Logbook: tech ect
I keep saying I need to post more…..
Its been months since I’ve actually posted consistently.
I have my reasons as my life has been one thing after another… but, I am going to try to get back to this at a regular basis. For one.. I’d rather post here. While facebook is an option its kind of like being in a dog park… Everyone is sniffing your ass wondering what you are doing and whether they agree with you or disagree they blow smoke up your ass if they think your position on things is not in line with theirs. I don’t need that, I really don’t give a fuck if you find my posts on coffee or other stuff offensive. I’m me I’ll post what I want how I want and that is all there is too it.
I’ve always disliked facebook because if someone finds your post offensive to them they can cause trouble…. Mainly you have no creative control over your posts, No style , No way to keep your posts to your target. Sure the website is come one come call , but if you don’t like it … At least on this end of things unlike facebook it does not keep post vomit in your face. Nor do I have to constantly fool with settings inside facebook. I am not going to make it where there is “friend system”. Facebook in it self is a disaster of code. I do not give ten fucks if you need 1023823 friends to get a chicken on your farm to fuck a leopard to get a land expansion. I like simplicity .
As it stands with facebook it is likely everyone of the post you make are analyzed and sold off to marketers. In reality facebook is more like test to see how you respond to certain stimuli. If you took Pavlov’s Dogs and applied it to facebook it would unsurprisingly fit will……
In his initial experiments, Pavlov presented a stimulus and then gave the dog food; after a few repetitions, the dogs started to salivate in response to the bell. Pavlov called the stimulus the conditioned (or conditional) stimulus (CS) because its effects depend on its association with food.
Now lets see how facebook works on the same logic.
In initial experiments, Facebook presented a stimulus and then gave the Human a like; after a few repetitions, the Humans started to Post in response to the like. Facebook called the stimulus the conditioned (or conditional) stimulus (CS) because its effects depend on its association with Liked Post.
Fucking fantastic to know facebook just wants you to be their dog to just get more information out of you. Privacy issues aside which are extreme. Facebook sucks, I’ve given up posting there. I will keep my postings here and if you find them and like them that’s fucking great.
Facebook is a step back in the age of the internet, Its going back to the bottleneck days of everyone has a portal and is stuck in there own prisons like AOL / Compuserve… Mostly to keep you in there own small toxic universes until they melt down and the users get fucked with a roadcone sideways.
All I have too say is…
Phone fun part MMMMDCCCLXXIII (Han shot first!)
In the last edition of Phone fun I had picked up the Galaxy Note 3. Now this phone is about the size of a small moon but does not hold a dime of the planet sized Galaxy Mega. Now while in hardware the phone is good but the software side of the phone can be completely rage inducing.
For all the phones functions there are parts of the phone that are completely annoying. Having to reset every wifi password every month or so just annoys the hell out of me. For whatever reason when the phone has a poor wifi connection it decides its a good time to dump every wifi password on the phone.
There should be no reason on this earth to do this. What ever process samsung made in making this phone had to been a result of being high and saying “dude wouldn’t be funny when people had a bad connection to make all the passwords disappear!”
The above image is the results of what happens when my phone decides to dump passwords on a weak connection. some of the passwords for wifi are more complicated than quantum theorem.
The UI of the phone is also bothersome . like they overcomplicated the whole UI to make it simpler Yet somehow made it more complicated. While annoying I simply replaced the UI it was kind of a duct taped maneuver because it did not stop the more annoying elements. While google experience is a really simple nice UI touchwiz still attempts to rear its ugly head when you do other things.
I really do wish that phone manufacturers would allow for a stock UI …. Rather than install all the random bullshit with no options to remove.
For example.. Beep and go.. Fuck beep and go with a hand grenade, when it updates itself it decides that it shall annoy the ever living fuck out of you not matter the hour of night . I hear a notification in the middle of the night getting up thinking somethings wrong its Beep and blow… “Would you like to add cards for your shopping experience.” FUCK THAT . uninstalling bleep and fuck only updates itself again . I don’t give a flying fuck about installing my customer loyalty cards to my phone. I don’t need Creep and GO to know what I am buying. they can go fuck themselves with a fire hydrant. Sadly enough I’d pay 50$ to buy the phone without bloatware just to not have to deal with that kind of shit.
