Nüb of the Week: Microsoft

How do I nüb thee? Let me count the ways!

Microsoft. Can they do anything right?

Engadget's article a few nights ago, entitled Latest Xbox 360 update causing problems for some describes symptoms from the latest firmware update ranging from random crashes to bricked consoles! Uh, Microsoft? Beta test? It's not a new concept. Even you were paying attention when Google Labs changed some projects over from "beta" to "labs" status. Although traveling to labs.microsoft.com only shows a page with a paragraph of lame-ass text. Way to go, M$.

A few months back, reading some del.icio.us feeds, I came upon a link for a video at Microsoft discussing a project of theirs, called Photosynth. I was excited about the project because I recognized the concept, and had a fleeting idea of the same idea. "The Making of Photosynth" is now different from what I watched months ago. Bits of them still there, but not so many of the parts that annoyed me. Here's some comments of mine reacting to the original video.

The opening was good, I was excited about the project because I've had fleeting ideas of the same thing. BUT, half of this friggen video is Microsoft saying, "Hey! We did a LABS just like Google!! But it's Live Labs, so it's speeecial!!"

Two very special complaints about Microsoft's latest venture into an already well-saturated market. First, Andy Ihnatko from the Chicago Sun-Times had the following opinion to share.

"The Zune is a square wheel, a product that's so absurd and so obviously immune to success that it evokes something akin to a sense of pity."

Ouch. Pwned.
Way to go Microsoft. Got it wrong, again.

One more way to screw it up, Microsoft. Their release of the Zune includes 100 players with a surprise, the color, not indicated on the outside of the box, is Pink. Yes, Pink. Pepto-Bismol Pink.

I learned of this holiday surprise from a wonderfully-written article, titled "How to Crap All Over a Product Launch, by Microsoft Corp." which even was so generous as to provide us with a photo.

Nüb of the Week: Good Morning America

Good Morning America has a special segment this week, discussing America's Secret Prejudice. I saw a commercial for it on TV, and something sounded familiar. Kind of reminded me of a song I had heard. I tried to find some information about it on Good Morning America's website, and found only one line:

"Be Seen, Be Heard Race in America: Is Everyone a Little Bit Racist?"

My God! They are ripping off Avenue Q! Either that, or they're major n000bs!

Avenue Q pointed out "Everyone's A Little Bit Racist." as early as July 31st, 2003 when it debuted on Broadway.

My apologies for choosing a source video which, inexplicably, was dubbed over scenes from Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith

!337$p34K is Evil! OmG!

Leet Speak, is apparently a cryptic language that parents are unable to understand! It can be used to mask conversations from parents so that kids can go out and be little net whores.

Okay, first of all, the newscasters are dumb, and the kid giving them information is dumb. Acronyms are not leet speak. It's not cryptic, AT ALL. It's stupid and pointless, on purpose. The "secret codes" in this newscast are perfectly readable to anyone with a few extra brain cells.

Dear parents, the awful truth is, your kids are WAY better than you at computers. Sure you can get software to filter how and what they look at, but nothing is foolproof. I was installing a program I consider to be a well-designed, powerful computer management software. The person who took the order for me to install the software, knew the customer's child was better at computers than she was, suggested I enable a BIOS password. Good thinking, but, I realized if the kid is smart enough to try and do something like change the OS, he's smart enough to download and burn a live Linux CD. Pop it in, it auto-configures the OS and network card. Boom! Filter-free computer usage and internet. Now what does Mom do?

So, if you're a parent, I hope you have a good enough relationship with your child to either trust them to manage their own computer use. I also hope you trust your child enough to ask them questions and get a truthful answer.

Nüb of the week: Worlds Worst Hacker

Oh man. n000b alert. See what happens when real hackers make the automatic hacking programs too good. Put in an IP, and go. There he goes, that is.

shut up i hack you
ok, i'm quiet, hope you don't show us how good a hacker you are ^^
tell me your network number man then you're dead
Eh, it's 129.0.0.1
or maybe 127.0.0.1
yes exactly that's it: 127.0.0.1 I'm waiting for you great attack
in five minutes your hard drive is deleted
Now I'm frightened
shut up you'll be gone
i have a program where i enter your ip and you're dead
say goodbye
to whom?
to you man
buy buy
I'm shivering thinking about such great Hack0rs like you
* bitchchecker (~java@euirc-61a2169c.dip.t-dialin.net) Quit (Ping timeout#)

Noobs and Ebay

Noobs do not belong on the internet. The point is proven recently on Ebay. Some guy purchased a picture of a PS3 for over $800. A PICTURE. FROM CNET.COM's SITE. Can't really blame the guy though, there were 21 bids before him. At least he tried to snipe the item (not exactly a n00b tactic). It just backfired this time. The link is above. More to come.

Nüb of the week: Yours Truly

For our first nüb of the week, I'd like to introduce you to someone very dear to me, myself. I mean me. I'm this week's nüb. I know what you're thinking. "But Aaron, you're so l33t, how could you ever be a nüb?"

Well son, everyone's a nüb sometimes. There's a first time for everything. The difference with your lovely hosts, Fritz0r and myself, is our very, very... very low concentration of nüb-sauce. Most people are almost 99.9 percent n00bish. And they are the people we are going to make the most fun of! But, alas. Since I had a n00b moment, I'm going to share it.

Teh Fritz and I are looking at something in Firefox, I'm speedily using the All-In-One Mouse Gestures like I normally do, but this time using the
rocker gesturesIf you're reading this, you are a n00b.
by holding the right mouse button and then pressing the left button, or vise versa. for Back and Forward. The previous weekend, I had finally figured out how to use the rocker gesture. For some reason, I couldn't get them to work when I first started using Mouse Gestures months ago. I was excited that I had finally learned it, so showed it to teh Fritz. His brow arches, "Dude, you didn't know about that?" "Uh, well, I couldn't get it to work before. I just figured it out this weekend."

He quickly moves to another computer, and after some typing, presents me with this certificate.

I've been pwned.