Scientist Implants 'PC Virus' on Self

Thursday, May 27, 2010

0 comments
The headlines immediately grabbed my attention: Man Infects Himself With Computer Virus, Scientist Infected by PC Virus, Human Carries Computer Virus in Implant for the First Time, Scientist Implants Virus-Infected Chip In Himself. Sounds like something you'd read in a few years. But these are headlines that dominated news sites in the last 24 hours.

RFID For DummiesRFID’s, fondly nicknamed ‘arphids’ by many a geek, have been used for several years now as a means of tracking stuff. The most common example I’ve seen is tracking inventory as it is delivered from warehouse to store. I’ve also seen them on CD’s in music stores and in clothes stores. When you go to the cashier to pay for your purchases, they take the RFID’s off. Security scanners near the door of the store bleat when one is taken out of the store premises. Useful :-)

Well, British scientist Dr. Mark Gasson has an RFID chip on his arm. RFID implants aren't new. Researchers have experimenting on ways to make these chips useful for the last 2 decades at least. Implants like these have so far been limited to storing information like medical histories on Medical Alert bracelets that emergency medical teams can use when patients are unconscious. They have also been used to store information about the person's identity, like in the case of passports. In the case of Dr. Gasson's research, he's using it as a swipe badge, allowing him entry to certain portions of their labs in the University of Reading. Although this isn't new (see this article from 2005 on a man who used a similar implant to unlock secured doors: http://www.theinternetpatrol.com/washington-man-has-hand-implanted-with-rfid-uses-hand-to-unlock-door/), Gasson took it further by implanting a benign virus in the implant. The virus replicated itself when it came in contact with scanning devices and again on RFID's that were scanned by these 'infected' devices.

RFID SecurityAs with other hacks associated with RFID's, this isn't astoundingly new. But the headlines sure do get your attention. With news like these grabbing headlines, I hope lawmakers and governments think twice about requiring RFID's in passports, vehicle identification and other sorts of tracking schemes. If there's anything to be gleamed from this experiment, it's that RFID's need to be made even more secure before they are even considered useful to confirm the legitimacy of identities.

Cheaper Ultra-Thin Notebooks on the Horizon

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

0 comments
Intel announced new Consumer Ultra-Low Voltage (CULV) processors for its latest generation i-Series processor line-up. This is a significant move for Intel in that it also announced that the pricing for these consumer processors will be lower as compared to previous generations of ULV's.


ASUS Eee PC Seashell 1005PE-MU17-BK 10.1-Inch Black Netbook (Up to 11 Hours of Battery Life)The shift is seen by tech journalists to be in-line with recent trends in the market reeling from the popularity of netbooks. Though netbooks are seen as under-powered when compared to mainstream notebooks, the low price point has induced tremendous growth in adoption by consumers. It has also caused notebook manufacturers to rethink how they market ultra-thin notebooks, formerly known as ultra-portables, because of the close similarities in form factor.


Think about it. Five years ago ultra-thin notebooks were considered premium notebooks, priced well above mainstream notebooks. Just take a look at PC World or PC Magazine for reviews of ultra-portables released around 5 years ago and you'll see what I mean. With the creation of a new niche for netbooks, with screen size ranging from 7-11", ultra-thin notebooks with 12-13" LCD's were on the verge of gathering dust in store shelves and stock rooms. To a prospective buyer, they'd rather have a smaller screen if it means they can tote it around and not pay a premium for it. They would have fewer qualms about it being slower if it's a whole lot cheaper.


MSI U230-033US 12.1-Inch Netbook - 4 Hour Battery LifeBecause of that, manufacturers have of late been repositioning the ultra-thin notebooks in a performance and price niche slightly above netbooks but with less power than mainstream notebooks. Their main selling points have been maintained though - low-power consumption that extends battery life and small form factor that makes it light and very portable. Screen sizes are still 12-13", which snugly fits the niche between netbooks and mainstream laptops. To give you a sense of what your money can fetch for you, you can get an Intel CULV-powered MSI x400 for $390 now. An AMD Neo-powered MSI U210 sells for about $407. Both definitely have more powerful processors than the Atom on netbooks. Both have lithe frames, slightly better video and slightly larger LCD's than netbooks. Battery performance is better on netbooks with smaller screens, but CULV laptops still have it better than mainstream notebooks. If you've got the money, you can go a more powerful Core 2 Duo SU7300 CULV processor like the one they packed on the MSI X350. It costs $890, still in the mainstream notebook price range, but as portable as any 13" laptop you'll find. There's also the 11" Alienware m11x for those who cannot do without World of Warcraft on the road. The Alienware m11x will set you back $799 for the base model.


Intel's announcement of cheaper, more power-efficient CULV processors to beef up it latest generation will make for cheaper ultra-thin notebooks. There are also several laptops powered by the latest generation of AMD Neo processor (take for example MSI's U230) that will compete with Intel's CULV offerings. This will make for more products choices should you want to get something with a little more processing heft than a netbook. Bottom line, more choice is always better for us consumers.

OpenDNS - Faster DNS, Faster Internet

Friday, May 21, 2010

0 comments
I've been wondering for a few weeks why my internet connection had started slowing down the last few weeks and I haven't been able to figure out what was causing it. Last night I finally got it figure out. I had almost always used OpenDNS as my DNS server whenever I configure my machines (I wrote a post about how to do that here: http://techthroes.blogspot.com/2010/03/use-opendns-to-protect-yourself.html). Well 2 or so weeks ago, while troubleshooting a slow internet connection, I changed the settings on my machine to PLDT's default DNS servers. I made a mental note to instead set up OpenDNS on the router instead so I wouldn't have to do that on each of my machines. Guess what? I forgot to do it on the router - LOL.

