René Rebe

After the scratchy iPhone 5 aluminum case I was seriously considering to finally try an Android phone. Most of the Android phones feel just extremely cheap and and do not even look good doing so, … Despite the likewise scratchy aluminum case the HTC One really looked sexy and promising. But a phone where the battery is even less changeable than in the iPhone? Thanks, but no thanks! … :-/ However, apparently due to supply chain constraints it very hard to get hands on, even less so buying one anyway.

Trying it out in a store, I also find Android confusing to use. The widget screen and settings are pretty cluttered and even browsing the internet did not feel so “snappy”. Sidenote: The HTC One screen in the shop was already broken, and the HTC promotion person did not look particularly “cultivated” (to say it friendly). I really wonder how they can showcast their product like that, … And when the screen is already broken at the demo unit in store it probably breaks likewise quickly (one one of the first drops) at home, hm?

For me this Android looks downright confusing to use, the settings and app screen are cluttered, but maybe that is the result of some HTC customization. Which brings us to what I think it the biggest Android problem: Every manufacture customizes some strange heck out of it, the result is an even more confusing experience going from one device to another. And the biggest problem? The lack of updates. Whether it are those customization that hold off updates, lack of motivation (planned obsolescence anyone?) or outright incompetence from the vendors. Unless you happen to have a device supported by Cyanogenmod, that is. The missing Android updates even from biggest manufactures (including Motorola, HTC, …) makes Android extreme unattractive to buy into.

Well, not that I was too interested about it, nor thinking about it, just accidentally stumbled over the MINI Connected system update: UPD01005.bin, a nice, plain tar archive:

SWIP_00000B97_003_005_005.xml
SWUP_00000B98_002_006_005.bin
SWUP_00000B98_003_005_005.bin
SWUP_00000B99_001_012_000.bin
SWUP_00000B99_003_005_004.bin

Which in turn are similar nice tar archives as well:

beschreibungstabelle.sgbm
Phone-2.6.5.tar
beschreibungstabelle.sgbm
Phone-3.5.5.tar
beschreibungstabelle.sgbm
MME-1.12.0.tar
post_deinst.scr
post_inst.scr
beschreibungstabelle.sgbm
MME-3.5.4.tar

Which -you can guess by now from the file extension- are nice tar archives again:

MME-1.12.0/
MME-1.12.0/HBMedia/
MME-1.12.0/HBMedia/db/
MME-1.12.0/HBMedia/db/mme_combined.sql
MME-1.12.0/HBMedia/qnx/
MME-1.12.0/HBMedia/qnx/etc/
MME-1.12.0/HBMedia/qnx/etc/post_starting_qdb.sh
MME-1.12.0/MANIFEST
MME-3.5.4/
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/bin/
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/bin/io-media-generic
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/lib/
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/lib/dll/
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/lib/dll/cipher-aes.so
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/lib/dll/iofs-hbextdrive.so
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/lib/dll/iofs-i2c-ipod.so
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/lib/dll/iofs-ipod.so
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/lib/dll/iofs-msdrm10.so
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/lib/dll/iofs-pfs.so
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/lib/dll/iofs-ser-ipod.so
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/lib/dll/iofs-usb-ipod.so
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/lib/dll/mme-imgprc-gf.so
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/lib/dll/mmedia/
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/lib/dll/mmedia/aac_parser.so
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/lib/dll/mmedia/audio_streamer.so
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/lib/dll/mmedia/audio_writer.so
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/lib/dll/mmedia/fildes_streamer.so
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/lib/dll/mmedia/media_streamer.so
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/lib/dll/mmedia/mp4_parser.so
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/lib/dll/mmedia/mpega_parser.so
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/lib/dll/mmedia/queue_filter.so
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/lib/dll/mmedia/ren_raac_decoder.so
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/lib/dll/mmedia/stream_reader.so
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/lib/dll/mmedia/tmpfile_streamer.so
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/lib/dll/mmedia/wav_parser.so
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/lib/dll/mmedia/wma9_decoder.so
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/lib/dll/mmedia/wma9_parser.so
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/lib/dll/mmedia/wms_control.so
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/lib/dll/mmedia/wms_streamer.so
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/lib/dll/mmedia/xing_mpega_decoder.so
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/lib/libaoi.so.1
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/lib/libmmedia.so.1
MME-3.5.4/HBMedia/qnx/lib/libmmfilter.so.1
MME-3.5.4/MANIFEST
Phone-2.6.5/
Phone-2.6.5/HBPhone/
Phone-2.6.5/HBPhone/exe/
Phone-2.6.5/HBPhone/exe/libbssservice.so
Phone-2.6.5/HBPhone/exe/libdmlservice.so
Phone-2.6.5/HBPhone/exe/libdsiservice.so
Phone-2.6.5/HBPhone/exe/libmediaservice.so
Phone-2.6.5/HBPhone/exe/libphoneservice.so
Phone-2.6.5/HBPhone/exe/libpimservice.so
Phone-2.6.5/MANIFEST
Phone-3.5.5/
Phone-3.5.5/HBPhone/
Phone-3.5.5/HBPhone/exe/
Phone-3.5.5/HBPhone/exe/libbssservice.so
Phone-3.5.5/HBPhone/exe/libdataservice.so
Phone-3.5.5/HBPhone/exe/libdmlservice.so
Phone-3.5.5/HBPhone/exe/libmediaservice.so
Phone-3.5.5/HBPhone/exe/libpdiparser.so
Phone-3.5.5/HBPhone/exe/libphoneservice.so
Phone-3.5.5/HBPhone/exe/libpimservice.so
Phone-3.5.5/HBPhone/exe/libsimservice.so
Phone-3.5.5/MANIFEST

