Macbook Pro Car Alarm

This has been out for a while now, but if your not familiar with it, here it goes, (video courtesy of “Pruekman”)

Link on the “How To” is located here: http://www.slappingturtle.com/home/ 

Coming soon… Full walkthrough on OpenSuse 10.1 with XGL on opengL Walkthrough

Just a heads up, I am currently working on the easiest method (compiled) for the cool effects that you see with Suse linux (10.1) using XGL/Compiz , I think that the current method is extremely simple, but have seen other struggle getting it to work properly. If you have no idea what Im talking about then watch this video below…basically, it puts OSX, and Vista to shame as far as visual effects (and in my opinion Stability and reliability)

[For video see above post: "SuSe 10.1 XGL"]
it’s not the greatest quality, but he/she goes over the really good features of XGL on Suse, like split desktop video, “Limp” windows, transperency windows with levels, check it out.

A cheaper alternative: Office/Home theater Projector

Recently on a dual quest to find a reasonably priced, and decent performance projector, one for the office and one for the master bedroom at home, I decided I would maybe try a DIY projector kit. Well 30 minutes later, after reading the how to’s, I decided that wasn’t the best idea. I didn’t want to have to program (or diagnose) anything else in my home, and these days, I like things to be simple, with Windows xp, Vista, Suse, Knoppix, Smoothwall, OSX, I have plenty of things to update and troubleshoot, a new projector, heck, I just want it to w-o-r-k. So I re-geared my goal, and decided to find a nice projector I could buy retail, and hopefully be under $1000 for a single unit. With projectors, majority are in the $750-$1500 price range for really nice performing projectors. But being a techie, I knew that the cost a replacement bulb would have to be researched as well…You see, if your not familiar with projectors, while they offer good performance for meetings, seminars, and in home, an widescreen movie, the bulbs lifespan is relatively short.

I found that when a projector was cheaper in price, the bulb was pricier, and vice versa. A cheap bulb was around $120, and cheap meaning it wasn’t the best the unit could handle, or didn’t produce as many lumens (not as bright of an image). I called a buddy of mine who owns a company that does “Smarthomes” digitally upgrading and renovating houses to bring them into the next century. He reffered me to this site : www.lumenlab.com/pm_projector.php , where lo and behold, there was a $500 projector! Now I was very skeptical at first and thought, “shit I didn’t even find decent ones on ebay for this price, how could this be any good?” . Well great things come in small packages (*sometimes) and this is one of them. First off the specs are “as good” if not better than majority of the higher end performance projectors than I had been looking at. It has AV, S-Video, TV (coax) and VGA pc inputs , which is quiet a few more than some of the other ones. It comes with a remote control and tv tuner, which on others was an accessory. And best of all, the lamp (bulb) costs only $30.00 to replace it.

Now Im not a fan of cheap things, unless its cheap, and yet top of the line, which normally, never cross each others path. But in this case, I settled for it, and when I recieved the projectors I wasn’t dissapointed at all. For the office it works perfectly, and for the home even better. I would have to say the only “odd” thing I could say about it, is the contrast is rated at 350:1, which may seem low to most standards (common LCDs and Plasmas are up to 10,000:1 ratio) but for some reason, its much brighter than its rated. I understand on the website it says that most manufacturers specs on their projectors are grossly inflated, and that they just used “actual specs”.. I guess that makes sense.

Firefox vs IE, Safari, and Netscape

I accidently deleted the original post, so here it is again: Firefox fan [Jeff Gill] created video, its very funny:

Photoshop: Rose With Color

Photoshop: Rose With Color

Originally uploaded by Exempt.

By adding a slight blur to the background, and increasing hues in selected regions of the dying rose, it makes the rose almost “pop out”, although I later saw some errors I left in this image.

Hopefully I’ll find the time to also add some Photoshop techniques, although, I wouldn’t say Im an expert like some of the guys I know.

{Edit} – Some people are saying this comes out as having a very high color pitch to it, if you don’t see the roses in “full” color, but rather as extremely bright, you need to adjust your Contrast (lower it) on your LCD/Monitor, this was created on a 10,000:1 Contrast Plasma, and appears fine under default viewsonic, sony, adobe, and Apple Studio color profiles .

ICall = Skype Killer?

