Computers & Technology News Comments 2006-09-29
This APC article has a direct link to an unsecured MS page allowing you to download vista! If your company blocks P2P (protocol obscufiation helps, but having outgoing connections blocked on BitTorrent, Emule and Emule’s default ports and a LowID – incoming connections blocked on nearly all ports – = much fewer peers) and you have no broadband at home, here’s your chance to leech it from work!
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Lots of leakage! Why do they need to keep all this secret (The titles and basic details at least)?? Well hopefully a few of the downloaders immortalized the leak on Emule or BitTorrent. Emule is more effective in immortialization because things stay on this network longer. I probably will not indulge in the leak as I don’t hoard game art very aggressivly, considering that the leak archive is a whole 2GB.
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I wished the Soren Johnson guy would leak more. I hate that word, ‘IP’. Just charts, diagrams, some screenies if not ugly, and detailed descriptions. The 2GB archive full of source art and maybe source code is nice, but not neccesary, at least for me. But I don’t benefit from source art than some others might though.
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The First ZDNet Article forgot to mention 3-days/3-plays hardware-DRM. For wi-fi beamed songs. Even on non-DRM mp3s and AACs. Easy to crack though. Copy-out and copy-back in for non-DRM, copy-out, fairUse4wm, copy-back in for the DRM songs, assuming Zune’s software doesn’t have library-level supplementary DRM (by reading the wi-fi flag from the zune itself and setting the flag in the ‘music library’).
I assume Zune will not be accessible as a USB mass storage device (like pen drives and generic external hard drives).
I don’t think I want a Zune, either. I’ll stick with the generic jukeboxes (none have screens yet, just a/v outs which can connect to headphones, and have no battery or inferior battery life, but no DRM!!).
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Hmm looks like a 42% false-positive rate with WGA. Looks like many are cause by program incompatibilities, especially registry cleaners that delete keys that WGA is looking for. I have an idea for the non-profit, just to cause trouble fraudsters that have internet access inside jail and lots of time — use your harvested credit cards to the WGA failure page (Try changing Error=8 in the querystring to Error=1 or 3,9,11,13) ! That will stir up lots of trouble. Microsoft largely follows Rule of Acquisition #1 – Once you have their money, never give it back, and #19 – Satisfaction is not guaranteed. MS don’t follow all the ferengi rules, but enough to make me think of them.
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Alienware 7700/9700 and Dell XPS should switch to NIMH. Current XPS notebooks is 9 cells – 3 banks of 3 cells, and Alienware is 12 cells – 3 banks of 4 cells.
NIMH AA-size cells are 2800mah x 1.2V and Lithium-Ion AA-size cells are 750mah x 3.6 v. Scale both to 3 cells, and it is 2800mah @ 3.6v for NIMH (series) vs 2250MAH @ 3.6V (paralell). NIMH has 24.4444% more power density!
Using the same ratio and up-scaling to 14500 sized cell, the 14500 is 2200mah, and Li-Ion is 8200mah. 3 banks of 3 or 4 2200mah Li-Ion cells is 6600mah (depending on voltage needed). 1 bank 9 or 12 of scaled-equivilant 18500-size NIMH cells is 8200mah!.
NIMH would need 1 bank of 9 cells for Dell XPS and 1 bank of 12 cells for Alienware, the same exact count, but NIMH would provide more power density. Great alternative if the new zinc technology doesn’t work out! I think Li-Ion 18500 batteries are the same radius as C / LR14 batteries but are longer, but I can’t find any equivilancy comparisons between the size systems. But either way, NIMH is not toxic in landfills, and they tend to explode less when shorted, and don’t need protection ICs.
