As if Microsoft didn’t rob the entire Apple playbook with the Zune, they have managed to copy the “Designed by Apple in California” logo and replaced it with “Hello from Seattle” on the back of the device.

Problem being, Microsoft hail from Redmond, not Seattle. I guess that Seattle was the closest “cool” city so they had to perpetrate. It all kind of reminds me of when I was a kid and those weekend warriors from Connecticut who would come down to the CBGB Sunday Hardcore Matinee showing off their NYHC tattoos.

It took about a week for YouTube to go to pot since Google bought them out. Every time somebody sends me a YouTube link I am greeted with the, “This content has been removed,” message. It’s totally Napster all over again.

The cynic in me says Google paid 1.6 billion just to dissolve YouTube.

My blogroll and digg thingie broke, my comments are off because I am getting inundated with comment spam. Most of all I have nothing of value to say 1/30 days a month so… I am taking a little break here. I’ll be back when I can spend some time fixing up the site.

If you’re like me and don’t have an hour and a half to sit in front of your computer and watch John Carmack’s Quakecon 2006 keynote this one’s for you. I ripped the audio and enhanced it a tad for iPod consumption.

Link here.

I’ve been getting a lot of email lately from people sending me this stupid 9/11 conspiracy video called “Loose Change.” I’ve tried to ignore it for months now, but you morons keep forwarding it to me, and I keep having to add more email addresses to my spam filter. The ironic part is that I’m a huge conspiracy nut, and even I can’t stomach this bullshit. For example, I believe that there is a small, reptile-like creature called Chupacabra that sucks the blood of goats in Mexico. Area 51? Hell yes. Roswell? Pass me the Kool-Aid. But “Loose Change” elevates bullshit to an artform.

Link.

I finally got around to sharpening my Photoshop skills. For kicks, here’s what I have thrown together recently.

Remote Desktop is an excellent tool for accessing Windows machines across locations. While there have not been many security exploits involving RD, I do not feel comfortable leaving the service directly open to the internet. Also, many corporate internal firewalls restrict outbound traffic to a handful of ports, and in my experience port 3389 which RD runs on is often blocked.

I’ve come up with a simple method of accessing a Remote Desktop machine over SSH which buys A) Port 3389 is no longer open “to the wild” on the host machine B) If port 3389 is blocked outbound on the client’s network, Remote Desktop will still be accessible if the common port 22 (SSH) is available.

All that is needed for this method is an SSH server either running on the host machine or on its local network. If you’re using a Linksys router DD-WRT may be an option as it offers a full SSH server that runs right on your router. In this example I will be using DD-WRT, but any SSH server will work.

Step 1) Enable the remote access SSH service under Administration->Management in the DD-WRT configuration:

Step 2) You must also enable the Secure Shell service under Administration->Services:

I strongly suggest disallowing password login and instead use the authorized keys method with a strong passphrase.

Step 3) At this point the host-end is set up. Ensure the router has access to the machine running Remote Desktop by pinging it from the router’s shell. In this case the host machine is at 192.16.1.100 on the internal LAN:

You’ll need a SSH client on the client-side. For Windows PuTTY is the best game in town. The key here is to set up access to your host and tunnel a local port through SSH to the host’s Remote Desktop service. With PuTTY it’s just a couple of settings.

Step 4) Add the remote router or SSH server IP address to the Session settings:

Step 5) Configure the tunnel under Connection->SSH->Tunnels:

What’s important here is to pick an open port on your local computer because we are going to point Remote Desktop at that port. Under Windows XP Pro port 3389 is already taken by the local Remote Desktop service, so in this instance the port we use is 3390.

The destination is the internal IP or hostname of the host as it is known to the machine running the SSH server (in this case 192.168.1.100). The destination port will is 3389 (the listening RD service on the remote host).

Step 6) Connect to the host with SSH and login. At this point if everything is working correctly you should have a Remote Desktop port live on the client PC on port 3390. That port is being tunneled securely over SSH to the SSH server and forwarded on to the host machine. Keep the PuTTY session open or you will shutdown the tunnel.

Step 7) Time to test things out. Start the Remote Desktop Connection client and point to localhost:3390.

If all was configured correctly you should pop into a Remote Desktop session on the host computer. The speed is snappy enough for me on a 45KB/s connection with all the bells & whistles turned on, even with the additional encryption overhead.

Enjoy!

But it gets better. To attract current iPod users Microsoft is going to let you download for free any songs you’ve already bought from the iTunes Music Store. They’ll actually scan iTunes for purchased tracks and then automatically add those to your account. Microsoft will still have to pay the rights-holders for the songs, but they believe it’ll be worth it to acquire converts to their new player.

Link

With 1-billion+ iTunes tracks out there, MS is willing to burn a lot of money to try and gain market share. Ouch.

The RIAA is now sending cease-and-desist letters to people who have uploaded to YouTube videos of themselves dancing to “unlicensed” music.

Holy shit, how far away are we from them raiding grandma’s house, Dallas SWAT style, for singing “Happy Birthday”?

I cancelled Netflix. The latency sucks.