Random Geeky Stuff

Cooliris 1.5 for iPhone

2009-08-11T17:25:00.004+03:00

It's nice to have friends :D Last night I got an e-mail from the CoolIris team. You know I'm a big fan of their product. So they launched a new version for the iPhone. With a new redesigned interface and tons of new features. Here are some of them:

* My Social, a brand new feature with complete Twitter integration so you can re-tweet, follow, and view public/friend timelines
* Search Bing, our News and Entertainment channels, or even Twitter for cool content
* Favorite entire feeds and Wall views to save searches for future viewing
* Search filter options for all search providers

For the full feature list and description, visit their blog. And for a DEMO of the program watch this. Hope you enjoy their product, and if you have any questions you can ask me, or ask the cooliris team directly @ cooliris.com

Muppets

2009-08-09T11:04:00.001+03:00

Hey ..I promised :)) . Here they are.

And I have to say this is the best rick roll ever

From Opera to Firefox

2009-08-09T10:52:00.002+03:00

A few days ago I found out that Opera 10.0 Beta 2 came out and as I still love Opera ( though I don't use it anymore) I decided to give it a try for old time's sake.

The interface is a little changed, nothing major but better overall. They seem to have resolved the stability issues, the program didn't crash, and they also seem to have resolved the rendering issues. I actually couldn't find any rendering faults this time , which is a big plus. And of course Opera passes the Acid 3 test with 100%. There's a new feature called Turbo, which is designed for the one person in the world that still uses dial-up. When turned on, your pages appear much faster because of a lossy algorithm that makes your pictures look like shit, but hey you see pages a lot faster. It's actually a useful feature for that ONE person out there.

Unfortunately no plug-ins work. I mean nothing besides Flash Player. Quicktime didn't work, Reader didn't work, and Windows Movie Crap didn't work. Plus the program now uses more memory that IE and Firefox. What's up with that? I would have added screenshots but I deleted it immediately and went back to Firefox and crying. Hopefully by the time they have the finished product ( which if I'm not mistaking should be Q1 of of 2010 as if it's a major release) they'll have worked out all of these problems. Cheers.

PS: It kinda seems we're going in circles here with the same subjects coming up over and over Browsers->windows-Apple-browsers-windows-etc and I'm getting sick of it. My next post will be about ..hmm ..muppets. Yeap that's right MUPPETS.

iPhone, Jailbreak and Nation Security

2009-07-30T12:05:00.003+03:00

This is a must read! Did you know that you could bring down the US nation only by using your iPhone?
As usual Apple outdid themselves with their own bullshit and stupidity. I have written this article in romanian already ( which you can check out here) , but I'll just forward you to the original english text @ Wired.

Y Mess for Iphone

2009-07-26T22:33:00.002+03:00

So a few days ago the new version of Yahoo Messenger for iPhone came out. Supposedly there are a few bug fixes and other small improvements but what made me curious was the new Push feature.
Taking advantage of the new API in 3.0 SDK they now made Yahoo use push directly. So if you receive a message or notification on messenger, even if the app is not running directly you will still receive a notification on the screen ( similar to the one for SMSs).
So I installed the update and went on to test it. I have to say that I'm quite impressed with how well the whole push thing works. I mean the delay between receiving the message and the notification appearing on the screen is only a few seconds..and that can easily be attributed to crappy signal coverage.
Another thing that I was really interested in was the battery consumption with Push. This goes both ways. Meaning that the Push itself uses quite little batter ..from what I saw only about 5-10% more which is quite decent. The problem appears when you send replies to messages you receive. Because every time you hit reply, the app reloads, and uses A LOT of battery.
With brightness set to 60%, 3G on, e-mail set to manually download, and a full charged battery I couldn't use the app for more than a few hours till it went under 20%. And as I said that's only because of the application itself , not because of the Push feature.
All in all , everything is ok but you can't rely on this app to chat for a whole day. Be sure to check this article in romanian if you can rgstuff.ro
Cheers Geeky

Time flies

2009-07-18T15:10:00.004+03:00

Wow I can't believe how fast time flies. It's already been a month ever since my last article. A busy and kind of stressful month with 6 exams and other such activities. Not to mention the ever daily beers :)) . I haven't messed with my pc lately, mainly because I really needed it and was in no mood to start fixing stuff. The only thing I have been working on if the new romanian site RGStuff.ro . Basically it's this blog plus much more. You can see the logo on the right in the sidebar. Just putting on the final touches , and we should be up and running in the next few days.

Unfortunately the new site is completely in romanian. I mean unfortunately for the english speaking visitors that come here, but RGStuff.ro is designed for a different target audience. Don't worry though, this blog will continue to exist and to be updated regularly. So be sure to check back soon.
If on the other hand you actually speak romanian give RGStuff.ro a try, we promise you are going to like it.
Until next time, cheers guys.

IPHONE OS 3.0 IS OUT

2009-06-17T20:46:00.001+03:00

the iphone os 3 is now out, you can download it on itunes. for a list of the most important features read this.

Opera Unite

2009-06-17T20:19:00.002+03:00

While waiting for the OS3 for the iPhone, V recommended I do a little research on a new project from Opera, Unite. If you've been reading this blog you know I'm quite a fan of Opera though lately they have been disappointing me.

What is Opera Unite?

Unite is a new concept. Actually, it's a question for an older concept.. " aren't we missing something? shouldn't this be different? " where this refers to the internet.
The internet may be viewed as " a series of tubes" but that's somewhat misleading. Fortunately the way the internet works is quite easy to understand and if you're reading this blog you already know how it works. The whole idea behind Unite is that why should we depend on servers who somebody else manages? why should we depend on 3rd parties when it comes to file sharing and other such interactions?

This idea in itself is worth pondering. And the people at opera say they have a solution, but I believe it to be flawed from the beginning. Their ideea is that each computer on the web should be it's own web-server, and interactions should be ..well .. directly peer-to-peer. And somehow Unite is said to deliver that. But my honest opinion is that Unite is an upgraded tunelling , VPN app. Something like next-gen Hamachi, over which you can now send files and stream media. But that's crap. The whole ideea with posting on the web is "it's there even if you're not". Social services are meant to be hosted by 3rd parties. Instant messaging is already well established with it's own apps. Same goes for browsing, games and everything else. Why would you want to downgrade all of the great apps and services out there and stick them all up in another new app? it just doesn't really make sense.

And let's say you do that, let's say it works out fine, but in the end ..YOU ARE STILL DEPENDANT ON 3RD PARTY SERVERS, opera's in this case.

SO let's try and forget for a second about utopic web-spaces and let's focus on rolling out the useful software..YOU HEAR ME APPLE??? useless people....

iPhone 3G S and Iphone OS 3

2009-06-09T13:33:00.004+03:00

Wow it's been a great day today, and it's only half-way through. Yesterday ( or late last night in my time zone) was the World Wide Developers Conference ( WWDC) at which Apple unveiled among other things, the latest and most powerful version of the iPhone.

The iPhone 3G S ( S stands for speed), is packed with new features, that make the iphone an even greater smart-phone. While there are quite a lot I will only note the ones that are truly great:

2x ( twice) the speed of the iphone 3g. Meaning you'll be able to load, view, edit and save programs/files/attachements/web pages much faster.
a brand new 3MPX built in camera, with auto-focus/tap-to-focus and the ability to film @ 30 fps.
new voice-controlled interface, for phone and ipod apps.
longer lasting battery, up to 9 hours on wifi.
improved accessibility features
data encryption options
built-in nike+ support
faster internet access, the phone now supports 7.2 Mbps HSDPA

A few other features hidden around, you can watch the keynote at Apple.com. Other things worth noting:

It comes out with the new OS3. For a list of features and enhancements read this.

It's release date is June 19th, and the OS 3 release date is June 17th.

The OS 3 is a FREE upgrade for all iphone users.

The 3G S cost 199$ for a 16 GB model and 299$ for a brand new 32 GB model. ( prices according to At&t for new subscribers).

The OLD iphone 3G is now available with OS3 preinstalled for only 99$.

All fine and dandy, if you're a new user than this is the phone for you. But what if you're not? Is upgrading worth it? Here's a great article on the issue from TechCrunch.

News

2009-06-08T11:08:00.002+03:00

Things have been going on these last few days. Here's my take on them:

First of all E3. Great ..too bad I wasn't there. Fortunately there were no " Giant enemy crab(s)" ( for people familiar with bashing Sony you'll know what that means). Second the game I was looking forward to, Assassin's Creed 2 was demoed. It seems to be a nice sequel with some definite improvements. What people can only hope now is that Ubisoft finally gives some freedom to the player. What Assassin's Creed actually needs is to have a talk with Hitman.

Second, we have a launch date for Windows Seven, and it's sooner than anyone expected: OCTOBER 22. As I have been beta testing for the last few months, I can tell you Seven is going to be a great release, and a very stable one. No more Vista-like mistakes.

Third I've had some rendering issues with a 9600GT on Sims 3. There is no possible reason or explanation, and I have yet to find a fix. And there's nothing on the net related to this.

Fourth Alongside Seven Microsoft is launching Bing. The beta has been around for a few days now. Bing is a new search engine, that is supposed to be Search 2.0. And while certain features, and ideas that went into it's making surely sound smart and great ..time and page-hits will be the judges in the end.

I'm sure many many many other things have happened in the last 2 weeks but I've been really busy with exams coming up. Anyway that's why the name is RANDOM geeky stuff. Cheers

From Vista to Seven

2009-05-24T09:30:00.003+03:00

Hello. How are you guys? What have YOU been up to? How are YOUR pcs doing?

Just wanted to do a very very short summary on a few up-front differences between the two Microsoft operating systems. Besides all the changes listed out there, here are just a few that you come across in the very first days of using Seven.

1) Boot Time.
When Seven was first unveiled, one of the main features was 40% faster than Vista at boot. Well that's a myth! Don't get me wrong, it does boot up very fast just not faster than Vista. Either I was very lucky with Vista or whatever but both OSs take 15-20 seconds from power up to desktop. And I tested this quite a few times just to be sure.

2) The real difference in boot is another one. Seven uses parallel driver loading, meaning it loads all your drivers at the same time making use of multi core cpus. Also means that once you see your desktop ..that's it, all drivers were loaded. Vista did not do this, and though it didn't take very long to see your desktop, drivers were still loading. For example after desktop it took another 1 minute to get my printer driver ready. But while doing this ..Vista also caches some of your frequently used programs, meaning if by any chance you use one of those programs it would load up much faster than usual. Seven doesn't seem to do this anymore.

3) Copy-ing + Install time
Copy-ing files finally seems to have gotten fix. It works even better/faster than in SP1 and I'm glad it does. As a direct result, install times for different applications are considerably lower.

4) Security.
Seven is based on Server 2008 kernel + Vista features and security. It's even more secure than Vista, and best of all you can now set the level of agressiveness for the User Account Control.

5) Compatibility
I have not had any problems with Seven ( except for this one). Most programs work, all drivers worked and in case they don't try the Run in Compatibility mode feature because it actually works. And best of all, companies have already released drivers for RC1 for example nVidia updated my graphics driver.
6) Toolbar
This is one of the highlights of Seven but I must say my own feelings are quite mixed. At first it does seem great and it always looks great but as for improving efficiency ..well not so sure about that. I mean it does make things faster but only in specific situations ( mainly the ones demoed by microsoft with multiple similar-looking documents), but there are quite a few situations in which it actually hinders the user. And there is still some work to be put into it because ocasionally it will get stuck and not open windows anymore. You have to manually right click and maximize the window for things to get back to normal. But certain aspects can be tweeked for example when to combine the icons and their size. Overall Seven makes for a nice experience and I really look forward to the finished product.
The end.
As I said this is not completely of thorough in any way. I just wanted to note the first differences people will come across between the two operating systems. Please leave comments and suggestions. :-) Cheers

No title

2009-05-14T15:37:00.002+03:00

Well I just wanted to let you know that (as you can see) we have a new header thanks to Flo. Don't ask me why there's a white line next to it ..it's just the way blogspot resizes pictures and I'm too lazy to edit the html again.

Second I wanted to give credit to Lucian, he's the one that told me how to modify the volume limit on ipods.

I might write an article later on today. Cheers

Windows 7 / How to install Alcohol

2009-05-13T15:59:00.003+03:00

Most people would say that I have way too much free time, but that is simply not true. Today, instead of writing homework or studying for exams I decided to install Win 7 RC1. I would have installed the first public beta but because the licenses expire in a few months I decided not to, but this license expires in March next year so I'm fine till then.

Now besides all the new and wonderful features Seven also brings a lot of crap with it. Yes I am very aware that this is not the final product, that it's still beta and all of that so stop yelling. I am also very aware that I personally tested the pre-beta version with which I HAD NONE OF THESE PROBLEMS.

One of the very annoying problems I encountered was trying to install a program with which I could MOUNT VIRTUAL DISKS. I have an Alcohol 120% kit, that I used on Vista and the pre-beta release of seven without any problems. Well that failed. When trying to install you would be prompted to restart. Now there are two things that go wrong here:
1) You reboot but the installation starts all over again, looping like this forever.
2) Windows crashes on boot and won't boot again unless you restart and use the Check Startup Tool provided there.
Mine was the second case. So I finally got windows to boot again and decided to try Daemon instead of Alcohol. I picked it up and installed it. Guess what? It would boot and go into an infinite loop the program always starting the setup instead of continuing on the install.

I looked around the web and found a solution that seemed somewhat logical. Before booting hit F8 and select one of the last options, the one that stops windows from enforcing DRIVER SIGNATURES. If that doesn't ( and it didn't) work for the daemon install it may work for other things, such as Windows not recognizing certain drivers and hardware.

( oh and if by any chance you have an Asus motherboard like I do the challenge is even better. On asus motherboards pressing F8 will get you the Boot Priority menu. So pressing too soon would get you that menu. Pressing too late would do nothing because Windows had already started to load. You have to have precise timing for anything to work)

Anyway when that didn't work I went directly to Daemon's forum and started looking around. No solution was found because the people at Daemon are crying because Seven is only a beta and they do not have support for betas and we should stop asking for it because it's a betaaa :(((( . God damn lazy bastards, the RTM release will probably be this summer and if all goes well Seven will be released before the end of the year so SCREW YOU. ( yes i'm pissed).

With that out of the way I checked back with the people at Alcohol. Well they seemed to be better at this, because they're latest release is Seven-prof. Meaning there are no compatibility issues. Or so they claimed ..when I installed it, it got me back in the loop of restarts with nothing really installing.

The last thing I did that actually worked is a combination of three things:
1) Completely disable the User Account Control.
2) Right click the setup.exe file ..and get it to run in compatibility mode with WIN XP.
3) Right click on the file and select RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR.
4) Finally upon restarting press F8 and select the setting I was talking about above.
I don't honestly know what made this work because none of the above steps worked on it's own. After doing all of that the setup should have worked and you should have Alcohol installed. You can get your User Acount Control back to it's setting and everything should work just fine.

Modifying iPod Volume Limit

2009-05-09T13:23:00.004+03:00

Disclaimer: What I do is on my own risk and expense. Please don't take what you read here as foolproof, because it's far from it. Messing around with software and hardware may have undesirable side-effects such as unwanted children, anorexia, rigor mortis, earthquakes, etc.

LE: This procedure only works for jailbroken iPods.
Ipods destined for the EU have a preset for volume limiting. You can't access it and it's designed to protect your ears/brain/family. But for those of us who don't care about any of those things here's how to disable the limiter.

