JDPFu.com 2025

Yesterday, I was told that there was some issue with email here. Messages were bouncing. After a little research, it was determined that the ISP had decided to filter port 25 inbound AND outbound. That began around 1:50am on Wednesday morning. I know this because there are logs. Why did they change this after 12 years? I’ll never know.

About a month ago, an editor at a large blog website followed one of my links in a comment there back here and offered to republish the story. I was already seeing increased traffic from that link on their site – like 10x more than my normal daily traffic – and it scared me. I don’t have the bandwidth to handle that sort of traffic and my Ruby on Rails blog software … er … pretty much sucks from a scalability perspective. What did I do?

Today I was notified by my DNS provider that someone had requested the password be reset. They sent the reset link in the email on file and told me the IP address of the requester – in this case it was from Taipei, Taiwan 112. Good thing the DNS guys have a correct email address for me, huh? I suspect they hacked the ISP email address which I haven’t used in about … 10 years. Sometimes you get lucky. DNS – Domain Name Service is the telephone book of the internet. Learn more about DNS from Wikipedia.

• I won’t be resetting that password anytime soon. It is fairly long and random.
• I will be blocking all access to this blog from that ISP, however.

Subnet Blocked

Enough said?

Almost everyone likes Facebook and Twitter. We reconnect with our friends, they connect with us. People we don’t even know want to know us – that’s pretty cool, until it isn’t.

This will be old news for some folks. Keep reading … Here’s a story about someone named Wigginbottom who tweeted just a few too many details.

Below is the email that we just received concerning the long promised Silicon Dust HD HomeRun Prime Networked QAM cable recorder with CableCARD decryption. It supports Multistream-CableCARDs (m-cards).

It appears this device will only with with Windows7 Media Center due to DRM requirements for CableCARD compatibility. That could be an issue for many Linux users.

HDHomeRun® PRIME™ News…

You signed up to receive HDHomeRun PRIME news on our website and thought we had forgotten about you? Not at all…
Today’s big news – the HDHomeRun PRIME just became available for pre-order!

HDHomeRun PRIME:

• Premium digital cable TV for your PCs
• Triple tuner – watch/record three channels at once from one or multiple computers
• CableCARD – all the digital cable channels you subscribe to, including HD and premium channels in 100% digital quality
• Windows 7 Windows Media Center – full featured DVR
• XBOX 360 – extend Windows 7 Windows Media Center to your big screen through your XBOX 360
• More information: HDHomeRun PRIME and HDHR3-CC
• Pre-ordering through NewEgg: HDHomeRun PRIME

HDHomeRun PRIME 6CC:

• Home-theater form factor – add 6 premium cable TV tuners to your home theater system
• More information: HDHomeRun PRIME and HDHR3-6CC
• Pre-ordering for the 6CC will be online in the coming week

Pre-ordering notes:
Orders will be fulfilled by NewEgg in the order in which they are received for each model. Your credit card will not be charged until near the ship date.
Both models are expected to begin shipping in volume in July, with the 6-tuner model expected to ship a little ahead of the 3-tuner model.

Ted H – CEO
Silicondust Inc. USA

Questions

There are a few questions that this email doesn’t answer:

1. Will the CableCARD decryption work with MythTV, GB-PVR, BeyondTV, SnapStream and other non-MS-Windows Media Center solutions?
2. Linux systems supported?
3. Can recordings be archived for playback by non-DRM devices?

Network Upgrade May Be Needed

The tuner does have GigE networking (1000 base-tx), which is needed to stream 3 full HD programs. If you get this device, you’ll need a GigE switch and may need a GigE router to avoid dropped packets on your network. The good news is that GigE switches are $20 and work just fine. Many WiFi routers that support 802.11n include GigE switches, but you’ll want to check yours, since 50% are still only 100base-t. Older wifi routers with 802.11g are are almost always 100base-t. If you don’t know networking, just get a GigE router and it will be easier. No switch needed.

Pricing

3 Tuner Model

I just looked at Newegg and the HDHR3-CC (3 tuner model) is $250 + $7 shipping. It also lists only Windows7 as the supported OS. No others.

6 Tuner Model

NewEgg doesn’t have a page for the 6-tuner model mentioned in the email above.

It seems just like yesterday when the Space Shuttle Endeavour had her first mission in space. That was 1992. Those of you who know me, know that I worked as a NASA contractor from ’89 – ’96 writing GN&C software for the space shuttle fleet, writing applications for the mission control centers around the world and laptops used onboard the shuttles and space station. Thousands of other people have similar, if not closer, connections to Endeavour.

