elazigdernekler.com

There are, however, legal issues. Algormor recorded only video, not audio. He strongly advised getting legal advice before constructing your own bagcam, as the rules for surreptitious audio-video recording vary from state to state.

See a summary of all my Defensive Computing postings.

What has he recorded so far? By his own words, nothing damning. The videos he showed were at once fascinating and boring. For the most part, they offered a bag’s-eye view of life on a conveyor belt. But there were some shots of TSA employees at work, and there was the expected shot of bags being mercilessly thrown into the cargo hold of a plane. Never pack anything fragile.

Eighty percent of the audience at The Last HOPE also said they found a TSA notice in their luggage. When a bag is mutilated, Algormor said the airline blames the TSA, and the TSA blames the airline.

In a presentation at the just-concluded hacker conference The Last HOPE, Algormor explained his method and motivation, and offered a glimpse behind the curtain.

Algormor travels a lot, referring to himself as an “elite” flier. Among other reasons to frequently travel, he and his girlfriend live a few thousand miles apart.
He’s a techie, having been employed in IT for 15 years.
He holds a private pilot certificate.
His luggage has frequently been inspected and (in his estimation) abused.
The illogical nature of airport security provided even further motivation.

No doubt, many can relate to his motivation, which started with one too many “Notice of Baggage Inspection” tags from the Transportation Security Administration. The last straw was when a zipper on his luggage was broken.

Surprisingly, the bagcam itself has yet to raise suspicion. You might think the video recorder would look suspicious to the scanning machines, but it has not yet been detected. What will happen when the TSA opens a bag and finds an active camera inside? An interesting question–and one for which Algormor doesn’t have an answer.

On the last point, Algormor made it very clear that he is not an expert on aviation security. Still, he referred to it as “security by facade” and compared U.S. security to Europe’s which he considers less invasive yet more productive.

Bagcam derived from a perfect storm of circumstances:

Lots of travelers have their checked luggage abused, but it takes a hacker to find out what really goes on behind closed doors. The first such hacker, who goes by the name “Algormor,” is on the case.

Extracting the video from the camera and converting it to a standard format was a major pain. But I was surprised at how small the hole he cut in the side of his luggage needed to be.

Frustrated and violated travelers are potential bagcam creators. Maybe someday the spread of bagcams will work like a deterrent. Stranger things have happened.

This being a hacker conference, Algormor went into the details of how he hacked together a video camera and his luggage. The camera he used, costing about $500, is one solid piece (no moving parts) not much bigger than a hand. The camera supports motion detection to extend the battery life, which maxes out at about 10 hours. Video was recorded at 128×128 and 15 frames per second.

Video of presentations at The Last HOPE conference will be available in the future. Exactly how, when, and where, I don’t know, but watch the conference Web site and Hackerdvds.com.

Algormor speaking at The Last HOPE conference

Algormor can be reached via e-mail at algormor at gmail. He expects to post the presentation to Algormor.org soon. Could this be the beginning of something big?

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The MFC-7840W is the standout product here, it includes all the features you would expect from a high end all-in-one printer, such as a speedy 23 page per minute output, 2400×600 dots per inch resolution, and a 35 sheet auto feeder. We’re excited to take a look at the 7840W’s 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi feature after our recent adventures with Apple’s Time Capsule and the Canon Pixma iP2600.

Both printers support PCL6 and BR-Script3, and information technology departments will be happy to know that the system is compatible with Buffalo Technology’s AirStation OneTouch Secure System and Linksys’s SecureEasySetup.

With spring just around the corner, it’s time to clean up your workspace. To help you clean up your clutter, Brother is releasing two multifunction printers: the MFC-7440N ($249) and the MFC-7840W ($299). Both are significant upgrades to their predecessors, with the MFC-7840W living up to its prefix multifunction name.

According to Brother, both models will be available in early April.