DNS for DummiesSo last night I remembered what I forgot to do while trying to isolate the cause of my slow connection. Pages took too long to load, about 2-3 minutes to load a page like SpeedTest.net. I was slower with large pages like Facebook or even Blogger. I decided to try using OpenDNS again. This time, I set it up on the router. Guess what? Every page I threw at my browser suddenly loaded a lot more faster. Facebook loaded in about 5 seconds. Blogger in 4 seconds. A welcome surprise was my torrent downloads, Linux images mind you, became  inexplicably faster. I'm not a networking wizard, so I can't figure out how resolving DNS addresses can make downloads faster. I can understand how that would make finding other computers seeding the images would be, but I'm amazed that the overall download speeds have shot back up to what they were before my troubles started.

Anyway, I'm just glad that it sped up. I can finally have the computer finish downloads faster. That means I wouldn't have to leave the computer on as long as it does when downloads take longer to finish.

SSD's - Speed vs Cost

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

2 comments
The speed of your computer depends a lot on the parts that you put into it. Most focus on the processor, video card and RAM. True, these components do improve performance dramatically should you choose to buy the fastest of the lot. But often the hard drive is taken for granted. A performance boost can definitely be had when upgrading to your hard drive the fastest available in the market. Right now, the fastest are the Solid-State Drives (SSD).

Intel 40 GB X25-V Value SATA II MLC Solid State Drive - Retail Box SSDSA2MP040G2R5SSD's offer speeds at par with your system memory or RAM. To give you a sense of how fast that is in practical terms, say you installed Windows on an SSD. If you click on an icon to launch your browser, it will launch in 1-2 seconds. Compare that to 3-5 seconds when your Windows is installed on a regular spindle drive. That's one heck of a performance boost, wouldn't you say? It also consumes less power, owing to the fact that it does not have any moving parts. That makes it ideal for stretching battery life in between charges in notebooks.

SSD's are not without cons. Owing to the process of how the data is made persistent in SSD's (remember, RAM looses the data when the computer's turned off, SSD don't), they actually wear out with repeated use. That's why it was necessary to incorporate technology to level out the wear. Data on SSD's aren't written in the same manner as spindle drives. An extra chip on SSD's monitors how many times a certain bit is written to and assigns new data to other parts to spread the wear out to different bits. In traditional spindle drives, data is written in sequence. When data is deleted, that skipped over portion (because it used to have data) is written over with new data. That's why you need to defragment spindle drives to re-arrange related data nearer to each other.

SSD's are also expensive at this time. Take for example the Intel X25-V is priced at US$125, or US$3.12 per GB. The OCZ Onyx, touted as one of the first sub-$100 SSD, is currently priced at US$90 for a 32GB model. That's roughly US$3 per GB. Kingston's SSD Now V Series, touted as an X25-V with a different controller by Anandtech, costs US$90 for a 32GB model and US$115 for a 40GB model. The cheapest still goes for about US$3 per GB, roughly Php126 and change per GB. At that price point, the money you'll shell out for a 40GB SSD will fetch you a 1.5 TB desktop drive in comparison. The prices have been coming down in the last few months as manufacturing costs are brought down by new advancements. However, don't expect them to be as affordable as spindle drives any time soon.

Seagate Barracuda 7200 1.5 TB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s 32MB Cache 3.5 Inch Internal Hard Drive ST31500341AS-Bare DriveI've been mulling over buying one for the past months. I have an Atom desktop that I chose to build precisely because of it's thrifty use of power. Adding an SSD to my rig would increase the power savings and lower the temperature inside the case. Using an SSD as a boot drive, the Seagate 500GB drive I currently have would make a great secondary drive for data. For these tough times though, value for money is still the priority. Speed will have to wait, at least for now.

Treo 650: Error 720B, Error 0x121A

Saturday, May 1, 2010

0 comments
Palm Treo 650 - Smartphone - GSMI got these errors out of nowhere. When I tried to launch the web browser, it just stalls and shows Error 720B. When I tried opening my network settings I got Error 0x121A. So here's how I resolved it.


I tried searching for  Error 720B, but i couldn't find any references. I tried looking up Error 0x121A. I found this post in the Palm Forums: http://forums.palm.com/t5/Wireless-Providers/Looking-for-serious-help-here/m-p/199229/highlight/true#M4919


If you're a Treo 650 user, you probably know that if you insert a SIM in unlocked Treo, it will get the GPRS settings automatically from the network and just work. Well, as far as I can tell you get this error when that doesn't happen. But mine worked perfectly for almost a year since my last Zero Out reset. So it seems my phone sort of forgot what the network settings were. Bear in mind that when I say network, I only mean the GPRS (internet  and data) network settings, and not the phone network settings. The phone functions, calling and text messaging, were not affected. Well, except for MMS, since that is dependent on the phone's data connection.


Palm 3184WW Battery for Palm Treos 650, 700w, 700p, and 700wxAnyway, not wanting to do a hard reset which requires restoring all my apps afterwards, I tried a soft reset first. On Treo's that is done by taking the battery out for 10 seconds. I booted the phone up and it spent a little longer that usual to get a signal from Smart. After that I check on network settings and there were new entries for Smart GPRS, Smart Internet and Smart MMS. The damaged profiles where still there so I had to deleted them to clean it up. After that I tested it by sending an MMS to my wife and it started working again. 


Posting this because this information might come in handy for all you Treo 650 users, who like me still hold on to their tried and tested companion :-)
Free Ground Shipping on Orders $125 or more at EpsonStore
Stop PC Crashes with WinZip System Utilities

Copyright © 2011 Tech Throes | Splashy Free Blogger Templates with Background Images, Trucks