Tech Droppings

Did your earpiece go silent in your Droid Incredible?

2010-12-02T19:52:00.000-08:00

About a month ago when answering a call with my Verizon HTC Droid Incredible I realized that I could not hear the person. I switched on speakerphone and was able to hear them just fine. If I switched off speakerphone, everything went silent on my end. This carried on for about a week and I got fed up with it. I did some searching on the Internet and found that there seems to be a variety of Android phone users who have had this problem sometime after their phones were updated to Android 2.2 from 2.1. I called HTC. They were useless. Of course it was a weekend and I would have to call back during normal business hours, bla, bla, bla. I popped off the battery and left it unpowered like that overnight. The next day it started working again. It's been fine for a few weeks now. I just wanted to put this out there so someone with this problem might find it and try this tip.

What would you like to see added to the 2nd-gen iPad?

2010-11-19T21:15:00.001-08:00

These are some things that I think could be added to the next generation iPad which I think would help make it a better device.

Carbon fiber housing to reduce the overall weight
Physical rotation lock switch (removed in 4.2)
knurled edges (or rubber hand grips)
Verizon LTE and At&t HSPA+
SD Card Slot
8 Megapixel Camera (rear)
2 Megapixel Camera (front)
facetime
Wireless mat charging capability
Ability to charge on 500mA of current like most other USB devices
Ability to change the built-in sounds with any sound I want
Built-in mic for voice commands and voice notes
Retina Display
more RAM
Ability to save home screen layouts to a file with import capability
thermometer
barometer
altimeter
compass
GPS
Gyroscope
vibration
multiple user-configurable physical buttons and switches

Oh yeah, and one more thing. Bring the price down by at least $100.

Is your thumb drive showing the wrong capacity?

2010-11-02T11:10:00.000-07:00

I have a SanDisk Cruzer Micro 16GB thumb drive which I was messing around with and tried to make it bootable by ghosting a bootable image onto it. The image was too large so it failed but it left my drive in a state where it only had a 32 MB partition. Yikes! so I scoured the web looking for a utility which can restore the drive to it's original capacity and I found this one:

HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool 2.2.3

I can vouch for this tool that it does work!

Is your device not responding to remote commands? Read this.

2010-10-03T13:13:00.000-07:00

For the last couple of months, my DirecTV DVR (Model HR23-700) was not responding to the remote some times and other times it would respond just fine. There's a small blue indicator on the front of the DVR which flashes when it detects an infrared command from the remote. When the DVR was not responding to the remote, this light would not flash.

1. It's not the remote

I use a Logitech Harmony One remote for my entire setup and the Harmony controls all other devices just fine. Only the DVR had problems, so I know it was not the remote. Just to be sure, I tried the manufacturer's remote when the problem occurred and the problem did not go away with the use of a different remote.

2. It's not the DVR

I did some research online that suggests that that there might be infrared light coming from somewhere else in the room that is interfering with the receiver. Possbile sources of this IR light include: Daylight, CFL Bulbs, LCD TVs. Since the problem happened at night, I know it wasn't daylight. It also happened even when there were no lights turned on in the room. So I tried turning off the TV. Problem went away instantly. Wait a minute, what?

3. Something about the TV

If it is the TV, why does it not happen at all sometimes? I researched some more and found that LCD TVs can emit a lot of IR light when they are "warming up." In my case it was my backlight reaching full brightness. Most LCD TVs, except for those marketed as "LED TVs" use a compact fluorescent bulb that goes all the way around the edge of the TV as a backlight. Apparently, this backlight can take a few minutes to reach full brightness. And during this time, there is a ton of infrared light leaking out of the display. It's been referred to online as the "IR leaking" phenomenon.

4. Why now?

I couldn't imagine that the problem would just start happening all of a sudden. For almost a year I have not had a single issue with this DVR. On one online AV forum I read a suggestion to try adjusting the backlight brightness. That's when I remembered that a couple of months ago I calibrated my TV for the best picture using the Digital Video Essentials HD Basics Blu-Ray disc. As part of the calibration I had turned my backlight brightness down from 50% to about 30%. That must be what caused this problem to suddenly appear.

