Schiller – Live @ Fuzz Club, Athens, Greece on 27/4/2007 – Review

Being a huge fan of Schiller i decided to buy myself a ticket for the 2nd concert in Athens (first as a support act to Depeche Mode, summer of 2007).

The price: fair enough as opposed to other concerts (30 €) yet pricey if one considers what took place during the concert and what the show package offered…

The place: ex-Club 22 mainstream dance club, capacity of around 300 people.

Ticket indicates 21:30 as show start time, Schiller shows up at 22:00, i think one can live with this delay and not argue with it…

One though can argue with the fact that:

• Heppner, Schiller’s main vocal performer of famous tracks including Dream of you and I feel you, was absent. Instead, what we saw was an excerpt from a live DVD release – Heppner voice over the music the band played live (luckily…) for us!
• The show lasted somewhat 1 and a half hour with 2 encores of no more than 15 minutes duration (both)…
  

On the contrary, bathed in super sexy mood that magnetized the audience and a splendid sense of humour, beautiful Kim Sanders was the concert’s star, a fact that can make up for the 2 minor disappointments mentioned above.

Leaving Fuzz Club a bittersweet taste lingers along with a hope that next time we will get to see all female singers and a longer-lasting show…

Installing a new S-ATA HD under Windows XP Professional – The DiskPart utility way

So you bought a new S-ATA Hard Disk and can’t wait to plug it in your machine and start using it?
Ok…You have physically connected the drive (power supply, s-ata cable etc) and opened Disk Management utility (Start -> Run -> diskmgmt.msc) just to see the new drive as unallocated…Tried to right click the disk and format it? My guess is that no format option existed…? Right?

If yes follow the steps below to see how a utility shipped with Windows 2000, Windows XP called DiskPart can save the day with a set of simple commands.

1. if you have closed Disk Management re-open it.

2. verify that the disk (i.e. disk 1) shows (as unallocated)

3. right click the disk to view available option.

4. format listed? if not then Start -> Run -> diskpart. DiskPart will help
us allocate partition(s) for the HD along with letter volumes and format accordingly.

5. inside Diskpart we will issue a set of commands marked below within “” (don’t include quotes when executing the command )

5.1 “list disks” (shows the available disks, i.e. disk 0, disk 1)

5.2 “select disk 1″ to move the focus to the new HD (an “*” appears to indicate that we have selected the disk)

5.3 “create partition primary”

Finished with our partition allocation!

From now on you can check Disk Management to see that changes by DiskPart session are immediately reflected and shown on the Disk Management window. You can now continue with the rest of the steps described below or switch to the right-click context menu of the Disk Management utility to choose drive letter for your partition volume and format the partition respectively.

5.4 “list partition” will show one and only (primary) partition created for the new HD

5.5 “list volume” will bring up a list of the drive volumes that exist on our PC.
Last in list appears a volume with no letter or label whatsoever. This is our HD’s partition created at step 5.3

5.6 “select volume [number]“,

5.7 “assign [letter]” [a letter not occupied by other drives/partitions].

5.8 Inside a DOS session (Start -> Run -> cmd) type: “format [letter assigned at 5.7] /FS:NTFS” to format the partition.

Hope you read through a previous blog on CD/DVD media and ways to understand whether the discs you bought are actually worth burning or not.

In case you haven’t here is the link:

http://dvrazos.blogspot.com/2006/02/ever-encountered-errors-like-cyclic.html

In case you want more here is the link to a forum research thread (Greek only):

http://www.pctechnology.gr/vbull/vb/showthread.php?t=11310

To further drill down on the details here is an exhaustive list of cd/dvd media-discs along with their media id’s (PDF file):

http://cweb.msi.com.tw/html/products/optical_devices/recommend/8352/CD-R.pdf

Vista SCL (as in Software Compatibility List)

Microsoft Windows Vista OS is finally out and setting a new mark in the Windows OS family history.

Whether you are just an OS enthusiast and want to try the new OS on top of an existing using Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 or you had Vista installed upon purchase of your new PC (OEM-DSP version) here is a exhaustive list of Software compatible:

http://www.iexbeta.com/wiki/index.php/Windows_Vista_Software_Compatibility_List

The list is Wiki(pedia) powered so expect new additions (and frequent ones) in days to come!

Enjoy!