First you'll need Total Commander. Then you'll need a plugin called T-poT. Then you'll need to install the plugin. To do this, extract the plugin into the Total Commander folder. Then go into TC->-configuration-options-plugins-file system .wfx and you add the plugin there.

Now connect your ipod. Using total commander go to network places and there you should see the files on your ipod. ( By the way ..before doing this you could go to folder options in control panel and select to view hidden and system files and folders).
Now follow this path: tpot/system/library/privateframeworks/celestialframework/RegioanalVolumeLimits.plist
RegioanalVolumeLimits.plist is the only file you need to modify. You copy it onto your hard drive, open it with notepad and replace the value : 0.aaaa ( where aaa is whatever ) and replace it with 1. Then copy it back to the ipod, overwriting the original. Disconnect the iPod and restart it.
That's it ..and it should be about 20% louder. Cheers

KemUtil.dll error

2009-05-07T22:29:00.002+03:00

Occasionally drivers and programs start to act weird. As someone once said .. " My software doesn't have bugs, it just develops random features". It was this thing that happened this morning to a friend.

When he started his PC, Vista based ..there was an error with the KemUtil.dll . This driver actually belongs to Logitech, and comes with many of their harware ..for example a mouse, keyboard ( as was the case), graphic tablet etc. To get rid of the error you may try one of the following:
1) simply unplug and then plug back in the piece of hardware that you have from Logitech.
2) Reinstall the driver
3) If it's something plug and play you can uninstall the driver altogether and see if that works.

Security for Vista sp1 / Win 7

2009-05-07T10:10:00.002+03:00

In case you don't have either of those operating systems and you're in no way planning to use them then you don't need to read this.
But if you do ..well here's the story.
Along with the first service pack for Vista Microsoft also launched a new set of APIs for developers to use. One of these APIs is used for communication between your Antivirus/Antispyware software and the operating system. Most software developers had implemented and used the older version of the API, but with the release of the new set and service pack 1 they would have to change to the new ones.

Now ..Microsoft gave developers an original 18 month grace period in which both the old and the new APIs would work, but that period ends. ( btw grace period started when you installed SP1 on your machine) Well in september the grace period will ends and yu may start receiving warnings about it.

What it all actually means?
Don't worry your antivirus software will still work, the only difference is that Windows won't know that. Windows will just tell you that " is on but is reporting its status to Windows Security Center in a format that is no longer supported. Use the program's automatic updating feature, or contact the program manufacturer for an updated version". ( screenshot below)

What can you do?
1) nothing because it;s all the same
2) Update your antivirus software as most companies have already implemented the new set of APIs and everything will get back to normal.

Changes from Beta to RC ..Windows 7

2009-05-06T21:43:00.002+03:00

Due to intake of massive amounts of alcohol in the weekend + exams in the weekdays I found myself unable to write anything. But today I finally got some spare time and tried to catch up with what's been going on.

I came across some pages detailing changes that have occurred between the beta release ..and the RC release of Windows 7. The pages are as old as March but I only found them today. There;s no use in rewriting or even copy pasting them here, so I'll just give you the links: link 1 and of course link 2.

As you know the RC was released a few days ago and you can download it for free from Microsoft. The beta version expires on 1st of July 2009 , and the RC expires on March 1st 2010 so the final release will most likely be Q2 of 2010..or at least I hope ..I don't believe MS will do a RC2 thing because they got it quite right the first time.

Hotspot Shield and other stuff

2009-04-30T19:53:00.002+03:00

Seems this is a double-post day so enjoy it.
First of all .. a little something about myself : I love to watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report. Two very interesting, funny and most of the times intelligent shows that relax and entertain me. Since I don't have Comedy Central here, I used to download the shows off torrents, but then I discovered I could watch whole episodes on Comedy Central's website. Which was excellent. Well, 2 days ago they introduced a new commercial thingy, from which they make some money, but it also means that you can't watch the show unless you live in specific regions aka the US and Canada. The way they check your location is via your IP. So thanks to someone's comment I tried Hotspot Shield a little program that creates a VPN and basically masks your IP and protects in/out-going data. By using this tiny little program you can now watch those shows and browse more securely.

Second because Vista SP2 was released to manufacturing yesterday, Windows Update now features a new update ..for the updater itself. It's exactly the same thing that happened before the release of SP1, so as to have a smoother install when the service pack gets here. So go ahead and install that . The update is KB955430.

Adobe Flash

2009-04-30T11:51:00.002+03:00

A few days ago I installed the Adobe CS3 because I needed to work on some projects. Unfortunately ..ever since I reinstalled Windows, for some reason Flash CS3 doesn't work any longer on Vista. Don't ask me why ..it was working perfectly before. So I got myself Flash CS4 and installed it. Well the program itself worked without a hitch .. but after installing it I noticed that certain Flash dependent apps ( such as Yahoo Messenger) went haywire, because each of these apps were primarily searching for " flash.ocx" ( the global flash plug-in file), but the new file was flash10a.ocx ( due to the version change). So I kept getting errors and reduced functionality because of this.
One simple solution is to go to C:/Windows/System32/Macromed/Flash find the flash%n.ocx file ( replace %n by whatever version of flash you have ..9a/9b/10a/10b- if older it should simply look like flash.ocx and you shouldn't be reading this post). Create a copy of the file ..and simply rename it to flash.ocx This should work in most cases and get you back to normal.
For some reason ( most likely because of some older registries ) this didn't work for me so I had to reinstall Y Mess for everything to get back to normal. ( when I reinstalled it actually updated the flash plug-in from flas10a.ocx to flash10b.ocx)
Cheers, and enjoy the long weekend everyone.

Vista SP2 RTM

2009-04-29T21:51:00.003+03:00

Vista Service Pack 2 was released to manufacturing today/yesterday. It's not a very big deal, as I said the OS doesn't desperately need it anymore ( as was the case before SP1). It was on the way we all knew and it's the next step. It includes all updates released after SP1, some security fixes and a few compatibility issues that were addressed, and it will be released to the general public in Q2 ( meaning May or June).

Here are some of the key benefits of Windows Vista SP2: ( taken directly of the Windows Team's Blog )

Windows Search 4.0 for faster and improved relevancy in searches
Bluetooth 2.1 Feature Pack supporting the most recent specification for Bluetooth Technology
Ability to record data on to Blu-Ray media natively in Windows Vista
Adds Windows Connect Now (WCN) to simplify Wi-Fi Configuration
Windows Vista SP2 enables the exFAT file system to support UTC timestamps, which allows correct file synchronization across time zones.
.

Browsers

2009-04-27T15:37:00.002+03:00

I'm really pissed right now, for half an hour I've been trying to get to different sites and I have to use all possible browsers that exist each for a particular thing. And i'm sick of it .

A good simple, good design and ergonomic browser is just something that doesn't exist and never will !!!!! Firefox looks like shit, I personally hate it + I can't even download it right now cause it doesn't f-ing work! Opera works like shit! Internet Explorer IS shit! And Chrome still needs some work put into it for my liking. Safari doesn't even count. I prefer text browsers rather than Safari. I prefer trying to get to a site via Command Prompt rather than Safari. I prefer physically going to the server and printing out a carbon copy of the page's source code rather than using Safari.

So I guess I'll just have to revisit THE LIST of less popular browsers and one out of there..

God damn it!

Windows 7 RC

2009-04-27T14:56:00.002+03:00

Besides buying laptops, installing Windows and remaking the blog template there hasn't been too much going on. But the highlights are that we finally have a date for Windows Seven Release Candidate 1 and that is: 30th April for MSDN and TechNet and May 5th for everybody else.

For all you haters, ignorants or just unsure and concerned people out there that believe Win 7 will be crap and you're still in love with your XP and your apps the people at MS actually did something useful :Windows XP Mode and Windows Virtual PC.

It's a mod for win seven that will allow you to install XP apps via Virtual PC and then run them in Seven. Check the link for more info.

Oh and on the lighter side of things the Yahoo Mess team did a little tinkering around and now you profile can show your updates from multiple social sites such as Last.fm and YouTube and Tweeter directly in YMess. Check out this post for more info.

Blog Template

2009-04-25T22:37:00.002+03:00

You may be wondering why the blog looks somewhat different. Well I was in the mood to play around with the coding, and I actually had a few different ideas that would have looked nice. The first one was to get the background back, a little blue stripe on the edges of the screen ( like we have now). For that I had to change the background color and the sizes of the different wrappers. I've tried to optimize the site for 1024 screen resolution, so the original wrapper was 1024 pixels. I changed that to about 900 and the site looked weird. I tried changing the main and sidebar wrapper to make them smaller ..but it still looked weird so I reverted back to the original sizes.

Google has the following thing written next to the editor view : You may want to save your template before editing it. Guess why? So tings don't go horribly wrong as they did for me. When I went back to the original wrapper sizes something got screwy because the site ( regardless of any changes that I tried) was about 20 pixels more than it should be, thus going off screen, thus creating horizontal scroll bar that looked and felt like s%$t. I tinkered around some more ( I swear I did know what I was doing!) but somehow the sidebar got screwed all together.

Now this is the thing that I truly and honestly completely hate about technology. When things don't work without any reason. It's like you give the command : print 1 and your PC without any possible explanation prints 2. I always get extremely pissed when stuff like this happens, and it's probably my weak point when dealing with tech stuff.

It was at that point that I almost threw my monitor out the window, but I managed to calm myself. And I began anew, with a new template modifying it from the basic aspect, and I finally got to what you can see now. There were more changes that were supposed to happen, but technology hates me and for some reason I couldn't change the header sizes and a few more other things.

Anyway it doesn't look too bad ( I got rid of the header that annoyed you so much) and I hope you like it.

Don't worry!

2009-04-17T21:56:00.002+03:00

Don't worry - we're from the internets. It's going to be alright. :-)

People will mock me and say that I'm melodramatic .. but this is for everyone that sacrificed at least a little bit for freedom.

AW-GA800BT

2009-04-15T11:38:00.008+03:00

Instead of doing something decent, such as studying for my exams today I decided to tinker around with a little wifi card that a friend of mine brought around a few weeks ago. Now this is a dangerous business, tinkering around with your computer like i do every week. You may end up burning your motherboard ( like i almost did), frying your CPU ( like i almost did), breaking you GPU ( guess what goes in this parenthesis), reseting some important CMOS or BIOS settings and oh so many many more things can go wrong, not because you don't know what you're doing but rather because things tend to go wrong. But if you're lucky and things DON'T go horribly wrong then you'll end up with something nice plus a feeling of achievement.

The wifi card in question is a AW-GA800BT usually found directly soldered onto Asus motherboards. But this was a standalone card. Its technical specs have a big 50 font, saying the card is based on USB 2.0 which is all fine and dandy if USB only had 5 wires instead of 4. But hey I completely ignored that...it wouldn't be the first time something worked with only half the wires plugged into it.

So I took an old USB cable, cut it to pieces and directly connected it to the board via the 4 circuits that it had on one corner and the big "USB" sign written next to them. Then connected it to the PC. Guess what ..well that didn't work. The next thing that I tried was to stick it into a USB port onto the motherboard via it's correct pins. Well that WOULD have worked if only USB had 5 wires instead of 4. The problem with it is that the card needed two power cables. The classic 5V usb one, plus another 3.3V that I don't have.Â I decided to take a old HD LED cable..because of it's easy connectors and cut it, connect it to the board and stick it onto another USB port's 5V wire. Originally I also added a diode thingy (that I took out of an old walkie-talkie) to drop the voltage from 5V down to 3.5 V. But for some reason when I redid the wiring the voltage went down to 2V which was less that I needed. So I took out the diode and used the 5V thing and luckily it didn't burn the card, it doesn't overheat and works just perfectly now.

To do all of this I had to use Google Translate , and translate this whole forum into English so I could understand something. Anyway thanks to everybody on the forum, and I really hope they don't mind I use their pics for explanatory reasons.

This is the old walkie-talkie and next to it is the card itself.

This is the card, and the old LED wire, connected to the 3V socket.

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This is the wiring on the card, that's how you have to connect it. Original picture is found on the forum I mentioned above.

Again one more picture with the wiring

This is the end result, and I know it looks ghastly but it actually works perfectly it it's not that screwed up. You have one small cable that you connect on the motherboard to a 5V usb pin, and another wire that goes into any classical USB jack ( the kind in which you fit your flash drives)and that's it. Anyway hope this helps someone, it was quite fun to do. Cheers

Early Morning

2009-04-14T09:44:00.004+03:00

Most people like to wake up to the smell of coffee, read a newspaper, check out the news online, perhaps stretch a little, maybe even have sex and that's a great way to start the day. But for me ..honestly speaking there's nothing better than a panic attack and a great feeling of dread, to get you out of bed.

Besides waking up with a headache ( as usual) today I also woke up to find that my PC was not working. On turning it on it would simply stand by, with both fans at max power and do nothing. My first thought was that there might be something wrong the the CPU ..in which case I was screwed. But after about 30 seconds the motherboard ( Asus P5KC) beeped. One long beep followed by 3 short ones. That was a decent sign for me, so I got out my handy "Beep codes and you" manual ( i'm kidding I got the mb's manual) and found out that one long beep followed by 3 shorter ones means there is no VGA input. So the video card was to blame( nVidia Geforce 8800 GTS 512). Now this may have also screwed me, because upon adding the second fan to my GPU aka ..opening it up I had lost my warranty. I checked the connections, the wires and everything because it's easy to dislodge the board out of it's proper place, but there was nothing wrong. I then proceeded to taking it out, and putting it back in. Fortunately that worked and everything came back to normal...almost. Because after I booted Windows i quickly got a BSOD, but it seems it only was a one-time event. Now I'm off to have my coffee. Cheers

iPhone Bug

2009-04-08T14:54:00.003+03:00

This is probably the weirdest thing that ever happened to me on a phone, not just on a iPhone.

Today I was sitting next to a friend, both of us with iPhones. I was using the new Yahoo Messenger app while he was streaming radio over 3G. Meanwhile another person, outside of the building, with another iPhone sent HIM an SMS message. Now here comes the weird part: I received the message, and it displayed it with the contact info from my friend's phone. And I didn't even have that person's number on my cell!

Most people would jump and say it was addressed wrong or that I was using the other phone, but I wasn't and it wasn't. When the 3rd person came by, we all checked the addressing ( which was a reply to an earlier message), the numbers and everything. When I checked my SMS app, the message was gone, it was never saved, nor opened, only displayed. Everything was correct, but I got the info/sms and my friend didn't receive anything.

We then proceeded to test the phones in different scenarios to try and recreate the bug but we couldn't. I checked around the net for anything related to this but it seems this is the first ever.

PS: here's some info on the phones: all of them are 3g phones, my friend's and the 3rd person's being jailbreaked while mine is legitimate.

If anyone hears anything about this I'd appreciate a reply or something. Cheers

Yahoooo Messenger

2009-04-07T22:54:00.003+03:00

As some of you may know Yahoo announced a few days ago they would be launching a new app for the iPhone, the Messenger app. Well today was that day and the app is out. You can find it on the AppStore, but right now it's only available on the US Store. So I decided to check it out.

The first thing you must remember is that YAHOO! is NOT THE SAME THING as YAHOO! MESSENGER. I had no idea there were two apps flying around, both official yahoo stuff. The first one "Yahoo!" would actually be cute if it wasn't utter crap. It's an app designed to give you all your yahoo stuff, such as e-mails, news, messenger, flickr, etc all in one app. The idea is nice, the design is actually very nice but the implementation is very bad. The app is slow, refreshes all the time and I actually made it crash twice by pressing two buttons on the screen at the same time. You don't get any notifications on new messages and well ..it's simply useless. The only thing it would be good at ( in my opinion) is for reading the news but of course you can do that via Safari or any of other 1000 news related apps.

