Monthly Archive for October, 2005

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Steve Jobs on the cover of TIME: “What’s Next?”

Published on Monday, October 17, 2005 in Apple, Internet and Technology. 1 Comment

Steve Jobs with the rest of the Apple Team

Steve Jobs is once again on the cover of TIME Magazine with the new iMac G5 and the new iPod. The October 24th issue of TIME Magazine features the story: “How Apple Does It” and the story’s writer calls Apple “the world’s most innovative company.” The article highlights Apple’s amazing industrial design success and offers interviews with Steve Jobs; engineering vice president Tony Fadell; current iPod head Jon Rubinstein; industrial design chief Jonathan Ive and marketing director Philip Schiller.

What happens to a Windows XP computer if it doesn’t have a firewall or anti-virus software

Published on Sunday, October 16, 2005 in Internet, Microsoft, Technology and Virus & Spyware. Closed

BBC Reporter Spencer Kelly sat down with ex-hacker Jacques Erasmus and talked about hacking, Jacques even showed Spencer what would happen to a Windows XP computer when it connected to the internet if it had no firewall, no anti-spyware or anti-virus software. So how long did it take for the computer to get infected, 8 seconds! The computer was infected with the very wide-spread sasser worm. Just goes to show how vunerable XP is. This may not happen for everyone but that doesn’t mean you don’t need any anti-virus / anti-spware / firewall software, unless you use a Mac like me! My Mac has been online for 2 months without any anti-stuff software and it is fine.

Within seconds of infection, our PC started downloading some strange programs, or payloads, from mysterious Internet addresses. These payloads are the programs that can take control of your machine and turn it into a remote controlled bot.
Our machine then started scanning random Internet addresses, looking for other vulnerable PCs to infect. Then Internet Explorer started downloading spyware. Within 5 minutes our PC was running so many malicious programs, that the CPU was running flat-out at 100% – and we weren’t even touching it.

Nintendo DS’s WiFi only supports WEP

Published on Sunday, October 16, 2005 in Gaming, Internet, Technology and Wireless. Closed

The image above was taken at the Digital Life Show in NYC on Friday. You can see the unlaunched interface for the Nintendo DS’s Wi-Fi capabilities. Some interesting features include:

Save settings for up to three connections
Auto-detection of available WiFi networks
Support for primary and secondary DNS servers
Support for DHCP and static IP addresses
Support for WEP (But not WPA)

The last ‘feature’ is what concerns most people. WEP has been out for a while and I have seen videos showing how you can crack a WEP key in 5 minutes using Linux, and it even showed me what programs to use (they are all open source). My PSP can do WPA, so why couldn’t the DS. My D-link Access Point runs on WEP as there is no need for a really secure connection, what hackers would live in my area? It is pretty safe. But in America you aren’t safe anywhere. Sure who would care about someone intercepting their game on their DS, but the problem arises when you have to convert your access point to use WEP because the DS can’t do WPA. This means all your data will be susceptible to getting hacked.
This may not be a big a problem because many people still are using wired connections, but for new people who aren’t all tech savy and get into it don’t really understand all this so they may go for WEP only, or worst of all no protection. I know that my neighbour has the same D-link AP as I do and he has no protection. I managed to get into his network and access is AP IP address. I could even log into the AP with the same ‘Admin’ ‘Admin’ username and password that came default. I could have taken over his network and could have had free WiFi. But because I’m no black hat hacker I just let him know about the problem.

read more (screenshots of DS’s WiFi on Flickr)

Best Buy customer buys $1300 PC, but only finds wooden block inside

Published on Saturday, October 15, 2005 in PC, Random Stuff and Technology. Closed

A Best Buy customer threatened to kill a female employee Tuesday after complaining that he purchased a $1,300 computer, only to find wooden blocks inside the box once he got home.

According to police reports, the customer came to the store to make the complaint, but became enraged after being told nothing could be done for him. Police said the customer ignored two requests to leave the store, telling the manager, “What are you gonna do, big guy?”

This sounds really crazy. I’m sure I would be really annoyed if this had happened to me. I’m not sure if it is true though since “the box’s seal was intact when it left the store, so if wood was inside the box, it came from the factory“. What would be the chances this happened at a factory, very small. But I have heard a lot of customer complaints about Best Buy. Read the article and see what you think.

The MacCast mentioned on The Gadget Show

Published on Saturday, October 15, 2005 in Apple, Internet, Podcasting and Technology. Closed

One of my favourite podcasts, The MacCast, was mentioned on The Gadget Show on Channel 5 here in the UK. They said that it was a very good podcast and they highly reccomend it to anyone. The MacCast is a podcast about Apple and anything Mac related including news and listener questions and answers. You can download The Gadget Show clip below and the full section of podcasting in The Gadget Show.
MacCast Clip [H.264 - 1024 x 576 - 4.4MB]
Full Section [H.264 - 640 x 480 - 87MB]
Both of these videos require QuickTime 7 or later to view. Command-Click (Right-Click) and Save Target As to download the files.

