Djiezes Kraaijst's Public Library

21 Nov 09

Google geeft broncode voor Chrome OS vrij | Core | Tweakers.net Nieuws

tweakers.net/...ncode-voor-chrome-os-vrij.html - Preview

Er komt op korte termijn nog geen bèta beschikbaar, maar alle broncode die tot nu toe voor Chrome OS is ontwikkeld, zal direct als opensource worden vrijgegeven.
Chrome OS eind 2010 in combinatie met nieuwe netbooks van hardwarefabrikanten te gaan leveren
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- In plaats van het inladen van services en allerhande applicaties na het inladen van de kernel, start Chrome OS op een compacte Linux-kernel die op zijn beurt uitsluitend de Chrome-browser opstart.
- Alle gebruikersdata wordt versleuteld opgeslagen op een partitie op de ssd-drive en continu gesynchroniseerd met de gebruikte clouddiensten, die niet noodzakelijk van Google zijn.
- Chrome OS moet in tegenstelling tot de huidige besturingssystemen een geheel ander veiligheidsmodel krijgen. Zo wordt alle gebruikersdata op de ssd-drive versleuteld en online opgeslagen, waardoor een gebruiker zijn gegevens makkelijk kan terughalen mocht zijn netbook worden gestolen. Ook zal elk onderdeel van de kernel door middel van digitale handtekeningen de integriteit controleren.
- In de Chrome-browser draait elke applicatie bovendien in een sandbox-omgeving en zijn de systeembestanden gemount als read-only.
- Bovendien zullen hardwarefabrikanten medio 2010 nieuwe netbooks met ssd-drives aankondigden waarop Chrome OS standaard zal draaien. Deze netbooks zullen volgens de zoekgigant betere toetsenborden en touchpads krijgen, evenals grotere displays en betere accu's.

Chromium Blog: Hello, open source developers. Would you like to help build an operating system for web users?

blog.chromium.org/...urce-developers-would-you.html - Preview

20 Nov 09

BBC News - Is the new EU President a good choice?

news.bbc.co.uk/...8369681.stm - Preview

Is the new EU President a good choice?
EU leaders have chosen the Belgian Prime Minister, Herman van Rompuy, as their new President.
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- He was the unanimous choice after the UK dropped its support for Tony Blair.
  The job of foreign affairs supremo has gone to the EU Trade Commissioner, Baroness Catherine Ashton from the UK.

18 Nov 09

Social networking meets ambient intelligence (w/ Video)

www.physorg.com/news176578652.html - Preview

A team of European researchers are working on merging the instant sharing of social information, popularised by networking and messaging platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, with emerging ambient intelligence systems that use sensors and smart objects to create awareness of users’ whereabouts and activities. Combined, the two technologies promise to provide pervasive awareness, a powerful new way to stay in touch with friends and relatives

Swedish spooks knocked offline by hack attack • The Register

www.theregister.co.uk/...swedish_spooks_ddos - Preview

The website of the Swedish Signals Intelligence agency (Försvarets Radioanstalt, or FRA) was taken offline by a massive DDoS attack this week.
The agency was in the news recently after Swedish legislators passed a law allowing FRA to tap internet communications networks that pass through Sweden.

<script type="text/javascript">RegAd('mpu1', 'reg.security.4159/crime', 'pos=top;sz=336x280', VCs);</script><script src="http://ad.uk.doubleclick.net/adj/reg.security.4159/crime;tile=2;dcove=d;cta=0;ctb=0;ctc=redesign;sc=1;cid=;test=;pid=96844;pf=0;kw=cybercrime;kw=botnet;kw=ddos;kw=sweden;kw=web%20site%20security;cp=0;vc=sec.crime;pos=top;sz=336x280;ord=616669783?" type="text/javascript"></script>

The monitoring effectively started last month, reports Finnish security firm F-secure, which notes that Russia's international internet traffic passes through Sweden.

It's unclear who's behind the attacks, but Russian cybercrime operations or possibly file sharers lashing out against the Pirate Bay clampdown are among the possible suspects.

Schneier on Security: Mossad Hacked Syrian Official's Computer

www.schneier.com/...mossad_hacked_s.html - Preview

Mossad Hacked Syrian Official's Computer

It was unattended in a hotel room at the time:

Israel's Mossad espionage agency used Trojan Horse programs to gather intelligence about a nuclear facility in Syria the Israel Defense Forces destroyed in 2007, the German magazine Der Spiegel reported Monday.

