Het bedrijf Iopener Media gaat, tot op 30 centimeter nauwkeurige, plaatsbepalingsgegevens van formule-1 auto’s vastleggen en opslaan. Het idee erachter is dat deze data gebruikt gaat worden in racegames om op die manier tegen een echte coureur te kunnen racen. Dat zou zelfs semi-live moeten kunnen met een vertraging van ongeveer vijf seconden. Volgens de oprichter, Andy Lurling, zijn er al zes spelontwikkelaars geïnteresseerd en zouden de eerste spellen in september op de markt komen die deze technologie (Engelse pagina) ondersteunen.

Het is maar de vraag hoe leuk dit echt gaat zijn. Als de speler door gebrekkige implementatie van de natuurwetten veel harder door een bocht kan dan een coureur in werkelijkheid is er geen klap aan. Het staat en valt dus met de kwaliteit van de game zelf.

Zojuist op slashdot gelezen dat men in Zweden een primeurtje heeft. Men heeft een nieuwe techniek gebruikt om van 60.000 gewone foto’s een 3D model te maken van de stad Stockholm. Een beetje wat Google Earth ook doet maar die gebruiken laser-meet techniek om hoogten te bepalen. Het model van Stockholm is in acht (!) dagen gemaakt inclusief het maken van de foto’s. Hoe lang het geduurd heeft om de software te ontwikkelen is onbekend. Je kunt hier de stad betreden. Zware Java-applet waarschuwing voor diegene die daar alergisch voor zijn. Even het vinkje aanklikken en op de knop drukken en de applet toont Stockholm. Vooral bij uitvergroten zie je wel wat vervorming hier en daar. De techniek is niet zo goed als van Google Earth maar het is een enorme prestatie om uit gewone foto’s zo’n model te genereren. Petje af!

Ik heb het geluk gehad om eens een weekje in Stockholm geweest te zijn. De stad bestaat uit een aantal eilanden, door wegen verbonden. Het eiland in het midden is de oude stad (”Gamla Stan”). Dit is het startpunt van de applet. De oude stad vind je in zuidwaardse richting. Helaas krijg je geen ‘mouse over’ informatie. Je kunt ook het Vasa museum zien (een donker gebouw bij de droogdokken dat lijkt op een groot zeilschip). Hier conserveren ze de resten van een oud oorlogsschip dat slechts enkele tientallen meters gevaren heeft bij de tewater lating en kapseizde. De boot is in de kleiachtige substantie van de bodem gezonken en opmerkelijk goed geconserveerd gebleven voor een houten boot.

So you got the brand-new windows rendition? Are you feeling secure now that you run the most secure windows ever? Well take a look at this and wonder how come Microsoft just doesn’t understand security. In this case priviliges are assigned based on a filename (Utilman.exe). So what happens when you rename another binary to Utilman.exe? Take a look and laugh your ass off. I’ve said it many times before and I will repeat it over and over again: Microsoft sucks!! They really don’t get security, they really don’t.

Here’s your video. Be careful I almost forgot to breathe while laughing. Hats off to the guys at offensive security. You almost killed me with this.

Backtrack is a live linux distro. You can boot it on any system to get a full working linux environment. That is used to copy the cmd.exe to Utilman.exe

I don’t like Microsoft. True: without windows the peneratation of the personal computer would not have been as high as now. So also the widespread use of internet would not have been possible without Microsoft. Albeit I really have a problem with the way Microsoft does business. The latest scandal is that MSN and live messenger now block URL’s with YouTube links in them. So you can’t send any funny YouTube video’s to your friends who are using MSN of Windows live messenger.

This kind of practices really make me sick. I hope this will backfire on Microsoft in ways they can’t imagine.

Update: The junta in Redmond reversed the policy after being exposed.

Here’s a remarkable report on a bug that has been living in BSD for over 25 years. At one time, BSD-hero, Kirk McKusick implemented the dir* library in BSD to prevent applications from having to implement the directory oriented functions themselves. Afterwards he changed 22 programs that were using direct directory handling to using the operating system functions. The bug could prolong itself for 25 years because it manifests itself in a particular (rare) case:

This code will not work as expected when seeking to the second entry of a block where the first has been deleted: seekdir() calls readdir() which happily skips the first entry (it has inode set to zero), and advance to the second entry. When the user now calls readdir() to read the directory entry to which he just seekdir()ed, he does not get the second entry but the third.

Even OSX has the same problem since it has BSD under the hood. The good news is that BSD now even got better and a small consolation for all coders out there: even Kirk McKusick slips one in every now and then. Happy coding.

Did you wonder why the linux support of your graphics card from ATI or Nvidia is so crappy? Why don’t they just open source the driver? Now we know: here’s a link that shows you how to upgrade your consumer Nvidia GeForce videocard into a (way more expensive) Nvidia Quadro card. Of course you are not instructed to solder extra GPU’s on your videocard, this is a software modification. It allows you to use the premium drivers intended for the Quadro series on your GeForce. So the hardware is very similar but you pay around $1000 extra for the driver to make the card faster in professional 3D software.

So know you know why there never will be high quality open-source drivers for your graphics card: the manufacturers want to rip you.

Obama? Clinton? No, no, no. This is not about the democratic candidate election this is about important stuff. Last night the Webby Awards winners were announced. As you might know my good friend Sander was nominated with his excellent Rube Goldberg machine viral for Hema.

Now is a good time to put on your party hats: Sander has WON THE WEBBY!!

