Game Over

1 min read

MP3 Connector

I just ordered one. We currently have to un/plug our computers from the stereo in our home-office. Sounds like this little device will do the trick quite nicely.

Microsoft's New OS

That's what I call rock solid. ;)

DirectTV War on Hackers

"Last Sunday night, at 8:30 pm est, DirecTV fired their new gun. One week before the Super Bowl, DirecTV launched a series of attacks against the hackers of their product. DirecTV sent programmatic code in the stream, using their new dynamic code ally, that hunted down hacked smart cards and destroyed them. The IRC DirecTV channels overflowed with thousands of people who had lost the ability to watch their stolen TV. The hacking community by and large lost not only their ability to watch TV, but the cards themselves were likely permanently destroyed. Some estimate that in one evening, 100,000 smart cards were destroyed, removing 98% of the hacking communities' ability to steal their signal. To add a little pizzazz to the operation, DirecTV personally 'signed' the anti-hacker attack. The first 8 computer bytes of all hacked cards were rewritten to read 'GAME OVER'."

You gotta give them credit for being quite ingenious and elegant about it.

Microsoft New Java Tools

The Evil Empire strikes back.

"This is a vapor announcement… It's a very focused effort to try to give a bridge for the Microsoft J++ developers who were left in a lurch when Microsoft decided to create a proprietary version of Java."

I'm more worried about Microsoft's decision not to provide a Java VM in Explorer 6 and thus future versions of Windows. A Virtual Machine is not included with Explorer on the Mac, but Apple's own VM, MRJ, is part of any standard Mac OS installation.

The Microsoft steamrolling PR machine is already at work. I've seen countless articles hinting at the death of Java.

<sigh>