According to the magazine, Mossad agents in London planted the malware on the computer of a Syrian official who was staying in the British capital; he was at a hotel in the upscale neighborhood of Kensington at the time.

The program copied the details of Syria's illicit nuclear program and sent them directly to the Mossad agents' computers, the report said.

Remember the evil maid attack: if an attacker gets hold of your computer temporarily, he can bypass your encryption software.

How a Botnet Gets Its Name - CSO Online - Security and Risk

www.csoonline.com/...How_a_Botnet_Gets_Its_Name - Preview

when it comes to naming botnets, there is no real system in place.

Also see the graphical map "What a Botnet *Looks* Like"

Schneier on Security: FBI/CIA/NSA Information Sharing Before 9/11

www.schneier.com/...fbiciansa_infor.html - Preview

It's conventional wisdom that the legal "wall" between intelligence and law enforcement was one of the reasons we failed to prevent 9/11. The 9/11 Comission evaluated that claim, and published a classified report in 2004. The report was released, with a few redactions, over the summer: "Legal Barriers to Information Sharing: The Erection of a Wall Between Intelligence and Law Enforcement Investigations,"
The report concludes otherwise:

"The information sharing failures in the summer of 2001 were not the result of legal barriers but of the failure of individuals to understand that the barriers did not apply to the facts at hand," the 35-page monograph concludes. "Simply put, there was no legal reason why the information could not have been shared."
1 more annotations...
- James Bamford comes to much the same conclusion in his book, The Shadow Factory: The NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America: there was no legal wall that prevented intelligence and law enforcement from sharing the information necessary to prevent 9/11; it was inter-agency rivalries and turf battles.

Schneier on Security: Beyond Security Theater

www.schneier.com/...beyond_security.html - Preview

[I was asked to write this essay for the New Internationalist (n. 427, November 2009, pp. 10–13). It's nothing I haven't said before, but I'm pleased with how this essay came together.]
Security theater refers to security measures that make people feel more secure without doing anything to actually improve their security.
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- Any terrorist attack is a series of events: something like planning, recruiting, funding, practising, executing, aftermath. Our most effective defenses are at the beginning and end of that process -- intelligence, investigation, and emergency response -- and least effective when they require us to guess the plot correctly. By intelligence and investigation, I don't mean the broad data-mining or eavesdropping systems that have been proposed and in some cases implemented -- those are also movie-plot stories without much basis in actual effectiveness -- but instead the traditional "follow the evidence" type of investigation that has worked for decades.
- Despite fearful rhetoric to the contrary, terrorism is not a transcendent threat. A terrorist attack cannot possibly destroy a country's way of life; it's only our reaction to that attack that can do that kind of damage. The more we undermine our own laws, the more we convert our buildings into fortresses, the more we reduce the freedoms and liberties at the foundation of our societies, the more we're doing the terrorists' job for them.
- We saw some of this in the Londoners' reaction to the 2005 transport bombings. Among the political and media hype and fearmongering, there was a thread of firm resolve. People didn't fall victim to fear. They rode the trains and buses the next day and continued their lives. Terrorism's goal isn't murder; terrorism attacks the mind, using victims as a prop. By refusing to be terrorized, we deny the terrorists their primary weapon: our own fear.

