What is the Budget Box?

The Budget Box on Ars Technica is all of the following things: versatile, capable, and extremely affordable. To us, "budget" means a low-cost, yet capable box for your money.

We believe that the Budget Box doesn't need to be able to handle 3D-intensive games or do video compositing, but they do need to be reliable, affordable, and upgradable. Lots of consumers out there want a similar box—something that lets them get onto the Internet, take care of e-mail, and create a few documents. For them, being able to burn a DVD would probably be nice, but anything beyond that is an extra.

Clearing CMOS Plug-n-Play Settings

From EVDO-Forums by J.C. Roberts

"The CMOS settings which you set, such as the current date/time, are not the only thing that is remembered between power cycles. Your box also remembers the mapping/remapping of resources to most of the installed hardware and adapters. In some CMOS user interfaces, it's called "Plug-n-Play Settings" but it's also called "ESCD Settings" and "NVRAM Settings" and probably others but even worse, there are some systems from Dell, IBM and similar which do not give you a simple way in the user interface to reset/clear the ECSD (Extended System Configuration Data). This is stupidity at it's finest, and resulted in the "Old Solution" outlined above. On most Dell boxes and probably others, you can actually reset/clear the ECSD settings but you have to know the super secret dance steps required.

1.) Enter the system CMOS settings ("System Setup") by hitting the F2 key when booting up (i.e. at the Dell logo screen).
2.) Hit the Num Lock key until the keyboard numlock light comes on
3.) Hit the Scroll lock key until the keyboard scroll lock light comes on.
4.) Hit the Caps Lock key until the keyboard caps lock light comes on
5.) Press Alt+E and many of the boxes made in the last 5 years will beep to let you know the ECSD data has been cleared.

There are probably similar dance steps for other systems from other vendors that lack a straight forward way to clear the ECSD settings, so you'll have to go digging through their sites/docs to figure it out.

On the first boot up after clearing the ESCD, the BIOS will rebuild the info by probing all the installed hardware. This should solve the ignored/missing hardware problem that some people face but if clearing the ESCD settings fails (or you can't find out how to do it), then try the "old solution" of removing all your adapter cards, booting the system, shut down the system, install one card, boot the system, shut down the system, install the next card ...

Flexible secure backup system

The ideal system would back up my files automatically and constantly, store off-site, cost very little, be totally secure, and let me look at, open, check and verify any file, any time. It would also be cross-platform, and back up to servers I trust completely. It should be fast and cheap. It should also let me back up from one system, and grab those files from another -- say, from my laptop.

Is that asking too much? Apparently not. Datamation reports on such a backup system -- finally!

Jungle Disk

Jungle Disk works as an interface to Amazon.com's super-secure and reliable Amazon Simple Storage Service (otherwise known as Amazon S3).

Jungle Disk puts a virtual drive on your computer that looks like any another hard drive.

Unlike "regular" backups systems, you can browse, open, check and confirm the validity of every file in your backup by simply opening the folder, and using the files as if they were on your local hard drive. They're not locked away in a cryptic, proprietary system.

The Jungle Disk application lets you set up automated backups, which looks for any file changes in the files or folders you specify, then backs up any modified files at the frequency you set. You set it and forget it.

Jungle Disk is currently in "beta," and is free for now. Once it launches, the company plans to charge a one-time fee of $20, or you can choose to pay $1 per month for as long as you use it.

Command line is coming back

Command line interfaces are back again, hiding under the name of search.

Don Norman writes:

The new command lines are far more flexible and robust than those of the past. Word order is not critical, often we can use synonyms or even related terms. Spelling accuracy is not even required.

Command line interfaces. Once that was all we had. Then they disappeared, replaced by what we thought was a great advance: GUIs. GUIs were - and still are - valuable, but they fail to scale to the demands of today's systems.

[But] Search is never anything I want to do. I don't want to search -- I want to know something. I want an answer engine, not a search engine.

So now command line interfaces are back again, hiding under the name of search. Now you see them, now you don't. Now you see them again. And they will get better and better with time: mark my words, that is my prediction for the future of interfaces.

Command Line Interfaces

Adesso Tubes

Tubes instantly builds synchronized, secure connections (what we call a "tube") between your desktop and the desktop of your friends, family, co-workers - even your other computers.

Now anything you drop in a tube is whisked to the desktop of anyone you choose - and vice versa. And Tubes syncs any changes in every tube ensuring you’re always up to date - even when you don’t have an internet connection. Click to learn more.

Improve your keyboard

Disable the Windows Key
http://johnhaller.com/jh/useful_stuff/disable_windows_key/

Disable the Caps Key
http://johnhaller.com/jh/useful_stuff/disable_caps_lock/

wHY wHOULD aNYONE
wANT tO bAN
tHE cAPS lOCK kEY?

