I just watched Requiem For A Dream. It’s directed by Darren Aronofsky, the same guy who did Pi. It’s a very good movie, in the same fucked up way that Pi was. Pretty much it’s about four drug addicts and the movie just follows them around as their lives are destroyed by their addictions. So, yeah, go rent it. I highly recommend the soundtrack, too.
I got the Packet8 DTA310 about a week ago but just realized I have yet to post the number, so here you go: 1-206-384-4309
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ketchup is a vegetable.
I really need to work on this ‘going to bed at a reasonable time’ thing. As I’m typing this, my eyelids are getting heavier and heavier. And no, I can’t dope up on caffeine or guarana; then I’d never get to sleep. Ah, sleep…Such a wonderful word… For all I know this snow is just a figment of my imagination. Yes, I said snow. In Seattle. In November. It’s not much, but it’s there (mixed in with rain, slush, and hail). I love winter.
I haven’t posted in a while so there’s a few things to say: I picked up the Revolutions soundtrack a while ago. Most of the tracks suck, except Juno Reactor’s Navras. Described by critics as a “9 minute epic”, it’s the opera/taiko drums/african vocal thingy that plays at the end of the movie, during Smith and Neo’s duel. I love it.
What else is happening? I picked up a 4-port data transfer switch for $20 on Ebay that allows me to plug four computers into one monitor (although I’m only using 2). Yay for me. Now I get to move another one of my computers into my room for a yet undisclosed purpose.
The big news in my life is that last Thursday I switched Wintermute’s OS from Mandrake Linux 9.1 to Slackware 9.1. So far I love it. The packaging system is great, everything works, and I’ve learned a whole bunch more from configing everything via command line (It’s not a desktop distro, so none of that fancy GUI crap). I think my only complaint is printing. I configured CUPS, which perfectly suits my needs, but some apps seem to want lpr. I’ll have to get that setup this weekend. All things considered, Slackware 9.1 gets the Pig Monkey Sweet Lurv Seal of Approval. I recommend it for intermediate users looking to move away from the GUI world of Mandrake, Redhat/Fedora, and Suse. Although that’s not to say anything about the desktop-oriented distros. Speaking of which, has anybody used Mandrake 9.2 yet? Until I hear good things about it, I think I’ll recommend SuSE for beginners. In other news (of the OS-switching type), I formatted my laptop and put Libranet 2.7 Classic on it (which is just Debian with a nice installer).
Right. Well, I’m going to attempt to be in bed in…3 hours. Wish me luck.
Electric Sheep is a screensaver that, when activated, takes advantage of distributed computing power to create artificial organisms: sheep. The sheep are fractal flames that evolve, mate, and die based on specific algorithms and user ratings. I recommend watching the documentary.
If you aren’t already harnessing idle cpu time with distributed.net, download it and colonize cyberspace.
I went to go see Alien at the Cinerama. I never realized how much those aliens really do drool. They need to learn how to swallow or something. Anyway, it was pretty good and would have been scary if I hadn’t seen the movie so many times already. They also had a preview for Alien vs. Predator, which looks likes fun for the whole family. My money is on the Predator. I mean, come one, he’s like an invisible monkey.
So, then I was like “he said that?!” and then she was like “totally!” and then I was like “oh my god!” and then she was like “I know!”
Oh, and I got Slack 9.1 running perfectly on my 500mhz laptop. It’s so beautiful. tear
Public Service Announcement This post brought to you by Jo Mints: They come in a cool box and they’re CrAzY!. Public Service Announcement
Let’s see if I can find something to post about…
Nick finally released v7 (or v 0.7, I can’t tell). It only took 6-7 months.
Ice mentioned something about a possible LAN party this Friday. We have Monday off, too. We have Monday off, too.
Uhhh…errr…yeah. Not much is happening. I want to make some more minor updates to the site this weekend, including fixing the blog for IE. Which reminds me, the phorums might be down for a bit Saturday, Sunday, or even Monday. It all depends when/if I get unlazy.
You know, everybody should go spam– I mean post here. They need more traffic.
There’s a cool new video up on Old Skool Phreak.