Oh! Nice shared-obejct’s and Shell-scripts, for QNX, how handy! ;-)

Usually Mac OS X is a joy to use as things use to just work ™. However, sometimes -well- they just do not :-/ Recently I had a very mysterious issue in Moscow, Russia. Often WiFi would just work ™, however, sometimes that specific access point station would simply not show up at all in the network list. I kept resettings that AP point a couple of times and even started to reboot Mac OS X in misbelieve - what else should one do when that WiFi would not show up nor auto-connect again? More mysteriously that AP I kept resettings worked just fine with with plenty of iPhone’s and iPad’s and the like around. I started to really wonder what was wrong with my Mac when I noticed holding the option key to the boot chooser, that the recovery netbook WiFi selector would show that AP’s SSID network! Hah! I thought it must be some caching issue / plist corruption whatever that irritates the full Mac OS X network stack, but even a few more reboots and wiping of the network settings still made no difference. It was then when I noticed something strange was going on with the Wifi Country Code and thus allowed frequency channels (yeah, I got some inside knowledge, working on drivers and such).

Mar 18 19:53:25 retina kernel[0]: en0: 802.11d country code set to ‘TW’.
Mar 18 22:56:20 retina kernel[0]: en0: 802.11d country code set to ‘X3′.
Mar 18 22:56:21 retina kernel[0]: en0: 802.11d country code set to ‘TW’.
Mar 18 22:56:38 retina kernel[0]: en0: 802.11d country code set to ‘X3′.
Mar 18 22:56:40 retina kernel[0]: en0: 802.11d country code set to ‘TW’.
Mar 18 22:57:26 retina kernel[0]: en0: 802.11d country code set to ‘TW’.
Mar 18 22:59:11 retina kernel[0]: en0: 802.11d country code set to ‘TW’.
Mar 18 23:00:58 retina kernel[0]: en0: 802.11d country code set to ‘X3′.

