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Motorola Tells Modders To Go Elsewhere

Frank — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 04:43:27 +0000

Android by it’s nature is an open source platform, a platform that is open to anyone and any changes as long as they comply with the Apache 2.0 license. So why have manufacturers like Motorola and HTC spent so much time fighting against people modding or creating their own ROMs? That might be a question that will go unanswered for a while, but today a rep from Motorola spoke out publicly and quite harshly against a custom ROM user on YouTube – leading Motorola to apologize to the Android community by way of their Facebook page.

Motorola has taken some heat from the Android community for including locked bootloaders on their devices. Today, a modder voiced his displeasure with Motorola’s policy via a comment to a YouTube video on Motorola’s channel, somebody using Motorola’s account wrote:

if you want to do custom roms, then buy elsewhere, we’ll continue with our strategy that is working thanks.

If you have ever spent any time reading YouTube comments then you would know that a comment like that wouldn’t be well received. A number of anti-Motorola discussions started to pop-up like weeds today all over the Internet in response to the YouTube comment which lead Motorola to apologize to the community via their Facebook page.

We apologize for the feedback we provided regarding our bootloader policy. The response does not reflect the views of Motorola.
We are working closely with our partners to offer a bootloader solution that will enable developers to use our devices as a development platform while still protecting our users’ interests. More detailed information will follow as we get closer to availability.

A Tiger’s stripes never change and neither will Motorola’s. I’m sure we will never see them “enable developers to use our devices as a development platform” or see “More detailed information”. I stand behind the fact that companies who use open source software in a commercial product should allow it to be open and free, not locked down.

Motorola Tells Modders To Go Elsewhere originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2011/01/19. Reproduction of content not allowed without consent.

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Eavesdropping On GSM

Frank — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 05:30:07 +0000

Speaking at the Chaos Computer Club on Tuesday, a pair of researchers demonstrated a method of eavesdropping on encrypted GSM calls and text messages by using a few cheap pay-as-you-go cellphones and a variety of open source software.

The ability to listen in on cellphone calls has been available to law enforcement agencies for a while, but even if the average person could they would have to invest in about $50,000 of hardware to do so, until now. The modern day phreaking takes advantage of security flaws in the GSM network and puts the power within the reach of almost any tech-savvy user.

By using custom firmware that they built in a few cheap Motorola cellphones, they created a bunch of cell phone "sniffers" that send real time raw cell network data back to a computer via a USB connection. By sending a target phone an SMS, they were able to determine what random network ID number belonged to the target.

All that was left was to decrypt the raw information they captured. This was easily accomplished with the use of a 2 GB rainbow table.

I’m sure with time, the software and firmware that was used in the demonstration will make it’s way into the average Joe’s hands and we will all be doomed. It’s not really modern day phreaking, back then all of us were just curious. There is no other use for this besides grabbing peoples personal communications.

Eavesdropping On GSM originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2010/12/31. Reproduction of content not allowed without consent.

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A Cell Phone For Grama

Frank — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 06:07:55 +0000

With the massive amount of multi-function “smart” phones out there people tend to loose the focus of what cell phones actually are; phones.

My mother couldn’t care less if her phone plays mp3′s or if it’s got a twitter client. All she wants is a phone and a super easy one to boot. As she starts to approach her twilight years (still love you mom), this generic brand mobile phone with oversize butons with a screen that can be read from across the room might just be perfect for her.

The oginal idea was to design a phone for seniors who aren’t very tech savvy, but you can also use it if all you want is a really simple cell phone.

The 6380 Senior Mobile Phone does actually carry a few handy features, including a flashlight, a massive “SOS” button on the back the can auto dial a pre-set number and emit a loud warning tone (if you think pocket dialing people is bad, just imagine this in your pocket), a phone book, SMS messaging, a calendar, alarm clock and an FM radio. The display is kept to a bare minimum with a massive font and, ready for this, a whopping 128×60 screen resolution.

The 6380 only works in the 900/1800 GSM bands, so it will work everywhere except for North America (sorry mom). If it’ll work on your home network, expect to pay $74.99 for one.

[Link to 6380 Seniors Mobile]

A Cell Phone For Grama originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2009/11/06. Reproduction of content not allowed without consent.

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Google Voice Invites

Frank — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 04:37:09 +0000

With all of the hoopla surrounding Google Wave most people have forgotten about Google’s last hot product, Google Voice.

If you haven’t heard of Google Voice, let’s look at wikipedia ….

