Real Cool Stuff

Information on Downloading and Installing Windows 7 Beta – direct download link to ISO here

Dave Caddick — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 13:04:06 GMT

If you can’t be bothered reading the details – simply use this? :-)

Because the Windows 7 Beta will be offered download-only, it will be provided to you as an ISO image (an .iso file) that you download. more details below

And just in case you are interested in the Keynote at CES from Steve Ballmer regarding the release of Windows 7

Windows 7 Home Page

As of today, I am running the Windows 7 Beta on several different PCs including my laptop, my work PC, and my PC at home, which I upgraded recently to Windows 7 from Windows Vista SP1. (I’ll be outlining the PCs I’m using to test Windows 7 shortly.) I’m all connected with HomeGroup, I’ve got several different Libraries set up, and I’m loving the new Windows Taskbar. I’ve got Windows Media Center recording my favorite TV shows and my Zune 80 syncing up with the Zune software. And things are even better with Windows Live Essentials installed. I find the Windows 7 Beta to be an amazing beta release and I am extremely excited for you to get your hands on it later this week! I’d like to take a moment to share some specifics regarding the Windows 7 Beta that I think are very important for people looking to give Windows 7 a spin.

On January 9th, the Windows 7 Beta will be available for Windows enthusiasts to download via the Windows 7 page on Windows.com. The Windows 7 Beta is going to be available download-only (we’re not sending out physical media) and available for a limited time to the first 2.5 million people who download the beta.

The Windows 7 Beta will be available in English, German, Japanese, Arabic, and Hindi, and each language will be available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions (except Hindi which will only be available in 32-bit). Because the Windows 7 Beta will be offered download-only, it will be provided to you as an ISO image (an .iso file) that you download. After downloading either the 32-bit or 64-bit ISO image of the Windows 7 Beta, you will be required to burn the ISO image to a DVD to install Windows 7. So you want to be sure you have a DVD burner before spending the time downloading the ISO image.

To burn the ISO image of the Windows 7 Beta to DVD, if your PC comes with Nero or Roxio products – you should be able to burn the ISO image to DVD. If you don’t already have DVD burning software on your PC, you can also check out ImgBurn which is free and can be downloaded here.

The Windows 7 Beta only supports Windows Vista SP1 to Windows 7 upgrades. So if you intend to do an upgrade – be sure it is on a PC running Windows Vista with Service Pack 1. We are not yet announcing anything regarding finalized upgrade paths for Windows 7.

The Windows 7 Beta will be only available in one edition, which is roughly equivalent the Ultimate edition of Windows Vista.

Also, another important thing to keep in mind is that the Windows 7 Beta will expire on August 1st, 2009.

I also need to emphasize that this is a beta of an unreleased operating system. Be sure to backup all your important data. As much as the Windows 7 Beta completely rocks, part of the beta process is discovering bugs and reporting those bugs. Some of those bugs could possibly lead to data loss. I tend to be a risk-taker myself and have gone all-out with the Windows 7 Beta by putting it on almost all my PCs both at work and at home, but not everyone should do this. I recommend using Windows Vista’s Backup and Restore features to ensure your information is backed up before trying out the Windows 7 Beta. Click here for several methods of backing up your data in Windows Vista.

The Windows 7 Beta is targeted toward the enthusiast crowd – people excited and knowledgeable with technology. If you don’t quite understand much of what I’ve written above, it is probably best you don’t try to install the Windows 7 Beta.

If you are an IT Professional, you can visit the Springboard Series for Windows 7 on TechNet (see the Windows 7 tab) on January 9th to sign up for the Windows 7 Beta but also can also get access to dynamic resources including video walkthroughs and the new Windows 7 forums.

Top 100 Classic Web Sites from PC Magazine – my take on this list, I’ve cut it down to 11

Dave Caddick — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 22:13:51 GMT

One thing I do enjoy when travelling in the US is getting up to date on some of the Magazines that I don’t always get a chance to get hold of, or get a chance to read, as there’s usually a lot of time sitting in Aircraft or Airports? ;-)

I caught this article in the PC Mag and found it quite useful, but I’ve cut their list down to the 11 that I thought were keepers. I could make that 10 really as I hadn’t come across Kayak before, but there you go?

