Tithe Repayment

Thanks to Steve Riley who brought this to my attention, there's an ex-parishioner who's been deconverted from false beliefs in a mythical/supernatural creator who has asked for his former church to return some of his tithes and has been granted his wish!

This is not like changing your mind and no longer liking the Haiti relief project, or the Chilean relief project, or any other project that had a goal based in reality.  It is realising that you've been mislead and told that to achieve some mythical goal you were indoctrinated to believe was true, you needed to give money.  That's fraud, people, plain and simple.  And all he was asking for is a return of some of this fraudulently obtained money.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Android Increases 4%, WinMo Decreases 4% and iPhone Treads Water

According to Gizmodo, it seems that while the iPhone treads water, gaining a mere 0.3% market share in the quarter Nov 09 - Jan 10, the big loser is Windows Mobile with a 4.0% market share loss.  Google dained 4.3% market share whilst RIM (Blackberry) gained 1.7% at the expense of Palm losing a further 1.7%, placing them now below Google's Android and at the bottom of the SmartPhone pack.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

XP Mode Without Hardware Virtualization

Thanks to Tony Albans for the info, here's a couple of links that show how to get the Windows 7 Pro, Ultimate and Enterprise "XP Mode" running on older computers that don't have hardware assisted virtualization.

First is a link on how to get this running with VMware Player.  Now, I've beein using VMware since 1.0 was released and it is a very solid virtualization platform.  The instructions here show you how to use VMware Player, a free virtualization client, to access the XP Mode install and integrate it with Windows 7.

The second link shows how to get this running properly with Sun's VirtualBox.  VirtualBox is free for personal and evaluation use as well as academic use, but not for use in any commercial situation.  There is a commercial license available and also an Open Source version, however the OSS version doesn't support USB pass-through.  Using the VMLite plugin allows XP Mode to integrate with the Windows 7 desktop.

So, out of these methods, I'd first suggest using new hardware with inbuilt hardware assisted virtualization as it will ensure a better experience.  Failing that, I'd recommend the VMware Player method, purely because it is a rock solid virtualization platform and it is licensed for use in all scenarios.

Finally, XP Mode is really only designed to be used for that one XP application from a LOB vendor who is so far behind the times they don't support Windows 7.  It isn't really designed for continued, production use.  However, it does work rather well!

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Microsoft Kills EBS

Well, it is now official.  Microsoft has killed EBS.  Although it was almost a good product, and with EBS version 2 looking like they had addressed some of the major shortcomings of the EBS 2008 release, Microsoft has blamed "new IT trends" for killing off EBS.

That's not quite right.

The totally and utterly abysmal Hands On Labs that were released as training for EBS, in which 100% of the 9 attendees in Brisbane has 100% of the labs fail went a long way to ensuring that none of us were actually interested in selling the product.  And after I reported back to both Microsoft (who wrote or at least commissioned the HOLs) and Excom who were the poor suckers who had to deliver them, the HOLs were pulled worldwide pending a rewrite.  A rewrite that never came, that is.  Microsoft didn't seem to want people to learn about EBS.

In addition to this, EBS wasn't really designed with a reseller channel in mind.  The Enterprise guys would only ever scoff at it because it was Wizard-driven and the SMB channel scoffed at it because it included System Center Essentials, an extremely heavy, slow system monitoring and management tool that didn't allow for remote monitoring and management in the way many of the MSP tools that we were already using did, meaning that if an SMB partner was to sell EBS, then they'd lose their MSP tool revenue stream and have a client stranded using SCE.

Yes, we mentioned this all to Microsoft when they first introduced the product.  But it was too late - the product was developed internally and then they needed to find a channel through which to sell it.  It shows that Microsoft not only doesn't really know their SMB channel all thatw ell, it shows that they don't know their larger SMB clients all that well, either.

So, with all the development that's gone into EBS version 2 up until now, Microsoft has decided to pull the product from sale as of 30 June, 2010.  The one thing that EBS clients will seriously miss when they take the offered upgrade to full products is Remote Web Workplace - the one other thing that EBS admins will miss is the Administration Console.