National Journal Magazine - The Cyberwar Plan

www.nationaljournal.com/...cs_20091114_3145.php - Preview

The Cyberwar Plan

It's not just a defensive game; cyber-security includes attack plans too, and the U.S. has already used some of them successfully.
At the request of his national intelligence director, Bush ordered an NSA cyberattack on the cellular phones and computers that insurgents in Iraq were using to plan roadside bombings
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- With this capability, the Americans could deceive their adversaries with false information, including messages to lead unwitting insurgents into the fire of waiting U.S. soldiers.
- The reason that cyber techniques weren't used earlier may have to do with the military's long-held fear that such warfare can quickly spiral out of control. Indeed, in the months before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, military planners considered a computerized attack to disable the networks that controlled Iraq's banking system, but they backed off when they realized that those networks were global and connected to banks in France.
- The U.S. is forming a cyberwar plan based largely on the experience of intelligence agencies and military operations. It is still in nascent stages, but it is likely to support the conduct of conventional war for generations to come. Some believe it may even become the dominant force.
- Over the past few years, however, the cyber-cohort has gained influence among the ranks of military strategists, thanks in large part to the ascendancy of Gen. Petraeus. The man widely credited with rescuing the U.S. mission in Iraq is also a devotee of "information operations," a broad military doctrine that calls for defeating an enemy through deception and intimidation, or by impairing its ability to make decisions and understand the battlefield. In past conflicts, the military has jammed enemy communication systems with electromagnetic waves or dropped ominous leaflets from planes warning enemy forces of imminent destruction. Today, cyber-warriors use the global telecommunications network to commandeer an adversary's phones or shut down its Web servers. This activity is a natural evolution of the information war doctrine, and Petraeus has elevated its esteem.
- According to The New York Times, officials were halfway through their research when the credit markets froze. A senior intelligence official remarked, "We looked at each other and said, 'Our market collapse has just given every cyber-warrior out there a playbook.' "
- Bush's response to cyber-threats took the form of a multibillion-dollar defense plan, known as the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative.
- President Obama confirmed that cyber-warriors have aimed at American networks. "We know that cyber-intruders have probed our electrical grid," he said at the White House in May, when he unveiled the next stage of the national cyber-security strategy. The president also confirmed, for the first time, that the weapons of cyberwar had claimed victims. "In other countries, cyberattacks have plunged entire cities into darkness."
- the military and intelligence agencies compete directly with industry for top talent.
- Responding to critics who say that by building up its own offensive power, the United States risks starting a new arms race, Williamson said, "We are in one, and we are losing."
- Other experts concur that the United States cannot claim to be the world's dominant cyber-force. Kevin Coleman, a senior fellow with the security firm Technolytics and the former chief strategist for the Web pioneer Netscape, said that China's and Russia's abilities to defend and attack are just as good as America's. "Basically, it's a three-way tie for first."
- Most experts believe that Russian sources launched a major attack in April 2007 against government, financial, and media networks in Estonia. It came on the heels of a controversy between Estonian and Russian officials over whether to move a statue honoring Soviet-era war dead. Estonia, one of the most "wired" nations on Earth, is highly dependent upon access to the Internet to conduct daily business, and the cyberattack was crippling.
- A year later, many security experts accused Moscow of launching a cyberattack on Georgia as conventional Russian military forces poured into the country. The assault was aimed at the Georgian centers of official command and public communication, including websites for the Georgian president and a major TV network.
- The attacks also underscored one of the most befuddling aspects of cyberwar. Not all of the computers that attacked Estonia were in Russia. The machines, in fact, were scattered throughout 75 countries and were probably hijacked by a central master without their owners' knowledge. Many of the soldier-machines in this global botnet were in the United States, an Estonian ally. To launch a counteroffensive, Estonia would have had to attack American computers as well as those in other friendly countries.
- Although it was obvious to most experts that the culprits were Russian, it's easy for attackers to mask their true location. The anonymity of the Internet provides many alibis. Furthermore, it's hard to know whether the Russian government committed the attack, hired cyber-mercenaries to do it, or simply looked the other way as patriotic hackers turned their sights on rival countries.
- The U.S. conducted its first focused experiments with cyberattacks during the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia
- Only four years after the war in Yugoslavia, planners again held off on releasing a potentially virulent weapon against Iraq. In the plan to disable the Iraqi banking network in advance of the U.S. invasion, the Pentagon determined that it might also bring down French banks and that the contagion could spread to the United States.
- Because of the widespread damage that cyber-weapons can cause, military and intelligence leaders seek presidential authorization to use them. "They're treated like nuclear weapons, so of course it takes presidential approval,"
- Unlike atomic bombs, however, cyber-weapons aren't destroyed in the attack. "Once you introduce them to the battlefield, it's trivially easy for the other side to capture your artillery, as it were, and then use it against you if you're not already inoculated against it, and then against other friendlies,"
- The odds for a broad international framework aren't good, however. The Russian government has proposed a treaty limiting the use of cyber-weapons, but the State Department has rejected the idea, preferring to focus on improving defenses and prosecuting cyberattacks as crimes. Officials are also wary of any strategy by the Russian government to constrain other nations' ability to attack
- "The advantages of having a cyber-warfare capacity are simply too great for many international actors to abjure its benefits," the panel stated.
- In this historical analogy, experts have embraced a Cold War deterrent to prevent the cyber-Armageddon that military and intelligence officials have been warning about -- mutually assured destruction.
- If nations begin attacking one another's power grids and banks, they will quickly exchange bombs and bullets. Presumably, U.S. war planners know that. And it may be the most compelling reason to keep their cyber-weapons sharp but use them sparingly.

