I’ve just posted a minor mod to b2links on the b2 forum.

Aargh! Because the Blogshares site has been down, my site hasn’t been loading for the last 12 hours! I thought the script I am using to scrape information from blogshares used a caching technique which meant I didn’t need to worry about that kind of thing. I guess I was wrong!

Aargh! I was reading about this story on LinuxFormat about an XBox unchecked vulnerability in the font loader which allows you to execute arbitrary code. The proof of concept of the exploit is a font and set of files which allow you to boot into Linux without hardware mods!

“Free-X had been trying to negotiate with Micro$oft, and was requesting the release of a “signed” Linux boot loader, which would allow Xbox owners to run the open source operating system without any hardware modifications or the exploitation of the console. Micro$oft would not negotiate, so they released the exploit, which unfortunately means that not only can this console now run Linux, Micro$oft’s rival OS, but every version of the console can now also run pirated games out of the box. Ooops.
Another blow to a console that has yet to make a profit for the company”

What is interesting is the rest of the article which goes on to ponder about the very serious security implications of future Microsoft products:

“This actually has serious implications for the credibility of Micro$ofts security in light of recent events.
The XBOX console’s security is in fact a prototype of Palladium, a new “trusted” architecture which Micro$oft developed to help save the music industry from the threat of being reduced to fair pricing by uncontrollable peer to peer networks.
The idea is to have hardware which will only run “trusted”, or “signed”, well more precisely Micro$oft code.”

If Microsoft cannot be trusted to check the validity of all files on it’s own products, there is no hope that they can ever produce a secure product. This isn’t a bug (although it explots a bug) it’s is simply poor design, and poor programming, lack of attention to detail.
All this on top of the second password reset exploit in Passport (see this internet week story and this Seattle Times story about disclosure), just serves to confirm my complete lack of trust in the security of anything Microsoft produce.

Original link from Mark over at Flat8

OK, Sayed says that Artifacts are for rich players:

“Artefacts are designed for rich players and they give them a fair bit of power in return for a lot of cash. There are limits and costs associated with each usage. When the power is exercised, those who have their stock restructured or taken over are paid fair prices for the loss of those shares. Simply put: Artefacts rebalances the competition to enable rich players a chance of winning as well.”

I’ve been playing Blogshares for a while now. I’ve managed to accumulate a total worth of BS$ 38 million or so. Now Seyed has introduced Ideas and Artefacts:

“Ideas are commodities produced by blogs which can be bought and sold or used in the building of artefacts. Each blog produces ideas for the industries it is associated with when it is indexed. The number and value of the commodities each contributes depends on the number of incoming links and the value of its outgoing links.
Each artefacts requires 10,000 idea commodities in the industry it is associated with to produce… Artefacts can be used to conduct special actions on blogs in the industry it is associated with.”

Now, this all sounds great and I like the idea of this. My understanding is that basically Artifacts are “power up cards”; you can only have one of each, and can only use it once per 24 hours and then only on blogs in the industry associated with the Artifact. You get powers like Hostile Takeover, Hype, and PR Disaster, etc. Some of the Artifacts’ names and descriptions are highly amusing.
These things are very expensive too. It takes 10,000 ideas to make an Artifact. If you could find industries which have enough ideas that cost say $1000 each, then you could get an Artifact for $10,000,000. Most of the industries which have enough ideas however seem to already be priced at the maximum $25,000 or nearly so. Which means it’s gonna cost $250,000,000 to get an Artifact!
Unfortunately, the mega players have massive advantages as usual, some of the top players already own dozens of artifacts!
Edit: I forgot to mention that last month I achieved a rank of 179th best player (out of 8000 active players).

Aaaw! I was going to go to bed early tongiht, but Mark pointed out that Lugaru have announced that there is a beta Version of Epsilon 12 Available!. Epsilon is the best programmers editor I have ever used, by a long, long way. I know that one’s choice of editor is almost a religious preference for some, but consider this; I have for the last 12 years consistently proven that I can perform day-to-day file editing tasks faster and more reliably than any of my non-epsilon using colleagues in job after job. I can perform many complex or unusual file editing tasks with epsilon which colleagues just cannot hope to even attempt (even if, in some cases, their editors are capable). I would walk away from a job which did not allow me to use epsilon! (Can’t you just smell the religious fervour? Hear the pulpit pounding?)
So now I’ve got to play with some of the juicy new features in this new version!