The service provisions a U.S. phone number, chosen by the user from available numbers in selected area codes, free of charge to each user account. Inbound calls to this number are forwarded to other phone numbers of the subscriber. Outbound calls may be placed to domestic and international destinations by dialing the Google Voice number or from a web-based application.[2] Inbound and domestic outbound calls (including calls to Canada, Alaska and Hawaii [3]) are free of charge, while international calls are billed according to a schedule posted on the Google Voice website.

It’s an awesome service and it currently in closed beta. Much like gmail of many years ago, you can only join Google Voice if you have an invite, and I just happen to have 3.

The first three people who post a comment will get an invite. Make sure you use your real email since that’s the only way to send out the invite. Enjoy.

Google Voice Invites originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2009/11/06. Reproduction of content not allowed without consent.

Skype And Chrome Go Portable

Frank — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 05:13:34 +0000

The guys over at PortableApps.com have been turning out great portable apps for years now. Apps that you can easily put on a USB flash drive and run from any machine. All of the software that they offer is open source, until now that is.

PortableApps has decided to add a handful of closed source apps like Skype and Chrome to their list of offerings. Project lead John T. Haller offered a number of reasons for the move, ending with “it’s the right thing to do. Keeping an open platform and allowing all software to compete on a level playing field just makes sense.”

Besides fan favorites Chrome and Skype, Free Commander, SpyDLLRemover and 2x Terminal were added. IcoFX, XMPlay and a few others are expected soon.

[link to PortableApps.com]

Skype And Chrome Go Portable originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2009/10/23. Reproduction of content not allowed without consent.

Hack A Master Lock

Frank — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:35:36 +0000

We all remember those Masterlock pad locks we had in high school. Some of us even remember trying to figure out how to get the combination for them. Some people would try everything from listening carefully to clicks right to pulling hard on it while spinning the tumbler hoping to feel a click.

Now mathematically we know that their are 64,000 possible combinations but what I didn’t know is by using this simple formula above (go ahead and click on it to take a closer look) you can drop that number to 100 or less. I agree it’s not the stuff that most professional lock picks have but it sure beats trying all 64,000 possibilities.

Hack A Master Lock originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2009/10/08. Reproduction of content not allowed without consent.

WoW Now 11 Million Strong (and still growing)…

Ryan Yewell — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 05:10:20 +0000

For all you under-rock-dwellers out there, a brief explanation of the phenomenon that is World Of Warcraft. It’s made by Blizzard. It’s a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. It’s been parodied on SouthPark. It’s a big deal, if for nothing else than the cash-cow it’s created for Activision Blizzard.

Well, World Of Warcraft has now surpassed 11 millions subscribers. Doing the math, if you don’t even count the initial purchase price of the game, and just look at the monthly subscription revenue, a WoW subscriber spends between $13 and $15 dollars a month depending if they are month-to-month or pre-paid.

So that means, in subscriptions alone, Activision Blizzard is making anywhere from $143 million to $165 million EACH MONTH. Nice…

Even nicer… In a conference call with industry analysts back in September, Blizzard revealed that, since the launch of Wow in 2004, the TOTAL money spent on everything from servers, to catering, to staff, has been $200 million (which is what they make in revenue every month and a half.)

So yeah, Blizzard has been in the black, like nobody else’s business, for quite some time. You can clearly see why other companies have tried to dip into that market with upstart MMORPG’s like Warhammer Online, Conan Hyborian Adventures, Hellgate London (to be terminated in January 2009), and even EA/Bioware’s upcoming Star Wars The Old Republic.

And BTW, the latest expansion pack for WoW, Wrath Of The Lich King, is out November 13th, just in time for the holiday season. That’ll mean another $40 bucks a pop for any of the existing 11 million subscribers, plus the additional subscriptions it will bring.

Personally, I’d like to know what the forecast from Blizzard’s number-crunchers is, regarding what percentage of existing subscribers they suspect will buy the Lich King expansion this holiday season. Even if you did an extremely conservative estimate of 1 in 10 existing WoW’ers picking up Lich King, that puts another cool $44 million into the coffers. Wow. Big numbers indeed.

WoW Now 11 Million Strong (and still growing)… originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2008/10/30. Reproduction of content not allowed without consent.

Is Your Printer Spying On You?

Frank — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 01:21:26 +0000

Seems that all of those forensic based TV shows were right all along, police can track the make, model, and serial number of a printer just by looking at a piece of paper that came from that printer. Scary stuff. Good to know that the guys at the EFF are actually trying to do something about this.

You can help the project by sending in prints from your printer. The larger their collection, the larger the possibility of them cracking the code. You can visit the EFF’s printer dot project here

Is Your Printer Spying On You? originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2008/10/23. Reproduction of content not allowed without consent.

