A motivator I created some time ago...
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Pirate vs Paying Customer
This is very true! When will the industry figure out they're alienating their own customers!?!?
Facebook embedded in to Engadget website! What the?
Where the hell did that come from? Why is my facebook page embedded in to the Engadget website? It's a static image, like a screenshot. I can't interact with it except by double clicking it and ending up at my facebook page.
If Engadget's website can access my facebook account to do this, what's stopping other malicious websites doing the same!?!?
Am I overreacting here?
Monday, May 17, 2010
Stephen Conroy is an idiot
Stephen Conroy, Minister for broadband communications and the digital economy, is an idiot.
Don't take my word for it, he proves my point pretty well in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUohfIhFET8
Conroy claims that the national filter will be used to block content like Child Pornography and the likes. When one opposes the national filter, it seems like the issue is twisted around to the Child Pornography issue in every video and article I have ever read.
The problem is, I've been using the internet since 1997 (at the age of 11 or 12). Over the last 13 years, I'd estimate I have spent somewhere around 20,000+ hours on the internet. This may even be a conservative estimate.
I have NEVER stumbled across child pornography, not once in my entire life.
I remember when I was very young, I went LOOKING for pornography, and I couldn't even find a set of boobs!!! I was using search engines like altavista and yahoo, etc. I wasn't able to find anything!
Today, search engines like Google enable SafeSearch by default, and restricts (fairly well I might add) results to those which I would consider safe for children. While this is not a means of blocking all pornography on the internet, it's certainly not bad!
In today's world, if Child Pornography is found on the internet, it is removed VERY quickly by the appropriate law enforcement agency/ISP. No first world country permits the distribution or viewing of child pornography! One might even go so far as to say that there is NO easily accessible child pornography on what every day citizens call "the web".
I am not saying that Child Pornography doesn't exist, I am certain that it does otherwise we wouldn't be debating it. I am also NOT condoning child pornography in ANY way at all!
However, the people who are filming, distributing, and viewing child pornography are NOT using usual channels to do so. They're using gateways, anonymous proxies, and vpns to encrypt and hide their activities. They're using technologies like TOR and private P2P networks.
In the same way that 25 years ago, dirty old men met in dark alley ways and private areas to exchange illegal goods, so too today are people using the darkest corners of the internet to exchange dirty and despicable content! But they don't go to Google and search for "Child Porn"!
Senator Conroy, I challenge you to use Google or any MAJOR search engine, to find Child Pornography on the web. I challenge you to PROVE that such content is stumbled upon by children, or indeed ANYBODY in this country, during the course of normal web usage. I challenge you to answer the questions being asked of you in the YouTube video I linked above.
During the Howard Government, there were internet filtering products like SafeEyes and the likes that worked very well for families with children. When these products were easily available to families, I deployed to a few families and was very happy with the results. As an experienced internet user, I was unable to reasonably bypass or disable the product, or easily find content that I would consider inappropriate for children.
When the Rudd government came to power, they swiftly disabled access to services like SafeEyes, and now all we have is a bunch of propaganda from Conroy about implementing a national broadband filter.
Please explain to me how removing FREE access to filtering products for the average australian family, and replacing it with a bunch of speech, has done ANYTHING positive for the country! Anything at all!?!?
Rudd, bring back the voluntary filtering products introduced by the Howard Government.
Rudd, get rid of Conroy. The louder he screams, the lower your approval rating goes. Surely you've noticed this?
Rudd, Get your act together and bring back the voluntary, pc-based products that Howard implemented! They worked well, and I would even go so far as to suggest they work BETTER than filtering a static list of websites that Conroy seems to hell bent on filtering.
Conroy, stop being an idiot! If you can.
Picture This
It's raining, and very windy, and I'm sitting in a 100 year old Wharf in Walsh Bay
all the windows and panels rattle every time the wind blows
in the distance, I hear *bang* *bang* *bang*
I think "hrmm, windy..."
