Bit-Shift.Net

Every once in a while I would notice certain web sites taking a long time to load. I had blamed it on network congestion and my

less than optimal Internet connection. But a short while ago I upgraded my Internet connection to Verizon's FIOS. Having previously had FIOS I knew I shouldn't have any more issues with network congestion.

After the upgrade I set about doing the usual network performance tests. Once satisfied I was getting the bandwidth I had purchased I set about my normal routine. But even with the upgraded Internet connection I was still noticing some lagginess on certain web sites. It was tolerable so I didn't pay much attention to it.

A few days ago, LifeHacker blog, ran an article about a new feature in Windows Vista called Auto-Tuning. The idea behind this feature is that in the days of old, modems and network equipment could only handle receiving a certain amount of data before they became overwhelmed, this is referred to as the receive window. Newer networking equipment is able to handle receiving considerable larger amounts of information without becoming overwhelmed.

According to the Windows Core Networking blog, the Auto-Tuning feature takes certain conditions into account like bandwidth, network delay and application delay and automatically adjusts this window to maximize performance. The problem lies in that older firewalls & routers can't properly handle the automatic resizing of the receiving window and cause considerable slow downs or application crashes.

To correct the problem, there are a number of steps you can take:

If your connection from a Vista machine appears slow or hung, here are some steps to isolate the cause:

• First, make sure that your firewall and router can support window scaling. Some devices from Linksys, Cisco, NetApp, SonicWall, Netgear, Checkpoint, D-Link were reported as having problems with window scaling. (Some of the incompatible devices are given here. You can check with the manufacturer or run the connectivity diagnostic suite (especially, TCP High Performance Test) provided by Microsoft to determine your gateway device’s compliance.
• Second, check with the manufacturer if a firmware update has been issued for your device that can fix the problem. Replace the problematic device or update the firmware as suggested by the manufacturer. If the router cannot be replaced or if it the device is remote (e.g., a firewall of your ISP or corporation)
• Third, If the problem still persists, you can restrict autotuning by running “netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=restricted” from the command prompt. We have found that restricted mode will often allow some of the benefits of autotuning with a number of problematic devices.
• Lastly, if all else fails, in order to disable this feature, run "netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled".
• (In order to re-enable autotuning, run “netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal”.)

You'll have to run the "netsh" commands from a command prompt with elevated privileges. To do so, open the start menu and type "cmd" into the search bar. Then right-click on the cmd program and select Run as Administrator.

It seems every where you turn these days you are encouraged to click. "Click here to apply", "click through to save", "click on the monkey to win an iPod". Since its introduction, the computer mouse has been firmly entrenched in our minds. The mouse has even become a metaphor for the incredibly simple, "setting up the firewall was as easy as point and click."

While this may not even occur to members of the younger generation, I grew up with the tried and true CLI (that's command line interface for you youngin's out there). The only impedance to progress what how fast you could type and how fast the computer could process input. It was natural, efficient. Although with applications like computer games and web browsers, the mouse is indispensable. But some days despite all the utility it provides, some days I don't want to be bothered with pointing and clicking.

For those that feel the same, the IE team has posted on their blog a list of keyboard shortcuts for navigating around in IE6 and IE7. The post lists shortcuts for all the common navigation tasks like going back a page, scrolling, stopping the current request and closing the window. The post also lists a few power user tips, like focusing on the navigation bar and opening the right-click 'context' menu. A handy reference to have around when your feeling not so handy.

A short while ago I was debating on whether to purchase a HP MediaSmart Server running Windows Home Server or build a new workstation for doing development at home. I chose to build a new workstation and I'm glad I did. Microsoft announced recently that they have reproduced a defect in Windows Home Server where using certain programs to access media stored on your server may result in unrecoverable file corruption.

From the KB article:

When certain programs are used to edit or transfer files that are stored on a Windows Home Server-based computer that has more than one hard drive, the files may become corrupted. Microsoft is aware of only a very small percentage of users who have confirmed instances of this issue and believes that most users are unlikely to be affected. Microsoft has established that this issue may occur when one of the following programs is used to edit, transfer, and save files to the home server:

•	Windows Vista Photo Gallery
•	Windows Live Photo Gallery
•	Microsoft Office OneNote 2007
•	Microsoft Office OneNote 2003
•	Microsoft Office Outlook 2007
•	Microsoft Money 2007
•	SyncToy 2.0 Beta
•	Intuit QuickBooks
•	uTorrent

Apparently this flaw only affects people who have more than one drive in their media server, which includes any self-respecting geek. The problem lies in the way that Windows Home Server handles transfering and balancing files across multiple drives. Microsoft reports that a fix is in development and will is planned for release in July 2008. Until then, all you media server guys just sit tight and use Windows Explorer or XCopy to move files to and fro.