Any app that has a push notification needs to die. I do not need to be reminded that I have not played a game in 20minutes. thats grounds for instant uninstall for me.
Things I allow notifications for.. Weather alerts/ Text messages / Emails / Missed calls. anything else is useless, including facefuckspace.
the first thing an app should ask when it has notifications is ask. if you say no . give the are you sure and never ask again function. because if you annoy me to the tiniest degree its to the shit can with your app.
People should stand up against annoying apps instead they just deal with the annoyances .
Logitech , A love hate …
I’ve gone through a few logitech Mice over the years, and its always the same shit that gets me on these mice. every fucking damn time ….. My last mouse is the Logitech performance MX , While the mouse is a nice mouse. It suffers the same fate of every other mouse I’ve had from logitech . The microswitch fails on the left mouse button – when you click it makes you click like a mouse struggling to escape . Want to click once? nah fuck that I’ll make you click 34973947 times and you’ll like it. This problem has actually cost me, I’ve clicks on a purchase button and ended up ordering multiple orders of something. You’d think in the 10+ years of this problem some engineer would go hmm somethings wrong. Instead it seems like all the logitech designers took the day off and smoked crack. This problem makes you want to destroy the mouse with no mercy.
It would be nice of logitech if they would redesign this one flaw out of there mice, otherwise most people that have used logitech for as long as I realize that the mouse you have is on a death watch from the second you buy it . If logitech made cars at this point they would force you to die when you press the accelerator and it floors you into a wall because it tapped the gas twice .
Unfortunately Microsoft or any of the other hardware manufacturers have yet to make a mouse that is good enough, so it feels like I am going back to a dealer that cuts his product with powder bleach or something.
SD Wifi to Compact flash fun. Compact flash Adapter fix.
I bought a Wifi SD card for my Digital Camera.
I jumped at getting a slightly newer camera, while it takes compact flash I thought about finding something like an EYE-FI card or Flashair. small problem, you’d think something like that would be a higher market value to someone with an SLR camera. But, after looking around I found all the cards with WiFi are only SD. with with the amount of tablets and phones I have. I figured why spend a ton of money on a huge Compact flash card. So after a bit of looking around I purchased a toshiba flashair card. the next step was to purchase an adapter from SD to compact flash . the WIFI SD/SDHC/SDXC To Compact Flash CF Type II Memory Card Adapter I bought was a generic card but, while I was not sure going into this because there was very many mixed reviews on using an adapter with a compact flash.
While the card with the Wifi SD card worked ok the range was severely limited, it was limited to about 3 feet at best. After looking at the card for a bit I noticed that there is a big metal face to the CF adapter. I did a little surgery to the card itself.
As you can see the two cards side by side.. Taking the CF adapter apart was actually very easy, using a razor I dug a bit under the metal face and popped it up a bit, After that It was very easy to remove the metal faceplate.
As you can see the metal piece is pretty much decoration and has no structural value . when I place the SD card back in a lot more of the card was exposed. the final look of the card was a bit more open.
With the removal with the face place my range on the FlashAir card did not only double it went up by a factor of ten. I could keep connected to the card from across the house with a max range of 40feet or so.
Stick that in your “cloud” and smoke it II
Now that the cloud services are hitting the market more and more, the more bullshit things that the corporate droids are saying what it can do. Honestly, the state of the cloud is something closer to smog. You don’t see the problems with the cloud till you are totally engulfed in the cloud of smog, and through the “information superhighway” your creamed by some asshole in a mack truck and get your car stolen with your wallet and by the time you come out of the cloud you’re naked and asking your self “WTF JUST HAPPENED?!”
Matt Honan learned this the hard way. He got hit in by the mack truck of social engineering when someone retrieved his password than went on a rampage of deleting his accounts and spamming with other accounts. One of the biggest problems with the cloud is there is only a single point of access, Once that’s broken it becomes fuck all and pretty much if you don’t have it backed up to solid media such as a DVD or a backup drive , you might as well just light your computer on fire in the end. Even if you do have your media backed up on the computer that you’ve connected to the stink cloud, in all chances you may end up with your device wiped due to that single point of access and accounts attached to it.