An even more interesting suggestion was to use a firewall to force all Internet access through a proxy that can log every connection from every client computer. One family reported:

Back to the topic of open source. One parent raised the issue that they are quite confident of the security and configuration of their own computer network, but what about the neighbor with the open wireless access point? A little education goes a long way. First, if you see a neighbor has an open wireless connection, suggest that they may wish to close it, as it represents a security problem for you. Second, if they are concerned about being a gateway to inappropriate content, suggest a mechanism whereby they, too, can play a role in filtering the content. OpenDNS might not be the right solution if your neighbor does not agree with their business model, but DansGuardian could be a good alternative. Third, use this as a positive opportunity to discuss with your children the "rules of the road" of Internet use. Those rules could range from accepting real-time oversight (how we do things at our house) to requesting specific permission to access the Internet (the parent turns on the sole wireless router the child's computer is configured to access) to accepting arbitrary monitoring and reporting. Or, do none of the above and study hard for what you plan to do when your child inevitably does access something you find disturbing and inappropriate, not to mention the disturbing and inappropriate things that porn-serving companies like to do to your computers. Worse than spiders, for sure.

But they also log every site you visit (part of the bargain of being between you and a "real" DNS server) and there is vigorous debate as to whether OpenDNS should be doing application-level rewrites of network-level requests. People think it is wrong (evil, even) that Google's toolbar does this. And they raised holy hell when VeriSign did this back in 2003. But if you are not bothered by the idea that whatever you type into your browser goes first to OpenDNS.com, and secondly, that when you request Site A, it could transparently and silently take you to Site B as if it were Site A, then it may be an interesting solution. As with any service that collects and interprets such sensitive personal information as your browsing habits, I suggest you read their privacy policy carefully. And you should be aware that OpenDNS is not open source.

One popular approach is taken by OpenDNS. (Disclaimer: OpenDNS was funded by the former CEO of CNET.) The Domain Name Service (DNS) is the service that translates a URL (such as wikipedia.org) into an actual IP address (such as 208.80.152.2). By using OpenDNS instead of regular DNS, you give them permission to help you with the translation:

Perhaps the first question to answer is "what is to be protected?" We live in a media-saturated culture where some of the raciest material is to be found in all its pixelated glory of some of the most conservative TV programs (see Fox News Porn). Between the catalogs, newpaper ads, billboards, etc., there’s plenty of disturbing material to go around. Indeed, when traveling through the airport with my daughter last year, she had quite a laugh when she came face-to-face with the image of a woman barely dressed on the cover of Cosmopolitan. (She called her "naked-bottom girl" for the rest of the day.) Deciding where to begin has become difficult indeed.

If you want a content filtering solution that is open source (because you want to independently verify what is being logged, and you want to independently verify how the blocking choices are being made), you might be interested in DansGuardian. They have an impressive list of users as well as a blacklist you can review, adopt, or ignore. Several of my colleagues said that they use DansGuardian and that it works well.

I must admit that at first I was taken aback by the idea of having this type of access to somebody else’s surfing history. But then I asked myself: if I am at all bothered by the idea of parents having such access to their children's surfing habits, how happy am I to be trusting that data with some third party, their supercomputer, and who knows what federal agencies?

So when I got home I did the manly thing and, judging their scientific value to be near zero, tossed the spider pictures into the trash. When our daughter threw something away later that evening, and then needed to retrieve it, she shrieked again at the vile images that she could not unsee (and I was chastised for merely disposing of them instead of using our new commercial-grade shredder). Is there any possible way to prevent our children from accessing images or content that is disturbing to them or to us as parents? And should that be our sole criteria for judging whether or not we have won the war on porn?

A new Red Hat employee queried an internal e-mail list as to methods of protecting their children from accessing pornography, and through the responses I learned a few things I thought I'd share…

Our daughter was rummaging through a box of memorabilia and found an evelope of photos taken in early 2001, about the time I'd purchased a cool new macro lens. One minute she was flipping through a series of cute puppy pictures and the next minute she's face to face with a set of full-frontal nude photographs depicting…a wolf spider. In fact, the spider was so exposed, the close-up so extreme, that Amy could not bring herself to even handle the photos so as to put them back into the envelope from which they came.

wikipedia.org -> 208.80.152.2 wikipedia.og -> 208.80.152.2 (it corrects your "spelling mistake") playboy.org -> BLOCKED! (if you want to filter out Web sites that serve "pornography" or "nudity")

The proxy doesn’t have a filter on it, but it does mail my wife and
I a daily summary of what each computer asked for and when, so we
know what the kids are doing online. And we make sure the
kids know that we know.

