This isn’t a guide or how-to article, it’s really just an informational blabber (in two parts), but maybe it will stir some thinking/experimenting with an old friend or two.
While messing around with my PS3 as an AAC/MP3 encoder, I quickly realized it doesn’t pull Art info etc. However, even if it did, I wouldn’t advise using the PS3 as your main ripper/encoder, as it’s always easier to replace standard PC DVD drives vs. a PS3 Blue Ray drive. 
Over the years I’ve moved from app to app and codec to codec (Audio Grabber, Lam3 via CLI, batch processing, EAC, dbpoweramp, linux tools with Lam3, OGG and so on) always looking for a great rip/encode combo. It’s funny, I swore off iTunes for encoding funtions until they starting using better versions of an MP3 encoder etc, I also stayed away from AAC, not because it’s not good (as it’s VERY good) but there was so few players (car/mobile) that could play them (except iPods) etc. Well…..years passed and lots of things started supporting AAC, so I moved to AAC a year or so ago.
Now days, I truly do love iTunes ability to encode AAC/MP3′s (plus managing my iPod Touch) and supposedly Apple supports and uses the standard tagging functions for MP3 ID Tags, well…..at least that’s what it looks like and feels like except for one little minor flaw I found recently.
However, keep in mind, unlike MP3′s, the AAC group has never set an industry standard as far as tagging goes, but Apple implemented a pretty good format on their own.
ENTER PS3 and Windows Explorer issues:
I ran into this problem where I was unable to install Firebug in Firefox. It would act like it was installing, Firefox would restart, but the plugin was simply not there.
A little research revealed there could be a variety of reasons for this, but for me it turned out Avast! antivirus was preventing it from working.
I disabled the Network service in Avast! long enough to try again, and it all worked.
Hopefully this will help someone else who runs into the problem.
I discovered an excellent article listing some of the little-known features, disabled by default, that phpMyAdmin has. Check it out:
http://blog.ht4.ca/2009/12/29/hidden-phpmyadmin-features/
Some of the more useful ones include the Query History and Query Bookmarking. There is also a Designer Mode which lets you see the relations amongst your tables and more. I wish I had known about these, oh, 8 years ago!
After eating lunch at a local restaurant yesterday, I noticed that when I was signing my receipt they had printed my whole credit card number on there. I hadn’t seen that happen in years, and I immediately scratched it out. I happened to be with a group of cyber security guys, and they were all in disbelief as well.
It would be very easy for a thief to pick up your receipt just after you leave, then go home and have an online shopping spree. The server or anyone else handling your receipt could do the same thing. Read the rest of this entry »
A lawsuit has been filed against Best Buy for price match fraud. You know how they tout on their commercials that if you find a better deal somewhere else, they will match the price? Well, I guess that doesn’t count their own web site.
The Consumerist reports the details of the lawsuit and how the shenanigans occur:
1. You walk into a Best Buy to purchase a sale item you saw on their site.
2. The employee tells you that the item is no longer on sale, and shows you what looks to be Best Buy’s website, but it’s really a secret intranet that Best Buy’s corporate office denies exists. The price on the website shows that the sale is over.
3. You cry and leave, then at home you see that the sale isn’t over at all. What happened?
I have acquired a growing distaste for Best Buy and will only go there when dire circumstances require it, such as needing a new wireless router at 8PM on a Friday night. (heh)
Now I’ll definitely think about staying away at all costs.
Detective Inspector Bruce van der Graaf from the Computer Crime Investigation Unit of the NSW Police says, “”If you are using the internet for a commercial transaction, use a Linux boot up disk – such as Ubuntu or some of the other flavours…It gives you an operating system which is perfectly clean and operates only in the memory of the computer and is a perfectly safe way of doing internet banking,”
Sounds like a good plan to me, but then, I’m sure most of you reading this are already in agreement. It’s just good to see this sort of thing hitting major news sites.
I'm providing the original text file for ease of use Grab it here - ClamAV.on.Fedora
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Background:
This guide will use the ClamAV CLI scanner and the ClamAV-Update script (freshclam).
I wrote this to help all the Home\SOHO users (servers or desktops).
ClamAV has various tools/packages/plugins for email servers etc. but that’s another story.
If you wish to learn more visit their home site: http://www.clamav.net/
Obviously, you can change anything you want, but this should get you going.
There are certain free apps I have come to rely upon when setting up any new installation of Windows. Some of these aid in my work, some of them just aid in a providing better Windows experience. I thought I’d create a list of my top 5 favorites. To qualify for this list, applications must be lightweight on system resources when running, preferrably open source, and free.
If you have any suggestions for apps which fit that description and make your life easier, post them in the comments.
If you find any of these tools useful, please make a donation to the author!
1. DColor is a great tool for saving space on your desktop by tweaking your icons. It allows you to resize them, and even display them in ‘list view’, as you would see a list of files in Windows Explorer. DColor will also let you recolor the icon text and background. It’s a tiny app which takes up very little system resources.
2. Color Cop is an eyedropper color picker which can sit in the foreground of all open windows. This comes in really handy when you are swapping back and forth between Photoshop and Dreamweaver, or are trying to pick colors from photographs. It allows for easy copy/paste to and from using your choice of RGB or several flavors of hex values. No installation — just launch it and use it.
3. ImgBurn is my favorite disc burning tool. You can run it from a command line or from the graphical interface, and it supports CD, DVD, HD DVD, and Blue Ray discs. ImgBurn is lightweight and sports a ton of tools and options. I have yet to run across a disc drive which it didn’t support out of the box.
4. Filezilla – I never leave home without this one. Not only is it free for Windows, but Filezilla supports Mac, Linux, BSD, and more. Providing a great interface for FTP and SFTP file transfers, it’s easy to use, lightweight, and full of options. My favorite combo of traits!
! WARNING ! – DO NOT VISIT THE SITES BELOW – ! WARNING !
I noticed some Pakistan site had pingbacks for some articles we wrote, but no comments from the person that copy and pasted them (verbatim) on their site.
Well, being the person that I am, I fired up “Wireshark” on my Linux box (of course) to investigate their site further.
I noticed they had various other sites tied to the same domain, so I visited another one (other than the blog) and low and behold something was a little fishy.
Their “photo” site tried to launch a little gift for me……an “IFrame exploit” and if you’re running Windows you get a special prize for the visit…..a worm. ;0)