Apple Drops iPhone Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA)

Apple has announced that they have dropped the iPhone Non-Disclosure Agreement for released iPhone Apps.We have decided to drop the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for released iPhone software.We put the NDA in place because the iPhone OS includes many Apple inventions and innovations that we wou...

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iPhone "Elite" Dev Team

I am a member of a iPhone developer group, the iPhone "elite" (its a play on words, from the events that have happened on the osx86.hu IRC). We have some initial pages and a build of iPhuc.

http://code.google.com/p/iphone-elite/

iPhone Symlink Unlock.....

One of the new unlocks that has appeared in the past day for the iPhone, this does require some use of the terminal and instructions are only for AT&T iPhone users; at the moment there is no publicly released activation process for 1.1.1. The other unlock that has been mentioned around, the TIFF process, has not been publicly released yet.

Source: iPhone Alley

Domain Change - Issues

As many might notice, the site has changed from the previous domain of compuguy1088.blogspot.com to www.compuguy1088.eu.org, mainly for the fact that it looks more professional. Though currently, the site will not redirect from compuguy1088.blogspot.com correctly, for some reason, nor will compuguy1088.eu.org work either (a limitation of googles custom domain system :(. Anyway, I personally recommend that all old links to this blog should be updated to the new system, in order for it to work.

Update: I've found a temporary fix, though it kind of messes up the load manage system that google has with ghs.google.com. The domain is tied to an ip that is apart of ghs.google.com, so the domain without the www connects to the blog, its not a perfect fix, but its better than only having it work one way.

Update again: the site now does redirect using the compuguy1088.eu.org, in a kind of a hacked up way....

U.S. Military Develops Ray Gun

This device looks like the ultimate non-lethal weapon, to be used against crowds. I wonder if it could also be used against other things other than citizens, like Insurgents....

The U.S. military has developed a non-lethal ray gun that makes people feel like they're on fire. Yes! It's supposed to be used in places like Iraq and Afghanistan (where else?) in order to disperse crowds and get people to cooperate. It uses millimeter electromagnetic waves to penetrate the skin and raises body temperature to 130 degrees Fahrenheit near instantly. Combine this with other top notch U.S. military technology and it's pretty easy to see why we're number one, now and forever.

(From Gizmodo)

The freaky DS playing cat. (with pictures)

"Ain't it cute?"

Its both adorable in a sense, and yet, because of the oddness of the cats ears being folded, the way its sitting, and the Nintendo ds lite it has, the effect combined is of adorable/wierd (not a very creative description).

From Kotaku - (Via Digg)

Amarok 1.4.4 released with music store

"The new Amarok 1.4.4 release is the first open source media player to have built-in support for a DRM-free music store: Magnatune guarantees that for every song sold half the revenue actually goes to the artist. The new release also includes a slew of other features, as well as under-the-hood improvements and bugfixes."

Sounds interesting, though I have mostly used Itunes for my music collection, I have had fiddled around with Amarok. Overall from when I used a cvs version of Amarok, that it probibly is the most featured filled Itunes replacement for linux. Still the only problem with Amarok, is that it is a KDE based app, and I use GNOME as my desktop environment

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Sam and Max: Culture Shock is comming....

Finally after many years, another Sam and Max game has finally been realeased: Sam and Max: Culture Shock (though only through GameTap at the moment). It will available worldwide Nov 1st. I could go on and on describing a basic summary, but thanks the the developers at Telltale Games, they have put together a collection of reviews...

Also here is one of the generated Sam and Max cartoons from the games' homepage, that caught my eye, enjoy!

Move over Firefox: IceWeasel is HERE!

From the recent Debian vs Firefox issue, it seems like "Firefox" will eventually and slowly be faced-out on GNU/Linux platforms that adheres to "free software" philosophy. There is currently a first binary release for GNU/Linux / x86 32 bit available, as well as its corresponding source code.

Curiously, even though IceWeasel's creation was originally for Debian, it will be interesting to see if other Non-Debian based distributions pick up on this....

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Is Outsourcing I.T. Overseas Past It's Prime?

"Is outsourcing IT overseas past its prime? According to a new survey, it is. Consider this: Two years ago, 84 percent of the respondents to a Global IT Outsourcing Study sponsored by Chicago-based consulting firm DiamondCluster International said they planned to increase their level of offshore outsourcing. In 2006, that figure fell to 64 percent."

This, at least in my mind, is a good sign that this fad of offshoreing is starting to fade. Possibly, this is connected to the fact that there are certain IT jobs that do have to be on site, and cannot be outsourced....

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Inside of a Hard Drive

"A video of what a Hard Drive looks like inside while doing various tasks."

