The problem with raising children with poor grammar can be summarized in a conversation I had with my 5 year old son tonight. In my efforts to trick him into saying “underwear” in the classic verbal trap, I said to him “What’s under there?” to which he responded, “What’s under what?”
Here’s a new feature of our service which I’m really excited about…
Now, you can receive Category5.TV’s weekly episodes by email!
It looks something like this:
Receive Category5.TV episodes by email.
This is really exciting because it means you can receive this really cool (and non-spammy) reminder each week once an episode is available. It’s not a dumb notice, or a “click here for our web site”. It’s literally an email that gives you 1) a screenshot from the episode, 2) a description of what we did in the episode (the main topic), 3) direct links to download the episode for free and 4) a handy “play now” link which will open a player window and instantly begin streaming the show to your device.
To activate this awesome feature on your free account, simply login at Category5.TV and choose “Members” -> “My Profile”, and you’ll see the new option “Weekly episode by email” as per the above image. Check it off and press Save Settings. Don’t worry, you can turn it off at any time, and we never spam you (it’s against our beliefs as non-spammers)!
Don’t have an account? No worries; it’s free, and easy! Just visit http://register.category5.tv/ and sign up today.
Please activate the feature, and once you’ve received your mailout (comes out when each episode becomes available; usually Wednesday mornings), let me know what you think. I would love to hear your comments below.
Thanks for watching Category5 Technology TV! Thanks also to _Jot_ for assisting me with the beta testing.
A customer emailed me, puzzled by why they’re suddenly receiving a bunch of virus emails from friends they haven’t spoken to in a number of years.
These types of mass-mail viruses can be very confusing, since they nearly always appear to come from someone you know.
Here’s why and how that happens…
Let’s say someone who you haven’t talked to in a few years (we’ll call him “Bruce”), who is part of the same “circle of friends”, caught a virus. So the virus goes into their address book and starts mass mailing everyone in the address book, and spoofs who it is from.
Bruce’s address book:
Bruce gets a virus. The virus sends an email to John pretending to be Betty, and an email to Doug pretending to be John.
Doug replies to John and says “You have a virus!” But John doesn’t have a virus; Bruce does.
It’s often difficult or impossible to track down the true culprit, and that’s why it’s imperative that everyone on Microsoft Windows have an up-to-date Virus Scanner such as ESET Smart Security 6. It is also important on any platform (Windows, Mac, Linux, or even Smart Phone) that you be familiar with phishing scams, and be extra cautious what you open or click.
I got thinking about this question today. Why do hard drive manufacturers add useless hardware encryption to external drives?
“Why, that should be obvious, Robbie; it’s because we are security conscious and want to protect our data from prying eyes,” you say. “And you call yourself a bald nerd!”
First of all, I don’t like your tone.
But second of all, exactly who are we protecting here?
Somewhere inside the chassis of your external hard drive, there is an integrated encryption/decryption chip. It boasts “256-bit AES Encryption”. Wow, sounds safe! So you plug in the drive to your computer, and place your private stuff on there, and feel safe. “It’s encrypted.”
Who is it safe from?
Bret Austen, General Manager of Positive E Solutions Inc., in Barrie, Ontario calls this feature a “false sense of security.” He explained to me that while his company does carry these drives, the encryption features are not a true protection for the users’ data. “That said, we do offer an encryption key solution which encrypts data in such a way that even if the drive is stolen, the data cannot be accessed since they require a literal key.” This key is one that you would keep on your keyring, and take home with you at the end of your shift. If that sounds more like what you’re hoping for, I suggest you get in touch with Mr. Austen to discuss this impressive solution.
So, back to your external hard drive. You placed your private data on it, and then you plugged it back into your computer a week later. Can you read the data? Sure you can. The hard drive is still an internal component of the chassis, which carries the built-in decryption chip. So as long as that drive is inside that chassis, you can read and write the “encrypted” data just as if it were unencrypted.
So exactly when does the encryption protect your data from prying eyes? Why it should be obvious: when the internal hard drive is removed from the external chassis.
