iBook G3 High Capacity 160 GB Hard Drive Upgrade

Yes, my 160 GB IDE drive was installed and recognised successfully, with the full capacity seen by the controller.

This post's purpose is to upload a little chunk of knowledge into the blogosphere, in hopes that it will help someone else one day.

My old White 800 MHz iBook's hard drive failed. Not surprising. I've had the machine for almost seven years now and the IBM 40GB had held out for an extraordinarily long time, filled with weeks on end of bittorrenting.

The real question is "What is the maximum size hard drive that this machine supports?" Various posts on other forums suggest there is a 137 GB or 128 GB limit. But not according to me.

I followed the steps on iFixit and three hours later, was installing the OS on my Samsung HM160HC IDE hard drive. So there you have it. The 160GB drive was recognised and supported on my machine. A screenshot is given here to prove it.























Please do leave a comment if this post helped you. :)

Keywords: Apple, iBook G3, 160 GB, hard drive upgrade, large capacity, high capacity, 137 GB barrier, storage

SysInternals PortMon - "Error 6" Workaround

I was trying to use the SysInternals Portmon utility at work today, but it kept failing with the highly useful "Error 6" message. The error appeared when I tried to select a Windows XP PC for monitoring.

Searching around various forums, I noticed that some other people encountered this error, but I found no solution.

My own Workaround is this:
Run Portmon under an Administrator Account. Once.

I think that this tool needs to install some kind of 'hook' in the system so it can monitor the serial port. User accounts would not have the permissions to install this hook. After I ran this tool under the Administrator account one time, it ran under a less privileged account quite happily.

Hopefully this post will find its way through search engines to help some other techies. Please drop me a line if this helped you!

MONIKER.COM - A Well-Justified Advertisement

For the first time, my blog shall host an advertisement written by me. You know how some people write blog posts to shame or bash companies? I've done it. But now it's time to give something back.

I got very good service from the domain registrar Moniker.com (www.moniker.com). Really really good service. Unnecessarily good service. Literally.

One of my domains was registered with this company. And honestly I felt that their services, while certainly robust, were not a good match. So I transferred out to another registrar.

To make a long story short, I forgot to turn off Moniker's "domain name privacy" settings, and ended up losing ownership of my own domain. The contacts and e-mail address listed still showed the old privacy service that I was no longer using and Moniker had no reason to maintain. Oops. My bad. My really big bad.

The new registrar, of course, had no ability to correct it for me, as that would be a contravention of ICANN domain rules. So I was basically up a creek without any real means of regaining control of my own domain name.

With a total lack of other options, I contacted Moniker support. To my surprise, Moniker, who had absolutely no compelling reason to use their resources to help me leave their service, was very very helpful. Their support staff connected me with a data centre engineer in Los Angeles, who re-activated the "privacy forwarder" and sent me all of the confirmation e-mails necessary to accept the domain ownership change.

I thought this was remarkable because they probably spent several hours of paid time to help someone even though it really was no required.

So if you are a business who needs to do something like manage a large number of domains, check out Moniker. Their service is good. Really good. You can trust me on this one. :)

Lenovo S12 Netbook

Tech blogs have recently fingered the Lenovo S12 as Lenovo's soon-to-be-released netbook offering. Its distinguishing features are the 12" screen, NVIDIA ION chipset for enhanced graphics, and a relatively low price point.

Notebook vs. Netbook
Debate has broken out in a number of forums and other peanut galleries about Lenovo's categorization of this device as a "netbook". Some claim that since it's greater than 10 inches in screen size, it is really an ultraportable notebook, but not a netbook.

I honestly don't care. A computer is as a computer does. To me it makes no difference what you call it. I think it fits my niche and my need perfectly, so I really have no interest in this naming debate.

Now that I have that out of the way...

My View On This Product
I have seized on this news because I think this product is really what I have been waiting for, and it fills a niche in which I've been sitting for some time now. My need is that I want to replace my six year old Apple iBook. My primary machine is a desktop, and I only use the notebooks when mobile, which is not that often. I've been lusting after the MacBook, Lenovo X301 Elite, Asus W series and Sony Z series. Beautiful machines, often maxing out above $3000. And I can't justify that price for something that's not going to be my primary machine.

This is why the S12 machine is perfect. It starts at about $450 USD (without the ION chipset) and it's still just in that nice ultraportable range without being too small to be usable. I will be closely watching the reviews when this actually can be purchased next month. (The version with the ION chipset is coming at some later date.)

The Hackintosh Factor
I will be overjoyed if this piece supports the Hackintosh OS. The existing Lenovo S10 Netbook supports Hackintosh except for the Ethernet chipset. (Wireless is supported.) In my experience, I've seen that OS X is really the superior OS in terms of technical advancement and usability versus Windows in almost every aspect. Putting Hackintosh on one of these would be like getting a cheap MacBook without investing in the Apple Tax. Optimal in almost every way.

Conclusion
So ultimately I am just excited about finding a product that seems to be highly optimal for my needs at a very good price. I'll be patiently reloading the Lenovo site each day to see when this guy can be ordered.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Spoiler Level: Minor, if any.