Acronis TrueImage 10 Home review

Few days ago i downloaded Acronis Trueimage 10 Home and gave it a spin against a 2-partitions SATAII disk. Managed to create a ~4 GB high compression .tib image file off a ~8 GB full Hard Disk (with the rest of the partition, approx. 175 GB empty) in about 25 minutes.

Note here that when i tried to boot off the bootable disc – CD and the Full version (which embeds USB, S-ATA drivers etc) the booting process gave an error (kernel mode…) and froze until i sent it the CTRL-ALT-DEL / kill signal…So, not having another option, i went ahead with the Safe – light if you prefer version.

Backup ok…what about restore you ask? Well, an adventure i may add…
Again i used the simple wizard to :

1. select the image
2. select the target partition will would be replaced…There is also an option to check-restore the Track 0 – MBR 512 bytes of space…

the use of checkboxes somewhat misleads the user into thinking that he can select both a partition and the MBR…Being the case that the selection here is mutually exclusive (if you check MBR partition loses it’s tick sign) i assume that a radio box would be preferable.

3. leave the partition spaces intact, as set by the wizard itself.
4. see the restore summary and Proceed.

Pressed Proceed…System freezes momentarily…Cannot load Windows…Decide to boot from CD again…
There goes the Acronis Loader booting again….Yet, what was previously an Active Partition lettered C: waiting to be replaced by the image now is u n a l l o c a t e d space – empty!

I thought that restoring was an one way procedure…Not 1. Delete target partition and 2. leave unallocated and continue… Then again i may be wrong… (see user manual , section 6.3.12, p. 45)…I presume that was preceeded was an unsuccessful attempt to restore, leaving me baffled on what went wrong…

So, i went through the wizard again to restore the image to the unallocated space this time..successfully this time…

I hope that sharing this event will be educational for you reading it as it was for me living it…
Please, post if this rings a bell to anyone that has used Acronis Trueimage 10 Home…
I am sure we can come up with great findings!

James Bond “Casino Royale” prequel personal review – A new Bond rising!

Went to see the long-awaited prequel James Bond movie the other day and i must say that i entered the movie theatre a bit biased about what i was going to see, since the critics were a bit ..harsh on Daniel Craig’s overall performance.

People say that seeing is believing…So, lights were out and attention drawn only on the big screen…

After 2+ hours these are my final thoughts on the movie product:

- unique opening titles sequence coupled with a terrific OST theme by Soundgarden’s & Audioslave guitarist and frontman Chris Cornell…”You know my name” is the track..
- GREAT human chase sequence at the very beginning…Wow!Take DeNiro starring in Ronin, only replace cars with human bodies, add more adrenaline and meticulously crafted stunt coordination to the recipe……The director Martin Campbell needed a strong card for the beginning to magnetize viewers’ attention..I think he made it!
- High level – for the Bond standards set by previous Bond characters – acting performance by Graid..There he was, stripped of his super-duper bullet-proof agent armor: a Bond revealing multiple character assets, crying, feeling love, betrayal, pain (note the near-death heart attack along with the torture on Bond by Le Chiffre sequences) yet with the coldest of blood running through his veins, able to inforce injury, kill and on-demand overcome fatique and strain known to human limits…A transformation worth every penny!
- 2 woman actors: a fine blend of Meditterean and British looks and talents by Caterina Murino
and Eva Green.
- an abundancy of style, glamour, breath-taking cars and natural surroundings…

Go and watch the film! It’s prove’s many critics wrong! Hope you’ll enjoy it!
Daniel Craig – you are here to stay!

Casino Royale resources:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0381061/

Map software..Going 3D….?

So, you have a friend who suggested Google Earth, then you downloaded this mapping program and used it full of awe? Well, guess what…Earth has evolved to Beta 4, incorporating 3D mapping to building locations, something done (with greater detail but for a minor subset of cities-locations) in Microsoft’s Microsoft Visual Earth 3D Beta (Windows XP SP2 only).

Tempted to try the new versions out? Here you go…:

Google Earth (available under Windows/mac/linux): http://earth.google.com/
Microsoft Visual Earth (usable under Windows only, use IE 6 or 7 to download, not Mozilla based browsers – somewhat predictable behaviour, don’t you think?): http://local.live.com/

More, yet less impressive or resources consuming, map services and sites:
http://www.mapquest.com
http://imageatlas.globexplorer.com/
http://www.multimap.com
http://maps.google.com
http://www.driveme.gr (Greek)
http://maps.flash.gr (ditto)

or you can always navigate to http://www.showmyip.com, see the whole amount of info that is exposed while you surf the web (don’t tell me you thought you were anonymous!?) like location etc and click on the location-tailor made links to map services as mapquest, multimap.