Save A Genius Playlist

Frank — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 16:37:26 +0000

One of the neat new features in iTunes 8 is the “Genius” playlist builder. Basically, it creates playlists from the songs in your library or from the iTunes store. What’s the big deal with that you ask? Well, it does this based on a track you select from your library. So, in short, you pick a song and iTunes uses some voodoo to pick 25 other songs that it thinks you might like based on your “seed” song. Got it? Good.

In this post we will show you how to save your Genius playlist in iTunes.

First, pick the track you want to use as your “seed” track. Next, click on the Genius button (it looks like the nuclear atom icon above), it’s located in the bottom right-hand corner of iTunes.

Tada, you playlist is now created. You can now go ahead and tweak the playlist to your liking. At the top you’ll see the “seed” track that the playlist is based on. Next to that is a drop-down menu which lets you select the number of songs to include. You can pick from 25, 50, 75, or 100.

You can also exclude any individual song you might not want to listen to by deselecting the gray checkbox next to it. When you’re happy with what you’ve got, click on “Save Playlist” in the top right-hand corner. Your new playlist will now appear with all your other playlists.

Save A Genius Playlist originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2008/09/13. Reproduction of content not allowed without consent.

Design An OS for $20-$100

Frank — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:21:16 +0000

I’m not one for ridiculously funny things, but this ad that I spotted on Get A Coder has got to be one of the most pathetically funny requests I have ever seen.

I need someone to program me a new OS (Operasting System) that looks different than Ms Windows XP etc. but has the same style. It does not need to run on a mac but all the other PCs. It’s supposed to have a stylish look with clear edges etc. And ITS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE JUST A REDESIGNED WINDOWS as I’m going to sell that operating system later on.
These are some important points :
It should have ALL THE FEATURES that Windows Xp Professional has.
ALL the files that run on Windows XP ust also run on the BlueOrb OS.
It must have a very user-friendly interface (like MS WINDOWS XP)
When it gets Installed, the user needs to insert a serial number.
It HAS to be HACKER SAFE!
It must be quick and good looking.

To top it all off his budget is $20-$100. If you interested in building this OS place a bid on his job bid page

Design An OS for $20-$100 originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2008/09/02. Reproduction of content not allowed without consent.

DVD::RIP – Rippin Linux Style

Frank — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 14:23:17 +0000

There is a ton of software available for both Windows and OS X that allow you to rip and encode DVD’s, but what about Linux? A few months back I did a segment on the Lab with Leo Laporte TV show on just that, DVD rippers for Linux. (Video after the break)

DVD::RIP is a full featured DVD backup program written in perl. It’s very intuiative and eay to use but also provides a feature rich control of almost all aspects of the ripping and transcoding process. Some of the key features are:

Runs on Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD
Rip to harddisk, on the fly or from an existent DVD image
Select audio track(s), viewing angle(s), multitple titles
Rip as much audio tracks as you like into one AVI/OGG/SVCD file
Supports nearly all of transcode’s video codecs, e.g: divx4, divx5, xvid, xvidcvs, ffmpeg, fame, opendivx and mpeg2enc
DivX/Xvid multipass encoding
(S)VCD modes, with multiple audio tracks for SVCD
Integrated video bitrate calculator based on target size resp. number of discs
Automatic splitting of the target files for best fit on the specified number of discs

Probably the strongest feature of DVD::RIP is it’s cluster mode which let’s you use any Linux machine you might have in your network for parallel encoding. Your rips come out much faster if you use say 2, 3, or 4 machines. Let me see Windows do that.

[Link to DVD::RIP]

DVD::RIP – Rippin Linux Style originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2008/08/31. Reproduction of content not allowed without consent.

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Rebooting Linux Magically

Frank — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:23:46 +0000

If you have ever had a filesystem fail on you in Linux then you are quite aware of that “bottom of the pit” feeling you get in your stomach, especially if you are remote to the server and have no physical access to it. What to do if the system can’t load the reboot or shutdown binaries to reboot your system and have fsck save your butt.

magic SysRq key is a feature built in to the kernel that lets you preform a number of interesting operations inculding rebooting a system. You can issue keystrokes to the magic SysRq device in /proc so you can send a hard reboot directly to the kernel with no disk access required.

[Link to Linux Journal article on rebooting via SysRq]

Rebooting Linux Magically originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2008/08/26. Reproduction of content not allowed without consent.

11 WordPress Plugins For Professional Bloggers

Frank — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 04:35:13 +0000

In a world filled with enough plugins to make your head spin, it can be quite frustrating looking for that right plugin to do that job your after. Most bloggers have spent countless hours sifting through google or wordpress.org looking for a plugin to do something they are after but just can’t come up with the name that they need.

