Roger's Security Blog : Fun

Pandemic Planning (Dilbert)

rhalbh — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:44:46 GMT

Get ready for the swineflu:

Roger

When Goog becomes your Roommate (a “must see”)

rhalbh — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:03:49 GMT

I just found that this morning. If you have 15 minutes, you have to watch these videos. They are really fun (are they?):

Enjoy! I did (partly)

Roger

Security Policies – Confidentiality

rhalbh — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 09:44:00 GMT

Hmm, think about it, when you write the next version of your policy:

Roger

Onion News: The Future of Privacy – the Google Opt-Out Village

rhalbh — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 14:58:36 GMT

Not really serious – just fun (or isn’t it??):

Roger

Vacation differently: Find new interesting places using Geocaching

rhalbh — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 22:35:00 GMT

This has absolutely nothing to do with security but is a lot of fun: A few years ago, I read an article about Geocaching. Basically, this is a treasure hunt using GPS. Wikipedia describes it like that: Geocaching is similar to the 150-year-old game letterboxing, which uses clues and references to landmarks embedded in stories. Geocaching was imagined shortly after the removal of Selective Availability from GPS on May 1, 2000, because the improved accuracy of the system allowed for a small container to be specifically placed and located. The first documented placement of a GPS-located cache took place on May 3, 2000, by Dave Ulmer of Beavercreek, Oregon.The location was posted on the Usenet newsgroup sci.geo.satellite-nav as 45°17.460′N 122°24.800′W / 45.291°N 122.413333°W / 45.291; -122.413333. By May 6, 2000, it had been found twice and logged once (by Mike Teague of Vancouver, Washington). According to Dave Ulmer's message, the original stash was a black plastic bucket buried most of the way in the ground and contained software, videos, books, food, money, and a slingshot.

There are people who are really addicted to and found thousands of caches all around the globe. For us, it is more a family-fun-event and we are up to a few dozens till now. However, the reason why I wrote this post is more that we started to use it during vacation to get to know space we would never have gone to.

Let me give you two examples. Last year we went to a camping at Costa Brava in Spain close to Barcelona. Close to where we stayed, there was a national park where a lot of people go to. So, we went looking for a cache called Monastery of Sant Pere de Rodes, basically a really touristic attraction.

However, the cache itself was not located there (the picture was actually taken on the way up to the cache). It was about a 30 minutes hike up the mountain to an old castle up there with an outstanding view on all sides – something we would never have seen without the wish to find the cache:

Another example is just form our latest vacation in Crete. We were looking for Crete - Akrotiri - "3 Monasteries Cache" – again monasteries. The first one on that list was the one, the buses stopped. The last one was about 30 mins later… Look at the pictures:

Worth it – wasn’t it? I know that I am a simple person: I just do not want to be in the big masses of people and I love toys (like GPS). But Geocaching led us to spots we would never have gone to. We did not even know that the center point of the state we are living in (and I was even growing up here) is just about 2 km away from where we live.

So, this is definitely something I would recommend you to look into. Just visit the Geocaching website and have fun

Roger

XBox Project Natal

rhalbh — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 17:23:47 GMT

I got some questions on my blog post that you should not by a Wii at the moment. The key question was about whether this is just a teaser. Well, look at the demos they did at E3. You find them here: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/projectnatal/

Roger

Thought of buying a Wii? Think again

rhalbh — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:37:14 GMT

I have to admit: Not really security related but really, really, really cool. Look at this Xbox trailer: http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-09-project-natal/50017?type=wmv

Roger

Software Security and Analogies

rhalbh — Tue, 12 May 2009 21:44:22 GMT

Often we see analogies being used to compare software security with cares etc.

During an internal discussion, Michael Howard posted a link to a pretty old blog post of his which I thought is worth reading: http://blogs.msdn.com/michael_howard/archive/2006/03/09/547575.aspx

Roger

If Apple bought Twitter

rhalbh — Thu, 07 May 2009 23:48:00 GMT

I just stumbled across this

Roger

Apple releases Keyboardless Laptop

rhalbh — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 17:55:32 GMT

Wow, there are news, which we cannot cope with. Apple just announced the first laptop without keyboard:

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

and additionally the new Mac Tiny:

They even talk about the Mac Nano in this video

Enjoy

Roger

Never Leave your PC Unlocked (or have additional protection)

rhalbh — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 15:29:52 GMT

How Spam Filters work

rhalbh — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 19:15:30 GMT

Just a short one: I think I had to feed that into the requirements list for our Exchange team:

Roger

Your PIN on the Internet

rhalbh — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:50:57 GMT

Yes, it is true: There is somebody who publically put known PINs on the Internet. I bet yours is there too: http://www.positiveatheism.org/crt/pin.htm

Roger

Opening a File (Dilbert)

rhalbh — Mon, 12 May 2008 18:49:00 GMT

Ever tried to open a file?

Roger

The Dumbest Thief of the Month

rhalbh — Sat, 03 May 2008 22:48:17 GMT

If there would be a price for the "Dumbest Thief of the Month", this guy deserves #1: Texan tries to cash $360bn cheque

Roger