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A clock with a USB port is by necessity a much more complex device than a clock with an Apple dock connector. Aside from having to implement the USB mass storage specification, it also has to have its own audio hardware. Your MP3 player is just acting as a glorified hard drive, and the clock is doing all the work. Also, if you're using any audio functionality that isn't exposed over mass storage, or isn't supported by the clock's hardware, then it won't work.

With an Apple dock connector, the clock only has to use the analogue signal from the dock connector's line out, and pass it straight to the amplifier. It will probably also use a subset of the Apple Accessory Protocol to provide audio controls - this works across a dedicated set of pins on the connector and is pretty simple to implement. With a dock connector, your iPod is doing all the work, so your clock is cheaper and with fewer compatibility concerns.

It's no surprise that most manufacturers have gone down the route of including a dock connector at the expense of USB. The dock connector is supported by the majority (or certainly a large minority) of audio playing devices in users' hands, it's simpler to implement, and there won't be the questions over compatibility that would plague the equivalent USB device. It's not rudeness, it's good business sense.

Most clocks like this will also have a standard 3.5 mm minijack line-in for compatibility with other devices anyway. Mine does.

And yes, I'm still annoyed that Intel didn't think about implementing and standardising extra functionality such as this when it was designing USB 3.0. The time was right.

all without jailbreaking your iPhone or having to pay thousands to access to the Apple Dock Connector. This makes it possible for students, hackers, and DIYers to extend the phone's functionality to the physical world

Or if you're a genius hacker, you can buy something with an ADC connector and... cut the cable, strip the wires, and have access to all its functions for a few dollars. Or maybe I'm missing something.

In case any of you are interested, I took photos of my teardown of the Zenith DTT900, one of the first available DTV converters, available here: http://nuxx.net/gallery/v/acquired_stuff/zenith_dtt900/.

In case any of you are interested, I took photos of my teardown of the Zenith DTT900, one of the first available DTV converters, available here: http://nuxx.net/gallery/v/acquired_stuff/zenith_dtt900/.

There is also this keyboard (image) which I came across in a CompUSA sale area for $4.99 or so.

It's big feature was that it had an extra three keys for Power, Sleep, and Wake. The problem is that these were right above the inverted-T, with Power being right next to Enter.

Here is info on my MAME Cabinet, if anyone is interested. That link also includes the control panel template I came up with, info about the hardware, software, an image of the whole OS setup which can simply be dropped on a Compact Flash card and booted, and a bunch of other things.

The cabinet was built completely from scratch, patterned off of a early 90s Data East cab.

Of course, I did this all back in the summer of 2000, so some of the electronics I used for it might be a bit dated. However, I think most of the info is still applicable.

If you take a look at this screenshot you can see Safari for Windows failing to work for me. That is on a Dell Latitude D620 behind our corporate firewall.

Before I turned the corporate proxy settings off in IE it would launch and chew through RAM while not responding. I had to kill it once it reached 600MB used. After turning the proxy settings off, what you see above is what I get.

I haven't tried it on a public network connection yet, but I'll give that a go tonight. Hopefully it'll fix the problem.

In case anyone is interested in Honda's solution, here is my review of the Honda Music Link iPod Adapter.

After being burned by the purchase of the Honda Music Link earlier in the year I wrote up that review to try and keep others from throwing away their money on it.

This iPod adapter that Honda makes does this; it reads to you the names of your albums, and you select the one you want when it says it.

Too bad it sucks. First of all, it would take, like, 2 hours to read me all of my albums on my iPod, so I can't jump to anything quickly... also, you have to click a button with a second or so of it reading the one you want. This is a bad idea when driving; the only thing I should have to respond to in a timely manner while driving is, well, driving.

One review I read of it likened the experience to handing your iPod to a friend on the other side of a door and having them read the contents to you, then poking them with a coathanger when they read the song you want.

Ahh, that explains what I saw when Safari was first made to pass the ACID2 test.

- Original Email
- Fake eBay Login Page
- Fake Message Composition Page
- Fake Sent Email Confirmation

- Original Email
- Fake eBay Login Page
- Fake Message Composition Page
- Fake Sent Email Confirmation

- Original Email
- Fake eBay Login Page
- Fake Message Composition Page
- Fake Sent Email Confirmation

- Original Email
- Fake eBay Login Page
- Fake Message Composition Page
- Fake Sent Email Confirmation

I have done this using a Venus-brand 4-drive enclosure, some surplus Seagate FC drives from eBay, a custom-made backplane, a Mylex eXtremeRAID 3000 controller, and a 30m HSSDC DB9 controller from eBay.

