Rants, Raves, and Ramblings

Personal web pages are in vogue, polluting web browsers with animated GIFs, embedded MIDIs, and the ever-popular “Under Construction” images. Free web services drive this trend, with Angelfire, Geocities, Tripod, and AOL’s Hometown being among the most popular. 10MB of storage is normal, while those with a Godlike 100MB are the envy of the community. You get an e-mail address with your site, but it only forwards to a different one; forget sending anything from it. Your web site comes at a ridiculously long and arbitrary URL, but you don’t care; you get a certain joy out of having a web site at all. The idea that some random guy on the side of the country (or perhaps the world!) might stop by and read your site absolutely thrills you.

And what exactly is it that people are visiting your site for? Is it a portfolio of all your bad poetry and artwork, carefully layed out with colorful imagery using that fancy new CSS stuff? A collection of codes, walkthroughs, FAQs, and screenshots for a video game? A fan-site dedicated to your favorite band, collecting every bit of digital minutia you can find? Or maybe it’s just a site about you, containing a few pictures, links, and your e-mail address. Regardless of what, your site is guaranteed to have two things: a hit counter, and a guestbook.

Lycos, Yahoo!, and Altavista are major web portals. Hotmail offers a popular free e-mail service. Screenshots, either from a video game, movie, or television program, are scarce, and so are highly prized. You’ve never seen video on the Internet, except for a low-resolution clip someone sent you of an old news report about a whale getting blown up. You peruse warez sites for programs made in Visual Basic which manipulate the Windows API to unique effect. AIM punters…text faders…mail bombers…an animated character that follows your cursor on the screen…it’s all so random, so pointless, so absurd, and yet so awesome.

You connect with AIM (or AOL) and see that most of your contacts are offline; being online but AFK is frowned upon. Away messages are employed sparingly.

You recently discovered Napster, and have been feverishly searching for music to download. You find everything you search for, even obscure background music for a Sega CD game. Each mp3 takes enough time and effort to complete that each file becomes a prized possession, an item to hold dear if only because of the trials you endured in obtaining it. Large collections makes you the envy of your peers, regardless of who the songs are actually by.

To pass the time, you download PC game demos, finding amongst them some real gems, like Dink Smallwood and Unreal Tournament. Before long, you are immersed in the addictive gameplay of Diablo, and decide one adventurous day to connect to Battle.net. The novelty of multiplayer gaming with someone in a different city quickly wears off when they repeatedly kill and then resurrect your character, repeating childish taunts to you the entire time.

You soon find comfort in the form of a browser-based game called Space Merchant, whose low-fi graphics are compensated for with a complex rule system, embedded social dynamic, and open-ended design. One bored day in class, you make a killing with the trade route you develop while on your school’s T1 line, only to find yourself podded when you attempt the same thing on your home’s dial-up connection. Those with the bigger bandwidth easily trod upon those without, creating two distinct classes of players.

At school, you get bored after completing your assignment in Keyboarding class and decide to spend your time playing flash games like Pico’s School on Newgrounds, laughing at humorous articles on Seanbaby’s site, or amusing yourself with the pictures on Cliff Yablonski Hates You. Nothing is filtered, and you are able to shock & amaze other students by showing them sites like dolphinsex.org. Maybe 3% of the other students are online on a regular to semi-regular basis. The few that are comprehend little of what is out there. You feel a certain sense of knowing, of belonging, simply by being a part of this giant, yet still obscure and esoteric beast called…The Internet.

Fall is my favorite time of the year. That morbid Halloween atmosphere is descending on the world outside, and my commute is largely filled with Scratch Acid, Switchblade Symphony, and Pink Anvil. Most importantly, I’ll be hosting the annual Halloween Party at my new house; the first time since it’s inception that it’s been on a complete length of property. I’m very excited, and it couldn’t come at a better time: Halloween is on a Saturday this year, meaning it will undoubtedly go late and perhaps well into the next morning. It’s definitely given me something to look forward to.

And not only that; about a month after the Halloween Party, we’ll be hosting a LAN Party at Computer Renaissance, on Thanksgiving Eve. A month after that, and we follow it up with the year-end New Year’s Eve LAN Party. So between now and the end of the year, I’ve got something to look forward to.

And on the subject of things people are looking forward to, this Thursday marks the official release of the new Windows 7. Here are my thoughts on the matter:

Eh.

I don’t expect this one to be a complete failure like Vista, but I don’t expect it to be anything particularly exciting, either. After all, what really will Windows 7 offer you, as a general computer user, that you don’t already have? Will it make your computer run faster? Will it give you access to groundbreaking new technical features? Will the user experience be significantly more exciting than anything you’ve ever experienced before? I think the answer to all of these will be a resounding no.

