Amit’s lab

Shantanu Goel (a hardcore geek and my brother) achieves this feat. He makes Kinect work with PS3 in a mash up. As far as I know, no one has done it till now. The entry barrier was not a technical one but, he just crossed a mental barrier of “Sony Devices cannot work with Microsoft Kinect”.

check this out .. Making Kinect work with PS3 .

 He explains all the technical details on is blog and he has even open sourced the code under GNU GPL v2 license. Now, if you want, you can achieve this feat yourself.

Go ahead. Enjoy Kinect with PS3.

 

Quote of the Day:"Every war is the result of a difference of opinion. Maybe the biggest questions can only be answered by the greatest of conflicts." - JC Denton

It’s been a long time since I posted something on my blog. and then, a twitter discussion with a friend sparked this thought in my mind. I am no expert on Google TV but given the nature of my job, i feel that I understand TV industry in some way now.

My friend questioned the existence of current TV technology in future as he thinks that Google TV is coming in as a killer for TV technologies.

I feel that Google TV might seem to be promising as a technological advancement for the TV software industry but it is still far fetched from the content distribution model.

To remind you, Google TV is just one of a software solution and it does not act as a content aggregator & distribution agent.

Even if you have a Google TV / STB at home, it does not mean that you’ll be able to watch live TV unless all the actors including content owners, content providers & content distributors reach a consensus and agree to a common content distribution standard like DVB being supported on to Google TV. The broadcasting industry is a tough nut to crack as they cannot afford to deviate from standards.

Developing Google TV in labs is one task but deploying in already existing market is another mammoth task.

1) Broadcasters cannot force users to change/upgrade Set Top Boxes/TV sets, So, for deployment, they’ll ask for backward compatibility, which Google TV cannot provide as they do not adhere to any kind of metadata/content distribution standards. This is needed as non compliance to standards means Broadcasters have to change headend systems resulting in multi million dollar investments sending the industry into a nascent stage again.

2) With opening the world of Apps on TV, Google might get into issues of security. Please note that the whole broadcasting industry is based on conditional access, be it, Satellite, Cable or IP TV. This conditional access protects the interests of broadcasters and enable them to make money by letting them control the content on user’s box. I could not find any strategy of this sort being announced with Google TV.

3) Watching TV and browsing simultaneously is definitely a good idea and developers/techies including myself love this but remember that, majority of the TV viewing eyeballs wish to watch TV in peace without interruptions of internet world. TV is a mass medium of communication so, the solution should appeal to the people living till the last mile.

4) Google TV technology is there but broadcasters is still far away from embracing it. I know the trials are on, and Sony has announced the Google TV production but then, I still did not find a business model where people can buy and still have a seamless TV viewing experience with their existing broadcaster.

5) The most important thing is that this is all about TV & broadcasting business which is a ground of traditional businesses and not of Internet. The last thing you want is that the world comes to know “what do you watch on TV after midnight” and Google just apologizes for mistakenly capturing the data in Google servers like their StreetView solution.

In short, I am not against Google TV or any other new digital TV technology. In fact, i am eagerly waiting to Google TV happen as a game changer, the only thing thing is I am still being skeptical given the way the whole Digital TV industry runs. and also, keeping the mind that the traditional digital TV solution providers have already internet enabled TV/STB running in market.

Google TV might not be a threat or a killer but definitely, is something worth to watch out for in future.

Quote of the Day:"The unplanned organism is a question asked by Nature and answered by Death. You are another kind of question, with another kind of answer." -Morpheus

It seems like browser war is back after a long silence. And this time, it will be big, it will be noisy and even a person who does not have an email account will know about Chrome and Internet Explorer 9. Google placed a full page Chrome advertisement in “The Times of India”, a leading national daily. Following is the snapshot.

                                            

Internet Explorer 9 Beta launch was announced a few days ago by Microsoft to compete in the browser market. HTML5 is becoming big and getting popular as the days pass. Both Chrome and Firefox are keeping up with the pace of HTML5 where as Microsoft was reeling way behind in this development. With the launch of IE9 beta, Microsoft made an entry into HTML5 browser market to compete with Chrome & Firefox. But seems like Google is getting impatient and wants to take an edge in browser market.