This past April I took the plunge that so many young people anticipate, dread and dream about all at the same time. I bought a house. It's a 3 story town house with a single car garage. Not the Taj Mahal by any stretch but my car and bike fit in the garage, I have a place to sit while I eat my meals and I'm totally in love with my next door neighbor (yes she knows and the feelings are mutual). And, the house came pre-wired with CAT5E. Most rooms have two ports, while the others only have one. In total, there are 11 ports throughout the house.

When I first moved in and saw a patch panel in the closest in one of the master bedrooms, the computer geek in my instantly though, "I need a wiring closet!". Unfortunately when you buy a house, you also have to furnish a house. When I moved in I had a bed and dresser to my name (I moved all my worldly possession in under 3 hours and most of that was driving).  But the idea never wandered far from my mind and a few weeks ago I finally got all the necessary hardware together.

For handling all the network connections I chose the Netgear GS116 desktop gigabit switch. It was fairly inexpensive after rebates from Netgear and Paypal, had enough ports to handle the job and had the mounting holes I needed to secure it to the metal plate that covers the patch panel. The router, a D-Link DIR-625,  I have had for almost a year. I bought this router after my Linksys died and my friend Greg gave it a fairly glowing review and I must say I'm 100% satisfied with it.

Up till I finished the install, my wiring closet would probably garner a top ten spot in a worst installation contest. I had the cover of the patch panel off and power cords and CAT5 running up to a shelf where my wireless router sat routing my packets, blissfully unaware of the squalor conditions in which it lived. Every time I walked into my office, I saw the eye sore that was my network installation which motivated me all the more to finish the installation.

Now being an engineer, I couldn't just throw everything together with chewing gum and bailing wire, I needed a plan or a template rather. My plan was to mount the switch and router to the metal plate that covers the patch panel and run the CAT5 wires through the plate to the patch panel. The next major hurdle was how could I layout where everything would be mounted and where the wires would be run in a fashion so that everything would look great and I would drill 50 holes unnecessarily trying to get everything lined up. Back in high school, I took a class on drafting using AutoCAD and thinking back, that seemed like the best option for creating my template as it would allow me to draw with the precision I needed when laying out where all the holes would be drilled.

After about a month of tweaking the templates so that everything lined up just how I wanted it I was ready to drill the holes and mount the hardware. To make sure that all the CAT5 cable lined up in an aesthetically pleasing way, I used zip ties to secure the wires, which meant I had a lot of holes to drill. After drilling, I used a metal file to ground down the rough spots and got the plate ready to install the grommets that will protect all the wiring from sharp edges.

As I suspected, the hardware mounted right up with a minimal amount of coercion. The next time consuming chore was crimping all the CAT5. I had the 11 ports from the switch to the patch panel, a cable connecting the switch to the router and then a final cable connecting the router to the world. Amazingly enough, I only had to re-do one cable. With all the wires run and the hardware mounted, I re-attached the plate to the patch panel and proceeded to surf. I have yet to run any bandwidth tests as I only have one gigabit enabled computer.

So there you have it. I have gigabit running through my home which will come in very handy when I build my home theater PC or buy an Xbox 360, which ever I decide to do. And as an added bonus, since I run a home based business, I can write the switch off as a business expense.

ComputerWorld is running an article listing 20 must have extensions for the Firefox web browser. Extensions for Firefox are small add-on modules, written by the Firefox team or independent developers, that (usually) improve the behavior of Firefox.

The extensions from the article I already use are:

• GreaseMonkey -  Allows you to customize the way a webpage displays using small bits of JavaScript.  Hundreds of scripts, for a wide variety of poular sites, are already available at Userscripts.org. I recommend the HTTP-> HTTPS redirector.
• IE Tab - Once installed, it places a small icon in your status bar. Clicking this icon swaps out the rendering engine from Firefox's to Internet Explorer's.
• FireBug - Allows you to examine and tweak the HTML, CSS and JavaScript contained in a page, all on the fly. This is a great tool for any web developer.

