Commodore-64 portablized

Is there anyone else out there capable of pulling off the work Ben Heck does? Honestly, I’ve seen a few people do similar mods to portablize game consoles or vintage computers, but no one with the breadth of neat hacks that Ben has done. The latest bit from him is the rejiggering of “Classic” computer the Commodore 64.

While I can’t say I personally would want one, this really is a pretty cool project for folks who have to get their retro on. (via MAKEZine)

Technorati Tags: Ben Heck, Retro, Commodore 64, Hardware hacks, MAKEZine

But in all that reading, research, study, training, and other learning, one of the coolest things I ever consumed was the OSSTMM project. Rather than try to explain this project, I’ll just snag the introductory text from the project home site:

The Open Source Security Testing Methodology Manual (OSSTMM) is a peer-reviewed methodology for performing security tests and metrics. The OSSTMM test cases are divided into five channels (sections) which collectively test: information and data controls, personnel security awareness levels, fraud and social engineering control levels, computer and telecommunications networks, wireless devices, mobile devices, physical security access controls, security processes, and physical locations such as buildings, perimeters, and military bases.

The OSSTMM focuses on the technical details of exactly which items need to be tested, what to do before, during, and after a security test, and how to measure the results. New tests for international best practices, laws, regulations, and ethical concerns are regularly added and updated.

The version I read when I first found this was 2.2.  It has been years since I used it, and I periodically check in for updates on the version 3.0 release.  I haven’t seen an update on the web site, and I’m not a team member/subscriber to the service, so I didn’t expect I would know unless I checked in on my own.  Well tonight, while catching up on email, I get this message from the project:

Hi,

Maybe you forgot us Six years is a long time to work on a single version of a project. That time is coming to an end and the OSSTMM 3 has been fully researched, completely re-written, and is nearly ready for press.

OSSTMM RC15, the Beta draft has just been uploaded for Silver Team members and OSSTMM RC20, the Alpha draft has just been uploaded for the Gold Team, partners, and team members.

All tests have been fully edited as well as most chapters. It contains the new, more usable format and descriptive content with greater explanations to make it easier to use. It also includes a full chapter
on Analysis.

Only a few chapters are missing. Chapter on RAV Calculations is still partially unedited and the Trust Metrics chapter is still incomplete. End chapters for templates and other extras are still incomplete. The unedited and incomplete chapters have been clearly labeled for completion.

We have a full color cover with an animal symbol ready to go, an OSSTMM security picture for the back cover, templates, and many graphics still to be added for the public version. Further examples,
graphics, and tips and tricks will go into the print version.

It feels so good to be so close to completing this version!

Sincerely,
-pete.

I’m really looking forward to getting this update. As a non-member, I know I will still have to wait. But as a consumer of all things open source, I expect it to be worth it. And I intend to review the final version and try to offer feedback, in the manner I hope most open source consumers at least try to do. Even if I have nothing to offer, I believe just making an honest effort to contribute is an important part of being in the community.  If I were still actively in security, I would probably subscribe, but it’s hard to justify the expense at this moment since I’m not doing security any more (but would like to – hint, hint)

If you are in to computer security at all, I can recommend the OSSTMM as a good resource for testing guidance.

Technorati Tags: OSSTMM, Open Source security, Security

Looks here like there is a story out on a new type of laser. While studying laser generation from a device called a quantum cascade laser, scientists noticed that a secondary laser with some unusual properties was generated.

ScienceDaily (Dec. 22, 2008) — A Princeton-led team of researchers has discovered an entirely new mechanism for making common electronic materials emit laser beams. The finding could lead to lasers that operate more efficiently and at higher temperatures than existing devices, and find applications in environmental monitoring and medical diagnostics.

In particular, this new type of laser apparently requires less energy to produce than a traditional laser. While the story in question makes no mention of strapping these frikkin’ lasers to frikkin’ sharks’ heads, I suspect a lower power draw would come in quite handy in any world take-over attempts based on such a premise. Assuming the scientists in question can figure out how to create this secondary laser without the primary laser still being there, of course.

The new laser phenomenon has some interesting features. For instance, in a conventional laser relying on low momentum electrons, electrons often reabsorb the emitted photons, and this reduces overall efficiency. In the new type of laser, however, this absorption is reduced by 90%, said Franz. This could potentially allow the device to run at lower currents, and also makes it less vulnerable to temperature changes. “It should let us dramatically improve laser performance,” he said.

The device used in the study does not fully attain this level of performance, because the conventional, low-efficiency laser mechanism dominates. To take full advantage of the new discovery, therefore, the conventional mechanism would need to be turned off. The researchers have started to work on methods to achieve this outcome, said Franz.

