Disappointed

after 10 days I swapped the hard disk of my late 2006 iMac, this morning I got into another problem :/ What's up this time? BAD RAM!
Yeah...this morning I got up late, woke from sleep my mac, and after a few minutes it got a panic. I thought to myself: "wow, first panic!!!" since I never got one on this machine (I bought it in March). Rebooted the machine, and it kept chiming at 15 seconds interval...just a fews secs after it read the first boot blocks :/ Hmmm...immediately, I booted off the diagnostic software (thank god it booted)...and after a few secs: tadaaah...diags told me 4MEM/1/40000000 (0xbc8f8310, for the records)!!!!

Removing the module solved the problem. I tried to remove the "good" module, but in that case the machine didn't even get to the boot chime. I swapped the modules, same effect. I tried to put it back in place and...nada! So I only had to remove it forever and...wait until tomorrow, calling Apple Care and see if they'll take their badram back without requiring me to send over the machine.

Enough of confidentiality notice clutter

We are all "disturbed" by the most naive and fancy or just annoying "Confidentiality Notice", DISCLAIMERS, or whatever people/companies add to their email signatures. That's just pollution, since they won't add any good into email messaging but cluttering our everyday mailing life.

I think most of you already know well the problem so I won't go much in deep explaining this problem.

Well I have a proposal to solv..hmm...circumvent this problem: introduce an X-Disclaimer or X-ConfidentialityNotice header whose value would be an URL pointing to website into the message's From: domain.

For example, the new header would appear like this:

  X-ConfidentialityNotice: http://www.iscanet.com/notices/email.xml

or more simply

  X-ConfidentialityNotice: http://www.iscanet.com/notices/email.html

Now for the feature request: it would be a good thing if mail clients recongnized this header and had some GUI binding, so that somewhere in the message view appeared some sort of button or whatever pointing to (guess what) "Confidentiality Notice", that would retrieve the xml, parse and show it, or simply follow the hyperlink showing the clutter :-)

What would we need to implement this magic?

• In the account settings, add a text box to add the notice's URL
• Define and share a DTD in the case we would go for XML
• some "app logic" to parse XML, and check correspondence between From: domain and X-ConfidentialityNotice domain of the URL.
• In the message view window add a GUI element (text, smallicon, whatever) on the window border, or statusbar or near the subject, or werever you like. This element would fire up the hyperlink or open a dialog with properly parsed xml.

Having this or some sort of this thing implemented would give us some peace of mind and less clutter into our email.

Since I like this idea, I will be mailing Microsoft, Apple and Mozilla guys to hear what they think.

That's my 5cents.

Vista, report to mothership when it works!!!

...well..I gave it a chance, 20 minutes ago I heard the Windows Vista welcome chime, activated and updated everything, so now I'm starting to learn.

Lesson number one - If everything goes okay, that's a problem: you should report it.

Yes, if Vista says there's a problem, don't be so sure the problem is really there...but, well yeah, maybe it knows it's a problem but it's not...or there's no problem, and that's the problem! ;-)

iMac 24" dissected

Two months after I bought my new baby (a Sep2006 24" 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo iMac), its hard disk temporarily died (the mac refused to boot). I recovered everything with some nifty tools and once again it died...well..after a surface scan it revealed bad blocks, and during usage I could hear the "classic" clicks (no S.M.A.R.T. warnings though). The drive is a 500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 .

Yeah, Apple offered me a free repair, but I should drive 200km to the closest authorized repair center, wait for diagnosis and repair and drive it back home. Add that to the fact this is summertime...

I didn't want risk to loose my mac for two months and spend 100 EUR for gasoline or express courier so I bought a Western Digital WD5000AAKS hard drive and replaced it myself.

Just in case somebody want to repeat it there are some pictures of the operation that lasted more or less 20minutes. Tools needed are basic: a T9 torx and a Philips screwdriver and some "glue" for temperature sensor.

iMac 24" dissected

Basiliska

...e' il nome del drink che ho inventato qualche giorno fa (o forse gia' esisteva?)...vabbe' comunque eccone la ricetta (che rilascio in licenza BSD) ;-)

La ricetta ufficiale e' la seguente:

- 87% di succo di pera
- 9% di latte parzialmente scremato
- 4% di Amaro Lucano

Prelevare dal frigorifero i tre ingredienti (tutti alla stessa temperatura quindi), versare il succo di pera, aggiungere il latte e poi aggiungere l'amaro lucano. Mescola il tutto ben bene...e degusta il tuo basiliska summer ;-)