The second app, and the one I was originally looking for is Yahoo!Messenger. Their icons are the same except the Messenger one has a yellow smiley on it. Well this app is great. Though a friend of mine complained it was sluggish, I didn't experience any problems with it. The design is great, simple and direct, you can change your status, you can even host a link, you can send pictures ( tried it and it worked great) either from your library or by taking a pic right there. Aaaa it still has a few more features but I don't remember them right now. Anyway it really is excellent, supersedes Palringo and OneConnect and especially Fring.

If you want a full list of features, and some more info you can visit the Y! Messenger Blog. Oh and I also embedded the presentation video for the app. Cheers

OnLive at GDC 09

2009-03-24T12:16:00.003+02:00

I've seen the future and I love it.

Here's a great and descriptive article about OnLive, a service/platform/thingy that may actually revolutionize the way we download, buy, and use games as well as making consoles obsolete. I wish I had the time (but I don't) to write about it a little more.

Be sure to read it, it's great, it's amazing and it sounds like the future. Thanks V for the article.

Cheers

iPhone OS 3.0

2009-03-19T15:39:00.002+02:00

Hello. A few days ago, Apple had a developer conference in which they revealed the new software for the iPhone and iPod touch. the 3.0 OS that will be released some time this summer, and alongside it the new 3.0 SDK ( which is already available as a beta). I have to say it's packed with features, some useful some not so much, some that should have been there from the start, but overall it's going to be a nice release, fixing many problems and making life just a little easier. Here are some of the most waited for and most important features you can expect :

First of all for developers, the SDK features about 1000 new APIs for you to use while coding. These include, the ability to insert a google map into your app, the ability to add in-app payments ( such as for subscriptions and buying new levels for a game) and many many more.
Now for the average consumer. Well they added the so much awaited and anticipated copy/cut/paste feature that works across all basic applications. You can now select part of a text, or the whole text and paste it wherever you like whether it is in a note, sms or e-mail.
They also added MMS support. Yes you can now send multimedia messages, sounds, pictures and even contacts over the cellular data network.
They finally added search across many applications, not the least being the iPod app.
Alongside search, or as an extention, they added Spotlight. Yes the same spotlight as on the Mac OSX. Every time you drag towards the right of the home-screen you'll go to a whole new screen where you can search in the entire phone for a name, a number or an address. It finds everything from contacts and songs, to calendar appointments.
Another new and awaited feature they added p2p ( peer to peer) connectivity over bluetooth. You can now play multiplayer games over it, and if i remember right you're also able to send contacts via bluetooth from one phone to another.
They tweaked around different apps, added the "landscape" mode for the keyboard ( meaning the big keyboard) in apps such as SMS and E-mail so you can now write easier and faster.
They also added some extra support for different calendar appointments stuff ( i never use those)
They added Push support for many many apps and now developers can encode push into their apps for you to use.
Safari has a few improvements such as phishing filters.

There are many many new features alongside these but these are probably the most important and most sought after ( alongside Flash support which is still nowhere near in sight). If you want to watch the whole keynote you can find it here.

In case you were wondering, this update is absolutely free for everyone that has an iPhone ( including 1.0 firmware), and costs about 12$ for the iPod Touch. And it will be shipped some time during Q2 or even more likely Q3 of this year.

That's it. Cheers

Macgyvering Around

2009-03-06T21:08:00.006+02:00

Wohoo Oh my God ..it's great to write this. I've had a truly great day in such a geeky fashion. First of all ..I was asked a few days ago to get together a few pieces to try and make a decent computer out of them that would last for another 3-4 years. So I put on my " buy geeky stuff"� hat ..and got together an Asus P5QL-PRO, an Intel Core 2 Duo at 2.8 Ghz and a Gigabyte GeForce 9600GT GPU. This was only the beginning of everything.

I came back home with everything and started assembling them. I had no box, so I just put them together on the floor to see if everything checks out and to install Windows. Unfortunately I had no more money to buy RAM so I'm just using my old cards which are 2x Geil 512 ~ 667. So only 1 gig of RAM and Windows 7 still runs excellent, I'm really hyped about it.

When I started to piece everything together I realized I had only one power source powerful enough to get everything running and that was inside my own computer. So I took apart my own PC which was kind of painful to do ..mostly because nothing really fits the way it should inside the box and it's all macgyvered together. Anyway I took out my power source and installed Win 7 on the new PC.

Meanwhile a friend of mine was playing around with my own GPU Asus nVidia GeForce 8800GTS 512. And we got to talking about how it gets really hot ( it idles at 70C) and the box that I have is in no way helping and how there should be a second fan on it. Then, noticing I actually did have a spare fan around, we reckoned we should do our best to fit it on the card. Now ..the next part of the story is told in pictures so bear with me.

This was what we were trying to do: to fit the fan on the left on the radiator of the GPU after we had taken out the plastic part that belonged to Asus.

We cut through the plastic with a heated blade, making an air intake.

Meanwhile my own PC seeing what we were doing to the poor card had begun to "turn into monster"

After almost 2 hours ..yes that's how long it took us to cut through that useless plastic, this was the end result. A double fanned GPU. And though it may not look much ..that little fan actually keeps my card 20 degrees cooler, maxing out at 61C after 2 hours or heavy ultra graphics gaming. Yeap, that was my day and I have to say I had tons of fun with it. Cheers

Chrome Final

2009-02-22T21:07:00.002+02:00

Hello everyone, sorry for not writing anything these last few weeks but I've really been jammed. Anyway let me get right to it.

During the last days of 08 Google Chrome came out of beta and the final release flooded the net. Yes I do know it's a great browser, much more secure than others, faster than Firefox 3 and even Opera, simpler ..and so we love that clean design. It has great rendering ability, as well as the great Java engine, and the multithreading innovations. And no Google did not pay me to say all of that. However what still bugs me, and why I still prefer Opera ( they seem to have solved most of the rendering issues) is that Chrome uses up so much memory. I did a few test and the end result is that Chrome uses about 40-50% more resources than Opera ( as shown by Chrome's own Task Manager) . Now that doesn't really bug me as I have quite some ram ..but if your trying to fit a nice little simple browser on a older PC you will definitely have quite a few problems.

Anyway ..it's nice to see you can finally run Flash on Chrome without it either breaking down or not supporting it at all.

I'm Rex Hunt, see you next time in the wonderful world of fishing .. ( inside joke! Cheers!)

Superfetch

2009-01-27T20:37:00.003+02:00

Vista introduced this new feature called Superfetch ( and it's still present in Seven). This thing is actually what deals with your memory consumption. Superfetch detects whatever program is running and allocates the necessary amount of memory for the program to run in real time. Another little thing that Superfetch does is that while you still have free memory it detects the programs you use most often and caches them. What this means is that if by any chance you start one of those programs it will launch right away ( many times faster than XP depending on size and program) because it was preloaded into your memory. And this is another reason why most often, if you check your mem status ..you'll notice that usually it's only 1-2% free. That is because the rest is cached ( right now i have 1.4 gb of cache and only 15mb free). And luckily this works really well and in case you start a program that demands additional memory Superfetch instantly releases the extra amount.

now here's the fun part .. 2 minutes earlier Superfetch failed and crashed, windows gave me a warning. I was expecting at least a restart if not a direct system crash ..but nothing happened besides Aero being disabled :)) and Aero just came back now as it has done many times before. ( yeah occasionally it crashes and restarts after about 1 minute ..it's because of my drivers).

That's it. I'm really sorry, i know i haven't written anything good but i'm super busy and always tired when i come home, so i never really have the mood to start messing up my pc. Anyway I have a holiday next week and I promise i'll try to get up to speed. Cheers

Bsods ( disabling auto restart)

2009-01-19T13:06:00.002+02:00

A quick follow-up to the last post. I kept getting many blue screens and the computer kept restarting. Now you actually need the info in those bsods to get to the root of the problem, and usually you never have enough time before the restart.

So here's how to disable the auto-restart:

Go to system properties. You can do that either through Control Panel or by right-clicking the my computer icon and going to properties. Select the Advanced tab. There select Settings from Startup and Recovery and clear the Automatically restart feature. That's it. Now whenever you get a blue screen your computer will wait for a manual restart and you can get all the info you want.

Assassin's Creed Issues

2009-01-19T12:50:00.003+02:00

Well let me tell you about this little thing. Yesterday, after quite a long long long long day ( of doing nothing) I decided to catch up on my gaming. Yes I can consider myself a gamer, I have a passion for games, but I haven't really played anything the last few months for different reasons. So I decided to replay Assassin's Creed, cause I never had the chance to test it on the new GPU.

By the way if you don't know I'm running Vista SP 1 and a GeForce 8800GTS 512. So I set everything except the multisampling to the highest rating possible and start playing. After about an hour, I decide to try the multisampling. So I set that on high and get back into the game. Guess what, the pc crashes, BSODs, and restarts. A little puzzled I restart the game, set the multisampling lvl back to default and continue playing. After another 2 minutes the same thing happens. The bsods giving different graphics driver files as being the cause of the crash. Now I'm even more confused.

A note: I personally built my PC from pieces, and I used an old frame which is somewhat too small to properly fit the GPU card. So that's why I always have one side out, and that's also partially the reason why my card is always very hot. And this led me to believe that maybe it was overheating. The normal temperature while the card is idle should be somewhere close to 50-55 degrees C. Mine idles at 73, and goes up to 82 on load, which actually isn't THAT bad. So it wasn't overheating.

As a final check I looked round the net for other people with the same issues. And sure enough I found a whole lot. No nobody has any fix, and the problem seems to come up randomly, even if the game was working perfect before.

The FIx: the fix for me was switching back from DX10 to DX9. I mean only use the DX9 exec. And I haven't had any problems with it since. Though it is strange..

See you guys

Windows 7 Beta

2009-01-09T16:11:00.003+02:00

SO the holiday is over, and the shit all began once again. here's two things worth mentioning. Last night i watched the Macworld Keynote. Man it was simply sad...i'm serious ..simply SAD. mindless robots applauding simplicity taken to the extent that it actually dumbens ( to make someone dumb) the user. What I did decide to do after watching ..is ..no not go out and buy iLife 09 , rather go to the Apple Store, and bet 1000 bucks that no one there can actually convince me to get a Mac.

Second thing, today Microsoft officially released the Seven Beta. Now you may remember I said i was already running it, but that was build 3000 ( close to that number don't remember exactly), and this is build 7000. Probably a few improvements on the way, but as i have been saying for these last 3 weeks I have had absolutely no issues even with build 3000. You can download the Beta from the MS site. And for further info you can also take a look at Windows Team Blog.

But currently it's so busy that you can't actually see the site. Oh and by the way there were rumors about the official Seven release date being January 2010. Once again ..I honestly don't get Microsoft's timetable.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

2008-12-24T16:22:00.000+02:00

Hey everyone. I know I haven’t written that much lately and that is because I haven’t been doing anything worth mentioning on this blog. Of course that doesn’t mean things haven’t been going on, just means that they haven’t really caught my attention. The last time you saw me I was running Windows Seven™ and I’m quite happy to announce that I haven’t had any major issues with the beta the release. Any way I’m taking a few days off and I just wanted to thank everybody that was part of this whole project and to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a very very Happy New Year. I’m very sure that next year there will be even more interesting and unpredictable stuff to write about and be sure up I’m up to the task. So once again thanks a lot, take it easy and I will see you all next year. Cheers, Geeky.

Changing file permissions in Vista

2008-12-17T17:28:00.002+02:00

Ocasionally in Vista you may come across certain system files, or restricted files that for some unknown reason you would want to change. For example let's say you would want to delete a system file ..for example windows.sys ( no that file doesn't exist). Still it's a system file and if you tried to change it, or modify it in any way the OS would deny you acces. Now here's how you can change that. The trick is to become the owner of the file and then give yourself godlike privileges.

Here are the steps :

1) Find the file you want to change.
2) Right click on it, go to properties.
3) Go to the SECURITY tab.
4) Select the user you wish to change the permissions for. In this case it's your own user name.
5) Hit the advanced button in the right bottom corner.
6) Go to the OWNER tab.
7) Hit Edit.
8) Select your user name from the list and the hit ok.
9) Hit ok till you close all the menus.
10) Once again right click on the file, go to properties -> Security.
11)Select your own user name.
12) Hit edit.
13) Give yourself full control over the file.

That's it your done. Now I know there are many such tutorials out there ( some even with pretty pictures) but I posted this for ease of access. Hope it helped someone, Cheers.

Windows Se7en

2008-12-13T19:08:00.004+02:00

After a full week of doing almost nothing ( just a Vista reinstall after buying a brand new Seagate 640gb HDD) today was a nice day. Why? No not because I went out with friends and had fun ..but because I finally got my hands on a Windows 7 Beta. Yes yes ..Microsoft Windows 7 Beta ..it's out ..and I have it. ( actually it's been out for quite a while now ..I even wrote about it ).

So quick facts: I'm running build 6.1.6956 ( The final release will be 6.5 and not 7 just to improve compatibility with drivers and apps) It looks even better than Vista. It boots and shuts down in the same amount of time. It uses exactly the same resource amount as Vista SP1. I've had no issues with drivers until now. In case your installer says it's not made for this version of windows just use the "run in compatibility with.." option. Surprisingly it works wonders.

The only issues that I've had so far is that upon installation it messed up the MBR ( master boot record) so I had to use the Repair option on the dvd. But besides that it seems to work great. Stable and fast. And remember this is still Beta, we should see even bigger improvements with the RC releases.
For reference I'm running : Windows 7 Beta on :
Asus p5kc
Intel Quad Core Q6600
Maxtor 160gb SATA
2 GB RAM ~800
Nvidia GeForce 8800GTS 512

By the way I forgot to mention, one pleasant surprise: you can now choose the level of security you want from the UAC ( User Account Control) so it;s not that bothersome anymore.

And here are a few screens. For any questions feel free to comment.

Windows Vista/ Server 2008 Service Pack 2

2008-12-03T17:13:00.003+02:00

Yesterday Mike Nash from MS announced that Windows Vista Service Pack 2 is being released to a wider audience. So subscribers of MSDN and TechNet, that want a preview can now download the beta build. Of course, for most users it is recommended that they wait until the official release.

Vista Service Pack 2 contains all the hotfixes and security updates released ever since SP1 came out. Plus it adds hardware compatibilities, but other than that very little is trully interesting in this pack. As I said before, Microsoft is now fully commited to Windows 7 and Vista does not desperately need any major improvements ( such as was the case 1 year ago) so quite little energy is spent on this project.

The requirements for installing SP2 are having Vista with Sp1 installed ( Server 2008 shipped with sp1 preinstalled). And an update to the servicing stack that as was with SP1 , will be shipped through Windows Update.

Cheers

My Weekend

2008-12-01T09:40:00.003+02:00

I actually had a dream earlier today .. that they were introducing the new i7 Intels onto the iPhone...wouldn't that be so extra sweet? :)) Anyway here's my weekend. On saturday after visiting a cousin for his birthday I was asked to fix 2 PCs. Both of them AMD's one has an AM2 socket proccessor I don't really know what it is and the other has a 754 socket Sempron. Both of them were supposedly working at some point.

