Zaphod's Deepest Thoughts

Question answered about the Sylvania SMPK2242, and more!

Yet more adventures with my SMPK2242!

J. H. Wrote in to ask me some questions and after answering them, he thought I should post it in the blog, so here goes.

***BEGIN Q/A***

Q: "Do you know of a firmware update that will allow you to play unlicensed mp3's on the player? I have 5 mp3 players in the house with everyone using different applications to transfer the music (songbird being the newest addition) and this is the only device that isn't working properly."

A:Simple, just connect it so it comes up as a USB hard drive, and put all your MP3s in /MUSIC.

Just as the videos go in /VIDEO.

Honestly, I never installed the bit that lets it work with Windows Media Player, as it would probably try to lock up the device as DRM only (Why? So [Company-X] could make you rent things you already own!).

I Just save things to it, as if it were a normal USB drive (Using windows explorer under Start/Programs/Accessories , it appears as Removable Disk Drive G: on my system. Yours may vary.) So next time you connect it to your PC, don't select MTP device, select USB drive. No special conversion is needed for non DRM mp3s, just copy them to the right directory on the device.

As far as I can tell, the SMPK2242 is one of the most OPEN players out there.

Zaphod

P.S. I repeat, no special programs are needed for the SMPK2242! Get back to me if you need more help.

***END Q/A***

I also added later, that the SMPK2242 can also play .ogg without modification, and that one can put in subdirectories like "/MUSIC/Heavy Metal/AC-DC" or "/VIDEO/Music Videos/New Age/Enya/" to keep things organized.

Of course, I can't leave well enough alone, so I did research on the Curtis International website, about what other Personal Medial Players they have that use the same codecs and media type, found out that the data on the TRANSCODING HELP PAGE should also work with these models:

SYLVANIA SMPK1072
SYLVANIA SMPK2072
SYLVANIA SMPK2242 (My model the page was made for!)
SYLVANIA SMPK8854
SYLVANIA SMPK8854B
SYLVANIA SMPK8858

CURTIS MPK7836
CURTIS MPK7836UK
CURTIS MPK8854

And I would assume, many other off brand players that use the AVI container, and the XviD codec may benefit too. Be mindful to match your player's screen resolution with that in the encoder.

If you have any more questions, get back to me at my CONTACT page!

Zap!

Sylvania SMPK2242 Personal Media Player page added.

For Christmas a friend of mine bought me a Sylvania 2 GB personal media player. It's truely a wonderful gift, and plays all sorts of non proprietary material, so long as you have the right conversion program(s).

Well, after seeing everybody on the web was frustrated by the lack of support for the video conversion utility that came with the player, and it's limited scope, I decided to make a page about how to use Media Coder instead, with much better results.

You can find the page HERE !

Sure hope it helps.

Zap! :)

New Filetopia 4 name and logo leaked!

Wow, I never thought I would see anything new out of them, but here it is...

 

Amazing isn't it?

Actually, it's not, it's a bad, somewhat inside joke based on this software in development forever. Sure hope it doesn't make for too much bad karma. But on a REAL NOTE...

BeTaGuRu has released a bugfix patch for Filetopia being run under Windows Vista, you can get it HERE.

The Night Owl has flown the coop.

Today, I just received word, that a friend of mine of several years has shucked his mortal coil...

Ray Patterson, SysOp of Opus/Fidonet BBS The Night Owl (307)235-5207 (Now Defunct) has died.

I won't say that we were good friends, in the sense of consistent contact, but I will say that he was at my first Casper Computer Users Group Meeting in the early 80s. His bulletin board (BBS) The Night Owl, I called at least twice a day. It is also rumored, though I never saw it myself, that he had made a one megabyte bank-switched Timex/Sinclair 1000! Totally within the realm of possibilities, but how do you load something like that with cassette?

It's a bit sad actually, that the bringer of his death was a brain aneurism, the man had a wonderful mind.

He had never done me wrong, and I don't think I had ever heard anyone else say ill of the man. So, yet another pioneer of Wyoming technologists flies off, not into the sunset...

But into the moonset this time.

With thoughts,
Zaphod Breeblebrox :(

*** Ray's Obituary from http://www.trib.com ***

Monday, September 8, 2008 7:37 AM MDT

CASPER -- Funeral serves for Ray Patterson, 55, will be held at Bustard's Funeral Home at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2008.

There will be a viewing at Bustard's from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2008.

