horsegoeswest

What would life be like if these things were seven or eight foot long?

The great minds at Ubisoft go down in burning flames yet again.

The authentication servers stopped working. Those would be the same servers that people who bought the game would have to log into to make the game work. Can’t log in? Can’t play! AWESOME JOB UBISOFT!!!!!!!!!

But hey, it’s OK, the pirates still get to play the game.

Thank you Big Fat Whale.

Here I rant about Ubisoft punishing the people that legally purchase their new game, Assassain’s Creed II and how their shiny new DRM will crash and burn moments after release.

As reported by InfoAddict:

Well, Ubisoft’s master plan has collapsed in under 24-hours, as infamous cracker group Skid-Row has tackled the new DRM and rendered it useless, meaning the only people now suffering with this ridiculous DRM are legitimate owners.

Not bad. So as predicted, pirates get to play the game the way they want and people legally purchasing the game are shackled with redicuous restrictions.

DRM is a broken ideology. It’s stupid way to try and do business.

Time to uninstall yourselves Ubisoft and go flip burgers, you fail at this business.

Steam is coming to the Mac platform. The very savior of PC gaming soon to be yours…

Read more over at Gizmodo.

Had a long day?

Lost your whole family in a fiery car wreck?

The Japanese have a ritual to make you forget it all by literally snapping the nuerons at the subatomic level.

Is it hard? Nope, just watch this vid and it all takes care of itself.

Once again, thank you Fark for this find.

That’s the new rallying call for what will hopefully by good TV. It’s a common phrase uttered by the Starks, a noble house from George R. R. Martin’s books.

HBO has officially greenlighted George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice series – otherwise known as A Game of Thrones (the title of the first book in the series).

They’ve ordered up nine episodes, which is a good start. Last I heard, each season will be one book. You better get crackin’ Martin, as the fifth book in the series is taking forever to be completed.

If you haven’t read it, and you enjoy fantasy series, A Game of Thrones may just knock your socks off. Good political intrigue, almost no magic (no vendors on every street corner selling +5 longswords), and fantastic characters you love – only to watch them horribly die… in painful ways.

Good books should make you hurt a little on the inside and rightly make you anxious as to what’s on the next page.

Check out the cast here.

Now I can only hope this will be carried on Hulu or other internet streaming concoction since I have no means of getting HBO…

Definitely not safe for work for language.

Last seen on the viralness of the treadmill video.  I thought the coordination was better than the song.

Here I think they nailed both, pleasantly. Same song, two different, cool videos.

The other is not embeddable but, I think slightly better.

Computer viruses, trojans, and malware in general all helps in the effort to hack computers with the purpose of corporate or government espionage, bilking money out of unsuspecting users, and in some cases just general mayhem. Already it has been used to wage a cyber war to cripple countries.

It’s a constant game of cat and mouse to write and deploy software or hardware that is secure. Patching is a regular thing in today’s world, with Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday being one of the more famous.

Computer security is a serious issue. At the local level, many home computers are potential targets to become computer-like zombies for enormous botnets that are then rented out for all manner of nefarious purposes. There are many ways to handle it – with a large one being proper education and instruction.

And that’s where a rather poor idea was put forth by Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President for Trustworthy Computing Scott Charney. In order to diagnose and secure computer,s Charney proposes a tax to pay for such procedures.

As reported in IT World,

So who would foot the bill? “Maybe markets will make it work,” Charney said. But an Internet usage tax might be the way to go. “You could say it’s a public safety issue and do it with general taxation,” he said.

There are so many better ways to keep computers, especially home computers, safe and secure.

How about:

1. Microsoft writing software that wasn’t so utter crap that most hacking is done with simple scripts.
2. Reversing Microsoft’s harmful strategy of not allowing pirated copies of their software to receive updates and patches. There are millions of computers on the net in China alone that are barred from getting patched and thus now part of the massive botnets that spread malware across the globe.

Microsoft, heal thyself first before even thinking a tax on everyone else.

Most good security boils down to a need for better education in our school systems on basic computer maintenance and security. From 1st grade we should be teaching the skills of how to keep software up to date, how to spot phishing attacks and malware, and how to keep your network clean.

Indeed, it should be as common place as reading, writing and arithmetic.