Yahoo! Depression™

Dep dep dep depression!

Not only am I depressed because of my own day to day life, but now Yahoo decided to depress me even further. Ever since I got Vista, I was anxious about the new Yahoo Messenger for Vista, of which I saw a presentation here. Useless to say that almost one year later that page hasn't changed a bit, and there is absolutely no news of the new program. I'm very satisfied with the 8.1 Messenger at the moment, but the new one would have improved the whole Vista experience thing even more. I mean come on, we all want cool smart looking stuff on our pcs. Not only is the project long overdue but it now seems to be dead and burried as Yahoo stopped it's developement and moved on to the new Yahoo Messenger 9.0 Beta Release.

I must say that at first when I heard about this I was actually happy. I said well they must have taken their ideas from the Vista one, integrated them with this one and so the new thing must be absolutely great. Unfortunately I was waaay to idealistic for Yahoo's standards.

Ok I don't want to be that mean, so I'll start with their ( one and only ) nice new feature: the "inline media player". The media player is integrated into the IM window so from now on whenever someone gives you a link to let's say YouTube you can view the movie directly in your window without having to open a separate browser. I understand the same happens for JPEG, GIF and PNG images. Yes truly a nice new feature, BUT i can already see problems with it. If you're anything like me, you'll have lots of people sending you lots of different video links, occasionally at the same time. From what I saw, even if it doesn't directly play the video it still loads the player for every link in every window. Now you get to fill up your RAM with only a few links. So where the hell did all my multitasking power go ?

  Enough with being nice. I've waited a really long time for a new Messenger ( 1 year , Yahoo Messenger 8.1 came out in Q4 of 2006) and they really disappointed me. Let's start with the beginning. Yahoo Messenger 9 offers a cool new user interface ..NOT. It's exactly the same interface just that they moved the avatars on the right side and made them somewhat bigger. Great now we can all perfectly see the "Yahoo Sucks MSN Rulz " pictures better.
  Another thing they added is the hover options. If you hover your mouse on a contact some action buttons will appear such as IM , E-mail and Call. Perfectly useless as we already had those action buttons in 8.1 next to the pop up thing remember ?
  Talking about useless, the new Messenger automatically creates a new group for you with all your address book contacts so you can now scroll 80 pages down if you want to look around in your contacts. Again Mess 8.1 had this done in a much more subtle and nice way: the icons under your status that changed between Address Book and Messenger List.
  As the guy in the demo says ( you can watch the demo here) a nice new feature of Yahoo Messenger 9.0 is the Search bar up there in which you can write a contact's name/id and it will find it for you. Now maybe it's just me but wasn't this feature already included in the program ? Oh yes ..wait ..I can see it now as I minimize Opera and look directly at my main messenger window... I wonder how it got in 8.1 if it's brand new in 9.0 ?
  And now for the real NEW AND AWESOME FEATURE : Whenever you write a " :) " in your status message, it now actually appears as ..as ...as ... A YELLOW SMILEY!!!! Indeed ladies and gentlemen a feat never before seen in any messaging program. You have to hand it to the guys at Yahoo , they really know what counts.

As an ending, I'll just recommend we all use Meebo.com for messaging. At least they never pretend to be better than they really are.

Mac OS vs Windows

And here's the follow up with my feedback on Mac OS X. As I've said before I have never really owned a Mac, of any kind. But I have had quite a few opportunities to play around with them. Last time I played with a MacBook g4 I think. The things is that, since the device wasn't mine I didn't really have a chance to check out the details, the installs , the way the thing actually works. I only saw what every demo shows : the outside, the user interface, the nice small little features that make Tiger so appealing. The thing is that I'm not really looking for design in an OS. Yes I do agree that Mac OS has a really nice design, and yes I do agree that the people from Microsoft did steal certain design elements and integrated them into Vista ( which I am running right now). But thank God , that's all they stole.
I have to confess that until now, I was always criticizing Windows and Microsoft for their many faults and weaknesses, and let's not forget their unimaginably huge sums of money. I viewed Apple as that close true friend i never had. Their smooth design, their new technologies, the fact that I own an iPod, plus the absence of A BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH ( which i have been getting quite too often in Vista due to some compatibility issues with my RAM cards) made me decide that Mac OS was the best OS out there at this time. This was before I installed it and got a chance to really do some stuff with it.
I just learned how to appreciate Windows.

Mac OS X ( Tiger) : Great design, great gadgets, great stuff. Unfortunately it sucks as an OS. I mean it's the type of OS you'd want your elevator to have , not your 10.000$ multiprocessor workstation, or even your decent programming machine. After you get your jaw off the floor and get over the design and the overall "nicety" of the OS, and when you actually try to install and do something with it you realise it's a piece of junk. It's that type of program meant for people who have had absolutely no connection with the digital world and are just getting into computers and stuff. It's simple, and usually quick.
Few errors, and almost no viruses, but when something like that happens, there's no way to say your mac. Now I agree, with people who criticize Windows ( as i said i was one of them until recently) for being full of bugs and errors and viruses and things like that. But here's THE GOOD PART: In Windows if you really know what you're doing you can solve almost any problem. In mac os you can barely set up you're applications. Sure you can change the color scheme for absolutely anything ..but you can't see the root files for a program. That's the type of OS this is. ( Yes i know you can see the root files but i was just giving a comparison. Plus even if you see them that doesn't mean you'll actually be able to do anything).
Now I'm back to my Vista Ultimate, which is getting better and better thanks to the updates from MS ( I can't wait for the SP1 to come out) and I'm really happy with it.

So I'll just sum up : Mac OS X : Smooth design, cute user interface, worthless when you want to use it for serious stuff.
Windows: Full of bugs and errors, but most of them can be easily solved. Great compatibility with almost any software, and ideal for complicated use.

Be back in a few days with a new article.

Mac OS X on PC Tutorial

Well this is one of the most exciting things I've done lately with my pc. I know lots of people enjoy Mac and Mac OS X , or the new Leopard and I have to say I was quite excited about it myself even though I've never owned a Mac. I saw the Apple presentations about the new Macs and Leopard and I liked everything so much that I decided to actually try and install Mac OS
on my pc. Now if you're anything like me, you're just going to be curious about the way I did it so I'm going to do this in two posts, the first being the actual steps, and the second being my feedback on Mac OS .

So here goes the tutorial.

1) First of all, unless you're willing to risk it all, you're going to need a separate hard disk than the one you are using for Windows. The two OSs can't coexist on the same hard even if they are on different partitions. ( Now I've heard of people who actually installed them on the same hard but based on my own experience and the way the two different systems work that seems fairly impossible).

2) Secondly you're going to have to download the "VMWare files for patched Mac OS X Tiger Intel” from the net. This usually can be found around on torrents under the name : "tiger-x86.tar.bz2". Note: this is only Mac OS X and NOT Leopard.

3) The last thing you are going to need is a program with which you can burn ( dd ) an image onto your drive. I actually tried two things. First i tried Cygwin, which emulates a Linux type command promt for Windows and with which you can dd images. This didn't work out at all. And what I used after that, and the program that I recommend is TransMac. It's a simple easy to use program that opens all kind of Mac files under Windows so it can be quite handy. It can be found around the net either in this simple form or as part of " Mac OSx Hacking Tools" pack released some time ago on torrents.

4) Ok , now that you have all of these, all you need to do is unrar the tiger-x86 archive. This make take some time depending on your machine. The files you are going to use is tiger-x86-flat.img . As you noticed it's an img file, older format used before OS X by Mac ( the new one is .dmg but don't worry TransMac has no issue with this).

5) Next thing you have to do is burn the image using TransMac ( or whatever other program you prefer) on the hard disk you want to install on. Note: Windows will now see this drive as unformatted and of unknown format. DO NOT FORMAT IT as Windows will suggest.

6) well, technically that's it. Restart and boot on the respective hard drive. Check your bios settings if it's not already set to boot on it. A grey/white screen with an Apple logo should appear if everything worked and if you're one of the lucky ones MAc OS will boot and you'll be happy. If not I suggest you keep on reading this.

7) If for some reason Mac won't boot try the following:
-> At the Darwin boot screen press any key and then type -x . This will boot the system in safe mode. It shouldn't pose any problems if this works.
-> In case that didn't work , again restart and at the darwin screen type -v . This will boot in Verbose mode and you will most likely see what drivers failed to load and what's causing the problem. If, by any chance, after loading whatever driver you see a " Still waiting for root device " message, then welcome to the gang. This is probably the most common error us pc users encouter when trying to use MacOS. This is a generic error meaning that no one actually knows what causes this error or how to solve it. The error actually happens because MacOS can't actually see the device from which it just booted, it can't find itself so to speak. Well, after I searched around the net, and saw that way too many people adviced starting to modify kext files from the original image I decided to do my own thing and this is what you can try also without actually fearing you'll destroy the image ( Disclaimer : Try this at your own risk. If you're familiar with BIOS settings such as drive configurations, s-ata / ide drives , and boot sequences you should have absolutely no problem. If not you may end up crashing your computer. ).

What I noticed is that MacOS can't even conceive not being the primary IDE drive. So if you have IDE drives be sure to set the one on which you have mac to Primary Master. This should fix the problem in most cases.
If you don't have IDE drives ( I only have sata hard drives) than it's trickier. I fooled around with the settings but I just couldn't make it work until I specifically disabled all IDE drives in bios ( i had my dvd rom in there ..so I can't use my dvd rom while using Macos :( ). That's it, if this still doesn't work there's nothing specific that I can say. Search around the net and you're sure to find tutorials on how to edit the kext files, and that might solve the problem, then again it might not.

I'm posting my own specs here, just to show you on what I did this :
Pentium D 3.4 ghz
Intel D946GZIS Motherboard
1GB DDR2 RAM
Nvidia Geforce 7300 GT
And I have 3 160gb S-ATA Hard Disks

Note #1: If you do get to use Mac with this install, and you will want to install other applications you'll have issues with the user acount password. The image was made by DeadMoo and so that's the acount. Now the original tutorial ( out of which 3/4 didn't work for me ) said you could modify the password in the control panel while booting in verbose mode. But this is the
much simpler solution. Deadmoo's password is BOVINITY ( without caps in case it's case sensitive). And now that you know this you can simply go and change the password from inside the OS.

Note #2: The onboard ethernet controller didn't work under MacOSx. I had to install a separate one. Also Mac didn't recognise my video card. Whenever Mac doesn't recognise a card that you can take out , well do just that. Take it out and boot MacOS. Then put it back in. It might just do the trick. If it doesn't ..well ..get a real Mac. Also remember that certain chipsets and pieces of hardware are not supported at all so that might be an issue. Look around the net for a full list.

Hope this has been of some help, and you have good luck and this works for you. Have fun!

iPods

Yes yes , I know it's more than late for publishing such an article but the fact is that the original post I had written about this got lost somewhere, and since I'm too tired to think about anything else right now I'll just write about my iPod.

Well ever since I was little I've had this fascination with cool smooth black/white shiny gadgets that have a lot of memory and play music. And quite frankly, lately everybody seemed to be getting an iPod. As I am a big music enthusiast ( right now I have about 8000 songs on my PC ) I decided it was finally time to get a mp3 player ( actually my phone which was also used for this purpose got stolen so that's why I had this sudden and clear ideea ). Searching around the internet ..ah who am I kidding i went directly to Apple to see what was going on at the moment. And that's when I was shocked, when I saw the new Apple iTouch. I mean cooome on ..that's the most beautiful gadget I've ever seen. So i quickly decided to buy one.
The problem was that it wasn't out yet. So I waited ..and I waited ...and WAITED ..and oh my God , waited some more ..until ..it didn't come out. What came out were the other 07 iPod models including the new Nanos with video ( absolutely GREAT ) and the longer lasting Classicals ( which until now didn't even have a name). I have to hand it to Apple , they came out with a great product. I personally bought the 160 gb black model ( I know it's a lot of space but I have 40gb of music + all the other files I carry around ..). Anyway, that small screen is even better, the colors are more alive than ever, and now I can listen to almost 36 hours of non stop music, or watch up to 7 hours of perfect quality movies.
So good job Apple! ( this time...)

Intro

  Well this blog started because I decided that instead of wasting each weekend and afternoon risking my PC's health ( and ocasionally my own ) by doing weird random things to it , I should tell people about what I'm doing.

  First of all it's a good way to say thanks to all those guys that wrote the wonderful tutorials for whatever crazy scheme I might be trying at the moment. And second it might just help save someone's pc. It's the kind of thing you see on tv shows like Brainiac : I do it so you don't have to. Remember, I am a highly trained amateur with more than 7 years in PC experience so I should know what I'm doing. 
Besides this, I'll ocasionally write about whatever I find to be interesting in 
the IT world lately. 

 
So I hope you'll enjoy this as much as I do.