moonlit

Geez, no wonder no-one contributes here any more. IT'S SHIT! IT'S REDUNDANT! BOO! HISS! HE'S BEHIND YOU! I kid, but ffs, if you people expect contributions to this forum then at least try and act like you give a shit, won't you? Sure, it's hardly the most feature-encrusted app in the world and it might not be awesome-amazingness compared to something like Putty which as been around for ages with tweaks and tweaks and tweaks until it got to today's Putty. Putty's interface has a bunch of crap to configure and this app is nice and simple. Right tool for the job, yadda yadda. Anyway, dude wrote an app and put it up for people to use, show a little respect.

Having heard only of EFiX and not having seen one I can only imagine it's basically a USB stick with EFI emulation software on it (as was suspected around its release time) but as I've no proof I'll give it the benefit of the doubt. However, even if it does do the job, it'll add anything up to £200 to a Hackintosh build depending on where you buy it (the UK supplier wants £170) and really, for a USB stick which makes OSX work a bit better? That's way, way, way over the mark. I'm doing this because I'm cheap, I don't want to drop 200 quid on a USB stick. Nice idea, shame it costs 10x the price it should, I'll just stick with pcefi. Besides, it still doesn't fix the fact that it isn't now and never will be supported by Apple, and drivers are still a huge problem. Not to mention EFiX only (officially) has limited compatibility when it comes to motherboards and it won't fix any non-motherboard problem you have.

<Pentium 1: Install Windows 3.1 and use Windows Write to keep a to-do list. If not, use it as a paperweight for your physical paper to-do list. Possibly a giant Gameboy, use no$gb on MSDOS for the emulator. Pentium 1/2: Digital photo frame, basic file/print/web/ssh server, net radio player, Linux test rig, test bed for old OSs, serial terminal. >Pentium 2: Media player/media center, console/computer emulator, TV (with TV tuner or Zattoo), router, carputer.

OSX86 isn't necessarily unstable, I can run it on my desktop will all hardware fully functioning and I never had it crash once. That said, I did have to put extra effort into making it work in the first place, it may have been broken by updates, it's unsupported by Apple (and thus useless for any business or user who requires absolute certainty their machine won't just decide not to boot tomorrow) and a whole lot of hardware is and will remain unsupported (eg: my X-Fi PCIe). Any drivers that do exist for unsupported hardware might not be available in a week's time and while the guys who spit out these community made drivers do a good job, it's not really good enough if you need guaranteed long term support, updates and hardware compatibility. In short, OSX86 is fun to play with and all, nice if you just want a taster of what OSX is like and what it can do, but ultimately if you want to run OSX you're still going to buy a Mac, sorry. As for pricing, well, that's the price you pay. If you think it's worth it for your requirements then do whatever makes you happy and buy whatever does the job. If you don't think it's worth it then live and let live, it's not your bank balance and it isn't your machine and again, do whatever you feel is necessary for your computing experience to be satisfactory and don't worry about someone else disagreeing.

I suck. It's true, I do. I was actually planning to start a podcast series answering questions just like this which would've potentially included interviews with seasoned con-goers and speakers but my lack of ability to follow up on projects thwarted my plans somewhat. I might attempt to revive the idea and spark talks with the guys I was discussing it with again to see what we can do, it seems like it would be quite a useful thing to have available. I won't promise anything but I'll keep you up to date if it's going to happen.

To clarify, I think the OP is referring to a chain of sandwich shops in the USA named Panera Bread, not the router mentioned on the show.

Not as far as I'm aware. Cost, part sourcing, time, your ability to assemble a machine that complicated in any space smaller than a wardrobe - those solder points aren't exactly big. Interesting idea, but I don't think it'll work. There's too much to buy, make and assemble and you have access to none of Microsoft's proprietary code required to boot the machine or run games on it. You could find more productive ways to kill time. I like the fact you're aiming high and perhaps a large project would keep you occupied, but try something a little (read: a lot) less proprietary and a lot less locked down. Even building your own Linux based cellphone would be easier and cheaper than this.

