Category Archives: Technology

There's a new Mac in town!!!

Posted by Dan on 2007/02/09 2 comments

Not content with my first Mac, the 20" iMac (G5), I decided to take advantage of "Salary Sacrifice" and buy a nice shiny new MacBook Pro (Core 2 Duo)…

Specs

2.33GHz Core 2 Duo
2GB RAM
160GB HDD
ATI Radeon X1600 256MB

I also picked up a Wireless Mighty Mouse and an Apple Keyboard…

To house the whole shebang I picked up a Targus XL Notebook Backpack and Booq Vyper XL2 protective case from rushfaster….

The service from Rushfaster and The Apple Store was awesome, each item arrived at my house within 24 hours of placing the order.

As with all Apple purchases I have taken a series of unboxing photos :)

So far I’ve been using it as my work and home machine for 3 days and I’m totally wrapped…..

It "seems" much quicker than my G5 iMac and the portability is unbeatable..

Technorati Tags: macbook pro, apple

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Tightening The Screws on Apples DRM

Posted by Dan on 2006/11/30 None comments

I read a couple of articles today, here and here detailing plans by four of the major studios to pressure Apple to tighten the restrictions in Apples "FairPlay" DRM as it applies to movie content.

Currently, as with music, you can authorize five computers to play content purchased by you and also download it to an unlimited number of iPods.

It is worth noting at this point that for music you can burn the content to a CD for playback in a standard cd player, you cannot however burn video content in any form other than as protected files on a data DVD for backup purposes.

Now, with the "unlimited iPods" scenario you have to basically wipe the iPod and sync it with your collection, so you can copy the files to a friends iPod but at the expensive of wiping their collection off. When they next sync their iPod with their own collection, your content will be removed and replaced with theirs. I believe they can copy the video into their collection, but, without your authorizing their machine ( and using up one of your five slots ), they will not be able to play it on their computer.

Now, to me, this seems to afford a sufficient level of control over distribution of video content, the studios disagree and want Apple to limit the number of iPods that can have the content downloaded to 5!!!

For the consumer this isn’t really going to be a problem, I mean, who has 5 iPods anyway??

What shits me about this is that the additional restriction is likely to do bugger all in the grand scheme of things but could have the potential to make the iPod/iTunes experience less pleasant and more complex for the consumer. Apple would have to include some way to deauthorize iPods, including deauthorizing lost/broken devices, as well so you don’t have problems with dud or old iPods using up your five slots. This means valuable engineering time at Apple wasted on adding complexity to a system that already works well and affords reasonable control over content that could otherwise be spent on new products or features…..

How long until we have mandatory MPAA/RIAA approved implants in our heads that make sure we pay for every use of every piece of their content…..

You may laugh, but I’m sure they would jump at the chance if the technology existed….

Technorati Tags: Apple, DRM, Movie, Piracy

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Pwned by the RIAA/MPAA

Posted by Dan on 2006/08/25 2 comments

My friends are doubtless tired of hearing me whine about the ridiculous amount of power that the content providers and their muscle, the RIAA & MPAA, have over us, the consumers.

We seem to be heading down a path where our use of content that we have purchased is being more and more tightly constrained and any concept of "fair use" seems to be going out the window.

Look at DVDs, until "DVD Jon" and friends brought out DeCSS, if you were using Linux and had a DVD drive in your machine then you were shit out of luck because there was no software on Linux that would allow the playback of DVD content.

Now, you have presumably purchased the DVD and a DVD drive, but, due to licensing issues you could not legally make use of the disc….

Now with the next-gen HD formats we have HDCP, which mandates that a secure, encrypted path must exist between the "player" and the "display device" in order to play full high-definition content. Too friggin’ bad if you own a high-def TV that doesn’t support HDCP, too bad if your computer has a graphics card that doesn’t support HDCP (mind you HDCP video cards are only just coming out now).

All of this crap is due to the absolute, gut wrenching, paranoia that the content companies have over piracy.

I just read a story about 32bit Windows Vista being forced to disable full HD playback due to concerns by our content overlords that there are too many security holes in 32bit windows to be sure that no program is sniffing the video stream on its way to the display.

Now Microsoft have gone to great lengths to implement HDCP in windows and even then that is not good enough!!!!!

