If you’ve driven at all you’ve probably been in a traffic jam at least once in your life. If you live in the Northeast or around any major metropolitan area such as Chicago, Dallas, or Los Angeles you may feel like you are in one almost daily. Sometimes there is a visible cause such as a car accident or roadwork, but other times a traffic jam seems to appear for apparently no reason at all. Scientist and engineer have been studying this phenomenon for years. In 2007 ScienceDaily published an article explain how this can easily happen using a truck switching lane and therefore cause the traffic behind them to slow down below a critical speed. The traffic around the incident clears and moves forward however the problem rolls back like a wave creating the traffic jam. There is a good graphical representation of this at SmartMotorist

So Scientist have known what happens in a traffic jam for awhile, the question is how can they be prevented. There are three types of traffic flow. Free flow, where traffic is flowing at the maximum speed allowed. Synchronized flow where because of the traffic density the vehicles move at a slower but still constant speed. Finally there are jams where speed drops to zero when traffic density reaches a certain unknown threshold. So how do you prevent the third circumstances. One possible solution is to have vehicles to talk to each other through an automated system. If you have been in a traffic jam you will quickly recognize that most people have one of two reactions the first are the defensive drivers who leave more space between them and the vehicle in front of them then necessary. The second group are offensive driver, the  kind that drive up so close behind you that you can see the spinach they had for diner. What you want is for vehicles entering the traffic jam zone to act more defensively and enter the problem zone slower and those in front to leave the jam quickly causing the traffic jam to dissolve.  What is the best way to do this, one possible solution is to have cars talk to each other. They could share their speed and position to the cars around them. As cars in front of them slow down this would hopefully convince the cars coming up to the area to slow down also. Meantime the cars in front of the congested area would leave faster, keeping the flow going.  This is the idea that is discussed in a Technology Review article published by MIT.

There are of course several problems that need to be resolved for this to work. First is security you want to make sure you have a system that can’t be hacked. Second at this point it is unclear how many cars need to have a system installed for it to be effective. Also systems that are manufactured by different companies need to be able talk to each other. Finally people have to actually use the information that they are provided in the way they are suppose to. As more and more cars enter our highways both in the United States and around the world developing technology like this becomes increasingly important. This type of technology is still in its infancy, but if it becomes reality, it will have far more impact on productivity and the economy, then any social network.

Smashing Magazine is celebrating its fifth birthday and as a wee treat, has prepared a “Best of Smashing Magazine” ebook and is giving it away free. The articles are all about web design, Photoshop, typography and user interfaces (or the user experience as it seems to be called now).

It’s no lightweight either - there are 409 pages of beautifully prepared material packed with information and examples. The first article, “30 Usability Issues”, makes interesting reading even if you aren’t a web designer. By being more educated about design, as a consumer you can be more aware and critical of websites and other media. Did you know that the Macintosh logo is an example of the Law of Pragnanz? No, neither did I but you’ll have to read the article to find out what it means.

Other articles include, “Setting Up Photoshop for Web and iPhone Development”, “What Font Should I Use?” and “10 Principles of Effective Web Design”. There’s the occasional overlap between the articles but it’s never repetition for the sake of it.

The ebook is available from iTunes or for .pdf, .mobi and .epub formats, direct from Smashing Magazine. Warning – it’s 55 MB download as it contains all three versions of the ebook.

Welcome to The Gadget Professor’s podcast, show #14. Today”s show features a review of the Audio Unlimited Wireless Speakers. Sit back and relax while you watch The Gadget Professor.

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Audio version NOW AVAILABLE!!

Welcome to The Gadget Professor’s podcast! Today”s show features a review of the MAGIC JACK – Never pay a monthly phone bill again! Free local and long distance calling in the USA and Canada. Take a look at two cool deal sites. Sit back and relax while you watch The Gadget Professor.

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If your looking for an audio version of the show, there is not one at this point.

It is very important that you listen to my podcast on July 2nd as within that show will be instructions on how to win a Lenovo Think Centre A63 Computer System with dual screens. As you know I have been talking about this system in my show for a while now, and it is going to make a great computer for a listener of my show. The contest details will be announced within the show. Here the kicker the contest period is very short. I will announce a winner on July 6th so you will have to make sure that you download and listen to the podcast over the 4th of July Holiday weekend.

I will be talking more about the Lenovo Think Centre this coming week along with releasing a in depth review in preperation for the giveaway. In addition to our giveaway a host of other sites are giving away the same prize package. Check out the rest of the sites for more details timelines of their contest are listed below.

• Gear Diary June 21-25
• SDR News June 22-26
• Digitizd June 23-27
• Neowin June 24-28
• GeeksRoom June 25-29
• HackCollege June 26-30
• Gear Live June 27 – July 1
• Bright Side of News June 28 – July 2
• ActiveWin June 29 – July 3
• Daddy Forever July 1 – July 5
• Geek News Central July 2 – July 6
• ClintonFitch.com July 3 – July 7
• Absolutely Windows July 5 – July 9
• PlanetAMD64 July 6 – July 10
• Women Home Business July 7 – July 11
• MediaBlab.com July 8 – July 12
• TwentiesLife July 9 – July 13

Cell Phone Overage

Yes, there was sarcasm in the title. But the FCC proposed a really is a great idea. Tell people when they are about to hit their limits.

I remember when I got my first overage bill. It was $130 more than expected. While I was a bit perturbed, I understood and paid it off. Definitely took a hit in my pocketbook.

Of course I did have a Land line and my Nokia phone (which still was just for calling people) had only 250 minutes and $.40 a minute after. I also could walk 20 feet to the west and all of a sudden get “Roaming” charges. So going over on a plan was easy – in 1998.

Nowadays, the land line is gone in liu of Skype and Google Voice. The Cell is the primary contact for calls, texts, emails and facebook posts. I have an unlimited text and data plan and if I go over in minutes, I have a backlog of rollover to keep me safe. Then again, I pay $130 a month…

Stopping the Overage:

37 years after the first cell phone call was made, companies are finally realizing that someone might go over in their minutes. O.K, the FCC is realizing this and trying to make the phone carriers comply. If the user hits their limit, they get a message stating that.

The user then can choose if they want to rack up additional charges or turn their phone off until the next month starts. Wait – you can turn a phone off?

Similar but Sad: Data Plan overage

Vodafone in the UK – who nixed their unlimited data plan – announced they will be offering a free text service to warn people if they hit their limit. So those of you in the UK who watch their soaps or Dr. Who from the phone during lunch might not be able to watch more than 1 episode for the whole month.

Remember last year the Chicago Bears fan who watched the game from his netbook on a cruise ship? He got $3000 in overage fees for his wireless data plan.

It’s all about a text

I get texts from AT&T whenever my bill is ready; Or if I haven’t paid last months yet. I suppose it’s time of month to see that text message aga…. oh wait. Here it is. They are so eager to make sure you pay your bill, but not that eager to let you know if you stretch your limits.

Automation

It’s not like someone has to sit by their phone and text everybody that goes over “Dude: You’re hitting your limit.”. We have automated scripts that can do that. Just like my bank has an automated script to tell me when my account hits below…. oh wait. Just got THAT text message, too.

I totally agree on an alert system. I can’t log into the website everyday to see where I am in minutes. Then again, if I ever go over

The Mitre Corp has produced the 2010 CWE / SANS Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors which identifies the most commonly encountered coding errors that can potentially lead to web sites being hacked or PCs being compromised.  Some of the errors are well-publicised in the technical press, e.g. “cross-site scripting”; some are downright stupid, e.g. “use of hard-coded credentials” and others are the results of carelessness, e.g. “improper validation of array index”.

However, what makes this document better than the usual Top-X lists is that it provides guidance to programmers on how to prevent or mitigate the errors.  For example, to avoid cross-site scripting it suggests, “Use languages, libraries or frameworks that make it easier to generate properly encoded output.  Examples include Microsoft’s Anti-XSS library, the OWASP ESAPI encoding module and Apache Wicket“. There’s additional information for the technically-minded that goes through the different stages of software development starting with initial design, through to compilation, implementation and testing.

One of the best pieces of advice is in the discussion around checking for unusual or exceptional conditions, “Murphy’s Law says that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Yet it’s human nature to always believe that bad things could never happen, at least not to you. Security-wise, it pays to be cynical. If you always expect the worst, then you’ll be better prepared for attackers who seek to inflict their worst. By definition, they’re trying to use your software in ways you don’t want.”

So, if you are into web programming in any way, this has to be mandatory reading to keep the bad guys at bay.  Even if you are not, the discussion elements for each of the errors is illuminating in showing exactly what is going wrong and why it’s bad.  Just skip over the technical bits in between.

I decided to devote a large part of last weekend to upgrading my main system to Windows 7.  In the interest of science I decided that I would read no guides or tips beforehand, I would test how easy it was using only the information and instructions that came in the packaging.

So the stage was set for the install.  The system I am upgrading was very powerful when I built it 5 years ago.  While I do most of my web surfing on it, the main use for the system is to manage my media, either syncing it to my portable player or streaming it to devices on the network.  It started this process with Windows XP Media Centre Edition installed; I had a brand new copy of Window 7 Home Premium upgrade to work with.

Stage 1 – Preperation

Even the packaging for Windows 7 made clear that a clean upgrade was only possible if you were upgrading from Vista.  The claim was though, that even though the main programs would need to be re-installed, the settings would be maintained.  I have never had a software upgrade that ran well so my confidence was not high.  Given that the test is to see how easy it is to have a usable system after the upgrade I took a few notes first on the beginning state.

When I performed a Vista upgrade on a relative’s computer the main issue I had was with a lack of drivers for all the installed devices.  At that stage it has already been 3 months or so since Vista was released and it was months more after that before all devices had working drivers.  I have a number of extra components installed so I am interested to see how many work after the upgrade.

Microsoft has released an upgrade advisor to check which parts of the system are supported under the new environment.

The reports showed that Outlook Express would not be available and the game port would not work.  No great loss for these as I do not use either of them.  More worrying though was that my network card was listed as not compatible.  I have recently put in a new wireless-n router so I took the precaution of buying a new wireless card prior to starting the upgrade.

As you can see from the image to the right, the majority of my devices came up as being supported.

Once I had a level of confidence that I could support Windows 7 on this PC I was ready to start upgrading.  The only change I made to the system was to upgrade the RAM to 2GB.

Stage 2 – Settings transfer

First step of the XP upgrade process is to run the Windows Easy Transfer program.  This is designed to take all the settings and files from the old to the new system.  There are options to save these to disk, USB media or a network share.  If the Windows 7 and XP installs are on different computers the transfer can also be done directly across the network.  In my case I set the target as a directory on another drive in the system.

While the process completed with no errors it took a long time.  Even though there was only about 260GB of data the process started at 5:05pm and didn’t finish until 12:51am, nearly 8 hours later.  Given that the processor was much busier than the disk during this time it appears like this was more than just a simple file copy.

Stage 3 – Install

The actual install on Windows 7 itself was a breeze.  I chose to install to a brand new directory so I could still boot XP if everything went pear shaped.  Even though I was using an upgrade version the install didn’t complain and there was very little interaction needed over a 15 minute process.  Within half an hour of shutting down XP I was running the Windows 7 side of the Easy Transfer.  This time I didn’t wait for the finish, I left it to run and went to bed.

In the morning the transfer had finished and I had a working system.  The next step was to check whether it was functional.  The Easy Transfer Report showed a few strange issues, including the “programs without identified manufacturers” including 5 Microsoft Programs.  Happily, even though the upgrade assistant claimed my system wasn’t up to Aero, it was running happily.

Stage 4 – Is it working?

A Device Manager report showed that there were 5 devices that did not automatically find a driver.

-MS  Keyboard with Fingerprint reader

-Soundblaster Audigy

-Avermedia TV tuner

-SB Gameport

-DLink USB wireless-g NIC

This last was of course the problematic one as it prevented me getting onto the Internet to find drivers.  Thankfully I was pre-prepared with my brand new replacement NIC.  Such cunning, such foresight, such misplaced optimism.  This is where I ran into my first actual problem with the install.  The Netgear wnda3100 wireless n USB NIC came with a Vista driver that would not load and management software that crashed 5 seconds after it loaded.  As I no longer have any UTP running to my study from the router this would have been a problem without the miracle of multiple computers and flash memory.

Doing a few searches I found that it may not have been Microsoft’s fault.  The general feeling around some of the forums was that the Netgear 64-bit drivers were flaky to begin with and people had similar problems with Vista.  I managed to find someone who had hacked a driver to actually work located http://www.wnda310064bit.webs.com/ So thanks to unnamed author who gets some link love and a $10 donation.

Now back on the Net I ran an autocorrect feature that Windows 7 provided.  This managed to find drivers for 2 of the remaining issues, the SB Audigy and the TV tuner which both now worked.  This left just the gameport, which I was unconcerned about, and the fingerprint reader on the keyboard.  While the whole keyboard is listed in the report, the reader is the only function that does not work.  How ironic that the only device that caused me a lasting problem on a Windows OS was a Microsoft problem.

I was also having problems with the system freezing coming out of hibernate.  I am currently avoiding this by diasabling the auto-hibernate feature.

Stage 5 – Application re-install

The big test was next.  The two biggest worries I had going into this were Firefox and iTunes.  Firefox has a number of plugins, greasemonkey scripts, and heaps of favorites and links.

I was very pleased with this install though.  No only were all of the mentioned features there instantly after install, the new version of FF remembered all of the tabs I had open under XP when I shut down.  I had left a number of tabs open as what a I though would be an unfair test of the upgrade and was pleasantly surprised with the result.

The iTunes install went just as well with all of my songs and playlists surviving intact.  Most importantly all my podcast subscriptions, listened stats and player sync details came up automatically.  I did need to re-authorise a couple of songs though, which highlighted again for me the danger to consumers of DRM.  Almost all my digital media is DRM free because I stayed with CD’s until iTunes offered DRM free downloads.  I have 5 iTunes DRM’ed songs though that I bought for my daughter because she bugged me at a weak moment.  I have already used 3 of my 5 total re-authorisations and they were only purchased 2 years ago.

Conclusion

The other programs I re-installed had no significant history to remember.  All in all a relatively quick and painless process.  A benchmark claims that the system is about 15% slower running Windows 7, which is not bad for a 5yo system jumping 2 OS generations in one step.  The browsing and podcast syncing, which are the main functions of the system are running just as well as with XP.  The next couple of weeks will show whether problems start to show up and I’ll report back on my progress.

For the upgrade process though I will give Microsoft an 8.5 out of 10.  They lose some marks for the length of elapsed time the whole process took, most of which was waiting for the Easy Transfer process to finish.  This was the only real negative though from what was a painless process that delivered a better than expected result.

The rumour machine is abuzz with the prospect of Apple releasing a tablet, and there are a number of other people, most notably TechCrunch and Archos, have tablet systems either out or on the planning desk. It will be interesting to see if anyone can finally make one that is worth owning.

The first tablet PC I had used was a Compaq Concerto somewhere in the mid 90′s which was a 486 based tablet version of a standard Compaq notebook. I believe the much glorified Apple Newton preceded it, however while both these products were much hyped at the time but never delivered any real value and were cancelled without replacement.

In the 15 years or so since they first appeared tablets have made periodic returns, always for a brief flurry of enthusiasm that eventually came to nothing. The most sucessful itteration was the slight tangent into the PDA space. While that eventually was a dead end market as well, it did directly contribute to the creation of the smartphone market, which has been an increasingly bouyant tech market.

I am not confident that the track record of tablets gives great hope of success this time. There are a couple of new technologies that give this iteration a better chance. The first is multitouch touchscreens. This will make the platform more usable and increase the number of applications. The second is pageflow. While it is more an application of technology rather than a radically new technology, it does change the feel of scanning though multipage documents or lists of items, essentially making it a more natural feel.

The other positive aspect is the operating system options that exist now. A major problem previously was trying to use a full size operating system on a platform that needed to be lightwieght. A modified iPhone OS or Android platform could offer the functionality needed for the platform to operate while being lightweight enough to operate well on a less powerful platform and get good battery life.

I think this article in PCMag might have a good handle on what the Apple platform might end up looking like. One factor I definitely agree with is that new version of the tablet has to offer a different experience from a standard laptop, which needs to be more than just adding a different interface. There is also a good rundown of the tablet market in this NYTimes article.

I don’t classify myself as an early adopter, I usually wait until a new technology has been out a while and the price has come down a bit before I jump in.  Consequently I rarely find myself ahead of the certification curve.  It is more a measure of the length of time that the IEEE certification has taken that I am already on my second generation of 802.11n router when the standard has only just been approved.

Considering that Draft-n wifi gear has become almost the defacto standard for most new networking gear it was only a matter of time.  Some time was lost deciding between one of three proposals until the groups behing them decided to merge into one.  A patent case from CSIRO on technology used in the draft standard also delayed things to some extent.  Regardless of the delays n is now a standard.  All we need now is something faster.

The team at MatrixStore have a post up calculating the weight of a petabyte of storage today compared to 1980.  Needless to say todays weight was a lot less.  The article was inspired by a post on Gizmodo illustrating how big a PB is.  There are two problems with the calculations though.

1. 2TB is a marketing number.  The formatted capacity of 500 2TB drives is more like 916TB
2. The weight is for the drives alone, which is not storage you could actually access and use

Image courtesy of WD

If we want to use 2TB drives we need a system that can hold 3.5″ drives.  The highest capacity tray I know of for these drives takes 48 SAS or SATA drives in 4U of rack space (about 7″ x 19″ x 24″).  You can sit multiple of these behind a single RAID box which would provide access for your computer over IP or FC depending on the type.

To get a real petabyte of base 2 usable storage you would need 546 2TB drives.  The whole setup including racks and power would weigh 1400kg or 3100lbs.  It would also consume 12kVA of power spitting out 39KBTU/hr of heat.

546 drives is for a PB of raw storage though.  In reality you would need to protect it from drive failures using RAID.  If we go for as littlle overhead as possible we can create 24 disk RAID 6 sets which would have about 40.4TB useable storage each.  For this we need about 600 drives which adds another 100kg to the weight.  Still about 1/180th of the weight of a PB just 30 years ago.

Like a few other thousands of people around the Internet I have payed close attention to the E3 briefings going on down in Las Vegas this week and it got me to thinking.

As I watch the live streams of the Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo briefs most of it seemed very familiar to me, due to the fact that most of the “announcements” had been leaked or rumoured for the past few weeks leading up to E3.

In today’s digital age we are hungry for up to the minute information on whatever topics and trends that interest us, but does some of this come at a cost?

Part of the thrill of watching the briefings held annually at E3, CES, and Apple’s events is seeing what new things ideas, projects, and innovations are in our futures. Now a good part of that thrill seems to be gone thanks in part to message board posts, tweets, and inside sources.

Now I know its human nature to want to know every secret right away, but in a way it reminds me of the days leading up to Christmas and seeing the present under the tree with your name on it and wondering what it could be. I think Part of the joy of Christmas morning was going through those secretive bundles one by one and the excitement of uncovering what is inside.

In short I’m starting to feel that knowing what’s going to happen before the event is like opening a gift to yourself. No matter how good it is, it pretty hard to feel that rush of excitement.

Let me know what you think. As always I can be reached at jparie@gmail.com.

Wall Warts is a slang term used for power supplies (wall transformers) and are the little brick-like devices that come with almost every electronic device. So why do I say they are like socks? Well, like socks, they seem to lose their mate and you end up wondering where it belongs.

Socks have a habit of getting lost for a period of time (typically around laundry day) but eventually show up and can be reunited with it’s mate (or one that looks similar). The same can’t always be said for wall warts. These are the ones that have no identifying information about where they belong and to make matters worst, may actually have a plug that would fit a number of devices. The fact that the plug fits, means it could supply the wrong power (voltage, current, polarity, AC/DC) and possibly destroy your device. (See AllElectronics.com for some examples of wall warts.)

This is a problem I’ve seen for years and I thought manufacturers were getting better identifying their products. Just the other day I bought a Maxtor 750 GB OneTouch4 external USB drive and it came with a small power supply. On the power supply was this information: “Sunny Switching Adapter; Model: SYS1308–2412–W2 … OUTPUT: +12V 2.0A …” It also showed a symbol indicating that the center connection was positive. The back of the Maxtor OneTouch drive had no voltage or polarity information so if I was trying to match up this power supply to it’s mate, I would be taking a gamble if the plug just happen to fit. This power supply uses a very common power connector and I know it’s fits at least four other devices that I own. I wonder how many devices have been destroy because the wrong power supply was plugged in? Would you take the time to research the power requirements of your device before plugging in an unknown wall wart if the plug fit?

I’ve developed products before and totally understand why manufactures do this. They develop a product that uses a common power source (i.e., +12V DC, 1.0A, positive center) and order an off-the-shelf power supply from China. It cost more to private-label the power supply, so they decide against it to keep down the cost. There is nothing stopping a company from offering a power supply with the same power connector but with a different power output (i.e., +5V, 0.5 A, negative center) and shipping that with a different consumer product. The consumer is the loser when he/she tries to mix and match loose wall warts and with their tech toys.

I do see a trend that I think may help. It’s the move to USB. More manufacturers are using the fact that the USB connector supplies a standard 5.0 VDC at 0.5 Amps. I said I think it may help because a lot of newer USB devices need more than the 0.5 Amps supplied by a standard USB connector (my Zune requires 1.5 A and my Android G1 phone needs 1.0 A). At least you have a fighting chance and may only damage (overheat) the power supply if your device needs more juice.

I would love to see manufactures label their power supplies to help out the consumer. I can’t believe printing and placing a sticker on the power supply to identify the manufacturer before they ship the product would be that costly.

I make it a habit to add a label to every wall wart before I start using the device. I have a Brother P-touch labeler and find it’s very handy (and fun) for things like that. I even add labels to wall warts that has been re-branded because I generally find the information is too generic (i.e. Maxtor) or hard to read when I’m looking to remove a power supply from a power strip under a desk with very little light. (I won’t mention that I have aging eyes too.)

Another reason I do it is because it’s a nice feeling knowing I’m organized. It’s wonderful seeing that little label showing me my Android G1 power supply after digging it out from under a foot-high stack of papers and unpaid bills.

73’s, Tom

GO BADGERS

That was the post Adam Wilson made to Twitter by using only his brain.  Wearing a special red cap fitted with electrodes that connected to a computer flashing letters, by concentrating on the letters he wanted, Wilson was able to Twit the small message on the screen in front of him.

What this means for the rest of the world is almost beyond comprehension for those of us that regularly type, text, and click to send messages, visit websites, write emails, etc.  What this means for persons with physical disabilities, who have perfectly functioning brains but ill-functioning bodies, is that they may be able to communicate as easily someday as the rest of us do.  And all it takes is a silly red cap with electrodes.  No cumbersome pointing devices held by the teeth or strapped to the head, or custom keyboards that will take the pounding of a fist because the fingers can’t move.

What is even more surprising and exciting about this breakthrough is that it uses two existing products to do its job.  Twitter, of course, already exists and functions well for many people.  The electrode “brain cap” already exists as well, and is still being fine-tuned for work with computers.  Previous work had been focused on using brain implants to communicate, but this work is 10 years or more from any type of fruition.  Using existing products, Wilson, and his supervisor Justin Williams (both work for the University of Wisconsin) made the link that had not been made before.

This is exciting news for those suffering from debilitating, paralyzing injuries, whose brains are able to function normally in all ways except in the ability to communicate.  Hundreds of thousands of people in the United States alone suffer from such disabilities.  These types of breaks in technology can really leapfrog researchers ahead in their efforts to bring accessibility to all.

Every day, it seems, when I boot up my computers, each one wants me to update iTunes and add Safari. It doesn’t matter how many times I say no, and click quit, every day the stupid install window keeps coming back up. And there is no way to permanently turn this off. At least, not that I’ve found.

Java wants to do the same thing. We cannot run the latest Java here at work because it breaks one of our enterprise systems that are critical to business functions. Fortunately, you can remove the Java Updater from the control panel on most machines to make the annoying popup telling you there’s a new install of Java not pop up every day. But every once in a while, that updater seems to reinstall itself on my machine and I have to delete it again.

My annoyance today is the Sandisk Cruzer. It comes with the U3 operating system installed, and self-installs on any machine you plug the device into. This tiny operating system then gives you tools you don’t need, like copy and paste, explore. On a college campus with locked down computers, these Sandisk Cruzers are the worst for confusing students. Of course, you can remove the U3 operating system, but it takes several steps and a geekish know-how, so not everyone who buys one of these devices knows how to remove the operating system so it works like a normal thumb drive. Worse yet, older Cruzers do not allow removal of the U3 operating system, only the newer ones do. Even a format won’t take care of the problem, as the U3 software sits in a hidden file that is difficult to access.

I want software and hardware companies to stop telling me what I need, and trying to automatically install their software into places without my permission. I want them to stop hiding this stuff, make it an option rather than a necessity, and when I say no, it remembers that I said no and never ask me again.

Much of this stuff is a huge waste of time for tech workers that are just trying to get people back up and running as quickly as possible.

I’m starting to put my list together for Santa for the holidays. Yes, Geeks can have dreams too!

Starting off, I’ve already purchased some things for the kids, including Sansa 8 gb MP3 players. These sweet little units are as powerful as the iPod without the costly risk of replacement when they get banged around too much. While I would love to get them all iPods, I don’t think they’d survive the hustle and bustle of my teens.

I, myself, am looking at the new HD-capable Flip camera. Sweet at $229 and I could have so much fun with such a thing. I mean, I could do so much important work with this thing. Yeah, that’s the ticket. The Flip Mino HD looks just like earlier versions of the Flip, only it films in HD. It shoots video in 1280×720 720p resolution, wider than the previous 640×480 size, and touts one-click uploads to websites like YouTube, MySpace and AOL Video. You can also upload to Vimeo and bleep.tv, which will actually upload your video in its original HD format. It also comes with cables to hook up directly to your television! How cool is that?

We don’t do video games, so I’m not looking at anything for the Wii or XBox, but I am looking for some great deals on LCD televisions. If I can get a decent one for a decent price, that may also be on the Geeky Santa List this year.

What are you looking at for the holidays?

So the other day I walked into a shop to do some repairs. They had an in-house techie that put together their systems, but had no formal training. The kid was on vacation, so I walked in to fix an important program.

What I found was less than acceptable. The wireless was open, the computers firewalls were off and their data was completely exposed. Further, they were close to a public fairway which means that they get a lot of unknown traffic.

I have been seeing this on a regular basis – people that put their trust in non-educated techies. I lost a job to one a while back. They took price over quality. Later I found that person did something rather scary that exposed the systems and was asked to leave.

I can’t believe how many shops that have free WiFi have open systems. One system I was able to not only see the computers, I could see their POS systems. I was also able to download and upload files.

Did you know if you expose your Credit Card data in any way, shape or form, you will be subject to a $30,000 a day fine. Let me reiterate:

Thirty Thousand Dollar a day fine

I understand you need to cut corners. You wouldn’t fire your accountant for someone who does it every now and then. You wouldn’t take your Lawyer off retainer because your cousin is taking some law classes in college. Why would you do that with your tech?

There is a flip side – I know a few so called “Experienced techies” that I wouldn’t trust with my systems. They have certifications and diplomas to prove they have the knowledge, but couldn’t troubleshoot their way out of a box. A couple of them turned out to be good supervisors.

I also know some kids who come out of the gate and know their stuff. They have no certifications and are still in High School. They have the thirst for knowledge and can pick up new technologies like no tomorrow.

So if you are a company or person that needs help with technology, what can you do? You don’t know how to do that stuff and need to get things done.

Well, unfortunately the only way is to have a little bit of knowledge. Not only a little on the technology, but also what can affect you. A seasoned techie might not know that little tidbit on credit card info and you don’t want to learn of the issue until after the fact (and fine).

A good thing to do is talk to another techie. Ask them if they will come in and look at something small. If a seasoned techie sees problems, you will know pretty quick. Then you can take action.

