Find your free tools:
"LocatePC"
"OCS Inventory NG" 
"PRTG" 
"SIW" 
"SyncBack" 
"TrueCrypt" 
"WinDirStat" 
"Wink"
"BareTail" 
"Ethereal" 
"FileZilla" 
"NeWT" 
"Ngrep" 
"OpenSSH" 
"WinDump" 
"WinPcap" 
"Winfingerprint"
"CamStudio" 
"CDBurnerXP" 
"Comodo Firewall Pro" 
"DriveImage XML" 
"GParted LiveCD" 
"JkDefrag" 
"PageDefrag" 
"TestDisk"

25 Absolutely Cool, Totally Free Utilities

It certainly looks quite impressive and it does have some lofty aims, but from a brief look through as well as their well deserved reputation based on Flex Profiles I’m sure this will stand up to it’s promises.

Test Scenario’s
With login VSI you can compare many different scenarios:
• VDI vs. SBC
• VMware, XenServer or Hyper-V running virtual desktops or Terminal/Citrix Servers
• Virtualized XP desktops versus virtualized Vista Desktops
• Performance impact of application streaming technologies
• Impact of (different) virus scanners
• Performance impact of tuning parameters
• Different VDI platforms
• Different Storage platforms
• Impact of changes or updates like service packs or security fixes
• Hardware differences
• x64 vs. 32 bits
• Etc…

I’d be very interested in hearing from anyone who does have the facility to test?

Login Consultants develop presentation virtualization benchmarking tool

Monday, May 12, 2008   |   0 Comments   |  

The consulting firm Login Consultants just opened the beta program of the first benchmarking tool for presentation virtualization: Login Virtual Session Index (VSI).

The product will measures the performance of a remote desktop session served by a Microsoft Terminal Services  / Citrix XenApp server or a VDI virtual machine.

To run the tool it’s required to have a 4 tiers infrastructure: a domain controller for the authentication a file server for logging user sessions, a server to host the TS/XenApp/VDI service and a workstation to launch the user sessions.

The firm is also working to introduce support for application streaming.

Enroll for the beta here.

virtualization.info: Login Consultants develop presentation virtualization benchmarking tool

BTW, a colleague recently found out how delicate the glass screen is, OUCH!!

So I would have provided more of a quote for this story but it appears that MISaustralia.com has come up with a mechanism where when you highlight a section of text it then drops every second character …. 

Optus confirms iPhone plans

MISaustralia.com - Optus confirms iPhone plans

I wonder if this is any indication of the coming marketing campaigns in the push for customers attention in the Desktop Virtualization market?

VMware ThinApp is the final name for Thinstall technology

In January 2008 VMware, a hardware virtualization company, acquired an application virtualization startup called Thinstall.
The plan is to use the Thinstall technology to stream virtualized applications on the virtual desktops that VMware spawns through its connection broker: the Virtual Desktop Manager (VDM).

So fare VMware has been pretty fast in rebranding the Thinstall Application Virtualization Suite: the beta program for the new version is open since end of February and the testers can already download the beta 2.
The final version of the product, temporarily called Project North Star, is expected for the H2 2008.

The only information missing so far was the final name that VMware wants to use.
Now Micheal Keen, Director and Senior Solutions Architect in the Enterprise Architecture group at Alliance Technologies, reveals that the final name is ThinApp.

Duncan Epping further validates the news reporting that a former Thinstall employee confirmed.

The choice is interesting considering that Citrix just renamed its Presentation Server product in XenApp.

virtualization.info: VMware ThinApp is the final name for Thinstall technology

Flash ads bearing malware plague popular sites

By Scott Dunn
A Flash-based advertisement that appeared last week on the USA Today site downloaded malicious code to users’ computers, generating erroneous warnings of a malware infestation and offering a phony solution.
The Flash vulnerability is so widespread that such "malvertisements" may be present on thousands of sites, but there are measures you can take to reduce your exposure.

Just opening the page puts you at risk

Visitors to USAToday.com last Thursday got more than they bargained for. A hacked Flash advertisement meant that merely viewing a page in your browser was capable of triggering a malware attack on your PC. According to an alert on the security site Websense, the ad can take control of the browser without any user interaction at all.

Two days after the ad appeared on the USA Today site, two prominent Utah-based news sites, DeseretNews.com and SLTrib.com, were found to have similarly dire banner ads. These ads directed users to various unexpected locations, including the site for AntiSpywareMaster. This destination has been called a "corrupt anti-spyware parasite" and a "fake program" by the RDV Group, a safe-computing organization.

News sites aren’t the only victims of what Sandi Hardmeier, who authors the blog Spyware Sucks, calls "malvertisements." The ads themselves may appear perfectly harmless, notes Hardmeier, who’s been recognized as an MVP (Most Valued Professional) by Microsoft. "The criminals behind such malvertisements . . . have no shame," she writes, "impersonating everything from WeightWatchers to Oxfam."

Advertisements are not the only source of the problem. The principal conveyors of this malicious code are Flash animations (or .swf files), which are commonly used to create intro screens, online video, and other Internet content in addition to Web ads.

Of particular concern are Flash files that are vulnerable to insertion of malicious code using a technique called cross-site scripting, or XSS.

This vulnerability was widely publicized earlier this year by Google researcher Rich Cannings and his co-authors in their book Hacking Exposed Web 2.0: Web 2.0 Security Secrets and Solutions. According to a report in the U.K.–based tech-news site The Register, a Web search revealed more than 500,000 vulnerable files on major Web sites.

A permanent fix is a long way off

Makers of Flash-building tools, including Adobe, Autodemo, TechSmith, and InfoSoft, quickly updated their development environments to patch the holes, according to a March story in The Register. But because many of the vulnerable files have to be regenerated from scratch, a titanic number of high-risk Flash files remain online.