I located the array in the basement, and the computer was in my office. I had wonderful performance and no disk noise, which was quite nice...

If you want photos, take a look here.

Also, while I sold off the rest of the kit, I've got the HSSDC DB9 cables left over. While they tend to go for quite a bit new (they are custom AMP cables) I'd be apt to sell them for cheap if another Slashdotter wants to do the same thing.

This reminds me of something I see almost constantly. See, I have pictures of my PowerMac G5 being unpacked after I first received it. It was one of the first ones shipped, and friends of mine wanted to see the photos, so I took them and upload them. Fast forward two years to now, and I am constantly seeing referrers in my logs from (clearly fraudulent) eBay auctions selling PowerMac G5's using my photos. Typically by the time I see the new referrer the auction has been taken down, but it really makes me wonder what someone is pulling. The only thing I can imagine is your aforementioned stolen account type scam. But, I really don't know for sure...

Since I'm not such a big fan of the big-name sodas anyway, I've taken to drinking Mexican sodas lately. They are sweetened with sugar, aren't as sweet as domestic sodas, and tend to come in really nice flavors. For example, two of my favorites are Sidral Mundet (apple) and Senorial Sangria. Or there is always the aforementioned Kosher Coke option, which can be had around here every once in a while.

Since I'm not such a big fan of the big-name sodas anyway, I've taken to drinking Mexican sodas lately. They are sweetened with sugar, aren't as sweet as domestic sodas, and tend to come in really nice flavors. For example, two of my favorites are Sidral Mundet (apple) and Senorial Sangria. Or there is always the aforementioned Kosher Coke option, which can be had around here every once in a while.

By visiting the ACID2 test and then scrolling downward in Safari using my Apple Mighty Mouse I'm able to break the ACID2 test rendering. Here is a screenshot of it. The face breaks and the better part of it scrolls across the page. I don't think this is the expected behavior, but I guess I may be wrong?

I don't know if you're interested or not, but I ended up acquiring four frames of IBM core memory which I took to framing and hanging above my couch. Yes, I know the color is off in that photo, but each frame is mounted over a gloss white piece of paper, which is then set on tan foamcore.

Core memory is so cool. :)

I don't know if you're interested or not, but I ended up acquiring four frames of IBM core memory which I took to framing and hanging above my couch. Yes, I know the color is off in that photo, but each frame is mounted over a gloss white piece of paper, which is then set on tan foamcore.

Core memory is so cool. :)

Recently I upgraded my personal photo gallery to a new version of software, eliminating the need for a publicly accessible directory full of images. Well, since my site has been around for a few years, I've collected a goodly number of people at sites like LiveJournal, Xanga, MySpace, and various other sites who have taken to linking some of my full res photos (2MB-5MB each) as the background for their sites.

Most of these sites are especially crappy, and as such, the bandwidth used wasn't much, so for the time being I didn't do anything about it.

Well, with the removal of the albums directory, I decided to redirect all requests for images in it to this annoyingly animated strobing GIF. This has the wonderful affect of making many, many crappy sites blink horribly. Like this and this.

I just wish I could figure out where four panels of core memory that I came across are from. I *think* they are out of an old IBM (the envelope they were in had IBM return address info), but when I contacted IBM they wanted serials, which aren't found anywhere on the frame. They'd clearly been cut out from a larger assembly, with some of the points desoldered. (Photo)

For now I've just got them framed and hanging on the wall of my living room.

I just wish I could figure out where four panels of core memory that I came across are from. I *think* they are out of an old IBM (the envelope they were in had IBM return address info), but when I contacted IBM they wanted serials, which aren't found anywhere on the frame. They'd clearly been cut out from a larger assembly, with some of the points desoldered. (Photo)

For now I've just got them framed and hanging on the wall of my living room.

If anyone is interested in seeing pictures of friends of mine and I playing what we called Super Soaker Wars, take a look here. This is back in the summer of 2001, and was quite a bit of fun. In order to make the game more interesting we generally played in a friend's rather large back yard with CTF-style games. The flag was a cylume lightstick positioned beneath a tiki torch. If you got wet, you were out.

There was (understandably) a lot of honor system involved, but it was all in good fun so it worked out rather well.

