Category: Technology

Do you want a legal copy of Microsoft Office Ultimate for $59.95?

Office Ultimate 2007 includes the entire Microsoft Office toolset that students are accustomed to working with and more, including Microsoft Office Word 2007, Microsoft Office Excel® 2007, Microsoft Office PowerPoint® 2007, Microsoft Office Outlook® 2007 with Business Contact Manager, Microsoft Office Access™ 2007, Microsoft Office Publisher 2007, Office OneNote 2007, Office Groove 2007 and Microsoft Office InfoPath® 2007.

It is available September 20, 2007 to April 30, 2008 from http://www.theultimatesteal.com/ You need e-mail address at college and active enrollment. See Microsoft press release at
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/sep07/09-12UltimateStealPR.mspx

For many years the Holy Grail of clean energy has been the search for “Cold Fusion”. The next best thing has just made the mainstream scientific community: seawater. Yeah, all that H2O that has covered the planet for eons has finally been proved to be a potential source of energy.

An Erie cancer researcher has found a way to burn salt water, a novel invention that is being touted by one chemist as the “most remarkable” water science discovery in a century.

John Kanzius happened upon the discovery accidentally when he tried to desalinate seawater with a radio-frequency generator he developed to treat cancer. He discovered that as long as the salt water was exposed to the radio frequencies, it would burn.

The discovery has scientists excited by the prospect of using salt water, the most abundant resource on earth, as a fuel.

Rustum Roy, a Penn State University chemist, has held demonstrations at his State College lab to confirm his own observations.

The radio frequencies act to weaken the bonds between the elements that make up salt water, releasing the hydrogen, Roy said. Once ignited, the hydrogen will burn as long as it is exposed to the frequencies, he said.

The discovery is “the most remarkable in water science in 100 years,” Roy said.

“This is the most abundant element in the world. It is everywhere,” Roy said. “Seeing it burn gives me the chills.”

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8RIRI600&show_article=1

If this sounds somewhat familiar, it should. Utilizing radio frequencies to produce energy is the plot of the movie Chain Reaction that was released in 1996. The movie starred Keanu Reeves, Morgan Freeman, Rachel Weisz and Fred Ward.

In Chain Reaction, a group of college students help a professor produce Cold Fusion using water. A radio frequency is necessary in order to sustain the reaction. After this breakthrough is achieved, the lab is sabotaged and Keanu Reeves and Rachel Weisz get chased thru the rest of the film.

Granted it is still early to find a definite power plant design to make this technology commercially viable but see if this idea piques your interest.

The reaction sustains a temperature of 3,000 degrees. So I’m thinking it could be used for a high-pressure steam turbine. If the required radio frequency could be generated naturally, much like to old crystal radios, then you might not need as much battery power to get it started.

The reaction would start in the salt-water chamber. Liquid would be heated to a high temperature and pumped thru to a heat exchanger. On the other side of the heat exchanger water would pump in where it would be converted to steam. The steam would flow into a turbine. Once condensed, the water would be pumped back to the heat exchanger. (See basic design for submarine nuclear power plant for many specifications. This would be smaller scale with different heat source.)

Once it gets going, the turbine could generate electricity to make the whole system run. All you would add is water to top-off the steam system. This would allow for electric cars, self-sufficient energy for homes and it would beat the socks off current solar technology.

Finally we could tell those folks in the Mid-East, “Bye-bye. Enjoy what’s left of the seventh century.”

Last week I finally bought a few songs from iTunes.

I was going on a long drive with my two-year-old son and wanted some children’s music that he would like and I could handle for prolonged periods of time. I downloaded about ten songs from The Wiggles plus a few he hears at bedtime every night.

Setting up the account was simple and downloading went smoothly. However using the burner from Apple was a challenge. It turns out that the files that I downloaded were encrypted and can only be played on the iTunes software. Therefore I have to use the built-in burner in the iTunes software. As I have learned from previous brushes with Apple, things not as easy as they seem. Every time I tried to burn a disk using their burner, I got an error and the burning process would close.