It is interesting, from the point that the drive actually works when it is open, It must be something to do with the construction of the older drive, vs the newer drives. Anyway, quite interesting, to see a open drive in motion....

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Not Just Third World Nations Banning Skype; Universities Get On Board Too

It looks like it's not just third world countries with government-backed telephone monopolies to protect that are banning VoIP. Some universities are getting in on the game as well. San Jose State University, just down the road from Skype's parent company eBay, has apparently decided to block all Skype use on campus.

Well thats a misnomer, partially because in the article cited, the campus has not blocked it, for now from the outcry of students and even professors; This shows that the telecoms are starting to feel that Skype is a threat to standard landlines, though the irony is that landlines have some advantages that you cant really get with cell phones, or Skype, one of those points is that the quality of the call on a landline is usually better than either cellular or via IP, though there are more ways to improve the quality of internet calling over cell phones.

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Alan Cox's Thinkpad explodes!

Even Linux gurus are susceptible to the perils of exploding batteries - last night famed kernel hacker Alan Cox's IBM Thinkpad battery burst into flames and exploded. Follow the link for an in-depth story in Telsa's inimitable style and photos of the laptop's remains.

Well, that sorts out one lession, don't use third party batterys, unless they can be trusted not to have impurities in them. Oh well, theres one more char-broiled laptop, to go......One more point though, who is Alan Cox? (Nevermind, apparently he is a famed linux kernel programmer).

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Python Programming for Beginners

"Despite what assembly code and C coders might tell us, high-level languages do have their place in every programmer's toolbox, and some of them are much more than a computer-science curiosity. Out of the many high-level languages we can choose from today, Python seems to be the most interesting for those who want to learn something new.."

Python may not be seen as the most prominent laungage, and as well has some simplicities over C++. This looks interesting and I'm definatley going to read up on this, becauase having one more programming language in anyone's arsenal, helps...

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New Apple Earbuds Available From Store

Now for the first time ever, you can purchase the same earbuds that ship with the iPods. Perfect for replacements or spares - for the *cheap* price of $29.00.

Apparently the design of the iPod earphones has changed slighty, to be more streamedlined, which in my opinion looks nicer. This seems to be the trend with Apple now, after they released there new Nano, which is sleeker, and takes on the better design of the mini, in a smaller package. Apple's new trend seems to be sleeker, brighter, and thinner. Though time will tell if these traits will make the next generation iPod even more thinner than it is now....

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Funny Prank to play on a friend, ex, co-worker or anyone.

This is way fun, enter anyone's phone number (us & canada) and type a message and choose what you want to display on the callerID, this site will call them and spoof the callerID so that it appears to be coming from whoever you specify. They then read the message back in the computer generated voice that you specify.

Sounds hilarious, being able to send fake calls to anyone, at least in the United States/Canada. I wonder what pranks could be done with such useable tool like this.

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New iPod Nano Disassembled

"Just got our new 'remastered' Nano today, and we immediately took it apart and posted photos online."

Huh, not much of a new design, more like a really small iPod mini. Hopefully with them going back to the mini design, it should not be as vulnerable to scratces. I must be out of the loop or something, because I didn't really hear much about this until I ran into this artice. Personally I think the new nano, looks better, with the curved edges...

Edit: After reading more about it, the body is now aluminum, and they added a 8 gig size nano...took them long enough to do that. If this was out when I got my iPod color, I probibly would of gotten that.....instead.

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Walkthrough: iTunes 7's big new features

Organizing, shopping, syncing - everything got a lot of attention from Apple's software engineers and, as you'll see throughout this walkthrough, a lot of polish has been applied to make this one of the most significant updates in recent iTunes history.

They have added quite abit to this version of Itunes, probibly in my opinon, the best feature is the Cover Browser, its neat just gliding through that view, and seeing all the album art (or the lack of it).

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Aqua is dead, long live Aqua! (iTunes 7 is a preview of new OS X style)

"Apple seems to use iTunes as a test-bed for new user interface design styles, and iTunes 7 brings with it an almost complete overhaul the Aqua look we have all grown to love/hate/tolerate."

From what the Windows version of Itunes shows, they've updated the Aqua theme considerably, but in a sense it is still aqua. You could call it really the "updated" Aqua, from the fact that it looks more modern than the previous Aqua.

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Hack to Change Windows XP Home to Windows XP Professional

Enable the features found in Windows XP Professional on your Windows XP Home Edition installation with this hack.

In the past, I've heard of other ways of getting Home Edtiton to act like XP pro via a program called TweakUI (or something like that), which is hard to find now. This process, from what I read seems a whole lot easier to do, and since its all done on the cd, it can be reused. Though after reading the digg comments, it seems to not give any of the pro features, but makes it look like its pro...which I guess is still nice...in a way...

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