For a full breakdown of Dish vs. DirecTV’s high-def programming, and how it currently compares with cable and Verizon Fios, check out the big chart.

(Credit:
CNET)

Of course, just because a channel has a big “HD” stamped next to it in the on-screen programming guide doesn’t mean you’ll be glorying in full-fledged high-def every time you turn it on. In fact, most of the new channels Dish added, and indeed most so-called HD channels on any provider, deliver a steady diet of upconverted programming that originates in standard-def–and usually doesn’t look much better when shown on an HD channel. Worse, many HD channels stretch their squarish 4:3 shows to fill the rectangular 16:9 HDTV screens, resulting in shorter, fatter people, oblong circles, and similar distortions. I flipped by something on HGTV HD and even noticed the tell-tale disproportional stretch similar to some HDTVs’ “panorama” or “Just” modes, where the sides of the screen are stretched more than the middle in an attempt to make people in the central area of the screen look less distorted.

According to our count, the new additions bring Dish’s total number of HD channels to 95, just under DirecTV’s 104. Excluding RSNs, on-demand/Pay-per-view channels, exclusives like Dish’s Voom channels, and duplicate East/West feeds, we count an even 50 national and local HD channels on Dish Network, and 60 on DirecTV. Dish is still missing some well-known networks like FX HD, MTV HD, and Nickelodeon HD, while DirecTV still doesn’t carry World Fishing Network (the nerve!) or ABC Family HD, but overall DirecTV still maintains an advantage in channels we expect more people care about.

For the record, I’m with most people who care: I wish all broadcasters would show all content in the original aspect ratio, and leave it to us to press the “aspect” or “zoom” or “format” keys on our remotes to fill the screen if we so desire. To date, some do (Jake 2.0 on SciFi HD, when I checked, had the proper black bars to either side of the 4:3 image) but many do not. The excellent guide to DirecTV’s channels at Digitalcaffeine.com breaks down which channels stretch and which leave the program unaltered–it applies equally to other providers, including Dish. Unfortunately, the anti-stretch-o-vision petition has been closed.

Ever since DirecTV launched a slew of national high-definition channels last October and November, it’s been the only place most Americans can get their Cartoon Network, Sci-Fi, and Bravo networks in high-def. On Monday, Dish network caught up somewhat, announcing the activation of a total of 22 new high-def channels, including those three and many other national, high-interest channels–as well as a few lower-interest ones, including World Fishing Network HD. Twenty of the channels are supposed to go live Monday, and the last two, the regional sports networks (RSNs) Comcast Sports Network Bay Area HD and Comcast Sports Network New England HD, will be activated Wednesday, according to the company. Check out the full list of new channels on the official press release.

SciFi HD is among the 22 new HD channels launched by Dish Network.

Google’s license text.

We’ve always encouraged other developers to adopt Atom, the Atom Publishing Protocol, and the extensions that Google has created on top of those standards, but we realized the issue of patents may have held back some adopters. Well, those concerns end today as we are giving a no-charge, royalty-free license to any patents we have that you would need to implement Atom, AtomPub, or any of those extensions.

I’m a fan of the AtomPub API and we (MuleSource) use it for Mule Galaxy. I had been a bit concerned about how Google would treat companies that were using it in products but this certainly alleviates any anxiety.

Microsoft should take a lesson from Google (as is often the case) and not just show the APIs but actually allow developers to use them without risk.

Good news for those who love Atom and AtomPub as Google announced that they are removing any patent implications to help further adoption.

The obvious first question one asks the AT&T execs when beginning a discussion of Pogo, the company’s new Web browser, is “What is AT&T doing getting into the browser market?” The answer you get is, at first, amusing. It’s a chance to build “another relationship with the customer,” they say. They also tell you it could be a great conduit for AT&T messages (e.g., brand or product advertising). Sounds like the makings for a truly awful product, does it not?

Pogo is a tabbed browser, but instead of using text tabs it uses little page snapshots. This may appeal to some people; I didn’t find it much of an advantage.

The best use of Pogo's graphical chops is in the history viewer, which lets you smoothly scroll backward and forward through snapshots of your visited Web pages.

