Category: Annoyances

Posted on
by

Worms of the future: someone on MySpace *ptui!* came up with an actual JavaScript worm using cross-site scripting exploits and XMLHTTPRequest. In 24 hours, the worm had forced 1 million users to add him to their friends lists.

Personally, MySpace bugs the heck out of me because it seems to have a culture that encourages embedding images from other sites. 18% of hits to hyperborea.org from other websites are from myspace. Admittedly that’s inflated by the fact that attempts to embed images from my Flash site redirect to the actual articles, so it’s probably more like 10%, but it’s still insane. Earlier this week I started blocking hits from MySpace to images posted on this blog, and I plan to do the same with the Flash images over the weekend. You like my photos? Great, link to my actual site! You like the scan I have of some movie logo? Great, copy it and upload it to your own site!

(via Slashdot)

Posted on
by

I got into work this morning to find my desk’s keyboard and KVM switch non-responsive. The only way to reset the switch was to turn it off and back on, which meant disconnecting all the keyboard and mouse cables. (A KVM switch doesn’t need much power, so many of them just draw power from the computer, the same way an actual keyboard or mouse would.) It switched immediately to the Linux box, which was happily displaying its screen saver, so I switched back to the Windows box where it had been… and it got stuck again.

OK, so the Windows box had crashed. It’s been doing that lately, though usually I actually get a blue screen with the dreaded IRQL_NOT_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL, which could mean anything from a driver conflict to failing hardware. I haven’t taken the time to track it down, but maybe I should. I rebooted the Windows box, which seems fine for the moment, though there’s no sign of the crash—or even my forced reboot—in the system log.

Then I switched over to the Linux box, and the mouse wasn’t responding. When the mouse gets messed up, sometimes it’s enough to switch out of X into text mode and back. No luck. Sometimes closing X entirely and starting it again is enough. Not this time. I actually had to reboot the Linux box to get my mouse back. That really annoyed me.

So here are three things that went wrong.

  1. The Windows box crashed. This is probably a driver or hardware problem.
  2. The KVM switch got stuck. This should not be possible. Even if it’s getting confusing signals from one set of ports, it should be able to switch to another port.
  3. The Linux box (Fedora Core 4) could not recover from having the mouse unplugged for 10 seconds. There should be an easy way to tell it to check for the mouse again.

It’s #2 and #3 that bug me the most. Maybe it’s the man-bites-dog effect (I expect Windows to crash and/or require frequent reboots, so it’s more annoying when Linux does it), or maybe it’s just the fact that they’re simple error-recovery issues. I mean, seriously, unplugging the mouse for a few seconds makes it unusable?

Update: I forgot to check the second Windows box on the switch. It also had stopped responding to the mouse even after I reset the KVM switch. I’m beginning to think that problem #3 was in the switch itself, not the Linux mouse driver, since the non-crashed Windows box had the exact same problem.

Posted on
by

The member benefits section in the latest Golden Key newsletter features an announcement of a business partnership. Take a look at the first paragraph and see if you can figure out what the company does:

Owens Corning is a company with an unwavering commitment to delivering solutions, transforming markets and enhancing lives. It’s who we are. It’s why we are here. We do it by fully engaging our employees in support of growing our customer’s businesses. And when we do, we grow ours as well.

The second paragraph explains that they manufacture building supplies and provide construction services. The third contains a brief summary of the company’s history.

Now, tell me, what that hell is the point of the first paragraph? As best as I can tell its purpose is to make readers tune out before they actually get to the informative stuff.

Posted on
by

Well, now that people have successfully gotten Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas reclassified as Adult (18+) instead of Mature (17+)—since we all know that sex scenes that you can only get at by hacking the game are far more damaging to 17-year-olds than interactive sequences in which they shoot people, commit carjacking, and run over prostitutes—they’re going after The Sims 2.

Yep. The Sims.

Apparently you can modify the game so that the sims appear nude. OMGSEX!

Jeff Brown, vice president of corporate communications at EA, in response to the accusations, told GameSpot, “This is nonsense. We’ve reviewed 100 percent of the content. There is no content inappropriate for a teen audience. Players never see a nude sim. If someone with an extreme amount of expertise and time were to remove the pixels, they would see that the sims have no genitals. They appear like Ken and Barbie.”

Thompson doesn’t buy it. “The sex and the nudity are in the game. That’s the point. The blur is an admission that even the ‘Ken and Barbie’ features should not be displayed. The blur can be disarmed. This is no different than what is in San Andreas, although worse.”

Yes, he actually said that The Sims is worse than Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

What is wrong with these people?

First they came for the violent games…