10.28.03
Posted in forum archive at 12:29 pm by
Yep, that’s right. SCO, in a new wave of attacks on the Linux community, is declaring that the GPL licence under which Linux is distributed violates the US constitution.
In it, SCO says that although both itself, IBM and others have contributed copyright code to Linux under the GNU Public Licence (GPL) as well as distributed Linux products, the licence itself is neither applicable, nor enforceable, as the only body that can enforce it is the owner (the Free Software Foundation) and it only does this ’selectively’.
So SCO believes that it will prove the GPL baseless in court. If so the ramifications would be huge. I can’t count the number of GPL music apps that I’ve used over the years. To suddenly have those invalid means that… well…
Things could get really, really ugly really really fast. 
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10.27.03
Posted in forum archive at 10:18 am by
- Just for Clarification: This isn’t Window’s chat feature, this is the data swapping portion of the OS that runs in the background-
Concerned about user’s security, AOL has started turning off the Windows Messenger Service on it’s customer machines; 15 million in the last two weeks.
Spammers have co-opted the service, which is typically only used to manage networks for businesses, to cause advertisements to pop-up in a gray box on home users’ desktops. By disabling the service, AOL aims to stop the pop-up boxes and also protect users against a flaw in the service that could let attackers control a Windows user’s PC.
The issue here is what rights does AOL have to be changing rather buried settings on a user’s machine? On one hand you can’t expect most users to stay up on the latest news and do this for themselves. On the other you have a company changing settings on your machine in your house (something that seems a little invasive to me).
Course, then I remember that it’s AOL doing this and I instantly know it must be an evil plot of some sort.
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10.24.03
Posted in forum archive at 3:09 pm by
The Phantom console crew recently had a press conference and Q&A session. The result? Even more confusion:
Overall, however, there’s the impression that these guys really have little knowledge of or respect for the gaming public. In all of a 90 minute presentation/Q&A session, not a single game was mentioned by name by anyone from Infinium. They seem to be of the opinion that gamers will just buy the console because it’s “cool and new.” They claim to support indie development but the impression is they’d rather just exploit it. There’s an almost sinister air about their trademarked slogan, “By gamers for gamers,” because there’s really doesn’t seem to be a gamer among them.
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10.23.03
Posted in forum archive at 11:50 am by
Remember X10? The company that assaulted you with pop-up ads the second you got online? Apparently red-ink is what’s been popping up lately cause they’ve filed for bankruptcy.
But X10 attorney Ada Ko of Lane Powell Spears Lubersky told the Seattle Times that the bankruptcy wasn’t a result of the lawsuit but of overall business. “The lawsuit was just another creditor,” the attorney was quoted as saying.
Other creditors include America Online, Microsoft, Overture, FedEx, Foxnews.com, Google, eBay and Yahoo!, the bankruptcy filing said.
So basically anyone who ever ran their ad ended up being owed money. Nice.
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10.20.03
Posted in forum archive at 11:11 am by
Yep. You can get it right here. My sentiments can be summed up along these lines:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2003/20031020l.gif
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10.14.03
Posted in forum archive at 11:46 am by
…a robotic arm, that is.
The device relies on tiny electrodes, each one resembling a wire thinner than a human hair. After removing patches of skull from two monkeys to expose the outer surface of their brains, Nicolelis and his colleagues stuck 96 of those tiny wires about a millimeter deep in one monkeyÂ’s brain and 320 of them in the other animalÂ’s brain.
The surgeries were painstaking, taking about 10 hours, and ended with the pouring of a substance like dental cement over the area to substitute for the missing bits of skull.
The monkeys were unaffected by the surgery, Nicolelis said. But now they had tufts of wires protruding from their heads, which could be hooked up to other wires that ran through a computer and on to a large mechanical arm.
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10.09.03
Posted in forum archive at 11:48 am by
Have you guys been following this? Earlier this month Valve was hacked into and the source code for their upcoming Half-Life 2 was stolden. This wasn’t any pansy kiddie scripting either. This was a full on clever assault over the course of several months that involved everything from keyword logging to packet sniffing.
Valve, perhaps more than most game companies, is affected by this. Selling the engine to other game developers makes them quite a bit of money. With their code floating about the ether every game made with that engine is endanger of cheaters, hackers, and other nastiness. As a result, the game has slipped from a near release clear to April of next year so that they can recode sensitive parts.
A new wrinkle has sprung up, however. An anonymous hacker has spoken up and, after seeing the code, claims that Valve’s Sept 30th ship date was an impossibility and that this is all some kind of complicated ruse to get some press, buy some time, and clean up all the existing holes.
Intrigue, no?
Maybe I should claim that music mogul was hacked rather than admit I’m way behind schedule. 
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10.02.03
Posted in forum archive at 2:02 am by
The first of what I hope will be many BB games has come and gone with wonderful results. Here with us now is Jennifer Garner, fresh from a well deserved shower after all that butt kicking in the steel cage, ready to inspire the next contest:
http://abc.go.com/primetime/alias/images/gallery/garner_ep12.jpg
Dressed as she is as if following the white rabbit and having obviously swallowed a pill of some sort (red or blue), the next contest will decide
[size=18:7b4f6cbceb]The Best Computer Geek Movie of All Time!!!!![/size:7b4f6cbceb]
(or at least this month)
Same Rules As Last Time. Without further ado, here are our choices:
- The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes
- Wayne’s World – (Garth was a Geek)
- Tron
- War Games
- The Matrix
- Sneakers
- Hackers
- Short Circuit
- Johnny Mnemonic
- Virtuosity
- Ghost In the Shell
- Weird Science
- Swordfish
- Office Space
- Blade Runner
- Minority Report
However, this time there is a twist. If you’ve got a great computer geek movie that’s not on this starting list you may use your post to add it. However, like last time, no back to back removals, removal/insertion, or double add. Gotta spread the love around.
[size=18:7b4f6cbceb]May the best Computer Geek Movie Win![/size:7b4f6cbceb]
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