Yep, we all know that the PS2 has a technology life-span, after which disk-read errors become a problem. Fortunately it’s pretty easy to fix, as these instructions show. Obviously, don’t blame me if you damage the machine or yourself, but follow the instructions carefully and you’ll have a fully working PS2 again in no time.
An eternal question answered…
Sucker Bet – more on Intelligent Design
I’ve had the pleasure of being friends with the Oregon-based author T. G. Browning for a few years now. He has proposed a very sensible idea to help move on the Intelligent Design/Evolution debate. Over to T. G.:
Okay folks, listen up. This is a plea, not a rant. The entire debate
about the Kansas School Board decision has shifted away from the real
core of the debate. I’m asking everyone who reads this to send it on
to at least three other people with a note suggesting that the
recipients do the same.Intelligent Design (ID) adherents keep saying they simply want to
teach the debate. It’s time to do just that. But how?
The answer is so simple that no one has actually suggested it until
now; at least, not in the terms Americans are most familiar and
comfortable with.Money.
I propose the following: A cash fund, administered by an impartial
panel that represents both sides, with the money to be awarded to
anyone who can put together a scientific experiment that has a
reproducible result.The debate is whether or not ID can function as a scientific theory or
not. The fund would be presented to the first person or organization
that could propose an experiment that passes scientific peer review
guidelines and proves – or disproves – any prediction of the ID
theory. If ID truly is a scientific theory, then it must make
predictions that can be tested. Let’s accept that at face value and
let the chips fall where they may.If this sounds familiar, it is. A similar proposal has been in place
for a number of years for any paranormal claim. The magician, James
Randi, has offered a cash award for years, to anyone who could
demonstrate under controlled, double blind conditions, any occurrence
of telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition or telekinesis. No winners
have come forward to claim the money.I’ll be upfront here. This is a sucker bet, because ID is not science
in any way, shape or form. It makes no predictions that I’m aware of
and no ID adherent has ever proposed any experiment, ever. Why?
Because there are no predictions to test.I’m not rich, unfortunately, and can’t put up a huge cash prize, but I
will go so far as to put up $250 as seed money. I’m forwarding this
proposal to the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims
of the Paranormal (CSICOP) with a request for others to start putting
money together. Perhaps someone rich who has demonstrated a concern
for science education in this country will also put up money. [Bill
and Melinda Gates come to mind. Over the past decade, the two of them
have shown a great deal of sense and civic concern.] My goal would be
a cash award of $1,000,000. That’s enough money to make the idea
attractive to even the most cynical of ID adherents.God knows I could be wrong. Perhaps some very smart, incisive person
can think of an experiment that would actually test Intelligent Design
as a scientific theory. I’d be the first to applaud such a test. I
don’t look for any such test in the near future, however, and will
make a non-psychic prediction for you all. None will be put forth.I strongly doubt that Michael Behe, William Dembski and Jonathan Wells
(three big name ID proponents), will back such a proposal because the
truth of the matter is that Behe and his fellow ID advocates know full
well that no such test is possible.Why?
Because ID is not science.
It’s a simple as that.
www.revisedevilsdictionary.com
New Doctor Who tonight
I like charity as much as the next sensible person (did I just describe myself as sensible? *shudders*) but I think that Children In Need has to be some bizarre form of punishment sent by the gods upon uncharitable people that accidentally inflicts itself on everyone else. It’s a bit like passover where you didn’t get the ‘blood on the door’ memo. Personally I’d happily pay them to not show it.
Anyway, slightly bizarre metaphors aside, during the hell-of-televisions that is Children In Need on BBC1, tonight they will be showing a new epsiode of Doctor Who. It’ll be the first episode featuring the new Doctor, David Tennant, and it bridges the gap between the last episode of last series and the Christmas special that will be shown next Easter.* The planned time for its showing is 9pm, but, being one of those charity-telethon thingys, that time might move around a bit. This does mean that fans are going to have to suffer some ‘hilarious’ and ‘worthwhile’ programming before seeing the thing we’re interested in. Oh well.
*Not really. They’re showing it next Halloween instead.
Micro$oft discover the secret of levitation!
Woah! Amazon.co.uk have revealed that the XBox 360 controller is capable of levitation! Fantastic! I was probably going to be waiting for the $ony Playstation 3 to come out next year, but with the floating controller technology I think Micro$oft just might have converted me. Click here to witness the spookiness
Don’t forget though, this marvellous aspect of the technology is only available in dear old Blighty, the colonial lot across the pond get a boring gravitationally-conformist controller. Click to witness the drab US version
(Found by Mwongozi.)
