Niri | Blog

I caught this over at Reddit.

Looks like Google has it’s own Torrent search engine. Makes me wonder if Google is so big and have so many high paid lawyers it doesn’t have to fear the RIAA or MPAA when it comes to torrents.

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What if you got fired, laid off or otherwise terminated from your job? Would you seek revenge as a last measure before heading out? Most of us wouldn’t but I’m sure we’ve all dreamt about doing what some of these people have done.

    

Microsoft being the software giant of the world it’s very surprising they never had their own online store, but that’s the truth up until now! Now you can buy all your MS stuff at the Microsoft Store.

Welcome to the Microsoft Store

If you’re running Vista there’s a quick tweak you can do with the CMD window which your eyes will thank you for. Vista ships with a new set of fonts and the new fixed width font is Consolas which is an easy to read, clean looking font.

Consolas used in CMD window.

By default you cannot use it in your CMD window but a quick reg hack will add that ability. First run the following command either from a CMD window or a RUN window:

reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Console\TrueTypeFont" /v 00 /d Consolas

That’s all it takes to use Consolas as your option in your CMD window. Well, not quite. You have to log off and log back in for the changes to take effect, but no restart required.

CMD Properties with Consolas selected.

There you have it. Pretty simple, but much easier to read than the default system font and Lucida Console is so last year.

Haws is reporting on an article found over at Arstechnica.com:

Academic researchers have found an exploitable hole in a popular form of wireless networking encryption. The hole is in a part of 802.11i that forms the basis of WiFi Protected Access (WPA), so it could affect routers worldwide. German graduate student Erik Tews will present a paper at next week’s PacSec in Tokyo coauthored with fellow student and aircrack-ng team member Martin Beck that reveals how remnants of WPA’s predecessor allow them to slip a knife into a crack in the encryption scheme and send bogus data to an unsuspecting WiFi client.

As Jeff suggests you might want to switch your router’s WiFi security over to AES which is not hit by this exploit.

Congratulations, you have become more flexible!

Exercise...you're doing it wrong.

Enjoy this little video.

This election has been special for many reasons and it’s become a world event with media coverage everywhere on a daily basis. Maybe that’s why a couple of folks from Ireland decided to create a website to see what the world as a whole thinks about the two candidates for the President of the United States.

I recommend checking it out and even if you don’t vote yourself it’s interesting to see the results and the breakdown of percentages for each country.

IF THE WORLD COULD VOTE

Here’s some information taken from their website.

Who is behind the site?

Just three guys from Iceland. The site is independent from all political parties, companies or hidden agendas. It’s just an idea a 22 yo guy in Iceland came up with and executed with a little help from a couple of friends.

Why are you doing this?

Just out of curiosity. The president of the United States is a powerful man, probably the most powerful person on the planet. So everyone seems to have an opinion on who should be the next president of the United States. We thought it would be interesting to see who would be the next president if the whole world could vote. It’s also a challenge to try to beat the number of voters in the last US elections. So spread the news!

How many times can I vote?

Only once. Each computer can only vote once. Yes you can clear your cookies and vote again, but we have a script(called the Psychic Monkey) that looks for multiple votes and specific voting patterns and deletes fake votes before we publish the results.

I’m from the U.S, can i vote?

Of course you can, that will only make it more interesting to see how the U.S would vote in relations to the rest of the world.

Where are the other candidates?

Unfortunately it is clear that either of these two will become president. Although the 3rd party candidates have a theoretical change, that wont happen. And since we are not giving the world a real chance to vote, we want to see which one of these two the world wants. If we do this again though, we will include the 3rd party candidates.

Do you really think the world should be able to vote?

No i don’t! The United States of America is an independent country. The website focuses on what would happen IF the world could vote. And lets not forget, we are only doing this for fun. Just to get the worlds opinion.

I really commend them on this effort and being a big fan of statistics and the freedom of speech it’s exciting to see the world chime in on such a high profile issue.

I hope everybody will use their voice and go vote on November 4th. This is an important day and if you have the right to vote you should really be part of this.

I’m a huge Bejeweled fan and if you haven’t heard of Bejeweled you’ve been living under a rock, with no Internet. (Remember you can get the Internet everywhere now so you have to spell that stuff out.)

For the uninitiated, or those who plainly do not care (so why are you still reading?!), Bejeweled came out in it’s first edition some eight years ago. The brainchild of Jason Kapalka and a few of his friends over at PopCap the game was first called Diamond Mine and was purely a Flash-based game back then.

Bejeweled 2: Deluxe

I got really addicted to Bejeweled 2 which featured more polished graphics over the crude, low-gfx first version. Today I play Bejeweled 2 on my XBox, my iPhone and occasionally fire it up on my PC when I need to refresh my brain. (For those days I run out of Brawndo!)

If you want to know how popular Bejeweled is world wide consider this; in the eight years it’s been around, addicts like myself have dropped around $300 million – and more than 6 billion hours – on the first and second game. Consider those numbers for a while. Now, on to Bejeweled Twist!

According to developers PopCap’s been developing Bejeweled Twist for 3 freakkin’ years. This better be a smashing hit because Twist will have some amazingly large shoes to fill.

Get set for a vivid sensory rush as you spin and match explosive gems for shockwaves of fun. Rotate jewels freely to set up electrifying combos, outwit obstacles, and blast high-voltage gems. Rev up with a strategic challenge or just relax in the gem-spinning zone. Any way you play, you’ll find endless ways to win!

Check out the video from the official web site

Some screen shots of the new gem.

Bejeweled Twist

Bejeweled Twist

Bejeweled Twist

System Requirements

OS: Windows XP/Vista
Memory: 256 (minimum); 512+ (recommended) MB RAM
Processor: 1.2GHz MHz or faster
DirectX: 8 (minimum); 9.0c+ (recommended)
Internet: Internet connection is required to register both the download and CD-ROM versions of the game

So what are you waiting for?! Head over to PopCap and download the new demo.

I’ve been using the Internet since it was available back in Norway. Through my years I’ve changed my online persona and user names a few times, often using different user names for different web services. It’s not always easy to remember what you registered where, and sometimes it’s annoying signing up for a site only to find out your user name is taken. Enter Usernamecheck.com. They have a search engine database that will check your name against 68 of today’s popular online services (Yep, that would be Web 2.0).

I hid my username for all you wannabe-h@ckz0rs out there.

TechCrunch readers have commented on the service being inaccurate at times. You’ll just have to check for yourself. Or raise your stalker rating and check on your friends! ;)