Speaking at last month’s CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver, B.C., Cannings estimated that over 10,000 sites host the risky files, The Register reported.

But that estimate may be low. In his security blog, Jeremiah Grossman, founder and chief technology officer of WhiteHat Security, writes that "potentially hundreds of thousands" of Web sites could be at risk. "Reasonably workable fixes are going to be a long time coming," he adds.

Even diagnosing the problem can be a challenge, notes Spyware Sucks’s Hardmeier. She points out that advertising commonly appears on Web sites in one of two ways: either the Web site’s staff handles its own advertising and posts the ads directly, or the site is served ads from an advertising network, which typically manages the content.

Unfortunately, it isn’t always easy for sites or advertising networks to detect problem ads. "Malvertisements are coded to exclude particular IP addresses, cities, states, and even entire countries," Hardmeier explains. "It is standard operating procedure for a malvertisement to be coded so that it will not trigger a redirect if displayed on a computer within the IP range of the victim Web site or victim advertising network."

What you can do to protect yourself

Even though the long-term solution is for the providers of Flash-based content to create more-secure versions of their files, there are some measures users can take to protect themselves. These protections are not foolproof, but they at least reduce the risk of exposure to malware via compromised Flash files.

Some of these tips come from Andre Gironda, Secure SDLC Consultant and author of the ts/sci security blog, who posted his pointers in a comment to Grossman’s blog posting.

The no-Flash option

The most effective – albeit drastic – way to protect yourself from malware-bearing Flash files is to uninstall Flash entirely. Adobe provides a special tool for doing this; you can find instructions and a link for downloading this file in a Technote published on the Adobe site.

The part-time-Flash option

If going without Flash entirely is too extreme, you can limit the sites that use this and other risky plug-ins by installing free browser add-ons that let you manage active Web content more granularly:

For Internet Explorer, TurnFlash lets you toggle between blocking Flash files and allowing them to run. A tray icon lets you turn Flash on or off, but the setting takes effect only in any new IE windows that you launch, not in the existing browser window.

A similar utility called No! Flash also switches Flash on and off, but it also gives you the ability to turn off several other elements, such as Java applets and other scripts. As with TurnFlash, the changes take effect in the next IE window you open.

For Mozilla Firefox, a plug-in called Flashblock disables all Flash content on Web sites and replaces it with a round Flash logo. You can selectively enable Flash files by clicking their icons.

For more comprehensive security, the plug-in NoScript not only disables Flash but also turns off Java, Silverlight, and other active Web elements. A NoScript icon in the Firefox status bar provides a pop-up menu for adding a site you trust to the add-on’s "whitelist," which enables all scripts and animations on the site (but not necessarily those on the site’s pages that are served up by ad networks). You can also right-click a link in Firefox to set its NoScript options via the context menu.

The minimal option

At the very least, update the Flash Player software on your system to the latest version (9.0.124.0 or higher). In the last three months, Adobe has patched a number of security holes in this product. The update won’t protect you from all buggy Flash files on the Web, but it will make your browsing much safer.

You can download the latest Adobe Flash Player from the Adobe Web site.

After you install the update, run the free Secunia Software Inspector online malware scanner to find old versions of the Flash Player that may have been left behind on your system. Secunia’s on-screen report will show the path and filename of the old files you need to delete. You may have to run the inspector more than once to make sure all the old files are deleted. If you delete a needed file by mistake, simply run the newest Flash Player installer again to correct the problem.

One danger posed by Flash bugs is the ability of hackers to get your login credentials for a given site. Andre Gironda recommends creating multiple Firefox profiles, each with its own NoScript (or, if you prefer, Flashblock) settings. He uses his Flash-enabled profile to browse sites such as YouTube, but he exits that browser and launches his Flash- and script-blocked copy of Firefox when he conducts online banking and visits other sites that require logins.

To set up a Firefox profile, do the following:

Step 1. Choose Start, Run. Type cmd.exe and press Enter.

Step 2. At the command prompt, type:

"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -profilemanager

Then press Enter. (Note that the quotation marks are required and that your path may differ.)

Step 3. If you want Firefox to prompt you for a profile each time you launch it, uncheck the option Don’t ask at startup in the Firefox — Choose User Profile dialog box.

Step 4. Click Create Profile and follow the steps in the wizard to name your new profile. Repeat the steps to create a second profile. For example, you might name one profile Flash-Yes and another Flash-No. When you’re done, click Exit.

Step 5. Rather than being prompted for a profile each time you open Firefox, create separate shortcuts to launch each profile. For example, if you have a shortcut to Firefox in your QuickLaunch toolbar or on the desktop, drag the shortcut with the right mouse button pressed, drop it, and choose Create Shortcuts Here.

Step 6. Right-click one of your Firefox shortcuts and choose Properties. Click the Shortcut tab and edit the command line so it ends in with -p followed by a space and the name of one profile. For example, the entire command line might read:

"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -p Flash-Yes.

Repeat these steps for a second shortcut to launch your other Firefox profile.

Step 7. You may need to download and install one of the plug-ins described above for these profiles and configure each profile’s browser differently. However, any changes you make should be saved with that profile, so they will be in effect the next time you launch it.

A complete solution to high-risk Flash files may not come any time soon. Until the creators and managers of these files can ensure a high degree of safety, users have to be extra cautious to avoid the risks of Flash-borne malware.

For more on Flash security vulnerabilities, see Windows Secrets contributing editor Mark Edwards’s Apr. 10 PC Tune-Up column.