One of the extensions I've come to love that is not listed in the article is TabMixPlus. This add-on enhances the tabbed browsing experience of Firefox with features like controlling tab focus, duplicating tabs and a full-featured session manager with crash recovery that can save and restore combinations of opened tabs and windows.

With features like these and the ability to add pretty much any feature you can dream of, it's no wonder that IE is feeling the heat from Firefox.

Microsoft recently released Windows Vista for public consumption. Over the past few months there has been a log of hub bub over whether you should upgrade to Vista and if so, which version do you choose. Unlike when Windows XP was released the choice was simple. But Vista is a serious commitment. Using Vista to it's fullest potential often requires purchasing new hardware as well as a complicated licensing scheme (it's rumored if you upgrade from XP to vista you forfeit your XP license). Not to mention expensive (Vista Ultimate, the OS of choice for enthusiasts, is likely to cost $300 for a single license).

Recently I stumbled upon this simple flow chart that will let you know definitively whether or not you should upgrade to Windows Vista. Just start at the top of the chart, answering yes or no to the questions asked and you will arrive at whether you should upgrade to Vista or stay with your current OS. Choices, choices... Is Vista in your future?

At my company I've become the go to guy for installers and the like. Naturally one of my jobs is doing builds in visual studio for including in those installers. As we write security software we always sign our assemblies to prevent tampering.

For anyone that has had this job you know that signing assemblies is a fairly trivial task. You change the AssemblyInfo file to point to your private key pair, set delay sign to false and off you go. In a matter of minutes you have a set of fully signed assemblies to deploy to your hearts content.

The problem lies in when your solutions start to get large, say greater than 8 projects. That 8 AssemblyInfo files to update. Since you all work in perfect worlds where builds go out on schedule and everything works magically I'm sure this has never happened to you. Imagine you receive word from a customer your software, which is in production, has a defect. *GASP* sound the alarm, drop everything and jump! Your team mobilizes into seek and destroy mode to find the defect and fix it. But you need to get the fix to the customer in a easy to deploy fashion. So you whip up a patch installer throw in the requisite assemblies and off it goes.

As your customer is happily installing your fix you start to wonder, did I update all the assembly info files in my solution?? Maybe I missed one. Just as you go check your code your customer calls back stating the installation failed due to a signed assembly problem. AHHHHH! If only there was a way to update one AssemblyInfo file and have it affect all projects. Well there is!

To begin solving this problem we turn to some built in functionality in Visual Studio. In Visual Studio there is a concept of linking files. The idea is you have one common file, an AssemblyInfo file in this case, and you link all your projects to that one file. So you change the file in one place and it is affected in all projects. Slick eh? The one exception to this is web projects. I'm guessing because of how web projects are built and ran (from temporary ASP.NET) you can't link files to them. To access the menu in the Add Existing Item dialog, click on the small arrow to the right of the Open button.

Now having a common file is really handy, but what if you type the path to the private key pair wrong or forget to turn off delay sign. Well you're in luck, by using #IF/#ENDIF statements you can control assembly signing simply by changing the configuration.

To make Visual Studio take advantage of this you will need to edit the project settings and define the symbols to switch on. The DEBUG symbol is already defined by default, so all you will need to do is define the RELEASE symbol. This is accomplished by opening the project properties, selecting Configuration Properties, selecting Build, and adding the word RELEASE to the list of semi-colon separated list for Conditional Compilation Constants.

When you put this all together you can control whether you delay sign or fully sign you assembly by changing one option in your development environment. By selecting Release from the configuration drop down the code in the AssemblyInfo file that controls signing is switched to use fully sign the assembly.

As a software developer for a company that supplies online banking and anti-fraud software for some of the nations largest financial institutions, quality is my main focus. But being a human being, I sometimes make mistakes and defects get introduced into my software. There are lots of reasons why defects end up in products (my software in this case), and I think the most prevalent of these reasons is bad assumptions about how a particular feature will be used.

How does my company release such high quality software you ask? By having talented quality assurance engineers like my friend Brent. No matter how well I think I've thought something through, how good a design I think I've come up with, he finds a use case I never thought and boom, my software explodes. Which is most often due to an assumption I made that he didn't.

