Have you considered that someone could be reading what's on your monitor from a few rooms away? It's unlikely, but possible, as work by Cambridge University computer security researcher Markus Kuhn shows.
A radio antenna and radio receiver - equipment totalling less than £1000 - is all you need.
Back in 1985, Wim Van Eck proved it was possible to tune into the radio emissions produced by electromagentic coils in a CRT display and then reconstruct the image. The practice became known as Van Eck Phreaking, and NATO spent a fortune making its systems invulnerable to it.
If everything is just right, you can pick up signals from some distance. "I was able to eavesdrop certain laptops through three walls," says Kuhn. "At the CEBIT conference, in 2006, I was able to see the Powerpoint presentation from a stand 25 metres away."
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Is it time to buy a new computer?
1) A bad power supply ($50-$75 generally) could make your system do all kinds of wacked out things. It might cause it to crash unexpectedly, never truly start up, or it might even get most of the way into windows and then suddenly freeze. I generally suspect the power supply when someone tells me about a multitude of problems (like your system is doing all those things you mentioned and not just one of them) as it will cause different things to happen at different times.
2) Failing hard drives ($50-$75)could show itself as corrupt data, the system wanting to boot into safe mode, random system freezes, or even the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). Now while all of these sound similar to the problems of a failing power supply the differences are there, but unfortunately unless you are a computer tech, you might not pick up on them. There are diagnostic tools you can run against your hard drive, but that would be a discussion for another day.
3) The RAM (memory) in your system has "gone bad" (about $100). While this is a less likely scenario it can happen and will again cause all sorts of different responses. As with the hard drives there are diagnostic tools to use to test your system memory.
4) Video card isn't working ($60). This is one of the easier items to detect as you will SEE what it is doing. When a video card fails it generally is fairly evident as your display will no longer show anything, or the text becomes all garbled.
5) Motherboard or CPU is beginning to fail ($200+). This one would most likely be a definite death sentence unless the system was less than a year or so old. However, this could be one of the toughest items for the casual user to determine as bad so it isn't too easy to make this call.
6) No bad hardware, just a tired old operating system (Free - maybe). Windows is a bit of a fickle operating system and over time it tends to deteriorate just from normal use. Installing and removing programs leaves traces of old software that can build up to quite a nasty mess. If you are diligent about backing up your data (you ARE right?!?!) then you could put in the disk that came with your computer and "wipe" it clean. If you have a name brand system (Dell, Compaq, Gateway, etc) then most of those have disks (you may have had to burn them yourself) that will restore the system to exactly the way it was when you first brought it home. BEWARE though that these disks do NOTHING to save your data, if you put the disk in and just run it without making sure you have everything copied off your system that you need, then you WILL lose your data.
The bottom line is what do you want from your computer. Were you wishing (when it was still working "OK") that it was a little faster, or that it had this or that feature? If so then you probably want to look at something new. If it was handling all the tasks you wanted from it then maybe getting it repaired is a better alternative. Just as there are many possibilities to why your computer is doing something wrong, there are multiple factors into deciding to just replace the whole thing.
Hope that gives you a little guidance in making a decision. Just remember that somewhere around 70% (that number is made up by me, but if anything I would expect it to be low) of the computers out there are NOT utilized to their full potential and most 5 year old computers are still way more than capable of doing what most people need from them. Just like with a car, they need a little maintenance from time to time as they won't run indefinitely when ignored. Doing some routing servicing could get you several more years out of what you already have.
Greg Hicks
2) Failing hard drives ($50-$75)could show itself as corrupt data, the system wanting to boot into safe mode, random system freezes, or even the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). Now while all of these sound similar to the problems of a failing power supply the differences are there, but unfortunately unless you are a computer tech, you might not pick up on them. There are diagnostic tools you can run against your hard drive, but that would be a discussion for another day.
3) The RAM (memory) in your system has "gone bad" (about $100). While this is a less likely scenario it can happen and will again cause all sorts of different responses. As with the hard drives there are diagnostic tools to use to test your system memory.
