Technology

With the help of a friend, I finally finished the upgrade on the computer.
Got the Amacrox case I wanted. It looks like a G4 done in perforated aluminium. The handles are useful for carting the beast around and I now get muh better airflow under the box.

Upgraded the graphics card, which was two computers old, could go above a resolution of 1024×768 and had an annoying habit of occasionally going wiggy on startup.

Doubled the RAM to a respectable 1G and added a second 80G hard drive. The hard drives are in black removable rack mountings, which wouldn’t fit in the old box due to a length dispute with the motherboard.

To top everything off I added lights to the box. They were going to be separately powered, but a recently replaced power supply blew within a month and the store swapped it for a 500W for me, so the lights got hooked in the new PSU unit.

My fascination with blue lights did have me leaning towards blue, but Laridian suggested green, so I went for both. Blue and green lights are good and look pretty spiffy bleeding through the perforated case. Also swapped the standard fans over to blue LED versions and they provide the bleed through the clear logo at the front of the case and light the back as well.
The computer is currently running well and the lights keep me well amused. I like blue and green lights.

Oh, and I got a Flickr account, as you’ll see if you click the thumbnail image

The research team at Johns Hopkins University have found a way to crack the code used in millions of car keys, a development that could allow thieves to bypass the security systems on newer car models. This shouldn’t affect Australia, as our codes are apparently tougher to crack for the time being

Google is now an ICANN-approved domain name registrar, an intriguing move that could be tied to its blog hosting service, Blogger. Yahoo recently dropped its domain prices to US$4.98, as hosting companies use domains as a cheap way to lure customers. Registrar status could allow Google to compete aggressively on price. Bloggers seem to resist paying for hosting, so cheap domains might help Google’s plans for world domination

Optus has reached 100,000 resale DSL broadband customers since entering the market less than 12 months ago. The move comes amid indications the number two telco plans shortly to announce details of an investment of up to AU$100 million in its own DSL network

Broadband via optical fibre, which provides transmission speeds up to 400 times faster than current ADSL technology, is set to be trialled in Tasmania

Telstra is trialling booster equipment that can increase the transmission limits of ADSL broadband by up to 20 kilometres from an ADSL-enabled exchange

Robot hacker Trevor Blackwell is at it again, this time with a self-balancing Eunicycle. Blackwell writes, Some time ago I built a self-balancing two-wheeled scooter. Since then I realised that two wheels are redundant, and only a single wheel is needed to make a rideable vehicle. A vehicle with a single wheel is much smaller and lighter. It weighs under 30 lbs and is easily carried with one hand when going up stairs or on public transportation

A new worm-like threat is spreading on the Internet and targeting computers running the MySQL open source database software. Thousands of Microsoft Windows machines running MySQL have been infected, according to one security expert

Microsoft plans to severely curtail the ways in which people running pirated copies of its dominant Windows operating system can receive software updates, including security fixes

Justice Virginia Bell, of the NSW Supreme Court, told a conference in Darwin of Supreme and Federal court judges from across the country yesterday that the ready availability of archived press reports on the internet could jeopardise the trial of an accused person and all information should be purged from the internet. But her call was branded silly and unworkable by the media union, while the internet industry said it would be impossible to police offshore sites