Where am I going with this you ask? Gizmodo has a link to a YouTube video demonstrating how to trick certain model vending machines into giving you something for free. This video demonstrates how not only did the engineers make a poor assumption but the QA people that are paid to find these kind of wrong assumptions and brow beat the engineers with them missed it as well. Now I'm not condoning theft by any means, but you have to hand it to these guys. By dismissing a simple assumption that the machine would always be able to deliver the product, they were able to trick the machine into return their money after they had purchased a soda.

Watch the video here.

I don't know how many times this has happened to me. I'm am sitting at work and suddenly I remember I have to do something online at some web site that requires a password. I have the password securely stored on my home computer. But a fat lotta good that does me sitting at work. Running home is out of thequestion because it'll take me an hour and a half round trip.

If only there was a way I could log onto my computer securely from work. If only I had a VPN at my disposal. I looked at getting a firewall that supported hardware VPNs from companies such as Sonicwall but those solutions were expensive which is not at all what I'm looking for. Recently on LifeHacker I found a post for some zero configuration VPN software from a company called Applied Networking Inc. called Hamachi.

The way the system works is really simple yet amazingly functional and secure. When you log on the first time you are given a unique IP address from Hamachi's pool of IPs. This address is guarenteed to be unique and will not collide with any IP you may already have. Also during the initial connection and on all subsequent connections a handshake is done where the server authenticates itself to the client and vice versa, then the server acts as an intermediary, negotiating sessions between peers of the VPN.

Once you are logged into Hamachi you have the option of joining an existing network or creating your own for others to join. When someone has joined your VPN it will be like they are plugged directly into the hub or switch located in your home or office. To keep random people from joining your VPN network you must specify a password (so make it a strong one, atlesat 12 character alphanumeric with mixed case and punctuation. If you don't trust any password that you make up you can use an online password generator such as WinGuides).

One of the things I like about this software when I was first researching it is their security model is open, so anybody can review it (which could be a weakness if a flaw is found and not acted upon) and make comments about its strengths and weaknesses. I like this approach because it allows people that know a great deal about applications of cryptography to make comments and give feedback about this implementation making the product much more secure.

Download the software here.

Hydrogen, everyone has heard of it. It is the first element on the periodic table of elements, our chemistry teaches blew up balloons filled with it and we know that when you combine two atoms of hydrogen with one atom of oxygen you get water. But what else can you do with Hydrogen? How about power your car with it.

My friend Greg Hughes posted about BMW testing their first 7-series hybrid car that runs on hydrogen or gasoline. With gas prices on the rise and consumers clamoring for more efficient vehicles that won't sacrifice the performance we have grown accustomed to, alternative power sources for vehicles has been a hot topic for the past few years. This has led to advances in battery technology for hybrid gas/electric vehicles such as the Toyota Prius. A favorite alternative of mine is vehicles that run on alcohol, partially because of friends of mine that raced alcohol powered go-karts, but I digress. GM has been leading the push for a technology they call FlexFuel, which is a blend of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline.

But what about hydrogen, where does it fit into this picture. Although, not as popular as electric cars or ethanol hybrids, there is a strong force behind the user of hydrogen for fuel simple because of the ease of creating it. Unlike ethanol, which requires vegetable waste (mainly corn) to produce or electric hybrids which store the energy from gas vehicles that is normally wasted, hydrogen can be produced for almost no cost from the most abundant substance on earth, water using solar or wind energy. There companies working to produce kits to convert your strictly gasoline burning car, truck or SUV to be a hybrid vehicle that can burn either gasoline or hydrogen. This is really cool stuff. United Nuclear is advertising a kit that allows your vehicle to run on hydrogen, and when the computer senses that the hydrogen is running out it switches back to running on gasoline. Tell me thats not cool!

One catch that United Nuclear does bring up is about the combustibility of hydrogen compared to gasoline may damage engines running greater than 9.5:1 compression ratios, e.g. turbocharged, supercharged or high performance naturally aspirated engines.

Today, as I was picking up my dry cleaning I watched the attendent swipe my card through the reader and enter in the amount then asked me to enter my PIN. When I entered my PIN and hit enter I began to wonder what happens to that information as it's whisked out onto the wire on it's way to my bank for authorization. Is it encrypted in any form, is my PIN hashed before being sent, or as I suspected in the most likely answer, is the data sent over the wire in plain text. Hey, I work in information security, these are the things that I worry about.

