Weebl has a new toon involving the Weighted Companion Cube from VALVe‘s Portal, released as part of the Orange Box. The Weighted Companion Cube has become something of an internet phenomena since it’s introduction in Portal.
Check out this cute flash toon. Thanks to Kotaktu for finding this little gem.
The great thing about rediscovery of the Weebl site is finding that Magical Trevor retains it’s rightful place as the most frequently watched flash cartoon (over 7000 unique page views daily).
I changed the config.php for the vengeance forums and I’m sharing the username/password with them for the phpbb-wordpress integration, so naturally when I forgot to change the config.php for the blog I broke it.
Now fixed (obviously), just thought you’d like an explanation. Wheee.
“Star Trek” Movie News: Sulu, Scotty, Captain Kirk(!) Cast found on Amazon Daily.
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=7441765
Microsoft has a nice guided support wizard that helps you find the correct DST patch for your version of Windows.
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?p=6796779&posted=1#post6796779
“First Valve update that has sporked my installation. Bad Valve, no gibs.” – Malanthazon
I actually have it installed and there are some nice feature “ideas.” Not always sure about the execution of those ideas, and the number of programs that are not backward compatible is staggering. Not exactly a “bold step forward” for microsoft, and it seems to be giving them some backlash in the market place.
Wired: Gathering ‘Storm’ Superworm Poses Grave Threat to PC Nets, by Bruce Schneier.
Thanks to Digg for finding this.
I’ve read some of Bruce’s work from time to time for over 8 years and have always been impressed with his work in cryptography and security. The interesting points in this article include things like
“Not that we really have any idea how to mess with Storm. Storm has been around for almost a year, and the antivirus companies are pretty much powerless to do anything about it.“ – Bruce Schneier [Wikipedia Bio / Bruce's Website]
And a link from the post to the author of an analysis of Storm’s (the name of the Worm) potential, leads us to:
“It is worth mentioning that multiple DDoS attacks have occurred in the December and January timeframe, targeted at anti-spam sites and anti-rootkit software developers. An attack was even launched against the personal website of the author of this analysis, in retaliation for research into botnet-controlled pump-and-dump stock spam. These attacks have been determined to be from no fewer than three independent and unrelated botnets. We see now the spam war is escalating to new levels. It could be that the spammers have been emboldened by the successful attack on BlueFrog last year, which shut down a service that was affecting the spammers’ ability to conduct their “business.” With no repercussions from that attack, or even older attacks which shut down certain DNS blocklists, it seems that more spammers are willing and able to attack anyone who threatens their profit potential.” – Joe Stewart
I’ve always thought that the design of a worm or virus that does damage is self defeating, as Bruce points out:
“Old style worms — Sasser, Slammer, Nimda — were written by hackers looking for fame. They spread as quickly as possible (Slammer infected 75,000 computers in 10 minutes) and garnered a lot of notice in the process. The onslaught made it easier for security experts to detect the attack, but required a quick response by antivirus companies, sysadmins and users hoping to contain it. Think of this type of worm as an infectious disease that shows immediate symptoms.
Worms like Storm are written by hackers looking for profit, and they’re different. These worms spread more subtly, without making noise. Symptoms don’t appear immediately, and an infected computer can sit dormant for a long time. If it were a disease, it would be more like syphilis, whose symptoms may be mild or disappear altogether, but which will eventually come back years later and eat your brain.” – Bruce Schneier
Talk like this always wants me to go in to the cryptography and security industry. A challege like this (to thwart the constant evolution of destructive or disruptive software) would be exciting. Perhaps if my career moves more towards networking it would be possible to pursue this at some future point in my life, but to do so now would be such a huge change in direction for my career track that I would be entry level at best.
//
// Added to prevent get_userdata from being loaded in wordpress
//
if(!function_exists(get_userdata))
{
//
// Get Userdata, $user can be username or user_id. If force_str is true, the username will be forced.
//
function get_userdata($user, $force_str = false)
{
global $db;if (!is_numeric($user) || $force_str)
{
$user = phpbb_clean_username($user);
}
else
{
$user = intval($user);
}$sql = "SELECT *
FROM " . USERS_TABLE . "
WHERE ";
$sql .= ( ( is_integer($user) ) ? "user_id = $user" : "username = '" . str_replace("\'", "''", $user) . "'" ) . " AND user_id <ANONYMOUS>sql_query($sql)) )
{
message_die(GENERAL_ERROR, 'Tried obtaining data for a non-existent user', '', __LINE__, __FILE__, $sql);
}
return ( $row = $db->sql_fetchrow($result) ) ? $row : false;
}
}
//
// Added to prevent make_clickable from being loaded in wordpress
//
if(!function_exists(make_clickable))
{
/**
* Rewritten by Nathan Codding - Feb 6, 2001.
* - Goes through the given string, and replaces xxxx://yyyy with an HTML <a> tag linking
* to that URL
* - Goes through the given string, and replaces www.xxxx.yyyy[zzzz] with an HTML <a> tag linking
* to http://www.xxxx.yyyy[/zzzz]
* - Goes through the given string, and replaces xxxx@yyyy with an HTML mailto: tag linking
* to that email address
* - Only matches these 2 patterns either after a space, or at the beginning of a line
*
* Notes: the email one might get annoying - it's easy to make it more restrictive, though.. maybe
* have it require something like xxxx@yyyy.zzzz or such. We'll see.
*/
function make_clickable($text)
{
$text = preg_replace('#(script|about|applet|activex|chrome):#is', "\\1:", $text);// pad it with a space so we can match things at the start of the 1st line.
$ret = ' ' . $text;// matches an "xxxx://yyyy" URL at the start of a line, or after a space.
// xxxx can only be alpha characters.
// yyyy is anything up to the first space, newline, comma, double quote or <
$ret = preg_replace("#(^|[\n ])([\w]+?://[\w\#$%&~/.\-;:=,?@\[\]+]*)#is", "\\1<a>\\2</a>", $ret);
// matches a "www|ftp.xxxx.yyyy[/zzzz]" kinda lazy URL thing
// Must contain at least 2 dots. xxxx contains either alphanum, or "-"
// zzzz is optional.. will contain everything up to the first space, newline,
// comma, double quote or <.
$ret = preg_replace("#(^|[\n ])((www|ftp)\.[\w\#$%&~/.\-;:=,?@\[\]+]*)#is", "\\1<a>\\2</a>", $ret);// matches an email@domain type address at the start of a line, or after a space.
// Note: Only the followed chars are valid; alphanums, "-", "_" and or ".".
$ret = preg_replace("#(^|[\n ])([a-z0-9&\-_.]+?)@([\w\-]+\.([\w\-\.]+\.)*[\w]+)#i", "\\1<a>\\2@\\3</a>", $ret);// Remove our padding..
$ret = substr($ret, 1);return($ret);
}blockquote>
Inserted following code immediately after to close if-then code to prevent make_clickable from being loaded in wordpress}
For the last 8 years I’ve sought the motivation to migrate all of my CDs to MP3 so that I could take them wheverever I wanted (and make MP3 CDs that are playable in my car stereo)…
Then along came iPod and changed the landscape for me. Overnight, I discovered a way to take all of the tunes that I love everywhere and play any or all of them at a moments notice. Suddenly new vistas opened for me, and I found the need to finish project X (MP3 me baby!)
As my interest in music was renewed, Amazon started offering MP3s for sale. WooT! Almost like a sign or something. So now I’m almost down to the last dozen CDs to MP3… Now if only some of my favorite “current artists” would become available via MP3
Breaking Benjamin: Diary of Jane (URL instead of object code because for some reason it doesn’t work on my website)
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