Microsoft TechNet Deployment Tech Center

http://www.microsoft.com/desktopdeployment/

Microsoft Deployment Team Blog

http://blogs.technet.com/msdeployment/

MCS - "The Deployment Guys"

http://blogs.technet.com/deploymentguys/

Newsgroups:

microsoft.public.deployment.desktop

microsoft.public.sms.tools

Non-Microsoft resources:

MyITForum

http://www.myitforum.com/myITWiki/OSD.ashx

Johan Arwidmark’s team site and blog

http://www.deployvista.com/

Deployment Forum – Jerry Honeycutt’s site

http://www.deploymentforum.com/

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit Video Walkthroughs:

MDT Lite Touch walkthroughs

http://blogs.technet.com/deploymentguys/archive/2008/03/13/microsoft-deployment-toolkit-lite-touch-video-walk-through.aspx

SCCM 2007 and Microsoft Deployment Toolkit - Video Walkthrough

http://blogs.technet.com/deploymentguys/archive/2008/03/20/sccm-2007-and-microsoft-deployment-toolkit-video-walkthrough.aspx

BDD 2007 Lite Touch and SMS 2003 Zero Touch Video Walkthroughs

http://blogs.technet.com/deploymentguys/archive/2008/04/03/bdd-2007-lite-touch-and-sms-2003-zero-touch-video-walkthroughs.aspx

Windows XP Whitepaper – Preserving OEM Activation 1.0: 
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457078.aspx.

Windows Vista Whitepaper – Preserving OEM Activation 2.0:  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=8f9753d6-0714-4940-884a-33027683e328&DisplayLang=en

I have just got back from some training in Houston and while listening to a question from a colleague from the UK where he asked if "VDI was going to be able to use the full suite of Hypervisor functionality like vMotion…"  and that got me thinking…

Some of the Conventional Wisdom around the place holds that VDI by itself will likely not be able to cover all of any one customers needs and most will more than likely need to look at quite possibly a number of different approaches to cover ALL employees and ALL Applications.

So with this in mind I’d be interested in your thoughts on the following idea?

Just a few thoughts around VDI??

Let’s say that we stock a couple of decent servers with loads of resources and allows us to run quite a few VDI instances? OK? So one of the possible issues with the classic VDI so far is that if a user places a bit too much pressure on the resources then it has the potential to impact on all other users, being as it is a shared resource? (This is still one of the classic gotcha’s in Terminal Server and Citrix PS - the session is sticky and it stays with the same server unless a logout/login occurs)

So one idea I’m kicking around is the possibility that if a user started something like a 120Mb Excel spreadsheet that might consume quite a bit of CPU then would it be possible to use the vMotion to transfer him to a BladePC, if they started 3 or 4 of them (or they needed more resources?) then transfer them to a BladeWS…..?

Seamlessly!! with the user completely unaware that this has happened!!

Now the fundamentals of vMotion (or XenMotion for that matter?) requires shared boot storage - BUT I don’t think it needs to be NFS or iSCSI, etc. - the Citrix Provisioning Server or OS Streaming method like Neoware IM would probably work just as well in this scenario? As this then leaves the Virtual HardDisk/Storage in a common area accessible by the Vitrual Desktops regardless of whether they are running on VDI’s, the BladePC’s or the BladeWS’s.

The other point is the similarity of CPU would possibly cause an issue, and this probably extends beyond just Intel/AMD? This appears to be a fundamental of vMotion/XenMotion? So this might not fly today, but it is possible that with improvements in the Hypervisors this issue might be overcome at some stage soon?

Anyway, what do you think of the *idea/concept*? As a user requires more CPU and resources they might be able to be transferred from shared resources (VDI on ESX) to individual resources (BladePC) and then high powered resources (BladeWS) - once the high intensity workload has finished then the user would be transferred seamlessly back through the stack to a VDI instance on the ESX server.

Please bear in mind that this is only a concept at the moment and there are clearly problems and issues to be overcome - but the main reason for this post is to ask if you think it has legs? What do you think?

Clearly the ESX/Hypervisor would need to be able to run on hardware outside of it’s current Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) but with Xen this might not be such an issue?

Is wonder if this is where XenDesktop is headed?

May 7: 1st Beta Release Free “Login Virtual Session Indexer”

May 7th Login Consultants will release the first beta of Login Virtual Session Indexer (Login VSI), a free and easy to use benchmarking methodology from Login Consultants. The Login VSI is a complete toolset that allows you easily to compare scalability of all virtualization platforms and technologies. Login VSI supports all recent Windows OS’s (including 32 and 64bit), Office 2003 and 2007, all application streaming technologies and most importantly both SBC and VDI.

Because the setup is so simple there is an infinite amount of combinations and technologies you can now compare. For instance, you can also measure the relative impact of a virussanner or performance optimization technologies. Additionally, Login VSI will be a perfect tool to compare scalability of different virtualization platforms. Enter May 7th in your agenda, and watch our website www.loginconsultants.com.

The only annoying part of this is that because I keep an eye on what is potentially coming to market, I keep putting off making a decision because I’m waiting for the next release…  <sigh>

The really annoying part of this <below> is the Microsoft Mediaroom, not because of what it is, but because of what it promises that is not available yet, grrrrrrr. This is exactly the sort of thing we would all like to hook up to the large LCD, but as far as I can see this is essentially a "mock up" of what is possible to deliver using MS’s IPTV *NOT* what is available - and more is the pity?

