Randomness Redefined

I’m still in quite a bit of pain from my surgery which is really becoming annoying but I guess my body is just taking its sweet time in recooperating. First off, I have found an extremely interesting Wordpress plugin called Linknotes and it was written by Jeremy Curry. It lets you add footnotes to your posts, pretty niffty imo!

AJAX: the cross-platform successor to Java (via ArsTechnica.Com)

This is a brief, yet interesting article about an emerging web standard called AJAX:”AJAX(Asynchronous JavaScript and XML)”:http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,68403,00.html?tw=wn_story_page_prev2 or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML which powers the poll and shoutbox on my site. Notice that your browser never refreshes? Nifty no? I think that AJAX has the potential to really go someplace and it might eventually replace Javascript for your nifty eye candy and whatnot. Even though Microsoft has a hand in its creation and outlook has used for years I think this quote is a a good summary of its potential so don’t be surprised if AJAX becomes the new buzzword to through around the water cooler or at your next party.

“While AJAX is clearly improvement over less rich HTML stuff, it is really just a step in direction, in terms, in what users want to experience,” Forest Key, a Microsoft group product manager said. “AJAX is nothing compared to what is coming. We recognize the need in certain scenarios for browser-based, standards-based stuff and that’s where we have ATLAS technology, which is going to simplify the development of AJAX content.”

Windows Vista to end the need for reinstalling due to “WinRot?” (again via ArsTechnica.Com)

This article discusses a new feature from the upcoming Windows Vista called SuperFetch, supposedly this will eliminate the hassle of having to reinstall Windows once or twice a year. Personally, I am somewhat skeptical about this and I think I agree with this quote from the article.

“It might help on a 128MB system that flushes the cache away very fast, but on a 1GB system I doubt it can make a significant difference, and at first glance, it doesn’t seem to be worth the complexity it would introduce,” the Imola, Italy-based developer said in an e-mail interview.

Also, another new feature in Vista will include another feature described as

Microsoft is also implementing a control panel applet that will identify any performance problems with the system. The applet monitors your boot time and if it notices a slowdown it will log what applications have been added to startup. In other words, it is an automatic version of MSConfig

Typical Microsoft eye candy with no substance whatsoever in this humble author’s opinion but we shall see.

Students nap for Napster (yet again via ArsTechnica.Com)

I have been opposed to large corporations coming into college campuses and offering supposedly “free” music to students. I worked very hard at SMS/MSU to prevent Napster from coming to campus and offering a service where students pay money to basically to rent music from a centralized server and you have to sync your mp3 player and your PC to a DRM based service in order to gain “permission” to listen to the latest pop offerings from an industry that has no clue how to embrace technology and all they want to do is maximize their profit margins. Enough of that, lets just say I was on the iTunes camp:”iBears(The group I worked with to stop the Napster sellouts. :P)”:http://organizations.smsu.edu/ibears/ and we lost to Napster and no i have to pay extra money for a service that I will not use and I do not think many students at SMS/MSU will either but I have some facts to back me up.

American University is one of the latest schools to realize that students aren’t nearly as excited as the university administrations have assumed they would be. Their semester-long trial of Ruckus, which provides music, movies, and a degree of social networking, was met with little interest. 36 percent of students flat out said that Ruckus should be nixed entirely, and 41 percent said that Ruckus should be only made available to those who want it (i.e., no forced enrollment). A whopping 47 percent of students surveyed said that they never even used Ruckus, and here’s the best part: it was free. That’s right: half of the student body didn’t even bother to use this service at a time when it cost them nothing.

What’s the administration’s response? You might think they’d relent and let the students choose their own services, just like adults in the real world. But no. They want to ink a deal with another service, and give them a shot. Julie Weber, director of Housing and Dining, was condescending in her assessment of the fact that half of the student body was apathetic.

“I personally think fifty percent is pretty good,” Weber said. “Getting fifty percent of our students to do anything is pretty good.”

Nothing like the apathy of America’s youth eh? I’m glad my fellow students around the country are not sheep on this issue.

Windows Genuine Advantage defeated again (via ArsTechnica’s M-Dollar)
If Microsoft is serious about their WGA:”Windows Genuine Advantage(You guys aren’t doing so hot are you?”):http://www.microsoft.com/genuine/downloads/whyValidate.aspx program they are really going to have to improve something because it just isn’t working. All that you need to do this time is download their GenuineCheck.exe. You can do this by attempting to validate in a browser that doesn’t support ActiveX such as Firefox or Safari and then setting GenuineCheck.exe to run in Windows 2000 Compatibility mode. Now, simply run the application and it will generate a validation code that marks the computer as genuine, even if it isn’t. What does the almighty Cube have to say about this you ask?