I recently heard about Icall, (link to the left), and reviewing it's specs, and offering, it seems to be in the perfect position as a "Skype Killer". Free outbound to anywhere calls, free incoming calls (to a number that they provide you for free!), as well as FREE voicemail!. All these services are charged services under Skype* (*free outbound calls until the end of this year). I haven't used the software extensively, but I can say some things so far, there is no spyware, bloatware, malware, it's all clear and the install is quick and extremely basic (that's a good thing). I'm not to happy that there is no MAC version available atm, but it's relatively new, so I'll give them that. The sounds are horrible, they sound like someone recorded them inside a paper cup, best described as "foggy". I had several problems logging in at late times, just receiving an error that says "There was an error logging in…" uhhh no shit…you don't say?  Going to their website and logging into my account, I noticed that they are positioned to offer paid services, when the link to "Extra Services" is clicked, you get this message: " In a few weeks, you'll be able to order dirt cheap incoming numbers! Watch this page for updates." Ok cool. Your originally provided with one, so I personally wouldn't buy another, but that's just me. You have the ability to see all your received/missed calls, just like Vonage, and lastly for now, they are giving away a free Ipod a day, gee thats original. You basically refer a friend, and once you have 5 referrals, your entered into a "once a day" everday (for who knows how long) Ipod drawing plus $100, kewl. I'll give away the Ipod, since I already have a few, and since it doesn't specify what type of ipod (it could be an old fat ugly one for all we know) although they do show a picture of an Ipod nano, but we all know that pictures on the net are not to be taken as legitimate lol. I'll keep the hundred bucks and buy banana frappacinos for my whole office, those damn things are addicting. I'll have a full app review on Icall, as soon as Iv'e played with it enough. Stay tuned 

Microsoft…This one is for the pals :)

Okay okay, I hear you! Iv’e got a few friends that work at Microsoft, resource managers, and two that work for the Microsoft Anti-Piracy team. Now these are buds, that I’ve either went to college with, or friends from before, and they’ve expressed a strong, and humorous advice that I should clarify my views on piracy, so that I don’t come off as Captain Hack over here. When I talk about piracy, obviously its most likely regarding downloading off the net, but the borders can get extremely vague at times. I burn backups, of DVD’s I’ve already purchased, with a collection almost reaching a thousand, and a busy work schedule, I’d be lucky if I could watch a specific singular DVD, once a year, however, sitting in a CD binder (that’s how I store so many without taking up to much space), I notice that they do in fact get slightly scratched over time. So I burn a backup, I own the original license, and no , I’m not going to sell them, I’ll leave that for the guys in downtown LA. This however constitutes piracy, just like the next guy who IS selling them on the street corner.

I use Tivo, just like a large percentage of Americans today, as mentioned before, with a hectic schedule, there is no way I can possibly catch my TV shows, (Rome, Deadwood, Sopranos, to name a few), so I use my Tivo (uhhh that’s what it’s intended for) to record the shows to watch at a later time….guess what? that’s piracy as well.

I own three ipods, a nano for jogging, a video ipod, and an older ipod mini. I purchased quiet a few songs off of itunes, but according to Apple and the RIAA, I MUST purchase a separate copy PER device. So therefore, copying the same songs to two other devices, that I own, and songs that I have paid for, that’s piracy.

So when I get all hot and heated, it’s because there is no rationalization going on here with these guys. With the rate and ridiculous methods going out against “borderline” piracy, soon you’ll have to pay to watch a sports game at your local bar, or guess what? You guessed it, the MPAA, or RIAA, will come knocking on your door.

I don’t promote piracy, not at all, I think of the guys who bootleg videos and “slang” them at Bike Night (I’m a street-bike, and chopper owner), I think there really just ghetto. But hey, who am I really to judge? he may need to feed some kids, aww who am I kidding, he’s probably terrorist supporting a world wide arms race (note the sarcasm). But really, I’m definitely NOT that guy. I don’t recommend using a copy of pirated windows ever, for almost nefarious reasons. I like Microsoft, despite minor jokes here and there, but I wouldn’t doubt for a second, that one day, they may possibly attempt to use some gestapo style tactics. I wouldn’t be to surprised if one day America wakes, up and goes to the office to find a “This copy of windows is pirated, you may not use windows, or retrieve your files until you purchase a license”, on your monitor. That would come as a shock to some of you, but hey, it wouldn’t be illegal on their part. This boils down to my promotion for licensed copies of Windows, however I can’t say the same for games or super stupid, but useful software apps, like WinRAR, or WinZip. I can honestly say, I don’t know anyone who actually purchased either of those. Either people use the trial version indefinitely, or they nab (pirate) a copy of it.

