Mobile Phone Communication Codes Cracked

The German scientist Karsten Nohl published his findings this week on the CCC (Chaos Communications Congress) in Berlin. The CCC is an annual hacking convention, which is being held in Berlin, Germany.

Normally, the GSM communication switches frequency regularly, and therefor it's hard to listen in, but if you can crack the frequency switching algorithm..... Which is exactly what Karsten Nohl and his team did.
They cracked the so-called stream-cipher A5/1 which protects the voice conversations, and published details off it on the CCC in Berlin.

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Star Trek 2009 - Most Pirated Movie in 2009

According to the TorrentFreak website, the latest Star Trek movie is the most downloaded movie in 2009.

I must admit that I participated in getting this movie on number 1 on this chart.... BUT, I also saw this movie in the opening weekend in the theater, and I own the movie on a Blu-Ray disc.

Since I don't have the capabilities to rip the movie myself, I downloaded the ripped version. No nag screens and other crap on the downloaded version, so I prefer to watch the ripped/downloaded version over the original Blu-Ray disc (also see this posting) on my Popcorn Hour media player.

So being the most downloaded movie doesn't necessarily mean most pirated (in my opinion).

Sure, there still are lots of people who'll pirate anything they get their hands on, but that doesn't mean that they would even think about going to the cinema or buy the disc. The studios wouldn't make money of them anyway.

But hé, that's just my humble opinion........

Update on Monday, January 4, 2010 at 19:58 by Willem

The EFF has an excellent piece on the most pirated movie. This definitely shows that they're NOT losing money on piracy

Microsoft Pays $290m

Remember this one? Well, the supreme court ruled that Microsoft did use some code illegally, and needs to cough up $290 million in favor to i4i.

They (i4i) must be celebrating somewhere in the tropics by now I imagine.... $290m is something I don't carry around in my wallet every day.

The court also decided that the existing Office/Word installments in the world don't need the patented code removed. New purchases from January 11, 2010 will have no illegal code (as does Office/Word 2010).
This basically results into 2 different Office/Word versions. I wonder how long it takes before the first incompatibility bug raises its ugly head.......

Thankfully I won't have to deal with this in my personal life.

And The Winner Is.....

James Hetfield of Metallica by Guillaume Raisonnable, on FlickrMy photo of James Hetfield (lead singer of Metallica) won this years photo contest at the local cameraclub (out of 51 other photos).

The photo was taken this year at their concert in Ahoy, Rotterdam [1, 2], and this image felt right from the beginning.

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The Twitters Are Gone....

For many, the world is was in disarray. It seems that the Twitters have been hacked (read: defaced) by the infamous (never heard of them though) Iranian Cyber Army.

Twitter rerouted to an Iranian Cyber Army page.

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Adobe Flash Player Problems

Updated on Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 22:26 by Willem

Since I encountered some problems with flash on certain websites, I decided to check if my Flash player has been updated since 1972. Normally you can check the Flash settings (incl auto-update functions) through a page on the Adobe/Macromedia website. Which is weird, since you would think that this is a local setting (incl. privacy settings and audio functionalities).... But no. Macromedia/Adobe decided that you have to do that through their website.
The reason being that they can check whatever you are doing with your player.......

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Windows 7 Backup Flaw(s)

During the last couple of weeks I've been using Windows 7 at my work laptop (a Dell E6500). The OS itself ain't that bad (but still no OSX). Among the many improvements there's a new Backup ad Restore Center in the OS (compared to Windows XP, since I skipped Vista). But the application/service has a flaw. A very annoying one.

The interface is pretty intuitive and definitely more user-friendly. There's the option of backing up to a local (CD/DVD) drive, and you can choose to backup to a network share. In the corporate environment I choose the network drive. To do this, you do need ownership (some special permissions) on the drive share. This way the Backup and Restore application can do its thing.

Since Windows 7 is a member of the corporate domain I don't need to enter any credentials when accessing network shares, except with the backup application. Why? Don't ask me. But this is where the flaw kicks in.

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Wibiya Website Toolbar

Updated on Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 22:31 by Willem

Wibi... what? I've no idea what it means, but Wibiya allows you to add a toolbar to your website. The toolbar is situated at the bottom of your web browser. Basically, it adds functionality to your website. The tool is still in beta, and you need to sign up to get access. Upon registration you wil receive an invite code within a couple of hours.

The toolbar holds several (configurable) tools you can use to display;

• a search bar (powered by Google Search).
  So if google doesn't (want to) know you, you won't find many search results
• a translate-this-page-to-<20 languages> option (powered by Google Translate).
• recent / random posts from your website/blog.
  based on your RSS feed.
• your Twitter Status.
• Photo album
  You need a Flickr account for that.
  
• Facebook crap.
• etc.

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Canabalt

Updated on Monday, December 14, 2009 at 14:37 by Willem

Yet another great iPhone game I found in the iPhone store. Canabalt is a bit more expensive (but still below €3). It's a running game. The graphics aren't that flashy. There's only black, white and some area's of grey in between. As soon as I saw it, it reminded me of an Apple classic called Dark Castle.

Controlling the game is real easy (just tap your finger on the screen to jump). The only variation is that you can tap harder (or softer) to jump higher (or lower). That's about it.....

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Rammstein @ Gelredome

Rammstein @ GelredomeOn Sunday December 6th, we saw the Rammstein 'Liebe ist für alle da' tour in the Gelredome in Arnhem, the Netherlands. The evening started with the support act Combichrist. These guys use drums and synthesizer to generate lots of noise. Music/rhythm; good, vocals; bad :-). Definitely not my cup of tea.

Just after 8 o'clock Rammstein started with the song 'Rammlied' from their latest album. Probably the best song for opening their show. And a great show it was. The show was filled with enough pyrotechnics to provide a small village in Siberia with warmth for at least a year.

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