SoC for STB’s has triple processors

Apr. 15, 2008
Sigma Designs has introduced a pair of set-top box SoC’s (System on Chip) that run Windows CE and Microsoft’s Mediaroom IPTV software stack. Powered by three MIPS cores apiece, the SMP8654 and SMP8655 boast accelerated graphics and compliance with HDMI (high-defintion multimedia interface) 1.3, says Sigma.
The SMP8654 and SMP8655, differing only in the latter’s omission of Macrovision, are designed to replace the company’s "industry leading" SMP8634. And indeed, they appear to be a significant advance on it. Where the older SMP8634 had a 300MHz MIPS CPU and a 200MHz security CPU, the SMP865x chips boast triple MIPS processors, for a claimed fifty percent speed boast, according to Sigma claims:

• A 500MHz processor runs the operating system and applications
• A 333MHz processor manages interrupts and part of the network stack
• A 333MHz security CPU, deliberately inaccessible by external interfaces, manages authentication, key generation, and content access functions

Sigma’s 865x SoC sports three processors
(Click to enlarge)

The SMP865x chips offer high definition video decoding, including H.264 (MPEG-4 part 10), WMV, VC-1, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4 (part 2). They also support China’s home-market AVS (audio video standard). HDMI 1.3 support offers bandwidth to 340MHz, while adding support for the Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD formats used by Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.
Other touted features for the SMP865x chips include:

• On-chip flash memory (24K for 500MHz processor, 4K for interrupt/stack processor)
• DRM (digital rights management) engines
• 2D graphics processor including scaling, JPEG and OpenType acceleration
• Dual gigabit Ethernet controllers
• Dual USB 2.0 controllers
• DDR2 controller supporting memory up to 666Mbps
• NAND flash controller
• SATA controller
• Audio I/O
• Simultaneous HD and SD video outputs

Sigma did not cite pin compatibility with its previous SoCs, but said the SMP865x chips are software-compatible with them.

SoC for STBs has triple processors

The lovely missus this afternoon called out that there was "some Virus Alert thingy on the computer screen" and did I want to sort it out? Being as bright as she is she knew that one thing you don’t do is to run any download that you didn’t initiate yourself?

Natalie had simply been trying to find a recipe on the Internet that she had just seen on a cooking show. It looks like as part of viewing that website the *proported* scanning process kicked in claiming that I was infected by 3 "high risk" viruses and offered to disinfect my Computer if I clicked on OK - not surprisingly it is not possible to actually cancel this installation - the only way to halt the install/scan at this point would appear to be to use Task Manager to kill IExplorer?

I must say that this looked pretty convincing, and it would not surprise me in the slightest that this would be getting a lot of success out in the wild with most average users

Now just for those of you that think this is all a bit too much and this stuff doesn’t happen much at all, have a look at some of the details from Google’s Online Security Blog as noted by ITnews

"It has been 18 months since we started to identify web pages that infect vulnerable hosts via drive-by downloads, i.e. pages that attempt to exploit visitors by installing and running malware automatically," the Google blog stated yesterday.

"During that time we have investigated billions of URLs and found more than three million unique URLs on over 180,000 sites automatically installing malware."

Google’s team also reported that around two per cent of malicious websites are delivering malware via advertising.

So even at 2% of sites that means that if you only browse to 7 sites a day then there is a good chance you have been infected that week? Scary thought?

AntispyDeluxe - Symantec.com

Why the present system is not working

Example 1:

Here in Australia Foxtel would like you to sign up for their premium service and use the IQ (similar to UK’s Sky+ Service) however here in Australia there is a wealth of content still delivered by the main Free to Air (FTA) Stations and yet this is only available **IF** you have the service delivered by Cable - NOT if it’s delivered by Satellite.

Apparently that would require a retransmission fee that the TV Channels are not prepared to pay for - so although you see the lovely shiny adverts for Foxtel’s IQ Service… come to think of it there haven’t been that many lately, then it won’t work for the majority of Australians who would expect to pause and timeshift TV Shows from the main Stations.

Example 2:

Related to above, my Wife starts getting interested in the TV mini-series Damages on Channel 9 at 9.30, only to find that 5 or 6 episodes in they decide to switch it to a 10.30 slot that is too late for her.

Example 3:

Channel 9 advertises "New Series" of CSI - as soon as it starts I can see it’s essentially a rerun of Series 7. But now that my interest has been piqued I check the details for CSI on www.tvrage.com and find that yes CSI is now in Series 8 and it first started airing back in Sept. 2007….  sheesh!!

Example 4:

My wife is a very big fan of X-Factor in the UK and yet this show never makes it to the Foxtel supplied UK channels, so we step outside this and download them from the Internet and generally watch them a week after they have aired in the UK.

Can anyone else see the similarity with the Music Industry?

The main point here is that the RIAA have spent the best part of the 5 years or so trying to stuff the genie back in the bottle with regard to MP3 downloads and they are clearly fighting a loosing battle. It would be far better for them to approach this from the point of view that it is extremely hard to stop and or eradicate, so how can we make this experience much simpler, easier for the Customers/Public to the point that they will all flock to RIAA approved web sites for their content? Or even take on board some of the suggestions that they organise a royalty payment mechanism with the ISP’s?

At the moment the Video content is still quite questionable in a number of cases and you never really know what it will be like until you view the file after it’s downloaded - so there is still a lot of potential for the TV Stations/TV Studios/Film Studios to learn from the RIAA’s experience and start building a consensus and/or business case of how the future might look? There will be plenty of people who will argue that it can’t be done because of the myriad number of vested interests - but my point is - look at where the RIAA is now, technology will advance, ADSL is getting faster and more ubiquitous….

And don’t forget from my example above, even though it might be a complex and time consuming exercise, every time I get stiffed by one of the "vested interests" above when they change scheduled times, or do reruns as "new series" etc. I revert to form 

It would be great to think what it might be like in another 3 - 5 years from now when you sign up on a TV Channel’s web site and get updates via email that your new show/episode is ready for download? And would you possibly interested in these other similar shows in the Archive? And don’t forget we will be debuting a new show that you might be interested in next month…  Would you like to schedule these downloads automatically?

If you make it simple and easy people will flock to it - then just add advertising to make it pay?

Anyway, that’s my 2 cents for what it’s worth, and below I have outlined how it is possible to make it reasonably simple enough that my wife is now able to get things without involving me

Downloading TV Shows and Movies from the Internet

Great places to search for these downloads are:
Pirate Bay - www.piratebay.org
Mininova – www.mininova.org
Newzbin – www.newzbin.com

Both of these are structured somewhat differently:

Mininova uses bittorrents that requires a bittorrent client like utorrent to facilitate the download, where as Newzbin simply searches parts of Usenet to locate the groups of smaller files that have been posted that make up the larger TV show or movie.

