Of Virals…

I don’t normally post viral youtube videos, but today I found a clip purporting to be the ‘best 5 second clip on the internet.’ I may be a bit late to the party with this one (I only found out what the whole Leeroy Jenkins thing was about last year) but take a look and tell me what you think…

To quote someone … awesome….

UFO in the skies above me!

I went for a long walk in the wilderness today and imagine my surprise when I saw this object moving at great speed above me. Please note, when I refer to UFO I don’t mean “I saw aliens”, I mean that I saw something that I could not identify

Anyone seen anything similar in the Kent area today?

(Higher quality pictures available on request, I also have two more pictures with the ‘object’ getting smaller / further away.)

MSN Spamharvesting – A Caution…

Let me set the scene, I was randomly on MSN when a friend of mine sent me a message saying “http://www.almanbirasi.info/list ” On inspection, the site appears to offer a service to tell users who has blocked them on their contact list, a function not available in regular MSN.

I would highly advise anyone looking at any such ‘third party’ service to do a bit of background digging before giving ANY of their details over to a dubious third party. I was immediately suspicious and I will detail for you why.

1) The page looks well designed, but has no google page rank. This can mean one of many things, but usually it means a site or page is new. A service such as a MSN block checker is likely to spread virally (if it worked and was genuine) and this would likely lead to it being assigned a google page rank. An example where this SEO based tool can be very handy.

2) Whenever you are prompted for personal or account details, you should immediately stop for a sanity check – look to see who owns the site (can be done by a whois) and if your data will be secure. This takes on two forms, one – is the site reputable (can be checked a number of ways) and two – will your data be secure ? For the latter, considerations of encryption (is the page SSL secured) and data storage (does the site have a privacy policy etc)

3) The link ‘http://www.almanbirasi.info/list’ infact takes you to a page ‘http://www.msnliststatus.com/’ which is a bit odd.

4) The .info TLD – call me a domain-ist if you will, but I don’t trust this TLD.

5) The terms of service explicitly state that by using their service you are opting in to (a doubtlessly un-opt-out-able) advertising service.

As it turns out I was right, I sent a message back expressing my concerns to this person, assuming he had stumbled across it and sent me the link. Here is the conversation we had, edited to remove the name of the person.

Person A says:

http://www.almanbirasi.info/list

Konrad says:
what is this?
Konrad says:
haha no way!
Konrad says:
it has no page rank, i.e. its a great way to loose your login details to do something you can do within gaim / pidgin
Person A says:
huh?
Konrad says:
I would not use it
Person A says:
huh?
Konrad says:
looks like a big security hole
Person A says:
what?
Konrad says:
lol you tried it didnt you?
Person A says:
what?
Person A says:
did it just send a message for me?
Person A says:
fucking thing
Konrad says:
hahahaha!
Person A says:
sorry, just changing my password
Konrad says:
lol
Konrad says:
thats funny
Person A says:
did it send a message to you
Konrad says:
yes

So, as you can see, he used this utility and it logged into his account, sent me (and presumably others) a link back to its page without him either knowing or expressing his permission for this. It appears this has been going on for a few months with users also reporting having their accounts hijacked. Luckily there is a very simple way to determine whether you are on a person’s contact list or whether he/she has blocked you on a variety of accounts not just MSN like Googletalk, ICQ, AIM etc. It involves using a free open source program called Pidgin.

Install it, setup the account you want to use and login. Right click on the contact and select ‘Get Info’ this window should tell you everything you want to know about a certain contact as illustrated below.

My friend is very clued up about systems, IT and security but he fell for it, just be careful on the web.

‘New’ Levels and an XBox Port?

On my old blog I did a fairly in-dept look at the legendary Goldeneye for the n64 and a newly released tool for editing levels and items (even allowing for construction of ‘new’ levels.) I came across two new levels that have recently been released. The first is by Dragonsbrethren who has used the tool to completely remake the Silo level into an interesting mix between Caverns style exploration to Frigate style hostage situations.

Details.

The second level will be familiar to anyone who played Perfect Dark, the spiritual successor to Goldeneye. It is a port of the Chicago multiplayer level into Goldeneye. Not had a moment to test it out (its been a busy few days recently) but it looks fun. Not sure what this will bring to Goldeneye that Perfect Dark multiplayer didn’t already, but its a great effort none the less.

Details.