As to pricing, well, back during the waste of 2 days that was the EBS HOL, we as a group sat down and looked at Australian EBS pricing versus WS2K8 Ent + Exchange + SQL + an MSP product + a firewall that we're used to and EBS didn't stack up all that well back then.  Now with WS2K8R2 Ent being available as a base, and with either Exchange 2007 or 2010 being able to be run on it, EBS, at the price it was, is even less of interest.  Especially with the functionality that RDS on WS2K8R2 offers as a replacement (lame one, admittedly) for RWW.

Anyway, as it stands now, a product that wasn't really all that well thought out to start with, that was pushed through a channel who wasn't really all that interested in it because of both its FTMG and SCE components, that had an utter failure of a HOL released for it, that wasn't followed up by a functional HOL, that was under some serious development which was looking *rather* promising is being pulled by Microsoft because of "new IT trends".  Yeah, right - it is being pulled because it wasn't built nor targetted correctly in the first instance, because despite the feedback, it took Microsoft ages to address the big issues, and because, despite the fact that the version 2 is looking nice, the product didn't bring enough return, so the accountant running the once good technology company has pulled the product.

That's what you get for letting an accountant run a tech company!  :(

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Office 2010 Tech Guarantee

If you buy Office 2007 Full Packaged Product, Upgrade, Academic or OEM/MLK edition between 5th March, 2010 and 30th Sep 2010 (and it *must* be activated by 30th Sep, 2010), then you're likely eligible for the Tech Guarantee, as can be seen here.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Kiva Christians Reach US$1m Loaned

Congratulations to the Kiva Christians lending team on reaching the US$1m loaned milestone.  As a member of the AASFSHNR lending team, we are glad that you can join us as only the second lending team to reach this milestone (so far).  I did find it interesting that as you reached your US$1m milestone, we're closely approaching our US$1.666m milestone!  :)

I'm also pleased that the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster lending team is leading the "Religious Congregations" category (ahead of the Kiva Mormons), is on the second page of all teams and is making its way steadily towards their US$250k milestone on the way to the US$1m milestone.

All up, this friendly rivalry is benefitting the borrowers, allowing them to make their lives better - which is the real reason I'm an active Kiva lender.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Queensland: Altruistic Surrogacy Allowed

Finally, Queensland sees clear to make altruistic surrogacy legal.  Commercial surrogacy still remains a crime, but Laws making altruistic surrogacy a crime in Queensland will be repealed.

The new Laws will contain no discrimination on the basis of sex, meaning same sex couples can use a female friend to start a family.

Now personally, I think this is a great thing.  There are a number of couples who cannot have children for various reasons and if someone is willing to bear a child and adopt it out to that couple, then this cannot be a bad thing.  There are a number of parents who definitely don't deserve to have children, and I'd be willing to bet critical organs that those who participate in a program such as this will be some of the better parents, more suited to bringing up these children than a number of other couples that any of us could think of.

The children are likely to be less intolerant of those different from themselves and therefore better fit into society than children of, say, right-wing religious nutter parents who can't tolerate homosexuals, people with long hair, people with body art, people with a different god to theirs (not that theirs exists) and voters who vote for a different political party.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Judge: Users Are Responsible For Their Actions

In a win for clear thinking and sanity, the Australian Film and Television Industry lost a poorly targeted case against iiNet for what its users downloaded.  It is going to likely become a landmark case with regard to who's responsible for piracy - it looks like the legal system in Australia thinks that those who download pirated material are responsible for their own actions and the ISPs and/or carriers themselves are not responsible for the illegal actions of their users that are clearly *against* the AUPs of the ISPs and carriers anyway.

So, sanity rules - this time!  :)

I'm a big believer in being responsible for your own decisions and actions and not blaming others for your choices.  And it seems that Justice Dennis Cowdroy agrees with me: "It is impossible to conclude that iiNet has authorised copyright infringement ... (it) did not have relevant power to prevent infringements occurring."  The judge also ordered the studios pay the court costs.

