leo.

February 19, 2005

The Sound Of Silence

I know I'm a few days late with this, but it deserves a mention nonetheless.
Scott Moschella at PlasticBugs.com has declared war on the RIAA by downloading a song from i-Tunes, cracking the Digital Rights Management (DRM) and then offering it for download on his website.
The only catch is the song by Ciccone Youth is actually 63 seconds of silence. And to make things even better Moschella "bought" the song by turning pepsi bottles upside down in his local Ralph's store and finding a code under the bottlle cap for a free download as part of the Pepsi/i-Tunes promotion.
Once he downloaded the song Moschella then used a program called JHymn to crack the DRM, and then offered the song for free on PlasticBugs.com.
To date a few thousand people have downloaded the song, and his site crashed yesterday after BoingBoing.net and Digg.com picked up the story.
But his site's back up now and you can read the specifics of his experiment, including screenshots here.

February 15, 2005

Will RipGuard Kill The DVD Ripper?

Macromedia announced today the next generation of DVD copyright protection, as RipGuard is set to debut in upcoming DVD new releases in the not so distant future.
RipGuard is set to replace the Content Scramble System (CSS), which most DVD's currently feature.
CSS copy protection was first released in 1999, just before the DVD revolution, and most movie studios and DVD distributors were quick to adapt the new technology, however within months of it's debut DeCSS was released as an open-source project thus rendering copyright protection useless. To date nearly 100 DVD "back-up" programs have utilized DeCSS.
However Macromedia believes that RipGuard will pick up the guantlet and succeed where CSS has failed.
"CSS encryption standards are binary", said Adam Gervin, senior marketing director for the entertainment technologies group at Macrovision. "They're great until you break it, and then it's worthless. DeCSS made its way into the public's understanding, that perfect digital copies can be made in minutes. The cat's out of the bag".
However with RipGuard, Gervin believes pirates will be in for a much tougher battle as the new applications biggest weapon is the fact that it eliminates the entire digital bitstream. With current DVD's, DeCSS "cracked" the digital bitstream and converted the data it into a single analouge hole, which then allowed users to copy and burn content to a DVD-R, and in the process produce a perfect copy of the original.
However with RipGuard any attempt to bypass copy protection through these means will result in the ripper software crashing or freezing.
"RipGuard will stop 97 percent of rippers by market share," says Gervin. "Look for MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) studios to adopt complete DVD protection (using RipGuard) in 2005", continued Gervin.
And to further boost Gervin's claims that RipGuard will soon debut on a video store shelf near you, THX has given the program the thumbs up after it's engineers conducted independent tests in an attempt to circumvent RipGuard protection. In addition Gervin told ExtremeTech.com that most of the major movie studios have committed to use RipGuard in future releases although he declined to elaborate any further citing FCC regulations.

February 14, 2005

Grammy's Enter The Internet Age

I missed the Grammy's last night and now I'm kicking myself.
I meant to watch the show, and was really happy that Norah Jones took home at least one statue. I discovered Norah Jones last year when I got her first DVD as a gift and I've been a fan ever since.
What really caught my eye though was the Grammy won by Jazz singer Maria Schneider which was done so even though she did not sell a single copy of her "Concert In The Garden" CD through record stores. All sales of Schneider's album came via the internet.
"It's a new way for fans to be closer to artists and artists to be closer to fans," said Schneider of her web sales. "For me it's been very gratifying".
The web-only Grammy win provides further proof to the music industry that the internet may indeed be the future music store for fans.
In 2004 legitimate online music sales were in the area of 143 million songs, up from only 19 million in 2003.
"This record cost $87,000 to make, I already made my money back," continued Scheinder. "(And) I'm not splitting the profits with the distributor, the record store or the record company, so it's working so well for me."
Schneider was the first participant in a new online program called ArtistShare where all album financing is done through donations from the artists fans. Initially 10,000 copies of the CD were pressed, with 9,000 being sold to those who donated money for the project through ArtistShare.
The remaining 1,000 copies are then sold through an online auction.
"They (fans) came into the project long before I completed my CD," concluded Schneider.

