Month: December 2013

It’s amazing what can happen when one takes a bad situation and makes the best of it. Winter has finally hit, and North Texas seems to be taking it quite well.

What we have here is an example of how pro wrestling used to work, especially in regards to the WWE. The interview segments are absolutely classic, and show how emotions combined with improv-acting can set up the story along with the match itself.

As the holiday sales season kicks into high gear, we learn about some cool things in the technology sphere as well as an update in regards to an earlier podcast episode.

Hopefully, this week’s links will help blast things off for the most intense part of the year.  For those who are studying for finals in college and/or going through finals week, we at The *Nixed Report wish you all the best of luck.  Happy studies.

Unix

• iBuyPower plans to put out their own Steam Machine (The Verge):  The current prototype has a 500 GB hard drive, multicore AMD CPU, a discrete Radeon R9 270 graphics card, Wifi, Bluetooth, and Valve’s Steam Controller.
• The City of Munich Has Walked Away From Microsoft (TechRepublic): An entire German city has walked away from Microsoft and is relying on free and open source software instead.  In the process, the city discovered that their IT infrastructure also needed an overhaul.
• Malware can spread via rogue networks utilizing the sound system of an OS for transmission, but Linux-based systems may already have a defense against it (Journal of Communications): Research done by Michael Hanspach and Michael Goetz indicates that creating a rogue mesh network may serve as an opportunity to spread malware in unexpected ways.  As it turns out, the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) and Linux Audio Developer’s Simple Audio Plugin API (LADSPA) may already have the ability to defend against such attacks via configuration of audio filters.  Yet another reason why Linux-based systems may be more secure than solutions from Microsoft.

Overlooked Pop Culture

• Bitcoin theft occurs in the dark web yet again (Layfield Report): Stephen Kelley talks about Sheep Marketplace and how bitcoins have been stolen from individual participants.  Though the marketplace has claimed that emergency procedures were in place to return the remainder of bitcoins to users, Kelley speculates as to whether it was a ruse by the site operators.
• Government chemist tampered with evidence in 40,000 cases (Filming Cops): Though this item of news isn’t entirely new, it’s here to serve as a reminder that though the justice system in the U.S. is by far among the most sophisticated, it doesn’t guarantee that cases will be 100% accurate, especially when evidence is altered.
• Dragon Con co-founder Ed Kramer Avoids Prison (The Atlanta-Journal Constitution): He will serve the remainder of five years confinement under house arrest.  For the remainder of his 20 year sentence, he’ll be on probation and must register as a sex offender for life.  He also has to pay $100,000 USD in restitution to the three individuals who claimed he molested and abused.  Furthermore, it appears that he will no longer profit from the Dragon Con convention.