MI6 Looking for Potentional 007′s

Published on Thursday, October 13, 2005 in Random Stuff. Closed

It looks like that MI6 (or its official name is Secret Intelligence Service, SIS) is looking for recruits to “support efforts to combat terrorism” online.

The Web site attempts to dispel the myth around the glamour of spying as portrayed in Ian Fleming’s James Bond stories. But it doesn’t resist Bond-based references entirely: “Staff who join SIS can look forward to a career that will have moments when the gap narrows just a little,” it says, adding that recruits will enjoy “the certainty of a stimulating and rewarding career which, like Bond’s, will be in the service of their country.”

PSP Firmware 2.50 released

Published on Thursday, October 13, 2005 in Gaming, Technology and Wireless. 1 Comment

Sony have released this morning a new updated PSP firmware from 2.01 to 2.5. The most major update is to use the LocationFree Player to stream media from the LocationFree base station (extra purchase needed) to your PSP’s WiFi. Other small changes include being able to set the time via an internet clock (such feature exists on Windows and Mac), Korean text input and more. Joystiq say that unless you will use the LocationFree product there really is no reason to upgrade as you won’t be able to run your homebrew games on it. Since I have no need for this I updated mine. I really couldn’t care less about homebrew games because I think the PSP games are really good and there is no reason to play NES games on it. You can get the update via your network update option in the settings menu of your PSP.

Watch Apple’s ‘One More thing…’

Published on Thursday, October 13, 2005 in Apple and Technology. 1 Comment

Finally you get to watch Steve Job’s Keynote presentation from the ‘One More thing…’ event that happened yesterday. This will get you the 100% full details, if you want them. I will watch this as soon as I get back from school. I like watching Steve’s keynotes. They are always exciting.

Keynote Page (Quicktime 7 Required)

iTunes 6 Update

Published on Wednesday, October 12, 2005 in Apple, Movies, Podcasting and Technology. Closed

I was really hyped up about iTunes 6 and I really couldn’t wait any longer. So I headed to the US site and download iTunes 6 for Mac. After downloading 80MB(!!) I installed it and off I went. You can see the screenshot above. I had already told iTunes where my music was being kept (in the network drive called MUSIC) and it found some videos that my dad had downloaded once. Pretty cool, and it was all done automatically. The iTunes Music Store hompage is the same as always but with a few adverts labelled: “U2 Exclusive Video”, “Pixar Movie Shorts” and a bunch of others. I really haven’t seen anything about the TV shows, but I quickly changed my Music Store location to USA and what did it show? Adverts for ‘Lost’ and ‘Desperate Housewives’. Please do something in the UK Apple and make it be soon. I clicked on the link for ‘Lost’ and I was taken to the Lost’s page. A screenshot can be seen below.

Apple Website (US – iTunes)

UPDATE: You can now download iTunes 6 through the UK site. [link]

iTunes 6

Published on Wednesday, October 12, 2005 in Apple, Movies, Podcasting and Technology. Closed

Interestingly, although iTunes 6 was announced and you can see the ads places on Apple’s page above, if you click the link for iTunes it just shows the page for iTunes 5. This only seems to be happening for the UK site, which was updated later when iTunes 5 was released.

What do they cost? $1.99 [£1.89] each. But we didn’t stop there; we’re adding some other videos you can buy. Pixar is putting up six of their award-winning short videos. $1.99 each. We are downloading videos 320 x 240, which is the native resolution of the iPod. They’re about the size of six songs. All songs are governed by FairPlay. You can play them on up to five computers. They’re not rentals. You own them — they never time out. We have one more thing today, a pretty big thing. We’re announcing one more thing that you can buy off the iTunes store today, and that is TV shows. What’s the number one show on TV? What’s the second? Lost. And who has these shows? ABC. And who owns ABC? [Disney logo on screen.] I know those guys! Lost, Desperate Housewives, Night Stalker, That’s So Raven, The Suite Life. Yes, you can buy current episodes, and you can buy them the day after they are broadcast. They’re ad free so you don’t need to fast forward through the commercials, 320 x 240 again. An hour show is about the size of five albums. Depending on your speed it’s about 10-20 minute to download an episode. What are they going to cost? $1.99 an episode for current season and past seasons. We have free previews on every episode.

This seems really cool, as most of these shows air in the UK as well and are broadcast by a variety of channels, such as Channel 4 for ‘Lost’, The Disney Channel for ‘That’s So Raven’ and ‘The Suite Life’. I am going to be interested to see how Apple work it out in the UK, or at least I hope they do something because it would be a really big blow if it was only for the US. We just have to sit and wait, again.

Apple Website (US – iTunes 6)