Archive for January, 2010

So, what’s the point of the iPad then?

Whilst I’m mildly reluctant to admit it, I was one of those sad people so excited by Apple’s scheduled July 27th announcement that I stayed behind at work so as not to miss the Engadget live-blogging coverage and despite the fact that every man and his dog will be blogging about the iPad over the coming weeks (and yes, dogs blog), as bonafide Apple fanboy I thought I couldn’t resist tossing my opinion into the fray.

My first sight of the thing was of Steve Jobs holding it up and I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was about the size of his head, 10″ screen and bezel included.  I appreciate that this is an odd feature to look for but many of the rumours I’d read were touting a 7″ screen which to me (more later) would have been utterly pointless but 10″ is a good approximation of a page from a book or a small magazine.  Sadly, along with this first sight came the bitter realisation that the thing was to be called the iPad, something I’m really going to struggle getting used to since it’s a crap name – please excuse my use of ‘the thing’ when referring to the new device.

The design is very similar to that of the iPhone, except with a proportionally much larger bezel, making it look a lot more like a digital photo frame and though I’d bet money that this proportional imbalance will be reduced in future versions I also acknowledge that it may be intentional since you’re going to have to rest your thumbs somewhere whilst you’re not pawing at the capacitive screen.  The weight is hard to gauge from presentations and so on but 1.5lbs seems weighty but maybe appropriately so, since you’ll want it to feel solid in your hands, I look forward to getting my hands on one to see what it really feels like to hold.

In terms of actually using the device, the demo shots of browsing the web, watching films and thumbing through Google maps all look absolutely superb, very slick, very iPhone, very Apple.  I was especially impressed by the look of the calendar since the iPhone has been a godsend in terms of managing my personal life and anything that can help me remember where I’m supposed to be and when is a real boost for me!  Despite being a gamer I really wasn’t that interested in that part of the presentation, there seems to be an obsession with trying to present the iPhone and now the tablet as hard-core 3D gaming platforms when I’m quite sure that they’re both rubbish for racing sims and first-person shooters.  I’m not saying that games don’t have their place in a mobile lineup but the physics-based genres are far better enjoyed on the XBox 360 or PS3, the real strength of a touch-screen mobile platform is for genius-like casual games such as Geared, Wurdle and Flight Control.  I’m also not really interested in drawing, writing or doing spreadsheets on the thing since I can’t draw and I’ve got a proper (read: desktop) computer for doing that sort of thing.

The biggest leap forward provided by the iPad is by far and away it’s use as an e-book reader and for reading newspapers, whilst the rest of the features are stunning by themselves the real revolutionary change that this device (and devices of it’s ilk) will bring is in how we consume ‘print’ media.  Steve’s presentation really made me feel sorry for Amazon’s Kindle, seeing a photo of the chunky white keyboarded 1980s-style device followed by as shot of a Jonathan Ives masterpiece must have ripped the heart out of the Kindle team at Amazon.  That’s not to say that Amazon as a whole lose out here, their app will most likely work on and compete with Apple’s own iBooks offering and that sort of competition can only be good for end users – my only big worry with the e-book future is that so far all of the major stores are using DRM, meaning that if you bought a book on one store you won’t be able to transfer it to another.

The price is an open verdict still since I’m in the UK but the dollar prices look pretty reasonable in my opinion, $499 for the 16GB WiFi version seems like a steal, though I’m sure I’ll end up getting the $829 64GB WiFi + 3G model since I’m highly likely to stick a tonne of video on it.  If the UK pricing ends up being towards the harsher end of the scale (the British always get screwed but it’s usually by our own government so we’ve no-one to blame but ourselves) I may be tempted by the $699 WiFi-only version since I’m pretty sure I’ll be using it primarily at home.

So, what’s the point of the iPad then?  I’ve heard a few people saying that they really don’t see the point and that’s it’s nothing more than a big iPod and to an extent they’re absolutely right, it’s not portable like a phone and it’s not as functional as a laptop.  I don’t even think Steve’s cheap shots at the netbook market were quite warranted since I’ve no doubt that the iPad would be useless if I were trying to work remotely from a Starbucks typing emails and using a VPN client to remote control my work desktop.  This is something I have done on little Dell Mini 9 many times and it really does work, the tablet market isn’t meant for people who want a laptop and it isn’t for people that want a netbook.