Mininova:

For example search mininova for “CSI series 8” and you will get a result like this

This brings the result like…..

Click on the link at the top of the seeds column, and this will rearrange the list so that those torrents with the most seeds is at the top (more seeds means that more people have the complete file being offered up to others)

Now look for the particular episode that you are looking for – these are typically named in the format like s08e04, s802 or 808 – what this is referring to series 8, episode x.

BTW (By the way) it’s worth mentioning now that a typical 1 hour TV show is actually only 40 mins in length once you have removed the ads – this is then typically compressed down to an *.AVI file of only 400Mb – so be aware of this when checking the size of the download, too little or to large could be a cause of concern. If it is a DVD then it would be appropriate to be of 4.5Gb in size

If you are in any doubt it’s always worth checking www.TVRage.com for the actual title of the episode – Films can be checked at www.IMDB.com (The Internet Movie Database) – these are both very good resources to check any details regarding TV shows or Movies

Click on the link you need – here I am looking for s08e01

So here is the link details

So in the above example you can see the mouse is just hovering above the link to download the utorrent client – if you haven’t installed a bittorrent client yet then I’d suggest you download and install this now

So just run this, no need to save it anywhere as it’s quite small, and we’ll install it straight away

So here Windows is asking you to confirm that you actually want to install this – just click on “Run”

Just accept the defaults and click on Yes

Change the “Connection Type” to whatever is appropriate

So at this stage just click on OK

In progress….

Newzbin:

Newzbin is a service that you have to pay for – more information can be found at:

· 1 Site Questions

o 1.1 What is the purpose of Newzbin?

o 1.2 What exactly can I do on Newzbin?

o 1.3 How do I download from Newzbin?

· 2 Email Questions

· 3 Premium Membership Questions

· 4 Legal Questions

· 5 IRC Questions

How much does it cost? 50 US Cents a week – what do you get for your money?

http://docs.newzbin.com/index.php/Newzbin:Premium_Membership

So once you have paid, here’s how it works

Search for “CSI 8x” gets you the following:

It’s worth noting that the date matches closely the first screening date as described in tvrage.com as well as the title, although that there are a number of different file sizes – this will probably come back to the compression routines, alogrithims or config details used when compressing the original recording down to the *.AVI file

I would always tend to go for the 400Mb or so as this will typically = 1 hour of TV? (i.e. 40 mins of program minus the 20 mins of Ads) and treat anything else as potentially suspect – but that is only my personal opinion

So when you attempt to download something from Newzbin you will be asked to open or save an *.NZB file

This needs to be opened or downloaded by the Newzbin Client (the best is probably NewzbinPro)

This will then download the components on your behalf in to folders.

Typically this will be a load of small files that will need to be re-combined using WinRar, and if there are any missing files they will need to be recreated by using QuickPar.

Happy Watching

Seriously, I have recently started using a new HP 2710p laptop and I’m shocked to find that my normal RAM load is something around 1 - 1.1Gb just doing routine tasks…  how crazy is that? When I get time I do want to rebuild it with the XP image because this is a joke - and the supposedly fancy UI is not that good really.

What I did find interesting in this missive from Gartner is the comments at the bottom that are suggestions to Microsoft?

Their advice to Microsoft took several forms, but one road they urged the software giant to take was virtualization. "We envision a very modular and virtualized world," said the researchers, who spelled out a future where virtualization — specifically a hypervisor — is standard on client as well as server versions of Windows.

"An OS, in this case Windows, will ride atop the hypervisor, but it will be much thinner, smaller and modular than it is today. Even the Win32 API set should be a module that can be deployed to maintain support for traditional Windows applications on some devices, but other[s] may not have that module installed."

The reason I find this so intriguing is that this almost follows what Ron Oglesby was suggesting way back in 2006?
Where is all this virtualization going?

Windows is ‘collapsing,’ Gartner analysts warn

The researchers damn Windows in current form, urge radical changes

By Gregg Keizer

April 10, 2008 (Computerworld) Calling the situation "untenable" and describing Windows as "collapsing," a pair of Gartner analysts yesterday said Microsoft Corp. must make radical changes to its operating system or risk becoming a has-been.

In a presentation at a Gartner-sponsored conference in Las Vegas, analysts Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald said Microsoft has not responded to the market, is overburdened by nearly two decades of legacy code and decisions, and faces serious competition on a whole host of fronts that will make Windows moot unless the software developer acts.

"For Microsoft, its ecosystem and its customers, the situation is untenable," said Silver and MacDonald in their prepared presentation, titled "Windows Is Collapsing: How What Comes Next Will Improve."

Among Microsoft’s problems, the pair said, is Windows’ rapidly-expanding code base, which makes it virtually impossible to quickly craft a new version with meaningful changes. That was proved by Vista, they said, when Microsoft — frustrated by lack of progress during the five-year development effort on the new operating — hit the "reset" button and dropped back to the more stable code of Windows Server 2003 as the foundation of Vista.

"This is a large part of the reason [why] Windows Vista delivered primarily incremental improvements," they said. In turn, that became one of the reasons why businesses pushed back Vista deployment plans. "Most users do not understand the benefits of Windows Vista or do not see Vista as being better enough than Windows XP to make incurring the cost and pain of migration worthwhile."

Other analysts, including those at Gartner rival Forrester Research Inc., have highlighted the slow move toward Vista. Last month, Forrester said that by the end of 2007 only 6.3% of 50,000 enterprise computer users it surveyed were working with Vista. What gains Vista made during its first year, added Forrester, appeared to be at the expense of Windows 2000; Windows XP’s share hardly budged.