Top 100 Classic Web Sites from PC Magazine

Digital Photography Review
www.dpreview.com

Celebrating its tenth birthday this November, Digital Photography Review is hands down one of the most influential—and popular—camera sites on the Internet. You'll find in-depth reviews of all kinds of camera gear, product announcements, and tips from photography pros in the discussion forums.

SmugMug
www.smugmug.com

SmugMug lets users share their photos with the world, order photo-centric gifts, and even make a little extra cash on the side.
Read our review of SmugMug.

Dynamism
www.dynamism.com

It's a truism that the U.S. lags behind Japan when it comes to cool tech like cell phones, laptops, and similar gadgets. If you don't feel like waiting years for a cool piece of tech to make it to the U.S. and can't figure out how to order from a Japanese Web site, chances are good that you can find it on Dynamism.

LinkedIn
www.linkedin.com

The social network for professionals has been slow to add new features and capabilities, and that's just the way its users like it. No music playing in the background, no blinking Flash modules, no SuperPokes, just simple, intuitive online networking.
Read our review of LinkedIn.

AVS Forum
www.avsforum.com

Like all the geekiest forum sites, AVS Forum isn't much to look at. But the frequently updated home-theater site has loads of expert tips and how-tos for audio- or videophiles with a DIY streak.

DistroWatch.com
www.distrowatch.com

The definitive Web site for Linux fans, DistroWatch.com keeps track of the ever-expanding universe of Linux distros with news, reviews, and downloads. Like many Linux-related projects, the site is indispensable to the Linux community and incomprehensible to most everyone else.

The Register
www.theregister.co.uk

El Reg skewers the tech and IT industry with its perfect mix of in-depth news reporting and snark. And if you're having a bad day on the IT desk, perusing the brilliantly biting headlines on The Register's homepage will serve as the perfect pick-me-up.

Engadget
www.engadget.com

After several years and thousands of upstart competitors, Engadget's no-holds-barred gadget coverage is still the gold standard for tech blogging.

Wired
www.wired.com

The Web site is just as multifaceted as the magazine, covering technology, gadgets, science, environmentalism, gaming, music, movies, politics—all with a cool look and a geeky slant.

Google Maps
maps.google.com

Google Maps just keeps adding great features, yet it still doesn't feel bloated in the least. The service offers driving directions, satellite views, street views, business and restaurant locators, user-created maps, public transit routes—the list goes on.

Kayak
www.kayak.com

Looking for the cheapest price on plane tickets? Kayak makes comparison shopping easy by showing you the prices of all the available flights. The service can find you a good price on a hotel room, too.

Race around the World in your own Yacht - Virtually ;-)

Dave Caddick — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 21:30:31 GMT

So it's been quite some while since I last did a post of any kind as I was away from Aust. sailing and sampling the hospitality in the British Virgin Islands thanks to my brother (thanks Martin), and then on to New York City, and finally London and Guilford (thanks to Lou and David) before making it back home.

Incidentally just before leaving for this trip the Volvo Ocean Race set off - and if you'd like to navigate your own 70 footer around the world and compete then get on to http://www.volvooceanracegame.org/play.php and sign up?

I'm just getting in to Cochin with 51 miles to go. Look out for “WhyKnot”, and Martin my brother is “EverRest”

See you on Leg 3? :-)

What is Mobile 2.0? Coming now to a mobile near you!

Dave Caddick — Sat, 10 May 2008 18:57:02 GMT

So from a note on Jason Langridge's blog about Mobile 2.0 I started looking deeper at some of the recent developments in the mobile world.

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.

| View | Upload your own

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

Future vision of VDI? What if the Hypervisor was cheaper and flexible enough to run on BladePC's/BladeWS's - could vMotion/XenMotion then switch on demand?

