Month: July 2012

By samzenpus, Slashdot – July 30, 2012 at 04:34PM

TheNextCorner writes “Images taken by a NASA spacecraft show that the American flags planted in the Moon’s soil by Apollo astronauts are mostly still standing. Each of the Apollo missions planted an American flag in the soil at their landing sites. Scientists had previously examined photos of the Apollo landing sites for the flags, and had seen what looked like shadows cast by them on the lunar surface. Now, researchers have studied photos of the landing sites taken at different points during the day (and under different illuminations) and have observed shadows circling the points where the flags are thought to be.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

By Aaron Cohen, kottke.org – July 30, 2012 at 03:47PM

For the first time, staff at the Karisoke Research Center in Rwanda witnessed gorillas dismantling the types of snares that have killed two juvenile gorillas this year. The staff knew the gorillas could do this, but they’d never seen them. I fully support this type of evolution.

One of the staff members reported he moved to dismantle the snare when a silverback (adult male) in the group grunted at him warning him to stay back. Then two youngsters named Dukore and Rwema and a blackback (teen male) named Tetero ran toward the snare. Together they jumped on the taught branch attached to a rope noose and removed the rope. They then ran over to another nearby snare and destroyed it the same way. Pictures the staff members took show the young gorillas then examining broken sticks used to camouflage the noose on the ground.

Add this to the list of monkeys getting smarter, and realize Planet of the Apes was a documentary from the future sent back in time.

Tags: gorillas

By Jesus Diaz, Gizmodo – July 30, 2012 at 01:20PM

I don’t know who had the genius idea—and courage—to stick this post-it on their fridge door but, as evil as it may seem for kids all around the world, it’s the best parenting tip I’ve ever seen on this age of underage internet junkies. More »

By samzenpus, Slashdot – July 30, 2012 at 01:15PM

Gunkerty Jeb writes “Moxie Marlinspike, the security and privacy researcher known for his SSLStrip, Convergence and RedPhone tools, has released a new tool that can crack passwords used for some VPNs and wireless networks that rely on encryption using Microsoft’s MS-CHAPv2 protocol. Marlinspike discussed the tool during a talk at DEF CON over the weekend, and it is available for download.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

By (author unknown), MacOSXHints.com – July 30, 2012 at 10:30AM

With Mountain Lion, you can now use the OS to encrypt disks other than the startup volume, assuming they are in GUID format. This includes USB flash drives and external Firewire/USB/ThunderBolt drives.

In the Finder, open a new window. Find your mounted (GUID) drive in the sidebar.

Control-click on the drive in the sidebar, then choose “Encrypt <drive name>.” You are now prompted for your password and a hint (which is required). You will get no feedback, so wait for a few minutes; the time depends on the size of the drive.

The drive should unmount and mount again. Once this happens, your drive is encrypted.

If you choose your startup volume, this will enable FileVault II. Other drives do not enable FileVault II.

[kirkmc adds: I, for one, think this is pretty nifty. I know a lot of people who have two drives in an older laptop, where they replaced the optical drive with an SSD. Being able to encrypt the non-boot drive is …

By Simon Slangen, MakeUseOf – July 29, 2012 at 09:01PM

Wireless networks may not have the reliability of wired networks, but being able to walk around with your laptop, or to connect your mobile devices to the Internet affordably also has its perks.

That being said, maintaining uniform network signal strength throughout your house isn’t always easy. Other wireless devices, the position of your wireless access points, or even the lay-out of your home can interfere with your wireless signal. Not so long ago, Ryan took this problem on in Wireless Feng Shui: How To Optimize Your House For Best Wi-Fi Reception.

When you’re optimizing your wireless network, you’ll want to check on your progress. Rather than waiting until you run into another dead spot, you can make a map of your wireless network’s signal strength throughout the building.

NetSpot

NetSpot is a free application for Mac OS X that allows you to do just that; make a map of your wireless signal strength. This map, and the results projected on it, can then be manipulated and analyzed to further optimize the lay-out of your wireless access node or nodes.

This won’t be finished with the click of a button, but the process doesn’t take too long from start to finish. The process of generating the map is two-fold – mapping the building layout and testing the wireless strength.