So what will happen is that people wanting to use Vista to play HD content will have to use 64bit Windows which means they need to buy a new 64bit CPU, say a Core 2 Duo or AMD64 and of course a new motherboard, maybe new RAM depending on their current system, perhaps a new power supply…

Screw it, just buy a whole new PC.

All in the name of Piracy!!!!

The scary thing is that Piracy seems to justify anything in the consumer space in much the same way as Terrorism is used to justify anything in the legal/political sphere…… Think about it….

NOTE: For the less internet savvy readers, Pwned is not a typo…

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The New Hotness!!

Posted by Dan on 2006/07/18 None comments

In my previous post I mentioned that I was selling my PSP and K700i to fund the purchase of a new toy!!

Those of you who remember me buying the PSP, know that it was primarily intended for watching videos, in particular TV Shows downloaded from the Internet.

The PSP plays video quite well BUT you have to convert the video to a format that is acceptable to the PSP, this is quite doable with one of many packages freely available on the Internet, but it’s a pain in the ass.

The other problem is that I only have a 1GB Memory stick in the PSP so space is really limited. The PSP has no output options other than staring at the screen.

Now, the new toy is the Topfield TFP20 PMP, a long winded name indeed.

 

This wicked little doo-dad is primarily a media player, here is the info from Topfield Australia’s website.

PORTABLE MEDIA PLAYER with Widescreen LCD, holds up to: 400hrs of Movies, 10,000 Songs, 100,000 photo’s or 10million E-book pages. Record directly from your TV or CD player, you can even set a timer record like a PVR. Connects direct to your Digital Camera or USB Memory stick via USB OTG Host. Small enough to fit in your pocket.

and here is the feature list

  • 20Gb 1.8" HDD
  • 4 inch WQVGA (480×272) 16 million true colours TFT LCD
  • Image formats: JPG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, PNG. (Max resolution 8 Megapixels)
  • Slideshows of JPG/BMP with MP3
  • Audio Formats: MP3, WMA, WAV, OGG, AC3, AAC (Bitrate 8-329Kbps CBR&VBR, OGG Q0-Q10)
  • Tags: ID3v1, ID3v2 2.0, ID3v2 3.0
  • Video Formats: MPEG1, MPEG2, DivX3.1/4.xx/5xx, Xvid, ISO MPEG4 SP/ASP, WMV9.
  • Video Bitrates: MPEG1(upto 5Mbps), MPEG2(upto 8Mbps), DivX3.1/4.xx/5xx, Xvid, ISO MPEG4 SP/ASP(upto 4Mbps)
  • Audio Bitrates: 8Kbps~320Kbps
  • Resolution:720×480 maximum (WMV9 320×240, 500Kbps)
  • Video Frame Rate: 30fps Max
  • Caption: SMI Format
  • Audio Recording Format: MP3 128Kbps
  • Video Recording Format: DivX 5.0 5Mbps max
  • Resolution: 640×480 VGA
  • AV Connections: Earphone jack, AV In, AV Out, Built in Microphone, Built in Speaker.
  • TV Output: Pal or NTSC
  • Power Source: Detachable Lithium-Polymer battery pack, External AC charger/adapter.
  • Physical Dimensions: 139x73x23mm, 270g.
  • System Requirements: OS:Windows 98 SE, ME, 2000, XP / Linux.

These puppies retail for ~ $800 but I am getting this at a bargin price due to my employers close ties to Topfield.

Now I will be able to bring episodes of my favourite shows to friends places and watch them on the TV instead of the PC, Mr B, this means you!!!

I expect the new toy to arrive today or tomorrow, expect more info then….

technorati tags:Topfield, tfp20

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At the top of my "Bitch Slappin' List" this week….. the winner is? "NIGERIA"

Posted by Dan on 2006/07/18 None comments

Man I hate these Nigerian 419 scammers, on the weekend I (well, really Viv) listed my PSP and my old Sony-Ericsson K700i, in both cases we received a request for a “Buy it now” price, we decided to put one on. A little later both items were snapped up for the buy it now price by people in….. Have a guess!!!!

Nigeria

And of course in both cases they wanted to pay by direct deposit so they needed us to send them our full address and bank details. Now this info alone is not too helpful, and, as we allow direct deposit for local buyers our bank details are already available in the listing.