This is going to be more important now that we can connect any machine to any available open wireless network. Laptops, phones or whatever from inside or outside the building. You might not even know someone is connecting. That is, until your data is compromised.

China’s answer to next generation optical discs has fnally had its first production line opened and earned itself a new name. CBHD (China Blue High-definition Disc) was developed in China by Shanghai United Optical Disc. It has some advantages over BluRay, mainly in the cost area. It is cheaper to license, and less than one third the cost to gear up a factory to produce them.

The disadvantage they have is the same one HD-DVD ended up with, they have no support from any of the major hollywood studios. This may be less of an impediment to getting a footprint in Asia though. I am sure that a large number of the Chinese movie makers will have no problems with writing to this standard. I am also sure that there will be a burgeoning trade in porting high definition movies to this standard within Asia, despite the illegality of that practice.

Given that the war for the next disc standard will be fought in the PC rather than the home theatre there is still a lot of questions to be answered about how well either product is going to work as a data standard. I would suggest that BluRay will likely have inbuilt restrictions to the way we can record HD content to it, regardless of whether it is fair use or not. If CBHD will allow us to record in HD to it and play it back in any device that might be enough to grab it some marketshare when these discs become mainstream.

The live Tech Podcast Round Table is over but here is the quick screen capture from our simulcast

Watch the Video Recording

VMWare has just announced its new version of ESX server, 3i.  They only mention, in the info out to date, that the new hypervisor “..is an extension of the hardware.”  This is actually much more geeky cool than it seems and represents a large step forward in virtualisation.  They are not the only company to have this, Xen is one example of open source embedded hypervisors which appear to do similar things to ESX 3i.  My purpose is not to compare virtualisation technology though.

Intel released its VT processors (VT standing for Virtualisation Technology) extensions about 2 years ago (AMD has similar AMD-V), but applications are only just starting to become mainstram that support it.  The problem with virtualisation has always been with ring 0 access to the processor.  If you are not familiar with priveledge rings, you can find a basic primer on Wikipedia.  Traditionally the hypervisor takes ring 0, which is the only level that can directly access hardware, forcing guest operating systems to operate at less privelaged levels.  Virtualisation engines have used various methods to get around this like emultation or binary translators.

Intel VT and AMD-V chips have a ring -1 that allow the software that controls the virtualisation to run in a special privelage level. This means guest operating systems can now directly access hardware without needing weird translations.  This reduces the complexity of virtualisation and opens the market for more players and faster developement.  But the real cool thing is the future possibilities this opens up for clustering.

If you can picture that a clustered OS allows applications to grow across seperate machines.  The limitations on how that application can use the resources of that cluster is dependant on that application.  Because the level of clustering is at the OS, it is the next level that must know how to use it.  At the moment the ability to do cool things with clusters is often application specific.  If the clustering is moved down a level, to the hypervisor, then this gives greater scope for the OS to do cool things with clusters.  And the applications can transparently take advantage of them.  This wasn’t impossible with ‘old school’ virtualisation, but much harder.

While virtualisation to date has offered some benefits, the virtual machines have still been limited in size by the physical hardware.  The future of virtualisation is to expand beyond a single box.  Not only will it be possible to have many virtual servers on a single physical box, it will also be possible to have one virtual server on many phyical boxes, and anything in between.  In all these cases, once the resources are selected it is only a standard OS install that is required.  The new generation of hypervisors make this much easier to achieve.

On the GNC podcast #238 Angelo’s Time Warner situation was briefly discussed. Basically he moved across town into a new home and experienced a dramatic loss in connectivity speeds with his Time Warner Roadrunner Cable service. The worst part was the pathetic customer service he received. You can find the whole story and what he ended up doing on his blog. [link] I hope he gets some compensation for the insanity he was put through.

I will be bringing you some pictures and video later on this new device. All I can say it is beautiful. Stand by for more information.

Quick Picture Video Coming Shortly

I do have a few observations here at CES getting Video Rendered is proving to be time consuming beyond belief as we expected. I have no problem getting the projects ready for rendering but I really would like to batch the renderings to process while I am asleep at night. I am using Final Cut Express so I am not sure if the version supports it but you Mac masters out there find me a solution and you will get a big warm hug. geeknews@gmail.com

For about a year now I have had a Sprint EV-DO card that has worked well in all of the locations that I find myself in. But recently I changed offices which moved me from a outer wall in a building with few windows to inner office. I knew I was in trouble when the guys desk I was taking over for told me that if I wanted my cell to work I would have to place it about 20 feet from my desk on top of a cabinet.

Obviously when I plugged in my EV-DO card at my new desk the signal was non existent even though I had perfect reception at my old desk that was less than 30 feet away along with a couple of walls.

I started hunting online for an external Antenna and Amplifier solution. The more I looked the more I become concerned when I found many sites that sold Antennas and Amplifiers did not have a customer support line. With the price of most solutions just under $250.00 I wanted to talk to someone that had a clue.

I finally found one company that had a responsive customer, and a warm body I could call with any questions I may have. Ultimately I ordered a amplifier and antenna from Gordon over at Maximum Signal. Gordon was very helpful and the kit I purchased really did the trick and I have a usable EV-DO card again.

The amplifier – antenna combo raised my signal from like -110 to -85 db it’s not perfect but it’s better than not working at all.

Meanwhile I am hoping Sprint looks at the building and installs a commercial amplifier in it so that our cell phones will work. It really sucks in this day and age to be in a location where the thickness of the walls kill the mobile coverage.

If you need a solution that works I highly recommend using the folks at Maximum Signal!

I will have more to say though about a couple of popular EV-DO sites that I have some serious concerns about in their site information and sales transparency.

Update: I have gotten some info that this is a hoax.

I can almost guarantee you that there will be a ban on using Laptops in Airplanes happening very soon. Some airlines have already banned the use of Dell and Apple computers in-flight. The latest laptop to blow up was a Thinkpad and I am sure if it had a Sony battery in it that it will be added to the list of banned devices used at 35,000 feet. [Engadget]

My moms house is 13 miles from the closest town were most of the major cellular services work. My mom business uses Verizon Wireless phones which is the only service that works reliably here at the house. I have a T-Mobile and Sprint cell phone in my pocket and neither of them even register a single bar of signal level. In order to get my VoiceMail I have to dial in via a land line or go to the second floor of the house and hang out a window.

Yesterday on a whim I plugged in my Sprint EVDO card into my computer and tried connecting to the sprint wireless network, even though their was no signal on the card it connected. I about fell out of my chair. Well it turns out that if I sit at the kitchen table which is next to a window the PCMCIA card will connect to sprint. I am getting transfer speeds that are a little slower than dial up.

To give you a idea my moms home is on a dirt road and will likely never get broadband via cable I doubt ADSL service will ever be available as well. This has made me realize that someday when Sprint and Verizon get their act together and get 3G or next gen wireless broadband speeds deployed to rural areas via their cell towers people like my mom will be able to get connectivity.

I have always told my parents that I would love to live in this area, we have land to build on but with no broadband there is no way I could operate my business. There is a huge untapped market of people here that are stuck on dial up in a broadband world.

Honestly I am pretty shocked that my EVDO service with Sprint works at this point even though it is at dial up speeds. The Samsung Sprint cell phone I am reviewing has no signal at all. I suspect if I stood on the roof I might get a signal with the handset. It is obvious that the antenna on the PCMCIA card is better.

I should have brought my wireless router that I can plug my EVDO card into as I would have tied it down on top of my dads 3 story barn to get a better line of site connection. Hey Sprint I would be happy to give you some land to put a tower up here at my moms place if you will give her free 3G broadband access as long as you have a tower here. Until then I guess I will have to deal with less than dial up speeds.

Lost some data from a crashed hard drive… We all have been there and if you haven’t you will (back up daily) but when it does happen to you and you get done screaming and crying you can always do this. [Extreme Tech]

If you have been listening to my Podcast you will know that I have had a dilemma, since the acquisition of the MacBook Pro I have been scratching my head on how I was going to have them both connected to the net when I was on travel or on the move. Yea I am one of those nuts that travel loaded to bear. Well I have been using Sprint EVDO service now for about 8 months and while it is faster than dial up but not as fast as ASDL I really did not like the idea of buying another card or having to pay for another broadband account that just does not make sense.

So instead what I have done is picked up a Kyocera KR1 Mobile Router this thing is awesome and testing it tonight setup took about 5 minutes the evdo card plugged in turned power on setup the wifi and I was in business. This allows me to share one EVDO card with 2 computers.

The box was a bit pricey but rumors are on the street that Sprint is going to be coming out with a USB EVDO card so that you can easily swap them if needed. But I like the setup I have better now.

With the upcoming Podcast Expo we are going to need connectivity in the booth and this will be the perfect configuration in that we will be able to use the the Mobile Router to stay connected and demonstrate things live. This will allow people to setup there accounts etc straight from the floor. [Kyocera]

Kudos to the folks over at Dell for blogging about the flaming laptop. It is not to often you see a laptop burn up like a few cars I have seen go up in flames. Seems they are working with the Consumer Product Safety Commission and a third party failure analysis lab.

Meanwhile if you own a Dell not sure I would be setting it on my lap or leaving it run with no one around. [www.dellone2one.com]

If this does not make your eyebrows raise nothing will. I had not thought it possible to be able to actually exploit a system device driver in order to gain control of a computer. The ramifications of this revelation is huge. If you have a wireless network in your home, and all of your PC’s are hooked up via wireless. Someone could effectively sit out on the street and your computers could be hacked and exploited Simply Amazing! [InfoWorld]