Angus Thinks

Category: Internet Stuff

  • … a massively single-player game

    There is a story up at Wired about Spore [flash heavy site]. Although spore is a single player god type sim game it will have some kind of internet access facility along the lines of the sims, you can place your planet into an online universe. Whether your creatures can then interact with creatures created by other players is unclear but the idea does sound like lots of fun however it works.

    Spore looks to be released sometime in 2006, presumably for PC. Hopefully a Mac version will come out at some point as well.

  • Explanation of the previous email

    Well I feel stupid.

    I was notified today that marilac.malcolmhardie.com (ie this server) was apparently hosting paypal login spoof web pages. Somebody managed to crack one of the user accounts on the system and place a few files in the public_html directory.

    Fortunately the pages were only there for a few hours, but it shows how important it is to check the logs regularly.

    This is really unfortunate, although at least at the moment it doesn’t look as if the cracker got root access.

    What is particularly annoying is that, as far as I can see, I have all of my software patched to the latest versions.

    I spent much of the afternoon checking the server to ensure that nothing else has been compromised. It may be necessary (or advisable) for me to wipe the whole machine and reinstall.

    It does explain the previous email though. I just wish that I had understood what was happening earlier.

  • Strange email about spam?

    Today, one of the email accounts at malcolmhardie.com received a very strange email

    just a line to let you know I have passed on you details to paypal and the police regards your scam emails trying to access my paypal account with bogus emails.

    This was sent from what appears to be an AOL account. I won’t detail the sender for obvious reasons, but I was rather puzzled by it.

    As I see it there are several possibilities for this:

    1) Somebody has received spam email that appears to be from malcolmhardie.com and is thus trying (unsuccessfully) to report the culprit (which incorrectly appears to be someone at malcolmhardie.com)

    2) A machine that is permitted to send email via malcolmhardie.com has been compromised and is sending out such mail. (unlikely, but possible)

    3) The sender is actually some kind of spam harvester that is hoping legitmate recipients will send back letters complaining or, possibly, explaining the situation.

    At the moment I’m tending towards option 1, since it seems most likely.

    However I remain mystified by the whole thing.

  • Adobe and Macromedia Merger

    Adobe are merging with Macromedia (read: buying up the only competitor).

    This is of course going to be as sucessful as every other merger from HP/Compaq (disaster) to Halifax/Bank Of Scotland (disaster).

    Daring fireball has an english translation of the marketing speak in the press release

  • Bricks and Morter Vs. Online for buying music

    I’ve been thinking recently about music buying. When I can buy music online from the iTunes music store why should I want to buy it in a physical store? With the online store I can experience a sample of any track and get to listen to the music immediately. If I buy it offline I have to carry it home, convert it to mp3 and only then can I listen. I suppose a music store offers some browsing capability and there are some music stores where they have friendly staff who can offer suggestions, but I don’t really tend to see that kind of customer service very often and the browsing that experience online is often superior, especially with recommendations from other users.

    So what is my conclusion? On the surface the online services have every advantage over the bricks and morter store. Unless the bricks and morter stores work very hard to catch up they’re going to fall behind. But where can they go? Bookstores are introducing cafe’s and relaxing chairs, but does a cafe make sense in a branch of HMV or Virgin? I suppose I can see a bar, maybe, but a cafe?

    With bookshops I actually enjoy going to browse, but then with books you can really browse, reading the books as you go. No music store offers the ability to sample all of the music in the store, although it doesn’t seem insurmountable as a technical challenge, so maybe that is one direction to go in.

    But I become increasingly disappointed with physical music and DVD stores. I go and then I wander around for a while looking vaguely for something worth buying. So I suspect that more of my business will be heading online unless something drastically changes.

  • Binary Thoughts is back

    Binary Thoughts is back!

    I probably should have remarked on this before, but Dhruba’s weblog “Binary Thoughts” has reappeared. He was moving servers so it went down for a bit, but it has now returned. Which is really great news.

    Plus of course the fact that the presentation of Binary Thoughts is so much better than Angus Thinks that the comparison really isn’t funny. Curved corners are definitely in right now and the theme and extras are much better.

  • chocolatereview

    http://www.chocolatereview.co.uk/

    Reviews of chocolate bars, with ratings and reviews !!

  • Inquirer, HP and Carly Fiorina

    The Inquirer has made a truly mischievous offer to Carly Fiorina, former CEO of HP. The company, resulting from the merger of Hewlett-Packard and Compaq, is in considerable difficulties, as the inquirer has merrily written about in articles like The three ways HP has screwed up and How HP totally lost the support plot.

    But now in a remarkable offer they have asked Ms Fiorina to write a column. It seems unlikely that Ms Fiorina will take up the offer given the consistent history of criticism that she has faced from The Inquirer but perhaps she will? Who knows? What if she does say yes? Will the inquirer find itself publishing a series of articles criticial of itself? A revenge on months of sniping?

    It seems unlikely. But stranger things have happened.

  • Windows XP advantages?

    … with Windows XP I don’t gotta worry about emailing viruses to my friends and family at all. The built-in email client Outlook Express does it automatically, in the background.

    From divisiontwo.com via Macslash.

    Disclaimer: I use Windows XP sometimes but not outlook express

  • Phantom Game System

    Amazingly enough, despite appearing on Wired’s vapourware list, the Phantom game system actually appeared at CES. (Or at least a box appeared at CES)

    The Phantom offers a sort of video game on demand system, which I’m not totally convinced about, but the box looks nice and it seems to offer an interesting collection of features. I think given the choice the XBox2 would be a better bet, or the PS3.

    TheTechLounge has the pictures (about half way down).