Renew Orb–Spying Technology Halted

The people living in London are glad to see this official good news from the company stating that the company has decided to halt this kind of program after knowing the public outcry about this controversy. Even better is that the company has decided to collaborate with EFF to respect the privacy of the people living in London. Bravos to whatever that company is, they have admitted this sort of mistake but it cannot be the same for those on-going idiots who have broken the rules of privacy thousands of times every year, that is, the ones who have been spying on the Americans, of course.

Renew Orb basically is the recycle bin mixed with technology but the spying on people’s privacy is a huge controversial downside and we’re glad to see this technology halted. Well, there can be a recycle bin mixed with technology, telling you on which types of stuffs can be recycled and especially when the recycle bin can display some message on the screen saying that it is full and it needs to be emptied. At least, this kind of recycle bin can be handy and the networking connectivity is completely unnecessary.

Countdown to support end for Windows XP

I bet that I forgot to blog about the support ending for Windows XP that will be happening in April 8 next year. Back then, the operating system was seriously infected with the worms, spywares and other virus attacks. They were quite strong back then that they had infected millions of computers and SP1 of the OS wasn’t quite enough. With SP2, the security might have improved but that was not enough as you can see in the chart below.

It appeared that Windows XP SP2 might have more infections than SP3 but it seemed that SP3 added even more technologies and securities. Unfortunately, starting next year, there will be the zero-day exploit like forever for Windows XP meaning to say that it will forever be flawed that your computer will likely to be affected unless you’re running the active Windows OSes. For Windows Vista and above, the security and technologies are quite better as seen in the chart above.

Today, with Windows 8’s Windows Defender or Microsoft Security Essentials, there is the real-time malware protection that protects your computer in real-time but of course, speaking of real-time protection from viruses and malwares, you’re better off with the superior third-party software. Also, the UEFI Secure Boot is the new feature in Windows 8 that helps prevent unauthorized OSes or firmware from running at boot time by maintaining databases of software signers and software images that are pre-approved to run on the computer. Lastly, the Trusted Boot feature in Windows 8 includes an Early Launch AntiMalware that enables the antimalware software to start FIRST. Also, the Measured Boot feature allows the third-party software on a remote server to securely verify the security of every startup component in a way that will be very difficult for malware to forge. Anything being tampered with, Trusted Boot will repair the system by restoring original files.

Other features mentioned in http://blogs.technet.com/b/security/archive/2013/04/09/the-countdown-begins-support-for-windows-xp-ends-on-april-8-2014.aspx include UAC, Bitlocker, AppLocker, etc. but they may seem to be the existing security technologies that first came out for the previous OSes. Speaking of the link here, this is where the chart of Computers Cleaned Per Scan comes from. Lastly, after the support ends completely for Windows XP, there will be huge amount of vulnerabilities for that OS and it will have a high risk of infection for sure.

Bullet Soul Infinite Burst for Xbox 360 Announced

Finally, another shmup that will be released next year from 5PB! A few days ago, there was already the full version of Double Dealing Character and some spell cards from the last boss battle were like the shout-outs to playing Combatzeal or perhaps purposely changing screen orientation yourself in the middle of the game which may be something nobody does. In Combatzeal multi-player battle, activating the Rotate powerup from the Gradius-like powerup bar will of course rotate the other players' playing fields but the rotation can be reset by getting hit or activating Reset powerup. I don't know if the rotation is temporary or perhaps permanent. For those spell cards I'm talking about, they simply flip the screen vertically or horizontally which may be some tricks no other shmups have.
Speaking of what happened a few days ago, there was an announcement of Bullet Soul Infinite Burst and the PS Vita version of Phantom Breaker Battle Grounds at the Phantom Breaker related event. Graphically, there can also be the 3DS release of Phantom Breaker Battle Grounds due to how retro the graphical style is in addition to the Vita release but for Bullet Soul Infinite Burst, I don't know what the new elements are because in the original Bullet Soul, it's basically Star Soldier meeting Ketsui or something.
As this was the initial announcement from 5PB, we may have to wait until there are actual details on what the game looks like.