*bang* *bang* *bang* Hellooooooo
*bang* *bang* *bang* Can somebody help me?
it's distant, I can hardly make out the words
I think, hrmm, whatever, someone trying to get through a door
*bang* *bang* *bang*
I figure, I'll go investigate.
It's a woman's voice, but when I walk to where I thought I heard it, there's nobody there
So I go back to my seat
*bang* *bang* *bang* Helllllpppp
I go over, stand at a set of stairs, and make a throaght clearing noise
Woman yells out, hello? Is somebody there?
I say "Yeah?"
Oh thank god, please help me, I'm locked in the bathroom....
So I go up to the handle, and i say, I'm locked out...
She says, I have the key...
But she's on the inside :P
haha
So I convince her to remove the key from the key ring, and try to give it to me under the door, but if we screw it up it will get stuck half way between her and me, and she's got a long night ahead of her
luckilly, I managed to get the key and let her out
couldn't help but giggle a little to myself
all the windows and panels rattle every time the wind blows
in the distance, I hear *bang* *bang* *bang*
I think "hrmm, windy..."
*bang* *bang* *bang* Hellooooooo
*bang* *bang* *bang* Can somebody help me?
it's distant, I can hardly make out the words
I think, hrmm, whatever, someone trying to get through a door
*bang* *bang* *bang*
I figure, I'll go investigate.
It's a woman's voice, but when I walk to where I thought I heard it, there's nobody there
So I go back to my seat
*bang* *bang* *bang* Helllllpppp
I go over, stand at a set of stairs, and make a throaght clearing noise
Woman yells out, hello? Is somebody there?
I say "Yeah?"
Oh thank god, please help me, I'm locked in the bathroom....
So I go up to the handle, and i say, I'm locked out...
She says, I have the key...
But she's on the inside :P
haha
So I convince her to remove the key from the key ring, and try to give it to me under the door, but if we screw it up it will get stuck half way between her and me, and she's got a long night ahead of her
luckilly, I managed to get the key and let her out
couldn't help but giggle a little to myself
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Scott's new Media Centre!
My Mate Scott and I have been working all day on his new media centre!
Specs:
- Silverstone GD05B mATX black HTPC Case- Alu skin ABS Front Panel, 0.8mm SECC body, USB2.0 x 2/ Audio/Mic no PSU
- MSI 890GXM-G65 AM3, Dual DDR3-2133, AMD 890GX+SB850, HT 3.0, Onboard Radeon HD 4290, VGA, DVI, HDMI, 5x SATA (5x SATA3), 1x eSATA, 1x IDE, CrossFireX, 2x PCIe x16 (x16+x8), 1xPCIe x1, 1x PCI, 14x USB, Gigabit LAN, 7.1ch ALC889, Micro ATX
- 4x Western Digital WD20EARS 2TB 3.5" IntelliPower SATA2 Caviar Green Advanced Format 64M
- 4GB of RAM
- Respectable GeForce video card, 550 watt power supply, and TV Tuner card
We spent a couple hours this morning modifying a case which by design takes 2x HDDs, to take 4x HDDs. We did pretty well, and are very happy with the results!
Everything was going to plan, until we tried to build the RAID5 array. The idea was to have 4x 2TB drives in RAID 5, giving 6TB of usable space.
Out of the box, the motherboard didn't have a raid5 option, even though it should have. A quick bios update fixed that pretty quickly.
However, when we installed Windows 7 64-Bit Ultimate Edition, it gets all the way through installation, right up to just before "Completing Installation", and it comes up with some BS error about "Windows could not prepare the computer to boot into the next phase of installation".
I honestly think we've installed Windows 7 about 20+ times today! At least it feels like it.
The only way we can get a working copy of Windows 7 on this machine, is by putting the drive controller in to ATA mode, and installing to a single drive.
We cannot, under any circumstances, boot a copy of Windows 7, or install Windows 7 to a drive that is on the RAID controller, while it's in RAID mode. It simply refuses to let us do anything!
