TWiT Podcasts Going Off-Topic

I've been a big fan of the TWiT podcasts. Especially the Apple, Windows and security related podcasts. But lately, the content of those podcasts seem to shift to too much off-topic talk. Take the latest edition of Security Now! (Cross-Site-Scripting - Part II). The podcasts is about an hour in length, but the first half hour is nothing but talk about the Sony e-book reader, and favorite writers. What's that got to do with security?? I don't know. Same goes for MacBreak Weekly. It's more about having a good time for the authors, than about bringing some news. I don't mind that the authors are having fun creating the content. Hell, I appreciate a good laugh as much as the next guy, but keep it on topic. Too bad that only about 50% of the content has something to do with the actual title (Mac / Security). If they keep this up, they will loose a listener (not that they might care).

Posted on April 10, 2007 by Willem and filed under Annoying, Apple, Personal, Security.

Blog Spam (part deux)

The last couple of weeks my blog was under some sort of spam attack. I got about 50 to 80 spam comments a day. Thankfully, Askimet intercepted 99% of those messages. But Askimet shouldn't be getting these messages, because my captcha plugin should keep them out... well, it didn't. Yesterday, I found Wordpress Hashcash. A plugin which uses crypto to keep automated spammers away. So far it's working. UPDATE: ~~ever since I installed WP-Hashcash it has been awfully quiet on the spamming front :-)~~ Never mind... Thankfully Askimet is catching them all (50 per day at this moment)

Posted on April 5, 2007 by Willem and filed under Annoying, Website, WordPress.

Blog Spam

I've got this blog running for a couple of months now. Even though not many comments are left behind (I don't care), the spammers definitely found my blog. I receive over 30 spam comments a day now. Thanks to the Askimet Anti-spam plugin for Wordpress, the spam entries are quarantined.

Blog Spam

Every spam entry looks the same, and all the links the f*ckers try to leave behind won't work (I must admin that I try some of the links they are leaving behind). So I ask you; What's the point in spamming useless links? If a link won't work, you won't even try a (spammed) link in the future, because it's a waist of time. Same goes for e-mail spam. I receive lots of spam in my inbox, but what is the use in advertising viagra, if the shop is offline.I guess that there are just too many people with too much spare time on there hands. But not enough to create, or host a decent online drugstore :-)

Posted on March 31, 2007 by Willem and filed under Annoying, Website, WordPress.

Major Server Downtime

Last night my server went down. There was a 'poof', and then nothing. The status LED on my motherboard was still in the green, so it could be either the motherboard, CPU or the power supply. This morning I head out to the local computer dealer to get me a new motherboard, CPU, and a power supply. Thankfully, it was just the power supply that died. This might actually be a good opportunity to upgrade my server to a Mac Mini.

Posted on March 30, 2007 by Willem and filed under Annoying, Personal, WordPress.

Wordpress 2.1.2 Update

I upgraded my version of Wordpress to version 2.1.2. This went the usual 'problems'. First of all I 'forgot' to make a recent backup. Second, I used Transmit (an OSX FTP Client) to upload the new pages. Transmit has the possibility to overwrite files. No worries (I thought), I just renamed the files I editted, do I could rename them back when I had uploaded the new files. It seems that I didn't read the warning very well. When I overwrote the directories, Transmit removed them first and uploaded the new files afterwards. This meant that all my uploads, and customized files were gone..... aaaaargh. Fortunatelly, I had a backup from two weeks ago, so I could get the old files. This reminds me to make a decent backup before doing anything about my Wordpress installation in the future....

Posted on March 22, 2007 by Willem and filed under Annoying, Personal, Website, WordPress.

Remote Annoyances

It's been a couple of days since I got my new home cinema set, and there are several annoyances with remote controls. My old home cinema components were also from Pioneer, so I guessed that the new remotes would be similar, but boy I was wrong. The new remote for the AV receiver has about 10 times as many buttons, with every at least 2 functions per button. The remote for the Pioneer DVR-545 lacks several key buttons on the remote;

numeric keys for zapping
buttons for going fast forward and reverse
Audio and subtitle selection

If you need those controls (and I need them a lot), you have to slide the remote open, and use a SHIFT button to alter in movie settings (like the subtitles). Why not place these buttons on the surface? So newer doesn't mean better IMO

Posted on March 21, 2007 by Willem and filed under Annoying, Hardware, Personal.

Microsoft Windows 2003 Service Pack 2 Released

Microsoft released Service Pack 2 for Windows 2003 this week. Normally, the release will be announced, but this time they released it quietly (??). Anyway, I tried to upgrade my experimental Windows 2003 SP1 server with SP2, but that was a no-go. It seems that if yo uninstalled Internet Explorer 7 AFTER you installed sp1, you need to uninstall IE7 (according to the release notes).

Internet Explorer If you installed Internet Explorer 7 after installing Windows Server 2003 SP1, you must uninstall Internet Explorer 7 before you install Windows Server 2003 SP2.

