Each time there's a soccer tournament, I feel the urge to kicks some virtual balls into virtual goals. Now it's the time of UEFA EURO 2008, so I decided it's time to try EA's FIFA 08 (I just can't seem to like PES over FIFA). FYI, the game sells for 99 NIS in Israel, I guess it has something to do with the fact they're having hard time selling that game, and that it cost them 0$ (or some other small amount of money) to produce.
Why would I say such a thing? Because it's actually FIFA 07, packed in a different box, carrying a different name. The rest of the game is exactly the same. Same graphics, same engine, same sounds, same everything. It's a brave move from EA to release such a game, especially when a competition such as PES exists.
From what I read, the Xbox and PlayStation versions, include a better graphics engine, and better physics. If I stumble upon a PS3 with FIFA 08, I'll give it a try. In the meanwhile, I'm so disappointed. Though I still prefer it over PES.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Friday, June 13, 2008
"Buying" users, for free. Genius
Most people been in the academy, knows the nice trick of major software companies: the "student edition" or "express edition" (sufficient for students requirements) is given for free or a small fee. Later, when the student will be looking for a job, he'll be looking the tools he already knowns. So, if for the entire degree the students uses Visual Studio Express and Office Student Edition, this is what will be written in the resume, and this what the student will be looking for.
This week, something similar (not exactly the same) happened in my university. The university opened "for free" email account for every student (still in pilot, but will eventually cover thousand of students) at live.com. Actually, this is live., but login is done through live.com. Now, since I was chosen to the pilot, I'm a happy owner of Windows Live Hotmail account. Not sure what am I supposed to do with it, but the university promised it'll work under Firefox and Safari under any OS, so no complaints here. The thing with this account is the fact that it is not limited to the period of time I'll be a student. It's for a life-time, only that after I'll finish my degree, the account would start display ads (which it currently doesn't). So, next year, I'll become a regular live.com user, that sees ads and everything, which makes me a source of income to MS. So thanks to the university, MS could make more money. Just like giving Visual Studio for free, only easier. Come to think about it, only one word comes in mind: Genius.
This week, something similar (not exactly the same) happened in my university. The university opened "for free" email account for every student (still in pilot, but will eventually cover thousand of students) at live.com. Actually, this is live.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
OpenDocument for University
Let me begin with good news, especially for myself: I'm done with university exams. Recently finished the last exams towards the M.SC, and now I feel the freedom back in my life. And since we talk about freedom, why not discuss free software?
Even though there are no more exams, there is this tiny little thing called "final project". As i might have mentioned before, it has something to do with email spam. Although it's quite late to start working on the project at this time of the academic year, I'm quite optimistic I'll manage to finish it on time. In the mean while, my partner and I are discussing with our project client (which is a Prof. in the department) about the contents of the project, in order to assemble a PDR which is agreed on everybody. Since we are good students for computer science, we'd picked the right tools for the job: OpenOffice writer and OpenOffice draw. This is not the first time we deliver documents in ODT format, but it is certainly the most comprehensive usage done. This perhaps won't sound as a big thing, but at our university, it is. I don't know much lecturers the would support these formats. Most still use MS Office, and might even force students to work with it as well. My intent is to base the entire project development with FLOSS, and become an evangelist in our department.
My original thought was way to advanced for our project mentor: we would do the entire research part of the project, and major parts of the development, and the community would assist us developing the rest of the project. This way, the final product would be far more polished and could be ready for real world use (as well as academia). I thought this could work, as I saw it worked for GNOME Do. But our mentor said he couldn't be sure we would do our part. I don't think he ever heard of Launchpad or Sourceforge for project management and tracking. Shame. Well, perhaps we cannot be too evangelist.
But we did make one small step for men.
Even though there are no more exams, there is this tiny little thing called "final project". As i might have mentioned before, it has something to do with email spam. Although it's quite late to start working on the project at this time of the academic year, I'm quite optimistic I'll manage to finish it on time. In the mean while, my partner and I are discussing with our project client (which is a Prof. in the department) about the contents of the project, in order to assemble a PDR which is agreed on everybody. Since we are good students for computer science, we'd picked the right tools for the job: OpenOffice writer and OpenOffice draw. This is not the first time we deliver documents in ODT format, but it is certainly the most comprehensive usage done. This perhaps won't sound as a big thing, but at our university, it is. I don't know much lecturers the would support these formats. Most still use MS Office, and might even force students to work with it as well. My intent is to base the entire project development with FLOSS, and become an evangelist in our department.
My original thought was way to advanced for our project mentor: we would do the entire research part of the project, and major parts of the development, and the community would assist us developing the rest of the project. This way, the final product would be far more polished and could be ready for real world use (as well as academia). I thought this could work, as I saw it worked for GNOME Do. But our mentor said he couldn't be sure we would do our part. I don't think he ever heard of Launchpad or Sourceforge for project management and tracking. Shame. Well, perhaps we cannot be too evangelist.