The error was as follows:

The last failed audio CD burn had error code 4000(0x00000fa0).

If you read the error message generated by the software you will see the following note:

If you have multiple drives on the same IDE or SCSI bus, these drives may interfere with each other.
Some computers need an update to the ATA or IDE bus driver, or Intel chipset. If iTunes has problems recognizing CDs or hanging or crashing while importing or burning CDs, check the support site for the manufacturer of your computer or motherboard.

Yeah, that’s right! I had to start disconnecting hardware in my computer to get their software to function. Apple writes bad code for a PC and it’s the PC’s fault. How dare we want to use multiple devices in our machines? Bad code and Apple have a rich history. Can anyone say “Safari”? Anyway I did disconnect one of my CDs and only had my burner connected and the disk wrote successfully. Nero, Roxio and several other burning software programs on my computer have never had any difficult knowing which CD was read only and which was the burner.

This problem plus the QuickTime bug I previously wrote about leave me with less than a favorable impression of Apple software.

Sony Electronics has its own music download site CONNECT™ Music Service. After several years of using a proprietary music format they are throwing in the proverbial towel and joining the rest of the technology world and adopting Windows Media and MP3 as their music standards. It appears that the Connect Service is going away but there is no indication if there is a replacement or they are getting out of the download business. Since Sony owns about half the music copyrights in the Western World, I would look to a partnership agreement with someone like Apple or Microsoft if they get out of running a download site.

Below is the core of the press release:

Today Sony announced its intent to move to a Windows Media Technology platform for Walkman® products in the United States, Canada and Europe. We strongly believe that the decision to embrace a more open platform for these devices will enable us to provide you with a better overall experience. As a result of this change, we will be phasing out the CONNECT™ Music Service based on Sony’s ATRAC audio format in North America and Europe. Specific timing will vary by region depending on market demand, but will not be before March 2008.

We are fully committed to helping you through this important transition away from the CONNECT Music Service and providing you with the best possible guidance on how to successfully transfer your music library to an MP3 or Windows Media-compatible format, should you wish to do so. We recommend that you use any outstanding promotional codes, account credits or gift certificates available in your music account prior to March 2008, but even after the store closes you will continue to be able to play, manage, and transfer the music in your SonicStage library and on your existing ATRAC devices. If you obtain a new device, all of Sony’s new Walkman music and video players will support MP3 or Windows Media Audio format.

Sony Rootkit in USB Drives
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/08/29/tech-sony.html

Sony Corp. is up to its old tricks again, hiding software that can be exploited by hackers in a line of portable USB drives, a Finnish security firm says.

The fingerprint reader software included with Sony’s MicroVault USM-F line installs a driver in a hidden folder that can be accessed by hackers on the user’s computer, according to F-Secure Corp.

F-Secure researchers did suggest that Sony had a good reason for hiding the files. The company was likely trying to protect the USB drive’s fingerprint authenticator information from being tampered with. However, the files are invisible to some anti-virus detection software.

“We feel that rootkit-like cloaking techniques are not the right way to go here,” Tolvanen wrote.

F-Secure said it notified Sony of the problem about a month ago, but did not receive a reply. On Tuesday, researchers with security firm McAfee Inc. confirmed F-Secure’s findings.

Symptom: You try running Quicktime media player from Apple on your Windows Vista PC and after a few seconds playing, Quicktime chashes and gives you a buffer error.

If this is you, then you are probably running SATA drives using an NVIDIA RAID Driver. If you run Quicktime files from the Internet they work great but any file on your hard drive will crash the Apple player.

Don’t panic, this is normal behavior, albeit, very irritating. The solution is that you need to run the files from either a USB hard drive or an IDE one. At this point neither Apple, Microsoft nor NVIDIA is admitting that there is a problem.

See thread that Apple has on their website.

If I play any files encoded in the MOV file format that are stored LOCALLY on any of my 3 internal SATA HD’s, the file play for a few seconds with sound, but without video, then eventually the buffer overrun error occurs.