The monolithic nature of Windows — although Microsoft talks about Vista’s modularity, Silver and MacDonald said it doesn’t go nearly far enough — not only makes it tough to deliver a worthwhile upgrade, but threatens Microsoft in the mid- and long-term.

Users want a smaller Windows that can run on low-priced — and low-powered — hardware. And increasingly, users work with "OS-agnostic applications," the two analysts said in their presentation. It takes too long for Microsoft to build the next version, the company is being beaten by others in the innovation arena, and in the future — perhaps as soon as the next three years — it’s going to have trouble competing with Web applications and small, specialized devices.

"Apple introduced its iPhone running OS X, but Microsoft requires a different product on handhelds because Windows Vista is too large, which makes application development, support and the user experience all more difficult," according to Silver and MacDonald.

"Windows as we know it must be replaced," they said in their presentation.

Their advice to Microsoft took several forms, but one road they urged the software giant to take was virtualization. "We envision a very modular and virtualized world," said the researchers, who spelled out a future where virtualization — specifically a hypervisor — is standard on client as well as server versions of Windows.

"An OS, in this case Windows, will ride atop the hypervisor, but it will be much thinner, smaller and modular than it is today. Even the Win32 API set should be a module that can be deployed to maintain support for traditional Windows applications on some devices, but other[s] may not have that module installed."

Windows is ‘collapsing,’ Gartner analysts warn

VMware Workstation 6.5 doesn’t allow ESX as guest anymore

Friday, April 11, 2008   |   0 Comments   |  

No matter how much VMware is extending its HCL, a large number of users is still looking for ways to install the company flagship hypervisor ESX (formerly ESX Server) inside Workstation virtual machines.

Being one of the most wanted feature ever, hacks to achieve the goal proliferated, and our post about how to run ESX Server 3 inside a Workstation 6 virtual machine is one of the most article ever read.

Said do the community disappointment in discovering that the new Workstation 6.5 beta 1 prevents the hack mentioned above doesn’t come by surprise.

One of the VMware employees that addressed the complains anyway is mentioning (but not promising) the possibility to run again ESX inside a VM since the Workstation 6.5 feature list is not finalized yet.

virtualization.info: VMware Workstation 6.5 doesn’t allow ESX as guest anymore

Of particular note is the presentation embedded below from Rudy De Waele of m-trends.org and I would encourage anyone who is remotely interested in where things are heading with regards to mobile usage, Internet and information services to review this.

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Rudy definitely appears to have a finger on the pulse of what’s going on in the rapidly changing landscape of mobile technology?

Understanding Mobile 2.0

On the eve of Le Web 3 in Paris - and one month after the Web 2.0 Summit concluded - it seems like an appropriate time to explore the world of the mobile Web, a.k.a. mobile 2.0. There has been a lot of discussion lately on this topic, a good deal of it inspired by the mobile 2.0 event - a one-day event held on 6 November 2006, organized by Daniel Appelquist and Mike Rowehl.

Carriers and Mobile Operators are taking notice…

In the closing session about carriers and operators at the Under The Radar: Mobility Conference on 16 November 2006, I heard an Executive Director from Verizon Wireless using the term "Mobile 2.0". Also Orange (France Telecom) is sponsoring one of the biggest web 2.0 related conferences in Europe, Le Web 3 in Paris. The fact that carriers/operators are now linking their brand name to web 2.0/mobile 2.0 related content and conferences, shows that progress is being made. Web 2.0 inspired projects going mobile and/or mobile 2.0 projects have been considered as things to avoid for carriers/operators up till now, since they are disruptive to their current business models.

So does this mean, with the carriers/operators entering the space now, that mobile 2.0 is finally taking off?

…..

What is Mobile 2.0?

It’s absolutely necessary that more connections are made between the players in the web 2.0 sphere (a.k.a. next generation web apps & services) and what some Mobilists are calling mobile 2.0. What we mean by ‘mobile 2.0′ is another (r)evolution, already started, that will dramatically change the web and the mobility landscape that we currently know. The idea is that the mobile web will become the dominant access method in many countries of the world, with devices that become more hybrid and networks that become more powerful - everywhere in the next decade to come.

…….

Well Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, put it very well in a Financial Times article in May this year (subscription only):

"Mobile phones are cheaper than PCs, there are three times more of them, growing at twice the speed, and they increasingly have Internet access. What is more, the World Bank estimates that more than two-thirds of the world’s population lives within range of a mobile phone network. Mobile is going to be the next big Internet phenomenon. It holds the key to greater access for everyone - with all the benefits that entails."

…..

Mobilist blogger Enrique C. Ortiz sees another hindrance (and I think he’s right): the lack of open standards and tools to build your own mobile 2.0 applications. He says:

"Web 2.0 is based on user intelligence instead of technologies, i.e. by giving users smart tools that enable them to apply human semantics to information provided, you get a more intelligent web. This can only be done in a massive (thus useful) way with open standards and protocols that are inclusive and inviting to everyone. Now, as I see it, this ‘open-source’ story is an aspect seriously lacking from mobile platforms."

Carriers/operators need to cover their investments and so they want to be compensated by any 3rd party using their network. This is fair enough, but the fact is that operators are losing more and more control over mobile devices - because these devices can communicate with other devices over Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Wimax, NFC, etc. That is, more options are becoming available for mobile users to access the web over networks other than the closed networks of the operators.

…..

Mobile Startups

There’s definitely a lot of movement around on the mobile start-up front. Besides Yahoo with Flickr and Google with YouTube going mobile, there are some very interesting start-up companies resolutely going mobile. Many of them are building easy-to-use mobile web apps and services. Here’s a starter for ten to check out (too many to link to, but just google them!):

• BluePulse
• ComVu
• Funambol
• Gizmo
• Loopt
• JuiceCaster
• Mobo
• Mystrands
• Plazes
• Plusmo
• Sharpcast
• SlingMedia
• Shozu
• SoonR
• TalkPlus
• Widsets
• Winksite
• … and many others. 

