Mossberg Likes My Computer
Walt Mossberg, the big daddy of tech writers, wrote in a recent column that…
We’ve been testing this new iMac, and our verdict is that it’s the gold standard of desktop PCs. To put it simply: No desktop offered by Dell or Hewlett-Packard or Sony or Gateway can match the new iMac G5′s combination of power, elegance, simplicity, ease of use, built-in software, stability and security. From setup to performing the most intense tasks, it’s a pleasure to use.
Sounds like he’s pretty happy with it, which in turn makes me even happier than I was before with my new iMac. Why? I’m not sure. But any little added iMac happiness helps these days because my credit card bill just arrived.
One minor issue with Mossberg’s article though. Towards the end he wishes that the iMac’s remote had a power button. It does! Well, its a Sleep Button really, and its kind of hidden…but it is there. I wrote that it was one of my favorite features in my iMac review. (You just hold down the Play button for a few seconds.)
Why Chris Berman Sucks
I’m not sure how much of our readership enjoys watching ESPN, or for that matter EPSN. I watch ESPN a lot, and thought I’m not convinced its exactly a TV channel squeezed from the birth canal of Satan, there are some things that I absolutely HATE about EPSN. I won’t bother to list all of my personal complaints, but 99% of them start with “I hate it when Chris Berman does…” Berman sucks. I’m not sure why he keeps getting treated like a god on that channel, but it needs to stop. I can feel the rage build up inside me when Berman decides to make his “Whoop!” noise over and over again in the highlights. Most of the time Berman makes the noise from hell when the guy isn’t even making a cool move, he just running! And don’t get me started on his ruining of a baseball game with his retarded “Back back back” thing he does when someone hits a homerun!
Ok calming tones. Deep breath. I’m cool now. The reason for the enraged tirade was a great list of 52 Reasons ESPN Sucks by the guys at the College Football site Everday Should Be Saturday. Thought I’m not as upset with everything as they are, they do seem to share in my extreme hatred of Chris Berman and that makes me smile.
14. Chris Berman’s “WHOOP!” noise. Berman will make several appearances here, since he’s one of the worst things about the network, so we’ll just list the offense and the death strike we think is appropriate. In this case, we think the two hand spiral neck snap, an old Seagal move, would be perfect.
Read the 51 other reasons why ESPN sucks, nod your head in agreement, then come back here and leave a comment on whether or not any of you care about stuff like this.
Daniel Geer Has Some Rockin’ Mutton Chops
On the great but oddly domain-ed CNET site, news.com.com there is a nice opinion piece on the state of Massachusetts’ new edict to require all government documents to be electrically saved in the OpenDocument format as opposed to the proprietary Microsoft Office format by Daniel Geer. As far as I’m concerned on this matter, this is a move that is about as long overdue as Bart and Lisa Simpson growing another year in age. There shouldn’t be any documents that are stored in a format where someone would have to pay a third party to get software just to read a freely available document. That just doesn’t make any sense why any public organization, be it the Government or the Boy Scouts, would use the Microsoft Office as the only way to view a document. In fact, I’m not sure why people are really even talking about this and making any kind of fuss! Other than maybe questions like: Why the hell did this take so long? Why is Massachusetts only the first state to do this? and Why did we start using Office document format as the “official” one to begin with? And other press about why they would do this and any implications of the change are just foghorns announcing that writer as “most likely to be on Microsoft’s payroll.”
Ok, tangent complete. For the real point of this article, please direct your attention to the picture of Mr. Geer I pulled from CNet’s site. Are those not some rockin’ Mutton Chops? Those are some of the best, modern ‘Chops I have ever seen! I officially want to congratulate Mr. Geer on the fine sideburn creation and give him the new created Martin Van Buren award for the best Mutton Chops for the year 2005.
Congratulations Mr. Daniel Geer. You’ve earned it with your lack of shaving, and, I’m assuming, peserverance through snickering behind your back. We here at Hell Yeah Bitch! .com salute you.
Do Less Work, Practice Making Drinks More
A web design firm called Liquid Light threw together a little game they call: “The Right Mix Cocktail mixing game” Its a fun little flash game where your job is to mix the right cocktail. You have to do it all, pour the right amount of liquids, add ice or lemon and shake it the right amount. The main problem is that to “win” the game you must go about making the best Cosmopolitan. Not exactly my drink of choice, but they made this as an invite to a company party for a client, so that must have had something to do with that limitation.
Xbox 360 Ups the Ante For Xbox Hacking
Remember when I said I would only buy a Xbox 360 when its officially hacked? Well it seems that task is going to be a infinitely more difficult that hacking the original Xbox was. Engadget has compiled a quick list of the road blocks in the way to a hacked 360.
- The flash is encrypted with a per-box key
- The key is stored inside the CPU
- The boot ROM is stored inside the CPU
- Also inside the CPU is a hypervisor that verifies the running state of the kernel, making sure there is no modification (RAM checksums), else the Xbox 360 panics and blows up!
The CPU contains RAM inside of it to store the checksums- All interrupt/exception handling is done by the hypervisor
- All code runs in kernel mode
- The emulator for first generation games can be updated via an official Microsoft download burned to CD by the user, though the CDs’ content will be encrypted and signed with public key cryptography.
- The boot ROM is stored inside the CPU.
Yikes. Anyone think Microsoft is using the 360 as a test run for their “Trusted Computing”? I guess they figured they would throw it all in the 360, and if all the geniuses out there working day and night out of their parent’s basements can’t beat it, then its golden (for now)…and if they can beat it, then they move on the 2.0 for the next try.
Either way, I’m thinking that I won’t be parting with my money for the joy of a new Xbox 360 anytime soon.
Japanese Matrix Table-Tennis
This is too bizarre to explain fully. These people do an incredible job at recreating bullet-time and slow-mo super-fast fighting action, all while playing ping pong.
Link to Google Video: Matrix Ping Pong
Mike and His Brother Take a Road Trip
In the words of the immortal Tenacious D, “The road is f*ckn’ hard. Its also really f*ckn’ tough!” My brother Lil’ J and I, in our quest for complete cheapness, will be taking a road trip from St. Louis, MO to Isle of Palms, SC to meet our parents, our extended family, my girlfriend, and some other people for my family’s annual Thanksgiving get-together. To be honest, I’m not 100% sure how this will all turn out. There’s a distinct possibility that we could end up somewhere near Maine after taking a wrong turn…which would suck because neither of us is really into lobster, and from what I hear thats all they eat up there. Hopefully though, everything will turn out fine, and at least I will make it to South Carolina on time to enjoy a turkey sandwhich and then turn around and come right back.
I will be documenting our progress and there is at least a confirmed internet connection at the final destination, so at the very least updating this site will happen once or twice from there. I’m hoping though that we run accross some WiFi along the way, or at least at the hotel in Knoxville.
Wish me luck.
For those that are pissed they just read that and want some real news: Did you hear that Ricky Martin likes to pee on people? Yeah, I wasn’t that surprised either.
The Xbox 360 Is Released, and the World Wets Itself
I know I’m a little late to the “Lets Write Something About the Xbox 360 Party” but I figured I would chime in anyway.
Has anyone noticed the complete insanity over these things? There are guys that would beat and pee on an orphan just to get one! Of course, that is insane…why should you get a Xbox 360 for doing something you love doing every Wednesday?! Thats besides the point though. The real deal is this: Yes, the 360 is cool, and sure its faster, but at this moment, what else is there? What else is there that is better than my current Xbox that would justify me losing my mind and paying some schmuck on E-Bay $1,625.00 for one?
Why I’m Tired Today: Fedora 4 and Samba
[ Attention: Geeky post ahead! ]
So I wiped out my last machine running Windows Saturday night and turned it into my primary Linux server, which now runs Fedora Core 4. Everything was great, except for Samba. I couldn’t get Samba to work at all. I set up the configs the same way I did on the old server, I added the users correctly, I did everything but my iMac just couldn’t connect. It kept returning “Username or password not correct.” or “Share not found.” I had other things to do, but I couldn’t get to them because of this stupid issue hanging over my head!
To make a long story short (and less boring) I finally ran accross something that sovled my problem. Actually there were two problems. In Fedora 4 there is an issue with Samba where the permissions on the /etc/samba/smbpasswd file can not be read. It looksl like the permissions are fine, but the server can’t read that file, and thus can’t find the user information. Problem one solved by touching a file in the root directory (Sorry, I’ll find the exact file when I get back home.) Problem 2 is that, unbeknownst to me, in Fedora 4 directs samba traffic by default through the security module SELinux. So I either had to mark everyfile I wished to share via samba or I could just turn the selinux intergration with Samba off with a command (That I will share when I get home.)
Finally it works…and I only wasted 2 – 3 hours total.