zomgpwn!

Qtrax is down! Qtrax is down!!

OK, so we've been there too.  We feel your pain guys and girls but... shouldn't you have been ready for this?  You've been prepping launch for quite a while now, and even though the m$m can't seem to figure out exactly what the hell you are (namely, an ad supported, client dl required, walled-in, last resort for the music industry to fight against open and free distribued p2p networks), at least you're getting an assload of press.

Funny how every single blog and site we see is simply reporting how great and revolutionary this will be, yet they haven't clicked your linkey lately or they would be reporting this same story.  Too bad nobody reads us but us.  Eh, we're pretty much over the funnay at this point anyway.

We're gonna go listen to Gratista and watch WKRP on Hulu while we eat Qtrax's lunch.

Puppy Vs. Robot! Epic Battle For Territorial Domination!

Oh man.  Screw your HTML 5, Semantic Web and your little blog too!  THIS is why 'THE INTERNET' was inventored.  To bring us vicious, territorial fights ending in complete domination by one side or the other.  Which one will win?  WIll blood be drawn?  Will children run from the room screaming as their parents faint dead away from the shock of it all?   Nah.  It's just a puppy fighting a robot... but holy crap is it awesome.

We've watched it about fifteen times already and we're still ignoring that car alarm going off in the parking lot outside out offices and the annoying stabs of hunger shooting through our guts.  We just gotta watch it ONE more time.

        

Ahhhhh... that's the good stuff.  Bet you don't see THAT on Metacafe.  We love the slums of YouTube.  We feel so at home there.  *sigh*

The Cooper Lawrence Effect

We won't go on and on about this because it's pretty simple and can be summed up in one sentence contained in Lawrence's 'mea culpa' to the NYT. 

"I had asked somebody about what they had heard..."

That's where we stopped reading because everything else is meaningless after that doozy.  There's your journalistic integrity and commitment to professionalism folks.  Just ask SOMEBODY about what they heard.  From that point on you're golden.  Shoot your mouth off endlessly and without bothering to dig into the source of your story.  Third hand information is good enough.

Original story here.

Conan Made Huckabee; We <3 Hulu

We finally got our invite to Hulu today and any lingering doubts we had about the awesomeness of their delivery, architecture and overall business model were quickly dispatched after wonking about with their controls.  There are several specific features that made us raise an eyebrow and vow to continue brushing up on our RoR knowledge, including a 'dim the lights' feature which grays out all the busyness surrounding your currently streaming vid - and the smooth transitions between popping out, full screening then going back to the original embedded version, with nary a hiccup or restart.  *knocks back a shot of single malt Glenlivet*  Smooooooth man... smoooth.  Not to mention they have quite a solid lineup of content, including NBC, Fox, Bravo, G4, Sundance, plus lots more.

The most fun we've had so far was watching Conan's recent opening monologue/on-air faux battle with Messr. Colbert over who actually MADE Mike Huckabee.  Was it Norris?  Was it Colbert?  Or did Conan actually make ALL of them?  We think you know the answer.

That was followed closely by the fun of picking our own clip, then auto generating the embed code.  YES it was fun.  We swear.  Lookit.

Not only is the embed process seriously intuitive and easy to grasp, even for non-technophilez.. it just works.  The delivered stream looks top notch, the supporting ad is non-annoying and lasts exactly as long as it should, namely a few seconds. 

Who knows where Hulu will end up in the totem pole of 2.0 but they are strong out of the gate and we'll be watching them, and their content closely.  First we're gonna go eat someone else's lunch from the company fridge though.  Anybody need anything while we're up?

Anonymous - 488 | Scientology - 716,949,386,024

We didn't wanna dip out toes in this (cess)pool until we got some reliable statistics on the DDoS ruckus laid down by Xenu and friends.  We finally have it, so let's get this party started.

If you don't know the background, shame on you.  Go read this.

Here's the part we're most interested in though.