The Mother Of All XP Tweaks

On the advice of a fellow geek, I downloaded The Windows XP Tweaking Companion (WXTC) from TweakGuides.com recently.
Now after using XP-Pro for the better part of 3 years I figured there wasn't much more that I could possibly tweak, and if there was I could always go where I usually go - BlackViper.com, but boy was I surprised when I downloaded WXTC.
This puppy had just about everything you could ever possibly need to know about tweaking Windows XP and at only 1.8 MB there really is no reason to download the PDF file.
I highly recommend downloading WXTC, and even though it's free you should shoot the writer a couple of bucks for all of his hard work.
You can download WXTC here.

February 13, 2005

Microsoft To Enter Cell Phone Market

It's being widely reported in Europe that on Monday Microsoft will announce a partnership with hardware developer Flextronics, to create a series of low cost phones designed to work in conjunction with Windows Mobile Platform (WMP).
WMP has taken more than it's fair share of abuse over the years, but the latest version seems to be a lot more stable than previous editions.
Flextronics is the Taiwan based hardware company who helped develop the XBox, Microsoft's first foray into the hardware market.
Rumors of the new partnership began swirling in France on Sunday night at the 3GSM World Congress, an annual mobile industry gathering in Cannes.
And although Microsoft would not confirm the rumor, OregonLive.com did get this quote from John Starkweather, Mobile Product Manager from Microsoft when asked about the new partnership.
"The significance of this partnership is extremely high-volume, low-cost devices that don't have any concessions in terms of functionality...seamless integration with Outlook, applications, calendar, e-mail, tasks, contacts — all wirelessly".

Futuremail - E-mail With An RSS Twist

Just stumbled across this on Digg.com.
It's called Futuremail and it allows you to create e-mail reminders that are then stored and e-mailed to you on the date and time that you specify.
One of the features that really caught my eye was the ability to share your future e-mails in an RSS feed, which would be great for any collaborative or group projects you may be working on - check it out here.

February 11, 2005

Geeking Out With The Geek Show

I just discovered a new show tonight on Book Television called The Geek Show.
The show is from Edmonton, Alberta Canada and is fairly low budget, it's actually shot in one of the the hosts diningroom, but it's pretty funny nonetheless.
The show also has it's own website - www.thegeekshow.com - and is definitely worth a peek as all past episodes are archived on the site, so check it out.

February 09, 2005

Two Babes And The Penguin

For those geeks out there who need some additional motivation to give Linux a whirl, you should check out the new "Linix Virgins" website.
The premise is pretty simple take two girls put them in mini skirts and then ask them to build a computer and then have them install Linux on the system. Episode One is available here.
Thanks to Alex "yeah he's the dell dude" Albrecht for the link.

February 08, 2005

Tuesday Tidbits

Here's a round-up of the latest news in Geekdom.

~It appears that Kazaa owners Sharman Networks were logging the IP addresses of users of their popular P2P network. The logging went against the advice of developers of the Kazaa Media Desktop who told Sharman that logging IP addresses could make people view the P2P client as spyware and scare users to other P2P networks. The IP logging came to light in an Australian court on Monday as Sharman Networks continues it's legal fight with the RIAA over copyright infringement.
~ Speaking of fighting, AskJeeves continues it's battle for legitimacy in the world of Google and MSN Search as it has purchased BlogLines one of the better RSS readers available on the market today.
~ Someone finally did it, they organized all the best free software available on the internet into one place. Thank-you.
~ Hackers at a U.S. convention this past weekend discovered a security flaw that could allow non-Internet Explorer browsers like Firefox and Opera to display spoofed pages of real websites by simply adding a little code to a link.
~ Microsoft is looking to finally release Longhorn to Beta by June of this year. Longhorn is the code name for newest version of Windows which is set for a late 2006 release.
~ NewsForge.com has a story that some IT experts are predicting that the first Spyware written specifically for Firefox will emerge this year.
~ Was I the only geek who appreciated GoDaddy.com's ad during the superbowl?
~Marc Morford has an awesome story on SFGate.com titled simply "Why Does Windows Still Suck", you can read the article here.
~ The Desktop Linux Summit gets underway this week in San Diego. Among the guest speakers will be keynote addresses by Ron Glasser of Real Networks, Mitch Kapor of The Mozilla Foundation and Michael Robertson CEO of Linspire. Other speakers of interest include Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome.com who will have a Powerpoint Presentation on the best and worst of Linux in 2004.

