Category: Tech Stuff

Anything to do with computers or anything of a similarly helpful / confounding nature

Prediction: Within 2 years it will be pretty common for thieves to be using RFID

RecallI heard recently about thieves who were using handheld RFID scanners to determine the contents of tractor trailer trucks to see which ones would be worth breaking into.

Such a double-edged sword can be these devices which offer so much convenience for retailers to maintain their inventory.

One of the practices that keep shoppers safe, especially at Christmas when the buying frenzy is at its peak, is to keep purchases out of sight. The trunk of your car is usually good for this. It’s pretty risky to break into a car, especially if a thief doesn’t know that he’ll be rewarded for his efforts.

But picture someone walking through the mall parking lot, a small scanner in hand (or up sleeve) surreptitiously reading the RFID tags for everything within each vehicle. Heck, with the right technology, I’m sure you can do this from within a moving car so one can pretend they are simply slowly looking for a parking spot. Then, once recorded and evaluated against increasingly available RFID tag databases, all the thief needs to do is go directly to the vehicle(s) in question and surgically extract the items of value.

I suppose the next step will be the “Shopper’s Package” that will be offered on vehicles much like you can get a “Sports Package” today. This “Shopper’s Package” will have some kind of stealthing or interference technology that will prevent exactly the scenario above.

There is never a shortage of possibilities…

You have Vista on a computer reporting only 3.2 Gigabytes of RAM on a system with 4 Gigabytes installed

RecallIt’s too bad that they don’t actually tell you about this when you are, I don’t know, actually purchasing your computer!

I picked up a new Dell Inspiron 530 computer back in early October of 2007 and saw that, in spite of having paid for 4 Gigabytes of RAM, the system reported only 3.2 Gigabytes.

In looking around I saw various folks talking about BIOS issues etc. But I’m pretty sure that this MS article explains the situation the best.

To paraphrase, your chip set is only capable of addressing up to 4 Gigabytes of memory. Addressing for other devices (video card memory is given as an example) must also come out of that. So if you have 2 or 3 Gigabytes of RAM installed, the other pieces can still be addressed by the operating system and you don’t notice anything. But install 4 Gigabytes of RAM and you will see Vista’s need to address those devices limited by your chip set and it will eat into the addressing available for your RAM.

The proposed workaround is to ensure that you use a chip set that supports at least 8 Gigabytes of address space. 

Ah, well, as a consumer I suppose I should have known that. Silly me.

This series of exchanges in “James Hayes’ Blog” indicate that there is still an advantage to going with the 4 Gigabytes of RAM if you want more than 2 Gigabytes (check the comments section and look for the postings by “DellCA”). I can’t vouch for what is being expressed, but I can say that they knew about the issue nearly a year before I bought my system and made no effort to either inform or correct my purchase options.

Of course I cannot see how much the wasted .75 Gigabytes of memory has cost me, Dell’s pretty savvy in how they report the computer options on the receipt – one lump sum price. But I think that one of the posters in the blog comments is right in that what Dell is liable for is 3/8 of the cost of the hefty 2 Gigabyte upgrade price. Not so much because it’s not usable, but because they knew it to be unusable and blithely offer the option anyway. Let’s face it. Were I a *real* computer hardware expert, I would be piecing together my own system, not buying from Dell anyway. We buy from Dell because we know enough to want to customize our systems for a known need (I know my computer habits mean that I need more memory than average) but do not want to spend all of our waking hours troubleshooting those systems. Dell’s biggest value to me is that they will ensure that all the pieces I have chosen will all work together properly and then deliver the result to me so I can just get on with using it.

Dell has fallen down on the job here.

iTunes Library updater keeps 2nd iTunes machine in sync

We share our music library by keeping separate copies on each of our machines. This works MUCH better then trying to share using a network drive (speed-wise).

For simplicity, the decision needed to be made to choose a master copy and then find some way to ensure that the slave would keep up-to-date as songs were added or removed.