When a thief steals your drive, are they going to sit down at your desk, pull out a Phillips screwdriver, and gently remove the internal hard drive from the chassis? Or are they going to grab the whole thing and run off with it, decryption chip and all? Similarly, if you lose the drive, will it still be readable by the finder? Sure, it will.
So when does the encryption actually take effect? When the chassis fails.
If your hard drive gets zapped from a surge, or otherwise the circuit board of the external unit gets damaged, data recovery “may not be possible,” says Phil Priest, a professional data recovery technician from PES Data Recovery in an interview with me this afternoon. “You’d have to track down a decryption chip with exactly the same key in order to access the data from the drive. We can recover the hard drive’s data, but it would be entirely garbled and unusable without the proper key,”
Data recovery may be possible in such a case. Mr. Priest goes on to say, “We had a recovery like that come in a while back. It was a Western Digital drive, and for some reason they had manufactured all the drives of the same model with the same decryption key.” He explained that the customer was fortunate in this case: the data was able to be recovered since a decryption key was readily available. However, the cost to procure the correct decryption key resulted in a notably higher cost of recovery and made expedited service impossible. Mr. Priest also warned, “if the manufacturer uses a different decryption key for each drive manufactured, there is likely no way to recover the data.”
So who is the encryption on your external drive really protecting? It would appear to me that the only person getting locked out of your data… is you.
Mr. Priest ended the conversation saying, “if your external hard drive has built-in encryption, make sure you keep a good backup.”
To protect your company data from accidental data leak or intentional data theft, please take a look at Endpoint Protector. This is the “proper” way to protect your data. www.endpointprotector.ca
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I’ve been using noty for quite some time–since Garbee introduced me to it a couple years back in our chat room. It’s been pretty great, but when version 2 came out, I realized that the developer is going a different direction than I am.
When I code my site, I consider “being lightweight” to be one of my top priorities. But I also like things to look cool.
What I liked about noty is that it was pretty quick and easy to deploy, and looks great. But it’s also a bit heavyweight for what it is, and now with version 2, it’s too much of a performance hit for my liking (touches way too many files).
So, I decided to whip out something really quick to replace noty on my site, and thought perhaps there would be other people out there who would like to use it, or at least use it as a base for something of their own. Want to see it in action? Visit the demo here (look at bottom right): http://www.category5.tv/?demo=notifier
Feel free to use, share or edit it. It’s pretty simple, obviously. These things do not have to be overly complicated!
Download the v1.0 ZIP: https://github.com/RobbieF/notifier/archive/v1.0.zip
GIT Repository: https://github.com/RobbieF/notifier
1.0 – Requires jQuery. I built it this way since my site has jQuery. Of course, it could easily be adapted to just use JavaScript, but I didn’t bother; it works for me. Feel free to comment if you really badly need a jQuery-free version. 🙂
Ready for my embarrassing, yet utterly hilarious story from today?
So, I decided it’d be nice to pick up some “Christmas Cheer” on our way home from shopping… sit by the fire tonight once the kids are in bed, with the twinkle of Christmas lights on the new-fallen snow… a perfect evening planned.
It’s a lazy Saturday and I didn’t really “dress nice” or anything… just a track suit, and unshaven face. The snow also came on pretty suddenly (literally overnight), and I haven’t found my winter boots yet since our move in August. Keep all these details in mind. Scruffy looking dude, wearing a track suit with a junky jacket on top, and wearing running shoes in this blustery winter weather.
I’m generally an outgoing person, and I like to make people smile just by being friendly and a little bit charming.
I enter the LCBO up on Bayfield Street, and there’s a lady giving Whiskey samples up at the front. Turn on the charm, I say to her “Boy, am I glad to see you!”, a bit of a joke about her handing out samples of whiskey.
Now, that would have been fine.
BUT…
As the words came out of my mouth, my shoes (yes, running shoes, on this wintery day) slipped as I entered the store. I stumbled, and slammed into the posts that you’re supposed to gracefully spin trough on your way in.
Trying not to lose my cool, I proceeded to walk over to her table, still slipping a little.