Well it turns out my third theory was correct. An article over at The Register talks about a group of scam artists in Thailand that stole credit card information using wiretap equipment, then smuggled the information to Malaysia for encoding on to phony cards. According to the Thai police, an estimated $1.59M dollars was fraudulently charged over a 6 month period while an additional $9.5M in charges is still being investigated.

Another thing that concerns me is that some of these credit card machines don't even use phone lines anymore, they have connections to the internet for performing authorizations. Ideally, these machines would connect to the credit transaction clearinghouse via an encrypted VPN, but given the history of financial services lack of security, I doubt that is the case.

Picture this, your cruising down the highway, top down, sun shining, radio cranked up. Then a song comes on the radio that defines the moment. Later that day you try to explain the song to a friend in an attempt to find out who sings it. But no matter how much you try, you can't hum that guitar riff to save your life. Well frett no more, Lifehacker.com posted an article about a music service that allows you to search for that song.

Yes.com allows you to search by radio call letters or zip code. The site then displays all songs played on that station for the previous 24 hours. So the next time you are cruising down the road on an idle tuesday and that perfect song comes on, all you need to remember is the station and time and your all set.

In a surprising move Samsung, a maker of many kind of electronics including mobile phones, has banned one of their products from being brought onto company property. The SCH-B570 is an mobile phone that Samsung produces with an crazy 8GB storage capacity. But Samsung is worried about some disgruntled or greedy employee using one of these phones to steal Intellectual Property (IP) from the company.

This is an interesting move where a company bans one of its own products in an attempt to protect it's IP. With a move like this you have to ask yourself, will banning a cell phone really going to solve anything. With higher capacity flash drives, MP3 players and the ability to email for that matter, stealing IP is pretty easy.

At my company we have very strict rules about attaching external and unauthorized devices to company equipment and with good reason. I work in security in the online banking space and a leak of any information or IP could spell disaster for someone or a family and thats not something I ever want to have to face.

Read about it here. (Article requires registration.)

When web mail first hit the Internet, way back when, it was a pretty revolutionary thing. Now you could have access to your e-mail where ever you were. Over the years lots of places started offering web e-mail accounts for free, but with limited storage.

Then enters Google and not to be outdone offers free web e-mail with TONS of storage. But something was missing. I was always email myself to remind me of something I had to do. But not anymore. Google has just announced their web calendar. It integrates with your gmail account, you can add friends calendars or public calendars that support the iCal format, and if you so desire can allow it to be search-able on Google.

Check it out here.

Remember back when single core CPUs where king? Man those were the days. Now we've got hyper threading and dual core CPUs at the top of the stack. And for all purposes, a dual core CPU should be more than sufficient. But what if its not? What if you do DNA modeling simulations in your spare time. Well Azul Systems has just the chips for you.

Azul has plans to integrate 48 cores onto a single chip, expected out next year. The company currently has a 24 core chip out but expects to double that. With their new chip, Azul's computer appliance will be able to offer 768 way symmetric multiprocessing. Slick! You'll never play video games the same way again.

Read about it here.

Arstechnica.com is running an interesting story on how the number of high school and college bound students being caught cheating using cell phones is on the rise. While the number of incidents per 1500 written tests is still relatively low it still causes concern for educators as students seem to still prefer more traditional methods of cheating.

I recall when I was in high school that the TI-92 was expressly forbidden to be used during more important exams such as your ACTs or SATs because it was capable of wireless transmissions. Curbing the rise of SMS cheating seems simple enough. Just don't let cell phones into the exam room. I think it would be pretty apparent when a student was trying to text a friend and ask what is the derivative of a fourth order polynomial...

Read the article here.

How many legal ways are there to get a full Windows desktop license? What does the Windows Desktop volume license cover? Are OEM license transferable? If you know the answers to these questions and have a valid US shipping address then Microsoft wants to give you a free gift. Simply go to Microsoft's website fill out the information and answer a few questions (HINT: 2, true, true true) and your off to the races. The once catch is you need a passport account, but those are free too :)

The drive contains all sorts of valuable FAQs and licensing information to help keep you legit.

To get your free flash drive go here and click on the 'Get Yours!' link on the right side of the screen.

I don't know about you, but when I was growing up, I never knew what I wanted to do when I grew up. I never had the "struck by a holy 2x4 and now I want to be a fireman" Epiphany. But as time went out I was drawn more and more to technology. Not sure what it was that interested me, maybe it was the sense of the unknown and therefore all those late nights spent browsing the internet and learning about my computer appealed to the adventurer in me.

