Review « *Nixed Blog

Archive for the ‘Review’ Category

The Ultumix Computer Radio Show Live!

Friday, May 30th, 2008

By Justin Breithaupt: usacomputertec

Well I was thinking of an extra way to get some income and advertise my computer services at the same time and so I thought why not start my own Radio show? It’s easy. So all I have to do is make some commercials to put on my show and that should be pretty easy.

Personal Message from the Host:

You can call in and ask Justin Breithaupt about Computers. Subjects will include GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Macintosh, hardware, Viruses, Security, Internet, ect.
Phone Number: (724) 444-7444 Call ID: 20068 If you would like to call Toll Free you can call: (865) 329-7705 (not a toll free number) and we will hang up on you and call your number back. It will show up as an unlisted number.
If you would like to sponsor this Live Radio Show simply e-mail us at ultumix@mindblowingidea.com or call and leave a message at (865) 329-7705.
If your interested on being on the show or doing a private interview about a Computer product, service, or device then please contact us the same way as mentioned above. We don’t have to record it at our normally scheduled time.

Scheduled Time:

Saturdays
Time: 08:00 PM EDT

How to participate:

Call in:

Dial: (724) 444-7444
Enter: 20068 # (Call ID)
Enter: 1 # or your PIN

Join from your computer:

Facebook user? You can join this Call directly through the TalkShoe Community Calling Facebook application.

Listen to the Recording:
If you missed this event or want to hear previous recorded episodes click here.

Posted in *Nix, Announcements, Computer Rescue, Free/Open Source, Review, Uncategorized, WE ARE *NIXED | No Comments »

PediaOpeness.org is now open.

Sunday, May 11th, 2008

By Justin Breithaupt. 05/11/2008

If you remember a little while ago the Wikipedia informed me that I had no freedom of speech there. After that I started www.OpenWikipedia.org. Then I got a phone call from a Wikipedia attorney that informed me that I needed to change my name.

So I sat up a new site at WetPaint.com called PediaOpeness.org. I was searching for a logo similar to the Wikipeida‘s Puzzle sphere except that I wanted it to be more open. I found a logo I could use on DeviantArt.com.

I decided that I would not put down the Wikipedia but rather allow other sites to do that for me. I also allowed the Wikipedia to state it’s own definition of what it was by quoting them.

I got several responses to this post and even though the responses were negative it’s still site content which means my site is growing.

From i’mnothere:

“I’m sorry you haven’t learned anything, but I do have a suggestion. I sometimes follow the nixedreport, and I recall your friend asking posters to put in a certain format for their name as the author. You haven’t been doing that. Maybe it is ok with him, I don’t know, but I sure would want to not be associated with the posts you put there.”

Last night I submitted my Wikipedia alternative to several groups looking for a Wikipedia alternitive. Hopefully this will spark some interest and get the thing going.

To join go to www.pediaopeness.org and click Join this wiki.

A list of links to other sites that have the same problems with the Wikipedia:

http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/12/knowledge_and_u.php
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/06/04/who-gets-a-wikipedia-entry/
http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/archives/cat_wikipedia.html
http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=4&mode=threaded
http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showforum=28
http://www.wikitruth.info/index.php?title=Main_Page
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Wikipedia_Problems/
How to search Google.com without using the Wikipedia in Firefox! http://www.distilled.co.uk/blog/seo/search-google-without-wikipedia-a-firefox-search-plugin/

Also if you are having any problems in the Wikipedia excluding you at all or posting something that is wrong just put “TELL THE WIKITRUTH” in your message without the “” and with the capitals and it will have these people looking at your page in no time.

Posted in diggworthy, Free/Open Source, LXer, Opinion, Political Underground, Review, Survival | No Comments »

New Viruses that Can and Will Destroy Your Computer!