If I stream the EXACT SAME file via the internet, or my local home network, or play them from my external USB HD, USB Thumb drive, or even burn them to CD/DVD and play them from that, I do not encounter the buffer overrun problem, and the files play just fine, even the files that are in high definition. I’m not an expert, but in my case, this may point to poor Nvidia SATA drivers, although I could be wrong.

Just to recap. If I play any MOV files from the internal SATA HD’s attached to my motherboard directly, I get a problem. If I stream them, or play them from another storage medium, I do not encounter a problem.

The US Senate is not the only thing running amuck this week. If you are running Windows Vista with any flavor of NVIDIA RAID then this could be a challenging time for you. The NVIDIA drivers that were just released via both their website and Microsoft Update are causing major issues for many folks that rely on RAID controllers in their computers.

The drivers from the Windows Update and those from NVIDIA totally kill my RAID 5 array. I get the legendary “blue screen of death” and the system reboots into the boot window where you can choose Last Known Good Startup. This will get your computer back up but then a window asking to install the new RAID drivers greets you. If you say NO the system tries to install the driver anyways.

My immediate concern is that I need to kill the automatic update from prompting me to install the RAID drivers each time I boot my computer. Sounds like a registry tweak or I need to delete a downloaded update program on my hard drive.

The support boards at NVIDIA’s website are full of stories by other hearty souls dealing with the same type of issues.  The drivers are part of the 158.18 update. The manufacturer considers these drivers a Beta for Windows Vista. Half of this driver package can be installed automatically; the Ethernet, SMBus & SMU, however, the RAID portion cannot. Don’t install the RAIDtool application. If you want to try this part of the driver package then create system restore point and give it a try. Oh, and good luck.

I went on the website for my motherboard and their driver site had an additional nugget of information missing from both the NVIDIA and Microsoft websites that I had already deduced from reading the support forums on the NVIDIA site, these RAID drivers must be installed by booting your system with the original Vista DVD and pressing F6 to install additional drivers.

For those of you that are not familiar with the significance of this fact, it is important. First, it means that the driver that Windows Update is trying to force feed me will never install correctly. Since my bootable driver is my RAID array, the driver that Windows is trying to replace is currently in use whenever my system is running. In fact my system cannot run without it.

Second, I need to create a floppy disk with the updated drivers in order to update the RAID drivers. There are actually two drivers that need to be updated. Once the NVIDIA update is downloaded and expanded, the necessary drivers can be found at the following location: C:\NVIDIA\nForceWinVista64\15.00\IDE\WinVista64\sataraid. Copy all files in this directory to your freshly formatted floppy drive. (Before trying this update, it would be good to locate your original 64-bit drivers and have that floppy available just in case you need to undo this experiment.)

Insert your Vista DVD in the driver, set BIOS to boot off of this drive and start the system on the DVD. When prompted, press F6 key to install additional drivers. You may now select the first driver from the floppy and install. Next press the S key to install additional drivers and select and install second driver from the floppy. If you mess this up, reboot and do over. You cannot damage your system and have made no changes to the drivers at this point.

Disclaimer: This next step is based on experience and I am relying on memory because I have not done this in a while. Next select Repair. (The goal on this step is to get the drivers on floppy copied to hard drive to replace old drivers.) If floppy is still in the drive this should happen without much user input. Once the system has completed repair, remove floppy disk and DVD and reboot. If system successfully reboots then you are done.

I am leaving for a much-deserved vacation and won’t be trying this before I return. If you run this update, write me and let me know how it went.

Last week I loaded the April 3 Security Update from Microsoft onto my work computer.
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/update/bulletins/200704OOB.mspx

This update was marked as Critical and was released early just to get it in circulation. Unfortunately it created a .dll conflict error.

RTHDCPL.EXE – Illegal System DLL Relocation
The system DLL user32.dll was relocated in memory. The application will not run properly. The relocation occurred because the DLL C:\system32\HHCTRL.OXC occupied an address range reserved for Windows system DLLs. The vendor supplying the DLL should be contacted for a new DLL.

