Posts by Andrew ourt

Sony pitches blue-laser Compact Disc revival

bring back MD

They have repeatedly dropped the ball when it comes to new media types. MiniDisc was a great idea. A CD which due to the floppy disc style case, can be thrown around the room, and go for years outside of its case with out getting damaged. For a person like me whose computer has columns of CD's/DVD's not in their cases surrounding his computer, MiniDiscs were a boone. My father loved them for the car, because you take it out of the player, fling it whereever you want, with out worrying about damaging it, and slip another one in. Unfortunately, Sony did not release the specs to enough manufacturers, hardware and discs remained expensive to buy, and due to a couple of stupid design flaws they failed. One of these being that their were different formats for audio and data.

Sony revamped the MD, and brought out the UMD. Universal MiniDisc. Sounded good, they even released Movies on the format. But the only player was the PSP. A PSP to TV player was only recently released, and they didn't open the format to anyone so it is safe to say that it has died a death aswell.

I am refusing to buy blu-ray discs, as I have spent the last few years collecting quite a large DVD collection and I am not going to replace it with Blu Ray discs. If I were to do that, then it would be the 4th copy of the Matrix I will have bought(VHS, DVD, UMD, Blu-Ray). In the meantime I am waiting for VOD, and internet TV to mature to the point that I won't need to store anything on Disc.

As for this blue laser CD? Pull the other one.

ET, because when we make contact, undoutedly they will be using a different format of media to us, and Sony will be pushing an Extra Terrestrial-compliant disc on us.

Spam spewing printer attack pulps security

Hacking printers has been around for a while

sup,

Using port 9100(the jetdirect port) for nefarious activities is not something new. I first discovered how easy it was to exploit them in about 2001, and indeed, the topic of using networked printers as your own personal storage space was covered in one of the "Stealing the Network" books. In my professional life, I have always tried to point out the vulnerabilities that lie in Networked printers which get over looked from a security point of view. In a job I held a few years ago, I put up the time and place of my leaving party on the display of the printer in the office from home.

Unfortunately, exploitation of printers continues because unless you print out "This printer has been hacked" 20,000 times, or leave it flashing on the display, no one notices any difference with whats happening inside the printer. If the printer has been left with a connection to the outside world, with the default password then you can bet no one is paying much attention to log files. I am sorry to say, I dont think things are going to improve until spammers actually start exploiting printers to print out spam. Only then will companies who are complacent regarding security , sit up and take notice.