A Pagan man died.

He found himself standing at the Pearly Gates; with St Peter blocking his way.

I’m sorry,” Said St Peter, “but you can’t come in here: You’re a Pagan, and you don’t even believe this place exists.”

The Pagan was startled. “Where do I go then?” He asked.

I’m afraid you’ll have to go to hell.” St Peter replied.

The Pagan resigned himself to destiny as St Peter waved his hand and he vanished.

He found himself in a dark courtyard standing outside some black gates smeared with blood suspended on two fiery gateposts. The gates were covered with gruesome gargoyles, and were rather hot to the touch. The Pagan opened the gates and noticed a sign above reading “Hell. No Exit.” He gulped as he stepped inside.

A falling leaf brushed past his face as he looked around. The sun shone through the trees and a song thrush sang a merry tune from the woodland in front of him. He was standing on a well-paved path which led into the woods. Squirrels and fawns came up to meet him as he passed through the wooded scenery. Tree spirits smiled as a tiny sylph hovered above her dew-pond and a dragonfly buzzed past.

Awestruck by the beauty of the place, the Pagan saw a well-dressed gentleman standing at the other end of the wood, holding a black cane with a small skull on the top of it.

“Ah…Hello…” He called, hesitantly, not knowing quite what to expect. “I’m new here: I wonder if you could help me?”

The other man turned and smiled.

Ah a new entrant.” He said. Yes I’ve heard all about you. Do allow me to show you around. I’m Satan by the way. I was just inspecting the latest bluebells, which appear to be sadly lacking in fragrance at this moment.”

“Tell me,” He continued, “Do you think a shrubbery would look nice there? I usually have them planted with pink lobelia, but I have a feeling light blue would better match the light.”

They strode out from the woods, chatting pleasantly, and to the edge of a quiet summer meadow. “The Pagan meeting grounds are right over there near the stone circle just over that hill.” Continued Satan. “I told them you were coming and they’re simply dieing to meet you if you’ll excuse the pun…”

The Pagan had noticed a huge cloud assembling above; and was just about to remark on it when:

KABOOM! A streak of lightning exploded the air between the centre of the meadow and the sky. Smoke rose from the meadow as the ground fell away revealing a huge blazing pit. Sulphur fumes filled the air as a chasm opened in the cloud above the pit, out of which flew three black bat-winged demons carrying pitchforks. One of them shouted “Come on you slow bastards!”, following which out tumbled several naked people into the flames; screaming in agony from the heat.

The pit closed-over and the meadow floor re-grassed itself as if by magick. The Demons re-entered the chasm and it and the cloud melted silently away.

The Pagan stared transfixed in horror and amazement.

“W-what was that!” He exclaimed.

Satan looked directly at him with red eyes aglow, a smirk on his face; and said, tongue-in-cheek:

“Those were Christians, they wouldn’t have it any other way.”

*Please note. : This story is fiction, and was for the purpose of humour only. It does not reflect the beliefs of Pagans, and neither is it written to ’slate’ or to provoke anyone of any belief or denomination. Any offence caused by this joke is unintentional, and is unnecessarily taken.

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It’s a long time ago; but if I recall correctly there was no media player in Windows 95, (Correct me if I am wrong; it feels like I’ve lived several lifetimes since then.) and the first Windows Media Player was introduced with Windows 98; a player with very basic functionality which was a part of the operating system itself.

To cut a long story short; the good news, as far as this article is concerned is, it’s still there – Exactly as it originally was: Microsoft Media Player 5.1 in all its antiquity.

You don’t believe me? Open a command prompt in XP (Home or Professional.) and type “mplay32.exe”. You see; it is there, hiding away. It can play a certain selection of files, such as AVI, WMA,WMV,MID, and WAV.

Now think; what if you could use this to sample sound files without opening the full media player, such as WMP11? – For instance; if you could just select a .WAV or a .MID file, click on something, and Microsoft Media Player 5.1 appeared and sampled it instantly: Useful or what? No hanging around waiting for WMP11 to load its massive bulk just to play a tiny file.

This is especially useful for people with midi-libraries or who create sound files from prerecorded effects stored on sound files, or even just for sampling your music collection maybe.

And now for more good news: You can do just that – and here’s how:

To use Microsoft Media Player in this way, add it to the SendTo menu by following these steps:

Right-click on a blank area of your desktop, (Where there are no icons.) and highlight “New” in the drop-down menu that appears.

Another drop-down menu appears. Select “Shortcut” and click it. A wizard appears.

Type “C:\Windows\system32\Mplay32.exe /Play” (Without the inverted commas.) in the text box on the wizard and click Next.

Name the shortcut “Microsoft Media Player” (Without the inverted commas.) and click Finish.

You’ll see a clapper-board icon appear on the desktop: Remember where this is on the screen. Now we’re going to find the SendTo folder.

It’s located at:

%windir%:\Documents and Settings\username\SendTo

Where %windir% is your system root directory; usually C:, and username is your account username. e.g. “Jane” or “John” or “Supernerd”, or whatever.

If you don’t understand that, then find it using the search feature. (You’ll need to look in hidden files and folders if you do.)

Once you’ve found the folder SendTo; drag and drop the icon you just created into it and close it. (You might find it useful to create a shortcut to it on the desktop: You’ll understand why from a future post.)

Now when you encounter an AVI, WMA, WMV, MID, or WAV file and you just want to sample it, you can simply right-click on that file and select the SendTo>Microsoft Media Player command. It’ll start playing right away, as soon as the Microsoft Media Player appears.

Target neutralised.

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Psystar; the company in the US that offers Mac clones, has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple in a counterstrike, claiming that Steve Jobs’ enterprise employs a load of hype, dubious licensing schemes/technology for the purpose of dominating the Mac-scene.

The Psystar “Hackintosh”

If Psystar were to win this lawsuit then the face of personal computing as we know it could dramatically receive a fair amount of plastic-surgery: The monopolisation that Apple insist upon enforcing on its customers will end, and Jobsweh will no longer be able to exploit the Apple fanbois/girls with his money-grabbing greed and vastly-exaggerated profits which he currently makes. If Psystar do win then it could mean that Apple technologies become a kind of Open Source environment – Something that Jobsweh has gone out of his way to avoid so far.

Psystar’s angle, according to documents filed in U.S. District Court for San Francisco, is Apple “has engaged in certain anticompetitive behaviour and/or other actions that are in violation of the public policy underlying the federal copyright laws.”

Apple originally filed a lawsuit against the comparatively tiny Psystar in July 2008: Psystar clones Macs; that is to say it sells copies of Macs, complete with Leopard, for their real value plus an acceptable profit-margin – Rather than the massively-inflated rip-off prices incurred in buying from Jobsweh and company. Apple claimed that this violates their copyright of the Mac OS and want the court to order Psystar to stop.

Psystar counter this argument by stating that Macs are a cult-monopoly, and that Apple dominates that sector of the market by employing  questionable licences, and uses crafty advertising to create a cult following of their non-interchangeable technologies, maximising their profit-margins in so doing.

In essence; Psystar is accusing Apple of acting anti-competitively in its monopolisation of the Mac and related products. Among other such anticompetitive practices; Apple embeds code into the Mac OS that will brick third-party machines by disrupting the kernel.

Personally I hope Psystar win, and succeed in defeating the greedy Jobsweh who is cheating his customers and breaking the law in some regards.

There have been a number of multi-million-dollar cases of antitrust filed against Microsoft for anticompetitive behaviour of a lesser nature; nearly all of which have succeeded. On the basis of that I think it only fair that Apple are forced to abandon their current policies, pay Psystar’s legal costs, and that Psystar are awarded a small figure in damages.

“…And the Overlord [Jobsweh]…shall strike as a thief in the night…”

2 Machinations 16:45

Whatever happens; this high-profile case is playing for some high stakes: If Psystar were to win it could open the floodgates and make the Mac environment virtually open source; competing with Linux, and even affecting Microsoft too.

Go Psystar – Yay! This blog fully supports and encourages Psystar in its attempts to thwart the anticompetitive and illegal endeavours of the greedy unethical Jobsweh; god of all things Apple.

Other related posts from other blogs:-

http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/07/apple-demands-t.html

http://www.davidrisley.com/2008/04/15/openmac-psystar-reeks-of-a-publicity-stunt/

http://www.pcmech.com/article/psystar-doing-software-patches-flips-off-apple/

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=1685

http://www.pcmech.com/article/psystar-gets-the-bejeezus-sued-out-of-them-by/

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§ Complete PC scanning, including running processes, registry entries, files and folders

§ Detects and removes: adware, spyware, pop-Up generators, keyloggers, trojans, hijackers, and malware

§ One of the largest spyware definition databases in the industry

§ Automatic definition and feature updates

§ Fast, powerful, and easy to use

§ Comprehensive customer technical support

§ Protects against identity and credit card theft

See this product in action for yourself:

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A large amount of the following material was written some years ago by myself, and I’ve attempted to join a number of partially-rewritten paragraphs together in this post, mixed with some newly-written sentences to make a more-in-depth article on this subject. Whilst I have covered a lot, both from writings I made several years ago and from new additions, I am unable to do full justice to this huge matter without writing a rather large book on the subject.

Whilst there is a lot of standard doctrine within Paganism; there is also a very deeply personal side which is unique to all Pagans individually. At this point I’d better mention that Paganism has nothing whatsoever to do with “Devil Worship”: The “Devil” concept is a myth of Christian origin; through which they attempted to discredit and demonise Pagan belief by colouring and utilising the image of the Horned God; partner of the Mother Goddess, as the archetypical representation of all evil within their own religion. – However this Devil character, referred to in the Christian Bible as Satan, is a relatively recent character in mythology, and has no relevance to original Pagan beliefs and doctrine; nor for that matter modern-day neo-Paganism.

No; it’s not “Devil worship”: This “Devil” is a Christian myth rather than a Pagan one – How can anyone worship something that they believe doesn’t exist?

So what would one do in order to become a Pagan? Of course there is no checklist.  : My experience of becoming a Pagan is most likely different to others; as all things are naturally individual and unique. : Organised religion has attempted to unify and simplify understanding of the spiritual to such a vast extent that it is now neither proper understanding, nor is it really spiritual. Certain religions have succeeded in producing programmed clones carrying a payload of a few simple viruses of belief, with which they seek to infect others who don’t use the firewall of discernment, the anti-spyware of education, and the anti-virus of intelligence.

Firstly in becoming a Pagan one will come to develop the understanding that all natural things are unique, and that all life is sacred; human, animal, and vegetable. As a result of this understanding one will not be unnecessarily discriminatory of others, and will recognise the sanctity of all life, regardless of nationality, race, creed, gender, sexual orientation, or religion.

There is no way of making oneself believe it, or forcing oneself to do so: Either you do or you don’t – But it’s no rigid doctrinal requisite though as such: There is no set structure that one has to adopt to the letter – All things are not equal just as all things are not deserving: Therefore favouritism can be an emotional outlet, but nevertheless favouritism in the light of recognising that no matter what one’s preferences may be, both the preferred and the partially-shunned are nevertheless unique and sacred

I personally found it helpful to study about, and often even to meet the deities; remembering that all spiritual deities are simply an aspect or sub-aspect of Divinity, whilst bearing in mind that Divinity is such an infinitely massive and supreme being – the union of all that exists, all that ever has and ever will exist, on this plane of existance as well as others, that it would be impossible to come to know all of Divinity in its entirety within a single lifetime; possibly even within infinity. (Imagine Divinity as a huge diamond with millions of different cut faces to it: Each deity is the aspect of each of those faces or aspects of the unfathomable whole of the one Divinity: This is where many err; seeing the entirety of Divinity as a single being with a single personality embodied in a master-god such as Yahweh. – (Who is a three-faceted god.) The fact is that Yahweh is a single aspect of Divinity rather than Divinity itself. (The idea of the Trinity was itself borrowed from the Sumerian Tri-Une Goddess legend.)

Whilst proceeding as above one will eventually and inevitably, as a result, at the same time as and by default, come to know oneself, and understand the personal unique individual nature of one’s own being, as well as seeking one’s own wills, desires, and aspirations. This requires a huge amount of individual honesty with oneself, as in doing so one must also confront and accept one’s own inadequacies and failings in addition to one’s assets and attributes, before seeking to deal with them. Once one has come to the understanding of who one is, as well as the true nature of one’s own individuality, one will respect oneself and others more, and also will reach a higher understanding of the reverence for the spiritual uniqueness of all things.

So what’s the best way to go about finding out more about Paganism?

You want to know about Paganism and Witchcraft; therefore, quite logically, you go to Google and type “Witchcraft” into the search bar: Google presents you with thousands of websites; a lifetime’s worth of study; but you didn’t want to spend a lifetime studying it; you wanted to glean the basic truths and make a decision on whether it was a path you wanted to follow – So you start on page 1 with the first site; http://www.witchcraft.org/ – ‘Good site; but maybe this site is a little too, shall we say, commercial and glossy, for your current needs. So you proceed through the listings, selecting sites at random, and studying those that you feel comfortable doing so with. 100 or so sites later you have learned a number of conflicting views; all backed up by other sites, yet seemingly contradicted by still others: One site may tell you that Witchcraft/Paganism, is all about love, peace, dropping out and becoming a “fluffy bunny”, being at one with nature, and displaying unlimited love for all things, while another informs you that there is no need to change a thing, as the divine resides within you, and bringing that out will give you all you need. Yet another site tells you that you should adopt a moral code based upon your newly-found Pagan ethics; while yet another seems to indicate that no moral code is necessary by the words “‘An it harm none, do as ye will.” Following this you stumble upon a Christian-edited website regarding Paganism which tells you that all Pagans unknowingly or secretly worship the Christian “Devil” and have been cleverly duped away from the “One true path that leads to salvation.” – Supposedly the Christian path; although that path probably has as many or more variations than the individual paths of Paganism.

Confused and mentally battered you ponder, and feel like giving up. So many sources and so much information; seemingly in disagreement with itself and each other depending upon its source. Which is the correct piece of information? Apart from the Christian view of Witchcraft; which is simply a method of gaining converts by denouncing any and all other paths, in a way they all are: Each individual has an individual understanding and path to Divinity which is in some way a variation of sorts upon others.

I’m going off the point here. The point I was trying to make is that one cannot use such a widely-defined search term as “Witchcraft” to find a single path within Paganism. There are many different “denominations” of Witches or Pagans. However unlike the case with regard to Christianity; nearly all, if not all, Pagans, interact peacefully with one another; whatever the denomination, whether Wiccan, Druid, Shaman, Buddhist, Hedge-Witch…Whatever. (Having said that though; there can be factious rivalries built up between male Pagans – The usual male sociality issues…) Uniting us are three major principles; firstly the universal Pagan belief that all paths lead to the same goal. : If you’re all climbing a mountain you all get to the identical summit eventually if you make it to the top, no matter which route you take. Second is the universal Pagan principle that all life is sacred and is a part of Divinity. Thirdly the Rule of Three, which is not exactly universal in its entirety, but appears in a similar form throughout Paganism; that being “Whatever you give out will be revisited upon you three times in this or future lifetimes.”(Similar to the Christian version; “What a person sows; this they shall also reap.”.) : So in short, then. : 1. We’re all going to the same objective “event”; that being ultimate enlightenment. 2. We don’t want to harm life, as life is sacred no matter whose life that is. 3. If we do harm others then we will get three times that harm back, yet if we do good to one another we get three times that good back.

What are the Paths up for choice as regards Paganism? Well there are many more than one could imagine; depending upon the individual who takes that path. The best path is the path that’s right for you. There are no “Book religions” in Paganism: (Genuine)Pagans are knowledgeable and responsible people as a whole, and we are fully aware that it is ours to bear the responsibility for every reaction resulting from our own actions. (That’s not saying that we never get it wrong or make major cock-ups.)

Auntie Sharron doesn’t have all the answers, and I’m speaking from my own personal experience of my own personal path at all times; although everything I write is in agreement with Pagan doctrine as far as I am aware. I’m not advising everyone to become a Pagan, unless it’s right for them. I have no insecure desire to “convert” people to my way of thinking. I’d just like people to start thinking; thinking for themselves, rather than blindly following blind halfwits like the proverbial sheep to the slaughter. When people have decided upon their path for themselves, using their own reasoning with a totally unbiased and fully open mind and without any coercion or brainwashing whatsoever, then their opinion is a valid one as far as that person is concerned at a personal level.