More crazed elks + squirrels!
For some reason a Swedish couple decided that parking their bicycle in front of their flower bed would prevent a local elk from destroying their roses. The elk, nicknamed ‘Droopy Ear’ (attempts at an interview have failed so we don’t know his elkish name, or should that be elken?), noticed that a small, light object was in the way and continued to eat the flowers on his next visit before continuing on his way. Unfortunately for the bicycle, it went with him and was found half a kilmetre away, bent out of shape. (Cheers to Hels for this and the previous elk fun source)
I’d love to have a combination of this elk and the drunken ones: I can imagine them riding around town on the bike, perched on each-others’ shoulders on a fermented-apple and rose fuelled rampage.
In related ‘news’, squirrels may be digging up crack-dealers’ stashes. Apparently dealers have taken to burying their goods in peoples’ gardens so they don’t have to carry so much around with them in case they’re searched. Squirrels have then been spotted digging up the same areas… The thing that really amuses me is that there is absolutely no evidence for the squirrels actually finding and consuming any of the drugs (which would almost certainly kill them near-instantly), but it still became a story anyway. For some reason I often find slightly bored journalists much more amusing than earnest ones. Source here.
New Royal Crest revealed!
This gave me a bit of a giggle:
the Department of Social Scrutiny is delighted to announce the adoption of a new Royal Crest which, we believe, mirrors the true values of Modern Britain and is set to make everything OK again.
It only takes a couple of minutes to read and is quite accurate, especially the meaning of the Overlion. Linkidy link link.
Getting to grips with the $ony rootkit
$ony have halted the inclusion of what is being called the ‘XCP virus’ on its CDs after the number of legal problems that it’s facing increases.
EFF has put out a guide to how to spot if your CDs contain XCP. That site has a list of 19 of the 20 titles that $ony have put this trojan onto, but, as is pointed out in Geoffrey McCaleb’s blog, the official number of 20 is being spoken in legalese: $ony might only have released 20 CDs containing the rootkit, but $ony subsidiary companies currently have 47 titles (that have been found so far). For a list of the titles currently identified, check out his blog post.
$ony says that this problem is only on CDs sold in the US, but, with the international market being what it is, it wouldn’t be surprising if this is a global problem. $ony are being invetigated by the Italian police for distributing malicious code, so at least one other country is taking legal action other than the US.
Currently there doesn’t appear to be an easy solution to removing the software, but Mirco$oft have decided that the code does indeed count as spyware so will be releasing an addition to their anti-spyware software in the next month (source) and other spyware comapanies such as Sophos say that they will have a removal system in place inside a week.
X-Box 360 backwards compatibility list & the two-package release
Micro$oft have made public the first list of Xbox games that are confirmed to be playable on the Xbox 360.
It’s a software-based solution that converts the old programming to work with the new processors. There is more info about how it works but it is frankly extremely dull; however it does raise one salient point, that being the nature of the solution (downloadable to burn to a CD or available from Microsoft) is a work in progress, with further games added to the list as the software becomes a better emulator for the old machine. As might be expected, to play any old games you have to buy the significantly more expensive Xbox 360 with a hard-drive, the ‘better’ option of the two-package release that they’re doing.
The hard-drive business is all a little puzzling to me. Why release two versions of a console? Micro$oft says that it has told games makers to ensure that all games need not have the hard-drive to run, so exactly who is going to use it and what for?
One of the things that I’ve always liked about consoles is the simplicity that they give when compared to the PC market. In the old days I learnt DOS and various hoodoo elements of autoexec.bat/config.sys files to get games running on PCs, and even now it’s often a challenge to tweak your system to be good enough to stand a chance of rendering the enemy on screen before they’ve killed you, and success is usually finally achieved only with the right incantations, chickens, and circles of flour. Consoles are the antithesis of the fiddly PC system: you buy the game, you put it in, and it works (unless you have an aging $ony Playstation2, in which case it might spin the disk, make some grinding noises, they deny that technology exists and decide to begin killing academics using wooden bombs that it builds in a hut in a forest somewhere). Er… Where was I?