Friday, April 11th, 2008

by Justin Breithaupt

Ladies and Gentlemen I can finally say that my worst nightmare has become a reality. So what could be so bad? Well back when I was younger I thought of a computer virus that could literally destroy a computer. How? Well there is this little chip that controls all of the power settings and the boot sequence of your entire computer. Some call it the BIOS and some call it the CMOS but whatever you call it it’s the flash ROM thats in your computer. So I thought to myself what if someone made a virus that reprogrammed the BIOS / CMOS to tell the rest of the computer to put out maximum watts and volts that were possible and fry the machine? Then I was approached by a man that told me of such a virus that exists about 6 months ago. I didn’t think anything like this was out on the internet but I guess now I’m wrong.

I spoke to some computer techs in the Lewiston Clarkston area that work on Microsoft Windows Vista and XP computers. They told me that there are two viruses that do two different things and one of them makes your computer useless. Evidently one of these new viruses does reprogram your BIOS or CMOS but it does not fry your computer. All this virus does is make your computer into a door stop by telling the BIOS / CMOS to never let your computer start again. What’s even better is if you pull the Hard Drive out and run it in another computer the virus puts itself into that computer as well.

The second virus removes all administrative rights to your computer and gives them to some other guy somewhere else who now controls your computer. We don’t know what this guy uses your computer for but we can only assume it’s not good.

In case your wondering I have seen computers with these viruses for myself and they are real.

So why didn’t I know about these viruses? Well it’s pretty simple really. I don’t get Viruses on my computer and if one of my customers gets one they usually choose to switch to the GNU/Linux system and I just back up all their personal information, pictures, ect. and copy them over. This does put me at a bit of a disadvantage because I am out of touch with the frustration that most Windows users experience from Viruses, Intruders, Spyware, Trojans, and Adaware.

Posted in *Nix, diggworthy, Humor, LXer, Magazine, Review, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Ultumix 0.0.1.4 Is Out!

Monday, March 3rd, 2008

Justin Breithaupt | *NIXEDBLOG

0.0.1.4 is out!

The long awaited Ultumix 0014 is out. It comes in 3 flavors but all are based on KDE. Screenshots here. Ultumix Standard Edition: Requires: 128 MB of System RAM, 7 GBs of Hard Drive Space, and a 800 Mhz CPU or greater. Recommended: 512 MBs to 1 GB of System RAM, 25 GBs of Hard Drive Space, and a 2.0 Ghz CPU or greater. What’s Included? In Ultumix Standard Edition you will find that all of the office programs you need for home use and business use are there. There are financial programs like KmyMoney and GNUCASH which can import your quick books files as well and help you do your taxes. You can convert your Microsoft Office documents that you had on your Windows computer into .PDF files if you like or open and edit them in OpenOffice.org first. You can view and make Power Point presentations. There are a few games to help you ease your grueling work day. You can also convert Microsoft Works documents into readable, editable OpenOffice.org documents. You can hook up any digital camera or digital video recorder and save your pictures and video to your PC. With Cinelerra you can edit your video just like the big boys in Hollywood do it. Ultumix SE also has a Windows user friendly start up menu that has the programs categorized under All Programs, Accessories, ect. just like what you were use to in Windows 98. You can also run Windows 98, 2000, 95, and NT programs pretty well and some XP programs as well. You can install Printmaster. If you look for instructions on the Internet you can even install Microsoft Office 2003. Do you or your friends need an office program to open your documents you send them? Well all they need to do is go to www.openoffice.org and they can collaborate with you. This distribution comes with free 24 hour support and a chat room where we can all exchange information. The forums work well too. Ultumix SE has all new sound effects that make your computer sound like something from Star Trek. Ultumix Gamer Edition:

Requires: 512 MB of System RAM minimum, 10 GBs of HD space, and a 1.5 Ghz CPU or greater,

an Nvidia video card with 128 MB of memory.

Recommended: 1-2 GB of System RAM,

50 GBs of Hard Drive Space, and a 2.2 Ghz CPU or greater.

an Nvidia video card with 256 MB of memory.

What’s Included? Everything that is in Ultumix Standard Edition is included however there are two missing packages that you will need to install from the Add / Remove Programs icon on the desktop using owner as the password. The packages are: build-essential and g++. This is a simple process that needs to be done before installing any 3D video drivers as instructed in the Read Me First file located on the Desktop.