Having gained this understanding one also gains perception of the energies and powers available to one, and learns over time in tandem with Spirit and deity how to use and manipulate those energies both for the good of others, of the earth, of the universe, as well as for the good of oneself. As a consequence of this one becomes empowered with true spiritual understanding, and receives one’s “awakening”; learning how to perceive using one’s third eye, gaining intuitive insight and perception of things both seen and unseen with one’s physical eyes: One therefore gains further knowledge and understanding, contributing to the overall enlightenment of the soul, deepening one’s understanding of all of the above; and from there is an upward spiral of enlightenment, with the added bonus of “sight beyond seeing”, (Which I actually asked for at an earlier stage, and was granted: Since I was at that time much more physically routed than in the spiritual, I saw the wiring under the board, the invisible structure, of modern society; and believe me it was pretty ugly, (I love these sensible oxymorons!) and shocked me to the core from the insight into the corruption, intrigue, mass subterfuge, and intrusion form virtually every facet of the politico-religious framework of the mass-hysteria we call a “free-society”. In fact a so-called “free society” is about as free as a high-security prisoner under 24-hour guard; but it could be worse, indeed it has been in certain places at certain times throughout history.)

Coupled with the action and implementation of true positive wholesome magick within one’s life, and the knowledge, joy, peace, love, and understanding which flows from Divinity through deity to one, and returns to Divinity charged with the power of the circle, to flow out once again on its journey invigorating, empowering, renewing…Just a tiny part of the universal whole which is a mere dot within all of existance. – But that’s another story.

Peace.

Namaste’

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We’ve heard moans twice from Apple Fanboi Michael Arrington; but we want to be convinced that it’s not just one voice in the darkness.

Well here it is: The post you never expected to see from one of the new Apple fanboys:-

“Apple Showing Warning Signs”
Posted Aug 28, 2008 by David Risley 

“As many of my readers know, I have converted pretty much everything to Apple products. I am now a Mac user and recently I switched to the Iphone. As of a few days ago, even my keyboard is built by Apple. I am a fan of the company and their products, but I am seeing big red flares that are showing signs of trouble on the horizon.”

(I think that’s meant to be iPhone; but ‘easy typo either way.)

-So David says; and I quote “I am a fan of the company and their products“. Fair enough: Each to their own. He continues:-

“Why I Like Apple“

“It continues to be funny when I witness the emotional reaction Apple can get out of people. A lot of non-Apple geeks are quick to dismiss me as a “fanboy” because I like Apple. Such a reaction is really asinine and, ironically, often comes from people who would buy Apple if not for monetary reasons…”

Help me Wikipedia:

“By 1990 the term was being used in popular music and science fiction circles, and as electronic entertainment gained popularity, the term became increasingly applied to computers and video game consoles – with people often developing an obsessive loyalty towards one platform or brand.”

“Current subjects of such obsessive loyalty include areas of: TV shows; movies; music; anime; comic books; cars; video game consoles, video games and MMORPGs; and computer operating systems, hardware and software—and more recently politics.”

“”Fanboy” was added to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary in 2008.^“

Next:

 

 

“…But, There Are Warning Signs”

“While I have admired the user-centric design of Apple products, the company has been showing some signs of losing touch. Some examples:

1. Iphone battery life has been a complaint, and it seems really stupid not to have it be user replaceable.
2. The Iphone software has been a bit buggy, worse for some than others. I’ve had my Iphone crash many times. I’ve had it slow down or features stop working that required a restart to fix.
3. No copy & paste on the Iphone? Stupid, stupid stupid. This is OS design 101.
4. The MacBook Air hasn’t been that high quality and many have been reporting stupid problems with it.
5. MobileMe has been a huge ball of fail since it launched, showing once again that Apple is horrible when it comes to anything on the Internet. And the fact that they’re charging money for it when it can all be done for free elsewhere is dumb. Apple tossed users some free time for their troubles, but all that is is free time using a barely functional service. Also, the fact that all the .Mac customers were automatically moved into this crappy service is a case of very poor customer service.
6. There have been complaints about decreased built quality on the MacBooks and MacBook Pros. “

                    Fail                                                   Better

“What I’m sensing is a bunch of Apple users who really want to continue liking Apple, but are having to find ways to explain the parade of bonehead moves and buggy products coming from the company.”

That last sentance was very well written and extremely spot-on-target: Those people are called “Apple fanboys/girls”.

Of course, not being a fanboy himself – and any suggestion that he might actually be a fanboy being “really asinine“; David doesn’t fit anywhere near into that category:

“In all fairness, most computer companies release crappy stuff. I guess Apple is held to a higher standard because of their marketing and the loyal following that they have. Perhaps Apple is just showing us one thing: they’re a computer company just like any other computer company.”

Of course; that’s not actually anything like “ways to explain the parade of bonehead moves and buggy products coming from the company.” : It’s just an excuse for darling Apple’s incompetence – ‘All companies cock-up from time to time: Apple are no different; in fact they’re much better at cocking up than any other company.’

Exactly; just one of the many things they do better than anyone else, isn’t it?

You read it first here; unless you read it first there: Apple cocked up – As admitted under a veil by an Apple…non-fanboy himself.

My analysis? Apple have lost it: I foresee a lot of their market-sector gains dwindling slowly back to much how they were. I see the crown falling from Jobsweh’s head. As a Microsoft fan I don’t see any immediate advantage to Microsoft. I would say that Linux will continue to make small gains from both M$ and Apple, at least until Windows 7 is released.

Do I see Linux reaching 10% market-sector impact? It’s possible but unlikely in my estimation. I won’t rule it out altogether, but Linux had its day; in fact around 3650+ of them. Ubuntu have made inroads in a sense; but the various distros are still proving difficult to give away; even in the light of Microsoft’s shot in its own foot with Vista.

??

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Have you ever visited a site and been redirected straight to a page saying something like:

“WARNING! Your computer is infected! Our initial scans have detected a possible malware infestation on your computer. Click here for a free full scan.”

So this advertiser is claiming to have scanned my files without my permission and found malware? Alarm-bells sound straight away. Whether I click “Scan Now” or “Cancel” their alleged malware scanner begins working: Clever that, as there’s no internet communication as such during this “scan”; and the only thing that’s been loaded onto my computer is a Flash animation.

Before I can think clearly the “in-depth scan” is over and reports that I have X amount of trojans and Y amount of other malicious programs on my PC! Wow: The only way that they could have got on there is if the advertiser had just put them there. I cancel the page and run a malware scan using XoftSpySE. The scan reveals 10 low-risk spyware cookies; at least 6 of which were put there by this advert. The Ad goes on to tell me that I should pay for their software which can find malware that other programs can’t…

Years ago I once downloaded a program called “Spyware Nuker” which used advertising tactics just like this, onto a clean install of Windows 98SE on a new hard-drive which I’d formatted in FAT32 that day. This HD had never been exposed to the internet before then but Spyware Nuker found oodles of malware and claimed it had fixed all of the problems. I uninstalled Spyware Nuker and ran Ad-Aware free edition – It found a trojan and loads of spyware that Spyware Nuker had planted on my system.

My guess is that the program you’re now considering downloading will do much the same. Here’s what actually happened:-

The URL that you typed redirected your browser to the advertiser’s URL, where the ad including a small flash animation and a few spyware cookies were loaded up to your HD. The “Scan Now/Cancel” panel was overall linked to a single link, which told the flash animation to run. After it had run, feigning a scanner GUI, the window uploaded a few names of various malware components at random from a database on the server and displayed them as infections on your computer.

The intention was for you to say

“OMG I have these infections that my current antispyware missed – What a clever piece of software! I must buy it now.”

Probably when you purchase it it’ll upload all those infections to your computer along with some others, it’ll then eradicate the infections it says it found, leaving you with the others it wasn’t supposed to find: Now you have a compromised system that is at the mercy of whoever has paid the highest price for use of your new bot – And worst of all if you’re not that computer-savvy, you’ll never know anything about it unless your ISP contacts you with a complaint.

Advice: If you ever see an Ad appear telling you that your computer is infected; close the page or ignore it – Don’t even bother with it. You might try telling the webmaster of the site that you intended to visit about this; as the webmaster may be unaware that their new advertising that they’ve just signed up for is run by unethical enterprise.

Remember, on the internet; if it sounds too good to be true then it is: 999 out of 1000 times there’s no “probably” about it.  If several reputable programs find no spyware, then one that you’ve never heard of informs you that your computer is infested; it’s fairly safe to assume that you’re being conned; especially if that program is over-hasty to grab your business at all costs.

Some advertising does have a funny side though:

————————–

Seriously now:

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§ Complete PC scanning, including running processes, registry entries, files and folders

§ Detects and removes: adware, spyware, pop-Up generators, keyloggers, trojans, hijackers, and malware

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The first thing I’d like to say is that this is the 100th post to this blog; which I consider quite an achievement in around six weeks considering everything, even though I do say so myself – So first off here’s to celebrate. (Yes I know it’s only 100, and yes there are hundreds, even thousands, more to come. This is my way of saying “Well done Sharron” to myself.) A small celebration; and then on with the show:-

Fire Your Computer Technician!

A computer technician spills the beans and makes available the knowledge he has charged clients hundreds in service fees for.

CLICK HERE

From the foldermarker.com website:-

“Folder Marker – a helper which can mark folders by priority (high, normal, low), by degree of work complete (done, half-done, planned) and by the type of information contained in the folder (work files, important files, temp files, private files).

Folder Marker is distributed in three editions. Compare them.”

PREVIEW:

Here’s a section of my desktop showing the multicoloured folder icons:

I hope you find this program useful; even for making your desktop look prettier if nothing else. Enjoy.

Connecting two transistors as a Darlington pair by connecting the emitter of the first transistor directly to the base of the second transistor multiplies the beta of the first transistor by the beta of the second transistor to give an extremely high-gain device.

Imagine, for instance; two NPN devices, each with a maximum gain of 50, connected in such a way, giving a device with a maximum gain of 2500: This would be useful for boosting the output of a piezo-microphone for example; notorious for its low output.

In the basic circuit-diagram of a Darlington amplifier below; the input is DC decoupled by C1, resistors R1 and 2 form a potential divider biasing the base of Q1 at exactly 0.7 Volts, R3 is the load resistor on the collector of Q1 – which drives the base of Q2; R4 restricting its collector load, and the R4/C2 combination decoupling its emitter to ground.

Since the base of Q1 is at 0.7 Volts, both Q1 and 2 will be in an “always on” state, and sensitive to any tiny ripple passing through the input capacitor C1.

Bearing in mind that the input ripple will probably be of only a few microamperes; the R1,2 pair should be selected with as high a resistance as possible – Within the megohm range to limit the current already present on the base of Q1 to a fraction of a microampere if at all possible.

Q1 should be chosen such that its base current need only be negligible for it to respond. With a beta of 50 the resistance of R3 should be within the range of around -2 to -40 times that of R1, so as not to drive the transistor into saturation.

Again, having a beta of 50; Q2 should be run ideally at between 2 and 40 gain.

Suggested component values to run the circuit at a voltage of 1.5 Volts are as follows:-

R1: 2M2, R2:(1M with 250K Lin. Preset in series.) R3: 100K, R4: 22K, R5: 110R

C1: 1uF 10V Elect., C2: 100uF 10V Elect., C3: 10uF 10V Elect.

Q1: BC107B, Q2: BC109C

Note: I haven’t built this circuit myself; and it’s been drawn up for demonstration purposes only: It’s very basic and wouldn’t give brilliant sound quality anyway, but should nevertheless “work”.

The Windows operating system’s GUI can be like a complicated maze that takes years to get used to finding your way around. I’ve personally been using XP for years and still occasionally struggle to remember where certain things are.

A remedy for this is a little icon that you can unzip to your desktop that, when clicked, brings up a click-able listing of features in a box; some of which are buried deep in the operating system – and if you’re like me you can never remember the command-line for them to save time either.

It’s called “Windows in a Box”; that’s Windows; not Window’s: The person who developed it must be one of those people who inserts an apostrophe before the s in every word that ends in s. Forgetting the spell-lames for now though, this little box can be most useful to virtually anyone. – Oh; and it’s free too BTW.

For example; if you’re not aware that to run the Direct X Diagnostic program (in XP) you need to open a command prompt and type “dxdiag”, or find the link to it buried deep in the GUI, then the shortcut is right there in Windows in a Box, and only requires a click.

The following text is quoted from the Softpedia website, and includes a download link:-

“Access all the features of windows XP on your desktop”

“Ever get tired of searching for a setting inside the control panel?
Inside Windows XP are hundreds of settings that require endless clicking through the Operating System that can get really frustrating. Windows in a box was designed to eliminate all that.
Sits on your desktop, easy to navigate, and puts an end to all the frustration of endless searching for settings.
Spyware, Adware and Malware free. Requires little memory to run, and nothing to install.”

Softpedia Secure Download (US)

Today is a “Bank Holiday” in the UK; which is Brit talk for “skive”: That applies to the employed-only populous though: I’m continuing much as usual here, although I did get a chance to finally see a few people I’ve been meaning to see for a while earlier.

It’s been a bumper weekend as far as hits are concerned on this blog; and my thanks to all who made it so: I hope you found the information that you were looking for and that it was useful to you.

In this blog entry I’m going to be focusing on operating systems and browsers with regard to the statistics of this blog from the last six days, and try to give my perception of exactly what this means for their respective markets.

Let’s look at some figures in terms of overall percentages for the operating systems used:

I apologise for the fact that the illustration’s not that clear: Nevertheless it can clearly be seen that Microsoft Windows XP is by far the leading o.s. at 75.8% (Of just over 1000 original hits.) ; beating Windows Vista into an un-commanding second-place at only 8.8%. To me that shows a big failure notice for Microsoft’s latest operating system and confirms the fact that people are sticking to XP for the time being, or downgrading their Vista installation to XP where possible. If this graph were to be taken as a representative sample it would indicate that for every person using Vista, there are 8.61 people still using XP.

What of the rest? Unbelievably in third place behind Vista is the obsolete Windows 98 at 4.3%: This also speaks volumes about Vista, as this says that nearly half as many people as those who currently use Windows Vista would rather use an obsolete operating system than Vista.

Let’s tot up the percentages of all Windows usage excluding Vista: We’ve already got XP at 75.8% and Windows 98 at 4.3%. Also there’s Windows 2000 in sixth place at 1.7%, NT4 at 1.1%, Server 2003 at 0.7%, ME at 0.6%, 95 and CE at 0.1% each.

I make that 84.4% of everybody, using Windows but avoiding Vista. Total Windows usage including Vista = 93.2%.

What of the others? Well there are two Linux groupings on this graph: “Linux” and “Ubuntu Linux”. I’m going to add those two together and call them “All Linux”; giving 2.4% of total: That’s not that bad a representative score for Linux in all honesty, and indicates some growth in the usage of Linux; I think somewhere in the region of 0.5% growth of market share.

Now Apple: There’s Mac OS X coming in at 2.9%, and the iPhone at 1.5%. I’m going to add those together and call them “Apple Platforms”; giving 4.4% of overall usage. This shows significant growth for Apple too; somewhere in the region of a whole percent if I remember correctly.

Obviously this isn’t an official survey, and the statistics gleaned from this are only representative of my viewers. If it were an official survey of a small cross-section of users, and there must be at least some parallel with the official figures, it would indicate that:-

• XP remains the prominent OS of choice.
• Vista is a failure.
• Linux usage is growing fairly fast.
• Apple usage is growing even faster.

To clarify; with apologies for the non-clarity of the graph again:-

• Internet Explorer 6: 50% (!),
• Internet Explorer 7: 23.7%,
• Firefox 2: 8.4%,
• Internet Explorer 5: 6.1%,
• Firefox 3: 4.5%,
• Safari: 3.8%,
• Opera: 0.9%,
• Firefox 1: 0.9%
• Konqueror: 0.7%

The other categories are “Firefox” (No number) 0.6%, Firefox 1.5 0.3%, Generic Gecko 0.1%, and Internet Explorer (No number) 0.1%.

I think what I’ll do is group Firefox, Firefox 1.5, and Firefox 1, together and call them “Not Firefox 2 or 3″, giving 1.8%.

Also I’ll group Internet Explorer and IE5 together and call them “Not IE6 or 7″, giving 6.2%.

OK; so IE6 appears to be a clear favourite: Strange that; I thought that since M$ were distributing IE7 as an auto-upgrade then everyone would start using it. I certainly do, and I prefer it to IE6 – I’m in the minority there it seems. IE7, which I use in XP, comes in second with less than half as many users as IE6. If we assume that all Vista users use IE7, then only 14.9% of XP users have adopted IE7. Fair enough.

Firefox 2 in third. Hmm: Although Firefox 3 was a record download it certainly isn’t a record Firefox; 2 still being the prevalent choice out of the Firefox versions.

Strangely enough IE5 with all its many vulnerabilities and its funny GUI has more users than Windows 98, indicating that people are using it with other Windows versions such as ME and 95.

