sohayda

Now get me a Mac Mini!

2006-03-03T19:19:00.000-05:00

Well, I eventually got my 'free' Sony PSP, so I signed up for the new Intel-based Mac Mini. I've got a few referrals cleared on my account but still need a few more. If anybody is interested in signing up and trying to get one too please use my referral link so you'd help me out while you're at it.
http://minimacs.freepay.com/?r=26896855
The offers aren't very difficult at all, especially ones like Blockbuster or the stamps.com one. They're almost worth doing without the free mini for incentive.
The deal used to be pretty attractive before the Intel versions were announced, but with the newly updated specs it's a steal.

* 1.5GHz Intel Core Solo Processor
* 512MB memory
* 60GB hard drive
* DVD/CD-RW combo drive
* Integrated AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth capability
* Mac OS X 10.4, iLife '06 and Front Row software
* Apple remote
* 6.5 inches wide and 2 inches tall
* Weighs only 2.9 lbs

Rude Animals to Return

2005-11-28T13:52:00.000-05:00

After being dormant for a few years now the surly bunch that makes up Animal Crossing will be making a return of sorts in their kinda sequel; Animal Crossing Wild World. I remember seeing fuzzy pictures of the original game YEARS ago in EGM when it was being developed for the N64 and thought it looked unique. How right I was. The Gamecube original is like crack rock on a disc! You basically mimic life in the game through a strange looking boy or girl character in a town full of rude and sometimes obnoxious animals. You do chores for them, or just hold things for them and they'll give you items that you collect and horde in your tacky self-decorated house that you're forever paying off to the wretched Tom Nook. This time around they've added...well not too much, but still it's new so it's reason enough to play the damned thing. You now have a slingshot (hopefully you can hit the animals with it like you could do with the net in the original. now THAT was good fun!), it's in a 3d perspective, and of course, the big deal is it is online capable. It's not easy to get online accoring to EGM, but when has the internet ever been meant to be easy anyway? At any rate I've been looking forward to this pointlessly addictive game for over a year now and it may very well be reason enough to get a DS. Hopefully Target is still honoring that whole $99 debacle...

Get me a PSP!

2005-10-17T15:00:00.000-04:00

By using this link;
http://psps.freepay.com/?r=23781226
and signing up for one of the offers available you can be a real super duper friend and get me a free Sony PSP!
I've been very doubtful of these offers ever since they started the freeipods thing years ago. They did a few segments about it on The Screensavers even and Kevin Rose shattered the myth once he actually took delivery of his free iPod. I had an iPod though so my interest in that was pretty limited, but when I heard about the free PSPs and Xboxes, and PS2s etc I just had to see if it was for real. The steps involved are pretty simple, you sign up and then have five friends sign up and complete one of the offers. Soon after that they send you the goods. I signed up for the $9.99 Blockbuster Online offer which has been great so far. I set up my account fairly easily and picked 3 movies. The next day my first movie arrived because the shipping depot they use is literally a few miles away. Lucky me. So, even if I don't get the free iPod I'll have gotten 3 movies for $10 delivered to my door.
If you want to be a super friend, please use the link above and hook me up. Hell, I'll even send you the ten bucks if you go the Blockbuster route using my referral!
I'll report back if I get it or have issues.

This makes total sense

2005-10-04T08:54:00.000-04:00

This article about the mediocre Motorola/Apple/Cingular Rokr phone makes complete sense to me. Apple never was the type to release something so "blah" and as this guy points out the Rokr is just a pawn in their grand scheme to get a foot hold in the cell phone market. The beauty of it is that they don't even come out of this deal looking so bad. It's not the Apple Rokr, it's Motorola's turd. It'll sell beyond what it would have normally because of iTunes, and as a result Apple might be able to come back to the bargaining table with something of their own design that could blow away the competition and be able to dictate their terms. The real iTunes phone is coming I think.

Well that's just obscene!

2005-09-22T15:47:00.000-04:00

Buggati is finally back in action. Their long talked about Veyron is finally going to be available and AutoExpress drove it. Rated at around 1000hp from a quad turbo charged W16 engine, the Veyron will cost you a mere $1,000,000. It apparently spanks the McLaren F1 as the fastest production car with an estimated top speed of 250+mph. AutoExpress has some audio so you can hear what a beastly 1000hp W16 sounds like. The old EB110 has always been a favorite of mine. Despite the Veyron having nearly twice the horsepower I'd still rather have an EB110...