CSRF vs XSS: Clarifying things…

You have probably crawled the web for info on these 2 security related risks and realised that is quite difficult to distinguish an attack and determine whether that attack takes advantage of a XSS or a CSRF bug/weakness…

IMO, XSS has to do with user input filtering/validation and the code devoted to the cause of preventing malicious input through a i.e. search textbox on a site. The more you try to filter characters like , ;, %, # the more you protect your site against XSS attacks. So, XSS = poor input/character validation.

In the case of CSRF (aka session riding), the attacker has to predict, in some way, the structure of the app/site he is trying to attack and a valid user’s typical functions on the site. In fact, he has to know the actual operations performed by a site’s user and the way the requests for those are made (GET or POST) along with the session/state mechanisms introduced and deployed by the site. This is the actual meaning of the hype term: predictable structure for invocation. Keep in mind that the best way to know a site is to become a member, so this brings us to the worst case of stored CSRF attacks, according to which the site that is under attack and the actual carrier of the malicious coding is the same.

More to the story of CSRF and XSS as it develops…

When the internet user (YOU!) becomes the victim and the accomplice…Cross-Site Request Forgery as high-tech identity theft and misinpersonation

Take a normal Web user who works on the PC who visits sites, buys online, talks online and neglects to erase the cookies tracking the online activity….Mark this as people’s exhibit 1!

The user who visits forums to exchange ideas with others. Forum topics by other users contain text and images…STOP! Images! Mark this as people’s exhibit 2!

Images seem harmless to the eye, but their src attribute can contain whichever resource/site or script snippet the coder wants them to contain…and therefore even a malicious action/request that’s performed against the site – target! Mark this as people’s exhibit 3!

Mix all 3 elements together and you have Cross Site Request Forgery. A misleading act, which involves impersonating another user (the victim) against a site he/she has used, yet for no legitimate use or cause.

And here are the horrifying facts against the 3 elements previously discussed:

- The attacker knows the sites the victim visits, the sites that store cookies for the victim.
- The attacker hopes the target site works on persistent authentication cookies, or the victim has a current session cookie or the victim has neglected to delete/clear his/her cookies when the browser’s session ends or forgot to log off.
- The target site doesn’t perform secondary authentication for advanced transaction, as a precaution to identity theft or misinpersonation.
- The more sites you visit, the more your risk increases.
- The user has no clue as to what’s happening. The user becomes the accomplice. The user becomes the victim.
- That user is you!Me!Everybody surfing oblivious of the dangers, obvious and well hidden that lurk in the universal Internet of 0’s and 1’s.

Perhaps these diagrams can clear things out on how CSRF works
Need more proof? Read on:

http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=107651&WT.svl=news1_6
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Csrf

it’s amazing…the way one moment of random PC system settings’ seeking can lead to an utterly enlightening experience of System tweaking (here and there) (did I just write that?)

anyway….it was when i began copying some files from a local-fixed HD to a USB 2.0 -External one when i realised that the copy process was pain-stakingly slooooooow…..Root of problem: DMA transfer mode.

Technical background: DMA (Direct Memory Access) transfer modes: PIO (programmed input-output) for old HD drives and Ultra ATA (UDMA) that start for Mode 2 (44 MBps) and result in Mode 6 (166 MBps) for newer driver. End of technical background.

The reason for the slow copy procedure was that the local-fixed drive controller (Secondary cable – IDE) had dropped it’s transfer mode to PIO from UDMA. This happens when Windows detects I/O timeouts (i think >6 timeouts drop the mode).

Solution that worked for me:

- reboot -> enter bios -> load optimized defaults.

Other solutions that may work for you:

- deactivate the Secondary Channel -> reboot -> let Windows reenstate it (and see what happens next).
- if BIOS doesn’t seem to support UDMA for the drive flash-upgrade it following the Motherboarb manual instructions carefully!
- if BIOS supports UDMA for the HD drive make sure that the motherboard driver is the one running in Windows environment instead of Windows native atapi.sys.

You will inevitably have to dig your way into Registry caveats but beware…

And another thing…if you run into video playback problems check DMA settings. Just thought it would help to mention it…

More useful info here:
http://winhlp.com/WxDMA.htm
http://www.pcbuyerbeware.co.uk/IDE.htm