The most valuable supply of worthlessness on the web
(via Schneier on Security)
The course material and lecture videos for “Welcome to Practical Aspects of Modern Cryptography”, taught at the University of Washington this past winter, are now available online for free. If you are looking to learn a bit about Cryptography, be sure to check this out.
[tags]Crypto, Cryptography[/tags]
Interesting short article at Mitch Kapor’s blog that I completely agree with. Americans’ dissatisfaction with pretty much every politician seems to be near or at historic highs, yet voter turn-out remains low. Why? Well, it could just be apathy or a total misunderstanding among citizens of how our government works, but Mitch suggests it’s just a general dislike for all the available options:
You would think that widespread dissatisfaction (Iraq, Congressional corruption, price of gas) would give rise to intense efforts to improve the situation, but instead there is general passivity, active political web sites of the right and left notwithstanding.
My speculation is that people simply aren’t moved by the choices they see. There is no belief that candidates of either party would really make a difference in setting us on a different course, in meeting the challenge of getting onto the right track. So, being as practical as they can, people go about their lives. If we’re not numb, we know there is something really wrong.
[tags]Politics, Mitch Kapor[/tags]
(via The Consumerist)
Wired has an article in which they experiment with taking a newly purchased computer and acting like a typical consumer who has not had any guidance or instruction in dealing with spam, pr0n, and other frequent Intarweb occurances. Note that this was done with the intention of seeing how quickly a system would become hopelessly unusable when used with a complete disregard for the consequences of one’s clicks.
What kind of idiot buys a computer and willingly – even eagerly – exposes it to all the malware and viruses he can? Me. I bought a Dell Dimension B110 ($468! Cheap!) and tried to kill it for more than two weeks. I clicked on every pop-up and downloaded the gnarliest porn, gambling, and hacker files I could find. It seems our Internet overlords are sterilizing spam. If I were to treat my body the way I treated this computer, I’d have yellow fever, bird flu, and Alzheimer’s. But the Dell? Eh. Somewhat the worse for wear.
. . .
Day 18: I take the Dell to Best Buy’s Geek Squad and tell a technician that I’m having a bit of trouble with it. Less than four hours later I get a call back from Carla. She declares it a total loss and advises wiping the hard drive and restoring it with system disks. “The tech ran a couple of virus scans,†she says. “One kept beeping so much that he had to just turn it off.†Ah, that’s the stuff.
[tags]Spam effects, Wired[/tags]
A really interesting article on Assassination in the United States. And for people who think the government keeps everything from us, this one is hosted by the secret service (should that be capitalized? I don’t know). Sadly, the article is a PDF file which contains an image (or images, I’m not certain). So I can’t rip out a suitable text section to post here. But trust me, this is a good read, if somewhat longer than most folks would want to read through. Check it out.
[tags]Assassination, Secret Service[/tags]
There have been a number of articles written about the security experts who recently during a security penetration test randomly dropped around the target facility USB flash drives with a trojan set to autorun. I like Bruce Schneier’s write-up and story links o this, so will reference it. First, Schneier has this:
Recently I’ve been seeing more and more written about this attack. The Spring 2006 issue of 2600 Magazine, for example, contains a short article called “iPod Sneakiness” (unfortunately, not on line). The author suggests that you can innocently ask someone at an Internet cafe if you can plug your iPod into his computer to power it up — and then steal his passwords and critical files.
So if you aren’t reading 2600 Magazine to keep up with the security underground, you’re in the dark. Get to reading it. I’ve found it to contain loads of worthless stuff, but the letters section and at least a few articles per issue are usually worth the cost of the magazine. And if any of you want to get me a lifetime subscription to 2600, I’d be more than happy to accept it…
Next, he links to the story about the USB drives used for the penetration test.
We figured we would try something different by baiting the same employees that were on high alert. We gathered all the worthless vendor giveaway thumb drives collected over the years and imprinted them with our own special piece of software. I had one of my guys write a Trojan that, when run, would collect passwords, logins and machine-specific information from the user’s computer, and then email the findings back to us.
The next hurdle we had was getting the USB drives in the hands of the credit union’s internal users. I made my way to the credit union at about 6 a.m. to make sure no employees saw us. I then proceeded to scatter the drives in the parking lot, smoking areas, and other areas employees frequented.
After this, it’s just a matter of waiting. And as noted in the penetration testing story, it didn’t take long. I have to admit, I probably would have gotten taken by this attack as well, and I’ve spent years working with computer security. It’s not that I wouldn’t be suspicious of the USB drives. My problem is, I didn’t know USB drives could be set to auto-run just like CD drives can. In fact, it’s the default behavior in Windows!
AutoRun is just a bad idea. People putting CD-ROMs or USB drives into their computers usually want to see what’s on the media, not have programs automatically run. Fortunately you can turn AutoRun off. A simple manual approach is to hold down the “Shift” key when a disk or USB storage device is inserted into the computer. A better way is to disable the feature entirely by editing the Windows Registry. There are many instructions for doing this online (just search for “disable autorun”) or you can download and use Microsoft’s TweakUI program, which is part of the Windows XP PowerToys download. With Windows XP you can also disable AutoRun for CDs by right-clicking on the CD drive icon in the Windows explorer, choosing the AutoPlay tab, and then selecting “Take no action” for each kind of disk that’s listed. Unfortunately, disabling AutoPlay for CDs won’t always disable AutoPlay for USB devices, so the registry hack is the safest course of action.