Dave Caddick — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 08:58:13 GMT

I am sure this is not really what VMware had in mind when they were touting VMware OnDemand? I'm guessing they had more of an idea that it would combine some of the benefits of ACE with ESX? ;-)

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? ;-)

SkyDive the beach - freefall from 12,000feet over the surf in Wollongong!

Dave Caddick — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 18:52:41 GMT

Well if you've ever had the thought that you might want to actually jump out of a serviceable aircraft for kicks then this is a great location to do it?

This was the Xmas present from my wife Natalie and we finally got around to doing this on Saturday 16th Feb. What a blast!!!

Nat also came along and did the jump but unfortunately had what they term a "Reserve Ride" meaning that here Pilot didn't like the look of the chute in that it was twisted up a little at the back left hand side - so he jettisoned that and went for the reserve. Needless to say this made it a bit hairier for Nat, but she was happy with the gentle touch down on the beach.

More info at www.skydivethebeach.com

My pilot Glenn and I were last out so we had a clear view of what was going on and we ended up being the spotters for where the first gear floated down in behind a couple of houses near the Train Station.

So while I'm admiring the view, Glenn's keeping an eye on proceedings?

Live Demos of VDM2 from VMware and XenDesktop from Citrix

Dave Caddick — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 20:41:02 GMT

In some cases the regular methods of "Going to Market" with a new product is fraught with pitfalls as it is conceived by Marketing and/or Product managers who then seem to loose sight of what the Customer is actually after - I've always thought it better to get the product and solution in front of the customer as quickly as possible and let them make up their mind and give feedback?

In all fairness, with some of the larger Vendor's there is so much red tape and bureaucracy this makes it nigh on impossible to actually create demo sites like this that Gareth has created - so kudos to him for getting this created.

What Gareth has alluded to but possibly failed to qualify was, if you don't have a Citrix ICA client installed then you might also want to think about downloading that elsewhere than from his hosted servers as that will also be quite quicker at over 17Mb for the web client?

Xendesktop or VDM2? Compare them for yourself

When the beta code for VDM2 was first released I wanted to push them both out over the Internet, however there was a red tape / NDA issue.

Now that VDM2 is released I can put both of them out together. All of the components are running as virtual machines on one ESX host. The XP clients are identical in terms of their configuration and resources.

The two URLs are https://oasxendesktop.oas.co.za for the Citrix XenDesktop and https://VDM2.oas.co.za for the VMware VDM2.

username is demo
password is also demo.

The latency is likely to be pretty awful for those abroad. It is slow but usable in South Africa but I am interested in seeing how the performance is from Europe, I think our under-sea cable terminates in Europe so it will probably be even worse in North America.

We have unfortunately also been having to contend with an inordinate number of power cuts, so please bear with our Third World infrastructure. Crises notwithstanding, I will try to give you some more details on the configuration some comparisons on the two different mechanisms tomorrow.

Stop Press:
Whoa, the reason that the Xendesktop demo worked was that most people already had a Citrix client. The VMware VDI agent is 6MB in size and getting that over our slow link will be hopeless.
Try to download and install it from http://garethcharlotte.googlepages.com/VMware-vdmclient-2.0.0-403.exe , this is hosted by google and should come down fairly quickly worldwide.

VMware and CITRIX for South Africa

Considering a MacBook Air? but put off by not being able to replace the battery? Don't worry, here's a DIY guide with pictures

Dave Caddick — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 17:05:18 GMT

So it would appear that Kyle at iFixit is something of a closet Mac Service guy? ;-) Really this is very nice to see exactly what is under the hood of this well hyped Laptop, this way you really get to see what's under the hood and know what you are actually paying for.

It is nice to see that it is not that hard to get in to possibly replace the battery if needed?

Look! We found the battery.

Unfortunately, it's no longer considered a user-installable part by Apple and is attached to the case by 9 screws:

Four 3mm #00 Phillips.

Four 3.8mm #00 Phillips.

One 7.3mm #00 Phillips.

The RF module, in all its blue glory.

The Broadcom 802.11 chip had the markings BCM4321KFBG.

Two other chips were enclosed in metal housings.

And the backside had another chip marked with BCM94321COEX2.