Firefox 3 with just over half as many users as Firefox 2 eh? : That should be a concern to Mozilla perhaps?

Safari at 3.8% – Well there’s the iPhone accounting for some of it, though I’m surprised its usage is that high.

Even more surprising to me is that Opera’s usage is so low at just 0.9% in comparison to Safari’s beating it by more than a factor of 4 times: Maybe some people know something I don’t?

The rest is pretty much academic anyway – So; in conclusion:-

• IE6 is still the most popular browser.
• IE7 isn’t a failure, but it appears that most people would choose IE6 rather than IE7.
• Firefox as a whole has gained a good foothold and is becoming popular.
• Firefox 3 didn’t go down as well as anticipated.
• IE5 seems to have a cult-following.
• Opera is, in my opinion, underrated.
• Safari is, in my opinion, overrated.

I found that statistical analysis quite exhilarating: I hope you found it interesting and maybe in some ways useful.

What do you think? Are you at all surprised by these results? Do you think that this study is a fair analysis that could be used as a representative cross-section poll of users? Do you think these results are typical? What would you expect the results of an official poll to be; similar, or different? Please feel free to comment.

Update: September 1st 2008:-

I’m getting some good hits from loads of Open-Source browsers all of a sudden: Keep ‘em coming! (IE6 is still in the lead.)

 I’m now going to have to review some of these and blog about them. Excellent!

Click Here 

The meeting’s basically over, everyone’s left, and you check over the data you’ve extrapolated from the topics presented as you sit alone in the empty boardroom. Suddenly Mother Nature calls you to the ladies room just outside the boardroom door and around the corner. As you exit the ladies’ room you notice someone’s purse lying on the floor, and being an honest person you hand it in to Reception. On your return to the empty boardroom you find that your laptop  is missing… Has anything similar ever happened to you? Hopefully not; but if it ever should, what are your chances of ever seeing your laptop again? Virtually nil – Unless you use Adeona:

. . . Fire Your Computer Guy or Girl! A computer technician spills the beans and makes available the knowledge he has charged clients hundreds in service fees for. Computer Secrets Unleashed To find out more CLICK HERE

According to http://www.pantheon.org/articles/a/adeona.html Adeona is “The Roman goddess who guides the child back home, after it has left the parental house for the first time.” (Seemingly a lesser-known goddess from the Roman empire times, and who I as a Pagan was unaware of, as were a couple of other Pagans who I asked.) 

This isn’t an exercise in invoking any Roman deity though – The software was named after the goddess Adeona for seemingly obvious reasons:

Developed by the University of Washington, Adeona is totally Open Source and completely free. It is the first such program that tracks the location of a stolen laptop, and it relies on no central service. Its use only requires a small software client to be downloaded to and installed on your laptop.

This new development in Open Source software was initially presented at Gnomedex on August 23rd 2008 by a representative of the development team.

For more information and links, please visit http://adeona.cs.washington.edu/ 

Also go here for more in-depth on this topic:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10024278-52.html

Click Here

What an absolutely fantastic event Gnomedex 8 turned out to be! Held in Seattle USA; this once-a-year event has reached and completed its 8th-time round. Run by Chris Pirillo and his wife Ponzi in association with their sponsors, which this year included HP as the main sponsor, this year’s show was simply awe-inspiring to me as I watched, despite the fact that I was online, across the pond in UK, and in an 8-hours ahead time-zone.

There isn’t much more to say other than the above now it’s over. At the end of the last night, Chris and Ponzi mentioned a chance of there being several one-day events of a similar nature in various locations around the USA; I suppose that would be next year if it happens, in addition to the main venue in Seattle: That would be utterly fantastic; especially if they were all streamed online too.

Having bade farewell to Gnomedex 2008 from my office chair in front of my monitor; (Yes I am still using a 17″ CRT monitor – I wrote a script to make the streamed picture cover the entire screen in 1024 x 768 resolution so that I didn’t have to watch through a magnifying glass.) I leave you with the closing views of the event as seen on the stream:

See this video to check out some stills of the highlights:

Chris | Live Tech Support | Video Help | Add to iTunes

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I’m going to quote directly from Michael Arrington’s blog here. Think of Hitler’s speeches to the German people on his Nazi rallies. Fill your mind with images of the Third Reich parading before him with swastika flags on poles; goose-stepping as they raise their arm in a salute to the Fuhrer. Hold that image and read this:

“I’ve been to enough Steve Jobs keynotes now to know that the man is able to take a crowd and bend it to his will. Every time, I’ve been a willing subject – sometimes (but not every time) to find myself in a hangover-like state a day later when I try to remember exactly why I thought that whatever he was pitching would change my life forever.”

“Steve Jobs is masterful and charismatic when he’s on stage and all eyes are on him. And when, like yesterday, the crowd is carefully packed with a throng of Apple developers cheering him on, the press in attendance can easily get caught up in the hype. He’s not nearly so charismatic in person, and I believe that’s why Apple will probably not, as Dave Winer suggests, ever move to a televised delivery of their big news while Jobs is in charge. The videos just don’t communicate the man’s magnetic charm in quite the same way.”

“So while I agree with Charles Cooper that Apple may sometimes get more press, and more compliant press, than they “should,” I think he and others miss the (much) larger point: Apple, and Steve Jobs, stoke our imagination in a way that no other technology company has ever done. Apple is about elegance, design, and potential, and we love them for it.”

The image that you’re holding in your mind and the image of Steve Jobs (Jobsweh) align perfectly don’t they? Just like Hitler; Jobsweh is mesmerising the faithful while pulling one of the biggest cons of the century!

Further down the same page, Arrington continues:

“Ultimately I concede that Android may have a much larger market share than the iPhone. But I’ll argue that the iPhone users will be much happier, even as Apple makes obscene profits off of that smaller user base. ”

Jawohl Mine Fuhrer Jobsweh: Mine allegiance is to you unt only you. Seig heil!

“I love the iPhone for the same reason I love technology in general, and loved Disneyland as a child – it drives my imagination and makes me wonder what kind of magic to expect next. Also, it just works.”

“The new iPhone, like the old one, delivers all of that in abundance. And I can’t wait to see what comes next.”

Apple Uber Allez!

It just goes to show that Hitler was a very powerful salesman; a fact that Jobsweh has noticed too by the looks of things!

I wonder if he’ll ever write his memoirs so that they can be published? “Mein iPhone”?

Click Here 

I caught David Risley online via the feed at the Gnomedex pre-conference bash and tried to get an interview of sorts. The chat was so hectic that this was quite obviously impossible and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I did manage to get about 3 lines through though, as you’ll see toward the end of this video clip recorded from the online stream: Technology is a fantastic thing; and all the world’s population now has the opportunity (Most have the ability.) to communicate over large distances via the internet to unite the entire globe.

After Dave Risley followed Sarah Lacy, who seemed to do her own show jointly along with virtually everyone else present: Sarah turned out to be an excellent chat-show co-host, and the presentation was most enjoyable and entertaining. The chatroom crowd interacted with the presenters and guests, resulting in a quite spectacular interactive production which, other than for the quality of the Ustream feed, was worthy of a television performance.

Towards the end of the long evening, as the alcohol flowed freely, one of the guests became aggressive and attempted to disrupt the show with a verbal attack on Sarah, her other current guests, and her co-presenter(s). This was handled extremely professionally, courteously, and graciously, by Sarah herself and a couple of the guests; one in particular whose name I forget (‘May have been Eric Rice?) as it was about 4AM BST and I had my eyelids propped open with matchsticks.

Another small downer was the absence from the show of Tara Hunt, aka @missrogue, who was requested to guest by a large number of the chatroom, including myself; and who I feel could have made a valuable extra contribution had anyone been able to locate her. Quite obviously Tara has an extremely busy schedule: This most articulate lady leads a jet-set life filled with great achievements, and parties hard in any spare time she gets: Quite a live-wire!

Everything suddenly scaled down in a matter of minutes, and the party was completely over and empty by 6AM BST. The main host, Chris Pirillo, did make a short appearance on the feed towards the end of the night; after his parents had been on and had been interviewed by the chatroom crowd about his young days and his personal life.

During this time I was writing the first draft of my last blog entry in addition to watching the feed. I hope my multitasking didn’t make me miss too much of the proceedings. All in all it was a thoroughly dynamic event. Apologies for having missed out anybody: There were three birthday people that night; one of whom was Kathy, the others…I think I remember it was Sarah Lacy’s too: Belated Happy Birthday wishes to all anyway.

The rest of Gnomedex is currently running for real. You can pick up the live Ustream feed at http://chris.pirillo.com/live/

Fire Your Computer Technician!

A computer technician spills the beans and makes available the knowledge he has charged clients hundreds in service fees for.

CLICK HERE

With Gnomedex going full-pelt in Seattle in the USA I am baffled as to the seeming total lack of interest in, even knowledge of, the Web 2.0 phenomenon in the UK. All this antiquated “stiff upper lip” crap and resistance to change, coupled with general lethargy and a lack of motivation, is a hindrance to progress.

From what I’ve heard the general perception is that the UK is ahead of the USA technologically to a certain extent; in which case why oh why can I get no public wireless signal anywhere along the line on the train travelling from Warminster in Wiltshire to London? Why is it that, when I go to a place called Wilton which used to be the capital of Wessex, I have to stand at a particular point on a particular road to get a GSM 900 signal and GSM 1800 signals are virtually non-existent.

Why the heck do we have 2 different frequencies here? (In USA they all use GSM 1900.) As for Wifi; (In Wilton, as well as in most places outside the city centres – Even in London itself, apart from the City Centre.) unless I am within close proximity of any one of a small number of dwellings, and the owners of those individual properties happen to have their BT Home Hub routers switched on at the time, there is no Wifi signal. As for anywhere rural; forget it: Usually no Wifi at all, and perhaps a fluctuating poor-quality GSM900 3G signal that’s as good as useless for anything other than making an interrupted phone-call on the Vodafone network. Even if I owned a house any distance out of town I’d probably not even be able to use anything other than dial-up or satellite to connect to the internet: That’s not technologically advanced; that’s third-world!

The sad fact is that the UK is or seems to be a third-world country as far as the internet is concerned; and the future of the UK will be affected by that inasmuch as it could well become a third-world country bearing in mind that the future world-economy will depend upon internet communication and usage. Despite boastings from government officials and companies such as Virgin Mobile that they have expanded the internet service and are continually developing it, the truth is that only populated areas close to a telephone exchange, and some other sub-urban areas as far as cable-internet is concerned, are able to get anything on a wired service greater than 5.6K dial-up.

This situation is slowly improving; but at a rate which is far too slow. Honestly in most rural areas I’ve been to I am unable to get any Wifi or mobile telephone signal whatsoever.

As a geek I’m quite ashamed in a way to be British – But the Wifi and 3G signals, or lack thereof, aren’t half of the problem: The attitude, bad attitude, or complacency/lethargy of a lot of the British public, but moreso the “ruling classes”, is a major factor.

Gnomedex in its original format could never happen in the UK. Why? There is nothing even remotely like Gnomedex in the UK outside of private corporate functions that are for internal company personnel only currently, and attitudes are so different here. There seems to be very few in the way of dedicated internet entrepreneurs in the UK. Why? Because the Government does its utmost to make it impossible to be such. Also there appears to be an overall work-ethic-dependency-culture amongst the population. I blame Government yet again: The bullshit that the UK Govt., in association with what the UK media spew forth, is unbelievable and it soaks everybody in crap: The negative deprecating content of it encourages a controlled tiered society; with the masters – the bosses – controlling their highly-paid understudies, who in turn regulate the multi-tiered workforce consisting of managers, Sub-Managers, Assistant Managers, Supervisors, and General Dogsbodies: Like ‘The Victorian age meets Communism’ under a negatively-oriented right-wing political system.

The UK Government provides you with the incentive to stay within this aged, stuffy, culture, by taxing anyone who decides to go it alone extremely heavily: As a “drone” or “worker” subservient to the work-ethic-based culture they tax a person at between 10 and 15%, I think it is, of their gross income. Attempt to break free from the dominant suppression, however, and that person can be taxed anywhere up to 50%. (Yes; half of their gross income!)

For the Owner/Director of a large successful company whose gross (personal) income can be anything up to £1 million pounds a year, it presents no problem whatsoever. For anyone trying to break free from the work-ethic culture, however, it means that essentially they have no option but to stay working at least at a part-time job until their income from self-employment matches up to double their gross earnings from their j-o-b in order for them to be able to maintain the lifestyle that they are used to. – Is it any wonder that people in the UK lack the motivation to go outside of the job-dependency-culture as it would mean leaving their comfort-zone: Something which the average British worker can’t even imagine doing for that very reason: It’s a vicious circle.

So there seemingly can never be true freedom within the political control-society of the UK; and this is one aspect where the USA is truly “The Land of the Free”. There is the other side of the coin though - Health: The British NHS is funded by involuntary contributions from this dominated-work-ethic-culture, and without it there’d be no National Health Service, no free medicine, no healthcare for all. People’s health would be dependant on their ability to pay for healthcare and for medical insurance. There’d also be no state-funded retirement income for the elderly, (SERPS – the State Earnings-Related Pension Scheme.) and those too old or too ill to work would have to rely on a private pension scheme or a welfare-handout system such as that currently running in the USA.

It all boils down to the old adage “There is no such thing as a free lunch” : What you gain on the swings you lose on the roundabouts. The British system has its faults; many of them – But so does the US system. The difference is that the US system is founded upon the concept of personal freedom; whereas the British system is founded upon subservience to State and to the class-system. Both work in their own way; but the US system works best as far as the concept of Web 2.0, co-working, and internet-dependency is concerned.

So what is the solution if there is one? The best I can come up with at present under the UK system is, as I mentioned previously, to stay in a job of some kind under the work-ethic-based system whilst at the same time building up an online enterprise. That solution is more difficult than it might at first sound. It requires twice the work for half the profit initially: One has to hold down a j-o-b and at the same time build an internet business. The j-o-b will pay peanuts (Enough to save you from bankruptcy – exactly as all such employment does.); around the same amount of peanuts as far as consistency is concerned; but nevertheless peanuts. The internet business will slowly take off and eventually equal the income from the j-o-b. (2 x peanuts.) When it does so perhaps it’s time to do the j-o-b part-time so that you can concentrate more on the internet business. Your income may stay static while the workload increases perhaps; but stick at it, as when the income from the internet business doubles you’re making as much as you were previously in your j-o-b. – Go for the gamble at this point: Say goodbye to the job.

You’ve made it: You’re working for yourself and your income no longer depends upon working 9 to 5, 5 days a week – Rather it depends upon your own efforts and actions: You’re now your own boss and your destiny is in your hands. Remember, though, you’re paying up to 50% of your income to the UK Government still.

You now have a choice: Stay in the UK and benefit from “free” healthcare + receive the pittance the state will pay you from SERPS when you reach retirement age AND continue earning from your internet business while paying up to 50% of that to the UK Govt. OR Move to America and become a US Citizen, and continue to control your own destiny.

Freedom at Last!?

What would I do? I’m working on it. When I’ve researched this properly I’ll come up with a proper, stage-by-stage, formula for making a success of Web 2.0 starting in the UK (Maybe even completely in the UK.): It’s a tough one, so I won’t have all the answers tomorrow, next week, maybe not even this year. When I do I’ll publish the final article as a paid-for work:  First as a prospective untested how-to; then, when I’ve done it myself, as a “How I Did It” article, again for a price. Watch this space – or somewhere near it – for more, at some point.

I want to be doing what they’re doing at Gnomedex. I want to make money online; and use some of that wealth to change the world for the better in whatever way I can in tandem with the people from the USA at Gnomedex. I’m going to do it too; but starting from the UK as I will inevitably have to do, I first have to work out a strategy as I stated in the last paragraph; and I’m going to do that too. Then I’m going to share it as I said.

If you have any ideas, insights, opinions, expertise, comments, whatever; then post them below. If you wish to dialogue or have any spontaneous input then I welcome it.

The experts from the scientific institutions such as Oxford Uni and NASA recently convened a gathering aimed at devising ways to prevent information technologies threatening human dominance and possibly bringing about the end of civilisation as we know it.

(Personally I think it might be a good idea if done right – I mean look at planet Earth right now: Humans are trying to self-destruct as a species as it is by the looks of it. Maybe it’s time for a change brought about by the cyber-gods we create? Jobsweh and his ilk aren’t doing very well after all; Gates has retired; and a conflict between Redmond, Jobsweh, and “cyber-terrorists” from the open-source community – The dark side in jackets – appears to have kicked off in a small way anyway.)