According to the Mandrake Store, all 9.2 pre-orders will be shipped by the fourth week of October. This just happens to be the fourth week so it should be out soon.
I’ve just updated from b2/cafelog to the brand new, and very shiny, wordpress! From the website:
WordPress was born out of a desire for an elegant, well-architectured personal publishing system built on PHP and MySQL and licensed under the GPL. It is the official successor of b2/cafelog, as b2 development has stopped. We hope by focusing on web standards and user experience we can create a tool different from anything else out there.
It only took me about 5 minutes to get it running (transferring everything over from b2 was extremely simple) but there’s still a bunch of little tweaks I want to make. And, of course, I need to update the template.
If you are considering updating from b2 to WordPress, the only piece of advice I can give is to change $table_prefix in wp-config.php to b2. It eases the pain while WordPress tries to upgrade your database.
The Reloaded DVD is $14 ($16.32 with tax) at Best Buy. It’s two discs: the first disc is the movie and the second is Preload (the making of Reloaded), That Matrix Unfolds (covers both movies and the game), The Freeway Chase (a making of just for that), Get Me an Exit (commercialism at it’s best), Enter the Matrix (making of the game), and The MTV Movie Awards Reloaded (some Reloaded skit with the Bullet Proof Monkey and that Nsync guy). You actually get about two or three hours of special features on the second disk, which is pretty cool. One thing I have to comment on is the Get Me an Exit feature, which was actually a making of the commercials (Heinekin, Samsung Phone and TV, and Power-Aid). Was this really necessary? I mean, the commercials are crap (as are all commercials). Do I really need to see how they’re made? If I didn’t buy the product back in May when the world was in a Matrix-frenzy, why should I buy it now?
Other than that, it’s great. The movie is the same. If you didn’t like it in the theatre, you probably won’t like it on the DVD. Although, I must recommend at least renting it so you can replay the end and try to figure out just what exactly the Architect says. I picked up on a few very minute details which, coupled with the latest Revolutions trailer (did I mention that I saw the trailer on the big screen when I went to see Kill Bill?), gives you a pretty good idea of the story line for the third film.
Kill Bill: Volume 1 is awesome. It may be a tad on the bloody side for some but that just adds to the whole comic book effect. It’s great how they stole Bruce Lee’s jumpsuit from Game of Death.
My only criticism is that Uma should be a little bit more cautious when playing with swords. She chops off body parts left and right. Can’t she just stab them a few times and not take off their limbs and/or scalp?
In other news, we’ve had about two weeks of clouds and rain now. Take that, evil ball of fire in the sky! It finally feels like Seattle again.
Underworld: Don’t see it.
The Rundown: Irish people aren’t Scottish!
Underworld really did suck the big one. The only thing that made it bearable was Kate Beckinsale. Oh, and they totally stole the ending (Victor’s head getting chopped in half) from Equilibrium. That was just cheap.
The previews, on the other hand, were great. First there was Kill Bill which not only has a great theme song but also has an old ninja man kicking Uma Thurman’s ass. And then there was the Alien Director’s Cut. Only in theatres this Halloween. That’ll be sweet.
I’m moving the pig-monkey.com domain over to a different shell account. This shouldn’t mean anything to you, the reader, but the site (especially the blog) might be down for a short time while the files transfer over.
I’ve also re-released the site under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 1.0.
Quicksilver comes out tomorrow. I’ll be heading over to Barnes & Noble right after school to pick it up (and if they don’t have any copies, I’ll be forced to put the hurting on someone). While I’m over there, I might as well go to Best Buy and annoy Brandon.
“We should not march into Baghdad. To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant into a latter-day Arab hero. Assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what would be an unwinable urban guerilla war, it could only plunge that part of the world into ever greater instability.”
–George H. W. Bush, “A World Transformed”, 1998
Neal Stephenson‘s next book Quicksilver is set to release it two weeks. Quicksilver is Volume One of the Baroque Cycle, a series of books based on Cryptonomicon.
I, for one, will wet myself when Amazon ships my copy.