4) Video card isn't working ($60). This is one of the easier items to detect as you will SEE what it is doing. When a video card fails it generally is fairly evident as your display will no longer show anything, or the text becomes all garbled.
5) Motherboard or CPU is beginning to fail ($200+). This one would most likely be a definite death sentence unless the system was less than a year or so old. However, this could be one of the toughest items for the casual user to determine as bad so it isn't too easy to make this call.
6) No bad hardware, just a tired old operating system (Free - maybe). Windows is a bit of a fickle operating system and over time it tends to deteriorate just from normal use. Installing and removing programs leaves traces of old software that can build up to quite a nasty mess. If you are diligent about backing up your data (you ARE right?!?!) then you could put in the disk that came with your computer and "wipe" it clean. If you have a name brand system (Dell, Compaq, Gateway, etc) then most of those have disks (you may have had to burn them yourself) that will restore the system to exactly the way it was when you first brought it home. BEWARE though that these disks do NOTHING to save your data, if you put the disk in and just run it without making sure you have everything copied off your system that you need, then you WILL lose your data.
The bottom line is what do you want from your computer. Were you wishing (when it was still working "OK") that it was a little faster, or that it had this or that feature? If so then you probably want to look at something new. If it was handling all the tasks you wanted from it then maybe getting it repaired is a better alternative. Just as there are many possibilities to why your computer is doing something wrong, there are multiple factors into deciding to just replace the whole thing.
Hope that gives you a little guidance in making a decision. Just remember that somewhere around 70% (that number is made up by me, but if anything I would expect it to be low) of the computers out there are NOT utilized to their full potential and most 5 year old computers are still way more than capable of doing what most people need from them. Just like with a car, they need a little maintenance from time to time as they won't run indefinitely when ignored. Doing some routing servicing could get you several more years out of what you already have.
Greg Hicks
Google Video DRM
With the introduction of its new copy-restriction video service, Google has diverged from its corporate ethos. For the first time in the company's history, it has released a product that is designed to fill the needs of someone other than Google's users.
Here's how the Google Video DRM works: when you download a restricted video from Google, it locks that video to your account and software player. Every time you want to play the video, your player has to communicate with Google to determine whether you are currently permitted to play it; if the player doesn't get the answer it's looking for, it won't play the video. The specifics of how this works aren't available -- Google hasn't published any details of how the security is implemented, committing the cardinal sin of "security through obscurity."
The video is encrypted (scrambled), which means that it is unlawful for competitors of Google (or free/open source software authors) to make their own players for the video, even if they can figure out how to decrypt it.
Other DRM vendors, like Apple, have threatened to sue competitors for making players that can play their proprietary file-formats.
Why Has Google Done This?
The question is, why has Google done this? There's no Google customer who woke up this morning looking for a way to do less with her video. There's no Google customer who lacked access to this video if he wanted it (here's a tip: enter the name of a show or movie into Google and add the word "torrent" to the search, and within seconds Google will have delivered to you a link through which you can download practically everything in the Google DRM catalog, for free, without DRM -- although it may be illegal for the person you get it from to send it to you).
That's not to say that there's nothing problematic about getting your video through Google this way. But the problems of the inability of the entertainment industry to adapt to the Internet are the entertainment industry's problems, not Google's. Google's really good at adapting to the Internet -- that's why it's capitalized at $100 billion while the whole of Hollywood only turns over $60 billion a year.
But once Google starts brokering the relationship between Hollywood and their audience, this becomes Google's problem too, which means that all the absurd, business-punishing avenues pursued by Hollywood are now Google's business, as well.
It appears that the main reason Google got involved in DRM was to compete with Microsoft and Yahoo, both of whom have created online video stores with movies and shows from major entertainment companies. These companies demand that their works be locked away in wrappers that restrict users in ways that have nothing to do with copyright law and so if you want a license from them, you've got to play ball, even though no customer wants this. You can't exactly put your offerings online under a banner that says, "Now with fewer features!"