Also with the perceived “Security” that the cloud has its really just unicorn farts and rainbows due to in part the end user. How many people will just log into there cloud putting in the password every time or will they hit save password and screw themselves in the fact that its just “easier”, Not to mention a lost device could doom all of your information since there is interconnectability in the toxic waste cloud.
It just makes me wonder about the security of the cloud thing. If someone can call and pretend to be you, how many other ways is your account on the exhaust cloud vulnerable. If media is able to execute in the cloud is there any stops to malware infecting your account and possibly everyone else with an account on the server or node your clouded information is on . Likely your information is stored like a cesspool everyone else’s shit is in the tank with yours. If someone finds a way to gain root access, Than pretty much rather than one account being hit thousands or more could be affected in the process. Since the security in the cloud is based on black magic , someone named tom and a cookie with m&m’s next to the keyboard to hopefully distract the person or persons trying to gain access to the information.
Websites, portals, and social media platforms have been dealing with these problems and can be directly relatable to the possibilities of problems that are ahead. Blizzard being the most recent, Linkedin , Amazon all being hacked With the biggest problem of you’re taking someones word for if your information is safe or not. Sony being hacked last year left customers in the dark for days with the hacking of their servers . So it only leaves you guessing if the “cloud” goes down for an extended time.
Also, some people are taking a liking to the cloud for other reasons security aside. At kotaku Patricia Hernandez likens the point of the portability of the “cloud” and how her information is accessible everywhere. Try saying that when the internet goes down , or the authentication server shit itself and you have lost complete access to the game since you cant grab an internet connection. She goes on to say…
But overall? The benefits of the cloud outweigh the drawbacks for me. Everything feels more convenient with the cloud. I can buy the games from my home, without having to go anywhere. I don’t have to worry about space, which tends to be sparse for me. And even if it wasn’t, if you’ve played games as long as I have, then you’ve accrued a sizable collection.
Having something being easy is not worth it when it comes with eroded customer rights, lack of ownership , Security issues, Likely needing to be bound to an internet connection. sure the cloud has some good things with it but, over all its just like a cloud left from a stinkbomb, It can be fun, have long lasting implication and at the same time can be your worse nightmare as Matt Honan learned. On another end is since all your information is bound to one point, if you get banned from said cloud, Your information and possibly your money with it due to any expenditures you have bought and is bound to said cloud. Sure you don’t have to worry about scratched disks , or loosing the books with the game . but, in all its not worth loosing everything because someone decided to make a stupid decision and leave your whole account open due to a hole somewhere and everything is gone. Also worth mentioning is if a company goes out of business with your cloud, than your cloud becomes a fart in the wind and is gone. Since you have no control of how stupid a company can be or have any control when some company decides to end its science project with a cloud saying its too expensive to maintain. you could loose everything in a moments notice including material stuff that matters such as credit cards, memories of events due to you only having your pictures in one place or other important work when your device suddenly clears itself due to someone hacking into your cloud and hitting wipe devices.
If the cloud is to succeed, there has to be allowed user changes and changes in the accessibility of the cloud, the future of cloud gaming may kill off any user modding and free creativity.
Don’t get me wrong, the cloud has its uses. but, what is trying to be done with the cloud is building a bank with a glass vault. One rock and its all over.
Call of deluded Elite premium ? wtf.
With the advent of DLC’s game publishers are getting more and more ridiculous with content and how its presented to its user base. I hate microtransactions with games and they are becoming mainstream to the point they are worthless to what they add to the game and making the games themselves worthless.
As publishers tap this as a primary income source games loose alot of there content because the game release often is hobbled to the point of being a few hours long and content running out in the first 5 hours. Often now you see unfinished games released with Day 1 DLC’s that fill in holes in the game that were made by short cutting the game and putting these pieces of a game behind a pay wall.
My friend picked up call of duty MW3 and i noticed that right on the box they were pushing for picking up something called Call of Duty elite premium and I wondered. What is it? its basically a $50 dollar limited license to the future content and a bunch of crap that was either free or was in games in the past.
Looking quickly over what you get with this “service”
3. Analyze & Improve Your Performance
Access Guides to Maps, Weapons, Killstreaks, Perks, and Equipment
Most games before COD ussaully have some sort of stats tracking , Hell Unreal tournament had this kind of stat tracking back in December 1999 . That 11 years before COD, Sure this is still on the free end of the elite but, what the hell, I know they are going to say but this costs money to track on a server etc etc etc. Not really since it takes all of ten miliseconds and a few lines of code to say l33tk4lla killed soandso.
