René Rebe

So you want to upgrade the quite slow Toshiba, MK1235GSL (4200rpm, quickly auto head parking, so that (any OS) UI freezes on FS object access until the disk spun up again).

Fortunately it is pretty easy to open, disassemble the Nokia Booklet. The keyboard can be flipped open by pressing back 2 clips with a plastic (like credit) card, and the keyboard sides with either a tiny plastic tool, or a fingernail.

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…but Sony indeed removed the OtherOS functionality with the v3.21 PS3 firmware update on April the 1st. So in order to use the primary function I purchased the 64bit PowerPC and Cell equipped small form factor workstation, I now have to carefully avoid to ever update the firmware again. Oh wait, there still is George Hotz to help out.

I’m crossing my fingers if that allows me to update to the more energy efficient PS3 Slim.

Certainly not the smartest move from Sony, to highly motivate some thousand, if not ten thousands, programmers -certainly some of the brightest minds, using it for super-computers in university labs- to regain access. Maybe even beyond the former restricted access, but now to the RSX, one more SPE, or Slim, as well.

From the Porsche designed VW Beetle to the modern – the Porsche museum in Stuttgart, Germany is definitely worth a look:

… more in the whole gallery

In Stuttgart you will also find the Mercedes museum, too. Unfortunately I did not yet have a free time slot to get there. However, I got some good shoots when they had a special 100 anniversary exhibition in a shopping mall in Berlin:

… more in the whole gallery

score 147
Microsoft Windows YlmF Ghost XP SP2 YE3.0 (#205409)
Vortex86 SoC @ 999 MHz (1 processor)

score 191
GBT___ AWRDACPI (#218595)
ALADDIN5
AMD-K6 3D+ @ 451 MHz (1 processor)

score 200
INSYDE CS553x__ (#43975)
Geode Integrated by AMD PCS @ 498 MHz (1 processor)

score 209
Linux PC (VIA Nehemiah) (#151851)
VIA C3, Nehemiah @ 999 MHz (1 processor)

score 464
Compaq Compaq Tablet PC TC1000 (#166888)
Transmeta Crusoe TM5800 @ 997 MHz (1 processor)

score 517
Linux PC (VIA C7 Processor 1500MHz) (#228756)

score 956
Linux PC (Transmeta Efficeon(tm) Processor TM8000) (#54706)
Transmeta Efficeon TM8000 @ 1.60 GHz (1 processor)

Some CPUs, such as the Vortex86 (formerly SiS 550) are particularly bad on the performance per MHz ratio, and the VIA C3 and C7 are not much better. For me it is surprising to see how well the old and “Code morphing” Transmeta CPUs perform for their time.

Some more results are also quoted in my Atom performance post.

Elsewhere I read others, like RedHat’s Fedora, SuSE’s OpenSUSE are dropping support for PowerPC – like Debian retired sparc32 in 2007.

I’d like to invite those, who are affected, to the T2 SDE Project, an unencumbered OpenSource project targeting all those architectures, without any plan to discarding support for any of those anytime soon.

We add, don’t take™.

I just read that Engadget now has an App for everything. Every crapgadget that is. From the iPhone over WebOS, to Blackberry and now Android.

I wonder why the heck one needs a custom App for a web-site, news-site that is? Do the mobile browser suck that much? Or is HTML no fun? However, they still got to maintain their plain, good, old HTML version (for now) anyway. With all that apps, that certainly is a maintenance nightmare^N.

Strange new world.

Just my own quick notes for SSL cert generation for use wit CAcert. Mostly just because too many instructions on the web run over many pages with thousands of words, … :-(

Generating the private key:

openssl genrsa -out key.key 2048

Generating the Certificate Signing Request, CSR:

openssl req -new -key key.key -subj /CN=example.com -out key.csr

The CSR is now provided to your signing authority, from which you get the resulting certificate, which you save to something like key.crt.

Some software require the key and the cert to resist in a single file, you can simple cat them together:

cat key.{key,crt} > key.pem

Just exported some RAW files (so regular Windows users can view them without the special Vendor’s RAW software):

for f in ../*CR2; do f2=”${f##*/}”; econvert -i “$f” -–gamma 1.1 -–contrast .25 -–colorspace rgb8 -–quality 93 -o “${f2/.CR2/.JPG}”; done

Among other things we ordered six identical shelves for our living room book library from OTTO’s pretty polished yourHome.de online store.

However, Houston, we’ve got a problem: From this six boxes of shelf modules, three sides had misplaced holes. Just look at this:

In contrast, I have not yet experienced something that grave with IKEA.

We even got some more stories to tell just from this single order. However, I first wait how our reclamations are handled. Stay tuned …

I’ve been abroad for the last weeks, so I got to taste some stuff I usually don’t have at home. Somehow Mövenpick marmalade always tastes a little synthetic. Don’t know why hotels and such often serve it. Must be the brand name, …