Everyone can probably name their favorite plugin. The trick is to name the plugins that are worth installing, ones that can actually add something useful to your blog. Remember, plugins tend to slow down wordpress blogs, so it’s a good to keep an eye on performance and only activate what you actually need.

Once we switched tech.nocr.at over to wordpress some time ago we too spent countless days tweaking and installing plugins, looking for the right combination to do the job. So here I present to you, the list of must have plugins for any pro-blogger. All of them are installed and activated right here.

The List

Of course, these plugins don’t make your blog an instant success, but they do add some important and needed feature to a blog. Concentrate on content if you want to attract readers and let the plugins do their jobs and help you along the way.

Must Haves

The following plugins should be install on any blog no matter what type of content you have or how popular your blog is. No exceptions.

Akismet
This one is a no brainer, I mean, who the hell wants spam on their site?
WP-Super-Cache
Once one of your posts hits the front page of Digg or you become popular on StumbleUpon you are going to be thankful of this puppy. This plugin stores a static file of each page in html, which is easier to show than dynamic content. It lowers the processing of PHP and the database hits that can kill you.
All in One SEO Pack
Want to have your site indexed properly on search engines? Let this puppy take all of the hard work off of your hands.

SEO & analytics

Google Analytics for WordPress
Probably the worlds most used analytics package. Install this one and you will be greeted with more stats than you can handle.
WP-UserOnline
Does exactly what it says, tells your how many people are on your site right now. Even gives you referring URL’s and spiders too.
Google XML-Sitemap Generator
Search engines just love sitemaps, especially google. This plugin will create a XML-Sitemap for you automatically and keep it up-to-date.

RSS Plugin

Feedburner Feedsmith
Feedburner is probably the industry standard for rolling out your feeds. This plugin will ensure that any link on your site to your RSS feed is redirected to your feedburner account.

Comment Plugins

Move Comments
This plugin in will give you the ability to move comments from one post to another. Keeps your commenters on track.
CAPTCHA
Just incase Akisment didn’t get em, this one will help you out.

Miscellaneous Plugins

Related Posts
Shows a number (set by you) of posts that relate to this post a users is one. This is a great plugin for giving people a choice of similar content on your site and having them dig deeper.
Maintenance Mode
If you ever need to tweak or upgrade your system, this plugin will allow your to show a static HTML page telling people that you are down for some upgrade and tweak love. The best part is if log in, you can still access your site to test those tweaks and upgrades.

Well there it is, this list of wordpress plugins that are must haves. There is always room for improvement though. If you have a must have plugin in that we should know about then let us know.

11 WordPress Plugins For Professional Bloggers originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2008/08/02. Reproduction of content not allowed without consent.

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Run Linux Apps In Windows

Frank — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 14:05:29 +0000

If your a Linux geek but are stuck using Windows for your day to day job this might just be the perfect compromise.

While you can run Linux within Windows using a number of virtualization products, andLinux takes it one step further and installs Linux on top of Windows, allowing the two to exist with one and other. Essentially allowing you to run Windows and Linux apps at the same time.

andLinux comes in two flavours; One comes with a full KDE system and the other with an XFCE based system.

Since andLinux installs a full operating system, you’ll need to make sure you’ve got quite a bit of free space on your hard drive. The KDE version eats up more than 4GB of space while the XFCE version takes about 2GB

andLInux

Run Linux Apps In Windows originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2008/02/22. Reproduction of content not allowed without consent.

FeedJournal: RSS Feeds Like A Newspaper

Frank — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 03:09:23 +0000

Not one who cares about the convenience of RSS feeds? Do you really not care about the amount of trees that are saved just by using RSS? Then FeedJournal is just right for you. FeedJournal is a new service that allows you to create a newspaper like pdf from your RSS feeds. The layout looks much like your run of the mill newspaper and you can select the number of columns and whether or not you want images.

Overall FeedJournal presents a neat trick for reading, but with most feeds being update almost per second, Iâ€™m not sure if Iâ€™d be using it to keep abreast with the world.

FeedJournal: RSS Feeds Like A Newspaper originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2008/02/21. Reproduction of content not allowed without consent.

Rock Band Guitar String Mod

Frank — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 15:31:04 +0000

I canâ€™t even count the number of times people say to me â€œRock Band isnâ€™t like playing a real guitar, itâ€™s doesnâ€™t even have any strings. This drives me insane and forces me to punch them in the throat. Please donâ€™t confuse the fun of a game with the real world of music. Would you actually bust some DDR moves in club?

For all of those nay-sayers you can show them this video of a single string mod to a rock band guitar. I know itâ€™s a far cry from the true 6 string rhythm experience, but it is a step closer to reality I guess.

