- Major League Baseball claims that Slingbox, the device that allows people to watch their home TV feed remotely over the internet, is illegal. Legal experts say users are not breaking any laws by using the device. The Slingbox, essentially…allows people to watch cable they’ve already paid for from another location. Cable or satellite prices can be high enough, especially when we have to buy 800 channels to get the three we actually want…now we have to pay because we want to see it when we aren’t at home?
- This spring, the XPower Powerpack Solar, a 10-amp battery with a 5-watt solar panel will hit shelves. The $169 device can run a laptop for 3 hours and a TV for 45 minutes. It takes 40 hours of sunshine to charge it…so it may not take off as much as the company hopes…although they expect people will charge it at home and top it off on the road…Green is in…is that green?
- Scientists at the University of Utah have succeeded in building small devices to turn heat into sound and then electricity. The devices could be used to produce electricity from waste heat in various industries. For the home, it could cool electronics, specifically the cooling of computers…it would also make them more energy efficient. A thermo-acoustic cooling device could cost about $100-200.
- The Free Software foundation has launched Playogg.com to promote awareness of the open-source multimedia format OGG as an alternative to MP3 and AAC, which are proprietary. Support for OGG on desktops is fully mature, with a variety of programs….hardware players are limited, although various ones do and several others can be hacked. We use OGG on some of our systems…
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Things You Should Know About
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Dell Offers Three Systems with Ubuntu Linux
Dell will be offering systems with Linux, based on a customer demand. Three systems will be offering it to start…the XPS 410N(Starting price $849) and E520N(Starting price $599) desktop machines, and the E1505n(Starting price $599) notebook.
Initially, Dell will offer a subset of the component options they support on the three systems and will continue to work with vendors to improve the stability of the associated Linux drivers in order to offer more options as part of a longer-term goal to increase the number of drivers that work at the kernel level.
They have a video available about Linux from StudioDell entitled Linux 101: What’s all the Fuss?.
Ubuntu Linux is available free of charge for download for your existing systems at the Ubuntu Website. Ubuntu is divided into desktop and server editions released every six months. For those of you interested in switching to Linux for daily use…you might want to give it a try. We use Fedora Linux ourselves…but we are creatures of habit.
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Fedora 7 Released
We use Fedora Core Linux for many of our systems…especially the servers. Today, Fedora(which has dropped the Core from their distributions), released Fedora 7, codenamed Moonshine. We are downloading it for upgrade of our systems as we speak.
OS Upgrade time is always a happy time in our household. We use it as an excuse to dust our system interiors(you should do this regularly) and review our systems for possible hardware upgrades. This year, we’re gutting the interior of our main server. The old pieces will be reallocated to other functions.
For those of you considering jumping on the Linux bandwagon, Fedora 7 incorporates some exciting new features. You can take your Fedora installation disc(usually a full DVD) and customize it…adding or removing packages and software to install…thus you could create a distribution that only installs what you need it to…or that substitutes packages not included in the standard distribution…You can also create a LiveCD that will boot Fedora without needing a hard drive, and customize this as well.
Here are the release notes…Wait a few days to download it…it is going to be overloaded for a bit. We’re hoping it will improve some of the weaker areas of previous distributions…the release notes seem to indicate they’ve worked on those areas.
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U3 is Gone, and Good Riddance
U3, as we said…is gone. Sandisk, which owns the product…has decided to discontinue the product. We always had a problem with it. It tended to take too long to load…was much too slow.
We had recommended the menu launcher and accompanying open-source software from www.portableapps.com. The menu takes very little in terms of system resources and it is optional…the programs there can run without it.
Sandisk, however, has announced it will replace U3 with a new software and hardware solution. For this, they have joined forces with Microsoft. The new offering is expected to be commercially available in the second half of 2008. It will include TrustedFlash security technology. TrustedFlash embeds digital rights management software on the card instead of the player. We are not about to embark on another diatribe against the inconvenience of DRM…but having it on the media instead of the player can be an advantage.
GigaOm directed us to another product…MojoPac…which we hadn’t previously noticed. MojoPac allows you to install almost any application to a USB 2.0 compliant storage device, including iPods, USB hard drives, USB flash memory drives, etc. One downside is that the current version requires administrative privileges on the Host PC. U3 did not, nor do the PortableApps menu launcher. MojoPac is working on the issue for future versions though…although most solutions require the cooperation of the administrator.
We’ve been experimenting with bootable USB drives that can either act using the PortableApps series of open source portable applications or boot a complete Linux or Windows based operating system…We’ll have more on this later.
