Rick Tech

The Blizzard Authenticator was announced only a couple of days ago and it’s already sold out. Based on the famous Secure ID tokens, the device is actually pretty simplistic. It merely displays a six digit number changes every minute or so.

When logging in users will now be presented with two password fields. The second password field is for the six digit number displayed on the token and will help provide an extra layer of protection for hacked and stolen accounts. Only physical access to the Authenticator will allow someone to get connected.

No doubt scams attempts will pop-up, users will get IM’s or phone calls from people pretending to be from Blizzard and asking for the current password on the Authenticator. But over all this will drastically reduce the number of scams.

These Authenticators will actually be very hard if not nearly impossible to hack. They are used heavily in any industry and in Governments to create secure connections to remote servers, or to provide a fairly simple but amazingly robust authentication scheme. Better yet, throw into many wrong attempts and the cards automatically gets locked out.

Each token is originally setup with a complex mathematical equation that is based off the serial number AND the number that is on the Authenticator when you call to activate it. When the number changes, that number is entered in on the server side by Blizzard and the Authenticator is then activated. This makes it impossible to login in with a different Authenticator as the passwords simply will not match.

Since the Tokens are serialized and only good for one account, this will actually help make account trades or buying/selling accounts safer as a physical item will now need to be shipped with each account. With the addition of tracking a package charge backs should be a thing of the past as users will no longer be selling “just a virtual item.”

In my opinion, any serious account buyers and sellers should start demanding this step. It’s only $6.50 (plus tax and shipping,) and will add so much to the security of an account that it’ll be pretty hard to loose the account to a scammer from now on.

In case anyone is not aware, the Computer Virus is here to stay. Even with the dozens of companies that have made billions around stopping the them, computer Virus have reached into just about every possible electronic device there is. Despite the backlash against anti-Virus software, if you’re a Windows user you NEED Anti-Virus Software.

Unluckily, Anti-virus software tends to come in two types. Expensive, and useless. The sad fact is that virus authors are not dumb and constantly find ways around anti-virus software.

With that in mind there is actually a large number of free anti-virus solutions. A lot are put out by companies that also have a stake in the market, IE, selling anti-virus software. Most of these are geared towards Windows Clients such as XP, Vista, 2000. But employing good anti-virus solutions no matter what OS is a great idea.

Downloadable
Avira AntiVirus is one of the few “Free” anti-virus downloads I’ve found for Windows. It seems to do a good job of catching most virus, but is a bit naggy about wanting to upgrade to the Professional Version which is 19.95 euro/per a year.

Online
Malwarecity.com: Among the online sites, this one really stands out. Brand new on the scene, the site takes “boring” anti-virus utility to a new level. If the site doesn’t win some kudos on design alone, I don’t want to know what would. Their Virus Map tool is interesting, but feels pretty skewed. I have a hard time believing Canada is 99% infected. I assume it’s only tracking users of the site by their IP address. None the less the scanner seems to work pretty well and fairly quickly.

Housecall: Created by Trend Micro this is possibly the first online anti-virus scanner. As such it feels like it picks up a large percentage of the virus out there, even among the new stuff. It is a little slow though, taking nearly twice as long as Malwarecity.com above.

Kaspersky: If I had to pick one online product this would be it. Kaspersky keeps getting some of the best reviews around. Better yet it does a good job of finding the new unknown virus that are coming out every day and even identifies some things that are not specifically a virus but could cause problems.

Mac-Compatible
ClamXav: This seems to be the only free anti-virus for Macintosh. Just as Macintosh Anti-virus software is pretty rare , the free world is even more so. This is actually a graphical front end for theClamAV project which is command line and originally meant to run on Linux based email servers. Despite that it does a fairly good job of identifying virus and trojans on the system. This tool is good enough that I’d easily pay for it though and highly suggest donating if you do use it.

Anti-Ad/Malware/Spyware
After the virus itself, malware, spyware and adware should be the next concern. Even worse, all three can easily provide vectors to let a virus back into the system, which is really annoying after spending 3-5 hours cleaning the computer with anti-virus software. As part of my anti-virus routine I always run the below two software programs.

Adaware from Lavasoft

Spybot - Search and Destroy

Other Solutions
Firefox’s ability to use browser plugins is a godsend. With plugins a thousand tasks are easily automated.
noscript is a Java code blocker. This plugin literally blocks Javascript of all sorts from running and highly reduces the chance of adware, spyware, and virus from being downloaded to the computer.

Keep in mind that there will always be new virus out there that can infect your computer, but that is no reason to not spend the time to protect against it.

Presidential Hopeful John McCain has proposed that the US Government offer a $300 Million dollar prize to develop a new battery aimed directly at automobiles. This idea isn’t new, the Department of Defense’s DARPA has offered prizes in the past to develop certain projects such as autonomous self driving vehicles.

On the surface his proposal sounds pretty good. “…such a device should deliver power at 30 percent of current costs and have “the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars.” Which is pretty ambitious considering the state of current battery technology.

This is part of his proposed “Clean Car Challenge” which also includes provisions such at $5000 tax breaks for consumers who buy Zero Emission vehicles, increased fines for manufacturers who do not meet current fuel-efficiency standards, and incentives to use and develop more ethanol fuel sources.

If McCain can push something like this through it could bring in a new renaissance in clean, fuel efficient cars that are affordable. Either way it’s something either Candidate is going to have to address heavily when elected.

Everyone’s favorite, Not-Apple, Leopard running computer is making headlines again. Psystar has taken firm aim at Apple’s Enterprise solutions and released two “Xservers”. Unlike the first box, they’ve gone one step further and attempted to out do Apple by adding not only a 1u form factor, but a double height 2u rack mountable box.

Configured with Xeon 2.5ghz Quad Core processors, 4gb of fully-buffered DDR2 667 RAM, and one 750gb hard drive by default, they can be upgraded to 8 cores, 16gb of memory and 4 Terabtyes of hard drive space. The 2u can be upgraded to 6 Terabytes of hard drive space. Interestingly enough the systems come with Centos by default which provides a clue on how they’re going to keep thumbing their nose at Apple.

For those in the “normal” Enterprise Environment, four different versions of Windows Server 2003 are also available as a preinstalled option.

The uncool part is that it’s all black plasticy, nothing at all like Apple’s sleak Aluminum/Titanium mix. But at a starting price point of 1,599.99 style sometimes needs to take a back seat to budget.

5 billion! Really! They said that the iTunes store wouldn’t be popular but there it is.

That’s a 5 with lots of zeros after it. I wonder how long until the number of songs hits the National Debt?

Buried in the article above is another interesting stat. 50,000 movies are rented and sold per a day via the iTunes store. I wonder how Blockbuster is doing? Or even how this compares to Netflix? Anyone got numbers?