tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-263390882024-03-05T11:26:14.783-07:00Meanderings of the PiratefishThis blog previously focused on my Piratefish Anti-spam system. I've dropped support of this as there are fewer buyers and free competition from Google, combined with ever-changing linux distro's.
I'll stay focused on security, infosec, and anything interests me going forward.John C. Silviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796481575930863954noreply@blogger.comBlogger54125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26339088.post-13825313798664266282014-04-28T07:37:00.001-06:002018-05-17T07:45:41.646-06:00Piratefish Main Site Back Up!<a href="https://piratefish.org/" target="_blank">The Piratefish website site is now fractionally back online.</a><br />
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I've not updated the Piratefish in quite some time, but have decided to openly share the Piratefish doc.<br />
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Cheers.John C. Silviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796481575930863954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26339088.post-15478248756655809042014-01-13T14:00:00.000-07:002014-01-13T14:00:15.256-07:00How I Caught a Card ThiefEver wonder how your card gets swiped?<br />
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It all started at the Burger King drive through near my house. My son and I trekked out to get dinner.<br />
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Bear in mind that I'm a full-time paranoid - I watch what people do and I learn by observation. We'd already had our cards stolen by different means - trusting a waiter at a cheap restaurant near a dodgy side of town - only to later be asked by our bank if we were trying to buy tires and a color TV at a Target in Texas. And one other time it was some crap stuffed into an online order done at Sherries Berries. Thank god our bank is good with this stuff 1st Bank of Colorado gets high marks for fraud detection and response.<br />
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The gal at the register had taken our order. I drove to the window to pay, and once I handed her my credit card, I watched closely as she swiped it with her right hand, then the receipt printed on the printer next to the register, she got the receipt with her left hand, and then (my card in her right hand, now out of view), receipt in her left hand, she tediously read my order back to me to verify - like anything was going to change now that payment was processed. The entire time she's doing this, my card is out of sight in her right hand, her right arm down at her side - and as she's reading my order to me, her right arm is moving a little.<br />
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Once she's done "verifying" my order, she hands me the receipt, with the card under - but facing her - and I think to myself - boy that was weird.<br />
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Then the kicker happened - she walked back towards the grill/fry station in order to get our order, and she whipped out her cell phone and sent a quick text message - and it was a quick one too because it looked like she typed only 3 digits and hit send.<br />
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That's when it clicked. That bitch.<br />
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I then finished out the order, checked all the food - made sure we had the ketchup and straws (none of that dastardly catsup here!) and then I asked to speak with the manager, all smiles.<br />
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I then explained all this to her, and let me tell you - my son had no clue, and his eyes went wide as his brow went up - and that pretty much matched the expression on the face of the manager - the look of "oh shit" on the bitch-thief's face was however classic - I'd seen it before..<br />
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<a href="http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1206/874357185_e02e570cdd.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1206/874357185_e02e570cdd.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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The last few times I'd seen this picture, I was speeding in the backwater areas of Princeton where I grew up - you learn to slow down fast out there or you slam into them.<br />
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Now, in case you're part of the uninitiated in the world of card theft, something you should know - that magnetic stripe on your cards holds a LOT of data. It's also encoded in such a way that it can be recovered - the stripe has "error correction" in it to some extent. But your PIN is not on that stripe. Neither are the extra 3 digits on the back of the card next to your signature. Those must be read. As for stealing that magnetic stripe, there are things for sale in the world called magnetic stripe readers. You can buy them on <a href="http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid=p2047675.m570.l1313.TR12.TRC2.A0.Xminidx4&_nkw=minidx4&_sacat=0&_from=R40" target="_blank">eBay here</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3D_6WESNy4Y5Lau7Tk5zeqdvVe_X2CNR5rLURv6I8dq1Za_DgYV5jFrfTueOBE1hhafqG2eWNRXPY5AcTCsEOXV3M0g4mxRbJn9I8qOABJTs0qRcYM0i85zzd_1bj9bj5HGE3Uw/s1600/card+stealer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3D_6WESNy4Y5Lau7Tk5zeqdvVe_X2CNR5rLURv6I8dq1Za_DgYV5jFrfTueOBE1hhafqG2eWNRXPY5AcTCsEOXV3M0g4mxRbJn9I8qOABJTs0qRcYM0i85zzd_1bj9bj5HGE3Uw/s320/card+stealer.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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This technology is something else - one of these little things can record the contents of a card - all except those 3 digits on the back - and these cost between $150 and $300. They're battery powered and can steal up to 2000 cards at a time. They also are password protected, if caught, what the person has stolen may not be recoverable without getting their password from them. Note that this particular unit is not much larger than a large cigarette lighter.<br />
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This gal did get hit. No skidmarks. No body damage to my car. I didn't stick around to see what the carcass looked like either, but I did see a fraud report on that corner the following week on my crimewatch app...<br />
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Cheers! Be diligent folks!</div>
John C. Silviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796481575930863954noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26339088.post-59216004587285515842013-06-05T07:06:00.002-06:002013-06-05T07:06:37.465-06:00Domains for sale! PointSwitch.com, PointSwitch.net and PointSwitch.orgAnyone looking to build their ultimate .com might be interested to know that I've put some domains up for sale that I've been sitting on for some time. Back in the day when I spent all my time working at my security company, Cadamier.com, Craig and I worked on a project that built a packet mangling router and we decided that if we could get the thing funded, we'd call it PointSwitch - the name was open in all 3 domains, so I registered them - it made sense - only.. well lets just say that never happened - cool product idea though, just not the needed traction to turn it into something that could be sold.<br />
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So anyhow, anyone wanting to build themselves something using the name should take a look - I've posted the 3 domains on eBay and they're gonna go fast!<br />
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I figure the names could have use if you're building some kind of firewall or network gear, but then again, a point switch is something used in the railroading world - but then, it could have some kind of use for a social networking thing, or a political site, etc.<br />
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I've gotten a quick valuation on the domains from GoDaddy, and they're worth $591 for the .com and $224 each for the other two - but something tells me that their valuation doesn't take into account things like dictionary word combinations and phrasing - I'm sure that they'd give a better value to something far more gross just because it was one word in some obscure dictionary file..<br />
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To see the auctions, follow these links into eBay:<br />
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<a href="http://www.ebay.com/itm/330933366353?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649" target="_blank">PointSwitch.com</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.ebay.com/itm/330933367306?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649" target="_blank">PointSwitch.net</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.ebay.com/itm/330933367884?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649" target="_blank">PointSwitch.org</a><br />
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Cheers!John C. Silviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796481575930863954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26339088.post-34088648221072186262012-12-04T12:32:00.004-07:002012-12-06T09:53:58.102-07:00Is Microsoft asleep at the wheel?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFzpUicsvGpEu9JEWdFORcsTQlZl5kjfktK8unV9_Yiq73sTAv-30DSi73BgO_iid7-nWuZPIqQDOIvf4_i2skM0WTCwb-qg1N4DfUWmLhkmXgVnlk0zJTcUr4rGKannBmlsii5A/s1600/MicrosoftAsleepWheel.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFzpUicsvGpEu9JEWdFORcsTQlZl5kjfktK8unV9_Yiq73sTAv-30DSi73BgO_iid7-nWuZPIqQDOIvf4_i2skM0WTCwb-qg1N4DfUWmLhkmXgVnlk0zJTcUr4rGKannBmlsii5A/s1600/MicrosoftAsleepWheel.png" /></a></div>
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<h4>
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A Multi-Hat Geek</span></b></h4>
Some of you reading this might think that I'm not a fan of Microsoft - I've been called an Apple fanboy before, but for the longest time I was a big-time believer in Microsoft and the good that they do.<br />
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I'm a huge fan of Microsoft Office - lets face it, Microsoft Word is the gold standard for writing in this day and age, and there are plenty of contenders out there who want to take Microsoft's business away on that front, and good luck. Apple's Pages is pretty good for the price, and the price is pretty good for their iWork package, but it doesn't quite replace Word in my eyes - it's more like a replacement for expensive layout software like Quark Express, but not a day-to-day problem solving application.<br />
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The same applies to Excel, Powerpoint, Visio and their other tools. If it wasn't for Visio, I probably wouldn't have even setup a Boot Camp windows install and Windows 7 on my Mac at all. It was nice getting Skyrim to run there (see my previous discussions).<br />
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The reality is this - at the office I'm a multi-hat geek that knows enough about everything to be really useful when weird things happen. And this is because I'm not just an Apple fan, or the first in my office to have an iPad, or even the first to buy a Surface tablet. I'm a fanboy of tech - an omnibus nerd of sorts. I've had tablets, laptops, desktops, servers and I've built hardware as well.<br />
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But this is about <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/" target="_blank">Microsoft</a> and the sad state they're in.<br /><br /><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dark Clouds in the Windows 8 Future?</span></h4><br /><br />
So the first signs of trouble appeared when a coworker started playing around with a Windows 8 preview edition on his MacBook Pro in a VM (non-bootcamp). The results were less than spectacular. The Windows tiled interface was bulky and weird, and he had troubles finding things and navigating the interface. But then, he didn't have a touchscreen, so maybe he was lacking the hardware. He did eventually figure his way around, but the ads in some apps seemed hokey at best, and then the seeming bulkiness of the entire tiled interface started to grate on him.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Windows 8 Surface RT: A New Hope</span></h4>
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A few weeks later we headed out to the Windows store as it's not far from my office. The new Surface RT was out, and I was hoping that I could find a replacement for the MacBook Air and the iPad 3 I was carrying around. What I saw was truly interesting - I mean, the storage to me wasn't that big a deal - I don't lug around huge song libraries or 500 movies - all I wanted was something that provided me the tools I need, with the portability and connectivity I need to be the nerd I am.<br />
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What I was was interesting - the Surface RT definitely had the weight factor down, and the type keyboard appealed to me was well. The battery life was also interesting as Apple has always owned that department from phones through laptops, and seeing Microsoft try to compete was a nice change. I liked what I saw, I knew that their market and closed architecture was new to them, and I realized that it was very likely that the market wouldn't have the apps I needed yet. When I pressed the Windows Key+R, it flipped to my favorite Windows OS screen - looking very Windows 7 like, and presented me with a run dialog - so I typed cmd and pressed enter - and I had my favorite DOS window.<br />
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Now, at this point, I have to say, my curiosity was peaked. You see, I'm one of those Windows guys who lives on the command line - and my command line on my Windows desktops has full Linux utilities attached - I have stuff like putty aliased to ssh, as well as scp and sftp - plus I have the full unxutils package loaded as well, so I have Linux command-line tools like sed, awk, grep, nmap and so forth, all available for my sysop nerd needs. Seeing this window on the Surface RT sold me right there. So I typed regedit - and I realized, Surface RT might be a closed garden, but you can still get in there an poke around at a pretty low level. Cool!<br /><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My Surface RT Debacle Begins</span></h4><br />
About a month later, I figured the bugs were out, and the finances were aligned as well - so I went out and bought a Surface RT 32gig with the type cover. The weight was nice, and the speed was okay - but then things started to tarnish the cool new luster right away. I had to download some major updates and the update process was slower than Apple's by a long shot - I don't know if I was downloading a new 12 gigs of software, or what, all I know was that it said "updating" and sat there, charging the whole time, cooking away, slower than molasses.<br />
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Hours later the system was done updating, and then I started poking around with the OS, hoping to delve into it's secrets. Along the way, exploring the Windows "classic" screen on the Surface, I noted that a familiar icon in the lower corned was beckoning me - one of the Windows Security notices was up - so I tapped, and a dialog appear that said that my system hasn't been scanned yet. So I clicked on the ok/next button, and Windows Defender ran and scanned the system.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><b>Windows RT had to scan my new system?!??</b></i></span></div>
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Now, by this point I know solidly that Microsoft had locked down their environment entirely - I mean, I couldn't run software that didn't come from their store at all - I couldn't even run Java on it, and I found that somewhat disappointing, as that was my way around their empty online app store.<br />
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So, as I watched, over the course of the next 5 minutes, my experience was once again delayed by this thing scanning it's storage - just like it was some Wal-mart bought HP loaded with Wild-Tangent scumware, toolbars and spyware at the factory. At this point I'd downloaded 2-3 apps from Microsoft, and was in the process of getting the mail client setup with all my gmail and office exchange stuff.<br />
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After the system-scanning episode, I carried this on the train to work for a few days, and I used it - or tried to. It linked to my corporate network easier than I'd ever seen before - for this was impressive it used my user certificate and authenticated with it automatically. This was nice, however, the mail client is a HUGE weakness on the Surface.<br /><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Surface RT EMail is a Joke!</span></h4><br />
For starters, getting the mail client setup wasn't too painful, however, it did seem to have some issues setting up one of my accounts - it didn't like the idea of my using a non-Google domain with GMail mail hosting. This is something that Apple supported simply for years without headache. I worked at it and managed to make it happy, but this was needlessly painful I think.<br />
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Being an active tablet user, I'm always conscious about my experience being hit by background tasks, so I exercise my new Windows 8 knowledge and easily go into the sidebar and kill all the stuff running. This is kind of a bad habit however, but it's one that I learned long ago - less programs running on your tablet, phone or PC, means more machine paying attention to me, and not other crap. This habit however led me to my next discovery.<br />
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That next I realized that Metro at some point later said I had messages waiting - so I tapped on the mail box and discovered just how slow the Surface RT mail client is. Now, when you're on a tablet, you just launch mail - it's there in a jiffy and once it's displayed, you'll see that the client is now getting messages and refreshing itself.<br />
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The slowness I experienced was the mail client loading - and in the case of the Surface RT, the mail client is SLOW. It takes a long time to load - more than 20 seconds in my case. Something you need to leave running if you want to have a more Apple-like experience. What they don't show in the Microsoft commercial is the person running and loading each program in the background, then jumping into them already loaded quickly from the tile interface. So here's a marketing lie for certain, but hey, you can't sue them for that.<br />
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I then noted later that there's no indication that the mail client is working - no indication at all. While riding the train to work with my wireless AP on, I saw nothing happening until 20 messages appeared in my inbox all at once. This behavior was the same for both GMail and Exchange mailboxes. Very sad really, as it had notified me that I had mail when it got online, but it had to load the mail client when I tapped on it and then it had to download the messages - it was like the tile interface uses the mail client authentication info to know what's going on, but there's no actual integration between it and the OS - the mail client still has to be manually loaded and has to be running in order to download messages. Note that the mail client does not run all the time like it does on an iPad - you have to start it, then background it and forget it's running for a smooth consistent mail experience. And even then, your other mobile devices will notify and display your messages before the surface can show them to you.<br />
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One item I flew by earlier was the loading times. The Surface RT boots up and runs just like windows, however, based on the performance I see and the way it launches software, you'd think you were running the OS off a USB2 memory stick. Run this, run that, it all works - but the tiles are the only thing that moves fast on it. The rest of the machine is fairly sluggish until the software has loaded, run and backgrounded.<br />
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<b><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No Java Support. It does support Flash though...?!</span></i></b></div>
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I did go into the Microsoft App Store and downloaded some apps to make this thing usable - Netflix and so forth, and it did okay. It wasn't great - I mean, it played the videos okay, and I was able to load the meager storage with more easily enough from an external hard disk, and I was able to connect to network shares in my house and office okay, but still, it played nicely with all the base OS things - however, the lack of software for this thing just kills it. If there was an SSH client for it, I might have even kept it - but then, the lack of Java support was killing me. I needed Chrome. I needed more.<br />