So I take on the AM2 one. Plug it in try to power it up ..nothing happens. Opened it, took at look at the cables and power source, everything seemed to be ok, turn it back on again still nothing. And by nothing I mean the state in which the computer powers up but doesn't even load it's BIOS or anything. So I start taking it apart, trying to change each part at a time to find out what the problem was. At one point when I reassembled it on the floor ( basically had the power source connected to the motherboard which was placed on a cardboard thing, and then I stuck some RAM into it ) it actually booted. And though the HDD wasn't connected the computer itself was working fine, I was able to look around the BIOS but there was nothing weird there. When I tried to restart it, it went back to it's original "stupidly do nothing" stage. And I haven't been able to figure it out. The thing is I don't have another AM2 socketed proccessor, nor AM2 socketed motherboard, cause then I could have changed between them.

Next I tried the other PC, the Sempron 3100+ ( i think). This one would boot up no problem, even boot windows, but after a few minutes of usage it would restart itself and keep restarting until you took the power cable out. First thing I thought was that the CPU was overheating. But after a few tries and tests that was no the problem. Next I thought that it might be the power source, because a weird buzzing sound came from it. So I changed it. Still nothing. I said what the hell ..let's try the RAM. This is the point when things got screwed. I took out the RAM card, and replaced it with another one (it's DDR1~400). The computer wouldn't do anything, got into the exact state that the other PC was in. Meaning powering up but doing nothing else. I changed back to the original RAM card but still nothing happened. So now I have 2 PCs with the same symptoms, different builds and no ideea on what is really wrong.

I would appreciate any suggestions you might have. Cheers, Geeky

Vista Themes 2.0

2008-11-28T18:06:00.002+02:00

I consider myself to be an inteligent normal human being...but sometimes I act totally against that. You might remember my other post with bad experiences with Vista themes. And you mihgt also think that I wouldn't be so eager as to try it again.. FALSE.

20 minutes ago I came across what seemed to be a cool Warcraft theme. The only problem is that it was specifically designed for XP. But I don't take into account such "details" :P. So I downloaded the theme, which was not a theme file but an exe. I said ok .. here we go again, and ran the exe. It installed some obscure h4x0r program that once again patched the theme files but also changed some .ico files from the system. Vista of course reverted to basic and then ..even worse ..took the "Classic" skin making it look like win 95.

This was still ok ..the major problem came ..when after patching and changing files ..somehow .. that program messed with my internet connection ( PPOE). So now I have no net .. I manualy revert vista to my own theme and restart the computer. Of course the .ico files were still there ..and the network still wouldn't work. This time ..System Restore did the trick. I simply restored to a few days ago and everything got back to normal.

Conclusion: Stop messing with themes! :)) Cheers.

How to change an admin password in XP/Vista

2008-11-26T17:21:00.002+02:00

Let's say your flatmate changed the password on the admin account. Let's say you're not trying to hack into his personal files to see naked pictures of his girlfriend ..rather you're trying to install a vital piece of software that you need to test so as not to get fired. What can you do?

First option
In case you have another administrator account ..well ..use that ( duuuuh).

Second option
You might be able to get into safe mode. It may be protected or it may not be. If you do get into safe mode you'll be able to create another account with administrative rights and then log on to that one. To get into safe mode just press F8 while booting and select Safe Mode.

Third option
If you somehow have access to system files. WinXp ,actually windows NT, stores passwords in crypted files : SAM. There are plenty of .sam editing tools out there but I wouldn't know which one to recommend. You can also try deleting the SAM and SAM.log files located in windows/system32/config/. The problem with tempering with these files is that even a tiny mistake may make your windows unsable and you'll need a clean reinstall.

Fourth option
This actually is the safest one. You can use one of the many freeware programs out there that are specifically designed for this. For a list of such programs and a few other tips and ideeas you can take a look at Petri's site. I actually used Petter Nordahl-Hagen's Offline NT Password & Registry Editor downloaded from there and it worked wonders.
Hope this helped someone, cheers.

Happy Birthday

2008-11-26T17:12:00.003+02:00

So yesterday RGS had it's first birthday. It's been one year since that dark and spooky afternoon when I decided that no more would I let all the work and nerves put into making a damn pc work , go to waste. It's been an exciting year, with a few very new and interesting tehnological developements, with increasing pageviews but much fewer problems than I would have anticipated.
First I would like to thank everybody for the feedback and suggestions, and everyone who has in one way or another helped me ( including the anonymous H4x0r 1337 people on different forums :P ). I promise I'll try and do an even better job this second year.
So thanks once again and Happy Birthday to that cute blue photoshoped excuse for a mascot that you can see on the right corner of the banner. :)) Cheers, Geeky

Internet speed, bandwidth issues in Vista

2008-11-19T17:45:00.003+02:00

So I wrote an article some time ago in which I mentioned I had had some issues with the internet bandwidth in Vista. And this only happens to me when I do clean reinstalls, it has happened a few times now and the fix is really easy. But yesterday other people complained they had simlar problems after random upgrades to Vista.
Symptoms: - very low download speed
- problems with loading search widgets and other such things.
- issues with searching on programs such as DC++ or other p2p apps.
- probably others but they're specific to each system.

How to solve: simply update your network card driver. Go to the manufacturer's website and download the latest drivers available. If by any chance you have the latest drivers simply reinstall them. You can also do this via Device Manager.
Now just in case that didn't work ( thought this has never happened) or you still think you can get more juice out of your connection here are two other tutorials that will help you: First, the auto tuning for TCP/IP receive levels. And second, how to Change or Disable the QoS Reserved Bandwidth Limit in Vista. This one reffers to the default bandwidth that the OS has priority over for such programs as Auto Update.
Cheers.

Microsoft Store

2008-11-14T09:47:00.003+02:00

Microsoft has launched today a new online feature: the MS Store. Sounds familar? Well it should cause apple has had one for many years now. You can pick up any MS manufactured product, including but not limited to games, software and even hardware with only one type of your credit card number.And it's not only a US store, it's also for the UK, Deutchland ( Germany) and Korea. Other countries will be added along the way. If you want to check the store out you can at www.microsoftstore.com .
Cheers!

A Warcraft Retrospective

2008-11-12T09:26:00.002+02:00

This isn't really related to anything, but it's my blog so I can post anything. Warcraft, in my opinion is THE game of the last 14 years. It was the game of my chilhood, and now ..14 years later ..i still enjoy an ocasional skirmish. SO for all the fans out there have a look at A Warcraft Restrospective:
Part 1

Part2

And part 3

Intel i7 processors

2008-11-10T20:46:00.004+02:00

I really really don't have time to write a proper article on this, but other people did. So here's a look at the new i7 series from Intel. Basically ..it's better than anything you've ever come to know until now. So for a full article THIS IS THE LINK. and I just added the benchmark jpeg to give you an ideea beforehand.

Android uber bug

2008-11-10T09:09:00.003+02:00

I didn't cover the release of the whole Android G1 stuff here because I really didn't care about it. But this tops everything else so I wanted to say a few words. It seems that the biggest and unexpected bug turned up a few days ago.
Apparently, every firmware version RC29 and lower interpret every single word that you type, anywhere (!) as a system command. And not only does it run it ..but it runs it with superuser permissions (WOW). The test is already classic. Go anywhere and type "reboot" then hit return. Your phone will reboot.
Luckily for those of you using it, Google has already rolled out RC30 fix that makes all your problems disappear and your life complete!

Windows Vista Service Pack 2

2008-11-08T16:23:00.002+02:00

I read about it, but forgot to mention it here. Last week ( October 29th)Microsoft released Windows Vista Service Pack 2 BETA to a very few lucky testers. The whole official release is still a few months away , but I'd say that most likely Q1 of 2009 will bring the service pack to everyone.

In addition to previously released updates since the launch of Windows Vista SP1, Windows Vista SP2 contains changes focused on supporting new types of hardware and adding support for several emerging standards:

Windows Vista SP2 adds Windows Search 4.0 for faster and improved relevancy in searches.

Windows Vista SP2 contains the Bluetooth 2.1 Feature Pack supporting the most recent specification for Bluetooth Technology.

Ability to record data on to Blu-Ray media natively in Windows Vista.

Adds Windows Connect Now (WCN) to simplify Wi-Fi Configuration.

Windows Vista SP2 enables the exFAT file system to support UTC timestamps, which allows correct file synchronization across time zones.

And of course, in adition to this there will be a number of bug and compatibility fixes. Will be waiting for it, thought I really doubt it will have the impact that SP1 had, especially because the OS doesn't desperately need it ( as was the case with the first service pack)

Cheers, Geeky

Y Mess for Vista CANCELLED

2008-11-08T10:11:00.005+02:00

This is actually news from 2 weeks ago but I thought of posting it just in case you haven't found out yet: Yahoo cancelled the developement of the Vista version of Messenger. After 1 year and a half they finally caved and no further work will be put in this project.
For those of you that have the Vista edition installed, don't worry it will still work but no new features are going to be added, and there's no online support for it. For the rest of you don't worry, Mess 9.0 works very well and we even got the old smileys back.
And for those of you who completely missed the whole Mess for Vista thing you can check out this post.
CHeers!

Asus TV 7135 Tuner Card

2008-11-06T12:58:00.004+02:00

I had another PC a couple of years ago, runnning Win XP. The PC came with a tv tuner card. Now i'm not the type to watch tv ..basically everything i watch is on my pc and usually not related to this country. So I didn't use at all because of that, and also because for some unexplained reason the sound didn't work. When I gave that machine away I took out the tuner card and yesterday i came across it. Having nothing better to do and no life of my own I decided to try it out and see if i could get it working.

I hooked it up to the motherboard and turned on the PC. I was a little worried about drivers cause the original driver cd would only install on : " windows 95, 98, 98se, 2000 or later". Don't actually get how that's possible but anyway I really thought that it wouldn't run on my Windows 1.1 ( Vista Ultimate SP1 ). After loading Vista had a little surprise for me. It actually auto installed the driver from microsoft's server. So I said great ..let's try it out. Launched Win Media Center and tried to watch tv. OPS sorry no tv tuner card found. You need one! BUY ONE! FROM WINDOWS MARKETPLACE NOOOW! I thought to myself ..well the pc doesn't recognise the card..too bad. And i took a look in Device Manager under Sound, Video and Game controllers but the card DID show up there. Tried to update but it said the drivers were the latest there was. After 10 minutes of looking around i realised that Vista had only installed the driver for the FM receiver on the card, not for the video part. So after another 20 minutes of looking around the Asus website i came across the corect driver and installed it. Then I started Media Center one more time.. WOW SORRY NO TUNER CARD FOUND BUY ONE YOU CHEAP BASTARD. I was sick with media center so i got the latest version ( trial) of Power Cinema and the card works perfectly with it.

PS: Opera has reached version 9.62 but it sucks more and more. I have problems with it rendering many pages ( including this "new post" page) and there's no support for silverlight and other such add-ons.

iPhone Apps

2008-11-05T14:41:00.004+02:00

Sorry I haven't written in such a long time but I haven't actually done anything lately. Got an older Gigabyte motherboard, with an AM 2 socket and an AMD proccesor , but for some reason it doesn't work and i have yet to figure it out. Basically it only worked once.

Anyway in the last few days two apps for the iPhone came up that are really nice.

The first one is Google Earth. It was launched a week ago, and is available for free on both iPhone and iTouch from the Apple App Store. It's exactly the same as the computer version, but it also uses the built in accelerometer for a few special things that you should check out.

The second one is Cooliris ( PicLens). You know I'm a great fan. The cooliris project was first an add-on for Firefox and IE, but now it comes as a stand-alone app. It's design fits perfectly with the whole Apple-ish feel. For more info on Cooliris you can either check out their homepage or this post Again this is a free app, you can get it at the App Store.

I'll do a post on Windows 7 as soon as I get the time

Microsoft Websites

2008-10-06T19:21:00.004+03:00

Don't you just LOVE Microsoft websites?

The title on each page is : YOUR BROWSER OR OPERATING SYSTEM IS NOT SUPPORTED.

Note: I'm running Windows Vista Ultimate Edition

PicLens Again

2008-10-03T21:32:00.004+03:00

Edit : PicLens is the former name, the product is now called directly Cooliris :P. Sorry, my bad.

Luna from Cooliris was nice enough to drop me a line tonight and mention a few words about the new updated version of PicLens. For those of you who are new, PicLens is a nice little add-on for Firefox that transforms any gallery-type site into a really enjoyable experience. So this is what she said.

Today, we are especially excited to announce two major developments. First, we are pleased to introduce a greatly enhanced shopping feature. You can now shop online through the sleek and time-saving Cooliris interface on Amazon, Macy's, eLuxury, Beauty.com, Nordstrom, Apple iTunes, Wal-Mart, KB Toys and more!

We are also thrilled to announce a new partnership with Kodak Gallery, the largest photo sharing community on the web. They are now officially enabled with Cooliris so you can enjoy your photos on Kodak Gallery in Cooliris style. Sharing and browsing photos on Kodak Gallery just became easier and more visually appealing for everyone!

So everything sounds just great! ( with the small exception that Opera still doesn;t support this). By the way this is their official site and you can download PicLens from here.

Thanks a lot Luna, and good night to all from Geeky.

Yahoo PingBox

2008-10-03T15:26:00.004+03:00

As you can see I added ( yes there on the right column) a Yahoo PingBox™. You can send me an IM whenever I'm online ( supposedly) and for other info and features check out this link. I did this to test the app and also cause it might actually be really cool.

I'll also add ( today/tomorrow/whenever) a search thingy so you can find what you need faster.

Y! Messenger 9.0

2008-09-25T15:22:00.001+03:00

I forgot to post this but 2 days ago Yahoo Messenger 9.0 finally came out, no longer just a beta. It features everything 8.1 did ( we even came back to the original smileys) , and supposedly there are no more bugs. Also the guys from Yahoo added an interesting new feature called Pingbox. It's an app that can be embedded into your blog/site/thingy and through which people can send direct IMs to you anonymously, but without knowing your ID. Nothing really extra added as far as I've seen except a few more color skins.

If you're new to Y Messenger 9.0 and would like a complete overview you can find it here!

Cheers

Life Without Walls

2008-09-22T15:43:00.006+03:00

Life without walls is a new marketing campaign by Microsoft. After The Mojave Experiment, MS decided it needed more public time, showing off features and apps to the ordinary PC user. And so they came up with this. The first stage were the commercials with Bill and Jerry that you can see below. Though nobody knew what they really were about, they got everyone's attention and the spotlight back on the Redmond company. The second stage came a few days after, and the campaign got it's name from this. Microsoft is countering Apple's adds ( that seem to focus on the negative sides of PC''s rather than the positive aspects of MACs ) and taking the " I'm a PC" stereotype and showing real people out there who really "are" PCs. It's a great new start , getting a lot of attention for Windows ..not just Vista ..but "the whole Windows story" as someone from MS said. I'm really anxious to see the next stage of the campaign, cause it's been so long since these guys came out with something so cool.

In other news a few people have been randomly getting BSOD's on Vista based machines with no traceable reason. Anything from issues with the IPv6 driver to CPU temperature being to high. My bet ( though not yet confirmed) might be an update from MS or more likely from some third party wide spread app. Keep you posted on that.

This is one of the prints of the campaign.

This is one of the Seinfeld/Gates adds, there's 2 more you can find on youtube.

And this is the part that reminds us that certain people ..should be behind walls..padded white walls to be more precise.