This is the first time, browser adverts has spilled outside the internet and reached the mass medium. This will definitely fuel the browser war and Microsoft won’t stay behind to wait and loose it. It seems to be a new era of browser war on the technical grounds of HTML5. And this time, it is spreading into non-internet zone of mass medium of print media. soon, it might be visible on Television or you might hear an advert on Radio. The browser discussions might be moving out of technical meeting rooms to drawing rooms.

Soon, you’ll find everyone, from your grandfather to your maid, discussing the hotting up browser war and taking sides of either Google Chrome or Microsoft Internet Explorer 9.

Quote of the Day:"The individual desires judgment. Without that desire, the cohesion of groups is impossible, and so is civilization." - Morpheus

Update: This article has been published in India’s leading Electronics magazine “Electronics For You (EFY)” january’2010 edition.

With the advent of Digital Television, Set Top Box (STB) has become the buzzword. The transmission of television signals has gone digital whereas most of the TV’s at home are still analog. So, an STB converts the digital signal to analog signal so as to enable a viewer to watch content on television. An STB is not merely a digital to analog signal convertor, but, it provides a host of services to enhance television viewing experience. For example, it provides an Electronic Program Guide to keep track all the content or a viewer can record/rewind/pause a program as per his needs.

In this article, Let us dive deep into the Set Top Box Hardware architecture.

Figure 1: various hardware components inside an STB

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Quote of the Day:"Too bad drinking scotch isn't a paying job or Kenny's dad would be a millionare!" -- Cartman

About 10 days ago, the news broke out specifying that Twitter was attacked by a hacker and sensitive information was taken out and published. Twitter denied it but now, it is public how the outage took place. The Hacker himself has done the honours to detail how he achieved this feat and the rationale behind it.

With this article, one can definitely learn that even the simplest of mistakes can be the cause of whole company crumbling down. Although, Twitter does not seem to get affected much on the business side but yes, it definitely puts a question mark on Twitter’s Security Policy.

Twitter is a micro blogging service and is hugely popular, so much so, that almost all the celebrities, From Barack Obama to Indian Movie Stars are hooked on to it. Everyone is typing out 140 characters of their personal or official information on twitter and is providing links to websites containing information.

The Hacker collected all the confidential information of twitter including project plans, financial projections, credit card information, call logs of twitter employees, people appearing for interviews et cetera. Now, this information is a like a gold mine for anyone.

The best part is that this attack on twitter has put even well established services like GMail, Hotmail, iTunes, AT & T softwares also in the line of fire. The twitter attack took place only after this hacker hacked the gmail account of one of twitter’s employee using “forgot password” option.

After reading this article, everyone should again think about password recovery policies, password formations and repeatitions, question the so called “secret question” for password recovery. This attack signifies that every piece of software/application/web service is vulnerable if the security aspect of itself is not in place.

This attack definitely started with Identity theft. and this leaves a lot more gap between the study and implementation of Identity Management concepts.

Read this article here The Anatomy Of The Twitter Attack

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Quote of the Day:"The individual desires judgment. Without that desire, the cohesion of groups is impossible, and so is civilization." - Morpheus

Update : This article has been published in a leading electronics magazine Electronics For you July’2009 edition.

Television is not a new concept. We are watching television for more than three decades. But, as everyone knows, technology is ever evolving which is leading towards the exponential changes in the world of television. With the advent of Digital TV, people got more choices to select the medium of their television viewing experience. Every one is going beyond terrestrial broadcast to get the best quality and enhanced television viewing experience.

There are three kinds of digital television broadcast systems existing today including Satellite TV, Digital Cable TV and IP TV (Internet Protocol Television) being the latest entrant in the world of television content broadcasting.