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When I brought it back, the folks at the store asked why, and I said "lack of java support" and they said, helpfully, "It runs flash!"<br />
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Am I so Apple-ified that this sounds backwards to me?? I guess so. The entire world is moving away from Flash where they can, and Microsoft instead decides to drop support for the largest base of software out there (java) and went ahead to embrace Flash - the language responsible for the single largest library of Internet crap there is - from the Fish in a blender to all levels of silly animated videos.<br /><br />
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Conclusion: Surface RT is a Fail</b></span></h4><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
All in all, I found the Surface RT full of great potential, but fails to deliver on many fronts. The email client is insufficient. Their support of common authoring the platform will kill it. The backwards compatibility with Flash is just wrong. The inability to run any software not signed by Microsoft isn't a deal killer, but they have to have an app store first. Somehow I think HP's tablet has more software available for it than the Surface RT has now.<br />
<h4>
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But this is only the tip of the iceberg...</span></b></h4>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
Microsoft will be releasing the Surface 8 Pro tablets soon - and they'll cost $899 for the small one without a keyboard. Wow. Microsoft fails again. Perhaps this version will solve many of the issues they have in the other environment, however, this tablet is more than half and inch thick, weighs near 2 pounds, and does all the things a full size laptop does, just without a keyboard.<br />
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I mean, honestly folks, has Microsoft truly lost their way?<br />
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Right now Microsoft is so far behind in the battle for consumer computing that the only leg they have to stand on is keeping the segment that can't afford Macintosh computers - so instead of appealing to that market with products they can afford, they charge higher prices. Don't they realize that flat taxes don't work because the poor people pay more of their money in taxes that way? Don't they realize that 10% tax on the poorest Americans still provides billions more dollars in tax revenue to the government than a 20% tax on the rich?<br />
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Microsoft should be coming up with ways to make Windows appealing to the broad base, and not marketing it to a small segment. Sure, the Walmart's of the world might well be the place where most PC's running Windows are sold, along with Amazon and Dell, but I honestly can't believe that their stores would be profitable without XBox's being sold there.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja8k3TYHrWpDZmGXdolGcfSZrmNUEWzrymCddNJlEEiXJyy8jAqiaW57OWFhH1YN0mgjDjjAPDnRU6jNn2yiDk5wOGrUX94mPiF2xKwuabUYrubm3tiW7RDFZVJ3noJQntTL5CCw/s1600/weird-dreary.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja8k3TYHrWpDZmGXdolGcfSZrmNUEWzrymCddNJlEEiXJyy8jAqiaW57OWFhH1YN0mgjDjjAPDnRU6jNn2yiDk5wOGrUX94mPiF2xKwuabUYrubm3tiW7RDFZVJ3noJQntTL5CCw/s1600/weird-dreary.jpg" /></a></div>
<b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></b>
<b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It gets worse...</b><br />
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I've just read that Microsoft is now planning on increasing their pricing for all their server products - note that the landscape for Microsoft licensing is a slippery slope folks - there are people's who's entire careers focus on Microsoft licensing - that's how complex it can be. And server managers have no time to worry about this BS, so they have to trust that vendors know and license them correctly - wow that's getting weird.<br />
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If Microsoft seems to think that they can keep on going in the direction they're going, they are doomed. They have sanctioned companies to sell their product, but have lost control over the packaging - thus providing folks like HP, Acer and others to pre-load their precious Windows OS with all kinds of clutter and market systems positively clogged with crap through mass-market outlets.<br />
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If I had control of Microsoft, I'd run things differently. First thing, Windows 9 would be skipped - it would be the "long term supported" version of Windows 8 without the stupid tile interface. Windows 9 would look like Windows 7, and be the last OS that business will want for years. It will be completely compatible with everything that's out there now. And it would be the last you'd see of "windows" with DLL's and registries, forever.<br />
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The next Windows after that would be Windows on top of Linux, but it would be a Windows base that makes Apple look bad. It would be fast. I would support everything that everyone else does. It would have integrated protection that folks would never see. It would not be compatible with any software that's out there now, but it wouldn't restrict developers from recompiling their software to run on the new platform. They would however have to change all their API's because all the old stuff is just not pared down enough. It would be Microsoft's Opus. The MS OSX.<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One way that Apple shed their baby fat..</span></b><br />
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Apple did an amazing thing when they moved from their old OS to OSX - this move is what re-energized them - this move is what put air under their wings for the first time in years.<br />
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I remember in 2003 when folks starting talking about Apple again, and how cool the new OS was. I really didn't realize how big a deal it was until the summer of 2004 when I went to my first <a href="http://www.defcon.org/" target="_blank">DefCon</a>, and in the lobby of the Alexa Park Hotel, there were a hundred hacker-types there, mostly with Mac's, chopping away. That was huge.<br />
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Microsoft needs to do bold things to get back into it's sweet spot as the king of desktop computers. They have the ability to do this, but they need to shed the fat of their legacy OS, drop the wayside all the old apps that have overgrown like the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlmycQNOgq8" target="_blank">monster Akira becomes</a> - they must stop being the <a href="http://southparkstudios.mtvnimages.com/shared/characters/non-human/trapper-keeper.jpg" target="_blank">Cartman Trapper-Keeper</a> they are now and find a way to slim down.<br />
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I remember when Windows typed OS's worked on computers that topped out at 16 megs of ram. When those days were upon us, computers were fast. If we could have the computing power of today, with OS's that are slim like that, computers would be really amazingly fast tools again, and not the bloaded, lumbering monsters they are is today. I know that realistically this won't be possible, I mean, is there an H.264 video decoder or encoder that uses less than 1 meg of ram? And there's no way possible that we'll be free of DRM any time soon. Imagine how fast anti-virus software would be if it only had 500 signatures...<br />
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I just think that folks have forgotten about the real start of computing, and where it all came from. OS's have overgrown, and Microsoft has taken us there. Everyone is guilty though. With billions of bytes of code running in our computers, is it possible for us to know everything that's going on? I think not.<br />
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A revolution in the computing world will be coming. It will have to. The question is, who will bring it?<br /><br />
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Sleeping at the Wheel</b></span></h4><br />
Right now, Microsoft has fallen asleep. If XBox wasn't around, it would be a solid hibernation. Steve Ballmer is asleep at the wheel. He lives in fantasy land. If he thinks he can take on Apple where they live with an expensive tablet that's just a slightly changed version of the same old Windows, he's sorely mistaken. If he thinks that a tablet that's more than a centimeter thick is going to redefine the Windows market, or even revitalize it, he's even more sorely mistaken. I can't believe he thinks people will pay more for what is obviously less.<br />
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Microsoft needs to find someone with a clue, someone at the bottom, someone who wins the lottery if they succeed, and then challenge them to do better than Apple - and actually put resources under their control. And don't worry about killing their existing business when the product comes out. Apple does this, although, they hide it. The fact is, they already did it with their iPad development - they built the product that's killing their own laptop sales. Microsoft can start from zero and try to take on Apple - but they have to really start from something new and fresh - and not just take a 30 year old OS and change a few DLL's and call it new.<br />
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What they need to do is develop a product that is something more, something less and something new. Right now it's not happening, and their problem is in their guidance. And it needs to be priced with a loss leader consideration as well - if they want market penetration they'll need it.<br />
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From an architecture standpoint, the idea that RAM and Flash are separate needs to be revisited. The entire architecture of how we use computers can stand for an upgrade now. Apple gets it, and others do too. Why doesn't Microsoft?<br />
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Windows 7 is a stepping stone to greatness for Microsoft. It's windows in all it's revered greatness. It should be good for at least 2-3 more years. Windows 8 has arrived too soon and Surface RT and Pro are the rocks that flip over when you step on them Now Microsoft has fallen into the abyss. The safety net of XBox, Windows Server products, Microsoft Office and Windows 7 can only support so many of their failures before it affects the company - and after highly notable failures like Windows Vista and Windows 8 and the Surfaces, I worry for future of Microsoft.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM68Q5dvey3RN5ppGJjOHy5_YkK4hl_QEwTidscrQkT0GH-vgsTMFYHnFl0FDIOuDSvkaazlWkOkoD-3wqU0chBEMemSDPeihtRbAaIsZ6CacFgtuooUI8oivpj71StQA7rLPP1g/s1600/Microsoft+Windows+Love+Chart.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM68Q5dvey3RN5ppGJjOHy5_YkK4hl_QEwTidscrQkT0GH-vgsTMFYHnFl0FDIOuDSvkaazlWkOkoD-3wqU0chBEMemSDPeihtRbAaIsZ6CacFgtuooUI8oivpj71StQA7rLPP1g/s1600/Microsoft+Windows+Love+Chart.png" /></a></div>
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<br />John C. Silviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796481575930863954noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26339088.post-78256090108344021132012-09-02T16:32:00.000-06:002012-09-02T16:32:01.673-06:003D Printing for Porsche PartsSo, you're looking down the throat of a Porsche project car - an old 944, and there's just one thing after another to repair on it - and the parts for these cars aren't cheap.<br />
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So you're tracking down the problems with the leaky windshield washer tank, disassemble all the stuff, and you find this little annoyance;<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK7YyOop7WCmanAwval8_-FZwih9o8fOTut0yKCEyCeDa88uqRPKZU4D7ldHux5xXQY9H9JwHGC1C7n57_-j0lc0XK8xxZxO9F27Tl_nbzCpdr4_ujDflPWHMNYu7UdS2UK4fMfQ/s1600/IMG_0793.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK7YyOop7WCmanAwval8_-FZwih9o8fOTut0yKCEyCeDa88uqRPKZU4D7ldHux5xXQY9H9JwHGC1C7n57_-j0lc0XK8xxZxO9F27Tl_nbzCpdr4_ujDflPWHMNYu7UdS2UK4fMfQ/s320/IMG_0793.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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Either the previous owner, or some stupid devil, had taken a pair of pliers to remove the washer pump hoses - and destroyed the pump posts so that the pump cannot ever work again.<br />
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So then you start looking at parts online and you realize that this little fubar on the washer pump isn't another $20 thing to add to the shopping list - it's a $100 thing. Hell.<br />
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And folks ask why I build a 3D printer - well, here's a good answer:<br />
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Step 1: Disassemble the 28 year old OEM pump:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw_lE_KCVPXX7fX0z1OQYgIxDSD6-jjayq3r78C505TsA_Sldn8r_w13hqegRuNaldxbdM_Fs63nsqKoQ7dzfcStRqIQHP1-A8z2ovQkyY7_8U6aWgzQC4abEL08Jf23J1_GsAmA/s1600/IMG_0795.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw_lE_KCVPXX7fX0z1OQYgIxDSD6-jjayq3r78C505TsA_Sldn8r_w13hqegRuNaldxbdM_Fs63nsqKoQ7dzfcStRqIQHP1-A8z2ovQkyY7_8U6aWgzQC4abEL08Jf23J1_GsAmA/s200/IMG_0795.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>
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Step 2: Go shopping and find the closest alternative - in this case, a GN styled pump intended for a 84-88 Camaro - $19.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOIR4mlOpoGh03RrytT8rCUd871qmEvy5X1oJhFCzPKtglBVY3W7TOVvkPUtjYb698j5TZpGxxvPuxl9XJOG5AZIOlBezirDXx-WPpK7v8TceAP_DjF8YmpQBaUzSg5aAddih41A/s1600/IMG_0794.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOIR4mlOpoGh03RrytT8rCUd871qmEvy5X1oJhFCzPKtglBVY3W7TOVvkPUtjYb698j5TZpGxxvPuxl9XJOG5AZIOlBezirDXx-WPpK7v8TceAP_DjF8YmpQBaUzSg5aAddih41A/s320/IMG_0794.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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Step 3: Eyeball the things together and start thinking about how to make the 3D printer do it's thing.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2nZk6Vz4kdI-T6A88zBleiYYRmKLVWxzpPpL8jFbiP8JHONQ0FSCEeL7dnxP48hwVjdZQh_4pyK1DS8fJVDSSfeBPUOaKyX65pWMDzhRNbrGVA2s0WG9VkguzWYNgm7UNdJnyFg/s1600/IMG_0796.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2nZk6Vz4kdI-T6A88zBleiYYRmKLVWxzpPpL8jFbiP8JHONQ0FSCEeL7dnxP48hwVjdZQh_4pyK1DS8fJVDSSfeBPUOaKyX65pWMDzhRNbrGVA2s0WG9VkguzWYNgm7UNdJnyFg/s320/IMG_0796.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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Step 4: Make some prototypes and refine your design. Lather, rinse, repeat.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyLj2TUQFQWZopRxHgqbjGRlOsZqPwIc_2ZnHNidZuE7v7pmPiN4Lpvoad-3NVGqizvA0mNh4MoLKJrTAUQr2IgEWeCQDtUTQATl3HQr4Hn7UBgxbQt-QSAu2mfRHQFSbJGyWJ7w/s1600/IMG_0803.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyLj2TUQFQWZopRxHgqbjGRlOsZqPwIc_2ZnHNidZuE7v7pmPiN4Lpvoad-3NVGqizvA0mNh4MoLKJrTAUQr2IgEWeCQDtUTQATl3HQr4Hn7UBgxbQt-QSAu2mfRHQFSbJGyWJ7w/s320/IMG_0803.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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Step 5: Once prototyping is done, switch from PLA plastic to ABS (better for the harsh environment under the hood) and print a higher resolution (.2mm layers now) version of the refined adapter.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJOOTzrmeT4U4beJGgth4xRxO9qSipaOqJ_UXm4xr1GnUIClnsq6mdl_0LVjFNtuT7SYWwbh1X12_t1HSrbmb4Dg8W8xQmbRFT9TnX5y_FsPWIJ3-cBrgyggCSkYCorBFzclQCRQ/s1600/IMG_0802.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJOOTzrmeT4U4beJGgth4xRxO9qSipaOqJ_UXm4xr1GnUIClnsq6mdl_0LVjFNtuT7SYWwbh1X12_t1HSrbmb4Dg8W8xQmbRFT9TnX5y_FsPWIJ3-cBrgyggCSkYCorBFzclQCRQ/s320/IMG_0802.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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Step 6: Be proud that when (and not if) the Zombies attack, your maker hat will ensure that you survive long enough to write about it.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYq7qFE-XZ9bT_C5ncGhtlnssx1jShgT47fb_SonFdbwJaOCMUP4qkowzWLNb-GTUk3dTmWY0zfUzNOrriXFBF1NcfuyaJhxnrNwRVolr1aUObNtdkIX3lpphA7ofAocyNWHj3wA/s1600/IMG_0804.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYq7qFE-XZ9bT_C5ncGhtlnssx1jShgT47fb_SonFdbwJaOCMUP4qkowzWLNb-GTUk3dTmWY0zfUzNOrriXFBF1NcfuyaJhxnrNwRVolr1aUObNtdkIX3lpphA7ofAocyNWHj3wA/s320/IMG_0804.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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And here's the finished product - ready to go.<br />
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Cheers!</div>
<br />John C. Silviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796481575930863954noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26339088.post-49874755899734084332012-06-15T07:30:00.003-06:002012-06-15T07:30:41.358-06:00Why I think Apple is winning over MicrosoftIt's fascinating to me that so many folks think I'm a total Mac Fanboy at times, but they don't realize that I fought for years with a dear friend over why Microsoft owns the market, and will continue to do so.<br />
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The funny thing is, Apple right now is winning that fight, and they have almost zero support for the enterprise, very expensive workstations, and a popular and well supported ecosystem. Microsoft has all these too, and it occurred to me today - and this is one where I'm going to solicit people's opinions too - because I'd like to hear what others think of this.<br />
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Here's my take on why Apple is winning:<br />
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1) Smart Packaging<br />
2) Small Bites<br />
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Okay, so this will need some explaining of course, by packaging I mean, Apple controls the entire bundle - most PC manufacturers are limited by PC standards - the need to use industry standard interfaces, industry standard connectors, Etc. They need to build the full package, they need it to be slick, but they never get past the need to be able to use common components. Apple has deeply transcended this - stuff like the MacBook Air just isn't possible if you're using anything industry standard inside.<br />
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Now I did say MOST, but not all vendors have this limitation - the one vendor who has managed to avoid this is Sony. I did say Smart Packaging though, and Sony has been everything other than smart in the industry. And Sony has made some awesome packages, but not all of them are that good - some of them were pretty bad, and others, ill thought out. Worse yet, Sony has a tendency to under-configure their stuff.<br />
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Case in point - when Windows XP came out, computers that could run it could run with less than 512k of RAM. I have a neighbor who bought a Sony laptop, and it did well and lasted for years - but it had a hard limit of 512k of RAM. It couldn't support any more than that - oops. Sony does this time after time - it's nice that they aren't afraid to use custom connectors too - but even Apple concedes that the industry standard connectors should be on the outside - which is why most Mac's have SD card slots on them. Sony's insistence on using their own memory stick format is ill conceived in this day and age, but then again, we're talking about Sony. No surprise - they've had some potential, but failed to live up to it. Perhaps its a cultural difference of some sort?<br />
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Packaging also includes drivers - and this is one place where most manufactures have utterly failed - HP fails here, Lenovo, ASUS, Sony and Dell - plus any others I missed all fail on the driver front.<br />
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The reason I say this is because I've installed an Apple Boot Camp partition, and I've seen how it should be done, and the basic truth as I see it is this: Apple installed Windows is the best Windows ever. And now even Microsoft has stepped in to start selling "premium" installs - where they kill off all the crap that came with your computer's new install, and just baseline you with sweet fast windows only.<br />
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That Microsoft had to step up for this was nice, but that it's a $99 charge for what should be basically a free option, is yet another mistake (but I haven't gotten there yet.)<br />
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When I installed Boot Camp, it was smooth, fast, and complete - and Apple's drive disk, custom made for my Boot Camp install, installed with one click, ran and quit - and loaded drivers for everything that my Windows needed to know about - all my keyboard keys, video drivers, network and wifi drivers, Etc. all loaded instantly - and none of it stepped on Microsoft's control over the system. I didn't have some Apple Wifi gui, or some other mystery meats hanging around - it was just what I needed, nothing more.<br />
