Evil Home Stereo

Executive summary: This is yet another rant about underdocumented software. My conclusion: What I hate more than undocumented software projects is documentation which first looks nice but later misses some essential details. Why? Because when I choose a software I often select one by the amount of documentation available. And when I then hit the point where I miss those pesky little details, I often invested too much time into this solution to step back.

And sometimes that’s the moment when I’m glad that I chose an open source project because I can start looking at the source code to find a solution instead of paying loads of money to an over-priced consultant. Read the rest of this entry »

I just connected to a Hotmail MX to test something and was greeted by the following banner:

mss@TreeHouse:~$ nc mx1.hotmail.com 25
220 bay0-mc5-f1.bay0.hotmail.com Sending unsolicited commercial or bulk e-mail to Microsoft’s computer network is prohibited. Other restrictions are found at http://privacy.msn.com/Anti-spam/. Violations will result in use of equipment located in California and other states. Thu, 23 Aug 2007 11:29:14 -0700

Hmmm… “use of equipment”? Did they mean something like this or is that lawspeak?

Most Windows related stuff takes a while to trickle through my filters (aka news sites). So only today I found out that last week Microsoft decided to block a driver hack called Atsiv. That stuff allows you to bypass the mandatory check for certified drivers in the 64-bit version of Vista by loading arbitrary code into kernel space. The whole story is here.

There are definitely some valid use cases for Atsiv as this comment points out. And (obviously) some threats as well. I don’t want to elaborate here on the arguments against Microsoft controlling what driver I am allowed to load on my machine. Much more interesting is the following paragraph:

The security team at Microsoft is investigating adding the revoked key to the kernel mode code signing revocation list, as an additional defense in depth measure.

So in Vista there is some kind of revocation list which can be updated via the web. I didn’t know that.
But it seems like any signature ending on that list will block the driver (or even any drivers created by some manufacturer?) from being loaded. Even if it ended there by accident only. Or mischief. Read the rest of this entry »

Just stumbled upon Danny Angus’ short post on the current situation in Zimbabwe, the hyperinflation there and the BBC article about the new 200,000 dollar note. The thing which confused me was that I met some guy from Zimbabwe in Durban and was pretty sure he used a 200,000 bill to jot down some notes because it was only worth a few rand cents.

But it was probably a 20,000 dollar note from before the redenomination in 2006. I should be able to remember from when it was because what I thought stunning was that the bills had some kind of expiry date. Check out one of the scans (scroll down for the current ones). Hmm… might also have been a current 50,000 bill of the current least valued currency unit.

To halfway answer Dannys question how long that will go on: Probably not long. I skipped Zim on my travels but some friends of mine were there. And they told me that for a mere mortal it is currently not only impossible to buy any petrol but also basic stuff like bread and milk. That’s caused by the price controls the government put on milk prices which would force the farmers to sell it ruinous prices.

Next step anarchy you say? Don’t think so, they also told me stories about incredibly nice and helpful people who live in a country going to the dogs but still do not hesitate to help a group of traveling white girls stuck at the closed border with a lift, accommodation and a meal. Let’s hope for the best…