Unrelated to its 3D features, the browser also supports mouse gestures for navigation, a fun feature that could become very useful if Pogo is ported to touch-screen mobile phones. (See also: Opera.)

The history function also uses visual snapshots. I found this very useful. Seeing your previously visited sites in graphic format added a lot of context that’s missing if all you’re looking at is a stream of titles.

While I’ve derided 3D interfaces in the past, the truth is that using the graphics power of a local computer can make for more engaging and easier-to-understand interfaces. See PicLens, a recently released plug-in photo browser, and also Flip3D in Vista, and Time Machine and CoverFlow on the
Mac. Finally, Picasa has a timeline view that’s very similar to the Collections view in Pogo.

Pogo’s 3D interface works because it doesn’t get in your face most of the time, and when it does, it’s in functions where using visual devices to jog your memory can make a positive difference in your productivity in the app.

For these three functions, Pogo puts snapshot images, which it calls “cells,” into a slick 3D rendering engine. In the bookmark feature, for example, you can thumb through categories like flipping through index cards. When you zoom into a category, you see all your site bookmarks as snapshots of your pages, not just page titles.

Things only get weird when you dive into the browser bookmarks or history, or use the multi-home-page feature called Springboard.

But here’s the weird thing: Pogo is not awful. Putting aside what might happen to the product should the AT&T brand Nazis get hold of it, it is, even in the early beta I got access to, a solid, usable Web browser.

You can fly through your bookmarks and the "collections" they are categorized in.

Pogo is a combination of the Mozilla browser code base with technology from Vizible, which AT&T has invested in. As a basic Web browser, it works as expected. Type a URL and it loads. No drama.

All cells, be they on the Springboard, the history, or bookmarks, can be tagged and moved around (you can drag history items to the Springboard, for example). The browser also has a search feature that scans for pages living in the the three sections just mentioned. For Web search, Pogo remembers the pages you visit from its integrated search engine (Google, currently), and saves them as cells, too.

That said, I do not expect Pogo to take the world by storm. It is a nice, slick, graphical browser. It’s probably an easier product to teach than the other browsers. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it show up in the mail in AT&T DSL bills, or maybe even on some new computers. And that will be just fine. But it’s still weird that AT&T is in the browser business, and I don’t think this product will win the hearts and minds of people already accustomed to Firefox or Internet Explorer. Pogo is quite good, but it’s not so good that current heavy browser users are going to feel that they need to switch.

Video demo is embedded at the end of this post.

The pre-public version of Pogo that I tried was too slow to live with, but AT&T is planning on opening up a private beta in May with a newer build. We’ll have some invites to the beta to give out when that happens. Open availability is still three or four months out.

You can set the browser’s home page to be your “springboard,” which is a grid of cells for sites you visit a lot. It’s a little better than having your browser start with several home pages in separate tabs, although it’s not a big enough feature that anyone should switch browsers for it.

Pogo does not support add-ons or plug-ins yet. Vizible built the browser with the older
Firefox 2 code from Mozilla. It is waiting for the Firefox 3 code, which it will re-configure its product in. Vizible will support plug-ins shortly after that.

Earlier this week, Buzznet announced that it had purchased another music blog, Idolator, from former owner Gawker Media.

It’s more extensive than Universal’s partnerships with other social networks; the label has licensed its catalog to MySpace.com for its MySpace Music endeavor, as well as to music-focused social-media site Imeem.

Beyond the financial investment, this means that Universal artists will post promotional blogs on Buzznet, and the social site will have access to the label’s music and video catalog.

Let’s hope that Universal’s investment doesn’t start tainting Buzznet’s snappy editorial.

Universal Music Group has invested an undisclosed amount in pop-culture social network Buzznet.

Not only does Buzznet own music blogs like Stereogum and Idolator, but it also has deep partnerships with irreverent gossip blogs such as A Socialite’s Life and Just Jared.

With only 10 million active members–that’s less than a tenth the size of News Corp.’s MySpace–Buzznet has some growth to do before it reaches its goal of being an MTV-caliber pop-culture influencer. The site has been aggressively bolstering its editorial content, acquiring music blog Stereogum and launching sister blog Videogum, with several hip blogging veterans at the helm.

