Guess I lied....

Lemme try again.

How about monday?

Yeah, a blog on monday.

There.

I set a goal.

I prolly won't though.

I'll just say.

"Screw it."

I'm just waitin too late.

In the night to do them.

I need an earlier start.

Then.

It'll get done.

But for now.

Monday.

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There is stuff going on.

Don't feel like blogging.

Be back in a day.

With tech news.

And my news.

Some good.

Some bad.

Some a little bit of both.

Words of wisdom.

For every good deed done.

There is a crime committed.

For every step ahead.

We could have been just seated.

For every invention made.

How much time did we save?

Blame it on the web.

The spider's your problem now.

I didn't know that the game we were playin.

Even had a set of rules.

I have no idea.

What I'm talkin about.

My blog.

Real update.

Tomorrow.

I promise.

I think.

This is my blog.

Of whuteva.

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Nah, I don't really.

Had to go get my bro this morning from camp. Seems like he had fun. He was yelling and screaming the songs and chants all week, so naturally he's hoarse *does cha-ching motion.* Saw some people there from the past few years, said hi, got some hugs. The usual. Seems like staff got a little shakeup, or they all just graduated college and got "real jobs."

I'm kinda bored. Just been listenin to some of Modest Mouse's Good News for People Who Love Bad News. Still good. Also watched the music video for Hoobastank's Same Direction. I liked the song before the video, but now they have a video for it. They run the video from The Reason right into Same Direction. It's pretty awesome. There is also like a twist. I've never really seen a music video do that, run two together. Good concept.

Tech News Today: Windows XP Service Pack 2

August 6th, the long anticipated service pack 2 is released. To some that is. You may have tried to run Windows Update, but alas, it was not there. It's not going to be there immediately. Best bet is to turn on automatic updates. SP 2 is also not for the dialup user. It would take days depending on when your last update was. Microsoft is approximating between 100 - 300 mb.

Some of the features SP2 offers:
- Automatic update being expanded beyond just critical updates: it will include security patches
- Security Center: will display status of firewall, auto. updates, and virus protection with a tray icon
- Better control of comm. protocols : (RPC,DCOM,WebDAV)
- Local Zone Lockdown: Trojan prevention against reduced restriction programs

Main Features (More Noticeable Features rather):
- Windows Firewall: replaces the Internet Connection Firewall(ICF), it already comes enabled by default, easy to use and configure, works right from startup, and provides overall better protection. Lacks a few features, but adequate.
- Internet Explorer: Built in pop-up blocker(thank god), information bar instead of pop-up message boxes, old spyware tricks protected, and more exploits patched.
-Outlook Express: blocking of web bugs(nice), attachment manager to help ban unsafe attachments from running,

So SP2 is a definite must have. So keep check on your lower right hand of your screen to see when its available. It won't make us invincible from attack, but it does a good job of patching, stronger and more configrable firewall, IE pop-up blocker, and a slew of improvements. Get it as soon as possible.

I'm tired, its now 1:41 AM Saturday. Later people.


UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE- Saturday 8.8.04 5:45 PM

Service Pack 2 is available for MSDN users already. General XP users should be able to download SP2 next week. For those of you who just can't wait, it is readily available on P2P/ Bittorrent networks. Information for downloading:

File Name: WindowsXP-KB835935-SP2-ENU.exe

File Size: 266.1 MB (Ouch for dialup)

Also, I don't know if anyone remembers, but SP1 would not install if you had a bootleg copy of XP. It checks the product key and then decides whether to allow you to download and install or not. I assume SP2 will do the same. So if anyone has "accidentally" put in the wrong product key earlier, follow the directions at this website:

http://labmice.techtarget.com/windowsxp/articles/changeID.htm

Otherwise, if you have a legal version of XP, it will be no problem to download it next week. I would wait for Microsoft to dish it out, simply for the fact of the digital signatures. So if you download, beware and check to see if it has the digital signature. If it doesn't, I wouldn't hold on to it.

That was an update. Good luck, I'm out.

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Then I Feel Pretty Blissfully...

Finally, the rain has ceased. Finally, the hurricane went away. Time to get it back to good.

Boredom. Yeah...boredom. I've been jumping into heaps of video games as of late, going through tons of games in "the closet." My collection has gotten very big over the past 3 years dealing with EGM. It looks like EB crammed into a 1/25th of an EB store closet. I need to actually go through and see what I actually have.