Thanks to everyone who has e-mailed me after seeing me on Call For Help on Tech TV Canada last Thursday and through the weekend re-airings. Your kind words are appreciated.

February 07, 2005

AOL Joins Browser Wars

AOL has jumped head first into the browser war between Microsoft, Apple and Firefox as their new browser went Beta today.
The new browser uses Internet Explorer's engine and integrates pretty well with it's proprietary desktop search utility.
AOL's announcement of it's browser entering Beta seems to fit in well with company's recent attempts to remain relevant as it is also on the cusp of offering a Voice Over IP (VOIP) service.
You can read more about AOL's browser here, and see a screenshot here.

February 06, 2005

A Cheaters Guide To Superbowl Ads

If you missed the Superbowl, or your like me and really don't care about it that much to begin with, but you still want to know what everyone is talking about on Monday morning around the watercooler check out this site for every ad that aired during the game.
Be sure to check out the banned ads for GoDaddy.com and the one that features Mickey Rooney's butt (thanks Fox).
By the way go Pats.

February 05, 2005

RIAA Sinks To New Low

In what can only be best described as one of the scummiest things the Recording Industry Association of Artists (RIAA) has done to date in their effort to curb P2P filesharing, the group that enforces copy protection for musicians has filed a lawsuit against an 83 year old Grandmother who died in December.
The RIAA has alledged in court papers filed in West Virginia that Gertrude Walton, who went by the user name "smittenedkitten", shared over 700 rock, pop and hip hop songs over Kazaa.
The problem of course is that Walton died over a month ago after battling a lengthy illness and her daughter Robin Chianumba, who lived with her grandmother for 17 years, told the Charleston Gazette that Walton did not even own a computer and definitely did not file share over Kazaa.
"I don't know if this is a scheme to get money, I just don't know what's going on. I am concerned, said Chianumba. "I am pretty sure she is not going to leave Greenwood Memorial Park to attend the hearing."
For it's part the RIAA has acknowledged it had made a grievous error, and intends to drop the lawsuit against Walton.
"Our evidence gathering and our subsequent legal actions all were initiated weeks and even months ago," said RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy of the mix-up. "We will now, of course, obviously dismiss this case."
But the withdrawn lawsuit and makeshift apology still leaves a bad taste in the mouth of Chianumba. "I believe that if music are going to set examples they need to do it to appropriate people and not dead people".

Thanks to Digg for the tip

Giving Away Gmail

Ok I'm sure almost everyone has one by now, but somehow I ended up with over 100 Gmail invites in my Gmail account this morning so I'm giving them away to the first 100 people who email me at james@closetgeek.net. Not sure what Gmail is click here.

February 04, 2005

A Little More Linux

In keeping with the Linux theme I seem to have going on right now, in addition to live Linux OS CD's it seems live Linux game CD's are all the rage.
The following are bootable Linux game distros which means you can take them anywhere you go and use them on almost any system without physically installing the games on the computer.

1. Games Knoppix - watch for an updated version later this month.
2. Advance CD - A bootable Cd for use with Mame and NES-Roms. Not sure what Mame is go here.
3. Linux Live Game Project

Thanks to Scott Moschella for the links.

February 03, 2005

18 Live Linux Distros, No Waiting

OSNews.com has a great round-up of the 18, yes that's right, 18 most popular live Linux distros.
A live Linux distro is a Linux operating system stored on a bootable CD, which is a great way to learn Linux without actually installing it on your system.
You just pop the CD into your computer and turn your system on and viola you have a Linux OS.
I personally use SUSE Linux, after playing around with Knoppix for a few months, on one of my systems and love it.
You can read the OSNews.com round-up here.