5. The fix

When I had just turned everything on, and the DVR was not responding due to the backlight warming up, I opened up the TV settings and adjusted the backlight brightness. I kept trying the DVR remote and it started working consistently as soon as I reached about 40% brightness. I put it back to 50% just for good measure. This fixed the problem. Now I can hit the "watch TV" activity on my Harmony remote and everything gets turned on and I can control the DVR right away without getting the interference from the TV.

6. Bottom line

I have a Vizio VO32LF which is a 32 inch Full HDTV. Apparently when the TV is properly calibrated, it leaks IR light for the first 20-30 minutes which interferes with my DirecTV DVR. I imagine that other devices might be susceptible as well but I haven't personally seen it. This problem is not unique to this TV either, as other people have reported that they have this problem with other brand / model TVs. I have read that it can even happen with plasma TVs. LED TVs seem to be immune to this problem from what I have learned.

A solution to the fully-electric car charging problem

2010-08-14T18:14:00.000-07:00

The problem with existing fully-electric cars is that there is no simple way to charge them and be able to take them long distances. The ideas below are my attempt to solve this problem for the future of electric vehicles.

A simple solution to the Electric car charging problem is to have removable batteries. If the batteries are removable they can be exchanged. These are some considerations in the manufacture of the batteries and their distribution.

Electric cars must be made to use removable batteries.
All Electric cars must use the same exact batteries so they are interchangeable.
The batteries must be made with handles and must either be light enough to carry long distances or made with wheels attached which are sufficient size so they can be easily rolled long distances on pavement, gravel, or loose dirt.
The batteries must be at the appropriate height in the vehicle to be inserted and removed from both the vehicle and the charging stations by a disabled person in a wheelchair.
Gas stations and other stores must clearly mark on the outside of the building that they offer charged batteries for rent or for sale, and be able to exchange depleted batteries for charged ones. This is the EXACT SAME concept as propane tanks.
Electric car owners may carry spare batteries in the vehicle so the batteries must be well sealed, be able to be stored at any angle for long periods of time and be protected against high temperatures and extreme cold.
Electric car owners must be able to buy and charge their own batteries at home, charging them via a normal household mains socket.
Vehicle manufacturers must offer an out-of-vehicle charging station to be used with the batteries, in addition to offering an in-vehicle charging solution which does not require the batteries to be removed for charging.

Future technologies, part 1

2010-07-22T19:58:00.000-07:00

Device resolution-independent computer operating systems

In the past, we had CRT monitors which would allow us to fill a 15 inch monitor with an image, whether that image was based on a high resolution or a low resolution. If you desired the items on the screen to appear larger, you needed only to reduce the resolution selected for the interface and they would scale to fill the entire space available. This did not result in fuzzy images, in fact it usually sharpened the images to do so. When we started using LCD displays for computers things changed. These panels have a fixed, native resolution. That means they only look sharp at that one particular resolution. If you change it to something else, you get a blurry image, and that can sometimes defeat the purpose of changing the resolution to make things bigger. Resolution independence will be a huge advantage for older people and others who have trouble seeing text at normal sizes. Rather than "dumbing-down" the resolution to make things appear bigger, the way they do today, I imagine a future where the operating system's selected resolution is always set to the native resolution of the connected display. Imagine an operating system which can scale its interface up or down in size smoothly while keeping the resolution unchanged. There may even be a slider or a virtual knob of some kind to dial in the precise factor of magnification desired. I presume that the size of text at 12 point font will be the basis of the factoring system used. We are already seeing some devices with extremely high resolutions. Apple's iPhone 4 features the retina display. It's a screen with a resolution of over 320 pixels per inch. Imagine that kind of resolution on a 22 inch widescreen monitor. That would mean a resolution of around 5480x3424 If you rendered current operating systems at that resolution on a 22 inch widescreen display, things would appear about 3.26 times smaller than they are now. Clearly, the answer for this is resolution independence. There is evidence of this already on the iPhone 4.