There are over 128 Games in Ultumix GE. (yes I tested them and they do work) Same Gnome, Sudoku, Tetravex, Armage tron Advanced, Bug Squish, b zflag, Circus Linux!, Cuyo, Eins tein, FlightGear, Gterinet Tet ri net client, Heroes, Keepalive, KQ, lbreakout 2, Lincity, Madbo mber, Metal Blob Solid (blob wars), Super tuxkart, Torcs, Track balls, TuxKart, TuxMath, TuxTyping, Vectoroids, Dos box Emulator, Fiveor More, Four – in – a – Row, Gnometris, Klots ki, Mines, Nibbles, Airstrike, Ksirtet, Ks mileTris, Ktro n, Tux p uck, Alien Arena, Barrage, Ene mylines 3, Epiphany, Frets on Fire, Frozen – Bubble, glTron, Holotz Castle, koules, Monsterz, Never ball, Never putt, Overgod, Pengupop, pydance, rroot age, Scorched 3D, Slune, SolarWolf, Tower Toppler, Tremulous, Warsow, Zatacka, DefendGuin, Kgoldrunner, SuperTux, Planet Penguin Racer, Kbounce, Emilia Pinball, KfoulEggs, Kolf, Robots,

KsnakeRace, KspaceDuel, Kasteroids, Fyrdman, KCC, Keepalive, KtickTacTux, Childs play (includes a bunch of games), Educational suite Gcompris, Potato Guy, Freeciv, Fyrdman, Kato mic, Kbattles hip, Kju mpingCube, Klickety, Kmines, knetwalk, Kolor Lines, Konquest, Ksokoban, NetPanzer, OpenCity, SameGame, Stratagus, Warzone 2100, AMOR, Kodo, KteaTime, KworldClock,

Extra Games: (these games must be installed by the user following a second Read Me)

Mania Drive, Urban Terror, Legends 3D, America’s Army, Spring, Enemy Territory,

There are also added programs in GE. It is recommended that you also install the Ultimate Edition or UE upgrade package.

I think the extra download time is worth it. Ultumix Ultimate Edition: Well what Ultimate Edition is, is a tiny download of an .iso file that you will use with aptoncd to install the top rated extra apps for Debian. If you want to know what programs come in the package go to www.ultumix.com . Also you will find that this package will fix bugs automatically in Ultumix Gamer Edition. ( a few packages were removed before compiling Gamer Edition by mistake that caused a few bugs )

Posted in Announcements, diggworthy, LXer, Review | No Comments »

GNU Consumer Reviews

Saturday, February 16th, 2008

Justin Breithaupt | *NIXEDBLOG

Right now you can go to http://gnuconsumerreports.blogspot.com/ and read the first GNU Consumer Review blog entries.

This site rates products and services based on real world facts and not on who pays us the most money to review their item. You as the reader also get to comment and rate these companies as well as suggest new companies to review.

We haven’t dugg this page yet or put it on lxer because we are waiting for our registered domains to be linked to this site and for our advertisers to approve our site. Once they do we will open up for everyone. We also want to post several product reviews before announcing the site to the world so if you have any ideas please don’t hesitate to suggest them to us. If you want to write for us you can also let me know at admin @ mindblowingidea.com. Thanks.

You will find GNU Consumer Review by using one of these links. (will be available after Edwin gets them working with his Linux web server.)
http://gnuconsumerreports.blogspot.com/

businessfactfinders.com

americanconsumerpal.com

usaconsumerpal.com

gnuconsumer.com

linuxconsumer.com

opensourceconsumer.com

freesoftwareconsumer.com

Posted in Announcements, Computer Rescue, diggworthy, Free/Open Source, LXer, Opinion, Review | 5 Comments »

More Insight Into the XBOX 360 Hacking.

Saturday, February 9th, 2008

Yesterday I discovered a whole new world of Trusted Computing in the XBOX 360 that I had never heard of on the Internet or anywhere before.