We think we might have narrowed it down to the Western Digital Advanced Format drives, not being compatible with the on-board RAID controller because of the "Advanced Format" bs. We currently are attempting to ghost a working copy of Windows 7 on to the RAID5 array, but I am skeptical at best that this will work.
We've tried putting jumpers on to pins 7 and 8, which supposedly puts the drives back in to the old mode, but this severely impacted on performance, which meant it took twice as long to install Windows 7, only to present us with the same error message.
The most annoying thing is that it gets nearly all the way through the install before we find out it didn't work! So, it's taken all day and we're still no closer to a working configuration!
My suggestion was to ditch the 2TB Western Digital drives, for the 1.5TB Seagate ones! We MAY end up doing this anyway, but for now we're still trying very hard to get a working copy of Windows 7 on this machine!
Specs:
- Silverstone GD05B mATX black HTPC Case- Alu skin ABS Front Panel, 0.8mm SECC body, USB2.0 x 2/ Audio/Mic no PSU
- MSI 890GXM-G65 AM3, Dual DDR3-2133, AMD 890GX+SB850, HT 3.0, Onboard Radeon HD 4290, VGA, DVI, HDMI, 5x SATA (5x SATA3), 1x eSATA, 1x IDE, CrossFireX, 2x PCIe x16 (x16+x8), 1xPCIe x1, 1x PCI, 14x USB, Gigabit LAN, 7.1ch ALC889, Micro ATX
- 4x Western Digital WD20EARS 2TB 3.5" IntelliPower SATA2 Caviar Green Advanced Format 64M
- 4GB of RAM
- Respectable GeForce video card, 550 watt power supply, and TV Tuner card
We spent a couple hours this morning modifying a case which by design takes 2x HDDs, to take 4x HDDs. We did pretty well, and are very happy with the results!
Everything was going to plan, until we tried to build the RAID5 array. The idea was to have 4x 2TB drives in RAID 5, giving 6TB of usable space.
Out of the box, the motherboard didn't have a raid5 option, even though it should have. A quick bios update fixed that pretty quickly.
However, when we installed Windows 7 64-Bit Ultimate Edition, it gets all the way through installation, right up to just before "Completing Installation", and it comes up with some BS error about "Windows could not prepare the computer to boot into the next phase of installation".
I honestly think we've installed Windows 7 about 20+ times today! At least it feels like it.
The only way we can get a working copy of Windows 7 on this machine, is by putting the drive controller in to ATA mode, and installing to a single drive.
We cannot, under any circumstances, boot a copy of Windows 7, or install Windows 7 to a drive that is on the RAID controller, while it's in RAID mode. It simply refuses to let us do anything!
We think we might have narrowed it down to the Western Digital Advanced Format drives, not being compatible with the on-board RAID controller because of the "Advanced Format" bs. We currently are attempting to ghost a working copy of Windows 7 on to the RAID5 array, but I am skeptical at best that this will work.
We've tried putting jumpers on to pins 7 and 8, which supposedly puts the drives back in to the old mode, but this severely impacted on performance, which meant it took twice as long to install Windows 7, only to present us with the same error message.
The most annoying thing is that it gets nearly all the way through the install before we find out it didn't work! So, it's taken all day and we're still no closer to a working configuration!
My suggestion was to ditch the 2TB Western Digital drives, for the 1.5TB Seagate ones! We MAY end up doing this anyway, but for now we're still trying very hard to get a working copy of Windows 7 on this machine!
Monday, May 3, 2010
LCD Shortcomings
I'm thoroughly impressed with all aspects of my new computer! I've already put about 4TB worth of data on to it, and have roughly 6TB of free space now (much better than the < 10gb I had two days ago.
I got all my data off one of my 1.5TB Seagates, and then installed Windows 7 64-bit on to that. The drive was originally a Dynamic Disk, which made things difficult from all aspects of getting data off it, to installing Windows. I think I'll steer clear of Dynamic Disks from now on. They just make life more difficult, not less!