I said to Viv, I bet if we continue with the sale they will say something like

“I am having trouble getting my bank to send the payment, can you give me your drivers licence number or passport number to confirm the details”, and then you can watch as your bank account is mysteriously sucked dry….

Of course we relisted the items without a buy it now price and moved on, but what a pain in the ass…

I said to Viv, imagine if the buyer was some poor bastard who really lives in Nigeria and is continutally frustrated by his inability to buy anything on Ebay :)

More info on the reason for flogging my toys later…

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Asterisk "The Future Of Telephony"

Posted by Dan on 2006/07/18 2 comments

I’ve been playing around with VoIP for a while at home to try and cut down the size of our phone bills.

When I signed up with iiNet I got the Belkin F1PI241ENau which is an ADSL2+ Router/ATA, I found it to be quite ordinary as an ATA, one thing in particular pissed me off and that was the fact that although you can (in theory) configure the two phone ports to access two different VoIP accounts, you can in fact only use two accounts with the same VoIP provider!!

The Belkin died a few months ago in a storm so I replaced it with a ZyXel 660RU ADSL2+ modem without VoIP functionality.

A little later I picked up a ZyXel P-2002/L ATA which was almost identical featurewise to the ATA functionality in the Belkin, except that

1) The phone ports can indeed be totally independent with respect to VoIP provider

2) The PSTN overide code (this allows you to dial a prefix to force the call to go to PSTN) actually works

Unfortunately all was not smooth sailing with the ZyXel, I still got random drop outs from the VoIP provider, I tried two and had problems with both. A little reading on whirlpool led me to a post from a guy who claimed to only be able to get reliable performance from his ZyXel when he used it to talk to an Asterisk machine. I had been thinking of playing with Asterisk but didn’t have a compelling reason to until now.

Rather than hand roll an Asterisk setup I looked around and found Trixbox (formerly Asterisk @ Home), this is a purpose built distro that installs a fully working Asterisk setup with AMP (Asterisk Management Panel, a nice web based configuration system for Asterisk), the Flash Operator Panel, Sugar CRM etc

The distro was a piece of piss to install and getting a basic setup running took a little over an hour.

I have had this running for nearly a month now and the results are excellent, I have had virtually no trouble with it and only lost connectivity twice, once from the VoIP provider being down and once from an internet outage.

I would highly recommend anyone with an inclination towards propeller headedness :) give it a go.

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Muffling the windows update nag dialog

Posted by Dan on 2006/06/28 1 comments

Here is a link to a blog post from a guy who, like me, was plagued by the “Restart Now” dialog from Windows Update.

He outlines a method that unfortunately doesn’t remove the nag, but does allow you to turn down the irritation level somewhat.

Updating your computer is almost complete – Restart Now?

I’ve set mine to nag every 1440 minutes which is much more reasonable than the default of every 10 minutes.

technorati tags:, , ,

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What I hate about "Windows Update"…

Posted by Dan on 2006/06/16 None comments

Don’t get me wrong, I think "Windows Update" or its big brother "Microsoft Update" is absolutely essential to keep Windows running.

That said, what seriously shits me, and it happens way too often, is that an update comes down, often at night that requires a reboot. If you happen to be at the computer when the update is ready to install you get a dialog that pops up asking you if you want to reboot now or "reboot later", if you select "later" the dialog appears again, and again and again.

If you let the dialog sit there for too long (like when it appears in the middle of the night while you are asleep) then after some period (I don’t know how long) it decides that you want to reboot and does it for you.

Unfortunately for me my typical development environment consists of several Firefox windows each with multiple tabs, several editors, several terminal sessions etc so after a reboot I have to spend a non-trivial amount of time getting things back the way they were.

I know I could disable auto-install of updates but that really defeats the purpose of having an auto-update service.

On the Mac when you elect to install an update that requires a reboot, after installation you get a "reboot now" dialog that you can move out of the way and ignore forever if you like, or wait until you are in a position to do a reboot in a controlled manner.

There is no auto-install on the Mac mostly due to the fact that most updates require you to authenticate the update with the admin password, as a rule system level changes always require authentication, this is one of the reasons that OS X is not a malware/virus magnet like Windows.

technorati tags:windows

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I feel dirty….

Posted by Dan on 2006/04/11 1 comments

Some helpful person posted a comment on my blog to tell me that I had a phishing scam running from my machine, and sure enough with a little digging I can see that their was indeed some rather nasty stuff sitting in a hidden directory in my brother-in-laws user account.

