Free Novel

Here is a free novel I found called Geek Mafia. I have not read it yet, but from what I have read it seems pretty good.

You can get this novel here.

The fabled Star Wars cartoon finally!

I'm a sci-fi geek. I love Star Wars. After the last movie came and went, there was a great disturbance in the Force. No more Star Wars? Sadness. Pure sadness! But then, George, magnificent George, always thinking. "We're gonna make a cartoon!" he'd said. And I didn't believe him. A Star Wars cartoon? Sure, there was the Micro Series (both of 'em!), but an on going series? Well, here's the first (of many, I hope) trailers.

One note for the skeptic, there's some debate as to whether this CG trailer is just a teaser or actually what we should expect from the series. I dunno, but this thing looks cool as hell!

Mac Myth

The "myth" that apple computers are hard, if not impossible to be hacked is, in the words of the "Mythbusters", busted.

According to Infoworld:

A hacker managed to break into a Mac and win a $10,000 prize as part of a contest started at the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver.



In winning the contest, he exposed a hole in Safari, Apple's browser. "Currently, every copy of OS X out there now is vulnerable to this," said Sean Comeau, one of the organizers of CanSecWest.
The conference organizers decided to offer the contest in part to draw attention to possible security shortcomings in Macs. "You see a lot of people running OS X saying it's so secure, and frankly, Microsoft is putting more work into security than Apple has," said Dragos Ruiu, the principal organizer of security conferences including CanSecWest



Initially, contestants were invited to try to access one of two Macs through a wireless access point while the Macs had no programs running. No attackers managed to do so, and so conference organizers allowed participants to try to get in through the browser by sending URLs via e-mail.
Dino Dai Zovi, who lives in New York, sent along a URL that exposed the hole. Because the contest was only open to attendees in Vancouver, he sent it to a friend who was at the conference and forwarded it on.

Come to think of it, I have never ran across anyone actually trying to hack a Mac. Meh.

The URL opened a blank page but exposed a vulnerability in input handling in Safari, Comeau said. An attacker could use the vulnerability in a number of ways, but Dai Zovi used it to open a back door that gave him access to anything on the computer, Comeau said.



The vulnerability won't be published. 3Com's TippingPoint division, which put up the cash prize, will handle disclosing it to Apple.

And you know Apple is not going to let out vulnerability. Come on Apple we just want to know so we can gain more um knowledge, yeah knowledge. We have a right to etc... We don't want to expand the novice hacker's abilities worldwide or anything. We promise.

One reason Macs haven't been much of a target for hackers is that there are fewer to attack, said Terri Forslof, manager of security response for TippingPoint. "It's an incentive issue. The Mac is not as widely deployed of a platform as, say, Windows," she said. In this case, the cash may have provided motivation.

Plus everyone absolutley hates Micro$oft and they deserve our undying hatred. @#$% YOU!

You know come to think about it this isn't even a hack on the actual Mac OS. It's just exploiting a vulnerability in the OS's default web browser. And, come on, who doesn't use Firefox these days? If you don't you need to, really.

Ok that is all.

P.S. @#$% YOU Micro$oft!

Update: Dell Ubuntu Specs

From Dell's Blog:

Ubuntu 7.04 Offering—Technical Details

Before we announce the availability of Ubuntu 7.04 on select Dell client systems, I'd like to give an overview of what customers can expect from our initial Ubuntu offering.

Availabile Software and Hardware

• The default software from the Ubuntu media will be installed on the system, including kernel and applications.
• The peripheral options offered with Ubuntu will be a subset of what is offered with other operating systems. We're offering the hardware options on each system that have the most mature and stable Linux driver support. These hardware options have been thoroughly tested by the Linux team here at Dell.
• We configure/install open source drivers for hardware, when possible.
• We use partial open-source or closed source ("restricted" in Ubuntu terms) drivers where there is no equivalent open-source driver. This includes Intel wireless cards and Conexant modems.
• We will have a wiki page on our linux.dell.com website that gives technical details of the supported systems, information on the device drivers used for system peripherals, details of our Ubuntu factory-installation, and information on the problems we found during our testing, with their fixes/workarounds.
• We recommend Linux users buy Dell printers that have PostScript engines in them. The previous hyperlink lists those printers. You can also check in the Tech Specs tab for each printer on Dell.com show if it has PostScript or not.

Software and Hardware Not Offered

• For hardware options not offered with this release, we are working with the vendors of those devices to improve the maturity and stability of their associated Linux drivers. While this may not happen overnight, we do expect to have a broader range of hardware support with Linux over time.
• At this time, we are not including any support for proprietary audio or video codecs that are not already distributed with Ubuntu 7.04. These include MPEG 1/2/3/4, WMA, WMV, DVD, Quicktime, etc. We are evaluating options for providing this support in the future.

University of Missouri Hacked for the Second Time This Year

About 22,396 students had their acounts compromised due to the hacker or hackers who gained access to UM web page that was set up by the IT department.

The IP addresses were traced to two overseas destination, one in China and the other in Australia. Although this does not mean that it actually came from these destinations because the IP addresses could have been spoofed or could have been going through any number of proxy servers.

This is the second attack that followed another attack in January.

Hmm.. Why are hackers so interested in UM? What secrets do they hold? Hmmm..

Optimus Maximus keyboard!!! *SPOOGE*

Since it was first reported to exist, like, a MILLION years ago, the Optimus keyboard is finally going to see the light of day. There's a count-down timer on Art.Lebe.Dev that shows when they're going to start accepting pre-orders for this magnificent piece of technology.

Don't know what I'm so excited over? How about a keyboard with a tiny LCD screen for each key. Oh, and did I mention that you can program those keys to change when appropriate? For instance, when working in Photoshop, the "alphabet" keys turn into pictures of the tools that are bound to each hotkey. And when playing Quake, the ASDW keys turn into arrow keys, indicating that they're used for movement. Plus, there are ten (10) fully programmable keys to the left of the actual keyboard. Those can be used as launch keys for programs, or you can use them as 10 more bindable keys. Awesome, right?

http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus-concept/ <--- Concept for actual keyboard

http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus/ <---- Actual Keyboard


*Spooge* Nuff said.

Ubuntu and Dell - Together at last?

Well, this has all KINDS of implications, now doesn't it?

The New Apple iphone

I am a gadget freak. I love all sorts of gadgets and I will get my hands on them whenever I possibly can. When I first heard about Apples new trendy iphone, I couldn't stop drooling. It provides a variety of features like the, nowadays, standard mp3 player and video player. It also boasts of a version of OSX, Email via Yahoo mail, and tons of other features too numerous to list here.

Now after researching on the iphone I'm not so sure I am all that excited anymore. For a price of around $600 it lacks on other features that many other cellular providers offer. First I have heard that the battery doesn't last for more than five hours if you plan on watching video and listening to music. Five hours! It also has no GPS system, which is a growing popularity for new phones today. The touch screen seems at first to be a very cool feature for the iphone but is very clumsy and hard to navigate.



Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had some things to say about the new iphone:




"There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get."


All in all I am usually the kind of person who doesn't follow what critics say and I just try everything for myself. I would love to get my hands on the iphone, but alas, I am not a rich man. A price of around $600 is just too expensive for my blood. I think I will just wait until someone I know gets one then I will give it a spin. There are other gadgets out there for me to play with for now.

You can take a look at the iphone and demos of everything it can do here.