Google Print Beta

2005-08-12T14:53:00.000-04:00

When I first heard about this I read there was a glitch that allowed you to basically just read the entire book online, but I thought it had been fixed. I just tried it out again and it seems to allow you to just read each page as long as you "search" for the pages one by one. Strange that they would allow that...

read more | digg story

Symantec warns Mac users

2005-03-24T13:51:00.000-05:00

This article talks about a recent warning from Symantec to Mac users. They apparently think that the Macintosh platform is going to be a prime target for viruses and malware due to its projected growth for the coming year. I agree to a certain extent, but can anybody really believe an Anti-Virus manufacturer about such things? Could they possibly be trying to scare up some more business for themselves? As of right now, if you own a Mac you don’t need an Anti-Virus application. That’s just the way it is. Will Apple doubling its market share change that? Maybe, but as this article says, 5% of the market still isn’t all that much to make OS X the next Windows in terms of viruses. You can’t blame Symantec for trying I guess.

Apple's revolutionary new product

2005-03-16T10:19:00.000-05:00

The site Apple Insider is reporting that Apple is working on a, get this, TWO BUTTON MOUSE!!! Yes, it’s crazy, I know, but it does make a lot of sense. They are trying to push the Mac platform on long-time Windows users, and what’s the first gripe they usually have about using a Mac? “What’s up with that one buttoned mouse, how do I right-click?” So it’s about time, but what kind of impression will they make by selling it for $70? Not a good one I’m sure.

Superman movie pictures

2005-03-15T13:33:00.000-05:00

ComingSoon.net has pictures from the upcoming Superman movie set. It looks like they were taken from a helicopter too which is really strange, but works out well because they give a great perespective to the huge space ship they've created. The farm looks exactly like the one they use in the Smallville TV show too. I sure hope they don't screw this one up. The first Superman movie was pretty damned good so it is possible.

Saleen S7 Turbo

2005-03-15T12:45:00.000-05:00

In case 500 horsepower was just never enough for you Saleen is going to be putting out a twin turbo version of their already fast as hell S7 sports car. It’s going to make 750 horsepower and 700 lbs/ft of torque from its 427 cubic inch V8. They’re looking at reaching 60mph in less than 2.8 seconds. I think Vipers and Turbo 911s usually only break into the 3.4 second range so 2.8 is freaking fast. Oh yeah, it’s also going to cost somewhere around half a million dollars too.

Heavyweight Receiver Champ

2005-03-15T11:15:00.000-05:00

Denon announced a while ago their new flagship A/V receiver, the AVR-5805. This thing is a beast too;

10 channels at 170 watts each
Dual 5.1 zones capability
THX Ultra2 certified
6 independent power supplies
Dolby Digital EX
DTS ES 6.1
Dolby Pro Logic IIx
2 Firewire Digital Audio ports
Ethernet port for control and/or upgrades
Denon Link 3rd port for pure digital inputs
6 Coaxial Digital inputs
6 Optical Digital inputs
6 Component Video inputs
1 DVI Video input
3 HDMI Video inputs
Faroudja DCDi video scaling

All this for a low, low price of $6000 and weighing a rack bending 92 pounds! It measures a full foot high too so good luck even finding a rack to hold it. Maybe the floor would be a better option.

Ron and Fez leaving terrestrial radio?

2005-03-15T09:13:00.000-05:00

Rumors have been flying around for months now with various hints being dropped by XM duo Opie and Anthony, but now Ron and Fez themselves are joining in on the fun. On their fan created site www.ronfez.net a special mock-error page has been posted hinting at the guys going to satellite. Ron and Fez were in NYC for a few years on 102.7FM along with Opie and Anthony prior to the whole church incident. Eventually the station changed their format and gave Ron and Fez the ax as well forcing them to move a bit south to Washington, D.C. I’ve missed their hilarity over the last few years, but would I pay $13 a month on top of equipment costs to hear them again? Not right now, but at least I have the option. Fezzie rules!

Quad CPUs Coming to the Mac?

2005-03-14T14:21:00.000-05:00

According to MacSlash developers have found references to dual core G5s as well as four processors in the latest version of the CHUD tools. This isn't like somebody heard somebody's girlfriend's brother's cousin's mother tell their pet canary type rumor, this is one where it's documented in an actual Apple application. Seems pretty legit to me. The next MacWorld should prove very interesting if this and the long promised 3.0Ghz G5 are set to be announced. Even a quad 2.0Ghz G5 sounds impressive, but a quad 3.0Ghz G5?! Wow.

