how i keep from going under
here at the office we're taking our own stand against sony's evil rootkit-based DRM software. fortunately they realized that before they drive away more consumers they should probably stop breaking their customer's PCs, so they're stopping usage of the software for now. news like this is what will wake up joe consumer to the truth about the industry's attitude about this fight - we'll do anything, no matter how ethically questionable, to force you to do things our way. anyway. we found a handful of PC's in our environment that had the software installed, so i'm writing some scripts to remove the software remotely.
sadly, switchfoot's nothing is sound is one of the copy protected CD's, so i'm gonna go pick it up at lunch so we can test the removal of the software. plus i hear it's not a bad disc.
we're also demoing a sweet tool from trend micro called damage cleanup services, which allows you to remotely scan and clean PC's for worms/viruses and spyware. i'd been on a hunt for a product like this for a long time, and it's just as good as i'd hoped.
it's funny... because of the rampant spread of worms in the last five years the public internet really has become like the narrows in batman begins - a slum where, if you're not 100% properly protected or hiding behind a firewall, your PC will be compromised in minutes. I remember back in '97 we were dialing into OneNet and I thought it was so cool having a public IP... now I'm a little scared of them.
i find myself longing for the 'days of yore', when i was 13, and it was just you and a phone line and a BBS on the other end. i'd sit for hours reading forum posts, playing legend of the red dragon, downloading shareware... heh, i remember when the shareware version of DOOM came out and it clocked in at a whopping 700k zipped, and i knew it would take me all night to download it at 9600bps. i remember the day dad brought home the 28.8 USR Sportster and i wept with joy... how the text flew by on my screen the first time i used it...
and i remember how mom and dad used to yell at me to disconnect so they could get calls from actual 'people', and dad had to buy the second phone line. i remember compuserve at $8/hour, AOL 1.0, and Sierra's ImagiNation Network, the cartoony online gaming service. i remember Tristate Online. back then it was simple, the web was grey backgrounds and the occasional text and we didn't need firewalls. humanity seems to be able to destabilize anything environment it touches into a polluted, dangerous war zone in a fairly short period of time.
played at taylor's club last night. hadn't touched my guitar since may, so now my fingers hurt.
well now your back's gonna hurt, cause you just pulled landscaping duty.
anyone else's fingers hurt?
You can trouble me for a warm glass of shut the hell up!
Dude, you didn't give a shout out to Prodigy.net? That's how I used to roll on the net. I think we had compuserve for a minute.
Fun Fact: My Uncle used to be the Publisher of Compuserve Magazine. Big ups to Calvin Hamrick III!
P.S. $10 says Justin and Mike are the only ones who read this site that have a "honeypot" set up to catch jerky hackers.
wow, I remember when we got our first Commodore 64 and happy with the cassette tape drive.
sorry I couldn't resist.
load "*",8,1
haha. don't disrespect the Commodore 64. You haven't lived until you've played double dragon in a light green tint.
screw double dragon. you gotta be playin' skate or die.
Double Dragon, Skate or Die, these games existed on the Commodore 64 platform? I remember playing Frogger in a cartridge that plugged into the keyboard.
And there's no way I could ever dream of playing strip poker on anything other than a green tint screen...
maybe that's a bit too much...
no steve, its really not too much.
anyway, J, i'm going to hold myself back and not give you the answer that you crave for that last question.