TW? Taiwan? And what is X3? Rest of world or what??? Either does not sound particularly Russian, so where does it come from? Turns out in Mac OS X Lions 10.7 / 10.8 there is a command line WiFi scanner hidden in the Apple80211.framework:

$ /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport -s
SSID BSSID RSSI CHANNEL HT CC SECURITY (auth/unicast/group)
Xyz 01:23:45:67:89:a0 -83 13 Y TW WPA(PSK/TKIP/TKIP) WPA2(PSK/AES,TKIP/TKIP)
…

It reveled the three or so access points around all were broadcasting with a TW Country Code, obscure bits, nobody cares about, set in the Linux-based firmware once in Taiwan, probably a hardcoded C struct, and forgotten they are. And then all those forgotten bits and pieces lead to this user annoying behavior in the field. Thank you very much! :-/ Mac OS X picks up the mostly TW Country Code bits in the air, … and then concludes channel 13 is not valid, and, … your precious network never makes it into the higher levels of the network stack, nor the UI to choose from.

Given that we can not (too easily and legally) hack into those offending access points and alter the Country Code, how can we fix that? Turns out the access point had a nice sticker with username and password on the bottom side, which allowed me to login and notice it’s channel was set to “Auto”. This explains why sometimes the network worked for me, when the AP choose another channel than 13, … which allowed my MacBook to connect in the “TW” region.

A simply change from “Auto” to a channels with in the range that was not used around by other routers, and I had a WiFi connection happily ever after, …

I hope this helps, and educates not to broadcast random, and wrong settings thru the air!

What sets ExactScan apart from competition? Well, for one it certainly are the now about 400 built-in drivers for various professional document scanners, that due the lack of a vendor’s driver for Mac OS X would otherwise not function on an Apple Macintosh at all.

On the other hand it is also our high internal standards for code quality that translates to higher quality images and general scanner behavior over other scan applications, including Apple’s ImageCapture or the vendor’s own Windows software.

Case in point are our new drivers for Canon DR-series scanners. From our past experience with other scanners and drivers we knew some areas where we could improve quality and scan speed; and we continued to collaborate directly with Canon as well as carefully analyzing the bits and bytes of the Windows driver’s USB I/O. The result of this sheer endless work? The next update will drive Canon DR-series scanners slightly faster; and the auto-crop and de-skew as well as image quality will be even better as well!

Made in Berlin; Germany.

You got a Canon DR-series scanner, such as a DR-M140, DR-M160, DR-3010C, DR-6010C or DR-6030,C older, or never and like to use it on an Apple Mac(intosh)? Search no more!

ExactScan now comes with built-in drivers to supper a whole range of Canon DR-series scanners, no matter if they are a couple of years old - or brand new!

Simply plug in the Canon DR scanner USB cable to a free USB port of your Mac, download and lunch ExactScan and the feature rich document capture application will list the scanner and batch scan at high speed on your Mac! Using ExactScan Pro you can even scan with OCR to searchable PDF, use the digital imprinter, and rely on many more automatic detection, such as automatic detection of colors and text orientation.

The possibilities are endless.

Looks like I (at least these days) have a little more time for the famous tip of the week series: It is long known (at least should be), that proper use of manual transmission (in cars) can greatly influence fuel economy and reduce the gasoline consume. This is archived by not driving out each gear, and instead upshift “quickly” into the next higher gear.

At least in Germany this is even standard teaching during driving school. Using drive-now car-sharing BMW Mini Cooper in Berlin for some time now I was wondering about the higher than expected gasoline consume of up to 10 liter per 100 km in central Berlin’s stop-and-go traffic. With some careful monitoring of the momentarily and average petrol consume in the digital display of the dashboard I figured out, that I upshifted too quickly for the Mini. Turned out that not up-shifting too early and rather going a little over the 2000 rpm mark brought down the consume from ~10 liter to something below 7 liter per 100km, …

In case you want to do something for the environment (and your wallet - or in reverse order) some conscious driving, monitoring and adaption can easily save some 30%, or more, …

Sorry, those of you with automatic (torque converter) transmissions are not in the fuel saving game anyway, …

Your milage may vary.