It really seems that MS has completely lost it’s way as far as pioneering new tech – something they could have begrudgingly been credited with doing at one time. NT-based operating systems were the last really relevant thing I can recall them doing; everything since then has been an exercise in fixing things that didn’t need fixing, while largely ignoring the major things that did. Maybe it’s because Ballmer is at the helm now, but MS really seems to have lost its way. I’m not shedding any tears though.

I will say that I’ve played with 7 a little bit, and wasn’t terribly impressed. I wasn’t put off, either. It did seem punchier (more responsive) than Vista, and also seemed a lot less “busy” with the UI. It ran okay. But you have to remember, this is a totally new operating system; it should have something far more noteworthy to it than “its not as annoying as Vista.”

I think the notion that Windows 7 is essentially what Vista should have been is right. I also think the rumor that it should have been a service pack for Vista rather than a whole new OS is spot on. Nothing about this seems to be so revolutionary that it requires a whole new release, complete with a $120+ price tag.

You may be asking, “Well, smartass, what would you do to make a new OS worth the cost?” And I’ll tell you. But first, let’s frame the argument a little bit.

I think when you look at what makes an operating system desirable, you have three major areas to look at: functionality, interface, and features.

1. Functionality – The core of the OS lies in the kernel, which, among other things, handles all that nasty hardware code and ensures that all the fun stuff will function with minimal harassment from your PC. This is the solid foundation on which any OS is built, and it also happens to be the least glamorous and least marketable. At one time, it made sense to brag that your OS would work with just about any PC; nowadays, that sort of thing is just expected. Which is probably a good thing; but look at how MS dropped the ball on this with Vista. From what I understand, MS has done a much better job of working with hardware manufacturers ahead of time to ensure that W7 drivers will be ready and working properly. Still, you don’t get points for this: it’s expected, remember?There are also considerations like how your OS handles basic tasks like copying files that Microsoft still gets wrong. More on that later.
2. Interface – Ever since Mac OS X hit the scene and made eye candy a vehicle for selling their wares, Microsoft has tried to beat them at their own game, and has proceeded to do this…and fail miserably. Vista’s Aero fell far short of topping Aqua, IMO. More importantly, they lost where user interface really shines, which is in the ease of use. UAC was rightfully a fiasco that took the wind out of Vista’s sails; who seriously thought this was going to improve security and make for a better user experience? Listen: users are confused enough as it is, and if the OS can’t determine bad software from good, what makes you think the average user can? It seems like one of the basic strengths of Windows has historically been that it’s easy for idiots to use, but they seem to have completely forgotten about this fact when releasing Vista.Windows 7′s UI seems to be cleaner, with less clutter and unnecessary shininess than Vista. One big thing is that they’ve decided that text is no longer relevant in taskbar items, so tech support people better get used to describing icons in painstaking detail and hoping that the eyesight of their clientele is better than what it has been historically. I can see an argument for strictly icon-based taskbar items, but I don’t know that taskbar space has been that much of an issue for normal people. If you’re lacking taskbar space, you’re either running at some ridiculously low resolution or are just too lazy to close windows you don’t need anymore. But that’s neither here nor there I suppose…
3. Features – One of the reasons I consider XP/2000 to be “good” Microsoft OSes is because the wealth of features that came with them. System Restore, NTFS, Driver Rollback, RDP support…there were actually genuinely cool technologies that came with these things. After a few years, when a good deal of the major security failures were patched up and drivers were ubiquitous, I think XP hit a level of maturity not seen before (or since) in Windows operating systems. There were so many features that were actually useful to an end-user or a technician that I think those alone made it worth the fairly condescending Playskool theme.Now look at the jump from Windows 98 SE to Windows XP, then look at the jump from XP to Vista. There is no comparison to make; the features in Vista were practically nothing compared to the leap forward provided previously (I think, aside from Bitlocker, that nothing was even worth mentioning when it came to Vista features). I think 7 is going to be much the same way; I don’t see any features that jump out as being super-awesome. We’re still running on NTFS, so forget any ZFS-like file-system technology (and no, Volume Shadow Copy is nowhere near as cool as ZFS). A quick look at their features page shows us exactly why you NEED to get the new OS. This includes “HomeGroup”, which looks like a networking wizard that “takes the headache out of sharing files and printers on a home network.” If this is anything like previous attempts to make home networking understandable to the average Windows users, I have no faith in it’s abilities. Those networking wizards have always been seriously god-awful; I believe the one that came with XP required you to copy files to floppy disk and then take that over to all the other computers on your network and use those with the wizard on those PCs. And let’s not even get started on the New Connection wizard…

   There are also “Jump Lists”, which look like a slightly modified context menu that includes personalized guesses at what you want to do. No use for that. “Snap”, which is a “quick (and fun) new way to resize open windows”…because I want resizing windows to be fun. Looks like we have full 64-bit support with 7, which I know my grandmother has been personally nagging me about…major selling point here.