By the way for more prints and campaign movies you can check out this site.

oneConnect by Yahoo ( Y! Mess for Iphone)

2008-09-15T15:54:00.006+03:00

I am really not in the mood to write anything right now, so I'll keep this really short. Yahoo came out a few days ago with a new version of Messenger designed for the iPhone. Unfortunately it only works in the US right now, and I think you might get taxed for some services but I can't be sure cause I couldn't find a way to test it on my iPhone even after downloading it from the US App. Store. The app itself has a nice UI , it uses the SMS service for messages ( at least that's the way I saw it) and has a few other features. You can check out an overview of it right HERE! ( For some reason I can't link to this site so you just copy paste this in your browser : http://www.ymessengerblog.com/blog/2008/09/10/oneconnect-yahoo-messenger-for-the-iphone-and-a-whole-lot-more/ )

For the rest of you who are not living in the US/ who don't want to get taxed for extra services , I recommend Palringo, which is a very nice, easy to use and ergonomic app that you can download for free at any Apple app store. Nor does it have any hidden charges, and it works with Y mess, MSN, Palringo service, and a few other widespread social networks.

Day to day

2008-09-14T23:06:00.003+03:00

This is the way each and every day of my life starts :P. Neah I'm kidding, but it's a nice little tribute done by a friend whom I thank a lot. I know all you haters of Vista out there will love it. And it's a prelude to an article about the real improvements of Vista that i've been meaning to write for some time now. Might be ready next week. Cheers

Vista Annoyances Resolved

2008-09-09T12:24:00.001+03:00

This may seem to some as a weird thing to do, something like advertising for the competition. But I never started this blog with the intent to make money, or as someone said leave a big mark. Basically I started this blog because I was somewhat bored of all the work I ocasionally do, going to waste. And another reason was to somehow thank and show my respect to many people out there that know what they're talking about, and have helped me many times.

Now, what am I talking about: Thanks to Chris Flores from MS, Ihave known about THIS ARTICLE, for a few days but I have never had time to read it until now.

It's a " breath of fresh air" ( if Skype doesn't sue me , Chris might), bringing an unbiased look at Vista's features, Vista vs XP , implementation rates and all those things that are so often blogged/posted/written/talked about around the net and the IT comunnity. It also features a few tweaks for Vista, plus a quite lenghty PDF file with all kinds of tweaks, ticks and explanations. Best part is Koroush Ghazi ( the author) is very coherent and uses very little tech jargon so that every user may understand it.

Again the article is HERE, it's a little long but I believe it's a very nice read.

Update on Chrome

2008-09-03T17:10:00.003+03:00

Chrome by Google! Came out , had a run with it, wasn't too impressed. The Tab Manager is a nice feature though but the browser uses up quite a lot of memory. Here's a printscreen from a test I did earlier. I ran IE , Opera, Firefox and Chrome, each had 10 tabs , 5 tabs main site of wikipedia, another 5 running a flash powered game. By the way if you still want to download Chrome they changed the link so you can find it HERE. Cheers

Chrome by Google

2008-09-02T11:11:00.004+03:00

After wining over the Internet it was only natural for Google to start thinking about their own personal browser, and sure enough they came up with Chrome. The news was leaked 2 days early in Europe, and on the 1st of September the very famous comic strips came out on blogs. You can find them here. ( you need a pdf reader plug-in to view this)

So what is Chrome?

Chrome is Google's take on a modern web browser. It's an open source project and it was developed using the WebKit rendering engine. Today the beta came out, but curiously enough it's nowhere to be seen. All "official" Google download links either give an error or redirect you to Google.com . And there's no mention of the browser on their main page, only this blog post.

Features

At first glance Chrome is a very simple, very direct browser with a no-bullshit attitude, much like the google search page. It has most features that any modern browser has, such as tabbed browsing ( and they do it similar to Opera making tabs a primary feature), and plug-in support for such plugins as Incognito ( that allows deletes history and cookies when a session ends). Another thing to be said about the tabs, is that each tab will be an individual process. Yes it is true that this will most likely use up a lot of memory but it will also make the browser more stable and if one tab crashes you won't lose the whole session. And because this is somewhat multitasking the browser will also have an integrated process manager that will allow you to control each process individually.

One more feature that's worth mentioning is the new Java Script engine V8, designed by Google so as to offer support to the next generation of webapps that will come.

Last thing to mention is about security. Each tab is sandboxed meaning it can't access anything on the local computer, this is a common safety feature and a very useful one. But it's still not very secure because plug-ins such as Flash Player aren't sandboxed ( though i remember certain browsers did this) and you are still somewhat vulnerable until the plug-ins are updated to work with Chrome's security features.

Ok so here's a screenshot of Chrome, and by the way the official download page once it becomes available again can be found HERE. Cheers

Mozilla Firefox 3.0 ( .1)

2008-08-26T10:08:00.004+03:00

So the new Firefox 3.0 has been out now for a few days and I just updated to 3.0.1. It fixes a few bugs encountered in the original 3.0 version.

( WHY the hell does Opera have to open the Help page on the same tab you are on!! It's the 3rd time i lose this article and i start rewriting it!)

As you know Mozilla Firefox is one of the leading browsers out there coming close with Internet Explorer and as usually they have delivered a great product. The new release fixes tons of bugs, improves compatibility with 3rd party add-ons, has what I believe to be a very nice improved user interface, and greater performance than ever. The only thing I still don't really like about Firefox is how tabs seem to be somewhat of a secondary feature, but that's maybe because I'm so used to Opera.

And speaking of other browsers, a few months ago I had anounced that the first batch of betas had been released almost simultaneously. I was refeering to the Firefox 3.0 , Opera 9.0 and IE 8 betas. Well after being released so close to one another, Opera took the lead and had their final release version some time ago. Since then they have reached version 9.51 fixing bugs along the way. Unfortunately the 9.x versions don't seem to be as good as promised. Mozilla came round and got out their 3.0 version which is great, and 3.0.1 latest that will probably be browser of the year. And while all of this is going on ..guess what the people at Microsoft are doing? Brandon LeBlanc from MS said that Beta 2 of IE 8 will be coming out shortly. And you simply know it's not going to be anywhere nearly as good as the other browsers.

Yahoo ! Fun

2008-08-25T16:05:00.003+03:00

I was looking around on the Yahoo Messenger blog and came across something that I found was really fun. Nothing related to business, but you should still check out THIS LINK. A few days ago Matt Harding went and danced around with the Yahoos in Sunnyvale mostly and they all had a lot of fun. Have a look.

Logix Hydra 100 by Lucid

2008-08-25T15:22:00.006+03:00

Well it's been two months ever since i've writen anything here. So yeah .. I'll just blame it on the holidays. I've been drunk a lot, and away a lot, most of the time combining the two. Anyway now I'm back and after being sick for one week I've decided beer is back on the menu, and so I've started writing again. ( weird thing isn't it? ) . Anyway I had writen the intro for an article about iTunes cause i've had to use it a lot lately and i hate it. But I stopped cause I was bored. So now I'm going to talk about the new Logix Hydra 100 chip from Lucid.

HYDRA 100 Series is the first SoC from Lucid that is designed to scale graphics performance using multiple off-the-shelf graphics processors. The solution is seamless to the application and GPU vendor to meet the needs of various visual computing markets. The HYDRA 100 system on chip is designed to manage and load-balance graphics tasks from the CPU to the display across multiple GPUs ensuring efficient scaling for maximum GPU performance.

So what does this mean? Well basically it means that you can take any two GPU's from the same vendor let's say for example a GeForce 9800GT and your older GeForce 8800GTS and run them on the same machine each rendering only parts of what you see thus better integrating and distributing their resources. Lucid promised near-linear performance which is very believable and most likely be achieved. But they also said it might be above-linear which made some poeple question them. But if you think about it it's quite possbile. Having 2 GPU's each set to render what it's best at ( for example one renders shadows and the other textures) will you get more FPS than by simply combining their rendering power as you would in SLI or Crossfire.

Another thing to mention is that besides any two ( or more) GPU's this chip also works with any chipset making it easily adaptable. So the question now is how soon will the major companies make use of it and what pricing will it have. It's expected to hit the wide-spread consumer market by Q2 of 2009.

This is a rendering using the Hydra chip. As you can see on one screen one GPU renders specific parts and on the other, the other GPU renders the rest.

Cheers

Google Lively™

2008-07-16T16:56:00.008+03:00

Well the last few days have been not so much dull as simply normal. Nothing has been going on, and I've just been wasting time. Anyway , ever since the Internet was invented it was seen as a wonderful new way of communicating, doing business, and even meeting new people. Now with the advent of such sites as MySpace or YouTube it has evolved to the next step where big corporations give people the chance to simply show how stupid they are, and in doing so making them rich. But that's all fine and dandy.

Another internet craze is chatting. From the beginning chatting was and most likely still is the most used feature of the Internet. With programs such as mIRC, and later Yahoo and MSN Messenger you can talk to any 50-year old pervert in the world.

But now ..well now there's a revolution going on, and Google is trying to headline it with their all new™ all inclusive™ all wonderful™ all crappy™ Google®™ LIVELY™®™®. What is Google Lively? It's the new way to chat, that's what it is. For those of you who still had somewhat of a life, prepare to leave it behind you cause you'll be blown away by this.

Somebody "up there" decided that simple chatting, even if filled with avatars, smileys, "imvironments", buzzs, and all that crap is far from enough. You can still remember you're just sitting in front of a monitor looking at 2d pictures. But Google said enough is enough. So they came up with Lively. You know what chat rooms are right? well now they've actually become ROOMS, 3d ones. Cause with a simple download you can now enter a 3d animated room on you're browser and look at more or less 3d models of people you have never met before in a complete 3d environment. You can ..well not walk ..more like glide around, interact with certain objects ( such as chairs) and kick your new found friends right in the balls with the integrated list of animations your character can do.

And that's not all, besides joining predefined rooms, you can make your OWN. Populate a virtual 3d space with chairs, cardboard cars, and even plasma screen on which you can embed videos from your favorite video streaming site such as youtube, or even better redtube. After that people from all around the world can join, forget they ever had lives, and waste a whole day looking at pixelated blond 3d models that don't even remotely look as the person that they're chatting with.

And hold on, this is only a beta, when the final product comes out it will be packed with a ton more features, such as a Disclaimer, a Porn edition, a Disclaimer for the porn edition, and so on. So why try and meet a person in the real life when you can do this all the day from any pc, as long as you have internet and IE or Firefox. And how much do you think this will cost? 100$? 200$? A THOUSAND DOLLARS??????? NOOOOOOOO IT'S ABSOLUTELY FREE. So you can now waste your life with style..oh sorry life? what is that?

This is a print screen from the actual program. I wanted to find a girl around but none were on..wonder why

From a very very bored and aggravated person, Cheers! Geeky

PS: Have you noticed there are no more AdSense adds? Wonder why? Cause after 9 months the people at Google decided that what i'm writing here can be considered hacking material and thus is not allowed on an AdSense sponsored site. No more comments.

Download speed / UnRar Issues

2008-06-30T09:58:00.004+03:00

After the adventures of two weeks ago I finally got a chance to relax and enjoy my holiday. Got to see a few movies, play a few games, read a few pages, and beer was back on the menu. All fine and dandy. But then I noticed that a few things were off, even more than before.

First thing I noticed was that my download speed over the Internet had been cut in half for no apparent reason. Second thing was that every torrent I was downloading had problems when I tried to unRAR it. And this could mean that somehow the data packages might be getting mixed up. I still don't know what is causing these problems but I did find ways to get around them.

First thing's first, the download speed. After I made sure there were hardware issues, i started looking around for people that also had had this problem. Unfortunately I couldn't find anybody that did. What I DID find were a few tutorials ( that might be helpful to you even thought they weren't for me) . And here they are : First, the auto tuning for TCP/IP receive levels. And second, how to Change or Disable the QoS Reserved Bandwidth Limit in Vista. This one reffers to the default bandwidth that the OS has priority over for such programs as Auto Update. As I said these didn't work for me but they are useful, and most of all they're official, on the vista forums for x64 editions. In the end what I did was to search for an update for my ethernet controller and installed it. After rebooting everything was back to normal.

Second issue. Problems unRaring torrents.
Well this still was kinda tricky and even though I tried a few things in order to find out what was causing the problem I didn't find anything. What I did find though was that , the data packets were ok, and weren't getting scrambled which meant that the files were actually OK. So the simple solution was simply to select, on Winrar's "Extract to" window the "keep broken files" option. This way I still get all the error messages but in the end it keeps all files, and all files work.

Well hope this helps, cheers Geeky.

PS: In regards to what I was writing in the last article, just in case you're curious , Diablo Battlechest fully works on Vista x32 as long as you get the lattest patches from Blizz, and D2 works on vista x64 ( i just tried it ) again get the patches.

Diablo 3

2008-06-28T19:25:00.005+03:00

Now I don't usually do this as this is not my style, and this blog isn't really about games. Actually it's not at all about games and that's why I didn't say anything when Assassin's Creed or Crysis came out , which are both outstanding games ..but this time it's personal.

Diablo has always been somewhere in the top 5 all time favorite games ever. I love this series, the inovation, the sheer coolness of the game, and especially the oustandingly well put together story. And again, the guys at Blizzard outdid themselves and have announced something I've been hoping for ever since I finished D2, that Diablo 3 is in the making and will some day come out.

Now to those of you who are new to the game, this might not mean anything ..but to the fans it's a big deal. This was quite unexpected at least for me because the original team that made Diablo ..Blizzard North ..had quit a few years ago as I remember.

To get a feel of the game, check out the Blizzard website and you'll have a chance to see the trailer..and a very nice gameplay trailer. So far the game looks great using what appears to me as a modified version of the graphics engine that Blizzard is also using for Starcraft 2. New classes have been added and are announced , the only one so far you can see being the Witch Doctor ( to all Blizzard fans this will be more than familiar). Basically Blizzard seems to have taken what they learned with their WoW experience, added it to the already amazing Diablo universe, and finished it off with their natural ability of making great games. Unfortunately right now their webpage is still somewhat under construction but be sure to check back soon for all the great new stuff.
Hope you enjoy this as much as I do , cheers Geeky.

PicLens

2008-06-22T10:05:00.008+03:00

Now I might be just getting excited over something most of know may have known about for a really long time, but still I'm glad I found it now. I'm talking about PicLens, which is a multi browser add-on that completely transforms your interface, into something that closely resembles ( in my opinion) Vista's Media Center.

The add-on is very small, a few megabytes , and it can be installed on Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari. Now if you're wondering which of these to choose have a look at my Browsers article and that should give you a clue.

Many popular sites have been optimized for the use of PicLens including YouTube, Google photo search, Yahoo photo search, Photobucket, MySpace, Flickr, Facebook and many more. You can view these sites either as a 3d image base, or as a slideshow. And the add-on already incorporates different popular subjects and sites such as News, Sports, Technology, and Movies that it will automatically search for an update on your screen.

Now the part that is really cool, is that you can optimize your own website for PicLens by using their tools, or adding a little html coding. And if you have a blog on Wordpress that you'd like to optimize for this , you simply download the Wordpress add-on. And the best part, is that even people who don't have PicLens installed or who use a browser that doesn't support it ( ie ME) can still view a nice interface using the PicLens Lite that runs directly off the net. I've added a few pictures so you get the ideea.

Cheers, Geeky.

This is the full PicLens on Mozilla Firefox while looking on an Wordpress blog.

And this is the same blog in Opera while running PicLens Lite.

Asus P5KC ( New Motherboard)

2008-06-19T14:49:00.005+03:00

Well the holidays are here, finally! Suprinsingly I passed every exam and test I had, and now it's 3 months of immortality. But while most other people, aka normal people, like to start off the holiday by finishing left over work, or by seeing some old friends they haven't had a chance to see in a long time, I prefer to waste my time, energy and money trying to fix my PC. Anyway here's what happened:

For the last 1 year and a half my PC had an Intel D946Gzis motherboard that ran smoothly with a Pentium D CPU at 3.4 Ghz , and 1 gb of RAM. After I installed Vista I realised that 1GB of RAM is not really enought to fit my demands so I went out and bought myself a 2Gb kit. After a few weeks of using the new cards, and about 20 Blue Screens of Death ( BSOD) I realised they weren't actually compatible with the Intel motherboard. So I went back to the old ones.