The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull feeds us the action we expect in an Indiana Jones movie once more, with plenty of fights and especially car chases. It was lacking in any kind of aerial scenes or philosophical backdrop. This is strictly a pot-boiler.

An old friend or two do make an unexpected re-appearance, resulting in a surprising lack of Indy having his problems and riddles solved by other people instead of himself.

The action scenes were largely satisfying, though some of it is completely over the top, even for an Indy movie, just making some sections less enjoyable due to being simply too fantastic.

The movie is sprinkled with a few laughs and a few gross-out scenes, but it's really mainly about the action. And seeing him go over Niagara Falls in a raft even though he's supposedly in South America.

Overall, I thought it became rather predictable toward the end, as it pretty much followed the formula from Raiders and The Last Crusade.

The Verdict: Wait for the DVD rental.

If You're Not Doing Anything Illegal, You Have Everything To Worry About

Something that's struck me time and again in the past couple of years is the way officials from government and law enforcement will introduce intrusive new surveillance measures. They say, "If you're not doing anything illegal, you've got nothing to worry about." This statement discourages real debate and argument because people who publicly voice their concerns are made to look like they are criminals, terrorists, child molesters or similar. It creates the idea that anyone who would defy the new security measures has some sort of anti-social agenda.

I must say that this line is quite clever, as it generally does achieve its purpose of allowing the authorities to implement policies that people would not normally accept. It is good at helping to avoid criticism.

My issue is that this criticism-dispelling slogan is completely wrong. To say that "If you're not doing anything illegal, you've got nothing to worry about" is contrary to the underlying principles of Democracy. One of the underlying tenets of Democracy is that leaders are elected and held accountable by the People. It is the People's job to remain vigilant and constantly monitor the elected leaders to ensure that the Rules, Laws and Constitution are constantly being upheld in word and spirit. It is also the People's responsibility to remove leaders who do not adhere to the Rules of society. If the elected leaders abuse their power or act inappropriately, the People must immediately act to change the leadership. That is what gives Democracy its worth.

To get back to the point at hand, this anti-criticism slogan erodes the People's ability to exercise one of the purposes of Democracy; It allows leaders to slowly prevent people from dissenting and working to remove corrupt government officials.

In the extreme case, the most corrupt of despots must be removed by the People, and the people have to take actions that such tyrants would clearly find to be illegal and offensive. (Obviously, despots would take offence at actions whose purpose is to make them accountable to the People.) This is where the anti-criticism slogan becomes most brilliant; Since it gives leaders leeway to force Big-Brother surveillance onto the law-abiding masses, it allows corrupt leaders to sniff out dissent.

Thus, the line "If you're not doing anything illegal, you've got nothing to worry about" is completely wrong because it gives governments leeway to slowly push their society into a place where it becomes impossible to hold leaders accountable for their actions. Therefore this slogan is anti-Democratic, and should be considered to be the calling-card of despot-wannabes and other dangerous, power-hungry characters. It is a warning sign to the People that their leaders are trying to manipulate them, and that the People should move swiftly to remove such dangerous persons from power.

Appeal In Advertising

I am very impressed with Apple's latest television campaign. The whole I'm A Mac / I'm A PC set-up is brilliant. It's brilliant because of the way they personified the competing products to give Apple an air of humility. Yes, humility.

So many advertising campaigns fail because they imply that people who don't buy their product are stupid, unstlyish, uncool or just plain inferior. The campaign for Sega's old Game Gear is one of the most perfect examples. The whole campaign implied that their product was a second-place product. The negative advertising alienated the customers who were already loyal to the competing product. Not only was the technology inappropriate for the time, Sega shot themselves down with their advertising.

And more recently, the same things happened in the recent U.S. Congressional Election. Some claim that Rush Limbaugh actually HELPED the Democrats with his acrimonious broadcasts. Negative advertising at its finest.

Back to Apple, they seem to have dropped all pretentiousness and holier-than-thou attitude. In their commercials, the Mac-guy is never once dismissive of the PC-guy. The Mac talks about what makes him great, and he tries to accommodate the PC through all his troubles. Mac never does anything negative. Mac is the kind of guy you want to invite over to your house. It's only the PC who comes across as portraying itself as a second-rate product. PC comes across as insecure and arrogant due to his faults, and generally trying to compensate through negativity. The PC reminds you of your insecure friend. The kind of person you have to baby-sit or they'll get themselves into trouble.

Of course this is all a highly biased portrayal from one company for the purpose of selling you something. But I think it works. Apple successfully conveys the idea that their product is much better and worth your money. And they do it without chiding anyone for siding with the opposition or making you feel like you need their product to be cool or feel better about yourself. And that is advertising excellence. It is superiority through humility. It makes you want a Mac.

I really with more advertisers would catch onto the idea that humility is the way to people's souls. Being loud and pushy only turns people off due to your obnoxious behaviour. But entertaining them, giving them a laugh or two, and showing with some humility that the other guy wants what you have really connects with people.

That is smart advertising.