Michelle doesn’t have much interest in ripping CDs or otherwise acquiring media so we made my machine the master. I back up all my stuff to my server every night and Mich’s machine checks the server periodically (daily, when she’s got it turned on) to pick up any new music / pictures that I’ve added or changes that I’ve made (we use SyncBack SE for this – works GREAT!).

Anyway, iTunes is a bit of a pain in that it is not able to monitor folders for updates. So instead I found this solution on Lifehacker’s web site. The iTunesLibraryUpdater fits the bill quite neatly.

All I needed to do is customize the associated batch file and add it to the “Scheduled Tasks” app to run an hour or so after I’ve got SyncBack to run. So any changes that were pulled down from the server can then be applied to iTunes automagically.

The suggested batch file command line (modified for Mich’s machine) looks like this and works perfectly:
“%PROGRAMFILES%\iTunes Library Updater\ITLUconsole.exe” /a /l /r “d:\my music”

Programs continue to run even after I close them in Vista

RecallSomething I’m finding quite interesting with Vista Home Premium is the propensity for some programs to continue running even after I close them.

For instance, if I’m playing any kind of media in Windows Media Player (audio or visual) and just click the little “X” at the top of the application, the window closes but I still continue to hear the audio track until I either re-open WMP or go to the task manager and kill it.

The same goes for Azureus. I had it open a couple of days ago to check something and closed it. Today I happened to be reviewing libraries on my Roku Sound Bridge  and see that Azureus is still serving up content if I wish to use it.

Checking  Windows task bar I can see no trace of Azureus, but open up the task manager and, sure enough, there it is. I do need to look into this…

For smiles ‘n’ giggles I just closed iTunes and can see from the task manager that it closes just fine. I re-opened it and started playing a song and then closed it while the song was in progress and it closed just fine.

So I’m not sure what the thread is here.

co-incidence or Kwality?

RecallA friend pinged me a couple of days ago with this question:

“Oct 7th you said you were getting a new PC with “vista”
Oct 9th the last post to your blog.

Co-Incidence? I think not….

So how is the new machine?
How is Vista?”

You know who you are 🙂

His question is well posed. My new computer has Windows Vista Home Premium installed on it. Although it’s been out for a while now, there are loads of interesting quirks with it.

Let me say that I really like a LOT of the new paradigms. The search is actually GOOD! I like the fact that I can hit the Windows key and just start typing a search for a program that I want to run, a contact name or a filename and they rapidly appear in the start menu. The Aero theme is pretty slick too. I’m VERY glad that I didn’t bother to try to retrofit an existing machine with Vista. Take my advice, unless you absolutely *love* tinkering with your box, just wait until you get a new one before indulging in Vista.

It took exactly 3 days before I went in and disabled UAC (directions here). As a friend at work stated “UAC is great if you don’t know anything about computers but it really gets in your way if you’re comfortable with them”. He’s right. UAC is that annoying feature that *will* prevent malware from taking over your machine. But if you normally like digging into the guts of your machine you will find it annoying very quickly. i.e. Open your hosts file with notepad, make edits then try to save, ooops! you should have opened notepad in administrator mode. Too bad so sad.

One problem that I faced was in using the task scheduler. It looks like there is a bug in the Vista Home Premium edition only that causes it to try to run under the system account even when you specify an account and password that you want it to run under. This might not be so bad except that it fails anyway. From my research this has been a problem for nearly a year now with no fix in sight (SP1 I await you). So my nightly backup has changed from running at a preordained early morning time via “Scheduled Tasks” to runnning “Daily” via “Syncback SE’s” own scheduler. This, of course then becomes dependent on when I restart my machine as to when backups are taken.

Also, Vista comes with a “Photos” screen saver, which seems to be the nicest one I can find for displaying both still and moving image files. But it consistently crashes (caught by Vista before it can do any damage. But I’d prefer my screensaver not to fail regularly. I’ll update this entry with window’s cute name for this (**update** “Data Execution Prevention”) but the actual Application event log shows as

“Faulting application PhotoScreensaver.scr, version 6.0.6000.16510, time stamp 0x467b2825, faulting module xvidcore.dll_unloaded, version 0.0.0.0, time stamp 0x41c6a36e, exception code 0xc0000005, fault offset 0x0d16f684, process id 0x1e48, application start time 0x01c8163284872183.”

