Tuesday, September 28, 2010

So as an engineering student I've been pretty busy lately but this newest article is just too big to pass up. It seems a group of hackers were payed, or at least organized into forming what is being called on of the most advanced hacks ever done. the hack labed Stuxnet was aimed at taking down industrial facilties in Iran by controling the firmware in machines, Including sites where Iran is currently doing work on nuclear weapons and nuclear power. Although the people behind the worm have yet to be revealed I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only one who wishes that they succeeded.
Also you have to read between the lines a little as to how bad Iran was actually hit because they are currently denying everything.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/innovation/09/24/stuxnet.computer.malware/index.html

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

BBC - Piracy and the MPAA and RIAA DDoS attacks

In retaliation to attacks on behalf of the MPAA by an Indian software firm, Aiplex, users of the popular torrent site The Pirate Bay fired back against the MPAA, RIAA and Aiplex itself with the use of Low Orbit Ion cannons to DDoS the websites of these parties.
Although I'm sure that we can all agree that such action has only ever been a hammers throw away from happening after all the suits and other action taken against the community by these very organizations.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11371315

Monday, September 20, 2010

College Life

College Life has officially started for me, First full day on the campus and first party at college as a college student.

Apparently there is a man in south africa who tweets details of all the police speed/traffic traps to over 2000 followers, I think its about time that someone made an app for that. just saying.

I hope everyone is doing well, I'm going to everyones pages but i've been skimping on comments to save time to go out and socialize. drop your URL in the CBox and i'll make sure to visit you!

Friday, September 17, 2010

.....

..... post your URL in the Cbox and i'll visit your page/comment. Still no noteworthy news.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

WOAH-OH-OH-AH-AH-AH-AAAA-HA-AH-AH-AH

THERES NO F#@$ING NEWS!!! AHHHHHHHHHHH >.<
I guess I'll post a story when something interesting happens. in the meantime here is an inspirational video. Enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCNICT2en_U

Monday, September 13, 2010

Symmetric 1 Gb/s Personal Networks In The USA: They're Here!

Sorry for not posting yesterday, but once again there wasn't any real news and I couldn't quite bring myself to make another blank post. I still went around most people's pages although I was kinda lazy and didn't comment. (sorry for those I missed, I fell asleep on the keyboard) But today we actually have some news!

(CNN) -- If you want the fastest internet connection in America, it may be wise to skip Silicon Valley and New York. Instead, look to southern Tennessee.

The unlikely city of Chattanooga says it began offering one-gigabit-per-second internet upload and download speeds Monday, a rate it says is the fastest in the United States -- and 250 times the average internet speed in the nation.

The city says the move is an investment in the future.

"It's like any other leading technology, people will invent ways to use it," said Ron Littlefield, mayor of the city of 170,000. "And having it here will bring those inventive minds to focus in Chattanooga."

 Personally I think that price is a bit steep since you can get T1/T3 for about the same, and the same service in Tokyo costs between 40-50$. I think that the overinflated price point will drive away those who would be interested in the service. Also as a side note I would be interested to know how strict they are about torrenting, because lets face it, currently thats the only real reason why civilians would need 1Gb/S upload.

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Intel Attempts To Combine CPU/GPU, Malicious E-Mail Worm Promises Porn, Delivers Pain

Well last night was fun, Hot chicks + bro + hottub + modified version of truth or dare (never have I ever-3 fingers- with penalty game) = amazing.

Intel has set its sights on a larger share of the GPU market, how do they expect to accomplish this? Not by going more powerful or more less expensive, but by combining the CPU and GPU. Why is this useful? It takes a lot of power to keep these chips running but by combining them more efficiency is gained in power usage,  power transfer, and most importantly cooling. Combining the cooling systems of the GPU and CPU will require a much more hefty cooler then currently used on most chipsets, but it will also decrease power usage and noise by limiting the number of fans. An important step for mobility as is currently seen with laptop heatsinks, which however present the problem of transferring heat directly over the motherboard when moving along from GPU to CPU to the environment. But while these results may be more "Helpful" then "Needed" for laptops, it becomes and entirely different story when it comes to smartphones, tablets, and netbooks, all of which rely on relatively power neutral components to lengthen their battery lives while staying speedy and efficient. Intel currently fails to contribute a single chipset to the Smart phone market, and they are intent on changing that.

 There is a new computer worm that siezes control of a user's email client when opened. Apparently clicking spam messages that promise free porn isn't good for your computer, what a novel concept.

