Recent Posts

1201

Living Room / Re: Raspberry Pi's $35 Linux PC

« Last post by ewemoa on August 23, 2012, 04:11 AM »

Everybody see this announcement?

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1731

And  this one?

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1734

-40hz (August 12, 2012, 09:03 AM)

On a side note, came across "Soldering is Easy" via one of the above:

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1494

Looks nice

1202

Living Room / Re: Should we pre-emptively retire old hard drives?

« Last post by ewemoa on August 04, 2012, 09:56 PM »

I hope CrystalDiskInfo wasn't made by some hardware manufacturer trying to trick me into purchasing a new computer...

-Curt (August 04, 2012, 12:41 PM)

I don't think so -- the following gives me the impression the author is an independent developer.  According to:

  http://crystalmark.info/information/index-e.html

and

  http://crystalmark.info/information/digitalsign-e.html

the developer appears to be hiyohiyo of Hokkaido, Japan.

1203

General Software Discussion / Re: HFS ~ HTTP File Server

« Last post by ewemoa on July 23, 2012, 01:06 AM »

HFS is indeed nice  

The fact that it can do uploads is quite handy.

IIRC, the beta version (available via the forums) is recommended by the developer -- I don't have a reference for that though...

The developer has shown up a few times here too

  https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=5811.msg40807#msg40807

(I used to also have it working under Wine, but for some reason hadn't had much luck with this lately.)

1204

Living Room / Re: 5-Speed Homopolar Motor Video

« Last post by ewemoa on July 23, 2012, 01:00 AM »

FWIW, part-way down the following, there's an explanation of the homopolar motor:

  http://www.evilmadscientist.com/2006/mhd-i-demonstrate-magnetohydrodynamic-propulsion-in-a-minute/

Search for: OK, so how the bleep does it work?

1205

Living Room / Re: 5-Speed Homopolar Motor Video

« Last post by ewemoa on July 22, 2012, 10:56 PM »

Awesome stuff  

quite the collection

http://danyk.wz.cz/index_en.html

1206

Find And Run Robot / Re: search alias (Core-Search.alias)

« Last post by ewemoa on July 21, 2012, 02:12 AM »

How about StartPage too?

  https://startpage.co...?query=donationcoder

1207

Living Room / Re: new DVD "M-Disc" perfect for archive material

« Last post by ewemoa on July 21, 2012, 12:46 AM »

I hope you're right about the issue being that of licensing and that that is taken care of easily...may be LG drives can get a firmware upgrade (or perhaps they are already capable...)


A minor point -- I know one of the things quoted used the term "Blue-Ray", but I think it's officially "Blu-ray"

1208

Living Room / Re: new DVD "M-Disc" perfect for archive material

« Last post by ewemoa on July 20, 2012, 09:01 PM »

Especially if they can get the disc capacity up to dual layer at least.

-40hz (July 20, 2012, 10:29 AM)

FWIW, regarding this point, some of the comments in blog posts at the M-Disc maker's site seem to indicate they are considering Blu-ray:

http://millenniata.c...technology/#comments

It would have the same characteristics and lifespan as the M-DISC now. But, we do not have plans to launch a Blu-ray version that early. Larger capacity will come, but we are still working towards that endeavor. When we have solid information we will share it!

http://millenniata.c...ta-storage/#comments

We are working on Blue-Ray M-DISCs that will be capable of more storage. We definitely see the 4.7 GB as a weakness and are actively working to make our product better, especially in that regard. As we get further along with new technology we will be sure to let you all know about it!

Thanks for the note about the odors -- hadn't picked up on that.

1209

Living Room / Re: new DVD "M-Disc" perfect for archive material

« Last post by ewemoa on July 20, 2012, 08:54 PM »

LG sends all their reject to this part of the world.

-Shades (July 20, 2012, 03:56 PM)

Hope the following digression will be tolerated

I have started to suspect that some companies that distribute to multiple countries have measurements per-country (may be even more specific?) of what level of quality they can deliver to which country.  If you produce a lot of products and can measure such things, it seems like an obvious thing to at least consider.  (I was just chatting the other day with someone who hasn't had problems with HDDs for years, but has had awful experience with optical media, whereas, the reverse situation has been true for me for approximately the last decade.)

If any one has sources of information regarding this, please share.

(FWIW, my personal experience with the LG burner I got recently has been quite good so far.)

