That was low!!

Ok, looking back, one can conclude that the last month was an all time low here at diGit Blog. We’ve gone high in past & last month we dipped to an all time low, just one lone post in a month!! :coffee:

But the reason is not that we’ve lost it, we still love tech, we still read & talk about it, we’ve kept up with the developments, its just that we got so entangled in the web of personal & professional lives that we just weren’t able to make it to the blog. The proof of my inactivity lies in my other blogs which also haven’t seen any or much action in the last few months!!

But ….. yes but, there’s always scope for improvement & so it is for us here as well at this moment. So lets just look forward to a new month filled with tech blogging!!! :tup:

A 3D touch by Microsoft …..

Microsoft, in collaboration with University of Washington, has lifted the covers off a new image editing software that can create a 3D replica of what a digital image shows.

Based on the fruits of labour of Microsoft researcher Richard Szeliski, University of Washington’s associate professor Steve Seitz and University of Washington’s third year grad student Noah Snavely, this new software, with the help of different angled photographs of a scene, can create a virtual 3D replica which the user can view from different angles. The software works by picking distinctive features & then pinpointing those features in a 3D landscape. But the technology requires atleast two photographs snapped from different angles to create this 3D replica, though the saying of “the more the merrier” applies here as well, meaning that the more photographs are provided to the software, the better replica it can create.

But I’m still not sure if there will be many takers for this technology. Clearly as some indicate, the main takers for this technology will be the tourism & the real-estate industries, however what I don’t understand is why they would like to create a virtual 3D replica of some place when they can film that same place. The only reason that I think of is that 3D replicas made by this software are supposed to be explorable, like a virtual walk-through which will be just too troublesome to film but easy to do with lots of different angled photos of the place & then feeding those photos to this software!!

You can read up more about this software Photosynth website & also watch the video there demonstrating the technology.

Is Apple a solution…..

….. to the growing malware & spyware threats to Windows users? Some indeed think so, like a so called security research company Sophos(via Net-Security.org). According to The Sophos Security Threat Management Report Update, though there has been a drop in virus/worm attacks, the malwares(spywares, trojans, phishing attacks) which target homeusers at particular for their secret info(like bank accounts, passwords, etc.) have increased. According to the report, the top 10 malwares in first half of this year are:

1. Sober-Z
2. Netsky-P
3. Zafi-B
4. Nyxem-D
5. Mytob-FO
6. Netsky-D
7. Mytob-BE
8. Mytob-EX
9. Mytob-AS
10. Bagle-Zip

It further highlights that none of these malwares are capable of infecting Mac OSX, while all of them work on Microsoft Windows. It says that vast majority of malwares are written for Windows while the first for Mac OSX appeared in February 2006 & that also didn’t spread in the wild. So in the light of these facts, the experts at Sophos advise the home users to switch to Macs to protect themselves!!!!

Yeah, I guess they are right. Because we can safely ignore the security holes present in the eye-candy rich Macs. And the fact that they are slower & heavy on system resources(thus decreasing performance by many folds) should also be ignored. And people also don’t need to give a damn if Macs cost way more than Windows PCs. And I guess there’s no need at all to consider the fact that the software options available for Macs are just about insignificant when compared with the options available for Windows.

I wonder what these self-proclaimed security companies do, staff the best of the idiots available in the market?!! What they are suggesting is that if we’ve to go to London from New York, then we should not go via a plane, since that might go down in the vast Atlantic!!! Instead, we should take a dinghy and row it to London, across the Atlantic, since it got no moving parts & always remain on water, so it can’t crash down!!

Really now, what the damn do these people think? Ok, I concede that for a very short time the Macs are gonna be safe, maybe 6 months, 1 year if lucky. But what after that? The malware writers will go after the Macs since thats what everybody will be using, just like they went after Windows. So then? Maybe these experts will then advise us to switch to Linux. Now after that too is also under attack, we’ll eventually be advised to either develop our own unique operating system else give up computers for good.