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Now packaging doesn't stop there - Apple you see has one other thing they do that Microsoft does not - and that is that they include a ton of features with the OS that you don't get in Windows without going to 20 different third parties. Apple basically hardens their OS so that most users don't need anti-virus - Microsoft has their Security Essentials too - but they don't roll it in, and it still appears as an add-on to the OS. This needs to be built in. Apple also includes a number of video enabled items, movie editing, music composition and editing, video chatting, and so on. Microsoft has none of this.<br />
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Smart Packaging would help Microsoft a lot, but I seriously doubt that they've embraced any of this in Windows 8. Should have made me the CEO I guess - I think I'd do better than Steve Balmer.<br />
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The next explanation is small bites.<br />
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This is easy - people paid for the computer already, in the case of Apple, so they own you. Just because you paid the premium price for the thing doesn't mean you have to keep on paying.<br />
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Apple gets this, Microsoft does not.<br />
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Case in point: Apple charged $20 for their OS upgrade. When I went from Snow Leopard to Lion, it was $20. Not $20 per computer, it was $20 for all the machines I have. And there's no license keys or activations in the OS either - Apple wants folks up to date - not calling in for support on versions that are years old.<br />
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The same carries true in the App Store as well. When I buy an app on my iPad, I buy it once - and if it can run on my iPhone, then I can use it there too - no additional charge. And my daughters iPad is on my account too, so she gets the app as well. One price.<br />
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Apple's philosophy has been an interesting one - and they've definitely taken the higher path - update at all costs, support the latest and greatest, keep folks informed, don't let licensing become a burden.<br />
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This also holds true on their office products as well. How much does MS Office cost? Apple's Mail client is pretty darn good for free, and $30 for Word (er, Pages), $30 for Excel (er, Numbers) and $30 for Powerpoint (er, Keynote) is nice. MS Office costs $200++ depending on who you are. Apple discounts students only.<br />
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All in all, it's clear to me now - Apple doesn't want to grab your wallet and go to town leaving you eating ramen because you updated and downloaded a couple apps, they want you to keep coming back because it doesn't cost more than $5 to $10 to keep the users happen each visit - and when millions of folks keep coming back, and keep tossing what is the equivalent of spare change at them, well, it's hard not to start counting money in the billions.<br />
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And Apple's share of the market isn't even that big yet - imagine what happens when 50% of households own an Apple computer?John C. Silviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796481575930863954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26339088.post-36408846070133285482012-04-22T17:41:00.002-06:002012-04-23T14:01:30.730-06:00Skyrim on Macintosh - it can be done!<br />
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<span class="s1"><b>Skyrim on an iMac - It Works!</b></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I’m a Mac user, but I’m more of a recent convert than an ages old fanboy. Lets face it, fourteen years ago where Mac’s were related to relative obscurity and used by artists primarily, they really sucked.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">Was is really that bad? From the end user perspective, maybe not - but I always thought the way they loaded 5-10 screens full of icon extensions was hokey. This was after the initial heyday of Apple, back when the SE20 was awesome. Macs started out pretty cool, but grew tired until they got facelifted on Steve’s return.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">From a network administrators perspective, supporting Mac’s on my networks was always annoying at best. Novell and Microsoft both supported Mac’s, but it was not fun in any sense of being - the multiple name spaces, data and resource forks, the odd way shares were mapped, even the hokey support for Internet dialup. All painful, but then again, Windows used to be pretty painful too.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">I’ll just say that I’m glad Apple has done what they’ve done - I wouldn’t change much of their inner workings now. I’d perhaps tweak a few things, but then again, they’re doing a pretty classy job right now.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">Lets face some other realities - not every software maker has embraced the Mac as a great place to be. Apple is still the most expensive computer in general - I mean, who’s really going to pay the money for a Sony computer, when the company can’t sell a PC that supports industry standards or that comes without tons of proprietary drivers and obscure proprietary bloatware. If Sony could return to basics - just Windows without their lame additional “flavoring” - they might actually turn around their dying PC business. But I digress. My point is, Apple makes a good PC, but price-wise, its not cheap. There are more expensive PC’s out there, but they’re not able to effectively replace the Mac.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">Now I’ve had the argument with my family regarding the “Why would I go Mac?” thing - and until they get the clue that just about every add-on that you’d want comes built into the Mac and just works out of the box... well, unfortunately, they just don’t get it. My family in my house gets it - and after I got Skyrim going, my son may even be coming around. My daughter has already asked for her own Mac. When more folks do get the clue, more people will move. Maybe when Target and Walmart have their little Apple Stores inside..</span><br />
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<span class="s1">So anyway, back to the point of my story - Skyrim is absolutely one of the most addictive games produced by Bethesda ever - and this coming from the company that created Fallout 3, Fallout 3 New Vegas, along with a host of other games. The real star in their lineup right now is Skyrim, and it uses the same game engine as the fallout series. This engine, when properly tuned, makes for games that have solid hours of playing times.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">The one thing about Bethesda that cheeses me however is their complete and total lack of support for the world of Apple.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">Apple users might recognize these games, but if they’re hardcore Apple users, they’ve probably never played them, or they’ve played them on their consoles - if they’re console gamer types. Somehow I don’t think most hardcore Apple types would go X-Box, but some do - I know a few, but I think those guys are more the exception than the norm. Frankly, I can’t stand playing on X-Boxes or on Playstation - the controllers just don’t work for me when I can precisely use a mouse to control myself in these games and the entire Valve/Steam lineup on my Mac.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">For me, this dilemma has been plaguing me for a while - because I do have a pretty decent PC in my house, and I now have more than just a few Macs as well. Our household has a plethora of Apple hardware here. </span>When I replaced my desktop PC with a Mac 2 years ago, I got the cheapest of the iMac line of the time - $1199. My wife did this as well as her 4 year old PC was starting to have issues.</div>
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<span class="s1">We went to BestBuy, stood around waiting for the sales mans glance (he was mid-explanation to a potential buyer) and I just pointed to the machine he was demoing and I said “can we get two of these please?” The people seeing the demo were stunned, the sales-guy excused himself and immediately got us rolling.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">As we walked out the front door, heads turned - some kind of foreign convention was going on, and people were just shocked to see us walking out the door with $2500 of stuff in nice Apple-white boxes with built in handles. That or perhaps by going Apple we’d separated ourselves from the people around us so much that they appeared to be foreigners. Either way, we were happy - and haven’t looked back... much.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">Now in my wife’s case is special - she’s got work stuff on her PC and we needed some way for her Mac to virtualize her old setup (Windows Vista running Quickbooks) and the best approach was for us to simply move her desktop PC, which was on it’s last legs, into a VM on her new Mac. We did just that, and it worked great. The end result was, and is, that she’s running Parallels with her old Vista PC as a VM, running quickbooks. Upgrading her to 8gb was $50 - for $75 I managed to upgrade us both to 8gb.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">I had no real need for running a full VM for the longest time, however, my Piratefish VM’s and test beds did need a home, and so I knocked around various options - but those VM’s never replaced my PC desktop, which is located at another desk in my office. When it came to playing games like Skyrim, or New Vegas, it was just normal for me to sit at the other desk, and play the games from there, however, this was a serious inconvenience for me as the good computer monitor is the huge Mac on my desk, and I have to even switch chairs when I’m playing on the PC, plus the good speakers are on my Mac, Etc. Etc.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">I suffered my way through a few games this way, including my first play-through of Skyrim, and I’ve been considering a second play-through when a colleague mentioned that there’s support in Parallels to run Windows Bootcamp. Now until this point, I knew full well about boot camp, but I hadn’t run it yet. This was however, the last straw, so I immediately went to Amazon and ordered Parallels.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">Yesterday, snail mail finally brought me my Parallels 7. I’d been resisting getting this for a while, having run other more ghetto VM solutions on my Mac for a while. My wife lives on Parallels on her Mac, so I was able to sell this as part support, part need, part fun.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">I had resisted bootcamp for some time because I can’t stand the idea of dual booting any PC - that reason being primarily the annoying updates. Apple has updates, Microsoft has more updates, and then there’s freaking Adobe, and tons of other updates - and if I have a “gaming partition” added to my desktop, then it’s a guarantee that I’ll be having to reboot and wait an hour after ever 10-14 days of not playing games on it - because it’ll want to update, do scans, and perform other annoying housekeeping stuff that won’t happen when it’s not running - with bootcamp it’s an “either, or” thing - no in-between.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">Setting up bootcamp isn’t annoying at all - it could have been far more complicated than it was, however, Apple seems to have a penchant for making good windows software. Bootcamp makes it easy enough though, and using it’s instructions was easy enough, and the tools were easily able to re-partition my drive once I cleared up enough space for the Windows side of my Mac.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">Once I’d cleared up some space, I started digging, and I realized that there was no way the 64bit Windows 7 VM I already had was going to run as my Bootcamp partition - however, I was able to-reinstall Windows as my bootcamp partition and go from there - the limitation being disk space. To alleviate this, a nice little network share and drive mapping, connects my PC (which runs my Minecraft server) and my Mac together. So my PC side has only a little local storage, but can still access the tons of crap in my old gaming PC.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">The install was smooth as butter - sure, some reboots afterwards - like any computer it needs to update itself and so forth, then I had to load the Apple drivers disk - and I’ll note that the Apple drivers that are added are about the smoothest driver updates I’ve ever seen in Windows land.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">Here’s one to nod I have to give Apple on this - Apple apparently knows how to make driver installers for Windows better than most PC manufacturers - I mean, if you’ve ever re-installed a modern Windows PC to a clean state without all the bloatware that comes in the land of OEM, then you know that you’ve got to go out and grab drivers from everywhere - even on Dell’s website you’ve got to download some 20 different packages and then HOPE that you got the right ones.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">Once my iMac rebooted as a Windows PC, it immediately was seeing my wireless network, asking me what network (home, office, public) I was connected to, Etc. And I hadn’t even installed any of Apple’s drivers yet - and once I installed the Apple drivers, it just got better.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">Now if one asks, just how good is your iMac when it’s booting in bootcamp as a full-blown Windows PC, well, let mw tell you - all I’ve added to my setup was two additional programs (Winrar and DaemonTools Lite), and I’ve installed Apple’s drivers. That’s it.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">I then asked Windows to figure out my performance rating, and wow. Just wow. I got a 5.9 and my lowest score was the SATA2 7200rpm 500mb hard disk my system came with!</span><br />
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I had figured my RAM, which being iMac RAM, in the form of laptop style SODIMMs, would rate lowest, second to my processor, which is only a Core-i3 - I mean, my wifes MacBook and my Air have Core-i5’s and Core-i7’s are supposed to be total hotness in Intel land. As it turns out, the Core-i3 rated a 6.9 and the memory rated as a 7.0!!<span class="s1"></span><br />
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<span class="s1">I immediately wanted to see what results I get, so I setup Skyrim right away.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">Playing Skyrim in full Windows mode is decent - my iMac screen is huge, and the video card isn’t an insane super-powered NVidia, so running full resolution with auto-detected settings and no tuning was playable, but not great. Skyrim decided I should run in high-quality mode, though, not with giant textures. The end result was that it had overstepped on the filtering and anti-aliasing a little - the images were great, but the frame rate suffered a bit, making combat jumpy. I then tweaked the settings in the other direction, turning off all the filters, but keeping the screen resolution high - the end result is playable, however, there’s a kind of buzzy jumpiness to the playability of the game.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">Once I got that environment stabilized, I then booted back into Mac mode and installed Parallels 7 for my Mac, and told it to make my Bootcamp into a VM. Now when this happens, there’s definitely some finagling going on in the background - I mean, from the Windows perspective, the RAM changes, disk-IO changes, all sorts of drivers are introduced, Etc. Turns out this is normal, and is such a change to the system base that the system has to re-activate with Microsoft. Parallels default Windows 7 settings gave my VM only 1gb of ram, which is a fairly extreme change, so no surprise there. I then reconfigured it to have 2.5gb of ram, as I could afford it.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">So once things were stabilized with the latest and greatest of everything updated, I then decided to try one last thing - run Skyrim in my Windows VM, while running in Mac OS-X. I had absolutely no hope of this working mind you - I tried installing New Vegas in my VMware VM with no luck, but this was a shot in the dark. It started, I then started toying with reducing the screen resolution and leaving minimal filtering on - that should result in a playable nice looking setup if I’m lucky.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">Not only did Skyrim run in my Bootcamp PC as a VM, it ran well. I did nerf down the graphics and textures a bit, but after an hour of playing, I’m not just convinced, but actually quite pleased. It’s playable, fast enough to battle with dragons and get the frame rates I need, and best of all, I’m not even running in bootcamp mode.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">I had to run the Windows 7 rating once again in VM mode - and the results were not surprising - I’ve dropped to a 5.5, with RAM taking a huge hit and graphics taking a hit as well. Funny thing, my disk performance went up for some reason as a VM - its a lie.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">I can play Skyrim on my Mac - and I can do it from a bootcamp Windows 7 64bit running in a VM. You should too.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">Cheers!</span></div>John C. Silviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796481575930863954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26339088.post-70200028130481850942012-02-11T13:27:00.001-07:002012-02-13T08:52:06.614-07:00So just what is this phone cache thing anyway?Being the nerd that I am, I'm often confronted with questions from the family - not news really, but just pretty much par for the course for anyone who "does computers" for a living.<br />
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The most recent question from a family member was this:<br />
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<i>"Many of my phone apps have a "clear cache" tab. What happens when you do this? Does it decrease the storage amount on my phone? I get a low storage amount notice on my phone."</i></div>
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As this has no simple answer, I figured I'd write it up properly for all to share.</div>
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<b>What is cache?</b></div>
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Cache, in this context, is just a chunk of memory storage in your computer. The purpose of all kinds of cache is to make things run faster. There are different kinds of cache. In this case, the cache in your smartphone is used simply to display things faster instead of having to go out to the network and download them again.</div>
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For example - most every time you visit your computers home page, you are confronted with the logo on that page - be it Google, or Yahoo, AOL, Etc. Now that logo doesn't change too often in most cases - and that logo took your phone or computer a few seconds to go out and download and then display it. This same speedup applies to the map app, and the weather app, and so forth.</div>
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<b>Where is it used, and network loads...</b></div>
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Now if you're at your desktop computer and you're connected via wireless to the Internet using a fast ISP, the few seconds it takes to load that logo doesn't matter. Still though, your computer has massive amounts of storage and caches TONS of files.</div>
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Now on your smartphone, even with the latest LTE networks and all that jazz, it STILL will take a few seconds to download that image - and as it almost never changes, there's no good reason to download it EVERY TIME you visit the page. This extra network load can cost a cellular company MILLIONS of dollars and it's a TOTAL WASTE of the company's bandwidth to re-download a logo for each and every smartphone out there. Also, many carriers will charge you for using up your data in your plan too - and they LOVE to charge us.</div>
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So instead of wasting your time and money and your cellular carriers' money and bandwidth every time you hit the page, your phone keeps a copy of that image in it's cache. Any program on your smartphone that talks to the Internet - that includes the "weather app", reading your mail, updating your calendar, Etc. can all have their own local cache of files that they need to download and display. Using this cache makes your phone look faster because it doesn't have to take a few seconds to show you the logo, or the weather conditions, or whatever - because the pretty picture is already there in the cache - and all it needs to do is go out and make sure it should show you the right one.</div>
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<b>The Network Data Plan and Cache Clearing</b></div>
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One other thing - many Android users do not have a grandfathered unlimited AT&T data plan like I have, or they're not on Cricket (remember, I work for them and we do unlimited everything on our phones - data, minutes, texting) - but for those of you who are on Verizon, or a newer AT&T data plan, Sprint or T-Mobile - then you're paying a pricey premium for every Internet bit you get - and are getting charged for going over planned data.</div>
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Now in reality, most users won't get near the 4gb limit on their data plans - I mean, I've gotten close - 3.8 gigs - but that's me watching Archer on Netflix, over wireless, in traffic, on my iPhone - this is common during the colder months where my commute can become an hour at 15mph. <i>(Yes, I'm one of THOSE people who watch TV and drive...)</i> but the fact is, most folks don't have a 4 gig plan or use Cricket - they have a 2 gig plan - or maybe less - and going over could mean a $10, $20 or $50 overcharge surprise in your next bill.</div>
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Also, clearing your cache will not always speed things up - I mean, if you clear the cache in the Map app, then yes, the camera might run faster afterwards because it can use all that map space for pictures - but clearing the Map app cache will make the Map app slower - because the maps it already has locally stored will have to be re-downloaded over the wireless data plan again.</div>
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<b><i>So what about those Low Storage notices on my phone?</i></b></div>
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<b>First, a word about storage...</b></div>
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Smartphones and desktop computers have a lot in common - they both are computers, they both have RAM and they both have non-volatile storage.</div>
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Non-Volatile Storage is the term that refers to where your data is kept. If you use a PC at home, then there's a hard disk that stores your programs and files and such. If you use a newer computer, like say a MacBook Air, then your hard disk might have been replaced with a flash disk. In these cases, when the computer is off, the hard disk or flash "disk" are keeping your data safe.</div>
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Don't confuse RAM with storage - the RAM in a computer determines how much work the computer can do at one time - the more RAM, the more it can juggle smoothly. Computers without enough RAM can't do as much - and when things get bad, they start <i>swapping</i> RAM with storage - and then your computer starts working really slowly. And putting programs and data from RAM into a spinning disk takes lots of time..</div>
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Now Smartphones don't have spinning hard disks - they do have flash memory though - and flash memory is fast, and depending on the device, it can be very abundant, depending on your device and how it's setup.</div>
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<b>Second, lets talk about how strorage is used on phones..</b></div>
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Users of iPhones will only very rarely see messages like the ones you are getting off your droid - this is because iPhones come with 8gigs, 16gigs, 32gigs or 64gigs of flash storage built into them. It all depends on how much you pay for the phone. When users of these devices dock their phones, the iTunes program works with them, backs the phone up, and permits folks to control what programs are installed, and what pictures are taking space, what songs are stored in it, and movies, and so forth.</div>
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On other smartphones - like android phones, storage isn't so simply handled as it is in the Apple products - there's no "droid-tunes app" to help organize the storage in your droids.</div>
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Fortunately android-based smartphones come with an additional memory slot in them, but only come with a tiny amount of memory in the phone itself. Newer, bigger droids - like the Huawei Mercury from Cricket (an awesome droid if I don't say so myself) comes with 4gigs of storage - and this is common among all the high-end android phones out there from other carriers - you can expect to pay upwards of $150+ for phones with this kind of built in flash storage.</div>
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The earlier generation of android phones come with even less storage built in - my original Huawei Ascend only came with 1.2 gigs of usable storage. Now this sounds like a lot, but once you start syncing your email, browsing the web, running the weather app, and otherwise using the phone and installing additional apps, this 1.2 gigs of usable storage fills up fast - and don't take any photos...</div>
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The pictures are a huge deficit to these phones - note that all the photos you take will pour into this little space as well - and with the high-end cameras these phones have - you only get 40-80 pictures at 8 megapixels and then you'll be getting these messages too!</div>
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Fortunately, Google saw this limitation in their design, and all droids come with one or more memory slots. Using this memory slot is recommended as you can put programs, data, pictures, music and even movies into a nice little memory card - and once that's done, you'll be all set.</div>
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I would recommend finding out what kind of memory your phone uses for this - most (maybe all) take something called MicroSD memory - and many phones actually come with MicroSD memory cards - but usually those cards are tiny - sometimes as small as 1 gig - and that's not much given the amount of data these smartphones use and create.</div>
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<b>Getting more memory for your phone...</b></div>
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On Amazon I was able to find a 16gb MicroSD HC card - plenty large enough for most users to store hours of music, hundreds of photos, 5000 books and probably as many apps for only $13.</div>
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Not all phones can use a card that big - it's important to look up your phones specs and find out how much it can handle before shopping for upgrades. If you've got an older android phone, you might find out that it can't handle more than 8 gigs of additional flash memory - and that would be unpleasant if you bought a 16 gig card that you couldn't use.</div>
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Just do some google searches on your phones model with the word "specs" in the search - and somewhere you'll find out what the maximum additional memory is.</div>
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Now it's just not as simple as plugging the memory in either - if your phone doesn't already have additional memory then you can simply run down the Best Buy, grab some and stuff it into the phone - and then many programs will see the open space and take advantage of it.</div>
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The tricky part comes in when you already have a small memory stick in your phone - because you'll have to back up the contents of that memory stick on your computer, then swap the memory cards, then re-upload all the old data (if you want it).</div>
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Many apps might then need to be told where to put their files - and if told to use the SD card, they'll store commonly used stuff there - and the phone will run faster, be happier, Etc.<br />
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Not all memory cards are the same - and yes, there are some REALLY cheap memory cards out there - but just because the memory card is cheap and large, that doesn't make it better. Remember the first time someone (like me) said that you need to upgrade the memory in your computer? Well, this flash memory stuff isn't all the same either - flash memory comes in different "classes" as well - so when you're buying that 8gb or 16gb memory card, be sure to look for things that indicate the speed of the flash memory itself. Remember that flash memory in your phone is stuff that you'll be using - so you want it to be fast.<br />
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Flash memory "classes" are numbered for the speed of the memory - Class 2, Class 4, Class 6, Class 10, Etc. The higher "class" a flash memory is, the more expensive it will be - and the faster it will be. Note that not all phones will be able to go as fast as the fastest class memory out there - so if you paid and extra $40 for that Class 10 SDHC 32gb card (if you phone can handle it at all) don't be disappointed if your phone doesn't appear any faster. When you upgrade your phone next and move that huge memory card over, the next phone might be able to get more out of it.<br />
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For most of us out there, Class 6 performs well enough, and most of the tech out there will use it just fine - and the price point is just right. If you're seriously into photography, the Class 10 will be worth it in time saved - but this class of memory is overkill for probably all the phones out there right now.</div>
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<b>Cleaning up your phone's storage</b></div>
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Now this is an area that I'm not experienced enough in with Androids - either the apps themselves, or perhaps the OS, determines where best to store things - and given the variety of phones out there, it might be different per phone, or different on different versions of the Android OS.</div>
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In any case, once you have the space available, using it is the next step. The first thing I'd recommend you do is start my looking at where your photos live, and getting them out of the phones memory - and then focus on the music if you have that on there. Those two alone should free up enough space to make sure that nothing complains.<br />
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On Android phones, go into the menu, choose Settings, Applications - then you can tell the phone where applications should live. By moving applications into the SD card, you remove them from your phones built-in memory and make the phone faster.<br />
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Ideally, commonly used applications should live in the phones memory - like your mail client and web browser. The phone's own OS might prevent you moving of these apps as well - some apps just can't live on the SD card because the phone would break if you docked or unplugged the card.<br />
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If an app supports the ability to use SD card memory for itself, the options to utilize the SD card will be found in this menu as well.</div>
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It's not as elegant as Apple's solution to the problem, but the Android memory management scheme does work, once you know where it lives.<br />
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Cheers!</div>John C. Silviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796481575930863954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26339088.post-91113306417479646452012-01-30T00:50:00.000-07:002012-01-30T00:50:23.215-07:00More 3D PrintingSo, as penance to my little project of building a 3D printer, I promised my friend Harout that I'd print him all he needs to build his own Mendel Prusa as well - he was generous enough to provide me with some leftovers from his 3D printer project, and it's taken 2-3 months of experimentation to finally get up to what I'd call "production" level quality - the unfortunate thing is that I'm running out of my best working materiel - the PLA he provided! This PLA stuff melts at a nice temp, cools fast when a fan is pointing at it, and hardens quite well too - making some serious stuff.<br />
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Here's a my RepRap in action, printing an endstop holder in PLA:<br />
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Now that the quality of the output is way up, I've started getting some parts together - and tonight I actually started printing one of the bigger pieces - what I'd call one of the hardest pieces in fact because it's been printing for over 3 hours thus far, and it has one huge nasty overhang.<br />
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For my non-3D printing experienced readers, let me take a moment to explain something about these 3D printers - they use something called <i>additive</i> manufacturing - this means that it prints things out by just adding materiel onto the print surface - and building upwards. Kind of like dropping melted wax onto a table very accurately and making a pyramid.<br />
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This sounds simple enough, however, when you're printing without some kind of support materiel, and you need to print out something with holes in it, you may find that you're in a pickle because you can't print in the air... or can you?<br />
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I've been fearing printing this part for quite some time, but had to give it a try - and it knocked it right out! Something like this drooping down or falling off after 2.5 hours of printing would really suck!<br />
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Anyway, the results were excellent as well - here's the final product once it was done!<br />
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Harout, you'd better be ready buddy - I'll have your kit printed soon...</div>
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Oh yeah, and I've STILL not gotten that black ABS stuff to print yet - it's EVIL! I'm going to try a different hobbed bolt and combine that with a .75mm printhead and a higher-temperature extruder upgrade next as getting the black stuff to print will give me enough material to print another frame for myself!</div>
<br />John C. Silviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796481575930863954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26339088.post-32708188419531039232011-12-11T22:29:00.001-07:002011-12-11T23:26:26.894-07:00Printing in 3D with RepRap Prusa!So, things have been a little quiet here lately - the combination of work, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9eGtyqz4gY" target="_blank">Skyrim</a>, and frankly, life, has been a total drag on my reality. Loosing relatives always sucks, no doubt about it - but it's been one hell of a year - and I'm not alone in that I just want 2011 to be OVER!<br />
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On the good news side of things, my project for the last 3-4 months has finally produced some real outbound, rather than just being a tinkerers dream. I got my <a href="http://www.reprap.org/" target="_blank">RepRap</a> printer going at last - and I've been now working on the next challenge - actually <i>printing</i> things!<br />
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Now this thing has been a challenge - at first I tried using my <a href="http://reprap.org/wiki/RAMPS_1.4" target="_blank">RAMPS 1.4</a> with the RepRap firmware - apparently most folks consider this a mistake - the <a href="https://github.com/kliment/Sprinter" target="_blank">Sprinter</a> firmware is evidently much better - and I'd have to agree. I'm glad I bought my RAMPS from <a href="http://ultimachine.com/content/ramps-diy-kit" target="_blank">Ultimachine</a> - they're one of the two great American sources for bot parts I've found. <a href="http://www.lulzbot.com/" target="_blank">Lulzbot</a> is the other, FYI.<br />
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As for the software controlling it - <a href="https://github.com/kliment/Printrun/blob/master/pronterface.py" target="_blank">Pronterface</a> is also the king of that realm in both PC and Mac - although it's no cakewalk to install - and then there's the entire mess of choosing how to perform your slicing - and it turns out that <a href="http://slic3r.org/" target="_blank">slic3r</a> is the Mac best option there - the Skeinforge program does look good, but it's got a slew of defaults that just don't seem to count - and the latest versions insist on dragging the printhead around the for a few layers first, why, I have no clue. Perhaps if I ever build a CNC or something...<br />
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So, here's the basic gist of what I'm up to - first, using <a href="http://sketchup.google.com/" target="_blank">Google Sketchup</a> to create stuff in millimeters - then using a Sketchup plugin to export the models in STL format - then plugging those STL files into Slic3r, then finally loading those into Pronterface and letting the printer try and print.<br />
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And what a learning experience this has been - getting the Z-axis aligned is a total pain - and even worse is figuring out how to best adjust the extruder rate! Right now, with the soft ABS that I got from Harout, I'm running the printhead at 240 C (need to recompile for the new printhead, so that temp might be off), and what's more, getting the first layer to stick is a REAL challenge with these.<br />
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I'm just glad I got the <a href="http://www.lulzbot.com/en/hot-ends/1-budaschnozzle.html" target="_blank">Budaschnozzle</a> working nicely - it was the most trouble-free thing about this adventure.<br />
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So, just to share some experiences with folks, here's my first printhead design - using a 10watt resistor (resistance is too high - never got hot enough) - did melt some stuff with work, but not a good seal to prevent backflow!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtCzE9-PMc1Dmn6yfU4cosR45WyyCeA7EYb_CMbmnRjQAKJxiAmrJGPJzTJho0zuVV0t7kb4UI0tKuLi5iNwxcDkE02X8VGVa5XKRGWR8RhJTT_nV60j2Z-5rDebArqatAS6ZUWA/s1600/IMG_0576.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtCzE9-PMc1Dmn6yfU4cosR45WyyCeA7EYb_CMbmnRjQAKJxiAmrJGPJzTJho0zuVV0t7kb4UI0tKuLi5iNwxcDkE02X8VGVa5XKRGWR8RhJTT_nV60j2Z-5rDebArqatAS6ZUWA/s320/IMG_0576.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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As you can see in this pic, the backflow really got in there - no matter what plastic I used - and I clogged it with blue and green ABS as well as PLA.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4lXrxvh-TWNN0nHXnPwOgTXojUwUUyOo6bkldZvaV2JZ_xSSQk9zPONFWMLpxnqMSf87yUY0CDPbCq9j3YXhOHxeQFwcwYG5-T1tFaPfxlk_GVJN7g-QX3MaFW1xwP2ebOzPCMQ/s1600/IMG_0572.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4lXrxvh-TWNN0nHXnPwOgTXojUwUUyOo6bkldZvaV2JZ_xSSQk9zPONFWMLpxnqMSf87yUY0CDPbCq9j3YXhOHxeQFwcwYG5-T1tFaPfxlk_GVJN7g-QX3MaFW1xwP2ebOzPCMQ/s320/IMG_0572.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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A common beginners design flaw here - too much standoff between the heat and the output - by the time the hot plastic comes out of the mig welder tip here, it's too cold to stick to the print bed!</div>
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I got no decent output from this one - just some lumps of melted plastic.</div>
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Design #2 wasn't kept around, but well, it was .5 ohms of nichrome wire wrapped around a mig welder tip - and it lit up like a 40watt bulb for about 5 seconds too.</div>
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Design #3 was a pure Radio Shack version of the printhead - while I was waiting on a shipment of appropriate nichrome wire - I started building extruder head #3 - and that produced this one:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtivg4iMW_13f5-z78qifusClm9uWkr0yySfQFkzKwLb-FKdYsbFYGLIxCz8lJbjU4h-6VoTIayeKIgjqWGfFX3z7SmGrqt11n5dU4HKJlnu6muD4wj0Cfm5PTK0hjaOVMoeTxTA/s1600/IMG_0575.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtivg4iMW_13f5-z78qifusClm9uWkr0yySfQFkzKwLb-FKdYsbFYGLIxCz8lJbjU4h-6VoTIayeKIgjqWGfFX3z7SmGrqt11n5dU4HKJlnu6muD4wj0Cfm5PTK0hjaOVMoeTxTA/s1600/IMG_0575.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtivg4iMW_13f5-z78qifusClm9uWkr0yySfQFkzKwLb-FKdYsbFYGLIxCz8lJbjU4h-6VoTIayeKIgjqWGfFX3z7SmGrqt11n5dU4HKJlnu6muD4wj0Cfm5PTK0hjaOVMoeTxTA/s320/IMG_0575.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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Now this one did have a fighting chance - it was six 10ohm 1watt resisters in 3 parallel strings of 2 resistors in series. It heated up very nicely, and the JB Weld kept them on the aluminum heating block nicely too - however, once I tried using this with the green plastic, well, things got bad - the heat was too much for it, and it desoldered the resistors - and shorting out the circuit. Once the resistance was out, it solidified, and then the pressure pushed it out of the teflon retaining tube. On the controller side of things, the 10amp fuse never really protected the circuit so much - as did one of the traces on the RAMP's board! Fortunately, I was able to lay down some wire and solder and bring it back into workable shape!</div>
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Design #4 came into play once I got the nichrome wire that worked - it was 7.5 ohms for foot, and had insulation too - so it was perfect. I immediately wrapped this up into a new single MIG tip once again, even put some insulation on it - and this sucker heated up FAST. Once it was warmed up, I was able to get some action out of it - however, there was major backflow in this design too - so much that it even blew through the JB Weld holding it in place on my teflon tube.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkUtrySX-opFgcjpBVPphZ7OO-0rrTMhQXKzx1ivnHqRKewC-z_pJyfnDqf4rih8DIua509kMjU90PHFLjTgFdbLpvg3Ob3YLOIwRo9dWshj0UMclIiHUSWfU7LYTp5XH9JaqtnQ/s1600/IMG_0574.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkUtrySX-opFgcjpBVPphZ7OO-0rrTMhQXKzx1ivnHqRKewC-z_pJyfnDqf4rih8DIua509kMjU90PHFLjTgFdbLpvg3Ob3YLOIwRo9dWshj0UMclIiHUSWfU7LYTp5XH9JaqtnQ/s320/IMG_0574.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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I finally bit the bullet and bought the Budaschnozzle from Lulzbot and immediately found out that I needed a couple of 4x30 screws and wingnuts and washers so that I could attach the thing to my printer.</div>
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Their design was different, but actually works quite well - kudo's to the Budaschnozzle - I've printed plenty so far, and my biggest problem is Z calibration.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsBSfUrUj8yccu94_BZvJ0Q9gDJ9pUa3Kn9VOiv8aPW6-vP5Ur94L1hjOpIrBBCqSYVYUtNf5dYL93StxRO9Aah3oVBJWuh44-qFW91qF1cYcsfrVpB2_JG8UlifcWkI7DxGBV9w/s1600/IMG_0580.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsBSfUrUj8yccu94_BZvJ0Q9gDJ9pUa3Kn9VOiv8aPW6-vP5Ur94L1hjOpIrBBCqSYVYUtNf5dYL93StxRO9Aah3oVBJWuh44-qFW91qF1cYcsfrVpB2_JG8UlifcWkI7DxGBV9w/s320/IMG_0580.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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My first real prints were to get more endstop holders - the ones that came with my original printer were not nearly as durable as I'd liked, and so I set out to print more of them - except that the plastic I used at first was hard, and wouldn't flex nicely - I got these, but was still having troubles with lack of stick to the bed - that pesky Z axis..<br />
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Eventually I got things to stick better, then started working on the flow rates - and that's looking better now too.</div>
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I tried printing one of the BIG prusa sleds, but I gave up - too many parts, and still have not mastered the art of getting the first layer to work perfectly.</div>
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Now I'm a few parts in and having some real results. Wowsa!<br />
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Thats all for now folks!John C. Silviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796481575930863954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26339088.post-76059042183137500842011-09-10T16:27:00.000-06:002011-09-10T16:27:02.482-06:00Piratefish 4.70 is releasedThe latest version of the Piratefish is now version 4.70. This version incorporates updates from the beta version (which shipped out most recently) (and quietly) - and adds in the bug fixes for the startup problems found last May.<br />
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I've also decided that it's time to reduce the price - the Piratefish eBook is pretty well refined now - most folks who've purchased never run into problems - at least, they're not emailing me about them if they are - and what's more, as much of that cost was a support charge - it seems unjustified now. My eBook price has dropped to $33, and as before - updates and support will be included.<br />
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Hopefully, the PayPal landing pages and such will now work better as well - kinda tough to test their purchase portal without using a second Paypal account.<br />
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If you're running the 4.7beta version of Piratefish, then you've already got most of this update already - the 4.65 version is replaced - so if you're using any version of the eBook prior to 4.7beta, please be sure to email me to get the latest version.<br />
<br />
Cheers everyone - and thanks for your continuing support.John C. Silviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796481575930863954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26339088.post-64493444949785350852011-08-02T00:56:00.001-06:002011-09-10T16:27:29.705-06:00The Real Truth Behind Android Sales?So, if you're like me, you probably see the tug of war between the <b>iPhone</b> and the <b>Android.</b> In the world of telecommunications where I work, this tug of war plays out constantly.<br />
<br />
But one thing always gets me - the headlines week after week, month after month, it seems that the market appears fickle, and that sales of this droid or another always seem to surge and release, and then an article comes out about how great iPhones are or how dedicated iPhone users are, or Apple posts their quarterly numbers and people see the real sales totals that result ing the "oh shit" reaction in the press, gushing about how great Apple is.<br />
<br />
I think however, there's a factor behind those high droid sales - it's something I've seen at the office with numerous coworkers, and it's something that the Apple world doesn't experience that often. Simply put, it's the phone replacement/upgrade/repair cycle. An extension of the old adage, the grass is always greener in your neighbors yard.<br />
<br />
Now in my case, this is really true - my neighbors to water more than I do - I mean, after all, we live in the high plains and Kentucky bluegrass is hardly anything close to native here, so I water the absolute minimum amount - not one iota more than needed. Sure, if it didn't rain for most of July, my yard would already be a brown dustbowl, but even now, my neighbors are probably watering as I edit this, or planning their next foray into yard fixer-upping. But I digress.<br />
<br />
A good friend of mine has the Star Wars "R2" Motorola droid - definitely a cool droid phone, but this particular phone doesn't seem to be that mainstream as droids go, but there's plenty of other models to go around. This friend has had some issues with his phone, and I think he got it replaced without issue - a fairly standard expectation given what he paid for it, and it's particular special niche being a specific model of sci-fi fan phone and all. My friend is the sole exception to my theory in this droid sales matter - he's that "static" kind of customer, who's not going to change phones, unless he can retire his R2D2 phone in favor of something cooler - like a pit droid phone, or perhaps a C3PO gold phone - but I seriously doubt that people would want a phone that embodies Sheldon Cooper on their hip. Oh, the humanities!<br />
<br />
So what I now theorize is the reason for the droid sales is based on the observation of other folks n my office. Large numbers of them have changed from one droid to another, seemingly often. Now I'll admit, there's some bias in my observation here - I'm an iPhone user - I had a 3GS and enjoy my iPhone 4 now. I also happen to work for a fairly large cellular carrier too - one that carries droid phones too.<br />
<br />
What I have noted is that a good number of other folks in my office appear to replace their droids when as often as the opportunity presents itself. One coworker moved away from his iPhone 3GS over battery issues, and has since had a Motorola Palm-clone, the Palm phone, and 3 different droid models, each one moving forward to a different degree, first from a big screen to a bigger screen, and now he's got the 3D phone. Note that I've not even worked 3 years at this job, but this guy's been through more cell phones than anyone should ever consume - and he's the only person I know who's actually cut away from Apple's iPhone. He still loves his Mac though.<br />
<br />
Another coworker went through a number of Motorola droids before he finally lowered the boom on Verizon with the quiet ultimatum "<i>Guys, I've been a customer for ages and you can't seem to get me into a reliable phone - we've send this droid model (their best one at the time) back for repair/replacement 3 times, what's next?</i>" only to be awarded with an iPhone and a "<i>Please Be Happy</i>". Funny thing is, he's been through a few phones in the last couple of years too - but he's no longer looking at alternatives because he's realized what other iPhone owners (like myself) have realized. Sometimes it's not the gadget that we seek, but rather, it's the reliability of a portable safe haven that just does the job and doesn't die.<br />
<br />
So my realization is a relatively simple one - I think that Droid sales as an overall statistic are generally overstated by the industry that supplies them - if their product was snappier, and it perhaps wasn't so poorly integrated at times, then it's possible that some folks could pick their droids just once, and run with them until they wear out. I think that Droid owners aren't all satisfied, though, some are - and others are just in it to play. With iPhone's, the play is in the device - you don't change them out often, only when the upgrade is out and you're ready (and can afford it - always an Apple factor.)<br />
<br />
So that's my rant - droid sales are driven by blind consumers who keep changing phones looking for a good fit, while they avoid the iPhone on principal, not realizing what they're missing.<br />
<br />
My R2D2 droid friend finally bought a iPad - he says it's for managing his VMware servers are work, and I believe him. I bet he uses that app twice a week to justify having the iPad, and I'm sure he loves his iPad, though he won't admit it. I'd bet money he's got Angry Birds on it now...John C. Silviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796481575930863954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26339088.post-24327672384776415252011-06-11T15:24:00.222-06:002011-06-12T12:48:13.065-06:00Testing Web Services in Load Balanced EnvironmentsSince the Internet has emerged, I've found that effectively testing web services is a sort arcane art form restricted to nerds like me - I have profited from this talent, however, I also think it's something that more people should know how to do.<br />
<br />
Testing cleartext web services is actually simple - I'm sure a number of you have all done it - some readers may find this information remedially trivial, while others of you might decide that it's helpful. In the past I've used the "open the web page" kind of approach - it either works or it doesn't, but that's not detailed enough if you're really wanting to do the job right. There's a lot of testing that can be done using Telnet that most people just don't know about.<br />
<br />
For those of you who do use telnet, please keep in mind that just telneting to the service port isn't good enough - just yesterday I got a call from some colleagues who "tested" a web server by "telneting to it on port 80" - it connected, so we thought it was working. Turns out they were wrong, and it caused a major outage to boot - but it wasn't their fault for not knowing what I know - that's why I get the big bucks.<br />
<br />
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Basic Remote Testing</span></b><br />
<br />
Basic remote testing is done two ways - using a web browser and then with Telnet.<br />
<br />
Lets start with an example server at 192.168.1.100 - you have a web server running there, so you try browsing to it - so you open the website http://192.168.1.100. Now, if this works and returns a page of any kind from the server, then it's all working. <i>This test is important - I might skip this often enough because folks don't usually call me when this works already - when testing this stuff, it never hurts to ask "Did you try browsing to it?" This could save you quite a bit of time on the phone!</i><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
Testing with a web browser does present some problems; what if you get a blank page? that's tough to interpret - and how long does it take to time out? does it time out? different browsers behave differently, so there's a big problem in result interpretation here. Unless you get really good results and know what you're seeing, you should perform more advanced testing.<br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
The telnet test is a little more complicated. Those of you running Windows Vista or Windows 7 will need to actually install the Windows telnet client (it's in Add/Remove Programs, Windows Components) - those of us using Mac's and Linux don't have to worry about this - telnet should be present on our systems already.<br />
<br />
Telnet is a command line tool, so you'll have to open a terminal window in Linux or Mac, or start a command prompt in Windows. From this prompt, to test a web server, all you have to do is type this;<br />
<br />
<b> <i>telnet 192.168.1.100 80</i></b><br />
<br />
Breaking this down, the IP address <i>192.168.1.100</i> is the server we wish to connect to - this can be an IP address or a name like <i>www.google.com</i> - and the number 80 is the port we wish to connect to. If you don't specify the port, telnet will assume that you want to use port 23, which is the standard telnet port. Port 80 is the standard HTTP port. If you're not familiar with the various ports and what they're used for, you can use google or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_TCP_and_UDP_port_numbers">check Wikipedia</a> to find a common TCP services listing.<br />
<br />
Now, if things work right and the server is at least listening on port 80, you will see a "connected" message of some kind - this message is slightly different from one platform to another, but most of the time it will clear the screen if it works. If you get this far, for basic testing, you've done well. Press <i><b>CTRL+]</b></i> key and type <i><b>quit</b></i> and you are returned to your command prompt.<br />
<br />
<div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">If things aren't working right, you will see one of two different categories of problem - either a <i>network response failure</i> or a <i>host response failure</i>.<br />
<br />
A <b>network response failure</b> will manifest with a long wait following by a <i>connection failure</i> message of some kind. These happen if you are being blocked by a firewall or if your traffic is somehow not getting to the server. Some network failures are fast - like if routing fails and you get a <i>destination unreachable</i> error - however, firewall blockages usually take 15-30 seconds to manifest.<br />
<br />
A <b>host response failure</b> will manifest much sooner and usually get a <i>connection refused</i> message - this is a <a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc793.txt">standard RFC-793 response</a> <i>(see pages 33 & 34)</i> telling you that you that the remote service isn't running - if you get a refused message, this rules out interference from firewalls and other things getting in the way in most cases - however, some firewalls can be programmed to send out connection refused messages - so it's a good idea to try doing a traceroute and validate the network path and make sure that none of the firewalls, if any, on the path are messing with things.</div></div><br />
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">HTTP Service Testing</span></b><br />
<br />
Up to this point, we've done only very simple testing of the remote service - we've determined that's listening, but we've not actually discovered if it's working yet. If a server is broken, or a load balancer is messing with you, then basic testing with Telnet isn't enough to know what's really going on yet.<br />
<br />
Service testing means that you don't just connect to the server, but you also must interact with it. There are rules for how the services interact, and each different service is described in it's own RFC. In this case, we're doing to communicate with a web server using <a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt">HTTP protocol</a> on port 80.<br />
<ol><li>Open a command prompt<br />
<br />
</li>
<li>Type in the command <b><i>telnet 192.168.1.100 80</i></b><br />
<br />
At this point you should see a <i>connected</i> message of some kind.<br />
<br />
</li>
<li>The next things you type may or may not be visible (depending on the OS you're using)<br />
<br />
Type:<br />
<br />
<i><b>GET / HTTP/1.1<br />
Host: www.whatever.com:80</b><br />
<b> (Press Enter/Return twice)</b></i></li>
</ol><div>When this is done, and everything is working right. a web page (in HTML form) should spit back at you - and the connection might even close - or it might stay open waiting for more commands.</div><div><br />
</div><div><b>Breakdown of the HTTP 1.1 directives used here:</b></div><div><b><br />
</b></div><div>With Step 2, we use the same command from the <i><b>Basic Remote Testing</b></i> section of this article above. </div><div><div class="p2"><br />
</div><div class="p1">Step 3 has two different command directives in it - these are from the HTTP 1.1 protocol. The first line in step 3 is the <b>GET</b> command. It tells the server what HTML page you want - replace the <b>/</b> with something like <b>/about.html</b> and you can change the page you wish to retrieve. </div><div class="p1"><br />
</div><div class="p1">The second line in step 3 is telling the server what website to get that web page from - remember that the HTTP 1.1 standard allows for <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_hosting">virtual hosting</a></i> - where multiple websites live behind a single IP address. When using HTTP 1.1 you have to tell the server what website you're testing with - and it requires you to separate the server portion of the URL from the page portion.<br />
<br />
Here's some examples:<br />
<br />
Example URL: <i>(a yahoo search result for Open Source Anti-Spam)</i><br />
<br />
http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=Am8gS8IlXhBaelxqn9B0BGibvZx4?p=open+source+anti-spam&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8&fr=yfp-t-701<br />
<br />
This URL can be fetched manually with:<br />
<ol><li><b>telnet search.yahoo.com 80</b></li>
<li><b>GET </b><b>/search;_ylt=Am8gS8IlXhBaelxqn9B0BGibvZx4?p=open+source+anti+spam&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8&fr=yfp-t-701<br />
HostL search.yahoo.com:80<br />
</b></li>
</ol><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Dealing with Load Balancers</span></b></div><div><b><br />
</b></div><div>Up until now, all that I've illustrated here is basic testing. In a load balanced environment there's another added layer of complexity.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Load balancers are designed to take traffic going to one IP, and distribute it to a bank of servers all doing the same job. In this way, a complex website with large amounts of traffic can be hosted on 10 servers, but all look like the same exact website.</div><div><br />
</div><div>One popular form of cheap and easy load balancing is done using DNS. Someone will setup DNS so that their website results provide multiple IP addresses in their results. A great example of this can be seen by running the command <b>nslookup www.google.com </b>- most people will see 2-10 servers in the results list for this, and these results will be customized depending on your ISP and a number of other factors.</div><div><br />
</div><div>This kind of load balancing isn't perfect however - google spends a lot of time and effort to make sure every one of those servers works right - and they also try to point any any servers you might be hosting for them as well - long story there - but large ISP's actually do host their own google caching servers, and this speeds up things substantially.</div><div><br />
</div><div>One common problem when you use DNS balancing is that if you have two servers in the DNS listing, and one of them is offline, your customers will experience a condition called <b>Every Other Request Works</b> - and when this happens, folks will fail the first time, then refresh and things work fine and keep working until 5 minutes pass and their DNS cache expires.</div><div><br />
</div><div>For the common masses, there are load balancing features in firewalls, and there are custom load balancing systems as well - <a href="http://wiki.nginx.org/">nginx</a> is a popular open-source load balancer - and <a href="http://www.f5.com/">F5</a>'s are a popular commercial load balancer. Both work very well and can be found in major networks all over the Internet.</div><div><br />
</div><div>A common term used in load balanced IP's is the <b>VIP</b>. A VIP in this context is a <i>Virtual IP address</i> that the load balancer creates for your website. This VIP is used as the destination for all your web traffic.</div><div><br />
</div><div>So lets take my example from before - my web server on http://192.168.1.100 - now imagine that I've actually got ten of these web servers running - http://192.168.1.100 through http://192.168.1.109 are all identical boxes running with the same content.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Using a load balancer, I can create a <b>pool</b> of web servers and in this pool, each of my ten servers will be defined as members of that pool. I then create my VIP so that the IP address 192.168.1.10 maps into my pool of web servers.</div><div><br />
</div><div>When hunting down problems in this environment, you must test all 11 of these IP addresses to make sure things are working. This means performing the testing described in the <b>HTTP Service Testing</b> section on all 11 IP addresses - from 192.168.1.100, 192.168.1.101 192.168.1.102, through 192.168.1.109 and then on 192.168.1.10.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Problems with load balanced websites can be many and weird - so knowing that everything must be tested is very important.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Testing the front end VIP ensures that the load balancer is running correctly; testing the servers on the back end ensures that they're all working properly.</div><div><br />
</div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Load Balancer Health Checking</span></b></div><div><br />
</div><div>Engineers working in load balanced environments should be aware of is that all load balancers have integrated health checking - and if the person who setup the load balancer didn't setup the health checks properly, then you can experience many nasty weird problems.</div><div><br />
</div><div>If health checks aren't enabled, it's possible that you can access a perfectly good VIP and get nothing back beyond a basic RFC-793 TCP/IP handshake - because it may have forwarded your request to an offline server.</div><div><br />
</div><div>If health checks are setup with simple checks, then the load balancer might just do <i>Basic Remote Testing</i> - and that's it. If a back end server in the pool is responding and connecting on port 80, but isn't actually responding to full GET commands, a load balancer doing Basic Remote Testing will eventually forward traffic to that dead server. Some load balancers may only simply ping your webservers - and responding to a ping has nothing to do with checking a web service.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Health checks, when properly setup, perform full <i>HTTP Service Testing - </i>talking and testing each server, fetching a complete web page. When a server stops responding or doesn't pass the health check tests, then it's disabled in the pool - and the load balancer engineer should be notified by email.</div><div><br />
</div><div>In conclusion, I hope you find this article helpful - it covers a lot of ground, but the processes described here are easy enough to remember and follow - and you may just impress some folks if you can pull these out of your hat and call the right engineers first. If everyone working in NOC or helpdesk environments knew these techniques, they could cut hours off their troubleshooting calls.</div><div><br />
</div><div><i>Cheers, </i></div><div><i>-JS</i></div></div></div>John C. Silviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796481575930863954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26339088.post-50476607020294921732011-02-20T16:18:00.000-07:002011-02-20T16:18:37.042-07:00Don't ever list an iPhone for $200My wife and I recently upgraded ourselves to new iPhone 4's, and boy were we surprised at the feeding frenzy that ensued when I listed them both on Craigslist for $200 each. What a mistake!<br />
<br />
They were listed 90 minutes ago, one picture, and the phones were complete with original headset, cable, box, Etc. Both were 16gb white 3GS's as well. I thought "hey, my new ones cost this much, I'm happy breaking even..."... Right after listing them on Craigslist, I went to make a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches for the kids, only to have my phone ring as I was getting ready to put butter on bread for sandwich #2.<br />
<br />
The first caller waffled a bit - he was at work, had to take a break, hold them, Etc. During that call, I got another call - this guy learned I had two, wanted them both, was ready to pay cash, was nearby, and on his way, when I flipped back to the original caller, he decided to come as well.<br />
<br />
By the time I managed to get the second sandwich onto the pan, I'd handled 10 calls, and the second caller had gotten here with more cash than I was asking to take both phones! While the guy was here I got 5 more calls, and had to deal with 10 text messages too - since I'd taken the ad down off Craigslist, another 10 calls came in.<br />
<br />
Holy crap!<br />
<br />
I know iPhone's are immensely popular, in spite of what the hypnotized android using masses say, and I must admit, I'm shocked by just how popular these things are. I should have realized this when my wife and I got the last two iPhone4's the AT&T store at the mall had.<br />
<br />
I'm not going into the business of selling iPhones, but in case you're considering selling an iPhone, here's what I suggest you do;<br />
<br />
<b>The Piratefish Guide to How to Sell Your Old iPhone</b><br />
<br />
<ol><li>Be sure you have a backup of the phone, complete with all your applications backed up and happy on the replacement iPhone.</li>
<li>Don't give the buyer any excuse to bid you down on price. Remove all covers, skins, Etc. from the old phone and wash it up nicely with a little window cleaner. Use a q-tip to get the gunk out of the switch and bottom holes if you prefer. If you have the original box, get all the bits and pieces together, and clean the box with a little window cleaner as well. </li>
<li>Go into the phone, do a complete RESET and WIPE of the phone's data. After it's wiped, plug it into your computer and tell it this is a new phone (don't restore it) - this will allow folks to test it, but whatever you do, don't reload any contacts or anything.</li>
<li>Take a picture of it - just one will do.</li>
<li>List it on CraigsList if you dare, eBay will get a similar price, but take much longer.</li>
<li>Take only cash.</li>
<li>Make them come to you! Don't offer to meet anyone anywhere - these are expensive phones. You're safer in your home.</li>
<li>Be prepared to de-list the Craigslist posting within 30 minutes of listing.</li>
<li>Don't offer to "hold the phone" for anyone - if they're not ready to leave now to get to your place and they don't say that, wait 5 minutes and someone else will be ready to come over and get it. Anyone waffling on the phone should be told this outright. This is rude, but frankly, you're getting rid of a phone here and the act of selling is an inconvenience - they shouldn't call if they're not holding cash and are ready to drive over immediately when they call you.</li>
</ol><br />
Now, I don't think I've left anything important out, but there is one more thing I've learned in this process, and that's what a successful buyer did, and what someone should do if they want to buy one.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b>The Piratefish Guide to How to Buy a Used iPhone</b></div><div><ol><li>Get the sufficient cash needed to purchase the phone - then get $40 more for the "just in case" scenario.</li>
<li>Gas your car up.</li>
<li>Get your "map" on.</li>
<li>Be ready to drive immediately after you make the phone call. The guy selling the iPhone isn't going to sit around and wait all day - when you call, you want to be first.</li>
<li>Get into Craigslist and start searching for the iPhone you want.</li>
<li>Keep on clicking refresh until you see a listing respond with something you like - plan on doing this for an hour or two. It's worth the effort to take your time and wait - the number of people who contacted me proves this.</li>
<li>Once you see it, call the person if you can - don't text them, don't email them - CALL THEM.</li>
<li>If they have the phone, tell them you're ready to go now - and get directions to where they want to meet and go immediately. If you can, bring a friend, but don't delay or tell them you'll be a "couple of hours" - if you delay, you will loose the sale. If you must delay, offer them more money for it - the "just in case" fund is for this - to get them to wait, you gotta pay.</li>
<li>When examining an iPhone, be sure to look for cracks on the edges, scratches in the metal on the corners, scratches on the Apple Logo on the back and scratches on the screen. Also, check to make sure it works a bit - if the phone is in "itunes" mode (displaying a "plug me in" screen) then you won't be able to test it - I'd request that they plug it into their computer and get it past that screen so that you can test the speaker.</li>
</ol><div><b>Why bring a friend when buying an iPhone?</b></div><div><br />
</div><div>Please take note: I'm a security guy by trade, so it's my job to think of worst-case scenarios, and one disturbing one came to mind after this experience.</div><div><br />
</div><div>The reason I advise folks to bring a friend when buying an iPhone is to hold your extra money and sit in your car, and to be ready to call 911 if something goes down. Sounds paranoid, but I've realized that all it takes is one Evil SOB with no morals whatsoever to figure out how to rob potential iPhone buyers.</div></div><div><br />
</div><div>Cheers!</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"></div><ol></ol>John C. Silviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796481575930863954noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26339088.post-30053887282577718572011-02-10T15:40:00.001-07:002011-02-22T12:19:51.447-07:00Spotting Counterfeit Cisco TransceiversA co-worker recently brought something interesting over for me to look at - he was getting ready to ship out some 10gig XFP's for one of our sites, went into our store room, grabbed some and got back to his desk, only to find that the two identically labelled models, one from Thailand and one from Malaysia, both X2-10GB-SR modules from Cisco, seemed suspicious given the current scares about bogus Cisco hardware in the wild.<br />
<br />
Being paranoid, we've contacted Cisco, but they've been less than helpful in anything other than verifying that both have valid serial numbers so far - but we've escalated the discussion to see if anyone in the community can help!<br />
<br />
Here they are:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHDIIWxz5bazo-RqYF-K4V4lAd1NMULS-0VG6u4dCQe5DVguNjP_i8nWwyYg3Je2kh3oA2hafziw2bKhBdETx4kC2FQj_F5ZwysBlW3Gs1avptL6sUStYROasrYjDxOBsNu_yG8A/s1600/Top.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="274" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHDIIWxz5bazo-RqYF-K4V4lAd1NMULS-0VG6u4dCQe5DVguNjP_i8nWwyYg3Je2kh3oA2hafziw2bKhBdETx4kC2FQj_F5ZwysBlW3Gs1avptL6sUStYROasrYjDxOBsNu_yG8A/s320/Top.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<br />
Of the two XFP's above, the upper one weighs in (unofficially) as about one ounce - very light indeed. The lower unit has substantially more mass to it - it weighs in (unofficially) at 3-4 ounces - it's much heavier and feels more solid - it was this difference that first set off my coworker, and has the rest of us wondering.<br />
<br />
The first pic shows the labels on the two units (serial numbers blotted)<br />
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</div>Note that the upper label looks great, but this is on the light weight one, so we're scratching our heads even more - Cisco even said the serial was okay, but serials can be copied. What's even weirder is that the logo on the lower one actually looks cheesier when you get really close in.<br />
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The next picture is the sides - once the weight made us look, we then started to notice more interesting little things about these:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIyVmowlaFZ8FCKqC8rSA1qr_b3xFr3iv55xWAmCJ7gxMkaoCs1xmsBnzngWn5M1s7szsfornxGILyXxBi0PEyrBqoUZN3nJindxDvZseyjK5qBaXqPT39hrJGIqLQ4IKSlr35uw/s1600/Side-by-Side.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIyVmowlaFZ8FCKqC8rSA1qr_b3xFr3iv55xWAmCJ7gxMkaoCs1xmsBnzngWn5M1s7szsfornxGILyXxBi0PEyrBqoUZN3nJindxDvZseyjK5qBaXqPT39hrJGIqLQ4IKSlr35uw/s320/Side-by-Side.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
The light weight XFP has obvious flashing on the sides, on both sides in fact, where you can see it was cast in a large mold, broken, and finished poorly with a cheap foam gasket and a large thick faceplate. The heavy XFP has a beautiful finish on it, the parts fit better, smaller gaps in the case, the faceplate is thinner and the gasket is a higher quality foam with a conductive steel sheath. The plastic components on both are impeccable - nothing obvious, however, there are mold marks (good ones) on the heavyweight XFP which indicate higher quality manufacturing controls. Also note that the lock pins on the light weight model are much sloppier in design when compared to the heavy weight.<br />
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Now some folks might call me nit-picky, but screws are something I take notice of as well.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6NgoOyw9wromALuIQOZa5gNsqaJQ3yuz8YjMFkBwQVc3G2vnLoG1RFKPOQIwlMcsWAu1iYGdwGOz5XFCHURQrvqixlg7shYCBmX76U6iKYLHmyy8PkzkuDIoYnSYlgK1i7QTqZQ/s1600/Screws.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="146" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6NgoOyw9wromALuIQOZa5gNsqaJQ3yuz8YjMFkBwQVc3G2vnLoG1RFKPOQIwlMcsWAu1iYGdwGOz5XFCHURQrvqixlg7shYCBmX76U6iKYLHmyy8PkzkuDIoYnSYlgK1i7QTqZQ/s320/Screws.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
The picture on the left is the light-weight XFP - and it's got phillips head screws on it. The other one has torx head screws - and they're recessed too. Much higher quality on the heavy one here in my opinion.<br />
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The last picture to share is the edge connector on the cards:<br />
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</div>Now call me picky again, but here if you look close, you'll see on the left-hand side, the circuit card on the light-weight XFP seems to have a glossy epoxy coating on it - the four round solder pads above the last few pings show "dimpling" where the epoxy coating seems to be dented in. On the heavy weight XFP, the board has a consistent, flat non-glossy finish - the leads are clear, the pins appear to etched with better quality, Etc. Etc.<br />
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Now here's the question: Until Cisco comes back with an answer on this, there seems to be nobody out there saying definitively "here's how to spot bogus Cisco stuff" - and this is there I'm hoping to hear from you!<br />
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Update: 2/22/2011 - So, our Cisco SE was on site today and we brought this to him - as it turns out, the upper logo that appears on the XFP stickers is the newer logo - the darker logo on the bottom (heavy) XFP is actually an older logo design - pre 2005 apparently.<br />
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From a design perspective, these are drastically different XFP designs, however, one thing was pointed out by our rep. If you have support, call the TAC, and the XFP's are appearing as Cisco in the IOS, then they're supported and it doesn't matter if they're clone hardware or not.<br />
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Another item to note: newer designs generally have lighter heatsinks and less insulation because newer chip designs are less noisy/leaky and generate less waste heat as well.John C. Silviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796481575930863954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26339088.post-53369753378661498382011-01-13T20:41:00.006-07:002011-01-14T11:05:01.444-07:00Why Apple will keep owning the tablet market for now<b><i>Apple shall dominate the tablet market until the next new tech comes along.</i></b><br />
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This might be a bold statement coming from an apparent Apple fanboy, but lets examine some market paradigms before you dismiss my statement.<br />
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Lets start with a few reality bites that can and probably do affect Apple's position: <i>(Note: these are not listed in any particular order.)</i><br />
<ol><li>Apple's "our way or the highway" approach to Apps has made enemies in some development circles.</li>
<li>Apple acts like a sort of gestapo when it comes to what apps are allowed.</li>
<li>The tech of the iPad isn't remarkable.</li>
<li>No camera, no video conferencing.</li>
<li>It's very expensive, bordering on over priced.</li>
<li>Lack of, or at best, weak, multi-tasking capabilities.</li>
<li>It's a giant iPod.</li>
</ol><div>Each of these points has been discussed at length online, and as much as I'd like to present my own re-hashes of these points, I'm going to refrain this;<br />
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<i> They're all correct.</i><br />
<i><br />
</i></div><div>For each of the items listed, a google search on that subject will return you 100's of links discussing that very point - enough crap that I could write 7 entire blog entries, one each for each subject. If you're reading this, then you've likely ready all of that crap already - just like I have.<br />
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</div><div>Note: The fanboys who read this will probably yell blaspheme and point at me like the Evil Monkey if they see me on the street. I can deal with that.<br />
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</div><div>One other thing that I can say for each of those items is that I don't agree with all of them - or perhaps, depending on my own personal rationalizations, I should rather state this:<br />
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</div><div><i> Don't entirely blame Apple, they're necessary evils - and it's our fault.</i><br />
<i><br />
</i></div><div>Please bear in mind that someone with something to protect can't simply ignore their rules - one bad apple ruins everything for everyone. Don't believe me? How many of you will buy Android apps from Bob's Hack Store using a credit card?<br />
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</div><div>Despite the hoopla, sales say otherwise - people are buying iPad's like crazy, and not knowing the actual retail numbers - I can say that every major retailer I visited was out of stock on all the iPad's they had this season - trips through Target and Walmart showed me empty cases - devoid even of demo units, during the last week before Christmas. Enough that Acer, and probably all the other retailers, are already bitching about lower than estimated PC sales during the 2010 holiday buying season.<br />
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</div>Regardless of the Apple's and the iPad's shortcomings, of which there are many, its wide array of applications and its broad appeal are spelling out a marketing and product success that will last for years, defining the standard for tablet computers for some time to come.<br />
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Now keep in mind, Apple's iPad isn't the first tablet attempt - there were plenty of other failures along the path over the years - Toshiba has had tablet PC's out for quite some time - and HP likely squandered their opportunity as well when they never made a Windows CE tablet that was either interesting or capable enough. Nobody is brave enough to try entering the OS market with anything visionary except Apple, and their vision is tempered by decades of GUI experience.<br />
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There have in fact been a vast array of tablet PC's that came before the iPad, and none of them were cool, slim or dedicated to the simple task of being hand-held and easy to use. Apple's own Newton Tablet (which I also owned long ago) was quite a kicking setup for its time, though its handwriting interface was, in my own opinion, a total failure. Being a terrible cursive writer, I was never able to tap the potential of the Newton.<br />
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Apple has certainly cleaned up however - their iPhone/iPod Touch OS, made large, has definitely proven to be a serious contender in the world of computing - and it's not often that so little can do so much.<br />
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Certainly, there's plenty of "next generation" tablets out there - the Android forces are definitely gathering for war in this marketplace, but I fear that they will ultimately fail. The reality is that the tablet war is over for now, and the next fight will not be over video conferencing or connectivity options or anything in that realm. Apple has won that war too, and the first shots of the competition are coming, and they will never be heard.<br />
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I liken the Tablet Computing Wars to the Video Game Systems wars: There can be only one winner at a time -- <i>Until the next best thing comes along.</i> There is always room for others.<br />
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If this is truly an extension of this kind of techno-warefare, then were in for plenty of wannabe's before the "room for others" finally gets filled with the winners circle. Remember, the video game wars had plenty of players before the market finally settled on the dominant players - and the dominant gaming console changed over time - the earliest console worth remembering was the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_2600">Atari 2600</a>, then <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega">Sega </a>dominated for a while, then <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo">Nintendo</a>, then Sega Genesis, then <a href="http://www.sony.com/">Playstation</a>, then Nintendo again, then the PS2, then the <a href="http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/">XBox</a>, and since then, the XBox 360, the PS3 and the Wii have been socking it out - as far as folks can see, there are no other consoles worth the time or effort - those 3 probably account for 99.9% of all gaming consoles.<br />
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Now that the <a href="http://www.xbox.com/en-US/Xbox360/Accessories/Kinect/Home">Kinect </a>is out, and based on the demo's I've played, I would say that it will over time dominate Microsofts position and rule the field for quite some time. Well done Microsoft! At least you did something right for a change.<br />
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As for Sony's PS3, well, the Blu-Ray player built into the PS3 still helps it enjoy a strong position, but if the movie prices remain offensively high, people will never stop buying DVD's. If Sony doesn't come up with their version of Kinect quick then they're doomed to remain in third place behind both the Wii and Xbox 360. Their "motion" solution, with those horribly stupid looking ball-ended controllers sucks - they screwed the pooch on that one - and the only saving grace for my PS3 is it's media playing abilities - but those are hampered by their self-serving content protection measures that sometimes creep up. Steaming media is killing even that functionality though - my Apple TV with Netflix has ensured that we didn't have any movies under our Christmas tree this year.<br />
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Endangering Sony's position even further is their enraging users of the PS3's "3rd party OS" support by removing it. This caused hackers to focus on breaking the PS3, and they didn't just succeed - they did something that Sony fears most - <a href="http://marsvg.com/2011/01/03/hackers-discover-ps3-master-key/">hackers cracked their master encryption key</a>. It's now possible to pirate any software on the PS3 platform, and there's no way for Sony to know you're using illegal copies. Sony has lost all ability to protect their content on the platform, and the only way to fix this is to replace all the PS3's out there with something better, like the PS4. The real rub is that, while the PS3 did have some backwards compatibility with the PS2 games, a new PS4 can not have ANY backwards compatibility with the existing base of PS3 games because they have no way to know which games are legitimate and which are illegal copies. Had Sony not messed with things, their master key could have gone for years longer without exposure or cracking had they not pissed in the wrong people's lunches.<br />
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The Wii has dominated in it's segment - it fills in the "discount gamers" niche quite nicely - while the XBox 360 and PS3 gamers fight their holy-war to determine who's the best. It's not a media player. It's got motion, but with limits, and the games focus on group play more than most - and these are big pluses in a world that is increasing isolated by FPS gamer heads - and those segments are filled with XBox and PS3 players anyway.<br />
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In the world of tablet computing, we've now reached our first Atari 2600 moment. There's a dominant product in the space - and that product, like the 2600, has dominated the space and defined it. There will be plenty of also-rans, but only one iPad for the foreseeable future. Just like the 2600 dominated during its time - there were alternatives, but they really never had the traction to take over until they hit the "next level". We'll see this trend in tablets too I think - there will be some cool stuff coming, and it will all be Android based, but the field may be filled with plenty of options that just don't seem to take over the top slot from Apple, because they just won't be that far ahead.<br />
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I think there will be a time where the iPad is surpassed by someone else's tech, but what puts that tech ahead of the iPad cannot be quantified at this time - we don't know what it will be yet. It's Apple's job to find out what that is, help refine it, and make sure that they're the one's selling it to us - and if they fail at that job then they'll loose the pole position in this field - for a time anyway.<br />
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Google is banking on cloud integration, and that may hold true for many things - but then, Apple is also working similar angles. I personally see the education market being the next big corner of the tablet world - my daughter seems to be enamored with the iPad, but her locking brains with Backyardigans on <a href="http://www.netflix.com/">Netflix </a>will only hold out for so long - she likes playing with the educational apps I download on it - and I see her eventually having my iPad and my moving into an Apple Macbook Air 13". I'd love to see a real-world version of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Stephenson">Neal Stephensons</a> of the Young Womens Primer from <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age">The Diamond Age</a></i> come to the iPad.John C. Silviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796481575930863954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26339088.post-33380777476927874312010-10-31T19:49:00.001-06:002010-10-31T19:49:20.151-06:00You know you've used the iPad too long when...The euphoria of owning an iPad lasts. No, really, when you're using it, you feel a connection - like owning a dragon or something, it's like.. and extension of you, like perhaps I'm part Borg, and have a low bandwidth connection to the collective..<br /><br />Anyway, I've started to realize some things in my life that have changed, and only 4 days since I've gotten my iPad.<br /><br />For starters, for the first time, I'm not as worried about being without a power connection nearby. I'm the kind of guy who ALWAYS has extra power cables for my laptops - if they're not plugged into the wall, they're not usable to me. I don't know why I'm like that, but hey, it's just the way I am. If I'm not getting all of the processor, I'm just not satisfied.<br /><br />With my iPad, I've actually run my battery down to 65% and didn't sweat the current state of charge - even now I'm home and writing my blog, using my new Apple bluetooth keyboard, and my iPads just happily buzzing along at 84%. Nice. Almost amazing really. This thing is a total miser.<br /><br />So, we're in our usual Monday meeting with my team, and our boss angles his 32" monitor our way to discuss some of the craziness that makes our jobs great, and as I'm sitting closest to his screen and leaning in to see, I actually caught myself reaching out to touch his screen to try and scroll it down! I mean, I didn't touch the boss's screen, but I did pause for a moment in the air, and then I retracted. As my co-workers looked at me curiously, I explained that I had just fought the urge to scroll Ben's screen downwards with my fingertip. The room roared. That moment, I realized, that the iPad has started to change me, and that things will never be the same.<br /><br />I'm certain that it will be a strange trip, but I can't wait to see where it takes me.<br /><br />I've always wondered what it would be like when our basic thoughts about how computing works would change, and I like where the iPad ios leading things - I mean, we've always used our computers and thought about how things were stored, and the design of the PC and the Mac all work with buckets - this bucket paradigm, as it were, is the basic concept of the computer as a device of different kinds of storage, and what we do fits into those buckets, and is ultimately, limited by them. Buckets of disk, buckets of RAM, offline buckets, Etc. PC users think of disks as drive letters - and what happens when there's more than 26 disk drives?<br /><br />At least in the land of Linux (and Mac) the storage-centric bucket paradigm has been broken down a little - instead of buckets, we have mount points, all linked to the big bucket called /. But even so, people still work in folders, and have the inherent need to organize their stuff in folders, which further reinforces the presence of the bucket paradigm.<br /><br />The need for these buckets was necessitated by the early computer designs that we all grew up with - of course, back when things were on the SS-50 bus the buckets were a lot smaller. Top end video cards come with more than a gigabyte of storage, and 28 years ago, the Atari 2600 video game system was dominating the home gaming market, and it had 127 bytes of video memory. And both of these systems, the new and old, live and die by the bucket paradigm.<br /><br />I see a future where computer storage becomes ubiquitous with the computer itself. Is that far fetched? I think not - I think the iPad/iPod/iPhone is the best step away from that direction in a great many years. I mean, certainly, one can see the device itself as a bucket, but when it comes to the operational side of things, in an organizational point of view, all you're ever dealing with is just one bucket - and I think that in the bucket paradigm, the computer itself should be exempt, until cloud computing comes into the picture.<br /><br />When I work on my iPad, I don't have to think about file locations, or cloud my mind with what kind of structure I'll need to solve this problem or that problem - all that concerns me is that I focus on what needs to be done, and I work on it and get it done. I find the freedom of not caring about what I'm doing or where I'm putting it, is something of a welcome release. I do certainly expect that at some point the computer might not be large enough, and I'm certain that I'll need to organize my stuff in folders, but I'm happy knowing that no application I can get won't run on my hardware. It's funny tyo say this now, but it's actual quite a relief to find that I don't have to deal<br /> with hacking together my OS every time starting from an insecure please.<br /><br /><br /><br />-- Post From My iPad<br /><p class='blogpress_location'>Location:<a href='http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Marshall%20St,Northeast%20Jefferson,United%20States%4039.774563%2C-105.068191&z=10'>Marshall St,Northeast Jefferson,United States</a></p>John C. Silviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796481575930863954noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26339088.post-89222007236575333572010-08-20T00:28:00.000-06:002010-08-20T00:28:00.436-06:00Piratefish Site Moved, Version 4.6 is out!Okay, so it's been a while since any updates here, so there's plenty to talk about. I could rant on about the little things, like my slow conversion to Mac, how much I love my iPad, how mad I am at Tic Tac's dropping the peppermint flavor for the new Freshmint flavor, and sneaking it into stores everywhere. It still amazes me how many times people have to pull the "New Coke" stunt just to try and revive their sales. It's either that, or the owner died and his son wants to pay off his new Ferrari. I hope they bring back the original peppermint flavor soon - I really miss it. Freshmint reminds me of what mints taste like when I'm done puking and want to try and kill the puke flavor that toothbrushing can't reach in the back of my throat, so I eat a mint, and it tastes like Freshmint Tic Tacs. But I digress.<br />
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For starters, version 4.6 of the Piratefish is out - for those of you who've been wondering if Ubuntu will EVER update their copy of the MailScanner software, well, it doesn't matter - we have an alternative to their poorly managed update system, and it's documented in the latest version, available to all previous owners of the guide. This solves a major problem folks had been having with mail looping on their fish.<br />
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Next: The New Website. The Piratefish site has grown over the years, starting from FrontPage, then going to Dreamweaver, and now finally to WordPress. WordPress, for those not familiar, is a CMS (Content Management System) that handles all the time-consuming website stuff like formatting, graphics, looks, Etc. with a nice point and click web-based management interface. Combining this with a blog-like approach to content, it's now easier than ever to update the site, document new releases, Etc. After spending some time with it, I'm convinced that it's the best way to go when it comes to building websites now - the plugins and widgets make customizing a snap, and the template options are quite nice too. There's still a learning curve for anyone managing it, but there's a lot of power available, even for a guy like me.<br />
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On the conversion to Mac front, I had a recent pleasant experience moving the wife's PC into a Parallels Virtual Machine - her old machine was starting to show some stress on the north bridge, plus it had a habit of overheating as it was breathing too much dust. Running the Parallels Migration Tool on it left the machine packing up a copy of itself for 3.5 hours, but the end result was a 100gb file on the machine which I then moved to the Mac. Parallels booted the VM instantly (it was on an AMD system too) and other than loading up some drivers to get the integration to work, it was a piece of cake. Definitely a well rounded tool there.<br />
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On a more or less different front than the usual list of rants, I recently completed the Cisco Troubleshoot class. If you're a serious Cisco admin, this class might be worthless do you, but for those of us who've moved on from Cisco and haven't quite kept up with all the little tips and tricks for debugging within IOS, this class can provide you with some excellent growth for your Cisco grey matter.<br />
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Speaking grey matter, I'm feeling nauseated once again. Better find something to eat soon that's not Freshmints - otherwise I'll be tasting them again in a very bad way that no amount of burritos could solve. Even the Santiago's Burritos that the boss got us at work the other day were better - and when they say they're "hot green chile" - you'd better believe it. I got one of them and darn near added new holes into my throat. Even the consultant from India who sits next to me had a hard time with his burrito, and he had a medium heat one - this from guys who use ghost chile's as elephant repellent on their fences and in-laws.<br />
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As for other headaches, my biggest one now is what to do with all the leftover stuff I have from upgrading two computers to Macs in my house - I mean, I've got two rack-mount servers without jobs, and I've also got a Packeteer Traffic Shaper sitting in my office gathering dust, and I've converted my Acer Aspire Revo into a low power server by adding an external Toshiba 1TB eSATA disk drive. One thing about these eSATA drives - seems that the cables can be somewhat sensitive to direction in some cases - in mine, the Toshiba drive had this nasty curve on the case, which forced me to shave some of the excess plastic off my only eSATA cable. The speed difference is great though with it - beats the pants off USB drives. I figure a trip to the Mile High Flea Market with all my stuff is probably in my future.John C. Silviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796481575930863954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26339088.post-69687571505175106552010-06-01T20:05:00.000-06:002010-06-01T20:05:28.996-06:00Piratefish Site UpdatedSo, after ages, I've finally gotten around to updating the Piratefish site a goodly bit - I figure, when I move the site to it's new home in a new CMS system, it would be a good idea to at least have the old version reasonably updated before committing myself to it's new home.<br />
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Just so folks know, I'm angling towards hosting Piratefish on a WordPress site - this will provide the web-based access I need to update the site more quickly, plus provide the extras that folks would appreciate - like being able to read it on their iPhones without extensively zooming in on content. More info and links as things get closer to done. The nice folks at GoDaddy, who've been hosting me for years on the cheap, have raised pricing substantially compared to 2007 - $15/year has become $5/month - so it'll be time to move the site one way or another, very soon.<br />
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Version 4.5 is now out - it's got updates, a lost chapter has been "found" (at least it's in the table of contents now) and I've managed to test and integrate a lot of goodies into this version. Naturally of course, Ubuntu had to "celebrate" by releasing a new version of Ubuntu Server, but fortunately, not much has changed since the last version.<br />
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No new features have been integrated in since the addition of MailWatch - though, the site now has a <a href="http://www.piratefish.org/Piratefish%20Anti-Spam%20System%20v4.5beta-sample.pdf">sample PDF available here</a> in case anyone is interested in seeing what the doc looks like before buying it. MailWatch integration is about 80% complete, with the grunt work of defining all the little bits and pieces still needing to be documented - the most useful feature - the spam quarantine controls - are the hardest to document by a long shot.John C. Silviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796481575930863954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26339088.post-45750101454480829222010-04-03T09:04:00.003-06:002010-04-05T00:56:19.982-06:00iPad Saturday - not so mad after all, but I got out early...This morning my wife and I got up, and made tracks down to the Park Meadows Mall to get my iPad. The crowds were definitely present, but it was quite amazing how quickly and efficiently they handled the mobs.<br />
<br />
We arrived at 8:40am, Apple said to show at 9am - the store officially opens at 10am (with the rest of the mall). The lucky reservists, like myself, who'd reserved their unit early, got treated to free Starbucks, Smart Water (no kidding) and granola bars. They had built two lines - one for reservists and one for those hoping to get theirs without reserving one. The staff did say that they'd communicate with folks actively as to the condition of their supplies, and would let folks know once they'd run out. When we got there, there was perhaps 45-50 people in line for the reserved units, and that line grew to more than 100 in short order. The unreserved purchase line was much longer. Apparently some folks thought that reserving the unit cost money as well - perhaps not a horrifying mis-understanding, but I think stating "free reservation" is better than "reservation" for future marketing prep.<br />
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<a href="http://blogpress.w18.net/photos/10/04/03/664.jpg"><img border="0" height="210" src="http://blogpress.w18.net/photos/10/04/03/s_664.jpg" style="margin: 5px;" width="281" /></a><br />