Iv’e got a great tip for software companies, and developers, if your app, is under 100mb, give it away for free, and make money off of advertising , and promotional sponsors. The open-source market is starting to make a great appeal to users of all ranges, take advantage of that….uhhh, cmon, look at Google and all their free apps, or Openoffice, or Linux distros. It reminds me of an old song from Sesame Street, “One of these kids is NOT like the other, One of these kids is doing it wrong…” . You don’t understand how bad you feel ripped off, when you spend $30, or $100 on a software app that is only freekin 760kb, and downloads faster than I can close my window and open up “My Documents”.

So all in all, sure I think we all have at one time or another “pirated” something, and I can’t say I won’t in the future, but it won’t be a copy of windows, or a movie recorded with some cheap camera (cmon guys if your going to do it at all, at least use a HD camera geez), but I can say this… “stay away from my booty .”

And for my buddies who work for MS, you can come over, have a beer, and run the validation tool on any of my computers, at any time, your always welcome

Piracy and the RIAA and MPAA

When it all comes down to the brass tacks, what the RIAA and MPAA do, is really a moral question, is piracy right or wrong? I’m sure we’ve all seen the really gay commercial before a DVD or in the theaters that says something like , “Would you steal a car?” “Would you steal a DVD?” “Piracy is stealing”. That’s real great and all, trying to enforce it with harsh fines and penalties, but then again, you should know the actual law, not just what you read on the internet.

Last year in my old home, I had a knock on the door one nice afternoon, and this fat grizzly looking guy asks me is I am “XXXXXX” “XXXXX” , I say, “yes” and he hands me a thick yellow envelope. The fat guy waddles off and Im still standing there like …”uhhh what the f**k was that all about”. I open up the package to find out that my ISP had ratted me out. There was several big hitters on who was suing me, Microsoft, Virgin Records, just to name a few, and amazingly , there was this 13 or so page document with every single file I had downloaded within a certain time-frame….amazing I tell you!

The total amount of fines was somewhere in the astronomical level of 11 million dollars in fines, and up to 4 years in a federal prison. I placed a phone call to my trusty lawyer , who simply said, “Don’t worry, I promise you, don’t worry”. He has had extensive experience with this type of cases living in LA. Fine, nuff said, and I didn’t worry. Now several things popped into my mind at the time, first was, I remember back in the day, when there was only VHS tapes, and we (people like you and me) used to record TV shows to watch later, or copy a video that you liked onto another VHS, and shit, you could even RENT copied VHS from the local mom and pops VHS rental spots. Remember all the videos, even today still have that FBI warning , “250,000$ fine, and time in federal prison”? Well that warning is still there, and I can tell you, Iv’e never met someone or even heard a story about a federal inmate, “Hey man, Im in here for robbing a bank, shooting two cops and crossing state lines, what are you in here for?” … “Oh shit man, I copied Pee Wee hermans Big adventure, like 4 times and gave them to my niece and nephew, and their friends”….You know why you don’t hear that? Cause it really doesn’t happen. Sure if they raid your home, and you’ve got illegal substances, and your just an asshole, then yes, very well you may get time added on for copying DVDs, but otherwise, you’ll most likely get off with a night in a holding tank, and a slap on this wrist when it comes to court.

Back to my story, which needs some explanation on my end. How did my ISP catch it? Well at the time I was moving houses, and I had a low end PC configured as a type of router, the PC uses 4 ethernet cards, and with a certain linux distro, basically constantly switches through the cards, seamlessly switching from one MAC ID to the next, all behind a very nice firewall. Certain IP’s can be filtered out, with apps like Blacklist manager, which blocks known RIAA, and MPAA, addresses, as well as other foundations that track what your downloading. Anyways, when I was moving, the computer room was one of the last rooms to get moved, and about two weeks before the actual move, I figured it was safe to shut down my “brick firewall” as I like to call it, yet I left the server continuously downloading. Well since I was downloading an exstensive amount of data, I guess I was flagged by my ISP….hence the proceedings.

In December of last year (2005) I went to court, and instead of even using my lawyer, he advised me to take up a public defender, and instructed me what to do. I walked out of court, with $0 in fines, and not one night in jail…case dropped. I ended up paying about $300 for the public defender.

