Posted Feb 24th 2008 7:18PM by Joshua Topolsky
Filed under: Gaming
What can really say about this? It’s simply the most delicious looking 8-bit console we’ve ever laid eyes on. Now, if someone could just whip up an Xbox 360 hot-fudge sundae or Genesis-brûlée. Hey — maybe for our next birthday?
[Via technabob]
Now in its second edition and twice as long as the first edition, “Hacking, The Art of Exploitation“, introduces the reader very rapidly to programming, pseudo-code, the C language, then dives deeply into exploits, and their associated code. If you’ve ever wanted to know what a buffer overflow, spoofing or password cracking was, then this book will not only explain what those are at a more than cursory level, but give you code samples so that you can test it yourself.
I have not seen the 1st edition, so this review of this book stands alone. Although Hacking devotes about a quarter of the book to introducing programming, pseudo-code, as well as computer basics such as memory segments and the heap, don’t make the mistake that you will learn programming from this book alone. This book’s strength is in explaining why holes exist, what common ones are and then demonstrating how they can be exploited with appropriate code samples. This is not a book for ’script kiddies’ who simply find pre-made exploit programs to run with a one-line command or a double-click of a mouse.
You can see the Table of Contents here [PDF], but Hacking goes into buffer overflows, employing both Perl and Bash scripting techniques, formating string vulnerabilities, networking holes, countermeasures and even cryptography. Despite a somewhat sensational title, the author, Jon Erickson, really does focus on what he sees an art. The art is in creating and writing elegant code that not only fulfills its goal, but does so in a clever, neat, non-brute forced way.
Of course, the eternal argument surrounding books and material such as this arises - that it is only enabling crackers to further damage computer systems, steal private data, etc. This is a weak argument of course. Those whose jobs are to protect computer systems and applications must understand these flaws and techniques in order to fix, prevent and protect against them. This does not only apply to computing, but to any other field where a ‘bad guy’ can take advantage of a system for their own selfish reasons. Once knowledge has been released, it becomes very difficult to put it back in its box. This book is just knowledge wrapped in a different package. We recommend you strongly consider this title if you would like to enter this field or add to your repertoire.
Gimme!
Price: $32.97
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)
Posted Feb 24th 2008 3:06PM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Laptops
Look out, here comes yet another duo hopping on the Penryn train, and each of these buggers are sporting a Toshiba logo. Up first is the €999 ($1,480) Satellite A300 — the apparent successor of the A200 — which features a 15.4-inch display, a refreshed design, Harman Kardon speakers, built-in fingerprint reader, 1.3-megapixel camera, integrated microphone, up to 2GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive and your choice of a Core 2 Duo T5500 (A300-124) or T8100 (A300-11I). As for the 17-inch P300 (seen after the jump), you can reportedly expect somewhat similar configurations, but sadly, we’ve no hard details on price or availability for it.
Posted Feb 24th 2008 11:15AM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Transportation
It’s really too bad nanotechnology is so gosh darn morally unacceptable, it could do so much good for humanity! Take this new wiperless windshield, for instance. Designed by Leonardo Fioravanti of Pininfarina, the Hidra features an aerodynamic design, and a bit of a nanotech sandwich (mmm, sandwich) to keep the front glass clear of water and debris. The first layer protects from sun and repels water, the second layer features “nano-dust” to push dirt to the edges of the windshield and is activated by the third layer which senses the dirt, while the whole kit is powered by the fourth layer which conducts electricity to keep it going. The tech could be ready for mass production within 5 years, but there’s already a working prototype in the Hidra concept car.
[Via Sparking Tech]
A new online resource from Palm could prove to be helpful for some of the new Palm smartphone owners. With the recent popularity (and the low price) of the Centro we are now seeing a whole new group of smartphone users, some who may not be as technology friendly. These new Self-Paced Learning guides from Palm should offer them the needed help to use their smartphone like a pro.
Palm has guides available for the Treo 500v, 680, 700w, 700wx, 700p, 750 and the Centro from both Sprint and AT&T. The guides offer up some tutorials on topics like getting to know your smartphone, setting up your smartphone, sending email, browsing the web, tips, tricks and a whole lot more.
Read [Palm Learning Guide] Via [gadgets On The Go]
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How can you resist an ipod speaker shaped like a raindrop that you can take into the shower or bath, or keep pool-side or on your beach blanket? I have the one in “Liquid Blue”; it’s about the size of a coconut (so not tiny), and it houses my iPod safely inside its waterproof shell so I can take my music or audiobooks into the bath with me. Sound quality is decent enough, considering my expectations aren’t that high when it comes to bath-side entertainment. It runs on four AA batteries, and external controls consist of just four simple, tiny buttons for up volume, down volume, stop, and playback.
The Zumreed Rain Drop iPod Bathroom Speaker comes from Audiocubes for $50.
Posted Feb 24th 2008 1:19PM by Joshua Topolsky
Filed under: Gaming
If that unplayable version of Pong we saw for the Wii wasn’t quite doing it for you, you ‘ll be happy to know that homebrewer Christian Auby (aka DesktopMan) has just hit the next stage in evolution: Tetris. That’s right, you can now get a fully functioning version of the puzzler running on your Wii, thanks to that handy Twilight Princess hack, and what was probably a gargantuan amount of work on Auby’s part. The game loads straight from SD out of Twilight Princess, but after the hack has been engaged you can jump back to the loader to pull something new off of a card, which should make experimenting a little bit easier. Check the video after the break to see how it all works.
[Thanks, Craig]
A few more details are emerging on possible delays with the Asus Eee PC, this time it seems some of the units will be slowed due to a lack of power supplies.
“But, shipment of the brand’s hottest-selling Eee PC, a budget-price laptop, is estimated at only between 650,000 and 700,000 units for the quarter due mainly to a shortage of power supplies.”
The statement specifically mentions “power supplies” but this may be referring to the recent reports of the battery shortages. Either way, batteries or power supplies (power cords) it seems like we are going to be seeing some delays on the Eee PC. The delays could prove to be good news for at least one other notebook, the Everex Cloudbook.
Read [emsnow] Via [eeeuser.com]
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With the recent demise of hd dvd and all things that surround it, this news from Microsoft comes as no real surprise, they have officially discontinued the Xbox 360 HD DVD player. Current owners need not worry though, because although discontinued the support and warranty will remain in effect.
Actually the only real surprise here is that it took Microsoft this long to make it official. A nice follow up would have been the announcement of a Blu-ray player add-on, but that still has not been mentioned. It would make sense though.
Via [Gizmodo]
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Posted Feb 24th 2008 8:57AM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Digital Cameras, Transportation
Ever on the lookout for the next step in up in Big Brother policy, there’s a new camera technology being developed in the UK at Loughborough University which can count car occupants by figuring out how much water and blood content there is inside the car. The obvious application is for trimming down those carpool lane offenders, trying to squeeze by the law with a dummy or a pet in the passenger seat. Look, privacy concerns aside, there’s just something awkward about traffic cams tracking quantities of blood and water inside of commuter cars. Do we really want to let the Machines have that kind of inside (literally) information on us?
[Thanks, Richard W]
