A homecoming

It's been years since I've used XBMC as my media center. I have a shitload of movies, TV shows, music, and pictures on my HTPC, and I'm always looking for a nice interface to deliver them to me. For a long time now I've been using Boxee's PC software. The latest (and final release) was something of a disappointment. The apps were terrible and so was the navigation and library integration. I decided to look around for another solution.

Unfortunately, I listened to stupid Tommy Jarvis and bought an Apple TV. There's nothing wrong with the product, but there's not a lot right with it either. Perhaps if the jailbreak for the Apple TV 3 was available, I'd be singing a different tune. It's not, so I'm not.

Tommy used a streaming app that allowed him to stream video from his PC to the Apple TV via his iPad or iPhone. It's a terrible idea for anyone that has HD content and surround sound. The image is compressed and all surround sound decoding is dropped. You're left with a shitty image and mono audio. Go fuck yourself.

XBMC had recently released their latest version, dubbed "Eden". I decided to give it a try. Holy fuck, is it lovely. Now, this setup is not for the novice HTPC user, just ask Viv. I've spent at least 4 hours getting everything setup, and I'm not completely finished. The end result is more than worth it. The guys at XBMC have outdone themselves with this release. Once your media is added to the interface and properly tagged (you can get as granular as you like), you're golden.

You access your movie library and the UI is just heaven. You have numerous views (cover art, scrolling, description, etc.) and numerous filters. You can have it show you all the movies in your collection by director, actors, genre, rating, etc. It's fucking ridiculous. Same thing with music. All of my albums have everything from band bios to cover/jacket art.

I cannot begin to go into detail with the options they've given you, let's just say it's everything imaginable. You can configure audio, video, and network access down to the finest detail. Yeah, they've added remote access now too.

The apps are another thing that pulled me in. Basically, you have video, audio, and program apps that you pull from a repository and add to your XBMC. Everything from live TV streaming, podcasts, web browsers, facebook, and disaster recovery. It's unreal. I've loaded tons of apps, but I have yet to go through them all.

To top it all off, they've created two magnificent remotes for the iPad and iPhone. The iPad app is stunning. I prefer the one that wasn't created by team XBMC. Constellation is just a work of art (the iPad app). You literally have full control of your XBMC from it. I prefer the team XBMC app for the iPhone though, it's sleeker and less busy.

The total cost for all this wonderful shit: $0.00. Unbeatable.

Windows Update

The critical RDP exploit needs to be patched ASAP.


I think this only applies to Pembry now as the rest of us are running extremely unsecured Macs that never release security updates.


This vulnerability is a major cause for concern because there is not authentication required to execute the malicious code. So, hurry the shit up and patch your computer, Jimbo!


I'm so very tired to computer exploits. Could you guys just fuck off and die? Is that too much to ask? I just wanna check 4chan, The Chive, XNXX, and read some football updates. I don't feel like dealing with virus infections from people googling "Fishing trade winds" and mashing the first link they see.


/looks at PFT


Oh, Manning went to the Broncos...


/stares blankly at screen


So, what are they going to do about Tebow?


Oh fuck.

What are you talking about, Pembry?

Eugene: Nyaaaaa! Pembry, your comparison of electronic file sharing to Prohibition or the War on Drugs is inapt. The prohibition of the drug and alcohol trade made a highly profitable product illegal, and criminal organizations were incentivized to exploit those markets to make huge profits. By contrast, there already is a highly profitable market for the legal sale of music and entertainment. Criminal enterprises do not have a market to exploit to reap huge profits. The very nature of file sharing is the free exchange of a product. And the forces behind it simply cannot compete with their opponents, highly profitable and powerful industries that wish to sell their products for profit.



Pembry: The fuck you say to me, nerd? I got a 5 on the AP American History exam!



Gap: He is pretty much right. Do you know even the slightest thing about file-sharing?



/Pembry panics

Pembry: Errr...


/Pembry distracts Gap




/Pembry skulks away

Keep it up!

The horse shit Protect IP act may be amended! Three cheers for freedom!

Senator Patrick Leahy, massive fag and huge fuckface

said Thursday he plans to offer an amendment that would require a study of the impact of the ISP provisions in the bill before they are implemented.

AND..."If the study found negative impacts, it's likely the ISP provision would be killed. The Senate is scheduled to begin debate on PIPA on Jan. 24."

HAW HAW HAAAAWWWW



The biggest opponents of this and SOPA are literally the guys who run the Internet (Google, Amazon, FB, etc.). This. Is. Awesome. Hopefully, their study will show negative impacts with a little help from these giants.

Ho ho ho ho!

Linux mint 12 has dropped!

It's quite lovely, I must say. Mint has been growing in popularity for a while now. It's based on the Ubuntu kernel, so you know it's going to be very user friendly and stable. I like it because you can completely strip it down. It has the same synaptic packet manager, so you can find all the same software and it's just as easy to install as Ubuntu. They've just cut out all the fat (fuck you, Ubuntu Unity). I dropped it on my MacBook with Parallels, which was easy as fuck, because Parallels supports Ubunut, so just select that and you get all the integration features. Jamboree!



Mint is also very visually appealing, and it has tons of video and audio integration with Banshee media player. As will all versions of linux, you can run it on the bare minimum resources and still expect ludicrous speeds. I have mine running on 1gig of ram on a 4gig partition and it's just as fast as my Mac OS X. Last night I loaded the latest Chromium (not Chrome) browser build on it and it actually runs faster and smoother than Chrome does on my MacBook. Thanks Linux, you really make me feel at ease when I'm surfing places I shouldn't be (xnxx, 4chan, msnbc, etc.)...

So, if you've got an old laptop sitting around, or you're tired of viruses, give Mint a try...or, just go fuck yourself.

Some men just want to watch the world burn

Well, looks like Anonymous is responsible for the porn on Facebook.

I hardly see how this is "taking down Facebook" as they claimed they were going to do. I don't have a FB account, so my knowledge of this incident has been pieced together, mostly from sugar packets I find on the ground. I really miss LULZSEC. Those guys were much funnier. These Anonops guys are all doom and gloom. Hijacking FB accounts and posting porno isn't really taking down FB either. It's just an inconvenience.

God, I hope Viv doesn't get hijacked...there is nothing worse than explaining computer stuff to her.