More to come…

**Another update October 26, 2007 ** keyword: photos screen saver was closed

New Computer on Order

I just went ahead and ordered a new Dell Inspiron 530 computer.

Here are the specs, looking forward to seeing it in action!  I managed to dig up a $350 off coupon online. That, along with free shipping made the price pretty good IMHO.

1 223-2222 Inspiron 530,Intel Core2 Duo processor E6550 (2.33GHz 1333FSB) w/Dual Core Technology and 4MB cache $1029.00
1 311-7240 4GB DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz $0.00
1 310-8025 Dell USB Keyboard $0.00
1 310-7966 Dell Optical USB Mouse $0.00
1 320-3000 Video ready option w/o monitor $0.00
1 320-5747 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT- DDR3 $0.00
1 341-4811 500GB Serial ATA II Hard Drive(7200RPM) $0.00
1 341-5517 Dell 19-in-1 Media Card Reader $0.00
1 420-6540 Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Edition, English $0.00
1 420-5769 Internet Search and Portal $0.00
1 420-5924 Icon Consolidation Application $0.00
1 463-2282 Dell Owners Manual installed on your system,click on icon after system set-up to access $0.00
1 420-6436 Vista, PC-Restore, Dim/Insp $0.00
1 420-6995 DELL SUPPORT 3.4,DIM/INSP $0.00
1 313-5582 Dell Resource DVD with Application Backup $0.00
1 420-7244 Dell Support Center 1.0 $0.00
1 310-1966 Mouse included with Keyboard purchase $0.00
1 430-0412 Integrated NIC card $0.00
1 313-4593 56K PCI Data Fax Modem $0.00
1 420-7468 ADOBE ACROBAT READER 8.1 DIM/INSP $0.00
1 313-5270 16X DVD+/-RW Drive $0.00
1 420-6464 Roxio Creator Basic $0.00
1 313-2758 Integrated Audio $0.00
1 313-2198 No Speaker Requested $0.00
1 412-0940 Security 30-day trial $0.00
1 412-0148 No Internet Service Provider Requested $0.00
1 412-1397 No Productivity Software requested $0.00
1 950-3337 1 Year Limited Warranty $0.00
1 987-3137 Dell Hardware Warranty PlusOnsite Service, Initial Year $0.00
1 982-4310 Type 3- Third Party At Home Service, 24×7 Technical Support, Initial Year $0.00
1 987-6238 No Warranty, Year 2 and 3 $0.00
1 960-3249 Banctec Service Agreement $.00
1 983-3680 Warranty Support,Initial Year $0.00
1 466-7687 Thank you for choosing Dell $.00
1 464-9572 No Preinstalled Software $.00
1 310-8626 You have chosen a Windows Vista Premium System $.00
1 420-7091 DataSafe Online Dim/Ins/XPS $.00
1 420-7092 DataSafe Online Dim/Ins/XPS 1YR-FREE $.00
1 987-4817 Insp Datasafe 3GB,1YR(Incl in price),DHS $0.00
1 988-0099 To activate your online backupaccount, go to Start, Programs, DataSafe Online $.00

Podcatching – Goliath is the winner

Until very recently I was using “Doppler” as my podcatching client. It allowed me a degree of control in managing my subscriptions that I simply cannot get with iTunes. However, I was finding more and more problems – even with the older podcasts – as they focused on ensuring that the RSS tags were iTunes compatible and not necessarily other podcatcher compatible.

Also, I was finding some content available exclusively on iTunes which had me using its podcatching features anyway for those select offerings. For example I’m currently in the middle of a GREAT astrophysics lecture series from Berkeley that is available as part of many educational institutions’ efforts to make such content generally available.

