an image of an eye glowing green...

0wn yourself

2005-09-27

hackermedia.org - just givin' a shout

shout outs to hackermedia.org! (bang)

--cid

chinese space program moving right along

i think this article about the chinese space program should really drive home the point of how the rest of the world is both interested and very well educated in the sciences.

we need to wake up.

--cidViscous

0wn your country

new sparcs lighting big fires?

sun microsystems new sunfire servers with the new ultrasparc iv+ chips.

hafta wait and see how they do.

--cid

2005-09-26

secure google wi-fi

this is new--secure wi-fi vpn through google.

i wonder what all they'll be logging?

--cid Viscous

0wn yourself

cool concept car con

badass concept car snippets from extremetech dot com.

most of it's not really that great, but there are a few gems.

--cid

hp with the hardware

new drm from hp (licensed from intel) and developed with phillips?

that's a mouthful.

i guess it's no surprise. hardware drm seems to be harder than software management techniques (no pun intended). it's not the first step down a long, dangerous path of crippled and outlawed technologies designed more with a thought to how they're gonna protect the corporations' intellectual properties than to how it's gonna benefit the end users.

we need to pay attention.

--cid

headline reads 'rocker bashes digital rights management'

now, this is the kind of attitude you've gotta give shouts to--rocker bashes digital rights management.

from what i've heard, they didn't have any control over stopping the inclusion of digital rights management (drm) on their latest cd, so they apologized to their fans and apparently put up instructions for bypassing the restrictions (which stopped users from importing the songs to their portable players).

now that's cool. shouts, guys.

--cid

0wn yourself

2005-09-22

snoop onto them as they snoop onto us

analyzing the sounds of keystrokes to tell what's being typed (with something like 96% accuracy).

creepy, though interesting.

for some reason it reminds me of an idea i once read about for a biometric security feature that would continuously run a hash of certain of the users physical input parameters--i.e. the rhythm of your typing or the way you move your mouse around.

better than a password because it's harder to steal--you have to fake it--and also because it keeps working the whole session, in the background, so, if an intruder did somehow manage to breach security, if the computer realizes that the biometric usage patterns don't match, then the session can be interrupted--something that can't really happen with a password.

--cid

2005-09-20

interesting....

a security forum called first, cisco, and ebay, among others, are urging everybody to adopt a 'commov vulnerability scoring system' (cvss) for the purpose of simplifying and unifying network protection and anti-malware efforts.

if practiced, having a simple, accurately descriptive way of classifying and explaining new exploits could be very useful to many parties (most of who would be the actual parties you'd _want_ to be involved in the process).

now, we'll just have to wait and see if ppl dig it (will use it properly) and if they do it right.

--cid Viscous

0wn yourself

north korea's playing ball?

north korea says they'll begin dismantling nukes provided (among other things) that the us supply a light water reactor to give power to the people (electricly speaking).

*shrugs*

i s'pose i'd sooner like to have us building their reactors than them actually having a nuclear program of their own. i didn't know if they were gonna play ball or not.

--cid

2005-09-19

vista for free?

vista for free? open source windows?

i don't know about that....

--cid

twenty eighteen (2018) ? seriously?

astronauts back on the moon in twenty eighteen? are you kidding, nasa? just telling us something outrageously far away so if you do it faster you'll look like heroes?

what's wrong with like--i dunno--two thousand six or something? have we forgotton something since we did it the last time? misplace the blueprints? we (meaning the citizens of the united states of america) need to start thinking bigger and making better use of our strengths.

sometimes i think americans have forgotten what it means to be american.

while i'm glad the space program has at least been giving the appearance of moving again, i think we can do better than two thousand and eighteen, neh?

the current shuttle orbiter design is ancient and unreliable. we neet to create a new design for a (truly) reusable spacecraft, but until that time arrives, it does not mean that we shouldn't be twiddling our thumbs.

there is a lot to learn, still.

we need to send up more automated tests and experiments and probes to increase our knowledge, and we should also be experimenting with extended stays out of earth's gravity and protective magnetic field. (this pdf should give you the idea...)

we should (and can) put people on the moon very much sooner than 2020 or 2018 or any other such number. by then we should have a permanent colony (or reseach labs or something) on the moon. our natural satellite can serve as a playground for learning how to best build habitable environments outside of earth.

we've had our terrestrial biodomes and the international space station as stomping grounds already. now we need to branch out to the moon (and mars once we solve certain problems associated with extended space flight--the effect of microgravity on the human body (possibilities include so called 'rotational gravity' which is centrifugal force) and the secondary radiation caused by particles being emitted from radiation shielding when it's bombarded (which could be dealt with through new plastics being developed, layers of shielding on a different scale than previously planned, or possibly even through magnetic field manipulation).

interesting times we're living in, but i hope we can start making some real progress soon.

--cid

0wn yourself

2005-09-16

twenty things we now know four years after 9/11

twenty things we now know...

interesting.

--cid

voice analysis determines concentration

the so-called jerk-o-meter is ready to analyze your voice patterns to tell how much attention your paying (which it can then relay to whomever you're talking to). though, i can think of some other interesting uses this technology could be put to.

can you?