So work is still underway. And has been for a while, in fact. Word from the brains behind this work is they actually discovered this effect sometime last year, but have been working on perfecting or improving it since then. My current suspicions are if this doesn’t end up in shark-based warfare, it will be part of the coming robot uprising. And I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords (unless the zombies take over first).

Technorati Tags: Lasers, Frikkin’ sharks, Throw me a bone, Robots, Quantum something I don’t understand, Science Daily

All that said, what follows below the break is some of my personal history in joining this movement, which hopefully sheds some light on why I care so much about the status and health of Open Source overall.

I am a long-time user of Open Source and freely redistributable software. Long ago, based on the recommendation of a friend (hello, Jay, wherever you are), I started using Linux at home. I still remember downloading via zmodem the 4-disk installation set for SLS Linux (most likely you’ve never heard of it, as it didn’t last very long – I think due to lack of update cycles, at least compared to a number of other then available distributions). I never got it working right, because it didn’t have proper driver support for my SCSI card (an UltraStor 34F, if you must know) and I didn’t know nearly enough to resolve the problem at the time. So I looked for and found a distribution that came with the drivers I needed (SlackWare), downloaded and installed it, and all was wonderful. I came in to the Linux flock on Kernel 0.99pl14, registering with The Linux Counter project sometime not long after it went live. This was geek heaven, as running Linux really got you down close to the system and made you learn what you were doing to get everything running right – back then, I didn’t care if Linux was usable by the so-called “typical” computer user.  It worked for me, and it kept me sharp on maintaining a Unix-like system.

For the next few years, I dual-booted, playing The 7^th Guest (sample game play video), Descent (reborn as DXX-Rebirth project), Doom, and other games in DOS or Windows, and rebooting into Linux to do “real” work, such as email, Usenet (there was not much on the World Wide Web for socializing and mass communication back then), and accessing and working on some Solaris systems I had guest accounts on.

After getting married, living on a limited budget meant sharing a computer with the wifey-person after some of her hardware crapped out on us. Her need for a regularly available work computer at home meant I needed to stick to a one-OS computer. And since the wifey-person was totally non-technical (the implication here being that she might be slightly technically inclined now), and many of the available productivity tools were less capable for her needs than the commercial stuff she knew at the time, that OS had to be Windows. Because of this, I was in Linux withdrawal for a few years. I still read the Usenet Linux groups and tried to help others (at that time, a busy group might get 300 messages a day – totally manageable for a single day’s readings), but I fell behind on Linux knowledge and skills. Clearly, action was required.

At this point, I started getting in to hardware in a way I’d never done before. I researched Linux driver development for all kinds of then-modern hardware, figuring that to save money I needed to build my system piece-by-piece. I was a huge believer in the need for SCSI drives at the time, because the IDE standard was just too unreliable for burning CDs. Burn protection that prevented bad disc burns when the system fell 3 milliseconds behind on feeding data just didn’t exist at the time. The irony here is that I bought a bad Philips SCSI burner that failed on discs over about 400 Meg, replaced it with a bad SCSI burner purchased on eBay, and then no longer really needed to burn discs after finally getting a reliable SCSI burner from a local store. In the end, though, I built a decent Linux capable system for a few hundred dollars (a crazy-low price at the time), got Linux running (not difficult since I’d researched my equipment needs first), configured X-Window to work (crazy hard, given the required technical details necessary to configure everything), and started looking about for software to make my efforts worthwhile.

And this brings me to where I want to start talking about what I call the Kudos society. I will be writing about tools I use, tools I’ve looked at using but do not for some reason, things I and others can do to contribute to support this community, and what I hope to do to help in the future.

First, my term “The Kudos Society.” It’s not really accurate to refer to the entire Open Source movement with this term, but what I’m really talking about is the tendency for so many to work on projects where there often isn’t real benefit beyond scratching an itch except recognition and appreciation from others.  I know there are people who get paid for working on Open Source projects. I know there are people who do the work on these projects who remain anonymous and avoid the recognition the projects could bring. And there are people who use Open Source project contributions as something of a resume to help get paying work. But generally speaking, most of the developers I see on Open Source projects are working on things as a side project to their “real” job, or are working on whatever because they have the time and skills necessary.

To me, these people seem, in essence, to be working primarily for Kudos – “Thanks for your good work.” I appreciate this attitude (even if I am incorrect in my perception), and do try to find ways to support the Kudos projects I use or would like to use. And with that large, rambling introduction, I’ll point to my “The Kudos Society” pages for my thoughts, my experiences, my attempts to contribute, and my recommendations.

Technorati Tags: Open Source, Free software, The Kudos Society

That out of the way, what good news to we have?  Well, how about a guide to building your own laser cutter?  Would you be interested in getting a knife made of focused light?  And what if it was less than $50?

This project demonstrates a simple hack to create a large format laser cutter utilizing all the scrap electronics you may have lying around. If you have a broken scanner or two, the cost can be just about 30 dollars for the entire project.

I totally need to build one of these, even if it isn’t actually a hand-held laser knife.  It sounds cool enough that it could go in to The Best of Instructables book, although it looks like it didn’t make the first volume.  Maybe volume 2?

So we’ll try to get you up date on the coolest or most useless new laser news in the coming days.  And as always, we’ll watch for news of advances on the friggin’ shark front.

Technorati Tags: lasers, laser, shark, Instructables, Laser knife

DataTraveler 150 USB Flash drive is big news in mobile storage. With a capacity of 32GB, it lets you store more digital files than ever before on one drive. DataTraveler 150 from Kingston helps budget-conscious users break storage barriers, allowing them to easily store and move files in a 32GB device no bigger than a pocketknife. As easy as click and drag, DataTraveler 150 can hold just about any file you can think of term papers, theses, digital images, spreadsheets or other important documents.

And the cool thing?  It’s dang cheap – just under $60.  Pop half a dozen compressed DVD images on there, and still have room for pr0n or portables apps and games.

Technorati Tags: USB, Storage, Kingston, PortableApps, Portables, Pr0n

A film for a wide audience!

Nine chapters, two hours of maths, that take you gradually up to the fourth dimension.
Mathematical vertigo guaranteed! Background information on every
chapter: see “Details“.

Here is the sample video for the visual walk-through:

Watching this, seeing that it was made with POV-Ray, and thinking of the power of legally freely available tools like this makes me feel that I owe my readers a write-up of some of the many free tools and toys I use on my computer at home and for work.

Technorati Tags: Dimensions, Mathematics, POV-Ray, Video

For years, IT professionals looking to increase their job security, expand their career horizons and potentially climb a couple pay grades have been told to take business courses or get an MBA, but the evidence to support these assertions has been little more than anecdotal.

Now, however, a study published in the March issue of “Management Science” from the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business finds that an IT professional with an MBA degree earns 46 percent more than one with only a bachelor’s degree, and 37 percent more than an IT professional with any other type of master’s degree.

Of course, that nearly doubles salaries thing doesn’t sound quite right when you read that the IT professional with MBA earns 46 percent more, does it?  So according to this study, the MBA nearly doubles IT Pros’ salaries, when 46% means 100%.  Still – a near 50% earnings benefit sounds pretty solid justification for the higher degree.

Technorati Tags: IT, Salaries, MBA, When +50% equals double?!?

Run HealthCheck to get a scan of applications on your system along with checks for patches and updates to those applications. This should help you track down security problems that have fixes available. If you keep up to date on these patches, it should help significantly with avoiding your machines getting taken over by a ‘bot-network. The tool appears to have been developed or at least re-announced (I’m not familiar enough with HealthCheck and it’s history nor age to know which is the correct term) as a result of an F-Secure poll regarding application patching.

It appears that many people are uncertain if their computers are fully patched when there are third party updates involved.

Q — What can you do about it?
A — F-Secure Health Check.

Health Check is a free online tool designed to help consumers identify security updates needed on their computers.

I will point out that HealthCheck requires installation of an ActiveX control in your Internet Explorer window. I personally trust the eggheads at F-Secure to not do malice as a result of this, but you need to understand that installing an ActiveX control is a security risk which gives the control vendor pretty much full access to your operating system. While *I* personally trust the F-Secure worker-bees to not corrupt, control, nor destroy my system, you’ll have to make that decision for yourself.

After running the test, here’s a snip of what I got as a result:

In my case, I’m on a work computer without anti-virus and anti-spyware protection. Sadly, I am not allowed to correct this flaw. I make up for it by using the PortableApps version of ClamWin, and regularly scan my system. I also run Firefox for my browser (actually, I use the PortableApps version of this application, too) and stick mostly to web sites I know and trust. I save my home computer for more risky online activity.

If you are unsatisfied with your HealthCheck scan results and the problem turns out to be a browser security issue, can I suggest you update to FireFox?

Technorati Tags: security, healthcheck, scanning, vulnerability, patch, Windows, Internet Explorer, FireFox

Man, is there nothing Shatner can’t do?  Apparently not.

Technorati Tags: Shatner, Vic-20, YouTube, The greatest actor ever

So simple to understand visually, but probably still ass-kicking hard for most of us to do numerically.  Still, I just thought it looked so cool that I needed to share.

Technorati Tags: Moebius, Transformations, Mathified, Mathy, Moebius Transformations, YouTube, experts, Mind blowing

Nixstaller is an Open Source project with the goal to create user friendly and flexible installers that work on various UNIX like systems.

Main Features

• Three different installer frontends, powered by GTK+2, FLTK and ncurses.
• Support for many common UNIX like systems (see table below)
• Can be fully translated (English and Dutch translations are already provided)
• The installation files can be compressed with lzma, gzip and bzip2.
• The installation files that should be used can depend on the current system.
• Lua support is provided to configure the installer and to program the installation procedure. This allows very flexible configurations.
• Very few dependencies: the end user and install creator only needs one of the supported systems. For compilation SCons (and python) is also required.

It’s an interesting project, and certainly not the first such undertaking. Given the slow track of progress, I’m extra skeptical, but I fully support any efforts to more closely unify Linux distributions. I feel anything that legitimately makes using Linux easier while not taking away capabilities from power-users that know their ways around is a good thing to have.

Technorati Tags: Linux, Universal installer, Nistaller

Self-balancing scooters, like the Segwayâ„¢ are often thought to be technological miracles, but it is not actually very hard to build one. I built the one described here in about a week using off-the-shelf parts. I spent another week tweaking the high-speed stability, improving the steering control, and writing about it.

Shoot yeah!  I have mad skillz.  So mad they have to be spelled with a ‘z’ instead.  But not quite mad sizzles, which is what I hear Snoop Dogg has.

So just how does the DIY self-balancing scooter compare to a real Segway?

The Segway is made with quite high-quality, high-tech, and expensive components. Overall, the components I used are a lot lower-tech and cheaper than the ones in the Segway. Yet, mine seems to ride just fine. It suggests that there’s room for a Henry Ford of balancing scooters to develop and sell a low-cost everyman’s version. Here’s a quick comparison. Quotes below are from segway.com.

This is followed by the comparison.  And I can tell you from reading it that while the real deal certainly wins for polish, the DIY scooter doesn’t measure up too badly on functionality.  Now to find a few hundred spare hundred lost in the sofa to make my own.

The author of the page has extensive information on the why of building this, some ideas for doing your own, and even updates on his next generation DIY home-built.  Overall, it’s a really cool project.  The write-up and details are long, but if you are into this kind of project work, I assure you it is worth the time to read it.

Technorati Tags: Self-balancing scooter, DIY Segway-style scooter, DIY

The autorun.inf file is the key to getting your USB drive (or CD-ROM drive, for that matter) to perform certain actions automatically and customize it’s look in My Computer. The purpose of this article is to shed some light on how this can be done.

Topics covered are:

• Autorun.inf Structure
• Setting a Custom Icon
• Naming Your USB Drive
• Setting AutoPlay Options
• Adding Context Menu Items
• Changing Default Action
• Viewing a File
• School’s Out, Time To Play!

Unfortunately, the author doesn’t have anchors set at each heading, or I would link you directly to each section. Fortunately, the entire article is brief and pretty easy to follow, so this isn’t a big negative in the article layout.

USB key break-ins are a real security threat, and this kind of tutorial helps you make the security breach even easier if you are in to that kind of thing. Whether you depend on natural curiosity to cause the breach or use something like the above-linked tutorial to get a tool running and stealing what you need from your victim, the USB key is handy. This also means you should be aware that the bad guys are learning (or already know) these things and will use them to attack you some day.

So to end, the next natural question for you, the reader, should be “How do I stop this vulnerability from impacting my system/network/company?” now. Well, there are many places that have the answer. I haven’t found one that I would point out as The best way to do this – this Microsoft technet article has the necessary information if you already know your way around the registry, as does this more concise and clearer article. Other helpful points include this CD-Freaks forum post asking that question, as does this web site that seems to focus on autorun features/bugs/benefits. That last one is probably the clearest, so may be the one I point folks to in the future.

Technorati Tags: USB autorun, USB keys, Security, DIY, Daily cup of tech

A quick report from the kernel summit: AMD’s representative at the summit has announced that the company has made a decision to enable the development of open source drivers for all of its (ATI) graphics processors from the R500 going forward. There will be specifications available and a skeleton driver as well; a free 2D driver is anticipated by the end of the year. The rest will have to be written; freeing of the existing binary-only driver is not in the cards, and “that is better for everybody.” Things are looking good on this front. More in the kernel summit report to come.

That’s a serious boost to the credibility of an ATI-based Linux system for gamers at the very least. I know personally I have avoided ATI cards for years due to long-term Windows driver issues (which are slowly resolved, if ever) and barely useable at times Linux drivers. It’s hard to do, though, given how powerful ATI videocards have become, but until reliable drivers are there, I avoid them. Well, with the open source community working on them with more information, hopefully the Linux issues will soon be cleared up and I’ll be able to seriously consider an ATI card in a future upgrade.

The comments in the linked article are also worth perusing, just to get a feel for the reactions from the open source side of tech.

Technorati Tags: Linux, ATI, Open Source, Kernel summit, Graphics, GPU