Now I can’t say everyone is going to have the same situation as I, but I can say, that I was one of those guys you would have read about on DIGG, or Slashdot, about a man getting arrested with a huge fine and what not, but you never really hear about what happened to em do you? Because the RIAA and MPAA WANTS you to hear about people getting arrested and fined (get scared….wooooOOOh, yet with a weak type of punishment there not going to broadcast that naturally. That was my experience, yours may be different.

Nowadays, I have so many colleagues, friends, and people I associate with that copy music, DVDs, games, and what not, I decided not to risk doing it myself, but that doesn’t slow me down at all. I only buy games that need a serial key to play online, and I rarely ever do play any games in their multiplayer mode. As a matter of fact, within the last year and a half, I can’t honestly say that I would have wanted to purchase any of the games that were pirated, they just sucked, I maybe played for an hour, and then uninstalled, due to lack of content, horrible gameplay, or repetitive gameplay, shit sometimes the sounds suck so bad, that it kills the entire game. As for movies, I have to agree with most of the comments seen on TPB. The guys/gals that are downloading movies on-line, are not the type of people that actually goto the movies, even if they were not available on-line, and actually paying for a movie that just sucks, well… feels…pretty shitty. If you were to go to a restaurant, and ordered a meal that tasted nasty, even if your half way through it, you would get your money back (taken off the order), simple and yet effective concept, do the same with movies. How about this, clean the goddamn nasty sticky floors in the theaters? Or set a designated theater for teens under a certain age, and play the same movie in a separate theater for adults. Take out the adds before a movie, its like freekin visual spam, I P-A-I-D , I don’t want to watch commercials, at all…ever. Anyone use XM or Sirius? Wasn’t there something like it a long time ago, with no commercials, and only music and talk-shows, but free? Oh yah the fucking radio! Only now we have to PAY to not have the commercials…gee, does anybody see how bad we get shafted? Back to the movies…My largest peeve, about the theater experience is that I have to find parking, which in Southern California, can take onwards up to 30 mins, and that usually means that your parking a ridiculous distance away. Get there earlier? An average wait for just a local restaurant takes about 3-4 hours on Fridays, and this time gets longer the closer you get to LA, movies get sold out hours before they show, online and at the booth.

So after experiencing that type of situation, when you can just ‘click’ and have it “delivered” to your home in a few hours, (not even like Netflix which takes 1-2 days), there is no better alternative. Now I’m sure the RIAA and MPAA, would like to say things like, “well the artists or actors are losing money”! Gee , please , I’m sorry, I’m not a great actor, I can’t sing worth shit, but I can see that it doesn’t require much physical labor, I served 3 years in the middle east when I was in the ARMY, I marched through the damn deserts with a 110 pound rucksack on my back, in temperatures over 120F, THAT’S hard labor, and guess what? I got paid shit, yet I loved , absolutely loved what I did! How about we treat artists, actors, musicians, shit even sports players like we treat the other 98% of America, you perform your job, IF, its a good job, THEN you get paid. I bet you Kobe would play twice as hard if he knew he doesn’t get payed unless he wins…

This is open for comments

Backing Up Win XP, in order to reformat

Lot's of Windows users frequently run into a slow operating system eventually, so we'll go over a "how-to" on how to backup your Winxp and save as much as you can. I'll try to stick with free software if possible, (or trial software) and see if we can get the same result. I will walk through these steps on my test laptop, and if I come across errors I will post, please do the same.

I have to note before hand, that by doing this , it WILL ask you to re-activate windows, so if your using a hacked, bittorented, borrowed umm a copy which you no longer have around, your going to need a new cd-key, which you can find online at www.keygen.us buy on Microsoft.com, ahem, your going to have to purchase another copy (yeah right) or find your original cd-key (located on the pamplet fold out that came in the box). You could always use a "borrowed" copy but "I don't recommend it".

1. Download trueimage trial located HERE

install it of course…

it says its only limitations are a 15 day trial, which works for us since we'll only need it for an hour or so.

2.Download VMware trial as well located HERE

Use a junk email account, and register, (these days you never know who they sell your email to), they send you a link with a key code.

download and install.

3. Fire up Trueimage and backup your whole hardrive that has your OS (if you don't know what OS stands for you shouldn't be doing this in the first place). Trueimage it will allow you to restore to a hardrive smaller than the original disk, which can come in handy. Backup the image to a external HDD, or internal HDD but seperate partition.

