Wednesday, November 05, 2008
People in Remember the milk finally made a step forward to give this awesome online service more accessible through over the mobile, iPhone in specific. However, you will have to pay $25/year to be able to use it. The app is free but the service isn’t.
Remember The Milk [iTunes App Store via RTM Blog]
Friday, October 24, 2008
I came cross this idea early this morning when I saw a post in the forum I am usually on. One guy mentioned that the ESXi serve he’s running has no hard drives at all, instead it boots from a USB key and links to the SAN afterwards. Very good idea. I wasn’t aware of such option as ESX server doesn’t have such thing that you can run an ESX server off a removable USB flash drive. So I followed the instruction I found from Google, and did on one of my test machine. No surprise, it works like a charm.
Tools that require to finish the work:
- At least 1G USB flash drive
- Virtual CD mounting tool, i.e. Daemont Tools
- WinImage to build the image to USB storage.
Steps to make the bootable ESX Server 3i USB flash drive:
- Download ESX Server 3i Installable ISO
- Extract INSTALL.TGZ from the root directory of the ISO image using the Virtual CD mounting tool.
- Extract /usr/lib/vmware/installer/VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0-xxxxx.i386.dd.bz2 from INSTALL.TGZ
- Extract VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0-xxxxx.i386.dd from VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0-xxxxx.i386.dd.bz2
- Attach the USB flash drive and make sure you no longer need the data on it
- Use WinImage to transfer VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0-xxxxx.i386.dd to the USB flash drive
- Disk->Restore Virtual Hard Disk image on physical drive…
- Select the USB flash drive (Warning: If you select the wrong disk you will lose data!)
- Select the image file VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0-xxxxx.i386.dd
- Confirm the warning message
- Wait for the transfer to complete
- Unplug the USB flash drive (Warning: If you forget to unplug the flash drive from the PC you might lose the data on your hard drives the next time you boot!)
- Attach the USB flash drive to the machine you want to boot (Warning: If ESX Server 3i recognizes local drives, you might lose the data on it, so make sure you don´t need it anymore or unplug all hard drives!)
- Turn the machine on and make sure the USB flash drive is selected as boot device
- Enjoy.
Notes:
I failed to so on my Vista machine but had no problem on XP. And the machine you want to boot from must have the option to make the USB flash drive as the boot device.
You can also watch the video to see how to do it in action.
Nice essay from Microsoft Technet, the revised 3-part series of edition to the first one published in 2000 by Scott Culp.
Law #1: If a bad guy can persuade you to run his program on your computer, it's not your computer anymore
Law #2: If a bad guy can alter the operating system on your computer, it's not your computer anymore Law #2: If a bad guy can alter the operating system on your computer, it's not your computer anymore
Law #3: If a bad guy has unrestricted physical access to your computer, it's not your computer anymore Law #3: If a bad guy has unrestricted physical access to your computer, it's not your computer anymore
Law #4: If you allow a bad guy to upload programs to your website, it's not your website any more Law #4: If you allow a bad guy to upload programs to your website, it's not your website any more
Law #5: Weak passwords trump strong security Law #5: Weak passwords trump strong security
Law #6: A computer is only as secure as the administrator is trustworthy Law #6: A computer is only as secure as the administrator is trustworthy
Law #7: Encrypted data is only as secure as the decryption key Law #7: Encrypted data is only as secure as the decryption key
Law #8: An out of date virus scanner is only marginally better than no virus scanner at all Law #8: An out of date virus scanner is only marginally better than no virus scanner at all
Law #9: Absolute anonymity isn't practical, in real life or on the Web Law #9: Absolute anonymity isn't practical, in real life or on the Web
Law #10: Technology is not a panacea
Check the full essay here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc895640.aspx
Friday, October 03, 2008
Why the heck did I want to spend my $3.99 on this? Simply because,
1. I love music.
2. I like guitar.
3. I wish I can play guitar.
4. I wish I can sing while I play guitar.
5. I wish I can play Hotel California, which is called Motel California in the app, like Eagles.
6. Many other more wishes…
It’s overall a deadly easy-to-use app and fun to play but I need to find the charts for the songs to play with. It’s going to choke a quite bit of my time on it…but that’s iPhone.
Check it out, http://www.frontierdesign.com/Guitar/
Friday, September 26, 2008
This sucks. Nullriver Software has confirmed on its website about the fate of NetShare, a network tethering app that only has its very short life on AppStore.
Looks like Apple has decided they will not be allowing any tethering applications in the AppStore. As such, NetShare will not be available in the iTunes AppStore. We are seeing a lot of similar reports from various developers who's applications were abruptly removed and banned from the AppStore without any violations of the terms of service. This is all unfortunate news for the iPhone platform end-users.