Mapping The Area Lay-Out

Firstly, to be able to generate a map of your wireless signal strength, you need a map of the area. You can either upload your map as an image file, or draw your own map in the application. There are some basic drawing tools available for this purpose, including a pencil, a line tool and several basic shapes. These tools suffice for creating a moderately simple lay-out. For more complex projects, you may want to generate an image in a different application, or draw it by hand and upload the image.

You can create multiple areas in one project, so instead of drawing one map for the entire building, it might be beneficial to create different maps for different floors, or even for different rooms, to keep things manageable. Once you’re done, just specify the distance between two points on your area lay-out, and you’re good to go.

Sampling Your Wireless Network Signal

Now that you have a map of the area, it’s time to gather some information about your wireless network signal. We do this by sampling the network in several discrete points. This is done by carrying your laptop to a specific points in the room, and click the corresponding points on the map.

As you walk around the area and take your samples, the application will start coloring your map. The area covered in green is the area that can be analyzed by the application in the next step. Ideally, you should keep taking samples until all areas of interest are covered in green. When you’re done, just click on Stop scan.

Analyzing Your Network Coverage

NetStop will generate a map of your network coverage as soon as you stop scanning additional points. By default, NetStop includes all wireless networks that cross a certain signal threshold. For the map to be relevant, you’ll want to toggle all those other networks off in the left sidebar.

NetSpot offers five different visualizations; signal-to-noise ratio, signal level, quantity of acces points, noise level and signal-to-interference ratio. You can toggle through these visualizations in the top right corner of the application. When you’re done, you can export all or any of these visualizations in a PDF file, or just save your project as a NetSpot file, so you can tweak and add to it at a later point in time.

What tools do you use to optimize your wireless Internet network at your home?

By Ryan, Business Pundit – July 29, 2012 at 05:55PM

When people think investing, the first name that comes to mind is Warren Buffett. Buffett is a legend and has been a huge role model for thousands of value investors over the years. Besides his success, perhaps the biggest reason people gravitate towards Warren Buffett is that his investing style relies on common sense: buy good, growing, well-run businesses that are selling at a value relative to other stocks.

To help you understand Warren Buffett’s financial principles a bit better, here’s an informative infographic that highlights 10 of Warren Buffett’s basic ideas:

Source: Best Finance Schools

10 Financial Lessons We Can Learn From Warren Buffett

1. Spend wisely.
2. No one cares about your money as much as you do.
3. Do your homework: scan thousands of stocks.
4. Overcome your fear of risk.
5. Focus on the long term.
6. Invest in quality businesses.
7. Hunt for exceptional bargains for solid companies.
8. Make decisions to invest based on how well money is being used by company management.
9. Be patient; wait until everything is in your favor to invest.
10. Sell losing stocks when the market is up; buy winning stocks during a crash.

By Andrew Cunningham, Ars Technica – July 29, 2012 at 04:30PM

Even long-time Mac users could be forgiven for not knowing anything about OS X Server, the business-oriented version of the operating system that has been developed alongside the better-known consumer version for as long as OS X has existed. For a long while, the software shipped only with the Xserve, Apple’s enterprise-class server hardware. Standalone licenses for the unlimited client version of the software cost $1,000 all the way up until Snow Leopard, when the price dropped to a still-imposing $500.

All this changed in early 2011 when Apple discontinued the Xserve and replaced it with repurposed configurations of the Mac Mini and Mac Pro. The former sold (and continues to sell) at the $1,000 price so appealing to power users and small businesses, though the Mini lacks the Xserve’s hardware monitoring features or expandability.

With Lion Server and now Mountain Lion Server, the software has followed the hardware in becoming cheaper and simpler, and in shifting its focus from large businesses to small ones. At $50, Lion Server cost only five percent of what Leopard Server did; at $20, Mountain Lion Server costs less than half of that. As the product has gotten cheaper and within reach of regular people, the tools used to administer it have become correspondingly less complex, both in terms of how difficult they are to use and in how powerful they are.

Read 124 remaining paragraphs | Comments

By James Bruce, MakeUseOf – July 29, 2012 at 02:31PM

Is your old Apple laptop starting to struggle? Is the boot time so long that you can actually go out and buy a coffee? If so, perhaps it’s time to think about upgrading your main system drive to a low cost SSD and getting rid of that useless old DVD drive. If it’s an older Macbook, fret not. This tutorial will be perfect for you.

