Board games are making a comeback this Christmas, reports the BBC. That’s interesting news. So go “Have Your Say” already, and tell them what your favourite Geek Night board game is!
Tag: news
SmartData On BBC News Online
From an article on the BBC:
SmartData UK aims to create software and database solutions.
Company spokesman Gareth Hopkins said: “The move to Technium Aberystwyth has facilitated an expansion of the company and we believe this opportunity will open up a whole range of possibilities.
“The package offered by the Technium will assist us in creating more jobs and expanding into the international market place.”
Rat Brain Flies Jet
Here’s a scary little news story: Rat Brain Flies Jet, from The Register.
Windows XP SP1 Honeypot Breached In 200 Seconds
The internet is becoming a scarier and scarier place.
In a recent “honeypot” study, a Windows XP computer with Service Pack 1 was infiltrated in just 200 seconds, without even opening a web browser.
For the less techie-minded, a “honeypot” study involves setting up a new PC with a new operating system (in this case, a Windows XP SP1 machine) and connecting it directly to the internet to see how it is attacked and to what end. In this case, all they did was connect said computer to the internet… and less than four minutes later, it had been compromised by an attacker. Within half an hour, it was receiving instructions to act as a bridge to attack other computers.
Four minutes isn’t long enough to download and install ZoneAlarm. It certainly isn’t long enough to install Service Pack 2. And all across the globe, newbie PC users are buying off-the-shelf computers with no firewall, taking them home, and connecting them to the internet, basically ‘volunteering’ their computers and their bandwidth to be zombies and attack others around the world, relay spam, or share their files with anybody, anywhere.
If anybody needs help securing their system, just give me a shout.
More Letters After My Name
News of the day: (here I go, flooding you all with lots of small posts), I’m now Daniel Huntley BEng(Hons) MBCS, ‘cos I’m now a member of the British Computer Society. Not quite sure whether or not this is a good thing, yet, but hey.
Hmm… they’ll be sending me my membership card seperately from my information pack for “security reasons”? WTF?
Oh, and in other news, BBC News is reporting that Internet Explorer’s usage dropped for the first time to less than 90% in recent polls, with Firefox taking up most of the ‘switchers’. This is good news, indeed (as anybody who’s looked at Abnib in (a) Internet Explorer and (b) Any Standards-Compliant Browser will understand).
Smash My Phone
For $12.99, you can have a model smash your phone and publish the video to the internet for you to enjoy again and again. Fucking weird.
Feel Like Santa
I bet Santa’s busy this time of year, too, judging by the fact that the supermarkets seem to have completely forgotten Halloween and Bonfire Night in favour of Christmas. Let’s see, there’s…
Another Busy Weekend
I’ve spent another weekend helping out those folks at Aberystwyth Nightline with the training of their new volunteers. Despite having
graduated and leaving the organisation earlier this year, they still invited me back to help impart some knowledge onto the new trainees. Which was nice – it’s good to still feel wanted
despite being an “old fogie” to it all – but draining: I’m not used to working harder at the weekend than I do during the week.
Next Weekend’s Not Much Better
From a being busy perspective, that is. Next weekend I’ll be in Scotland, of course, to witness and celebrate Kit and Fiona‘s wedding. Amazing how fast that’s crept up. In other news, Jon and Hayley are now
engaged, and much merriment ensues.
Move To The Technium
SmartData has now pretty-much entirely moved to Aber Technium, a lovely seafront building just 10 minutes walk from my house. Sadly, this means
that I now have a whole heap of extra work to do, setting up new server gear and sorting us out with our own online dedicated server. Despite my protests, the company has decided that
our first dedicated online server is to be a Windows Server 2003 (Web Edition) box, which means we can’t go with Diogel, my first choice for web
hosting.
In Other Web-Related News
And in another almost-as-geeky turn of events, Ruth, JTA,
Andy (the rock monkey), Matt and I are working towards getting a virtual server together. The server that currently hosts
Scatmania, Abnib, Troma Night, and others, is getting a little crowded these days, so
we’re going to alight and find ourselves greener pastures.
And Finally, An Interesting News Item
This amused me today: an Oregon student was surprised to have his house assaulted by police and rescue
teams, after his new wide-screen television began to suddenly transmit the international rescue beacon signal. He’s been offered a free replacement.
And on that note, I’m off home.
