Sneaky Bastard

When I see an advertisement for a technical product that shows a computer, I always look at the product to identify the make and model. Very often, art directors and designers will use Apple hardware in their photos because they have ready access to those products, during a photo shoot, for example. I would imagine that the storyboard has a note like “woman using laptop computer, smiling at camera.” They don’t consider that the photo will be used to advertise a product that requires Microsoft® Windows®. This drives me crazy (well, crazier anyway).

Here’s an example I recently encountered for a product that I actually wanted to use. PayPal has a product called Virtual Debit Card that allows the user to create a temporary credit card number for a single purchase. It’s a simple idea that would prevent a lot of fraud, although I’m sure it’s technically difficult to implement within the Visa and MasterCard networks. I really want to use the PayPal Virtual Debit Card, but it only runs on Microsoft® Windows®. In the photo below, the satisfied user depicted has an Apple Titanium PowerBook G4.

Of course, if you look at the system requirements, you’ll see that it requires a really old PC.

Aaaaargh!

I was at my local Office Depot late last night to pick up a USB flash drive for a project. I needed a simple device — 1 Gb was plenty of space to move some security certificates and keys between computers. I ran into the store just as they were closing and grabbed the cheapest USB flash drive I could find (SanDisk Cruzer Micro 1 Gb for $14.99). I had heard about flash drives that contain the U3 root kit, but never used one. I stuck the drive into a Mac and reformatted the partition. I then discovered that the device still emulated a CD-ROM drive and did not show that as a real partition. Ugh.

After reading about U3 “enhanced” flash drives, it became apparent that the only way to turn the device into a plain flash drive was to use their uninstaller application from Microsoft® Windows™. Luckily for me, I still have one PC that runs Windows. I don’t use Windows inside a virtual machine, although I certainly could. I’m not sure the VM would have had enough hardware access to the USB device to uninstall the root kit anyway. Regardless, I ran the uninstaller and created a perfectly usable device for moving bits around. Neato.