links, originally uploaded by rlaskey.

Today, however, Amazon revealed their third version of the 6″ Kindle, with a Wi-Fi only version for $140.  Notably, too, the battery is larger, reportedly lasting up to a month; and they also are packing in a new e-ink display which is supposed to garner better contrast and faster page turns.

DRM improved?

Perhaps I’m a bit late to the party, though I did find on Amazon’s website a certain section labeled “Downloading to Multiple Devices,” which reads in part:

Content purchased from the Kindle Store can be downloaded to your Kindle, or Kindle compatible device, as long as you’ve registered the device to the Amazon.com account that purchased the Kindle content. There is no limit on the number of times a title can be downloaded to a registered device, but there may be limits on the number of devices (usually 6) that can simultaneously use a single book.

That means you can download and read your books on any Kindle device you own as long you’ve registered each device to the Amazon.com account where your Kindle Library is stored.

Personally, this sounds like a big upgrade.  A year or so ago, it was the case that certain titles would only be allowed to be downloaded a certain number of times.  That meant that with multiple devices, generations, etc., the content which you paid for would no longer be yours. Tying the purchases to the account, and having the with “no limit” to the number of downloads sounds like a great step up.

Closing remarks

I personally have no reason to want to stray from my Reader.   It serves me well, is still great for my eyes, and still does have a touch screen which the Kindle series lacks.  Even so, it seems as though Amazon is slowly getting their act together, and I can see that the case may be that they win this e-book stuff in the end, especially if they keep good hardware at such low prices; as well as a reasonable system of DRM to allow your content to actually be your own.

Dell prefab machine went down, so it needs a replacement.  The only sane replacement system has a BIOS password which I don’t know, and a root password I also don’t know.  Only solution: use a root SSH key to access the system on a particular network (static hostname) in order to make required changes.  Boot bare, non-complete system with old, functioning IDE disk, since all other systems are SATA only, in order to find configuration details, including YP, LDAP, NFS, etc. settings.  Make appropriate changes on new system, and move back to a new static IP.  Find extra USB keyboard, since new machine has no PS/2 ports and the only PS/2 to USB adapter on hand wasn’t functional.  Take deep breath; because there was actually a lot more to the situation than the above, though it wouldn’t be good to put those parts on the Internets.

I’m impressed with myself that I got this all sorted out in less than 3 hours.. but good lord did it take some patience and innovative thinking.

With that said, I did eventually experience some dust that came in between the screen and the touch layer.   It wasn’t all that much, though I kept seeing it and it was a bit of a bother.

Only warning

The only thing you really need to be careful about in cleaning the top insides of the 5800 is that you do not break the ribbon cable at the top of the device, near where the USB port is located.  If you break this cable, the screen will not work and you’ll need some rather major repairs.  Please note that while I’m giving this advice, it is entirely your fault and yours alone if you do any damage.  All electronics are inherently delicate and need to be handled with extreme care.

Method

With the above warning in mind, it’s not too hard to pry open the top part of the device in order to clean the screen and touch layer.  I hope I don’t have to say this, but before you begin you will need to turn off your device and take the battery out.  It will also rather likely void your warranty; and if you’re close enough to a Nokia Care Center they will do this same process for a small fee without the risks.  In the USA, out of warranty without any nearby Care Centers, it’s not so bad to do as I’ve done.

Using the plectrum which came with the device, very gently pry the right side of the top assembly away from the rest of the phone.  By “top assembly” I mean everything above the small line around the side of the phone, directly above the volume keys, camera key, and MicroSD / SIM card ports.

It will not take any amount of real force.  It should sound as if the device wants you to take this part away from itself, and it should also sound like it will easily snap back in place by pressing the top back into the body of the phone.  Please be gentle.  It worked best for me to start at the right side, where the volume rockers lie, and then to work a bit on the left side, where the SIM and MicroSD cards go; then the bottom..

When you release the top of the top assembly, the only thing holding the two parts together will be the ribbon cable, as described in the above warning.  Again, be very gentle and careful.  You can now clean the screen and the touch layer with either compressed air or an incredibly clean microfiber cloth.