Now, don't think that I condone piracy for a second - but I don't blame iiNet any more than Microsoft for enabling users to download pirated material - after all, not only did they use iiNet's Internet connectivity, many of them used a Microsoft Operating System to access the Internet - so if iiNet was responsible, then Microsoft should have been, too.  And the Electricity authority who provided the power.  And Laser or whoever manufactured the blank DVDs that the pirated content was burned onto.  And Seagate or whoever made the hard drives that stored the pirated content.  You may now see how ridiculous this claim that the AFTI made against iiNet truly was.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Security vs Safety

In quite a decent article on CNET News, Elinor Mills interviewed 32 experts in security and came up with the content for her article.  She also quotes ESET (the makers of NOD32), who released the results of a recent survey in which they found (not surprisingly) that Mac users were not only victims of cybercrime just as frequently as PC users, but that they perceived that they were less likely to be a cybercrime victim.

I call this the "ostrich defence" (or, more correctly, the "Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal Defence") where people mistakenly thought that ostriches buried their heads in the sand when they were in danger, thinking that if they can't see their attacker that their attacker can't see them.  Obviously, when it comes to ostriches this is a fallacy (there are still ostriches alive today), however when it comes to Apple users, well, this looks to be the way they are treating security.  Look at their response to Elinor's request for comment as a good example of the emphasis Apple places on open discussion about their security.

My take is that security and safety are two very different things.  When you look at the two current OSes - Apple's OS-X Snow Leopard and Microsoft's Windows 7 - generally the experts all tend to agree that there's very little between them, with Windows 7 being the more secure OS and Snow Leopard being the safer one to use.  The reason that Snow Leopard is safer is not because it is more secure (it isn't) but because there is a smaller installed base and therefore a lower financial reward for malware authors to target this platform.

Apple's market share rose dramatically as the result of Windows Vista.  Even now it is around 5-7% of market share depending what sources you read.  That's not a lot.  It took just 4-5 weeks for Windows 7 to reach this market share, showing how small a player Apple's Mac OS-X really is.  That clearly explains why it is such a small target for malware authors, regardless of its lower security than Windows 7.

Windows XP is still the largest shareholder and the biggest target for malware.  As Windows XP, released in 2001 and patched three major times since, is now 9 years old, you can understand why it has security issues in 2010.  As users move towards Windows 7, I can honestly see the number of successful attacks dropping and malware authors starting to look more seriously at OS-X.

Another issue - the biggest issue - is the wetware, not the hardware nor software.  Wetware is sometimes referred to as "PEBKAC".  Yes, I'm talking about the user themselves.  It doesn't matter how secure an operating environment is, if a user is determined to enter their password to download a browser plugin to watch the cute dancing pig, then they have made this secure environment unsafe.

This is why we strongly recommend against regular users having Administrator rights - users are users (ie, they use the system) and administrators are administrators (ie they administer the system) and even an administrator's regular daily account shouldn't have administrator rights as far as I'm concerned.

Windows Vista, the slothlike behemoth of an OS that it was, introduced some good security concepts, however they were very poorly implemented, making the slothlike OS even more unbearable to use.  Many of these were fixed in SP1, but Microsoft had done their dough by then.  Fortunately Microsoft learned from their legion mistakes with Vista and Windows 7 is a much, much nicer OS to use that retains and actually enhances the security introduced in Vista.

It is quite often the applications running on the computer that contain the vulnerabilities that are being exploited.  A classic example is Adobe Reader - one of the applications with huge amounts of security issues.  It TRULY is in need of a complete rewrite.  If you don't keep your operating system *and* applications updated, then you're neither safe nor secure.

So, safe behavior is more important than a secure OS - this isn't really news, but with decently secure OSes now available, safe usage practices become more important as social engineering attacks become more prevalent.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Battery Technology

I do a bit of work in various fields that rely on batteries to run equipment - laptops, servers, desktops, cameras, microphones, IFB, in ear monitors, remote controls, clocks, smoke alarms, building alarms, emergency exit lights, hearing aids and a great deal more.  Because of this, developments in battery technology are somewhat important to me.  So, why not share?  :)

Now, we're talking about two main types of batteries here - the batteries that work when you buy them (primary batteries) and those that don't work when you buy them (broken batt...  oops, secondary batteries) as you need to charge them before using them.

Well, let's forget the Zinc-carbon dry cell as it is crap at pretty much anything - it does run at 1.5V, but it has a low output, low life, limited usefulness.  We'll also completely diss Zinc Chloride (aka Heavy Duty) batteries as they are only very slightly less crap than Zinc-carbon batteries.