How to use a search bot

I love search bots. They cater to both my info-lust, laziness and cheapness (they're free!). A search bot is a service that does the kind of Internet-based search you might do on Google or Yahoo, but constantly. When a running bot search finds a new "hit," it e-mails it to you. Most people don't use bots. That's too bad, because with a little imagination, search bots can be extremely powerful, making you a better professional, and even a better friend or family member -- but you've got to know how to use them.

THESE BOT TIPS WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

via Mike's raw feed

Free rootkit scan tool

Grisoft, makers of the popular AVG Antivirus, today released a free scan tool for rootkits.

Rootkits hide their files from the operating system and from security software that relies on the operating system. AVG Anti-Rootkit was developed to "detect and destroy rootkits".

Some tests show that it didn't report on hidden Registry data nor on every hidden file, but after its removal process all leftover files and Registry data were exposed for removal by ordinary antivirus software. [download]

Google studies Hard Drive Death

Conventional wisdom states that the more you use your hard drive -- or, for that matter, the hotter your hard drive gets -- the more likely it is to crash. "That certainly sounds plausible, but is it true?", asks Patrick Douglas Crispen.

According to Google, the answer is a resounding "NO!"

Google collected data on a population of 100,000 disk drives, analyzed it, and wrote it up: "Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population", 241 KB, 13 pages [pdf]

StorageMojo studied the arcane .pdf and posted a thorough summary.

Gizmodo posted the stuff that really matters:

• First of all, Mean Time Between Failure rates mean nothing.
• Secondly, SMART hardware monitoring missed 36% of all uh-ohs.
• Third, overworked drives fail similarly to standard drives after the first year.
• Fourth, age means less than you think.
• Fifth, failure does not go up when temperatures are higher than usual (unless super high).

More links from storagemojo:
How does Google build the world’s largest data center? Check out Google File System, Google’s BigTable Storage System, Architecting the Internet Data Center and Google vs Amazon: A Choice Not An Echo.

Cut The Craplets

Techdirt says:

Anyone who has bought a new PC in recent years knows all about the rigmarole associated with getting them going once they've been taken out of the box. In addition to all of the preferences, the user is faced with an onslaught of what are basically software ads in the form of trial services.

Wall Street Journal tech columnist Walt Mossberg, who has certainly seen more than his fair share of computers over the years, was nevertheless struck by how ridiculous things have gotten, after experiencing the joys of setting up a new Sony Vaio laptop. In addition to two dozen pieces of teaser software for services from Napster and AOL, the computer came pre-loaded with four feature-length movies from Sony Pictures. Of course the movies, which were taking up valuable space on the hard drive, couldn't be viewed without first paying Sony.

The problem, as Mossberg correctly identifies, is that computer manufacturers act as if the computer doesn't belong to the user, but is instead some platform for them to pitch services.

It could be argued that all of these pitches help subsidize the cost of the computer, or at least help defray the growing Windows tax (the fact that as hardware prices continue to drop, the portion of a computer's price that goes to paying for Windows goes up).

But it's not surprising, then, that consumers are increasingly interested in alternatives, like desktop Linux, as a way of avoiding the whole mess.

Step by step TrueCrypt

TrueCrypt makes it very easy to encrypt almost every piece of hardware including partitions, hard drives, usb keys and other storage devices. Once everything is setup you would mount the True Crypt container using the password that you have selected while creating the encrypted container. This is actually the only password that you have to remember, everything else can be kept in the encrypted container.

Step-by-step here

• Launch TrueCrypt
• Click on Create Volume
• Create a Standard Volume, click Next
• Decide if you want to encrypt a device or create a encrypted container. Select File creates an container of x megabytes that you specify, select device encrypts the device. I’m using the second option for my hard drive but this is really up to you and does not change the data safe that we create
• If you select File: Browse to a location that you want to store the file and name it, something like test, data or whatever. Click save, then next.
• Select an encryption algorithm, AES is fine for instance. Click Next
• Select a file size for the container. It should be at least some megabytes, the limit is the space on the device that the file is created on
• Create a secure password that you can remember. Write it down for the first time if you want to be sure that you do not forget it. Get rid of that paper as soon as possible.
• Click on Next, move the mouse around for a minimum of 30 seconds and click on format afterwards.
• A message should appear that the container was created.
• To mount it simply select a drive letter that is not taken and click on Select File and browse to the file that you created
• Click on mount and enter the password that you have selected during installation
• If everything worked out fine the container should be mounted and you can use it like any other drive letter. You could for instance move important files into the container or create a textfile that contains all of your passwords.
• Do not forget to unmount the partition if you leave the computer for a longer time. Booting or shutting down automatically unmounts the drive.
• It would be nearly the same process if you want to encrypt a whole partition or drive.
• Instead of selecting a file at the beginning you select the drive letter of that partition and follow the same menus as before.
• Mounting it is similar as well, you only click on Select Devices instead of Select File before you click on mount

Just move the files inside and no one can access them unless they can provide the password to this True Crypt container.

TrueCrypt works with big hard drives and there is no visible loss in speed during read and write operations.