Feckoff.net

You may have noticed that the site was down for an hour or so today. I was busy upgrading WordPress to the newly released version 2.0, and farting about reintroducing the old hacks and stuff I had made to the default theme. Its got some nice under the hood bells and whistles, but probably bugger all that you will notice just viewing the site. I particularly like the new WYSIWYG post editor and built in image uploading facility.

Scrubs is returning for a fifth season to NBC in the US on January 3rd, after a lot of speculation about whether the fifth season would air at all. Nice one! No sign yet of season 4 coming to DVD anytime soon though.

The Shield also returns earlier than expected for a fifth season a few days later on the 10th, on FX. I can’t wait! There’s a nice little trailer of the next episode on the FX site.

This one arrived via email, and got a laugh out of me. Click the thumbnail for a full size version.

(continue reading…)

Santy was good to me and dropped a PSP down the chimney this year.

Despite being a shower of bastards, Sony really have done a great job (hardware wise, more on this later) with the Playstation Portable. The screen is massive for a handheld, and crystal clear. The manufacturing problems they had during the first 6 months or so of PSP production seem to have disappeared, as reports of mass dead/stuck pixels on new PSP screens appear to have dried up.

Software wise, however, Sony are still up to their old tricks. They really would not like people to be running their own code on their PSP’s, as that makes them no money (tut, tut!). The original PSP firmware version 1.0 had no security against the running of code not digitally signed by Sony, so a vibrant PSP homebrew software scene sprung up on the Internet. Sony then released several new firmware revisions to prevent customers from running non-Sony approved software on their PSP’s. Each version up to and including 2.00 has been cracked or otherwise exploited to allow people to continue running their own stuff. The hackers are reportedly close to breaking 2.01 and 2.50 as well.

The nasty thing about this is that Sony will require you to update your firmware to whatever the latest version is at the time of production of any new PSP game that you buy – i.e. to play Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (which is excellent, by the way), you have to first upgrade your firmware to version 2.00. Until recently this meant that you had to make a choice – play the latest games and lose the ability to run emulators and other home-made software, or be stuck with old PSP games and keep the ability to run third party software. As soon as an exploit was found to run user software on version 2.00 (and to downgrade it back to version 1.50) Sony released firmware 2.01, which had no changes in it besides closing that loophole.

All PSP’s currently in Irish shops have firmware version 2.01 on them out of the box, and rumour has it that some newer ones have version 2.60, on which practically no progress has been made in cracking.

If they would actually embrace this kind of use for the PSP, Sony could be sitting on a goldmine, but they prefer to crush the competition and lock their customers into their own proprietary formats — only Sony can write UMD discs — , even though “the competition” consists mainly of people who make free software in their spare time. We can see how successful this strategy made things like Betamax and Minidisc, can’t we Sony? Coincedentally, Nintendo are wiping the floor with Sony with regard to software sales on their DS handheld.

Merry Christmas one and all, even from a heathen atheist like myself!

[From RTE News]:
The US senate has blocked the renewal of parts of the US Patriot Act, which gives the American security services extended abilities to invade the privacy of innocent individuals (phone taps, surveillance, the infamous “you are a suspect because of your library lending records” incidents, etc) as the act is about to expire at the end of this year.
‘ave it.

Saw this the other night, and it was bloody good. Best Batman flick ever, in my opinion. I hope they keep Christian Bale on for another one, the role suits him. Most of the cast were A-listers, with Bale, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Katie Holmes, Liam Neeson, Cillian Murphy and more.

Recommended.

From good old RTE news this morning:

Gardaí have warned motorists to exercise extreme caution if driving in Co Cavan.

More than 5,000 chickens escaped from a lorry following an accident.

It happened on the N55, south of Ballinagh, near Cavan town. The southbound lane is blocked and it is near a sharp bend.
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Extreme care is needed as the chickens are loose; all drivers are asked to reduce their speed.

Some of the chickens are laying eggs on the road and conditions are quite treacherous.

Hahahahaha!

He died of a heart attack a few hours ago, aged 65. RIP.

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