Of all the random dates already in my calender, I have just added another! The so called Pi approximation day, which I missed this year, is on the 22nd of July and is so ‘celebrated’ because it mathematically gives a close approximation (divide 22 by 7) to the true value of Pi. Oh well, this time next year (sans one day) I will make a Pi pastry and who knows what else…
I was surprised to hear of a LAN gaming center in Trocadero, but a few of my friends had been extolling it’s virtues for a little while so I decided to give it a try. It is run by Gamerbase and houses 80+ extremely high end Dell systems with 24″ Monitors and looks absolutely stunning. I went there on Friday and had such a great time I went again yesterday. The only downside is it tends to be a bit quiet when they are not running tournaments so bring a group of friends down with you! Pictured below is the 18+ section where I do my gaming.
Well, the free weekend that Valve were running has finished and according to Xfire, the number of hours Day of Defeat Source has been played has literally doubled.
Despite my rather tepid review, I was still tempted to buy DoD: Source, $4.99 was a very good deal although but I didn’t in the end, but I am sure many did and this just reinforces how successful such events can be.
The next version of Ubuntu (8.10) that will be released in October of this year has been named (drum roll please)
“Intrepid Ibex”
Which appears to be a wild goat. At least they are more creative than some of Microsoft’s internal codenames. Still, I must confess I have tuned out a little bit from the Linux world since Hardy Heron (euphemistically named Hungry Hippo by the F/OSS community), when more concrete details emerge as the mile stones progress I will write more on the subject.
I can’t believe SciFi / Sky One went ahead with their plans to shelve the second part of the final season until 2009! Bah! Like a crazed junky, I am left clamoring for my BSG-fix - especially with the way the mid-season finale left things!
Anyway, despite being quite frustrated - here is a trailer for the final part of season four which goes a long way to rebuilding my excitement for the last segment, although interestingly, there is talk of another feature length film being considered.
We have been hearing rumours of a 480 stream processor equipped card from ATi for a while now. Featuring crazy capacities of GDDR5 memory and even coming with its own cold fusion generator which glows red and pats you on the ass periodically telling you ‘Well done my pet, now worship me’ ….
Ok, so most of that is not true, but some is! ATi have announced in the last few days two flagship cards from the new R700 range - the 4870 and the budget 4850. Rather than the 480 stream processors, both cards feature an even more impressive number - 800 (!) clocked at 750Mhz and 625Mhz respectively. A good preview and very promising benchmarks can be found over at gamespot. Its great to see ATi finally bringing out products to be excited about, rather than the recent damp squibs like current generation Phenom and the R600 series graphics cards.
Oyster cards are cards containing RFIDs which facilitate transport on the London Underground (and overground) networks. I had been wondering for a while how exactly they worked, but not finding much detailed information online I based my conclusions initially on my observations.
Here is what I have deduced.
1. Each RFID card has a unique ID which is recorded during each transaction with a card scanner.
Any Oyster user can access their usage history, either online or via a Oyster top up machine. This presents an interesting problem - if you can check up on where your card has been, what is to stop Transport for London from using the same information? Either individually or as part of the collective, it presents a very detailed picture of individual and mass use of the transport network.
2.The RFID works passively and contains a small amount of EEPROM.
Given that the Oyster card needs to be ‘tapped’ on the reader every time, it is safe to assume that the RFID does not have an internal power source. Instead, it only becomes ‘active’ with the energy it obtains via induction from the electromagnetic field close to the surface of the Oyster touch point. This energy is sufficient to power up the (presumably) CMOS device which then sends the encrypted data to the reader. It is not clear at this point whether the reader then sends back a response with the new balance to the card, or whether the entire ‘transaction’ process is done on the RFID card.
3. The information stored on the EEPROM is encrypted, most likely with symmetrical cryptography.
4.When scanned, the information from the Oyser card is used, it is not pulled from a central server.
When updating the Oyster card the card itself must be touched against a scanner. If this is not done the balance is not applied. I initially believed all balance and travel card information was securely stored on a ‘mothership’ server. This clearly can’t be entirely the case. Although, when a top-up is bought online, it is stored in the Oyster system until the Oyster card is touched on a reader somewhere in London. This suggests there is a ‘mothership’ server which records all this information, although it is likely it is only linked to newsagent kiosks and top-up points, not the barriers themselves otherwise there would be no need to store the information on the card.
5.Not only can the RFID store a balance, it can also store season tickets for a variety of durations and zone validities.
However, the title of the post suggests the security is broken, and indeed it is, although not through my investigations. A Dutch team took this a step further.
It turns out almost all my assumptions were correct, the Dutch team used a portable device to ‘touch-in’ on an Oyster reader, this disclosed the encryption key used on the Oyster device which they then stole. In possession of this, not only could they decrypt any Oyster card to determine how the information was stored but they could also theoretically generate any balance or season ticket, which encrypted properly would be indistinguishable from the real (paid for) thing.
However, to avoid no doubt countless hours of reverse engineering, the Dutch team brushed up against commuters on the tube and wirelessly interrogated their cards, stealing the information that was on them. This allowed the team to effectively clone cards which were valid, entitling them to free travel.
But the story does not end there, it turns out the company that makes the RFIDs for Oyster cards is called MIFARE, and their chips are used in a wide variety of sensitive installations in a variety of countries.
Well, with any luck I have got my laptop problem sorted now. Although my excitement has been tempered moderately by being on my fourth (!!) HP dv2799 in two weeks. Still, fingers crossed this one won’t fail after a few days Prior to buying this laptop, I did a fair amount of research and digging around to see what I could get and for what price. I was quite taken with a Dell XPS laptop, the M1530. However, with all the horror stories I had heard about Dell, I thought I would put them to the test first, this and I had some questions I genuinely wanted answered before I considered going ahead with my purchase.
I have to say, Dell did a sterling job - if their intention was to make me reconsider my purchase. Having both called them up and spoken to a Customer Care representative online I was surprised at how clueless the people I spoke to where.
Admittedly, the questions I was asking were fairly technical, but instead of checking or asking someone, I was fobbed off with ridiculous answers. I decided to share my experience of the online chat with Dell’s Sourabh Bhattacharya. (I am assuming this is him on Facebook.)
I wanted to share the experience partly as a warning to others and partly for the comedy value in the responses. It also turns out I am not theonly one who has had frustrating chats with this agent.
10:42:45 System System You are now being connected to an agent. Thank you for using Dell Chat 10:42:45 System System Connected with Sourabh_Bhattacharya 10:42:55 Agent Sourabh_Bhattacharya Thank you for contacting Dell Sales Chat. My name is Sourabh, your Sales Advisor. 10:43:00 Agent Sourabh_Bhattacharya In order to help you better, May I have your telephone number and email address, if the session ends I will contact you and help you further. 10:43:01 Customer Konrad Hi there 10:43:24 Customer Konrad I am looking to buy a m1530, I have a couple of technical questions not covered by the site 10:43:53 Agent Sourabh_Bhattacharya Hi Konrad 10:43:53 Agent Sourabh_Bhattacharya sure 10:43:56 Customer Konrad I do not wish to give out my telephone or email address at this time. 10:44:00 Agent Sourabh_Bhattacharya please go head 10:44:03 Agent Sourabh_Bhattacharya No Problem 10:44:12 Customer Konrad now, when customising the xps m1530, there are a number of options 10:44:27 Customer Konrad the faster hdd (7200 rpm) are they SATA 150 or IDE? 10:44:45 Agent Sourabh_Bhattacharya Yes. 10:44:59 Customer Konrad which one - SATA or IDE? 10:45:55 Agent Sourabh_Bhattacharya SATA 10:46:43 Customer Konrad ok, cool. Next question, the RAM. As per default, 2Gb is selected which runs in dual channel mode. If I upgrade to 3Gb (2Gb+1Gb) will it still run in dual channel mode or be reduced to single channel? 10:47:10 Agent Sourabh_Bhattacharya Yes it will still run in Dual Channel Mode 10:47:48 Customer Konrad what command timing does the RAM use when shipped? 2T or 1T? 10:48:57 Customer Konrad Hang on, on your site it says “Note: In order to get dual channel bandwidth capability, both slots must contain memory modules and they must be of the same size and configuration” If I go for the 3Gb configuration, then the modules will not be the same size?! 10:49:50 Agent Sourabh_Bhattacharya Yes, it will be of the same size 10:50:12 Customer Konrad but it wont it will be 1×2gb and 1×1gb 10:50:45 Agent Sourabh_Bhattacharya doesn’t matter. because the slots inside are of same size 10:51:00 Agent Sourabh_Bhattacharya and it is made for DDR2 RAM only 10:53:07 Customer Konrad the slots will not be the same size if populated with a total of 3gb of memory 10:53:16 Customer Konrad you can’t get 2x 1.5gb ram sticks 10:53:47 Customer Konrad Ok so what happens if I buy the laptop and it is not in dual channel mode? Can I send it back? 10:54:51 Agent Sourabh_Bhattacharya it will be of same size, however the there are different Modules inside the RAM card which are more compact and increases the capacity 10:55:58 Agent Sourabh_Bhattacharya for the first 7 days, you will have the return policy to return it back 10:56:06 Customer Konrad I am not talking about the physical dimensions of the ram module, I am talking about the memory chips on the ram module. 10:56:13 Customer Konrad Ok, thanks for your “help.”
As you can see, I eventually got a bit fed up and decided to terminate the session. The above is completely unedited and as it transpired. Never before have I had an argument about the dimensions of RAM modules. *rolls eyes*
Yes, granted the title to this post makes no sense and basically relates to nothing, but I thought it set up this post rather well. You see, this is just a brief post to apologise for the less than usual frequency of my updates in the last couple of weeks. Its been a bit of a busy time so I have slightly taken my finger off of the pulse of the various industries I follow. Since the majority of my posts are reactionary commentaries or rants or how-tos it follows I have not been writing much.
Also, the much vaunted laptop (dv2799) I bought a couple of weeks ago has now had to be swapped a third time!! The first time it had a strange RAM corruption problem in the GFX RAM and the second laptop I received had a poorly constructed USB header which shorted the whole thing out. *sigh*. Still third time lucky I hope, its a lovely laptop, its just a shame it is let down by dubious quality control at Hewlett Packard’s end.
So, stay tuned, I have by no means lost interest in my blog! For now, I leave you with the comedy genius of Simon Amstell.
Well this is the first post from my new laptop. So far I am mostly impressed with the penryn goodness, there are a feel little niggles which annoy me with the build quality, but overall a big thumbs up. I will review it after I have spent a few more days with it.
But anyway, to the point of this post, by now the majority of people would have noticed that Google has changed their default icon.
Am I the only one who seriously dislikes the new one? I know its just aesthetics… but for some reason it irkes me.
