Archive for September, 2005

Space Shuttle Was A Mistake

Thursday, September 29th, 2005

SpaceThe head of NASA publicly states that the space shuttle and the international space station were mistakes:

Link: http://www.usatoday.com/…

I personally foresee a space elevator becoming the vehicle of choice for getting into low-earth orbit. Once the purview of science fiction, the technology for creating one is almost in place. Expect to hear more about this in the coming years.

Update (9/30/2005): Apparently Congress disagrees.

Star Wars Baseball

Thursday, September 29th, 2005

Darth Vader

Chewbacca threw out the first pitch for a Red Sox game. The picture is great! (Who knew he was a lefty…)

Link: http://bostondirtdogs.boston.com/…

Custom Ribbons

Wednesday, September 28th, 2005

This site allows you to design and purchase custom ribbon magnets for your car (like the yellow ones that say “Support Our Troops”). I can see some real possibilities here…

Link: http://supportourribbons.com/…

iPod Nano Problems

Wednesday, September 28th, 2005

Apple

Looking to buy one of those hot, new iPod Nanos? You may want to wait, as there have been some problems with the initial batch. First and foremost is that the screen is ridiculously easy to scratch (to the point of unreadability). Second, Apple has admitted that some of the screens are flawed and will easily crack.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/…

Update: Here is a better link for the scratching problem.

Just When You Thought The Water Was Safe

Wednesday, September 28th, 2005

Military

Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction (thanks to Josh):

Link: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/…

Maximizing Your Power Strips

Friday, September 23rd, 2005

Power Strip

Something that should have been invented a long time ago (and they’re inexpensive as well):

Link: http://www.lifehacker.com/…

And for those who want to dispense with having to purchase both power strip and extenders, there’s the PowerSquid.

Malicious Spyware

Tuesday, September 20th, 2005

Computer SecurityI’ve been seeing a bunch of articles on a new type of spyware: keystroke loggers. A keystroke logging program will keep track of everything you type and then forward it to someone who will look for account numbers and passwords. This can be very bad when the information is for banking, credit cards, and such. A recent study found that 15% of all spyware is of the keystroke logging type.

Most of you reading this are quite tech savvy and know all about not opening attachments on incoming emails and not clicking through to web addresses given in emails (especially those purporting to be from eBay, your bank, or PayPal). But there are other ways to install malicious keystroke logging programs with which you may not be familiar.

Security Holes: Computer systems that don’t have the latest security updates are vulnerable for as long as they are connected to the internet. Malicious programs continuously scan the internet for computers with open ports to unpatched programs. Tests were run with a fresh installation of WinXP SP1, and it took approximately 4 minutes before the computer was compromised. The best way to protect against this type of attack is two-pronged: 1) Apply all patches and updates as soon as they are available, and 2) use a firewall.

Browser Vulnerabilities: Carefully crafted web pages or even web addresses can attain the ability to execute programs on your system. The best way to protect against this type of attack is to not use Internet Explorer. If you must, ensure that all of the latest patches are applied.

DNS Cache Poisoning: This is one of those cases where even if you do everything “right”, you can still be compromised. Essentially, a system that you use for DNS is given false DNS information and stores the data in its DNS cache. So when you type in www.paypal.com, for instance, you are redirected to a spoof site which gets your login/password information (and may also attempt to exploit browser vulnerabilities). The best way to protect against this type of attack is to minimize financial transactions online. In reality, you just have to trust that your ISP and upstream providers don’t let their systems get compromised—it’s really quite simple and comes down to having their DNS system correctly configured.

Internationalized Domain Names (IDN): IDN is a fairly new standard whereby non-Latin (non-English) character sets can be used in domain names. This is of greatest concern for Asian-language domains, but it was expanded to include all languages. It turns out that some languages have characters that are identical to the English language, but which are treated as different under IDN. This only works when you click through to a spoofed web site, via email or a link on another site. The best defense against an IDN attack is to use Internet Explorer 6, as it does not support the IDN standard. Other browsers, such as Firefox, have implemented security procedures to ensure the user is aware of IDN site names, but older versions do not have these measures in place and are vulnerable. More recently, researchers have found another IDN exploit in Mozilla/Firefox, and it seems like the best thing to do for now is to simply disable IDN.

Bic Sells 100 Billionth Pen

Friday, September 9th, 2005

That is a lot of pens:

Link: http://today.reuters.com/…

Motorola Creates Phone/iPod Combo

Wednesday, September 7th, 2005

Phone

Now this is something even I would shell out bucks to purchase. They don’t allow portable music players at work, but they do allow cell phones. Look for the official announcement on Sep. 7th.

Link: http://www.iht.com/…

Update (09/07/2005): Here it is, the Motorola ROKR. Holds up to 100 songs, costs $250, and is exclusively supported by Cingular.

Fair Use—What’s That?

Monday, September 5th, 2005

I fully support the protection of copyrights and patents, but some of this stuff is just plain absurd:

Toner Cartridges: http://yro.slashdot.org/…

Blu-Ray Players: http://yro.slashdot.org/…

New Supreme Court Opening

Sunday, September 4th, 2005

Gavel

Chief Justice Rehnquist died yesterday (Saturday), thus opening an additional spot on the US Supreme Court. Look for some serious political battles over this one.

Link: http://yro.slashdot.org/…

Hurricane Katrina

Saturday, September 3rd, 2005

Scientist

A basic explanation of hurricanes, as well as specific details about why Katrina was so destructive. Also, the best picture of a hurricane I’ve ever seen.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/…

There’s also a movie that someone made from satellite images:

Link: http://episteme.arstechnica.com/…