Bruce winds up with this comment that seems obvious to everyone interested in protecting computers except the folks at Microsoft:
In the 1990s, the Macintosh operating system had this feature, which was removed after a virus made use of it in 1998. Microsoft needs to remove this feature as well.
[tags]Security testing, USB drives, Autorun, Network security, Bruce Schneier[/tags]
(via boingboing)
Well, that’s what it looks like. Hawking will be working with his daughter to write a kids book to explain theoretical physics in a style kids can understand.
Physicist Stephen Hawking and his daughter are to write a science book for children which will be “a bit like Harry Potter”, but without the magic.
[tags]Stephen Hawking, Kid’s book[/tags]
In a further attempt to alienate customers, maintain an absurdly high price, and give Micro$oft a better lead in the next-gen console battle, Sony, through President and CEO Ken Kutaragi , has announced that the PlayStation 3 is a computer, not a console.
Kutaragi pointedly commented of the next-gen console, which is due to launch this November at dual price points of $499 and $599 in North America: “We don’t say it’s a game console (*laugh*) – PlayStation 3 is clearly a computer, unlike the PlayStations [released] so far.”
This, Sony says, leaves open the possibility of upgrades or additional configurations in the future.
. . . “I think it’s okay to release a [extended PS3] configuration every year”. It’s clear from the comments that Sony is indicating that it will be possible to upgrade hard drives and perhaps even other components easily.
The Sony CEO gave another example in the interview: “As PS3 is a computer… it also wants to evolve. We’ll want to upgrade the HDD size very soon – if new standards appear on the PC, we will want to support them. We may want the [Blu-ray] drive to [have a writable version upgrade].” He then tempered his comments: “Well, BD may not develop like that, though.” But extensibility is what Sony is stressing that you get for the price of a PS3, nonetheless.
I think Bill has the whole PS3 situation covered best of all the sites I follow. That last link in particular has some pretty good discussion on the fiasco.
[tags]PS3, Playstation 3, Sony suicide[/tags]
(via boingboing)
Well, the federal government has increased the price of saying “Fuck” on the public airwaves. It has gone from $32,500 to $325,000. I must say, that’s a bigger fucking price increase than I’ve ever seen elsewhere.
[tags]Govermental interference, FCC[/tags]
(via boingboing)
Ahhhh, open source makes everything better. OK, maybe not everything – but Free Beer 3.0 (with Guarana for extra alertness) is probably a wonderful by-product of the open source movement. Directions, naturally, are included.
[tags]Free Beer, Free as in Beer, Open Source[/tags]
Ohhhh, this is a looooonnnnngggggg page. Check out some of the silly names given to molecules by various scientists. Sometimes, the names are comical all by themselves. Sometimes, it takes reading the site’s commentary to get the laugh. Here’s a tiny sample (there are so many covered, that this really is a pretty small sampling).
Draculin
Draculin is the anticoagulant factor in vampire bat saliva. It is a large glycoprotein made from a sequence of 411 amino acids, but I haven’t been able to find a picture of it yet.
DEAD
DEAD is actually the acronym for diethyl azodicarboxylate, which is an important reagent in the well-known Mitsunobu reaction which performs a stereospecific conversion of an alcohol to a primary amine. It’s quite a good acronym, as DEAD is an orange liquid that’s explosive, shock sensitive, light sensitive, toxic, a possible carcinogen or mutagen, and an eye, skin and respiratory irritant! A version of diethyl azodicarboxylate mixed with acid and triphenylphosphine has also been termed DEADCAT.
Fuchsite
Fuchsite is a mineral, and is the green form of Muscovite, KAl2(AlSi3O10)(F, OH)2. It is used as an ornamental stone, and apparently has perfect cleavage…
Erotic Acid
No, this isn’t the world’s best aphrodisiac. Its correct name is orotic acid, but it has been misspelt so often in the chemical literature that it is also known as erotic acid! Another name for it is vitamin B13. Apparently, if you add another carbon to it, it becomes homo-erotic acid…
[tags]Molecules, Chemistry[/tags]
Another Modern Mechanix moment here on Blah, Blah, Blahg. I’ve gotten hooked on this site, and find great articles from days past that are interesting to me. This latest is a 1970 Popular Science article reproduced for your edification.
The light fantastic is no longer a scientific curiosity: It’s now being used for just about everything from moon measuring to tire checking
By C. P. GILMORE / PS Consulting Editor, Science
. . .
Modern use of lasers
Today, lasers are working for you in ways you may have never suspected. For example, they’re . . .
- Guiding tunnel and trench diggers
- Welding microcircuits
- Drilling holes in rubber nipples for baby bottles
- Spotting tire defects
- Machining parts to ultra-fine tolerances
- Helping predict earthquakes.
