Why they do it

If you got a computer virus ten or fifteen years ago, you probably experienced the digital equivalent of a mean and nasty practical joke: ink poured on important papers, stink bombs, bags of dog poop on fire, insults spray-painted on your house, your car keyed. Generally, virus/worm authors wanted notoriety, a rush of power, or just to stick it to someone who wronged them.

Now, it's all about cash money.

The Conficker worm recently woke up, as you may have heard. No, it's not the end of the world, but we are starting to see some of what it's designed to do- make money fast. Infected Windows machines are starting to present notices along the lines of "Hello. Your computer is infected. For $49.95, you can be cleaned!"

Malware authors are not maladjusted teens living in their parents' basement; they are professional criminals trying to make money.

Microsoft: scared or stupid?

With a reactionary title like that, you might imagine that I have a hard-hitting article full of insights and interviews and evidence.

Microsoft has released a beta version of their next OS, imaginatively dubbed "Windows 7." I actually don't mind the name that much; I think that XP and Vista are silly names for versioned software. "What version are your running?" "Butter Hammer Pecan Movement!" Naturally, everybody and their dog wants to see about the next version of Windows; chances are that they will have to, anyway, once Redmond stops supporting their OS of choice or their hardware fails or their machine gets too old and crusty.

For quite a few years now, people have used peer-to-peer programs, applications, and networks to transfer large amounts of data semi-anonymously. Remember Napster in the Bad Old Days? Nowadays, most people use BitTorrent to transfer large files, and rightfully so; the algorithm is pretty efficient and makes great use of limited network bandwidth by spreading around the traffic burden in a sensical manner. A lot of Linux distros have used BitTorrent, since they operate on a limited budget and bandwidth costs. I know that other projects use BT to spread around large media files.

Also there's something about piracy and porn. Whatever.

So either Microsoft doesn't want to use BitTorrent (if so, my guess is NIH syndrome- look at Silverlight, their response to Flash) or they don't know about it (seems amazingly unlikely, but possible; perhaps the decision-makers don't get good info). Folks are using BT to distribute the Windows 7 beta anyway. Be nice to legitimize it, right?

I'm at a loss.

Communications convergence

Non-ironically, I want to opine about the various forms of communication I have at my fingertips, despite the fact that I've barely managed one blog post a week this month.

First, an examination of last month's NaBloPoMo experiment-slash-activity. Out of thirty days hath November, I wrote twenty-five posts. Not surprisingly, five of those days I went to BGG.Con and twittered my words. After con, I did up a Geeklist of the things I taught and played. I had thought that blogging once-a-day in November would have gotten me into the blogging habit; I think that BGG.Con and Twittering disrupted that nascent habit. Even though I cheated a little with some timestamps and missed a few days, I consider my November a blogging success.

Why the slowdown? Some of it is Twitter and my Google Phone. Right now, I get email, SMS messages, Google IM, Twitter, voice mail and phone calls on my telephone. I feel like I am communicating enough. Couple the tethering to my phone (sorry dear) with my sharing nifty RSS stuff, I know that I'm scratching my communications itch.

I still feel that blogging is/should be/is to me/feels like op-ed pieces; I want what I write to be interesting to everyone that I know reads it, plus the strangers who I don't know. Success is a variable here. Tweeting is the opposite of blogging.

Cell phone headsets

Executive summary: If you drive with a cell phone, you should use a headset. I bought the first generation Aliph Jawbone and like it.

Right, moving on.

Two months ago, my loyal readers may recall that I started using a Bluetooth headset with my cell phone. Of course I find out yesterday that the company is soon releasing a second version of their product that's sexier, sleeker, newer- hell, it's literally got leather upholstery. At least the price point hasn't changed. This doesn't bug me so much, but I do wish they had a loyalty program.

I don't constantly wear my headset like some folks. You see these people walking and talking, and at first you think they're either talking to you or outright crazy and conversing with their dog. I got problems enough without strangers thinking I'm talking to invisible people across the ether. I most commonly see people who spend a long time working alone wearing headsets- delivery personnel, usually. They may have a business case to wear one, too. Maybe taxi drivers will soon start wearing them for dispatch.