“It is not a surprise for us that those who never intended to pay for software would try to find some way to circumvent Windows Genuine Advantage,” the representative said.

Poor nameless M$ rep, back to the drawling board I guess.

VMware to Fight Microsoft by Sharing Code (via Neowin.Net and C|Net News.Com)

I never saw this one coming, should make things interesting.

VMware, the leader in the fast-growing market for virtual machine software, said Monday that it will share its code with partners like IBM, Intel and Hewlett-Packard in an effort to make the its technology an industry standard.

Virtual machine software is a layer of code that resides between the operating system and computer hardware. It essentially mimics a computer so that several copies of an operating system–say, Windows or Linux or both–can run on one physical computer. More recent versions of virtual machine software make it possible to juggle computing chores across many machines to increase efficiency and reduce costs in corporate data centers.

News source: C|Net News.com

And finally Apple reopens their switchers site (via MacRumors)

Check out Apple’s redone Mac Switchers site:”Switch to a Mac(You know you want to ;))”:http://www.apple.com/switch/ , it looks a whole lot better if you ask me and it wont’ kill you to take a peek. I promise I won’t tell a soul you were tempted by the “Dark Side” of computing.

Doom ported to the iPod (via engadget)

It looks like the folks over at the iPod Linux project have successfully ported over the classic first person shooter Doom to the iPod. In order to play this though you will need to install their Linux port to your iPod, this is a neat idea but I think I will personally wait until the whole thing is a little more stable and I know it will not break my new generation 4 iPod.

The HoneyMonkey cometh: automated malicious website detection from Microsoft (via M Dollar Journal over at ArsTechnica.Com)

Apparently M$ is unleashing the power of “monkeys” to seek out websites that host malicious code that can cause all sorts of lovely levels of nastiness to your copy of windows running on your home or work PC. What this basically amounts to is that Microsoft has a lab someplace with a whole slew of computers running windows XP in various stages of security patches installed and they expose these computers to viruses, etc and watch how quickly the operation system deteriorates. The article on M dollar probably has the most simplistic overview of this but for my fellow geeks I found a really in depth article called
Microsoft Unwraps HoneyMonkey Detection Project over at eWeek and one other from eWeek called Strider HoneyMonkey: Trawling for Windows Exploits. This article did help me better understand exactly what they are up to but I realize this is not for everyone. The article also discusses a new technology that Microsoft is developing called Strider Ghostbuster. This type of technology is called a Rootkit, what a rootkit is according to the ever informative Wikipedia is:

A root kit is a set of tools used by an intruder after cracking a computer system. These tools can help the attacker maintain his or her access to the system and use it for malicious purposes. Root kits exist for a variety of operating systems such as Linux, Solaris, and versions of Microsoft Windows.

The hope is that once you can detect a rootkit attempting to install itself onto your system you can nip new vulnerabilities and viruses in the bud before they even have a chance to frolic in the wilds of the Web. Microsoft is planning to include this technology in a future version of their Antispyware program that is currently in beta testing according to eWeek. I will keep watching this because I am sure i will need to know as much about future attacks to keep myself prepared for my freelance and paid regular work that will come my way.

Even though Microsoft has fixed the previous two work around for their now mandatory MGA check in an effort to stamp out piracy. i personally see this turning up the piracy rather than detouring it but we will see. I first discovered this over on Flexbeta which was referencing a post made on Full disclosure. From that article you can see that the original discovery was from this site. I’ve had all of these up all day because I assumed they would get shut down so I will quote from the original article.

How to bypass windows Genuine Advantage Check on Windows XP

Procedure…

It took basically 5 minutes to figure out how to bypass this check. However, Microsoft can change his server part of the check in order to block this.

Here’s the procedure as it works (28 July 2005)

1. Block the ActiveX execution.
2. Choose the alternate method and download the GenuineCheck.exe
3. Right-click this executable and go the compatibility tab
4. Set the compatibly mode to Windows 2000
5. Run GenuineCheck.exe
6. Paste the code returned in the Browser.
7. off you go…

I get my wisdom teeth forcibly extracted from my jaw on Thursday. I just hate, hate,hate, HATE going to the dentist!!!! It probably has something to do with that high pitch whining noise that the drill makes. There are some pluses to this though 1. I don’t have to work on Friday and 2. The apartment opens up in 4 days! I will let you know how the surgery and whatnot goes.