Posts by Matt Haswell

Terminator will be back in 2009

Sarah Conner Chronicles

Actually - as someone who has (legally) watched the pilot of Sarah Conner Chronicles, I think it could work.

It's pretty grim (including the bit that's now infamously been dropped from the pilot when the substitute teacher in school turns out to be a terminator) and gritty. Some tongue in cheek too though (thank the gods). Very cool time travel stuff from both sides - anyone can be prepared if they send agents back in time with enough years to build more time machines and resources.

Apparently they spent about $8m on the pilot - only a small jump more to having a film especially with the pace the pilot sets.

However the one sticking point is if they can keep up the plot quality. This could be the problem with the films too of course.

Israel suspected of 'hacking' Syrian air defences

Friend of a friend story

...so no idea if it's true but it was a bloody good hack if it was.

Iraq. First gulf war. CIA manage to intercept an order for laser printers going to a known front company for Saddam's military. It inserts an additional little "surprise" into them and lets them get sent out.

First days of the war. Bombers go out - normal ones - to take out the AA sites.

As the first wave appears on the radar they don't try and hide. Fairly anti-stealth you say?

All the AA systems go into single user mode and have to fire with no radar and no other systems reachable. In the confusion 90% are bombed to bits.

The surprise added was a small chip that snoops the ethernet they were connected to and if they saw lots of targetting info from radar systems then just to flood the network with a denial of service.

Yup - the CIA had figured out that they had added laser printers onto the same simple network all the AA and radar was on.

Who checks inside a printer that all the chips there are *supposed* to be there?

Australian court rings to the sound of satisfaction

Ringtones in the workplace

I have purged my local area of annoying ringtones when people leave them on the desk to go to meetings or lunch with the simple tactic of removing their phone batteries - usually to the cheers of other annoyed people. The phone owners soon learn to leave them on silent or take them with them.

It started due to the terrible idea of vodaphone of "if they miss a call and leave a message then the answerphone should call them back about 1 minute later, and again and again and..."

BioShockers delivered from DRM hell

Bugger

Was really looking forward to this.... but no way am I going to buy something with that stupid DRM. I don't mind DRM that means you need the DVD (I buy *all* my games unlike some people) but this just seems utterly stupid.

It reminds me - I have a copy of "Freedom Force vs. The 3rd Reich" which I have never played. I installed it once but then needed the space before I got around to play it. Went to install it about 6 months later and was hit by the stupid Star-Force protection install which requires it's own code that wasn't on the manual. Yep - it was on a bit of paper that has gone missing during that 6 months. ARGH.

Just realised - Freedom Force made by Irrational Games/2K Games too

Damn them.

Oz foetus becomes Facebook star

Lester on Facebook

So.... this isn't you then?

http://www.facebook.com/s.php?k=10080&id=610359812

Hackers debut malware loaded USB ruse

One word : autorun

I looked into this myself a while ago in order to better secure systems - you must at least disable autorun to be secure on a Windows box. Although most USB sticks won't autorun, this is just due to a hardware bit setting. Just grab one of the Microsoft USB sticks from a tradeshow or the U3 ones you can buy and they are set to autorun - you then just have to set up a normal CD autorun and put it on the stick. Easy!

I imagine there is a way to get it to autorun on Macs too - anyone comment? Just like those CD's that some magazines used to have that would run on Windows or Macs.

Of course, you could just put a tempting exe on the stick anyway like "HR Salary Records.exe" and that would probably do it anyway. Just have it throw up a failure due to lack of some special software, meanwhile installing the trojan in the background.

BA upgrades corpse

Aren't there other considerations?

I thought that after death the muscles in the bowel relax and there's a pretty nasty smell? I don't think *anyone* would want to be beside a dead body that's stinking away. Crew beds it is then..... (they wouldn't all be used in a short 8 hour journey anyway).

Personally I would rather grieve in a toilet away from people watching me too - however I guess people have different ways of coping.

Personally I can't stand BA anyway - I know 2 people who have had gold BA airmiles cards (lots of work journeys) and they're never upgraded - however I've been upgraded to first for free on Virgin about 5 times. I even met Richard Branson there who was very patient and good-humoured about a stream of questions from a 10 year old in first class too.

Netgear HDX101 200Mbps powerline Ethernet adaptor

Good throughput - annoying design

I bought 4 in order to connect all 3 floors and the output from my ADSL router into a network without having to drill holes everywhere. I have pretty much given up on wireless due to old thick stone walls, lots of neighbours with wireless (crowding the bandwidth) and even at full speed it's just too slow to transfer significant data for backups.

At first, like the reviewer, I had to plug them into extension strips and got a decent enough bandwidth but after sorting out the wiring and plugging them directly into the sockets I got a much better throughput. I can't remember the exact figures, but certainly good enough for backing up.

Downsides though:

Perhaps like Brian Green commented above, it really depends on your electrical wiring and also anything generating electrical noise on the circuit. For instance I get a great connection from my ground floor to my middle floor but the top floor connection can be pretty flakey sometimes.

Also the design of the adapter when plugged directly into the socket means that the socket power switches can cause the Powerline to not sit flush. I assume it depends on the design of your sockets but these seem fairly standard. It doesn't seem to affect anything, but was a bit annoying. The blue connection light can be a bit bright if you have one in your bedroom too.