When UPS 2-day air isn't 2 days... more like slow-ass day air

I'm home a little early on Wednesday afternoon, ready for a 4 day turkey weekend.  I fire up the 'ol HTPC for some boxee\hulu\mkv... and nothing.  After a some troubleshooting, it's the powersupply.  Unfortunately this is a small form factor PC so it requires a non-standard sized powersupply.  I hop on the interwebs, find a replacement, schedule it for 2 day air, and then I sit back and wait, and wait. 

I placed my order on the 25th, and deliver is scheduled for the 30th, a monday.  Great!  I'll get my HTPC up and running right when the full week starts.  What the hell!?!?  So instead of watching quality shows on the internet (TWiT, fringe, the cleveland show) I stare at the UPS package tracking page all weekend:

and whats up with that stop in Dallas?!?!?   it arrived on the 28th at 6am, and it sits there for over a day.  Come on people, I need to watch some hak5 and tekzilla.  WTF! 

Flash 10.1 GPU acceleration (non-scientific) tested. WHQL drivers make a difference.

MBpro, dual core 2.4 Ghz, Nvidia 8600M GT, bootcamp Win 7

2012 trailer in HD:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hz86TsGx3fc

[Default bootcamp/Win 7 drivers]

Using Flash 10.0.32.18, bootcamp/Win drivers, CPU usage averaged around 55%:

Using Flash 10.1.51.25 beta, bootcamp/Win drivers, CPU usage averaged around 65%:

[Updated default bootcamp/Win 7 drivers to Nvidia's latest 186.81 WHQL drivers]

Using Flash 10.0.32.18, 186.81 WHQL drivers, CPU usage averaged around 50%:

Using Flash 10.1.51.25 beta, 186.81 WHQL drivers, CPU usage averaged around 35%:

Summary:
Using the default drivers I didn't notice a big difference when upgrading to the Flash beta (55% to 50%) .  When I switched drivers to 186.81 I saw a decrease in CPU usage from ~65% to ~35%. wow

[UPDATE]  It looks like AnandTech came up with similar numbers, from 450% to 190%.  CPU usage dropped by more than half.
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3678&p=5

GPU accelerated Flash... not so fast Mac, you too Linux.

The beta is available for Mac, but no hardware acceleration.  Windows only for now:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/

From the Hardware requirements section:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/fplayer10.1_hardware_acceleration.html

Linux and Mac OS X hardware-accelerated decoding is not supported in this version.

Blogging browser, Part 2: Flock

Firefox + ScribeFire was nice, but I've found something even better, Flock Browser.
Flock Browser - The Social Web Browser

It has support for twitter, blogging, email, instant messaging.  An interesting feature is broadcast.  It reposts your stuff to more than one site.  And since based off Firefox, it's cross plateform!  Mac, Linux, Windows.   

Distraction free writing with Google Docs, Firefox, and Stylish

If you're looking for an online, minimalistic, word processor, here's what you'll need:
Google Docs
Firefox
Stylish Add-on :  Stylish :: Add-ons for Firefox

Once installed, you can select a style to use when you're editing a Google doc.  Several dark-room type scripts are available for the minimalistic writer.  Once you've chosen your style, hit F11 for full screen.  I prefer the full black screen with green text:

Here's what i use:

@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);

@-moz-document domain("docs.google.com") {

tr#navigation{
    display: none !important;
}

.editor {
    margin: 30px auto !important;
    width: 100% !important;
    max-width: 800px !important;
    background-color: #000 !important;
    color: #00DD00 !important;
    font-size: 100% !important;
    line-height: 100% !important;
}
}

The code is simple enough for most people to understand.  Some people prefer a tighter column, different color text, etc. 

iPhone is the new Windows: Worms, Viruses, and Trojans

New article on tuaw.com:Worm rickrolls unsecured jailbroken iPhones via SSH

If you have a jail broken iphone, and you didn't change the default SSH password, you're vulnerable.  But let's say you did change your password, are you safe?  How long before someone adds a dictionary attack to the worm, and starts searching for weak passwords?  That's one of the methods that the Conficker work spread.  I'm amazed at how many people have a password of '12345'.  Is this Apple's fault?  or Microsoft's fault?  Who will get the blame for this particular worm: the jail breakers? ikee? Cydia?

