philly

One Gig of Classified US Military Info: $40

Flash drives are wonderful things. I don't have one myself, but use other people's flash drives to transfer files here and there. It's a hell of a lot quicker than just about anything else. Apparently some people in the US Military also find them useful. Unfortunately, an almost full 1GB flash drive was apparently lost and later sold at an Afghani bazaar outside a US air base, the LA Times reports. Shit.

The flash memory drive, which a teenager sold for $40, holds scores of military documents marked "secret," describing intelligence-gathering methods and information — including escape routes into Pakistan and the location of a suspected safe house there, and the payment of $50 bounties for each Taliban or Al Qaeda fighter apprehended based on the source's intelligence.

The documents appear to be authentic, but the accuracy of the information they contain could not be independently verified.

On its face, the information seems to jeopardize the safety of intelligence sources working secretly for U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan, which would constitute a serious breach of security.

The names of secret operatives, the names of their families, diagrams, documents on base security, photographs of informants, cell phone numbers, informant pay scales...

Information used to be encrypted. Remember that whole Enigma thing? The article states that most of the documents were "neither locked nor encrypted" holy shit.

I've read articles as recently as last month on how there are still enigma codes being broken; now that's one hell of a complex cipher. Passwords on documents can be broken easily, encryption is another thing. The article states that there were some password protected documents, but most of them weren't fucking encrypted?!

Now, this could be a hoax with fake info on the drives, but if it isn't, Chroist.

Segways

On my way home from Market East station Sunday night, I spotted a pack of Segways in front of the Cosi at 12th and Walnut Sts. It's a weird sight to see.

I didn't bother to look inside for the prospective owners. There were no obvious markings on them to signify if they were Philly PoPo or something. Just some regular cord-style bike locks which were not attached to anything aside from the main center column.

I hate thest things. I think they're stupid. At the same time, they intrigue me.

Podcasts

I don't listen to podcasts much because I don't want to have headphones on at work all the time, I don't have a portable music player and I don't have a car to listen to stuff while driving from place to place. But I do listen here and there.

Three friends of mine put out podcasts on the regular. Miss Plum and Seuss are the duo behind The Unharshed Mellow which has lots of cool indie music, beer reviews and all things Philly, inculding the latest shit [sometimes literally] in their backyard.

Brian Russell of Audio Activism also podcastas and has been at it for quite awhile now. When he stayed over at my house for Live8 over the summer, he showed me how he does it all right in the field. I can't remember if he got around to upgrading a home studio or not.

The two podcasts have different feels, but I like them both. The Unharshed Mellow is a home studio setup. Audio Activism is an in-the-field operation. Technology is coooool.

On My Computer

So I wiped my harddrive and have re-installed everything I need again. One notable thing that I am going without this time around is the MS Office suite. I have the CD for the old XP version and the newer 2003 version. Instead, I'm going it the open source OpenOffice route. It is almost fully compatible with the full MS Office suite and it is free free free. Not having the MS Office suite on the HDD really frees up a shitload of space. It really is a hog.

Firewall Meltdown

Had a bit of a computer meltdown last night while updating my ZoneAlarm [free] firewall. I was prompted to update and hit OK and the process started. Downloaded the update file. Executed it. It got up to twenty-nine percent completion. And then it just stalled. Stalled. Stalled. Stalled. I ended the process. I cranked it up again. But was prompted that certain .dll files were missing or something.

While I was fiddling around to find a way out of this mess, I must have moused over the harddrive and I noticed that something had just eated 5GB worth of space. Blech. I went through the Temp directories and unzip directories and cleaned up a bit, but I have no idea where that extra 5GB all of a sudden came from.

Restarted the comptuer.

Retried to update ZoneAlarm. Now, it was saying that the TrueVector monitor [vsmon.exe] was running and had to be shut off before continuing with the process. I opened up my Task Manager. It wasn't there. I think that within the first twenty-nine percent of the update, the updater deleted the last version of ZoneAlarm in the process.

I tried to salvage the situation by restoring my HDD to a previous date, say anyday but yesterday. GoBack tells me that there is no safe restore point. Fuck.

I was already late to my volunteer duties for the Chuck Pennacchio campaign so I just packed up my stuff and headed out.