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The transaction went smoothly, and we were in and out of there fast. I got a 64gb unit along with the case. When I asked about the case, another sales rep danced up fast, handed me a unit already in a case, and that was my first time ever holding one. These things definitely have some weight to them, but the case is surprisingly rubbery as well - a definite must have for the iPad owner.<br />
<br />
They did not have the keyboard dock - I was quite bummed with that - and much to my dismay, I have a feeling that this won't be able to charge by just being plugged into my computer - the 10watt AC adapter might just be something I'll need an extra of. Once unpacked, the unit was fully charged and just needed to be synced with my iTunes. All my media, music and apps moved over without too much trouble as well.<br />
<br />
I've downloaded all the updates, and I'm sure more are coming out as well - I installed iBooks as well as Stanza - Stanza is much better at finding free content, but once I know what I want, I can probably find it in iBooks and get it without paying for it as well. The iBookstore seems a bit like an early release in Apple land to me - it's plenty polished, but seemingly very limited. I'm sure that many new features and options will appear as time goes on.<br />
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The movie and audio quality are all what folks thought they'd be - I'm very impressed with the screen and the quality of the multi-touch.<br />
<br />
Importing my picture collection was definitely an interesting experience - apparently they don't actually move your pictures, but rather, iTunes runs an optimizer on them first, and then brings them all in. My 16gb of pictures loaded into something like 1.7gb of space! The picture navigation interface is definitely cool stuff.<br />
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I tried to do some playing around with Bluetooth on my email station that runs Windows 7, and was plenty entertained by the Bluetooth connection process. Windows recognized it as an Entertainment Device (hilarious!), but failed to load a driver.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpDvrviv9pxPoqAh-WQVPe9NqGzX2HqA2QH47rUhr0dMMpNfj9Ut8-RBLBFYgLHeSjRMQ_3WlrkXLX5Kgr3_vSUnes7sT5rBpNI5tAGHPnbZv4rAEQuujh7OP-jSV51ej9iCxrHA/s1600/Entertainment+Device.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpDvrviv9pxPoqAh-WQVPe9NqGzX2HqA2QH47rUhr0dMMpNfj9Ut8-RBLBFYgLHeSjRMQ_3WlrkXLX5Kgr3_vSUnes7sT5rBpNI5tAGHPnbZv4rAEQuujh7OP-jSV51ej9iCxrHA/s320/Entertainment+Device.jpg" /></a></div><br />
Anyway, I'm going to post more updates as I get around to it. Definitely a lot to explore on this thing!<br />
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Update: Its official, the default background makes folks think the screen is scratched. Nice move Apple.<br />
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Chargers are definitely going to be a necessary extra - turns out the 10 watts these things need isn't available from a standard PC USB port. Apple seems to have anticipated this in their hardware though, as their latest machines provide the correct power. Looks like battery life will be tested - need to test the car charger options to see if they can cut it. Perhaps my old iPod stuff will work... <br />
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Update: Sunday<br />
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Okay, so I like actually went outside and tested some things. PC users of iPads are going to be bummed until a high-powered USB port somehow. PC's can NOT charge an iPad - they just keep it from dying. My car charger does charge it. The $20 Belkin charger I picked up at Wal-Mart doesn't charge it. My iPhone mini-cube charger DOES charge it! I gave the Belkin to my son for his iPad Mini, er, iTouch, and took my mini-cube back and will leave it in my bag. It probably just barely charges, but slower. No smoke yet either, but I'll be watching.<br />
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The screen does show fingerprints badly, however, video quality is definitely top notch. The Netflix app is hot - now I can watch (and actually hear) a movie without blasting out the house while I'm on my treadmill - and I'm not squinting at something I cross-coded for my iPhone anymore either! Booya!<br />
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So now the news reports that Apple may have sold more than 700,000 of these on day 1. Wow. I mean, lets put this in perspective - if the average price of an iPad is $599, that means they solve $419 million dollars on day 1. That's $419 MEGA dollars. Avatar pulled in only 232 million on opening weekend, and it wasn't a holiday. Apple released this on EASTER WEEKEND! Like, worst sales date ever - only one buying day, and then everyone takes Sunday off. Even if you correct for Apple's cost per unit, adjusting the $419 down by say... 60% (which is high from what I've seen).<br />
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But wait, there's more. At the same time as this. Apple released their office suite for only $30 - and that's the most downloaded item in the iPad store now!<br />
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Cheers!<br />
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- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone<br />
<div class="blogpress_location">Location:<a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Park%20Meadows%20Center%20Dr,Sedalia,United%20States%4039.562033%2C-104.874432&z=10">Park Meadows Center Dr,Sedalia,United States</a></div>John C. Silviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796481575930863954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26339088.post-77719144520380338332010-03-13T11:03:00.002-07:002010-03-26T19:45:24.262-06:00Goodnight, Netbook.<div class="MsoNormal">Goodnight <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">AC Adapter,</i></div><div class="MsoNormal">Goodnight <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">BIOS Messages,<br />
</i>Goodnight <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Windows Boot,<br />
</i>Goodnight User Chooser.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Goodnight <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Windows Update,<br />
</i>Goodnight <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Windows Genuine Advantage,<br />
</i>Goodnight <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Updates Complete, Time to Reboot,<br />
</i>Goodnight Reboot.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Goodnight <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Anti-Virus Scan,<br />
</i>Goodnight <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Anti-Spyware Program,<br />
</i>Goodnight <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Internet Explorer, Firefox & Chrome,<br />
</i>Goodnight Mouse.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Goodnight<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Installation Media,<br />
</i>Goodnight <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Heavy Lump,<br />
</i>Goodnight <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Low-Resolution Screen,<br />
</i>Goodnight Over-sized dialog boxes off the bottom of my screen,</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Goodnight <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Outlook,<br />
</i>Goodnight <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Flash,<br />
</i>Goodnight<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> PDF Reader,<br />
</i>Goodnight Adobe. And don’t come back.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Goodnight <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Battery life concerns,<br />
</i>Goodnight <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">CPU Cooling Fan,<br />
</i>Goodnight <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Keyboard,<br />
</i>Goodnight Netbook.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Hello <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Big Touch Screen,</i><br />
Hello <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Always on,</i><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Hello <i>Cheap Apps,</i></div>Hello iPad.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And good night to tech support, at least for now.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>John C. Silviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796481575930863954noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26339088.post-55355895695874846172010-02-15T22:44:00.000-07:002010-02-15T22:44:40.345-07:00MailWatch for Piratefish - it's in Beta now...So, for those of you who want to live dangerously, I've added a new chapter on setting up MailWatch for the Piratefish. This needs to go through some serious testing, but thus far it looks good. From the sound of things, I've managed to take this further than most of my users - but man, after today my brain is toasted. I need to kill some zombies now! The integration of MailWatch into Ubuntu is definitely not an easy task! This new chapter walks folks through setting up MySQL and PHP, and there's a lot of integration tweaks too! The current write-ups all focus on using PHP4, however I've documented the process to get it burning on PHP5, and it appears to be working great!<br />
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MailWatch has some nice visibility into the logs from the look of things, and can draw up some nice graphs and provides the Quarantine management features that many of you have been asking about. As it stands, I need to re-build my SMTP lab, and re-configure my Piratefish to use it - and then expose things to the outside with my test domain to see what comes in. I figure, with some serious abuse, I can get MailWatch to really shine and get some nice pretty pictures for the Piratefish website! <br />
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MailWatch also has features that integrate the Bayesian filtering controls and blacklist controls into the SQL database - I've not gotten that part written yet - that'll be another weekend soon I'm sure. First I want the lab operational so I can formally test what's been done so far!<br />
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I also added a new section in the appendix providing a walk through to get VMware Tools installed if you're running the Piratefish on a VMware server.<br />
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If you're a current owner of the Piratefish and would like a copy of version 4.3beta, please drop me an email! Testing in a live environment should be possible, and this configuration on minimally hooks into the MailScanner conf file (which can be backed up before starting!) - the only requirements are that your Piratefish system has enough extra disk space and RAM to handle running MySQL in addition to it's regular duties, and that you are using a good firewall that blocks MySQL and Port 80 on your Piratefish from the outside world.<br />
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Cheers!John C. Silviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796481575930863954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26339088.post-46474493753823640562010-01-28T09:09:00.000-07:002010-01-28T09:09:54.510-07:00ClamAV Permissions Errors? Take a look at...One of my users recently ran into some troubles with their Piratefish where MailScanner was having troubles moving messages after scanning them - in particular, one message became locked into place, and MailScanner was unable to extricate it and get it on it's way.<br />
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Now tempting as it may seem to just manually go and fix this, I resisted telling my user, and he resisted doing the same, but he did ultimately re-configure his MailScanner conf file, loading an older backup, and that's where we might have found the source of headaches, as the backup of the file fixed things nicely.<br />
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This problem might exist as a problem within the MailScanner Webmin plugin itself, but is easily repaired. All one has to do is enter into their MailScanner.conf file, and find the line containing "Incoming Work Group = clamav" and change it to "Incoming Work Group = "<br />
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This fix might have deeper implications for other problems I've seen with MailScanner - all telling me I should start looking at MailScanner configuration alternatives - and there are some worthy replacements for that part of things, FYI. Those updates will be coming out later.<br />
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For any of your seeing some weirdness in your logs regarding permissions, please do check this line in your MailScanner.conf. I'll be adding this troubleshooting step into the latest book update as well.John C. Silviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796481575930863954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26339088.post-70167422519019189992010-01-26T21:43:00.002-07:002010-01-26T22:10:49.935-07:00What in the world is wrong with Adobe?I just don't know how to start this post - I don't think I want to go off on a rage again, but I have to wonder sometimes if anyone human is actually making decisions at Adobe.<br />
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The concept of a single document reader is a good one, and they've jammed this down our throat for years - I remember the first time I ever purchased an $8k software package, only to find the book missing, and replaced with CD-ROM with a PDF - at the time I was very pissed - after all, I'd just purchased one of the first Intrusion Detection Systems available - RealSecure, and it was some next level cool stuff during it's time - but I was infuriated with the idea that they could pocket more of that money and take up more of my screen real estate.<br />
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Back then, downloading and installing Adobe's reader wasn't a major painful installation - sure, it was an 8mb download, but nobody cared. Nowadays, most people don't even balk at the idea of downloading a 35mb program and installing - there's larger toolbars these days. But what really gets me is the tendency towards these installer packages - sure, okay, I can understand using Microsoft's special downloader when I'm pulling down an ISO, or perhaps using a special installer for some larger things that need updating like Google Earth, but hey, when Adobe's stupid Acrobat reader his 40+mb, and I have to download an installer - yeah, I get a little annoyed. What makes things more annoying is when I go and do something else, with that dog running in the background, and when I return 5 minutes later, it's not even half way done downloading!<br />
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I mean, wait a second - I'm paying for 20mb downloads here - and Adobe's stuff is perhaps one of the most downloaded programs on the Internet - so why does it take so long? I mean, Comcast buffers this stuff, but not if their custom downloader is messing with it, but taking more than 5-10 minutes to read a single 2 page PDF is getting excessive.<br />
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During my impatience, I explored Adobe's site to see if there was a way to download direct, and then I saw the death bell for Adobe Acrobat Reader - version 9.3 now REQUIRES Adobe Air. For those of you who are less educated about things, Adobe Air is the essential equivalent to Microsoft's Silverlight, and Adobe Flash <i>(formerly known as Macromedia Flash, but I digress.)</i><br />
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<i> </i>Faced with installing Adobe Air on my little Acer Aspire Revo, which is a cool, albeit weak PC, I was disgusted. I'd run Adobe Air before on a Dell D630 Dual-Core laptop with 4gb of ram - and it performed poorly on that system. Very poorly. Poor enough that I aborted the Adobe install completely. My little Intel Atom couldn't take it. If I didn't have the full version of Acrobat on my PC at work, I wouldn't run Adobe's software at all now!<br />
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I liken Adobe Air to being more like a nasty fart. I have to wonder why they came up with Air as they already own Flash, but the I've realized that they might "own" Flash, but the fact is, it's grown beyond them and they don't make the money off it like they can if folks want to make Adobe Air apps. At least folks can write and publish Flash code without paying Adobe anything - however, Air being their own proprietary format, pretty much precludes third-party development tools, at least for a while, boosting their tenable bottom line, while leaving the entire room smelling like a flatulent donkey.<br />
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Disgusted and still not able to read my 2 page PDF, I decided to see what free alternatives are out there, and yes, I found some - and so I downloaded the Foxit PDF reader, and installed it, and opened my PDF, all within 2 minutes of my Google search. Funny thing is, even after killing the install when it wasn't complete, there were icons on my desktop - who do these bastards think they are? When did leaving icon's strewn all over people's desktops become acceptable software behavior? Does a Microsoft's Help utility need to have an icon on my desktop? No. Does anyone launch the Adobe reader, then use it to find their files? I seriously think not! My parents would find it in Windows then open it - and that's how I've always done it. That's probably how you do it too - that or you click on the link and want it to launch - but cluttering up my desktop, well, that's rude - and it's something I've come to expect with those scumbags. Excess icons on my desktop are akin to someone sending me a gift, and boxing it with 10,000 packing peanuts that explode out of the package when you open it. <br />
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It's regrettable that Adobe has deteriorated so far that they have to trick people to distribute their schlocky, unnecessary new "platforms" by stitching them to their own "document standards" that they've been pushing down peoples throats for over a decade now. I have to say this - folks, remember these three letters:<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>O D F</b></span><br />
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Open Document Format. It's the future. It's not quite mature yet - but I'll be watching. And if you own any stock in Adobe, well, I'd recommend to watch carefully - their only worthy product is Dreamweaver... what, that's from Macromedia too....<br />
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And one last little note to take in - in the time it took me to write this, plus the time it took me to patch my Windows 7 Ultimate and reboot, you could not download Adobe Acrobat 9.3. For some reason, I can download 40mb in seconds - but not Adobe Acrobat. They must think that having their bloated slugware installer on my desktop for 15+ minutes is some kind of free advertising. Man, are they stupid!John C. Silviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796481575930863954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26339088.post-84704654588367141282010-01-09T01:28:00.004-07:002010-01-09T09:38:34.379-07:00Installating Windows 7 and seeing 0x80070570 error...<span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:arial;">If you've recently tried to install Windows 7 on a new hot setup, you might run into the 0x80070570 error, where the installation fails with disk errors during the unpacking process.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">After scouring the web for solutions, burning and re-burning the MSDN image, and considering doing the crazy thing - like installing XP, then migrating to 7 via Vista, I was very frustrated. In my desperation to see this machine sing, I tried a different approach and was most pleasantly surprised - I installed the OS from an external USB DVD drive.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">It would seem that my brand new ASUS M4A78T-E w/AMD Phenom II X3 with SATA DVD burner, just wasn't getting along with the installation process for Windows 7 - but my USB DVD drive, which is an old IDE DVD burner with an adapter cable and external power supply ($20 at most well stocked computer parts places), worked perfectly.<br /><br />Now if someone can explain how it is this new setup tells me that 4 cores are activated, when I have a three-core AMD processor, well, I'd just love to know! For those of you out there trying to get Windows 7 installed, just so you know, it appears that SATA DVD drives just may not be the perfect starting point - I'm certain they'll work fine once the OS is installed though.<br /><br />Cheers!</span></span>John C. Silviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05796481575930863954noreply@blogger.com0