DS and PSP need to come on out. I need some portable game play. Soon. Chop chop fellas. At least some good console games are coming somewhat soon: Halo 2, Fable, Madden 2005, GTA: SA, Paper Mario 2, and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. Until then, I reckon it will have to be Tales of Symphonia and ESPN NFL 2k5. Both are excellent titles.

Tech News for Today: 321 Studios



321 Studios has finally folded underneath the pressures of the many lawsuits by movie studios and game developers. They came under fire because of their popular software to backup games (GamesXCopy) and DVD's (DVDXCopy). Mostly backed by the MPAA, Electronic Arts, and Atari went with accusing 321 Studios of violating the Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998. Business operations have now ceased, including any form of support for their products including email, telephone, and live chat. 321 Studios insisted in their fight that their software was for making "backup copies" of copyrighted material you already own. Federal judges in both California and New York ordered against 321 studios.

This is a huge blow, making the ability to make "backup" copies of your material you already own swirling into a cyclone only to be described as jeopardy. 321 Studios have been in support of backing up material since day one and have been fighting ever since. 321 Studios should be celebrated for fighting for our backup rights. For now though, we must wave farewell. The next question is: Who will fight for us? The answer is uncertain.

Well thats about it for tonight.

If it takes shit to make bliss, then I feel pretty blissfully....

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Like black cadillacs outside a funeral...

These black clouds have been hangin over here for days and days. It needs to stop raining now. Then they're talkin about "Tropical Storm Alex" all the live long day. So...whatever.

The latest version of a hell for one marine is now being delivered in a nice plastic wrapped box. Doom 3 is finally done. As a matter of fact, there are people probably standing in line for it right now for some midnight sale of the popular first person shooter series. Others have taken the alternate route by using torrents and P2P file sharing networks and have had it for a few days. It had been recorded at least 50,000 active users having the Doom 3 files. At a $55 price tag a pop, thats about $2,750,000 in potential sales gone. Though I was tempted, it would have taken forever to download those files. Not worth the price of getting caught either.

Those fellas at id software have been workin their asses off since January, putting 80 hour work weeks consistantly up until it was done. Basically, living at the office. Carmack, who I am told writes sweet code(hehe), is not done yet. Time to port it to the Xbox. Who knows how long it will take for that, but id software has no time to relax. So to John Carmack, Marty Stratton, Kenneth Scott, and the other 21 Doom 3 workers: Good Job. Now, you just have to do it again for the Xbox.

Tired. Lazy. Whatever you call it. Bye.

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I got lucky today. Not the lucky you might be thinking, but lucky nonetheless.

My mom's work, Mid Atlantic Dairy Queen, pays for commercials and things for various local TV stations. Every so often, they give extra tickets and things of that sort to all of the stations contributors. Tickets to concerts and stuff. Turns out they had some Evanescence tickets. Not like in the back section of the place, but smack dab center two rows back. So my mom's boss goes,"Does anyone want some Evanescence tickets?" My mom goes,"Sure...I'm sure my son can use them."

On my aol profile, I had made a list of concerts and shows I'd like to go to in the area. That was one of them. So Evanescence and Seether tomorrow night. For free. Life is swell.

Tech News of the Day:


Microsoft had undoubtedly the biggest story to catch my eye today. IE to be exact. Just in case the world with a Microsoft logo didn't appear in your lower right hand corner, a new critical update for Internet Explorer has been released. Apparently this is a decent security issue, otherwise it probably would have been bundled in with Service Pack 2 next month. Basically(sounding like Patrick Norton now), through the most severe vulnerability found, someone who attacks your computer could gain complete control over your machine.

This will vary with what sort of limitations you have set on your account. Say you're logged on as an administrator, obviously you have lots of power on your machine. Then an attacker takes over your machine. The attacker is now in control with administrative privileges and can therefore do just about anything: delete files, install programs, and even create a new account with full privileges and/or lock you out by changing passwords and limtations. Of course accounts with fewer privileges will not have much power and an attacker cannot do as much.

Just a few words of advice. Download the update. Now. For more info, check out the security bulletin here:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS04-025.mspx

Well, I'm out people. Gotta rest up.

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