Sep 27
I used to always say my own personal hell would be spending eternity waiting in line at Wal-Mart behind someone who doesn’t speak English with half a dozen screaming children going through two hundred coupons and then attempting to write a check for seven dollars. This is such a short-sighted version of hell though, because at least at Wal-Mart, there is only one line to wait in as oppose to Tiger Direct’s three or possibly four different lines you must conquer to purchase something.
Naturally, you’re thinking, “So why do you even bother shopping there?” Well, that’s always the catch. I never EVER willingly go to Tiger Direct. 99.9% of the time I’d rather just order whatever computer component, networking device, or other gizmo online, gladly pay for shipping, and wait for it to arrive… even if it takes weeks. But then there is that other 0.01% of the time where I need something for a project at work, a client I’m dealing with, or someone in between and can’t wait for it to ship from NewEgg. In times like this, it’s never something easy and generic I need that could be picked up at Best Buy, it’s something that needs to be pulled from the warehouse.
Getting an item pulled from Tiger Direct’s warehouse goes a little something like this:
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Sep 27
Dear Retards,
I’ve never been able to wrap my head around the seething hatred for Steam a lot of people have had since Counter-Strike 1.4’s initial Steam download in what… 2002? Like it or not, online content delivery is the future of all forms of media. Look at what is happening to music, the iTunes music store is the #3 largest music retailer in the USA right now. With more and more music being either iTunes or internet-only exclusives, how long before retailers decide to stop wasting shelf space with CD’s?
The same can be said for Steam, the XBOX Live Arcade, and other internet video game content distributors. Take for example the following two scenarios in purchasing a new computer game:
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Sep 24
Check this out-
Step 1: Get the Orange Box via Steam. Step 2: Add me to your Steam friends.
I am pretty impressed with what Valve has done with Steam. I remember when it was first released along with Counter-Strike 1.4 in 2002 and the entire internet was in an uproar about how Steam is ruining their lives and they’ll never give Valve another dollar ever again. Five years later and they’ve effectively conquered the online video game content delivery market, nearly killed off Xfire with Steam’s built in messenger and while they’re at it, destroyed all of the different gamer “MySpace-like” community sites in the process.
I said it in 2002, and I stick by my words today- Steam is awesome, and online content distribution is the future.
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Sep 18
Why in the world anyone would download anything on a public bittorrent or peer to peer network is absolutely beyond me. I think it would be quicker and easier to just mail the few thousand dollars the RIAA and MPAA have been settling with people out of court directly. Skip all the pomp and circumstance and just skip directly to the end result of being an irresponsible thieving idiot on the internet.
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Sep 17
Someone is using Naperville’s free WiFi right now for BitTorrent, the Internet’s most popular piracy tool. The Pirate Bay and Demonoid, shown in the next few screenshots are the most popular torrent sites on the internet. Behold, city sponsored movie, music, or software piracy-
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Sep 17
…or maybe more depending on the range of your laptop’s antenna.
For this example, I’m using my iPhone again to view the internet, and my Mac Mini running Wireshark to intercept and parse the data. First things first, we verify we’re connected to MetroFi-Free, Naperville’s new free 802.11b network:
After that, we’ll navigate to any web site that has a login form which isn’t encrypted with SSL. My own blog works great for this example, but really any web site which has a URL that doesn’t start with https:// is vulnerable, along with pretty much all internet applications (more on that later).
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Sep 17
Assuming you’re using a real computer which runs Mac OS X-
- Download EtherPEG
- Open Terminal.app, type:
sudo chmod 777 /dev/bpf*
This enables promiscuous access to Ethernet devices.
- Then type:
ifconfig -a
to figure out if your wireless card is on en0 or en1. (Most Macs should use en1)
- Load the correct version of EtherPEG depending on what network interface is wireless. (EtherPEG (en1).app for my computer.)
- Connect to MetroFi-Free if you’re not already.
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Sep 17
Naperville’s free municipal WiFi went live in the downtown area over the weekend.
Totally unencrypted.
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