I've run Windows 2000 on lesser systems than that without a problem. I've even run XP and Longhorn on lesser systems though I'll admit to them not being hugely useful. Windows 2000, though, should run just fine on that machine, and would be much more useful (read: compatible, stable, secure) than Windows 95.

Absolutely nothing, jack of all trades and master of none, it's a bit like being in a free hacking pick and mix finger buffet, you never get a full plate of anything in particular, but you can take from any plate you like the look of.

No insult inferred, all is well, welcome to hel... err... the forum. :)

If a question is asked and you know that the community isn't very good with questions on that particular topic, it's fine to say something like "You might not get much useful information here, most of us don't tend to do that thing much, but you might have more luck at [specific website, chat or wiki]". What isn't so reasonable, however, is "no1 no's shit in hear fuk off". It's all in the attitude.

Being so long and detailed I can imagine the author probably has some sensible points to make but I haven't yet read it. To be honest though, the points he makes probably aren't really very relevant to the end user (I did see mention of what he claims was inadequate memory protection in early NT versions, for example) and I've seen so much meaningless bitching about Windows I'm pretty sick of the whole thing by this point. I like to stay reasonably unbiased and neutral and yes, I'll admit that Windows has problems, but what doesn't? Nothing is a fix-all answer to anything else in the world of computers and all OSs have both good and bad points. So I probably will read it at some point, but I will continue to use and recommend Windows for non-technical users because it's very well supported by many, many commercial entities and it does what it's supposed to do for a majority of users. Cost is not an issue either, because most machines come with some version of Windows off the shelf. If you can't keep Windows clean then you probably can't troubleshoot Linux either, and OSX doesn't count unless you own a Mac (OSX86 doesn't count, it's unsupported and isn't suitable for general users).

Basically you reverse the order of the characters using a Right-to-Left control character (which can be found using Character Map). In the above example, notepad.exe is named notepad.txt.exe, but before the txt.exe is a control character which reverses the direction of the text making it appear to be called notepad.exe.txt. The downsides to this are plentiful: 1) You have a double extension, which is easy to spot. 2) You can only realistically do it with palindromic extensions, for example txt and exe, because if you reverse jpg or bmp they make no sense (if you saw a file called notepad.pmb.exe you'd get a little suspicious, right?) 3) If you used this trick as part of a plan to hide an exe then you would need the exe to have a convincing icon. If you had a txt file which had a notepad icon and not a picture of a piece of lined paper, you'd guess something wasn't right. I just thought it was an interesting little trick though, even if it's not hugely useful. Edit: Problem 1 can be solved by turning on "hide extensions for known file types", the result being: However, this is really no more or less useful than having extensions turn off while having malicious files which appear without extensions (and is easier to spot if you know what you're looking for, because if your extensions are supposed to be hidden but they show up on these files and only these files, something's obviously up).

It is indeed Fedora 10, works very nicely right out of the box on the 701 with all hardware fully functional (except the wifi on/off function key for some reason, no big deal, I never use that key anyway, all other Fn keys work) and the battery life is a respectable 2:15 playing a video over wifi on loop until the battery dies. That's compared to XP's 2:30 doing the same when the machine was brand new, so that's more than good enough for a year old battery. Xandros is shit and Ubuntu's given me nothing but issues on the 701 but Fedora's given me no such grief. One thing I did notice is that neither XP, Windows 7 or Ubuntu could report remaining battery life in minutes/hours, only percentages, but Fedora has no trouble displaying a real time and it's pretty accurate while doing it too. Personally I find the keyboard/touchpad more than adequate, but then I guess I wasn't expecting a $1000 17" laptop when I bought it so my expectations were low enough to not be pissed off with it.