--cid Viscous

0wn yourself

2005-09-15

spam map

the mailinator has a new trick--spam maps. it uses google maps and their own database to plot out the location of wicked spam clogs. kinda cool.

--cid

new airgo wifi chip

airgo has a new chip for wireless.

the new mimo chip (Gen3 or something like that) is s'posed to support up to 240 Mbps and apparently they're claiming that in real-world tests they're getting actual, sustained throughput of over 120 megs of uncompressed traffic--which is slightly faster than ethernet standard 100BaseT.

so let's see it. put it in the stores, put a good price on it, and we'll buy it already....

--cid Viscous

daypop

daypop - a current events/weblog/news search engine

hmmm..... i wonder how they keep things current? clusty, the clustering engine is an interesting one, too. and i just found bloogz, too.

it's interesting to watch this whole process evolve and build on itself.

--cid

zen garden css project

css zen garden: the beauty in css design, is a project which showcases the creative css tricks that can be accomplished through style sheets.

the homepage is an html framework and a css sheet. artists are encouraged to download the style sheet and modify it to suit their tastes--but they can't change the html for the index.

if the zen garden accepts your sheet, it will be added to the list. as you click on the name of each style sheet, it's loaded into the index page giving it drastically different looks and feels, but all with the same html framework.

shouts to the css zen garden project.

--cid

0wn yourself

joone

joone - java object oriented neural engine

it's an open framework for setting up artificial neural networks.

swett.

--cid

2005-09-11

lojack for your laptop

new laptop sports built-in tracer. they don't say how the technology works, but apparently, if it's not found within sixty days, you get a refund of up to $1000--which is just super on a laptop which costs twelve or thirteen hundred dollars containing who knows how much (possibly sensetive or irreplaceable) data.

gateway is doing it, along with another embedded security device--a tpm (technical protection measures) chip. i don't think i like it.

this chip could be used to enforce drm at the hardware level, it contains a uniquely identifying number which is never a good thing, and, on the whole, seems to be set up to protect a corporation from losing important data on a stolen laptop, and retrieve their computer than actually protecting an end user from data loss or even really (in some cases) get enough money to even cover teh hardware.

i'm not impressed.

--cid

2005-09-09

pulling a fema?

people are saying fema lacks disaster experience. off the hook's emmanuel goldstein wants everyone to start using it as an insult.

you fema'ed us this time, didn't you? go fema yourself. you are _such_ a fema. he's gone and pulled a fema?

i'm all for it.

--cid

0wn yourself

aggregated carbon nanorods

aggregated carbon nano rods. s'posed to be harder than diamond.

sweet!

--cid

0wn yourself

twenty things we now know four years after 9/11

twenty things we now know four years after nine over eleven. it's on liberal slant.com, so i think you'll see where it's coming from.

wild.

--cid

study shows airlines now safer for terrorists

this excellent article on sierratimes dot com brings up some very good points (after starting with a chilling story of the airline security confiscating the dull pocket knife the author had inadvertantly left in his bag while missing the four (count 'em) four smal combat knives he had in the same carryon bag.

and what's worse is he (or possibly she, actually, i didn't look at who wrote it...) made it through multiple airport screenings, at different airports, going both directions, and all they found is the pocket knife.

unbelievable.

or, actually, i s'pose that's all-to-believable these days anyway. oops. there i go again.

i did agree with the logic of the article tho, and the conclusion reached--namely that it's impossible to disarm all of the criminals all of the time, and it's impossible to pick them out all of the time. apparently, it's also very improbable that they could put armed personnel on every flight, and if they did that it could (and prolly would) create an entirely new set of problems (i.e. crazy terrorist flight attendents with guns).

also the solution proposed in the article makes a lot of sense if two conditions are met--a) permit holders are allowed to bring their concealed weapons on all the flights and b) proper gun control and licensing were maintained and (i know, i said two) c) carriers not be identified (singled out) as concealed weapon carriers.

random searches just aren't effective (by any means) and they are also not what this country is supposed to stand for.

--cid

0wn yourself

http://www.sierratimes.com/archive/files/sep/27/armp092701.htm
http://slate.msn.com/id/2064257/

whatever happened to 'that's my bush'?

bush dividing the country? bush popularity at an all time low?

i even heard that his popularity ratings are equal to those of nixon just before the impeachment. but then nixon didn't have partisan control of every branch, did he? i dunno what's going on here, but it doesn't seem like very many people like the president right now.

you know what i miss, tho..? 'that's my bush'--was it comedy central? yeah, it was trey parker and matt stone, the dudes from south park and orgazmo. i wish that show would've lasted through the presidency.

*sigh*

i'm surprised by the way the country is reacting to this whole disaster thing, though sadly, i'm not all that surprised at how badly the situation turned out.

looting and rioting? snipers? the whole city wiped out? minimal communications. trouble getting in and out. the tsa bumbling around hand searching evacuees (or so the story goes...) from the 'cane.

we (as a country) need to start working as a whole to better ourselves and our land. we need to fortify our defenses and expand our education exponentially. we need to get resources to the people. we need to rethink a few laws, rethink some policies and break down a few barriers.

we need to forget about politics for awhile and work on survival and self preservation and expansion (not necessarily of our borders (at least not on this world) but our abilities and talents and resources, we need to expand). it's time for another renaissance.

i sure do miss that show...