I very specifically wear mine in two cases: driving or if I plan to have a long phone conversation. I've even gotten into the habit of wearing it no matter how long the drive unless I have someone in the car with me. This may change in the future, but for now, it's a solo tool.

Let's compare driving without a headset versus driving with a headset. Without, you must hold your cell (and ergo the hand) up to your head. Regardless of squandered attention, my hand cuts of a bit of my peripheral vision, but also makes me less inclined to turn my head. This is the crucial argument for using a headset- not that you're more or less focused when you jibber-jabber, but that your sense of kinesthetics inhibits you from the maximum range of freedom if you've got your meathook by your mug.

Upshot? It took a few days to a week to get used to handsfree talking. Now it's second nature. Oh, and it works with my Mac. Bonus.

Shameless plug:

Tech toys

I bought the bullet and bought a fancy Bluetooth headset.

Like many recent tech purchases, I tend to listen to other people's experiences and do a decent amount of research before plunking down dollars for a gadget. So far, I like my little cybernetic ear roach.

You want one? Check it out. They come in red, too.

UPDATE:I've got an Amazon link there to a black Jawbone that should come through an RSS reader.

Living in a cyberpunk world

Guess which came from a 1992 RPG sourcebook and which came from a 2008 news article. Talk about a case of future shock. (Yes, the game lists a price in euros.)

News source here.

Steampunk rayguns

Words can not express just quite how much I want one of Dr Grordbort's Infallible Aether Oscillators. Sadly, I do not have $700 USD to drop on a handmade, metal-and-glass creation, even if it is done by the geniuses at Weta. I could also live with more steampunk technology in day-to-day life- there's simply not enough aether or pneumatic tubes these days.

Thanks to Wired for the original article. Actual art an imagination by Greg Broadmore (webbernet coming from New Zealand, so patience is a virtue!).

In a similar vein, mechanical television fascinates me.

It's backup time

My man Tom back home had some data problems, both at work and at home, to the tune of a 2.5 terabyte (Mega, then Giga, then Tera- imagine about a quarter of the Library of Congress) disk failure and a flaky home system.

I'm doing my backups right now. I use a handy program called Synk to do the dirty work onto a 300GB external drive. I also set up a monthly reminder for myself to run backups. What is it about April that makes me think about backing up?

I don't do it frequently enough, and I know better. You can get a blank DVD for about a buck, so compare spending less than a crappy meal and one evening's time versus days and weeks and months if you need to recreate everything on your machine. Just imagine that for a second, that you have to retype every document, rediscover all your contacts, remember all your emails, take brand new photographs, redo your taxes, find new porn, rip your music, etc etc etc.

When was the last time you backed up your stuff?

From the Are You Paranoid Enough Dept.

CNN is running an AP story on Canadian coins with hidden radio transmitters found on American contractors. I can't find any pictures, though.

This story reminded me of the "Thing" found in the Great Seal of the United States presented to the US ambassador in Moscow, where it hung for nearly a decade without detection. For contemporary pictures of its discovery and more details of its history, check out this nice long article. Oddly, the incident's only a footnote on the Wikipedia entry on electronic bugs. The NSA has a replica of the Seal on display at the National Cryptological Museum, which must be full of scary and fascinating devices.

Passive and undetectable spy stuff is A) cool and B) not new.

Apple versus Microsoft

Not quite a heavyweight battle for supremacy, more like a compare-and-contrast essay. Slashdot brought us the latest article in a series comparing the new Microsoft Vista and the newest incarnation of Apple's OS X, Leopard. I spent at least an hour reading the author's various articles- There's a lot of pro-Apple information to the point of evangelism, so be advised if you don't want to read some drum-beating.