So what’s next? Go for the JailBreak?
Check out these tips from PC-Word.
But I worn you that having all of them on your computer would not help. Windows just can’t handle that many cleaners the same time. :)
Friday, September 05, 2008
There was a discussion today on the forum I participate regarding the spam whitelisting. The forum is specifically aimed in legal industry so we are all talking about how the technology works in the legal field. The question was whether or not whitelisting the client email address, quite common one but I was surprised about some of the answers that mentioned lawyers are responsible for their own emails, meaning that they should spend their time going through the quarantine to find their own false positive. And the more reality that shocked me even more is that this is quite common in many of the firms.
I just don't get it. Isn't lawyer's time worth more spent on something that generates more revenue? Asking lawyers to go through their own quarantine is just like receiving emails without anti-spam protection at all. Yes, the job going through the spam is probably one of the dirtiest job in the world but that doesn't mean no one is willing to do so. We have one in our office, part of whose job is going through the nasty spams. She averagely checks 4000-5000 spams a day and does a wonderful job catching the false positives. I just can't imagine how many time she had saved for lawyers just by doing this.
IMHO, whoever said or suggested the idea that lawyers should check their own spams needs to learn a bit of more business lessons.
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Another big day in web browser history, the day Google finally announced the release of their long waiting and already forgot web browser, Chrome, shortly after they renewed their sponsorship to Firefox for another 3 years. I couldn't wait for a second once I heard the release, rushed to their website and had it running on my Vista one minute later. The first impression, blazing fast; the second, deadly simple; the third, just amazing. To be honest, never had the same feeling when firstly touching the IE.
What's good? Google's legendary simplicity, and the renovated home page layout. The Chromer team even thought about completely getting rid of the bookmarks but I am glad they didn't.
What's cool? The performance. It's fast, deadly fast. Thanks to the awesome Webkit, the fastest rendering engine that powers Apple's Safari. And their own developed JavaScript Virture Machine that really speeds up most of JScript-rich web 2.0 websites.
Speed may be Chrome's most significant advance. When you improve things by an order of magnitude, you haven't made something better — you've made something new. "As soon as developers get the taste for this kind of speed, they'll start doing more amazing new Web applications and be more creative in doing them," Bak says. Google hopes to kick-start a new generation of Web-based applications that will truly make Microsoft's worst nightmare a reality: The browser will become the equivalent of an operating system.
What's best? The multiprocess architecture that allowed each opened tab run as a separate program. One tab crash won't affect other opened tabs, a huge benefit against all other current browsers in the market, which is also the reason that makes drag the tab to a new Window thing in real. Thanks to their acquisition of Green Border Technologies, a software security firm that developed the "sandboxes" for Chrome.
What's the killer? Open source. The source code will be released to public shortly after the release.
But all of these nice killer feature would make me to a switch, not really, at least not now. Why? Because I am so Firefoxed, can't leave without the add-on extensions. That's the fundamental different between these two browsers. The add-on extensions used to be the most innovated feature in Firefox, but not any more in Chromers' eyes, who can't stand on the fact that any innovation made in browser will be broken without all the updates to the extensions.
The conclusion was obvious: Only by building its own software could Google bring the browser into the cloud age and potentially trigger a spiral of innovation not seen since Microsoft and Netscape one-upped each other almost monthly.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Man, that's the reason why I love lifehacker. They constantly review and share stuff like this, free replacements for paid tools. They know exactly what's best for their readers. Well, they are also the killer to the owners of the paid tools.
I have already been on half of them, specially AVG for protecting my computer, Mozy for backing up my data, and Google Docs, alternative to Zoho, for documenting. Right now, I am loading reQall over on my iPhone, and will be remembering Gparted next time when I need to repartition my hard drive.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
MochaSoft, the provider of VNC app on iPhone, released the Remote Desktop app for iPhone, a long waiting iPhone app for me since the first day I had my iPod Touch. As always, the lite version is free. According to the description of the app:
None of these features I need on my iPhone, so the free lite version fits me perfectly. Besides, I am using it only in emergency. RDP on a 3.5" screen isn't actually very enjoyable. The limitations say it only support for Windows XP pro but I have no problem RDP in Windows 2003 server.
Now, with a paid app NetShare from nullriver through which you can get your laptop on Internet by tethering you iPhone's 3G network while you are on the road, every piece of application I had been dreaming for on a mobile device are there. Dream finally comes true...well wait, NetShare has been took off the Apple Store again at the moment.
By the way, MochaSoft's other little app Telnet Lite should be added too.
<update date=”Nov 3, 2008”>
The RDP app was pulled from the Apple App Store for some reason and was just put back on again. Hurry up to get it installed on your iPhone and back it up on your desktop in case it gets disappeared again.
</update>