I’ve put up another mirror, this time of New York City Hackers. Here’s the description from the website:
Hackers; malicious vandals or cyberspace freedom fighters? In the last few years hacking have become synomous with electronic crime in the media and the public mind. The federal agencies strikes down hard on any offender it catches, and all off a sudden what has earlier been considered intellectual games becomes serious business...This documentary looks at the "2600" community in New York City of today, its meetings and conferences, political annotations, and historically explores the roots of the definition 'hacking' amongst the model train enthusiasts at MIT...
It’s 218MB and in DIVX format. I like it alot. So what are you waiting for? Download it!
I setup a new email address that forwards to my cell phone: mobile at pig dash monkey dot com
Most likely I won’t reply (until I get to a computer, that is) so don’t use it for general conversation but if you need to contact me fast for some reason, go ahead. Keep messages shorts, plain text only (no HTML), and no long signitures.
And if you have a camera phone, you can send your pics to that address. I’ve got the Sony Ericsson t68i without the optional camera but I can still view all the pics. Sound too.
Let’s see how long before I get my first spam…
Binary Revolution 1.2 has been released. I ordered mine yesterday.
I went to Best Buy today and guess what? Yes, another employee left himself logged in on one of their terminals. This time it was the one in the CD section. Will they never learn? I didn’t touch it because I was in too deep a shock from seeing that they had 5 or 6 rows of of “Rock and R&B” but only gave 1/4 of a row to dance. Sigh
Oh, and that new computer I talked about yesterday turned out to be quite a catch: 1.3ghz Athlon, 256MB RAM, GeForce2 MX. I still don’t know what I’m going to do with it yet. I’m thinking Shorewall.
Three posts in one day!
Anyway, I fucked up the blog index by accident and had to start over with a fresh one. I’ve tried to recreate the old index as best I can but if you notice any discrepancies (I don’t have a copy of the old one handy…) or just have any comments in general regarding the blog layout/style sheet, post it as a comment.
Also, you’ll now notice that there are archives in the middle iframe at the bottom of the page! Yes sir, 11 months of Pig Monkey-goodness. But wait, there’s more! You’ll also notice a little ‘XML’ button that links to the RSS feed of this very blog. Yup, put my blog in your Mozilla sidebar, Ximian Evolution, or any other newsreader.
I just got back from the Matrix Reloaded: The IMAX Experience. That was fucking awesome. Not only was the movie unspeakably sexy on the eight story high wrap-around screen and the 12,000 watts of digital sound but there were no previews/commercials (they played the soundtrack from the first Matrix instead) and we had chearleaders entertain us before we were seated (no joke, I think they were on some sort of field trip or something). Anyway, go find an IMAX near you and see the movie! There are three in Seattle, but it’s only playing at the Boeing theatre at the Pacific Science Center. It’s well worth the $9.50!
Oh, and they’re now playing the new Revolutions trailer at the end. I would have liked to see the old one…
Equilibrium
I bought this one from Best Buy last week. If Fahrenheit 451 had sex with the Matrix, this would be their offspring (with a little 1984 mixed in, as well). The story takes place in a post-WWIII world where emotion is outlawed. The movie follows the top Cleric (an elite police force who’s job it is to kill those guilty of ‘sense-crime’) who misses his dose of an emotion-blocking drug and begins to feel. All in all, it’s a pretty good movie. The action isn’t as good as the Matrix, but they have their own fighting style called gunkata instead of your classic kung-fu stuff (mostly beating people senseless with guns, not much kicking or anything). You should definitely rent it.
Pi
This is one fucked up movie, but in a good way. The director won Best Director at Sundance (‘96 or ‘97, I believe). It’s about a brilliant mathematician who believes that everything can be explained by numbers. He’s searching for a 216 digit number that will “decode the numerical pattern beneath the ultimate system of organized chaos- the stock market.” Of course, this 216 digit number also happens to represent the true name of God. So you have a mathematician on the brink of insanity being chased by some crazy ass Jews and a psycho bitch from Wall Street. Did I mention it’s all in black and white?
