Sep 30th, 06
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A9.com Help and Frequently Asked Questions. A9 just updated their site and they bagged their 1.5% off of Amazon purchases if you use it. Nice if they told someone, but I think that’s part of the plan. People keep using it (the main reason I used it was for the Amazon rewards, I have to say the search quality wasn’t that good, so no real loss there).
Now I can use Blingo and try to get rewards. Another example of how Web 1.0 companies with earnings (Amazon) are going to have time beating the marketing dollars of Web 2.0 companies like “Blingo”:http://blingo.com
Sep 29th, 06
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“Tom’s Hardware”:http://www.tomsnetworking.com/2005/05/10/how_to_crack_wep_/ has an amazing guide on how to crack a WEP key on a Wifi network. Kinda scary how easy it is. Everyone should move to the more advanced WPA or WPA2 if you can ASAP.
Basically, you need a laptop with a Prism2 card in it (this is a particular chipset that the cracking software needs). There is a CD you plug in that has a Linux distribution on it called “Backtrack”:http://new.remote-exploit.org/ over at remote-exploit.org so it fits on a CD and comes in .iso format
YOu can either use Nero or “CDBurnerXP Pro”:http://www.cdburnerxp.se/ which is freeware burning software.
With the Linux tools on Backtrack, you can use Kismet which is like Netstumbler to find wifi networks and like Ethereal in that it allows you to look at the raw network traffic.
You then use the tools
* Airodump to capture the packets looking for IV or initialization vector packets
* Void11 to kick clients off the network and thus generate IVs for you (a deauth attack)
* Aireplay take the traffic that void11 generates and keep replaying it to the wifi network to generate more traffic
* aircrack to take the captured files and extract the WEP key.
Sep 28th, 06
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Just got back from a “lala.com”:http://lala.com board meeting. Boy, those guys are rocking. Here are the CDs that I have and also you can start to click on my radio station to hear more.
Click here to get any of my CDs for $1
Sep 27th, 06
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!Apple Store. Well, the screen of my iPod nano broke. It was in a case and has a protective cover. Uh oh, $189 down the drain I thought. Wandered over to the Palo Alto Apple Store. First, it is an incredible retail experience and I can’t believe how crowded it was with people buy $2,000 desktops. They have an online system where you register and what order you are in. so 10 minutes later, the resident genius says, “yup, you broke it, here’s a replacement. Wow! So I now have an unbroken 4GB nano and Apple didn’t have to do it, but they sure earned my loyalty.
I had forgotten what buying technology should be like. I almost bought a $2700 Macbook Pro 17″ notebook right there. So if you are buying an MP3 player, remember you also get this level of service with Apple, I don’t expect the same with PC products. And Apple is right about controlling the retail experience, it does make a difference.
For double protection, I recommend buying your iPod at Costco, but in the first year, Apple has an amazing iron clad product guarantee. Beyond that Costco will take anything back that they sell for a replacement.
Sep 25th, 06
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!
| Buffalo | Seagate 7200.10 Only | Buffalo-Drive | Buffalo $/GB |
| 250 GB | $200 | $83 | $117 | $0.80 |
| 320 GB | $223 | $102 | $123 | $0.70 |
| 400 GB | $396 | $150 | $246 | $0.99 |
| 500GB | $343 | $220 | $123 | $0.69 |
| 750GB | $642 | $360 | $258 | $0.86 |
The imputed bare drives prices use “Seagate 7200.10″:http://www.pricegrabber.com/search.php?form_keyword=seagate+7200.10&topcat_id= as proxies. As you can see, the 750GB drive is way too expensive, but the 320GB and the 500GB are good deals at $123 effectively for the enclosure while the 400GB is a really bad buy as is the 250GB version.
h2. Synology, nice but way too expensive
The “Synology”:http://www.tomsnetworking.com/2006/06/28/synology_ds106e_full_featured_nas/ is nice but it is expensive at $280. Compared with the Vantec Nexstar LX, it is better because:
* It uses SATA drives and can plug in three additional USB 2.0 enclosures or an External SATA drive like the Nexstar 3 to really get a lot of storage.
* It has way more features including a Upnp media server, a mysql database and a web server with php support and a BitTorrent downloader (so the NAS does the BitTorrent download and you don’t have to leave your computer on).
* It is more efficient, so it doesn’t exactly blaze away compared on a disk in a computer, but on a sequential write, it is pretty good at 8MBps for read *and* write on 100Mbps Ethernet. On Gigabit Ethernet, it gets a real world 14MBps which isn’t bad.
* Underneath it has a Freescale processor and uses Linux internally.
It is hard to get this box in the U.S., but apparently TigerDirect will be carrying it soon according to “Synology”:http://www.synology.com/enu/buy/ and of course “Newegg”:http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?DEPA=0&type=&Description=synology&Submit=ENE&N=0&Ntk=all&Go.x=0&Go.y=0 which has it for a whopping “$230″:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822108004 so good things aren’t free.