So with these concepts and criticisms in mind, what would I do to make a new Windows OS worth the cost? Well, I’m not UI designer, or even a programmer, but as a SysAdmin, I have a few ideas from the front lines that I’m sure can be done without a terrible amount of hassle to a multi-billion dollar company.

• Fix the file copying code. I may be wrong, but I believe Windows 7 still uses the same basic code for copying files, which is terrible at handling multiple data streams (try copying two large folders at once – they both become extremely slow). Moreover, one corrupt file, and your entire copy procedure is over. This is especially shitty when you’re copying numerous levels of folders containing lots of files, and have no idea what files were copied and what ones weren’t before the copy finished. There is a third-party app called y-copy that keeps track of corrupted files but continues the copy procedure, so why can’t MS make their own version and tie it into the OS?
• Make customization of the interface more far-reaching and easier to do. I was amazed at how well WindowBlinds was able to completely change the appearance of Windows. The Themes feature of Windows has become a scarcely-populated feature; I hardly see anyone make them anymore, and when you try searching for them, you find yourself adrift in a see of malware and ugliness. Yet look at how many themes are made for Window Blinds, and how awesome some of them look. Why can’t Microsoft learn from this and code some kind of API that could handle radical customization like this? I think they’d single-handedly get rid of their need for designing UIs – something they have proven they suck at – by having communities develop them instead. I doubt it would cost as much, either.
• Create a repository-style way of installing and updating software. I think it would benefit users of Windows greatly if we had a single, unified, trusted interface for distributing software updates instead of letting the Adobe Reader, Java Runtime, and anti-virus program X all harass/confuse users constantly from the taskbar. What’s really keeping a malicious program from giving them exact same message (or one that looks enough like it) to trick a user into downloading a Conficker variant? I think it’d also go a long way if we made finding and installing free windows programs easier. Download.com is a mess these days, and trying to instruct a less-than-savvy user in finding and downloading free software is a nightmare. It’s far too easy to get led to sites that trick you into downloading malware, and I think having a software repository could go a long way to remedying this.

I have more, but I can’t think of them right now. I had a list somewhere…

Honestly, I’m way more excited about Google’s ChromeOS, since it seems way more like the kind of thing I’m talking about. I like Google’s track record with software design, since they usually incorporate a fair amount of technical capability with an easy, simple interface and . I know it’s going to be a free OS, but I hope they sell copies in Best Buy just so I can have a reason to buy software from a store again. God knows most of the software worth buying is sold online these days.

Don’t think that just because I’ve gone a ridiculously long time without posting that I have effectively killed the journal. On the contrary – topics for posting are quite formidable in number, I just haven’t had the time to properly type them out. You see, I’m a bit of a perfectionist, especially when it comes to things I write that essentially become public record, so at any given time I usually have half-a-dozen or so partially completed entries waiting in the wings.

As the summer dies down, I hope to purge myself of these so bear with me as I work to publish them in the coming weeks. Here is a short list of what to expect:

• An essay on popular misconceptions of the PC tech and the associates pros and cons that come with them.
• A roundup of book reviews for what I’ve been reading this summer.
• Details on the new house, and possibly pictures (if you think I neglect this site, just wait till you see what my house looks like).
• Updates on some projects of mine, including the much-discussed tech frat and a possible presentation for next year’s Notacon.
• Musings on LAN parties and their cultural relevance (at least to me). Certain to include nostalgic rambling that may also evoke similar responses in other dullards.

So there you have it. If you’re still reading this, do be so kind as to post a reply – I like to occasionally poll to see who still hasn’t given up on reading this, and how often they check back (usually approximated by length of time between posting and response).

And because I’ve had these comments sticking out in my inbox for so long, let me get a few quick personal replies out in the open:

Joe: [Humorous expounding on the buying of houses with allusion to house-purchasing in the works] – Did you ever buy that house? And how do you like being clean-shaven?

Paul: ‘Like the ideas and congrats on the house! The hacker space thing sounds cool…. I wish I had more time to work on stuff. By the time I get home from work I’m usually to exhausted to work on fun stuff.‘ – I can relate – I spend much of my 9-5 life at work, and post-5PM life schooling in one form or another. This has stilted much of my progress with pet projects, but I haven’t lost any fervor for them. I just need to hope the associated parties interested don’t lost their passion in the meantime. How’s Royal Oak treating you?

