Watch the video below for a simple and genius attack at hardware encryption.
Category: Technology
Every so often, something catches my eye, and I get the impulse to blog about it… This time is no different. That’s right, like many of you out there, I’m waiting for a Wii… but I’ve already have my eyes on add-ons already – Wii Fit. This particular add-on brings you a pressure sensitive pad/controller. Kudos to Nintendo for your design. Could you imagine how many possibilities it opens up when you combine it with the Wiimote, and the nunchuk?
Below are pictures of it, courtesy of Nintendo.
Some ingenius rendition of the 24 paired with old-school technology and some really bad hair. To quote engadget, “How did Jack Bauer ever get by without his magical Treo? We figure it must’ve involved a whole lot more eyeball threatening than he usually manages to cram into a season of 24. Also, according to CollegeHumor’s “unaired 1994 pilot” episode, it involved a pager and some really bad early 90’s hair.
So, it’s true; MacBook Air is born; it’s definitely sexy, no to mention the .16″ thin, 13.3″ LED-lit LCD display form factor. Head over to: http://www.apple.com/macbookair/, and click on Design to see it.
engadget will have its hands-on very soon: http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/15/apple-macbook-air-first-hands-on/
5. Slimming down Windows. Windows, like bacon, naturally comes with a lot of features and other background-running programs, called services, that gobble up resources. Now, these little programs make sense on desktops that may encounter a variety of foreign hardware (i.e. an obscure specialty printer, and archaic storage devices). However, if you’re using EEE PC like it’s designed to be used, i.e. a ultra-mobile platform, chances are you wouldn’t need all those programs.
The best way to trim the fat is at the beginning when you’re installing windows. nLite is a program just for that. With any windows installation CD, you can create your own customized set of features to be installed. The program then compiles your own customized Windows XP Installation CD. Pretty powerful program.
4. Use the “Customize” mode whenever installing programs. Like Windows, program installations often carry unneeded features. Stuff like help files, non-native language packs. For example, a full installation of Office 2007 Enterprise has programs like Access, Infopath, Groove – chances are you’ve never heard of them, and therefore won’t need them. For another instance, we really don’t need to have Google Toolbar occupying more screen estate whenever we install acrobat.
3. Use Open Source equivalents. Open source programs are almost always free, and are comparable in features and perforamcne to its commercialized counterpart. The term open source refers to software that are usually collaboratively developed by having its source code freely available. (source codes are like the blueprint to a building. By having it freely available means that anyone who knows how to modify the blueprint can do so.)
There are alternates to PDF programs. There are alternates to image editing programs, GIMP. Installing Acrobat Reader (~20 MB) might be overkill and possibly straining on the system when a 3MB alternate gets the job done.
2) Offload your files. With the limited hard drive space of the EEE PC, it makes sense to carry your documents somewhere else. Leave the hard drive for the operation of the system. Consider carrying your documents on a fast USB memory stick. Better yet, carry them on a SD card as the Eee PC has a SD slot. Be sure to purchase a SD HC card, which functions much faster and has a higher capacity than regular SD cards. SD HC cards are rated by “Class”: Class “6″, which is what you should get, is faster than Class 4, which is faster than Class 2.
1) Optimize XP. The history of the Windows legacy is such that is OLD, and such that it is akin to a pair of jeans that’s been patched and patched and patched over the years. Unlike the Mac operating system, the need to support centry-old (in computers time) hardware means that it needs to keep everything with each revision.
As such, there are many things you can do to optimize it. http://www.tweakxp.com/performance_tweaks.aspx is a great page. Disk Clean-Up, and reducing the internet cache comes to mind as the simplest ones.
Those who knows me know about my geeky side. In my lil box in Res at Queen’s, I run three computers, which keeps my room nice and warm. Before you strike me down with your eco-friendly arguments, there is a purpose to the madness (or hotness). I’m finding the cure to cancer.
My computer is part of an international network of computers that analyses and predicts protein shapes. The project amasses the power of computers around the world when it isn’t doing anything that is calculation-intensive, i.e. 99% of the time that a computer is turned on. The CPU is only active when say, you open a file, starts a program; otherwise, it sits there idle not doing anything useful.
The particular project that I belong to is called BOINC, which stands for Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing. It’s free. You download a small program, which then acts as an intermediary, sort of a controller, of all the different projects that you can sign up for. There is one that predicts global warming, one that cure cancers, one that solves mathematical problems, among others.
As of Dec 30, 07, I now rank at 18,868 of all users, and have contributed 98.445% more processing than others. 
Your computer is probably not realizing its full potential. Why don’t you give it a try?
For your extra reading pleasure: Wikipedia’s page on BOINC