Agent Censor
Last Sunday I watched episode 13 - Lost Tapes (or episode 14 - Lessons, depending on who you ask) of Max Headroom. I now know where The Matrix’s Agents come from.
I think Max Headroom did it better.
Signal to Noise
Today I finished reading Eric S. Nylund’s Signal to Noise. I’ve had somewhat of a love-hate relationship with the book, but, in the end, love prevails and I’d recommend it to any cyberpunk fan. Although it’s not your average cyberpunk. I think of cyberpunk as generally being placed in a sci-fi setting, but not focusing much on the actual science fiction. And, of course, cyberpunk has your post-apocalyptic/dystopia themes, too. Signal to Noise is leaning more toward normal science fiction – they have aliens! – and ends with the apocalypse, instead of taking place in it. It ends in a cliff-hanger, too. Bastard.
All in all, a good book. I think Eric Nylund spent a tad too long at Microsoft, though. The whole book revolves around corporations and business.
The Politics of Ecstasy
A few weeks ago I finished reading Timothy Leary’s The Politics of Ecstasy. It’s an ok book. Less attention on the philosophical/mystical side of the psychedelic experience, and more on the real-world stuff. You know, politics.
Firefox/Thunderbird in slackware-current
Thanks to this post on LQ, I discovered that Firefox and Thunderbird have been added to slackware-current. Sweetness. Now I just hope that the next version ships with 2.6 as default so I don’t have to upgrade whenever I install.
HITB 2004 Video
Video from the HITB Conference 2004 is available – for free (hint, hint, 2600). The page has been up and down all day (like Nick’s site), so here are the torrents: http://video.hackinthebox.org/HITBSecConf2004-Pack-1.torrent (2.1 GB) http://video.hackinthebox.org/HITBSecConf2004-Pack-2.torrent (2.6 GB)
Where's my Faraday Cage?
Yesterday I discovered that by tuning my Grundig Mini World 100 PE shortwave radio to about 1200kHz, I could pick up what was playing on my computer. Freaky. I’m thinking it must be some sort of TEMPEST effect.
The Secret Service Wants You!
…to take a survey.
I got this in my inbox today:
CSO magazine is conducting a survey in cooperation with the U.S. Secret Service and CERT Coordination Center, the 2005 e-Crime Watch. The purpose of this project is to uncover electronic crime trends. We respectfully request your help in completing an online survey. Please be assured that any information you provide is confidential and your responses will be used only in combination with those of other survey respondents. This survey should take no more than 15 minutes of your time. Please click on the following url to begin the survey or copy and paste the url into your browser: http://www.rresults.com/062865/index.cgi?l=3 Thank you in advance for your help. Sincerely, Walter Manninen President CSO magazine W. Ralph Basham Director United States Secret Service Richard Pethia Director CERT Coordination Center
I knew they’d come crawling to me some day…
Cedega Tweaks
There’s a nice Cedega Tweaking Guide over at LinuxGamers. It’s meant for Half-Life 2, but most of the tweaks apply to all games. I did the following
Some distributions need to set up a System-Variable. First, you have to examine if it is set. cat /proc/sys/vm/legacy_va_layout No output means, that this Variable isn't set. As root: echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/legacy_va_layout This setting only survives up to the next reboot. To set up this Variable permanently, open your /etc/sysctl.conf and append vm.legacy_va_layout = 1
VIDEORAM Don't forget to set Videoram and AGPVertexRAM to the values of your graphics card. Read the description in the config file and in the release notes of Cedega. The best value for Videocards with 256MB of Videoram is: "VideoRam" = "256" and "AGPVertexRam" = "128" Use adjusted values after this pattern for cards with less memory. ALSA If you have ALSA then use the winealsa.drv of Cedega. It will give you a small FPS boost. Open ~/.transgaming/config or ~/.point2play//config and edit the [WinMM] section to "Driver" = "winealsa.drv"