We explained before how SSDs work. Basically they’re solid state memory, meaning no moving parts and significantly better performance. Programs will launch a lot faster, your boot time will be cut dramatically, and it’ll feel like a new machine. Best of all you won’t be sacrificing storage space, since we’ll be putting your old drive where the DVD drive was.

Overview

Today, we’ll be opening up the laptop, removing the DVD drive and replacing it with a hard drive caddy. We’ll then shift the current hard drive over to that, and place the SSD in the primary hard drive position. This will result in superb boot and application launch times, and who needs a DVD drive anyway in this day and age?

You Will Need

• Set of miniature screwdrivers.
• T6 Torx screwdriver – though you can get away with a miniature flathead (I did).
• A small plastic spatula for lifting off ribbon cables.
• Anti-static wrist strap, or lots of touching radiators.
• An SSD – 60GB+ is fine, mine was about $100 from Amazon, the cheapest they had.
• A DVD to hard drive caddy converter kit – the Optibay is the best option at $49, but I went with an even cheaper generic model from eBay that required a little modification to fit correctly (I’ll detail this later). The ultimate choice is the HardWrk adapter, which comes complete with tools and an external caddy for the DVD drive you’ll be removing.

When buying a DVD caddy, be sure to get one which converts an SATA drive to the PATA interface used for the DVD drive in old Macs. Newer Macbook models have a SATA connection to both, so check your exact model first.

Teardown

I’m working with a late 2006 Macbook Pro today – it’s a non unibody, aluminium design. However, this can also be done on other Macbook models. If you’re using a different model, check out the hard disk and DVD removal guides at iFixit.com.

Begin by removing the battery pack via the two clips. Then remove the 3 screws holding the memory plate in place, and slide it out the plate. You can remove the memory too, but it’s not necessary.

Unscrew the underside of the case. There are 4 Phillips screws along the back, 2 Torx next to the memory, and 2 Phillips on the inside wall of the battery compartment.

Hint: I place all the screws removed on a kind of mini diagram as to where they should go back – there are varying lengths and threads, so it’s important you don’t mix them up. Use a piece of paper to actually draw the outline of your Macbook and distinguishing features if it helps.

Next remove the screws on the edge of the case; there are 4 on the left and right sides, as well as two on the back hinge.

Turn the machine around and carefully lift open the screen. Lifting from the back, you should now be able to remove the entire keyboard section. Be very careful of the ribbon cable connected to the motherboard underneath though. Don’t lift so much that it pulls off, or you’ll end up with a doorstop. The front section may be difficult to remove – “wiggling” may be neccessary. When you can, carefully pull off the ribbon cable from the motherboard using a plastic spatula.

Removing The DVD Drive & Hard Drive

There are 4 screws holding the DVD in place – a T6 by the top left (next to the cable), 2 tiny Phillips screws at the front, and a further one at the back.

I’d also suggest removing the existing hard drive at this point, so we can fit the SSD to the main drive location and the existing drive to the extra caddy we are fitting now. This isn’t strictly neccessary though – your SSD will function in the new caddy, but may not be the best performance possible.

In the following photos, I haven’t done this. It was only after putting everything back together that I realised the interface for the DVD drive caddy (PATA) may be slower than the actual SATA interface that the main drive runs off. Therefore, I opened it up again and switched everything around.

To remove your existing drive, first prise off the temperature sensor and ribbon cables that are sitting on top. A knife or spatula will be essential here – just be sure not to rip anything.

There are just two screws on the left hand side that secure the drive in place, these hold a metal clamp. Unscrew and pull out the bumper, then pull and lift to the right to take the drive out – don’t forget to remove the data cable carefully, too. You’ll notice the drive has rubber screws to reduce vibration and shock damage. Though your new SSD doesn’t actually vibrate, you should migrate these over for a secure fit (there’s no other way of securing the drive).

Reverse the process to fit the new SSD in; fit the data cable, slide it in, clamp down, and tape on the sensors and ribbon cable.