Wow, just wow!! Experts of this kind really make me all warm & fuzzy and at peace. We can leave all our IT security worries to them & can safely go to sleep, being assured of waking up in some jungle cave dressed up like a pre-historic caveman!! And if we are lucky, then maybe they’ll also give us a small dinosaur for transportation, since cars can cause accidents & besides they also pollute the environment!!

But then I think, what else these people can do or advise. Mad about free screensavers & free money/lottery prize which they never won, an average home user doesn’t know about the foul creatures which dwell in the bowels of internet, waiting for the gullible to appear. And all the stuff that’s been written till now about how to protect one-self from these things & traverse safely online, its of little to no use because the people for whom that stuff is intended hardly care to read it or even worse, are unsurprisingly unaware about all that stuff till reality bites them hard & then they start looking for help!!

Play Foreign Region DVDs with VLC!!

I’m sure that you have been told about the benefits of VLC Media Player, a very versatile player that plays almost all codecs (except RM), but I bet that you didn’t know it could play DVDs from foreign regions.

Yes, in fact it all happens so smoothly that I have been overlooking it for months. I have been comfortably playing DVDs from regions 1,2 and 5 without any hiccups. When one day, I tried running one of them without VLC Media Player installed on my computer it asked for changing my DVD drive’s region, which I had not encountered for a while, so I switched back to VLC and everything worked perfectly.

So, moral of the story, no need to search for software (mostly crap-ware) to play these DVDs when you can get the job done with some awesome freeware!

Shell Script for a Periodic MySQL Backup

I've been playing around with the UNIX shell off late, and its helped me greatly in reducing backup times for backing up my MySQL databases from at least 10 minutes to around 10 seconds. Also, since it's a little tricky to manage periodic backups, I made a little shell script that you can use to make periodic backups of your MySQL databases quickly and easily. So, here we go...

You can use multiple lines of mysqldump to backup multiple databases quickly and easily, although some hosts wont be happy if you give them such processor intensive jobs. The above script simply creates a directory of the format mm_dd_yyyy and stores the MySQL databases of that particular date over there.

Apple Strikes it Right with the MacBook

The long awaited MacBooks are finally out and although there is is not much revolutionary about them, Apple has managed to pack quite a punch. I has earlier mentioned that Apple has brought itself into direct contention with PC manufacturers, and with the MacBook, the response has been excellent.

The new MacBooks are very well priced for their hardware specifications, and as some would put it, have the "bonus" ability to run Mac OS X on it. Another nifty thing I liked about the MacBook is that with two fingers on the trackpad, the single button behaves as a right-button, so you no longer miss the second button on Mac notebooks. However, like the Mac Mini, the base price for the MacBook has been pushed up by $100 to $1099, which may be a bit of a psychological barrier.

A laptop with a 1.83 Core Duo processor, 512 MB of RAM, and other nifty features like MagSafe, the Apple Remote, etc. for Rs. 50,000 doesn't sound bad at all, and then there's the Apple design which not even the most loyal PC lover can deny. It looks like Apple is now moving to capture new markets, and the portable computer market is a good complement to the portable music player market. Here are a few more links about the new MacBook.

Apple MacBook Official Page
Comparison Chart of MacBooks & MacBook Pro
First Look @ MacWorld

Free Calls to US, Canada!!

So you've heard of VoIP and Skype, the company that eBay bought for $2.6 billion, which lets you make free PC-to-PC calls worldwide via VoIP for free? Big deal?? :eyebrow: That still requires you and the person you are talking to, to have a PC and internet connection. But what if one wants to call a regular phone from Skype? That service is ofcourse available but isn't one supposed to pay a few cents per minute to avail that facility?

Not anymore. :nope: Yes, you no longer have to pay for calling traditional landlines and mobile phones from Skype, you can call them for free now, but only the numbers of United States and Canada. Though it might not be a happy news for all, but it certainly is a good news for a lot of Skype users and will definitely be a good news for people who regularly call phones in United States and Canada and who might now switch to Skype. :tup: Broadband penetration is increasing nowadays and Skype with its super cool audio compression, can serve pretty decent quality even on slow connections!! :bingo:

Though, Skype will continue to charge its current fees for calls made to phones in other countries & for the traditional phone numbers it provides to allow its users to receive calls on Skype made from any phone, it certainly is a start. The eBay subsidiary said that this free bonanza will remain in effect till the end of this year but you never know, they just might extend the free ride!!

www.Skype.com

Source: Yahoo! News

Genuine Movies for Free via BitTorrent?