In other news, I finished building 3jane into it’s new case. It is a Black X-Dreamer ATX PC Case with 350 Watt P4/AMD Power Supply and Build-In Thermal Monitor. This is one nice case. The entire case looks so professional and it’s so damn shiny, I love it. If I saw it on a store shelf anywhere I’d think it was a $200 case but no: it’s only $70! My only complaint is that the generic power supply is a bit loud but, hey, it’s practically free.
Verizon goofed when installing my new circuit at the CO so I haven’t had internet at home since Friday. I’m still checking my email at work everyday, though.
Covad (they provide SpeakEasy with bandwidth) is going down to slap Verizon in to shape, so hopefully I’ll have internet by Friday.
As many, many people have noticed (my email is flooded every morning), the proxy is down. Dreamhost took it down because of “excessive resource consumption”. Here’s a copy of the email:
Hello,
As you may have noticed, I've removed the execute bit on nph-proxy.cgi.
This type of program is not generally allowed on our servers,
particularly when it results in excessive resource consumption.
Please let us know if you have any questions regarding this.
Regards,
William
I’m not going to fight them on this because it puts them in an awkward position: in one hand they have free speech and in the other a possible security hole and “excessive resource consumption”.
I am working on getting it up at another location (if anybody wants to offer me space at havenco, feel free!), but that’s taking a while seeing as how I have no internet. In the meantime, use Garnet’s at http://proxy.ccrepair.net.
The summer ‘03 issue of 2600 is out!
I finished reading Simon Singh’s The Code Book yesterday. It is a short (350 pages compared David Kahn’s book which is over 1000) history of cryptography from the ancient Greek’s Linear B script all the way up to quantum cryptography. I think it’s unique in that he not only describes the code to you but takes you through the process of breaking it and manages to tie in the intriguing back story, as well. You get cryptography, cryptanalysis, and a mystery story in each chapter. I’d probably recommend it to anyone with an interest in cryptography (no math required).
The last chapter (A Quantum Leap into the Future) also manages to serve as a great introduction to quantum theory. He provides a short overview of the two camps: superposition (the cat is both dead and alive) and the many-worlds interpretation (the multi-verse, the cat is dead in one universe and alive in the other). And yes, this does tie into crypto!
It appears that WiFi will not be used at the 2004 Olympics in Athens because of security reasons. Could this be a sign that the general public is catching on to the insecurities of 802.11b/g/a? Certainly the people who put on the Olympics aren’t the general public but I wouldn’t consider them hackers or geeks, either.
I upgraded my Netgear RP614 router firmware today. It adds new features such as remote management and UPnP which, remarkably (and thankfully), are turned off by default! Although I still think LinkSys (now Cisco) is a better brand and I was happier with that router, points go to Netgear for somewhat secure defaults. I say somewhat because the default username and password is admin; password (although the default for LinkSys is no username and ‘admin’ for the password…).
I’ve setup IIP, the Invisble IRC Project. Just as the name suggests, it’s anonymous IRC. It doesn’t work as a bouncer and connect you to normal IRC servers such as dalnet or 2600net, but rather functions as it’s own irc server. Here’s a better description. You can find me hanging out in #anonymous and #freenet.
Speaking of Freenet, I hadn’t really messed with it since my last experiment in March but just yesterday I got it back up and running. After leaving my node up for 24 hours and messing with the config a bit, it seems to operate quite nicely. I recommend anybody (with a broadband connection) to check it out. You can find many interesting files in it.
Has anybody heard of JAP? I think it stands for Java Anonymity and Privacy. Anyway, it’s small java application (meaning that it is extremely portable: nix, windows, and mac versions available) that makes your web surfing anonymous. The way it works is sorta difficult to explain, check out their website. All you have to do is set your browser to proxy through 127.0.0.1:4001. Because it’s based in Germany, you don’t have to worry about the shifty American government tracing you (well, you do, but laws and such make it harder).
I’ve only been using it for an hour or so, but so far it appears to work quite nicely. It is without a doubt easier than my previous method (daily visits to stayinvisible.com and pinging each foreign server labeled as ‘high anonymity’ for the best response times).
I’ve also just discovered CryptoMail. Haven’t had a chance to check it out yet. Does anybody else have any expierence with them?