Fix: missing "Never" option under Auto-Lock on iPhone

2010-06-21T16:17:00.000-07:00

I have an iPhone and noticed that the screen suddenly started dimming after a few minutes and it's not supposed to. I distinctly remember turning off the auto-lock feature and now it's locking itself after 5 minutes. WTF!? I tried to set the auto-lock setting to "Never" but that option was no longer there! At first I got angry with my iPhone. Then I got Angry at Apple. Then I learned the truth about what was causing this problem and was able to get it fixed.

If you have an iPhone and this same thing has happened to you, I have good news for you. There's a fix.

First, to see if you are affected by this, try going to your iPhone's settings and just disable contacts, calendar and email for your company's activesync server account. Now look in the auto lock settings under General in your iPhone Settings. Did the "Never" option come back? If so, then you just proved that it has something to do with your corporate email server.

Fortunately for me, I'm an Exchange 2007 Administrator. If you're not, then you're going to need your Exchange administrator's help. Pass this page along to them and as long as your company doesn't require auto-locking for connected devices, they should be able to help you. This is a very quick fix and should only take an administrator a minute or two of their time.

Here's what your Exchange administrator should do:

On the exchange server launch the Exchange Management Console
Open Organization Configuration -> Client Access
Right click on the default activesync mailbox policy and select properties
Select the password tab

(Exchange 2007)

The default properties window should look like this:

If any of the boxes are grayed out and checked, you need to check Require password so you can uncheck them. Then you can uncheck Require password again.

After this has been done, on the iPhone, disable this activesync account (no need to delete it, just turn it off) and then turn the Auto-lock setting back to "Never." Now go back and turn your activesync account back on. Your auto-lock setting will now will stay at "Never."

Netflix vs. Blockbuster for Mac Users

2009-08-26T00:51:00.000-07:00

I started out with Netflix, and tried Blockbuster Total Access in 2008. I quickly lost interest in that due to the relative lack of selection of Blu-Ray titles at the local Blockbuster stores. Swapping out the mailed movie at the store for a free in-store rental was very nice and convenient, but when there's nothing on the shelf that you want to see, that quickly loses its novelty. Also, I found that Blockbuster's online service made me wait longer to see new releases versus Netflix.

I switched back to Netflix when the Instant watch feature was released for Mac. I have watched dozens of movies online this way and I find that it adds more value to what I'm getting with Netflix. If I were to try to use BlockBuster's download service I am greeted by this error message: "Downloading and playing movies requires Internet Explorer 5.0 (or newer) and a PC running Windows XP or Windows Vista." I have XP running in VMware on my Mac but I don't want to have to use that every time I go online to watch a movie.

Verdict: It may be $1 more expensive per month than BlockBuster Total Access, but Netflix with Blu-ray option is more worthwhile for Mac users.

Update: It's now 6/6/10. Blockbuster has had almost a year since my last comparison to get with the program and it seems like they never will.

Youtube and ... you could be the face of "anal fissure"

2009-06-22T22:20:00.000-07:00

So be careful how you title your youtube videos or you could end up like this guy:

The video itself was actually quite amusing and enlightening.

I know, WTF, right? I searched for this because of something Kevin Smith said and I wanted to know what it was.

And, by the way,

Google Docs Personal Finance spreadsheet template

2009-05-18T01:40:00.000-07:00

This is my first Google docs template. I'm in the process of getting it approved as a global template. It will show you your monthly income for one income source if you are paid weekly. You put in your take home pay for a normal paycheck and then change the number for what day of the week you are paid. For me it's Wednesday so I have 3 in there. Also this is not my actual paycheck amount. I plan on updating it so it will work for people paid bi-weekly. If you are interested, please post a comment.