[Via Joystiq]

Rock Band Guitar String Mod originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2008/02/08. Reproduction of content not allowed without consent.

Best Buy Admits To Selling Infected Picture Frames

Frank — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 17:59:55 +0000

If you bought a picture frame for yourself or a loved one at Best Buy over the holiday season you might have gotten more than you bargained for. Apparently they came with a factory installed virus that is a threat to Windows machines if connected via the included USB port. The frames that had the malicious code are able to spread to any connected Windows PC, but Best Buy isnâ€™t recalling the infected products.

“A limited number” of the 10.4-in. digital frames sold under the in-house Insignia brand were “contaminated with a computer virus during the manufacturing process,” according to a notice posted on the Insignia site last weekend. The frame which carried the part number NS-DPF10A has been discontinued and all remaining stock have been pulled off the shelf. Best Buy has not specified the number of virus-loaded frames that has been sold but it said in a second notice posted on the Insignia site, that it is continuing to investigate and is “connecting with our customers who may have been impacted.â€

According to Best Buy, the virus that is on the frames is an older one than is easily detected by any up-to-date antivirus software. The name of the virus hasnâ€™t been released but they said that itâ€™s a non-replicating Trojan rather than a self-propagating worm.

Best Buy Admits To Selling Infected Picture Frames originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2008/01/28. Reproduction of content not allowed without consent.

Wrong Number Generator – Brilliant

Frank — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 18:48:54 +0000

Are you up for something evil? You know, something that isnâ€™t harmful but can easily drive someone right up a wall. The Wrong Number Generator is an absolutely perfect way to do just that.

You plug one end of this unit into your victims phone and the other end into their jack and the unit will intercept any numbers that are dialed and replace them with other digits. It will get annoying quick for the unsuspecting victim, but to throw them off the unit will let the correct number go through 1 out of 4 times, making them think that it was all in their head.

This amount of fun will cost you dearly, $89 to be exact.

Wrong Number Generator – Brilliant originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2008/01/24. Reproduction of content not allowed without consent.

MacHeist – 12 Days Left

Frank — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 14:56:56 +0000

The uber-ly popular MacHeist is back, and you only have 12 days left. For those of you who don’t know what MacHeist is, it’s a way to purcahse a bunch of apps together at one low price.

Based on the number of packages that are purchased more applications are unlocked for your loving. For example once they hit 5,000 bundles sold they will unlock CSSEdit. As for Snapz Pro and Pixelmator we will only know the number of bundles require after the 5,000 for CSSEdit has been hit.

Confused yet? I was, but if you stroll on over to macheist.com you’ll get a better flavour for how all of this works. It has been greatly successful in the past and you get some awesome software for $49. At the time of this release here are the packages that are already available.

1password – Password Manager
Coversutra – iTunes Controller
Cha-Ching – Money Management
iStop Motion – Stop Motion Video
Awaken – Alarm Clock for your Mac
Speed Download+ – Download Manager
AppZapper – App Uninstaller
TaskPaper – Task Management
CSSEdit (5,000 buys) – CSS Editor
Snapz Pro (Locked) – Screen Capture
Pixelmator (Locked) – Image Editor

If you haven’t jumped on this great bundle of software then do it now. I want my Pixelmator.

MacHeist – 12 Days Left originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2008/01/11. Reproduction of content not allowed without consent.

RFID Clothing

Frank — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 20:17:07 +0000

Sorting your laundry might just be a thing of the past. I can’t even count the number of things I have ruined in the wash because I didn’t pay attention to the care tag. You know, hot items in cold water, cold items in hot water, vodka instead of water, (I could go on and on).

The clothTag concept might just be right up my alley. Using RFID technology the tag can communicate with RFID enabled washing machines, dryers, irons, presses, and even dry cleaning equipment. All settings on the various machines will be automatically adjusted based on the information stored in the tag, you literally have to do nothing, just toss your stuff in the machine and shut the lid.

As RFID technology becomes more and more popular, I’m afraid to say it’s going to dumb all of us down, the less and less we have to do the lazier we become.

RFID Clothing originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2008/01/10. Reproduction of content not allowed without consent.

Business Card That Calls For You

Frank — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 02:30:49 +0000

Tom Ward who designs electronics for a living wanted to create a lasting impression on people who he meets so why not create a business card that dials his number for you?

To use the card you simply hold the corner, which contains a small speaker over the phone’s mouthpiece. The card then emits a series of DTMF audio tones to dial the number for you.

Although a single card might not be that cheap you can get you costs down to about $2 a card if you produce them in large batches. At $2 a card you might not hand your card out to each person you meet, but if you want a lasting impression then it would make quite an impact.