And if it's not SSH then it's SMS; Apple patching nasty iPhone SMS vulnerability
And if it's not SMS then it's Safari;  iPhone Flaw Lets Hackers Take Over
And if it's not Safari...

So is it as bad as Windows?  Not until the iPhone/OSX reaches the mass market... oh wait, has that happened?

On the Windows side if you find an exploit, say RPC vulnerability, how many machines can you hit?  The tools are easy to come by, the data you can steal is valuable, and the targets are everywhere.

Compiz Fusion and Virtual Box 3.10 playing together

Unlike VMware Workstation 7, Virtual Box can enable Compiz Fusion right out the box.  I'm impressed.  Shouldn't this have been on VMware's list?  I think they focused too hard on Windows 7 and Direct X support.  I think they're missing the boat on this one... not to mention Virtual Box is free!  VirtualBox

After a little more testing, I notice slight delays when working with windows that are semi-transparent or fade in/out of some level of transparency.  As with most things in Linux, there's probably a setting to enable/disable window transparencies.

[UPDATE]  I've tried increasing the resources, memory and cpu, but I'm still noticing a slight delays in window painting, menu refreshes, etc.  With Compiz Fusion turned off, performance is great.  Adding additional CPUs to the VM was a bit tricky.  When I attempted to start a VM with more that one CPU, I'd get an error, "vt-x is not available".  After some googling I found four setting in the BIOS that needed to be configured:
    * Security > Execute Disable (set to On)
    * Performance > Virtualization (set to On)
    * Performance > VT for Direct I/O Access (set to On)
    * Performance > Trusted Execution (set to Off)

I found the information here:  http://www.shnake.com/blog/?p=419

[UPDATE Jan 11, 2010] Fixed performance problems, see my latest post here:
http://orsontyrell.blogspot.com/2010/01/better-performance-with-compiz-fusion.html

Compiz Fusion and VMware Workstation 7 not playing nice

On a default install of Ubuntu 9.10, with 3D acceleration enabled on VMware, Compiz Fusion is not working.  :( 
"Desktop effects could not be enabled"
So it's either troubleshoot this or look at Virtual Box....

[UPDATE] I finally broke down and read the help file...  I stumbled upon this gem:
Under the section Support for Direct3D Graphics: 

Prepare a Virtual Machine for Accelerated 3-D

Before you begin, make sure the guest operating system is Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7.

Isn't that swell.

[UPDATE Jan 11, 2010] Fixed performance problems, see my latest post here:
http://orsontyrell.blogspot.com/2010/01/better-performance-with-compiz-fusion.html

Mozilla Weave .8 released

Mozilla Weave .8 is out!  Sync your bookmarks, history, passwords, etc.  Mozilla Weave
The latest release looks more like optimizations than anything else.  You'll need Firefox 3.5 or higher.
After Google killed off their addon that did similar synchronizations (my favorite part was the history sync), Weave was one of the best options. 

ScribeFire + Firefox = blogging browser

ScribeFire has some nice features.  I especially like the support for copy/paste, makes posting URLs easier.  Here's some of their flavor text:

About ScribeFire

ScribeFire is an extension for the Mozilla Firefox Web Browser that integrates with your browser to let you easily post to your blog: you can drag and drop formatted text from pages you are browsing, take notes, and post to your blog.

Time server synchronization in Windows Server 2008

There's been a change in the way you configure your time server synchronization in 2008. Previously you'd use the net time command. So in 2003 you'd do something like:

net time /setsntp:timeserver1.domain.com,timeserver2.domain.com

net time /set

In Windows 2008 you use the w32tm command:

w32tm /config /syncfromflags:MANUAL /manualpeerlist:timeserver1.domain.com,timeserver2.domain.com

w32tm /config /update

You can query your current settings with the following relative commands:

net time /querysntp

w32tm /query /source

For non-domain PCs the workstation defaults to time.microsoft.com. There's an "Internet Time" tab (Windows 7) in the date/time properties dialog box.