Why are Micro$oft making two versions of a console? What is the actual advantage to buying the posh one (for gamers, rather than for Micro$oft, who will gladly charge you £80 for a hard-drive that might cost you twenty if you were putting it in your PC)? So far it’s essential to backwards compatibility, but, given that this is said to be being achieved through hardware-based solutions for the other consoles, it seems that this is a little like putting a bow around someone’s doormat and then giving it to them as a present; they’re happy to have it, but they could’ve sworn they had it anyway, and there is sensation that somehow they’ve lost out on the whole deal. Try it next time you go to a dinner party then ask the host if they feel it’s a good metaphor for Micro$oft’s approach to backwards compatibility, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the answer.
Micro$oft like us to believe that the hard-drive version is obviously better but they haven’t really given any good reasons why this might be. The amusing thing is that they are now faced with a situation where they have to say why the expensive version is better (which is an easy and publicly nice thing to do) but they also have the problem that the non-hard-drive version is regarded as being a bit rubbish. It’s got to be a problem in marketing terms, that, on the day of launch for your new console, 50% of your stock is regarded as being a bit pants. I can’t imagine the situation is going to endear Micro$oft to shop staff either, as they patiently (or not-so-patiently) have to explain the difference to the 40th concerned parent that day.
I’m sure the console itself will be lovely, albeit perhaps remaining the same as the last console only with a better graphics chip, but the two-packages release system doesn’t strike me as one of their most enlightened ideas. I just hope that it doesn’t catch on with other console makers.
Christmas gift inspiration
Amazon.com have put together a list of ‘most wished for’ items from their shop categories. I suspect that technically I’m not supposed to be linking to this because it was designed for people with associate accounts. Ah well, stuff that for a game of turkeys:
Christmas gift ideas from Amazon.com
They’ve also put together a more public list of things that are in a more reasonable price range:
Cheaper Christmas gift ideas from Amazon.com
I thought some people on here might find them handy for inspiration. I’ll let you know if Amazon.co.uk deign to grace us Brits with something as useful.
Circlefish – a new game
It’s simple to play, just use the arrow keys to guide your dot and collect the numbers in the right order. If you hit the wrong number you have to start again. It’s as easy as that… In theory!
As always, if you like it, please pass the link on to friends or forums you’re on.
Have fun!
It seems that there might have been some problems with a password protection system interfering with my shop but that should be fixed now, so if you tried buying something before please pop back and give it another go.
http://www.matazone.co.uk/shop
Additionally, if you dislike Paypal, I’m in the process of getting full credit card facilities set up so people don’t have to use Paypal anymore. That’s a few weeks away yet, but I thought I’d keep you posted.
While I’m here, don’t forget to start shopping trips to Amazon .com and .co.uk from the search boxes on my site! Thank you!
.co.uk:
.com:
Right, I’m off to work on the introduction to my thesis for a while. It’s the last chapter I’ve got left to write. It’s very exciting to at last be so close to finishing!
2 Unlimited still have fans! Who admit it!
Do you remember 2 Unlimited? Their songwriting still is used as a representation of some of the worst aberations of techno lyrics. For those who don’t know them, the chorus of ‘No Limits’ went something like this:
No no,
No, no no no no,
No, no no no no,
No no,
There’s no lim-its!
(repeat)
Well, apparently there are still people out there that love 2 Unlimited, and they’ve put photos of themselves on the web! My personal favourite is the deadly serious Guillaume from France who looks a like like he failed the audition for The Machinist (UK link
Perhaps it’s the tag-line that really brings this to a new level ‘You’re not alone : 2 unlimited fans are all here !!’
Sometimes the web throws you a gem and you just can’t help but marvel at variety of humanity.
Google logos
Here’s something to while away 3o seconds with:
It’s a collection of the logos that Google have used to celebrate various days with links to the ones from previous years. Today’s one, marking the end of Western conflict in the First World War, isn’t on there yet but will no doubt appear soon.
I hope all you UK people purchased a poppy!
Foil hats amplify alien signals!
FACT!
People at MIT hve spent time proving that foil hats actually amplify radio frequencies rather than deflect them, as is the commonly held belief. No doubt the rumours about their protective capabilities was started by the government. Yep.
Using a $250,000 network analyser, we find that although on average all helmets attenuate invasive radio frequencies in either directions (either emanating from an outside source, or emanating from the cranium of the subject), certain frequencies are in fact greatly amplified. These amplified frequencies coincide with radio bands reserved for government use according to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Statistical evidence suggests the use of helmets may in fact enhance the government’s invasive abilities. We theorize that the government may in fact have started the helmet craze for this reason.
Isn’t it reassuring to know that the people at MIT are making good use of their time? 😀
See the tests here.
Drunken elks!
No, that’s not a Batman TV series-style exclamation, it was a problem for an old people’s home in Sweden. A pile of apples had begun to ferment and a couple of elks got drunk on it and started causing trouble! Full story here.
Technically there’s not actually anything very amusing about this, but I just find the idea of drunken elks funny for some reason. No? Maybe it’s just me then.
$ony just keeps getting better
Did you know you enter into an agreement whenever you buy a CD from $ony? The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a virtual rights campaign group, have read through the 3000 word end-user license and kindly summarised the highlights:
1. If your house gets burgled, you have to delete all your music from your laptop when you get home. That’s because the EULA says that your rights to any copies terminate as soon as you no longer possess the original CD.
2. You can’t keep your music on any computers at work. The EULA only gives you the right to put copies on a “personal home computer system owned by you.”
3. If you move out of the country, you have to delete all your music. The EULA specifically forbids “export” outside the country where you reside.
4. You must install any and all updates, or else lose the music on your computer. The EULA immediately terminates if you fail to install any update. No more holding out on those hobble-ware downgrades masquerading as updates.
5. Sony-BMG can install and use backdoors in the copy protection software or media player to “enforce their rights” against you, at any time, without notice. And Sony-BMG disclaims any liability if this “self help” crashes your computer, exposes you to security risks, or any other harm.
6. The EULA says Sony-BMG will never be liable to you for more than $5.00. That’s right, no matter what happens, you can’t even get back what you paid for the CD.
7. If you file for bankruptcy, you have to delete all the music on your computer. Seriously.
8. You have no right to transfer the music on your computer, even along with the original CD.
9. Forget about using the music as a soundtrack for your latest family photo slideshow, or mash-ups, or sampling. The EULA forbids changing, altering, or make derivative works from the music on your computer.
This all seems massively draconian, but it also makes me wonder what other products have similar restrictions on them that I may have unknowingly broken.
Source here.
Additional: $ony are now being sued over the rootkit software.
‘Have you heard of DRM?’, or ‘Back to $ony’
DRM stands for Digital Rights Management. Essentially this is a system that is set up to prevent you copying CDs on a PC. Sometimes this stops you from being able to rip the tracks to an MP3 player, but mostly it’s about restricting what you can do with the music that you have legally paid for. As you can probably guess from my tone, it’s not something I’m a big fan of.
Many years ago, manufacturers took a group of individuals to court because they had cracked the DVD encryption system. The manufacturers argued that doing this was an aspect of computer piracy and was therefore illegal. The silly thing is that you don’t need to crack encryption to copy a DVD; you just need to copy the information. Cracking the encryption really makes no difference to the whole process. The people were being prosecuted for being inquisitive about something that they had legally purchased in shops.
This brings us back to DRM, because the issue is what rights do you have to use the things that you own? If DRM is correct then the company still owns the music that you have bought from them because of the format it’s recorded in: if you want to listen in a different format then you need to buy it in a different format. Hm.
So, Sony have produced a little bit of software on their CDs that installs itself in your machine without telling you when you listen to it on a Micro$oft Windows PC (I’m not sure if this is also the case for Mac owners, but generally they get away with most things like this). This bit of software makes certain files invisible to the user and operates without the user’s knowledge to filter content that is played on that machine. If it thinks you’re doing something that it doesn’t want you to then it will prevent you from doing it. It hides all files that start with $sys$ so that the user and other programs can’t locate them. This behaviour is commonly associated with another type of software called a ‘rootkit’.
A rootkit is a piece of malicious code that integrates itself with the Windows operating system to hide itself and any other files that it fancies running, such as trojans and viruses. Rootkits are really nasty pieces of work and notoriously hard to remove. Guess what? There is currently no known way to remove the Sony rootkit and current methods will break Windows to such a degree that you have to wipe your entire hard drive and start again. This is some bad hoodoo.
To summarise what we’ve got so far: Sony have published a piece of software that automatically hides files on your computer on the basis of their file name, that destroys your machine and all files on it if you try to remove it, and apparently this is legal.
Installing a rootkit on a machine is quite tricky, but once you’re there you own it completely and can run whatever you want without the system ever knowing.