This comes as details of a possible Official Remake of Rare’s Goldeneye have begun to surface. There are a lot of legal obstacles undoubtedly still present, not least of all is Nintendo’s declaration that they are actively pursuing bringing Goldeneye to their Virtual Console platform. Microsoft refused to comment on development of the ‘Reimaged’ Goldeneye for their Xbox Live Platform further adding to the speculation.

Headcrab shortage – Update

Well I do appear to post in an untimely fashion! I went to VALVe’s store today and found that, not only are they shipping head crabs again, but head crab hats as well!

Headcrab Shortage

… I wonder if the Combine have an eshop?

I previously wrote about toys that VALVe were producing for the holidays based on Half Life 2. Unfortunately it does not look like we will be seeing any headcrabs as that particular product’s page (which has been ‘out of stock’ for a while) has just been removed. However, for those interested, Vortigaunts are still available

Microsoft glares at the iPhone

Before the iPhone started gaining traction, Steve Balmer is on record as saying that there was no way for the iPhone to achieve the same market share as Windows CE. A few short months on and it appears Apple’s foray into the portable devices market has led them to a position of dominance in terms of market share over all of Windows CE products.

In response to this, Ars Technica has a great summary of the new version of Windows (CE 6.1) which is Microsoft’s attempt to redesign the interface. Whilst on first glance it is impossible to tell if it removes existing limitations / annoyances that have plagued Windows CE since its inception, what is plain is that the Vista-esque design looks simply awful. It might be due to smart phones becoming more mainstream, but the transition to simpler and less informative window-spaces (despite increasing screen size) is something that annoys me.

That is not to say that there have not been fundamental (and much needed) core level design changes / optimisations, however as the iPhone has proved, people look at the interface first and then get to the annoyances typically once they have bought the product.

Lets hope that Microsoft get their act together for their upcoming Windows CE 7.0.

Obligatory Sony Bashing

At the risk of jumping on the Sony bashing bandwagon, I thought it would be funny to post this message we got from our head office this week:

Regardless whether the shortage is artificially Nintendo imposed or genuine, whenever we have had stock of either the Nintendo Wii or DS they have flown off the shelves. The PS3… lingers hopefully in the shadows…

A Mysterious Package (C/o Ebay)

A random package appeared at my doorstep from ebay this morning. Not having ordered anything (from Leeds anyway) recently I was surprised as the package was ~A5 size (or that of a DVD slim case.) Curiously I unwrapped the packaging to discover what, on first inspection looked like a box of cheap ebay branded Christmas cards.

I thought ‘great, another cheap mass produced product sent in the hope cheap people will send them out and ebay will get free advertising…’ But on digging further through the packaging, I discovered a rather (cheap but nice) set of ‘EBAY’ festive coloured lights powered by USB. I would never have put them on a tree but they look rather nice on my desk, so I have to give Ebay a thumbs up for this rather unexpected but nice Christmas present ( / advertising tool.)

Sorry for the bad picture, but they were too bright to snap without the flash. Anyone else get these?

EDIT: They look better in a dark room

GIVING away PS3s – a sign of desperation?!?

I briefly mentioned a National retailer that was giving away PS3s along with top tier TV packages in a comment on someone else’s blog. At the time I considered it to be more of a curious twist of fate, however I heard on the radio today that now AOL are also giving away PS3s! Admittedly they are only given away with, what I assume to be exorbitant contracts which last for 24 months.

This idea of giving away games consoles is not new, over a year ago mobile phone companies were offering free PSPs along with 18 month contracts. Initially I was tempted until I compared Free PSP contracts to Vanilla phone contracts and did some subtraction and multiplication. It turned out that the total overal cost of the PSP would have been ~1.6 times the store price. Needless to say I just went out and bought a PSP (with a nice game bundle) and renewed my contract with O2.

Its curious that at no point have Microsoft nor Nintendo needed to take such steps in order to sell their consoles, although this could be to do with being first to market and being highly sought after repectively. Sony is having a very bad time with the PS3 (the PS2 is still apparently outselling it) and recent surveys showed that at least 40% of PS3 owners did not even realise their console could play Blu-ray DVDs. At points this year, the Wii was outsetting the PS3 6 to 1. Sony’s profits are down, with the company reporting a multi hundred million dollor loss in its gaming division. Luckily other parts of the company are doing quite well (e.g. ATRAC and TVs) so its unlikely Sony will go under any time soon. Slashing the price of the PS3 has definitely boosted sales considerably, but considering they were making a loss at the higher price, I wager the Sony Computer Entertainment Execs are hoping volume and game sales will save their presently sinking ship.