Lego Deathstar

2005-03-11T10:49:00.000-05:00

I had to steal yet another story from Gizmodo. Lego is set to release a Star Wars Deathstar set for $300 and weighing in at a mind bending 3441 pieces!!! It will be available on September 30th for all those 30 year old Star Wars freaks with or without kids.
This story is especially funny to me because my son and I just watched Episode IV last night, he loves Legos, and I eventually end up putting them together for him before he smashes them to pieces. As Gizmodo puts it;

"Of course, if you’re anything like I was when I was nine, you’d have your father spend six hours putting the whole set together just to smash it into a wall in a tragic “accident” 10 minutes later."

Oh how true...except somehow I think this one might take more than 6 hours.

Apple commits to Blu-Ray

2005-03-10T12:45:00.000-05:00

Apple announced that they will join the Blu-ray Association which, to me, means that future Macs will support the Sony-created technology for High Def content. Steve Jobs declared this year the “year of High Def” in his last keynote, so it appears this is a step in that direction.
The dual layer version of Blu-ray discs can hold 50 GB of data making room for High Def movies a cinch. Blu-ray players have been available in Japan, of course, for months now, but the first guaranteed taste of the technology that the US will see will be in the form of the Playstation 3. It can’t come soon enough.

The Next Xbox

2005-03-10T12:42:00.000-05:00

And it’s not going to look anything like the above picture…
Some Specs for the next Xbox have been put out by Gamespy. They’re just speculation at this point, but they’re based on what was told to them by numerous game developers who are actually working with the development hardware. The three core 3.0 Ghz processor has me blown away. How this is going to cost less than $500 is beyond me. A 720p minimum resolution for games is a welcome feature too. An optional hard drive is a good compromise, if it’s true, and should keep the modders out there happy.

Bit Torrent 4.0

2005-03-09T17:57:00.000-05:00

Looks like version 4.0 of the ever famous Bit Torrent is out. Windows and Linux versions are available, but no OS X one. Typical...Hopefully Azureus fixes this.

...and the MPAA & RIAA can be heard collectively weeping

PSP & OS X, perfect together?

2005-03-09T12:31:00.000-05:00

The Sony PSP is a work of art in terms of geek factor. It’s shiny black, it has a huge clear screen, it plays games, it plays music, it displays pictures, it basically does it all. But what are the chances of such an uber toy being supported on the Mac OS? Slim to none right? Apparently not. Sony announced that they will be releasing software for not only Windows, but for OS X as well. Sony said the software would be out within a year which seems a bit far off since the PSP is coming out in the US in two weeks and has been out in Japan for months. There is, however, a program that is out already which does everything you’d likely want in regards to sending content from your Mac to your PSP called iPSP. I’m guessing that the Sony software will not be as well integrated as iPSP, at least from what I can tell just reading the site. It supports iPhoto smart albums, iTunes playlists, automatically backs up your game saves, converts video to the PSP supported format, it even converts DVD .vob files for viewing on the PSP. Ok, so the PSP is releasing at $250 (they force you to buy the package with the accessories unlike Japan where they were given a choice between the accessory pack or a stripped down pack for less money), the iPSP software is $20-24, and a 1 GB memory stick DUO is $130-140. That makes the whole multi-media-geekfest package easily over $400. The latest 30 GB iPod Photo is $350 by itself and while it can’t do a lot of the things the PSP can it does have 29 more gigs of storage for your music and picture collection. That kind of comparison is going to be made quite a lot in the coming weeks as Sony has made it clear that they’re now gunning for the iPod market share. Now if only they can make enough of the damned things!

The perfect phone?

2005-03-08T17:46:00.000-05:00

Ok, so the W800 is a bit of overkill for most, but this handy dandy K700 looks perfect. And from the sound of this broken english review it's as good as it looks. Now to win the lottery and place my order!

SadPod

2005-03-08T09:38:00.000-05:00

I love this picture. Some older iPods had a feature called Disk Scanning which would sometimes occur when you powered it on. When it was running you would see various hard drive icons and then the above picture if the scan found problems that it couldn't fix. Could you imagine seeing this thing on your screen? Sure it's funny now, but if this is how you're told your $300+ gadget is dead I really doubt you'd feel the same way. Older Mac hardware had similar Sad Mac icon that occurred at start-up if a hardware test failed. In addition a car crash sound would play!! What sick-o thought this was a good idea?!