He died on Sept. 5, 2008 at the Wyoming Medical Center from a cranial bleed. He was surrounded by family and friends.

He was born Dec. 10, 1952 in Thermopolis, to Harold "Pat" Patterson and Willamette (Gerard) Patterson.

He lived in Casper for most of his life and graduated from Kelly Walsh High School in 1971. He also attended Casper College.

On May 28, 1976 he married Terry Lea Brummond, the love of his life.

He worked at the Wyoming Medical Center as a computer specialist. He was retired from the Natrona County Fire Department.

He was a member of the Eagles, F.O.E. #306, Casper Air Modelers, Wyoming Blues and Jazz Society, Wyoming Modelers Park Association and his nightly coffee club.

His was interested in stock car racing, kite flying, RC airplanes and cars, playing the guitar and motorcycle and RV road trips, among other things.

He is survived by his wife, Terry, daughter Erin Rodgers and her husband, and daughter Deedee, all of Casper; his sister Janet Althouse and her husband, two nieces, one aunt and four cousins.

He was preceded in death by his parents and brother.

In lieu of flower, memorials may be made to the Wyoming Blues and Jazz Society, P.O. Box 1643, Evansville, WY 82639 or The Donor Alliance in Denver, CO, (303) 329-4747.

(Edit #1: Added Obituary)

Fight Back at Instant Messenger Spam!

I am sure you regularly get IM spam messages like...

daddydungbag3424:        you home? ;pdsc

Which you don't dare answer, or you will get link spammed, infected, or e-mail bombed with offers.

Well, I have figured out a way to fight back, and help people at the same time! Here are some things I have found out...

1. Most instant messenger spam comes from infected machines running robots under a rootkit where the normal virus checker can't see it.

2. Most of these infected machines are owned by n00bz (newbies) and are considered "fair game" in skiddie (formerly skript kiddie) circles.

3. 80% (or so) of these "bots" have auto-accept file transfers turned on!

This gave me all the data I needed to know. Now for the fun bits, I wanted not only to stop the machine from sending me something, but wanted a way to alert the owner of the machine that something was wrong, without causing damage.

Thankfully there is a virus out there that isn't a virus, but all virus scanners, even crappy ones see it. I figured if I were to send said fake virus to the offending machine, it would drop outside the rootkit, and the virus scanner would pick it up, and alert the newbie their machine had an infection. Luckily most newbies know to let a true tech take care of viruses (they are scary after all). If a tech were to see the test virus, and knows the person is a newbie, it should ring alarm bells in his head too instructing him to dig deeper.

This magical test virus is known as the EICAR test virus from the European Institute for Computer Antivirus Research. This fake virus file is older than dirt, but still, all but a malware anti-virus scanner would alert on it. This should work with almost all instant messenger programs, AOL IM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo's Y!, Google Talk, Pidgin and more. Here's how you can fight back with me!

1. Make a subdirectory (folder) on your hard drive named... wait, you pick the name, because we don't want anyone, even me to guess it.

2. Go into your virus scanner, and protect that directory from shield and daily scans (else your virus scanner will do it's job, and delete our tool.)

3. Go to http://www.eicar.org/anti_virus_test_file.htm read the spiel on what it is, and download the EICAR test file to that directory.

4. Make a few copies of it.

5. Rename the copies to some juicy filenames like (be inventive!)...
mypassword.shs
creditcard.exe
wellsfargo.com
firstinterstate.com
(Thank you Clifford Stoll!)

6. Lay in wait for the next robot to link you to some foul site, or gibberishly greet you, and send them a present! (Some won't accept your poo cookie, but most will (as of the writing of this article))

7. When it happens, know you have pretty much alerted an innocent person that there's an evil spy loose in their machine (Quite like superuser come to think of it...), and started them on the road to safety Oh, and, you got to take a toy away from a bad bad boy.

Zap >:)

(Edited to fix some egregious spelling errors)

A hacker's political sign!

Ever wondered if hackers like you and me are getting the message out to eachother? Here's a simple hack to get your message out...

Set your SSID of your router or modem to whatever message you want to get out. Some automated software will even be spamming your political message all over wi-fi access point maps!

Here's what mine looks like when searched for in XP.

Just incase someone else believes the same way you do, like me you should put a _XXX where X is a random something as a postamble, so every Tom, Dick, and Harry isn't trying to connect to your wi-fi as well as their own. Also this would be a good time to check your modem/router's wi-fi security settings to make sure they are as tight as you like them.