Is the Matrix to become a reality? I suggest pre-empting it by rewriting Smith if so. Will we become slaves to vast armies of terminators following a nuclear war started by our computers? I think not – That scenario appears a bit too far-fetched to me; considering the fact that such a war would obliterate most of the worlds computers, internet communications, and server units, anyway.

The lightning pace of information technology may be of concern to some; but would it be so bad to be controlled to some extent by a higher, if non-human, intelligence? Once again I really don’t see what’s so terrible about that. Humans replaced Neanderthals because they were more adept at survival, so what if some technologically-enhanced race of humans superceded humans as we know them today?

OK ignoring thoughts of the Borg that are now running through the heads of Trekkies reading this blog – Forget the Borg collective consciousness and forget cruising the universe in a cube looking for vulnerable civilisations to turn into more of the collective – I really can’t see what’s so bad about having unobtrusive implants attached to increase the sensitivity of the human senses, in addition to being a replacement for worn out parts. OK maybe it might change humanity totally; but is that so bad after all? We already have the capability to self-annihilate within minutes and it only takes some set of power-crazy halfwits with access to the right button to make it happen: What if technology could prevent it from ever happening? What if some implant could correct the chemical imbalances in people’s deranged minds: No Hitlers, Stalins, no warmongering Bush hearing voices from “god” telling him to nuke his enemies.

The experts say that the reason humans are the dominant species on this planet is because of our intelligence – Pah! – What intelligence? – We’re just clever monkeys having bigger inter-tribal wars with each other and using rocket-propelled sticks and stones that explode and kill more of the enemy; otherwise we’re no better than Neanderthals as a whole, apart from being better suited to today’s environment physically. If technology threatens that position due to having greater intelligence then good: Isn’t evolution wonderful? Isn’t it just engineered evolution taking its natural course? – Or do we fight it and carry on blowing each other up until there’s nobody left to kill?

They think that they could create a super-computer with recursive artificial intelligence that could become more intelligent than humans. I say do it: You can’t get more stupid than some humans in some regards; and those stupid humans usually end up leading an army of followers…You know the story – Look at Osama Bin-Laden as one example.

“Anything that has more brains than us, can develop more technology, more quickly – including powerful weapons technologies. It could also come up with strategies and plots much more quickly and would therefore be extremely powerful.” said Bostrom; one of the so-called experts in question. If that were the case then surely it would soon see how the way humans have turned out is only going to lead to oblivion; therefore it might even ensure a future for humanity- rather than the 50/50 chance of self-elimination.

The mind boggles! – Aided of course by the latest multi-cored processing technologies. If only…

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Microsoft says that it will be giving us a primary view of Windows 7 in October: It will be providing concise technical previews at the Professional Developers Conference on 27 October and also at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference taking place in the first week of September.

Microsoft is reported to be taking an “open and honest” approach to the operating system’s developments; unlike it did with Vista which was cloaked in secrecy and hit an unprepared market. Maybe the softies learned something from the disaster they called Vista? This time round they’re taking an open discussion approach to get as much feedback as they can before the next chapter of the Microsoft o/s saga is released: So much so, in fact, that they even have an Engineering Windows 7 blog.

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In contrast to the Vista fiasco, this time they seem to be taking a different approach with Windows 7, in order to make sure that there is a reasonable degree of confidence in the product.

Windows 7 is expected to be released in 2010; although it would make more sense to release it in November 2009 in time for the holiday season in my opinion.

Latest reports appear to indicate that Apple  aren’t quite as bad as it seems; in fact it might appear at first sight that they had a windfall.

That’s not exactly the case though: Despite news of their taking top customer-satisfaction honours among personal computer manufacturers, as released on Tuesday of this week, there are two things you should note before assuming that Apple are the tops and that this blog is heavily biased against them:

Firstly nobody even thought to ask Kustom Komputa if they even wanted to be included in this award; probably because they knew Kustom Komputa would trounce Apple into second place. On a more serious note, though, the index measures results only for the three-month period ended in June – Before the crap began to hit the fan for Apple, starting with the release of the iPhone.

Also on Tuesday; Apple admitted that a software update for their much troubled iPhone only partly fixes the connection problems it has had in connecting to 3G networks: In other words; honestly this time: “FAIL: We scratched again.”

It has been reported that it isn’t only Apple’s buggy software that’s to blame: There have been reports that the Infineon Technologies 3G chipsets used in the iPhone are faulty. That could mean that no matter how good the software, the hardware issue might cause the problem to never totally go away.

It has been reported that it isn’t only Apple’s buggy software that’s to blame: There have been reports that the Infineon Technologies 3G chipsets used in the iPhone are faulty. That could mean that no matter how good the software, the hardware issue might cause the problem to never totally go away.

The crap certainly has been hitting the fan lately for Apple; and maybe rightly so too: It seems that Steve Jobs has always been a bit of a dreamer;   and now incarnated as “Jobsweh”; the god of all things Apple; it appears that the power has gone to his head and mingled with his dreams, turning his wallet into a bottomless pit that seeks filling with loot, no matter what the cost.

As reported here on kkomp.com; Apple were recently forced to extend the free trial of MobileMe in a face-saving operation.

“We have already made many improvements to MobileMe, but we still have many more to make.” Said Apple.

To me that sounds like: “We did it again by releasing a service well ahead of schedule in order to market before the competition: It wasn’t actually ready to be released; but we did so out of a case of having to. We hope we can eventually get it to work.”

If they don’t it’ll end up costing them a few dollars more; which could incur the wrath of Jobsweh!

In the same email Apple stated “We know that MobileMe’s launch has not been our finest hour.” ROFLMAO – You’re telling me! What exactly has been Apple’s finest hour during the past two months? Steve Jobs seems to think he’s Apple’s answer to Bill Gates of late. The question is; is Jobsweh, the god with the bottomless pockets, fit to run Apple any longer? Should someone more competent and less greedy take over?

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This; direct from Apple:

“Why is Apple granting a 60-day subscription extension?
The transition from .Mac to MobileMe was rockier than we had hoped.”

First understatement.

“While we are making a lot of improvements, the MobileMe service is still not up to our standards. We are extending subscriptions 60-days free of charge to express appreciation for our members’ patience as we continue to improve the service.”

How generous of Apple to realise that they cocked up – Again!

“Am I eligible for the 60-day extension?
You are eligible if you are a MobileMe member whose account was active as of August 19, 2008 at 0:00 Pacific Daylight Time.”

Ah I knew there was a catch!

“What if I am currently in a free trial period?
If you were in your free trial period on August 19 at 0:00 Pacific Daylight Time, your free trial will be extended an additional 60 days.”

Blah blah…Ah: Is this another crafty catch? :

“I have an activation key. Will I lose my extension if I apply the key now?
If you are currently in your trial period, you will lose the remainder of your trial period —including any extensions— as soon as you apply your activation key.  If you already have a paid subscription, you can enter your key at any time and Apple will automatically apply the key to renew your subscription after your extension period expires.”

Remind me to fire my Advertising Executive

In his blog entry entitled “Apple Is Flailing Badly At The Edges” he goes on to say:

“My obvious enthusiasm for Apple products is fairly evident to readers of this blog. But recently I’ve had a string of bad apples come my way, so to speak. It’s time for Apple to stop screwing around and start paying attention to product quality.”

He then goes on to speak about the single hour of battery life he gets from his iPhone , as well as certain Apps vanishing at the behest of the great Jobsweh with his lever of power; before, in usual fanboy style, declaring his undying love for his dead battery iPhone; symbol of the divine nature of the great Jobsweh. (Waste of time, costs you a fortune, sub-standard.)

- As his following commentary notes, under the heading:

“Mac Mini, Macbook Air, Macbook Pro and Macbook, All Failed“

* – Read the rest of “Apple Is Flailing Badly At The Edges“. – *

Some of my online associates say that I’m anti-Apple: I disagree; I’m not in any way prejudiced against Apple because they’re not Microsoft, even though you could say that I’m a Microsoft fan. I’m looking deeply into the eyes of Apple and seeing a culture of control, company domination, and exploitation of customers: In fact I see a kind of Pagan-istic-ish fundamentalist cult religion appearing; one where the faithful hang on every word of and would be willing to give their life for, Jobsweh, the god of all things Apple.

- And even though this cult-following; like a flock of ante-Linux zealots, is happening; the faithful are being sold utter substandard crap for a small fortune as massive amounts of profit appear in Jobsweh’s pockets.

A friend commented that I could be cruising for a lawsuit to be filed against me: Quite obviously Apple strongly discourage the expression of opinion through free speech; but in trying to sue me they’d have to interface American law with British law and probably apply for an extradition warrant, only to end up being paid any settlement from my limited funds at about £1UKP a week.

How many $million was that? Oh well it’ll be paid one day – I can imagine being connected to an Apple-funded life support technology to keep me alive indefinitely until the debt is paid in full; like some frankenstinian contraption from the backrooms of science-fiction in the great Jobsweh’s research laboratories  – Until suddenly the entire thing fails and I begin to rapidly age and die as technicians rush about to resolve the issue:

“Holy shit: We used an iPhone battery to power this thing! That’ll add another £ 55 (includes VAT), plus £ 7.29 shipping and handling, includes VAT.”

“Don’t worry about cost right now; she’s dying, and Jobsweh will be mad at us if he doesn’t get his money!”

“Man are you serious? We’ll have to take all this equipment to an Apple store and wait 5 working days plus shipping time!”

In the post I made earlier entitled “A Geek’s Toolkit Supplement: Loaded USB Drive ” I spoke of what I described as “branding files”: Files that I add to the operating system to indicate that I am supplier, builder, and maintenance tech for a particular computer.

I can hear your brains whirring; so before you start thinking that I’m up to something naughty I’ll show you exactly what I mean. Oh yes; this only works if you have Windows XP installed, so don’t go trying it with a Linux or a OSX installation and then comment that I’ve messed up your operating system or “I can’t find those files in Ubuntu!” – “It doesn’t work with Leopard!” You’re quite right; it doesn’t – So be forewarned.

If this information has already been added to your operating system by the manufacturer then I suggest it best to just leave it anyway.

(Why are you playing about with your computer like this anyway? What do you hope to achieve? Oh well; your problem, not mine.)

The aim of the exercise is to customise Windows XP’s general tab in the System Properties dialogue box that you call up by right-clicking the My Computer icon and selecting Properties.

This customisation involves adding support contract information and a logo. It involves using only Notepad and whatever program you like to use to create a 256-colour bitmap.

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OK let’s start with the details: I won’t tell you exactly what details I put for computers that I build; so for this exercise we’ll assume that these details are regarding a computer built by the Acme Computer Corporation:

The computer is a Datamax, model 55102. Support line is 1-800-ACME…

Open Notepad and type the following text, replacing the example with your company’s details etc:

[General]

Manufacturer=Acme Computer Corporation

Model=Datamax 55102

[Support Information]

Line 1=Call 1-800-ACME for technical support

Line 2=  ">.invalid

Line 3=500 Billion Byte Drive

Line 4=Pixelgraphicsville, USA

Save this file to %windir%\Windows\System32 as Oeminfo.ini

Create a 256-colour bitmap of your company’s logo that is no more than 96X96 pixels in size. Save this file to %windir%\Windows\system32 as Oemlogo.bmp

Yes I deliberately soiled the picture: ‘Better safe than sorry.

To see the results either right-click on the My Computer icon or press the Windows and the Break key simultaneously.

And that’s how it’s done – No registry edits, no hacking into anything. This is a white box system builder’s trick; but it’s no massive secret. The files aren’t permanent anyway; if you remove them or reinstall your operating system the dialogue box reverts to default.

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Being a geekette; that is a female computer designer/builder, as well as a blogger, I often get asked by my girlfriends (And some of their boyfriends too – Shh!) to pop over for a cuppa and attend to some problem they’re having with their computer. Most of these problems turn out to be software-related, so it’s always a good idea to come prepared – Although I can download most of what I need from the internet, sometimes their internet connection is not working for whatever reason, and more than one is on dial-up – Which can make downloading a program a 2-hour job in itself.

To combat this I have a 1Gb USB flash drive with most of anything I might need on it; plus loads of links to anything useful on the internet itself that might be useful which I haven’t bothered to include because I probably won’t need it.

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I pop the cord from which the USB stick hangs around my neck, and go to sort out their issues.

I mainly have program installers in the form of .exe files on the USB drive: These are always useful. I also am able, in a worst-case scenario, to provide them with a temporary internet connection via my mobile device, for which I also carry a USB bluetooth dongle to plug into their computer on the rare occasions where it is necessary; such as an instance a year plus ago where a friend somehow lost the driver for their network interface device and was unable to communicate with their router as a result: I removed the old driver which was faulty but obviously didn’t have that particular driver on the USB device; so I set up a temporary internet connection via my mobile phone/bluetooth and downloaded a new driver, installed it – Target neutralised.

The items I have on my USB drive are listed below: I’m sharing this with you as I’m assuming that as a geek you too get called out to similar situations; but being unable to fix it on the spot you end up taking their computer home, doing the work in your spare time, and returning their computer at a later date; which causes inconvenience to both parties.

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The files I carry around on my USB device are as follows:

1. AVG Anti-virus.exe installer: You’d be mightily surprised how many people don’t run an anti-virus program! They might find that their computer slows down with use; and, not realising that it is caused by the registry getting cluttered with crap among other things, they start removing programs which they think are unnecessary in order to attempt to get the machine to speed up again, one of those “unnecessary” programs being their anti-virus program.

2.. A free anti-spyware program; such as AdAware and Spybot Search and Destroy – For the reason stated above or that they didn’t even know what spyware was etc. The latest AVG antivirus has built-in spyware-protection, but that protection is not exhaustive, so it’s always a good idea to install extra spyware protection supplemental to that.

3. Free FTP clients in .exe installer format, such as WS-FTP-LE and FileZilla: They do occasionally come in handy.

4. Diagnostic programs; such as Core Temp.exe, Diskcheckup.exe… I know; rather than listing them all here I’ll show a picture of all the icons below and to save a lot of my time I’ll let you Google for them all.

Obviously the folders are of my own making: Batch Files contains some useful batch files that I wrote or copied, Dragons Websites contains the URLs of the websites of the millionaire entrepreneurs from the BBC series “Dragon’s Den”, Glint(Program) contains the .exe file of the Glint System Monitor program, KK contains pictures which I use regarding Kustom Komputa; Suppliers, Parts, and Circuits contains URLs to suppliers of computer hardware components, plus a few electronic circuits, Web Shortcuts contains hundreds of various useful URLs, Websites contains copies of all my website files from some of my various sites, WP Plugins contains some useful WordPress plugins. Some of the files, such as DSC00* are photos from my mobile phone. aports.zip shouldn’t be on there as it’s a program that contains malware. OEM Exel and OEM INXP are folders containing branding files which I add to the OS to indicate that I am supplier, builder, and maintenance tech for a particular computer. The file “Kustom Komputa” is a copy of some files from my Kustom Komputa website. WP Themes contains WordPress themes. The Folder “Self-Installing Scr” contains a number of screensavers that I created and which automatically install on the computer upon activation of the .exe file thereof. (No malware involved.) The folder Paint.net contains the program Paint.net, and the folder “Sounds” contains some alternative Windows sound effects as spoken by the Daleks from the BBC TV series “Dr Who”.

There are also a number of shortcuts which you don’t normally see on any Windows desktop. These shortcuts; such as “Sound Recorder“, “Volume Control“, “Command Prompt“, “Device Manager“, and “Sleep or Hibernate” are described on this site, including the method to create your very own icon(s).

So that’s pretty much it: Carry this lot plus your own personal files around on a USB flash drive and you won’t go far wrong.

HTH (‘Hope That Helps.)

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At times I’m browsing through folders and remember that I need to make a backup to another internal HDD of a particular file or subfolder, or I discover a file in the wrong folder. Sometimes I snag a picture from somewhere and add it to the My Pictures folder. On my computer I store my main picture library on my D: drive; which is a relatively large drive on a separate disk all to itself.

I built my computer myself: As you may have gathered if you’ve spent any length of time browsing my blog; I’m a computer-designer & builder as well as a blogger. This one I built for myself is from a range of a particular baseline design of computer I call INXPense. As an experiment and to use up an old hard-drive I had lying around I used a 40GB Hitachi HDD as the system drive (C:) and I try to keep as much as I can off that drive and store it on the other drive(s).

(The reason for this is that should the system drive fail on me (Which has happened to me at least once already with another computer.) I have a recent backup of C: which I keep up-to-date; and therefore it’s a simple matter of removing the old disk drive and installing a new one; restoring the twenty-something gigabyte backup to it, and I’m ready to go again within the hour; avoiding too much downtime.