Friday, September 10, 2010

N/a

Going out tonight so no time to write a real post, stay classy fellas I'll make the rounds the tomorrow and do double the work.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

The Future of Digital Media: The Piracy Revolution

In lieu of writing of technological advancements today (due to the lack of news) This post will be a discussion on the future of digital media and how its will be shaped by the ever increasing thrall of pirates. Feel free to post your ideas on the future course of digital media, in all its forms: Music, movies, television shows, e-books, and video games. (also porn)

My theory is as follows:

Music will become free to download from corporate sponsorship, It doesn't provided that the corporation releasing the music has the facilities to record the music itself its possible to cut out a whopping 90% of the cost of producing music. Artists themselves will receive somewhere in the range of 5-10C per song downloaded, This system will also allow for easier discovery of music by allowing users to download as much music as they want at no cost other then ADs on the site / possibly on the CD cover art just a simple "Brought to you by * *" or by integrating ads into the media client used to play the songs. ADs will target users tastes on a personal level and users will be able to choose what ADs they want to see, be it concert tickets, new food products, or new tech etc. Such a system would possibly increase the profits seen by artists who can now bring their music to the whole world with a built in matchmaking system to help users find new artists similar to their tastes.

Want to listen to a song before you spend that precious hard drive space? No problem, listen to the whole song streaming, say goodbye to crappy 30 second previews. No hard drive space at all? still want to listen to your music? Stream it : Radio style much like last.fm or Pandora, choose between random songs or a library of your choosing, Ads will be in the form of 15-30 second messages after every 5-10 songs, and each song play will generate 1/4-1/2c toward the artist. People who want to skip ads in streamed content, or to remove whatever ads come with downloads will have the choice of subscribing to a monthly fee or paying 1.1x what the distributor pays for the music.

Movies: Outside of Theaters we will we the rise of subscription and pay-per-download services, although It is likely that the prices will drop. I think the ideal model currently is probably netflix who offers both the service of DVDs/Blu-Rays and the convenience of streaming content.
 I however have no idea what will happen to the theater system, other then hopefully reduced salaries for the highest paid actors/actresses/directors/producers which will hopefully lead to lower box office ticket prices. although I recognize that this is probably just wishful thinking.

As for television I believe we will soon move away from the schedule system. There is no longer any need for sending generic content to every house, we will start to see a more personalized approach, with TV shows "becoming available to view" instead of coming on the air at certain times, there will be a greater deal of library footage of TV shows and TV movies, in short we will move towards an "On-demand" oriented network.

e-books will probably go a similar way to music, and will be paid for by ad content.

Video games will probably become free on release, but will require payment for online use and additional down-loadable content that will be released in small more affordable packages, Steam will probably become THE source for computer games, and the various consoles will all have both online and offline disc distribution, (although you can be sure that getting the disc version will cost $)

Porn: well porn is just advertising for other porn isn't it? and its not like people are going to stop making it even if it is no longer profitable. I mean to a certain extend it can just be relatively expensive legal prostitution, and there is always going to be demand for the worlds oldest profession. My prediction is that most porn will become free and user generated, although a series of pay-sites will continue to exist, many sharing customers through multi-key systems.


Anyone have any Ideas on any of the categories?

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Yesterday/Today: Hurd Joins Oracle / Nano Tech For Cooling Systems

Firstly I would like to apologize to everyone for not posting yesterday, I'm trying to fix some problems with my video card and XFX had me running Memtest 86 all day. But don't worry I'll make sure to get around to everyone's new posts today!

Short:
Mark Hurd of HP has defected to Oracle after being Fired for mismanagement at HP, Oracle has promised him an annual salary of 950k with a chance for a 10 million $ bonus each year. HP however is filling suit due to what they believe is a breach of contract, as they suspect Hurd of selling trade secrets for the deal.

The electric car: "The Buckeye Bullet" Made it to 307MPH


























 Researchers from Sweden's Institute of Technology have discovered that adding some nanoparticles to water can improve its ability to conduct heat by around 60 percent. These particles, most commonly oxides of commonly used heatsink metals such as aluminum, copper and zinc, work by enhancing the liquid's (most likely a mix of ethyl glycol and water) ability to absorb the heat from components while still allowing for the even flow that makes water cooling so effective. Such technology could help companies lower energy costs, and allow components to function more efficiently, and could help tech related companies produce even smaller clusters of transistors, knowing that they now have cooling solutions for the everyday user, and the corporate render-farm alike.

for more info see: http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/innovation/09/07/eco.nano.web/index.html

Monday, September 6, 2010

Absolutely Nothing!!!

So Today in the world of technology: absolutely nothing!!!! Well nothing worth going into detail about here. A list of song un-noteworthy things
iTunes Ping: Social Networking + iTunes + Typical iTunes users = Hipster faggotry

Facebook once again is pissing people off by lightening their privacy with the iPhone Ap "Places" Its simple... don't use the Ap... also this one is just lulzy... I mean really facebook a stalker button? Allowing you to follow in detail EVERYTHING one of your friends does on FB? thats just wrong, I think we all know bitches be crazy.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/social.media/09/03/facebook.stalker.button.mashable/index.html

and this: http://www.hackiswack.com/ I mean, are you serious?

