I haven’t been impressed by new software in quite a while, especially web-browser stuff, but wow, Piclens is amazing. It turns browsing photos into an amazing 3D experience. And it’s not just cool, it’s totally convenient and quick!
I haven’t been able to get it to work with Maxthon yet, but if I see how I’ll update this post. It works great in IE and Firefox (and Safari for Mac users).
I just finished Bioshock for the PC, and it’s one of the best single-player game experiences I’ve ever had. I’d suggest everyone rush out and buy the game but you’ll need a pretty hefty computer to play it. A better option for those that don’t stay updated with gaming PCs is to finally get yourself an XBox 360 and get Bioshock for it.
Before I put my meagre writing skills to the test to explain why it’s so good, just go read all the reviews from Metacritic (96% average rating for PC, 97% for 360 — AVERAGE!)
Graphically the game is gorgeous. It doesn’t just have the latest-and-greatest in graphics technology — one of the reasons your PC should be pretty good to run it — but the art direction is some of the best I’ve ever experienced in a game. The game is set in 1960 and has an incredible art-deco look, with brilliant shades of steampunk that convince you that all the marvelous technology you experience is actually possible in that setting.
Note that this commercial isn’t using actual gameplay footage but instead gives you a compressed idea of what you’ll be doing.
Moving past the graphics, the gameplay is deep, intense, frightening and at times incredibly emotional. You’ll have lots of hard decisions to make — your “powers”, weapon upgrades, skills and abilities as well as a choice between what is morally right but less profitable and… well, something horrible I never did and possibly paid a price for in game ease. Yeah, yeah, I’m a good guy in video games.
There’s a free PC demo available through Steam, and if you have a 360 it’s available to download from the XBox Live Marketplace. Both demos are the first 45 minutes of the game and are well worth trying out.
PCs will need at least Windows XP, a P4 2.5 GHz (or equivalent), DX9c compliant video card with 128MB, and 1GB of RAM.
Read this article on ArsTechnica about the upcoming Windows Vista’s hardware tolerance and reactivation scheme. Basically, you install Vista on your computer and if your computer hardware changes “significantly” enough times it will require a reactivation. Windows XP already does this. However, Vista will require you to purchase a new software key if this happens too often!
Yes, that’s right, if you’re an upgrade maniac like myself, or simply use the software for a long enough time that you’ve upgraded your system fully a few times, and Microsoft will demand that you buy Windows Vista again.
Faced with this ridiculous demand, what will users do? Some will head to Linux-based OSes, probably, though I believe many more will simply install cracks, auto-activation programs, and “corporate editions” that won’t require such nonsense.
I’ve already done this for Windows XP. Yes, I run a pirated copy of Windows XP Pro Corp, and I do it because I was sick of my computer constantly bugging me to reactivate because I’d changed a few pieces of hardware. Sometimes when troubleshooting a hardware problem I can yank out nearly everything in there and replace them one at a time to find the error. This threw my legally purchased copy of Windows XP Pro into “you must reactivate” fits. The first few times it did it online. But then it told me that I’d activated online too often and had to phone in to activate.
So I did. And the tech on the other end of the phone gave me the third degree over why this had happened. I told them I had changed out some hardware, and they reminded me that the Windows license was only good for one computer. I remember wondering if I had stuttered, and I said “No, this is the same computer, I had my motherboard die on the old one and have had to get a new one and now Windows wants to be activated again!”
“So the old motherboard is no longer in use?”
“No. It’s dead. This is the same hard drive. I haven’t made a copy.”
“Ok,” and they gave me the activation code.
The next time my computer wanted to be activated, I simply downloaded a “Corporate” version of XP that didn’t require activation. Unfortunately my legal XP Key wouldn’t work for that, so I had to also get a keygen. I went from legitimate Windows user to OS pirate because of Microsoft’s policies, and many of you will too.
Hell, I doubt I’ll even bother buying Vista with all the big brother software that comes along with it. I suggest everyone else avoids it for as long as possible.
The quote that keeps coming to mind is paraphrased from Star Wars Episode IV (oh man, I know I’m nerding out here): “The tighter your grip on the OS market, the more users will slip between your fingers.”
Craig got himself a new computer recently and I immediately went into protective geek mode and started telling him all the security software and updates he should make sure he had installed and his eyes kind of glazed over and so I said “maybe I’ll make a blog post about it so you can just follow the links.”
Ok, so you have your new computer. Why are you on the Internet with it already? If you didn’t activate your Windows Firewall before connecting you may already have become infected! I’m serious, turn it on!
Windows Firewall
Click Start > Control Panel > Windows Firewall and make sure it’s “On”. Those of you who are more advanced users and have a hardware firewall (such as a hardware router like my DI-624) can pretty safely disable the WIndows Firewall. There are other firewall options such as ZoneAlarm but it’s recently become nagware so I avoid it (their page really tries to get you to buy it too). If you really care, get a router. They’re great and can provide you with Wireless Networking around the house if you have a notebook. It’s become really handy for us to have Internet anywhere in the house thanks to Wireless.
Windows Updates
Ok, then I want you to go to http://www.windowsupdate.com/ and get all the Critical Updates and reboot. And then? Go there again and do it again. Because some Critical Updates won’t show up until you have other Critical Updates. So keep going there, getting updates, and rebooting until they stop giving you ones marked as “Critical”. Ok, now that we’re done with that, here’s the software you want:
The announcement by Skype that they’re offering free calling to mobile and land-line phones until the end of this year blows me away. My first thought was that they were just stepping up the pressure against Vonage and the other VOIP providers, but when I mentioned this to Ryan Dancey he said “eBay to telcos: You wanna fuck with our rates? How about we KILL YOUR BUSINESS. Have a nice day!” and I think he’s right on the money. This is a response to AT&T’s attempt to double-bill for Internet usage (read more about Network neutrality at that link, PLEASE).