Exhibit A:

• Number of attacks measured on scientology.org: 488 in the past week
• Attacks by date: 488 on January 19, 2008
• Maximum PPS rates seen: nearly 20000 pps (packets per second), with an average attack size of 15,000 pps
• Maximum bandwidth seen per attack: 220 Mbps, with an average attack size of 168 Mbps. This is on the high side of an attack, but significantly smaller than the largest ones we commonly see nowadays
• Maximum duration of a single attack: 1.8 hours, which is on the long end of common, but the average attack lasted just under half an hour

Exhibit B:

• Site                      http://www.scientology.org
• Last reboot          28 days ago
• Domain                scientology.org
• IP address           72.52.6.28
• Netblock owner   Prolexic Technologies, Inc.  <====!!!

Well then.  Nicely played, LRH.

Translation?  Anonymous actually DID hit Scientology's Apache Linux box pretty hard a week ago.  Then the organization (we're treading lightly here) did probably the smartest thing it could have.  It signed up Prolexic to substitute one of their servers and filter down the flood to a trickle.

Now of COURSE we realize that this wasn't the ONLY denial of service dropped on Scientramopolay.  (look in your heart, hackinatorz... look in your heart!) We just wonder if it was the biggest, or what else is coming.  It's fun to see Digg gamed the right way for a change and even though we've watched and re-watched the original Anonymous YT vid enough that we now don motorcycle helmets in our meetings and only communicate with each other via text to speech tools, it has us all a twitter with what could pownceably be next from our new favorite bunch of waxxorz haxxorz.   Even lolcats are in on this one.

Our vote is that Anonymous should start their own church and possibly even take over TMZ's slot on your local Fox affiliate.  They are sooo much more entertaining than Harvey Levin, and Harvey is no slouch.  Well.. OK he's a slouch.  We still think he's pretty awesome.

Also we'd just like to point out that we value the notion of free expression in the good old U. S. of A.  People should always worship who they want to worship, or not.  Not only is the line between legality vs. illegality ONLINE a slightly blurry one, it must be taken into account that Chanologists are OPENLY declaring war.  You know what they say about that and Lllllllllove.  (puke)  While the m$m and a lot of smaller 'news' outlets are chuckling to themselves about what the 'kids' are doing on the intertubes, remember... you have been warned.

We can't endorse either side, mainly due to our lack of a solid legal team.  However we DID see an episode of Matlock in a bar last night. The sound was turned down but we're pretty sure we got the gist of it.

N4p4 V4££3¥ R3g1$t3r. 0n th3 b4££, Ð4wg!

Ever since MW started w00ting off, l33tz have been showing up in mainstream press surprisingly often.

First, we want to be clear.  We're not poking fun at all.  There's just something so entertaining about a serious, scholarly report  on the nuances of a ubiquitously silly linguistic mutation, from a professional type organization like the Napa Valley Register.

We love it like stoners love shake.

Common words include “pwn,” pronounced “own,” which means to dominate an opponent. “N00b,” as in “newbie,” is a common put-down among teens. “The” is often deliberately misspelled as “teh,” and used to add emphasis.

True.. true...  pronunciation issues aside...

Instead of laughing, (New Tech sophomore Andrew) Horobin will sometimes say “Lol,” which stands for “laughing out loud.” He’ll say “ZOMG” (“Oh my god,” with a “z” for emphasis) “when I see something cool.”

That might be taking things a little far Andrew but who are we to try and place limits on the free expression of HS Sophomores?  Nobody, we admit.  That's your parents' job.

Read the whole kekekeke story here.

What took you so long Taser Tag?

Fruit on the bottom, hope on the top.

Somehow we missed this montage of Mitch Hedberg on YT via Neozaz.  It's eleven and a half minutes of classic and early Mitch, with most of his best lines included.  The early stuff, pre-sunglasses and even pre 'wall-of-bangs' is interesting, mostly because it illustrates how some of these jokes evolved over time.

If you don't know who Mitch Hedberg is or know what the fack I'm talking about then please click.