4. Customize your load outs & sync DIRECTLY to the game
WHY? if you at work trying to think about how to kill someone in a game and you’re bored shitless likely its not going to work.
onwards to ..
7. THEATER
Free Premium
- Upload & Share 30 Second HD Videos Online
10. MW3 DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT*, INCLUDING ALL THE MW3 MAPS
Premium
- More Content than Ever, with 20 Pieces of New MW3 DLC Premium
- New monthly DLC released over 9 months, so you Always have Something New to Play Premium
- More Variety than Ever, with New MP Maps, Spec Ops, Missions, Game Modes & More Premium
- You get to keep all the DLC even if your membership expires. Premium
This is what is annoying. Likely all this material was fleshed out waaaay before the release of the game so they will keep dropping it on players to keep the “interest of players” up, there’s a tell tale sign that this content is either done or was near done when Call of Duty was released.
Read it carefully ….. 20 pieces of …. New monthly DLC over 9 months… new game modes. basically they announced they have this DONE and set to be dripped out to the user base as slow as possible to keep interest in the game rather than have a finished product. Since the announcement is in finite numbers rather than speculative, which means they either cut this from the game or made a decision to leave this from the game.
DLC type content is an excuse to release a half finished game and get 3x the money for it. If you look at the cost of MW3 its pretty much over a 100$ for a complete game since the shelf life for these games are limited to about 12 months at most.
In the past games were given free content to keep interest or letting people mod the games to their hearts content . Now if you mod a game to have more fun its pretty much going to get you banned from the game. These games now come with FREE planned obsolescence .
What happened with games we could play to our hearts content and Not worry if EA or someone will shut down an aspect of the game or software that therefor makes the product unusable , They Should be forced to put some sort of patch into games that have to connect to servers that multiplayer still works on a connection without the need for servers in the middle. Direct connect games used to be common but they are hard to find these days without some sort of hoops to jump through.
Basically if this gets ground… game will continue down this bad path and players will suffer at the hands of the producers of this crap.
My guess is when COD 10 is release and you want to play COD MW3 for old time sake you will try to play and get “CONNECTION REFUSED” and be stuck with the Disc that now serves as your coffee cup coaster.
Stick this in your “cloud” and smoke it.
Everywhere you look these days you hear about that newfangled cloud thing…. and most people ask what the hell is the cloud. I tell them its a pile of shit buzzword. Watching TV you see the Microsoft commercials about the cloud and how you can access your stuff at home… Or your job… or the moon whatever the fuck.. Here’s and example of said “cloud”
For those whom have had there head buried in the sand or are quite possibly dead… this innovation is as old at the internet it self(of current not arpanet you silly ass).. its called network storage. Introduced in the 1980s
Network-attached storage Connects to Local Area Network via: Hard Drives via one of:
Common manufacturers HP
NetApp
Dell
Cisco
Netgear
CTERA
Sun MicrosystemsIntroduced 1980’s
Yes this amazing new cloud of bullshit buzzwords yay!
And this.. hmm this is not “cloud” like .. the fact these people are accessing there pc at home tells me …. Remote desktop .. YAY MORE OLD TECH CALLED CLOUD! Mind you the guy says “I just brought up our PC at home” yeah… that’s safe.. you’re flying to who the hell knows where and your leaving a PC on 24/7 while your away from the house, when the PC overheats and sets the house on fire – Your house will be a cloud! YAY CLOUD!!
This should be called the windows FartCloud technology
It’s the Cloud! ZOMG!
Microsoft’s idea of the cloud is pretty much rebranding old technology and calling it new.. Some of the other cloud innovations here are just blatantly scary , Such as software as a service .. that’s pretty much a baaaaaaaaaaaaad thing.. Your Office software you bought.. You know the 365 one … You don’t own it. at least the could portion.. also when Office 366 comes out.. and they shut down 365 … Forced upgrade… since your only paying for a service. your stuck in an upgrade cycle for money … Also you will have zero expectations of privacy .. Your account gets hacked? your shit is good as stolen.