Thats all for today. Thanks for the support, although can I ask that people
View/comment >>> Anything

To new Bloggers: Make sure you leave a link, or have one in your profile so I can add you! the Cbox on the right is a great place as it allows me/other users to just click the hyperlink!

Also anyone who still has a captacha take it off under Settings > Comments > Show word verification? = "No"

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Samsung's Galaxy Tab, An In Depth Look

I know it seems my posts keep coming later and later, and I don't really have a legitimate excuse today, too much time spent playing vidya games. Anyway, done with the rounds, for a while I would appreciate more views then anything as my % points are higher then Schrödinger's cat is dead and alive! (engineering joke that wasn't funny.. ever)

The Samsung Galaxy Tab promises to be a hefty tool for those in the market of mobile tablets. The main features of the Galaxy Tab include its 380 gram weight (.8Lb) or just over half of the non-3g enabled iPad. And the memory, display and processor will all be designed and made by samsung. The tablet will run the Android 2.2 operating system (although it will be upgradeable to 3.0) and will be able to run Flash 10.1, something that the iPad can't. All models will come standard with 3g and WiFi. The device will be able to play high-definition video for at least 7 hours on a single battery charge, and perform less strenuous tasks for much more than 10 hours, a considerable step up from the iPad's 10 hours max battery life. And the device will feature a  7-inch, 1024x600-pixel LCD display.

Overall The device seems to be packing quite a punch, and given that it is planned to be sold through mobile carriers much like a smart phone, it should be interesting to see the price points, although it is predicted that it will come in just under the price point for the 3G enabled iPads.

Sidenote: There was another article on the subject from CNET, but personally I can't take anything they publish with the word "Apple" in it seriously. I mean their previous articles about the iPad were taking about how revolutionary it was when really apple just took prexisting technology and added the multi-touch screen and OS from their popular phone line. Also any website that quotes market research done on products by companies that blatantly have a bias toward the company being reviewed, is not trust worthy

"Apple's iPad is unlikely to face a viable competitor until 2011, allowing the company to maintain a dominant share in the tablet market at least through 2012," research firm iSuppli said in August." but they didn't have a dominate market share when this was written, and iSupplies own projections state that by 2012 they could hope to gain 61.7% of the market share, meaning that there is still a year and a half before they hit that mark....

also the CNET head to head battles, don't you hate it when the non-apple product wins EVERY technical category but the apple device wins because CNET claims that style > substance. ah well enough CNET rage.

Saturday, September 4, 2010

Late Edition feed / Life / Thanks

Sorry for posting so late, but I was out shopping for stuff for my dorm room for 6 hours, so I had to take a nap and eat some baby back ribs before I was fully functional.

 3 Sentence snapshots of tech today:

Samsung released news of its new Tablet computer the Galaxy Tab, what appears to be an enlarged and empowered version of the popular new Galaxy S phone. The Tablet weighs about half what the iPad weighs and packs a hefter punch, all models include 3G connectivity. The tablet is supposed to hit stores at the end of this month in the USA, and mid october in the EU, prices are not yet set, although It is known that it will run the android OS and will have plans available from at least one major telecoms company. (an in-depth look tomorrow)

Toshiba has announced the voluntary recall of about 41,000 notebook computers worldwide at risk of overheating and burning users. The recalled models are the Satellite T135, Satellite T135D and Satellite ProT130 notebook computers. If you recently bought one of these models please contact Toshiba on what to do.

Telecoms company O2 is working on sorting out a problem with its iPhone subscribers where users are being charged data roaming fees even when data services are shut off. O2 has yet to make any headway in the matter although they are currently working with apple to resolve it.  It has been suggested that it might be a problem with O2s Visual Voicemail which is not turned off when other data services are..
  
 Craiglist has ended sexual service ads on its site. Thats right, no more hookers from craiglist. From now on you'll have to get your kicks from guys like this:


Finally thank you everyone for all the support. And an especially hefty thank you to the following. Who have been constant supporters almost from the begining of the blog. If you are looking for some dedicated bloggers, go ahead and hit them up! In no particular order:
http://sleepingthegame.blogspot.com/
 http://www.getjackedson.com/
 http://adpluscommunications.blogspot.com/
 http://taylorswiftbackstagepasses.blogspot.com/
http://kaizasozes.blogspot.com/
http://marketengine.blogspot.com/
http://drydensforge.blogspot.com/
http://anti-1337.blogspot.com/

Thanks so much for your support!

Friday, September 3, 2010

PS3 Hackchip Ban Upheld In AUS / Programing Released as Open Source

First off I would like to thank everyone for the support, Yesterday this blog hit its first 1000 Page impressions! Also, if anyone has any information on how to fix the comment text size can you please post it? I've tried everything I can and it just resets.

