25.02.2006 19:51

Krita

KOffice is close to 1.5 release. A very interesting program (present in 1.4, but version from 1.5 will have many updates) is Krita. A big plus is rapid development (may result in bugs, but that's the price...). Krita is a program that may, in the future, be a competition to Gimp. Worth looking into.


Posted by Mara | Permalink | Categories: Software

21.02.2006 21:23

Security in practice

There was an interesting experiment: cdrom disks were given to employees of big financial institutions in London. The disks were said to be a Valentine Day promotion. They also had labels about not bypassing security policy.

The result? Just as expected. The software was run. Fortunately for the companies the program just made a notification. Imagine a case when it installs spyware, keylogger etc.


Posted by Mara | Permalink | Categories: Security

19.02.2006 18:18

KDE 4 features

Newsforge has an article about new features and changes in KDE 4. An interesting read, but too much marketing hype at certain places.

Qt4 brings a number of interesting features, but is not a revolution. I don't think KDE4 will be, either. Looking back at the development of KDE 3 series, however, I expect the new features will make it even nicer. I hope it wouldn't result in performance problems (it shouldn't, looking at the changes and Qt 4).


Posted by Mara | Permalink | Categories: Software

16.02.2006 20:58

Cracking RFID tags

Famous cryptographer Adi Shamir says that many popular RFID tags can be easily cracked. They show specific power use patterns when recived bit is equal to the one expected in password. He tested a tags from populra vendors and they all seem to be unprotected.

Shamir thinks that a cell phone is enough to kill all the tags in the area. Bad news to the ones who want to use such tags everywhere.


Posted by Mara | Permalink | Categories: Security

14.02.2006 21:43

2Gbit/s for download

There was a test at Umea University (Sweden). Ubuntu and Debian released were mirrored with 2Gbit/s limit. A number of interesting points were made. Example: it caused a number of DoS alarms...


Posted by Mara | Permalink | Categories: Software

11.02.2006 19:59

Another spammer's visit

I had yet another blog spammer's visit. This is interesting and shows how creative techniques they use.

First, it was a comment spam. Two entries (more than 6 months old) were affected. For someone who's not looking at ALL the comments, it'd be hard to spot.

The spam started to appear when there was a gap between the entries. When I posted a new entry, it stopped. This behaviour has reasons. When blog is not visited by the author it's a 'good' idea to spam it. Better profits. Taking the number of abandoned blogs...

IPs -- different. Looks like a botnet or something similar.

Time between posts. That's interesting. One and a half to eight hours. I guess it has something to do with the ranking system that says 'modified -- good, but modified too often -- bad'.


Posted by Mara | Permalink | Categories: Security

09.02.2006 19:21

Patents: BlackBerry

BlackBerry patent case is currently a hot topic. It shows how a company without a product, using only patents, can try to bring a successful service down.


Posted by Mara | Permalink | Categories: Science and technology

02.02.2006 19:15

Firefox 1.5.0.1

Firefox 1.5.0.1 has been released today. It fixes a number of quite serious security problems. What is also important, the annoying grey bar is gone.


Posted by Mara | Permalink | Categories: Software