Archive for 2006

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Xbox 360 problems

Saturday, August 5th, 2006

Well, I never ended up sending my Xbox360 in because the problem is now happening with my brother’s xbox also.  So, I just assume that the problem has to do with an incompatibility with how my TV handles 1080i.  Crazy since my native resolution is supposed to be 1080i on the thing.

A coworker of mine, howver, has had a major hardware problem.  That is when we discovered that the manufacturer’s warranty is only for a period of 90 days.  Even the original Xbox had a warranty of 1 year.  His problem appears to be related to the audio/video cards.  It cost him $130 to have it fixed.  You can read his post here.

He goes on to state that in 5 years time, an xbox 360 is way more expensive to match the features for a PS3.  My only argument is not everyone wants everything the PS3 has.  They may not need it.  My other argument is that I don’t believe for an instant that their online matchmaking / game playing will be free.  If it is, I am sure that other consoles will follow suit.

Posted in Video Games | No Comments »

Microsoft / California Class Action Settlement

Saturday, August 5th, 2006

Well, I got my settlement today.  It came a lot sooner than I had anticipated.  I thought that I was due to get something like $96 back, but I can’t remember.  It has been a long time since I filed my claim.

What I did see though, disappointed me in a way.  I was hoping to use the money to get an HD-DVD drive for my Xbox360 when they come out.  Well, at least to partially pay for an HD-DVD drive.  But, it doesn’t work for that.

It is useful for:

  • Publically available software that will run on a Laptop, tablet PC, or Desktop. I assume this covers Mac software
  • Computer Hardware
    • Desktop, laptop or tablet PC
    • Printer
    • Mouse
    • keyboard
    • monitor

It won’t even cover an HD-DVD drive for a desktop, it seems.  Since it is valid on purchase made since July 18, 2003, however, I can use it to receive reimbursement for an older purchase.  That means I can still use it for an HD-DVD drive for the 360 but it wasn’t half what I was expecting.  Oh well, I guess it is “free” money.

Posted in Personal | No Comments »

Don’t work in Wisconsin!

Friday, August 4th, 2006

My brother used to work for AMD in Texas.  His group was sold to another company and he quit AMD to work at this new company.  They didn’t direct deposite his last check for several weeks, and never mailed him his paycheck stub.  Pretty unprofessional for such a large company. In California, where AMD is headquartered, a company has to pay a final paycheck on a person’s last day if they give at least 72 hours of advance notice.  We decided to see what the laws were like in Texas.  We found this site.

That page contains final paycheck laws for every state.  If you look you’ll see that Wisconsin’s law states “Any employee, except a salesperson paid by commission, who does not have an employment contract and who quits or is fired: next regular payday but not more than a month later.” (Wis. Stat. Ann. §109.03).  Can you imagine that? It suggest that in Wisconsin, they don’t have to pay you more often than once a month.  In fact, they may not even have to pay you once a month.  It is unclear.

Tennessee could be even worse: “Next scheduled payday or 21 days, whichever occurs later.” (Tenn. Code. Ann. §50-2-103).  What if they only have to pay you ever 45 or 90 days in Tennessee? You could go months without getting your final check and then go months without getting your new check if they allow pay periods in excess of 30 days!  It may be cheaper to live in places other than California, but I’d rather live there than either of those two states!  Check out your state here.  If it prompts you for a zip code, put in any one you’d like.  I like to use 90210 when any site asks for mine.

Posted in Personal | No Comments »

Why I won’t be renewing my Internet w/ AT&T

Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006

I seem to have a habit of discussing old news but this actually came up at lunch today with my friends.  I have a friend who repeatedly gets emails from a friend of his attacking President Bush.  So, naturally we started talking politics.

I’m a conservative person and I tend to lean towards the Republican platform.  I can’t say that I agree with everything they believe in, but it suits me better than the democratic party.

That being said, however, I completely disagree with what President Bush has allowed the NSA to do.  They may only be spying on people who are emailing and calling international people, but it does not matter. 

People have the right to privacy.  The fact of the matter is that this widespread invasion of privacy is going to push people towards encryption, which is only going to further hinder the government.

But people ought to be able to call and email their friends, family, and business relations without fear of eavesdropping. This could very easily be a stepping stone into monitoring all communcations, domestic and international.

My lovely ISP has embraced the government with open arms and has been freely providing all that they ask for without a court order.  That is wrong. AT&T should be protecting the privacy of their customers and not bowing to government pressure.

People argue that they have nothing to hide.  Well, if that is the case, may I please have your social security number, mother’s maiden name, date of birth, and all of your credit card numbers and expiration dates? Oh did you want to hide that from me? What if I worked for the government? Then you might not be able to hide that from me.

Posted in Rants and Raves | 2 Comments »

RIAA Lawsuit

Monday, July 31st, 2006

I know this is old news, but I just stumbled upon it.  I guess the RIAA filed a suit against a mother from Oklahoma requesting damages for file sharing.  The case has been dismissed.

I’m glad to see this.  An IP address alone is not enough to find someone liable in a civil suit.  I don’t even think having them on a computer should be enough.

If John Smith has his home network connected to the Internet, he could have a half a dozen or more computers available for someone to pwn.  Any script kiddie or hacker on the net could take control of his network and use his box to fileshare without putting themself in risk.  Likely they’d make John Smith’s computer(s) a server spewing out malware and warez.  Why should John Smith be liable just because someone stored some files on his computer?

Now if you can show that he didn’t get pwned and is using the files, maybe you have some merit.  But I don’t think the RIAA or anyone else ought to be able to snoop around on someone’s computer because they can’t adapt their business model to the digital world.

