Graphic images are getting pretty hard to pick from the old "genuine" photo.
Check out this Fake or Foto Site
I got 7 out of 10
via Hutch

How often do you see the hero blow the lock off with his pistol?
At the Box O' Truth they did some investigating ...

1. "How hard is it to shoot off a lock?" Answer: Very hard.
2. Pistols won't shoot a lock off or even penetrate the lock.
3. Pistols are pistols and rifles are rifles. Enough said.
4. I now understand why our troops are often seen carrying "breeching shotguns" on their backs and a rifle in their hands. Shotguns will blow a lock off. Rifles will blow holes through a lock, but will not reliably shoot one off.
5. The rifles went through the locks with ease. It is obvious that you could "knaw" off the lock, little by little with a rifle, but a shotgun does it with one shot.

"An obscure branch of security studies" I told the ${BOSS}.

For a couple of years now, I have fantasized about putting a LED display in the rear window of the car, so that I can *communicate* with other drivers.

Well now it seems there is one This product is pretty much what I was imagining.
Except the messages I was anticipating were more like:
"Keep Left"
"Dip your lights"
"Back off"

I followed yet another clown driving and jabbering on a cellphone into work today. These idiots are so easy to spot, with their casual attention to the driving, and sluggish reactions to what's happening in front of them. Their road speed can go though wide fluctuations with no reference to the traffic conditions.
They *really are* a safety hazard.
Unfortunately the road safety people have got it very wrong with this issue.
By leaving out any regulation until a safety problem is proven, they have allowed a culture of acceptance to develop, and all those half-wits consider it to be their right to lower their attention threshold and drive with one hand while holding a cellphone in their ear.

While writing the previous post I impulsively used the spellchecker in the blogger interface and it made some rather interesting replacement suggestions:

rootkit: replace with "ratchet"
XCP: replace with "SCAB"
MediaMax: replace with "muddiness"
Sony's: replace with "song's" or "sin's"

Hmmmm...

So now it turns out that:
1. A rootkit (known as XCP) is found on about 50 of their CDs
2. Their uninstaller for this is a bigger security threat.
3. A second self-install software (MediaMax) is far more prevalent
and is "Spyware", in that it phones home.
4. The uninstaller for this is also a security problem.
5. The virus writers are all over this like a rash.
6. None of the anti-virus protection systems considered this a threat.

A summary can be found at: EFF and the whole thing is documented at Freedom to Tinker

An interesting solution has been suggested:

Every time a user plays a XCP-affected CD, the XCP player checks in with Sony's server. As Russinovich explained, usually Sony's server sends back a null response. But with small adjustments on Sony's end -- just changing the output of a single script on a Sony web server -- the XCP player can automatically inform users of the software improperly installed on their hard drives, and of their resulting rights and choices.

But as Bruce Schneier suggests:

This is so obviously the right thing to do. My guess is that it'll never happen.

This has got to be the best way to write a letter applying for a job as a librarian.

Ain't the latest cellphones nice and small and cute!
Unfortunately they *ALL* seem to be small, and this is a problem.
I have just spent a couple of hours with the old fella across the road trying to help him come to grips with a cellphone (Nokia 1100) which he got "in case of an emergency". Now he is no fool, but these new fangled cellphones are a bit of a mystery. It took over 2 hours to just go through the basics of turning it on, turning it off, and making a call.
Not hard you may say, but consider that the modern cellphone is not a telephone, it is a complex radio frequency device which is capable of allowing telephone calls. The telephone is a device which is installed by an technician, and setup ready to go; you just pick up the handset, and make a call. With the cellphone, you have to set it up yourself, you have to connect it to the network, and then you may make a call. All a bit of a challenge, if you are not familiar with it.
So when we were working through the operations, it became obvious to me that the dinky wee phone keys were too small for my friend's fat agricultural fingers as they mashed two or three buttons at a time. Once we substituted the end of a pencil for fingers, the next hurdle was the accessiblity of the display, and particularly *the menu*. A tricky concept to get across, when all we want to do is turn the phone off.
The size of the display was a challenge for him, as in his advanced years, his eye-sight is particularly poor, but he coped remarkably well. It did however make me aware of the fact that I also have difficultlies with my phone due to my need to put on a pair of reading glasses every time I use it. I cannot read the display clearly without them, and I sure-as-shit can't read the abc txting letters on the keypad (I don't do a lot of txting so I don't memorise them : I probably don't do a lot of txting 'cos I can't read the keys!).
About ten years back, I stopped wearing a wristwatch, as my cellphone doubled as a clock, but that was in the bad old days when the display characters were a decent size. My current Nokia phone (after years of various Ericsson phones) has the time in a microscopic text in the top corner. I CAN'T READ THAT. A nice touch is to have the screensaver show the time (nice BIG characters) but unfortunately this is unreadable in most light conditions, and as soon as I trigger the backlight on the display, the screensaver dissappears.
Consequently, I basically don't have a timepiece any more (and I won't submit to any of the recent avalance of spam selling fake Rolexs).
For me, the answer is to get one of the more complex (and expensive) phones which incorporate just about every other function, and have a large display.
For the old fella across the road, there is no technology which is *REAL SIMPLE* with big keys and big display. For him, there is only blind faith in the quick dials (as long as he remembers to turn it on first) ... using a stick.

Spotted while cruising through suburbia yesterday.

... I didn't know about this.
It seems that the Government Communications Security Bureau have been operating a thing called "The New Zealand Centre for Critical Infrastructure Protection" (CCIP) for some time now, and as far as I'm concerned, it has been completely below the radar.
Anyone in Aotearoa with a passing interest in Network Technology Security should be aware of these bunnies!
They seem to be very busy sumarising the various security alerts & advisories, and keep a good list running. Their newsletter looks like a handy resource for keeping dumbusers™ informed.
It seems to me that they need to get themselves a lot more into the spotlight, particularly in association with the Internet Safety Group's recently launched Net Basics campaign.

Another example of why DRM and the big corporations are not to be trusted in your computer.
This guy played a Sony copy-protected CD in his computer and it installed and tried to hide a rootkit. The arrogance of these companies in believing they can can install software, (apparently poorly written, draining system resources, and very difficult to remove) in the guise of protecting their revenue streams (trans: exploitation of artists who don't know any better).
The sooner that the "recording companies" are removed from the relationship between the performers and their audience, the better.

UPDATE: "Virus writers have begun taking advantage of Sony-BMG's use of rootkit technology in DRM software". That didn't take long, 'though hardly surprising considering the publicity.