Matt: ‘I’d like to offer a hand in getting the technical organization started. I don’t think I can lead the project (I have no idea what that would entail, but it’s probably more than I could handle), but I would definitely love to pitch in however I can. If you get enough other volunteers to get this off the ground, send me an e-mail at [e-mail]‘ – Thanks for keeping up to date on this. I’m glad you’re still interested, but at this time, leadership is precisely the lacking element in this project. Rest assured, I should have time to assume all those responsibilities myself, but it’ll likely not be till summer 2010. In the meantime, keep in touch, keep checking back, and don’t stop thinking about what you could do if…

To be continued…

The last few weeks have been some of the busiest I’ve had in years, and it likely won’t let up until the end of May. I haven’t melted down yet, but the busy-ness has kept me from doing some of the things I’ve wanted to do, including responding to some of the comments left for me in this journal. Since the people who left them have probably given up on checking the appropriate comment thread, I figured I would respond to them here as a way of grabbing their attention once more.

• Matt: The tech organization is waiting on one of two things: me clearing up my schedule enough (probably summer 2010) or enough other people stepping forward to help handle getting it started (probably a good two or three motivated folks). As of this moment, establishing all the groundwork for this idea is basically impossible for me, given the number of duties I have and the severe lack of available time to commit to the project. See later in this post for more…
• Joe (jmf): Your post made me genuinely laugh out loud (I refuse to use the acronym for that statement – its long since lost its true meaning). +1 for MST3k reference. Also, I can’t imagine you with facial hair…
• Tony (Mansion Maniac): Unreal is easily my favorite FPS, with GOTY placing first in my heart followed slightly by 2004. I’m still working on forgetting UT3. And as far as cons go – Gencon sounds like it might be too far for me, but should I ever find myself with extra time and finances, I’ll consider heading out there. Or I could just cut out the middleman and drop in on you for a couple days (who needs a con?)
• Nick: Thanks for the kind words. The new job is definitely a much larger handful, but I’m quite happy with the challenges. The environment is also a nice change of pace.

Okay, so with that stuff out of the way, a few new insights (since I know everyone here is just so interested in the mundane details of my life).

• I’m currently in the process of buying a new house. The paperwork has ben filed, and the gears are turning. I’m looking at moving out at the end of May, and hope to hammer the whole thing out over a solid weekend.I’m a bit excited, since I’ve never owned a house before. I’ve been renting a duplex since first moving out of my parents house, and its suited me all right since then. I’m not a terribly needy guy when it comes to living quarters – I dare say almost minimalist. But the time has come. A really good opportunity just materialized out of nowhere, and added to all the financial incentives currently in place for first-time home buyers, I just couldn’t pass it up.

  If anyone is curious, its a four-bedroom house in Point Place valued at 92k that has only been inhabited by one family (the patriarch of which recently passed). The house is in amazing shape (new garage, new roof, new windows, etc), includes all the appliances (and some furniture), and the purchase price is 65k.

  As nice as all of this is, its heaping another colossal work pancake on top of my presently backbreaking stack. Sleep has been rare these days, as has the chance to post here. I’m looking forward to the day I can make a post without having to apologize for not posting in it as much as I promise to.

• I’ve recently been musing on the idea of buying some cheap property and converting it into a “hackerspace” – basically, a big flophouse for members of my hypothetical tech organization that acts as an incubator for tech projects.Ideally, it’d have a large open section big enough to house a monthly meetings in which we give demos/talks/presentations on some of the projects/hacks that we discover/explore/develop. I’d also like it to include a fridge, a shower, a private room with bunk beds, a small library, and a couch/TV setup. As you can probably guess, the whole building would be designed to allow those passionate enough to socialize and work on big projects for extended periods of time. With the right atmosphere, free of distractions and replete with tools, parts, books, and other important resources, I think a lot of cool things could emerge.

  I am usually blessed every school year with meeting a few young, motivated, and hungry students who really could flourish if given the right tools and left in the right environment. I think a place like what I’ve described would be just that, though I realize its largely a pie-in-the-sky daydream. But its fun to think about, and isn’t completely far-fetched when you think about it. I’ve got plenty of spare parts, unique computers, and textbooks/manuals that would be a good foundation on which to build this little commune – so why not?

  Part of my inspiration for all this came from reading about John Carmack, as well as the history of id Software (as wonderfully chronicled by David Kushner in Masters of Doom). Carmack has a great quote that goes like this:

  ‘If you want to set off and go develop some grand new thing, you don’t need millions of dollars of capitalization. You need enough pizza and Diet Coke to stick in your refrigerator, a cheap PC to work on and the dedication to go through with it.‘

  Though my goals are much more humble and modest than anything John Carmack has ever done, I think the principle still applies on a smaller scale. Really, I just want to see what could happen if you concentrate a lot of skill, talent, and know-how into a small enough place in space and time. Think of it as a social experiment.

