Lonster's Missouri Mojo

Scary thought but TRUE

2006-02-11T17:07:00.000-06:00

You may not be interested in the digital rights war, but that doesn't mean you'll have the luxury of sitting on the sidelines. Because the other side is very, very interested in you.

Zap You!

2005-12-12T18:19:00.000-06:00

A new post for the first time in ages. This guy has way too much time on his hands but it's funny. Solar Death Ray

Sweet sorta success

2005-11-22T13:43:00.000-06:00

I'd be shouting it from the rooftop, but I lost my ladder. Sony has recalled all the infected CDs, or at least says they have. I'll check out Wal-Mart this afternoon. This is a minor victory though - they make no promises they won't try this again. I only hope all the lawsuits spread out to include any dangerous copy protection. The surest way to make a criminal out of an honest person is to treat them like a criminal.

Notice the link to "The Egg" at right. Quirky, truly GEEK internet radio. Woo Hoo! Jump in the carton!

They done broke it, canna they fix it?

2005-11-15T21:04:00.000-06:00

Apparently NOT. I haven't tried the fix that Sony is offering for the mess it caused, and I won't - Lord knows what further havoc that might bestow on an already sick system. Besides that, getting their fix means I would have to give them my EMAIL ADDRESS! WHF? Are they going to add insult to injury by SPAMMING US? I DO have a fix now that stops short of wiping the hard disk clean, but it involves editing the registry keys, temporarily disabling the CD-ROM drive, and multiple re-boots. Certainly not for the novice and I won't post it lest Mr Six-Pack screw up his system even worse and then blame me. Take it to a professional or wait for the cure from the major anti-virus people. Even Micro$oft has one in the works. As far as I know, these are the only CDs affected:

— Trey Anastasio, Shine (Columbia)
— Celine Dion, On ne Change Pas (Epic)
— Neil Diamond, 12 Songs (Columbia)
— Our Lady Peace, Healthy in Paranoid Times (Columbia)
— Chris Botti, To Love Again (Columbia)
— Van Zant, Get Right with the Man (Columbia)
— Switchfoot, Nothing is Sound (Columbia)
— The Coral, The Invisible Invasion (Columbia)
— Acceptance, Phantoms (Columbia)
— Susie Suh, Susie Suh (Epic)
— Amerie, Touch (Columbia)
— Life of Agony, Broken Valley (Epic)
— Horace Silver Quintet, Silver's Blue (Epic Legacy)
— Gerry Mulligan, Jeru (Columbia Legacy)
— Dexter Gordon, Manhattan Symphonie (Columbia Legacy)
— The Bad Plus, Suspicious Activity (Columbia)
— The Dead 60s, The Dead 60s (Epic)
— Dion, The Essential Dion (Columbia Legacy)
— Natasha Bedingfield, Unwritten (Epic)
— Ricky Martin, Life (Columbia)

source: Electronic Frontier Foundation thanks, guys

I truly believe that few if any of these artists had anything to do with this, but they will feel the backlash. I haven't had time to visit most of their websites, but the Van Zants have devoted a whole page to apologies and what help they can give their fans to resolve this. A hell of a lot more than Sony has done.

Shame Sony discs don't make good Frisbee(tm) substitutes

2005-11-14T10:01:00.000-06:00

Then there'd be one use for them. I have spent the last few days helping friends remove root kits from their machines. If you don't havea clue as to what I'm talking about you are blind, deaf, and can't Google something as simple as "Sony rootkit." Contrary to what the Sony goons say about this malicious (and futile) attempt at copy protection, I have verified these little tidbits with my own systems:1. It steals clock cycles from your CPU, slowing your system down.2. It "phones home" if you have a connection to the internet, supplying Sony with info on what music you are playing.3. It's "stealth technology" can easily be used to hide anything else, a virtual gold mine for the script kiddie hacker. Not that they need much help.4. It is difficult to remove, and any mistake in the attempt to do so can result in your cd-rom becoming unusable and/or your system crashing. Some friends have already had to completely re-install Windows from trying to do this themselves. In the case of two machines, we pulled out their hard disks, plugged them into one of my machines, copied important data, and then completely reformatted their drives.In every case I have had personal experience with, the infection apparently came from the new Van Zant cd. I applaud the Van Zant brothers for immediately posting about this on their site,http://www.thevanzants.com/ along with links to help you remove the software.More on this as the dust clears. The truth is in there.

Long Time

2005-11-02T10:41:00.000-06:00

It's seems like a year since I have posted. All work and no play... Well, not entirely. Here's a spot for all you gear heads just in time for Christmas. http://emachineshop.com/ And I mean a full online machine shop at your fingertips. They even provide free CAD software and the list of available materials and shop tools borders on the ridiculous. Just design your part and order it. Wow, now you can build that 240 mph hybrid you've always dreamed of.

On a more down home level, an open source scalable vector graphics editor for the masses, and it even exports to POV-Ray!!!. http://www.inkscape.org/ Use this to design decals for the hybrid! Seriously, this is a very useful piece if software. It even includes an XML editor. Tutorials included, and lotsza online support.

Here Momma cat and I enjoying the beautiful Autumn weather. The trees have been particularly colorful this year.