Forza Demolition Derby

2005-03-07T17:06:00.000-05:00

I found these pictures of Forza for the Xbox. Apparently they’re going to have a demolition derby style mode where you can smash up exotic cars like the NSX pictured above. That makes GT4’s lack of in-game car damage even more confusing. Maybe Micro$oft just paid more money to the car manufacturers so that they could show realistic damage. All I know is it gives GT4 an almost goofy arcade quality not expected in "The Real Driving Simulator" that they tout it as.
These pictures are of the New York City board without any cars on it. Sure they look photorealistic, but how will the game play and the cars handle more importantly? If the demo they have out is anything to go by then it will play like a piece of poop. The demo is horrendous with beyond normal load times, bad controls and jaggie graphics. Yes, it’s a demo, but why would a company put out a demo if it wasn’t regarded as good in their opinion? If the demo is considered ‘good’ by its developers Sony has absolutely nothing to worry about.

W800 Preview

2005-03-07T15:57:00.000-05:00

I would love a shiny new Sony Ericsson phone. Any one of them really. My problem though is that my current phone (a Sony Ericsson t68i) works just fine. I guess I could use better reception as they’re said to have poor reception due to their not-so-great internal antenna, but who knows if a new phone would even be much better. Anyway, the upcoming W800 Walkman phone by Sony is a nice as hell looking phone, but I don’t really think I could realistically justify the cost of the phone based on the features. A phone with a camera might be cool, but is it really worth upgrading a phone based on that? I mean it’s a 2 megapixel camera which would make it 4 megapixels shy of what my digital camera has. No sense in that. The W800 also comes with a 512MB memory stick you can load up with a bunch of MP3s that can be listened to using either the included headphones or a nifty composite line-out cable you can plug into a home stereo. That’s cool, but my 40 gig iPod does that better by a factor of 80. I’m also not sure if I like the whole orange and white creamsicle case thing they have going on there. Regardless, Club Sony Ericsson has a short preview with a lot of cool pictures so check it out.

maybe the K700i is more my speed...

Borrow your music!

2005-03-07T13:44:00.000-05:00

Market analysts are speculating that Apple will be forced to offer a music rental/subscription service to go with its iTunes Music Store in order to compete with Napster. What?! Since when is Napster a threat? They upped their revenue forecast a million bucks so all the sudden that means everybody wants to rent their music instead of owning it? I’m sure there are a ton of people out there who love pop music who this kind of system works well for, but I’d prefer to own my music, not borrow it. I might as well just listen to the radio. I also can’t see how Napster isn’t in a bad financial situation with their service being cracked by users so that they can save the files indefinitely using a winamp plug-in. But, who knows, with the record labels chomping at the bit to raise the fee for downloaded music, maybe Apple really will be forced to at least add the option.

Marv coming to a theater near you!

2005-03-07T13:03:00.000-05:00

I must admit I was a bit skeptical about the idea of a live action movie adaptation of my favorite comic book, Sin City, but from the looks of the trailer this movie is going to be freaking awesome! They may have overdone it with how many stars are in the thing, but what are ya gonna do? Just look at all these people;

Bruce Willis as Hartigan
Jessica Alba as Nancy
Rosario Dawson as Gail
Benicio Del Toro as Jackie Boy
Mickey Rourke as Marv
Brittany Murphy as Shellie
Jamie King as Goldie
and series creator and comic book god Frank Miller as a priest

It’s directed by the guy that did El Mariachi, Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn and…Spy Kids, Robert Rodriguez with a guest director nod to Quentin Tarantino. I hope Tarantino has some kind of input into the Miho scenes if anything. She needs to be reminiscent of Kill Bill if anything. The look of the movie is perfect and the special effects match the over the top mood of the series. Now if only they’d make a worthy movie of Miller’s Dark Knight Returns series…
Check out the trailer and the official site for more.

