Category: Techie

Anything of particular interest to the techie crowd.

Popular Science lists all time favorite on-screen nerds

First, not all of these screen-heroes are nerds – some are geeks. That out of the way, check out Popular Science’s all-time favorite on-screen nerds.

17. Chris Knight and Mitch Taylor (Val Kilmer and Gabe Jarret) in Real Genius A house destroyed by massive quantities of popcorn, the “Tanning Invitational” full of bikini-clad women, and a car taken apart and reassembled in a dorm room–Chris Knight and Mitch Taylor pull these stunts and more to prove that nerds can party as hard as anyone. Real Genius is like Animal House but with lasers and dry ice.

17-Real-Genius.jpg

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IP over SMTP

Way back in the early days of the Intarw3b, not everyone with a computer was surfing around. My first exposure to real use of the ‘net revolved around getting actual work done. At that time, I was a neophyte networking and security goob (today, I’ve advanced to just being an all-around good) and I spent a lot of my work time reading networking and security mailing lists and tracking down tools and documents squirrelled away in the corners of the ‘net.

One of the coolest things I remember reading from those lists was about one of the security gurus who needed some binary files while working at a site without general Internet connectivity but that did have e-mail services. He wrote some scripts to actually implement NFS file transfers over SMTP. I don’t remember the exact details, but I remember that he sent scripts to a co-worker back at his office who installed them as the mail processing scripts for a particular account and then did the same with some other scripts at the worksite. Using these he was able to make the worksite system and his office servers talk as if they had an NFS connection, but using packets 7-bit safe encoded and transferred via SMTP. If that makes no sense to you, it’s OK. I probably have some of the details wrong (it’s been over 10 years since I even read about this), and non-networking folks have no need to understand this. But to really geeky people (especially, if you can imagine it, people more geeky than I), this is really cool use of technology, and worthy of hacking recognition.

So, with all that information, here’s the reason I posted about this. While reading some older web articles I long ago tucked away for later review, I found a link to a Dutch site on which the author has posted a script for doing IP over SMTP. I can’t recall ever being in a situation where I’ve needed this functionality, but it’s really cool that it even exists and someone remembers well enough a time when it was useful that they would post it.

[tags]Script for running IP over SMTP, IP traffic via SMTP encapsulation – useless? But cool[/tags]

Beware unknown Excel spreadsheets

Microsoft has announced that there is, unfortunately, another currently unpatched exploit in Excel.

In its security bulletin, Microsoft warned that “other Office applications are potentially vulnerable” to the zero-day flaw.

Zero-day refers to a flaw for which there is an exploit but no available fix. The Excel vulnerability is Microsoft’s fifth zero-day exploit since December, and part of an increasingly troubling trend.

The zero-day flaw affects Office versions 2000, XP, 2003 and 2004 for the Mac, but not 2007 or Works 2004, 2005 or 2006.

That means don’t open any Excel spreadsheets that you don’t know and trust the source if you are using any of the vulnerable versions.  In related news – if you aren’t already aware, there is a similarly troublesome exploit available for Microsoft Word.  While it is fun to pick on Microsoft, note that this problem is a nearly unavoidable result of increasingly complex software.  Even some of the best known security software and networking tools have had security vulnerabilities in the past.

[tags]Exploit out for Excel, Microsoft Word vulnerability, Secure software is tough – just ask Microsoft (and others)[/tags]

On the iPhone

Let’s pretend for a minute that Apple successfully defends the iPhone name from Cisco’s claim of ownership. Instead, focus on the features and benefits of the phone. apple-iphone-specs-narrow.jpg With a 2 year contract, the iPhone basic runs $499, which gets you a 4 gig iPod+phone combo. For $599, you get an 8 gig iPod+phone combo. Of course, that’s not all the features of the phone:

