1408 - Scary it may not be

Okay, so we all know that short stories CAN be translated to the big screen without losing the essence of the literature it's torn from. And sometimes, there just isn't enough substance. Such is the case with 1408.

On it's own, it's a decent thriller/suspense/horror flick. Perfect for summer movie-goers, in fact. But it wasn't good enough to have a tag "Based on a short story by Stephen King." Mr. King's writings are MUCH better than this movie. Unfortunately, that is the same for MOST of the film/video endeavors based on a Stephen King novel/short story.

1408 has some decent scares. I found my heart racing at the slightest noise, and my companions regularly gouged me in the ribs when something darted on screen. And the directing is twisted. Bringing a man's daughter back to life just to kill her in his arms? That's just wrong. But with poor closure, plus the feeling that the "entity" never really let the main character go, and a shallow background, this movie is simply a summer movie.

Rent it. Or download it for even cheaper. It may scare you once or twice.

More than meets the eye!

I saw Transformers (the new Michael Bay flick) this weekend, and I was pleasantly surprised. It was a straight-forward action movie with lots of explosions. Exactly what a summer blockbuster should be. But what gets me is the fact that people are saying that it's a "mindless, summer movie."

Just because it has a straight-forward story that people can follow makes it mindless? That's bull. A conviluted story doesn't make it good. A sudden, unexpected (and inconceivable) twist at the end doesn't make something Oscar-worthy. Transformers has a good story, plenty of action, and even some sweet, sweet lovin'.

Oh, and Optimus Prime says "My bad." How can you not love that?

Thundercats movie, HO!

It had to happen sooner or later. With Transformers coming out in July, it was only a matter of time before Thundercats! were seen for the cash cow it actually is. The movie will be CGI and it will be an origin story fleshing out the first two episodes of the series. Personally, I can't wait.

Thunder THUNDER THUNDERCATS, HO!

Thundercats on Wikipedia
Thundercats Official Homepage

How healthy IS your brain?

That's what Lumosity.com wants to know.

Sign up for there beta program and run through the tests. Find out just how dim-witted you really are. There's no denying the facts. They have tests for memory, visual perception, and how quickly you can process simple problems.

Needless to say, I failed the SHIT out of the problem solving one. They've got these bubbles with simple math problems in them. Nothing worse than the big four (add, subtract, multiply, divide). And I still managed to show my ass.

It was fun, though. :)

Sign up for the beta. Leave your scores for the various test on our comments. I'll post mine, when they improve (so, never).

http://www.lumosity.com/

Free Novel

Here is a free novel I found called Geek Mafia. I have not read it yet, but from what I have read it seems pretty good.

You can get this novel here.

The fabled Star Wars cartoon finally!

I'm a sci-fi geek. I love Star Wars. After the last movie came and went, there was a great disturbance in the Force. No more Star Wars? Sadness. Pure sadness! But then, George, magnificent George, always thinking. "We're gonna make a cartoon!" he'd said. And I didn't believe him. A Star Wars cartoon? Sure, there was the Micro Series (both of 'em!), but an on going series? Well, here's the first (of many, I hope) trailers.

One note for the skeptic, there's some debate as to whether this CG trailer is just a teaser or actually what we should expect from the series. I dunno, but this thing looks cool as hell!

Mac Myth

The "myth" that apple computers are hard, if not impossible to be hacked is, in the words of the "Mythbusters", busted.

According to Infoworld:

A hacker managed to break into a Mac and win a $10,000 prize as part of a contest started at the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver.



In winning the contest, he exposed a hole in Safari, Apple's browser. "Currently, every copy of OS X out there now is vulnerable to this," said Sean Comeau, one of the organizers of CanSecWest.
The conference organizers decided to offer the contest in part to draw attention to possible security shortcomings in Macs. "You see a lot of people running OS X saying it's so secure, and frankly, Microsoft is putting more work into security than Apple has," said Dragos Ruiu, the principal organizer of security conferences including CanSecWest



Initially, contestants were invited to try to access one of two Macs through a wireless access point while the Macs had no programs running. No attackers managed to do so, and so conference organizers allowed participants to try to get in through the browser by sending URLs via e-mail.
Dino Dai Zovi, who lives in New York, sent along a URL that exposed the hole. Because the contest was only open to attendees in Vancouver, he sent it to a friend who was at the conference and forwarded it on.

Come to think of it, I have never ran across anyone actually trying to hack a Mac. Meh.

The URL opened a blank page but exposed a vulnerability in input handling in Safari, Comeau said. An attacker could use the vulnerability in a number of ways, but Dai Zovi used it to open a back door that gave him access to anything on the computer, Comeau said.



The vulnerability won't be published. 3Com's TippingPoint division, which put up the cash prize, will handle disclosing it to Apple.

And you know Apple is not going to let out vulnerability. Come on Apple we just want to know so we can gain more um knowledge, yeah knowledge. We have a right to etc... We don't want to expand the novice hacker's abilities worldwide or anything. We promise.

One reason Macs haven't been much of a target for hackers is that there are fewer to attack, said Terri Forslof, manager of security response for TippingPoint. "It's an incentive issue. The Mac is not as widely deployed of a platform as, say, Windows," she said. In this case, the cash may have provided motivation.

Plus everyone absolutley hates Micro$oft and they deserve our undying hatred. @#$% YOU!

You know come to think about it this isn't even a hack on the actual Mac OS. It's just exploiting a vulnerability in the OS's default web browser. And, come on, who doesn't use Firefox these days? If you don't you need to, really.

Ok that is all.

P.S. @#$% YOU Micro$oft!

Update: Dell Ubuntu Specs

From Dell's Blog:

Ubuntu 7.04 Offering—Technical Details

Before we announce the availability of Ubuntu 7.04 on select Dell client systems, I'd like to give an overview of what customers can expect from our initial Ubuntu offering.

Availabile Software and Hardware

• The default software from the Ubuntu media will be installed on the system, including kernel and applications.
• The peripheral options offered with Ubuntu will be a subset of what is offered with other operating systems. We're offering the hardware options on each system that have the most mature and stable Linux driver support. These hardware options have been thoroughly tested by the Linux team here at Dell.
• We configure/install open source drivers for hardware, when possible.
• We use partial open-source or closed source ("restricted" in Ubuntu terms) drivers where there is no equivalent open-source driver. This includes Intel wireless cards and Conexant modems.
• We will have a wiki page on our linux.dell.com website that gives technical details of the supported systems, information on the device drivers used for system peripherals, details of our Ubuntu factory-installation, and information on the problems we found during our testing, with their fixes/workarounds.
• We recommend Linux users buy Dell printers that have PostScript engines in them. The previous hyperlink lists those printers. You can also check in the Tech Specs tab for each printer on Dell.com show if it has PostScript or not.

Software and Hardware Not Offered

• For hardware options not offered with this release, we are working with the vendors of those devices to improve the maturity and stability of their associated Linux drivers. While this may not happen overnight, we do expect to have a broader range of hardware support with Linux over time.
• At this time, we are not including any support for proprietary audio or video codecs that are not already distributed with Ubuntu 7.04. These include MPEG 1/2/3/4, WMA, WMV, DVD, Quicktime, etc. We are evaluating options for providing this support in the future.