Tom posted a very detailed step by step of this process over on Instructables. I wonder what they would say at airport security when you passed your card through the X-Ray.

Business Card That Calls For You originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2008/01/07. Reproduction of content not allowed without consent.

Freedom Phone is the Un-iPhone

Frank — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 14:04:12 +0000

So if your like me you want the one gadget in your pocket to do it all, phone, email, web surfing, text, your laundry, etc.. There are people out there that want a phone and only a phone, well Freedom Phone does just that.

It’s a pay as you go phone that you buy with minutes already included. The front of the unit has a keypad and volume controls. That’s right, no music icon, no mobile twitter, no nadda. Flip the phone around and you’ve got all of your necessary info like the phone number.

This is the perfect phone for my wife, no more support calls.

Freedom Phone is the Un-iPhone originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2008/01/04. Reproduction of content not allowed without consent.

RAID Primer

Frank — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 16:44:32 +0000

Now that some of us got shinny new external hard drive units that support RAID I figured we might as well go through a basic RAID primer for all so everyone know the difference between 1, 0, and 5, I know it gets confusing.

With technology advancing at lightening speeds what was once only available to higher end users or server based environment is now available to the average user. RAID is the best way to ensure that you have some form of redundancy for your data. RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 1+0 all of this can be very confusing.

RAID (Redundant array of independent disks, formerly redundant array of inexpensive disks) is in short a failover system for hard drives. A certain number of hard drives (2-4) work together as one logical drive. If anyone of those disks fails at any time none of the data is lost, you simply have to replace the failed drive and the system will automatically rebuild the array.

RAID comes in many flavours.

RAID 0 (also known as a stripe set or striped volume). This is essentially a JBOB (Just a bunch of disks) configuration and provides no data redundancy and is not recommended for maintaining data integrity. Essentially you add up the space of two hard drives (or more) and it will show up as a single big drive.

RAID 1 creates an exact copy or mirror of a set of data. This is great for ensuring that data integrity is maintained because if any disk fails the other one immediately takes over and is completely transparent to the user.

Raid 5 uses stripping to both provide performance and redundancy. By using a min of 3 disks you can achieve super fast speeds and complete data redundancy, as long as only one drive dies. If multiple hard drives fail you will lose all your data. You generally get 75% of your total drive capacity in order to maintain speed and redundancy.

Bottom line is if your external storage unit supports RAID then don’t be afraid to use it, you’ll eventually come to a point when a hard drive fails, and believe me they do, and you’ll be thankful that you have some form of redundancy available to ensure your data hasn’t been lost.

RAID Primer originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2007/12/29. Reproduction of content not allowed without consent.

iPhone in Canada…. Not

Frank — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 02:18:59 +0000

Today a rather amusing rumor popped up on the web about the luxury retailer Holt Renfrew was going to be the exclusive retailer of Canada’s iPhone. It funny for a number of reasons. Read the Article and make your own assumptions. My bet is that come two weeks from now there are going to be a few disappointed Mac … opps I ment to say iPhone fans.

Link: Digital Journal

iPhone in Canada…. Not originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2007/10/03. Reproduction of content not allowed without consent.

A Non Tech Video

Frank — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 04:29:14 +0000

Well this may have nothing to do with technology it is one of the funniest public access tv shows I have ever seen. The concept is the guy (John Kilduff) paints while on a treadmill while he blends fruit’s and Veggies. He also seems to get an large number of crank calls while doing so. He has posted over 90 videos of his live show on Youtube and has appeared on the Tyra Banks Show among others. In this particular episode he loses his patience and the result is pretty funny. NOTE: This video does contain some distasteful language and some my find it offensive.

Link: Let’s Paint TV

A Non Tech Video originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2007/09/30. Reproduction of content not allowed without consent.

Relaunch of Suprnova.org

Frank — Unknown, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

2 PM EST, or as the site predicts:

Suprnova Returns

(soon we will return with suprnova.org – the number 1 site in the world for waffle recipes. how do you like yours? with chocolate? syrup? ice cream? maybe plain?! we have all the pictures of waffles you will ever need. and we will have the biggest waffle forum in the world! all for you waffle-people. waffles! WAFFLES!)

Relaunch of Suprnova.org originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2007/08/21. Reproduction of content not allowed without consent.

Why StumbleUpon is better than Digg

Frank — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Before I go on my observations between digg and stumbleupon let me just say that I am happy with digg and stumbleupon equally, as a user. This is just a numbers crunch that explains on paper why traffic referrals from stumbleupon are better for your site than numbers from digg, in the long run.

