futt dot org

Did I break it?

“Danger” is my middle name! Actually, I don’t have a middle name. But if I had one, I bet it would be “Danger”. I like to live on the edge, I fear nothing! Which is why I decided to upgrade Wordpress today. On the live site, no less. No testing. No backup. From the Subversion repository, currently at version 2.3-alpha… It’s a damn miracle it works at all, so I guess one could say it went well. Still got some issues with some posts appearing twice on the front page, and a couple of plugins barfed, but overall I’d say it was a success. I’ll fix the glitches eventually.

Posted in Futt Dot Org | 429 views | 7 Comments »

Xbox 360

Well I finally caved. I swore I wouldn’t get an Xbox 360, as I always figured it was kinda crappy and didn’t have any cool games. But seeing as GTA IV will be 360/PS3 only I kinda had to get one. Buying a PS3 is completely out of the question - at least until the price drops to about 1/3rd what it’s at right now. That, and someone other than Sony releases it… I hate those muppets.

So I bit the bullet and went online to find a cheap one. Found a Premium (w/harddrive, HD cable, headset, wireless controllers etc) for around €300, including 4 relatively new games, and went for that one. It’s fun, not as nice as the Wii of course, and paying for online play sucks hard. But on the bright side, I can use it as a media center extender, and the arcade has a few gems (Bejeweled 2, kids love it. OK so I like it too. Oh and Geometry Wars!).

It does suck hard for FPS games though. The controller is kinda unwieldy, but it works OK for popcap, racing and classic arcade games. I gave up on Gears of War pretty quick, the control scheme definitely takes some getting used to. So I’ve been playing arcade games and NFS Carbon mostly. Now, get coding Rockstar! I want my GTA!

Posted in Gaming | 380 views | 2 Comments »

Slack on a stick

Ever since I got my 1gb Kingston USB stick, I’ve been wanting to install Linux on it. Well I got bored the other day and figured I’d have a look around for viable options. I settled for slax, the miniature Live CD version of Slackware (the ISO clocks in at around 192MB). I settled for Slax because it’s small, has KDE on it, and has a nice installer thingy that will setup Isolinux/Lilo on the USB stick for you - no fiddling required.

Another nice thing about Slax is that it will not destroy your USB stick. One of the major weaknesses of solid state USB storage is that most of them have a limited number of write-cycles, so things like system logs and other heavy disk io will quickly destroy it. Slax can be run with the USB stick write-protected, using ramdisk to store your settings and data. When the time comes to shut down you get the option to sync the changes you’ve made to the stick.

So now I have my own portable pocket-linux!

Posted in Linux | 290 views | 3 Comments »

Great Firewall of Norway

From time to time I shake my head in disbelief at the antics of the Chinese government and their internet filtering. Well yesterday, two members of the Computer Crimes Commission put forward a proposal (in Norwegian) that, if enacted, would force Norwegian ISPs to filter all illegal content on the internet. Slashdot covered the proposal here. Fortunately this is a minority proposal that only has the support of 2 of the 6 members of the commission, but the mere fact that it would be considered as a serious proposal scares the hell out of me.

Maybe it’s time to shell out for that Relakks account now.

Posted in Rants | 363 views | No Comments »

Look into the Orb!

Browsing around for a way to stream media to my Wii the other day, I stumbled across Orb. Orb is an agent running on your computer that will make an online library from your multimedia content (audio, video, images and webcams/TV cards) and make them available to you (and any friends you may choose to share content with) via a web portal. So now I can not only watch my video collection on my Wii, but also listen to my music collection at work or check on my apartment by accessing the webcam. Useful little tool indeed!

Posted in Uncategorized | 207 views | No Comments »

0wning an Acer notebook

Tan Chew Keong over at vuln.sg has some interesting news for owners of Acer notebooks. Apparently they all come with a rootkit preinstalled, in the form of an ActiveX control called “LunchApp.ocx” that is registered and marked “safe for scripting” (that is, any web page embedding the code to launch this app may do so without even presenting a warning to the user).

The ActiveX control, last modified sometime in 1998, is distributed as a part of the operating system install on all Acer notebooks. It is designed to accept a drive letter, executable file, and command line parameters and execute those automatically. Read on for a quick guide to getting rid of it, and a test to see if you have the control active.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Gadgets | 476 views | No Comments »