Four SAMSUNG SpinPoint T166 series, HD501LJ and more than 4 years in a 8-core server, here are the raw error rates:

1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0×000f 100 100 051 2
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0×000f 253 253 051 0
13 Read_Soft_Error_Rate 0×000e 100 100 000 479105152
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0×0033 253 253 010 0
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0×0032 253 253 000 0
187 Reported_Uncorrect 0×0032 253 253 000 0

1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0×000f 100 100 051 6
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0×000f 253 253 051 0
13 Read_Soft_Error_Rate 0×000e 100 100 000 633936205
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0×0033 253 253 010 0
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0×0032 253 253 000 0
187 Reported_Uncorrect 0×0032 253 253 000 0

1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0×000f 100 100 051 0
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0×000f 253 253 051 0
13 Read_Soft_Error_Rate 0×000e 100 100 000 494533244
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0×0033 253 253 010 0
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0×0032 253 253 000 0
187 Reported_Uncorrect 0×0032 253 253 000 0

1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0×000f 097 097 051 54549
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0×000f 253 253 051 0
13 Read_Soft_Error_Rate 0×000e 100 100 000 844820954
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0×0033 098 098 010 20
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0×0032 098 098 000 20
187 Reported_Uncorrect 0×0032 253 253 000 4194449

Fail?

Update: Running “dd if=/dev/zero, …” on the fourth actually bumped the reallocated sector count even further:

5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0×0033 098 098 010 21
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0×0032 098 098 000 21

Selectively overwriting defect sectors?

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=512 count=1 seek=Y

Where X is the storage device, and Y the LBA sector address, …

Update 2: Some manual sector write, to reallocate loops later:

# 1 Extended offline Completed: read failure 30% 34103 663074301
# 2 Extended offline Completed: read failure 30% 34101 663073326
# 3 Extended offline Completed: read failure 30% 34084 664843895
# 4 Extended offline Completed: read failure 30% 34080 561288851
# 6 Short offline Completed: read failure 90% 34007 409641893
# 7 Extended offline Completed: read failure 90% 32227 791207080
# 8 Short offline Completed: read failure 90% 32227 791207080

I should just throw away this piece of s**t, right?

With all the reviews about Bulldozer performance, I wonder how much is to be attributed to Intel’s compiler not generating latest, greatest, vectorized code for AMD CPUs, …

I still believe that Bulldozer delivers excellent server performance, especially when it comes to hardware assisted virtualization, and that desktop performance would look better with unbiased benchmarks, (and a better “core package” aware Window process scheduler) …

I got quite some CPU cycle requirements. For some time now I’m waiting for AMD to deliver sub 100 Watt (e.g. 95W) CPUs, but unfortunately the 95W editions of the Phenom II X6 1055T and 1065T are nearly impossible to come by (except you are an OEM ordering thousands of them). So I got a test system with the regular, 125W 1055T, and it just keeps running too hot.

While I’m still waiting for the Bulldozer to appear, and in a 95W flavor no less, I decided Sunday is a great day to experiment with undervolting the aging, hot silicon I got at hand. Actually it turned out the beast of a silicon I got can be undervolted by huge margins, from the factory settings:

NbVid NbDid CpuVid CpuDid CpuFid UNb CpuMult UCpu PCore
P-State 0: 32 0 6 0 17 1150.0mV 16.50000 1475.0mV 23305mW
P-State 1: 32 0 14 0 12 1150.0mV 14.00000 1375.0mV 20625mW
P-State 2: 32 0 18 0 6 1150.0mV 11.00000 1325.0mV 15370mW
P-State 3: 32 0 22 1 14 1150.0mV 7.50000 1275.0mV 10838mW
P-State 4: 32 0 26 1 0 1150.0mV 4.00000 1225.0mV 6738mW

Down to so far stable:
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You got a Fujitsu fi-series scanner, such as a fi-5120, fi-6130, fi-6140, older, or never and like to use it on an Apple Mac(intosh)? Search no more!

ExactScan now comes with built-in drivers to supper a whole range of Fujitsu fi-series scanners, no matter if they are a couple of years old - or brand new!

Simply plug in the Fujitsu fi-scanner USB cable to a free USB port of your Mac, download and lunch ExactScan and the feature rich document capture application will list the scanner and batch scan at high speed on your Mac! Using ExactScan Pro you can even scan with OCR to searchable PDF, use the digital imprinter, and rely on many more automatic detection, such as automatic detection of colors and text orientation.

The possibilities are endless.