Add to that the fact that the creator of Doppler has been really dragging his feet on updating the podcatcher and I had to reluctantly transfer all of my feeds to iTunes and find some new ways to manage my content.

iTunes doesn’t offer a feed-by-feed way of discarding unplayed podcasts (for instance, if I haven’t listened to a “Clark Howard” podcast in a month, then I’m just not going to listen to it) and there is no really good mechanism for marking a podcast as “done with” – you can do this in Doppler by simply assigning a rating to the podcast and it will automatically remove all with that rating if you have set that podcast up to be managed in that way.

In iTunes the only feedback mechanism I have is to run the podcast to the end so that the play count goes above zero. Then I have an “Obsolete podcast” Smartlist that picks these up. Periodically I go to that Smartlist and delete everything in it. I *know* I can have iTunes automatically delete all played podcasts but sometimes I do not want this to happen right away.

Anyway, I’m pretty happy with my iTunes podcatching experience so far. It’s sort of like when I finally joined the mainstream and installed Windows 95 after being a die-hard OS/2 user for so many years. I can finally do everything everybody else can do, the price being that I have to give up some of my prized features that just don’t seem to be in demand by the mainstream.

If you are interested, here is my current podcast list in OPML format: OPML File as of September 20, 2007. If you want to know how to import/export OPML files from iTunes, click here.

Below is a list of my current podcasts in order of preference. I enjoy ALL of these, of course, otherwise I wouldn’t download them. But some are more relevant, informative or fun than others.

The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe
Astronomy Cast
Astro 10P: Introduction to General Astronomy – Fall 2006
TEDTalks (video)
Slashdot Review – SDR News
CBC Radio: Quirks & Quarks Complete Show
Skepticality: The Official Podcast of Skeptic Magazine
IT Conversations
Cato Daily Podcast
Cato Weekly Video
Science @ NASA Feature Stories Podcast
Humanist Network News
Mr. Deity
Career Opportunities
The Finer Points – Aviation Podcast
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Video and Audio Podcasts
The Economist
The Clark Howard Show
Clark Howard’s Scam Alerts
Clark Howard’s Call Of The Week
Battlestar Galactica Podcast
Astronomy Magazine Podcast
David Allen Company Updates
David Allen Company Podcast
43 Folders
Pilotcast – Aviation Podcast for Pilots, by Pilots
Slacker Astronomy podcast
Slacker Astronomy Video Podcast
The Skeptic Tank
Astronomy a Go Go!
SETI: Science and Skepticism: Are We Alone?
Cato Institute Event Podcast
Gmail Podcast
The Ellen DeGeneres Show in a minute
IdoNotes (and sleep)

Dynamic image resizing (Really, this is impressive!)

Listed on CollegeHumor.com under the boring title “Advanced Photo Resizing”, this is astonishing. Sure, we’ve been able to modify images for quite a few years now. Photoshopping an image to remove, accentuate or beautify the subject matter is nothing new at all. We’ve simply become better at it over the years.

But this video, describing the ability to now allow images to be dynamically resized, including the ability to selectively emphasize what is removed, is truly a giant step forward in this arena.

Of course, the images presented could never be claimed to be a true representation of the original subject. But then, that’s been true since the first wide angle lense and the first filter were applied to still photography.

Reality has always been somewhat subjective, and now it can depend on the size of your viewing screen!  🙂

Remove duplicate tracks from iTunes Playlists on a Windows Machine

There seem to be plenty of utilities available for this kind of housekeeping on MAC systems on which iTunes is a native application. But it took a little digging to find these helpful little utilities. There are about 20 utilities of which I see a use for about 3 of them for my purposes.

Every once in a while I like to re-evaluate some of my playlists and/or create new ones. I don’t necessarily want to throw away my previous work (although sometimes I do that too…), so I wanted to be able to toss songs into, say, my “Driving” playlist without concern for whether or not those songs were already represented there.

Running Teridon’s script allows me to simply purge all the duplicates after I’m done. A handy little time saver.