I've been having some trouble for a while with my nVidia GTX 275, in that it's been defaulting to the VGA port, even if the screen connected was DVI. It's strange and has had me puzzled for a while now. But, during my recent OS installs, I have discovered that the fault does NOT lie in the GTX275 or the nVidia drivers, but in the Creative X-Fi Platinum drivers.
Whenever I install the X-Fi Platinum drivers, the video card switches off it's DVI port, and starts outputting to VGA! I've never seen anything like it before. Maybe the X-Fi has outlived it's purpose? Time will tell.
Most impressive of all though, my GTX275 has really been allowed to stretch it's legs! It's clear now that simply upgrading the video card in an old system is NOT going to be the quick fix I thought it was. Amazingly, I can now run Crysis at 1280x1024, and run EVERYTHING on "EXTRA" which is the highest that Crysis will go. I still get around 40-60 FPS!
Modern Warfare 2 is much the same. Before, while playing online I had to drop the Resolution and graphics quality in order to get a competitive framerate. Now I can run everything at maximum and still get 60FPS online! Must be time to buy a 24" LCD
Just for a laugh, I decided to jump in to Quake 2 and see what that was like! I think modern day browsers put more stress on a system than Q2 does! I was mostly surprised that it actually ran! I'd forgotten how good a game it is for brutal multiplayer! Can't wait to bring it out at our next LAN Party!
Finally, I am most impressed with the throughput of the RAID Array, especially when copying between that and the System 1.5TB drive. I can copy 300+mb files between the two without the file copy window even appearing, and 1GB folders copy in a matter of 1-2 seconds with the file copy window reporting transfer rates of up to 800MB/second (which I think is a calculation issue) and down to 200mb/second. I know that Windows 7 is reading the files to RAM and writing in the background, but still, funky!
I left DC++ running in the background overnight to hash my "linux isos", and the LEDs hardly even blinked even though it was hashing at a sustained throughput of about 100MB/second (limited by the single hashing thread using a full CPU core). Curious to see how it performs when being accessed by 10+ people at the same time.
I got all my data off one of my 1.5TB Seagates, and then installed Windows 7 64-bit on to that. The drive was originally a Dynamic Disk, which made things difficult from all aspects of getting data off it, to installing Windows. I think I'll steer clear of Dynamic Disks from now on. They just make life more difficult, not less!
I've been having some trouble for a while with my nVidia GTX 275, in that it's been defaulting to the VGA port, even if the screen connected was DVI. It's strange and has had me puzzled for a while now. But, during my recent OS installs, I have discovered that the fault does NOT lie in the GTX275 or the nVidia drivers, but in the Creative X-Fi Platinum drivers.
Whenever I install the X-Fi Platinum drivers, the video card switches off it's DVI port, and starts outputting to VGA! I've never seen anything like it before. Maybe the X-Fi has outlived it's purpose? Time will tell.
Most impressive of all though, my GTX275 has really been allowed to stretch it's legs! It's clear now that simply upgrading the video card in an old system is NOT going to be the quick fix I thought it was. Amazingly, I can now run Crysis at 1280x1024, and run EVERYTHING on "EXTRA" which is the highest that Crysis will go. I still get around 40-60 FPS!
Modern Warfare 2 is much the same. Before, while playing online I had to drop the Resolution and graphics quality in order to get a competitive framerate. Now I can run everything at maximum and still get 60FPS online! Must be time to buy a 24" LCD
Just for a laugh, I decided to jump in to Quake 2 and see what that was like! I think modern day browsers put more stress on a system than Q2 does! I was mostly surprised that it actually ran! I'd forgotten how good a game it is for brutal multiplayer! Can't wait to bring it out at our next LAN Party!
Finally, I am most impressed with the throughput of the RAID Array, especially when copying between that and the System 1.5TB drive. I can copy 300+mb files between the two without the file copy window even appearing, and 1GB folders copy in a matter of 1-2 seconds with the file copy window reporting transfer rates of up to 800MB/second (which I think is a calculation issue) and down to 200mb/second. I know that Windows 7 is reading the files to RAM and writing in the background, but still, funky!