This Time, Google's Users Don't Come First
This isn't the first time Google's had a major industry demand that it design a product in a way that didn't put Google's users front and center.
As documented in John Battelle's excellent book The Search, there was a strong push on Google in the early days to adopt graphic advertising banners for the site. All of Google's competitors were doing it, making a fortune at it, and no one wanted to advertise via text-ads even though its users clearly found them them less invasive than graphic banners.
But Google hewed to a brilliant and successful strategy of never putting a supplier's need above its searchers' needs. This, more than Google's controversial "Don't be evil" motto is the true force driving its most successful offerings. Google refused to graphic ads and only accepted ads from suppliers who shared its view of how to deliver a quality service to its users.
Abandoning this is a terrible idea and one that's exacerbated by design decisions in Google's DRM technology. The outcome is a Google service that opens the company and its users to unprecedented new risk.
Liberally taken from Richard Forno
Here's how the Google Video DRM works: when you download a restricted video from Google, it locks that video to your account and software player. Every time you want to play the video, your player has to communicate with Google to determine whether you are currently permitted to play it; if the player doesn't get the answer it's looking for, it won't play the video. The specifics of how this works aren't available -- Google hasn't published any details of how the security is implemented, committing the cardinal sin of "security through obscurity."
The video is encrypted (scrambled), which means that it is unlawful for competitors of Google (or free/open source software authors) to make their own players for the video, even if they can figure out how to decrypt it.
Other DRM vendors, like Apple, have threatened to sue competitors for making players that can play their proprietary file-formats.
Why Has Google Done This?
The question is, why has Google done this? There's no Google customer who woke up this morning looking for a way to do less with her video. There's no Google customer who lacked access to this video if he wanted it (here's a tip: enter the name of a show or movie into Google and add the word "torrent" to the search, and within seconds Google will have delivered to you a link through which you can download practically everything in the Google DRM catalog, for free, without DRM -- although it may be illegal for the person you get it from to send it to you).
That's not to say that there's nothing problematic about getting your video through Google this way. But the problems of the inability of the entertainment industry to adapt to the Internet are the entertainment industry's problems, not Google's. Google's really good at adapting to the Internet -- that's why it's capitalized at $100 billion while the whole of Hollywood only turns over $60 billion a year.
But once Google starts brokering the relationship between Hollywood and their audience, this becomes Google's problem too, which means that all the absurd, business-punishing avenues pursued by Hollywood are now Google's business, as well.
It appears that the main reason Google got involved in DRM was to compete with Microsoft and Yahoo, both of whom have created online video stores with movies and shows from major entertainment companies. These companies demand that their works be locked away in wrappers that restrict users in ways that have nothing to do with copyright law and so if you want a license from them, you've got to play ball, even though no customer wants this. You can't exactly put your offerings online under a banner that says, "Now with fewer features!"
This Time, Google's Users Don't Come First
This isn't the first time Google's had a major industry demand that it design a product in a way that didn't put Google's users front and center.
As documented in John Battelle's excellent book The Search, there was a strong push on Google in the early days to adopt graphic advertising banners for the site. All of Google's competitors were doing it, making a fortune at it, and no one wanted to advertise via text-ads even though its users clearly found them them less invasive than graphic banners.
But Google hewed to a brilliant and successful strategy of never putting a supplier's need above its searchers' needs. This, more than Google's controversial "Don't be evil" motto is the true force driving its most successful offerings. Google refused to graphic ads and only accepted ads from suppliers who shared its view of how to deliver a quality service to its users.
Abandoning this is a terrible idea and one that's exacerbated by design decisions in Google's DRM technology. The outcome is a Google service that opens the company and its users to unprecedented new risk.
Liberally taken from Richard Forno
Query on PayPerPost to Acquire XYZ
PayPerPost, the global Internet "advertising on blogs" company, for approximately $.. billion (not known) in up-front cash (not clear yet), plus potential performance-based consideration has acquired the famous company XYZ.