It looks like there were two different scams running, one for PayPal and one for Chase Bank.

I’ve removed the user account and moved the directory and I’ll have a poke around a bit later.

One thing I will say is that I feel violated and embarrased to think that my machine has been used to aid these theiving bastards.

Out of interest, here is the directory listings of the directories added to my machine.


.:
total 8
drwxrwxr-x 4 504 504 96 Apr 10 22:54 ./
drwxr-xr-x 7 504 504 4096 Apr 7 19:49 ../
drwxr-xr-x 3 504 504 16 Mar 21 06:46 .MembersLogIn/
drwxrwxrwx 5 504 504 24 Sep 22 2005 .update/

./.MembersLogIn:
total 4
drwxr-xr-x 3 504 504 16 Mar 21 06:46 ./
drwxrwxr-x 4 504 504 96 Apr 10 22:54 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 0 Mar 21 06:46 si
drwxr-xr-x 2 504 504 88 Mar 21 06:43 .SignIn/

./.MembersLogIn/.SignIn:
total 460
drwxr-xr-x 2 504 504 88 Mar 21 06:43 ./
drwxr-xr-x 3 504 504 16 Mar 21 06:46 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 446 Mar 21 06:42 .cvv.db
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 56784 Mar 11 07:17 final.html
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 463 Mar 21 06:43 .first.db
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 480 Mar 21 06:43 .last.db
-rwxr-xr-x 1 504 504 167964 Mar 17 2001 pico*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 504 504 84476 Jul 28 2005 pico.jpg*
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 73988 Mar 11 08:43 prospect.html
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 11759 Mar 21 07:51 prospect.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 27828 Mar 21 06:38 sso_logon.html
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 16384 Mar 21 06:20 .sso_logon.html.swp
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 176 Mar 21 06:40 .user.db

./.update:
total 12
drwxrwxrwx 5 504 504 24 Sep 22 2005 ./
drwxrwxr-x 4 504 504 96 Apr 10 22:54 ../
drwxr-xr-x 2 504 504 80 Nov 3 06:52 cgi-bin/
drwxr-xr-x 2 504 504 24 Sep 9 2005 css/
drwxr-xr-x 2 504 504 4096 Sep 9 2005 pic/

./.update/cgi-bin:
total 368
drwxr-xr-x 2 504 504 80 Nov 3 06:52 ./
drwxrwxrwx 5 504 504 24 Sep 22 2005 ../
-rwxrwxr-x 1 504 504 8693 Apr 10 01:53 check_card.php*
-rwxrwxr-x 1 504 504 0 Aug 3 2004 index.php*
-rwxrwxr-x 1 504 504 8938 Sep 10 2005 letter.php*
-rwxrwxr-x 1 504 504 176723 Mar 17 2001 pico*
-rwxrwxr-x 1 504 504 84476 Jul 28 2005 pico.jpg*
-rwxrwxr-x 1 504 504 2476 Sep 22 2005 webscrcmd_checkuser.php*
-rwxrwxr-x 1 504 504 9440 Apr 23 2005 webscrcmd_login.php*
-rwxrwxr-x 1 504 504 28005 Apr 7 19:53 webscrcmd_profile_credit_card.php*
-rwxrwxr-x 1 504 504 4117 Apr 23 2005 webscrcmd_redirect.php*
-rwxrwxr-x 1 504 504 28351 Apr 7 19:52 webscrcmd_thank_you.php*

./.update/css:
total 52
drwxr-xr-x 2 504 504 24 Sep 9 2005 ./
drwxrwxrwx 5 504 504 24 Sep 22 2005 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 41904 Apr 22 2005 xpt.css
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 1081 Apr 22 2005 xptInvoice.css
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 69 Apr 22 2005 xptlive.css