If you have an old 802.11B router around that is not in use, this would be a great use for it! Even better, if you can secure the link, make it a free WAP that people look for! (I have some iffy security in my LAN, and a somewhat slow connection, so I am keeping it closed.)

Oh, yeah, and don't forget to activate SSID and full power output on the device!

Enjoy!

GPS Navigation, and How It's Making You Vulnerable.

Used to be a time when if you were lost, it was commonplace to ask for directions. But this was an inconvenience to you, and the person that had to help. And it might put you in danger (heavens no!) of being in contact with the criminal element. Or even worse, as a man, you had to admit to your wife you were yourself lost, and needed to ask directions. Of course, it also meant you might miss out on hearing about the best place in town to get eats (not the place that paid your GPS navigation data provider the most for top placement in their restaurant list.), or maybe even make a new lifelong friend.

There is the oldskool way, the trusty old map and compass. Sure, not many city folks know how to use them, but living in Wyoming, it's a matter of survival. "Huh?" you say. Yes, survival. If you don't stick to the main roads, and are looking for a place to fish, or hunt (as many people do when they come to Wyoming), you better know how to read a map, and to tell if you are on public land, and if not, where is the ranch house on that topo. Not doing so, can get you shot at, and perhaps killed. The last thing a rancher wants to see, is some out-of-stater with a gun, walking through his pasture where he keeps his $150,000.00 prize breeding bull with a bad attitude. That bull doesn't know what a gun is, and will charge you like any other invader, and you will probably shoot rather than run. So guess who might shoot first?

Of course, using said tools, requires you know how to use them. It's called Orienteering. Pick up a book on it at your library, ask a veteran (they love to feel useful), or steal your son's Boy Scout handbook for a bit. What? Your son isn't in scouting? For shame! What? You don't have a son? Then put your daughter into the Girl Scouts, they do it too! .......... Oh, you are too young for kids, then get into scouting! Why? Keep reading.

 In our current state of paranoia there comes a time when one must wonder, in the panic following a good kicking, if our government may turn on its own civilians. Perhaps it won't even be intentional, but in a panic knee jerk reaction, it may do things it thinks will protect everyone, but instead cause mass detriment to the populace.

For instance, the chances of some foreign creep looking to blow stuff up running around Wyoming is pretty slim to none. The US Bureau of Reclamation had decided, along with the Department of Fathe... errm... Homeland Security, that one of my favorite fishing holes by Alcova Dam in Alcova, WY, needed to be fenced off to protect us. I can't drive, or even walk up there to the spill gates to toss a line in the water anymore. You hear this Dick Cheney? This is a place we both have fished at (Not together, but I gladly would), now closed forever due to some idiotic out of state numbnuts deciding it was a target of THE TERRORIST. Horsepuckey! We all know terrorists don't strike infrastructure. They are into flashy areas with lots of civilians, and big bangs.

I have digressed...

The whole point of the preceding being, that Imagine some day, some bureaucrat flying a desk in Washington D.C. gets some bad information about an impending missile attack. Imagine that, the government getting bad information! But they do. (We stayed in Iraq for the right reasons, and we should never have left in the first place!)

So, in a panic, Mr. Faceless and Blameless public servant decides the GPS system should be shut off to civilian receivers (or maybe even accidentally crashes the whole shebang) to avoid providing the missile guidance. You suddenly have no way to figure out where you are... that is, unless you have bought a map (or picked one up at the tourism information center when you crossed the border for free). What I am saying is, GPS is nice and accurate, but it has a fatal flaw, it is electronic, and foulable in so many ways!

Actually, as another sidenote, in a couple years, it won't matter, the terrorists will be using the Russian GLONASS which we have no control over.

This still doesn't mean GPS won't be tampered with, even by nature. It's a microwave radio based system, and that means line of site. I have been down in several deep dark canyons where you might be lucky to see 2 birds at any one time... and this is the last place you want to be lost, is in the middle of nowhere, at the bottom of some pit.

Also, if your system isn't large (as in has a big antenna) or sensitive, severe weather may block too many of the satellites from it. Imagine being lost in the dark, knowing there is an F5 Tornado sneaking up on you. Your GPS has quit because there is too many tons of dust and water held aloft in the supercell above you blocking the signal. You were madly looking for the interstate to escape, but now find yourself in the middle of a corn field at the end of "Bob's Road." Wouldn't it be nice to have a map, and the skills to read it with you to know that the on-ramp is only 2 miles away, but only if you make 3 left turns from where you are, instead of the 3 rights you are going to take that will take you over the interstate with no on-ramp, and right into the path of destruction?