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The More You Know
Our colleagues at Flight Wisdom have switched to a mostly roundup-based format in order to report on more news that isn’t worthy of a full article…so we decided to give it a try over here.
- Verizon last month introduced a $2 fee for customers who don’t subscribe to long-distance service and don’t pay for a long-distance calling plan. It is nice to know that it costs money to NOT do business with Verizon as well as all the surcharges we pay for doing business with them. You can get rid of the charge…if you happen to notice it….by disconnecting your long-distance access…but that will cost $6.75.
- Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs contain mercury…and thus you are advised to dispose of them in compliance with local regulations…The Consumerist has its review of this story which made the rounds in the media…of a woman who broke one of these bulbs and was advised to call a toxic waste team at a cost of $2000 to clean up the mess. The bulb has less mercury than a thermometer. It is unnecessary to have it professionally cleaned. Just take proper care…clean completely and then clean yourself afterward.
- We got a kick out of this cheap network rack project…which uses cheap Rubbermaid letter trays to keep and stack network equipment in a simple and aesthetically pleasing ways. Have a look here.
- Vonage has set up a website called Freetocompete.com as a result of their current legal problems with Verizon. They want you to sign their petition to keep VoIP companies from being unfairly hassled by Verizon by claiming they own patents that cover all VoIP services.
- For those of youwho use or consider using third-party ink refills for your printer(refills not made by the printer manufacturer…check out this investigation by TrustReviews.
- Popular Mechanics did a test on the light quality of a set of Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs.
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FCC Chairman Supports Ala Carte Cable
We support ala carte cable…the idea that you can only buy the channels you want, rather than being forced to buy dozens of channels you otherwise wouldn’t watch. Well…FCC chairman Kevin Martin said it testimony he’d support legislation to force cable operators to allow them to purchase more programming on that basis.
Our current cable provider, Time Warner…with which we’ve had many problems…offers two digital packages…the Value Pack and the Standard Pack. On top of that, you can get sports extras, premium channels, and an HD package. Ideally, we’d prefer some more finely tuned options.
The cable companies insist that ala carte will increase the costs…as channels are often sold to them in blocks. However, they could sell them in much smaller blocks than they do now.
The Consumerist suggests you write John Kerry and have him write a letter to Martin.
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Dell to Offer New OS Options
Dell will once again be offering Windows XP on new machines, as well as Windows Vista. On their suggestion website, a plea to restore the option for XP racked up more than 10,700 votes. It will immediately offer XP again as an option for four models of Inspiron notebooks and two models of its Dimension desktops.
Dell has also said it plans to offer Linux as an option…also due to increased demand. It feels the issue is driver support, however. Their goal is to have all open-source drivers, and that means choosing components with such drivers available, or with the understanding the manufacturer will make them available. Currently, Linux device support can be hit or miss. If they sell a system…it must be preconfigured to work with all the hardware.
We have an Inspiron notebook that we loaded with Fedora Core linux…our current preference. It works flawlessly…after a slightly higher learning curve. Each component had to be configured.
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Vonage suffers
A Judge has ruled that Vonage cannot service new customers while it appeals a ruling that it violated Verizon’s patents for making phone calls. Vonage will only be allowed to serve its existing customers. Vonage’s stock fell to an all-time low on the announcement. A higher court has stayed that ruling, but it may be reestablished.
For more information, ZDNet has an analysis of the patent infringement. Most feel the language is too general for the accusation of infringement to hold up.
Vonage chief executive Mike Snyder has left the company, and founder and chairman Jeffrey Citron is taking over until a replacement is found. Citron is legally banned from associating with stockholders.
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AMD lowers Prices
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Experimenting with Operating Systems
We recently started experimenting with QEMU. QEMU is a generic and open source machine emulator and virtualizer.
As an emulator, it can run operating systems and programs made for one machine on another. It currently can emulate the ARM processor(used in routers and other embedded network hardware), SPARC, PowerPC, MIPS, and more are coming.
As a virtualizer, it can create a virtual computer than can run a complete operating system on it. There is an optional drive available to enhance speed.
QEMU runs on the command-line under Windows and Linux-based computers, but pops up a window or a full-screen display for the operating system it is virtualizing. We have used QEMU to experiment and test bootable CDs. These CDs boot a complete operating system and are often used for diagnostic testing on computers.
You can find the latest version of QEMU for Windows here.
To try QEMU out, get a CD image of a bootable CD in iso format, and run the following command:
qemu -cdrom [iso filename] -boot d
That will boot whatever iso you want in a virtualized window.
We’ll have more on QEMU in the future, but it is a great way to experiment with Linux and other operating systems, if you want to try them without major alterations to your system. For more information, try the QEMU on Windows wiki.