I left DC++ running in the background overnight to hash my "linux isos", and the LEDs hardly even blinked even though it was hashing at a sustained throughput of about 100MB/second (limited by the single hashing thread using a full CPU core). Curious to see how it performs when being accessed by 10+ people at the same time.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
10.5 TB of Awesomeness
I took a quick drive to my office at 7am this morning, RAID Controller in hand, just to make sure the nVidia 790 chipset would accept the card, and sure enough it does.
Spent the morning at my Mate's place, saw Iron Man 2 (pretty awesome!) and then went to pick up my new Motherboard, CPU and RAM! I'm very happy with the final result!
The array turned out to be 10.5 TB, equaling around 9.7TB of usable space after the 1024/1000 conversion.
I ran a HDTach Long test on the RAID Array, averaged around 260MB/Second sustained throughput, with a peak of 360MB/Second burst, pretty respectable I think!
Couple of things I forgot about, firstly, I had to acquire a copy of Windows 7 64-bit edition to handle the 8gb of RAM, I also needed a spare HDD to donate itself for a day or two so I can get the data off my existing 1.5TB Seagates.
I had to take a quick drive back to IJK this afternoon to pick up an eSATA dock, so that I could transfer all my existing "linux isos" from my existing drives.
Once the data is off those and on to the RAID array, I'll be able to reinstall Windows 7, hopefully for the last time in a very long while.
I'm extremely happy with my video performance, my GTX275 runs MUCH better with the "Full High Definition Linux ISOs" which I couldn't play before. All other media runs even better than I expected. I can't wait to jump in to Modern Warfare 2 and the likes to check it all out!
Currently, I have a lot of file copying ahead of me which should be fun, and I also need to look for a home for my old Case, Motherboard, CPU, and RAM:
Antec Case (big good one)
Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra-SLI
AMD Athlon X2 3800+
4GB of Corsair DDR400
Needs, PSU, HDD, VGA and DVD-RW to be usable... Might give it to "The Boss" as a workstation if I can cobble together the parts I need to make it whole again.
RAID Woes
My RAID controller arrived yesterday to much excitement on my part. I unboxed it immediately and was very happy with what I saw. I had already placed the order for my new case and hard drives, and they were ready to be picked up, so I paid for them and giggled a little inside!!
My mate (who has a server similar to mine, except with 500GB Hitachi drives) is going to help me build my server. He's the kind of guy who tidies everything up very well, so I figured his expertise would come in very handy, and I was pretty impressed with the end result. The cables look great!
However, my motherboard (Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra-SLI) will NOT detect my RAID card at all. The BIOS doesn't see it, and my OS doesn't see it. I've used this motherboard for SLI with 2x nVidia 7800GT's and they worked OK, so I am pretty sure the second PCI-Express (x16) port works...
We took the RAID card to my mate's place and plugged it in to his server, and the BIOS immediately picked it up fine, so I don't think the card is DOA... (Which is lucky, as I imported it from the US to Australia, and I'd hate to have all these HDDs just sitting here while I sent the card back to be replaced!).
I've ordered a new Motherboard, CPU and RAM from IJK:
1 x AMD HDZ965FBGMBOX 965 Phenom II X4, 3.4GHz, Quad Core , 8MB cache, 125W AM3 black edition $223.00
2 x Corsair CMX4GX3M2A1600C9 4GB (2x XMS3 2GB) PC-12800 (1600MHz) XMS KIT, DDR3 For MB i7 / i5 Core dual channel DDR3 processors $350.00
1 x Gigabyte GA-790XTA-UD4 AM3, AMD790X, 4DDR3, 2PCIE2.0, RAID, GbLAN, 3FW, SATA3, USB3, ATX $187.00
Coming to $760 all up, it should bring my computer back in to this century.
I am about to hop in the car, drive to the office, and test this RAID card in my work computer. I want to know that the newer model gigabyte motherboard will detect my RAID card before I commit another ~$800 to this computer... $800 I technically don't have! :(
Photos of the build soon.
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