Elvis leeft! Er zijn veel mensen die altijd al dachten dat de dood van Elvis Presley in scene was gezet en dat blijkt nu waar te zijn. Elvis leeft en heeft een Nederlands paspoort. Althans dat heeft de onderzoeker Jeroen van Beek aangetoond. De chip die gebruikt wordt in de Europese paspoorten is gekraakt (zie OV-chipkaart).
Hier het hele verhaal op nu.nl
Now here’s a nice video in which some German hackers explain how they analyzed and hacked the Mifare chip that is about to be used in the chipcard for Dutch public transportation. Although each chip has a unique ID the Germans show how they can alter the key so it card behaves as another card with another unique ID. So the ID can’t be changed but using the key a card can be cloned. They will publish full details somewhere next year. As they say it: “start migrating now”. Video is about one hour.
Today I came across a small article that mentioned that the Data Loss Database is taken over and will be maintained by the Open Security Foundation. Ignorant as I am I didn’t even knew there was such a database. It holds all known cases of data loss world wide. Take a look at that and see how many cases are reported. Once again the only question that comes to mind is: when will we ever learn?
Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), has been known for his controversial and sometimes radical statements. So in many cases I don’t (fully) agree with Richard but in this article I like the gest of his article regarding proprietary software and the stranglehold it keeps on its users.
In the article Stallman calls copying software for neighbours a neighbourly thing to do. I feel that if the software is targeted at home users (with acceptable pricing) you should not copy the software. License a copy for a few bucks. However when software is targeted for business-use I don’t think home users should have to pay up. If I were Microsoft, only business/professional use of MS Office would require a license. Home use of MS Office would be free. Does Microsoft really believe that an eight year old who writes a letter to grandma should pay hunderds of dollars for an office license? I don’t think this is very realistic. I would like to see a business plan that projects expected revenue from eight year olds writing letters to grandma. Get out of here!
Read the view of Stallman on Microsoft, Bill Gates and proprietary software in general in his article. Stallman refers to an “infamous open letter” in his article which I reprinted below for your convenience.
SPAM is bad. We all get unsolicited email every now and then. I’m not really bothered by it. Most of the spam is caught automatically and every day i get around 4 or 5 spam messages. That’s acceptable. Now a new form of SPAM is winning ground: SPIT (SPAM over Internet Telephony). You only encounter SPAM when you open your mailbox. SPAM that arrives in the middle of the night will not wake you up… with SPIT this is different… so the anti-SPIT wars has started.
So prepare for some restless nights, the good thing is that you can order viagra at bargain discount rates. I hope they sell sleeping pills as well.
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.
Ja kijkbuisvriendjes, de feniks is geland. Het gaat hier natuurlijk niet over Harry Potter maar over de nieuwe mars missie van de Nasa. De Phoenix lander is op de noordelijke ijskap van Mars geland. Het doel is om te boren in (en onder) het ijs in de hoop daar sporen van (vergaan) leven te vinden.
Uiteraard is er de officiële website waarop ook foto’s gepubliceerd worden die gemaakt zijn door de lander. De signalen doen er 15 minuten over om van Mars terug naar de Aarde te komen. Maar dan heb je ook wat:
De actiegroep “Wij vertrouwen stemcomputers niet“, een initiatief van o.a. Rop Gonggrijp, heeft haar doel bereikt. Voorlopig worden in Nederland geen stemcomputers gebruikt. Het stemmen gaat weer ouderwets met pen en papier. Dat maakte het Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken vrijdag bekend. De stemmachines van fabrikant Nedap bleken onveilig.
Men heeft succesvol de software reverse engineered en aangepast. Daarnaast zenden de machines signalen uit waarmee afgeluisterd kan worden wat iemand gestemd heeft. Eindelijk eens een goed besluit uit Den Haag.
Forget about the blackberries and the iPhones of this world. It’s old technology. Within a few weeks anyone using an iPhone will look like a dinosaur, the blackberry people will feel like fossils. New technology is here, baby! Make way for the new generation. The new generation of mobile computing and communication will be Smart Mobile Utility Telephone or SMUT for short. You’ll find an image of my new SMUT below.
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.
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.
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:
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″.