Endeavour was the first shuttle to fly with an upgraded nose-wheel steering. This is particularly personal for me, having spent about 9 months implementing the software to take advantage of those upgrades. Many thousands of lines of code and some Karnaugh mapping to speed the boolean decisions. Many thanks to Henry for pointing this dumb ASE to that logic simplification technique. I recall during the code review at IBM-FS that nobody had checked those lines of code for 100% accuracy due to the complexity. They announced it. A peer on my team had validated it by creating exactly the same equation himself (thanks BW!) and we tested every possible combination of inputs to validate we met requirements 100%. It passed. Running that many tests was a major team effort with all the other coders jumping in to save me from missing the deadline for weeks. I doubt anyone has touched that code ever since.

I have fond memories of walking around building 30, working on the FCR computers, servers and working with the different flight controllers. This week, I found myself re-watching the HBO From the Earth to the Moon series. It brought back more memories even if some of the places aren’t 100% accurate. I also recall watching the Apollo 13 movie on opening day, surrounded by NASA flight controllers at a local movie theater on NASA Rd 1 in Webster, Tx. Yes, we saw it during work hours. Together, we changed the world for the better.

Anyway, Godspeed Endeavour. Here’s wishing that you only exercise the nose-wheel steering and elevon flight control code that I implemented for smooth landings and none of the other code – mostly for when really bad things are happening.

The launch is scheduled for around 3:47 pm today. I always hold my breath (not really) during a launch. Going into space is a dangerous business the way we currently do it.

Sometimes you’d like to learn a little about a subject but not have to search and search and search for the information. That’s where the Khan Academy comes in. It began as a way to help family and grew and GREW.

It contains a wide range of subjects, but traditional school learning is what is mainly covered. From Algebra to Venture Capital and Capital Markets – I guess there is no Zoology presentation available. ;)
There are over 2,100 videos are available. Each is a bite sized piece of learning.

Here’s the website: http://www.khanacademy.org/ Definitely bookmark it. I’ll be in the accounting fundamentals section for the next few days.

There are exercises and videos, so the concepts you are supposed to understand are verified through the exercises until you demonstrate mastery.

The depth and breadth of subjects is pretty impressive.

So I got this email today from TiVo. Relatively short and too the point. Definitely appreciated. I hope they fire that email service. There needs to be repercussions for unauthorized data leaks. The company reported to have the breach is Epsilon. If you are a client, time to get out of that contract.

I use a very specific email alias just for TiVo, so I’ll know if anything comes from this leak. Anyone knowing that address and my first name … oh well … lot’s of people know my first name. I’ll wait until spam starts before disabling this alias created for TiVo. This is the 2nd time that my TiVo specific alias has been released without my approval. Nice job selecting partners TiVo. I still use a TiVo Series2, but haven’t paid them any money since 2004 due to the prior breach. At least they told me about it this time – perhaps due to the California law which requires customer notification of unauthorized data releases?

================================================== 
TiVo Service Announcement
================================================== 
 
Dear TiVo Customer,

Today we were informed by our email service provider 
that your email address was exposed due to unauthorized 
access of their system. Our email service provider 
deploys emails on our behalf to customers who have 
opted into email-based communications from us.

We were advised by our email service provider 
that the information that was obtained was limited 
to first name and/or email addresses only. Your 
service and any other personally identifiable
information were not at risk and remain secure. 

Please note, it is possible you may receive spam 
email messages as a result.  We want to urge you 
to be cautious when opening links or attachments 
from unknown third parties. 

We regret this has taken place and apologize for any 
inconvenience this may have caused you. We take 
your privacy very seriously, and we will continue 
to work diligently to protect your 
personal information. 

If you have unsubscribed in the past, there is no 
need to unsubscribe again. Your preferences will 
remain in place.

Sincerely,
The TiVo Team

Here is what Epsilon says on their website

IRVING, TEXAS – April 1, 2011 - On March 30th, an incident was detected where a subset of Epsilon clients' customer data were exposed by an unauthorized entry into Epsilon's email system. The information that was obtained was limited to email addresses and/or customer names only. A rigorous assessment determined that no other personal identifiable information associated with those names was at risk. A full investigation is currently underway.

If this was an insider job, there isn’t much that could have been done to protect against the releases besides paying their people well and giving stock options to them so they have a financial reason to protect company assets.

Ok, not really 101 uses for a Password Manager, but many more than you thought, about 30.

Use A Password Manager

For the last few years, I’ve been trying to get anyone with more than 5 passwords to remember to start using a password manager, PM, as part of increasing your desktop security. Below I’ll go into a few alternate uses for that password database beyond just storing computer and website passwords.