Previously on the other computer mentioned above I had a 320GB HDD split into 2 partitions of around 160GB each. The operating system stored all pictures by default to the My Pictures folder…etc. In a short time I had filled up over half of the system drive C: with mainly files that had little or nothing to do with the o/s and I’d backed up everything to an external hard drive – Hence when the internal HDD took a dive I had a backup of all the contents of both drives: So installed a new internal HDD (15 mins.), restored the contents of the C: drive backup onto it, (> 1 hour) then had to partition it ( 1 hour) and install the contents of the D: drive backup onto the newly-formed drive D: (> 1 hour). Altogether the machine was down for about 1/2 day which pissed me off no end.

If it happens again I won’t have that problem. (I could have used RAID 1 instead; but that requires a second identical hard-disk and I just didn’t have the room in the case nor the SATA ports on the motherboard – and those PCIe RAID controller cards come in at nearly £20 ($35-39USD) cost each – Even the PCI RAID cards are almost £15 ($26-29USD) – And although I had all necessary components in stock I didn’t want to utilise resources unnecessarily.)

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This is becoming a little long-whinded admittedly; but I’m getting there: – So you’ll appreciate that I don’t want everything I input accumulating on the relatively small C: drive or it’ll fill up fast. Every now and then I transfer a small accumulation of files, such as pictures, from where the operating system puts them by default – In this case the My Pictures folder, to the Pictures library on the D: drive.

The immediately obvious way to do this would be to open the My Pictures folder, highlight an icon, click Edit>Select All, then cut everything, open the D: folder, browse to the Pictures folder which is in a folder called “Media” on D:, and paste. What a load of hassle! There’s a much easier way – I call it a “portable shortcut”:

Enabling hidden-folder viewing reveals a system-folder called “Send To” in %windir%Documents and SettingsUsername. (Where %windir% is the root-directory of your system drive; usually C: ) Right click on this folder and create a shortcut to it on your desktop. (You might not believe it but that was a major part of the operation.) Here comes the boring bit:

Create further desktop shortcuts to folders and drives that you use a lot; for example a shortcut to D: drive, if like me you happen to have another hard disk or partition of a hard-disk at that location. On that drive you may have, for example, a folder called “Recipes” and another called “Dress Patterns“. (Or even “Motors” and “Porn“.): Create desktop shortcuts to whichever folders you feel like doing so; especially those that you use a lot and transfer files into and out of a lot. Be thorough. I appreciate it’s very boring after a while; but the more decent shortcuts the better.

So that you don’t overlook a shortcut that you create I suggest that you create a new folder and label it something like “New Shortcuts“. Put all your newly-created shortcuts in that folder as you create them.

When you’ve finished creating and rounding up all the shortcuts you like, it’s time to edit them – yes all of them individually. (I know this is getting very boring; but it’ll be time well spent in the end.) What you want to do is shave off “Shortcut to” from the shortcuts name; thus “Shortcut to D:” becomes simply “D:” and so forth.

DO keep the shaved shortcuts in your “New Shortcuts” folder; otherwise if you let them spill onto the desktop you could think that they’re direct-path icons which might lead to some confusion: If you like you could even create a folder within New Shortcuts called “Shaved Shortcuts“; just so that you know where everything is: It’s better to be meticulous and safe than slightly careless and sorry.

Once you’ve done that; copy the contents of your Shaved Shortcuts folder by highlighting a single shaved shortcut, click Edit in the toolbar at the top, and click Select All, right-click a highlighted shaved shortcut and select Copy. Now mouse-over the Shortcut to Send To icon on the desktop, right-click it, and select Paste.

You’re all but finished: If you don’t want to keep the New Shortcuts folder and anything inside it on the Desktop, then it seems a shame to delete it after all that work – So mouse-over it and right- click. Select Send to… – Where do you want to send it to? All those shortcuts you just created are now made available as portable shortcut (LOOK!) places that you can send that, and indeed any other shortcut or file, to in the same manner.

Sending the file to anywhere will not delete it from its original location though; so after you’ve sent it wherever you choose, you can then erase it from the Desktop if you like; safe in the knowledge that your hard work is in the folder that you sent it to.

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Test it out again if you like: Create a new text file on the Desktop and call it “Test“. Mouse-over it, right-click and send it somewhere using your enhanced Send To… menu: Now go where you’ve sent it to and you’ll find it.

So in future anything that you download; you can use the Desktop as the default download location rather than fiddling about specifying the file to download it to, if you like: As soon as you’ve downloaded your file(s) to the Desktop and checked it (them); just mouse-over, right-click, send it (them) to its (their) final destination(s); then delete it (them) from the Desktop. – This can and does save a lot of time – Especially if you’re transferring files from one folder to another:-

Imagine that you have a file in the folder C:My DocumentsFashionTops that you want to transfer to D:PicturesCatwalkModelsTops: If you have a portable shortcut in the Send To folder to Tops that is the destination folder then all you need do is browse to the source folder C:My DocumentsFashionTops and send the file straight to Tops on the D: drive without all the faffing about.

There are many useful enhancements you can make to your Windows XP operating system and this is just one of them. There are others mentioned on this blog-site; as well as at http://www.pcmech.com. Here they’re all free so far at the time of writing; at pcmech.com there is so much content that there has to be a charge for some of it; but what you get for a small fee is well worth it in my honest opinion. Yes I’m a member, and no I’m not currently getting paid for advertising it: This is just a complimentary favour at this point in time.

This site, kkomp.com, is currently at time of writing totally funded by advertising: I don’t currently charge anything for anything: Nil, nada, sweet FA. If you’d be so good as to look at some of the adverts, click a few, even buy something you might like, or give it as a present to someone even, then it will help to fund this site.

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Monday

I AM as powerful as the lightning, as necessary as the wind, as beautiful as a rainbow and as open as a beautiful waterfall.

Tuesday

I AM committed to honouring myself to create complete success in healing my life, and my environment. I love myself as Goddess loves me and I set an example for others to know their truth NOW.

Wednesday

The resources I need to complete my project are brought forth now. The individuals I require to assist with this endeavour are ready now. Our lives and hearts join forces to manifest this new and exciting adventure – which will positively affect the hearts of mankind forever!

Thursday

I AM claiming joy in my life as I ascend into my higher self to see with enlightened perception the right action in all situations. I willingly perform this action without hesitation.

Friday

I have transformed my desire for abundance into an openness to receive this abundance on all levels and in all areas of my life now.

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Today, after a week of iPhone battery jokes and chidings aimed at a certain iPhone user I know online, whose iPhone battery died very quickly on Monday last, I thought it an idea to have a look into the topic of iPhone batteries a bit more deeply with a little research. A quick Google search revealed 16,300,000 results for iPhone batteries. Quite obviously I wasn’t intending to read them all, and as it happened the first one that I clicked on inspired me to write this blog entry:

The following was what I found at http://www.apple.com/uk/support/iphone/service/battery/ : Basically it describes Apple’s method of further ripping off the customer post purchase in the event that their battery becomes useless and fails to retain its charge. (I wonder exactly how long that will be? Has anyone actually reached this point already? If so then do please feel free to comment. – Otherwise do feel free to comment anyway.)

The page in question is officially entitled “iPhone Out-of-Warranty Battery Replacement Program Frequently Asked Questions” and begins with the question “What is the iPhone Battery Replacement Program?”

Many iPhone users will be glad to know that there is an official battery-replacement program – Until they hear the cost of it. The article says:

“If your iPhone requires service only because the battery’s ability to hold an electrical charge has diminished, Apple Technical Support will replace your battery for a service fee. Be sure to follow these instructions for optimizing life span and battery life before submitting your iPhone for battery replacement. “

The instructions in question say; in a most roundabout and lengthy manner, that the more use you give your iPhone the less time your battery will remain charged: That’s quite logical I suppose. The catch is, as with all rechargeable batteries, the more you recharge the batteries the less you’ll get out of them: Fair comment. It then goes into great detail about ways of not using your iPhone so that the battery’s charge lasts longer. (Following which it instructs you to “Use your iPhone regularly”.) I find it rather strange that Apple made a product that is to be used as little as possible; but as we’ll note later, this is a caveat for the process of charging you a fortune to replace a dead battery. “Jobsweh(1)“, the god of all things Apple, is a greedy and profitmongering god who likes to milk his people for every dime that they posses after they sell themselves into bondage with him by buying one of his products.

The article continues:

“How can I set up my iPhone for the Battery Replacement Program?”

“You can take your iPhone to your carrier. You can also contact Apple Technical Support or take your iPhone to an Apple Retail Store.”

Yippee-doo; thank you Apple for being so helpful. Now here’s the sting in the tail:

“How much does it cost to participate in the program?”

“The program cost is £ 55 (includes VAT), plus £ 7.29 shipping and handling, includes VAT. All fees are in Euros. Service may not be available if your iPhone has been damaged due to accident or abuse. Please review Apple’s Repair Terms and Conditions for further details.”

EH?! Fifty-five quid to replace a f—ing battery! That’s over $100 USD; and only “if your iPhone has [not] been damaged due to accident or abuse.” – Accident such as the case accidentally disintegrating perhaps? Abuse such as allowing the case to disintegrate in the first place?

Moving on:

“How long will service take?”

“Service through Apple Technical Support normally takes one week (five business days) from the date the unit is shipped to us. Time may vary if it is done through your carrier or an Apple Retail Store.”

Oh the geeks are gonna love that! A whole week PLUS shipping time without the iPhone: $100USD+ to be without your iPhone for 2 weeks; maybe more? Apple are the biggest con out there today – And people moan about Microsoft! – Er, reality check: Wake up!

This may be the answer you’re looking for:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=XlkKQoUlOQg

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———–

1. Credit to DedRyzing ( http://twofourtech.com/ ) for naming the divinity of Steve Jobs.

A very useful icon to have on your desktop, if you’re like me and use this function a lot, would be a Sleep or Hibernate icon: You could just click a single icon on the desktop and the computer goes for a snooze, one way or another, depending on how it’s set.

Unfortunately Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, didn’t include a Sleep or Hibernate desktop icon by default in XP – But fear not: You can create your own:

The following procedure should work just the same in Windows 7 too. – It works with my Windows 7 RC anyway.

It’s just an icon that sits on the desktop with all the rest of them.

How to make an icon to click (Done in XP.):

Right-click on a blank area of your desktop (Where there are no icons.) and mouse-over “New” in the box that appears. Click “Shortcut”. Another box appears asking you to type the location of the item: Enter in the full command:

“%windir%\system32\rundll32.exe powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState”

and click next.

It now asks you to type a name for this shortcut: I named mine, strangely enough, “Sleep or Hibernate”. Why? Because it’s a shortcut icon to make the computer sleep or hibernate – innit?.

Click next, the box vanishes, and an icon appears on your desktop. – Target neutralised.

Any time you want to make the computer sleep or hibernate, just click the icon: It really is that simple!

—–

The following is not the same in Windows 7: The rest of this article only applies to XP.

Sleep or Hibernate?

Do you want your computer to sleep or to hibernate when you click that icon?

Which one it does will depend on the following setting:

Right-click on a blank area of your desktop (Where there are no icons.)

Click Properties>Screen Saver tab>Power button>Hibernate tab.

If you’re in the right place it’ll look like the picture above: ‘See the tick box marked “Enable Hibernation”? If that’s ticked the computer will hibernate when you click your new icon. If it isn’t the computer will sleep when you click your new icon. – You choose which; after all it’s your machine.

And that, dear reader(s); is that. – Target neutralised.

See also: http://www.pcmech.com:80/article/change-how-your-power-button-operates/

BT have messed up again! I tried to access this website via the normal ftp channel that I use to upload and download files, and the server returned an invalid address error. I checked my ftp settings on my Fasthosts account, which were correct; but still got the same result. I uninstalled and reinstalled my ftp client, FileZilla, inputted the correct settings – same result. I downloaded WS-FTP-LE , set it up, and got the same result with that too. I phoned Fasthosts who said that all BT customers had exactly the same problem since BT had introduced new  measures to combat spam and illegal downloading via P2P earlier.

What that means is that BT have introduced a new piece of equipment into the loop that looks for anything it doesn’t like and blocks it. It saw my ftp, which it passed to the server, the server responded but the BT equipment saw the response and blocked it. My ftp client didn’t get a response and assumed that there wasn’t one; hence its response.

This is all connected with this stupid illegal unworkable UK government initiative to kerb illegal downloads that I reported on earlier. http://kkomp.com/archives/629 I asked how long did they think it would take for the problem to be remedied. They said it should only take a few hours, that they were kicking and screaming at BT, and that BT had assigned some of their top technicians to the case.

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2 Hours later I phoned BT : After following through several stages of a complicated menu I was played the message

“Welcome to BT broadband…we’re closed…” in short. “…For faults only please ring…” I did.; I endured the boring drivel about how BT record all phone calls and that if I had a problem with the internet service I could visit their website…A bit like saying

“If your car won’t start why not drive round to our garage and we’ll have it fixed in no time at all.”

“…please phone 0800…” was the message before the phone went dead: I redialed again and endured the same drivellous messages before…

“Om-put-put-ding-ding saab. Welcomming to BT. Please be to how may I help you. Can I have your name and the first line of your address please thank you?”

Yes hello Ranjeet – Here we go again. I gave my name etc – Yes I am the account holder. (Stupid question to ask: “Are you the account holder? Why not just look at the details on your screen when you bring up the account?)

“I’m having problems with using ftp over the internet and am unable to access my server at my web-host.” I continued. “BT are aware of this matter and are working to resolve it. Would you tell me how much longer you expect the matter to take until it’s resolved please.”

“You can’t access the internet?” Came the reply.

I think I used the word pillock in what I said next before I repeated myself.

“It is a problem with your server.” Said the Indian

(I’ve edited out the next few lines to make this blog fit for publication.)

“I will find out for you. Please to be holding the line. What is ftp?”

“File Transfer Protocol” I replied; amazed at the lack of knowledge. “I thought you were trained? This is a technical helpline isn’t it? – It bloody well better be as it’s the only one that’s open!”

“I will find out for you.”

The line went silent for a while and then was hung up.

“‘Cheeky f—ing bleeders!” I hit the roof.

To cut a long story short; after partly-demolishing a door that I didn’t like, I went through all that again to be told by a very gently-mannered Indian woman that nobody had a clue as nobody had been informed of it.

“Fair comment.” I thought; thanked her for her time, and rang the BT Broadband Status line, which told me that there were no problems at all with BT Broadband. I tried to connect via ftp again and got the same result. I phoned Fasthosts again, who confirmed that BT were fully informed and working on it.

- An ISP that lies; both by telephone message and by half-baked computer-illiterate representative. An ISP that neglects to inform its staff of major issues so that they can be of any help to its customers. An ISP that promises a service and ruins the experience of that service for its customers; then lies about it, and keeps everyone in the dark.

You’re wondering “Since you’ve had all this trouble with BT lately; why don’t you change ISP?”

I’d love to; but they give me material for my blog as part of their excuse for a service, so it can’t be all bad.

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At 01:40GMT (02:40 BST) this morning the following email was delivered to my inbox. I’ve added my comments to it in regular Arial 12pt text:

“I’m sending you this note because you registered a mobile device
to work with Twitter over our UK number. I wanted to let you
know that we are making some changes to the way SMS works on
Twitter. There is some good news and some bad news.”

“I’ll start with the bad news. Beginning today, Twitter is no
longer delivering outbound SMS over our UK number. If you enjoy
receiving updates from Twitter via    +44 762 480 1423   , we are
recommending that you explore some suggested alternatives.
Note: You will still be able to UPDATE over our UK number.”

What this means is that UK telephone companies are refusing any concessions to Twitter in the interests of their own continued 100% profit; as if they needed to do so – The greedy money-grabbing penny-pinching slimeballs! Doing so might reduce their profits by a fraction of a percent; which might mean the Director will only get 5 paid-holidays and less than £500G a year or something equally ridiculous.

“Before I go into more detail, here’s a bit of good news: Twitter
will be introducing several new, local SMS numbers in countries
throughout Europe in the coming weeks and months. These new
numbers will make Twittering more accessible for you if you’ve
been using SMS to send long-distance updates from outside the UK.”

Note the absence of the word “free” or “Freephone”.

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Starring:

Sharron (Me) 

DedRyzing 

davidrisley 

Bitch that I am I can never resist a bit of “I told you so” bragging: So when David Risley posted the following tweet on twitter:

  “Went to use my Iphone and, sure enough, it’s dead. Frickin’ battery. No comment from @kkomp please. ”

- This war happened:

Me: @davidrisley iPhone, iPhone, falla-diddle-iPhone. iPhone, iPhone, falla-diddle-i…No more need be said…ROFLMFAO!