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

References:

• (dutch) nu.nl meldt winnen Webby voor Hema viral
• (dutch) Bright.nl bericht er ook over
• (dutch) Webwereld kan niet achterblijven
• (dutch) Computer Totaal!
• (dutch) Planet heeft zelfs een screenshot
• (dutch) Emerce spreekt van ‘Oscars van het internet’

Today is the 44th birthday of the first BASIC interpreter. At Dartmouth college two professors, John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz, ran the first program in their new computer programming language BASIC (Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code). They created BASIC to provide access for non-science students to computers. At 04:00 (AM) on May 1st 1964 the General Electric GE-225 mainframe of Dartmouth college started running a BASIC interpreter. This made the power of computing available to students and staff members who could not program Algol or Fortran.

BASIC was so simple that it became the language of choice for virtual all homecomputers albeit each had its own dialect. Exchanging programs always required considerable porting effort. However the computer industry owes Kemeny and Kurtz a lot. BASIC allowed the computer to enter the homes of millions of users and was one of the factors that made people accept and embrace computers.

BASIC has since evolved into a “serious” object oriented language. The rise of the BASIC compiler made it a viable alternative to develop production code in BASIC. For a long time BASIC was the scripting or ‘automation’ language in a lot of Microsoft products (VBA). I learned to program BASIC when I was 12 and abandoned it a few years later in favor of 6502 assembly. Maybe today is a good day to program a “hello world” in BASIC. You can do that online, have fun.

I have a fairly strict power management and security settings on my Mac. This will cause the screen to dim when the laptop is not used for a few moments. Furthermore the screensaver will kick-in after a couple of minutes and requires my password to unlock. Now this can be annoying when you are watching a movie on YouTube or something that don’t require interactivity with your Mac. The screen will dim and after a few minutes the screensaver will hide the movie. Sure, you can change your power management and security settings but that is also annoying. So just put your Mac on caffeine. It puts a tiny icon in your menu bar and allows you to (temporarily) disable the screen dimmer and the screensaver. You can even trigger it on a timeout so you will never forget to ‘restore’ the settings. After the specified timeout Cafeine will turn on the dimmer and the screensaver again.

Microsoft presented Windows Vista as the most secure Windows ever. It is, by far, the most annoying Windows version ever. It has a security measure called UAC (User Account Control) in which programs run under a restricted user (not new, Unix anyone?). When an application wants to do something that requires a higher privilege-level UAC will show a pop-up in which the user has to agree on the raised privileges. The result of this is a constant, non-stop, bombardment of pop-up windows bothering the user constantly with “security” questions. It feels secure. You think you are in control. Now read this. These guys created a program that lets you reboot Vista without UAC kicking in even once. The trick? Let part of your program run as a service which has “System Administrator” privileges.

Windows Vista is not more secure than windows XP is. All Vista users can now deactivate UAC since it is a hoax anyway. Cancel or Allow?

update: It seems Windows 2000 is the more secure Windows version. At least it requires a password of 18770 characters and cannot repeat any of your previous 30689 passwords.

There’s a new version of VMware Fusion for your Mac released. Version 1.1.2 (87978). I have a license for verion 1.1.1 and the updater accepted that license and installed version 1.1.2 under the same license. So updating is free. There are some issues resolved. One of the issues was a bug that prevented running virtual machines being backed up using TimeMachine. This was fixed in Mac OS X 10.5.2 and TimeMachine backups are now enabled in VMware Fusion. Update now!

Now this is a remarkable piece of technology. Ksplice allows you to patch a running Linux kernel without the need to reboot your system. Of course there are restrictions. The patch should not introduce semantic changes to kernel datastructures. Now this is not really a restriction since most security patches won’t change the kernel datastructures and this technique is typically used to apply security patches to running systems. ZDnet also reports on Ksplice.

When I have the time I will definitely play around with this software.

Oh the lucky bastard. This guy went to a flea market and came across roms for the old Colecovision console as the label read ” Cabbage Patch Kids’ Day in the Park” which was only released on Coleco, and a very poor game by the way. At home he took a close look at all the eproms and noticed some labels mentioning “CPKPark Atari 2600″. An amazing find. The 2600 rendition of the game is never seen by anyone other than its creator Ed English as described here.

Now he only needs someone who can help dump these eproms. Great story! The Atari 2600 scene is very much alive these days so hopefully we will get some screenshots soon

When Windows Vista was released we were led to believe that Vista was the best and most secure Windows ever. It didn’t take long before the first complaints came in. Very limited hardware and software support. Annoying user interface that keeps bothering users with ’security related’ questions. Vista was a big disappointment and one of the worst windows versions ever. Now we finally know the reason: according to Steve Ballmer Windows Vista is not finished. It is a work in progress. Steve confirms what we already knew: Microsoft sells unfinished beta-software with known defects. Thanks you Steve. Put Vista where the sun doesn’t shine.

Now this is nice. IBM piloted using Macs in the IBM office. Currently IBM uses Microsoft Windows. The users are very positive (no surprise here). Not all users were that happy. One of the Mac pilot users visited customers offsite. His remark: “When presenting at customer or external meetings, I have been greeted with the ‘wow factor.’ ‘Where’s the ThinkPad, IBM uses Apples now?’”. Most pilot users (19 out of 22) wanted to keep the Mac for their daily business. This was despite some software that they needed but didn’t work on their Macs:

• IBM’s own DB2 database and Websphere application server
• IBM’s Rational Application Developer IDE for J2EE apps
• IBM’s WebSphere Integration Developer SOA development tool
• support for IBM’s InfoPrint workgroup laser printers
• Microsoft Visio diagraming software and NetMeeting video conferencing tool

This article has some nice quotes from the pilot users. Way to go IBM! Give it a positive swing: “Mac OS X the best alternative for OS/2″.