In all my years of computing I have never before seen that error. I restored my system to an earlier date and again loaded the update with the same results. I searched in vain on the Microsoft website to find an explanation for this error. While the computer seemed to perform correctly, I wanted to be sure my system was ok.

I looked up all the .dll files mentioned in the error message and found that the one triggering the error was a RealTek audio driver. I went to the RealTek site and downloaded their HD audio update and I no longer get the error message.

Why there was conflict between Microsoft and RealTek I don’t know but I hope the security update was really that important.

UPDATE
After this blog was posted, Microsoft released a patch.

Update for Windows XP (KB935448)
Date last published: 4/10/2007
Download size: 702 KB
Install this update to resolve an issue where certain third-party applications may not start, and you receive an error message: “Illegal System DLL Relocation” after you install security update KB925902 (MS07-017). After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer.

Well I finally got my new computer up and running. I wanted a machine that was fast with lots of storage and room to grow. I think I have achieved that and more.

Unlike the strawman arguments found in the Apple advertisements where the PC is prepping for surgery to upgrade to Vista, I wanted a system made to use the new OS as it was supposed to operate.

Just a comment, I do find the hypocrisy of Apple in their ad campaign intolerable. Back when Apple had their own operating system—before they junked it and went to a Unix-based OS and Intel CPU chips—I tried one of their computers. After a short time I gave it away to a friend that wanted an Apple system. Their Soviet-style business model stinks and their computers are overrated. Clearly viewers of Oprah and AOL users are the target market for their computers.

If you want a more neutral evaluation of your computer’s ability to run Vista, run the Vista Upgrade Advisor tool at http://www.cnet.com/4520-33_1-6671810-1.html

Anyway, I went to tech nerd heaven a.k.a. Fry’s Electronics and purchased the following:
AMD dual core processor 5,000 MHz
2 GB 800 MHz RAM
Gigabyte GA-M59SLI-S5 Motherboard
Three 500 GB SATA II Hard-drives in RAID 5 Array
Antec 900 Mid-Tower Case for Gamers
Striker 600 Watt Power Supply
Nvidia 8800 SLI video card with 640 MB RAM

The Gigabyte motherboard was actually the second motherboard I tried for this system. Originally I had purchased an Abit Fatal1ty board but it would not work correctly so I took it back. The Abit board was very frustrating, I don’t know if it was the board or the Kingston RAM but the machine would randomly lock-up at various points in the start-up sequence, even when making changes to the BIOS. In addition, I could never successfully format the RAID 5 drive. I tried Windows XP Professional, Home and Professional x64 and none would install.

The only way to get an operating system installed was to break the RAID 5 apart and install on a single drive. But still there were random lock-ups.

The Gigabyte board worked perfectly the first time. Getting past the two hour step on formatting the hard-drive was concerning but the rest of the process went quite rapidly.
After installing to OS, which ended up being Windows XP Professional x64, I installed the drives from the motherboard DVD and ran Windows Update. After just four downloads the system was up to date. One of the updates was Service Pack 2 with an impressive 351 MB download; but at 2 a.m., that was a rapid download.

It took over five hours to transfer my music, photos and video files to the new computer via our home network. The 10/100 hub got quite a workout. I haven’t verified to transfer size yet but it was probably in excess of 250 GBs.

I still have some more preps to do to the system before I finally get Vista installed.

I went to the HP website and downloaded drivers. I found that my replacement Photosmart printer had drivers but my nice scanner was no longer supported. HP had a note where my scanner driver should be located informing me that my device must be more that seven years old and therefore is no longer supported. My HP Scanjet 6200c is a business quality scanner that connects via USB cable. It seems such a shame to part with it.

On a brighter note, I have found something to replace my Computer Associates anti-virus product. I bought the CA virus program because it is supposed to work on Windows XP Professional x64. It does seem to work except that it won’t scan incoming e-mail, which is probably the most vulnerable access point to my computer and the most likely avenue of attack.