Goldman hinted that more partnerships with big media companies were on the way for Buzznet. That’s good, because having a single label behind a community and editorial site is a bit questionable.

According to a release from the two companies, this is “one of the first times that a music company will be directly involved in developing editorial programming for a social-media site, with both companies sharing in the revenue.”

Last week, Buzznet CEO Tyler Goldman told CNET News.com to expect a partnership announcement that would bring more audio content to the site.

A Silicon Valley entrepreneur has been chosen to run the new National Cyber Security Center, an agency charged with coordinating efforts to protect the federal government’s computer networks from cyberattacks, according to published reports.

In the book The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations, which he co-authored with Ori Brafman, Beckström wrote about the power of decentralized networks in organizations. He has gone so far as to say the concepts he outlined in the book could help the U.S. government in its dealings with al-Qaida.

Beckström co-founded CATS Software, a derivatives and risk management software company, in his garage when he was 24, according to his Web site. He recently co-founded Twiki.net, a company that supports open-source wikis.

Rod Beckström, 47, is expected to be appointed to the post Thursday and report directly to Michael Chertoff, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, according to reports in The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. The secretive center was created by a national security directive signed by President Bush in January.

(Credit:
Nintendo)

In the past couple of years we’ve seen a Nintendogs bundle for kids, a Brain Age bundle for the old timers, and other age-specific packages in between. As with all tech toys, every newly designed DS makes the last seem so passe. The lime green console itself has “geek chic” written all over it and–though I’m not a mom–I may just have to grab one for myself.

At the usual $149.99, the bundle includes a lime green console, a matching carrying case, and Personal Trainer: Cooking. Those who tend to buy into gender stereotypes can already preorder the bundle just in time for Mother’s Day on Amazon. Don’t forget to add on My Weight Loss Coach and Imagine: Babyz while you’re at it.

Gamers and geeks, step aside. It’s Mom’s turn to jump on the gaming bandwagon. On Monday, Nintendo announced a new DS Lite bundle, clearly tailored to the interests of middle-aged women.

The bundle will be available at all retail locations on May 3.

Representatives from both Microsoft and Yahoo declined to comment.

CNET News.com’s Ina Fried contributed to this blog.

“Sure there has been some frustration in Redmond over the pace, but this is a marathon and not a sprint,” said the source.

Last week, Yahoo announced it would extend the deadline for investors, including Microsoft, to nominate an opposition slate of directors, in an effort to avoid a proxy fight with the Redmond giant while it explored its options.

Then on Monday, one of Yahoo’s possible white knights, News Corp., indicated it had no interest in entering into a bidding war with Microsoft. And on Tuesday, Time Warner’s CEO noted he wouldn’t rule out a deal with the company’s AOL operations and Yahoo, noting in sweeping terms that Time Warner would consider anything that would make AOL stronger. AOL, however, announced Thursday it plunked down $850 million–in cash–for social-networking site Bebo. And while the Bebo acquisition doesn’t necessarily mean Yahoo is no longer of interest to AOL, Time Warner has less money to burn post-Bebo.

“Yahoo has shown some willingness to have a conversation and talk,” said the source on Wednesday. The source noted the Redmond giant has since come to the conclusion it may never get a formal rejection letter from Yahoo.

The recent events add further clarity to comments Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made at CeBIT a couple weeks ago, in which he said “‘there is a range of dialogue’ for both companies about the proposed takeover,” as cited in an Associated Press report.

And while the software giant could pounce and go hostile at any moment–via a proxy fight, exchange offer, or both–Microsoft-Yahoo observers should be ready to park it on a bench for a while.

Another source close to Microsoft’s Yahoo buyout efforts, however, cautioned Thursday that if the talks had reached a substantive level, Microsoft would have disclosed it publicly.

Whether these informal talks will lead to a deal has yet to be seen, added the source.

Microsoft and Yahoo are holding informal merger discussions, marking a shift from the “radio silence” that previously existed between the two companies, according to a source familiar with the talks.

A lot has changed over the past two weeks, compared with February 1 when Microsoft issued its unsolicited buyout bid for Yahoo, which initially valued the company at $31 a share.

Microsoft has set no internal deadline of when it’s ready to say enough is enough, said the source.