BBC Seeks Geeks For Open-Source Codec Work
There’s a story on The Register: The BBC are looking for eager open-source hackers to help them develop their new Dirac video codec project. Looks fascinating, and with the weight of the BBC behind it, it could have a bright future.
Primary School Permits “Conkers” Only With Protective Goggles
It’s a funny old world. A primary school in Carlisle is insisting that pupils wear industrial safety goggles while playing conkers, in order that they don’t end up with shards of horse chestnut in their eyes.
Aber Graduates Earn Least In UK
This is just fucking weak: the average salary of an Aberystwyth graduate is just £12,968… the lowest in the UK. And on this crappy ‘probationary period‘, that’s still more than I earn. Fucking shitty.
Feeling unmotivated now. Not getting enough work done.
Happy Fun Weekend
It’s so much nicer coming back to the office on a Monday after a weekend both relaxing and productive, with lots of happy fun time with friends. Managed to tidy the flat, do heaps of laundry, have a successful Troma Night (three films, a decent crowd, and everybody hung on in ’til the end despite knackeredness), a sedate but moderately successful Geek Night (Carcassonne and Chez Geek). All good.
Plus, I managed to find time to learn a fair bit about mod-rewrite, the Apache module that lets you do all kinds of useful things like canonical URLs, content negotiation, proxying content, fallbacks, etc. (as used on Scatmania to make the ‘nice’ URLs you see with the date and post name embedded into the pseudo-folder-structure). Fab. And managed to help Bryn with his new web site, which I’m sure you’ll all be seeing later this month.
And in actual news, BBC News reports that a Swedish man has been issued with a £90 ticket for illegally parking his snowmobile in Warwick, despite claiming never to have been there and that his snowmobile was in his shed in Bollstabruk at the time.
Mr. Sinus Theater 3000 In Name-Theft Lawsuit
The Austin Business Journal reports that the makers of Mystery Science Theater 3000 are taking to court the makers of a new show, Mr. Sinus Theater 3000, in which a group of guys sit in front of a cinema screen and take the piss out of the films they watch. And fair enough: it seems to me that this is quite obviously an attempt to cash in on the fame of the now-dead series, MST3K. Although if it’s not – and it is just fair use and parody… then Best Brains would be complaining that their parody-ridden show was itself the victim of a parody… umm…
In any case, go read the story.
World’s First Room-Temperature Plastic Magnet
New Scientist reports that researchers at the University of Durham have created the world’s first plastic magnet to work at room temperature (previous plastic magnets worked only at extremely low temperatures, typically measurable in double-digit Kelvins).
I’m sure I’m likely to be corrected on some minor point by any of the physicists who read this blog, but – for dummies:
Traditional (and naturally occuring) solid-state ferric magnets work by having their composite atoms aligned to all ‘face the same way’: the difference in potential between the ends of the atom causes a magnetic field, and the combined action of these is what makes the magnetism. These can be created by heating the metal (freeing the movement of the atoms) and then exposing it to another magnet (aligning the atoms) before allowing it to cool. More on magnets from Wikipedia.
Conversely, these counterpart plastic magnets are composed of a two-part polymer and the magnetism is induced by the alignment of free radicals within the plastic.
Plastic magnets have applications in computer magnetic storage, mechanical medicinal implants, and other fields.
Belt Buckle Shows Highlights Of Crazy Search Results
This is just crazy. Some mad geeks have adapted a Pocket PC into a hip 80s-esque belt buckle, such that it displays a scrolling list of popular web search terms of the last 24 hours, live… at your crotch.
I have no idea what the purpose of this is.
How Google Could De-Throne AIM, And Other Geeky News
There’s an article on how Google could overthrow AIM/ICQ (link removed; apple-x.net now seems to be occupied by domain squatters), and perhaps even MSN Messenger, from their dominant positions in the instant messenger market, and improve internet standards usage and accessibility, by releasing their own instant messenger tool powered by the (wonderful) Jabber protocol. It’s a lovely idea, but (sadly) not one which is likely to happen.
On similarly geeky news, there’s a new web site, BrowseHappy, which aims to help everyday users make the switch away from Internet Explorer to safer, simpler, faster, better browsers. If you’re still using IE, take a look. If you’re already enlightened, show it to your unenlightened friends. It’s a very approachable site in nice, easy language.
And finally, there’s apparently a new worm doing the rounds, “Peeping Tom”, which, upon infection, turns on the victim’s webcam and microphone, and begins broadcasting to the world. What a lovely idea for a novelty virus.
Thanks for listening