Back, which seems so many moons ago, I ran a small podcast called the techphile podcast, which from time to time, received its fair share of traffic. After doing some serious data mining from the logs of the old podcast and from this site there seems to be some clear patterns that form with regards to traffic that is referred from both digg and stumble upon. Lets break this down and take a look.

Traffic

August of last year I had Kevin and Alex from Diggnation on the podcast, the story was quickly dugg to the front page of digg, which brought some insane traffic to the site.

Day 1 – Digg, 6,800 hits, StumbleUpon 143
Day 2 – Digg 11,340 hits, StumbleUpon 221
Day 3 – Digg 4,832 hits, StumbleUpon 289
Day 4 – Digg 132 hits, StumbleUpon 498
Day 5 – Digg 31 hits, StumbleUpon 732
Day 6 – Digg 0 hits, StumbleUpon 1184
Day 7 – Digg 0 hits, StumbleUpon 2132
Day 8 – Digg 0 hits, StumbleUpon 1932

You can clearly see the pattern. Digg will bring you an insane amount of traffic right off the bat, and probably kill your server like it did mine. StumbleUpon will lessen the load off the bat and spread the traffic over time.

Bounce Rate

This is the butter that makes StumbleUpon sooo smooth. Digg users generally crawl digg’s frontpage looking for stories. StumbleUpon’s users crawl looking for interesting sites. This translates into repeat users, which for a blog is a lot better than a single hit on a single story. Think of it as a target focus. SU users are looking for fun and interesting sites. Digg users are looking to read a static page. I much prefer having people land on the site looking for something new as opposed to someone hammering the site for a specific story.

Remember, I’m a heavy digg user; the experience is great, but as the managing editor of a blog looking to generate traffic. Static traffic is great but if we can keep people coming back that’s even better. StumbleUpon wins this round!

Why StumbleUpon is better than Digg originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 1999/11/29. Reproduction of content not allowed without consent.

Skype wont let me log in!

Frank — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Hello all,
Here’s the latest on the sign-on problem. We’re on the road to recovery. Skype is stabilizing, but this process may continue throughout the day. An encouraging number of users can now use Skype once again. We know we’re not out of the woods yet, but we are in better shape now than we were yesterday.
Finally, we’d like to dispel a couple of theories that we are still hearing. Neither Wednesday’s planned maintenance of our web-based payment services nor any form of attack was related to the current sign-on issues in any way.
We’ll update you again as soon as we can. Thanks for hanging tight.
Please see our Heartbeat blog for ongoing updates.
UPDATED 17 August, 2007 11:00 GMT

There are a lot of industry professionals that often rely on Skype. Bloggers, Internet Radio stations, Podcasters, all of these people who rely on Skype (sometimes more so than their POTS line or Cell phone) are out of luck today. They woke up and were unable to sign on, unable to get to their list of clients, or interviewees. Some times we don’t realize just how quickly an internet service that drives our lives can disappear. If you weren’t able to to sign in to your favorite instant messenger would you still be able to contact everyone you had on that list? Maybe, maybe not.

Skype is working hard at getting everything back up and clicking on the hearbeat link above can get you an actively updated list of down/up services at Skype.

Skype wont let me log in! originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 1999/11/29. Reproduction of content not allowed without consent.

Firefox: 400 Million Strong

Frank — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Firefox has made the 400 million mark, quite impressive. The open source browser has only been around for about 3 years, so achieving this number is quite impressive. There are reportedly about 120 million or so regular Firefox users, which makes me wonder what happened to the other 280 million went.

81% of our readers are regular Firefox users, good for all of you.

Firefox: 400 Million Strong originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 1999/11/29. Reproduction of content not allowed without consent.

Idiot from Pennsylvania sues Google for $5 Billion

Frank — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Dylan Stephen Jayne of Pennsylvania has decided to sue Google for 5 Billion dollars (cue Auston Power music).

The premise of his complaint revolves around the following assertion;

“I, Dylan Stephen Jayne, plaintiff, has [sic] a social security number that when the social security number is turned upside down in its entirety it is a scrambled code that does spell the name GoogleÂ®.”

Mr. Jayne must have put a lot of thought in the case. The five pages, all hand written, further implicates Google is responsible for compromising the safety of his identity, as they persist on using his social security number in coded form. For good measure, Mr. Jayne accuses Google of not doing enough to fight terrorism, nor having any respect for his civil liberties.

Idiot from Pennsylvania sues Google for $5 Billion originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 1999/11/29. Reproduction of content not allowed without consent.