- At this point DedRyzing opened up on target: 

DedRyzing @davidrisley Well ya know Dave…everyone was saying the iphone battery is dung.  And ya bought two…sad. I feel for ya

DedRyzing @davidrisley Don’t fret though. Disabling the phone will increase batt life for important things like ibeer and the lightsaber thingy 

A feeble response of counter-fire: 

davidrisley @kkomp @DedRyzing Its still the best phone out there, guys. I haven’t seen a phone yet with the same balance of features.

It’s war:

DedRyzing @davidrisley Honestly, yer right. Which says less about how good the iphone is and more about how BAD other phones are.

A shot across the boughs from me:

Me: @davidrisley That’s only because you never bothered to get a Viewty.

A veiled attempt at opening negotiation from the target: 

davidrisley @kkomp Looked at Viewty. Good camera phone. But, it is no Iphone.

Fire 1:

Me: That’s the beauty of a Viewty: It’s not an iPhone! – I ought to do their PR; they’d sell more product than apple!

Fire 2: 

Me: @davidrisley That’s the beauty of a Viewty: It’s not an iPhone! – I ought to do their PR; they’d sell more product than apple!

Fire 3: 

Me: @davidrisley I – Phone but the battery’s dead; so I use the beauty of my Viewty and get straight through: iPhone + dead battery = No phone.

Incoming communication from allied force: 

DedRyzing @kkomp It boils down to this. Other phones do a few things crappy.  The iPhone can do a lot more things crappy.

Incoming challenge from target: 

davidrisley @kkomp DedRyzing Hope you guys will be in the show chatroom tonight so I can argue with you.

Reload tubes. Response to allied force: 

Me: @DedRyzing That says it all : Let’s email LG today and offer to jointly run their PR campaign: KompDedRyzing Promotions Present…

Fire 1: 

Me: @davidrisley LOL you’d better beleive it. Topic = The iPhone battery life and ways to improve it other than not using the iPhone at all.

Fire 2: 

Me: @davidrisley On second thoughts that’ll be the shortest topic discussion ever.

Small-arms attack on target from allied force: 

DedRyzing @davidrisley Geez man…every show I argue with either you or @frostedside. Man…stop picking fights.

Fire 3: 

Me: @davidrisley I hope Apple never develop an electric car…

Incoming communication from allied force: 

DedRyzing @davidrisley Just start running OpenBSD and use an OpenMoko Freerunner and everything will be ok

Response to allied force: 

Me: @DedRyzing …Or he could always invest in a Viewty; as I suggested before he wasted his money on a dead battery – I mean an iPhone.

Nothing further from target – Scanners detect target neutralised.

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‘Time for another freebie – It’s been a while.

This program is written in dos; but it will run on XP in normal circumstances without the user doing anything other than clicking on the .exe file. (I’m not sure about Vista though: ‘Never tried it with Vista.)

This program is so small it will fit on a floppy, and it’s very much like the original 1970s arcade game in looks when it’s running. I wish I could remember who the program’s author is but I can’t: Neither can I find it on Google any more.

I discovered this program in 2001 and I’ve been playing it occasionally ever since: When you activate it it’ll take your entire screen but it won’t erase anything that’s on it. Press “Esc” to leave the program and return to normal Windows. It should also be OK running in Linux too; though once again I’ve only ever used it in Windows.

You can download it FREE from this link.

The controls are quite simple: Press return to start the game. To move left press the “Ctrl” key, to move right press the “Alt” key. To fire the canon press the shift key.

I was unable to get a screenshot in the time I had available to write this article; and anything I could find on the web didn’t do the program justice; so excuse the lack of my usual illustrations.

I hope you enjoy playing this relic from the 1970s: It was probably in vogue before a lot of you were even born. At the risk of showing my age I used to play it at the arcade in my teens.

*Disclaimer – This software is supplied as is; without warranty, guarantee, or any charge. I refuse to accept any responsibility for any problem that it causes you or that you may have with it: If you can’t accept that then don’t download it: Having said that it’s never given me any problems whatsoever. Please virus-scan the file before you run it so that you can be sure that I haven’t sent you malware, spyware, or a virus. (I haven’t; but do so anyway as it’s good practice.)

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BEWARNED: BT’s new Home Hub could cost you nearly twice as much as advertised as an existing BT customer; and you won’t know that you have to pay extra until after you receive the unit:-

Home Hub v2.0, released in July 2008

Last week I was looking at the BT website and I noticed that they had brought out a new model of the BT Home Hub router – a version 2.0. http://www.frequencycast.co.uk/homehub2.html It had a stylish curved polished black plastic design and 4 ethernet ports. I decided that I was going to have one, as the one I was currently using was white which clashed with the colour of the rest of my equipment, was chunky and fairly ugly in comparison, and I was using both ethernet ports out of the 2 available and would prefer an additional 2 ports for future expansion.

I rang BT and eventually managed to get the Indian at the other end of the phone to understand what I was saying and take my order. He said that I’d have to pay £44.99 for it, (About $90USD) which I thought was fair (That was half-price as an existing BT customer.): I’d had the existing BT Home Hub (V.1.1) free with the full package including VOIP phone, unlimited bandwidth, and their biggest and most expensive residential phone package. The VOIP phone uses a separate BT telephone number on the same line, and was channeled over the internet from the BT exchange; thus the cost of calls was allegedly cheaper. (As well as worse quality.)

(*Note: The recent BT Home Hubs; 2.0 and above, require a working voltage of 15 Volts. The older BT Home Hubs, before 2.0 require a working voltage of 9 Volts: Therefore if you’re replacing an old Home Hub with a new 2.0 or greater, you would probably have problems with it, if it works at all, if you don’t use the power adapter supplied with it and use the old one instead. (I don’t advise using the new adapter with an old Home Hub; although it may or may not work as a temporary measure. (Then again it might damage the old Home Hub due to over-voltage – I don’t know and I don’t intend to experiment in this area.)))

Today I received delivery of my new BT Home Hub; exactly as described in their advertising material. It was a snitch to set up; the only thing I had to do really was replace the old mains power adapter with the supplied adapter; as the new hub ran on a voltage of 15 Volts, whereas the old one ran on 9 Volts. I already had the required software installed, (I don’t use their free Norton security software as it’s ineffective resource-hogging crap. I only use the BT Desktop Help software.) and it picked up and worked a dream. I then realised that I hadn’t attached the VOIP handset’s cradle or configured it to work with my existing handset. The existing handset was white – Hmm; a new one would cost me so I decided I’d live with it until I had enough spare balance to buy a new black one.

I removed the cover from the cradle socket on the new hub and it suddenly hit me that there was no way that my old cradle was going to fit. I checked the package for a new cradle but none was supplied. I phoned BT. :

The Indian went all through the most stringent interrogation for identity verification; and then said he’d transfer me to the relevant department; who did it again. This time I was talking at last to a Brit – Yippee!.. But my happiness was short-lived:

The reply was that they don’t supply a new cradle separately; and that I’d have to buy one along with a new handset for £35.99 (About $70USD)> I said that this was a con: I already had a perfectly good handset; all I needed was a cradle which should have been supplied with the new hub: I’d like a free cradle by itself or I’d be taking the matter to the Office of Fair Trading. I’d also like BT to make it clear in their advertising that the new router would require a new cradle and handset BEFORE the customer chose to buy it; or I’d be taking that matter to Trading Standards as well.

To cut a long story short she wouldn’t budge; so rightly or wrongly I went ahead and ordered and told her that I’d be referring the matter to the relevant powers that be – Which I’m about to do.

If you’re a BT customer and you’d like a new BT Home Hub 2.0 with a usable cradle and phone included; the cost isn’t £44.99: That’s a con – You can’t use your existing handset as the cradle won’t fit. The true cost in total is £80.00 approximately. (Somewhere around $160USD.)

Another example of Bullshit Telecom’s dishonesty and unethical advertising.

They WILL be sorry: I’ll make sure of it!

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Chris Pirillo found this at Donald’s Blogg:

http://donaldturnbull.com:80/post/45347525/my-first

I think it links in so well to my previous article “Welcome to the United States of Paranoia – Now Hand Over Your laptop”

http://kkomp.com/archives/735 : The cherry on the top so to speak.

Uncle Sam has his hands into everything these days!

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It’s called the iPhone Apps Blacklist Feature; and sitting at the remote-cut-off controls of your iPhone is none other than Steve Jobs himself; playing god with your purchase.

It must be a comforting thought for all iPhone users that the great Steve Jobs has control over what Apps you can run on your iPhone that you paid for.

Jobs said that the intent behind the capability is “high minded”: It sounds to me like a case of a control-freak mentality:

“I am the great Steve Jobs; God’s boss, and I shall decree with my awesome power what you will and will not have on your iPhone.”

“Hopefully, we never have to pull that lever,” Jobs said, “but we would be irresponsible not to have a lever like that to pull.”

It certainly removes a massive element of control by not having it.

What next? MacBooks saying “I’m sorry user; but Steve Jobs has decreed that you are not allowed to run this program; however there is a similar program available from Apple for $$$”?

Apple allegedly need this function to deactivate potentially hazardous software: In other words so that they can instantly defeat any attempt at hacking or at running any open-source Apps from the Open-Source club and the Linux zealots etc.

Last week there was a rumbling and concern amid reports of the so-called “Kill-Switch-Ability” This week the Apple CEO confirmed it himself. We used to think that Microsoft impinged upon personal freedom in computing: This, however, makes Microsoft’s previous alleged control-freak mentality less than academic.

John Gruber of Daring Fireball spoke with an “informed source” at Apple on Friday, who confirmed the presence of a URL inside the iPhone’s Core Location API that downloads a blacklist of applications designated as malicious. Independent iPhone developer and author Jonathan Zdiarski discovered the URL earlier in the week.

Remember; when you are using your iPhone; big Uncle Steve is watching!

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XP has a built-in sound recorder that you can use to make .MP3, .WAV, etc, files from a microphone. This is especially useful when recording a voice track for a song, or a bit of talking; such as reading a limerick or an audible greeting.

It can be called up via the command line; but to save time and hassle, plus remembering the command to use when you need it, you can put an icon on your desktop which you just click when you need it

How to make an icon to click ( in XP.):

Right-click on a blank area of your desktop (Where there are no icons.) and mouse-over “New” in the box that appears. Click “Shortcut”. Another box appears asking you to type the location of the item: Enter in the full command:

“sndrec32”

and click next.

It now asks you to type a name for this shortcut: I named mine “Sound Recorder”; because that’s exactly what it is.

Click next, the box vanishes, and a loudspeaker icon appears on your desktop.

Now let’s put a volume control icon on the desktop too: Clicking this has the same effect as double-clicking the little loudspeaker icon in your system-tray; but it’s much more handy to have it on the desktop.

As before; right-click on a blank area of your desktop (Where there are no icons.) and mouse-over “New” in the box that appears. Click “Shortcut”. Another box appears asking you to type the location of the item: Enter in the full command:

“sndvol32”

and click next.

It now asks you to type a name for this shortcut: I named mine “Volume Control”; once again because that’s exactly what it is.

Click next, the box vanishes, and an icon appears on your desktop. – Thus:

- Target neutralised.

The procedure for creating the volume control icon applies also to Windows 7 (RC). The sound recorder icon is created in a very similar manner in Win 7, except that rather than just typing “sndrec32″ when creating the shortcut; you type in “%systemroot%\Windows\System32\SoundRecorder.exe”, where %systemroot% is your system’s root directory. (Usually C:)

——

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A very useful icon to have on your desktop, if you’re like me and use this window a lot, would be a Device Manager icon: Rather than clicking Start>Control Panel>System>”Hardware” tab>”Device Manager” button; a 5-stage operation, you could instead just click a single icon on the desktop.

Unfortunately Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, didn’t include a Device Manager desktop icon by default in XP – But fear not: You can create your own:

It’s just an icon that sits on the desktop with all the rest of them.

How to make an icon to click (Done in XP.):

Right-click on a blank area of your desktop (Where there are no icons.) and mouse-over “New” in the box that appears. Click “Shortcut”. Another box appears asking you to type the location of the item: Enter in the full command:

“%windir%\system32\devmgmt.msc”

and click next.

It now asks you to type a name for this shortcut: I named mine, strangely enough, “Device Manager”. Why? Because it’s a shortcut icon to the Device Manager – innit?.

Click next, the box vanishes, and an icon appears on your desktop. – Target neutralised.

Any time you want to call up the Device Manager, just click the icon: It really is that simple.

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As far as I am aware this is the most part of one of many versions of the “original” Moon Goddess Incantation, allegedly taken from ancient Hebrew traditions and writings stretching way way back before Biblical times, before the Hebrew monotheistic culture, maybe even back before the formation of the Genesis myth itself; to a time when the original gods, the Elohim that the early untranslated writings of Genesis refer to, were worshipped: A time when the tree of life was held sacred and symbolised with its roots in the unfathomable soil of the past stretching from the beginnings of the universe and emerging at the wellhead of the spring of the waters of life in the Garden of Persephone’. This sacred tree was guarded by an immortal serpent who was later to become the symbol of the downfall of humanity in the later Hebrew mythologies; the personification of the root of evil; a fallen angel in the guise of a snake in a different garden – That of Eden.

The Hebrews bastardised their ancient legends at the uprising of monotheism and the exclusive worship of Yahweh, son of the Elohim; leading eventually to the formation of Christianity: Another bastardisation based upon an original bastardisation of ancient legend.

Here is the incantation of the Moon Goddess: She whom even the gods call beautiful:

I am She who ‘ere the earth was formed –

was Rhea, Binah, Ge,

I am that soundless boundless bitter sea

Out of whose deeps life wells eternally.

Astarte, Aphrodite, Ashtoreth –

Giver of life and bringer of death;

Hera in heaven, on earth Persephone’,

Diana of the ways, and Hecate.

All these am I, and they are seen in me,

The hour of the high full moon draws near;

I hear the invoking words, hear and appear

Shaddai El Chai and Rhea, Binah, Ge –

I come unto the priest who calleth me.

Oh Isis veiled and Rhea, Binah, Ge,

Lead us to the well of memory,

The well-head where the pale-white Cyprus grows,

By secret twilight paths that no-one knows.

Diana of the ways and Hecate,

Selene of the moon, Persephone’.

The high full moon in the mid-heavens shines clear,

Oh hear the invoking words, Hear and appear!

Shaddai El Chai and Rhea, Binah, Ge.

Sink down, sink down, sink deeper, and sink deep.

Into eternal and primordial sleep.

Sink down, forget, be still, and draw apart

Into the inner earth’s most sacred heart.

Drink of the waters of Persephone’,

The secret well beside the sacred tree.

I am that secret queen, persephone’,

All tides are mine, and answer unto me,

Tides of the airs, tides of the inner earth,

The secret silent tides of death and birth –

Tides of men’s souls, and dream, and destiny –

Isis veiled and Rhea, Binah, Ge.

I am the star that rises from the sea,

The twilight sea.

I bring men dreams that rule their destiny

I bring the moon tides to the souls of men,

The tides that flow and ebb and flow again

That flow and ebb and flow alternately.

These are my secret, these belong to me.

I am the eternal woman, I am she –

The tides of all men’s souls belong to me.

The tides that flow and ebb and flow again;

The secret silent tides that govern men;

These are my secret, they belong to me.

Out of my hands he takes his destiny;

Touch of my hands bestows serenity.

These are the moon tides, these belong to me.

Isis in heaven, on earth Persephone’;

Diana of the moon and Hecate’,

Veiled Isis, Aphrodite from the sea,

All these I am and they are seen in me.

The high full moon in the heavens shines clear,

I hear the invoking words, hear and appear –

Shaddai el Chai and Rhea, Binah, Ge,

I come unto the priest that calleth me.

Sink down, sink down, sink deeper and more deep.

Into eternal and primordial sleep.

Sink down, be still, forget, and draw apart

Sink into the inner earth’s most secret heart.

Drink the waters of persephone’.

The sacred well by the sacred tree.

Waters of life and strength and inner light –

Eternal joy drawn from the deeps of night.

Then rise, made strong, with life and hope renewed,

Reborn from darkness and from solitude,

Blessed with the blessing of Persephone’,

And the secret strength of Rhea, Binah, Ge.

—-

This has been further parodied and set to music thus:

“Thou art the soundless boundless bitter sea;

And all things in the end shall go to thee.

Thine is the kingdom of Persephone’;

The inner earth where leads the pathways three”

“Thou art the star that riseth from the sea;

In all things thou bringst men their destiny.

The tides that ebb and flow and ebb again;

These are thy secrets; they belong to thee.”

With the chorus line added:

“She who drinks the waters from that well;

She shall see things there she dare not tell:

‘Shall tread the shadow path that leads to thee;

Isis, Ictii, Persephone’.”