But last week I decided it was finally time to change my motherboard, as I now had the time and the money to buy a new one and perhaps fix all the problems that may appear ( I was actually expecting the RAM not to be compatible, or at the most to do a clean install of Vista).

Well I went out and bought me a brand new Asus P5KC board with an Intel Chipset specifically asking if it would support the dual layered RAM I had with me. SO I bought it, went back home, unboxed it filled with anticipation, and finally I began to take part out of my PC to install it. Now I have taken motherboards out before but never really with the intent of them still working afterwards so this time I had to be very careful. I don't really know why but at one point when I was taking out the CPU I accidentally touched the pins and a few other circuits you are really not supposed to but I didn't pay it much thought.

After finally ..finaaaally figuring out how the LEDs and the Power Switch cable were supposed to be fitted ( i had no diagram of the motherboard's circuits) I was ready to test it. Plugged in the power cable, LED on the motherboard came on , pushed the power switch ..nothing happened. Ok i figured out I might have plugged something in the wrong way ..so I rechecked everything, tried it again ..still nothing happened. For a full one hour I stood there cheking and recheking every possible jumper and cable I could see, trying to figure out what I had done wrong.

On the verge of despair I realised I could switch the reset button to simply switch the power on or off ..so I did that. Success it worked! The PC powerd up , checked RAM, checked drives, ( i couldn't remember which of my HDDs was the bootable one so I had to find out through trial and error), failed to boot. I said to myself no big deal, I just went into BIOS and ..wooa.. the PC shut down. Ok ..restart. Again go into BIOS ..switched the booting order of the hdds and before it even had a chance to try and boot, it had shut down again. Something must be very wrong I thought to myself and restarted one more time.

I directly checked the CPU temperature as I knew that might be the cause. Well I was right .. the BIOS told me that my CPU was making water boil with a temperature of about 125 C ( that's about 257 Fahrenheit ). Wow I was stunned ..the cooler must not be working and ..wow ... So I checked everything again, the cooler was working, the radiator was properly set, and the CPU's actual temp was somewhere close to 40C.

So i checked everything one more time, and then I use a different PC and search the internet for what might be causing this. I found out something interesting: the PC doesn't measure the temperature using a thermal sensor, but actually runs an electrical current throught the CPU and then measures some data and converts it using a formula thus giving the temperature of the conductor. If for any reason ( such as touching the conductor leaving grease or other substances on it ) the current behaves differently than it normaly would then you'll get false readings. So I realised I had touched the pins on the CPU most likely leaving that thermal jelly thing ( that's found on the bottom of the cooler) on it. There are no certified ways of cleaning a CPU ..actually if anything, it's strongly counter-advised. But I wasn't completely sure that this was the cause of it.

So I tested the CPU on the old motherboard, adn it worked with no problems. Then I looked around the net some more and found out that many people had had issues with the Asus P5K with weird temperatures readings because of buggy BIOSs.The obvious resolve was to update the BIOS , and Asus makes this easy with their EZFlash feature that let's you update directly from a flash drive without having to boot into DOS from a floppy. So I get the latest BIOS from Asus and try updating it. But after checking the file, the system says that the file has no Asus signature and it wouldn't let me update it.

I assumed the motherboard MUST be faulty and decided to switch back to the old one until I got the replacement. But big surprise ..after switching back ..the computer would simply restart itself a few times and then shut down. Somewhere along the way the CPU had fried. So the next day I went out and used up the money i was planning to use for a trip ..to buy a brand new Intel Quad Core Q6600. Great I think to myself, now everything should be fine.

So i go back home, and set the NEW processor into the NEW motherboard. It starts, 60C in BIOS ..that's decent, and then ..after 10 more seconds ..just as I thought things were back to normal ..the PC shut down again, no obvious cause. So I get the motherboard, go back to the shop and togheter with one of the guys there we tested it with different processors. It worked like a charm, no problems, no issues, no restarting no nothing.

Feeling a little embarased I took the board back ..stripped my PC .. took everything apart and then started to add components one by one to try and diagnose what the hell was going on. Weird part is ..it worked perfectly, after i came back with it I simply didn't have any other issues . Except for the fact I had to do a clean install of Vista x64 ( due to the new processor) everything was perfect, and still is.

Now after these two days I've learned a few things ..such as NEVER TOUCH THE INSIDE OF THE CPU, and could probably give a lot of tips if asked.

Well that's it. For questions or suggestions post a comment.
Cheers, Geeky.

Remember remember...

2008-05-30T20:46:00.007+03:00

Here's a guest post by Flo

As far as I remember, we haven't always had these computers around. I'm not going to write about the abacus or the first giant computers, but rather about the first PC’s I had my hand on…

My first computer was a small box and a huge keyboard. It was an Ice-Felix HC-85 computer built in Romania, but it actually was a ZX Spectrum Clone. It was faster than the speed of light, with a mind-blowing 3.5 MHz. Its internal memory was even more negligible, but it was enough for the BASIC operating system.

The rest of the computer was improvised: the monitor was my everyday TV and the “CD-ROM” was my brother’s walkman. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, a walkman! The programs and games were written on magnetic tape.
Of course, the graphic capabilities were limited, but it was good enough for puzzle games.

Next, I got my hands on an Intel 486. The magnetic tape was obsolete now, so it was equipped with a 3 ½” floppy disk and a monitor that was as wide as 10 inches.

15 years later I got to play with a 286 Compaq laptop. It was operated with Windows 3.1 and its hardware was something like 8 Mb RAM, 100 Mb HDD and so on. The amazing part is that it still works (except for the charger) and the battery can still run for up to 2 hours.

Next time your computer crashes, before cursing and punching it think about the computers I wrote about and you’ll probably change your mind.

PS: If you have experienced working on any old computer, feel free to comment here. Maybe even write a couple of follow-up posts…

Happy surfing, Flo

A little post

2008-05-12T20:50:00.003+03:00

So, after a very long time of not writing anything I decided to write about what’s been going on lately. Nothing really special, just your average day to day weird stuff.

Ever since I got Vista I was happy to see that almost every upgrade brought a new improvement in stability and other issues. The SP1 was no different, addressing quite a few issues that made everybody happy once they were gone. But every once in a while Microsoft screws up big time. A few years ago people started accusing Microsoft of changing root coding with their updates, which is not allowed, as updates may only address non essential coding. And they brought forth some good evidence to support this claim, but if I remember well, nothing happened. Now Microsoft did screw up a little.
Cause about 3 weeks ago they released the super cool update KB938371 that made all our mouses/mice/rats useless. Not to mention many other usb devices. Now some people said that further updating windows would fix this issue, but for me it didn’t.
So here’s what you have to do: 1) learn to use the keyboard to get around. 2) refrain yourself from getting Linux 3) go to system restore and use the auto restore to the last restore point that Microsoft suggests. Be careful, if you restore to a different restore point you might just lose any chance for your mouse to work until your next format. This was just one of the ways I’ve been having fun recently.

Another thing that has happened more or less recently, actually about 2 months ago :P , was the release of all the new browser betas. The IE beta was quite nice, being faster and more ergonomic than before, but it still has issues with rendering certain things. So it still doesn’t pass the Acid 2 test, and people from MS said that this was not because it wasn’t capable of it, but because of a special security protocol incorporated in the new coding. I wonder how Firefox or Opera can still pass the test, and be more secure than IE ..wow. Firefox was on top as usual with no issues at least not on the surface. Opera was a disappointment, having issues with rendering, plug-ins and other things, but I hope this is simply because it’s still beta.

And last thing going on right now, that I really enjoy is Microsoft being fined with 899 million euro by the European commission . Now MS has had different problems respecting the EU’s rules, taking advantage of it’s strong market position. This fine was imposed on MS for charging “unreasonable” prices to rivals for access to its dominant software. Now I really enjoy this, because I’m not a very big fan of MS and anything that shakes them up a little is fine by me.

Anyway this was it, hope I’ll have something better next time. Cheers.

This explains EVERYTHING

2008-04-10T01:44:00.004+03:00

For many years I was trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with Microsoft ..many of their ideeas, and implementations made absolutely no sense at all for a normal human being. Well right now I just found the answer. Take a look at this guy here :

Do you know who that was? None other than Steve Ballmer ..CEO of Microsoft. Yeah ..i know. But hey give the guy a chance, that was happening a long time ago, things were different. Everything's changed now ..or is it :

And just in case you didn't know what MS is really in need of ..here's Ballmer again explaining it to you

And this my friends ..explains EVERYTHING. After seeing this ..I have absolutely no more questions for Microsoft...it all became very clear.

Quick Update on Vista

2008-04-08T20:36:00.006+03:00

I mentioned two posts ago ( approx) that I'll keep you posted on what happens when the grace period for Vista SP1 expires. Well that happened a few days ago and here's what happened.

-> first ..and this was immediate , actually a few hours before it expired , my background turned black. But that was fixed by simply ..resetting the background :)). It might just go black again once I reboot but it really doesn't bother me. Also someone mentioned that Aero will be disabled. Well it;s hasn't so far, it's working just fine. Later edit: it reverts to black after some time ..or after runing a full screen app.

-> second the system keeps telling me ..from time to time let's say once every 30 minutes that I may be a victim of sofware counterfiting. It's not only that I'm a victim, I'm an addict of counterfited software :))

-> third thing, when you boot up , after logging in, a screen appears that tells you to register now, and the register later button becomes active after about 15 seconds.

-> this is a curios one: from time to time when i use my cpu for more than just listening to music or refreshing my desktop ..let's say when a play a demanding game, it stalls for a few seconds and then goes back to normal . That has happened a few times and i know for a fact it has never happened before. Now this was not mentioned anywhere in the effects sp1 might have, nor have i heard of anyone having such issues. It might just be that my hard drive is kinda old and maybe it's just failing. Not sure on this one.

-> another curios one: updates still work. Two days after my license expired I downloaded and installed the latest definitions for Win Defender. I really wasn't expecting this. I read somwhere that usual updates will not be delivered anymore but critical ones will. MS is socially obliged to deliver the critical updates to all machines even if they say they won't/don't/whatever. Right now this seems to be the case.

So to sum up , if you don't mind ocassional small popups ( they really don't bother me and they aren't even on top of other applications) and the fact that you have no background, you can get all the benefits of the SP1 without worrying of anything bad happening ...for now at least. Whichever way this develops I'll keep you posted. And for any experiences or questions please be sure to leave a comment.

Vista Themes

2008-03-29T00:24:00.004+02:00

It’s 2 am Saturday and I’m writing about what I’ve been doing for the last 3 hours.
Most people like to enjoy and relax, maybe go out on their Friday afternoons. Well no, not me. My favourite activity on a Friday afternoon is hiting the desk with my head. And I came very close to doing that today.

      There comes a time in every man’s life when he says to himself: Well I’ve got a good computer, a great OS but ( after seeing a few SCI-FI films ) I want it to really look cool. Such a thought occurred to me a few hours ago, and I decided to change my classic Vista skin with a cooler techier one. Now I’m not the one to usually have 20 skins for every application and 45 types of cursor that I change acording to my mood. Actually I haven’t really used skins for the OS ever since Win 98. It’s just something that I find useless and memory consuming. But tonight I forgot all that.

      So after googling around for a nice theme I decided ( as usual) on an OS X Leopard one, actually extremely well done from what I saw in the previews. So I downloaded a few versions to test them. Unpacked them and tried to install them. Nothing happened except for my background going black. I decided to take another look on the site where I found them. “ You need to get Vista Glazz and patch files for the skins to work”. I think to myself ok no problem, so I quickly download the latest Glazz version I can find. Install it , hit the “check dlls” button.
!!! “ Vista Glazz is missing key components of the program, do you still want to patch?”. Wow, key components ..no I don’t want to patch. I uninstall it and get the version from the original Vista Glazz website, without corrupt files and stuff ..or so I thought. Do the whole thing over again. Check dlls. “Glazz is missing key components..” oh screw it , patch anyway. It patches a few dlls from the system. Great. Reboot needed. I reboot. When I log on again , my Vista was looking somewhat like MS DOS 5 .

      I think to myself, well it went back to windows basic and now I can install the theme. SO I try to double click on the .theme file. Nothing happens. Then I try to open the personalize menu. OPS, ERROR. APP Crash, host process error. My PC was kinda telling me to go *%& myself. And I got that error for anything that had to do with visual styles , resolutions, basically the way anything looked.

      OK so I figure ..patching system dlls with obscure program = BAD IDEA. Didn’t even know what files it had patched. So I go to my theme folder and notice that the Aero files were patched. Ok no problem it must have kept originals. WRONG, no originals. So I ring a friend and he sends the original files to me via messenger. I try and replace them. BANG no can’t do. YOU NEED PERMISSION to modify these files.

      How do you change permissions in Vista? Easy, right click on the file, properties, security. Advanced, Owner, make yourself the owner of the file. Back Back back , Edit permissions, select yourself give yourself full control over the file. I had to do this for about 10 files in the end. Try and delete the patched files. Again no can’t do. The files are in use. By what? Who knows …Aero wasn’t working, no theme service was working , no graphics service was working ( I disabled all the services myself) ..but hey the files are in use. OK. Reboot. Safe Mode. Delete. WOW the files are still in use. Now that’s weird.

      Solution: Renaming the patched files ..even though they were in use I was allowed to rename them ..yeah ..don’t ask… then copying the good files, rebooting, and then deleting the patched messed up files that were no longer in use due to the name change.
So I did this for my Aero folder and the files inside it. Rebooted once more. I was actually thinking everything would be fine now. Guess again. After logging in nothing had changed, and I still got the fatal errors when trying to change stuff via control panel. And then I go to the original Glazz forum and try to search for a solution. Somebody was complaining of something similar so I followed those ideeas and found out that besides the Aero dlls it also patched a few other ones. To be exact Uxtheme.dll, Themeui.dll and Shsvcs.dll, all found in system32. And the guys also mentioned that Glazz makes a copy of the original and stores it as filename.dll.vgorg so this can be used in case anything goes wrong. Said and done. Again I modified permissions, again I rebooted in safe mode, again I changed names and deleted the crappy files and replaced them with the ones that I got my friend to send to me.( the so called copies of original with the .vgorg were of no use)

      Finally I logged in and surprise ..nothing changed. The theme was still basic BUT ..and this is important I didn’t get the Fatal error thing in Control panel. So I recopied the Aero folder once more ( it had somehow got corrupted between 3 reboots ..again don’t ask ..) recopied the good aero dlls and rebooted for the last time.

      Praise the Lord it works now. People also suggested trying to boot using “ last known good configuration” but that didn’t do any good. And also trying system restore to an earlier date but I didn’t have any restore points near today , plus I have very little faith in that program as it has NEVER helped me with anything.

      The conclusion of this story is : 1) always have a copy of the original file before doing anything to it.
2) Try and enjoy your Friday afternoons.

  Please leave your comments and suggestions after the beep.

  Cheers, Geeky.

Vista Service Pack 1

2008-03-24T15:44:00.003+02:00

      Yes it’s true , it’s TRUE , it’s HERE. The new Vista SP1 is here. On March the 18th Nick White from MS announced its release on Windows Update. I found out about it that night. OK, so what did Microsoft promise about the SP? They said it would improve reliability, stability, efficiency, driver compatibilities, and other such issues. What does the SP do? Well mainly what it’s supposed to.