Fix for Catan Online World crashes with OS X Leopard

2009-04-29T22:38:00.000-07:00

I love the game Settlers of Catan. I've grown addicted to it ever since I got into the free online version of the game available at playcatan.com. With my older mac mini I was using the game without any issues. Since Java for Mac OS X 10.5 update 2 came out, I have been having this HORRIBLE problem of the Catan Online World application crashing when sound was turned on in the games. Half the fun of this game is the sounds so I wasn't thrilled that my favorite game was no longer fun anymore.

Sadly, there doesn't seem to be any way to simply roll back the java version on a Mac. If anyone knows how to do this, point me at some instruction because I'd love to learn how. This is something that could be easily accomplished on a Windows machine thanks to the add/remove programs wizard. And, let's face it - a lot of us have been in that damn wizard more times than we care to admit because some crapware made its way onto the system somehow.

Tonight, I installed a developer preview of Java SE 6 for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 4. I can't copy the details of the download here but I can tell you that it looks like the next version of Java coming out for Mac will fix the "sound = crashing" issue.

How to fix the vbscript error "There is no file extension in..."

2009-01-21T11:59:00.000-08:00

Have you ever seen this error on windows XPE-based thin clients?
The actual script path is "c:\script with spaces in the name.vbs"

Here's the fix.

copy this code and paste it into a blank text file. Save it as whatever.reg and then double click on it to enter the contents into the registry:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\VBSFile\Shell\Open\Command]
@="C:\\WINDOWS\\system32\\WScript.exe \"%1\""

Bluetooth Tethering an at&t BlackBerry 8700 to a Mac running Leopard

2008-08-05T08:35:00.000-07:00

If you're like me and use a blackberry for work, you might be wondering if it's possible to use your blackberry's data connection as an emergency backup connection to the Internet. Yes, you can. The data transfer is slow, but it could provide you with web access in a pinch if there is no free Wi-Fi connection around.

Special thanks to Grant Goodale for his work in putting together these modem scripts in Leopard form and distributing them freely. If you find this script useful then please don't thank me, thank him. He has a paypal donation link on his page if you are feeling generous.

Here's how you set it up:

Download the modem script here

Extract the contents of the Zip file to Macintosh HD\Library\Modem Scripts

you will see other folders in there with a .ccl extension. This folder should sit right next to those other ones.

Now pair your blackberry to the Mac.

When asked if you want to share your phone's network connection make sure yes is highlighted and continue. You will be prompted for the model of your phone.

Choose Research in Motion from the list and then select your model number. This will also work for 8100 and 8800.

The phone number, User name and password fields should be filled out this way:

(Note: use the APN in the phone number field)

# APN: wap.cingular
# Username: ISP@CINGULARGPRS.COM
# Password: CINGULAR1

It can be helpful for making quick connections to your blackberry if you enable the checkbox next to "Show modem status in menu bar."

If you have a BlackBerry 8700 from a different wireless carrier, then you might try some of these other carrier-specific settings.

Epson Stylus Photo R280 printer now works with Airport Express (b/g)

2008-07-13T14:33:00.000-07:00

I just finished setting up my Epson Stylus Photo R280 printer on the USB port of an airport express. With third party inks or even with genuine Epson Inks, the ink level monitor does not work but printing and head alignment, etc. work just fine.

for thoroughness I installed the latest Bonjour from Apple on my dell laptop running XP and installed the XP driver for my printer on that and I can print wirelessly from my dell laptop as well. Again, on the PC side the ink level monitor does not work but one can disable it by going into Printers, right-click on the printer, choose properties -> printing preferences-> Maintenance tab -> Speed & Progress -> and check "Disable EPSON Status Monitor 3"

Epson just added this driver update on 6/11/08 so it's likely that some printers that didn't work with bonjour before will work now:

Updated driver for Leopard and Epson Stylus Photo R280

Uncovered: iPhone 2.0 has screenshot capability built-in

2008-07-13T00:00:00.000-07:00

I posted this on the AppleInsider forum today when I discovered it. I use another name when I post on other sites.