1210

Living Room / Re: The most persistent scammer

« Last post by ewemoa on July 20, 2012, 07:39 AM »

Thanks for sharing this

1211

Living Room / Re: new DVD "M-Disc" perfect for archive material

« Last post by ewemoa on July 20, 2012, 03:54 AM »

I'm not sure if tape technology is all that affordable, but FWIW, there appears to be consideration given to the idea of future compatibility.  For example, from a Wikipedia page for Linear Tape-Open:

An Ultrium drive reads data from a cartridge in its own generation and at least the two prior generations.
An Ultrium drive writes data to a cartridge in its own generation and to a cartridge from the immediate prior generation in the prior generation format.

I've not been a tape fan, but perhaps it's not likely that there will be other alternatives before long...

1212

Living Room / Re: new DVD "M-Disc" perfect for archive material

« Last post by ewemoa on July 20, 2012, 03:47 AM »

Below is one of the reviews I came across:

  http://www.amazon.co...-reviews/B005Y4NKE0/

-ewemoa (July 19, 2012, 08:26 AM)

in fairness,
that sounds like it could well be a problem with the burner he's using, rather than the discs.

-tomos (July 19, 2012, 08:56 AM)

As I understand it, the maker's of the M-Disc have some sort of agreement with LG for LG to produce drives that work with M-Discs.  It would be unfortunate if what was described in the review is common.

I managed to find the other problematic report:

  http://www.cdrlabs.c...riter/All-Pages.html

Of course, the BP40NS20's biggest feature is its support for Millenniata's M-DISC technology. Offering greater longevity and durability than standard DVD's, the M-DISC's rock-like material provides up to 1000 years of permanent data storage. This really doesn't mean much, though, if the burn process fails or the discs are not completely readable as was the case with the BP40NS20. Hopefully this is an issue with our drive or something that can be fixed with a firmware update and not an indicator of what we can expect from LG's M-READY drives.

Having seen a couple such reports (I think they are for different drives made by the same manufacturer) I became less interested in testing M-Discs at the moment -- I happen to have purchased an LG burner that's supposed to burn M-Discs (without knowing about M-Discs), so I am pretty interested in things working out well.

1213

Living Room / Re: new DVD "M-Disc" perfect for archive material

« Last post by ewemoa on July 20, 2012, 03:30 AM »

I was wondering myself about SD cards - if they're rarely used, would they be suitable for archiving. The format looks like it's going to be there for the foreseeable future.

-tomos (July 19, 2012, 12:59 PM)

I considered using SD cards and tried for a while, but like HDDs I found that they could easily lead to complete sudden unrecoverability of data -- e.g.  via static electricity.  One zap and poof 

As I understand it, the situation with optical media is a bit different -- typically optical media don't suddenly die.  Unless shattered I suppose

1214

General Software Discussion / Re: One more reason to like independent SW developers

« Last post by ewemoa on July 20, 2012, 01:31 AM »

As a side note, looks like a nice application

Thanks for sharing.

1215

Living Room / Re: new DVD "M-Disc" perfect for archive material

« Last post by ewemoa on July 19, 2012, 08:26 AM »

It sounds like a neat idea, but I've read a few reviews that reported difficulty with successfully ending up with usable burned M-Discs.

Below is one of the reviews I came across:

  http://www.amazon.com/M-DISC-DVD-Cake-Box-Pack/product-reviews/B005Y4NKE0/

I think there was one other, but I'm not turning it up at the moment.

I'd be happy if this technology managed to work reliably, develops a larger capacity per media, and sticks around -- but I'm not too hopeful of affordable reliable off-line storage though (difficulty imagining enough consumer demand with recent developments in the areas of tablets and network-based storage)...

What I've come to suspect is that depending on where you live in the world, the reliability of certain technologies seems to vary a fair bit.  I used to have no problems with HDDs at all, but some time in the last decade I moved to another country...in the new environment, I've had 4-5 failures of HDDs, so at least here, I don't trust HDDs with my data at all.  (I thought quality had just gone down overall, but from talking to some other folks, I hear they still seem to have few problems.)  Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to leave much that's relatively simple to work with -- multiple copies on optical media is what I've come to depend on, but that technology seems to be dying in many areas of the world...I wouldn't be too surprised if in the not-too-distant future, it won't be affordable to have significant quantities of offline data.

1216

General Software Discussion / Re: Pause/Break Key has never been able to invoke the FARR!?