It appears that the Kaspersky Internet Security 6.0 will work on 64-bit versions of Vista and XP. It is less of a performance hit than Symantec or CA products. I was impressed that Kaspersky found two Trojans and another virus in my e-mail that were not detected by the CA anti-virus program. The Trojans were from spam while my friend that uses exclusively Apple products sent the other virus. The program made a great first impression. http://usa.kaspersky.com/products/internet-security.php

In order to keep my computer running properly, I will need to get the new version of Diskeeper to keep my drives defragmented and running their best. Since my Raid 5 array is more than 768 MB, I need the Diskeeper Professional Premier edition. http://www.diskeeper.com/defrag.asp

Thankfully, both Kaspersky and Diskeeper have demo programs that I can test drive on my Vista OS.

Lastly, I have decided to switch which version of Vista that I will be installing. I had planned to install Windows Vista Ultimate but I have decided to purchase Windows Vista Home Premier. The only difference seems to be features that I will not need.

One area that I have been diligently researching for several days is the issue of Windows Vista and which versions are 32 bit, 64 bit or both. Microsoft has neglected to document this up front. Yesterday I was finally able to get some definitive answers to this mystery.

Vista is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions, but some are easier to obtail than others.

The following Vista versions are available as 32 bit programs when purchased retail.
Home Basic
Home Premium
Business

At this link you can upgrade your 32-bit Vista to 64 for a nominal fee.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/editions/64bit.mspx

Windows Vista Ultimate has both 32 & 64 bit versions on the installation DVD.

Another nugget on this page is that all 32 bit versions of Vista are limited to 4 gigabytes of RAM while 64 bit OS can support up to 128 GB of RAM depending of which version that you are running.

32-bit versions of Vista will support 16-bit applications but the 64-bit OS won’t unless you are running Microsoft Virtual Machine 2007, which will be a free download later in the year. Virtual Machine will allow 64-bit operating system to operate 16-bit programs in a virtual environment running older versions of Windows. Virtual Machine 2004 is available for download now.

Also Microsoft is offering an upgrade special that can save you money over the retail prices. If you buy either full or upgrade version of Vista Ultimate, then you can also purchase license for two copies of Vista Home Premium for $49.99 each. This is simply a key to use same DVD that you already purchased to install the operating system on additional computers. See the link below for details.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/buyorupgrade/familydiscount.mspx

I’m really looking forward to getting myself a computer that can put Windows Vista to the test. Unfortunately, I will not be running out on January 30th to buy the new operating system from Microsoft.

First, I want to know if there are drives available run my hardware. When I upgraded to the 64 bit version of Windows XP many of my otherwise perfectly fine printers, cameras and other gadgets no longer worked. The lack of support by manufacturers was significant.

In addition all my trusty computer utilities were instantly obsolete. In fact most software companies still don’t support 64 bit operating systems. I had this wonderful OS with no antivirus, defrag or registry cleaning ability. Many programs that I rely on would not work and were not going to be supported by software makers. This included many 32 bit programs. By design no program with 16 bit code will run on a 64 bit OS. This includes Windows Vista. There are supposed to be both 32 and 64 bit versions of the new OS but information is not easy to find on the Microsoft site.

While a few companies finally did patch their code enough to run on a 64 bit OS, most also decided that I must be a business if I run a 64 bit OS and priced their products accordingly. Microsoft doesn’t even fully support the 64 bit version of XP. Their new OneCare product with anti-virus and other utilities will not work on their 64 bit OS.

64 bit computing is here to stay but will Vista be fully supported by the industry from the introduction on January 30? HP will not even release a list of their products that are supported in Vista until the 30th.

Will hardware manufacturers have a variety of drivers ready? Will they let us Beta Test their drivers and then find something that works or have they done their homework?

Based on my experience with 64 bit computing thus far, I recommend caution before blindly upgrading to Vista. In fact, Microsoft doesn’t even allow me to upgrade my OS to Vista. I must wipe the drive and start over.

If Microsoft can’t fully support their own software, what hope is there that the entire industry will do better?