• Notacon was great fun, as I knew it would be. Got to see the usual faces, and socialized a bit more than I had in the past. Got a pep talk from James ‘Myrcurial‘ Arlen at a diner on Sunday morning in which he insisted I should really take a stab giving a talk myself. He’s a great guy.Katy also placed second in the High-Res compo of Blockparty, but lost because neither she nor the other four people that went with us bothered to vote. She lost by one point (and each voter can administer up to five points to a given entry). God, my friends are lazy.

  Her entry was a colored version of this wonderful piece of art entitled ‘Philoslothical‘.

There is, of course, more bouncing around in my head, but I’m afraid I’m out of time for now, so you’ll just have to wait. In the meantime, here is my good friend Rich doing PowerPoint Karaoke at Notacon (followed by int80 and Al Potter).

In following with the pattern of previous months, my in-semester posting has been nil. Allow me to indulge you with a few small personal updates.

Firstly, I’ve been passing a lot of time playing Quake Live. This was launched just over a month ago, and is essentially Quake 3 Arena, but inside your web browser. All you need to do is download a plug-in, and log in to the website to play. The game is going to be funded primarily through in-game advertising, though I’ve yet to see any (perhaps because it is still technically in Beta).

I’ve never been much of a fan of the Quake series, especially when compared to Unreal, but Quake Live has kept me coming back. Let me run down some of the things I’ve observed about Quake Live:

1. One of the major problems I’ve always had with Quake 3 is how difficult it is for novice players to play. The skill levels in Quake 3 are incredibly disparate, and anyone who has ventured onto a Quake 3 server knows the frustration of never getting a chance to even fire a weapon. I know I quickly gave up on playing online after this otherwise fun game became little more than an exercise in respawning and a chance for smarmy adolescents to hurl endless insults at me in the process.In Quake Live, all players are required to take a training match before they begin. Their skill level is then ranked somehow, and this metric is used to determine which servers they can join. As a player, you can choose to join a “Skill Matched” server, where you can be assured that the other players are somewhat near your skill level. The brave can join a More Difficult server, but no one can join a server that is too far below their skill level. This feature works to keep some degree of fairness in the servers, though I can vouch from personal experience that it definitely isn’t perfect.
2. One big reason I enjoy Unreal over Quake 3 is the pacing. When encountering an opponent in Unreal, regardless of factors like player skill or weapons available, the gunfight between two people will last at least three or four seconds. In Quake 3, most gunfights don’t last longer than three or four seconds. In fact, its not uncommon to find yourself spontaneously fragged in Quake 3, owing to how powerful some of the weapons are and how fast the players can move.I find this to be a turn-off. In Unreal, even beginning players can make a valiant attempt at defense, but in Quake 3, no matter how good a player you are, you can find yourself fragged before you even know someone had spotted you. And i’m not just talking about using sniper rifles/railguns here; death via such devices as rocket launchers can occur without even hearing the trademark audible cue that its coming.Dodging and escaping from an encounter are also practically worthless options in Quake; once you engage in battle, you might as well try to stick it out. There is no left/right dash, and the maps are usually wide open. The tactical considerations are thus limited to camping near armor and health spawn points, which is fairly lame IMO.
3. Speaking of maps, the maps in Unreal are miles ahead in terms of playability, not to mention beauty and creativity. After playing Unreal, the smaller maps of Quake 3 seem cramped and unimaginative; even rudimentary. I won’t deny that once you put the Unreal comparisons aside, many maps in Quake have a definite charm/appeal; but I suppose when the focus is overwhelmingly placed on mere brutality, there isn’t much room for elegance.
4. Probably the biggest thing going for Quake Live is the fact that it records game statistics. This is somewhat like how MPlayer was with Quake 3, but far more detailed, and with awards. I’ve been going through and achieving as many of the awards as I can – including a “Sick Day” award that I got over Spring Break for playing more than six hours in one day. (If anyone wants to help me out, there is an award for getting 25 people to create a Quake Live account, so lend me your e-mail address if you wouldn’t mind making one.)

In other news, I have left my position at ISCG to become the Agency Technology Specialist/Agency Security Administrator at Seymour & Associates/MassMutual out in Maumee. I’m essentially the IT department for a ~80 workstation network that houses a lot of confidential data. So far, I’ve been keeping busy, but enjoying the new job immensely. Everybody I’ve met seems bright, motivated, and professional, which is the opposite of what I’m used to dealing with. It’s a welcome change.

