links for 2006-08-28
Posted in links on August 28th, 2006 by delicious-
cats and snakes are cool
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Called “The Lion King Video” on the site
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Good reference on the Civ IV leaders
links for 2006-08-21
Posted in links on August 21st, 2006 by delicious-
Probably fairly funny for the average gamer. It’s BRILLIANT if you;ve played a lot of Counter-Strike though.
Survived Another Pilgrimage
Posted in travel on August 7th, 2006 by r3vAnnette and I managed to survive another trip to Mecca Las Vegas. Three highlights:
1. Penn & Teller. We saw their show on Saturday night. It was awesome. I’m a huge fan of theirs and the show really delivered. It was intelligent, funny, impressive, patriotic and, ya know, magical. After the show, we also got to meet Teller (he spoke to me!) and Jonesy (great jazz pianist who plays before the show and supplies music for Penn’s radio show). The line to meet Penn was a little long and we were off to a party, so I will have to meet him next time. Besides, we had forgot our camera. >.<
2. Drinks at Defcon. In case you were unawares, geeks can f’n party. It was fun meeting Annette’s old 303 friends.
3. The third highlight? Well, the third highlight is what Vegas’ motto is all about. At least as far as this blog is concerned. Heh.
Now That’s a Fuckin Stereo
Posted in GTI, misc on August 2nd, 2006 by r3vI’m talking about the Alpine IVA-W200 I just put in the GTI. Touch-screen control of iPod, Sirius, AM/FM, CD, DVD, MP3, WMA, etc… with the option of adding in a Nav System, if I feel like dropping the coin.
The touch-screen has this cool feature Alpine calls PulseTouch. What it does is offer some physical feedback when you use the touchscreen. It’s hard to explain, but it makes it feel like the buttons on screen are physical buttons, sorta.
You can customize the background using Alpine’s iPersonalize website. I’d like to make my own, but the files are in a an “apn” file format that appears to be some sort of MPEG-2 derivitive. (Or, more likely, the apn is a wrapper for the mpeg data.) Unfortunately, GIMP, GraphicCoverter and QuickTime all refuse to open the file. A quick check on the topic is no help. I found one forum where some people discussed it, but got no where. Maybe I’ll have a go at the files with a hex editor when we get back from Vegas.
Some Casual Thoughts on Security
Posted in security on August 1st, 2006 by r3vEric had a post on “security smarties” today:
Via EricRice.com:
The problem with Internet Security smarties: How come when really smart people who know lots about security, get together and talk about security, they don’t really touch on the fact that so much of our lifestyle, attitudes, personal tastes, insights, patterns of behaviors and such- are placed so prominently on display, that anyone with the slightest shred of skills could engage in one-on-one pyschological warfare with people?It’s not always roses. But if you’ve blogged, flickr’d, podcasted, and videoblogged, I’m fairly certain there’s enough public transparent and disclosed information on you in the world, that someone who wants to start hell on your brain…
…can.
Because you’re not talking to the right security experts? (Or that’s not the topic at hand for the conversation? Hard to suss the context of the question.)
All of the security specialists I know and respect always consider this fact. The ones that are actively involved in the security of a network are accutely aware of the fact that their users are their weakest link in security.
The best among them also know that security is a not a state, it’s a process. Part of the process is education. Education of one’s self and education of their users. This goes not only for security peoples, of course, but for everybody with anything to lose. And, guess what? That’s everybody who ain’t dead.
Eric mentions blogging, flickr’ing, podcasting, etc*. These are all good and wonderful tools for the online age. However, like most good tools, one needs to be conscious of how one uses them. When you’re talking to the web, you’re talking to the world… even if you don’t think they’re listening. Someone you don’t like, or (more importantly) doesn’t like you, will be listening when you don’t want them to… So, gauge carefully what you toss into the great ocean of information.
* Note that the same goes for email, chatting and forum posts. Just because you think it’s private doesn’t mean it is.
Hrm, well.. this was supposed to be fairly conversational and now it’s ended up bring soapboxy. Time to wrap it up.
links for 2006-08-01
Posted in links on August 1st, 2006 by delicious-
Wired journalist finds out how thieves defeat “transponder immobilizers”.
