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Monday, March 31, 2008

CCC publishes the fingerprints of Wolfgang Schauble

Lifted from a glass he drank from the Chaos Computer Club managed to get a copy of the German Secretary of the Interiors fingerprint and make biometric device fooling molds.

Original article - translated by Google

How to fake fingerprints (CCC)

So, what does this mean for biometric security? It demonstrates one of the biggest flaws with the 'something you are' approach to authentication, if it's copied or taken how to you change it? Generate some new fingerprints and make molds perhaps?

Also, I'd like to thank the CCC for continuing with this and other efforts. It is only by exposing flaws such as this that we can all profit from increased security and privacy.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Book Club

Since I've moved my life and business over to France I've been making an effort to learn the language. So far je me débrouille bien (I get by pretty well) but, you know, it's quite humbling to be stuck at the linguistic level of perhaps a ten year old (on a good day!).

So I've decided that from this day forth, I'll only be reading fiction books in French (I'm not quite prepared to swap all my cocoa/java books over just yet...)

The first one I've decided to wrestle with is Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
- mostly because it's something I've always meant to read in English and never managed to get around to it. I'm not sure wether it being a translation of an english book will help or hinder my progress, however they do note in the preface that a bad translation is just another form of book burning, so I'm remaining optimistic.

Monday, March 17, 2008

Korg DS-10 Pocket Synth

I really, really, need to get me one of these for my Nintendo DS :)





(For those of you that didn't know, I've been a synth fanatic for a long time and when I'm not hacking out software for fun and profit I'm often fixing up old Moogs and Rolands for fun and profit.

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Electric String

Once upon a long ago, I worked in a 2nd hand hi-fi shop and did my best to uphold the tradition of being a miserable bastard who knew more than the customer, although my rather unique position was to declare a lot of expensive equipment as junk and push the customers towards quality value stuff which performed just as good if not better most of the time.

Anyway, turns out the internet has come out in force against Monster cables and declared it impossible to identify the difference between them and coat hanger wire in A/B tests. Although I don't think the method of testing was scientifically valid, they're probably right.

I did, however, find this interesting article on wire which explains what makes a good speaker wire.

http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm


Oh, the picture for those of you old enough to remember is from Not The Nine O'Clock News (Gramophone Sketch)

Saturday, March 1, 2008

Playmobil Security Check Point

This initially filled me with sadness, however upon reading the comments and tags my faith in humanity has been restored.



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