She looked at me … and it was clear she was judging me.
OH MY GOSH, I realized; “She thinks I’m DRUNK”. GASP!
She proceeded to pour me a sample, and no word of a lie: 1.5… maybe 2mL in the bottom of the glass! She didn’t want to give me a sample! She literally thought I was entering the store drunk! LOL!
I can’t say I blame her! In walks scruffy guy. “Boy, am I ever glad to see you!”. Trip. Slam into pole. Stumble over. Drink 1.5 mL of Whiskey.
MY GOODNESS, that was about as embarrassed as I’ve ever been (when I realized what she was thinking), and I have no doubt in my mind she has since told people about this “drunk guy” who visited her tonight. My word!
Well, for the record, the whiskey was nice (all 1.5mL of it). I might have bought some if I didn’t feel it important to quickly get away from that table as fast as I could!
ALL TRUE!
Blip.TV, the video provider relied upon by many independent digital shows has been down since a little after 2am PST, according to isitdownrightnow.com.
Because of this, any videos hosted on Blip.TV (for example, Category5 Technology TV on-demand and main RSS feeds) are entirely inaccessible, and even the Blip.tv web site is not available during the outage.
I must say, this is a first that I’ve ever seen such an extended outage for Blip.TV, who have always been pretty reliable in spite of their growth. Their Twitter feed is silent, and since their site is down, we know nothing yet about what’s going on, but we know it’s down, and has been down for several hours.
Update #1 – Auto tweets and blog entries continue to auto-post (albeit, laced with deadlinks), but no sign of any realtime notes from Blip.TV directly.
Update #2 – Tasherre Risay commented below that Blip.TV is located in New York. Absolutely understandable then that there’d be issues. I hope everyone is okay, and our thoughts and prayers go out. Hoping for at least an update as to the status and what’s actually happening.
Update #3 – 11am Eastern: as Peggy George commented, the Error 503 message has been updated on Blip.tv to the following:
I received a note from Blip “We are currently experiencing unexpected downtime due to flood water in Manhattan affecting our colocation data center. We expect to be back up within the hour as the generators come online but may experience temporary outages through Friday.” Our thoughts continue to be with the Blip team and all those who are affected by Hurricane Sandy.
Update # 4 – Annie Tsai (Blip.tv’s social media manager) informed us below that she’ll be able to update us via social media now that she has access to power.
Update # 5 – 12:45pm Eastern – Blip.tv is responding and serving up videos!
This is serious, folks.
Screenshot from the new commercial depicting the Windows 8 home screen by way of metaphor.
Yes, it looks like Microsoft hit the nail on the head with their first commercial for Windows 8. In it, they depict the Windows 8 interface metaphorically. It looks like a messy wall decorated by a 6 year old.
Just sayin’.
Had a thought this morning that wifi could be used to do some pretty rad stuff… like detecting when I get home by noticing my iPod touch.
Since most of us carry wifi-enabled devices with us at all times, and most of us have them set to auto-connect once in range of our routers, I thought, why not use that data? It could be as simple as logging coming and going, or as sophisticated as automatically turning on my favorite music when I walk in the door. Or even adjusting the thermostat when I arrive home to save energy when nobody is around.
As a very brief proof of concept I whipped out a simple algorithm in PHP which can be run from any Linux computer on your network.
Usage: php wifi-check.php –device=devicename
0) {
$tmp=@explode('=', $ping);
$result=@explode('/', trim($tmp[1]));
}
if (count($result) > 0) {
// Now we know the device is connected; do something
echo 'Device active.' . PHP_EOL;
} else {
// Device is not connected.
echo 'Device inactive.' . PHP_EOL;
}
} else {
echo 'Usage: php wifi-check.php --device=devicename' . PHP_EOL;
}
} else {
echo 'This script is designed to be run from the Linux terminal, not a browser.';
}
?>
My thinking is to put something like this in a looping script and let it run every so many seconds or something, calling particular functions if the device is detected as active vs inactive.
I’d welcome your thoughts in the comment section below. What practical things could this be used for?