Posted in Rants and Raves | No Comments »

Password creation

Monday, July 31st, 2006

I thought this was an interesting read about passwords.

People definitely need to be more secure with their passwords.  The fact of the matter is though that weak passwords aren’t always as dangerous as just browsing the wrong web page can be.

So many people just install any software application a website thinks they ought to have.  Browser vulnerablities allow malicious site owners to force software installation on unsuspecting web surfers.

I’m not saying that people ought to continue on with their weak passwords.  I’m just saying that people need to be educated about more than just password creation.

It’s the fear of malware that causes me to force friends and family to use a severely limited account when they use my Windows machine.

Posted in Technology | No Comments »

Al Qaeda’s IT department shutdown?

Monday, July 31st, 2006

There was an article on News Factor talking about one of the key players in Al Qaeda’s internet “marketing” campaign.  I’m not sure why the article is so late in coming since the guy was arrested almost a year ago.

Anyway, they say that this guy was instrumental to spreading Al Qaeda propoganda.  He made some crucial mistakes while working that helped narrow down his location to the London area.

The article goes on to compare Al Qaeda’s IT department to Script Kiddies, indicating that they are rather inept.  While these lower level people seem to be stumbling, I’m willing to bet that we won’t see Osama leaving his digital footprint anywhere.

Instead, I think that these organizations use these people as tools.  They couldn’t care less what happens to the people once their purpose has been served.  That is why they let them become suicide bombers and don’t blow themselves up.  They let these low level people stumble around taking up valuable resources that could be used to track them down.

Posted in Technology | No Comments »

OLPC to help NSIT?

Sunday, July 30th, 2006

There has been a lot of talk lately about the One Laptop per Child program.  On paper it sounds good.  Every child will be able to learn how to use a computer in such countries as Argentina, India, and Nigeria.

Some people think it’s a great program.  I think it’s, more or less, a nice idea on paper but not very practical.  I think that starving children would end up selling their laptops for money.  I think corrupt officials will misappropriate them.  I think they will get stolen from the children.  I also think that Nigeria shouldn’t be allowed to receive them.

There has been a large number of Nigerians who have tarnished the country’s image for a long time.  Corruption abounds there.  Their national football league allows for referees to take bribes.  They are also the home of the Nigerian 419 scam.  Why the rest of the world hasn’t screamed to have them severed from the Internet is beyond my comprehension.  As Nigeria’s image tarnishes, their economy will worsen.  If it weren’t for their oil, I expect they would have been cut off from the rest of the world years ago.

As companies avoid doing business with Nigeria due to the corruption, the people will become more dishonest. 

I am positive that a lot of people participate in such scams to try and feed their families.  But they are only making the situation worse for their children.  Children who will have to become more dishonest than their parents to survive.

Now the lovely OLPC program is set to ship over 1 million laptops to Nigeria.  People argue that the scammers already have better equipment, but I bet most NSIT (Nigerian Scammers in Traning) could use the helping hand!

By cutting off Nigeria from the global economy, many people will starve.  But if we give economic and humanitarian aid to Nigeria, the government will use it to suit their own needs and not the needs of the people.

So what do we do with Nigeria?  I don’t think there is any right solution.  Nothing we do will work until we can get rid of the culture of corruption.  Until we do so, I don’t think we should let them have access to scam the rest of the World from the comfort of their local Internet cafe.

Posted in Politics, Technology | No Comments »

OpenBSD

Wednesday, July 26th, 2006

When I setup this server, I was going to use FreeBSD but a coworker told me that OpenBSD touted their strong stance on security.  Their website boldly claims that there hasn’t been a security hole in their “default configuration” in something like eight years.  So I gave it a try and installed it.  I don’t know if sshd is part of the default configuration but it had SSH1 enabled by default.  I don’t think Fedora or Mandrake or any other Linux allows SSH1 by default.

I claim that sshd is part of their default config because all the install asked me was “Would you like to install sshd? [Y/n]“  So I instantly distrusted OpenBSD from that point on because their claim seemed outlandish.

Not only that, but the default installation didn’t even install the ports service (think urpmi, yum, etc).  That’s how their tutorial talked about installing all services.  I spent forever trying to find dependencies for all the things I wanted to install and just gave up.

So, even if they are the most secure OS in the world, they are probably the least user friendly.

Posted in Technology | No Comments »

Sleep disorders suck!

Tuesday, July 25th, 2006

Have you ever felt so tired that you just want to put your head down on your desk and take a quick 3 hour nap?  I feel like that every day.  Some days are worse than others. There are times when I don’t even want to get out of bed.  I was diagnosed with “Obstructive Sleep Apnea” back in November.  Apparently, I’ve had this problem for most or all of my life.  It explains why I slept away junior high and high school.

My problem stems from my tongue. It is apparently a bit large and has a tendency to obstruct my throat.  The probelm intensifies when I fall asleep since my muscles relax.  Thus, I end up with a “respitory disturbance” and my brain forces my body to wake up.  This happens to me about 23-30 times an hour on average.  Or did, until I had a tongue advancement to correct the problem.  Now I don’t know the frequency of these occurences.

I had a sleep study here in town almost two months ago that indicated I was in the “normal” range (less than 5 per hour).  I have a hard time believing that.  So, I went to the experts at Stanford and had another study done.  I should have the result in about 1 to 2 weeks.  I expect that will indicate that I am still in the 23-30 range. If I am in the normal range, then there must be something else wrong with me.

In any event, as Ozzy Osbourne would say, “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

Posted in Personal | 3 Comments »

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