Sweet, glorious specs of the 11.6 millimeter device (that’s frickin’ thin, by the way) include a 3.5-inch 480 x 320 touchscreen display with multi-touch support and a proximity sensor to turn off the screen when it’s close to your face, 2 megapixel cam, 4GB or 8 GB of storage, Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR and A2DP, WiFi that automatically engages when in range, and quad-band GSM radio with EDGE. Perhaps most amazingly, though, it somehow runs OS X with support for Widgets, Google Maps, and Safari, and iTunes (of course) with CoverFlow out of the gate. A partnership with Yahoo will allow all iPhone customers to hook up with free push IMAP email. Apple quotes 5 hours of battery life for talk or video, with a full 16 hours in music mode — no word on standby time yet.

What I’m wondering on this, though, is why get a phone with all those features if it is going to cost that much? I’ll admit that I’m probably not the target demographic for this whiz-bang gadget. I like to get single task gadgets for the most part – I want a phone that is just a phone, a camera that is just a camera, and an MP3 player that is just an MP3 player. For a geeky, dorky, gadget-whore like me, that probably sounds bizarre, but I want functionality at reasonable prices. What happens if next year you want to carry around more music? What if you decide you really want a 6 megapixel camera? Sure, you can choose to carry around those in addition to the iPhone, but why would you given what you’ve spent on the multi-function phone?

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The Chronicles of George

I realize there are not many techies left who haven’t read The Chronicles of George, but if you happen to be one of those techies, get over there and read some. This site is a collection of support desk tickets recorded by the hapless site subject, George, as received by one of the techies who had to work them. A lot of identifying information has been removed, but the value of the tickets remains intact with what is left.

Here are some sample tickets – George’s ticket entries are in bold, while the site’s maintainer’s comments are standard text.

[Unknown user] is getting explannation mark on her anti norton virus service

We begin with a lovely example of how George’s tickets usually are. Note the strange spacing, the awful grammar, and general weirdness. However, I can’t fault him terribly over-much, since there are some days I wish we really did have an anti-Norton virus.

[Unknown user] called and said [other user] is havening problems printing ,he says the firing is saying canceled printings.

One of the printers is acting weird. George is typing weird. Note the use of the word “havening”. This is a word that George uses often–hey, at least he’s consistent. I believe “firing” refers to the Fiery printer controllers we have at work, but who the hell knows?

she is getting error message that say undliveriable messages,her hole area cannot send externail emails

Oh, man. This one gets my vote for “Best George Ticket of All Time”. My hole area can’t send e-mails either, but I don’t consider that a problem. Perhaps I’m just different.

My older brother introduced me to The Chronicles of George many, many years ago. I periodically revisit the site just to get some laughs again. The site maintainer also points out that George was born and raised in Houston, TX and is a native English speaker, so you can’t blame this on a foreign language to English issue. Trust me – if you’ve ever worked in tech support, you can appreciate the troubles involved in working these tickets, and will probably get quite a few laughs from them.

[tags]Chronicles of George, The joys of tech support[/tags]

IP Radio

Since I’ve recently posted something about the online radio service Pandora, I figured why not post another online radio “thing” here (where “thing” is a highly technical industry term). The Phoenix IP Radio, highlighted in the latest issue of Computer Power User magazine (one of the few geek magazines I find valuable enough to actually pay for), provides IP access to online radio stations, playlists, and RSS feeds (think podcast here) over 802.11b/g connections. It’s battery operated, so you won’t be running a wireless network connection while being required to have a wall-plug to power it (except when charging the batteries, which are supposed to run 4 hours per charge).

phoenix-radio.jpgFrom the recent press release with some details on the radio

Features of The Phoenix radio include

  • alarm clock
  • eight preset radio station buttons and search mode
  • rechargeable batteries and integrated internal charger for portability
  • lightweight – under two pounds
  • integrated stereo speakers and spatialization enhancer technology for digital sound quality
  • can plug into any hi-fi stereo system or headphones with analog outputs
  • connects to any 802.11b/g wireless network with its easy Wi-Fi connection
  • no computer interface necessary
  • allows for Bluetooth¨ connectivity with adapter offered through Com One
  • bookmark favorite stations and songs for instant access
  • listen to missed shows with radio-on-demand or podcasts
  • embedded software for easy connection to the Internet-based service distribution platform, content & service customization, firmware upgrade over the air, push & pull interactivity and management of subscription or click & buy functions
  • lets you listen to MP3, WMA or uncompressed audio (WAV and AIFF) and supports Real Audio


[tags]Wifi IP radio, Take the online radio experience anywhere you have wifi[/tags]

Windows Vista – vulnerable already (permanent activation hack, too)

Well, normal consumers haven’t even received the product and we find industrious types working to show us security flaws in Windows Vista. This should surprise no one, but I guess it does, or news of it wouldn’t be such a big deal. “Complexity = insecurity” generally. Vista is an extremely complex system. There will be lots of security flaws discovered. It is unfortunate, but likely unavoidable in software the size of the latest Microsoft OS release. And yet, here I am posting about it.

Microsoft is facing an early crisis of confidence in the quality of its Windows Vista operating system as computer security researchers and hackers have begun to find potentially serious flaws in the system that was released to corporate customers late last month.

On Dec. 15, a Russian programmer posted a description of a flaw that makes it possible to increase a user’s privileges on all of the company’s recent operating systems, including Vista. And over the weekend a Silicon Valley computer security firm said it had notified Microsoft that it had also found that flaw, as well as five other vulnerabilities, including one serious error in the software code underlying the company’s new Internet Explorer 7 browser.

In a separate article, elsewhere on the gr3at int4rweb, we find that there is already a permanent activation hack for Windows Vista, too. This allows you to avoid the “must activate within 14 days or functionality will be reduced” problems.

Until now, Microsoft has an upper hand, with no permanent or foolproof ways to crack or bypass Windows Vista activation request emerged. Instead, various workarounds and tricks to bypass, skip, delay, disable or spoof Vista activation has been suggestion, to various degree of success, such as extend evaluation period, rearm method, install Vista in future year, ‘frankenbuild’ Vista by replacing RTM build WPA files with RC build files, activate against spoofed KMS server, or run and activate Vista with own local KMS server and etc. Now, there is new crack method that able to permanently stop the countdown timer of time left to activate Windows Vista, effectively running Vista OS in full functionality evaluation mode forever.

[tags]Windows Vista security vulnerabilities, Windows Vista activation bypass[/tags]

Disable Snap preview

If you’ve noticed some of your web sites recently putting a “feature” in place that causes a small preview pop-up when you hover your mouse pointer over a link, you’ve found the annoying technology that is Snap. If you hate this annoyance, it turns out you can easily disable it just by visiting the disable Snap preview link at the Snap web site. Don’t click anything else on that page, and refresh any page with a Snap preview enabled after you visit the link.

I suppose there are people out there who appreciate this tool – I’m not one of them.

[tags]Simple method to disable Snap preview, One less annoyance when browsing[/tags]

Light exceeds speed of light

This is old news, but it was new news to me, which makes it news. That whole “If you didn’t know it, it’s news to you” bit applies, I suppose. Anyway – last year, some smarty-pants scientists showed some control over the speed of light in optical fiber. Slowing down light to 1/3 its natural speed was a noteworthy feat. But when the scientists were able to speed to light up to faster than the natural speed of light, well, that was phenomenal.

On the screen, a small pulse shifts back and forth – just a little bit. But this seemingly unremarkable phenomenon could have profound technological consequences. It represents the success of Luc ThÊvenaz and his fellow researchers in the Nanophotonics and Metrology laboratory at EPFL in controlling the speed of light in a simple optical fiber. They were able not only to slow light down by a factor of three from its well – established speed c of 300 million meters per second in a vacuum, but they’ve also accomplished the considerable feat of speeding it up – making light go faster than the speed of light.

This is not the first time that scientists have tweaked the speed of a light signal. Even light passing through a window or water is slowed down a fraction as it travels through the medium. In fact, in the right conditions, scientists have been able to slow light down to the speed of a bicycle, or even stop it altogether. In 2003, a group from the University of Rochester made an important advance by slowing down a light signal in a room-temperature solid. But all these methods depend on special media such as cold gases or crystalline solids, and they only work at certain well-defined wavelengths. With the publication of their new method, the EPFL team, made up of Luc ThÊvenaz, Miguel GonzalÊz Herraez and Kwang-Yong Song, has raised the bar higher still. Their all-optical technique to slow light works in off-the-shelf optical fibers, without requiring costly experimental set-ups or special media. They can easily tune the speed of the light signal, thus achieving a wide range of delays.

The article goes on to explain how this can have an important impact on light-processing systems for network switches and computers. In fact, it is important enough that the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is investing heavily into continuing this research. Cool.

[tags]Light goes faster than the speed of light, Controlling the speed of light in optical fiber[/tags]

Hacking Vista’s registration lock

Thanks again to TimG for the heads up on this one. I didn’t figure it would take long, but I hadn’t paid attention to find out when Microsoft Vista’s activation check so anyone can fake a valid Vista installation. Using the newly released crack, anyone can install an enterprise copy of Windows Vista and have it function as a valid installation.

Hackers are distributing a file that they say lets users of the corporate version of Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system get around the software’s anti-piracy mechanisms.

. . .

The software Microsoft.Windows.Vista.Local.Activation.Server-MelindaGates lets users spoof that KMS process, allowing them to activate copies of the enterprise editions of Vista, its creators say. The hacked download is available online on sites including The Pirate Bay and other file sharing sites.

An article on Yahoo including a link to The Pirate Bay is just an extra touch of funny, to me.

[tags]Vista activation hack, Vista enterprise installation hack[/tags]

Analyzing paper storage breakthrough claims

ArsTechnica takes on the task of debunking the recent claims of 450+ Gig of data stored on plain paper. I remember reading originally about this fantastic new technology and something didn’t feel right about it. That’s probably a result of decades of tech interest. But I just couldn’t figure out why the claim didn’t seem to hold water. If you ever wondered if the ArsTechnica folks are really smart or just SMRT, check their brief discussion on unrealistic paper storage claims. Here are the most relevant bits, but I’m skipping a number of details from the discussion and the pretty picture.

The system allegedly works by encoding data into small geometrical shapes (circles, squares, and triangles) in various colors, then printing them out on a piece of paper. A scanner is used to read the data back in to the computer.

However, despite technological advances in scanning and printing technology since [the early days of paper storage], Abideen’s claims quite simply do not hold water. A little bit of math is in order here. Starting with a scanner with a maximum resolution of 1,200 dots per inch, this leads to a maximum of 1,440,000 dots per square inch, or just over 134 million dots on a sheet of standard 8.5″ by 11″ paper (excluding margins).

… a maximum theoretical storage of 134MB, which would likely go down to under 100MB after error correction.

Now this technology may come out, wow us all, and be the greatest storage advance in years (or decades). However, for now it has the smell of the world record python in Indonesia.

[tags]Massive paper storage tech debunked?, ArsTechnica on paper storage revoluation[/tags]

Direct X 9.0L is Direct X 10 for WinXP?

Well, that’s the news I’m getting from The Inquirer.  And I’ve found things there to be right so often that I pretty much take them as true.

WE MANAGED TO glean a few facts about the upcoming DirectX 9.0 L we told you about here.

DirectX 9.0 L is simply a renamed and refurbished DirectX 10 for Windows XP. It will make DirectX 10 games to work on Windows XP.

And games such as the upcoming Crysis won’t work on the existing DirectX 9.0 c. they need a DirectX 9.0 L

Slightly more to the article (but nothing that matters) if you care to head over and read it all.

[tags]Direct X 10 for WinXP[/tags]