Archive for May, 2008

All fair in the war on piracy?

May 30, 2008 News

During the American long weekend, Revision3.com, a site which hosts web-only shows had its servers brought down by a DoS attack. The online community is quite pissed-off, not only because the shows weren’t available but because it seems the attack was perpetrated by MediaDefender. There are write ups about the attack on ArsTechnica, Popular Science and on the Revision3 blog by CEO, Jim Louderback, to name just a few.

Revision3 uses the BitTorrent protocol to distribute its shows in an economical way. BitTorrent allows users who have already downloaded the content to share it, thus reducing the load on the original distributor’s servers. Of course, torrents are also used for pirating software, music, movies and other forms of media. MediaDefender is a company contracted by among many organizations, the RIAA in their fight against piracy. The problem here is that Revision3 distributes its own content which is a completely legal and legitimate business use of the torrent protocol.

According to Jim Louderback’s blog entry, it seems MediaDefender’s practice of injecting fake torrents isn’t the only shady part of their MO. Revision3 had discovered that someone had been using their tracker to distribute non-Revision3 torrents so they shut that down. Once MediaDefender’s servers realized they couldn’t play at will any more, they began flooding Revision3 with SYN packets and brought them down, a practice ArsTechnica has written about before.

I urge you to read the articles and see how shady the practices of this alleged law-defender are.

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Screwed by the gaming industry

May 30, 2008 Video game

Cracked.com (which seems to be one of my most used resources for geeky stuff) has a list of “5 Innovative Ways the Gaming Industry is Screwing [us].” I have myself heard of all of these before but I still find them all very ridiculous. Here’s the list, but check out the article for more explanations.

  1. Gamespot Offers Good Reviews To Companies That Pay Them
  2. EA Sports Creates A Mini-Monopoly
  3. Activision Fakes Its Commercials
  4. Blizzard’s Warden Client Is Watching
  5. Battlefield: Bad Company Sells Upgrades For Real-World Money

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I would certainly hope so

May 27, 2008 Uncategorized

I decided to start my search for potential employers a bit early. About three years early in fact. While looking through a company’s website I ran over this little gem:
Our Engineers are capable of solving various mathematical problems which relate to the development of our products.
I will leave the company nameless but needless to say I see there is potential for a contract position in improving its online presence.

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A guide to lead-free soldering

May 26, 2008 Hobby

Hack a Day has a great post about using lead-free solder. It explains why leaded solder is dangerous, the options you have when choosing a lead-free solder, gives some general soldering tips and downsides of using solder without lead.

{How-To: Go Green with lead free solder}

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Mars Phoenix, first pictures

May 26, 2008 Cosmos

The Mars Phoenix Lander sent back the first images from the North Pole after a safe landing yesterday. Discovery News has a slide show of the images.

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