./.update/pic:
total 432
drwxr-xr-x 2 504 504 4096 Sep 9 2005 ./
drwxrwxrwx 5 504 504 24 Sep 22 2005 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 10951 Mar 8 2004 6qkUBHm48gr6isze5LqAc-t.s0AK2P019CxPBg.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 250 Mar 1 2004 bg.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 1864 Mar 8 2004 bnr_ppBuyerProtection_175x80.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 21910 Mar 8 2004 bnr_providianClearChoicesV22_120x600.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 7743 Mar 8 2004 bnr_providianPPVisaV22_135x132.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 8332 Mar 1 2004 check_zoom_260.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 3314 Mar 8 2004 DyU7qIySrousGoYNb9CiNrydF3cTQqpwIcXjbA.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 490 Mar 8 2004 icon_auctionTools_35x35.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 1720 Mar 8 2004 icon_community_logo.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 576 Mar 10 2004 icon_error_40x40.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 465 Mar 8 2004 icon_merchantTools_35x35.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 432 Mar 8 2004 icon_shops_35x35.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 879 Mar 8 2004 icon_shops_logo.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 267 Mar 8 2004 logo_ccAmex.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 403 Mar 8 2004 logo_ccDiscover.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 408 Mar 8 2004 logo_ccEcheck.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 815 Mar 8 2004 logo_ccMC.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 338 Mar 8 2004 logo_ccVisa.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 33 May 11 2005 logo.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 545 Mar 8 2004 mini_cvv2.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 902 Mar 1 2004 paypal_logo.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 148 Mar 8 2004 period_ani.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 43 Mar 1 2004 pixel.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 267 Mar 1 2004 P_off_auction_tools.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 293 Mar 1 2004 P_off_merchant_tools.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 288 Mar 1 2004 P_off_request_money.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 257 Mar 1 2004 P_off_send_money.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 231 Mar 1 2004 P_off_welcome.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 494 Mar 8 2004 P_on_my_account.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 473 Mar 8 2004 P_on_welcome.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 7568 Mar 1 2004 pp_main.js
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 16433 Mar 1 2004 pp_styles_111402.css
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 869 Mar 1 2004 pp_table_styles.css
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 10226 Mar 8 2004 Pz9p1YQ8ot6LD63QmOkuRQcmtrDJaXn8JtZpsw.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 5880 Mar 8 2004 QyeQfcf-aVAv88Kd3fVhXFxKzIwr1hxUy1pycQ.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 99 Mar 8 2004 SA_none.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 183 Mar 8 2004 SA_off_add_funds.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 190 Mar 8 2004 SA_off_history.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 168 Mar 8 2004 SA_off_overview.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 175 Mar 8 2004 SA_off_withdraw.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 198 Mar 8 2004 SA_on_profile.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 95 Mar 1 2004 secure_lock_2.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 4362 Mar 8 2004 SOxUEOLlFrdzrT2t6fkgK29DGKVEKfHwdLBRA.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 79 Mar 1 2004 symbol_account.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 62 Mar 1 2004 symbol_account_small.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 79 Mar 1 2004 symbol_route.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 59 Mar 1 2004 symbol_route_small.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 140800 Sep 9 2005 Thumbs.db
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 2489 Mar 8 2004 top_image_home.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 1963 Mar 8 2004 vR.XVfEKfuwONsUNZTSCT5Y.ED0mHsIogNiAdA.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 504 504 10228 Mar 8 2004 YA5wVvU5WOm0qTmpfAQoolDHkLZpFpU9y6CvgA.gif

You can see that it’s quite elaborate, once the ebay page has collected the victims info it is emailed to the following address.

coaielepopii@gmail.com

I have reported the abuse to gmail but of course they can create a new account in seconds.

F**KING Sony

Posted by Dan on 2005/11/02 None comments

Another one in my "F**KING" series…

I read this article today on sysinternals about a rather extreme form of DRM on some of Sony’s latest CDs.

In case you couldn’t be arsed reading the article, Sony in their infinite wisdom require windows users to use a special media player to play their CDs in a windows box, in order to force the user to comply with this requirement they install (without permission or even telling you) a Root Kit that patches parts of your Windows installation to hide itself and prevent the CD driver in Windows from accessing the disc without using the "special" media player.

There is no way to uninstall this Root Kit without going to extraordinary lengths….

A related post I saw on digg the other talked about the fact that Sony is pissed with Apple for not allowing them to licence the FairPlay DRM that it uses in the iPod. Apparently one of the reasons they instigated their current DRM is to prevent windows users from being able to rip Sony CDs for use in iTunes and the iPod in the hopes that the masses of affected users will bombard Apple with demands to play nice with Sony.

So, you are basically being coerced into lobbying on behalf of Sony.

The amusing thing about this is that Mac owners can happily rip the same CDs into iTunes with no DRM problems.