Needless to say I'm glad I chose this career path. According to CNN Money, .Net developers are among the top 5 highest in demand for jobs these days, the other job they make mention of is Quality Assurance engineers. When I was going to school, the software engineering program I was enrolled in was heavily influenced by Microsoft. While we learned all the basics like UML and patterns and things like that, the tools and technology we used were primarily Microsoft products. So naturally when .Net came out, we were all over that like white on rice. At first I was concerned that I might be educating myself into a corner, but as time went on I found out how valuable those skills I learned really were.

So what do I want to do when I grow up? Well I still can't answer that, mainly because I don't think I'm ever going to grow up. But I really like what I do now, which is .Net development for Corillian Corporation in their security department. The job is very challenging and I work with a lot of very smart people which allows me to learn a lot about online security, applications of cryptography and even a little bit of computer forensics.

The screen shot in the previous blog post was created using a cool little app written in C# called Cropper. It allows you to capture any part of the screen simply by dragging the opaque window around and hitting enter. The interface is very simple and intuitive to use. The software allows you to output to various file formats in a folder you specify or output directly to a printer. As someone that also creates documentation for work complete with screenshots, this is MUCH better than the "print screen/paint route".

Highly recommended. Grag it here.

For anyone who is interested I have ZERO invitations available for the beta of Windows Live Messenger, aka MSN Messeneger 8.0. This is part of the new Live Family of application Microsoft is putting out.

The new version of messenger contains alot of cool enhancements like folder sharing and a slick new UI that looks like some really talanted artists that think like first graders were let loose with a stack of crayons ( I mean that in a nice way).

If your interested, send me an email at the link on the left and please tell me which email address you'd like the invitation sent to and maybe a little bit about yourself.

Its first come first serve, get'em while their hot!

I've been a increasingly less satisfied customer of Verizon Wireless for just over a year now. My main gripe with Verizon is their lack of coverage in areas where all my friends had good to excellent service (this went both ways, but usually ended up on the non-Verizon side). The biggest frustration was when I started snowboarding. Verizon has HORRIBLE service at Mt Hood Meadows. Case in point: I had become separated and was trying to contact my compatriots one very clear and sunny day at the mountain. I figured I'd get really good reception if I went as high as I could, which just so happens to be Cascade Express. So there I stand with miles of visibility and pretty good signal reception showing on the phone, granted it was analog signal but hey... I dialed the number and hit send, then I waited. Silence... After about 5 seconds the phone would beep loudly and display an error simple stating call failed. What the hell...I turn off the phone and turn it back on. Try again, same result. Then I fiddle with the roaming options, again no dice. At this point I was getting pretty frustrated and decided that I'd had enough.

I have a friend with T-Mobile and she is the only person I snowboard with that consistently gets good service at the mountain so I decided to give them a try. And sure enough, first day on the mountain with my new phone during a pretty heavy snowfall I get a call. Sweet!! Its from a pet grooming shop saying my dog is ready to pick up. Thats great, but I don't own a dog. Oh Well. My new phone works at the mountain, mission accomplished.

Oh ya, which phone did I buy you ask? The Samsung t-809. This phone hit store shelves around the second week of December and from the reading I did on various cell phones on sites such as Gizmodo and Engadget, everyone was in agreement that this phone was awesome and they were all going to buy it when it became available. They were right. The screen on this phone is absolutely gorgeous. Paired with the 1.3MegaPixel camera makes for some pretty decent phone pictures. The phone also supports Micro SD cards. If you haven't seen them, they fit on the tip of our finger. The phone also has bluetooth support, quad band GSM, SMS, MMS, and a host of other features. And did I mention the screen is amazing!

Check out more specs here.

Microsofts Automotive Business Unit announced the release of Windows Automotive 5.0 at The Microsoft Windows Automotive Conference 2005.

From the press release, "Windows Automotive 5.0 provides the automotive industry with a powerful, flexible software platform to create an array of cutting-edge in-vehicle solutions."

The system touts such features as an enhanced user interface toolkit and expanded virtual memory support for the creation of complex 3-D graphics and advanced navigational displays. Also mentioned are enhanced power management and faster cold boot times for increased performance.

