I kid you not, this is a real product.
Ξ September 2nd, 2009 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Humor, Odd, Technology |
I came across this on TechBargains, and I think it was put there more as a joke than anything. Here is the description:
Viable Statistical Attack on Social Security Numbers
Ξ July 6th, 2009 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Technology |
Wired has the writeup:
By analyzing a public data set called the “Death Master File,” which contains SSNs and birth information for people who have died, computer scientists from Carnegie Mellon University discovered distinct patterns in how the numbers are assigned. In many cases, knowing the date and state of an individual’s birth was enough to predict a person’s SSN.
“With just two attempts, the researchers correctly guessed the first five digits of SSNs for 60 percent of deceased Americans born between 1989 and 2003. With fewer than 1,000 attempts, they could identify the entire nine digits for 8.5 percent of the group.”
“A botnet can be programmed to try variations of a Social Security number to apply for an instant credit card,” Acquisti said. “In 60 seconds, these services tell you whether you are approved or not, so they can be abused to tell whether you’ve hit the right social security number.”
It also turns out that some SSNs are easier to predict than others. Because of the way numbers are assigned, younger people and those born in less populated states are more at risk, Acquisti said. Before 1988, many people didn’t apply for an SSN until they left for college or got their first job. But thanks to an anti-fraud effort in 1988 called the “Enumeration at Birth” initiative, parents started applying for their child’s number at birth, making it much easier to predict based on a person’s birthday.
BD+ Broken
Ξ November 2nd, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Technology |
BD+, the encryption scheme used for the most heavily protected Bluray discs, has been publicly broken by the guys on the Doom9 forums. It had been previously broken by the guys at SlySoft, makers of AnyDVD, but they had kept the method secret, as they were trying to make a commercial product of it. Now, however, we should see open-source Bluray decrypting software along the lines of DVDDecrypter begin to appear.
Best 404 page ever.
Ξ September 27th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Humor, Technology |
Someone spent a lot of time and effort to amuse lost people.
SSD & MLC – Why Solid State Drives Seem to Suck
Ξ September 27th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Technology |
I just got a new laptop and was thinking about putting in a Solid State Drive (SSD), now that they seem to be affordable. There was a *huge* drop in price recently, with drives only costing half as much as they did a year before. It turns out this is due in large part to a change in technology – the shift from Single-Level Cell (SLC) technology to Multi-Level Cell (MLC) technology. The trade-off is that MLC drives live only about a 10th of the lifetime of SLC. Even so, it seem that for most people that is long enough (the rough rule of thumb seems to be 20GB/day of data being written for 5 years), and the result is twice the density at the same price.
But reports were coming in that these new drives seemed to really suck. Anandtech had a look at the problem while reviewing the new Intel SSD. Turns out that most of the SSD manufacturers are actually using the same parts, that is a Jmicron controller with Samsung memory, and there is a problem with that combination that results in *very* slow write times – so bad it’s actually worse than a normal drive and results in system instability.
OCZ, who used that combination with their Core series of SSD’s, seem to still be having teething problems, if one were to judge by the hoops people are jumping through in their forums to get everything working. Looks like good, affordable SSD is at least a year away (unless Intel does *way* better than expected).
BoxOver
Ξ August 19th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Technology |
I was looking for something to easily do HTML tooltips. It’s pretty easy to do using the :hover CSS element, but with the major cavet that IE6 doesn’t support it, which makes it nearly useless. But as luck would have it, I found a Javascript library called BoxOver that works better than anything I could have coded up, and all it needs is to be included somewhere in the page. Then all you need to do is include a little markup in the element you want the tooltip to appear with, and viola – really, really cool tooltips.
AV Upgrades
Ξ July 28th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Technology |
I just spent the last 4 hours ripping apart my entertainment center, tearing out obsolete wire runs, re-running wires I realized were originally poorly run, and running new lines. Originally, the entertainment center was pretty well designed, but where I thought the configuration was going to last 5 or more years, at least, ended up lasting less than 3 years. I’ve just replaced everything other than the Tivo and the TV, with the upgrade to the receiver, replacing my Pioneer VSX-516 with an Onkyo TX-SR606. It cost more than I spent on the Pioneer, but at under $400, shipped, I think it was a good deal – especially considering that it takes 4 HDMI signals and does 720p upconversion.
HDMI is the way to go, I’ve come to realize. It cuts the number of wires needed to run by at least 1/2, as you get a digital video AND audio signal along a single wire. Now I have my HTPC and my PS3 both going into the receiver, and an S-Video signal from the Tivo getting upconverted to 720p, and all sent to the TV via a single HDMI cable, as well as having the 5.1 speakers available.
I did encounter a problem with one of the speakers, who’s wall mounting came loose. Unfortunately, it didn’t want to cooperate and now there is a sizeable hole in the wall. My father thinks a longer screw could reach the wall in the back and would make a suitable mounting point, so hopefully it won’t turn into too much of a disaster.
Messing around with the speaker took at least half an hour, and by the time I had finished cleaning up, I was too tired to actually turn anything on and do any configuration. I guess that’s the task for tomorrow. Thank goodness for Logitech’s Harmony – should make the whole process easier. Can’t wait to give the whole thing a go.
ZoneAlarm breaks Internet
Ξ July 22nd, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Technology |
I’ve encountered a number of computers recently that have had their Internet connect stop working recently. I tracked the problem down to ZoneAlarm, but when one of the computers at work also broke due to ZoneAlarm, I looked a little bit deeper. It turns out that a Microsoft Update pushed in mid-July that was designed to fix a DNS exploit is the culprit. The ZoneAlarm folks turned out an updated version pretty quickly, and all is well with your high-security settings again.
McCain and Carly Fiorina
Ξ June 10th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Politics, Technology |
I was watching Special Report with Brit Hume, and there was a piece on Jim Johnson, the controversial member of Obama’s VP search committee. The McCain camp’s attempt to highlight the issues surrounding Johnson came from the RNC’s liason to the McCain campaign, Carly Fiorina. I was floored. I hadn’t heard from her since she was booted from HP for driving the company into the ground. What the heck are the Republicans and McCain thinking?
Mass Effect Bugs and Tweaks
Ξ June 8th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Games, Technology |
I finally got around to loading up Mass Effect, and right off the bat a couple annoyances crept up that I think others that are playing the game on the PC would be interested in. First off, if you encounter problems with saved games, and your “My Documents” folder is pointed to a non-standard location, you’ll need to go into the <My Documents>\BioWare\Mass Effect directory and create a “Save” folder. For some reason the installer didn’t create one, and the the game wasn’t programmed to create one on the fly. Create that and you’ll be able to save games.
Next was the buggy shadows in the game, and the reason I like computer games over console games – the ability to tweak settings you normally aren’t suppose to be able to. The dithered shadows always drove me nuts when I saw it on the XBox360 version, and was one of the first things I looked for when I installed the game and saw they were still there. Turns out it’s a known problem with the Unreal 3 engine, and that a work-around was already discovered for it. User homerdog came up with the following solution that worked for me:
- Open <My Documents>\BioWare\Mass Effect\Config\BIOEngine.ini
- Alternately, you can edit <Program Files>\Mass Effect\Engine\Config\BaseEngine.ini
- Search for “DepthBias=0.012″ or something to that effect (there might be trailing 0’s)
- Change to “DepthBias=0.03″
- Save and Exit
Additionally, if you feel your card can handle it:
- Find “MaxShadowResolution=512″
- Change to “MaxShadowResolution=2048″ or higher – I upped it to 8192. Be sure that it’s a power of 2.
- Find “MinShadowResolution=32″
- Change to “MinShadowResolution=128″
- Find “MaxAnisotropy=4″
- Change to “MaxAnisotropy=16″
Lastly, I always disliked the fake movie grain they put into the game. You get that grain with a crummy transfer to high-def – it’s not a selling point and I have no idea why you’d want to actually *add* it. Luckily, that’s an easy fix. It’s in the Options -> Graphics menu selection of the game.
FYI, I currently have the settings on the game maxed out, and I’m not noticing any appreciable lag on my 8800GT. Your mileage may vary.