[Alternatively] You could partition your primary HDD, and slam your data into the partition, but this doesn't work in the same fashion, since were trying to backup applications in their working state as well. Thats a whole other topic though.

4. Startup VMware, and install to a directory on the external HDD, or the other partition where your data is located, basically any directory/drive than the one you are about to reformat. You are going to need to run it after youv'e wiped your C: drive, which is why we need it located somewhere else. KEEP THE CD-KEY and information handy, you will need it later on, so write it on a pad of paper, or print it out.
5. Create a virtual harddisk slightly larger than your C: drive, so that it can hold the contents of your C: drive. Always add a safety margin, usally 4gb should do. Tell VMWare to create the new virtual disk with the capacity you have deducted. You don't have to pre-allocate the space but it will make things a lot faster.

Now at this point, I haven't gone farther on my end, ( I just perform the backups "in case") but here's what should come next in your scenario…

Create a boot disk from VMware, should be under options, or Recovery. Or if this is not an option with the trial, start a recovery session from VMware, it may need to reboot. One the Recovery session has started, point it to the image you created earlier (the backup of your whole HDD), and restore the image to the VM.

Now this should take some time depending on the size of your HDD, and the amount of data being restored, so go eat, or play a game on another computer, or watch pr0n, I don't care…

When you come back from pr0n, eating, err whatever you were doing, you should be able to take the CD out and boot the VM from the restored C: drive. As long as you didn't encounter any errors, your system will come up in VMWare, and will bitch about your hardware not being present and having found new devices, blah blah blah. You can ignore these messages for now.

When you get into the virtualized XP installation, change the virtual computer's name, because you can't have two machines with the same Windows computer name on the same network. Right-click My Computer>Properties, and click the Change button on the Computer Name tab. Give it a new name, and "Ok" on the boxes. Do NOT reboot yet, even though you will be prompted. Go ahead and install VMware tools…(yes again) This will install the proper drivers for your virtual hardware. You will be prompted to reboot, and now it's ok to.

When the system comes back, adjust the screen resolution to your liking. Handle any of the hardware installation boxes that pop up (remember if you just backed up your entire HDD, your original drivers are still on there as well) So install all those as well. Now I have to add here in bold: GAMES will not backup properly but most likely were not doing all this because of a game, were doing this for safety and to preserve reinstallation of apps like photoshop, or I dunno your custom database templates, whatever.

6(?) Now go ahead and reinstall Winxp the normal way, just be sure to leave alone the drive you slammed all your data to, otherwise you'll end up deleting all the shit you jsut saved. Once your back into Windows, install all drivers and all that good stuff, open the VM you created in the previous step, and boot it. If it works, everything's great. If things did not work out, you can still boot your physical computer from your backup software recovery CD and restore the backup you've created earlier. At this point, networking should be up and running between the new system you've just installed and your old XP installation in VMWare. Everything should be working now, give it a spin, if you have any issues let me know.

-Exempt

Windows Media Player 11 Authentication hack

I recently wasn’t able to install Windows Media Player 11 on one of my laptops, says it can’t run the verification tool, not that it’s an invalid key, but that it just can’t start the tool to verify the damn thing. I run all my systems on a “services.msc” diet, so I imagine I may have possibly disabled something there that may need to be running, or possibly a script block through my Smoothwall. So Iv’e decided, err… my buddy has decided to work on a hack, or a “plug” as I’d like to think of it as (Microsoft=sinking ship). It seems that lately Microsoft is really upsetting quite a few people with all the complications due to the shoddy “Windows Genuine” deal. So check back frequently, it will be here soon. BTW small update to the WGA workaround, there is a mythical program named 905474.exe that is supposedly a compiled script that automatically deletes all references to the WGA “virus”, if youve seen it let me know, I’d like to see what its really about.

[UPDATE]

After numerous emails, and talking with a few other buds, I was notified that the Beta will be entering actual Public release, within a few days, possibly a week or so, so in effect, cracking the beta wouldnt do much, so I will wait for the full release and start over from there, files will be hosted as well. Stay tuned

[UPDATE]   For full workaround, perform a “Search” (right hand side –>)  and enter : “Windows Media Player”  and it will search my blog archives, and youll see links within my blog to the patch and download links…Have Fun