This Nerd Heard…

I thought this was an interesting read about passwords.

People definitely need to be more secure with their passwords.  The fact of the matter is though that weak passwords aren’t always as dangerous as just browsing the wrong web page can be.

So many people just install any software application a website thinks they ought to have.  Browser vulnerablities allow malicious site owners to force software installation on unsuspecting web surfers.

I’m not saying that people ought to continue on with their weak passwords.  I’m just saying that people need to be educated about more than just password creation.

It’s the fear of malware that causes me to force friends and family to use a severely limited account when they use my Windows machine.

There was an article on News Factor talking about one of the key players in Al Qaeda’s internet “marketing” campaign.  I’m not sure why the article is so late in coming since the guy was arrested almost a year ago.

Anyway, they say that this guy was instrumental to spreading Al Qaeda propoganda.  He made some crucial mistakes while working that helped narrow down his location to the London area.

The article goes on to compare Al Qaeda’s IT department to Script Kiddies, indicating that they are rather inept.  While these lower level people seem to be stumbling, I’m willing to bet that we won’t see Osama leaving his digital footprint anywhere.

Instead, I think that these organizations use these people as tools.  They couldn’t care less what happens to the people once their purpose has been served.  That is why they let them become suicide bombers and don’t blow themselves up.  They let these low level people stumble around taking up valuable resources that could be used to track them down.

When I setup this server, I was going to use FreeBSD but a coworker told me that OpenBSD touted their strong stance on security.  Their website boldly claims that there hasn’t been a security hole in their “default configuration” in something like eight years.  So I gave it a try and installed it.  I don’t know if sshd is part of the default configuration but it had SSH1 enabled by default.  I don’t think Fedora or Mandrake or any other Linux allows SSH1 by default.

I claim that sshd is part of their default config because all the install asked me was “Would you like to install sshd? [Y/n]“  So I instantly distrusted OpenBSD from that point on because their claim seemed outlandish.

Not only that, but the default installation didn’t even install the ports service (think urpmi, yum, etc).  That’s how their tutorial talked about installing all services.  I spent forever trying to find dependencies for all the things I wanted to install and just gave up.

So, even if they are the most secure OS in the world, they are probably the least user friendly.

Ok, I was pretty pleased with the results of my previous shield so I decided to get one for my digital camera.  The camera is a pretty typical Canon A510 or whatever.  It’s got a nice 2.5″ or so LCD display.

I put the invisible shield on last night around 5pm.  It went on rather well.  It fit so precisely that you cannot even tell that it is on my camera.  It looks perfect.  Best of all, it should be completely scratch proof.  I tried to feel the seam on it and I could not.  I suspect that this will help to keep it from coming off.  We’ll have to wait and see what happens over time, of course.

No Scott, you can’t scratch my screen. 

Ever since I got my xbox, it has had a problem when displaying.  It doesn’t happen constantly, or even consistently.  But every time I play, the display will go all crazy and start acting very jittery.  It’s hard to describe but basically the picture remains intact but gets shifted left and right really fast.  There may even be a small up/down component to it.  Obviously, it can be very difficult to play the game for the 2-5 seconds that it continues to do this.  I thought it was a bug that everyone experienced when in 1080i, though I could find no one else mentioning it on the net.  When I first contacted Microsoft about it, they blamed it on me.  They stated I needed to change the hardware settings to the output of the game (i.e. 720P for almost everything).  I tried explaining to them that the native resolution of my TV is 1080i and that everything ended up as a 1080i signal, it fell on deaf ears.

 My experience with support though suggested to me that it was a common problem.  Well after dealing with it for months, I mentioned it to my brother.  He has the same native resolution and he told me he has no problems at all.  So we swapped xboxes and I couldn’t reproduce the problem after several hours of playing.  I’m going to keep his for a few more days to verify.  But, I called support and told them I didn’t have this problem on my TV with a different xbox.  Their fix for the problem was hilarious.  Here it is:

 1.) Play one of the games that you experience the problem with (all games, coincidentally). 2.) When the problem occurs, yank the power from your xbox and then all other cables (while it is still on). 3.) Unplug all the wall cables. 4.) Plug everything back in again.

 I thought those were odd steps.  Who ever heard of a manufacturer telling you to not do a graceful shutdown on your computer hardware?  At least they conceded that if that doesn’t fix the problem that they will repair the unit.  So we’ll see what happens to my poor little xbox.

In his podcast for the week, Major Nelson interviewed the VP over digital media at Microsoft.  The big discussion, HD DVD and why it is better than Blu-ray.  He indicated that Blu-ray is more susceptible to scratches because the data layer is much closer to the surface of the disk.  He also talked about the sub-par performance of the Blu-ray movies that have come out.  Well, after looking at DigitalBits, they have confirmed that there appears to be a problem with the first round of Blu-ray titles.  But they also indicated that there is a problem with the HDMI output on the only available Blu-ray player.  This likely has a lot to do with the conception that Blu-ray movies just don’t look as good right now.  The Microsoft exec attributed this to the fact that they can only make single layer Blu-ray disks right now.

Which one will win out? Probably neither.  All Blu-ray players are going to support DVD which means that it won’t be difficult for them to be made to support HD-DVD.  The downside?  If you can only play one, you’ll have to go through the headache of returning disks because your not so techno-savvy relative gave you a Blu-ray disk instead of an HD-DVD disk (or vice-versa).

Well, for those of you who don’t know, I bought myself a Creative Zen Vision:M.  It’s sort of a personal media player, it’s the same size as the iPod Video 60GB.  Fits perfectly in the palm of one’s hand.  Only problem is, the thing scratches easily and is rather susceptible to finger prints also.  I had been looking around for the perfect case when I stumbled upon the Invisible Shield.  It arrived in the mail on Friday. 

For those of you who don’t know what it is, it is supposed to provide front and back protection.  It is virtually puncture proof and scratch proof.  I’ve seen them key the heck out of an iPod with it and not leave a mark.  I thought it would come in two pieces, one for the front and one for the back.  It came in four pieces instead.

Installation was rather interesting.  I had to put this tiny piece on over the slider (kind of like the scroll wheel but just up and down).  It was a bit awkward since it was so small.  Next I put a piece over the upper half (screen, etc), and then a piece on the lower half (over the buttons).  After that I put the backside on as one giant piece.  It had little flaps to cover the corners and around the power switch, headphone jack, and the port for connecting to my computer.  It was a bit awkward to put on also because it was more difficult to line up. Plus, the Zen has some indented spots where I ended up with some big air bubbles.

After putting everything on, I was instructed to let it sit for 24 hours so the cover could bond firmly.  I let it sit for maybe 16 hours before I started playing with it.  I haven’t tried to scratch it, and won’t try to do so, but it looks great.  Can’t even tell that it’s on when I look at the screen.  It also doesn’t get fingerprints on it nearly as easily either.  So far I am rather impressed.  We’ll see how well it sticks over time.