Pardon our dust

I'm on the new Blogger Beta, with bells and whistles and pizzazz. Right now, it looks like everything made it okay- I don't see any huge 402:Kidnapped By Elves errors, the posts are in place, the layout looks right, and the ads are working. I'll play with the features some time this weekend. Maybe even tag old articles for ease of reading.

Technology update

Yesterday I bought a modem for my MacBook at the Apple Store over in the mall. Wha-huh? A modem? Why? Well, we're traveling to California for the holidays and none of Cat's family has high-speed internet. I'll have to rough it for a few days and go back to dial-up. My awesome boss back at Tulane once told me that he used going back to dial-up as his standard threat to his wife and daughters. Last year, none of their neighbors were giving away wireless, but I'm hoping that this has changed. We'll see. After all, when McDonald's, Chick-Fil-A, and even the smegging Dairy Queen has free wireless, perhaps someone else in the city will jump on the bandwagon.

The gold and silver beamsplitters for Khet (née Deflexion, BGG, BUY ME!) are now available! Major kudos to the guys at Innovention Toys for supporting the early adopters of their game. Shop Louisiana! I had an opportunity to teach this to someone recently- even though I trounced him twice, I still had fun with the lasers and the mirrors.

In other news, my car is back from the shop after I skid on a puddle, hit a curb, and managed to really hose my suspension.

Firefox is awesome still

I recently downloaded the new Firefox 2.0, and so far it rocks. It's got built-in spellcheck in form fields, has built-in crash recovery, and they fixed an annoying Mac-only bug with Gmail. And it is a little faster, too.

If you install it on a Windows box, I get a dollar. Go click the big Firefox button on the right.

Hokey Smokes!

I woke up today to 321 pieces of spam in my Gmail.

MS Vista was released a few days ago.

Coincidence? I think not.

Yet another bandwagon

Okay, okay. I joined LiveJournal so I could post a comment on a friend's LJ thing. Sadly, because I'm late to this party, my choice usernames have been claimed by impostors. I'm rossumcapek over there.

Never fear, loyal readers! The real action will continue to happen at this address.

The Future is Now

In one of the deleted scenes from Aliens, we see the robot sentries emptying their ammo into hordes of swarming aliens.

Now, for the low low price of $200,000, you too can own your very own automated robot machine gun sentry robot, by Samsung. ED-209, hold on to your pension.

Bonus points if you can name the rousing Korean music played during the video.

My PDA is full

Full, you say? Why not delete something? Or upgrade its memory? Or simply back it up, wipe it, and reenter what you need.

Well, my friends, I don't have a digital PDA. I have something akin to the Hipster PDA, which is nothing more than index cards and an alligator clip.

Imagine a reaction to the over-digitalization of modern culture. Normally, I'm all about being pro-gadgetry, but I've recently been much more keen to optimize seconds instead of bytes. I went a little high-class for my own solutions and impulsively purchased a small memo book for 79 cents- about a penny a page! I started intentionally carrying it around with me in order to lifehackishly install a new habit, and after less than two weeks I found myself missing my little book if I didn't bring it with me.

One of the handiest things about the little memo book as compared to the oft-lauded Moleskine notebook is its cheapness. I don't feel financially guilty if I jot down a single word or two, or a URL for a friend, then tear the page out with glee and get on with things. I can also use it as a tasklist, I've always got my tool on me, and it has an ink pen, so I'm set and I have one less thing to carry.

In case you have a concern about a calendar app or the like not existing for, well, dumb paper, here's a treeware solution.

Want the pretty pictures? Go look at other people's solutions on flickr.

After about two months, I've used the eighty pages and I'm ready for another little book. That fact alone speaks to the success of this habit.

Code Monkey Make Me Laugh

I know a lot of you sling code or know someone who does. Here's an aural bit of funny for you: Jonathan Coulton's Code Monkey in a variety of media: Artist's site, direct MP3, lyrics and flash-based player. Heck, if you need video with your funny, there's even a World of Warcraft video.

Yeah, I know this is old news for those of you what follow Slashdot. Gimme a break, okay?