Modifying The Generic Drive Caddy

If you didn’t buy the same generic cheap caddy as I did, you can skip this step.

As it is, the caddy is slightly too large to fit. To remedy this, remove the metal plates on either side then unscrew the 1mm thick black plastic bezel at the front. It will come off cleanly, and you can put the caddy back together.

Before trying to place your old drive in the caddy, you’ll need to unclip the black plastic spacer. Take this out, then lay the drive in and slide it until the connection is made, then replace the spacer.

Drive Fixings

Around the outside of the DVD drive you removed are 3 metal plates through which it is was attached to the Macbook case. Though these aren’t strictly necessary. You can just “sit” the caddy in the case without being secure but I would recommend you remove those and fix them to the caddy.

Unfortunately, both the screws provided with the caddy and the original screws that were holding the plates to the DVD drive didn’t fit. I raided my parts box to grab some tiny Apple screws, then secured the caddy correctly to the space where the DVD drive used to be. If you bought the proper kits, rummaging for screws probably won’t be necessary.

Finishing Up

Close the case up in the reverse order that you opened it. Replace the motherboard ribbon and fix the keyboard back, slotting in at the front first. Close the lid, replace the side screws, flip over, and replace the rear screws. Fix in the memory plate, clip the battery back in, and you’re done.

Turn on the Macbook and things should boot just fine as always – it’ll recognize and read your existing OS install that’s not in the DVD drive caddy. Your SSD won’t be formatted yet.

Once booted, you’ll want to enable TRIM on the SSD, as Apple doesn’t enable it by default for non-Apple approved drives. TRIM enables better performance by optimizing the file deletion process, and makes a significant difference. Thanks to a tip from our almighty associate editor Jackson Chung, you can do this using the free TRIM Enabler utility. Just run it, enable TRIM, and restart.

The next step is to format the new drive; open up Disk Utility, select the drive, and format it with one partition and the usual journaled file system (the defaults). Just change the name.

Copying Data

Since my installation was already less than 70GB, a quick clean up of downloads enabled me to get below 60GB and just duplicate a bootable copy of the entire drive over to the SSD using the trial version of SuperDuper. If this isn’t the case for you, I suggest you temporarily move data files to an external drive, then copy then back to your new data drive once you’ve got OSX booting from the SSD. Alternatively, install a fresh copy of OSX (using a USB installation or an external DVD drive). There’s probably a mountain of utilities you don’t actually need, and spring cleaning is always great.

When you’re sure you’re booting from the new drive, you can go ahead and format your old disk. To be sure, hold down the ALT key on start up – it should show you two possible systems to boot from. Select the drive you named your SSD, and boot from that. If all goes well, you no longer need the old system drive, so format and use for data.

Summary

This procedure isn’t for the faint of heart. This is not my first time opening it up either – I’d already upgraded the main drive to the 500GB model years ago. This time around, I screwed it all back together and it failed to turn on. The problem – I’d forgotten to reconnect (or accidentally pulled out) the motherboard ribbon cable. Luckily no damage was done to the cable, but there were a lot of screws and a lot of work getting it open again. The best rule of thumb before attempting to perform serious modifications on a laptop (or any gadget for that matter) is if you can’t afford to break it, don’t do it.

There’s also the formatting issue – don’t start deleting any data until you have a full external backup somewhere; and don’t forget once it’s all working again to set up a proper triple backup solution (in fact, you could use your spare internal drive as a daily bootable backup just in case).

That said, if you’re considering replacing your Macbook just because it’s slowed down, this SSD upgrade could really help. The extra drive caddy enables us to keep costs to a minimum by only needing the smallest SSD to boot from, while data can be shifted off to the spare drive.

Any problems or questions? Get in touch in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer, though obviously I can’t accept responsibility if you’ve managed to break something in the process. Be careful, people!

By noreply@blogger.com (John), Super Punch – July 29, 2012 at 09:49AM

Some of the customized Star Wars helmets to be auctioned off at Celebration VI to benefit Make-A-Wish:

Tim Munro/Weta.

Kotobukiya.

Chris Trevas.

Volpin Props.

John Brosio.

Phillip Freeman (Acti-Props).

Russell Walks.

Slobo Art.

Tom Spina.