The acquisition will strengthen PayPerPost's global marketplace and payments platform, while opening several new lines of business and creating significant new monetization opportunities for the company.
The deal also represents a major opportunity for XYZ and PayPerPost to drive traffic, advance its leadership in Internet advertising market and offer posties worldwide new ways to make money in a global online era.
XYZ and PayPerPost will create an unparalleled ecommerce and advertising platform for advertisers and bloggers around the world.
We still do not know what it really is (at least I didn't understand), but following the past it won't be something hurting PayPerPost.
The only question mark is: Will it be convenient also for bloggers? Or for a few of them?
In this jungle and hard competition world you cannot survive if you are not a wolf or close to it.
It is a challenge, but it is also a big stress trying to be always on top.
"An acquisition is a sheep and two wolves deciding on what to have for lunch.
Success is a well armed sheep contesting the results of the decision."
Patrizia Broghammer
The acquisition will strengthen PayPerPost's global marketplace and payments platform, while opening several new lines of business and creating significant new monetization opportunities for the company.
The deal also represents a major opportunity for XYZ and PayPerPost to drive traffic, advance its leadership in Internet advertising market and offer posties worldwide new ways to make money in a global online era.
XYZ and PayPerPost will create an unparalleled ecommerce and advertising platform for advertisers and bloggers around the world.
We still do not know what it really is (at least I didn't understand), but following the past it won't be something hurting PayPerPost.
The only question mark is: Will it be convenient also for bloggers? Or for a few of them?
In this jungle and hard competition world you cannot survive if you are not a wolf or close to it.
It is a challenge, but it is also a big stress trying to be always on top.
"An acquisition is a sheep and two wolves deciding on what to have for lunch.
Success is a well armed sheep contesting the results of the decision."
Patrizia Broghammer
Friday, April 20, 2007
Training for cyberspace
To most of the hundred millions of computer users around the world, the inner workings of a computer are an utter mystery.
Users expect information technology (IT) professionals to help them with their needs for designing, locating, retrieving, using, configuring, programming, maintaining, and understanding computers, network, applications and digital objects.
But the reality of what users, students, and professionals find differs markedly from what they expect. They find poorly designed software, complex and confusing systems, crash-prone systems, software without warranties, surly customer service.
And this is where a good training comes into the scene.
Especially if done at a high level like the one at the Open Technology Group.
Their courses are delivered using a unique method of blended learning, which utilizes a combination of industry recognized instructional materials, and their own in-house developed materials.
Their PHP training is both flexible and affordable. The courses are taught by experienced PHP MySQL training instructors.
They combine industry recognized materials and their own course guides.
If you are interested you can find on their website the start date of the courses, the price and the location.
For further information you can complete a form or give them a call and one of their PHP MySQL training enrollment specialists can answer your questions.
So, if you belong to most of the computer users, and want to find the solutions that bring clarity to technology, now you know where to go.
This is a sponsored post, please read disclosure policy.
Users expect information technology (IT) professionals to help them with their needs for designing, locating, retrieving, using, configuring, programming, maintaining, and understanding computers, network, applications and digital objects.
But the reality of what users, students, and professionals find differs markedly from what they expect. They find poorly designed software, complex and confusing systems, crash-prone systems, software without warranties, surly customer service.
And this is where a good training comes into the scene.
Especially if done at a high level like the one at the Open Technology Group.
Their courses are delivered using a unique method of blended learning, which utilizes a combination of industry recognized instructional materials, and their own in-house developed materials.
Their PHP training is both flexible and affordable. The courses are taught by experienced PHP MySQL training instructors.
They combine industry recognized materials and their own course guides.
If you are interested you can find on their website the start date of the courses, the price and the location.
For further information you can complete a form or give them a call and one of their PHP MySQL training enrollment specialists can answer your questions.
So, if you belong to most of the computer users, and want to find the solutions that bring clarity to technology, now you know where to go.
This is a sponsored post, please read disclosure policy.
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