The Content Scrambling System, or CSS, is a Digital Rights Management, or DRM, encryption system that encrypts data on commercially-available DVDs and prevents users from copying the disc’s data to a computer file or another disc. The Content Scrambling System is also used to require all media player manufacturers to produce devices that are compatible with the Content Scrambling System because the encrypted discs will not stream to a non-compatible device.   How A Content Scrambling System Works The Content Scrambling System depends on three keys and a process known Read More

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) licenses the frequency spectrum in the United States. Useful charts showing frequency allocations are available from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) at http://www.ntia.doc.gov/osmhome/allochrt.html. This table shows commonly used names for various frequency ranges: Frequency Description 30 – 300 GHz Extremely High Frequency 3 – 30 GHz Super High Frequency 300 MHz – 3 GHz Ultra High Frequency (UHF) 30 – 300 MHz Very High Frequency (VHF) 3 – 30 MHz High Frequency (HF) 300 KHz – 3 MHz Medium Frequency 30 KHz – Read More

A diopter is a lens that bends light in order to magnify an object. Diopters can be used to enlarge small objects or see across far distances and are generally integrated into other objects in order to maximize efficiency and accessibility. A diopter can also refer to a measurement that describes a lens’s optical power and measures the maximum distance that a lens  is capable of viewing an object from. How Diopters Work A diopter (lens) is a transparent piece of glass or plastic that bends light inward or outward Read More

Recipient Objects Overview Active Directory objects such as user accounts, contacts and groups become recipient objects when e-mail address information is added to the object. The public folder is another type of recipient object. A public folder does not however usually have its own an email address. Exchange Server 2003 supports the following types of recipient objects: User recipient objects: This recipient object type is created and managed using the Active Directory Users And Computers management console. User recipient objects are associated with the user accounts in the Active Directory Read More

RFC 2829 – Authentication Methods for LDAP defines the basic threats to an LDAP directory service: Unauthorized access to data via data-fetching operations, Unauthorized access to reusable client authentication information by monitoring others' access, Unauthorized access to data by monitoring others' access, Unauthorized modification of data, Unauthorized modification of configuration, Unauthorized or excessive use of resources (denial of service), and Spoofing of directory: Tricking a client into believing that information came from the directory when in fact it did not, either by modifying data in transit or misdirecting the client's Read More

The BOOTMGR (Windows Boot Manager) is part of Microsoft Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, and Windows 7. It finalizes the steps in booting the computer and loading the Operating System by looking for the active partition in which Boot Configuration Data is stored. BOOTMGR runs the “winload.exe” process in order to do this. This process is essentially the operating system boot loader that loads the operating system kernel and device drivers that are in the boot-class.Small changes can easily corrupt the BOOTMGR configuration on Vista, Server 2008, and Windows 7. Read More

3D TV is, as the name suggests, a television that can play 3D picture. For the most part, 3D TV are TVs that work in sync with LCD shutter glasses that tell the glasses which eye should be exposed to the image on the screen. While 3D TV has been slow to take off, with more movies beginning to go 3D, there has been an increased demand for 3D TVs and therefore, many of the large television companies — Toshiba, Sony, Panasonic, to name a few — have all expressed Read More

Wireless networks are great, when they work. A weak wireless signal can mean real trouble. One of the best ways to improve a wireless signal is to replace the antenna on one or both ends of the connection with a better wireless antenna. Types of Wireless Antennae Wireless antennae fall into five general categories: Omni Parabolic or Dish Yagi Patch Sector Omnidirectional Antenna An omnidirectional antenna works equally well in picking up signals from every direction. Omni's make excellent general purpose and mobile antenna's. The longer an omnidirectional antenna is, Read More

A computer process is a computer program that is executing and has a unique process identification or PID. On the Unix Operating System (OS), a process may be running in the background, foreground, or be in a suspended state. On Unix, the OS shell will not return the prompt to the end-user until the current process that is executing finishes. As a result, many processes that take a significant amount of time to run and keep you from using the Unix console until it finishes running. A common task that Read More

File sharing is a necessity when there is a network. Whether it is the Internet or an intranet, people are sharing files all the time. It helps businesses function at an optimum level as people can share any information they want. File sharing makes files available for others to use. This is accomplished in many ways. In business networks it is done via file servers, on the wider Internet it is done via the peer-to-peer (P2P) model, in which the files are received, stored, and served by the personal computers Read More