About a week ago I posted an updating discussing the new PS3 hackchip and sony's move to ban the chip. The band was upheld earlier today. The Australia ban prevents resellers OzModChips, ModSupplier and Quantronics from importing or distributing the device in Australia, and names the supplier as Chinese firm China Sun Trading Limited. All companies were asked to turn over any remaining dongles, but the legal war is still raging, especially with the new news related to this. A PS3 hack group has officially released the firmware that the USB dongles ran on! Unsigned code on the PS3 and disk back ups and playing games directly off the HDD is finally here! Piratefags and Homebrewers alike rejoice!
GET IT HERE: http://www.ps3hax.net/downloads.php?do=file&id=392

To use the file:
1. Download the file
2. Buy a USB micro-controller AT90USBKEY ($31) models(* AT90USB162 * AT90USB646 * AT90USB647 * AT90USB1286 * AT90USB1287 * ATMEGA32U4) Teensy++ USB Development Board ($24) or These Blackcat Boards http://www.embeddedcomputers.net/products/BlackcatUSB/
3. Flash the file onto the hardware
4. Plug into PS3, install
5.  ??????
6. Profit~!!
7. Enjoy!!

http://www.ps3-hacks.com/2010/08/31/diy-ps-jailbreak-may-be-available-soon/
http://www.ps3hax.net/2010/08/psgroove-open-source-psjailbreak-code-released/
http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/long-target-sonys-ps3-faces-pirate-onslaught-090310

Who knows what sony will do to try to stop it though.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Jobs Gives iPod Classic The Shaft / Captcha / Life Updates

Hey Everyone I know I'm late posting today, but I just installed League of Legends and spent half the day shopping for dorm stuff. Also I cut my thumb with a reciprocating saw yesterday when doing housework so its interesting how everything takes 3x as long with no left thumb.

Unrelated but helpful for me and shows you do occasionally visit the page: anyone who still has a captcha for comments, can you please remove them? Google's captcha doesn't play nice with Opera so sometimes I try to post a comment to your page and just get signed out of my comment profile (could be why you aren't getting comments from me)
Its really easy to get rid of, just go Dashboard > Settings > Comments tab >  turn "Show word verification?" to "No"

Finally as I mentioned yesterday, I took Steve Job's lack of commentary on the iPod Classic to mean that they are not going to update the it and will eventually drop it. It seems that CNN has the same thinking as they posted an article about it earlier today. The question has been asked of apple but as of yet there has been no response. This is actually quite sad for me as the iPod classic was my favorite of the line (Although my 80GB no longer works it served me well for 3 1/2 years)  It seems apple is once again on the track of Style > Substance (or maybe they just don't want to keep using the extra machinery?) After all iPod touch = iPhone - Phone.

Well feel free to post any apple related rage here. And its true what they say about Mac users being the least computer savvy, one of my friends who uses a Mac had an Ubuntu Graphic as his background and didn't understand what I was laughing about so I had to explain it to him.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Self Serving Military Chopper Disobeys Orders / Apples New Line

Since so many people have been commenting on the last post about how terminator will be occuring in real life soon, well it may already have, 5 days ago a military Helicopter when rogue when a section of its programing was corrupted by a software error.

"US Navy captain Tim Dunigan told Aviation Week that an MQ-8 "Fire Scout" robochopper, carrying out a test flight from the Patuxent River Naval Air Station in Maryland, “lost link and proceeded 23 miles north/northwest into restricted airspace,” on August 2.

The statement from Dunigan continues to add that “the operator team shifted to another ground control station, restoring link and successfully commanding the vehicle to recover at Webster Field”.

Av Week also quotes Rear Admiral William Shannon as attributing the problem to a "software logic flaw"."

The government has claimed that we have nothing to worry about however as they located the anomaly and rewrote the code, and have placed further restrictions on development of robotic  military vehicles, so hopefully no skynet... 

....yet.

In other news Apple Launched its revamped iPod line today, with the re-appearnce of apple tv. a product that flopped when consumers realized it could only view content approved and sold by apple. This will still be the case, but the content has recieved price drops in addition to support from Fox and ABC also the box will recieve a price cut from its outrageous 299$ to 99$. Personally I'll be waiting for google TV which is supposed to allow internet video and content from non-google sources, and will be out in just a few months.


 "It's also an iPhone without a contract," Jobs joked.
  The new line up of iPod touches are here, and appear to be exactly that, an iPhone, without the phone, not as if the iPhone was ever a decent phone anyway given the attena problems, and its poor service from AT&T. And job's lack of mentioning the iPod classic they may be considering dropping the line as it doesn't match the ascetics of other apple products (completely my hypothesis)

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/gaming.gadgets/09/01/apple.music.event/index.html?hpt=C2
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/26/fire_scout_washington_hiccup/