Internet Protocol Television (known widely as IP TV), being the newest arrival on the block, threatens the other two mediums by promising to give a tough competition. IP TV is a mechanism of viewing the regular television channels over IP. Similar to Satellite TV and Cable TV, the signal is encrypted using vendor specific security mechanisms and can only be decrypted by a receiver (STB). The video is sent in the form of IP packets over the existing broadband infrastructure and is assembled at the viewers’ end with the help of a Set Top Box. This becomes advantageous as existing broadband distribution infrastructure can be used to deliver television signals enabling the user to enjoy television over the same broadband connection used for surfing the internet. This is beneficial for broadcasters as they can offer “Triple Play” service of voice, data and television over the same network using the same infrastructure. “Triple Play” service refers to three different services of VoIP, Internet and IP-TV bundled together and offered over the same network. With IP TV, one can be assured of better video quality and stereophonic sound much like in case of DTH & Digital Cable TV. Even the customer specific services of Video on Demand (VOD) become a reality. Also, this enables broadcasters to have two way communications with the viewers as opposed to in case of DTH and Cable TV. IP –TV, still being in its stage of infancy, is not very stable. Due to high bandwidth requirement (approximately 5 Gbps, even ADSL2+ technology can support only up to 25 Mbps), hundreds of channels cannot be broadcasted simultaneously. Every channel change request by the user goes to the content server resulting in a delay for changing a channel. Currently, IP-TV is in roll out phase with broadcasters being BSNL, MTNL, Airtel and Reliance only in selected cities of India.

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Quote of the Day:"Too bad drinking scotch isn't a paying job or Kenny's dad would be a millionare!" -- Cartman

Finally, I have logged on to my blog site after quite a few months. My personal and work life kept me busy for these few months …

Anyway, So I thought to get back with one of my favorite topics : Gaming.

Recently, I read about XBox Live new development kicked off by Microsoft, called, Project Natal. It is all about a different gaming style or I should call it as an attempt to the next generation gaming experience. Now, Nintendo has already started in that direction with the launch of Wii. And how can Microsoft be far behind in copying the idea. So, here comes the annoucement of Project Natal, a “controller free gaming and entertainment experience”.

With this, a gamer will be able to use his whole body for a rich gaming session just like in Nintendo Wii, except that there will not be any device tagged to the gamer’s body. The Xbox live sensor device will be able to capture the complete body movements of the gamer and translate them in action in the gaming scenario. The game will move according to user bodily reactions. Even to make the experience much better, there will be microphones embedded so as to enable to gamer to interact with the characters in the game. So, it seems like you can actually become “Templer” in “Kill Zone” (some future XBox version) and fire in whichever direction by just pointing your fingers. The sensors should also be able to recognize your facial expressions to understand you feelings and who knows, might be, “Lara Croft” falls in love with you.

As per the claims mentioned on Wikipedia, technical demos of the basic games are done and Microsoft is keen to invest more towards this technology.

I seriously doubt, not about the evolution of rich gaming experience, but about Microsoft’s credibility in producing such high end gaming experience. For Microsoft, sticking to Windows OS and making it stable should be a better and safer option.

Anyway, Lets wait and watch. Meanwhile, just have a look what Microsoft has to say about Project Natal here …

Quote of the Day:"If there are any questions, direct them to that brick wall over there." -- Network President

Hi All,

My brother, Shantanu Goel and I, have started another blog called http://www.safercode.com which is an aim to tell people about some tips and tricks to make your code safer, secure and faster.

You’ll find quite a few interesting discussions and concepts about code optimization, securing coding, safety and reverse engineering on this website. The aim of this website is to cover those apects of programming and security which are not taught in schools and technical institutes.

Also, This site aims to bring all the information together on one page which is spread out or too vague or is not available on the internet.

The site supports RSS feeds also for the people who wish to be the regular readers.

Please do visit the site and leave your comments if you liked the posts there.

Regards,
Amit Goel

Quote of the Day:"You can't fight ideas with bullets." - Leo Gold

” Abguvat zhpu.. V unir orra hfvat guvf fznyy hgvyvgl sbe n ybat gvzr jurarire V jvfu gb jevgr fbzrguvat rapelcgrq.