I was going in for a job interview at a computer repair / video game arcade / XBOX repair shop. The first thing that they asked me was if I knew much about XBOX 360s. I told them that the only thing I knew was how they worked. I had never taken one apart before and worked on it. I asked them what the problem was. They told me that the original CD/DVD drive had broken inside and they took it out and sent the XBOX 360 to Microsoft for repairs 3 times and each time they got it back they would stick an XBOX 360 game into the console and it said to please put it into an XBOX 360. So the XBOX was having an identity crisis of sorts or was it a trusted computing program in the game itself? They told me that they had been working on the problem for 3 weeks now trying to fix it themselves. So what was the problem?

Lets think back to the chain of trust that the XBOX uses (video here). First the secret BIOS checks the flash memory and passes trust to it and then it checks the hardware and software and passes trust to it and then it checks the game in the drive and passes root access to it. So where were we going wrong here? The XBOX 360 would play DVDs and CDs. So where were we breaking the chain of Trust? Well the secret Bios was passing control to the flash and to the HD software and playing DVDs and CDs. For some reason when we stuck in a Game and it tried to verify that it was an XBOX 360 it panicked. My conclusion was that every piece of hardware had a hardware ID of sorts and that the BIOS was to check all of them against each other to make sure that the system matched. The game however did not see that all of them matched up the way they were suppose to so It said it didn’t like us.

So I wanted to see the two XBOX 360 CD/DVD drives. Both had the same model number on them and both looked identical from the outside. But I was suspicious. Why was this drive twice as thick as a standard CD/DVD drive and enclosed in a strange metal cage? I looked at the model number more closely and found a strange unidentified number underneath that ended in 014 and the other new one was 009 if I remember which was which. So now we took the outer shells off and looked at the circuit boards. Both boards looked identical to most people but if you really looked the circuits had different shapes and different resisters in different places. Also the big chips that were in the same place had different numbers on them even though they were the same brand. It had a Panasonic controller chip. So I instructed the guy to exchange the boards (which had the same connectors) between the new and old drives. We put the new drive back in with the old board and the games played.

Before I knew that they had the old drive still I figured they would have to call Microsoft and explain the problem to them and hope that 1. they understood and 2. they agreed that it could be a possibility.

We are not done here. Then the guy asked me if we could add more RAM by putting ram chips on top of the old ones in there. I said that if it’s so picky about the hardware being just right then I would not try it because it probably would not work. Besides that it could hurt the Linux hacking ability by changing memory addresses.

Somewhere in a forum on the net a man claimed that his friend had a 100MB program that put files into Windows XP and turned it into the XBOX 360 game system without needing the secret BIOS or any of the hardware. That got us thinking. What if you could add these files into WINE and convert it into an XBOX 360? What would be the problem? I’ll tell you the problem. 1. The software probably can’t be modified due to the End User License Agreement, 2. The game might try to verify the XBOX 360, 3. WINE runs slow. However this might also give us the free Cedega we’ve been looking for like PlayOnLinux.

If anyone can use this information to do further XBOX 360 hacking please have at it.

Related articles and material that might help you with XBOX hacking.

Hacking the XBOX and Microsoft’s 17 classes of Mistakes http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-749497642180741726

XBOX 360 Hacking Videos http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=XBOX+360+Hacking&sitesearch=

XBOX 360 gives off dangerous levels of Radiation and screws up Wal Mart’s Computer system. http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/perfectdarkzero/news_6136388.html

Posted in Announcements, diggworthy, Humor, MS-SHADYiness, Review | 2 Comments »

The Distro Journey Has Begun: OpenSuSE 10.3

Saturday, February 9th, 2008

I have started a journey of sorts as I have stated not too long ago. I decided to try multiple distributions in order to see what features were good, what ones were not, and if an all star distribution were to be made, which features would, in my view, make the cut. The first part of what is going to sound disturbing to a few at first, because of the issue of “selling out.” However, allow me to explain.

OpenSuSE

Whether we like it or not, it is on the top 10 of DistroWatch. The fact that enough people are willing to visit the OpenSuSE website should indicate that they are at least interested in this distribution. Now before being accused of walking towards the dark side due to Novell’s deal with Microsoft, allow me to point a few things out.

When the deal went down, the volunteers had no say in the matter. In other words, the OpenSuSE team was caught in the crossfire that ensued. While Ken Starks (a.k.a. helios) himself criticized Novell heavily for the deal they made with Microsoft, he never once fired upon the OpenSuSE team. Not once. Again, they had no say in the matter. With that in mind, let us begin with the evaluation of OpenSuSE 10.3. Keep in mind that this will be quite brief as I plan on making a more in depth version later on (in the form of a book perhaps).

Installation

I used the network installation method so that I would have the up-to-date packages installed. It uses the RedHat Package Management tool for installation/removal of software. I ran into an issue on AMD Athlon-64 desktop system when trying to do a straight installation. I had to set up the repository information before beginning the install sequence. In my opinion, I should not have had to do that, but oh well. It was a minor inconvenience. I have only tested this on the desktop system for an entire week, so…..

What Worked

Hardware detection was decent for the most part. I had to change the monitor type, but after installing the nVIDIA driver for 3D graphics and improved desktop performance, the resolution problem was easier to fix. Software updates worked for the most part, and I was able to connect to the web through the cable modem. I was able to use K-mail to send and receive e-mail and Konqueror and Firefox for web browsing. Installation of packages through YaST (Yet Another System Tool) worked like a charm. Hardware detection worked quite well. My printer worked just fine.

What Was Wrong

For the life of me, I kept being told that there was an update to Amarok. I installed the same thing several times, only for it to show up again later. It was the same update over and over again. I would think, “Not again! I already installed it!” It was quite annoying. Also, I have not used Thunderbird, because when I tried hitting reply to an e-mail, the application locked up and was stone cold dead. Not a good thing. It would also be nice if the installation routine allowed people to do 1440×900 resolution, but that would have to be set aside: it is not always good to sit around and complain.

What Makes It Unique

Before getting into that, I would like to point out that a choice was given between GNOME and KDE. It even included the usual staples, such as Firefox and OpenOffice.org. However, there is some uniqueness to OpenSuSE that I would never have th ought possible. Like an RSS feed, it is possible to subscribe to a repository of RPM packages for OpenSuSE. By clicking a link to the file, the appropriate YaST component for software opens and runs a wizard to install the pertinent software without enabling the repository on a permanent basis (though it can be arranged latter). I subscribed to the nVIDIA driver repository so I could get 3D up and running on the 64-bit desktop. It worked well enough. YaST is also an interesting approach to controlling the system itself. Think of it as a Windows Control Panel on steroids and then some. This edition of YaST is much more streamlined and better looking than past versions of SuSE that I purchased (before Novell/Microsoft).

While there are plenty of control panels, I believe that SuSE may have been among the first distributions to allow for installing software via the Internet. Another first is of course the ability to add a repository with a single mouse click. Imagine if something like that were in Ubuntu, Mint, or PCLinuxOS! Would that be cool or what? Mint already has a one-click install feature, but it temporarily edits the repository information. What if such a thing could be made permanent?

All Star Feature

Adding a one-click feature to the software installation management utilities out there would be an excellent idea in my opinion. So how did OpenSuSE do on my main desktop system?

*** out of *****

It was decent enough, but too many annoying glitches kept popping up, such as the Amarok update that refuses to either install or be removed from the update list. The setup confused me initially as well. Note that a 3 out of 5 score indicates a very decent system. Yes, I am setting the standards pretty high. 😉

Posted in *Nix, LXer, Opinion, Review | 3 Comments »

*Nixed Blog

Archive for the ‘Review’ Category

The Ultumix Computer Radio Show Live!

PediaOpeness.org is now open.

New Viruses that Can and Will Destroy Your Computer!

Ultumix 0.0.1.4 Is Out!

GNU Consumer Reviews

More Insight Into the XBOX 360 Hacking.

The Distro Journey Has Begun: OpenSuSE 10.3

Pages

Archives

Recent Comments

Meta