08.28.03
Posted in forum archive at 9:52 am by
Well, in the next few days the house here (3 guys upstairs, Val and I, and the couple downstairs) will be getting DSL. Right now Qwest/MSN are running a sweet little deal and they hands down beat any other DSL/ISP combo in price.
The only problem is that they do not provide static IPs. Usually this isn’t a big deal. However, if I’m going to do any web hosting/serving out of my own house I’d like a stable IP address.
I was looking for software solutions over at ZDNet and found over 68 results for a ‘DNS Server for Windows’ search. Several of these software programs even provide dynamic IP address translation for free – for example, you run their client program on your computer that monitors your IP address. When it changes it updates their system and in turn you get a reliable YourName.WhatEverSoftware.com. You can buy your own name, like Quakeserver.com for a small additional fee.
Does anybody have any experience with this? Have any good programs to recommend? 
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08.27.03
Posted in forum archive at 5:34 pm by
It may be a tad premature but I’ve been working for awhile on this (first as a concept, then the parser, now the virtual storefront) and I’m ready to start showing it-
It? It in this case would be Music Mogul – the Fantasy Music Label online game.
http://voxpopdesign.com/demo/music_mogul/index.cfm
Not too much there to click on or interact with but there will be in the coming weeks. While I was still mulling things over MTV went and made their own version – however, from what I’ve seen its pretty weak and very biased toward MTV friendly artists (you know, those that whore themselves on MTV’s Beach Bimbo IV). Right now it’s a proof of concept design piece. However, the parsing in the background with will provide all the lovely data that the game will be based on only requires a few more tweaks.
I’d love to hear any thoughts or comments about the look or design.
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Posted in forum archive at 4:06 pm by
Proving that when push comes to shove, Redbaron can flex the computational muscel. Just look at the Team Bit Rot Stats now loacated on the new mutednoise.com frontpage. In both units processed this week and total units done Mr. RedBaron is tops. *cheer*
As you may have seen mutednoise is remodeling (if you just skipped directly to the forums, I don’t blame you. The front page was pretty static).
Over the next several weeks I may continue to change things around but the Team Bit Rot stats will stay up and ideally be updated daily (except for this weekend, when I go out of town…uh-oh).
Just some things worth mentioning:
*currently I’m only displaying WU (work units) although I can see how important the credit system is – the bigger (and thus longer time invested) the packet the more credit a person recieves. Look for Credit rankings shortly.
*In the % of total column, the numbers will appear red if the machine listed has lost percentage of total units done (it’s loosing ground) and green if its gaining work unit share in the past week. Currently it’s set to flag variations greater/less than 0.25/-0.25. However, with the number of units completed this may have to be adjusted.
*who is TMH? They’re doing great (almost 9% of all units done) and I have no clue who it is…
On a side note, if you’ve got an old post that you think is worth saving mention it here – I’ll be purging this Friday.
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08.26.03
Posted in forum archive at 12:56 pm by
You that are old hands at firewall protection will have to bear with my naive awe.
This just really intrigues me. With all the little nasties floating around the internet I thought I really need to get on the ball and get a little more protection for my babies before these virii and worms actually do something malicious. I hate the thought of my loved ones sick because of some script kiddie – if they’re under the weather I want it to be my fault, darn it.
This morning I downloaded ZoneAlarms free firewall software. I am simply blown away – every 2 or 3 minutes a message pops up letting me know that another incoming message has been blocked:
ZoneAlarm blocked what was most likely a port scan by a remote computer trying to determine if your machine was operating as a web or mail server.
ZoneAlarm blocked traffic to port 135 on your machine from port 3096 on a remote computer whose IP address is 216.126.195.145. This communication attempt may have been a port scan, or simply one of the millions of unsolicited commercial or network control messages that are routinely sent out over the Internet. Such unsolicited messages are often called Internet background noise.
Internet background noise – Like the entire mass is humming with automated chatter, machines just talking to each other. If I really get romantic about it I would pose that it would be this noise where we would find a Gibsonesque ghost in the machine…
Anyway, just thought I’d share. ZoneAlarm is working great – really impressed with all you get in just the free version. 