What companies are banking on is that you buy into the cloud without any research thinking “Hey this is cool wizbang tech!”
When it comes down to office level this is going to be a nightmare.. as to finding your document or having documents that are not supposed to be public leaking out to the public, since the information would be on the “cloud” it maybe a passworded folder and you give it out and someone cleans out the office bank account because the boss left the banking information in the “Cloud”.
Better yet.. this is all on the internet.. the office connection goes down and productivity goes to zero since no one can access the files..
All these “cloud” services are going to open a black hole when some random company hosting your cloud goes out of business and you cant access your data anymore. not to mention there will likely be a monthly/yearly price to pay for this rather than paying a one time costs.. Its Like renting a car that you have no control over and only can do simple things on like turn on the lights and honk the horn yet your paying a cost X infinity , rather than a one time license cost. These companies will at first seem cheaper than buying software outright but when you figure that over a period of months or even years . the “cloud” costs will greatly exceed the software costs.
And I’ve said it many times… the cloud is just rehashed shit with rainbow farts and ponies with glitter just to stuplify the average user into thinking he is getting something better than it really is.
The risks building a company around the cloud is just insanely risky … From buying ultra cheap terminals that can only access the cloud, to having to build a connection that can handle massive amount of data throughput. if you have a company of 100 people all using the fartcloud you need 100 networked computers that has a zero lag time connection to manipulate data. if you have a crowd-sourced project with lag you will have 50 people fixing one problem and not realized that the other 50 just did the same thing and wasted about an hours of productivity due to each person wasting 30 seconds fixing a problem that was fixed by 1 person.
The idea of the cloud is just totally not a good idea in its current form since corporations are not looking at this as a productivity tool but more as a subscription for cash run.. since they have to sell nothing and get a fuckton of money.
In the end I really hope people understand what the cloud is and its not anything new nor is it worth it in any means of the word.
Phone Fun MMXXIV – thank you sprint….(nexus S 4g)
After Much Dealings with replacing my phone more times than the amount of explosions in a Michael bay movie, Sprint has worked with me and I have gotten away from HTC..
After going back and forth with the executive customer care since my phones kept having issues. they offered to restart my contract and pick up a phone at new contract cost, which was alot better than returning phone after phone. I tried to get a brand new EVO in hope of getting a phone without issue.
It just seems sprints flagship phones from the refurbished end are TERRIBLE.
From the B spot to random reboots and bad sound…
I wondered if HTC’s release products are the same – there is no way quality control should of ever let these phones back on the market. A refurbished phone is like a repaired car, It should look and act like NEW..
Anyways I am fully done with HTC.. the only way I’d use one is if one was given to me…
well, This time i’ve gone with a Samsung… though, The second phone problem going back to Phone fun 3 was a samsung. This time I’ve gone with a Samsung Nexus s 4g
Now in previous post I’ve had my “Requirements for my phone”.
- to make calls –
- The Phone is configurable
- good battery life
- add/make ringtones
- Applications that don’t cost a years pay for a small 3rd world country
- Durable
Basically The nexus S is as follows.
- This phone makes calls and does it well with one small stipulation.. in some areas the antenna for the phone is lacking.
- Configuration on most android phones is your mileage may vary.. but this phone you can configure it pretty much ANY way you please… rooting is fairly simple. reflashing is simple.
- This point Really needs a to be explained, since any smart phone will not hold a candle to a “dumb” phone , On average a smart phone lasts about 1 day on a decent charge. The EVO on average would require charging after about 18hours. The nexus easily passes the 1 day marker and most days it gets close to 2 days before requiring to be charged.
- on android phones this is a dead simple process.
- Android Market has all kinds of applications- but, Its now not cost … but moreover privacy with apps now.
- While this phone feels very light its fairly durable. the EVO in comparison weighs alot more.
So far this phone has served me extremely well .. and hopefully (knock on wood a tree or something) I will not have any issues with this.
Im leaving this post fairly short.
Hopefully I will not have to go back to this post and make phonefun MMMXXXVI
Of the PS3 Jailbreak and sonys reaction.
As you know I do talk about games… alot. Anyways, When i bought my PS3 i had intended to make use of the OtherOS feature. The only thing was when i bought my PS3 a week later They removed OtherOS. If you have followed this little adventure, Sony originally dropped otherOS from the PS3slim and people got worried that they would drop it from the ps3.