Here's how you do it...

Push and hold the home button and then tap the screen lock button once. The whole screen will flash and there will be an image waiting to upload when you dock your iphone. It won't have a thumbnail and will just look like an empty square but once you import it into iPhoto you will see that it's a screen capture image.

If you want to press and hold the lock button and tap the home button second that works just as well.

How to cheat in RoboKill

2008-07-06T11:13:00.000-07:00

If you haven't seen RoboKill yet, then you should immediately check it out. It's a flash-based game that blows the doors off every other flash-based game you've ever seen. Now, you will need a newer computer, preferably one with a core duo processor at 1.66 GHz or faster, because I've noticed that on a 1.2 GHz single-core processor, the game pokes along and is not much fun.

With any good overhead view shoot-em-up game there has to be a quick and dirty way to get all the cool weapons and power-ups you need to blast anything that moves to smithereens. RoboKill is no exception. The more cash in this game, the better and I'm going to show you just how to get as much of it as you want without losing anything.

You will first need to play the game up to level 4. You will need to make it this far in the game because the cheat is on this level.

* At the very first room of level 4 where there is the Merchant, go upwards on the screen into the doorway immediately ahead
* As soon as you enter this room, move to the left or the right so that you fall off the ledge

When you re-spawn in the main room, you can do this again as many times as you want. You will notice that each time you enter that room with the 8 robots, more cash gets added to the piles. It may not look like it at first, but when you are ready to collect it you will see for yourself. You only have to kill off the 8 robots to go collect the piles of free cash.

Now, here's the most important part.... If you want to keep getting more cash from this room, do not exit through the door. Fall off the ledge instead. You will keep your cash and you will be able to go back into the room again where there will be more robots and more cash just laying on the floor. DO NOT EXIT THROUGH THE DOOR.

If you want the most cash possible, equip yourself with 4 cash sensors. My robot is currently at level 26 and has a combined total of 46% increased cash with all the sensors I have equipped. If I go into this room and fall off the ledge about 10 times when I go to collect the cash there's about $5000 just laying there on the floor. And I can do this in about 45 seconds.

One more thing, make sure that the last thing you do before you quit the game is fall off a ledge and get teleported back to the main lobby area. If you don't do this your game may not be saved properly when you close your browser or if you switch to another level you might not have your cash that you just made. For some reason going to the merchant after making some cash will not save your transactions all the time.

Solution: How to stop the Dymo LabelWriter registration reminder

2008-07-03T12:01:00.000-07:00

I use my LabelWriter on a lot of different computers, and I have clients who share their LabelWriter on a network with multiple computers. Installing the software is no issue, however my clients and myself are getting tired of being nagged to register our LabelWriters every single day. There is currently no option to simply "don't remind me again to register" which seems like it should be an obvious addition. There is only an option to "register later", but by later they mean tomorrow. It seemed like the only option to get rid of this nag screen was to proceed with registration. Until I got so fed up with it that I decided to find out how to override this reminder. This should work with any LabelWriter printer.

If you want to never see this screen again without registering, copy this code and paste it into a blank text file. Save it as whatever.reg and then double click on it to enter the contents into the registry:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\DYMO\Registration Information\DLS]
"UseCount"=dword:ffffffff

I welcome your feedback.

I fixed my Powerbook optical drive

2008-06-30T10:04:00.000-07:00

For over two years I have been unable to use my optical drive in my powerbook. At first, it would not read certain discs and I noticed that after my hard drive died, it would not read any.

First of all, I was too cheap to buy applecare for my PowerBook G4 12" with DVI back shortly after they were released in October of 2003. It came loaded with Jaguar and was eligible for a free upgrade to Panther, if that gives you any idea how old this thing is.

So when my hard drive died in May of 2005, I replaced it myself. I'm an A+ certified technician and it really wasn't that hard for me to do. I had my ice cube tray for the different screws and a purloined copy of an official Apple take-apart guide for the laptop so I was pretty prepared.

