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Posts Tagged ‘Linux’

10 Interesting Links From June 20th

June 20th, 2009 Greg Smith No comments
  • Police: Argument over better father ends in shooting – A man shot his former lover's new boyfriend in the leg early Saturday morning after the two men argued about who was a better father to the first man's son, police said.
  • Home invasion suspects tied to border group – KVOA News 4, Tucson, Arizona - – The trio are alleged to have dressed as law enforcement officers and forced their way into a home about 10 miles north of the Mexican border in rural Arivaca on May 30, wounding a woman and fatally shooting her husband and their 9-year-old daughter.

    Their motive was financial, Dupnik said.

    "The husband who was murdered has a history of being involved in narcotics and there was an anticipation that there would be a considerable amount of cash at this location as well as the possibility of drugs," Dupnik said.

    Forde is the leader of Minutemen American Defense, a small border watch group, and Bush goes by the nickname "Gunny" and is its operations director, according to the group's Web site.

  • News : Intel fined for hazardous waste – The New Mexico Environment Department fined Intel for violating the state’s hazardous waste management regulations in March.

    On March 25, NMED conducted a hazardous waste compliance evaluation inspection at Intel Corporation. Inspectors discovered that Intel failed to close several containers of universal waste lamps. Universal waste lamps are bulbs used for standard office lighting and can contain levels of mercury and lead that make them hazardous waste when disposed.

  • Growing the Poison Pepper – Boing Boing – I ordered naga jolokia pepper seeds from the Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University. The naga jolokia, sometimes called the bhut jolokia, the ghost pepper, or the poison pepper, is the world's hottest chile pepper. My brother, the expert gardener, is growing them right now. These are pretty difficult to grow in Minnesota; they take forever to germinate and the drop flowers at the slightest provocation.
  • Bare-bones warning to Boulder cyclists – The Denver Post – Boulder Police Chief Mark Beckner warned Thursday that police will ticket bike riders if they expose their genitals during the World Naked Bike Ride, which is planned for Saturday as a protest against oil dependency.
  • Not so windy: Research suggests winds dying down – The Denver Post – The wind, a favorite power source of the green energy movement, seems to be dying down across the United States. And the cause, ironically, may be global warming—the very problem wind power seeks to address.
    The idea that winds may be slowing is still a speculative one, and scientists disagree whether that is happening. But a first-of-its-kind study suggests that average and peak wind speeds have been noticeably slowing since 1973, especially in the Midwest and the East.
  • Four Reasons Why iPhone Owners Hate AT&T – With the iPhone 3G S news now in the wild, the discussion digressed from the announcement of the 3G S itself to AT&T, the iPhone's exclusive carrier in the U.S. (at the moment). Without a doubt, this relationship is where Apple's weaknesses lie.
  • Three Things the Palm Pre Does Better Than the iPhone 3GS | Popular Science – Arguably the Pre’s biggest draw is its super-elegant multitasking schema—apps fill up “cards” as they’re launched, which you can quickly scroll through horizontally by pressing the main button, which zooms out into a “card”view. Closing apps is done by flicking it off the top of the screen, which feels great. Aside from the five icons in a quick-launch bar and those within the three drawers of the app launcher, there is no icons-on-a-desktop conceit.
  • Al Jazeera English – Europe – WHO declares H1N1 pandemic – The World Health Organisation has declared a H1N1 pandemic, the first such annoucement in more than 40 years, as infections continue to rise around the planet.
  • Atomic Warfare – Intel last week bought for $884 million Wind River Systems, a venerable embedded operating system company — yet another of the chip giant’s recent forays into software. The reason for this purchase is both simple and grand — to help Intel vertically integrate and to further its Linux ambitions. Intel’s ultimate target with this purchase is Microsoft. It’s all about kicking Redmond out of the netbook business.

Momento Live To Be Terminated

January 20th, 2009 Greg Smith 5 comments

Momento Live is a service that goes along with the wifi enabled Momento digital picture frames. It allows you to stream photos from your Momento Live account to other picture frames.

I purchased two of these frame partly for this feature. I wanted to buy frames for my family then be able to stream my pictures to them as without anyone having to do any configuring.

Today I get a email that the service is being terminated. Not only is their site not updated to reflect what the email says, they seem to provide no work around to provide the same kind of service that they currently offer or to remove it from the frame’s software.

I think someone needs to hack the frame to run linux.

Dear Member,

The Momento Live service will be terminated on February 25, 2009. After that date you will not have access to the Momento Live website or services. However, your Momento frame will be unaffected so you can continue to enjoy viewing your photos on your frame.

The closure of Momento Live web site means you can no longer store your photos on the Momento Live server and/or and share your photos with other Momento Live members.