Today I had a tiny tweet-up with jaditelefae; who suggested that she’d make me a looney-hat so that the local weirdo riff-raff element could have something better to talk about other than how I was  making myself an outcast from their idea of society by striving to be a success and that I was a tight bitch because I refuse to “lend” them any money toward their drug and alcohol habits.

They’re not all like that round my way, but there are a number of that type; as is probably the case in many if not most neighbourhoods worldwide.

(Jaditelefae’s internet connection is currently down; which is why she’s not currently around online.)

On a different note; I thought the Olympics were to blame for two days of the worst visitor-figures for my blog ever. The figure plummeted from the norm down to a single-figure amount on Friday, only to my surprise to do even worse on Saturday. (Yesterday.):

Today, however, the trend has fully reversed: I have already seen the best visitor count ever when I last looked at 2PM, and with almost half the day still to go from thereon  I’m hoping for a landslide count at the end of the day.

Many thanks to all of you who’ve visited.

Today I was up at the crack of dawn since I never really went to bed last night, and I did an all-nighter optimising and improving this blog and my computer: So here’s to dawn; whose crack I was up at.

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So that’s all for now: Enjoy what’s left of the weekend and keep visiting kkomp.com: There is/are usually new post/s every day.

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You may note that I use the “Serenity-Pink” theme. You may also note that I’ve edited the “Serenity-Pink” theme that I use. I have absolutely no idea how many other bloggers actually use the “Serenity-Pink” theme for their blog: I haven’t seen anyone else using it yet. Maybe it’s not the most popular theme as a larger percentage of bloggers appear to be guys, and not a lot of guys would choose pink; added to which not all girl-bloggers, nor dare I say gay guy bloggers, like pink and/or this theme.

For those who do, however, I may be able to offer you some help if you so want it.

I found a number of things that were screwy with this theme, after I started using it; the main ones being as follows:

The size of the text in the sidebar as well as the default text size in the body also to some extent, were too small: I use an older CRT monitor circa 1999 – Yes I know I’m behind the times but I prefer CRTs http://kkomp.com/archives/46 – and I use 1024 X 768 resolution. It appears that a large percentage of desktop users, whether they use CRT or TFT/LED monitors, prefer this resolution also. My eyesight without glasses or contacts isn’t fantastic but it’s acceptable. (- Just.) I found that I had to really concentrate hard to read the default text in the body if I was more than a metre away from the screen.

The text and links in the sidebar were even worse: Smaller, and baby-pink on very light grey. I could read it if a metre or closer to the screen.

Thirdly the header overflowed in Firefox and some other browsers if the first line was full; pushing the entire header and body to the left and into the pink area . I use IE7 which doesn’t have this problem, so until it was pointed out to me I was blissfully unaware of the issue.

In essence then the theme that I had chosen was virtually unusable in its default state.

Virtually Unusable 

Working with a couple of other bloggers (See end credits.) I’ve edited the theme to a point where it is now workable:

The amendments I made were all made in the folder style.css:

First I edited the “Wrap” container to sort out the overflow problem with the header links with regard to Firefox etc.

An Example as Seen in Firefox etc.

The second amendment I made was to edit the hex. values of the colours so that pink was pink rather than baby pink, also to darken the grey background a tiny bit. The only effect that this had was to change the sidebar and link text from an unnoticeable unreadable small-print to a noticeable unreadable small-print. Added to that was the fact that some browsers; particularly those used with the Apple Mac, were still seeing the grey background as white.

- So I edited the hex. again; this time to a hot-pink: Almost soft-red. I also darkened the grey background a bit more; but the thing that really did the trick was using a larger font-size and different font in the sidebar: I agree it doesn’t look as pretty as it used to – But it’s at least now easily readable.

As for the default text in the body: I left it as it is; but I use Windows Live Writer a lot to edit text, font, style, and to build tables etc anyway. I’m not a fan of Trebuchet MS but I do still use it in a few posts.

Trebuchet MS

My question is; do you use “Serenity-Pink” theme, and if so have you edited it; either in a similar manner or completely differently? If you do use this theme and you think you could benefit from my improvements then my edited style.css file is available in a .zip format HERE. If you’ve not edited your own style.css file at all then all you have to do is replace the existing style.css file in your (Your_domain)/wp-content/themes/serenity-pink folder with mine, and you’ll see all my improvements appear in your theme. If you have edited your style.css file then I suggest that you compare mine with the original to see where I’ve changed things, and change those things accordingly in your style.css file accordingly if you wish to do so.

Note: If you have already edited your style.css file and you replace it directly with mine as above, then all your editing will be lost and you’ll be left with only my edits – So if you’ve already worked on the file then I suggest that you check my edits against the original first; than implement them after you’ve found them should you wash to do so. If someone else has edited your style.css folder for you in the case of you not knowing quite what to do then I suggest you get that person to do the operation if you wish to try out my edits.

Please please back up everything from your original configuration before you do anything: then if you change your mind or bugger something up you’ll have the original files to replace the changes you made with your original.

I would like to know about your edits and changes to the “Serenity-Pink” theme if you use it also – So do feel free to comment, or contact me: serenity-pink at kustomkomputa dot co dot uk.

PINK

CREDITS:

My thanks go to MaXsiM http://mxm-studios.com/blog/ for his help in working with me to address the header text overflow issue; also thanks to davidrisley http://www.davidrisley.com/ for his constructive criticisms leading to the current editing of colours and font/font size.

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Today we’ll look at a very basic analogue audio-amplifier circuit and examine how the principle of negative feedback can reduce distortion:

Capacitor, C1, decouples the input to potential divider, R1&2, keeping the base of Q1 at 0.7 Volts – Therefore any AC ripple will be picked up instantly by Q1 and amplified. C2 is the first example of negative feedback: With a value of a nanofarad, it feeds higher frequencies from the collector of Q1 back to its base, thus giving a better response to bass and mid-range audio-frequencies than treble notes. Q1’s Iceo is set by the combined resistance of R3 and R4, and decoupling is provided by electrolytic capacitor C4 to ground. (C4/R4’s reactance should be taken into account when deciding the component values.)

The first stage is decoupled from the following stage by C3, and resistors R6 and R5 act as a potential-divider to set Q2’s base at 0.7 Volts. The output is taken from Q2’s collector via C6.

Let’s assume that the beta for each individual transistor is 100, and that we’ve chosen components that will allow each transistor to operate with a working beta of 50: Therefore a tiny signal of 10mV p-p applied to the input will give a massive output of 1 Volt p-p. – That’s quite some amplification; and not only will the clean signal be amplified 100 times but so will any distortion on the input waveform. Second to that, if we’re amplifying an audio signal with variable amplitude on the input; there are going to be occurrences where this circuit; particularly Q2, is driven to saturation – A 2.1 Volt p-p signal from a preamplifier at the input, for example, producing an output of 20 Volts p-p with a flattened crest where Q2 saturates – Thus producing distortion.

To compensate for the above unwanted distortion we introduce negative feedback:

With the introduction of PR1 and C7 we have allowed a regulated path back to the input from the output, DC decoupled by C7: Therefore the higher the resistance of PR1 the less the entire two-stage circuit is bypassed; therefore the more current flows through Q1 and 2 and is amplified.

This is a similar function to that of R2 in the basic DC inverting operational amplifier circuit below:

Again we note that should the voltage on the inverting input at the virtual-earth junction of R1/2 reach a certain level with respect to the supply voltage it will cause IC1 to saturate. R2 gives negative feedback between input and output, therefore limiting this effect. 

In very basic terms then, the function of negative feedback is to reduce overall gain, thereby limiting distortion.

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Here’s another moan about BT: The British face of Indian incompetence; or should that read the Indian face of British incompetence? :

BT, for those not in the know, are British Telecommunications; a multinational conglomerate which centres its’ operations here in the UK. Years ago BT took the British telephone network over from the Post Office Telecommunications department and had a monopoly for some years, until the rise of Mercury Communications in 1995 following deregulation of telecommunications services. Mercury tried to be as big as BT but cheaper from the off – And went bust. Following further deregulation and an independent enquiry from the Monopolies and Mergers Commission into unfair monopolisation and anti-competitiveness by BT, the telecommunications giant was forced to share its exchanges and equipment with other upcoming telecommunications companies; hence the many ISPs and phone services around in the UK today.

If you read the article “BT and the 150 Fuckwits“; you’ll realise that BT aren’t my favourite cup of tea right now. Nevertheless I still use BT as my ISP and phone-line* provider because things rarely go wrong, since in essence they built the modern UK telephone network and know it inside-out.

(* I use 18185.co.uk for calls.)

On the rare occasions that things do go wrong, however, it’s usually at the most inopportune moment and it’s nearly impossible to get any sense out of the Indian at a call-centre in India on the other end of the phone; unless you happen to get one who is experienced in speaking English and has a technical background: Unusual circumstances, but it has happened.

-So you can imagine how unbelievably pissed-off I was when right in the middle of a PC Mech online meeting, early this morning in the UK; my internet connection failed, and everything; pictures from Florida and IRC, vanished into a greyed-out window.

My BT Home Hub router was displaying signs that it wasn’t getting a signal. (The Broadband light was flashing fast orange while the Wireless and Power lights were a stable green.) I checked my own wiring between the BT phone socket and the computer – Which was all fine.

Forgetting the BT Broadband Desktop Help software I had installed I instead made the mistake of phoning BT: Ten minutes later when I had negotiated the series of complicated menus I was told that the team was available between the hours of … But if I needed technical assistance; phone 0800 800 …. After another puzzling set of menus I finally got through to … an Indian with a strong accent who spent the next 15 minutes verifying my identity:

Now to be helpful I always; within the first few sentences, state my name, account number, etc. This guy was a product of the job though; a biological answering machine: He asked me for all my details including name, account number, etc, again.

He then instructed me to bring up the router’s control panel by typing in the router’s ip address, which I did. We then went through every different way to try to make the router connect to something, without success. He then got me to check my wiring again; which I did with a continuity tester, and then he had me taking the BT socket apart and connecting directly to the phone line itself. Now I’m a geekette, and a computer-builder, as well as a blogger, so I always have a small flat-headed screwdriver lying around somewhere; but how many other people actually do same? Not a lot. He seemed to take it for granted, however, that all BT customers have a basic toolkit to hand at all times, and have at least some technical know-how….Anyway the result of this was that the situation stayed the same. He said he was going to test my line and would have to ring me on another line, so I gave him my business line number and as soon as I hung up I popped a new ADSL filter module in circuit just to be on the safe side.

I waited an hour and phoned again. This time a non-English-speaking technically-illiterate Indian picked up the phone, went all through the identity-verification process, asking me to repeat everything at least once, and tried to start the entire process of faultfinding from the very beginning again.

Eventually I got him to read the notes from the previous encounter, and he calmed down and said that a fault had been detected either on the line or at the exchange, and that my connection would be restored within the next 48 hours.

48 hours without internet! Just as I began to see red I remembered the BT Broadband Desktop Help software that I had installed on my computer and activated it while I was still trying to translate the representative’s further words into something intelligible and getting him to understand what I was saying.

The software said that I had no internet connection because the router needed resetting by pressing the reset button on the side of the hardware unit for 10 seconds and then releasing it. I told the Indian this but he wasn’t programmed to respond in that area and couldn’t understand what I was saying. He then denied that my software existed; even though it was provided by BT, following which he started repeating over and over that my connection would be restored within 48 hours. I fobbed the idiot off that he was 100% right and thanked him for his “help” before hanging up.

It was then that I did what I should have done in the first place: I held the reset button in for 10 seconds and released it, clicked the connect button that appeared on the screen, and… connection restored. Target neutralised.

It was now 5:35 AM, and I’d wasted sleeping time talking to incompetent idiots and tying to solve a fault their way that I eventually solved in less than a minute with the correct way.

- So BT users in the UK: If your internet dies suddenly, don’t phone BT, especially outside of office hours. Instead run the BT Broadband Desktop help module that you probably have installed on your computer: If you don’t have it installed you can download it HERE. Set it up while your computer and internet are running normally. – Yes I know the software used to be as much help as the Indian; but it’s now been vastly improved and is a great diagnostic tool for BT internet users only:

Use it; rather than the Indian pillock you’ll most likely get on the other end of the phone – It’ll save you much time and effort.

Click Here

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Mozilla won’t be developing Firefox as an iPhone App: Mozilla Chief Executive John Lilly says Apple has made it too difficult a task to accomplish. Instead Mozilla will focus on other mobile platforms and in particular the LiMo project, aimed at putting Linux on other mobile devices.

Development of desktop Firefox is still going ahead in leaps and bounds: The alpha release of Shiretoko; AKA Firefox 3.1 has already happened.

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/3.1a1/releasenotes/

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/3.1a1/releasenotes/#download

Besides adding new filtering features to the Awesome bar where users can filter their searches to show browsing history only, Mozilla are particularly set on improving the Gecko rendering engine and adding a new visual-tabs feature.

What of Microsoft and IE8? Well IE8 is in beta and available for download. I’ve heard that installing this beta kills the Microsoft auto-update ability of Windows to receive critical updates and patches from M$ Update: I don’t know if that’s still true or if they’ve updated the beta to prevent this?

According to Microsoft:

“Some of the new features designed for developers include a developer toolbar and improved interoperability and compatibility…Internet Explorer 8 will take the web experience beyond the page.”

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/ie8/features.mspx

- Beyond the update too it appears? I don’t see anything immediately outstanding about enhanced security features; although a Google search reveals this:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=IE8+enhanced+security+features&meta=

The good thing is that IE8 beta is available for download to Windows XP as well as to Vista – I hope this is also the case with the final retail version.

Why, though, has IE8 been in beta so long, while all other browsers are advancing and releasing newer versions? Who knows the mind of Microsoft? Does M$ itself know it’s own mind after the departure of Bill Gates?

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Twitter, the No.1 micro blogging site, has been targeted in the same kind of attack that befell MySpace and Facebook yesterday. A bogus Twitter profile with a malicious payload has been spotted by security firm Kaspersky.

The link; which says that it is a link to a pornographic video, downloads the dodgy version of Adobe Flash Player; the file “codecsetup.exe”; just as with the occurrences reported yesterday: http://kkomp.com/archives/827 And exactly the same result too: You’re suddenly a part of a botnet, sending span, phishing attacks, and DOS attacks.

Variants of the worms are already appearing according to security firm Kaspersky; who spotted this and yesterday’s two attacks also.

The attack appears to originate in Brazil, a conclusion based upon the use of the Portuguese language, the location of the servers that download the trojans, and the email addresses used also.

Once again only Windows users are vulnerable to these worms etc; so therefore would it be logical to conclude that the perpetrator is a South-American Linux zealot with an axe to grind?

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Mountain View, California: The Google car is out taking pictures for Google Earth and the Google geeks have been forewarned: There amongst the Google throng a particular banner stands out. Holding it up is Michael Weiss-Malik; a member of the Google Geo team.

Proposal 1.0 was a romantic low-key affair indoors alone together: Proposal 2.0, however, was the one that went public. http://www.marrymeleslie.com/ 

Now I wonder; have these proposals come out of beta yet? If so is this the final retail version, or will there be further updates? Will this version ever be replaced by a different proposal? A “Marry Me Danielle” or a “Marry Me Amanda” perhaps?

I sincerely hope not; or the distributor will have serious egg on his face for the rest of his days – And I really do think that this is a lovely gesture in a very geekly manner: Best of luck and happiness to them both; and may they live long and prosper.

I thought “Leslie” was a man’s name and “Lesley” was the spelling of the female version: Maybe he can’t spell, or he has a rather unpleasant surprise waiting for him?

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When designing a single-transistor-amplifier stage; be it an AF, RF, IF, whatever project, one must always take into account the gain of the transistor in question and design for it accordingly. It’s best not to attempt to utilise the full amount of available gain as the transistor will probably saturate and cause distortion. In fact a tri-stage amplifier with negative-feedback, (The subject of a later article maybe.) with only half the available gain of each transistor used will produce a much better and less distorted output than a single-transistor stage utilising all of the available gain.

For now, however, I’m going to concentrate on just a single-transistor stage, and on correctly biasing the transistor’s base proportional to its base/collector.

Let’s assume that our subject transistor has a voltage-gain of 20, and a Vb(max) of 3.3V. Let’s place it in circuit:

Ignoring the type and strength of input signal as far as this example is concerned, we intend to bias the base of the transistor from the supply rails using a straightforward potential divider (R1 & 2). We know that the base voltage must not exceed 3.3V, and we’re running the circuit from a 6 Volt rail. We use the equation V=Vin (+Vcc in this case, using a NPN transistor.) X R2 / (R1 X R2). In the example above, (Which is an example only rather than a functional circuit.) I’ve taken a guess and used a 1K negative resistor (R2) and a 2.7K resistor (R1) to the rail. This gives a working base voltage of 2.223 Volts. In most cases we’d tweak that voltage, by altering the resistance values, to as near 0.7 Volts as possible. (The transistor’s transconductance threshold, assuming that we are using a silicon rather than a germanium transistor.) For this example we’ll leave it at 2.223 Volts.