[...it's the name of the drink i just invented (uhmm or maybe not?)...well anyway here's the recipe (released in BSD license) ;-)

Official recipe is:

- 87% pear juice
- 9% low fat milk
- 4% Amaro Lucano (great one, learn it at http://www.amarolucano.it/)

Grab the ingredients straight from the fridge (all at same temperature), pour the pear juice, add mink and finally Amaro Lucano. Blend it well..and enjoy your fresh Basiliska summer drink ;-) ]

FreeBSD warp

Just upgraded my alice from 4-STABLE to ...tadaaah...6-STABLE. Oh well, nothing so special, but I had to struggle a bit while dragging vinum partitions through 5.4!!! Well...it wasn't that smooth but she's up'n'running now :-)

Voy a partir...

...at last :-) no puedo esperar!!! I'm in the airport and all flights are scheduled and in time. Wish me luck!!!!

Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all

Laughing is a healthy human activity. Thank you Microsoft!!! :-)

We had to wait almost 40 years to discover another piece of the puzzle:

• values of β will give rise to dom!
• Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
  

what's next? ;-)

Nintendo, Apple, Microsoft...

...tonight, I was, as usual, talking to my friend (Super) Mario. We were arguing on one of same old religion wars; yeah this is one of our favourite talks, we love it, we absolutely love it!! Well, I couldn't stop myself from taking a picture of my latest puppets, as an argument of course, a good one!!! I bet you can imagine which wars I'm talking about ;-)

HD!!!

Ebbene si, e' arrivato il momento di passare all'alta definizione (*)... e come tanti sto cominciando ad attrezzarmi. Non tanto "casualmente" ho voluto acquistare un ricevitore A/V che mi permetta di controllare tutti i dispositivi, audio e video, con un solo telecomando e che mi consenta di mantenere la promessa fatta a mia madre da anni: "Mamma, con l'alta definizione ci sara' un solo filo, che va dall'amplificatore al televisore; tutto il resto sara' nascosto...non ti preoccupare che togliero' di mezzo questo groviglio".

Beh... cosi' volevo fosse, ma ecco che l'HDCP si mette di traverso e rallenta i miei propositi. Bando alle ciance, cosa e' successo? Ho ordinato il decoder SkyHD, e nel frattempo avevo anche acquistato un PVR Samsung con uscita HDMI, che ho collegato allo switch A/V e la cui uscita HDMI va direttamente nel televisore. Arriva il decoder, lo connetto al televisore, lo provo, lo attivo....funziona tutto benissimo.

A questo punto e' il momento di fare ordine nel groviglio di cui sopra, e collego anche il decoder Sky all'ampli, al pari del PVR Samsung, risultato: accendo il decoder, e dopo qualche secondo ecco il fatidico "Errore di autenticazione", seguito dalla schermata nera che blocca l'uscita HDMI del decoder.

Insomma, si e' capito no? Qualcosa nel percorso di autenticazione HDCP e' andato storto.

Per la cronaca ecco gli apparati che sto usando:

- Televisore Samsung LCD LE37R72B, HD Ready (1 ingresso HDMI/HDCP)
- A/V Receiver Denon AVR-4306 (3 ingressi HDMI/HDCP, 1 uscita HDMI/HDCP)
- Samsung PVR DVD-HR737 (1 uscita HDMI)
- Decoder Sky HD Amstrad DRX700i fornito da Sky Italia

Le connessioni, banali, sono le seguenti:

- Denon AVR-4306 HDMI out ----(cavo HDMI)----> HDMI in Samsung LE37R72B
- SkyHD HDMI out ---(cavo HDMI)----> HDMI in port 1 Denon AVR-4306
- Samsung HVD-HR737 HDMI out ---(cavo HDMI)----> HDMI in port 2 Denon AVR-4306

Chiamando il servizio clienti Sky mi hanno detto che in questo periodo stanno lavorando in stretto contatto con i vari produttori proprio per l'introduzione dell'HD e quindi per risolvere i problemi che vengono fuori man mano che il servizio viene utilizzato...mi sono permesso di segnalare questo sito, che pare sia abbastanza esplicativo riguardo alla problematica: http://ca.denon.com/2082.asp

HDCP problems anyone? se qualcuno ha problemi analoghi please, battete un colpo.

(*) alta definizione...insomma: wannabe piuttosto ;-)