Virii to screw another platform

2005-03-07T11:08:00.000-05:00

If you live with the virus infested OS that is Windows you might not mind this new up-and-coming trend. It seems there are reports of a virus infecting Symbian based smartphones. This article mentions the possibility of an example being found “in the wild” but it hasn’t actually been proven so it may be a big scam to sell some Antivirus software to a new platform. It also only affects Nokia Series 60 phones based on the Symbian 6.1 OS so at least it’s limited in that regard. At any rate, the little bugger spreads itself via MMS messages and even scans for other victims via Bluetooth in order to propagate itself! The MMS ‘feature’ could be a real problem for people that pay per message too. Similar cell phone virus reports have been made in the past as well as proof of concepts, but this time it seems a little more problematic due to the financial damage this particular virus could cause to users. Is the Symbian OS the cell phone Windows equivalent?

Freedom is slowly dying

2005-03-04T10:21:00.000-05:00

Blogs are quickly becoming America’s Public Enemy #1 it seems. Political blogs are under fire and the ruling so far in the Apple vs. “The Rumor Sites” case is not going so great for freedom of speech. According to the San Jose judge ruling in the Apple case web blogs are not covered under the same constitutional protection that traditional media outlets are. It’s only a preliminary ruling so far, but I’m guessing it’s a good indication of how things will transpire in the end. The case is interesting in that it’s questioning who should be considered “legitimate members of the press” in today’s digital world. The preliminary ruling doesn’t bode well for the legitimacy of rumor sites/blogs and that’s not good for those of us who love rampant Apple product speculation!

Attack of the Clones

2005-03-03T13:45:00.000-05:00

It took a few weeks, but Intel has already proven that Apple will be shamelessly copied in the very near future. At their Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco yesterday Intel’s VP showed off a plastic concept mock-up called the “Sleek Concept Entertainment PC.” This surprises nobody I’m sure. I can’t wait for Dell or HP to offer this to their customers for $100 so we can have a real problem with zombie bot led DoS attacks!

RIAA proves they are money hungry vampires!

2005-03-02T16:55:00.000-05:00

Here’s how I see it; the record industry was hurting a few years ago when Steve Jobs approached them about this little idea he had for selling their content online for a buck a song. They thought it was a novel idea and agreed to it thinking they’d make some money off of him and didn’t think twice about it. Fast forward ~2 years and Apple’s sold over 300 million songs via their wildly successful iTunes Music Store. The record industry gets greedy causing them to think they’ve undersold themselves and now would like to ruin it for all parties involved by jacking up the price. Hmm, that sounds pretty close to what they did with the cost of compact discs a few years ago. Didn’t they eventually get sued over that and end up owing consumers a ton of money because they were ripping everybody off with their over inflated CD costs? Way to go RIAA! You are the devil!

Apple to own TiVo?

2005-02-23T16:55:00.000-05:00

The rumors are starting already. I don't know that Reuters and CNN would report pure rumors though. TiVo is in dire need of somebody saving their dying butts, and who better than Apple themselves?! The possibilities are astounding especially after considering what Apple did for the music industry with their iTunes Music Store. And with Steve Jobs heralding this year as the “year of High Definition” in his last keynote it makes the possibilities even more incredible. TiVo’s ailing stock has jumped 17% based purely on this speculation!

New pods have landed!

2005-02-23T13:32:00.000-05:00

In an effort to build an even more unstoppable digital music player line-up Apple revised their iPods today. They now sell as follows;

Shuffle 512MB $99
Shuffle 1GB $149
Mini 4GB $199
Mini 6GB $249
iPod 20GB $299
iPod Photo 30GB $349
iPod Photo 60GB $449

Most notable is how the ‘old’ 40 gig model has been dropped in favor of a 30 gig iPod Photo. The rumor sites were reporting that the mini would get a new color screen which turned out to be false, but it seems like an inevitable progression of the line-up I think. Apple has also chosen to omit the Firewire cable from the pack-in accessories leaving only the USB 2.0 one. Not something I would be too fond of as a Mac user, but understandable from a marketing standpoint. And for those bargain shoppers out there, you can get the ‘old’ 40 and 60 gig iPod Photos for $379 and $479 respectively in the Apple Store Sale section. That’s quite a drop from their original $499 and $599 prices. Some have speculated that this might be due to slow sales of the Photo models, but who cares? They’re cheaper, get some!

Do Panic

2005-02-22T15:52:00.000-05:00

Not so much news as it is a free advertisement (to both readers of this blog out there) for a great Mac-centric software company. Panic Inc, is a company that puts out some great software. Not only does it work well, but it looks great doing it. The user interface of their applications is clean and simple to navigate which should be the aim of any application. I’m a frequent user of their Candybar, Transit and Unison products, so obviously I like them, and continue to be a satisfied customer. They recently updated their FTP app Transit to version 3 which is why I was at their site thinking about their products. I don’t know why, since the apps work well enough already, but I can’t wait for the next release of Candybar and Unison. Companies like Panic are the reason I love the Macintosh platform.