« Last post by ewemoa on July 17, 2012, 12:05 AM »

IIRC when I have something that's running with admin privileges (and it's focused), Pause/Break doesn't appear to bring up FARR though Control+Space (if configured) seems to -- this is with Windows 7 64-bit.

Update: This appears to be when FARR is running without admin privs.

1217

Living Room / Re: Best android security app (Remote-Wipe, screenshot, etc)

« Last post by ewemoa on July 16, 2012, 09:11 PM »

I haven't managed to find out anything relevant concerning the wipe option but came across the following discussion at xda-developers:

  Lost Phone Apps: Cerberus vs. others

Among other things, there was mention of another app named AndroidLost, with a link to a review:

  [Mobile Security App Shootout] Android Lost (Beta): Sophisticated Security Options For The Budget-Conscious Android User

1218

Living Room / Re: Best android security app (Remote-Wipe, screenshot, etc)

« Last post by ewemoa on July 15, 2012, 07:51 AM »

I don't have a suggestion for you but am interested in what turns up as I recently learned that a factory reset of a device doesn't necessarily remove all data that has gotten on to a phone since its departure from the factory.

As I understand it, there is something called "factory format" (at least on some devices) which seems to do a more thorough job compared to factory reset.  I haven't yet come across a way to perform this apart from a code entered via the dialer (though presumably it is possible programmatically) -- more at:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=932919

Sorry for the digression

1219

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the ctrl-alt-del and does it exist in other OSs?

« Last post by ewemoa on July 12, 2012, 09:51 PM »

Magic SysRq key

-jgpaiva (July 11, 2012, 08:47 AM)

Reboot Even If System Utterly Broken

1220

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Final Release: Tell When Done

« Last post by ewemoa on July 11, 2012, 08:25 AM »

So the website will have the hash for zip file and also the exe ; and mention so.

-anandcoral (July 11, 2012, 07:58 AM)

Thanks!

1221

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Final Release: Tell When Done

« Last post by ewemoa on July 11, 2012, 03:21 AM »

I have an idea about what may be going on.  I am computing the checksums for the zip files.  From your post it looks like your computations are for the exe files.  A test here appears to be consistent with this view.

1222

General Software Discussion / Re: What Android Apps Do You Use?

« Last post by ewemoa on July 10, 2012, 05:05 AM »

For those with more than one Android device -- and one that connects to a larger screen, may be you'll like Tablet Remote.  It allows one Android device to more-or-less control another via Bluetooth:

Tablet Remote: Control One Android Device With Another via Bluetooth (addictivetips)

Got it working with a few devices here -- though struggling with a third.


On a side note, has any one else encountered problems sending files between Android devices using Bluetooth?  When this happens, it appears that it can be worked around sometimes if the file in question is zipped...quite odd.

getting the apk

If anyone knows of an official way to get the apk via non-Play means, please share -- ended up getting mine via a friend's phone.

1223

DonationCoder.com Newsletters / Re: --> Newsletter for July 9, 2012 - 100 Days of Summer Slumber

« Last post by ewemoa on July 10, 2012, 03:22 AM »

Thanks for this 

1224

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Final Release: Tell When Done

« Last post by ewemoa on July 10, 2012, 01:57 AM »

I will put the checksum on the website next time

-anandcoral (November 07, 2011, 08:35 PM)

Thanks for doing this.

I just downloaded the zip file for 1.6.0, and computed some checksums for it.  Unfortunately, what I got:

MD5: 5816907e299cc6798c2a2df83322f404
SHA1: fcda32396572c0f009c21e4db399de90fb29be24

differs from what I see at the Download section:

MD5: B730B35429820D191F1E76CFB5367E6C
SHA1: CFE68189D4DD9C53899958C316F27C2E235A7FF2

Any ideas as to why there appears to be a discrepancy?

I decided to check for 1.5.0 as well and also ended up with different results:

MD5: 9daa9a8098c53dcde3a3915d4f799d96
SHA1: fe9f4d664920504ed0cc59bbfe68c8ea6d6755ec

What I see at the site is:

MD5: 92075C9913F83A09E3F6148D0073AAA1
SHA1: 0886E3D2B6619DD2B9A83B7DAF20F15B52F51700

1225

Living Room / Re: Phone scam - pretending to be Microsoft Engineer

« Last post by ewemoa on July 08, 2012, 05:38 AM »

The July 2012 SANS OUCH! issue (PDF) - "The Tech-Support Phone Call Scam" seems to be related -- via http://www.securingthehuman.org/resources/newsletters/ouch