Fedora actually, it does say so beneath the picture in bold text. ;)

Not necessarily useful but interesting all the same, with careful use of Right To Left control characters you can mess with the order of filenames. Those files are actually called "notepad.txt.exe" and "text.exe.txt".

Desktop: Left Monitor, Windows 7 Beta 64bit. Desktop: Right Monitor, Same but 1280x800 and no taskbar. Laptop: Asus eeePC 701, Fedora 10. Phone: HTC Kaiser, Windows Mobile 6.0 Professional.

The woman who made the film has been interviewed on the show, some time last season. Edit: As for a nickname, you'll have to choose that yourself, a handle is your identity and generally exists as a result of some story, thought or attitude you have. It's a personal thing.

* moonlit hears his name and starts growling and tugging on his chain

For $350? No, not really. I just use a Palm m130 for reading ebooks. Bright, clear, backlit screen and buttons in pefect positions for flipping pages, it's light and it fits in my pocket. Cost me a grand total of about $20 used and came complete with box, accessories, manuals, etc. Also takes SD cards, so storage isn't a problem. MobiReader is pretty alright for a Palm reader (though it's available for other platforms too), works on PalmOS 3 devices and newer I think, so it'll work on pretty much any reasonably functional Palm device.

Yes, HVR = Hacker Voice Radio

I actually really enjoyed it. I can see where metatron's coming from but I wouldn't really agree. Ok, hackers are often presented as socially inept and emotionally bent but some of them are (just like some non-hackers) and it's not necessarily a bad thing because I think having a screwy mind can assist in thinking differently (and who really is normal anyway?). I did expect it to be a load of bollocks but I think the overall feel of the film said something of what I've been trying to say for ages, that it's not about hiding in your mum's basement with dot-matrix printed posters of scifi actresses and it's not all about breaking into stuff either. It's not something I would expect everyone to like, I'm sure it's not perfect, but it does make a change from "hackers are stealing your credit card and are the scum of the planet, wipe them out now!".

London's cool by me, and a long weekend like last time sounds good. I think some time during the summer would be good but I'm not too fussed, June might be a bit early for me but I might still be able to make it if it was, July would also be fine.

What he said. I'd also echo stingwray's post too, I don't think it'll be too effective. There's no harm in giving it a shot anyway, it at least shows you're trying and if one kid gets the picture then it wasn't entirely pointless. There's also a chance, however high or low, that it'll make kids think hacking is cool if you start sniffing passwords, I know from experience that kids are spiteful bastards and if they figure out how to get other peoples' passwords then they will, and they won't think too hard before using them either. There's always the option of doing a little play, get a couple of kids (or teachers, or something) to act out what might happen if someone figures out where you live or if you agree to meet random strangers online or whatever, and how easy it is to figure out a lot about someone from a simple social networking account. You could also do a short play about someone phishing/MITMing a password and inviting one of your friends out without your knowledge and then show that just because someone said something on the internet it doesn't always mean that they are who they say they are. If it stands any chance of working then you'll have to make it engaging and I don't think a MITM attack will necessarily accomplish that unless you make it look like a movie.

Vista = no can do XP = it's possible, but it's a headache and relatively pointles There's an alternative, though I don't know how easily it can be done on a Mac, you can use WinPE environments to run certain Windows apps from a USB stick. It's been featured on the show and I posted some info on a Vista based WinPE stick on here somewhere, searching for "WinPE 2.0" should give you some useful hints. Be aware that it's not a full Windows install, though, and some apps (and most drivers, other than storage and network) won't work. Really though, if you want to boot Windows on an Intel Mac I'd recommend either using virtual machines or Boot Camp. You can install Windows Vista from a USB stick easily (format with HP's USB Format Tool and copy the Vista DVD files to the stick) and Windows XP can be installed using a BartPE stick. Edit: Probably irrelevant, but it's possible to boot OSX from a USB stick - just install it to a USB stick as you normally would.