Virus Writers Use RARs

2005-02-21T15:56:00.000-05:00

It seems virus writers aren't as dumb as most IT people would hope. Most networks, including the one where I work, block out emails containing ZIP files. So what do virus authors do? They stuff their work into a RAR archive instead! And Symantec, Norton and McAfee collectively pull their hair out working overtime to fix it.

They're Back!!

2005-02-21T13:27:00.000-05:00

I knew this day would come, but the wonders of Safari and Firefox kept me in denial. Pop-ups, or pop-unders for some, are back with a vengeance.
I noticed this recently with my favorite icon site xicons.com. It’s part of my morning links, and every time I came to its tab a pop-under would do it's business all over my desktop. Apparently you can turn off Java or JavaScript to get rid of the problem under Safari, but that means you’ll often get an error message telling you about the Java plug-in you seem to be missing. In Firefox you can use an extension called Flashblocker which is said to get rid of the ads at the expense of blocking any legitimate flash you might try to view. At least with the extension you get no error messages time and time again.
At any rate, I hope Apple puts out an update to Safari soon since I prefer using that over Firefox on the Mac. Either that or I just boycott xicons until a fix is available…

Xbox is on fire!

2005-02-17T17:00:00.000-05:00

The ever benevolent Microsoft is recalling some 14 million Xbox power cords because of reports that they can cause fires or burn you. Damn, talk about bad press at the worst time. With the next Xbox set to be announced in May at E3 this is the last thing Microsoft needs. I guess it says something about the company that they’re not just sweeping it under the rug in an effort to avoid bad press though. I have to give them credit for doing the right thing at least. My Xbox doesn’t seem to be effected as it was manufactured after the October 23, 2003 cut off date. The first one I owned would have been affected though. Good thing I got rid of that one!

Sony's iPod Killer?

2005-02-16T16:29:00.000-05:00

Sony is set to release their self-proclaimed iPod Killer, the PSP, March 24th in the US. The announced price of $249 seems incredibly high to me despite the Value Pack name associated with it. It comes with the following;

A 32 MB Memory Stick Duo
headphones with remote control
battery pack
AC adaptor
soft case and cleaning cloth
movie/music/game video sampler UMD disc including multiple non-interactive game demos
and for the first one million PSP Value Packs shipped, a special UMD video release of the feature film Spider-Man 2

Im guessing the Memory Stick will be useful for game saves, but if you want to rip your own movies to view on the PSP you'll definitely need to buy a very expensive 1gig stick as well.

Ok, so the iPod plays music and can now even display pictures. What does the PSP do? It plays PS2-quality games, proprietary-based discs with movies on them, MP3s from a Memory Stick, connects wirelessly to a network via 802.11b for multi-player games and looks damned good doing it. Rumors have surfaced about Sony intending what amounts to an office suite of applications for use on the PSP even. It looks like Sony is basically making the PSP their new Clie PDA line. I doubt youll see business people on trains using PSPs for their powerpoint presentations anytime soon, but having the capability sure cant hurt. If the PSP wasnt so large I could see it being a threat to the iPod, but its just not very portable. Thanks in part to the PSPs 4.3 inch widescreen display the unit measures nearly 7 inches long and 3 inches wide. Not something you want to have in your pocket. And regardless of whether or not it has a lanyard strap loop on the side, this isnt something you want dangling from your neck, geek or not.

Regardless of any shortcomings the PSP might have it's one nice looking gadget that any self respecting geek will be drooling over in the coming weeks.

Kensington Lock Useless?

2005-02-15T17:53:00.000-05:00

This kind of thing just scares me. Apparently a Kensington laptop lock cable can be picked with a simple roll of paper wrapped around a pen. Is nothing safe?!

Napster's DRM Circumvented

2005-02-15T16:19:00.000-05:00

Not really surprising, but funny none the less; It seems Napster's music renting service has been taken advantage of. Now instead of all your music being gone once you stop paying their $15 monthly fee you can burn the songs to CD. It just proves once again, DRM and all other forms of piracy protection only burden honest users. The pirates will always find a way around it...