OtherOS on the PS3 was used to install Linux and use the system as a computer in some ways, From the Normal user perspective it would be a mostly useless thing, The only reason I say mostly useless is, that most people have a home PC and would rather use something they are more familiar with. People interaction with linux is pretty funny, even the word they cringe thinking its some sort of alien software. The state of linux Is just a different iteration of “windows” really .. between win7/OSX/linux the interface is nearly the same now .
Before the removal of OtherOS hacking the internals for the playstation3 was minimal, when sony decided that removing otherOS was a good idea, they Officially opened Pandora’s box. After that door was opened and removing the option hobbyist and players alike were pissed because of the loss of otherOS, but the segment of the market they did piss off was not the one they should of pissed off. Basically everyone that had this on there system looked for a way to return there system back to having the otherOS option. Geohot was the first person i payed attention to when it came to poking around in the PS3 hardware. People originally blamed Geohot when it came to exploiting the hypervisor and the removal of OtherOS on the ps3. The most recent development was the release of the private system key for the system pretty much fully opening Pandora’s box. With the final kick to the door with the key exploiting the system is actually a null point now. With the Key in hand people can now sign there code with the key and run software as if it was from Sony with little to no exploitation to the system. The question comes to mind.. would this key have been found without the removal of OtherOS , yes eventually , but Not as fast as it was found since the removal of it. If you follow the timeline of hacks for the PS3 virtually all hacks came AFTER the removal of OtherOS . Now, sony is suing the two groups involved with finding the private system key, at this point Sony I think is making the wrong move.
Why, because look what happened with the bluray/HD-DVD AACS Encryption keys. the attempted DMCA take down started an explosion of attention towards the keys in question. Will this happen with the PS3? Maybe, the main problem is this Key will be harder to fix. there are a ton of problems with fixing the key or revoking said key. If the key is revoked millions of PS3’s will have issues playing games, basically making your entire game library a minefield of if you can play it or not. Reading from Sony’s “motion for Temporary restraining order”
Knowing that the “Metldr Keys” can defeat TPMs in the PS3 System, Hotz began
using these proprietary Keys as a component of a Circumvention Device that applies SCEA
signatures to any file, effectively “tricking” the PS3 System into running unauthorized
programs.
by Using the key your not “tricking” the system, as far as the system cares its a signed file and will run it as so. Since the key is there you can run whatever you want, with that key exposed basically the keys to the castle are open and its open season on whatever someone wants to run.
Again if sony revokes said key there will be a nightmare of problems with games, there is no good way to revoke a key at this point since you would have to adapt EVERY piece of software out there to the newer key and changes to the system may create a hardware failure rate that would cost billions to the company. With Failoverflow and geohot were there intentions piracy… No, it was not , most software hardware and other devices tend to have homebrew scenes to which to run there own code on systems and find out interesting things with the hardware or make your own games. Unfortunately homebrew is often associated with piracy and homebrew is not piracy .
From here since Sony’s suing people the next step will be very interesting, Questionably – if the slashdot effect happens sony will have truly released Pandora’s box and created themselves an even bigger problem as millions of users go rogue. If they ban consoles, same effect, at this point they have backed themselves into a corner. Sony could have stayed silent about the issue and tried to fix it in the background, Either way its a long road ahead and an uncertain future with the PS3 since one of the main keys has been released. Looking at the possibilities…
The worst case scenario? Sony throws up there hands at the ps3 and shoehorns the PS4 into service with little to no upgrades and completely alienates there user base.
Another possibility, Sony finds an amicable fix that doesn’t break too many consoles but leaves older unsupported software unplayable.
Hopefully Sony finds a way to not completely screw up everyone’s game library.
well.. in the next few weeks, we will see..
The state of gaming.
Ever had one of those days where you look at something and say hmm. Well, I’ve been doing that for about a few months. For awhile Now I’ve been wanting to spread out my gaming more than just between the WII and the PC. Both platforms in my opinion are suffering from bad development and bad companies. Well, After long thought and wondering if I’d be better off with a Bluray Drive for my PC or Some other upgrade I finally decided against both and went with the black sheep of the decisions.