When I got back home, I was so fed up, I just backed up my files to my external HDD and wiped the computer with a clean install. That took a few hours. Now the stupid Windows Updates are slowly being downloaded and installed. I'm up to the SP2. That'll be done later tonight and I'll re-install all of my programs and applications afterwards.

Firefox Maglite

How much of a geek am I? Not only do I want a Mag-lite now, but a keychain Mag-lite. A Firefox Mag-lite at that. Must... Resist... Urge...

The white Firefox logo [unfortunately no fox icon] is laser engraved to add to the geek factor.

$12!

Photo via Mozilla store

UMPC / Origami

So Microsoft unveiled the big Origami shindig. It's a little touch screen PC. From Wired:

The ultracompact, wireless-enabled PC is everything a full computer or laptop is, minus the keyboard. Weighing about 2-1/2 pounds, the 1-inch thick device sports a 7-inch touch-sensitive screen that responds to a stylus or the tap of a finger.

Cool, eh? Well, you'd think that such a tiny little thing would be awesome to put in your bag and take everywhere, just like your cellphone, eh? Well, the battery life sucks balls.

This $600 - $1000 paperweight will get you all of 2.5 - 3 hours. Just as good or worse than most laptops. You'd think that with a few billion in cash on hand, Microsoft could team up with their various partners to run this thing more effectively. But no.

If this thing packed in say six hours or dare I say ten hours of usability. Enough to use throughout the day and not have to plug it in every night to recharge, I'd be going bonkers over this thing. But it don't.

I wonder how crippled enabled this thing MS had a hand in designing will actually be.

D&D Online?

Between the ages of eight and twelve or so, I played a shitload of my single favorite game, no, not a video game [although Mike Tyson's Punch Out was probably a close second], but Dungeons & Dragons. To nitpick a little, I was actually playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons; I can't recall what the real difference between the two was/is more than a decade later though. I haven't played since, but I still very much still have all my dice which may still worry Joey Sweeney. From d4 through d100, I got 'em.

And earlier today, I read this NY Times article on how D&D is about to go online. At first I said Nooooooo! But then I thought of all the knock offs that are already online. All those sim games are derivative of D&D. The one that sticks out the most, and the one that has gobbled up dozens of hours of my life, is Final Fantasy. The original Nintendo game which is now on Play Station and is set for it's thirteenth or so iteration. I'm gonna buy it up and not be heard from for many hours when that happens. But then I thought that while all these derivative games were out there already, D&D was different in that it was always a pencil and paper game and never was simply a video incarnation of a role-playing game.

Transforming that analog/organic pencil and paper game online, that's just about impossible. There's some form of the gathering of friends around a table with masses of dice and junk food that cannot be transferred online, call it, say, the organic geek quotient. Something about the clack of the die as it hits the table and rolls around. The eager looks of anticipation on your teammates' faces as the dungeon master reads aloud a scenario. Stephen Colbert knows what I'm talking about. So does Vin Diesel [so does Vin Diesel?!].

Stupid Power Button

And this stupid keyboard I have at work apparently has a power button on it. It is located to the right of the function keys and above and to the left of the numbic keypad. There are three buttons: Wake - Sleep - Power and I had never noticed them before. I accidentally brushed the Power button and then all of a sudden, windows on my screen began to close and then the screen went blank. I was dumbfounded. What the fuck had just happened?! Had I launched some crazy dormant virus with a weird keystroke combination?

And then I looked at what I had just brushed my finger over and ARG!

I had a semi-long post I was in the middle of writing and had not yet saved as draft or copied and pasted into Notepad and saved just in case I do something stupid like accidentally close the browser window or hit the Back button or turn off the computer with a single keystroke! Blech.

Now to redo it. Ugh.

Stupid fucking hair trigger power down button.

Laser Level

One of the little projects of this weekend was to go and get a laser level and use it. I picked up the above laser level from Rittenhouse Hardware [20th/Pine Sts]. Unfortunately, the mastiff, Brody, wasn't in the store. I like going to local hardware stores so much more than a big box. Big box bad! But I was also looking for one of those magnetic vent covers and they didn't have any. I gotta call around to see if any local place has one.

I got home and used the new cool laser level to beam a line in our bathroom down the wall and across onto the perpendicular wall to hang up a series of five photos around the corner. It's this set of photos of a skateboarder in LOVE Park during Wild in the Streets. It very much totally rocks.