Warner Brothers has announced that they will soon introduce downloading of their movies for a fees via the BitTorrent peer-to-peer network. You can read more about that from the following.

Warner Bros.'s video unit on Tuesday unveiled plans to sell movies and television shows to BitTorrent Inc. for legal downloads from the Web site that was once blamed for aiding the swapping of illegally copied films and programs.

The pact marks a big step for Hollywood as it increasingly makes digital files of movies and TV shows available on the Web because until last year, BitTorrent's software and Web site were considered to be aiding piracy of major studio films.

But in November, BitTorrent agreed with the Motion Picture Association of America, which represents Hollywood's major studios, to help stem illegal swapping of digital movies and TV shows by removing links to pirated copies.

Executives from Warner Bros. and BitTorrent said the MPAA pact and new digital rights management (DRM) software from BitTorrent were key elements in bringing the parties together.

Source: Reuters | Read More @ ExtremeTech

This was an expected move on Warner's part, considering Apple is gearing up to sell movies via the iTunes music store. What I find more interesting is that Apple has plans to incorporate BitTorrent into iTunes, and let users seed downloaded content in exchange for rewards from iTMS :applause: . This is very much in line with what I have in mind.

Let's say Warner goes ahead with it's idea of using BitTorrent for their downloads. Now, instead of seeding these movies only on their servers, let's say they let the downloader keep the movie for free if he/she seeds it with say a ratio of 10, which means that he uploads the movie 10 times. This will result in Warner saving a lot of money in bandwidth charges, and us getting movies for free! Is this feasible, you may ask? :eyebrow: It is and very much so. Maybe a share ratio of 10 wont do the job and it'll need something more like 25, but it's still very much possible. I am not very sure about the exact costs and savings and I would be very grateful if somebody figured it out, but as far I think, this is one cool idea! :tup:

Mac, hollow inside!!

For any of us who's been around, its hardly possible to have not come across at least one debate where a Mac enthusiast haven't ranted off furiously in favour of the power horse that a Mac is and the weakling that PC(read Windows) is!! Talk a bit more into it & the conversation tends to get dirty with lots of water splashing out of the bath tub!! :sick:

For many a time, the Mac users have been living in a self created fantasy that harboured the misconception of Mac's superiority over Windows. True & unbiased showdowns were quite impossible since the Macs were safely away on an altogether different platform & the PC die-hards waited, for they believed that a day will come when they'll make the Macs fear the power of their PCs, the ultimate in computing!! They didn't have to wait for too long, Apple announced a shift in premises of their haven, abandoning the old PowerPC for Intel!! It has been though previously said by many that given the high-end specs of Macs, a comparable high-end PC would definitely do better, both on performance & price.

And the D-Day arrived, thanks to the guys at c|net who did a comparative review of the intel powered MacBookPro & a PC laptop, Acer TravelMate 8200 loaded with WindowsXP Pro, which despite being slightly lower in specs than the over hyped Mac, came out as the winner in both performance and price, thumping Mac to a convincing victory. :bingo: Mac's de facto operating system OSX was so slow, that even WindowsXP(loaded onto it via BootCamp) performed much better on it!!! :d-oh:

So, who's got more competition now? Will Apple be fighting hard to contain its 3% something share of the market? BootCamp doesn't seem like a nice move now!! :eyebrow:

Back and Better!!

diGit Blog is now back online after being down for some part of the morning today as it was being upgraded. :shh: Its now running the latest stable release of WordPress along with WP-Cache2 as earlier. GZip has also been turned on, so the load times will be quite better than earlier, and some other under the hood improvements have been done as well. Add that with the latest stable release of SK2 and the combination is just spiffy!! :cowboy:

So look forward to some kewl tech blogging!! :tup: