I went to the mall and Wal-Mart today, and the amount of advertising for Shrek was positively sickening. There were posters, plush dolls, candies. It was on soda bottles, bags of chips, Cheetos, shoes, the television screens, the shirts, there was not one place in the store where you could not see at least one Shrek-related item. It reminded me of the ubiquity and pervasiveness of a leader of a personality cult. I was constantly reminded of his existence, it was like everything was trying to hammer into my mind that THIS IS SHREK, YOU MUST SEE HIS MOVIE AND BUY THESE PRODUCTS. It seemed almost frightening. Is this level of marketing really necessary? Are they attempting to distract us from the fact that the movie has a thoroughly overused plot and is just another opportunity for the CGI companies to show off and make money? I'm tired of seeing this garbage everywhere, it actually enraged me. I am done with this. I am not going out to any stores until this advertising shitstorm passes through.
Ironically, I found my first bag of Garfield-free cheddar Goldfish at Wal-Mart. I am so very happy Shrek was not involved.
Now that that's been said, here's a list of useful freeware that I've actually used and approve of.
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Mozilla
An open-source web browser with tabbed browsing, popup blocking, and themes. I've found it to be faster and more stable than Internet Explorer, and with more useful features.
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PGP
A public-key encryption program for email and files. It can also securely erase data.
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SETI@home
A distributed computing program that analyzes data recived from the Arecibo Radio Telescope for extraterrestrial signals. The command-line version is faster.
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Winamp
An MP3 player that can also play videos, streams, and video streams. Also has an equalizer, playlist, media library, themes and plugins.
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HTML-Kit
A web-oriented code editor with an integrated FTP client. I use it for this site.
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mIRC
An IRC client with many features and excellent scripting capabilities. It says it's shareware, but it will work past the "trial period".
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Sam Spade for Windows
A freeware network query tool. It can ping, traceroute, nslookup, whois, IP block whois, dig, finger, and more.
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NMap
A port scanner and "network exploration" tool, designed for scanning large networks, but also works well on individual hosts.
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Apache
A widely used open-source HTTP server.
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PHP
An easy yet powerful web scripting language. Goes very well with Apache. I use it on this site.
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TheSHAD0W's Experimental BitTorrent Client
A peer-to-peer client with status indicator, download rate, connection options, and other advanced functions.
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PeerGuardian
A P2P-oriented firewall that blocks connections from known anti-P2P entities.
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CDex
A CD ripper and encoder. Can create playlists and ID3 tags, supports many file formats, and also uses CDDB.
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PuTTY
A telnet/SSH/Rlogin client, also a terminal emulator.
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DAEMON Tools
"An advanced application for multiprotection emulation." I really have no idea what that means, but it creates a virtual drive that you can use to run CD images as if they were an actual CD.
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WinBar
A system monitoring toolbar which also provides access to controls such as time synchronization, email checking, Winamp, and volume.
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Home Planet
A high-resolution earth map, satellite tracker, and general space/astronomy package.
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Aros Fractals
A high-resolution fractal exploration program.
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Vitrite
Enables adjustment of transparency on almost any window. Only works on Windows 2000 or XP.
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Trillian
An integrated IM client for AIM, ICQ, MSN and Y!M.
I hate Garfield and the Garfield movie. It's the cross-marketing. That goddamn cross-marketing... GARFIELD IS IN MY PEPPERIDGE FARM CHEDDAR GOLDFISH. These Garfield-shaped crackers fundamentally alter the cheesy taste. They lack the empty space in the center, and therefore have a taste similar to Cheez-its. If I wanted the taste of Cheez-its, I would buy Cheez-its. But I did not buy Cheez-its, I bought Goldfish. So now I have bags full of these useless Garfield crackers, and I have to pick through every bag of Goldfish to get what I wanted: Goldfish. Advertisers, I can always shut off the television and radio, but please stay the hell out of my food.
* wombleaces (wombleaces@lcirc-28CD6020.in-addr.btopenworld.com) has joined #talk
<wombleaces> joe r u unbanned from that room?
<Forged> r u lazy or just retarded?
* wombleaces (wombleaces@lcirc-28CD6020.in-addr.btopenworld.com) has left #talk
This may be the single most offensive thing ever.
<~Apocalypse> ?JOIN #ALBINOBLacksheep
<~Apocalypse> ?join #albinoblacksheep
<~Apocalypse> OMG HER CAPS LOKC IS BROKEN
<~Apocalypse> ackkk
<~Apocalypse> i cant do a slah
<~Apocalypse> ?quit
I wish my rats did this.
I learned how to set up UnrealIRCd over SSH. It's actually not that hard.
This may have absolutely no relevance here, but I'm particularly proud of it.
![[pr0n]](/images/hahainternet.jpg)
<+Captain_Gaping_Anus> http://www.imgspot.com/u/04/140/02/hahainternet.JPG
<+Captain_Gaping_Anus> greatest picture ever
Just walking down the road.
fftacs15.com
Apparently, someone named Andy Kaufman faked his death 20 years ago, and has now returned. Once again, absolutely no relevance here.
zxvure
Correction: Andy Kaufman is dead and has not actually returned. Oh well.
The IRC channel will be moving has moved to irc.luniticfringe.net in the near future. Yes, that's "lunitic". With an "i". All ops and regular visitors to #emptv are advised to register their nicks on the new network as soon as possible so they can be added to the access list once the channel moves. The command to register is /msg NickServ register PASSWORD EMAIL. Also, I'm designing the network's site, which may or may not work for you depending on whether or not your ISP's DNS has refreshed. And if you didn't know, you can be connected to multiple IRC networks simultaneously, so you can still talk to everyone on LCIRC or wherever.
<Batty> identify poopoo
<Batty> fuck
<rmuser> hahahahaha
<Batty> well woops
<Chongablonga> lmao batty
* Batty (Batty@lcirc-1E39F139.speed.planet.nl) Quit (Killed (NickServ (GHOST command used by rmuser)))
-NickServ- Ghost with your nickname has been killed.
<Chongablonga> LOL
<DirtyHarry> hah
<Jim> pwnt
<DirtyHarry> rmuser your so mean
<rmuser> I won't do it again... hell I thought he was joking!
Update: I got a 30 on the ACT! I guess being on the internet 16 hours a day DOESN'T make me stupid.
Yes, I am aware that the SETI page doesn't work most of the time. That is not my problem. SETI@home's web servers keep having errors. This has been going on for at least a year.
"Power Blade" Review
Guest article by Ovens
My first submission to the review section is a game for the NES called "Power Blade". I cannot stress enough that you do not play this game. I played it and reviewed it so you wouldn't have to.
Plot: I'm not sure if there IS a plot. So I'll just make one up based on what I witnessed during the first level, or "sector". Apparently, some time in the future, a guy in blue padded sweat pants in a black muscle shirt who looks ridiculously like Arnold Schwarzenegger mixed with Duke Nukem decides that he wants to shut a bunch of "sectors" down. Now, by having the word "Blade" in the title, I expected him to wield some sort of sword or knife. I didn't know how wrong I was.
That's right, he uses a boomerang. Against semi-automatic weapons. With no protection except his nifty sunglasses. This ought to be loads of fun.
Gameplay: So, after a nifty level select screen, I ended up choosing "Sector 1" because it's always good to start at the beginning. I noticed that despite the obvious flaw in his chosen arsenal, the main character was insanely adept at jumping. He could jump about two and a half times his own height. This came in handy, because the ladders were placed high above the ground, apparently to prevent intruders from infiltrating the facility. But they didn't realize the possibility that their enemy might have pneumatic leg implants or a really good personal trainer. After scampering about the first level, throwing blue boomerangs at brown guys with guns that shot gigantic orange pill/cork things, I found a vital piece of information.
According to this guy who looked exactly like me, but with red pants, my name was Nova. Now that I knew my name, I got a lot more optimistic about the quality of this game. He gave me an ID card to get into "Sector 1", which is where I thought I already was. When I jumped to the right to grab onto a ladder, I died, and so did my optimism. I respawned in the same exact place, but the red guy was gone. I decided not to risk a jump to my death, and I climbed back down the ladder I had climbed to meet Mr. Red.
I then found a power-up that covered me in armor. Here's a screenshot of that.
Notice in the upper-right corner that there are now three big white dots under a helmet-looking thing. Basically, the armor will absorb all damage from three individual hits. I went back down the ladder and got hit about five times.
After progressing a bit further, I found a door with a big "1" on it. I went to it and pressed up. I got a message along the lines of "ID Confirmed" and the door opened. What I saw when I got inside was not a pretty sight.
Yeah, the first boss was a huge mecha-turtle/bird that shot the weird yellow sponge/cork/biscuit things as it hopped over you. I died on my first attempt to slay this demon, but the second time I got it. After my grueling battle that included such exciting elements as running back and forth under a big metal abomination while throwing blue boomerangs up at it, I get this:
YAY! I beat the first level! And now access is permitted! To where, I never found out, because I died about three seconds into the next level.
As "fun" as this game was, and I use the term "fun" extremely loosely, I couldn't compel myself to continue. I just had a hunch that every "sector" would suck as much as the first. So, here's my critique of the game after one level:
Sound- 3/5
It's an NES game, so the sound just isn't going to be anything special, but even by NES standards, it was subpar. By "subpar", I mean "annoying as hell".
Graphics- 4/5
Again, NES graphics aren't really anything special, but this was okay by NES standards.
Plot- 1/5
At least they gave him a name, but that's about it.
Gameplay- 3/5
Well, it's fun for the first minute or two, but then the novelty of whacking guys in tan armor with boomerangs wears off.
Overall- 2.5/5
There was nothing really original about this game, except for the boomerang thing. I enjoyed about half of the first level, and that was it.