Jul naq Jura qb V jevgr rapelcgrq? V qb vg jura V nafjre fbzr dhrfgvbaf va n choyvp sbehz naq fgvyy, qb abg jvfu gb fcbvy gur sha sbe bguref. Guvf jnl V gryy gur ubfg nobhg gur pbeerpg nafjre naq trg uvf npxabjyrqtrzrag naq fgvyy, V qba’g cynl n fcbvy fcbeg sbe bguref.

Tbg gur guvat abj. “

What is this all about? is it all gibberish ? hey, i am just playing around being stupid. Just copy paste the above text in www.rot13.com and see what is written above and below?

” Vg vf whfg n cynva fhofgvghgvba pvcure. Vg ebgngrf rirel punenpgre ol 13 cynprf naq rapelcgf gur vasbezngvba. Vg vf whfg hfrq sbe cynva sha naq fvzcyr fghss naq fubhyq arire or nccyvrq ba erny frphevgl vffhrf. Vg vf n irel cbchyne pvcure bayvar hfrq va sbehzf, tnzrf rgp. “

Why I wrote a post like this? I am in a mood of fun. Most of the people know about this. In case you did not know, a good learning for you then.

For more details, check out the rot13 entry at wikipedia

Enjoy… I am just playing around..

Quote of the Day:Morpheus: Throughout human history, we have been dependent on machines to survive. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.

Cracking softwares is one of the favorite pastimes for everyone. Everyone loves to use cracked versions of games, IDEs, utilities et cetera so that they don’t have to pay for the licensing fee. Now, Licensing schemes vary from company to company and software bundling too. I definitely appreciate the efforts put by engineers in cracking the license keys so as to get the software working till eternity. Cracking license keys work till the time software is just a demo version and opens up only if the license key is provided to the system or it belongs to different licensing schemes which vary from node lock to server based licensing. But, there are still good softwares which do not put in too much of security. I don’t know the reasons. either they really don’t care about the licensing of their highly used softwares or they just don’t know about it. I believe that the former must be true as latter questions the capabilities of engineers sitting in that company.

 

To cut the long story short, If we target such softwares, we actually don’t need to crack the license keys. In turn, what we can apply is the simple reverse engineering philosophy of reading the assembly and modifying it. This works with quite a few softwares. For example: Source Insight is a very popular IDE used for coding in C/C++/Java like languages and it widely used in the world. Its license is also very costly which is about INR 10,000 or approximately $200. Now, if you go wish to use this software, then you need to buy the license otherwise it won’t work after 30 days. Changing the system clock etc are outdated techniques which are no longer valid. Moreover, changing system clocks might affect the functioning of other softwares installed on your machine.

So, For softwares like Source Insight, you can try out few basic things. Disassemble the binary of the targeted software, for example: Source Insight binary is “insight3.exe”. Once disassembled, you need to look for pop up like “trial screens/license key input screen” etc. How does this occurs? Software itself might be checking for some date of installation reading from somewhere. In most of the cases, it is registry files but then, it can vary. So, Attach a debugger (Ollydbg/IDAPro) to this software and try to trace the call looking for date of installation. Once you find it, replace it with calls of NOP instruction. Yes, this is one of the most useful redundant instructions assembly language provide. Once you suppress this call, software thinks that it is a fresh installation. After that, just suppress the function call which displays the “trial version” popup. After this, just reset the installation date by again putting NOP instructions in place of function call of date replacement. There are lot of tools available to make changes to the binary like “HexEdit” etc. Once you do this, Source Insight will never ask you for a license as it thinks itself as a fresh installation every time.

Now, This leads us to think that why a company like source dynamics keeps such a weak licensing system? Either this is their marketing strategy or mere stupidity. I still give benefit of doubt to the former.

Quote of the Day:"Too bad drinking scotch isn't a paying job or Kenny's dad would be a millionare!" -- Cartman