Home Improvements – Part 2

I’ve purchased my Linksys NSLU2 🙂

Now I want to make some modifications. The issue is that there are a number of different firmware options to choose from.

My requirements:
– Serve files for media (Basic functionality for all firmware)
– Read from FAT32 formatted external drives (isn’t provided by the base firmware!! The device requires all disks to be formatted!)
– Bittorent client
– Subversion server

Based on this comparison of different firmware options I’m going to have to look at a full linux based OS. Unfortunately I’ve never used Linux, so trying to get it to work on a small memory/slow processor device is going to be a steep learning curve.

Stay tuned for the next exciting episode.

YouTube goes international

Google just launched a number of YouTube international sites: “Brazil, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Ireland, and the UK.”

Given Australia has its own Google, can we expect a YouTube Australia any time soon? Maybe. But it looks like first they’ll have to kick off the domain squatter that owns youtube.com.au — some guy called Aaron whose contact address is a Hotmail account. Which is interesting, because normally to own a .com.au address you have to have a registered company or business name that is related to the domain.

NZ is more liberal, and similarly youtube.co.nz is owned by someone on an india.com account.

No doubt there will be similar issues in other territories. Which makes you wonder why these companies don’t nab their domains around the world when they get their first million or two in venture capital (like Amazon has; they’ve owned amazon.com.au for years). It’d save heartache later.

Gone phishing

I’ve had many phishing attempts trying to impersonate banks, but this is the first I recall impersonating the Australian Taxation Office.

From: Australian Government <admin @ ato.gov.au>
To: dbowen @ custard.net.au
Date: 15-Jun-2007 16:32
Subject: Australian Taxation Office – Please Read This.

After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of $163.80
Please submit the tax refund request and allow us 6-9 days in order to process it.

A refund can be delayed for a variety of reasons. For example submitting invalid records or applying after the deadline.

To access the form for your tax refund, please click here

Regards, Australian Government

© Copyright 2007, Australian Taxation Office – All rights reserved..

The click here link was to: http://bigart.com.tr/ato/updatedb/ (rest snipped)… from the looks of it this domain is commonly used by phishers. Evidently they’ve been at it for a few months now.

Home Improvements

I’ve annexed a room at my house to be my ‘den’. First order of business is getting some entertainment in there.

Requirements:

  • Watch DVDs
  • Watch other media from my computer
  • Reasonably inexpensive

My current solutions contains the following components:

  • Xbox running XBMC as a games/media streaming console (just purchased from Global Consoles)
  • Some sort of network storage so I don’t need to have my PC running constantly.

The network storage decision is narrowing down. I considered solutions such as the Thecus N1200. I dismissed this as being overpriced and probably overkill for my needs.

My current front runner is a Linksys NSLU2. It doesn’t have any internal disks, but has two USB ports to plug in external drives. The real beauty of the device (affectionately known as the ‘slug’ by fanboyz) is that there is an open source Linux based operating system that can be installed to it. This adds lots of extra functionality like all sorts of servers (print, bittorrent, iTunes, media/photos). I was even thinking I could install svn on it and it can be my source control repository.

I’ll let you know how my plans proceed. Any advice/comments would be very welcome!

More on Safari for Windows

Safari logoWired’s benchmarks show Safari is slower than IE7 and Firefox. And within a day of its release, 6 security holes were found in it. ArsTechnica was similarly uncomplimentary.

Does it matter? Perhaps not. Jobs is obviously doing two things here: The first is continuing to get Apple’s applications onto Windows desktops, following the path of iTunes and Quicktime. Mind you, Safari is several zillion times less compelling at present; maybe that will improve… and if not, hey chuck them all together into one big bloated mega-package. “Click here to install iTunes 8 + QuickTime + Safari (a billion Mb download; a zillion Mb hard disk space required)”.

(Seriously, iTunes used to be a 20Mb download. Chucking in QuickTime blew it out to 33Mb.)