Apparently, when I was putting the computer back together in 2005 I misplaced a screw that was supposed to hold down the right side of the metal frame. It happens to be positioned just over the slot for the optical drive.

Guess where the screw went...

So, three years later I took apart the whole computer down to the metal bottom and opened up the optical drive hoping to find that the lens was simply dusty. Attached to the magnet on the laser head was the screw that I noticed was missing as I took apart the PowerBook.

I put it all back together, cleaning as I went, dusting, putting on new thermal paste and replacing all the tape with new kapton tape. I powered it up with the fully charged battery and inserted a DVD. It began playing right away with no noticeable delay.

FIXED!!

Can Netflix Instant-watch run on Mac with Crossover?

2008-06-28T13:58:00.000-07:00

I set out to answer this question today, and my short answer is No. Netflix minimum system requirements are:

Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or higher, or Windows Vista
Internet Explorer version 6 or higher
Windows Media Player version 11 (DRM version 5145) or later
An active broadband connection to the Internet
1.0 GHz processor
512 MB RAM
3 GB free hard disk drive space

With Crossover, applications are installed into "bottles". Think of a bottle as a shell for the application which emulates the folders and hookups that would be found in each windows operating system. There's a bottle for 98, 2000, XP and Vista. Running IE6 inside an XP bottle makes it think it's running on Windows XP.

I was able to successfully install IE6 into an XP bottle, although I was warned before beginning that I would encounter errors. The installation went perfectly but certain web pages were not viewable in IE6 or produced strange errors. IE6 did work just fine in a Win98 bottle.

Now for the next part - Windows Media Player 11. I had to download this installer from FileHippo and its installation did not complete. So without that peice of the puzzle, I'm afraid Mac users like myself will not yet be able to enjoy our Instant Watch on our Macs without Parallels or VMware.

Solution: SSONSVR.EXE process is not running

2008-06-25T13:59:00.000-07:00

This is for anyone who, like me, was pulling their hair out because Citrix broke all of our configuration scripts when they updated V90 class firmware with PN 10.1

I wrote a script, which, among other things, enables Single Sign-on otherwise known as Passthrough Authentication. For Citrix Program Neighborhood. This was working fine all the way up to version 10.0.5x

Something changed in 10.1 so that the normal procedure of simply dropping in a couple .ini files into the default user's ICA Client folder no longer works.

Here's what you have to do now...

Either log into the winterm as Administrator and manually enable "Pass-Through Authentication" and "Use Local Credentials to Log on" checkboxes. (note, unless it tells you that you will have to log off for the settings to take effect then you haven't done it right.)

OR - here's the missing peice of the puzzle that can be added to any existing script. Import the following .reg file:

    Code:  
    
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\NetworkProvider\HwOrder]
"ProviderOrder"="LanmanWorkstation,WebClient,RDPNP,PnSson"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\NetworkProvider\Order]
"ProviderOrder"="LanmanWorkstation,WebClient,RDPNP,PnSson"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Citrix\ICA Client]
"SSPIEnabled"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\PnSson\NetworkProvider]
"Name"="Citrix Single Sign On"
"Class"=dword:00000002
"ProviderPath"="C:\\Program Files\\Citrix\\ICA Client\\pnsson.dll"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\PnSson\Enum]
"0"="Root\\LEGACY_PNSSON\\0000"
"Count"=dword:00000001
"NextInstance"=dword:00000001

Once you add these registry changes, log off and back on and SSONSVR.EXE will be running and you will again be able to use Single Sign on in Citrix 10.1 (which is installed in V90LE firmware ver. 4.05).

The way I found this was dumping the registry file (win9x version) before and after getting this passthrough authentication working. Then I used WinDiff to see what changed. These changes are the only ones necessary to get it working without having to go in there and check the boxes by hand.