My heart goes out to you

2005-10-16T20:35:00.000-05:00

Just a little test to see if I could actually convince the Blogger software to do an animation. It sort of worked. It is animated but somehow the gif palette got a bit trashed in the process. Still. I am impressed by the ease with which I did this.

I committed an act of journalism, am I liable?

2005-10-13T10:43:00.000-05:00

Is there a test I can take somewhere to get a “license” to be a “real” reporter? Is there a regulatory board that examines the credentials of a reporter and then determines whether or not said reporter has a right to legal protection as member of the press? What I am really asking is why the ivory towers get the right to abuse freedom of the press when my lowly blog may not be so protected. Millions are blogging now, and not surprisingly companies (and governments) who are just now coming up with guidelines for email are running scared from this groundswell of independent thought. Employees are being fired and military personnel disciplined, even though no stated rules were broken.

To top it all off, there is growing support for the idea that the internet should be internationally (read that United Nations) regulated. Just great! Give control of domain assignment to countries with a long record of supression of free speech, like Iran and China. While we’re at it, make it criminal to start a blog without first registering, waiting for government approval, and then signing an iron-clad agreement not talk about anything “less than socially redeeming.” The dream of every Orwellian son-of-a-bitch tyrant come true. But I don’t for a moment see it happening. America still controls the internet, don't we ;) Comments?

Check out Blogging Guide for Social Activists

RSS for Outlook

2005-10-07T11:10:00.000-05:00

I have been using intraVnews since July for all my RSS feeds. So cool it’s cryo. IntraVnews seems quite stable on my XP-Pro system, and friends tell me it runs fine on XP-Home Edition. It puts it’s own little toolbar on Outlook and the controls are well thought out and intuitive. It can easily keep the news and email separate, can use all of the cool Outlook organisational tools, and flawlessly recovers from system crashes (not that I have any.) READ THE ON-LINE INSTRUCTIONS CAREFULLY! You will probably need additional (free) software from MicroSoft to run it. A license for personal use is free but you must register.

If you’re new to RSS I suggest installing the sample feeds, and then quickly unsubscribing from them once you’ve added a few of your own. You will quickly learn that subscribing to more than one (if that) major news feed for things like headlines is insane – even reading the headers and a brief description would be impossible if you have a life. I use it for staying current with a lot of obscure tech and hobby sites that may only change perhaps once a week. This software is very fast, has many powerful tools like the ability to import and export feeds, and has been tested with 5000 feeds simultaneously! Highly! Highly! http://www.intravnews.com/

In living color

2005-10-07T09:57:00.000-05:00

Text worked fine from Outlook, pictures did not. Oh well, my motto has alway been "the difficult I do at once, the impossible takes a little longer." As promised, here is some ray tracing. An Armillary sphere.

Drain Bamage

2005-10-06T22:04:00.000-05:00

I have really been a glutten for punishment today.  Reformatted my primary hard disk in anticipation of repartitioning it and installing Linux on HD2, now trying to decide what to put back.   I’ve done this many, many times but it still gives the willies with a Windows machine.  Jeeze!  There’s stuff on the backup DVDs I haven’t touched since January.  Talk about rust, but I am not complaining.  When I started with computers you couldn’t even get a megabyte on a sloppy floppy and backups were a constant pain in the ass.  Now the computer just asks for a fresh DVD-RW once in a while and tells me what number to write on it.

While the drive formatted I went tudors down for coffee with my hippy friend Rick.  True to form, the Lava Lamp was lit, Richie Blackmore on cassette, Cheech n Chong on VHS.  Was I really that crazy in the 70’s?  Don’t’ even need an answer, of course I was, ‘just don’t like to admit that I finally left Never Never Land.  Some of my friends never did, and a lot of them aren’t with us anymore.  More rust.

The blog plugin for Word is installed, this will be the first test of it.  There’s seems to be no documentation to go with it.  Can I include pictures?  Sounds? Movies?  Smellorama?  Will they upload along with the HTML, or do I have to do that separately via HTTP or FTP?  Guess I’ll find out right now.

Thing I couldn't put down

2005-10-06T06:13:00.000-05:00

2005 has been a banner reading year for me. I have feasted my eyes on more excellent literature this year, both online and in my easy chair, than in the last three years combined. My number one pick would be “The Elegant Universe” by Brian Greene. The PBS NOVA special of the same name hosted by Greene is available for online viewing at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/ After watching it (all three hours!) I HAD to have the book. Few men, especially super-geek physicists, have such a mastery of the English language and such an ability to explain arcane subjects. I may still be a little fuzzy on string theory, but that’s not the books fault, it’s my lack of a full brane. Number two is available online, and not by coincidence. “The Cluetrain Manifesto” by Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, and David Weinburger leaves corporate America with a bloody nose and it’s pants down. It takes guts to open a book with the line “People of the Earth…” and from then on they just keep punching. Deep insight into what the internet is and isn’t, and how it has changed us forever. They state that the internet is really about people telling people stories, and they tell one hell of a story. Full text at http://www.cluetrain.com/book/ Someone should send a copy to the RIAA - those guy truly need a clue.

Up and running

2005-09-27T11:02:00.000-05:00

My new blog. I'll use this to keep family and friends posted on my whereabouts and doings, pass on links to cool free stuff I find, and show off my artwork and programming projects. Please send your comments and suggestions, I might even read them.