Facebook source code leaked

Frank — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Looks like someone has leaked out the source code for the Facebook main index page on a blog called Facebook Secrets. There are really only two possible ways that this got out into the wild. The first is that it was leaked out by a developer, or the more likely option that there just might be a security hole at Facebook which can’t be good news for the millions of people who are on it, including me. Taking a quick look at the code and verifying some of the paths that have been referenced, I can say with some certainty that this seem real and a recent version of the main Facebook page.

There are some serious issues that can arise from this. The first is that this code can be using by people to better understand how Facebook works, or for the malicious purpose of finding further security hole or bugs that can be exploited. Once an attacker starts to gain entry into the workings of a system he or she can easily locate, if any, bugs or exploits that can lead to even more headaches.

This leak can’t be good news for the guys at Facebook. It raises some questions about the security of user information. If main code can be leaked then there is a possibility of anything happening. Facebook has become such a large and profitable outfit that it virtually has a bulls-eye on it much like myspace did to attackers

[Update] Facebook has made an official response to the leaked code on TechCrunch:

I wanted to clarify a few things in your story. Some of Facebook’s source code was exposed to a small number of users due to a bug on a single server that was misconfigured and then fixed immediately. It was not a security breach and did not compromise user data in any way. The reprinting of this code violates several laws and we ask that people not distribute it further.
Thanks to you and the TC readers for helping us out on this one.
Brandee Barker
Facebook

Not sure if this is the “legal” or “pr” answer to what happened, but I’m sure that we’ll be finding out if there is anything to come of this leaked code in the next few days or weeks.

Facebook source code leaked originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 1999/11/29. Reproduction of content not allowed without consent.

Apple Now Thirds Biggest Laptop Vendor

Frank — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I was at the local Apple store in Yorkdale mall here in Toronto yesterday to pickup a replacement power supply for my Mac Book Pro when I noticed that almost everyone walking around in the mall was caring a box with a shinny new MacBook or MacBoook Pro. This came to me thinking about the rise in popularity of the Mac.

Today I find out that market researcher NPD release notebook sales figures and put Apple in third place overall, HP and Toshiba take number 1 and 2. The numbers are for brick-and-mortar store sales only, not taking into account online sales.

One of the serious possibilities for the increase in sales is that the Mac is the only machine that will run all major operating systems: OS X, Unix, Linux, and Windows. Even if you’re not a big OS X fan, the Mac is the perfect machine for running Vista.

Apple Now Thirds Biggest Laptop Vendor originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 1999/11/29. Reproduction of content not allowed without consent.

Apple’s market share hits 17.6 percent

Frank — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

With all of the iPhone hype over shadowing Apple’s primary financial source, their notebooks and desktops, consumers are clearly still interested in the company’s bread and butter. Data from one market research firm shows Apple’s notebook business broke 17 percent while another research firm says that Apple is now in third place among computer manufactures.

Dell comes out on top with HP coming in a close second of total unit sales. Apple takes number three; Gateway and Acer round out the top five.

Only 10.6% of tech.nocr.at users use a Mac (including me), while 82.9% use Windows and 5.7% of you use Linux. Amazingly 0.02% of you use an Amiga (okay come out and show yourselves). Where are the other 7 percent of the Mac users? Maybe they are running BootCamp or VMWare Fusion.

Apple’s market share hits 17.6 percent originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 1999/11/29. Reproduction of content not allowed without consent.

First Looks: VMWare Fusion

Frank — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

In preparation for my monthly trips to Vancouver to appear on the Lab with Leo I installed the latest and greatest for the Mac from VMWare, Fusion. Suffice to say that only using this product for only the past 12 hours has already lead me to completely remove my install of Parallels.

Now don’t get me wrong, Parallels is a great product and work well but when you have an industry heavy weight in the virtualization world drop a hammer like Fusion things are bound to rock.

Right off the bat I’ve noticed a serious speed gain with Fusion, now I don’t have any detailed numbers, but just watching the system load brings quite a difference in speed as a factor.

If you already have a lot of work put into your virtual machine in Parallels and don’t want to start from scratch, you can follow a detailed step by step on VMWare’s forums to bring your Parallels machine over to Fusion. Take it from me; it’s not for the faint of heart but it works.

Then there’s Fusion’s amazing Unity feature, which allows you to run Windows applications side by side with you Mac applications. From what I’ve seen so far it’s even better than Parallels Coherence mode.

As a final thought; virtualization on the Intel based Macs is still at it’s infancy. First we had this break through product Parallels that allowed us to run other operating systems on our machines, then came Fusion with the entire stable code base that VMWare has become famous for. What will we see next year? Maybe operating systems that boot at the same time and can run seamlessly together. Only time will tell.

First Looks: VMWare Fusion originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 1999/11/29. Reproduction of content not allowed without consent.