"Based on the robust, real-time embedded operating system Windows CE 5.0, Windows Automotive 5.0 contains the building blocks necessary to integrate with off-board services, including those offering real-time traffic updates, directions to the cheapest gas in town, turn-by-turn navigation and more." And with support for 802.11, Bluetooth, USB and other common standards the possibilities are limited only by your imagination.

Being a software engineer and an auto enthusiast, designing an in-car system to play music, movies and other media all while making calls on my phone via bluetooth and following google maps directions to a car event, etc... has always been something I've wanted to do. Now with the new version of Windows Automotive and its ease of use I may finally be able to find the time to do just that.

Microsoft has release a few videos to demonstrate some of the possibilties. Watch them here.

I'm a HUGE music lover. Rock, rap, techno, classical and yes even some country (but not very much). I can't live with out music. So naturally I like to have my music with me whether I'm working out or just plain working. Unfortunately, taking my wide variety of music with me to work of the gym has always been a problem. At the gym I just put up with whatever they were playing over the PA, and at work I compensated by bringing in DVDs of music (I work in the security department of an internet banking company, so music on the computer is a BIG no no). Recently though I became fed up listening to the limited selection of tunes I had with me so I decided to finally break down and buy an iPod. And I haven't regretted it once.

I asked several friends and co-workers what their opinions were on the various models and the consensus was to buy an iPod nano. Uhh huh, I'd fill 4GB in about three minutes. So I decided to buy the 30GB iPod video. I went down to the local mall, got my iPod, an AC wall charger and a neoprene skin to protect my new investment, all said and done I spent about $350. At the time I thought "Damn, this thing had better be worth it." It was.

When I got it home I hooked it up to my desktop and tried to install the iTunes software. At which point I was greeted by a friend installshield error (another story all together). After lots of fiddling around, a system format and some colorful language I got the iPod all setup. I thought it would be easy to fill, I was wrong. It turns out I'm also very picky about what music I put on my iPod. While I may like a whole album while I'm driving, listening to said album while sitting on a chair lift at Mt. Hood doesn't appeal to me, probably because its so hard to change songs.

So what am I going to do with a very strict filter on musical selections and 30GB of space to fill you ask? Movies of course. This is the iPod "Video". I currently have Fight Club and Garden State residing on my iPod. The picture quality is amazing and at the small resolution they don't take up much space at all (the two movies currently on there take up about 1GB). The only downside is watching movies does eat the battery a bit faster, but thats to be expected.

Overall, I love my iPod. Two Thumbs Up.

This is so cool I have to share. My friend Jeff, who is by all accounts, way geekier than I sent me an email contact for MSN's encarta conversation agent. You add this contact to your MSN list and then ask it questions like you would a normal person and it responds with the information you requested. When you ask it questions it gives you a short synopsis for you to verify that is the actual information you requested, then asks you to accept an invitation. The invitation opens a separate window on your PC that displays text and pictures (as well as an banner ad or two). Man thats slick! To use this service add "encarta@conversagent.com" to your MSN contact list.

Brent, the QA engineer I work with and a pretty good friend, has started a blog discussing his experiences with testing techniques and various tools for software quality assurance testing. He is always on the lookout for tools and techniques to make his job easier and my code better. If QA is part of your job, keep an eye on this blog.

Read it here.

It's about 10:20 PM and I have tomorrow off. So naturally I'm up late and bored. I was reading a blog post on a former co-workers site about google indexing and got curious where I would rank if you searched for "bit-shift". So I loaded up my favorite web browser, pointed it towards google and off I went. Was I on the first page...Nope. Page two you say? Notta. When I loaded up page three I was beginning to get depressed. But Wait! There at the bottom of the page, second to the last link was Bit-Shift.Net. Woohoo! Atleast I beat out a link to an Intel article on 64 bit-shifting, HA! Take that Intel.

Note: if you google for "VoIP Eligibility" and select I Feel Lucky, you get to my site :P How cool is that?

UPDATE: Thanks to Greg Hughes for pointing out my spelling error. I apologize to anyone that took offense. Since then, I've moved up 3 positions in the search ranking.

Anyone who uses the internet today knows how valuable services that Google offers are. Their search engine helps us find exactly what we're looking for, their email service gives us rediculous amounts of storage and their ad service gives us lucky few some extra income. But how large will google become and what will they do with all that power.

This video plays presents some humorous and mildly disturbing glimpses of the future and how Google plays into that future. The United States of Google...?