In fact please add your name/project to the list here in the comments, so someone can start categorizing them

…..

Conclusion

To conclude, check this nice mobile 2.0 definition from Daniel Appelquist:

"Mobile 2.0 is not "the Future." it is services that already exist all around us. These services are maturing at an amazing rate and what they are doing is effectively knitting together Web 2.0 with the mobile platform to create something new: a new class of services that leverage mobility but are as easy to use and ubiquitous as the Web is today. These services point the way forward for the mobile data industry."

It took the internet a couple of years after 1994 to reach its maturity on the technology side, not to forget the business side of things. I believe the time has come for another exciting period, the Mobile Web. Some carriers/operators are finally starting to act - how about you?

Written for Read/WriteWeb by Rudy De Waele of m-trends.org.

Understanding Mobile 2.0 - ReadWriteWeb

What I have so far is - A PC or Fat Client Advantages are:

• Always provides a better user experience
• Fewer server requirements.
• Better multimedia performance.
• More flexibility.
• Better peripheral support.
• Suitable for poor network connections.
• Easier to repurpose.
• Doesn’t need specialist or server knowledge to support.
• Any technical support issues only affect single users, not multiples.

Does anyone know of any others?
Cheers,
Dave

Wiki on Long Tail:

The phrase The Long Tail (as a proper noun with capitalized letters) was first coined by Chris Anderson in an October 2004 Wired magazine article ^[1] to describe the niche strategy of certain business such as Amazon.com or Netflix. The distribution and inventory costs of those business allow them to realize significant profit out of selling small volumes of hard-to-find items to many customers, instead of only selling large volumes of a reduced number of popular items. The group of persons that buy the hard-to-find or "non-hit" items is the customer demographic called the Long Tail.

Given a large enough availability of choice and a large population of customers, and negligible stocking and distribution costs, the selection and buying pattern of the population results in a power law distribution curve, or Pareto distribution, instead of the expected normal distribution curve. This suggests that a market with a high freedom of choice will create a certain degree of inequality by favoring the upper 20% of the items ("hits" or "head") against the other 80% ("non-hits" or "long tail"). ^[2]

My take on a Long Tail
In essence one of the easiest analogies is the difference between a Music Store and an iTunes. A physical store has a finite limit on the amount of stock it can display on it’s shelves, so as a consequence of this limit it needs to stock and display the most popular music to ensure a decent turnover and revenue - whereas with an on-line store with little restriction on it’s stock (add more HDD’s?) and a very cheap and scalable distribution system (the internet) that the customer actually pays for can not only stock a huge amount of titles but it also needs to only hold one of each.

His latest missive was about the way everything on the Web is free…  or getting there?

Everything get’s cheaper in digital format?
Essentially this distills down to the trend that once anything gravitates from physical to silicon/software it appears that there is an almost unstoppable force that will place the price of that commodity under a constant downward pressure due to what might be described as the “Economics of IT” and the way the cost accelerates downward under the sheer weight of scalability, it almost seems to be the nature of Technology?

Appendix at the bottom for example of how cheap hardware is getting

This can also be demonstrated very clearly with the news of Google’s new App Engine being released today? Google Jumps Head First Into Web Services With Google App Engine  - It’s free for the first 10,000 developers who get in the door, and even though there are restrictions on its capabilities (at the moment) I think it’s all quite reasonable to expect that this will build from here and still be listed as Beta in a couple of years when it’s still free and got millions of users?

In an aside as to how Google manages to provide it’s service for free, I was recently chatting to a colleague, and he told me that Google don’t buy Servers or even Desktops – they just buy the motherboards and hang them in the racks – the maintenance cycle simply consists of a tech going around the Data Centre and replacing the failed systems once a week. Apparently they are looking at moving to newer DC supplied M/B’s so that it’s safer, but other than that it just keeps ticking. (Please let me know if this is correct? I’d consider this info to be anecdotal and not confirmed)

So from my perspective the one shining ray of light that shouts about being free is Music via MP3.

On the one hand, now that it has been absorbed in to Silicon (i.e. Digitized) the price is in an ever downwards spiral, and yet on the other hand it perfectly validates Chris’s Long Tail theory that people can still make money in fulfilling a niche demand?

This is also demonstrated somewhat by the more popular artists who have branched out beyond just providing the musical content and now diversified into clothes, designer accessories, perfumes, etc.

Video
The main issue looming on the horizon here is what is going to happen to the Motion Picture Industry (isn’t that a quaint way of phrasing it?) if they don’t pull their collective finger out? Just in case they haven’t been paying attention during the last decade we have moved from traditional TV (I’m not counting VCR’s) to Tivo for the US (1999) and Sky+ for the UK (2001) so that for most people who do enjoy TV they have had it on demand for some time now.

In some ways TV and Video have stagnated in development since the launch of these devices, I’m sure there will be folks carrying on about BluRay etc. but once the commodity has been digitized it’s game over – from that point on the ONLY medium that we all want to use is whatever we have to hand – iPod, PSP, Portable HDD, SD Card, iPhone, Laptop, etc. Who cares if you can or can’t burn it on to a plastic disk? What I’m trying to point out here is that once the product or service has been turned in to a string or stream of bits then the Studio has effectively given up control, and the sooner that they can understand this from the recent history of the Music Business the better off they will be.

There are other ways to make money from content, and clearly the biggest one going at the moment is advertising where we would appear to be in the midst of a titanic fundamental shift where advertising that was normally placed with traditional media is now moving steadfastly in the direction of the Wired World, be it YouTube, whatever. I seriously think the Studios have had a coffee or two and are up to speed on this, but at the moment they don’t see a way out and so they are watching the dwindling revenues and hoping for a miracle?

