Compact Flash 5.0 Promises Petabytes

That’s 144 Petabytes to be precise, and if you want that in good old Gigabytes, that’s around 150994944 of them. Data transfer speeds are said to be in the order of 32Mb per second, but before you get too excited, no such card or storage chip exists, yet… The newly announced spec from the Compact Flash Association is basically a re-vamp of the way data on a memory card can be accessed, using a faster and more efficient 48-bit address, which opens the way for the theoretical 144Pb storage capacity. It’s sounds impressive but it’s worth remembering that 64-bit systems can theoretically address up to 16-Exabytes of data, which is 16384 petabytes, or 16777216 terabytes in old money. It sounds terrifying, but I only have to think back to the late 1970s and my first home-built computer, which had an impressive1 kilobyte of memory A few years later and my first hard disc drive had a massive 10 megabytes of capacity; I remember thinking at the time that it would take years to fill it up…

Most popular downloaded programs?

For an upcoming post, I’m putting together a list of the programs that someone is most likely to download and install after completing a clean installation of Windows.

Here are the programs that I come up with quickly:

* Firefox
* Picasa
* Skype
* iTunes + QuickTime
* Windows Live Essentials
* Adobe Reader
* Flash
* Java

Of course, I have more entries on my list of personal faves, and there are some essential categories where there isn’t a clear leader antivirus and security programs, for example. There’s also a second tier of popular but not essential software, like file compression tools, disk utilities, and disk-burning software. But right now I’m looking for the ones that are really , where someone is very likely to want a quick download link. Read more

Apple Keyboard Hack Proved Possible

Slashdot reports that Apple keyboards are vulnerable to hackers’ attacks due to the complexity of their inner workings, which include RAM and flash memory. According to the report, the hack can potentially place keyloggers and malware directly into the device’s firmware.

To make matters even worse, the author of this “proof of concept” has also published the presentation and code in a PDF that’s free to download for anyone on the planet. The vuln is undoubtedly enticing to hackers, some of which are likely to create one or more exploits for the flaw in question. To better understand how this discovery has turned into a potential security issue, we offer you a few excerpts from the published document.

For ethical reasons, the firmware modification we describe is benign. The firmware is modified so that the LED under the CAP S LOC K key of the keyboard will flash momentarily when the keyboard is first plugged into a system. However, malicious payloads can be developed by individuals with mal-intent. Read more

Soft Cell Netbook

There’s no denying netbooks have become hugely popular and they are an essential travelling companion, but like all laptops, large and small, they have one big drawback. Somehow they always run out of power at the most inconvenient moment. That won’t be a problem with this new one from Norhtec? The Geko Edubook looks like just another 8.9-inch cheapie, and the starting price is competitive, the baseline model will be a touch under £170, but the big bonus feature is that it doesn’t use a proprietary rechargeable battery pack. Instead it uses a set of 8 standard AA cells. It will run for up to 4 hours on NiMh rechargeables, and if you get caught short all you have to do is pop into the nearest shop and drop in some Duracells and it’s good to go for another 6 hours, thanks to the very low power consumption (there’s no fan and it uses an LED backlight). It even has it’s own built-in charger so there’s no need to lug a mains adaptor around with you either. The rest of the spec is fairly routine. It has a 1Ghz processor, it comes with 256, 512 or 1Gb of RAM and there’s a choice of standard hard drive or SD flash storage. Needless to say it supports Windows XP or stick with the pre-installed Ubuntu Linux operating system. They’re taking orders now for US delivery, unfortunately there’s no word on the European release just yet.

How to Remove Virus from USB Device

USB Drives has become very popular as data storage and also as a backup device mainly because of it’s versatility, flexibility and size. But USB devices are very prone to virus infection and virus use your USB device to infect your computer. The common viruses are Autorun.inf, New Folder.exe, Ravmon. Unfortunately most antivirus fails to detect and remove these type of viruses. In most cases antiviruses are unable to delete them, only quarantine it. If your antivirus is unable to remove the virus from USB device here is the procedure to remove the pesky virus manually.

Whenever you plug a USB drive in your computer, a window will appear (if your autorun is enabled). Read more

Unforgettable USB Drive

If the media is to be believed Government employees are a forgetful lot, losing laptops and leaving CDs and USB drives containing sensitive data all over the place. It’s easily done; though and short of chaining a USB drive to your wrist sooner or later you are going to inadvertently leave one plugged into a PC. Here’s a simple little freeware program that might help jog your memory. It’s called Flash Drive Reminder and all you have to do is download the zip, extract it and copy a couple of small files to your drive. In fact there are two versions, Standard displays a reminder message when you plug the drive into a PC, and another when you log off or shut down the PC; the Quiet version just displays the logoff and shutdown messages.

Beer Powered USB Drive

Well, not exactly, and we’re not even sure the golden brown liquid in this rather eye-catching flash drive is actually beer, but we can tell you that it is available in capacities from 128Mb to 8Gb (sorry, no half pint or litre versions yet – now that would be useful…).

It is being produced by a company called CNK Promotions, and it’s the sort of thing that companies give away at exhibitions but CNK will happily pack their custom drives with the liquid of your choosing but be warned, the minimum order on this particular item (1Gb version) is 250 and at $20 a pop, not including the setup fee, you need to be pretty generous, or drunk, to give them away

Hacked Off USB Memory

It started off as a bit of a joke but now it’s a commercial product. A bright spark at Evilmadsicentist.com came up with a simple mod that turns a flash drive into what looks like a USB cable that’s just been torn apart. Clearly designed for that special someone, the sort of person who enjoys humorous, witty and ironic artefacts, and probably already has a dog’s back end sticking out of their lawn and fake bullet holds on their car. Anyway, a company called Fred & Friends is now making them and it’s called ‘Hacked’ the ‘OH! *#%’ flash drive. It’s available with a 2Gb capacity and that’s just about all that’s known about it at the moment, so if you want one head over to Worldwidefred.com and pester them, not me…

Flash in the Can

Hard on the heels of Hitachi’s 5 terabyte hard drive (see below) comes more data storage news, this time the promise of cheaper and more reliable and longer lasting solid state drives (SSDs). Later this year Samsung are about to start production on 64 and 128Gb SSDs, with 256Gb drives in the pipeline later in the year. The Flash memory modules are mounted inside a metal case that’s the same size and can directly replace standard SATA II type hard drives in laptops, and since there are no moving parts they are not only faster than HDDS but they also out-perform and consume less power than rival first generation SSDs.

How Flash Memory Works

Flash memories are solid state electronic devices with random access memory capabilities used for fast digital information storage. They are used in a wide range of applications, such as storing BIOS routines in typical digital computers, as medium capacity hard drives for digital cameras or as memory cards for laptop computers and video consoles.

The technology used to manufacture flash memories is based on EEPROM (electrically erasable programmable read-only memory) chips, which consist of memory banks formed of storing cells disposed in a grid of columns and rows. A basic storing cell has two MOS-FET transistors at each intersection, and are separated by an oxide layer. The two transistors are known as the floating gate and the control gate. Read more

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