Too bad this is being sponsored by a manufacturer of rather poor-quality products. For example, they make a product called the SightFlex which appears to be the ideal iSight stand. So, I bought one... The camera caused all sorts of problems on the FireWire bus, so I contacted Jack at MacMice. The long thread of emails ended in my not receiving a response to a request for a working product, although Jack did suggest opening up the SightFlex and wrapping aluminum foil around the wires in the base.

So, I opened it up and here's what I found: http://www.nuxx.net/gallery/sightflex_troubleshoot ing

Great, huh? Nicely random scattered, poorly soldered wires in the base, not all twisted up like they are supposed to be in a FireWire cable.

I would have pursued the issue further, but the cheap plastic base of the device ended up breaking when I was moving it around one day. It seems that the flexible metal of the neck is just threaded into some fairly thin plastic in the base (again, see pictures) and the rather brittle plastic just up and broke one day.

Great idea, piss poor execution.

And, it is exactly becuase of this sort of product why I will never trust DVForge / MacMice again, no matter how noble the cause may be.

After my experience, I'd think that they are offering $25,000 in monopoly money. Note that they never say US Dollars, so you can't fault them if they pay up in fake bills. ;)

Too bad this is being sponsored by a manufacturer of rather poor-quality products. For example, they make a product called the SightFlex which appears to be the ideal iSight stand. So, I bought one... The camera caused all sorts of problems on the FireWire bus, so I contacted Jack at MacMice. The long thread of emails ended in my not receiving a response to a request for a working product, although Jack did suggest opening up the SightFlex and wrapping aluminum foil around the wires in the base.

So, I opened it up and here's what I found: http://www.nuxx.net/gallery/sightflex_troubleshoot ing

Great, huh? Nicely random scattered, poorly soldered wires in the base, not all twisted up like they are supposed to be in a FireWire cable.

I would have pursued the issue further, but the cheap plastic base of the device ended up breaking when I was moving it around one day. It seems that the flexible metal of the neck is just threaded into some fairly thin plastic in the base (again, see pictures) and the rather brittle plastic just up and broke one day.

Great idea, piss poor execution.

And, it is exactly becuase of this sort of product why I will never trust DVForge / MacMice again, no matter how noble the cause may be.

After my experience, I'd think that they are offering $25,000 in monopoly money. Note that they never say US Dollars, so you can't fault them if they pay up in fake bills. ;)

Per usual, I've mirrored the video here.

Although, this really looks like a fake... I'm not sure why, but something doesn't sit right about the info at the end and the product ordering. Or maybe it's just me.

-Steve

Hey everyone... I've mirrored just the images here, if anyone would like them:

billg-teenbeat1.jpg
billg-teenbeat2.jpg

Enjoy!

Hey everyone... I've mirrored just the images here, if anyone would like them:

billg-teenbeat1.jpg
billg-teenbeat2.jpg

Enjoy!

Thank you, and congrats on your brown ale. That was the first beer I ever made, and it came out surprisingly good. I personally don't like it too much, but my friends do... The aforementioned batch is the third I've done, and the second (a very, very hoppy strong ale) should be done bottle conditioning in about a week.

I'm doing some minor temp control for this ale... The person I got the recipe from specified 70F-75F and... Well... that's warmer than I keep my house in the winter. So I'm doing the fermentation in the bathroom with the vent open and door closed. It's currently sitting around 74F in there. It seems to me like it might be a bit hot, but we'll see...

If you are interested, I have two pictures of the fermenting setup, as of about four hours ago: 1 2

Thank you, and congrats on your brown ale. That was the first beer I ever made, and it came out surprisingly good. I personally don't like it too much, but my friends do... The aforementioned batch is the third I've done, and the second (a very, very hoppy strong ale) should be done bottle conditioning in about a week.

I'm doing some minor temp control for this ale... The person I got the recipe from specified 70F-75F and... Well... that's warmer than I keep my house in the winter. So I'm doing the fermentation in the bathroom with the vent open and door closed. It's currently sitting around 74F in there. It seems to me like it might be a bit hot, but we'll see...

If you are interested, I have two pictures of the fermenting setup, as of about four hours ago: 1 2

Wow, what a weird post to read right now... I'm actually brewing beer as I type this. There's about 52 minutes left in the boil. Unfortunately I'm doing it the old analog method.

If anyone is interested in reading the recipe for the beer I'm making, look here.

I've had it for a long time, moving it from machine to machine... I don't honestly remember where I'd gotten it, but it was disappeared not long after it was posted.

http://www.nuxx.net/files/longhorn_gray.zip

Enjoy.