That leaves us with the commonly used 1.5V Alkaline (Zinc-Manganese Dioxide) and Lithium (really, Lithium-Manganese Dioxide (mainly) at 3.0V or Lithium Iron Disulfide at 1.5V) primary batteries and various secondary, or rechargeable batteries.  I'll mention both Zinc-air (used mainly for hearing aids) and Silver Oxide batteries here to complete the picture, but will summarily ignore them from this point forward.

As for secondary batteries, I'll immediately ignore Lead Acid batteries (2.1V/cell) as I'm really thinking more of portable batteries in this post.  And I don't mean portable if you wrap a car around it!  :)

Now, NiCads, or NiCd if you spell it properly, are the most inexpensive, most common of secondary batteries.  They are fine for things such as remote control cars, but are crap for radio microphones, IFBs, IEMs and many other things such as smoke alarms and remote controls - mostly because of their 1.2V cells.  The Cadmium in these is a significant environmental hazard and these batteries are being phased out in a number of countries because of this.  They also suffer a "memory effect" where if they are not fully discharged before being recharged, they will o0nly discharge that far before thinking they are empty - this can be addressed sometimes with the use of deep cell recycling/rejuvenation, but there are better battery technologies around.

Like NiMH - Nickel Metal Hydride.  These have the same issue of being a 1.2V cell, making them still not ideal for devices designed for 1.5V cells, such as many radio mics, IFBs and IEMs, however they have the ability to withstand higher discharge rates than Alkaline batteries.  The original NiMH batteries have a crap shelf life - use immediately after charging as they lose 10% of their original charge after 2-3 weeks and about 35% after a year.  Newer "low self-discharge" NiMH batteries lose only about 5% after 2-3 weeks and 15% after a year - they can therefore be quite usable off the shelf most of the time.

Lithium Ion secondary cells have been around for a while now, however they are ~3.6V/cell, making them not so usable in AA/AAA cells, but great as laptop batteries.  They are lighter than pretty much any equivalent secondary battery, however they suffer poor cycle life - each recharge causes them to lose a bit of life expectancy.  They also don't handle high charge rates nor discharge rates well at all.  They are not very good with heat and can explode if overheated or overcharged.  Lithium-polymer cells (Lithium-ion polymer, to be correct) are a variation on this theme which offers a higher energy/weight ratio and a more physically robust design at the expense of needing to be quite carefully recharged.

Then there's the new (well, patented in 1901) Nickel-Zinc batteries at 1.6V/cell that are also looking promising.  They are currently commonly available as AA or AAA cells, however with low environmental impact, high cell voltage (usable in devices that can't run on the 1.2V cells of NiCD or NiMH batteries), fast recharge times, mAh ratings similar to Alkaline batteries, costs approaching those of Alkaline batteries, around 1000 recharges, however with very little real information on self-discharge rates.

So, it looks like for regular 1.2V secondary cells in devices that can handle them, the newer LSD-NiMH batteries, even though they will take fewer recharges (compared to normal NiMH cells) are the way to go, and NiZn in devices that don't work well on 1.2V secondary cells.  I'd really like to see some comparisons on discharge curves of the NiZn vs Alkaline batteries.  I'd like to see NiZn batteries and chargers available in Australia, too!

I could spend a boatload of time Googling everything and anything related to thes ebattery technologies, looking for discharge rates and lifetime plots and such, but I'm very unlikely to find any real comparative figures across different technologies.  I know that the Sanyo Eneloop site has some decent information comparing NiMH and their LSD NiMH Enerloop batteries, and Stefan Vorkoetter has done some more research on these and a few other LSD NiMH batteries.

Out of interest, you *can* recharge some Alkaline cells with varying degrees of success.  You *cannot* do this in a regular NiCd, NiMH, Li-ion nor NiZn charger.  Depending on how discharged they become, you can charge them up to a few hundred cycles, but in normal use, this will drop to a couple of dozen recharges at most.  A risk with recharging regular (especially Duracell) Alkaline batteries is cell leaks, which I can assure you, definitely does happen.  :)

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie