Chad's News

An interesting snapshot of the last ninja grand master’s life and philosophy.

http://www.mercurynews.com/…

It only took 4½ years, but construction has officially begun on the building that will replace the World Trade Center towers. Does anyone else think they went a little overboard on the patriotism front by making it exactly 1776 feet high?

http://news.yahoo.com/…

This article gives a good overview of the new features in the upcoming Internet Explorer 7 release. Personally, I use Firefox—and don’t miss IE one bit.

http://www.nytimes.com/…

According to this article, 60 billion emails are sent each day. The really amazing statistic, however, is that AOL alone blocks 1.5 billion spam messages per day—which is 2.5% of all emails sent.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/…

To resounding cries of “What the #$*! took so long?” TiVo has released a Series 2 DVR with dual tuners, enabling users to record two shows at once.

http://www.tivo.com/…

Email your picture of a document or whiteboard to scanR, and they’ll convert it into searchable PDF file. The service is free.

http://www.scanr.com/

Digital watches did it to the leading watchmakers, now digital cameras are doing it to traditional camera/film companies.

http://arstechnica.com/…

Here’s a neat gadget that will find those lost golf balls for you.

http://www.engadget.com/…

On the heels of this post, the linked article has a detailed explanation of the various HDTV formats geared for the tech-savvy-but-HDTV-ignorant audience. After reading it, you should be able to easily explain statements such as this one:

“Although 1080i has 1080 lines of vertical resolution (against 720 lines of 720p) and 1920 pixels (against the 1280 pixels of 720p) per line, the fact that 1080i is interlaced, causes an overall lower resolution (in practice) than 720p.”

The article is not light reading.

http://editorials.teamxbox.com/…

A video (in Japanese, yes I know…) that clearly demonstrates how to apply a band-aid so that it stays on. This is one of a series of instructional videos.

http://www.youtube.com/…

I’ve been using Windows since before version 3.0, and already knew most of these shortcuts—but there were a few new ones. The ones I use most are CTRL-A, CTRL-C, CTRL-V, CTRL-S, and CTRL-Z, which are all conveniently placed for my left hand to easily press. One (non-keyboard) shortcut that isn’t documented but many people find by accident: double-click on the top bar of a window to maximize/restore it. This saves having to click on the little button on the top right.

http://www.intelliadmin.com/…

Keystroke logging has become more of a concern in recent years, as more and more spyware programs install a software-based logger and send the results back to the creator—who then takes advantage of the password, bank account, and credit card information that may have been captured. In addition, there’s the problem with loggers installed on public computers (never enter sensitive information on a public computer—you’ve been warned).

With all this emphasis on software, however, it’s easy to forget about the hardware-based loggers. ThinkGeek has one for sale, at a mere $99. Simply unplug the keyboard, attach the Key Katcher, and plug it back in. Remove it later and you can browse up to 130,000 keystrokes. Very useful for checking up on a potentially-cheating significant other, or monitoring a child’s internet use. Or, for the creative, posing as cleaning staff and installing them on a bank’s computers. (The bank in question now super-glues keyboard cables to the computer, although there are other, less-expensive solutions.)

The gist of it all is that physical security is just as important as firewalls, anti-virus/spyware software, and network/internet security. Did you know, for example, that it’s quite easy to reset Windows passwords provided you have physical access to the computer? (Via the Linux disk or the login.scr trick.) And you can usually access the files themselves just by moving the hard drive to another machine that already has Windows installed—which is why really sensitive files should be encrypted.

It’s a dangerous world out there, in the land of computers, but knowing the potential risks is the first line of defense. I’m sure I haven’t covered them all, so feel free to leave comments with any additional information.