Many of its competitors can be gotten for $300 including a hard drive.
Sep 25th, 06
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“Nexstar LX”:http://www.atruereview.com/vantec_nexstar/index.php. This is nearly the ideal device. I already use the Nexstar 3 SATA enclosure for backup and it fits a 750GB hard drive very nicely. The main issue with this one is that the performance is very, very slow over Ethernet Otherwise, it is nearly ideal, the NST 375LX supports up to 500GB IDE drives and has a smart cooling fan plus it is an FTP and an SMB file server with a Web interface from “Vantec”:http://www.vantecusa.com/products/nexstarLX/p_nst-375lx.html
The problem is that a USB 2.0 interface runs at 480Mbps and you get a real 25MBps or so out of a USB 2.0 drive in the read, but Ethernet 100Mbps is way slower and the protocol is much more wasteful so you normally get 3MBps or 10x slower than USB. In the “real world”:http://www.atruereview.com/vantec_nexstar/nas_storage3.php a 5GB copy took 13 minutes with USB 2.0 and 23 minutes with Ethernet NAS but that’s more a limitation of the protocol. It would be interesting to see how a Gigabit Ethernet interface would fare.
BTW, “Sysopt.com”:http://www.sysopt.com/features/storage/article.php/12033_3622186_5 found the same basic performance with a direct ATA133 IDE drive running at 39MBps so that’s the real world maximum of a NAS drive, the Nexstar GX dedicated USB 2.0 enclosure running at 31MBps, the Nexstar LX over USB 2.0 at 26MBps while the Nexstar LX over Ethernet was just 2.7MBps.
One final point from “virtual hideout”:http://www.virtual-hideout.net/reviews/Vantec_NexStar_LX/index2.shtml is that this drive needs to use FAT32 to function, it doesn’t support NTFS, so on a 500GB drive, you are certainly going to get big blocks and less efficient storage.
Sep 25th, 06
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It is amazingly easy at “freeantennas.com”:http://www.freeantennas.com, print out the template, they have listed on cardboard and then then cut it out and make the little sale and glue tin foil on the back and voila you have incredible gain. I’ve got to try it. It works best where you want to direct the pattern in a particular direction, like across a room.
There are two models, the “EZ-10″:http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/Ez-10/ looks liek the simplest as it is just a bunch of straight pieces. It increases the gain by 11dBi which is pretty . amazing. You cut the template and fold it.
Sep 25th, 06
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If you have DD-WRT or some other devices that need a time server to get the correct time, “NTP”:http://ntp.isc.org/bin/view/Servers/WebHome#Browsing_the_Lists can help. There is a list of servers that provide the exact time free for network devices.
If your device can take a DNS name, then the “pool”:http://ntp.isc.org/bin/view/Servers/NTPPoolServers servers are great since they give you a random selection and you can be pretty sure you’ll have a working server. Fill in _pool.ntp.org_ or if you are in the US, _north-america.pool.ntp.org_
If you need a hard IP address, then you need to use “Stratum 2″:http://ntp.isc.org/bin/view/Servers/StratumTwoTimeServers servers which are for public use. I’ve been using ntp1.sf-bay.org or 207.126.97.57 if you need an IP address.
powered by performancing firefox
Sep 24th, 06
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“DD-WRT”:http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/WRT54G_v4_Installation_Tutorial has a great tutorial for the somewhat tricky installation with V23 and above. You have to install the mini version first which is called mini_generic.bin then you reset and you upgrade to DD-WRT standard and again use generic.bin
You only want to use generic.bin by the way when using the web user interface which is the normal way. If you use TFTP then you have to use the specific versions.
In terms of recovery, there are two different set of instructions on the web. Linksys used to have a dedicated utility, but now you just use tftp built into Windows XP. YOu basically run the tftp command as the router is booting and it should take using the “TFTP”:http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Installation#Flashing_with_TFTP instructions on the DD-WRT wiki.
There is amazing “feature list”:http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/What_is_%22DD-WRT%22%3F#Feature_List includes things like Client Mode, Afterburner that are too numerous to understand, although the “HOW TO”:http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Configuration_HOWTOs#HOWTOs_for_basic_configuration_scenarios list is really useful:
* “Afterburner”:http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Afterburner you should only use this is you have the special client cards from Linksys that enable this kind of optimization or if you have a notebook with a Broadcom chipset. Look in the Wireless LAN Card setup and see if there is a property in Advanced Tab called Afterburner. “Hyperwrt”:http://www.hyperwrt.org/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=5228 has more information on this which has lots of trade names include Afterburner, Speedbooster, SuperSpeed, 125mbps, Gplu and G+