But we did make one small step for men.
8800GT TV Out solution
As you may already know, I recently bought a new PC. My new and cool PC is powered by Nvidia's Geforce 8800GT chipset based graphics card. When doing the market research about which graphics card to buy, I read comparisons, benchmarks and relied upon other people experience, thinking "Hey, I have a good experience with Nvidia, this looks like the best buy". Well, I learned that while all of this is important, it's even more important to look for known problems. Especially of other people using the same features you are planning to use.
A simple web search shows many people are having many problems connecting these cards to their TVs. The two problems I'm aware of
If you insist using Windows, I can dispense some advice, assuming you use XP (don't have Vista, don't want to). The problem arises from the drivers (forceware) and Nvidia's control panel. It seems that the new control panel assumes you want your TV to be auto-detected, and if the auto-detection fails, you won't get any other option. Moreover, even if the control panel's wizard thinks it has detected your TV, but it actually fails, you are stuck. The most common phenomena is the TV screen flickers for a second or so with your desktop, and than returns to it's blue state. In the mean while, the driver is sure that everything works perfectly, so no further configuration is allowed. This is where most of the forum threads in the Internet says "replace the 8800GT with something else". And then I found this very helpful lead. Basically, it suggests to get back the classic Nvidia control panel, and try to configure stuff there, as the rest of his advice, it didn't help me. So i found this help site that explains how to do that. After changing the value of ContextUIPolicy to 3, I got the classic control panel. Now, I could use the wizard that says "My display is not in the list" and then turn on the "'Rigorous Display Detection". Finally, the TV connection wizard allowed me to use other settings then "Auto Detect", so I could choose "S-Video". After doing so, my TV came to life, and started to display my desktop as "Monitor 2". Some final tweaks were required, such as setting the region to "PAL/B" (otherwise, screen flicker would occur in Israel and western Europe) and setting the resolution, and that's it! Notice that the lead I found only managed to get B/W picture, while I managed to get full color.
Hope this guide saved someone from deep frustration, and happy TV watching everyone.
A simple web search shows many people are having many problems connecting these cards to their TVs. The two problems I'm aware of
- DVI-to-HDMI would pass audio signal, even though there is no audio output. This would prevent the TV from playing sound coming over other cables (such as RCA).
- S-Video won't detect your TV, which forces you to use component or composite connections for CRTs. This sucks.
If you insist using Windows, I can dispense some advice, assuming you use XP (don't have Vista, don't want to). The problem arises from the drivers (forceware) and Nvidia's control panel. It seems that the new control panel assumes you want your TV to be auto-detected, and if the auto-detection fails, you won't get any other option. Moreover, even if the control panel's wizard thinks it has detected your TV, but it actually fails, you are stuck. The most common phenomena is the TV screen flickers for a second or so with your desktop, and than returns to it's blue state. In the mean while, the driver is sure that everything works perfectly, so no further configuration is allowed. This is where most of the forum threads in the Internet says "replace the 8800GT with something else". And then I found this very helpful lead. Basically, it suggests to get back the classic Nvidia control panel, and try to configure stuff there, as the rest of his advice, it didn't help me. So i found this help site that explains how to do that. After changing the value of ContextUIPolicy to 3, I got the classic control panel. Now, I could use the wizard that says "My display is not in the list" and then turn on the "'Rigorous Display Detection". Finally, the TV connection wizard allowed me to use other settings then "Auto Detect", so I could choose "S-Video". After doing so, my TV came to life, and started to display my desktop as "Monitor 2". Some final tweaks were required, such as setting the region to "PAL/B" (otherwise, screen flicker would occur in Israel and western Europe) and setting the resolution, and that's it! Notice that the lead I found only managed to get B/W picture, while I managed to get full color.
Hope this guide saved someone from deep frustration, and happy TV watching everyone.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
I've failed the Turing Test
Finally, I can see the end of my M.Sc in computer science. Almost all exams are over, and only the final project is to be completed. My projects advances kinda slow lately, but I hope things would get better. The topic of my project is spam (as in email-spam) and mechanisms to fight it. It is partially research, and partially technical. In order to test different web-mail vendors' spam filtering mechanisms, I've created free accounts at GMail, Yahoo! and Hotmail. Each of these vendors use the CAPTCHA anti-bot mechanism, so their services cannot be easily exploited. I've seen many of these CAPTCHA images before, and answered them correctly without a problem. And then came Yahoo!. According to them, I'm probably not human, as I failed the Turing Test three times, before I eventually managed to guess what's in the image, and pass the registration process. They had, by far, the worst looking CAPTCHA images.
I have a test of my own for computer software. My test tells if some software is usable or not. I call it "My Mom's Test". The test is quite simple: my mom is trying to use some software, with less than 1 minute training (zero is better). If she succeeds - the software is usable for everybody. If she doesn't - that's trash, and I remove it from her PC. Skype, for example, passed that test. The same test applies for web sites. Some sites are easy for her to use, while other sites frustrates her. For example, Google's search page is easy. Yahoo!'s registration process would fail "My Mom's Test" over and over again, as she would call me a hundred times before we can together "break" it's anti-bot and anti-human defense mechanisms. Therefor, it's unusable for my mom, and probably many other normal people. Too bad for them, as the profit from free services (such as web mail) comes from advertisement, which would bring more money if my mom would use it (she clicks ads).
I have a test of my own for computer software. My test tells if some software is usable or not. I call it "My Mom's Test". The test is quite simple: my mom is trying to use some software, with less than 1 minute training (zero is better). If she succeeds - the software is usable for everybody. If she doesn't - that's trash, and I remove it from her PC. Skype, for example, passed that test. The same test applies for web sites. Some sites are easy for her to use, while other sites frustrates her. For example, Google's search page is easy. Yahoo!'s registration process would fail "My Mom's Test" over and over again, as she would call me a hundred times before we can together "break" it's anti-bot and anti-human defense mechanisms. Therefor, it's unusable for my mom, and probably many other normal people. Too bad for them, as the profit from free services (such as web mail) comes from advertisement, which would bring more money if my mom would use it (she clicks ads).
Thursday, April 24, 2008
The smell of something new
You know when buy something which comes wrapped, and you tear the wrappings off, there's a nice smell of something new. Well, I got to smell that two days ago. I bought a new PC. This is the spec:
Also, installed 64bit Ubuntu 8.04. The new Ubuntu really rocks. Solid, fast and cool.
It took me some time to decide where to buy the new PC (or PC parts). After a long survey, I bought it on KSP. The decision was rather difficult for me, as I personally built my previous 2 PCs. Today I saw this post regarding Ivory (important: read the comments and follow-ups), and I'm more than glad I didn't go there. How rude can someone be, especially when your job is to give service. When my work included service-giving, it never crossed my mind to act like that.
Back to the fun part. Now I have 2 PCs, a laptop and some other WiFi enabled devices, so it was time to setup up a WiFi router. Bought an Edimax router. The setup was very easy, including WPA2 encryption (actually the encryption is AES in WPA2). The firewall and NAT were a bit tricky, but 10 more minutes and all was up and running. Now I have gazillion devices that all require electric power in the same room, so it's time to buy a little power-plant.
- E8400 CPU (Dual Core, 3GHz)
- Asus motherboard, based on Intel's G35 chipset
- 2 Gigs RAM (800 MHz)
- Western Digital 320GB HD (SATA 2, 16MB cache)
- Nidia 8800GT based graphics card
- The rest of the stuff you put in a PC
- 20" LCD
Also, installed 64bit Ubuntu 8.04. The new Ubuntu really rocks. Solid, fast and cool.
It took me some time to decide where to buy the new PC (or PC parts). After a long survey, I bought it on KSP. The decision was rather difficult for me, as I personally built my previous 2 PCs. Today I saw this post regarding Ivory (important: read the comments and follow-ups), and I'm more than glad I didn't go there. How rude can someone be, especially when your job is to give service. When my work included service-giving, it never crossed my mind to act like that.
Back to the fun part. Now I have 2 PCs, a laptop and some other WiFi enabled devices, so it was time to setup up a WiFi router. Bought an Edimax router. The setup was very easy, including WPA2 encryption (actually the encryption is AES in WPA2). The firewall and NAT were a bit tricky, but 10 more minutes and all was up and running. Now I have gazillion devices that all require electric power in the same room, so it's time to buy a little power-plant.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Correction
Today I had an exam in communication security (SSL, IP-Sec, Crypto Hash, etc.). The exams are the main reason I hadn't blogged in a while. But excuses aside.
One of the questions was about how a CA signs some certificate (attribute certificate), and includes the validation key of Alice (so Bob can be sure that Alice really signed the data in the certificate). Anyhow, the lecturer, who wrote the exam, had a mistake. He wrote A.s which means Alice's signature key (private), while he meant to write A.v which means Alice's validation key (public). So, when our lecturer found out about the mistake, he wrote to the board "Q2 s/A.s/A.v/". I don't know how many students appreciated the little joke during the exam (did I mention it was difficult?), but I'm sure it made me smile.
One of the questions was about how a CA signs some certificate (attribute certificate), and includes the validation key of Alice (so Bob can be sure that Alice really signed the data in the certificate). Anyhow, the lecturer, who wrote the exam, had a mistake. He wrote A.s which means Alice's signature key (private), while he meant to write A.v which means Alice's validation key (public). So, when our lecturer found out about the mistake, he wrote to the board "Q2 s/A.s/A.v/". I don't know how many students appreciated the little joke during the exam (did I mention it was difficult?), but I'm sure it made me smile.
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