Note the use of resistances in the kilohm range: This is for the purpose of limiting the base current. Although we haven’t specified a current for the input signal we’re assuming that it’s in the several-tens-of-milliamperes range. When dealing with even smaller input signal currents use higher resistance to limit the biasing current further so as not to interfere with the input signal.

We can work out the base-bias current precisely using Ohm’s Law: I=V/R; 6 volts divided by (R1 + R2 = 3700Ohms) = 1.62 milliamperes: We’d therefore be looking for a gain of about 10, driving the transistor at half-available-gain, so it would be fair to say to use a total DC resistance of 100 Ohms in the emitter circuit, and a total DC resistance of 270 Ohms in the collector circuit, ignoring any reactance from any decoupling capacitor (Such as C3 in the second circuit.) in the emitter circuit.

Looking at that second circuit we note that there are DC decoupling capacitors (C1 & C2) on the input and output of the stage: these are included to prevent any DC component bleeding back into the stage before, as well as bleeding off from the collector circuit into the following stage. Note that I’ve sketched in a decoupling capacitor into the base circuit using a broken line: This may or may not be a good idea depending upon many factors; and that’s well beyond the scope of this post.

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A few of the dodgy comments posted on MySpace and Facebook :-

These comments lead on to a link to a bogus You-Tube clone, which asks you to download the latest Flash player; at which a file called “codecsetup.exe” – a network worm – downloads to the victim’s machine.

Kaspersky said its security suite detected the threats proactively and signatures were added to the database on July 31, 2008.

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In the onsite newsletter I published yesterday I stated, in a round-about way, that I’ll be taking this blog in many directions in addition to tech and electronics etc, introducing new categories and subjects: Well here’s the start of a new category; that being poetry:-

(I’m a girl of many talents.)

And where else to start than my poetry…

In the past I’ve turned my hand to poetry; with at times, although I say so myself – others agree too, some fairly good results. That was back during the 1980s, 90s, and earlier this century. My adoption of Pagan beliefs  in 2003 led many of the works I’ve since written to have a mystical edge to them.

At the time I wasn’t a blogger, didn’t have a blog, and therefore had no platform to share my poetry from other than among a few friends. I now have a blog, a worldwide audience, and so I may as well use it.

(I’m actually wondering which adverts would be fitting to use with this particular blog, and looking at my repertoire of available ads the answer seems to be none: But that doesn’t mean that you’re getting away with an ad-free post today: Oh no by jimminy or however-you-spell-it you’re not. There’s one at the bottom – And for the sake of keeping this blog going you might just consider clicking the link or even buying it?)

My “signature poem”, if you like, is one I wrote back in the early 1990s: I did at one point publish it somewhere under a pseudonym, in a periodical; but the publication it was published in was the edition after Xmas; a thin edition lacking content and I don’t think many people even read it.

It’s called “Wonderpoet“:-

I am a poet, you see, and I know it: I must be you see, as I write poetry.

I consider’ a crime when a poem don’t rhyme;

But a rhyme interspersed with some lines of blank verse is quite clever at best and confusing at worst.

A poem that confuses has no further uses, than to use as a tool to upset stupid fools; or to teach to the pupils in modern day schools;

So to hell and a curse on confusing blank verse, as confusing blank verse is abusing the rules.

I am a poet; my poetry, though it may seem rather strange, or even deranged, how the words are exchanged and arranged.

Lyrics so terse, arranged into verse, cleverly interspersed with others that rhyme, to a beat-steady-time, so that reading them’s fun, and when you are done; start again.

I am a poet – You see, and I know it: A poet who writes of the sounds and the sights;

Of the brightness of days and the darkness of nights; of the blackness of darkness, the brightness of lights:

My poems are brilliant – All right?

Now as the eagle lands on rubber bands, she spreads her talons higher; we move our poetic desire up a gear as we aspire to have no fear of things much higher. We take a feel  of astro-wheel:

The sign of Capricorn the goat; ruled by the planet Saturn: A cold and harsh place where learning is by bitter experience and lessons come with a price to pay. Saturn teaches us the bare truth; no frills – no spills: Encounter the Capricornian learning curve and you’ll leave with all your stamina drained but your wisdom and experience enhanced no-end.

This is “Capricorn Sun“:

Goatshine light of Saturn’s learning. Cold and harsh with bland emotion.
Knowledge sprouts from out of yearning, missing out on deep devotion.
Far away the distant giant; dragging motion, slowly shifting.
Serve the curve from which we gather; lesson learned and veil lifting.
Solarbode the house of sunsign lies within the sixth placed power.
Snail of the astral skies counts time in years discounting hours.
Teacher from celestial plane of heaven’s lights forever burning.
Reach into the deepest voids to keep this thirst forever turning.

Around 2004 I hung out online at times with a group of mainly American girls who I classify as neo-witches: Eclectic “Pagans” who seem as much at home with the traditions of Christianity as the Pagan festivals, sabbats, and esbats. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to discover them at a Pentecostal church in the US Bible-Belt on a Sunday, after which they switch on the computer and claim to be totally Pagan – Which I suppose there’s nothing particularly terrible about as even Adolf Hitler was a ChristoPagan; each to their own.

(Don’t get me wrong here; I’m not anti-Christian, although I suppose I would like to shake some sense into some of the more tunnel-visioned charismatic-Christian people I know.)

Anyway I actually had a visible premonition in a dream of falling out bigtime with this crowd, as well as what would happen to certain members of their ranks following that; and it all happened exactly as the premonition foretold. One thing that I really couldn’t figure out about them was this strange fascination with keeping ferrets. If it were in the North of England and they were middle-aged blokes then yes it would be a fairly regular thing to happen; but young-ish to middle-aged girls in America keeping ferrets, talking constantly about them, swapping pictures of them online…?!

The bitch in me came out and I put pen to paper:

This is the “Pickled Ferret Limerick“:-

When NASA sent probes to the stars,
They pickled a ferret on Mars,
To provide an example preserved as a sample;
And sent back to earth in a jar.

The bitch in me always comes out in a limerick for some reason: It must be the Irish blood in me.

Well that’s yer lot for today. I’ll leave you with a relaxing piece:

This one’s called simply “Sleep“.

Sleep well on wings of dragonfly,
In the gossamer light from the hue of your dreams.
May your rest be recharging subconscious,
Rebuilt by the Moon with her beams.
Let your life from the Goddess be blessed,
And your smile a refraction of light.
Your heart beat steady time in an absolute rhyme;
May you sleep well this nighttime: Goodnight.

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As you may or may not be aware; I’m constantly attempting to improve and/or update this blog in as many ways as I can. Current news items relating to technological issues in particular have been the main thrust of the recent posts, although I do intend to broaden the scope somewhat in future to cover more electronics (Basic/theoretical/practical electronics.), and other subjects, as well as introduce more categories.

Also in the near future I intend to start up a mailing-list as well as a separate subscription-only mailing-list. To accomplish this I have bought an extremely efficient plugin from Tribulant Software : I know that there are various online services that take a subscription and manage mass email distribution on your behalf; but to be honest I fail to see the point when, for less than the price of a month’s subscription in some cases, one can buy this plugin as a one-off including support, and target neutralised; no more fees to pay.

To add – There is an issue with the Kontera WordPress plugin: This was discovered by Antonie from Tribulant Software today when helping me install the mailing list plugin. I quote:

 ”Unfortunately there seems to be a problem.”

I’ve informed Kontera about this: Their autoresponder says they’ll be in touch in the next 3 working days.

Also the (free) plugin called “Simple Tags” caused a fatal error in the server when the plugin was installed the first time. (By me.) It may well be the case that “Simple Tags” causes a fatal error to occur even when installing a few of the free plugins too.

-So I’ll be looking at starting a free mailing list within the next few days, and then a subscription-only list thereafter.

Other news:

You’ll notice I’ve at last tidied up the top of the index page; which appears to be by far the most popular page to date – Hopefully those who turned up to have a laugh at it will now beam in admiration at it: OK I know that’s going a little too far… That logo; it changes colour and brightness slowly: The “kkomp.com” part changes between almost black and pink & black. The “Taking you beyond the comfort zone.” part starts off purple, goes black and almost illegible, goes bright and pink; then it cycles slowly through again and stays pink – Just in case you were wondering what actually was going on but didn’t have the time nor patience to sit watching it in zomboid style.

Moron Newsletters More on Newsletters:

Of course; all this type of thing will appear in the free newsletter in future, rather than a post in the blog itself.

And; since the free newsletter is, as its name suggests, free; it’ll have advertising included. The subscription-only newsletter, on the other hand, will have a lot more content and be totally ad-free. The first one; when it appears, will cost you exactly $1.00 USD or thereabouts. I’ll be announcing more on that in due course, as and when.

Only those signed up for the free newsletter will receive it in their email, and those who have subscribed to this site will automatically receive it unless they choose to opt out: So if you want to receive the free newsletter then do sign up for it when you see the link appear in the Main Pages table near the top of every page and post in the sidebar.

Postings:

Thus-far I’ve done my best, with a couple of exceptions, to post something, hopefully of interest, on some topic(s) or another, every day. I intend to continue doing this and maybe more, up to a point; but if there should be nothing posted/written on the occasional day every now and again, please don’t immediately assume that the blog’s been discontinued – Some days I just don’t get a chance to get anything typed up.

 ”It’s time I started using my head.”

Conclusion: Is that a promise? Please make it so!

Enough of my verbatim for the time being: It may interest you to know that the number of incoming spam comments has overtaken the number of incoming decent comments. (The spam went up BTW…OK, and the real comments have gone down a bit lately.) – So let’s put the spamming halfwits to shame and see if we can out-comment them.

Right then; that’s it for now: Enjoy the coming week. Blessed be.

Sharron. (admin)

(P.S. Certain domains will not be accepted for email/newsletters: The “sogetthis” domain and others associated with mailinator are examples. – Such domains are frequently utilised by spammers, hackers, and kooks, for dubious or malevolent purposes.)

(There is a person – And I do know who it is incidentally – who is signed up to this blog on the main list under the domain “sogetthis”. Will this person kindly please sign up again with a proper email address as your current registration will be removed in due course. Thank you.)

Read on; you’ll soon feel better

Today I was wondering what to write about. I have a folder full of text-files going right back to the year 2000, most of which are complete junk. I thought I’d have a look through it to see if I could gain any inspiration. I found several parts of a series of advisories I’d written in 2003 with regard to setting up an FTP and web server in IIS in Windows XP – but I decided that was a bit old-hat for this point in time.

One of the items I found was one that I posted on Twitter, and would, I feel, be a must-have for any male geek:

http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/product/Accessory/DriveBay/a2021/a2021.asp

(See website for image.)

An ashtray and cigarette-lighter fitted to a spare 5.25 drive-bay would be just the thing for the macho motor-enthusiast geeks.

Next we come to the one that I mentioned that I have designed into the novelty G1RL-P0W3R range from Kustom Komputa:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/ezbake.shtml

Personally I think this in-computer oven is a great little novelty: Cook while you compute.

For the third gadget – What can I say? Al Bundy eat your heart out. (Al Bundy never actually did use a computer in Married With Children as far as I recall, not even a 386.)

http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/pcmods/8095

Think Geek themselves describe this device as “High-tech Laziness at its Finest”.

Oh what a shame that our next device is out of stock or discontinued!

http://tekgems.com/Products/et-15783-cmo-yel-paradise-bay.htm

Damn! I think it’s quite a useful idea; providing you have enough drive-bays to sacrifice one for storage.

Now you might, like myself, have hundreds of old cassette tape cartridges with all your favourite 70s, 80s and early 90s music on them – But try buying anything to play them on and it’s virtually impossible to get a cassette-player these days. (I have an old Ferguson Cassiever analogue radio/cassette deck which I used to play the cassettes on and used it also to transfer the content to my computer: Unfortunately the cassette-deck gave up the ghost last year.)

Now, however, using our next gadget, playing and transferring cassettes is even easier:

http://www.firebox.com/product/1700/Plus-Deck-Cassette-Converter?src_t=sbk&src_id=cassette&currency_conversion=1

Just in case nothing out of those took your fancy there’s a whole lot more similar weird geeky gadgets for you to browse at http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/product/Accessory/DriveBay/drvbay_index.asp

-And no, I gain nothing, whether or not you buy any of these products.

Enjoy.

On August 1, 2008 Apple Inc. issued patches for 17 vulnerabilities in Mac OS X, including one meant to fix a critical bug in the DNS

The DNS patch doesn’t seem to be very effective though; according to Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Network Security Inc. “The difficult news this morning is that we thought we were getting a patch, but we haven’t gotten anything”

Last week after the technical details of the DNS vulnerability were revealed exploit code appeared; this week attacks began against unpatched servers. Apple’s boob, a patch that doesn’t patch, isn’t going to stop further attacks.

Tests revealed that systems running Mac OS X weren’t randomising ports as they should have been doing if the supposed fix was working.

One would have thought that after Apples recent history of poor performances; such as releasing a buggy firmware platform early in order to beat the competition to market, http://kkomp.com/archives/214 and producing an auto-disintegrating case for the iPhone itself, http://kkomp.com/archives/664 they’d have made a special determined effort to get things precise and spot-on from that point. Apparently not though: It appears that Apple’s catalogue of disaster is continuing to be revealed. Perhaps Steve Jobs should make way for a better candidate – But if Microsoft is anything to go by then the same power-struggle will happen with Apple too.

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No suspicion necessary; only discrimination required.

The US news-sources – In fact the whole world – is a-buzz with the story of America’s new so-called “Terrorism-prevention” measures; which open the floodgates for racism, sexism, all sorts of other-isms; and which seem totally ridiculous anyway.

The good old FBI are now allowed to seize a traveller’s laptop, PDA, alarm clock, mobile/cellphone, wristwatch; in fact any electronic device – Especially if they like the look of it. Who knows; they might just allow that beautiful middle-eastern woman to keep the devices strapped to her body following a strip-search and a sexual bribe?

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If you see the men-in-black waiting at the point you’re just about to cross America’s borders at then kiss your brand new notebook farewell; an FBI agent has already decided that he/she prefers it to his/her current model. They are allowed to take the device(s) to an offsite location, e.g their home, for an unspecified period of time, e.g. until the device breaks down through natural wear and tear/usage, without any suspicion whatsoever.

The policies cover “any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form,” including hard drives, flash drives, cell phones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes. They also cover “all papers and other written documentation,” including books, pamphlets and “written materials commonly referred to as ‘pocket trash’ or ‘pocket litter.’ ” I suppose that’s at least a way of passing on an iPhone: They’re the only people who’d want something with cracked casing. http://kkomp.com/archives/664

They can also steal any data contained in or on said devices, and there’s nothing to prevent them selling anything to interested parties, rival companies, Al Quaida, North Tibetan Militia, Russian Mafia … From your porn to your personal details; it could easily end up in the hands of the highest bidder.

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These ridiculous policies were issued jointly by the US Customs and Border Protection and the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement: Both of which are to do with the DHS. (Department of Homeland Security.)

DHS officials said that the newly disclosed policies — which apply to anyone entering the country, including U.S. citizens — are reasonable and necessary to prevent terrorism. That is the biggest load of crap I’ve heard in years! They think that nicking people’s laptops etc is going to stop anyone bringing illegal data into the USA? Err, just a dad-blamed cotton-pickin’ minute there Mr Redneck, but ain’t y’all gone and forgotten the internet?

Officials said such procedures have long been in place but were disclosed last month because of public interest in the matter. Ah right: The FBI have been stealing people’s devices for years but nobody noticed: That explains it and makes it all perfectly acceptable then – NOT! Maybe they diverted people’s “lost” luggage at Heathrow Airport, UK?

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“You want all electronic devices?”

It’s already started for real: The Washington Post reports that “…an increasing number of international travellers have reported that their laptops, cellphones, and other digital devices have been taken — for months, in at least one case — and their contents examined.” No reports of any disappearance of equipment yet then? Maybe the data on then made more money at sale and wasn’t as traceable?

The policies state that officers may “detain” laptops “for a reasonable period of time” to “review and analyse information.” It is claimed. however that ” Searches have uncovered “violent jihadist materials as well as images of child pornography” – So it’s not all bad news then.

‘Want to view the policy in detail? Click here.