Lavabit and Slient Circle shut down their Email service

Okay, today’s the National Day in Singapore in which we can have a smoother celebration online and offline although the peaceful celebration couldn’t be the same for United States in July 4th last year. Lavabit and Slient Circle have closed down due to the on-going spying program from the US government. Interesting thing about Lavabit is that Edward Snowden happens to be one of the users of this email service but to us, the non-US citizens, we don’t even know what Lavabit and Slient Circle are all about until we have discovered the news about it.

For Slient Circle, they have their official blog post stating their reasons for shutting down after discovering that Lavabit is doing the same thing as seen at http://silentcircle.wordpress.com/2013/08/09/to-our-customers/. It’s interesting that both Lavabit and Slient Circle are made in the US in addition to other companies I knew of from my childhood like CompuServe and AOL, etc. Of course, I’ve been using AOL to receive emails ever since two years ago upon seeing the stupid rumors regarding the reasonless social networking shutdown. Maybe I SHOULDN’T HAVE BELIEVED those useless rumors all along!

Now, who else eventually cares for the spies and the program leaker by then? But what we care is the important activities we should do as well as to enjoy the national celebration or perhaps the national birthday like I should have a nice August 9th. So celebrate your independence, NOT TO FOLLOW OR CONTRIBUTE TO shitty policies, laws and rules.

Megatex again

Not really much to say about this IT show that took place in August 1st until today but it seems that the same companies are showing their new products. There may be earpieces with the bass support but there are those without the bass that you may need to find some software as the work around for enabling the basses. Also, you get to see the 2 in 1 input device from Rangers company that has the remote control on one side and the mini computer keyboard on the other side. It may be cool enough if this is kind of true but I could have gone out to visit this IT show yesterday instead of today to see even more cool stuffs. Headphones on the other hand, you have to use the headphone that is loud enough for both multimedia and gaming purposes because no one wants to wear the headphone that is freaking soft and whose design is posing a challenge in wearing it.

Unfortunately, while Megatex is supposed to be the IT show event, there are appliances that are not IT related such as the beds, kitchen accessories as well as other home appliances. If those kitchen accessories have the technological stuffs such as the microcontroller stuff which we can instruct them on what to do in a cool technical way, then there will be a reason to explore them. For those things, we surely expect a mini screen along with the buttons to press with similar to what the 2 in 1 photocopying devices are.

Lastly, there are even Samsung media players with the wireless bluetooth support where you can use your IOS device for instance to tune in to music or video wirelessly. They may be great in addition to inserting some disc but the main purpose of those media players is obviously the wireless bluetooth playback.

A-Tech Rain Dance Speaker Obtained!

As seen from some IT show the last time at Singapore Expo, I eventually bought this speaker for $39.90 yesterday. This set I bought features dual speakers for some reason which added some challenge on hooking things up correctly. Of course, this is one of those cool things you can use when listening to music and comes with the Stereo Plug where you can get direct audio capture from whichever device to your computer. Of course, one end of that cable leads to the headphone jack of whichever device and the other end leads to the microphone jack of your computer if that’s what I mean correctly.

Now that I have this speaker, I should be able to redo my video capture of Xevious 3D/G+.

Megpoid Stereo Earphones Obtained!

Days ago, after buying a PSN card for buying Xevious 3D/G+ from the PSN Store, I stumbled across this interesting geek related accessory. Well, the title pretty much says it all and after buying this, I was told that not all things could be imported from Japan and this earphone is one of those Made-In-Japan products. There was another earphone with Lily, another Vocaloid character but I guess that I’ll stick on to the most known Vocaloid characters anyway.

Inside the package, there are two additional orange stuffs to be placed on the earphone in case you end up losing the current ones. I don’t know what are these called although the shopkeeper surely had mentioned that name. Also, the nice thing was the coloration as well as the Chibi Gumi thingy that was for balancing or something.