--cidViscous

0wn yourself

inflatable spacecraft by bigelow

space dot com's talking about the new inflatable spacecraft design by bigelow aerospace. bigelow's been working with nasa--i guess they're working on some kind of space hotel.

space tourism is gonna be a reality soon, methinks.

it's this kind of attitude (not necessarily the capitalistic 'siezing newly blossoming opportunities in newly forming markets' kind of attitude, but capitalism )_does_ yield results.

space kinda got put on the back burner for a decade or so as the world realized what cyberspace was (and as cyberspace came into existence as we know it today). now, i think the ball's finally starting to roll again.

private companies like bigelow and lockheed martin and many others have broken a lot of ground (indeed, creating the commercial space industry) in areas that were formerly only the domain of governments.

does that say something about technology, the state of nasa, or the state of corporate economics? private rewards and challenges (most prominent example: the ansari x prize) have contributed to this phenomenon, as well.

me? i'm just glad we've still got our eyes on the stars (and lately mars, if you'll pardon my unavoidable rhyme).

--cid

2005-09-08

sony touts evolving walkman

sony has announced an 'evolving walkman' that will learn certain information about its' users' taste in music, etc. kind of cool (if they do it right (which i doubt they will)), but also potentially kind of scary (if they use the technology to report back (i.e. datamine) with the info it learns about it's owner.

we'll see.

--cid

e164

e164 provides a service where you can map pstn numbers with voip routes or something. i haven't got it all figured out yet, but it seems pretty cool. i'll let you know when i figure out more.

--cid

new texas instruments semiconductor

ti's got a new semiconductor that's s'posed to make it easier to make sweet video devices (like media players, palm/pocket computers, and phones).

s'posed to be out by the end of the year. i can't wait.

--cid

0wn yourself

phone scoop dot com

i'm sure i've done it before, but i just wanna take a second to pimp phonescoop dot com for scoopin' all those phones.

also in the lineup is howard forums. and then pla (not to be confused with the pla) out there losing with phones.

bell's mind, old skool phreaking at binrev dot com, verizown--they never stop phreaking for us, phone trips, strom dot com, north american numbering plan administration, skype, free world dialup, and everything else that has to do with telephone networks.

i like phones.

--cid

ipod nano--cute. very cute....

seen apple's newest hardware media player, yet? looks like it's all geared up to take the place of the mini (or maybe the mini'll get some kind of upgrade and/or price reduction).

in spite of myself, i want one. it's just too cute. i dunno about the price, tho. and i still hate teh itunes software.

anyway...

--cid

0wn _your_ media, or 'be the media' as the man said...

their president's last name is talabani?

saddam confesses to slaughtering kurds. and their new president's name is talabani... wtf?! where have i been?

*shrugs*

--cid

2005-09-05

geneSat one

projects like this are great. this is what we need more of. lets send up thousands of these experiements. let's put 'em in orbit. let's land 'em on the moon. let's gain more knowledge. let's get the ball rolling. let's expand. let's explore our solar system. let's explore the galaxy.

that's my rant. we now return you to regularly scheduled whatever.

--cid

0wn your satellite

hd-dvd losing steam?

is hd-dvd already losing steam?

whatever happened to the crazy multimethod storage media that was gonna shatter the curve on these new hd format wars? iomega, where are you?

--cid

note to self--check this out

Hexen2 for Linux : Hammer of Thyrion--be there!! (bang! bang!)

--cid

0wn yourself

2005-09-04

i wanna talk to my computer in plain english

computer gimme a summary of the career history of president bush, and play me some music while you search, some hard jungle. go.

--cid

2005-09-02

the internet all over again - or - how we lost our computers

wired has an article talking about new ititiatives (like geni--the global environment for networking investigations) being funded by the nsf, in an effort to redesign the internet from the protocols up.

while i do agree that tcp over ip technologies (and most of the other protocols out there) leave much to be desired in certain areas, i think the computer industry's done all right for itself with what it's been given. we _do_ need a new set of protocols, but we need to do it right, so it'll be done for the next thousand years.

let's write the 'perfect' set of protocols and the 'perfect os' and just be done with it. easily expandable, serviceable and upgradeable. universal across devices, and linking with new and legacy systems and devices. stable and self-maintaining.

virtually unbreakable.

and then we can just worry about content. doing and creating and consuming knowledge.

--cid

2005-09-01

we're watching you amdocs...

tv over the internet. we may not be watching your tv/ip (tv over ip) but we're watching _you_, amdocs.

--cid

0wn yourself

is law enforcement wasting resources protecting big music?

well, i know i'm getting this up late, but it still deserves some attention.

tnw's got an article talking about how law enforcement seems to be wasting resources trying to protect big music (and media in general) from piracy.

we need to reexamine our priorities.

--cid