Holding Back Progress

2005-02-15T11:33:00.000-05:00

The Kaleidescape system is something I've read about with interest because it's just a cool idea executed well. It's basically a DVD jukebox that enables you to rip your movies to its massive array of hard drives to be streamed across a network of Kaleidescape systems in your home. Oh, and it happens to cost somewhere close to $30,000 for a system! But anyway, Hollywood being how they are these days Kaleidescape got sued because the DVD Copy Control Association is afraid that the billions of millionaires out there that own these systems will spend their days and nights ripping their NetFlix DVDs instead of discs they actually paid for. The end result is the DVD-CCA wants Kaleidescape to require that the actual disc be in the player to authenticate before allowing it to be played. Yes, they would like you to do exactly what you paid $30k NOT to do! How asinine is that?! Hollywood really needs to regroup and actually work with companies like this and figure out a way to move into the 21st century. It's bad enough they put out 3 or 4 versions of the same movie to bilk more money out of people, but when they can't even let somebody who buys what is essentially a $30,000 DVD player use it as it was intended they obviously have distorted priorities.

Is TiVo the next Ultimate TV?

2005-02-14T15:38:00.000-05:00

With all their other problems, the last thing TiVo needs is trouble with their latest update. I just wish they would release TiVoToGo for OS X before they go under at least...

Xbox 2 in the Fall!

2005-02-14T13:38:00.000-05:00

Bow down before the pure power that will be Xbox 2! Ok, so the PS3 will probably hand the Xbox 2 it's lunch when that finally comes out, but who cares, this thing is months away, not years! wo0t!

Gotta love a quote from Steve "The Monkey Man" Balmer too;

"When you see the new Xbox, you're going to think it's un -- well, let me say it politely -- unbelievable. Just unbelievable...I think we’re going to blow by Sony with our next box. I absolutely think we’re going to kick their backsides, so to speak. I think Xbox 1 has been a fantastic product. We’re not market leaders yet. There’s Sony, there’s us, there’s Nintendo. When we get Xbox 2 in the market, there’s going to be Xbox and the other guys." His voice escalated to a crescendo as the audience laughed and applauded. "I'm feeling a little frisky on this topic right now!"

The man is pure insanity.

Happy Valentine's Day

2005-02-14T11:14:00.000-05:00

So it seems the iPod Shuffle is regarded as one of the more popular Valentine's Day gifts this year. It makes more sense with the Shuffle starting at $99 but good luck finding one in a store.
(the above article is from Canada and as a result gives higher prices for the Shuffle)

AAPL en fuego

2005-02-11T17:19:00.000-05:00

Apple stock is splitting. Damn I wish I had bought some a year or so ago. Doh!

Beefy iPod Case

2005-02-11T16:25:00.000-05:00

This thing is amazing. It's not entirely practical, but it's definitely a quality case. This guy also has an insane homemade heatsink for a G4 Cube on his site.

With Teeth

2005-02-11T11:44:00.000-05:00

Nine Inch Nails new album "With Teeth" is coming out soon. From the sound of Trent's comments, ("We are preparing to destroy you.") it's going to be amazing.

RX-8 'Shinka'

2005-02-11T11:18:00.000-05:00

The Mazda RX-8 Shinka Special Edition is available to US customers now. I like the color a lot, but it's a bit too high priced. A nice silver base model will do just fine in my opinion.
Unique features include; Parchment white leather interior, chrome accents and piano black lacquer-look trim pieces. In other words, it's just an appearance package. The MazdaSpeed supercharged version will be the one to get for those not satisfied with the current 238hp.

Patch your patches

2005-02-10T17:32:00.000-05:00

This is funny;
Symantec Antivirus May Execute Virus Code
I'm so glad my pc is in the basement.

OS X Server

2005-02-09T16:06:00.000-05:00

Mac OS X Panther Server Essentials certification prep is retarded. One book exists to help and it so far seems ridiculously incapable. I have a free exam coming to me which would make taking the exam easier, but I'd rather not waste the freebie.
Damn you Apple!

Competition for Monster?

2004-11-12T17:15:00.000-05:00

DVDManager
gonna check this out. hopefully .mac can handle the exported html though

Delicious Library

2004-11-09T22:06:00.000-05:00

I just downloaded this app. Very nice looking and a great idea (for a collector like me), but it could use some work too. For one it needs to be able to get images and info from somewhere other than amazon.com.
Delicious Library