Oh, you'll want to change from the default wallpaper... Currently I'm using... Uhm... This one. (Link leads to my personal wallpaper archive.)

I've had it for a long time, moving it from machine to machine... I don't honestly remember where I'd gotten it, but it was disappeared not long after it was posted.

http://www.nuxx.net/files/longhorn_gray.zip

Enjoy.

Oh, you'll want to change from the default wallpaper... Currently I'm using... Uhm... This one. (Link leads to my personal wallpaper archive.)

In case SCO ever gets around to fixing their site, a screenshot I took of the affected site is available here.

I wanted to take a moment to plug a couple of things... The first is my personal moblog which really isn't anything special. However, the way the photos are published is kinda unique, and I thought other people might find it nice to play with.

What I use is the rather well-known PHP-based Gallery photo management / presentation software, combined with an implementation of the Nokia Image Upload Server API as a plugin for Gallery.

It works great... I just snap a picture on the phone, go to the Gallery (on the phone) which is where you generally sort through all the pictures, pick Image Uploader then Upload. A GPRS connection is made, you are prompted for the default folder or a new one, and the image is uploaded. That's how I get all the pictures in my moblog. The only limitation is that you cannot caption the photos. The API seems to support it, but it's not implemented in the plugin, nor do the phones support it.

(I looked into this a bit, and here's what I found: Captioning isn't enabled on the server, the phone doesn't prompt for any sort of caption info, and since the phone doesn't detect the capabilities of the server, implementing it on the server won't make any difference. Ah well. At least the photos get there, and you could always rename the file, because that name will be automatically set as the caption in lieu of one.)

I wanted to take a moment to plug a couple of things... The first is my personal moblog which really isn't anything special. However, the way the photos are published is kinda unique, and I thought other people might find it nice to play with.

What I use is the rather well-known PHP-based Gallery photo management / presentation software, combined with an implementation of the Nokia Image Upload Server API as a plugin for Gallery.

It works great... I just snap a picture on the phone, go to the Gallery (on the phone) which is where you generally sort through all the pictures, pick Image Uploader then Upload. A GPRS connection is made, you are prompted for the default folder or a new one, and the image is uploaded. That's how I get all the pictures in my moblog. The only limitation is that you cannot caption the photos. The API seems to support it, but it's not implemented in the plugin, nor do the phones support it.

(I looked into this a bit, and here's what I found: Captioning isn't enabled on the server, the phone doesn't prompt for any sort of caption info, and since the phone doesn't detect the capabilities of the server, implementing it on the server won't make any difference. Ah well. At least the photos get there, and you could always rename the file, because that name will be automatically set as the caption in lieu of one.)

Sorry, I must have somehow screwed up the link to the PDF. That mirror of the Google cache (in case she asks for it to be removed) is at http://www.nuxx.net/files/dumbgirl.pdf.

Weird. You have the exact same tubes that I do...

Can I ask where you got them? A local place had them off-lease (and less than a year old at the time) for $180.

Talk about a swanky monitor...

I can't believe how much a second display has helped out when working on things. A terminal/browser for reference, the TV tuner, IM / IRC windows, etc. It can all be open, and visable, at once.

I do find myself using Exposé a lot less now, though...

A friend of mine works on the AOL Campus in Dulles, Virginia. On September 17th, 2004, one of his coworkers, Steve Gibson (not of grc.com) captured some images of what I believe is the tornado that caused this damage. The photos can be seen here, here, and here, if anyone is interested.

A friend of mine works on the AOL Campus in Dulles, Virginia. On September 17th, 2004, one of his coworkers, Steve Gibson (not of grc.com) captured some images of what I believe is the tornado that caused this damage. The photos can be seen here, here, and here, if anyone is interested.

A friend of mine works on the AOL Campus in Dulles, Virginia. On September 17th, 2004, one of his coworkers, Steve Gibson (not of grc.com) captured some images of what I believe is the tornado that caused this damage. The photos can be seen here, here, and here, if anyone is interested.

Interestingly, last night while at a party I burned my copy of an EDS book which was ghost written for the old CEO. Yep, the same CEO that got EDS investigated by the SEC, caused a bunch of employees to lose jobs, etc.

Actually, I've got a NeoGeo as well. And you're right, it *is* built like a tank. I need to do a bit of work on mine still, but it generally works fine.

http://www.nuxx.net/gallery/condo_basement/DCP_057 2

That shot's down in the basement of the MAME cabinet and the NeoGeo right near each other.