In celebration of summer vacation, I’ve redone the design a bit. Pretty much all the sections have been updated with the new style sheet (which has actually been online for a while now) and have had their code cleaned.
My stylesheet is now W3C valid and my code is all valid XHTML Transitional. It’s actually valid XHTML Strict, with the exception of the iframes.
AT&T Wireless is in the progress of updating their voicemail system. This means all passwords get reset back to the default 1111#. Have fun.
Try installing Windows XP (home or pro, I don’t think it matters which) and don’t register it but say you’re on a docked laptop. I’ve heard this somehow voids the registration requirement. Do this before you update anything, of course. Contact me if it works.
I decided I’d try the “unofficial” version of Xine (unofficial because it comes with DeCSS) today. While I was at it, I went ahead and got a few other packages with it (real codecs, MPEG4, DivX and Windows Media Player etc). After uninstalling the version that comes with Mandrake 9.1, I had my new Xine back-up and running in less than 5 minutes. Now I can watch any kind of movie in the wonderful GUI that is Xine, including my legally purchased but CSS encrypted DVDs. So far, I’ve watched the Half-Life2 video, Doom3 video, The Fellowship of the Ring, and The Matrix.
I’ll post a tut. on getting everything to work in the phorums later.
Oh, and I went a little trigger-happy on the screenshot button during the Matrix. Here you go.
Enter the Matrix is indeed a good game (Kung-Fu vampires and lesbian kissing). If you’ve seen the movie, play the game. If you haven’t seen the movie, see it before you play the game.
In case I don’t get a chance to update again for a while, I’ll be at the Matrix tomorrow at 4:45, then I’ll be packing for my trip to the Army Ammunition Plant in Hawthorne, Nevada. I’m planning on taking my H2K2 Threat Risk card and see if they detain me, or at least give me funny looks (should I wear my DeCSS shirt?). I’ll also bring along my camera to take pictures of my ticket (so we can see what threat level I officially hold) and maybe some pics of the Plant.
Oh, and here’s an annoying thing: all my http queries are proxied through Japan and Italy so when I go to google.com, they redirect me to google.it. Now I can say “I’m feeling lucky” in Italian. Mi sento fortunato.
Have you seen the latest Animatrix? It shows the creation of the Matrix. Pretty cool.
I’ve zipped and uploaded all 6 chapters of FrontLine’s Cyber War. It’s 207MB, 56 minutes, .mov format (runs fine in mplayer). They call it “high quality” but it actually is pretty bad. Just watchable in full-screen (too bad Quicktime users don’t have a full-screen option).
As for the programming itself…well, it’s ok. The whole “cyber war” and “digital Pearl Harbor” is definitely exaggerated (not to mention that Richard Clarke is an idiot and they make him out to be a hero) but, hey, if it scares people into security, I’m not complaining. Watch the war game in chp5 and compare that to DefCon CTF.
It’s starting to become clear why the U.S. government is so insecure…
I almost forgot, they talk about both Moonlight Maze and Eligible Receiver. Moonlight Maze has not been proven to exist and Eligible Receiver was no measure of the real world. The NSA setup a dummy-electrical-grid and whatnot for them to play on.
You hear people concentrate on the rumor that they took out the 911 system, too. What actually happened is that they sent out a memo to everybody that the 911 system was down so that everybody would call 911 at once and the trunk wouldn’t be able to handle it. A simple DoS attack just like what happened on 9/11, not any sort of break-in.
PlanetHalfLife gave out the official word a week or so ago and the newest PC Gamer has the full story and exclusive screens. The graphics look ok (character modeling could use some work).
Oh, and the release date is Sept. 30 2003
It took 4 hours (including last night), but mplayer finally plays quicktime movies with audio. I am now, unlike you, watching the new Matrix Reloaded trailer (uber 1000x540 version, not listed on thematrix.com) in Linux. Full screen.
ThinkGeek delivered Revolution-OS today. I’ve watched the first DVD (which is the actual movie) and I plan on putting in the second one (an additional 70 minutes of interviews) later tonight.
If anybody is interested in seeing it, I’ll bring it to the next LAN Party (Jacob’s).
