I’ve had this weird problem while playing games for the past couple years — at some indeterminate interval (admittedly, I haven’t attempted to measure the time because I’m usually very intent on the game), while moving or shooting… basically doing anything involving my mouse, my “character” is immediately turned around. In other words, I’m running North one instant and South the next. I don’t know if it’s exactly 180deg, but I do know that I often get killed because of this issue.

I searched around with various Google searches:
“mouse error jumps OR flips 180 degrees during game”
“mouse error jumps OR flips automatically”
“mouse error jumps OR flips automatically during game”
and so on… I found one possible hit that remarks it’s a Linux-only problem… obviously not since I’m running XP SP3.

I have had this problem with World of Warcraft and Battlefield 2, though I cannot remember (and have not played recently enough) if it happens with Half-Life or HL engine games.

If anyone knows what this is, please comment here. Thanks! I’ll also update if I find a solution.

Jason Luttgens and I were interviewed by Bret Padres and Ovie Carroll over at the CyberSpeak podcast regarding our log analysis tool, Highlighter. Take some time to listen if you’re interested — the interview begins at 18m 10s, though I recommend listening to the whole podcast because those guys are fun and their content relevant.

Thank you for finding my keys at the dog park and leaving them at the message board. I was wracking my brain to think if where I might have left them and I just wasn’t finding them. So you made my day and I’m grateful to you.

Sincerely,
Cyberpir8

You say Senators on CNN are arguing “all CPAN style”.

I’m almost back to DC from my trip to St Louis for the DoD Cyber Crime conference. In case you don’t already know, Jason Luttgens and I came here to finally release our visual log-analysis tool, Highlighter (www.mandiant.com/software/highlighter.htm).

We received very positive feedback and we were even able to give our presentation twice, thanks to Paul Alvarez for organizing the Birds of a Feather meeting later in the day. Check out blog.mandiant.com it the link above for more details on Highlighter.

So far I have been poorly impressed with the presentations I attended. Talking to some coworkers, it’s possible that I simply wouldn’t find good proactive speakers here even though the forensics/IR speakers were more interesting. C’est la vie, it’s all good.

I enjoyed the keynotes by Jeff Moss (of Defcon fame) and Johnny Long (No-Tech Hacking). Mandiant had me, Jason Luttgens, Nick Harbour, Kelcey Tietjen, Wendi Rafferty, Travis Reese, and David Ross as speakers presenting. That’s just how we role!