AnandTech: The Radeon HD 5970: Completing AMD's Takeover of the High End GPU Market

www.anandtech.com/...showdoc.aspx - Preview

The 5970 is without a doubt Overkill (with a capital O) on a single monitor. This will likely change for future games (i.e. STALKER), but on today’s games it’s more power than is necessary to drive even the largest single monitor. The 5970 still offers a good performance boost over the 5870 even with a single monitor, but with the 5870’s outstanding performance, it’s not $200 better.
As the fastest of the fast cards, AMD can basically charge up to 2x the price of a 5870 for it, and they didn’t. After seeing the performance data, I understand why. In our benchmarks the 5970 is practically tied with the 5850CF, and a pair of such cards would sell for $600 at this time.
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- There’s a market out there for $1200 in video cards, but you had better be running 3 30” monitors in Eyefinity mode to make use of it.

AnandTech: The Radeon HD 5970: Completing AMD's Takeover of the High End GPU Market

www.anandtech.com/...showdoc.aspx - Preview

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- Looking at the 5970 when it’s overclocked, it becomes readily apparently why a good power supply is necessary. For that 15% increase in core speed and 20% increase in memory speed, we pay a penalty of 113W! This puts it in league with the GTX series in SLI, and the 5870CF, except that it’s drawing all of this power over half as many plugs.

AnandTech: The Radeon HD 5970: Completing AMD's Takeover of the High End GPU Market

www.anandtech.com/...showdoc.aspx - Preview

However the 5970 really drives this point home, being the largest video card we’ve ever tested. The PCB is 11.5” long, and with the overhang of the cooling shroud, that becomes 12.16” (309mm).

AnandTech: The Radeon HD 5970: Completing AMD's Takeover of the High End GPU Market

www.anandtech.com/...showdoc.aspx - Preview

The Radeon HD 5970: Completing AMD's Takeover of the High End GPU Market
The 5970 serves as the nowadays obligatory dual-GPU part. It is 2 Cypress dice mounted on a single, dual-slot video card. AMD clocks it at 725MHz core and 1GHz (4GHz effective) for the GDDR5 memory. The card comes equipped with 2GB of GDDR5, which is split between the two GPUs, giving it an effective memory capacity of 1GB. The card will be selling for $600
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- The TDP is 294W, bringing it in just under the 300W ATX limit. Idle power is 42W
- In order to meet the 300W limit, AMD went and binned Cypress chips specifically for the 5970, in order to find chips that could operate at 725MHz at only 1.05v (the 5850 runs at 1.088v). Given the power creep coming from the 4800 series, binning for the best chips is the only way AMD could get a 300W card out.

16 Nov 09

Hollywood accounting - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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In accountancy, Hollywood accounting is the practice of distributing the money earned by a large project to corporate entities which, though legally distinct from the one responsible for the project itself, are actually owned by the same people. This substantially reduces the profit of the project proper, sometimes eliminating it altogether. The effect of this practice is to reduce the amount which the corporation must pay in royalties or other profit-sharing agreements.

12 Nov 09

RepRap, the replicating machine: The Free and Open Source Factory on the Desktop?

www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/...nd_open_source_factory_desktop - Preview

RepRap, the replicating machine: The Free and Open Source Factory on the Desktop?
RepRap (replicating Rapid-prototyper) is a 3D printer and it is impeccably free and open source under both the GPL and the Creative Commons Licence.
4 more annotations...
- as Douglas Rushkoff points out in Life Inc: How the World Became a Corporation and How to take it Back modern corporations originated in the Renaissance, invented by the aristocracy to control and profit from the activities of the merchant class. The rest, as they say, is history. In Rushkoff’s own words, the corporations effectively outlawed the exchange of value between individuals.
- RepRap makes the skeleton of the machine but not the electronic components and of course other raw materials must be sourced too.
- The software core of RepRap is a zip file hosted on Sourceforge.
- The real challenge for RepRap though will be not just to make more complex stuff with significant economic impact but in interfacing to the potential legal quagmire of free hardware. Even Richard Stallman thinks it raises relatively more complex issues, such as firmware, circuit designs, copyleft, patents and free interface specifications

Test Results: Latency, Frequency, And Bandwidth - Review Tom's Hardware : Value DDR3 For Intel's P55: Six 4GB Kits Rounded Up

www.tomshardware.com/...ddr3-4gb-p55,2462-6.html - Preview

Value DDR3 For Intel's P55: Six 4GB Kits Rounded Up : Value Is In The Overclock - Review Tom's Hardware

www.tomshardware.com/...ddr3-4gb-p55,2462.html - Preview

the vast majority of it is rated at overclocked settings. Standard DDR3 runs at 1.50V, and components rated at higher voltages are likely to have slower, standard memory under those heat spreaders. When you pay extra for performance RAM, what you’re really paying for is a guarantee that the modules will operate at a speed beyond the ratings of its components.

