YouTube - Get down with your feeds!

YouTube - Get down with your feeds!

--MissM

Ziggurat Con - The World's First War Zone Game Convention? | Gamegrene.com

I hope/think we have some gamers that read this blog?? I wondered if anybody could contribute prizes or supplies to Ziggurat Con, the very first D&D convention/game day! Its June 9th, so you have to hurry, all the contact info is at the link, but I wanted to highlight the need:

Miss Joy Brown, an employee with KBR who works with MWR (the army’s Morale Welfare & Recreation Department) has graciously allowed service members to use part of the Community Activity Center to hold the Game Day. The Ping Pong room will be set up for RPGs (Role-Playing Games, not to be confused with the rocket propelled grenades which share the same acronym), and the DVD Movie room will be playing Anime Movies all day in support of the event.

"Miss Brown has expressed her support of the soldiers who are planning this event, and who keep her in the loop," said Amberson. "In many events, MWR does the running around, trying to get supplies and support; however, in this case, it is the service members themselves who are contacting the publishers and manufacturers. This makes it a real event for the service members, by the service members."

The largest problem with running a Con in Iraq, of course, is that there are no local stores or game publishers, and few game books on the post. Even dice are in short supply, with many soldiers breaking the unwritten taboo held by many gamers and (gasp!) sharing dice. Thankfully, many game publishers have also lent their support, and have agreed to supply game products to help the Con along. aethereal FORGE, Sovereign Press, Final Redoubt Press, Goodman Games, Paizo Publishing and Steve Jackson Games are among those that have thrown in their support for the convention. But Amberson indicated that the soldiers could definitely use more.

"This convention is currently in drastic need of prizes and giveaways for the troops," he said. "Everything donated will go directly to the troops, or to MWR to use as loaner books for the soldiers."

For more information, contact SPC David Amberson at the following address: david.amberson (at) iraq.centcom.mil

Ziggurat Con - The World's First War Zone Game Convention? | Gamegrene.com
--MissM

Michael Dell's Linux choice? Ubuntu

Another tip of the [proverbial] hat to Curtis for this one.

I'm not sure why people are surprised that Michael Dell is running a Linux box. Dell is in a spot of a slump and their prospective clients are clamoring for Linux on Dell's products. So he's bound to be checking things out. Any good CEO would, and he is surely that.

I hope Ubuntu is one of the distributions Dell chooses, if indeed they advance past selling "Linux compatible" machines and actually choose one or more flavors of Linux. And for those of you who are not inclined toward Ubuntu, don't worry. You'll be guaranteed the hardware for your favorite distro to use.

Jack

Home Users: Windows XP Returns | Direct2Dell - Dell's Blog

This is a great example of the right ways to have a two way conversation with the customer. Dell has a "digg style" site called IdeaStorm that allows customers to vote on suggestions. The most recent change made as a result of IdeaStorm was giving the option to have XP or XP Pro installed (in the U.S. only) instead of Vista. Very interesting development both for Dell and Microsoft, but in different directions...

Home Users: Windows XP Returns | Direct2Dell - Dell's Blog
--MissM
my shared google reader items:

Open Source alternatives to Adobe Creative Suite

Many thanks to our listener and friend, Curtis, for this one.

With the list price of Adobe's Creative Suite 3 (CS3) at $2499 USD (yes, that's correct, though upgrades from previous versions are much less) there is a need for alternatives. Admittedly, these won't give you 100% of CS3's functions, but they come reasonably close and you ought to be able to find workarounds for any additional ones you need. I can do a few additional steps in order to save all that dough. I imagine a lot of you feel the same.

This blog lists a lot of alternatives, both for Windows and Linux, and some for Macs, too. Enjoy all that money you save. Send me some.

Jack

Babel Linux distro is all spin and costs a bob or two

It had to happen sooner or later. A Linux distribution that is all about fleecing the user. As the article says; it's easy enough to get everything Babel Linux offers for free. So steer clear unless you simply cannot resist.

Jack

Savenetradio.org

This is important to everybody that listens to ANYthing on the internet. They want to increase the royalties on all music played on the internet, PER listener.

From the About page:

At the request of the Recording Industry Association of America, the CRB ignored the fact that Internet radio royalties were already double what satellite radio pays, and multiplied the royalties even further. The 2005 royalty rate was 7/100 of a penny per song streamed; the 2010 rate will be 19/100 of a penny per song streamed. And for small webcasters that were able to calculate royalties as a percentage of revenue in 2005 – that option was quashed by the CRB, so small webcasters’ royalties will grow exponentially!

We like our free radio (ask Joe how many listeners contribute), but the RIAA is trying to contro, or stifle, every outlet for their product monopoly.
We can't afford this. If you like to listen to music on the internet click on the link and sign the petition. I don't believe we would be affected, but you never know. The place that I like to listen to online music is Pandora, its excellent!

--MissM

Savenetradio.org

SANS isc:Update on Microsoft DNS vulnerability

From The Internet Storm Center
"We received a couple of e-mails over the weekend asking us why this vulnerability was significant. Most public DNS servers should not be listening on the RPC ports, after all. Indeed, networks obliging to basic secure perimeter design would only allow port 53 UDP/TCP to the authorative DNS servers, and definitely not the additional RPC ports required for exploitation."
SANS Internet Storm Center; Cooperative Network Security Community - Internet Security - isc
--MissM

OnComputers Radio show Podcast 04-15-07

This is the On Computers Radio show podcast for 04-15-07. You can listen live every Sunday from 10AM to 1PM Pacific thats 1PM to 4PM Eastern. If you prefer, you can download the same file here via ftp.

Remember GeekMeet 2007 is May 4-6 in Boston MA Join us!

Microsoft: Word 2007 crashes are a feature, not bug

This one speaks for itself. Read it and weep!

Jack

Links from the Gregg Zone!

1) To start off this time I thought you might have heard this story as a lot of people thought it was just an urban myth, it has been around for a while about a guy who attached thirty-five helium filled weather balloons to a lawn chair and took off to 20,000 feet over LAX. Well I found the site if you are interested, even has the cb radio audio between him, his wife, the air port, and police. News reports, maps, and anything else you might want to check into. http://www.markbarry.com/

2) Sparked by the first site I decided to check into the availability of flight using this principle, it occurred to me that with somebody making news doing this, it seemed that if he did not copy somebody else, somebody would copy him. What I found was the Cloud Hopper, a personal balloon system on a back pack. Fly around, land, and then you just pack it on to the back-pack and walk out. Wish I was a little younger, I’d like to try it, its not a scary kind of I don’t want to, it’s more the hiking out. The guy at this site really makes it sound like a lot of fun, check it out http://www.cloudhopper.org/

3) Well I suppose since this is a computer tech show, I should try to put up some of the show related stuff, when I run across it, even if I have very little understanding of just what it is, or how it works. This site qualifies for that line of thought. It seems there is a group of folks out there who like to build stuff for their computers on the cheap, and at the same time do their little bit to save the land fills. I found this interesting as I remember doing the can and string bit when I was a kid. http://www.turnpoint.net

4) We had a sick Joe in the house this week at the time of this writing we still do not have a definitive answer to the cause, however during the process of dealing with the issue I ran across a site that might be of value to some of you out there. Joe was convinced that there might have a correlation between one of his new prescriptions, the timing was just to close. I was worried about a possible interaction with one of his other medications, so I did a search on the net. I came up with this, a site where you just type in the name of all your drugs in one list and it searches for any problems, and/or interactions, they also give advice in a general way. http://www.drugs.com/