Sadly, because of the demands of working in a professional environment, I had to shave off my iconic goatee. I had sported it for just over five years when I finally waved goodbye a few weeks ago. I’m working to get the picture on my home page updated to reflect my new facial hair-less status.

Coming up in a few weeks is Notacon 6. This will be my third straight Notacon, and I really am quite eager for it. I encourage anyone who has an interest in seeing technology used in genuinely creative and innovative ways to go as well; if you do, let me know so we can meet up sometime.

Notacon introduced me to the demoscene, namely through the Blockparty event that coincides with it. I could write a rather lengthy essay on why I find these so interesting, but for now, I’ll just leave you with an example that hopefully captivates you to a fraction of the degree that it did me.

Here is a collection of random humorous links, assembled for your benefit.

1. Linux Genuine Advantage – From the site: “Linux Genuine Advantage™ is an exciting and mandatory new way for you to place your computer under the remote control of an untrusted third party!” “Did you wake up this morning and say ‘I wish someone would figure out a way to let me do less with my computer’? You’ve come to the right place! “
2. Gentoo Is Rice – A collection of actual quotes from Gentoo users. From the site: “Welcome, this page is dedicated to the Linux Community’s greatest ambassadors, Gentoo users. Like the annoying teenager next door with a 90hp import sporting a 6 foot tall bolt-on wing, Gentoo users are proof that society is best served by roving gangs of armed vigilantes, dishing out swift, cold justice with baseball bats to those fucking ricer bastards.“
3. Comparison of file systems (Wikipedia) – A cached copy of the current page, of course. If you don’t get it, check the last column under “Features”.
4. vi Assistant – A Kafka-esque look into a dystopian future, or possibly an alternate universe parallel to our own. Watch.
5. SCIgen – An Automatic CS Paper Generator – Legendary academic paper generator which has apparently fooled a few scientific conferences and journals in the past. One part elaborate prank, one part social critique, one part satire – a delicious combination if I may say so.
6. Comcast Hijackers Say They Warned the Company First – Though I’m not sure it was intended to be humorous, this Wired article on two kids in NY who managed to hijack a series of domains owned by Comcast cracked me up when I read it on Slashdot. There are a ton of quotable sections, plus a laughable identity shot of one of the attackers which was culled from MySpace, but here is just a sample: “EBK slept for an hour Wednesday night; Defiant for 20 minutes. Even as the attack was in progress, the hackers began to feel the weight of their actions. Both say they’ve been raided by law enforcement before. ‘I slept in my clothes, because the last time they came, I was in my underwear with my dong hanging out and shit,’ says Defiant. “
7. Back Orifice 2000 Screen Shots of the Week – Taken back in the days when truly owning a system was a bit easier. This documented owning is made up of two images – a screen cap, and a picture taken of the guy’s reaction using his webcam. It really is priceless.
8. eBay Feedback Profile for andy46477 – I can’t remember when or where I first saw this, but I know it was a long time ago. I guess at one time you could leave feedback for other people on eBay without having to buy anything from them…that practice has since been eliminated, of course, and this link may work to explain why. Shades of Happy Noodle Boy.
9. Amazon Reviews for Products I Used In Dreams – Though there are countless SA articles I could link to, I find this one to be one of my favorites.
10. A Simple Question of Hot: Simon vs. Hitler – I shamefully have to cull this from The Wayback Machine, as the original URL has died on me. It documents one man’s experiment in seeing if he could get a higher score on HotOrNot.com than a mildly edited photograph of Adolf Hitler. The results may (or may not) surprise you.
11. 56k Modem Emulator – More cute than humorous, this quaint reminder of days past warms my heart.
12. The Light Sharpener – 12 foot Solar Collection Dish – More cool than humorous, this documentation of one man’s attempt at building a sunlight-reflecting death ray is both intriguing and absurd.

Enjoy.

Before the new semester begins, I’d like to take some time to point out what I’ve been doing to keep occupied over the last number of months, when updates were scarce. There have been plenty of things I wanted to share, I just couldn’t find the time to do a halfway-decent update on them, so here they are, all at once.

Firstly, I thought I’d point a link to the now-completed Master the Mainframe competition held by IBM. The entire thing can be done for free online, and deals entirely with the z/OS operating system used on today’s IBM mainframes. All registrants are provided with a terminal account on an actual IBM mainframe somewhere, and then given a list of tasks to do (along with the instructions on how to do them). There were three parts, increasing in difficulty, with all winners of part 1 getting a free t-shirt, the first however-many winners of part 2 getting a gift certificate of some kind, and the top five winners of part 3 getting an MSI Wind netbook, and the top 2 winners of part 3 getting a tour of the IBM headquarters in Poughkeepsie, NY. It’s like Willy Wonka for nerds.