After this you can install Service Pack 2. This means 2 reboots instead of 1 (are we going back to the old days where you needed a reboot every time you sneezed??) First of all, I didn't want IE7, but it got pushed down my throat in their so-called 'critical updates'. And second, this confirms the lack of inter-department communication in Redmond, otherwise this wouldn't be necessary.... And the fun continues.... After uninstalling IE7 I received an 'Access Denied' error while updating. Research on that error gave me some pages relating to Windows XP service pack installations. It seems that there might be some registry keys which are not modify-able by the installation of SP2. For godsake, I run the update under the administrator account. Why can't the installer modify the registry setting for me? Why do I have to screw around with the registry editor and logfiles to install a freakin' service pack from Microsoft :mad: ? The Windows box goes out the window, as soon I have enough money to get me a OSX based server.... UPDATE: The update via Windows Update also didn't work. It didn't show the Access Denied error, but it wouldn't install SP2. I did get it to work though by 'resetting' the permissions on the registry with the following command:

secedit /configure /cfg %windir%\repair\secsetup.inf /db secsetup.sdb /verbose

Posted on March 15, 2007 by Willem and filed under Annoying, Microsoft, Operating Systems.

More EU Action Against Apple

And yet another dumb-ass politician with no clue whatsoever is starting a campaign against Apple. Again the iTunes Music Store (ITMS) is the victim in this crusade. A certain Meglena Kuneva is complaining about the fact that music bought at the ITMS can only be played on the iPod. Well, Meglena Kuneva, I got some considerations for you:

Music bought in the ITMS can be played on Windows and Apple platforms (iTunes, which is free).
5 platforms can be authorized to play these songs. This means that you can buy 1 song and play it legally on your work, at home, on your laptop, on your wife's PC etc.
Music bought in music stores selling the MS flavor (PlayForSure) can ONLY be played on Windows platforms.
ITMS music can be burned on CD's by default, lot's of MS flavors won't allow that. There are some limitations on burning when you're burning playlists.
Music burned to CD can be ripped to MP3, and can be played on ANY mp3 player.
Music protected with PlayForSure solution, can't even be played on their own Zune media player, so you have to buy the song(s) multiple times.

The biggest advance is that there are no different flavors of FairPlay. The MS DRM can be different on each song. Sometimes you're not allowed to do anything but listen to it on you're PC, while other implementations allow you to do more with the music. This is nice, but when you have plenty of songs, how do you keep the limitations apart? An accurate list with the Apple FairPlay DRM limitations can be found here.

Posted on March 12, 2007 by Willem and filed under Annoying, Apple, News.

Sony Limits PS2 Compatibility on PS3

The great thing about the current game consoles is that people who have (owned) an older version still can play their games. most XBox games run on the XBox 360. Nintendo also offers great backwards compatibility on their Wii. Sony has to be the one company who differs. The current PS3 (sold in the US and Japan) offer backwards compatibility with PS2 games (to some extend). The PS3 which will be available in Europe will have a different 'engine'. This means that backwards compatibility is much less. Way to go Sony. This means that the current PS2 owners have to keep their PS2 as well.... I'm stil in the orientation phase in deciding which console (Xbox360, Nintendo Wii or the PS3) I should buy, when I get my new HD-TV. I guess that PS3 is dropping a few places with this strategy, cause older games come cheap and can still offer lot's of fun.

Posted on February 24, 2007 by Willem and filed under Annoying, Gaming, Hardware.

Macrovision Responds to Steve Jobs' Open Letter

A couple of days ago, Steve Jobs posted an open letter regarding DRM. Since then several others have responded to the letter. Some against it (RIAA of course :neutral: ), others in favor of it. Today, I ran into an open letter by MacroVision. These are the guys that made it impossible (euh.. well... a bit harder actually) to copy the old VHS tapes. They can't agree with Steve, cause that would put them out of business. So they came up with some bery intelligent (NOT) reasons why DRM is good for the consumer: DRM is broader than music Sure, for them. Just put the bloody stuff on everything. Music, Video, Software. If they have the chance they'll probably put it on a sandwich. DRM increases not decreases consumer value With DRM, I can't put my purchase music or movies on another player or play it under Linux. If I want to do that, I have to BUY it several times. And that puts more money into their pockets. The funniest line in that paragraph is probably: "Abandoning DRM now will unnecessarily doom all consumers to a "one size fits all" situation that will increase costs for many of them." [sarcasm]Indeed going for plain-old mp3's, or mpg's/avi's cripples me to hell and back. Can't play it on anything these days.[/sarcasm] DRM will increase electronic distribution I don't get this one. It is well known that people don't want protected stuff. They want to play the things they bought on players they choose, and not just the players the RIAA and others decide. So removing DRM would mean that more people are able to play the content on their devices of choice. It would also open the entire Linux market (they are left out with all the DRM protected stuff). More prospect customers means more transactions, or at least the number of customers / transactions would be the same. But if they stay the same, you get a bigger margin on sales, because you don't have to pay for the DRM licensing. DRM needs to be interoperable and open Can't argue with this one, but it means that they have to open the sourcecode, so that the Linux communitie can also use the technology. And we all know what that means... It means that all DRM will be cracked/circumvented within days, so that's not gonna happen ever.

Posted on February 16, 2007 by Willem and filed under Annoying, General, Software.