We found Intel's new Core 2 Duo chip right beneath the heat sink (no surprises there). A temperature sensor sits on an external board glued between the CPU and graphics chips. A high-resolution image (632K) is available here.

There are 16 RAM chips (eight one-gigabit chips on each side of the logic board) for a total of 2 GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM.

The large microchip in the center of the picture is a low power Intel North Bridge GS965 integrated graphics chip with the markings LE82GS965.

Three chips adjacent to the North Bridge/graphics controller have a semi-transparent blue epoxy covering them, as part of the HDCP hardware requirement for digital video signals.

The reverse side of the logic board. Many of these chips are for power management. A high-resolution image (708K) is available here.

You can see the second half of the Micron RAM chips.

We identified the Silicon Image SIL1392CNU HDMI video chip and Texas Instruments TPS51120 dual current mode synchronous step-down controller (power management).

iFixit — MacBook Air

HOWTO - Free Download of TV Shows and Movies from the Internet + screenshots

Dave Caddick — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 16:18:08 GMT

Now this may seem a bit hypocritical, but first let me state that I don't condone this, but in quite a number of ways the TV Stations and the Cable Operators are responsible for setting our (and our Spouses? ;-) expectations quite high in the first place and then clearly not delivering.

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 TVRage.com for the actual title of the episode – Films can be checked at 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

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?

o 1.4 How do I use the site with my Usenet client?

o 1.5 How does the site work, and where can I download the code?

o 1.6 I can't login to Newzbin, whats wrong??

o 1.7 There's no XXX/porn/adult content. Where is it?

o 1.8 Why do I get more results on www.newzbin.com than I do on v3.newzbin.com?

· 2 Email Questions

o 2.1 I got spammed by you, what are you going to do about it?

o 2.2 None of your e-mails ever arrive in my Inbox. Why not?

o 2.3 Hotmail?

· 3 Premium Membership Questions

o 3.1 What features do I get for the Premium Membership?

o 3.2 How much do I have to pay for this service?

o 3.3 I sent a Payment, where is my premium credit?

· 4 Legal Questions

o 4.1 Are you sure that this site is legal?

o 4.2 What data do you store about me?

· 5 IRC Questions

o 5.1 Where's the IRC channel? I'm lonely!

o 5.2 What are the rules of the #Newzbin IRC channel?

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 = 1 hour TV series type of relationship and treat anything else as potentially suspect – but that is only my personal opinion

Tweak Vista's warnings

Dave Caddick — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 16:44:22 GMT

I have been trying Vista on a corporate Laptop over the holidays in advance of getting hold of the "Approved" corporate image for my laptop and in some ways it's a clunker - so if you know what you're doing and want to "trim" some of those annoying messages and confirmations then this might be just the tool for you?

Vista4Experts

Current Version: 1.0.0.1

Download Vista4Experts

Vista4Experts is kind of a treat for computer experts who don't want security center notifications, User Account Control dialogs, automatic Windows Defender scannings, automatic update installations (which cause you to reboot your system if you don't react quickly enough). People who want MSDN (or google) set as default search engine in the Internet Explorer search bar, who want the start menu power button to shut down the system instead of hibernating it, etc. These and many more fixes are included in Vista4Experts. All of these changes can be discarded, enabled or reversed. Vista4Experts is the first expert utility of its kind and works on every platform.
This is a free software and so it is given without warranties, this means the use of this tool is at your own risk. I take no responsilbity for any damage that may unintentionally be caused through its use.

I realize, of course, that many fixes in Vista4Experts lower Windows Vista's default security, but that's the difference between users who feel enough confident to decide what's best for their system and users who don't. Many of Windows Vista's security features are extremely annoying to many developers and other IT experts.
I even think it's bad that Microsoft didn't provide a permanent way to disable the driver signature verification and making it possible only for signed drivers to run on x64 (that if the user isn't in the mood of pressing F8 on every boot). This is my system and I want to run any driver that I want to! I'm pretty sure I won't involuntarily execute a rootkit, don't worry about me Microsoft...

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