I did the first two parts and sadly, was not a finalist for part 2. Even so, it was a really nifty learning experience that was actually kind of fun, and something I highly recommend to CS students once it begins again next fall. Bookmark it.

I’ve also gotten around to watching some of the CS lectures provided by Standford University on their website. Through a program called Stanford Engineering Everywhere, about ten CS/EE courses have been put online and are free to the world. What this means is that all the course material has been put into a digital form and made available for download, and an entire semester’s worth of lectures has been recorded and is free for people to watch. The classes currently online are their intro courses on programming, as well as some more advanced courses on topics like Fourier Transforms and Convex Optimization.

I’ve busied myself in the last week or so by watching the first six videos of the first intro programming class, entitled ‘Programming Methodology‘, which is primarily centered on teaching Java. So far, I’ve found it to be a wealth of ideas and an entertaining enough way to kill some time. Each lecture is about 50 minutes in length, so when times are slow at work, I throw on some headphones and watch another lecture.

Stuff like that is probably why I don’t have dates on Friday nights these days.

Speaking of online video series, I’ve gone through and watched the entire Crash Course. It’s essentially a primer on how the economy works, starting with the basics, and working up to the serious crises facing the US economy today. There are about 20 videos total, most of which are only 3-7 minutes long, and the total viewing time for all videos is just over three hours. Everything is free and flash-based, so you can view it right in your browser on your lunch break.

The guy who made these does a great job of explaining some complicated things in a way that even people who aren’t math geeks can understand, and he does the whole thing without getting political or preachy. For these reasons, I found myself thoroughly engrossed (and mildly terrified) by these videos, which it goes without saying I highly recommend to anyone curious about the difficulties facing our economy today.

Another winter break joy was getting a chance to host another LAN party at Computer Renaissance on New Year’s Eve. It was an enjoyable time, as usual, and I got to see some of the friends that I don’t get to see very often. I thank everyone who made it out to the event.

I’m not sure how I managed not to hear about it before, but apparently a collection of unpublished Kurt Vonnegut stories on the subject of war was released under the title Armageddon In Retrospect, complete with an illuminating intro by his son, Mark. Good read.

On the subject of good reads, I also had the pleasure of finally getting to read Chris Connelly’s excellent memoirs of his time working with Al Jourgensen in Concrete, Bulletproof, Invisible, & Fried: My Life As A Revolting Cock. Everyone has music that instantly invites waves of nostalgia to wash over them, and for me, the Revolting Cocks are such a case. Few acts invoke the feeling of being a teenager again. Such memories…

For anyone desiring a minor challenge, head on over to the FBI’s website for their annual cryptanalysis challenge. Last year’s code was a piece of cake, and this year’s wasn’t much more difficult. Still, a fun way to kill a little time. Check it out.

I know I’ve touched on it a little in a previous entry, but I would like to take the time to point out that I’m really in love with the idea of getting a netbook. I think their lightweight and portable design, coupled with networking capabilities would make them ideal tools for on-site troubleshooting. Having a laptop essentially acts as having a known-good machine for testing network connections at a site, and having an even smaller laptop would be great, since I could reduce the load of tools I typically carry around. Less bulk to cart around is always a good thing in my eyes.

And to wrap things up, here is a video released by Sun demonstrating how shouting at your hard drives can be bad for your data.

To counter-balance my last entry, here is a list of more affordable tech gifts. Nothing here exceeds $50 in cost.

1. IEEE Membership ($30/year for students) – The affordable counterpart to the IEEE membership mentioned previously, the Student Membership does lack some of the functionality of being a full member (access to fewer papers), but if you’re just looking to inflate your resume or grad app, it works just fine.
2. ACM Membership ($19/year for students) – Same as above, only for the ACM.
3. Hacked And Frayed Spy Flash Drive ($29.99) – This is a cute pseudo-spy gift that is more like a practical joke than anything practical: a flash drive disguised as a severed USB cable. Quirky.
4. The Manga Guide to Electricity ($13.57 new) – An educational book disguised as manga, this is part of a series of comic books done up in anime-style with some sort of goofy plot stringing it together. They have also made these on other subjects like calculus, databases, and statistics. I find my interest in these is more based on humor than practicality.
5. Security Engineering (2nd Edition) by Ross Anderson ($41.94 new) – This one comes close to exceeding the cut-off of $50, but if you get it from third-party sources, you can beat the retail price of about $60. This is considered one of the better books published on the marriage of technology and security, and was recently expanded into a 2nd edition due to the huge success of the first.

