2010
02.12

·         Gaping hole: EMV Chip+PIN vulnerable to man in the middle attacks.  Translation: millions of European card holders at risk of card fraud (that to the bank’s eye doesn’t look like fraud) http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2010/02/11/chip-and-pin-is-broken/

·         E2E and tokenization increase security but do not decrease scope, unless “if, and only if, it has been validated that the entity that possesses encrypted cardholder data does not have the means to decrypt it.” “Once the cardholder data is encrypted or tokenized, and so long as the merchant never has the ability to retrieve clear text data, all the downstream systems could be out of scope. Otherwise, all bets are off and all your cardholder data are in scope. You may have improved your security, but you have not reduced your PCI scope.” http://www.storefrontbacktalk.com/securityfraud/security-versus-scope-choose-one/

·         Visa increases the number of merchant categories eligible for “no signature for $25 or less”, decreasing tender time for cash heavy discount merchants http://www.paymentsnews.com/2010/02/visa-extends-no-signature-required-to-additional-merchant-categories.html

·         Dutch retailers expecting to go cashless in five years http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_url?doit=done&tt=url&intl=1&fr=bf-home&trurl=http://www.nu.nl/economie/2180145/contant-geld-verdwijnt.html&lp=nl_en&btnTrUrl=Translate

·         NEC using facial database to estimate age of customer to within 10 years http://www.storefrontbacktalk.com/crm/nec-using-hair-color-ear-shape-to-help-digital-signage-guess-consumers-age/

Posted via email from Bicotech Posterous

2010
02.10
I've spent a few weeks tinkering and trying to get a non-standard USB peripheral passed through to a VM running in VMWare server.  When I read this in a forum posting I wondered if I simply need better glasses.  I never saw that icon there.

Highlight the virtual machine, wait for the summary screen to refresh and you will see a USB icon above the Tasks and Events tabs.

Posted via email from Bicotech Posterous

2010
02.08
Just when I thought I was narrowing in on a Canon body…

Canon EOS 550D vs EOS 500D Key differences
  • Higher resolution 18MP CMOS with gapless micro lenses
  • ISO 6400 no longer in 'expanded' range (12,800 max remains the same)
  • Redesigned buttons and new movie/live view button
  • Customizable auto ISO ranges
  • Improved 63 zone metering (iFCL)
  • 3:2 format screen with more pixels
  • Improved movie functionality
  • Slightly higher burst shooting rate (though buffer holds fewer shots)
  • HDMI control (CEC)
  • SDXC compatible

Full preview here

Posted via email from Bicotech Posterous

2010
02.04

So now my Slingbox dies?

Fantastic, just fantastic.  My Slingbox Pro-HD just died and went to firmware heaven.  I've got the "red-upside-down-U-of-death".  No network activity, audio pass-through is hobbled, and even the hard reset didn't bring it back from the wasteland between functional and totally non-functional.

Slingbox is happy to talk to me about it, for the marginal fee of $149.  Most likely that fee will cover the RMA and replacement of the device, and I predict they would simply replace it with someone else's repaired unit (however I won't know until I pay at least $19 just to begin receiving support).  I paid $230 for the product in October 2008, which means I paid around $14/month during its underutilized life.  At this point I can't see pumping another $169 into it.  I liked the product, and for the most part it just worked, but I didn't use it enough to justify putting more money into its repair.

But to make matters worse, AT&T just authorized Sling to let its iPhone app function over 3G networks instead of just Wifi (http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/att-gives-go-ahead-for-iphone-slingplayer-over-3g/).  That would have been nice, and perhaps would have increased my usage.  Incorporate the wasted $30 on the iPhone app and my monthly bill for my total sling experience went up to $16/month.  A lot of decent content subscriptions are available for that price, and are probably much more useful.

Posted via email from Brad’s posterous

2010
02.03

Posted via email from Brad’s posterous

2010
02.01

The iPad’s future shock

A great little editorial suggesting (perhaps correctly) that the iPad is being panned because it knocks the tech elite off our high horses.  From the article:

The tech industry will be in paroxysms of future shock for some time to come. Many will cling to their January-26th notions of what it takes to get "real work" done; cling to the idea that the computer-based part of it is the "real work."

It's not. The Real Work is not formatting the margins, installing the printer driver, uploading the document, finishing the PowerPoint slides, running the software update or reinstalling the OS.

The Real Work is teaching the child, healing the patient, selling the house, logging the road defects, fixing the car at the roadside, capturing the table's order, designing the house and organizing the party.

Read it here: http://www.macworld.com/article/146038/2010/01/ipad_future_shock.html

Posted via email from Brad’s posterous

2010
01.04
For my security readers (in case you didn't see this over the holidays) a nice summary of guiding security principles:

http://securosis.com/blog/my-personal-security-guiding-principles/

Posted via email from Brad’s posterous

2010
01.01
While importing about 11GB of photos from my SDHC memory card via Picasa, all of a sudden a little over a day's worth of photos were no longer on the card.  They were there yesterday when I checked on the camera, but during the import of other photos, they disappeared.  

I did a quick google search and others are reporting issues similar to mine.  Some say a faulty card read can lose directories worth of data, and perhaps that is what happened.  But it is the second time in a month that it has happened on this computer, and both times were on different cards.

This time I tried "Recova" which did not help.  Then I tried PhotoRec, the open source utility from CGSecurity, and after telling it to scan the full volume, it recovered every lost photo, including the ones I truly deleted from the camera during our last trip.  

Posted via email from Brad’s posterous

2009
12.09

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/Q0PvEVThhG8/jp-nataf-come-tell-m.html

Posted via email from Brad’s posterous

2009
11.17
I've been trying to figure out how to upgrade my Windows 7 RC Ultimate to Windows 7 Professional, and it seems these guys figured it out:

http://icrontic.com/articles/upgrade-the-windows-7-rc-to-retail

Posted via email from Brad’s posterous