Cool news and other interesting links at Daniel Spisak on Technology

So it looks like Jupiter has formed a new red spot, which I like to call Little Big Red personally:

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/02mar_redjr.htm

NASA Red Spot Jr.

The new Intel Mac Mini with the Core Duo processors in them look to be powerful enough to playback full res 1080p H.264 encoded video without dropping any frames. Not bad for a system with so-so integrated onboard graphics!

Apple Intel Mac Mini

http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/reader_report_1080p
_24fps_playback_on_mac_mini_core_duo_plays_fine/

Have you ever lost data due to a hard drive dying on you, or “accidentally” deleting a drives partition or other such fun means? Then you will want to check out the list of free data recovery tools assembled here:

http://riccardo.raneri.it/blog/eng/index.php/2006/03/02/free-tools-to-recover-lost-data/

Need to hammer a MySQL server to test it, or make sure that your disk subsystem isn’t lying to you about when it commits writes to disk? Need detailed Cacti reporting data on your MySQL server farm? Then check out the assorted scripts, tools, and Cacti templates here:

http://www.faemalia.net/mysqlUtils/

Need to increase the value of your FedEx Kinko’s ExpressPay smartcard? Well now you can! There is a known vulnerability to the enTrac cards because the “security bit” used to control access to change the stored value on the cards, along with the value stored itself are not encrypted. This makes it trivial to change the amount stored on the cards as can be seen here:

http://www.mal-aware.org/2006/02/28/fedex-kinkos-smart-cards-hacked/

You can also see this in action in this video here:

FedEx ExpressPay Vulnerability 16.5MB WMV9

Last but not least, ever wanted to know how some photographers manage to make photos of thier models look so damn good? Sure, airbrushing comes to some peoples minds but this page below shows how its done in Photoshop. Pretty interesting and impressive if you ask me, check out the difference!

Original After

http://www.bvibe.net/beauty.html

Thats all she wrote for this time!

About the Author

Daniel Spisak was born from the fiery depths of fusion and now roams the pale blue dot known as Earth. I obtained my bachelors degree in Computer Science from UC Irvine at the end of 2007.

I am also involved in technology & security consulting firms as well as being a freelance technology writer. I also contribute to Jerry Pournelle's website and Chaos Manor Reviews. Additionally I am also a freelance photographer as well and you can find my photos either on my own personal gallery or up at my Flickr account or on Zivity.

This blog is one of the main locations where I do my writing, which is then automatically sent to my LiveJournal, VOX, and MySpace accounts. I can also be found on a variety of social networking and microblogging sites like Pownce, Twitter, Brightkite, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

If your viewing this site with Internet Explorer it may not look correct because IE is horrible about following W3C web standards properly or consistently. I suggest you try browsing the Internet with Firefox. It is much better and not as vulnerable to security flaws as IE can be.