It was only a matter of time before the next step happened, but, now that Sony are kindly installing rootkits on their customers’ machines without their consent, a trojan has appeared that gives itself the file name $sys$drv.exe in the Windows directory, and anyone with the Sony rootkit installed won’t be able to see it while their machine is merrily used for distributing junk email, recording credit card numbers typed into websites, or simply sending out any files stored on your machine such as website passwords.
Congratulations Sony, through your dedicated interest in preserving your own profits to the massive detriment of your customers, you have once again re-earned your appellation ‘$ony’. And they were doing so well…
The trouble is, because $ony have made the rootkit, it’s uncertain whether blocking it is an illegal act. Anti-virus software manufacturers know that this software is a problem that essentially mugs a computer and leaves it bleeding in the gutter, but they also know that DRM companies have a strong history of over-zealous litigation and extremely deep pockets. So what do you do? Protect your clients’ machines and risk bankruptcy or allow the rootkit to be installed and struggle to find a way to overcome the massively exposed system flaws that it creates?
A little more about the trojan here.
‘Deceased’
Shouldn’t it be ‘ceased’? Surely something that is de-ceased is restarting?
As easy as aleph-beth-gimel
Perhaps not a very exciting thing for many people, but I was quite interested in this:
In the 10th century B.C., in the hill country south of Jerusalem, a scribe carved his A B C’s on a limestone boulder – actually, his aleph-beth-gimel’s, for the string of letters appears to be an early rendering of the emergent Hebrew alphabet.
Archaeologists digging in July at the site, Tel Zayit, found the inscribed stone in the wall of an ancient building. After an analysis of the layers of ruins, the discoverers concluded that this was the earliest known specimen of the Hebrew alphabet and an important benchmark in the history of writing, they said this week.
Isn’t that fantastic? An alphabet from 3000 years ago… We all deal with writing every day of our lives, and so I find the discovery of this quite exciting. It reminds me of our place in the continuum of existence on this planet, the way that there is a continuity of ideas that appeal and are passed on (‘memes’ to use Richard Dawkins’ idea UK link
It also makes me wonder what will be left of our time. Plastic bottles? Everything is biodegradable eventually, and the strongest materials aren’t commonly used any more because they’re so hard to work with. The vast quantity of data on the internet is most likely going to disappear in a magnetic blip, never to be seen again. Given some of the stuff online, perhaps that’s not such a bad thing, but the internet has been a true cultural revolution in indsutrialised countries of the world. For the first time in the history of mankind, people have got the power in their hands to publish information for the whole world to see and hear. The importance of this has been lost in the realisation that many people don’t have a lot to say, but maybe that idle chatter really is the significant thing after all.
Perhaps the greatest revelation about the internet for scholars should not be ‘it’s full of rubbish and Klingon’ but that people often don’t care about academic debate and just enjoy discussing the trivia of their lives with friends. That’s not so bad, is it? Is there any reason why every person on the planet should have something important to say? What does it tell us that when given the greatest public stage in the history of humanity we end up discussing our choice of clothing in a shop that day?
More on the Intelligent Design trial
This isn’t technically about the trial, but, after an election, all the supporters of Intelligent Design on the Pennsylvania school board have been voted off. It seems that parents in the area have had enough of the topic and would like teachers to get back to educating the children about science. That’s not too surprising really, but it’s heartening that it’s happened.
Full story here.
Is there such a thing as ‘religious studies’ in American schools? It’s a standard feature in the British curriculum. Admittedly, it is usually heavily biased towards Christianity, but we did cover other religions a little bit and I suspect things have got better in that regard since my time at school. I think it’s important for the peace of a country that people are taught about the alternative faiths that exist around them. From a personal perspective I think that knowing religious mythology gives you a richer insight into the archetypal images of humanity, but it can’t hurt to give people a greater understanding of why followers of Islam can be just as peaceful as those who follow Buddhism or any other religion.
You could probably write on the back of a small postage stamp the amount that most people know about different religions; I’ve taken an interest but I would still say that my knowledge is quite limited, so it wouldn’t hurt to bridge a few cultural gaps in people’s education… Although I think this moves us on to the rather touchy subject that perhaps not everything written in the American constitution is always a great idea, which I’m really not going to get into here. If anyone fancies discussing it, you could always start a topic up in the Issues section on my forum! http://www.matazone.co.uk/forums