This discovery came at the last possible moment for me because the IT director at my company just ordered 16 V90LE winterms to be delivered straight from the factory to different offices around the country, and I had written a configuration script that completely configures these little guys to be full-fledged workstations. It already worked perfectly for version 4.03, and I found out late in the game that version 4.05 broke the script. By then it was too late to get the 4.03 firmware from Wyse so I could just flash them back to 4.03. At least now I have the 4.05 version of my script working and a way to flash these winterms back to 4.05 using USB. The boss is happy. Thanks to the guys who put together the USB flashing package! Combined with my script, it's enabled our company to save time and money and ditch Wyse Device Manager altogether.

idea: email fax confirmation

2008-05-05T12:10:00.000-07:00

Instead of wasting a sheet of paper and having to stand by the fax machine while transmission takes place, it would be nice to be able to go back to the cubicle and receive an email notification from the fax machine when your job has finished sending. (Including a thumbnail image of each page would be nice touch.)

One good reason webapps are better

2008-04-21T13:32:00.000-07:00

When the Iphone came out last year people whined and moaned because there was no third-party native application support or capability on the iPhone. Now that there is, I realize why Apple chose to push developers to go the webapp route for applications instead of using a native application.

At first you might believe that it was about application security and keeping the device virus-free since it is running an almost full version of safari.

But it's actually about connectivity! Because webapps are inherently connected to the Internet, they make it easier for developers to design information-rich applications that not only present a current view of things, but they also enable file storage and processing-intensive database queries and formatting to occur on the server side. This leaves the processor free for the webapp interface to handle the presentation of that information. And what a beautiful presentation it is.

Multi Core Madness

2008-04-21T10:55:00.000-07:00

So AMD just popped the seal on its 12 core shanghai chip. I'll believe it when I see it. While we wait, here's some interesting speculation about what the hell you can actually do with 12 cores.

First of all, What good are 12 cores if you can't use them? Most software is not designed with multiple cores in mind. My assertion is that there should be a layer between the OS and the processor that divvies up the processing chores among all available cores and does it automatically or programmatically if the developer so chooses.

Secondly, why stop at twelve and say "tada!" when there's a possibility that month your competitor is going to one-up you? If you showed me a chip with 128 cores then I'd be really impressed. Hell, even 64 cores would be impressive but I find twelve kinda weak, considering that AMD has just built a multi-chip bus that can process instructions not only across multiple cores on a single die, but multiple dies on a single chip. Maybe they are finding that too many cores cause a bottleneck in some other component, like the RAM. In that case I'd be right behind them in supporting the 12 core standard but then I want to see them doing something about that bottleneck so they can open it up, like pouring some R&D cash into better memory.

With twelve cores (assuming each core on its own was capable of running an OS with several applications) you could designate each core to handle a different part of the computing tasks. Hell you could even give each application its own core. I seldom have more than 10 apps open at a time.

I feel that operating systems as we know them should change fundamentally to accept this new paradigm of multiple cores. Yes I'm saying we should risk breaking backward compatibility for the sake of an impressive leap forward. Build a compatibility layer, or virtualize for backward compatibility if you have to but by all means, build new software based on new technology and don't look back! Carry over your old data but leave your applications behind. We all know that there's no way to move boldly forward if we are clutching our legacy applications. Rather than real progress, people would rather have slow progress as long as nothing stops working. That is the old way of thinking and will die along with those that think that way. You can build a new system and test it while you are still supporting an old system. You don't have to immediately drop what you're doing and cause downtime because certain critical apps won't work. If people are smart about it they can roll out new systems in parallel with old ones to make sure that they don't have any downtime if one system fails.

First! 1st! ONE! 1!

2008-04-21T10:48:00.000-07:00

Anyone who regularly visits tech gadget blog sites will know that there's a constant presence of ignorant retards waiting in the wings to get their first comment fix on. I'd like to treat them like the dirty flies they are and lure them all onto a giant sheet of poisonous flypaper and watch them squirm their way to certain death.