Nobody Would Ever Guess That

One of the most highly anticipated games expected to be released soon is Half-Life 2, and the recent announcement that people could start downloading parts of it ahead of time only increased the frenzy. Then when Gabe Newell, head of the company, announced on a message board that it was ‘going gold’ (i.e., ready for mass manufacture) on Monday, everyone went nuts. Nearly every single forum I checked that day had at least one message like “OMG OMG HALF-LIFE 2 GOLD MONDAY!!!!!1!!1”

Except it wasn’t true. Turns out that Gabe had his message board account compromised and it was some prankster responsible for the message. And the L33T hacker tactic which allowed this security lapse to happen? He guessed the password: ‘gaben’

No wonder they had their source-code stolen…

Canada Post Sucks

I received a couple packages this week, and one of them had a fair bit of water damage along one edge. I don’t mean discoloured-and-wrinkled either; it was still fairly damp and easily tearable when I took it out of the mailbox. The mailbox itself is inside, so I’m not sure if water got in the drop-box, or delivery van, or sorting centre, or what.

Fortunately it’s the first time it’s ever happened, but too bad it had to be to someone else’s artwork originals… At least they seem to be mostly repairable by reflattening them under a stack of books.

The other package only suffered bent corners, but it seems that happens to nearly everything that gets mailed, no matter how well it’s protected.

Paranoia

I usually keep an ssh session open to my server at home, so I can check in on e-mail and such during the day, and every once in a while the connection breaks and I can’t get back in. My mind instantly starts conjuring up scenarios in which my server is being stolen, or the apartment is burning to the ground, or hackers have locked me out of my own systems, but after quickly popping back home over lunch to check on it, it’s inevitably just a cable connection problem, hardware crash, or power outage (today’s culprit).

But what if my systems really had been stolen?
Continue reading “Paranoia”

Wheel Of Zzzzz…

Not only do I have a stack of games to work through, but I have a stack of books waiting, too.

Currently I’ve been trying to get through The Eye of the World, the first book of the Wheel Of Time series, and it’s been slow going. So far there’s been a lot of Vague Hinting, people constantly Running Away From Imminent Threats, and descriptions of the world and people as they travel, but it still doesn’t really feel like anything interesting is happening yet. There isn’t anything that really compels me to continue reading.

Admittedly though, I am only reading it in small bursts as time allows, which is potentially making a somewhat slow stretch seem even worse. It’s a beloved enough series (the first few books, anyway) that there has to be something more to it, so perhaps it just hasn’t reached the good parts yet (maybe things pick up once they actually reach Tar Valon), or has to be read at a faster pace.

It probably doesn’t help to be reading multiple books simultaneously, either. I’m also reading A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge, and it at least always has something new or interesting happening in order to retain your attention. Maybe I should finish it first and then go back to EotW…

Ewww…

(Yes, it’s a news-as-filler day.)
Woman Dies After Six Years On Couch

How the hell do you even let yourself get into that kind of state? Did she just think to herself “Y’know, this is comfy, I think I’m just not going to get up ever again…”? And if the guy living with her wanted to help so much, why not call the cops to forcibly remove her for her own good? Yeesh…

Psst, Hey Buddy…

While I was walking to the office this morning, headphones on and the PocketPC playing, a slightly-dishevelled gentleman standing by a bike motioned to me as I passed by. I paused a moment and took the headphones off, mentally preparing a polite apology that I could not help, but instead I was surprised to see him reach into a pack and bring out a CD wallet, which he opened to reveal a number of CD-R discs. He then asked if I had a CD player, to which I mumbled something like “Er, no, not really, sorry…” and then went on my way. I’ve heard of the old cliche of someone selling copied video tapes out of their trunk, of course, but this is the first time I’ve personally run into anything like it, and a bit higher-tech even.

Looking back, it doesn’t even make much sense. If I’m so desperate for cheap, pirated music, I can get nearly anything I’d want easily enough for free. Oh well, it helped make the day a little more surreal, at least…

One More Down

Today I finally finished Morrowind: Bloodmoon, and it was a lot like the previous expansion, Tribunal. More-of-the-same of Morrowind, but with better map, dungeon, and quest design. The new map was large enough that there was a lot of new stuff to see, but not so large that huge chunks of it were left unexplored, like the mainland. The only real complaints are that the story wasn’t all that interesting (Some Guys: “Ooooh, behold the prophecy…” *do stuff* “Yay, the prophecy is fulfilled!”), but it was still fun to work through it and there was an interesting diversion in overseeing the development of the Raven Rock colony.

Although there are still a bunch of unfinished quests, unexplored areas on the mainland, and zillions of player-created mods available, I think I’ll leave it off here. I’ve still got a lot of other games to finish off, and ending Morrowind here puts me -1.5 games closer to catching up.

Why -1.5? Because yesterday I went out and bought two more and an expansion pack (Thief 3, Beyond Divinity, and Simcity4: Rush Hour). Yes, I know, I’m horrible… I’m just lucky I didn’t cave in and pick up Doom 3 and City of Heroes, too…

Anti-Touch Typing

One thing I’ve always meant to do is learn to type properly. I took a class way back in Grade 8 and was rated at around 45 wpm, but the lessons never really stuck. I have awful, awful habits, no sense of standardized positioning, occasionally have to look at the keyboard, and make quite a few mistakes.

After watching some co-workers wail away on their keyboards I always felt a bit slow and clumsy in comparison. It was thus quite a surprise when, on a whim, I took a few different online typing tests and actually scored between 65-70 words per minute, including corrections. That was just on plain text, and punctuation-heavy stuff like code would be a bit slower, but it was still a lot higher than I expected.

I should still probably look into some kind of tutoring, though, to at least reduce mistakes. It still feels a bit foolish when you’re typing with a coworker looking over your shoulder and you spend half your time backspacing…

I Am The Virus King

After another thorough scan on my systems, including cross-scans from different OSes, I have confirmed that my streak of being virus-free is still unbroken from ever since I got my first PC in 1993. Sometimes it pays to be paranoid…

Avoiding them has actually been fairly simple:

1) Never run e-mail attachments directly. EVER. If you do get what you think is a legitimate attachment, save it to disk and then open it from within the appropriate program.
2) Don’t use Outlook. That’s just asking for trouble.
3) Firewall off every port and only open the ones you absolutely need. Preferably with a physically separate firewall device.
4) Don’t use IE on untrusted sites. If you do use IE, deactivate ActiveX objects and Javascript. If you have to leave them enabled, don’t ever say yes to those ‘toolbar’ downloads.
5) Be suspicious of .exe files from untrusted sites. Virus-check the hell out of them, see if you can open them in WinZip instead (sometimes they’re just self-extracting .zip files), etc.
6) If it has an unfamiliar extension, don’t run it.
7) If you browse Usenet, don’t auto-display HTML and images. Treat them like e-mail attachments in 1).