But hey, let’s reap the rewards. I know a lot of you make a lot of long distance calls. Get yourself a computer headset and download Skype and save a lot of money. And even after this year is over, Skype-to-Skype calls are *still* free!
If you don’t have a headset yet, I strongly suggest you buy a “USB Headset” because it will allow you to use it separately from your computer’s speakers and regular microphone. They’re a bit more expensive but totally worth it.
Every version of Windows needs to get this security upgrade NOW. It’s vitally important that you do because the hole it patches is otherwise unstoppable and could do terrible things to your system simply by browsing a web page that someone has set up to take advantage of the hole.
If you have XP and you have Automatic Updates turned on you should’ve received this yesterday, but it doesn’t hurt to make sure.
An update in the news on Sony’s Rootkit DRM(Digital Rights Management) software that I mentioned previously.
Microsoft has labelled the rootkit spyware and an upcoming update to the Malicious Software Removal Tool (you all get your Windows Updates, right?) will remove it from an infected system.
While the obvious comment is that “it’s sad to be saved by Microsoft”, I’m very happy about this. The average Windows user won’t even know they’ve got the rootkit installed and their computer will just degenerate into a stealthed-virus-ridden mess. Even those users should be getting their updates from Microsoft and once they do they should be ok.
Check out this article. Seems Sony created software to protect their music CDs from being pirated (note: Every song has totally been pirated and is all over the net for easy download) that didn’t just hide itself, but would hide any file that started with “$sys$” in the filename.
I read an article about this “rootkit” earlier and thought “What a bunch of jerks,” but didn’t even realize the true extent of the damage they’ve caused with this: They’ve given hackers the ultimate tool to hide their hacks, ruining online gaming quite possibly forever.
The article I linked mentions World of Warcraft, but the same can be true of any game hack, including first-person shooters like Counterstrike, or the new Battlefield 2 or Quake 4. All totally ruined because their new anti-cheat measures simply can’t detect a file that’s been hidden by such a rootkit.
And it doesn’t stop at games. I’m sure most viruses coming down the pipe these days will use the $sys$ prefix so they can’t be detect and cleaned by anti-virus software.
And the cause of this bullshit? A multi-billion dollar media conglomerate didn’t want Joe Consumer to be able to copy their legally purchased music CD onto their computer.
As I mentioned, the pirates worked around this protection already. How? They simply didn’t let their CD drive do an “autorun” so the software was never installed in the first place and then copied the music just like any other CD.
So I went out to Future Shop today and picked up Star Wars: Battlefront II. I enjoyed the first one quite a bit and this sequel was a decent price so I grabbed the DVD version.
Brought it home, installed it and went to run it and got this charming error:
What’s causing that? THE BUILT IN ANTIPIRACY SOFTWARE.
Hey thanks Lucasarts for using shitty software that makes it so LEGITIMATE PURCHASERS can’t use the product they PAID FOR.
I’m sure in a day or two the pirate sites will have a no-cd crack and people who didn’t pay for the game will be able to play their copies JUST FUCKING FINE.
Next time why don’t I just wait for them to do that and then not pay for a product that screws me over for playing by the rules?
First off, go to Trendmicro’s Housecall, a free virus scan and let it install the ActiveX controls needed for you to scan your computer, then start the scan. I’ll wait here until you get back.
Go. I’m not continuing until you start that scan.
Oh, you want to know why? Because when you get infected with a virus these days you’re not hurting yourself, you’re hurting thousands and thousands of other people. Today’s viruses can be installed via unpatched Internet Explore Security Holes (and you do go to Windowsupdate.com and patch them, right?), opening email attachments (that you thought were from friends, or of Anna Kournakova being naked) or from the old-fashioned “running an infected file”. There are even some viruses that can just get onto your computer if it’s on the Internet, not behind a firewall, and not updated with the latest security patches.
And what most viruses these days do after they’ve been infected is spam themselves out to EVERYONE ELSE YOU KNOW. That includes me. I checked my email today and Symantec Antivirus deleted TWENTY virus attachments. Someone who knows me, or at least has my email in their temporary internet files folder somewhere, is infected and their computer is non-stop sending itself out through its own email program, over and over again.
And all it’d take is an antivirus program. Me, I like Symantec (aka “Norton”) Antivirus. It’s powerful, a fair price (I suppose) and constantly updated.
My guess is that the majority of you out there don’t have an antivirus program installed, or haven’t updated the one you have and haven’t done a scan in a long time. Oh sure, maybe *you* aren’t opening email attachments, but is everyone who uses your computer so smart?
A friend (coughJoeKeysercough) asked me today why he couldn’t send email. He gave me the error and it was because his outgoing mail port was blocked. After going through every possible cause I figured it had to be his ISP blocking it, and the main reason for that: They detected he was sending out TONS of email and was either a spammer or infected. So they blocked it. Good for them, I say. If not for that action he would have continue to send out that virus 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to everyone in his address book and anyone whose email showed up on a web page he visited. Nobody would know it was him because viruses are smart and fake their “from” addresses.
So look, just go get scanned. If you come up clean, that’s great. You should still get an antivirus program installed, and should definitely make sure you get the latest Windows security patches.
And while you’re at it, stop installing spyware just to get at porn. Yeah, you know who you are.
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