...stuff I do and things I like...

Two weeks ago I bought a PX10000 the first available pico-itx board for one of my projects. The thing is really really small 10cm x 7.2cm (smaller then the Nokia N800 as you can see on the picture). The board seems too be 100% Linux compatible (I haven't tried the SATA and PATA controllers yet) once you find that you need the openChrome Experimental Branch to get your X running nicely (VESA driver works but sucks as all ways). The thing really boots from everything you connect to it: hard disk, cdrom, usb-stick, usb-disk, usb-cdrom (I installed ubuntu 7.04 from a usb-cdrom to a usb-disk).

I only had a little trouble with the Wake-on-Lan functionality, since there is no setting in the BIOS and it didn't just work. The trick is to enable wake on PCI card event, after that use ethtool to set the wakeup type and you're done.

The board seems quite fast (I gave it 1GB of memory). The only annoying thing with this board is the fan in the middle of the heat sink. Also the fan is not to noisy I really would like to see a version that is cooled passively.

The bad part is that PX10000 is quite expensive compared to a Mini-ITX board, the PX10000 comes around 230 Euro while you get a Mini-ITX for around 130 Euro.

If you really need something small for a project I think this is a good choice.

A more complete review can be found at: Mini-itx.com

Andrea of Darkircop just release the first working version of the reverseengineered Bluetooth Sniffer Software. This works with an of the shelf CSR-based Bluetooth USB stick. Besides the sniffer software itself the package contains a Bluetooth firmware assembler and disassembler.

This should cause some new Bluetooth security havoc (small or big ... who knows).

wenn ich diese heise Meldung zum Thema Jugendschutz lese wird mir akut uebel. Denn Vodafone/D2 bietet jetzt das deaktivieren der Bluetooth Funktion fuer ein spezielles Handy von Samsung an (andere werden sicher folgen). Der Sinn soll wohl sein das die Kids sich nicht mehr irgendwelche Bilder und Videos (unkontrolliert) kopieren koennen. Wie heise schon feststellte gibt es ja noch SD/MMC Karten, GPRS/UMTS und MMS, diese werden natuerlich nicht blockiert. In den U.S.A. gibt es schon lange Handys mit Bluetooth ohne Bluetooth Funktionalitaet (ausser Freisprechen) das machen die Provider um ihre Kunden dazu zu zwingen ihr Fotos per Bezahl-Dienst (MMS oder Internet) von ihren Handys runter zu laden. Weil das kostet ja richtig Geld wenn man keine Flatrate hat. Meine Schlussfolgerung ist damit: die Provider wissen natuerlich welche ihrer Kunden viel Geld ausgeben allem voran die Kids. Die Provider verdienen sich ja jetzt schon mit SMS zwei Goldene-Nasen und um das Geschaeft mit MMS etwas anzukurbeln gibt es jetzt fuer besorgte Eltern die Bluetooth-Sperre. Und jetzt weiss man warum die Sperre so halbherzig gemacht ist. Mal sehen wie lange es dauert bis die anderen Provider mitziehen. Ich hoffe ja das es nicht so wie in den U.S.A. kommt wo Bluetooth generell erstmal abgeschaltet wird solange bis man Schutz-Geld bezahlt und sie es frei schalten. *ARG*

I added a section about the new German law §202C StGBto my Imprint/Impressum since the law is active since last weekend. If things go bad here in Germany I basically will have to remove a significat part of my content from the web. I suggest that you mirror everything that seems important to you because it could be gone soon.

Collin

heise-security: Germany passes Anti-Hacking laws

Here are some photos from the event. I don't have too many without peoples faces that I can post.

Here is one example of how cool the Night Life was at the camp

first of all I had a really great time at the camp so great that I kind of forgot to blog about it. There were some other reasons too like: too much sun/rain and no stable Internet connection (local network was working fine). As usual I meet many friends I only see at these kind of events and of course I meet many new interesting people. For example John Gilmore was camping right next too us.

There were so many cool things going on at the camp. The nights were especially cool since there were hundreds of light installations. Like three really bright sky roses and one quite powerful green laser. There were several disco balls mounted in cool places like trees that created a real good effect. One really cool thing was that the reflection of one of the disco balls were visible on the low hanging clouds - just awesome.

People from various projects I follow online were at the camp so I could take a look at new hardware like the OLPC.

The one OLPC I spent some time with seemed to be a newer revision then the one I played with at that last CCC Congress. The rubber keyboard was way more usable from what I remembered. Also the device itself seemed to be of better quality. Seems the project is getting along :-)

OpenMoko

I also spent some time at the OpenMoko tent, were Harald was taking his vacation. Anyway I had the chance to look at a disassembled version of the Neo1973 and talk to the developers for a bit. I found that they had again updated the GUI of the device, but it is far from being complete/usable.

Quadrokopter/Mikrokopter/Drones

Watching these things fly is just pure fun. I would like to build one my self but I think this would take up all of my spare time (so I wont do it).

Other cool stuff from the camp: Cracking A5/1 (yes the GSM crypto) the talk was really cool; then there were some talks about/using GNU Radio (also used to attack A5/1) which were quite interesting; and last but not least there was David Chaum's idea for a voting system a system that should work on- and off-line and gives you secrecy and a way to check that your vote was counted.

Now I will sort my photos and post some of them online.

the first day was quite fun until now, we saw a few good talks (GPS tracking and Drones). The weather was fine too, also there was some rain but nothing bad. There are many cool light installations like two big spot lights that constantly pan over the camp ground.

Pictures (not taken by me) are available from Flickr

I arrived at the CCCamp at around 18:00, by now we have setup our camp site and started to enjoy the camp. There a still some smaller problems with power but we were told that this will be fixed tomorrow.