Hackers, Phreaks, Crackers, Fed's, Ham radio ops, security researchers, and all other category of geek have now all packed up there things and left the wonderful sin city. Having concluded this years Defcon13 at Alexa Park, I won't waste you're time telling you about Cisco exploits, new security tools, or any new l33t h4x0r tR1ck5. I will say this; the defcon series of conferences that are annually held combine that best parts of technology, security, and partying. If you didn't go, you missed out. Pictures and videos from the conference will soon be posted. Oh and Peace to DC702(Thanks for the shirt) and 303(sweet party) you both own.

[Update] 8-9-05
Original pics and movies were condensend into a single movie to save more space.
https://s56.yousendit.com/d.php?id=6XTH00GXB9S81BQT6HS6YY74O

Last night I asked Logikal if knoppix came with nessus installed, and to my supprise it did not. He did however find that a difrent version of knoppix existed for security puposes. The new version called sTD (or knoppix security Tools Distribution) comes with almost every security tool for the linux enviroment preinstalled, from nessus to shorewall, to airsnor this distribution has it all.

Knoppix is a distribution of linux that runs entirely on compact disk, All you need to do is boot your PC from the knoppix CD and you have a working linux desktop that won't interfier with your current windows installation.

Wired News reported today that both Moterola and IBM have been developing a single type of memory the will supposedly replace all other forms of ram/rom and what not.

MadPenguin.org reviewed Mozilla Firebird 0.6 and said, "Mozilla Firebird is an excellent browser. Even though it has a few bugs, it still packs a mean punch and I believe that by the time it is in it's 1.0 release state, we will have a serious contender for the browser throne. The developers of Firebird know what they are doing."

Rob Pegoraro at the Washington Post reviewed two challenge response systems that claim to "eliminate almost all junk e-mail messages." He feels that they might somewhat work at eliminating junk e-mail, "but not without forcing major changes in how e-mail works."

And so it’s done, the DVD standard stands to be useless in less then a few years thanks to Sony, Hitachi, LG Electronics, Matsushita Electric Industrial (Panasonic), Philips Electronics, Pioneer Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Sharp, and Thomson Multimedia. According to this PC World article the new technology “Blu-ray uses a blue laser to record data on discs, while CD and DVD systems use red lasers. Blue lasers have a shorter wavelength--405 nanometers compared to around 650 nanometers on DVD systems--and that means the laser beam can be focused onto a smaller area of the disc surface. In turn, this means less area is needed to store one bit of data and so more data can be stored on a disc.”

The end result is more data storage which comes close to being 30 GB. The author of the article Martyn Williams continued by saying “Recording is done in the MPEG-2 format, and the 23GB disc can store two hours of high-definition video at maximum quality, or four hours of standard-definition digital broadcasting. Up to 16 hours of lower quality analog terrestrial broadcasting can be stored.” All of which is great, luckily Sony is only planning to deploy this new media in Japan.

Besides this being a market Microsoft has yet to trend upon, Microsoft’s PVR emulation operating system has so far gone over well. To start Microsoft has made serious changes to the way it’s selling this new operating system, it can only be purchased already installed on a system that has been approved by Microsoft. So far Microsoft has only approved 6 manufacturers. The other thing Microsoft has done is mandate the use of a tuner card that uses on board mpeg-2 decoding of which only two are avalable at this time. By enforcing these restrictions Microsoft has no one to blame if the machine crashes or doesn’t work correctly. This new mind set isn’t unlike apple, who only allows approved hardware manufactures to make components. I personally believe this is the best thing Microsoft can do to ensure the new operating system goes over well. An in depth review can be seen here from anandtech.com