Because it is now officially the least useful time of the year to report this sort of thing, here is a list I’ve compiled of twelve great tech gifts. Note that they all cost over $50 – a baseline from which I deemed this the Completely Unaffordable Tech Wish List of 2008.

1. Gyration GO PRO 2.4GHz Optical Air Mouse and Compact Keyboard Suite ($299.95) – Gyration wireless systems tend to be high-quality, capable of getting phenomenal range and excellent battery life. We’ve recently installed a pair (I believe this exact model) of input devices from Gyration for use in ET153 at Owens, and I have to say I’ve been most pleased with the results. Highly recommended.
2. Unicomp Customizer 104/105 ($69.00) – Of course, modern keyboards don’t have the same satisfaction that came with the enchanting click-clack of the IBM Model M. That is, all modern keyboards except this one. Unicomp is a manufacturer in this niche market of special buckling-spring keys, and one of the only retail sources left for such devices. While they certainly charge enough for the scarcity of these keyboards, one nice thing about buying a new Unicomp versus an old IBM is having a color and style that better suits today’s PC.
3. AirPcap Tx: USB 802.11b/g Adapter (capture + injection) ($298.00) – AirPcap adapters allow for hardware-accelerated cracking of WEP-protected access points. A fast and effective way to infiltrate weakly-protected networks, the AirPcap Tx would make a perfect accessory for your war-driving friends.
4. Paraben Forensics CSI Stick ($199.00) – A nifty high-tech forensics device that can be plugged into cell phones to discreetly copy the information out of them, from call histories to phone books to text messages. Note that the cost cited is for the hardware device – reading the information requires a software program sold separately, and ranging from $99 for basic functionality to $1,095 for more advanced. Ouch.
5. Micro-camcorder ($129.00) – This cute pseudo-spying device fits into a pack of gum and is supposedly capable of 15fps and 3GP quality for up to 33 hours of recording time (depending on the size of mini-SD card used). While it’s hard to imagine a terribly practical use for this camera, it’s good feed for the would-be spy that many fantasize about being.
6. The Unbreakable Walking Stick Umbrella ($179.95) – Speaking of impractical but ‘cool’ gift items, how about this marvelously engineered nigh-unbreakable umbrella that can double as a weapon? See the link for a video of some foreign tough-guy bodyguard demonstrating its use. If I see JCVD carrying one, I’m sold. (BTW, I know this one really isn’t techy, but I’m allowed to break my own rules if I want. Cope.)
7. IEEE Membership ($169/year) – What better gift can you give for those in Academia than the gift of knowledge? Aside from providing a resource to God knows how many scholarly resources (otherwise kept under lock and key), it never hurts to plug IEEE membership on a resume or grad school application.
8. ACM Membership ($99/year) – Like IEEE membership, but with a different organization and different resources. Since membership is usually a prerequisite to submitting a paper, it helps to get the ball rolling on that process nice and early.
9. PGP Desktop Home ($99 perpetual license) – Simple and powerful encryption software for the paranoid in all of us. Hard to beat whole-disk encryption at such a strength that the only known method for effectively deciphering it is the mainstay of rubber-hose cryptanalysis. Sorry, Windows only. :(
10. TCP/IP Illustrated Volumes 1-3 Boxed Set ($131.99 new) – A highly praised volume expounding on the intimate details of TCP/IP with an approach that is apparently highly illuminating. Comes with nifty poster, though I doubt it’s anything as cool as this.
11. The Art of Computer Programming Volumes 1-3 Boxed Set (2nd Edition) ($151.99 new) – The programmer’s bible, Donald Knuth’s legendary treatise entitled ‘The Art of Computer Programming’ is nothing short of a modern classic. What else is there to say?
12. Acer Aspire One ($300-$400) – With all the rage over netbooks these days, it’s hard to pick one. MSI has he Wind, Asus has the Eee, Intel has the Classmate, Gigabyte has the M912, and IBM/Lenovo have the ideaPad S10. Though I’m normally partial to IBM, and the Eee has certainly been on my lust list for a while, I think if I had to pick one, I’d take the Acer Aspire One. I have to say that I like Acer’s balance of affordability and functionality, not to mention their style – I love my Aspire 5050 – and coupled with John Scalzi’s nod, I think I’ve found my personal recommendation.

I don’t own any of these, by the way, so feel free to throw a few hundred of your hard-earned dollars away so that I can enjoy them. I’ll even throw in a review of whatever you get me as a bonus gift, since I know you leave reading these so much.

Joking aside – anyone care to share a gift they got this year that satisfied some degree of techno-lust?