      After about half an hour ( that’s how long the update took) and 2 restarts I had SP1 up and running. I took a look at my win version , and wow major change from build 6000 to build 6001. Good sign, means the sp worked. Second change, you can now actually select which drive you want to defragment ( no I’m serious you couldn’t on the original release of Vista). I’m messing around here but that’s because I haven’t noticed any major changes. The system does seem more stable with certain aspects, and it looks as though there’s somewhat less CPU usage, but I also noticed about 10-15 % increase in RAM usage. MS said that the service pack would bring a 50% increase in file copying speed. Of course that 50% is only possible because with the service pack they fixed some sloppy scripting they had done in the original release. Plus I did a few tests with different files and personally I would estimate the increase at about 15-20% but maybe that’s just me.

      Compatibility with different drivers was indeed improved ( I only got 1 BSOD ever since I installed the SP and that’s with a very curious driver). Unfortunately Vista is hardware scripted, meaning that it is designed for specific hardware much like Mac OS is, thus making possible many compatibility issues. Hopefully by now most manufacturers have learned to test everything with both Vista and XP ( though this should have been going on for the last 1 year and a half) and such issues can be avoided. The problem persists with older hardware that doesn’t have support any longer but that’s a different story.

      So if you have a genuine Vista install you can install the SP and have all the wonderful benefits mentioned above. But what if you don’t ? There were two main hack for vista that made it possible for everybody to enjoy it without paying. One of them was tricking the activation timer into thinking you had 999 days to activate and then just rewind it again. The second method developed by Paradox was to fool Windows by emulating a specific BIOS and then use a specific key code. This would make Windows appear as if had been preinstalled by manufacturers and required no activation. Every update worked, no issues with anything, it would easily pass registration and had no problem with WGA. Well the SP1 takes care of both these methods rendering them useless for the time being. And I did a little snooping around but until now I haven’t found any way to bypass this. So if you didn’t have a genuine install, and you installed SP1 you probably now have 15 or less days to activate.
      The good part is that there is no more “reduced functionality mode” that Vista had. After the 15 days are up you’ll just have a black background, and continuous remarks from WGA that you may be using counterfeit software. That’s all. I’m curious what would happen if you uninstalled the sp after those 15 days. The old hacks might still work. I actually will try that on another computer just for the fun of it.

For the original info on the release of SP1 you can check out this link.

For a list of some of the updates ( but not all) contained in the SP you can check out this link ( I wouldn’t download anything from there, get the original if you want Sp1, it’s free) . If you want a full list you can probably find it somewhere on the MS site.

Questions, suggestions be sure to leave a comment.

Cheers, Geeky.

News

2008-02-15T16:05:00.006+02:00

Well in the absence of any other article I'll just fill you in on a few things that caught my attention lately.

      First of all on the Microsoft - Yahoo deal.

    As you all know a few days ago Microsoft put up an unsolicited bid of 44 billion $ for Yahoo. They tried to do this one or two years ago and they got a very big NO. The answer was exactly the same this time, not to mention all the oposition towards the merger from outside parties. Without any other bid, MS may still argue that their price is fair, and will probably try to put pressure on Yahoo executives into negotiating, even if that will eventually mean reaching a higher strike point than iniatially thought.
    Yahoo's response to the unsolicited bid was to apparently restart negotions for a merger between them and AOL. This was quoted from London-based Times newspaper which also mentioned Google as another possible partner for  future colaboration with Yahoo.
Right now most of us will just have to wait to see how this whole thing turns out.

      Second thing in the news: Vista Service Pack 1.
    It's done, it's ready but you're not going to get it any time soon. At least that was the way Mike Nash from MS first explained it to us.
    Vista SP1 was released to manufacturing on the 4th of February but a full implementation of it was scheduled for mid April. The reasons for this were quite confusing and weird... Microsoft- style. First Mike said that there were still some issues with certain drivers that would malfunction once the update to SP1 was complete. And so there was this 1st thing to solve.
    Then they said that the whole point was a great Vista experience and that everyone should receive the sp at the same time, and because mid April is when it will be in stores that was the release date on Windows Update too.
    And now , I believe MS must have reconsidered after the negative response because the SP1 is already available on both MSDN and TechNet for subscribers to download. And almost all the prerequisites for the sp were put up on Windows Update in preparation for the release which was set for mid-March. So in just 3 weeks most of us will have it installed. Now for exact
info on what the sp will bring
you can check around on microsoft.com. Be sure I'll do an article about this when the time comes.

Well that was is , time's up. Stay tuned the next article is due soon.
    Cheers, Geeky.

Windows Genuine Advantage

2008-02-03T15:20:00.001+02:00

  Genuine Crap

    Imagine me saying that with a deep Scottish accent. What the hell am I talking about? Well actually I'm talking about Windows Genuine Advantage or WGA for short. Now some of you might be blissfully unaware of it's existence which probably means you're running either a genuine version of Windows or a very well- hacked version of it. The rest of you have probably encountered it, and you know just how annoying it can be.

      What the hell is WGA ?

    Well WGA is a program/spyware/thingy from Microsoft with the alias of being an anti-piracy system. It enforces MS Windows online validation when trying to download certain updates or other programs from MS. WGA covers Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Vista. It doesn't cover Server 2003 and the Win 9x family. At first it was an optional feature which you were asked if you wanted to install, but later on it became mandatory if you wished to obtain programs or upgrades for Windows from MS. In April of 2006 MS began ditributing WGA as "critical update" KB905474 through Windows Update effectively annoying milions of users .

      What does it do?

    I kept saying until now that it is extremely anoying, and now let me explain why. The WGA validation process validates the present installation of Windows and its license key against the hardware involved. It is accessible by either a stand-alone program, or as an ActiveX control within Internet Explorer, the latter of which is relevant to any attempt to access Microsoft updates via its browser.
    If successful in validating Windows, it stores a special license file on the PC for future verification.
    If an instance of Windows does not seem to have a valid license, WGA displays a specific notice to the user and prevents "non-Critical" updates from being downloaded from Microsoft. At least this is the official version. In fact it blocks all updates except the new versions of WGA and displays pop-up warnings that you may be running a counterfeit copy. Another syndrom is the computer locking up whenever you try to access IE. Now this is not official but it happened on different machines that had not passed the test.
    On Windows Vista, WGA validation failure has a greater impact. In addition to persistent notification and the disabling of "non-critical updates", WGA also disables Windows Aero, Windows Defender, and ReadyBoost. The user is given a grace period in which to then pass validation, after which most of the operating system is disabled and Windows reverts to reduced functionality mode, which will suposedly be removed in Service Pack 1 of Windows Vista.

      Other info

    Now I mentioned this as "spyware" from Microsoft. And I am not the only one. Why? Well because it is installed and acts exactly as a spyware program. First MS tells you it's a critical security update, which in fact it is not. It does not ,resolve or notify or have any connection with any system vulnerability. Secondly it collects data from your computer and "calls home" once a day sending that data back to MS. At first no one even knew what info it was sending but later they broke it into bits and this is what this little tool sends each day :

-> Computer make and model
-> BIOS checksum.
-> MAC address.
-> A unique number assigned to your computer by the tools (Globally Unique Identifier or GUID)
-> Hard drive serial number.
-> Region and language settings of the operating system.
-> Operating system version.
-> PC BIOS information (make, version, date).
-> PC manufacturer.
-> User locale setting.
-> Validation and installation results.
-> Windows or Office product key.
-> Windows XP/ Vista product ID.

    After heavy accusations and criticism directed at the Redmond based company, MS said that future versions of WGA would only "phone home" once every two weeks, and also came up with removal instructions for WGA. Unfortunately those didn't work for the machines I tried them on.
    Now, another issue with WGA is that is has a tendancy of giving out false positives. Meaning it doesn't identify genuine copies of Windows as being so. This actually has happened to me on another machine with an XP Pro GENUINE instalation.
According to an editorial on the arstechnica.com technology website, WGA reported around 22% of 500 million Windows computers as failing the test; of these less than 0.5% were due to pirated software, with the balance (over 20%, or 90% of all positives) related to non piracy issues. Microsoft "refused to comment on the rate of pure false positives" beyond saying it was "under 1%" (or as stated, at most around 5 million users affected).

      How to fix it!

    Now there were many ways and ideas out on the net on how to get rid of the wga tool. Unfortunately MS quickly found most of them, and complained thus effectively shutting down the sites that hosted such sollutions. A good last place where you can find info and sollutions on this problem is this one. I did try some of their recomandations but they didn't work for me. The second place where you can actually find something useful is Softpedia. You can actually download a WGA removal tool here. I did use this one and it did the trick.

    Disclaimer: I did say before, that I like Windows and that I especially like Vista and it is true. But not the same goes for MS. While I do believe that every coder and person that has worked o a project should get payed, I also believe that no student should have to pay around 600$ in total just to be able to use MS Office to do his projects. And yes I know there are some alternatives out there, but what can really substitute Windows when it comes to compatibility and availability?
By the way if the original copy of your Windows looks something like this, " You may be a victim of software counterfeiting".

That being said I hope this article was useful for a few people.
Cheers, Geeky.

Browsers 2.0

2008-01-22T20:46:00.001+02:00

Hello to everyone. First let me apologize, I know I said I would write the article the second day but the past week has been absolutely hectic for me with exams, and different projects. Right now I’ll start working on a very short movie with a friend and that will give me a chance to experiment with the Avid Xpress Pro software. I might just write a review about that.

    Anyway back to browsers. Last week I took a look at only the 5 most popular browsers : Internet Explorer from Microsoft, Opera, Mozilla Firefox, Netscape Navigator , and Safari from Apple, and from those Opera ranked number 1. This time I wanted to take a look at the not so popular browsers. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to find as many as I had hoped for, but I still found a few that are interesting.

      Maxthon

    This is the first browser I’ll start with and I have to be frank, it’s not really so unpopular. From what I’ve seen a lot of people have started to use this browser, especially in China and they are actually right to do so. In fact this browser was first developed by a Chinese person who simply wanted to customize his Internet Explorer browser, hence the original names MyIE/MyIE2. The browser was then further developed and it got the name Maxthon in 2003.
Some time ago there was a rumor that Google had started investing in it but it was quickly laid to rest, though the possibility of a future collaboration was never excluded.

    The latest release is 2.0.7 and here are some of it’s features: 1) the usual standard features for any modern browser, such as tabbed browsing, bookmarks managing, integrated flash and RSS/Atom feeds. 2) it also has a recovery for lost tabs in case of it crashing or accidental closing. 3) Java applet and ActiveX blocker just as IE. 4) External utility bar – this is a toolbar that let’s you open third party apps. 4) Supports most of IE’s plug-ins not to mention all the ones built especially for it. 5) It also supports mouse gestures. 6) It supports most Java technologies except DOM ( Document Object Model) 2 and 3. It does not support however PDF natively ( as most browsers don’t) but that can very easily be taken care of with an Adobe plug-in. 7) It uses the Trident layout engine but it can also use Gecko; It does not pass the Acid2 Rendering Test.

Performance 7/10
Features 8/10
Looks 7/10

    And a few final notes on it: it only works on Windows, it uses a lot fewer resources than the original IE ( comes to about the same level as Opera), it has good 3rd party compatibility, has no major security flaws ( actually I believe it’s even safer than IE ), is very fast, has a familiar environment, and is simply a very good alternative to any other browser.

      Avant Browser

    Avant is a popular freeware brower, also based on the Trident engine. But unlike IE, it’s designed to be more feature orientated, flexible and ergonomic. It runs natively on all versions of Windows.
It was originally inspired by Opera, which was the first browser to have a multiple document interface. The idea was to use basic IE shell but just make it a lot faster, and ergonomic, but not to encounter the rendering problems Opera faced in the beginning. It’s original name was actually “IEopera” but it quickly changed. Avant then concentrated on adding use-requested features, and it was one of the first browsers to have pop-up blocking.

    Ok enough history, here are the features: 1) tabbed browsing and all the rest. 2) Built in search named AvantFind that uses Yahoo Search but can be changed to Google or many other search engines. 3) Undo menu for the last 25 closed tabs. 4) All pages open in a single process, thus reducing resource demands ( this is part of the secret ). 5) Also compatible with most IE toolbars and plug-ins, including the Google toolbar. 6) Built in RSS feed reader ( also supports Atom). 7) Has a very nice feature that allows you to save bookmarks and other info ( such as passwords) directly online. 8) Can directly be run from a flash card or other data storage device. ( these last two features make it possible to stop browsing and a computer, move to another an resume from where you left off). 9) Great security features, it can clear browsing traces automatically, and it can also use the XP SP2 security extensions.10) You need to have IE 6 or 7 already installed in order to run it; does NOT pass the Acid2 Test, even though it fully supports the most used formats on the web.

Performance 8.50/10
Features 9/10
Looks 9/10

    Last Word: Really really nice browser ( this was my favorite from this lot). Even faster and more ergonomic than Opera, secure, and with a very nice feel overall. I truly recommend it at least for a look if not for your new fulltime browser.

      SeaMonkey

    SeaMonkey is a free, open source, and cross-platform Internet suite that is the continuation of the former Mozilla Application Suite. It consists of a Navigator which is a descendant of the Netscape family; a Mail and Newsgroups client program, and an HTML editor, or Composer program. Being a descendent of Mozilla it uses the Gecko engine.

    The current stable version is 1.1.7 and here are the features:
1)Tabbed browsing ( even though not so nicely integrated) and all the rest. 2) Cross platform so it’s supported by all popular Oss ( unofficial versions exists for Solaris). 3) It basically supports every web standard that Firefox does. 4) It does NOT support RSS/Atom feeds. 5) It also supports exactly the same Java techs that Firefox does. 6) Unlike Firefox it does have an E-mail client and it does support NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol) and IRC. 7) It is safe and fast, with low resource usage.

  Performance 8.50/10
  Features 7/10
  Looks 6/10

    Last Word: This is a nice browser, but it looses points for the general aspect. In the end it’s just a rundown version of Firefox and since it has no special features I can’t really see the logic in choosing this over any of the before mentioned browsers.

      K-Meleon

    K-Meleon ( don’t know why but I keep reading k-melon) is a browser designed for Windows and it uses the Gecko rendering engine ( yes the Mozilla Firefox one). It also uses the native Windows API to create the user interface thus it’s tightly integrated into the look and feel of the desktop. The change from the K-Meleon 0.9.x series to 1.0.x was a major modification. The most notable change was the main K-Meleon code being updated to accommodate the Gecko 1.8.0.x rendering engine. The change of layout not only brought the browser up-to-date on the level of security, but on web page layout as well.

    The current release version of K-Meleon is 1.1.3 and these are some of the features: 1) K-Meleon has a very flexible interface. All the menus and buttons can be customized using its configuration files. 2) Modified versions of the program can be found which allow you to run it directly, without any installation making it a portable browser. You can find some of them including Pocket K-Meleon and KMV ( K-meleon on the move) here! 3) Tabbed browsing, bookmark management, spell checking and pop-up blocking are all present. It does not have a download manager! 4) Supports mouse-gestures. 5) Basically supports most common web stuff including RSS/Atom. 6) Supports all Java technologies except DOM3. 7) Does NOT support natively pdf, mng and 2d canvas formats. 7) Not what you’d probably expect but it has limited compatibility with Firefox plug-ins and themes but it often integrates improvements to the scripts and codes ( especially security related ones).

Performance 10/10
Features 9/10
Looks 9/10

    Last Word: Extremely nice browser, extremely fast, good security and compatibility, and a very nice feel overall. This is , alongside Avant, a browser that I really recommend.