The other is making it easier for developers (some of whom don’t particularly want to buy Macs) make their web apps work on both Macs and the iPhone. That’s ultimately good for sales of Apple hardware, since more apps will work better with it, further moving away from the crazy “You must have IE on Windows to run this web page properly” thing that some people seem to think is sensible. (Those people really get my goat up. Yeah, sure, take a universal platform like the web and mangle it.)

From the reaction of some people though (Tony: “Wow, Safari really is a beta. Crashing all over the place.”) it’s got a way to go before it can even be used for that. If and when I try it, I’ll be quarantining it in a virtual machine for sure.

Scott “Lazycoder” sarcastically notes his blog is now iPhone-enabled, as it displays properly in Safari. heh.

Safari for Windows

Apple announces a version of the Safari web browser for Windows. A public beta is already available. Jobs claims it’s twice as fast as IE. Hmm.

A lot of Windows users certainly have and use iTunes, but is that because they’re locked-in by their iPod, or because they actually like it more than Windows Media Player or WinAmp or the many alternatives? My problem with it is it actively breaks some of the Windows interface standards, and tries to pretend you’re using a Mac. Will Safari do the same? Judging from the video demo, yes.

And what syncing software will ship with the iPhone? Will it be something that tries to encroach on the contacts and calendar territory of Outlook/Outlook Express, perhaps?

PS. Perhaps iTunes users will not have a choice but to install Safari, just like they’re forced into installing QuickTime now: Mary Jo Foley notes: “Jobs said that Apple plans to use iTunes as a distribution vehicle for Safari for Windows. He noted that there are a million downloads of iTunes a day, with 500 million of those going to Windows machines.”

PS. Midday. Joel Spolsky rips into it: “…it takes an insane amount of time to launch: 57 seconds… By comparison, Firefox takes about 3 seconds and Internet Explorer takes about 2.”

Is the (original) Xbox dead?

It’s amazing to see how quickly (original) Xbox games have disappeared. There’s still some on the shelves, but their space has shrunk markedly to make space for other platforms, and there’s nothing in most advertising — it’s all gone onto the Xbox 360.

Contrast that to the Playstation, where PS2 games are still being promoted along their PS3 companions, and even the newer games are still being developed and released for the PS2. Which reflects the massive install-base of the PS2 against the Xbox, I suppose. In fact, you can still buy a PS2 in the shops.

I have an old Xbox… I’m not ready to upgrade yet. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that I rarely have time for it, but I’m still enjoying PGR2 and Halo. Will I still be able to find games on the shelves in six months’ time? Probably. Twelve months? Who knows. You can still buy GBA games new.

When I bought my Xbox a few years ago, I pondered that buying it was actually a good way to fight back against the dominance of Microsoft, because they lose so much money on them. Turns out Microsoft reckoned they lost US$4 billion on the venture.

Influential games

Henry Lowood curator at the Stanford University History of Science and Technology collections has named the 10 most important video games of all time: Spacewar, Star Raiders, Zork, Tetris, Sim City, Super Mario Bros 3, Civilization, Doom, Warcraft and Sensible World Of Soccer. And I can understand why he’s gone for the most influential, rather than the most popular.

Pacman didn’t make the grade, but the new Pacman Championship edition for XBox 360 has just come out (available via XBox Live). And it appears to be a re-design (not just a graphical revamp) that attempts to bring new gameplay in, while not trying to break the fundamentals of the game (like the 80s and 90s Pacman sequel games did, trying to make the field 3D, or turning it into a platform game). Pictures. Review from Joystiq.

Paper and the metric system

Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about ISO paper sizes (such as A4), which is used worldwide. Well, except in North America. Maybe one day they’ll catch up. Maybe not. The article talks about the resultant difficulties of exchanging documents between North America and The Rest Of The World, and also notes the different hole punch standards.

It’s related to the uptake of metric, of course. So how many countries are resisting going to metric? According to this FAQ a survey some time ago concluded not many: Liberia, Burma, and the USA.

Mind you others, like the UK, haven’t totally switched, and still use imperial for things like distances.