Arduino Now Controlling – The Crop Harvest?

December 23, 2009 by Jake W 17 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDzHwy28kng]

We’ve seen the Arduino board in charge of some pretty unique tasks in the past. Harvesting locally grown soybeans was not one of them.

[Lance] rigged this beast up in order to automate the monotonous task of driving up and down the vast soybean fields of Iowa. The 15 ton farm combine’s hydraulic steering pump is at the mercy of a team of gadgets, including a GPS, Windows 7 PC, and the omnipresent Duemilanove (which acts as the output card, connecting the PC to the pump). So far, it is reported to be doing a great job, straying only about an inch and a half from its desired, GPS-programmed, path. Even if the Arduino decides to go totally berserk and drive the combine off course, speeding around at 5mph makes it pretty avoidable. A supervisor is also in the cabin at all times, looking out for errors. [Lance] eventually hopes to offload all steering-related calculations to the ATmega328P onboard.

Commenters are welcome to share heavier-duty uses for the Arduino (if they exist).

Microsoft Unveils Open Source Multi Core OS

October 1, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 62 Comments

group (Custom)

A new operating system, code named Barrelfish is being developed by Microsoft research labs and ETH Zurich in Switzerland. This operating system is being built with multi core operations foremost in priority. It is supposed to be extremely scalable and able to function on a very wide range of hardware. You can download the current snapshot of it on their site and dig into the source code, released under a 3-clause BSD style license. If you would like to learn the primary differences between this OS and Windows or Linux, you can read this PDF.

[via Engadget]

Android App “tests” Windows Vulnerability

September 14, 2009 by Mike Szczys 48 Comments

android_windows_vulnerability_checker

An Android App for “testing” the Windows SMB2 vulnerability we covered last week has been released. For testing? Yeah right! The availability of this kind of software makes it ridiculously easy for anybody to go out and cause some havoc. Go right now and double check that your machines that run Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 are protected (see the “workarounds” section.)

[Thanks Tom101]

Cain And Abel: Windows Password Recovery Utility

September 10, 2009 by Brett Haddock 72 Comments

cain

As far as password recovery utilities go, Cain & Abel is by far one of the best out there. It’s designed to run on Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/Vista but has methods to recover passwords for other systems. It is able to find passwords in the local cache, decode scrambled passwords, find wireless network keys or use brute-force and dictionary attacks. For recovering passwords on other systems Cain & Abel has the ability to sniff the local network for passwords transmitted via HTTP/HTTPS, POP3, IMAP, SMTP and much more. We think it is quite possibly one of the best utilities to have as a system administrator, and definitely a must have for your toolbox.

Windows 7 And Vista Crash Via SMB Exploit

September 9, 2009 by Mike Szczys 40 Comments

vista_dx10_bsod

[Laurent Gaffié] has discovered an exploit that affects Windows Vista, Windows 7, and possibly Windows Server 2008 (unconfirmed). This method attacks via the NEGOTIATE PROTOCOL REQUEST which is the first SMB query sent. The vulnerability is present only on Windows versions that include Server Message Block 2.0 and have the protocol enabled. A successful attack requires no local access to the machine and results in a Blue Screen of Death.

[Laurent] has a proof of concept available with his writeup in the form of a python script (please, white hat use only). There is no patch for this vulnerability but disabling the SMB protocol will protect your system until one is available.

Update: According to the Microsoft advisory this vulnerability could lead to code execution, making it a bit worse than we thought. On the bright side, they claim that the final version of Windows 7 is not open to this attack, only Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

[via Full Disclosure]

[picture: Inquirer]

Rename Files En Masse In Windows

August 19, 2009 by Matt Schulz 55 Comments

Bulk Rename Utility

Everybody hates it when they have to rename a fileset to fit a new naming scheme. Instead of doing it the hard way and writing a one-time script to go through and rename everything, check out Bulk Rename Utility from [Jim Willsher]. It provides you with a multitude of methods to take care of business and allows you do pick your favorite method, be it regular expressions, simple finding and replacing, prefix/suffix modification, or a combination of many more.

However, if the sheer amount of options available overwhelms you or if you just want an easier way to do things, check out A.F.5 from [Alex Fauland]. A.F.5 offers features like adding a counter to your filenames, change file attributes, and save your rename settings out to a file for repeat use.

Install Windows 7 On Your Netbook

May 16, 2009 by Eliot 47 Comments

windows7

No one will ever accuse us of being Windows fanboys; we’re certainly fans of netbooks though (or anything cheap enough that we don’t care if we accidentally burn a hole through it). We’ve heard from quite a few friends that Windows 7 is actually an excellent operating system to run on a netbook and is a dream compared to XP. Gizmodo has compiled a guide to getting the release candidate on your lightweight machine. It’s available now and will work for free for a year. The image is 2.36GB which you need to dd onto a USB device. They recommend at least an 8GB drive, but anything smaller than 16GB and you’ll have to use Window’s compact utility to save space. Other than these space considerations, the install appears to be easy. Let us know about your experiences using Windows 7 on your netbook.