Trust me on this one folks, this planet is pretty oldskool. And it plays by the old school rules. Learn how to use a map, and maybe a compass, and save yourself a bunch of grief. Don't rely on technology, it can betray you at the worst times, and according to Murphy, it will!

Or, you can always lower yourself to asking a local where to go... (I got yer answer right here!).

Zap!

Forum Spam, and how to stop it cold.

Funny...

When I first started my forum, about the only posting I got was from spambots and malbots, dropping infectious links, and links to bogus drug company websites selling some magical brew to make my gonads grow to incredible lengths, or make my breasts larger.

Well, I would love to have huge 'nads... but forget the breast increase! LOL

So, I decided the way to keep them out, was develop a new CAPTCHA system, starting with the old one, and tweaking it into something that Mr. Bot's OCR couldn't see through.

I thought long and hard on this. And my solution was to forget how the eyes work, and forget how recognition works, and instead concentrate on how the interim step, the visual cortex works. Yes, bots have been able to crawl through most CAPTCHAs till now. I have "bounced" 100% of over 100 attempts out of the registration process. The solution, is optical illusion. Namely the type that antagonizes neurons in such a manner as to set up a wave function that causes a perceived letter to appear.

<= This is what the new CAPTCHA looks like to a human.

and this is what the captcha looks like in detail =>

As you can see, there is nothing there for an OCR system to lock onto. Just a 50% pixelated background no matter where you look, with 50% pixelated letters placed on it. If averaged, it gets blurred out. Contrast is also 100%, black and white, so there is no stretching the contrast to any effect. Scanning for gross detail, will show nothing, and scanning for fine detail will show allot of noise. Nope, this one is pretty much reserved for humans. And depending on some other things, I will release it to the GNU/LGPL V.2 in June, or perhaps earlier if any of you comment as such.

Head over to my forum , and try it out for yourself! :)

EDIT 5/18 : Wonderful response on it! Have fastracked it! Go HERE to get it!

Added Mac Flaming as suggested by Mr. Frost

A few You-Tube videos for you...

Mac Killed My Inner Child

Macs Suck

And the winner is...

But everyone can win!

Enjoy!

Zap!

iPod Nano... or how to proprietarily shoot yourself in the foot.

When will these companies learn, that the best way to hurt yourself, is to strike out on your own, and put a wear-part in a device where people can't get at it to change it?

Case in point, the iPod Nano... The batteries are catching on fire from being poorly constructed (the batteries), and cycled too much. Oh, sure, the same battery pack, in a different lump of plastic has been powering cell phones for years without problems (educated guessing there), but phones don't throw the kind of load on a battery that an h.264 + AAC audio and video decode will do. And people like the device, and some people (like the Japanese ) will watch video on both the way to and from work, charging at both places (lots of cycles in there!). So it goes as expected the first LiOn batteries are burning out there, rather than in the more gadget sedate USA.

Face it, when a Lithium Ion battery, like the one in the Nano gets used beyond it's life expectancy, they usually suicide by one thing... hot gas venting (fire).

So take this as a lesson learned Mr. Jobs, use standard stuff, or pay the price (as you may have to with these Nanos needing safe batteries)...

iPod Nano II should use RCRV-3, standard rechargeable Lithium Ion. Why?

1. You don't have to pay any other company for use of the open standard.
2. Most people could replace a defective battery themselves.
3. Allot of people could remove and set on some concrete a battery that was hot, but not yet venting gas, thus saving their investment!
4. You will finally break the stereotype in the non-apple community that if it has a fruit name on it, it's proprietary.

Of course, Apple has been kept alive for many many years, by illogical people who find proprietarily being locked into one company's products is just fine. (Usually leftists who don't mind complete control over their lives, such as attorneys, news publishers, and educators.) So, chances are, Apple will continue to go on for as long as there are illogical people to feed it.

Seriously here, ask someone their political affiliation, job, and then ask what computer they own...

Leftist AND/OR Legal/Publisher/Educator = High chance of a Mac.

Conservative or Libertarian of any other employment = Very low chance of a Mac.

Make your own survey, and see for yourself, I dare you.

Zap!
(Soapbox off!)