If anyone is interested, here are a bunch of photos I took of my MAME cabinet when I built it back in the summer of 2000. The pictures are kinda crappy, and were all taken at my parents house, but they show a full stand-up MAME machine, with a cabinet made competely from scratch. The cabinet was patterned off of a Data East Robocop / Bad Dudes cabinet, but made a bit deeper to accomidate my monitor.

I made a Fibre Channel array like this last year. The only difference being that I used a Mylex eXtremeRAID 3000 (eBay for $200), a 256MB Crucial DIMM for cache, and four Seagate ST39102FC 9GB 10,000 RPM disks.

My whole point to the project was EXTREMELY fast disk access (up to ~160MB/sec sustained transfers, see here) that I could locate at the far end of a REALLY long cable. I've got my machine in my office and the hard drives on the other end of a 30m cable, nestled nicely down in the basement where I cannot hear it.

There are a few basic pictures of the external assembly available here. Works really, really well. It's amazing what hugely fast disk IO does for the rest of a machine.

I made a Fibre Channel array like this last year. The only difference being that I used a Mylex eXtremeRAID 3000 (eBay for $200), a 256MB Crucial DIMM for cache, and four Seagate ST39102FC 9GB 10,000 RPM disks.

My whole point to the project was EXTREMELY fast disk access (up to ~160MB/sec sustained transfers, see here) that I could locate at the far end of a REALLY long cable. I've got my machine in my office and the hard drives on the other end of a 30m cable, nestled nicely down in the basement where I cannot hear it.

There are a few basic pictures of the external assembly available here. Works really, really well. It's amazing what hugely fast disk IO does for the rest of a machine.

Utilizing eBay and a few vendors that I dug around for, I was able to assemble a blazingly fast fibre channel RAID system for home for around $500. If you take a look at http://www.nuxx.net/gallery/fibrechannel you can see the assembly of the box. There are also benchmarks detailing the RAID 5 array bursting to >160MB/sec (image at http://www.nuxx.net/gallery/fc_benchmarks/aad).

The box is set up as follows:

o Mylex eXtremeRAID 3000 ($200 via eBay)
o Crucial 256MB DIMM for Cache (~$50 from Crucial)
o 4 x Seagate ST39102FC 9GB 10,000 RPM drives ($9/ea on eBay)
o Venus-brand 4-disk external enclosure (~$35 on eBay)
o Custom made FC-AL backplane for disks (~$200 from a site I can't remember at this time)
o 35m FC-AL cable (HSSDCDB9) (~$40 for two on eBay)

The best part? The box is located in my basement, so I have this incredibly fast disk disk access, with no noise and no extra heat inside my case. That also allows me to cool the case more efficiently. Sure, IDE RAID may be cheaper, but the performance, per-disk, coupled with the reduced noise in my office and the reduced heat in the case is a big plus. Also, I might eventually pick up a second backplane for another four disks and do RAID 0+1. Since each channel is capable of 100MB/sec (without caching), the use of a set created across two channels would be amazing.

Utilizing eBay and a few vendors that I dug around for, I was able to assemble a blazingly fast fibre channel RAID system for home for around $500. If you take a look at http://www.nuxx.net/gallery/fibrechannel you can see the assembly of the box. There are also benchmarks detailing the RAID 5 array bursting to >160MB/sec (image at http://www.nuxx.net/gallery/fc_benchmarks/aad).

The box is set up as follows:

o Mylex eXtremeRAID 3000 ($200 via eBay)
o Crucial 256MB DIMM for Cache (~$50 from Crucial)
o 4 x Seagate ST39102FC 9GB 10,000 RPM drives ($9/ea on eBay)
o Venus-brand 4-disk external enclosure (~$35 on eBay)
o Custom made FC-AL backplane for disks (~$200 from a site I can't remember at this time)
o 35m FC-AL cable (HSSDCDB9) (~$40 for two on eBay)

The best part? The box is located in my basement, so I have this incredibly fast disk disk access, with no noise and no extra heat inside my case. That also allows me to cool the case more efficiently. Sure, IDE RAID may be cheaper, but the performance, per-disk, coupled with the reduced noise in my office and the reduced heat in the case is a big plus. Also, I might eventually pick up a second backplane for another four disks and do RAID 0+1. Since each channel is capable of 100MB/sec (without caching), the use of a set created across two channels would be amazing.