      Other Browsers

    These are just a few other browsers that I find are worth mentioned because they have some important/cool ideas/aspects.

      X-smiles

    X-smiles is actually an experiment in progress right now. It is a browser completely scripted in Java language. At present it sucks. Sorry, a little to direct. At present it is very slow, it uses up an insane amount of resources, it has very limited compatibility with anything and it often times has problems with rendering quite simple pages. That being said I still find it very interesting. Because once it is perfected and be made into a decent browser, the compatibilities and possibilities of a java based browser will be absolutely countless. Ok enough said. We’ll wait and see what happens in the future.

      Torpark/xB Browser

    xB Browser, previously called Torpark is a portable browser originally forked from Portable Firefox web browser with Tor access built into it. This is the browser you want to use to be absolutely sure your IP won’t be traced.
    xB Browser works by routing Internet traffic through several "onion" servers, obscuring the originating address. This does not naturally provide anonymity for other Internet programs, only the xB Browser. However, other applications data such as Pidgin can be routed through the Tor network via xB Browser by directing the applications traffic to a SOCKS proxy at localhost, port 9050. This port can be changed via Xconfig, an INI generator for xB Browser located in its App/ directory.
    Now the only issue with this browser is that it is somewhat slow. The free version that is. Because there are also two version for which you can pay, that work at normal/fast speeds. But I guess that’s the price you might have to pay to be completely secure while browsing.
    Easter Egg

    There is an Easter egg in version 1.5.0.7 and 2.0.0.2 of Torpark. The Easter egg is revealed by launching the executable from CMD with the switch /DEADBEEF enabled, an allusion to 0xDEADBEEF, eg. C:\Torpark\torpark.exe /DEADBEEF. A black cross with Cult of the Dead Cow symbols appears while playing a chiptune song in the background.

      Text Browsers

    Last time I told a few people that I would look into text browsers. And I did. But text browsers are more than useless for normal pc-users that simply wish to browse the web and to check their e-mail . The only practicality of text browsers of when you are creating custom networks and you wish to check different protocols and assignments. And since I don’t have the time or resources to do that ( and to be frank I don’t really have the knowledge either) I just let them be. Of course this was my personal view on them, if any of you believe otherwise feel free to correct me with a comment.

    Finally I ended this article. I have been stressing over it for to many hours now. Well I hope it’s not too bad and that it might just be useful to someone. For suggestions or questions feel free to leave a comment.

    Cheers, Geeky

Browsers

2008-01-09T17:22:00.001+02:00

First of all I want to say sorry for the long absence but the holidays were quite busy for me, I was away most of the time and quite focused on trying not to use the PC because I really needed a break. Secondly, I just want to wish everyone a Happy New Year. I hope you all had great holidays.
    Now, as you've seen in the title I've actually commited to the impossible and started to write this article on browsers. Why am I writing this ? Well mainly because there are 5 major internet browsers out there, and I myself was really curios which was the best and why, and just maybe this will also point out to which browser works best for you. Ok so the major 5 browsers which I will refer to are : Internet Explorer, Opera, Mozilla Firefox, Netscape and Safari. All of them created for browsing the net, but which is the best?

    Internet Explorer

    This browser first appeared in 1995 with the Plus! release of MS Windows 95. It is probably the most known browser out there even though it's usually not the best one. In the beginning IE struggled for a long time to try and catch up with Netscape Navigator , the first public browser . In 1996 both browsers were at the same level offering brand new and exciting support for Java Script and CSS. But due to the fact that IE was free ( unlike Netscape) and that it continued to evolve backed up by Microsoft, it won the battle. By 1998 IE had majority of the market shares, and Netscape's future was unclear. With the passing of time Microsoft kept developing the program increasing security and support for third party features, but also adding their own new features that kept this browser at a very competitive level.
    In 2001 MS released Internet Explorer 6 alongside Windows XP, which was now very focused on security and reliability. And now in 2007 the latest release came out with Vista and that is Internet Explorer 7. IE 7 is the best version of IE of course, and it brings new features such as tabbed browsing ( IE was the last browser to adopt tabbed browsing), better support and a friendlier relationship with the user regarding RSS feeds, advanced printing and other such features. Now the dowside of the browser, while it is true that it now supports almost all third party add-ons for any kind of media, and it is true that it is one of the most secure out there, it has come to lack in speed and to consume a lot of resources. IE7 is probably the second slowest browser ( the first being Safari ) that there is and the fact that it's free is not a good excuse anymore as all the above mentioned browsers have become freeware. There are no other special features that I find worth mentioning. It has all the common features that every browser now has.

    Mozilla Firefox

    As I mentioned in 1998 the future of Netscape was unsure. So they decided their browser would be free from then on and also that it would be an open source project. 4 years later ( yes quite a long time) the first version of the Mozilla came out which was then named Pheonix. The first official Mozilla Firefox came in November 04 with their 1.0 release. It included advanced security , and new features such as RSS/Atom feed support.
    The second full official release came 2 years later in October 2006 when Firefox 2.0 was released, which added certain features such as session restoration after a browser crash, search using Google and Yahoo, an add-on manager and more importantly anti-phishing protection. It also included support for JavaScript 1.7. One year later version 2.0.11 was released that fixed a few problems that had arisen. This is the latest stable release of Firefox. Now you may say there is nothing special about this browser, but it's speed, stability, performance,high security ( still some debate if it is the safest ) and excellent compatibility with 3rd party add-ons make it one of the best browsers around and this shows as it's popularity is quite rapidly growing. It now owns about 17% of the market share.
    Work has already begun on version 3.0 but no public beta has been put out. While we wait , this is still one of the best browsers.
Note: Firefox 2.0.11 ( the latest stable release) does NOT pass the Acid2 standards-compliance test. But neither does IE7 nor Netscape. For more info on this, search on Wikipedia for Acid2 test.

     Netscape Navigator

     I have to be sincere and say that this is probably the browser that surprised me the most. Why? Well because I actually hadn't heard/used Netscape ever since windows 95. I didn't even know this browser still existed, and yes that's ignorance on my part. Well I am very glad I found it once again. Popularity with it seems to be at an all time low ( that's the reason I didn't know it was still out there) but performance of the latest version which is Netscape Navigator 9 is above average. And I actually think it's even a little faster than Firefox.
    But unfortunately that's where the better part of it stops. While it does have compatibility for most common web technologies used now, it still lacks certain popular features ( right now it does not support e-mail and other such features). It is because of this and other reasons why it seems to be destined to always remain somewhere in the shadows, nothing more than " a backup browser". Plus on December 28, 2007, Netscape developers announced that AOL will discontinue their web browser on February 1, 2008.Petitions have been made in an attempt to stop this, but I can't really say how successful they've been.

    Safari

    Safari is Apple's official internet browser and the first (1.0) version was released in 2003 alongside Mac OSX. Windows support didn't exist until June of last year. The latest version (3.0.4 ) works on both Xp and Vista.
    As with everything else Apple, Safari has a cool look and cute features, but it doesn't really take you all the way. It does have all the popular features such as tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking, incremental finding, ad filtering, the oh so marketed page zooming that ie7 has. It does support almost anything you can think of that other browsers support, it actually passed the Acid2 test that most other browsers didn't. It even has complete text-to-speech support. Great security features. So why isn't it number one? Well mainly because it is slow. Certain people said that is quite fast and a great browser but comparing it to all the other browsers it seems to me that it's the slowest. Second I personally wasn't able to find any 3rd party add-ons to go along with it. On Mac Leopard it works great, being part of the OS and taking advantage of all the built in features of Leopard but on Windows it seems to be somehow out of place. I can't comment any further on it. As I said great browser but somehow it just stops dead in it's tracks.

    Opera

    Ok I have saved the best for last. Yes I do believe Opera is the best browser out there at this moment. Opera's first public realease was in 1996 and back then it only worked on Windows. Even though it's been around for such a long time it hasn't really caught on until now. The latest release stable release came on the 19th of December 07. The early versions had a lot of issues and that's why this browser was never very popular, not to mention the adds that were included in the browser some previous versions.
    Right now it is clear, fast, extremly economic on resources, and supports more features than any other browser. It does pass the Acid2 test and it has almost everything you can think of. I believe Opera is the browser that invented tabs ( but I am not sure of this so don't yell if it happens to be false). Anyway it does support tabs, mouse gestures, voice commands, email, adress book, bookmark management, almost any type of web standard imaginable, it even supports BitTorrent. It even supports Web Forms 2.0 that no other browser supports. It is a jewel. And if not the fastest it is definitely in top 3. What can I say ..I am more satisfied with this browser than any other and the only fault I have found for it is that most tracker sites will not allow you to use Opera's built in BitTorrent but that is a mild incovenience considering that using IE for just one link isn't that bad.

If you wish to look for a specific piece of information on support for any of the above browsers that I have not mentioned you can look here, a great source of info.

Well that's it. I've done it, I've written it though not in as much technical detail as I would have wanted. Disclaimer thingy : I have used both professional reviews and personal experiences in the descriptions above. Also all the support information or/and the technical specs were taken from OFFICIAL or trustworthy sites ( such as Wikipedia). If any of the provided information is false and you have proof of this please adress me in any form you want and let me know. The last thing I want is to post false info.

Anyway that's it. Hope this was worth it. I will definitely come back on this subject and the next article will also be on Browsers but the ones that aren't so popular such as Maxthon, Camino and everything else I can get my hands on.
Enjoy, Geeky.

AMD Phenom™ Processor

2007-12-21T11:11:00.002+02:00

I was trying to decide what to write: the already way-to-late article on Browsers, or an article on the great and fabulous Adobe Creative Suite 3 at which I finally got a look last week, when suddenly I decided not to write about any of them ( that Browsers article will probably become my own goal in life :P ). So this week I'm writing about the (almost) All New AMD Phenom™ Quad-Core Processor.

The news about it started pouring as early as July when AMD unveiled it at its 2007 Technology Analyst Day and ever since then, there's been much anticipation. Well it is ( or has been for a few days now ) out on the market, and it does have a complete tech profile on their site here .

What I can quickly say about it ( I haven't had the chance to actually use it yet ) is that it sounds absolutely great. AMD took a fresh start on this one, abandoning their classical chip architecture. Instead the Phenom is based on the new k10 microarchitecture technology. This results in excellent performance and you can actually see a list of all the features and benefits here.

Phenom processors will use the same X2 and X4 suffixes used in the Athlon line to differentiate between dual- and quad-core processor variants, and the flagship FX moniker will move over to the top-performing Phenom processor.

The perfect combination ( or at least the one AMD put out for the Technology Analyst Day event) is a 3GHz Phenom FX system running three Radeo HD 2900XT GPU's everything working on the RD790 Chipset, which can support up to 4 , yes that's 4, GPU's in Crossfire. That was just in case you had some money and you were wandering how you could spend it to play Crysis as smoothly as you can play Starcraft 1 now :)). By the way Phenom supports AM2 sockets so no need to worry about that.

The last thing ( and this is probably one of the greatest ) that I will say is about the price. AMD promised to cut down ( a lot )on it, and they kept that promise. The Phenom 9600 processor is at about 245$, which is a reasonable price for it.

Now what I am really wondering is if there will be a response from Intel. I really am waiting on some giant battle between the two that will result in Quad-Core processors to cost less than 20$ :)). Oh well I can always keep dreaming. But seriously Intel will probably respond somehow and everyone's expecting a new extraordinary processor from them.

Disclaimer: Yes yes it's true. I prefer Intel to AMD and Nvidia to Ati :D

Cheers, Geeky.

Yahoo Again

2007-12-09T19:44:00.002+02:00

   Finally I found the time to write this. I promised I'd write the Browsers article, but before I had the chance to do that something extraordinary happened. A few weeks ago I wrote an article, Yahoo Depression, and I was saying that Yahoo has yet to release the long awaited Vista Messenger, nor had they given any news on it's development. Well after reading my bad reviews about them Yahoo decided it was finally time to give us a preview of the product. So they launched the beta version of the program. You can download it here! I downloaded it as quickly as I heard, because I was really curious how it will look and what it can do. So here are the features: (* Remember this is just a beta version so the full one will probably have more cool and interesting stuff)

   First of all the design. Yes, it really is great. The color schemes integrate very nice, and the whole program has that cool, stylish, Vista look to it.Plus the contacts now arange themselves according to your window size. One smiley face for Yahoo till now.

   Second, we have the big avatars, and the adjustable display mode for the friends list. That works out really nice, but unfortunately I have found some bugs and some things that could be improved. For example the program seems to randomly choose when to display a web adress as a link ..or just as a normal status. And if the status is really long there's no other way of seeing it than opening an IM window with the person and stretching it out as long as you need to. That's why I sent Yahoo a suggestion ( using the very nice Feedback link in the program) to simply maximize contacts in the list ,regardless of the display setting, whenever they are selected. That would really make things easy and smooth.

   Third feature, and this one is probably the nicest : Tabbed IMs. As it was said in the demo video ( yes that very old one that i was complaining about ) whenever you talk to multiple people you now need only one IM window. You have tabs, and choose from the different people you are talking to. As i said this is a very nice feature ( and just in case you don't like you can always expand the windows) because it helps keep your desktop clean.

   Another feature, you can actually take one or more contacts and post them on your Vista Sidebar so you can monitor them directly without having to check the Yahoo window everytime.Now I don't use this ( because for some reason it doesn't work), but it's still a nice feature.

   The last added nice thing that I want to mention is they increased the transferable file size even more. It now reaches 2gb of data. This is actually great as I send lots of edited clips that can take up a lot of space, and thus this helps a lot.

   Now as this is still a beta version I'm not sure what right I have to complain about this but I will do it anyway. Certain , very nice features, seem to have disappeared, such as Photo Share. That is completely gone and there's no mention of it anywhere. Also voice chat, audibles and some other stuff are also gone. I hope , and I believe that these features will be back in the full version, which will probably be released some time in Q2 of 2008.
   Oh and as a last bug thingy : I noticed the memory usage of the program fluctuates a lot sometimes as low as 2mb and sometimes as much as 200 mb. Still haven't figured out why it's doing that and if this only happens to me or to everybody. Well besides this, the program is very nice overall and I do recommend it, at least for a go.I'll let you discover new features on your own.
Have fun with it!

Sorry...

2007-12-03T19:25:00.001+02:00

Well I was supposed to write an article about the most used web browsers today. I've actually been planning to write that for some time. But the truth is I'm quite lazy and tired right now.

I decided some time ago that if I do waste at least 6-7 hours a day on the computer might as well use them for doing something useful. To be more precise I decided to learn coding. Not HTML, but C++, and while that's still on my To Do list I quickly drifted to Java, and to Flash from there. Flash Action Script is actually a really nice coding language. Of course anyone with a little knowledge of any coding language would find it very familiar. Yeah .. dot syntax and all of that ..really like it. Unfortunately I don't really have a "coder's eye" so I sometimes have big problems debugging my projects. That's why I'm so tired right now ( and listening to Pearl Jam) because it took me 1 hour to find a missing underscore.
Anyway this whole post is just an excuse for not writing anything else. I promise I will write the Browsers article as soon as possible. Until then, have a great week, and check out the other articles already written.

PS: Nike put up a bid to buy Adidas! ( Yes I know this is in no way related to computers but I find it an interesting business merger. )

Yahoo! Depression™

2007-11-27T19:50:00.003+02:00

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

2007-11-26T16:24:00.001+02:00

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

2007-11-26T14:23:00.002+02:00

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

2007-11-25T22:22:00.001+02:00

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

2007-11-25T21:50:00.000+02:00

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.