I now have 1GB of web space.
The new Nvidia Linux drivers work great!
Simply run the nifty new installer and change your driver from ‘nv’ to ‘nvidia’ in XF86Config-4
Redhat 9 is scheduled for release on the 31st but what about Mandrake 9.1?!
I just gave Redhat 8.0 another test run on my Dad’s computer. It’s horrible.
I couldn’t even get to a konsole.
Joy for Mandrake.
There are now 26 bottles of Bawls sitting in my room…
How many will be left on the 28th?
Drunken rambling
26 bottles of Bawls on the wall! 26 bottles of Bawls!
Take one down. Pass it around. 25 bottles of Bawls on the wall!
I had to repair and network a 133mhz computer today. With 65mb of RAM.
Go download Mozilla 1.3.
I finally finished Cryptonomicon. Good book.
Greetings and salutations, bfce.vicenza.army.mil. 775 hits is a lot from one military computer. Should I be afraid?
Is it because of the 4690 requests I’ve received from .ae (United Arabs Emirates) domains? Those Arabs are shifty…
The proxy is still coming.
Blame Maxtor.
http://blackhole-1.iana.org/ - Looks like fun
pipedreams.dea.gov - Pipe Dreams? Are they high?
http://208.255.166.219/ - No, that website is not blocked. That is the page they redirect blocked sites to.
http://ready.gov/ - I can’t resist posting this one. Call 1-800-BE-READY (seriously).
I just got the Winter issue of 2600!
I’m a little late in this post but KDE 3.1 was released on Tuesday. I have yet to install (I think I’ll wait for an rpm) so I can’t vouch for it but I hear it has a whole bag of sexy new features.
Judging from the screenshots, it looks a little ‘cute-ish’ (in a fluffy, XP way). Strange? Yes.
In other desktop news: the latest Gnome 2.2 Release Candidate came out today. I’m not a fan of Gnome, but I’ll be downloading 2.2 to test it out, anyway.
If Linux and Windows mated, this would be their baby. I’m serious. Check out the screenshots.
As some of you may know, I purchased a new cell phone on Sunday. It’s a Sony Ericsson T68i. Nice phone, right? Well, it runs on the new GSM network. Now, AT&T tells me that it will take a max of 24 hours for my plan to activate on the new network. Both my Dad and my sister had purchased new AT&T GSM phones a few months ago and their plans had activated with about 45 minutes.
32 hours later, my phone still isn’t active.
So, I call up AT&T. After a 30 minute hold time (not too bad, really), I get a customer rep on the line and we discover that there is nothing wrong with my phone or the service.
AT&T had been hit by the Saphire worm. WHY?! First of all, they need to be shot for running running Microsoft SQL in the first place. Second of all they need to be shot in the penis for not patching it! MICROSOFT RELEASED THE PATCH FOR THIS BUG 6 GODDAMNED-MONTHS AGO!!!. And this is Microsoft were talking about! Two, simple button clicks and you’re updated!
I find this excusable for the other 250,000 computers (comprised mostly of small firms) that were hit, but AT&T? Jeebus christ… You think LoD and MoD would have taught them something back in the ’80s.
If I hadn’t just purchased a $100 AT&T phone, I would switch to another carrier immediately.
I was fooling around with tcpdump and I found another Gamespy Ad server: http://adcontent.gamespy.com/
0 years, 0 months, 0 days, 3 hours, 15 minutes, 21 seconds till Kevin is free!
1) Before Dieselboy was famous, he was an extra in porn films
2) Dieselboy is growing a mullet
And everybody go upgrade their phpBB forums to 2.0.4
The P-M Netwerk (all domains) will be down on Saturday, Jan. 25, between 10:00 PM and 3:00 AM PST (approximately) for server migration. This includes: HTTP, mail, webmail, Telnet, FTP, SSH and all databases.
The GBA-SP may renew my faith in Nintendo. It looks a nice piece of hardware and, with a $99 price tag, should sell well here in the U.S.
Now, if they would only stop making kiddie games.
Here’s an interesting read.
I love his predictions for 2003.