The top assembly doesn’t really rest well, and tends to hang off the ribbon cable.  My solution was to gently rest the top assembly on the phone’s battery, so that there wasn’t as much leverage pushing on the cable.  Gently clean to the level that makes you happy, then softly push the top assembly back into the rest of the phone, starting with the  top.  Everything will click together, and it will be as tightly put together as before you started.

Conclusion

While I am urging caution and care, if you take the steps all together there’s really not much to the entire process.  I also should say that the 5800 is actually more dust-free than many devices I’ve owned, though I’m happy I was able to safely tinker and get inside without any special hardware or unexplained mangling of internals.  Hopefully this’ll help at least a few people who are at least as picky as myself.

YouTube video, from ElAmigoCZE

As an extra help, I found this video from YouTube which shows the process:

The movie, however, looked rather interesting, and Netflix seemed to say that I’d like it.  Just finished watching it, and good lord I am impressed.  For the sake of history, it is worthy to note that I’m speaking here of the original, 2009 Swedish movie, not the American remake that supposedly is in the works.  re: Hollywood looking to copy yet another foreign film: well, screw that, again.

Acting, cinematography, locations, pacing, sound.. it all fit together incredibly well.  I was cringing heavily at certain scenes, and cheering at others.  What’s perhaps most interesting about the film is the way they thread dark elements alongside the plot while still retaining a balance.  As per my general form here, I’m not going to delve much more into the plot; though I’ll say that it’s rather essential to check this out when you get the chance.  Grab it, via Netflix, Amazon, or whatever other method you can find.

Overwrote my php.ini

For those who don’t know what a php.ini file is, it’s a very important configuration file for PHP.  If you want to set whether errors get displayed, which directories you want in your include path, etc.  These are both options that I set in my php.ini:

I’ve put my custom libraries outside of the web-accessible path, in the odd case that there’s a system problem and the code gets exposed.  More importantly, however, I can have a single require_once(‘library.php’), and regardless of the path I’ll be able to get the file within that include directory.

I also changed the default error behavior, to disallow PHP errors to be displayed on the page itself.  This again is a security measure, since otherwise there’s a reasonable amount of information about the system that can get leaked out by these error messages.  They should be in a private log, not searchable via Google.

Imagine my dismay, then, when I find that my site has been broken since this past Sunday (Friday, today) because both of these directives were completely overwritten by Bluehost.  I never received an email, nor any sort of communication before or after the fact.   I was on the support line for 27 minutes and 53 seconds, after which I received a suggestion that not all users are quite as picky as myself, and that I can send an email to their feedback line if I wanted to voice my opinion.

I’m opting for this instead.

My only real evidence of any sort of problem was, and is, the modification time of the php.ini file, and another file titled “php.ini.NEWCONFIGPOSSIBLYBROKEN”.  Oh, and masses of error logs; and the site showing PHP errors rather than content.

Passwords in the clear?

So of course, that wasn’t the whole story.  There’s also Bluehost’s support contact page, which is a gem in of itself.  In order to see the nasty bits, you’ll have to click one of the various support options and hit the button at the bottom of the form.  In there lies a rather special field:

Last 4 Characters of Password (not credit card):

Really? ! Upon mentioning this to the tech on the support line, he assured me that the system is entirely safe.  No one can read your passwords; they have a script which takes your input and then gives an answer.  He wasn’t sure how it worked, though he claimed to know it was not a security problem.

It is possible that the system is storing two independent hashes, one for the entire password and secondly for what’d be substr($password,-4);.  I seriously hope that’s the case, because any other alternatives that I can dream up seem to point to storing the system passwords in plain text.  I do hope that they are not that stupid.  My confidence is just a little bit shaken, however, by their inability to forsee other problems, such as described in the upper half of this post.

Taking a deep breath

Aside from today, I’ve never had a problem with Bluehost.  I know they have a huge number of clients, and that alone is not an easy job to undertake.  Their MySQL performance and support for multiple domains make me want to stick with them; on top of the fact that I already bought three years of service from them, of which I have two left..

With that said, systems are incredibly important, and these kinds of mistakes are not representative of a company which knows what its doing.  Luckily they had backups of my old php.ini — and because I knew where to find it, I was able to get my site running again.  Sans that, however, there was no trace of my configuration.  That simply is not cool.  I sincerely hope that they, along with all other providers, take the proper steps to help developers; not those which send them up a creek without a paddle.

special specimen, originally uploaded by rlaskey.

As I mentioned a few days ago, I recently got the itch for some video games re: the Steam summer sale.  While most game specifies a minimum requirement of a certain ATI or NVIDIA chipset, my standards weren’t all that crazy, seeing as I’ve been rather happy with Quake 3, and even Quake 2.  If the Intel Graphics within the i3-530 can do 1080p video adequately, I was rather sure it could handle some basic introductory level for the games of yore (here, “yore” referring to less than ten years).

The result?  If you can stand to not be working with the latest and greatest games; if you can deal with low resolutions, with most of the detail turned off.. then you have yourself a hell of a deal.

The Bad: “GRID” from Codemasters

Of the list I have compiled here, which is admittedly very short, GRID is probably about the worst performer of the bunch.  Released in 2007, it runs halfway reasonably on the Core i3-530, with the low quality preset, with additional settings then removed.  We’re then talking about 800×600 resolution, with an incredible amount of jagged edges that seem to about make the eyes bleed.

There could be a few reasons for the poor performance: it may be that there are specific graphical elements which are designed specifically to work best with NVIDIA or ATI graphics cards.  It could be that the underlying graphics engine is just not quite as tuned for the PC as it could be.  It also is certainly due in part to the fact that even with these lowest settings, the game still holds a lot of graphic complexity, in its textures and styling.

It’s also worth keeping in mind that my “bad” rating is only in response to running the game with what is essentially less than the minimum requirements.  As a racing game fan, even with the above considerations I’ve had a really wonderful time with the game as is.

Not great: “Street Fighter IV” from Capcom

SF4 is a step up in some ways from GRID.  It’s possible to disable more of the graphical effects, which lends towards decent framerates if the quality of the image isn’t as much of a concern.  800×600 is again the highest resolution that gives any sort of playable results, and even then most of the graphical options need to be disabled in order to keep gameplay running smoothly.  Even so, we’re talking about being able to experience and play a game that otherwise would be out of reach for an extra amount of cash.

Reasonable: “Defense Grid: The Awakening” from Hidden Path

Defense Grid is a tower defense game.  Graphics isn’t all that much of a concern here, since there aren’t quite as many crazy things going on inside the screen as in the other examples.  The Core i3-530 GPU works well enough at 1024×768 with a medium graphics setting.  It plays well and looks about as good as it needs to in order to provide the amount of entertainment you’d expect.

Stunning: “Team Fortress 2″ from Valve

TF2 runs on the Source engine from Valve; I haven’t tried other games that use Source, though for the example of TF2 the results are outstanding.  The Intel GPU handles this game stunningly well at 720p with graphics settings up towards the higher side of medium.  It looks great, and is incredibly fun and entertaining.

I did at one point experience a single instance where the screen got garbled up; I had to restart the game, and I haven’t seen it again since.  Steam is counting me at 6 hours of gameplay so far (which flew by, for what it’s worth).  I imagine that this, if it is a major issue, will be sorted out in patches at some point, so unless I hear any comments to the contrary it seems a non-issue.

Honestly, though, Valve is hereby a gold standard in how to make a game perform extremely well with limited resources.

Closing comments

YMMV (“your mileage may vary”) is about the most relevant comment as it pertains to any part of the above.  I am obviously not arguing that graphics cards are an obsolete quantity; however with so many articles out there blindly saying that a video card is a must, I wanted to put out a contrary opinion.  I’m not morally opposed to graphics cards, and if anything certain games as I’ve listed show their necessity.  Even so, graphics cards suck up extra power, and in certain cases can add a fair amount of heat and noise to a PC.  It is important to evaluate what exactly it is you want, and I hope these words can offer some help in arriving at a more informed decision.  Happy gaming, and do feel free to comment if you have more examples from your experiences.