Important note! Any pictures that you have stored on Momento Live server will be permanently lost after February 25, 2009. If you have any images stored on the Momento Live server, please ensure you have a copy of them stored on your PC. Any images that are hosted on Flickr, Picasa, SmugMug, or similar services will not be affected.

When currently visiting the Momento Live web site you may receive a website security warning as the SSL certificate has expired and will not be renewed. Please ignore this message. You are welcome to continue onto the website to retrieve your images.

To visit Momento Live please click here.

Any questions you have may be directed to momentosupport@imate.com

Thank you,

The Momento Support Team

Smart Home Hacks: Tips & Tools for Automating Your House

October 11th, 2004 Greg Smith 3 comments

I’m very happy to announce a new O’Reilly book is coming out. “Smart Home Hacks” is a book on using Mac, Windows or Linux to automate your house. What’s exciting for me is that I got to contribute several of my Indigo scripts to the book!

You an pre order it now from Amazon (an in the process I get a kick back).

Read Gorden Meyers (the author) official announcement on his blog or go visit the the O’Reilly Home Automation blog.

Apple PDA Rumors Again

February 16th, 2004 Greg Smith 2 comments
Rumors of a Apple branded PDA have surface again. The rumors have persisted for so long that Apple needs to come out with one just to make them go away. Granted, I would be the first one to buy it if it ever came out but it seems so unlikely at this point.

“According to this report, the device will run an operating system that is described as being “OS X-like” and is quite possibly based on Linux. It will have an unknown amount of RAM, but it will also have the same type of miniature hard drive that is used in Apple’s iPod line of MP3 players. Apparently it will use a clamshell design, with the screen on one side and keyboard on the other. Like many recent clamshell models, the screen can be rotated around and closed over the keyboard, allowing the device to be used as a tablet. Its touchscreen will have a HVGA resolution, and it will use Apple’s Inkwell for handwriting recognition.”

Linux? It might be”OSX-like” because it is OSX. I would think that Apple would have an easier time scaling down OSX then trying to make another operating system look like OSX and scaling it down. And if it’s a true PDA I think Apple would likely license the PalmOS. It seems logical that it would have the iPod hard drive in it. In fact I’m surprised no one else has already done this. The rest of the hardware sounds cool, and very do able.

It’s no doubt that Apple has been playing with prototypes for some time. I’m hopeful but skeptical that Apple will ever release it. My credit card stands ready if they do. 

Mac OS Is Not As Insecure As Windows

December 11th, 2003 Greg Smith 2 comments
“The truth is that the Mac OS is just as vulnerable as Microsoft Windows.” No it’s not. Yes MacOS is vulnerable to a lot of things but it’s not as vulnerable as Windows. And that is the issue that the writer of this article doesn’t get. In fact it’s such a non-article about anything that it doesn’t deserve the “press” that the Mac websites are going to give it.

The article is mostly a bunch of ego fluff about how the author was a Mac user until we went to work for the real world where they made him switch to windows. Blah blah blah, why don’t you just give us beauty tips instead.

The author refers to this security advisory as an example (the only example he gives) of how insecure MacOS is. What he fails to do is research. This exploit requires a “malicious DHCP” server. Meaning someone has to hook up to your network and be the DHCP server for your network. That counts out most home users, since they are likely going to know about any servers in their home. Even with the wireless scenario that the Carrel.org claims could happen, It’s no easy exploit, your in much more trouble then you think if it happens to you and not just because of this exploit.

The register has an excellent article on Linux vs Windows security. To quote “To mess up a Linux box, you need to work at it; to mess up your Windows box, you just need to work on it”. This applies to MacOS X as well. This article has been out since July.

[Update:] See, I’m not the only one that thinks this guy was “incorrect” in his “article”. 

Linux Router Project: RIP

July 23rd, 2003 Greg Smith Comments off

Slashdot brings news that the Linux Router Project has EOL. The creator of the project looks like he needs to move on and do something he can survive on. Although I never used this router project (since I messed with Mac based routers) it was inspirational to some of my projects.

I wouldn’t be surprised if someone else picks up the slack. 

Using Your PC As A Shortwave Radio Receiver

June 9th, 2003 Greg Smith Comments off

For years I have subscribed to a Spy Numbers mailing list. Spy numbers are these voices located on radio stations that just speak numbers. Some are human some are machine. Some are suspected of being messages to government agents here and abroad. Now Ars Technica has a story on using your PC as a shortwave radio receiver.

They basically review the Ten Tec RX-320 , a short-wave radio box that hooks up to your PC that you control completely with your PC. This might be another gadget I will want, if they come up with MacOS X software for ti. Since they have Windows and Linux versions of the software for it I suspect if wont be long.