TV Shows and Movies
So what’s going to happen to Video? If we take it that we are now entering an age where Video is something that by default is now stored, transmitted and received in digital format it becomes pretty simple to hit the "Forward 30 secs" button and pass the Advertising completely - and this is what is scaring the pants of the Studio and TV execs.

After all this is the fundamental difference between Movies/PayTV and Free to air TV (FTA), the advertising segments on FTA broadcasts are what pays for the whole model, now if people are recording the TV series, episodes etc and retransmitting via bittorrent (with or without stripping the ads) to other folks then this is effectively curtailing the Broadcasters revenue stream?

My take on this (please feel free to comment if you disagree?) is that the Movie and TV players have always kept a keen eye on trying to make as much money out of the content as is possible, and rightly so in a free market economy, and this has been possible while the distribution system was tightly controlled by them. So Movies typically play to large cinema complex’s first (that presumably pay a premium to premier?), then a wider number of cinema and distribution houses, then DVD release, then DVD Rentals, TV Premiere’s and then finally TV reruns? And in this way they try to maximize the return on the original investment of making the content in the first place.

Now unfortunately this cosy state of affairs that was all very nice for the content creators but what they didn’t quite anticipate was that they had effectively "let the genie out of the bottle" when they decided to go along with changing over from VHS tapes to DVD’s, once this was agreed to and they had conceded to move from Analogue to Digital then this is the moment they lost control of the content. By 2000 the DeCCS code for the DVD was broken, the AACS for HD content was broken in early 2007, and since then the only real impediments to holding back the masses from going ahead and sharing this wildly across P2P sites has been the size of the files and the corresponding bandwidth as well as the threats of lawsuits from the Studios and TV Stations.

So once we started to get to around 2005/2006 and bandwidth was becoming a bit faster, XViD and DiVX codecs were becoming commonplace in consumer DVD players, DVD Recorders were getting cheaper and before you know it entire TV shows and full episodes were appearing on the internet within hours of them being aired in the US - now the Exec’s were really starting to get worried…

Advertising
So what are they going to do? I would say that the distribution system that we now take for granted for Audio (MP3 files) and Video (AVI files) via the internet is so efficient and personal that it is here to stay unless something better comes along - what they need to do do is stop thinking of how they can stop it, it’s like King Canute trying to stop the tide, it is nigh on impossible. I would think they are better off trying to follow the lead of what most people are turning their hands to on the Web and embrace the concept that once it’s turned digital and it’s in the silicon it’s as cheap as can be - but you get it with advertising!

The old model of advertising in video was to stop what the customer is watching and force them to watch something that you want to advertise but only for a short time and then go back to the original material that the customer wanted. Typically people would tend to ignore this, so advertisers manage to pack more sound effects in to "pump" the volume without the volume changing - we just muted the set. With modern technology it’s getting easier to bypass the advertising all together, and if you are watching recorded shows on a DVR you can just skip 3 minutes in a heart beat.

So it would appear to me that the old method of TV advertising is almost at it’s use by date anyway? I think what we will be seeing soon is ads that appear along the edge of the screen (left, right, top or bottom depending on the action?) during the actual program and these will be akin to the banner ads were are used to seeing on web pages.

One example of what this might look like is here: Overlay.tv Adds Links and Easter Eggs to Music Videos
The key to this will be getting ALL the TV signals being broadcast in digital otherwise it wouldn’t work, so there is still a window of opportunity on a number of fronts, so in the meantime you’ll have to keep trolling the bittorrent sites for the episodes of the show you *were* watching before the local station decided to move that show to a 3am time slot on Monday morning?

Appendix: Examples of Hardware costs from days gone by….

The Macintosh II, introduced in 1987 for US$5,500
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/total-share.ars/6

Try this for size, anyone with an iPhone has more power at their disposal than this server from 10 years ago:
The Hewlett-Packard NetServer E50 is a case in point. The unit I tested (street price: $2589) had a 333-MHz Pentium II CPU, 64MB of RAM, and a 4GB Wide Ultra SCSI hard drive; the 4GB SCSI tape backup is a nice enhancement. Like many bargain-basement desktop PCs, the E50 comes without a monitor. More important, it lacks an operating system:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,3992-page,3-c,servers/article.html
And….  that’s without a display or an O/S? now you can get the equivalent from AT&T…. 

But lately with some of the odd storms coming through Sydney we’ve had to resort to switching from HD back to the SD transmissions of TV shows - and doesn’t the difference show!!

Now here’s a small neat video camera that can also take high quality stills - it’s almost enough to make me consider looking seriously at video camera as a possible replacement for my current Canon Ixus 65?

Video: Sony’s $900 HDR-TG1 — world’s smallest 1080i camcorder

Posted Apr 3rd 2008 1:04AM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Digital Cameras

We’ll go ahead and let those other guys battle it out for the "world’s smallest" camcorder title — meanwhile, Sony’s just cranked out the one to really pay attention to. The HDR-TG1 Handycam checks in at just 1.3- x 4.7- x 2.5-inches and weighs ten ounces, all while boasting the ability to capture those oh-so-precious vacation moments and unannounced streaking episodes in 1080p 1080i. Aside from that, it’ll snag stills at 4-megapixels and holds everything on MS Pro Duo / Pro Duo Mark2 cards, while the 2.7-inch touchscreen keeps your eyes glued to the action. Furthermore, you’ll find a 10x Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar optical zoom lens, BIONZ processing engine, 5.1 Dolby Digital audio recording and a bundled 4GB Pro Duo Mark2 card for $900. Get ready — this one’s comin’ at you next month. Video of Japanese model after the break.

Video: Sony’s $900 HDR-TG1 — world’s smallest 1080i camcorder - Engadget