ADSL Technology... wooohoooo (not)

I'm one of those lucky bastards who lives like a gazillion miles from a phone central. This means that the ADSL speed reduces dramatically on high speeds. My older ADSL subscription was an Ultra Fast subscription (20Mbps/1Mbps). Due to the distance I only got about 6Mbps (if the wind was blowing from the right direction). The cheaper version (Basic, 8Mbps/1Mbps) is slower, but I get relatively more speed (around 5Mbps). So for me, the additional <1Mbps more costed about 20 euro's a month..... Damn, it's about time that they start using different technologies to bring the Internet into peoples homes. How the hell will they be able to bring phone, Internet, and TV over the Internet? Currently, it would mean that downloads 'stop' if you pick up the phone, or that artifacts appear on the TV signal when browsing the Internet.

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Scotty Meets His Maker

Scotty, the engineer from Star Trek, has returned to space (for a short time) to meet his maker Gene Roddenberry. Yesterday, James Doohan's (better known as Scotty from the Sci-Fi series Star Trek) remains were launched in to space. Currently, over a hundred people are 'buried' in space. One of the first was Gene Roddenberry. He was the creator of the Star Trek series. I wonder who of the original Star Trek cast will be next to be 'buried' in space....

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Wordpress Search Engine Not Working

I installed Ultimate Tag Warrior recently, because I liked the tag clouds I saw on other blogs. Unfortunately,  the plugin seems to cripple the search capabilities on the website. If the plugin is activated, you can't find any posts with a search query. Disabling the plugin make things work again. So, I want to humbly apologize to all those people trying to find important stuff on this blog :-)

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'Secure' USB Flashdrives

Recently, the dutch Tweakers website started with dissecting USB flashdrives. Their goal is to see if the so-called secure USB flashdrives are as secure as the manufacturer says they are. They reviewed the SecuStick, and a BioStick. The first protects the data with a password. The latter (two different versions were tested) uses biometrics (fingerprints) to secure your precious data (in combination with AES encryption). The full reports can be read here, (SecuStick) and here (BioStick). The dutch review can be read on the tweakers.net website (here, and here) along with interessting comments on the article. Conclusion of the articles: Some of these so-called secure USB flashdrives are not as secure as you might think. Oke, the data is 'secure' for the casual user. If real secrets (your private pron collection :-) ) are being stored on those USB flashdrives, you might want to consider using TrueCrypt (with a strong password, and keyfiles) to store your 'valuable' data.

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New iPod rumors

The rumor engines are buzzing with 'news' about a new Wi-Fi iPod. The estimated release would be the holiday season (X-mas). This means an even more expensive X-mas... iPhone, Wi-Fi iPod, OSX Leopard.... all due in the second half of this year. Better start saving some money :-) B.t.w. I have some doubts on the delay announcements of Leopard. The announcement was only a small article on their (hot)news page. Apple stock didn't suffer that much with the announcement. What would happen to the apple stock if they will ship it during the WWDC? During the WWCD keynote, Steve would tell us about all the great features in Leopard (some of them were kept secret to prevent the copiers at Microsoft :-) ). And at the end of the keynote:

Oh yeah, there is one more thing..... We're shipping Leopard as scheduled starting TODAY! .... [crowd goes absolutely, and totally berserk] Together with iLife 2007, and the new iWork.... [crowd goes mental....] [Steve checks his Apple stock options on his iPhone]

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Leopard Delayed (Officially)

Apple announced that the OSX 10.5 (aka Leopard) will be delayed till October 2007....

... We now plan to show our developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship Leopard in October.....

Aaaaargh. I was hoping to get it in June. Well, this gives me more time for saving a little extra money, and buy a new piece of Apple hardware (Mac Mini or perhaps even a Mac Pro) which will have Leopard pre-installed. Or maybe just the iPhone when it arrives in Europe at the end of the year and a separate copy of Leopard.

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Getting 'Punished' for Using Pirated Software

Steganos has a piece of software which allows you to create encrypted containers. The Stagenos software is 'freely' available on the P2P networks. just download it and use a key found somewhere on the Internet. This won't help you though.....

You simply install a copy of Steganos Safe 8 but not the new security suite and when doing this you turn "OFF" the update feature temporarily and use a fake serial code you get off the net. Simply mount anyones .SLE file encrypted drive into the software and it will ask you for their password but won't let you in because it's encrypted. From this point you want to turn the "update" feature back on and force steganos to update by right clicking it in your system tray or restarting the software. From this point it will detect you had used a fake or known serial after the update and it will now PUNISH you by resetting your encrypted drives passwords to "123" until you buy a registered copy. [SecurityFocus]

This means that ANYONE is able to open your encrypted content stored in the container. Just use pirated software to open the containers. Thankfully, Truecrypt is still freeware :-) . Too bad it still isn't available for OSX :cry: .

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What to Get?

The Apple TV box is available at this moment. This devices allows you to stream music, and movies from iTunes on your TV. Downside is that you also need iTunes to host these files, since the Apple TV can only sync with iTunes. This also introduces a limitation. It's not possible to watch videos in a format like DivX, or XviD. iTunes doesn't support those (and therefor, the Apple TV won't support them either. It is possible to hack the Apple TV and add DivX/XviD support (and lot's of other nifty features like installing a hacked version of OSX). To achieve this, you need to open the Apple TV (byebye warranty). The other possibility is to get a Mac Mini, and strip it down mainly for media center purposes. Downside with the Mac Mini is that it's a bit more expensive. Currently I use my MacBook Pro as a media center (whenever I need it). But this is kind of a hassle with power, audio and DVI connectors. So I need a (relatively cheap non Windows based) dedicated setup for watching content on my TV. *SIGH*

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TWiT Podcasts Going Off-Topic

I've been a big fan of the TWiT podcasts. Especially the Apple, Windows and security related podcasts. But lately, the content of those podcasts seem to shift to too much off-topic talk. Take the latest edition of Security Now! (Cross-Site-Scripting - Part II). The podcasts is about an hour in length, but the first half hour is nothing but talk about the Sony e-book reader, and favorite writers. What's that got to do with security?? I don't know. Same goes for MacBreak Weekly. It's more about having a good time for the authors, than about bringing some news. I don't mind that the authors are having fun creating the content. Hell, I appreciate a good laugh as much as the next guy, but keep it on topic. Too bad that only about 50% of the content has something to do with the actual title (Mac / Security). If they keep this up, they will loose a listener (not that they might care).

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100 Million iPods and Counting

Apple announced yesterday that they shipped 100 Million iPod since its introduction in November 2001. Leaving the competion far, far behind :-)

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