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08.24.03
Posted in forum archive at 12:14 pm by
From Penny-Arcade, the source for biased, rumor monger reporting (that is every bit the facinating read):
We had a reader go by Infinium Labs and take pictures of their “facility” ( that’s when we found out it was a strip mall in the Florida Keys ) only to find out it was a single desk in a 100 x 100ft room with two phones and no furniture. That was about 4 months ago.
I talked to the Tim Roberts guy on the phone when he returned my call ( 22 days after I left a message ) and when I asked him about all this…he HUNG UP ON ME. I asked him if he was looking for investors, he said “We are actively recruiting investors”. I asked him if they had any consoles on hand, he said “We have several hundred prototype models here in the office”. So then I asked him where the prototypes were made, he said “right here in our facility”. Then I told him I had seen his 100ft x 100ft office space conveinently located next to Missing Link Art Gallery in the strip mall ( located at 5380 Gulf of Mexico Dr. Longboat Key, Fl 34228 ) and he went NUTS!!! “WHO THE F*CK IS THIS!?!?! BLAH BLAH I’LL SUE YOU”.
Hope you weren’t planning to buy a Phantom from Infinium Labs just yet.
http://www.phantom.net/images/video/main.jpg
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08.13.03
Posted in forum archive at 12:46 pm by
Not I, most likely because my computers have been off the net since Saturday night cause Val and I were in Cali. I just checked and I had been vigilent enough to already have the patch installed on my laptop (somewhat doubtful about the two machines at home on dial up though).
My mother’s machine has it, however. Some quick facts (from Rediff:
Who’s at risk?
computers running Windows XP, Windows 2000, Microsoft Server 2003 and Windows NT 4.0
How does one get MSBlast?
This is rather insidious – all you need is the right host environment and be online… That’s it. You don’t need to blindly open email or download strange files. MSBlast is unusually intellegent because it scans the Internet for vulnerable computers and when it finds any it downloads a file called msblast.exe on to the computer.
How do I know if I have MSBlast?
Right click on the ‘task bar’ and select ‘Task Manager’. Click on the ‘Processes’ tab. If you can find a process called msblast.exe, then your system is infected (if you’re having trouble sorting through all the processes, clicking on “Image Name” will sort the processes alphabetically).
AHHHH! I have it! How do I remove it?
From ZDNet comes a fairly detailed answer (click on the preceding ZDNet to be taken to the page).
Step 1: Patch the system against further attacks. Go to http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ and follow the instructions there. It may be running slow because of all the users attempting to update their machines, but if you’re persistant and patient you’ll get though. (You’ll be asked to reboot after installing the critical updates).
Step 2: Now before you can delete MSBlast.exe, you have to stop the running process. Open up the ‘task bar’ again the same way you did before. Right click once on MSBlast.exe and choose to ‘End Process’.
Step 3: Locate the MSBlast.exe file in your system 32 directory (C:\WINNT\system32 on most windows xp machines – if your computer is not the same just search for the file using the ‘Find file’ function on the windows start bar). Once you’ve found the file, delete it.
Step 4: With MSBlast.exe deleted, restart your machine.
At this point you are technically done – there is no troublesome worms in your computer. However, MSBlast does change a registry entry, putting in the following:
Hkey_local_machine\software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ Run “windows auto update” = msblast.exe I just want to say LOVE YOU SAN!! Bill
If you want to correct that here is what you do (warning – editing the registry without knowing exactly what to do can be a dangerous thing that may destroy your computer, bring forth the apocolyse, and cause Milky Way candy bars to cease to exist if done incorrectly- do so at your own risk)
Step 5: Go to the start button and select ‘Run…’ from the available options.
Step 6: Type ‘regedit’ and hit enter.
Step 7: Navigate to the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
Step 8: In the right hand section of the registry editor, the following value will be found:
“windows auto update”=”msblast.exe”
Step 9: Delete the above statement
Step 10: Reboot. DONE!
Hope this helps. Blue, have you stored this worm away for later study with the rest of your collection? Looks like it exploits a DCOM vulnerability…
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