The iPad is for people who want to grab their tablet off of the coffee table, quickly check their emails, see what’s in their calendar for the weekend and maybe pop open IMDB find out whether the guy in the film they’re watching is the same guy that was in Black Hawk Down and Enemy of the State*.  A lot of people still have a PC situated at a desk which may be upstairs in a barely used room and unless you’ve taken the step yourself it’s almost impossible to express how your life can change when you go portable.  It may sound overly dramatic but my life literally changed when I bought bought my Macbook, having my laptop constantly on standby down the side of the sofa means that any time I’m at home if I have an idea I can execute on it it, I can answer a question, book some tickets, contact my friends, etc.  Through having the Internet by my side I’ve ended up in all sorts of adventures including Storm Chasing in the Midwest, discovering new music, attending festivals, going to gigs, exploring abandoned buildings and even meeting my girlfriend.

Most people, especially families, warrant having a desktop – there are times when you need to sit at a desk and write essays, edit photos, etc. and because they’ve already got a desktop many people are put off buying a laptop as well and this is where the iPad comes in.  Sure, you could have a laptop but this will be better at its core functions without any need for the complicated side of using a PC such as installing software, worrying about viruses and spyware, etc.

* Tom Sizemore BTW.

Boot Kit Renders Windows + Truecrypt Entirely Vulnerable

Having been using PCs for at least twenty years and having been an IT Professional for the last eight it’s a rare occasion for me to be blown-away by a piece of technology but the Stoned Bootkit, presented by the author Peter Kleissner at HAR 2009, literally blows my mind.  You can find the video here or the presentation here.

Essentially a bootkit is a small piece of code that can be inserted into the Master Boot Record of a PC’s main boot drive, this code is then executed every time the PC is switched on and executes before the operating system loads.  This is effectively a variant of more traditional rootkits which tend to install themselves as low-level drivers as part of the operating system and they are both equally dangerous in that once a system has been compromised the writer of the rootkit/bootkit can effectively do whatever they like.  This may range from logging and transmitting keystrokes and capturing bank details to bypassing product activation or enabling law enforcement to gain access to allow forensic analysis.

The Stoned Bootkit is effectively a technical demo and whilst it is entirely effective I am not aware that it has been put to any nefarious purpose, in fact it was released by Peter Kleissner at the Black Hat security conference in 2009 to an audience of security professionals and I believe intended by the author as an ‘eye opener’ for the industry.  Notably, Stoned is the first bootkit that has been tested an verified on Windows 2000, Windows XP, Server 2003, Server 2008 and Windows 7.

So why does this blow my mind?  It’s not that the technology is brand new – MBR viruses have been around for decades which is something which Kleissner acknowledges himself by naming his boot-kit after one of the earliest examples: the Stoned Virus from 1987 (I remember encountering the variants Manitoba and Zapper in the early nineties).  The reason that I was so awed by Kleissner’s presentation is the comprehensive list of attack scenarios he presents, the ease with which this is possible and the fact that it can be used to entirely bypass whole-disk encryption (tested against Truecrypt and DiskCryptor).  The bootkit is available for download as an ‘infected PDF’ or even as Live CD that can be used to boot and infect any PC to which you can gain physical access.

There has been some debate between Kleissner and Truecrypt about whether this constitutes a ‘valid’ attack, the debate is fairly academic since Truecrypt themselves acknowledge that the attack is effective provided that the attacker has administrator privileges (most non-technical users run this this way), that administrator privileges can be gained (most likely by other exploits) or through physical access to the machine.  I’ll concede that Stoned isn’t a valid attack against Truecrypt itself but it is a valid attack against the PC and a such can still be used to entirely bypass Truecrypt which still allows an attacker to achieve the same aim.

As a footnote, it appears that Peter Kleissner is being sued by his former employer, Ikarus Security Software GmbH, for an alleged intellectual property violation (source code theft), given that he is only 18 years old I sincerely hope that this does not harm or curtail Peter’s future career and potential.  Alarmingly there are reports (English here) that Ikarus and Kaspersky are attempting to build a criminal case agains Kleissner on charges including “distributing malicious code”, if this sticks it could be worrisome for all security researchers (particularly hobbyist hackers with no money for a good legal defence) who often write code that could be classified as malicious whether they intended it or not – all security flaws could be exploited, does that make it wrong to point them out?

How to show the version number in MS SQL Server, Sybase and MySQL

Just a quick post – I often need to find out what version of a database platform I am running SQL against (presuming this is not my own server!), this may come up whenever you are contemplating upgrades, diagnosing faults or looking for features in documentation.  In Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase and MySQL (and perhaps other platforms) the command is…

SELECT @@VERSION