How lasers work
Naturally, this last line is followed by a write-up of how lasers actually work. The explanation might have been fairly technical at the time, but now it seems a little primitive. Or maybe I just know more about lasers than I realized. Regardless, the article continues:
First lasers
The laser first appeared as a glint in the eyes of physicists Charles Townes and Arthur Schawlow. In 1958 they wrote a paper saying that it should be possible to build a device in which photons, individual packages of light, could be used to stimulate excited molecules to give off yet more photons in step with the original ones. In 1960, physicist Theodore Maiman, then of Hughes, built one. Despite the high-powered physics that led up to its design, it was a deceptively simple deviceâ€â€a rectangular chunk of ruby surrounded by a bright photo-flash lamp. Every time the lamp flashed, its photons jiggled certain atoms in the ruby, causing them to give off photons and stimulate yet other atoms to radiate, just the way Schawlow and Townes said it would happen.
The new device was called a LASERâ€â€which stood for Light Amplification by Simulated Emission of Radiation. Since then, other investigators have made hundreds of liquids, solids, and gases lase, giving off hundreds of different wavelengths or colors of visible light, and hundreds of other wavelengths of invisible infrared and ultraviolet. Some generate power continuously, others in bursts or pulses.
Because laser light is coherent, it can be focused to an extremely small spot. The energy density of such a spot can be a billion watts per square centimeter or moreâ€â€enough to vaporize any substance in existence.
Whoa. That’s a lot of power in a single square centimeter. I believe that’s even more concentrated death power than the Solar Death Ray! After all this, there is a lot of information on potential practical uses for lasers – Military uses, highly accurate measurements, photo manipulation (particularly clearing up fuzzy images), and so on. One of the most interesting to me is for large TVs.
Television. Another promising area: big-screen color TV. The current color TV tube has about reached its limit. And that three-color dot system doesn’t produce the sharpest pictures. A much better TV system could be built using three laser beamsâ€â€red, blue, and greenâ€â€projected on a screen. The screen could be any sizeâ€â€it could cover a living-room wall or the end of a theatre.
At least two such systems have been built. General Telephone and Electronics has demonstrated a four-foot-wide TV picture. And now, at Expo 70 in Japan, Hitachi has on display a system with a picture 9 by 12 feet. People who have seen it say the picture is more brilliant and lifelike than the one we see on regular color TV sets.
Ultimately, such wall-to-wall TV may be practical in our homes. But right now, there’s a problem. Most lasers are highly inefficient. The big-screen laser display in Japan uses three lasers, each putting out about 7 watts of power. But it takes 30 kilowatts to run the equipmentâ€â€too much for use in the home.
They had me right up to 30 kilowatts. I don’t think my wife would let me run a 30 kilowatt TV in our house. Of course, think of the reduction in heating costs for the winter when such a beast was running! Anyway, I think this concept of large televisions in the home is worth pursuing. Someday it might be nice to have a screen large enough to function as a home theatre…
Sadly, nowhere in the article is there any guidance on how to mount these technological wonders on the heads of frikkin’ sharks for offensive use – I really thought such an idea would have been covered under the military research section. Although maybe that information is classified.
[tags]Modern Mechanix, Lasers, Frikkin’ Sharks[/tags]
One of those “How did I get here?” sites I found recently is the Intuitor Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics page. The site covers a lot of the bad physics we see in movies, and then gives a brief review of the quality of the physics displayed in some recent movies. What kind of things are covered on the site? Well:
Flashing Bullets
The terrorist unleashes a lengthy burst of submachine gunfire as the hero runs along a gangway in an industrial plant. Bullets bounce everywhere. This would be a dramatic event for almost anyone, yet moviemakers feel it must be enhanced. The special effects representing impacting bullets give off bright flashes of light. Normal bullets, especially handgun bullets, do not.
. . .
Problems with Windows
No, we’re not referring to Bill Gates’s woes (or lack of them), but to the ways movie windows refuse to obey simple laws of physics. Apparently no one in Hollywood has ever picked up a piece of broken glass and suffered the inevitable bloodied finger.
Saying that shards of broken glass are razor sharp is an understatement. A shattered window contains thousands of incredibly sharp edges and dagger-like points. It takes almost no force for one of these points or edges to cause a laceration. However, people in movies routinely jump through plate glass windows without receiving a single scratch.
All told, there are nearly a dozen descriptions of bad physics in movies, and the reality behind the false portrayals. My favorite, which has a few simple diagrams that show the Hollywood and the reality behind it, is the issue of lasers.
Visible Laserbeams
From security systems to space adventures, conveniently-visible laserbeams are a common part of our movie experience. Too bad they often don’t reflect reality.Multi-beamed laser security systems are a frequent Hollywood plot device. Again and again movies feature tension-filled scenes in which characters snake their way through mazes of laserbeams artistically arranged in random patterns by professional security fools to entertain us by making would-be thieves do contortions. A simple arrangement of closely-spaced parallel beams would be contortion-proof but certainly not as much fun.
[tags]Physics, Movies[/tags]