On October 26, the new eco-friendly, non-monopolistic, ComCom-cuddling Telecom opens the tap on all its broadband plans. From that date "your download connection will be as fast as your line allows." So now's the time to start testing.

Forget numbers like 256 kbps and 3.5 Mbps, in the new plans all download speeds are simply "Max". But will you be blown away by the results? Or will Max turn out to be the latest in a long line of Telecom dogs?

To find out, run this Broadband Speed Test now and note down your results in the Comments section of this blog. Next week, once Max has been unleashed, I'll remind you again and we can compare the numbers.

Posted by Geoff Palmer at 7:32 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 55 )

Forget bin Laden, here's a bin you really should worry about. The one that sits outside your house. In a recent identity theft test, researchers raided the rubbish bags and recycling bins of a 120 households in the London borough of Wandsworth. They found that nearly half had thrown away enough information for their identity to be stolen.

As the BBC reports, there were 137,000 cases of indentity theft in the UK last year - a 500% increase in just five years. Fraud related to identity theft cost the UK around £1.7 billion last year.

In the US, where ID theft is reaching epidemic proportions due to their overweening reliance on social security numbers, some people have been forced to declare themselves legally dead in order to resolve the situation - an act known as 'pseudocide'.

The London bin raiders found that 30% of households had thrown away documents containing credit card numbers, 46% had details of bank account numbers, and 73% had thrown out paper showing their exact signature on a credit card slip.

Don't quote me, but I suspect the law here is similar to the UK where ID theft per se isn't illegal. Only using a stolen identity to obtain goods and services is actually a crime.

Posted by Geoff Palmer at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 )

There's a Google search string doing the rounds at the moment that locates unsecured webcams. Type in a search for inurl:“ViewerFrame?Mode=” and you get back hundreds of hits. Like this one...


Hmm, looks like an interesting set up. This particular webcam allows users full remote control so let's zoom in on a couple of areas. First, what's hiding behind the fax machine...?


A Pentium 4 Processor. Can we get any closer...?


If there were numbers on that speed dial we'd be able to read 'em!

Now let's take a look at that notice pinned to the wall unit...


That's the one. Move in closer...


...and at maximum zoom it's perfectly legible.

The lesson here is simple; if you don't want people peering over your shoulder, secure your network. Please!

Posted by Geoff Palmer at 12:23 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

Here's a great project for budding Babbage's or anyone handy with a bit of number 8 fencing wire; build your own computer - or bits thereof - and then, via the magic of the internet, get it running. The end result is called a Heath Robinson/Rube Goldberg (HRRG) computer.

The basic idea is outlined in a paper by Clive Maxfield with the suitably snooze-inducing title Implementing a computer using a mixture of technologies from relays to fluidic logic. Don't be put off, it's a brilliant idea. Here's how it works:

1. Download the emulator and run a virtual HRRG machine on your PC.
2. Pick the physical component you want to build and make it.
3. Connect this component via USB, switch out the emulated component out and run with the physical one. You're now running a mix of virtual plus physical componentry.
4. Using the internet, connect in other peoples' components to complete your computer.

To get you started Maxfield has a few suggestions. How about making the system clock from that old horror movie prop the spark-arcing Jacob's Ladder?



Add a photo-detector and you could count the sparks as ticks. Or how about pneumatic ping-pong ball memory?



The possibilities are endless - and educational.

(There's no need to go to this extent. This guy built an entire computer out of relays!)



[All illustrations are from Maxfield's paper.]

Posted by Geoff Palmer at 8:46 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

Microsoft are suing an unknown hacker for continually cracking their DRM (Digital Rights Management) software, showing once again they simply don't understand how hackers work.

The basis of their lawsuit against an individual known only as "Viodentia" is that in order to so relentlessly keep cracking their DRM algorithms he/she must have access to their source code. It therefore logically follows that anyone who finds a hole in Internet Explorer or figures out buffer overruns in their vector graphics libraries also has their source. As Penn & Teller would say, Bullshit!

They haven't learned anything from the case of "DVD Jon" who, as a teenager, helped crack the Content Scrambling System found on DVDs. Where you have a system whose inputs and outputs can be examined and analysed, someone's going to crack it. No source code necessary.


Viodentia's program, by the way, is called "FairUse4WM".


Of course an upstanding and law-abiding blog like this would never refer you to the sort of sites that stock Viodentia's program. So please do not click here, here, or here!

Posted by Geoff Palmer at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 )