11 Nov 09

Does Biostar Win? - Review Tom's Hardware : Enthusiast P55: Eight LGA 1156 Boards Between $150 And $200

www.tomshardware.com/...-1156-motherboard,2463-19.html - Preview

The four boards that remained 100% stable are Gigabyte’s $170 P55-UD4P, Biostar’s $185 TPower I55, Asus’ $195 P7P55D EVO, and EVGA’s $200 P55-SLI. Of these, Gigabyte’s P55-UD4P has the second-highest CPU overclock, highest base clock, highest memory clock for high-end four-module configurations, lowest power consumption, and lowest VRM temperature. Gigabyte’s P55-UD4P also has the lowest price of the four top-quality boards and is thus the best value in its class.
Yet the one thing missing from the Gigabyte P55-UD4P is any PCIe x4 slot, an interface that enthusiasts might use for an x8 RAID card or “spare” x16 graphics card dedicated to additional displays or PhysX processing. For that we look to Asus and EVGA, since Biostar’s x4 slot has a closed end that prevents longer cards from being installed. Of the two motherboards that support a third x16-length card at x4 bandwidth, Asus provides 1.2% better performance, 0.2% higher CPU overclocking, 1% higher BCLK capability, and 5.3% higher average efficiency. None of those miniscule leads are capable of giving the P7P55D EVO a clear advantage over EVGA’s P55 SLI, but combining them with a 2.5% lower price gives Asus the edge it needs to take honorable mention behind value-leader Gigabyte.

Overclocking - Review Tom's Hardware : Enthusiast P55: Eight LGA 1156 Boards Between $150 And $200

www.tomshardware.com/...-1156-motherboard,2463-17.html - Preview

base clock limits beyond 300 MHz are completely meaningless with the LGA 1156 platform, and not every board could fully support even our moderate 1.45V CPU core setting.
3 more annotations...
- ASRock’s entry--this particular model wasn’t stable at 1.45V CPU core when maximum overclocks and eight Prime95 threads were applied. We found the highest practical setting for the P55 Deluxe was 1.40V, as anything higher would cause the motherboard’s over-current protection to reset the system under full load

Djiezes Kraaijst's Public Library

Google geeft broncode voor Chrome OS vrij | Core | Tweakers.net Nieuws

Chromium Blog: Hello, open source developers. Would you like to help build an operating system for web users?

BBC News - Is the new EU President a good choice?

Social networking meets ambient intelligence (w/ Video)

Swedish spooks knocked offline by hack attack • The Register

Schneier on Security: Mossad Hacked Syrian Official's Computer

Mossad Hacked Syrian Official's Computer

How a Botnet Gets Its Name - CSO Online - Security and Risk

Also see the graphical map "What a Botnet Looks Like"

Schneier on Security: FBI/CIA/NSA Information Sharing Before 9/11

Schneier on Security: Beyond Security Theater

National Journal Magazine - The Cyberwar Plan

The Cyberwar Plan

It's not just a defensive game; cyber-security includes attack plans too, and the U.S. has already used some of them successfully.

AnandTech: The Radeon HD 5970: Completing AMD's Takeover of the High End GPU Market

AnandTech: The Radeon HD 5970: Completing AMD's Takeover of the High End GPU Market

AnandTech: The Radeon HD 5970: Completing AMD's Takeover of the High End GPU Market

AnandTech: The Radeon HD 5970: Completing AMD's Takeover of the High End GPU Market

Hollywood accounting - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

RepRap, the replicating machine: The Free and Open Source Factory on the Desktop?

Test Results: Latency, Frequency, And Bandwidth - Review Tom's Hardware : Value DDR3 For Intel's P55: Six 4GB Kits Rounded Up

Value DDR3 For Intel's P55: Six 4GB Kits Rounded Up : Value Is In The Overclock - Review Tom's Hardware

Does Biostar Win? - Review Tom's Hardware : Enthusiast P55: Eight LGA 1156 Boards Between $150 And $200

Overclocking - Review Tom's Hardware : Enthusiast P55: Eight LGA 1156 Boards Between $150 And $200

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