Leonard
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Posts by Leonard
RIP
Jun 26th
One of the greatest entertainers, musicians and performers that we have had. I love listening to his music and watching his performances – in awe of the talent and showmanship he had – I grew up with a lot of his music and still love it to this day. To know that he has gone is really quite sad but I know he will be remembered by many as the true King of Pop and for everything he brought to the world of music and entertainment. RIP
The New VAT Rate
Dec 1st
As of today, the 1st December 2008, the government has officially rolled out for a set time, a new VAT rate of 15% as opposed to the old 17.5%.
Immediate thoughts are that on the surface it all seems to be a win-win situation for the consumer, a 2.5% drop in the VAT has to be a positive thing given the current economic climate…right? It should encourage people to spend more…right?
Why drop the VAT rate?
The VAT rate has been reduced, not just to encourage people to buy more, but with the ultimate aim of boosting the falling economy and rescue a lot of businesses which would otherwise be quite likely to go under in the next 12 months.
First thing to note though, is that it is not a 2.5% reduction in the ticket price. It actually equates to an overall reduction of 2.13% if you do the maths.
Secondly, it means that a lot of high street retailers and smaller stores are spending an obsene amount of money changing all the POS, till systems and advertising media to reflect the new prices so as to draw in more customers and show that they have the best deal.
This has therefore resulted in a spate of obscure prices. For example, rather than having a simple £29.99 item, it is now £29.35 meaning stores need to have a lot more easily accessiblechange and it also means if we as consumers pay using cash, will more than likely end up carrying a lot more loose change around.
I don’t know about you, but I’d rather pay the £29.99 and have 1p change, putting the difference back into the economy, than walk with a limp, dragging my leg because its 3kg heavier for all the change.
And before I get people claiming that all the small change adds up…consider that if you say, spend £300 a month on items that incur VAT at the 15% rate…you’ll save less than a whopping £7…
The only time you’d see a significant saving is if you spend tens of thousands…and if you’re spending tens of thousands on items which incur VAT, the difference is probably insignificant to you!
All in my opinion, and generally speaking, of course.
(Oh, and fuel duty has gone up by 2p)
Creative and the Daniel K Saga
May 25th
Creative Labs are one of the biggest players in the PC Sound Card market – great hardware, but their downfall has always been the drivers and software they develop and distribute for their products. And their attitude towards customers really does stink.
The failings of their software solutions were made even more prominent with the release of Windows Vista, which completely changed the way audio drivers work in comparison to XP. During Beta and RC stages of Vista testing, Creative had no proper drivers available (I had no sound functionality when using Vista x64 RC2), while other big name manufacturers at least made an effort to distribute some functional Beta samples ahead of Vista’s final release date.
Eventually, Creative got their act together and released some drivers which at least allowed you to get sound from your card on Vista – but that was about all they could do – many features were missing that were present in XP – features that a lot of people bought these cards for (EAX in gaming, for example). Creative blamed this on the way Vista worked saying that the software could not easily be adapted.
Fast forward to more recently (2007) when Creative released a software update called ALchemy which re-enabled OpenAL sound processing in Vista – effectively breathing life into X-Fi and Audigy series cards. Problem was, Creative released ALchemy free of charge to X-Fi users but charged for it to become useable for Audigy cards – even though the process was the same and the features were the same.
Enter Daniel Kawakami (Daniel K). Driver modder. Working on his own, he modified the free version of ALchemy to work on Audigy series cards and also modified the Creative drivers themselves for Vista users to enable functionality that Creative said was impossible to reinstate. He’d basically done their work for them and this allowed people to actually use their Creative sound cards again.
Then it all went sour. In March 2008, Creative issued a post on their community forums basically telling Daniel K to stop developing their drivers or they would take legal action:
We have read the strong feedback about Creative’s forum post regarding driver development by Daniel_k and other outside parties. Creative’s message posted on our behalf by our Company spokesperson tried to address our concern about the improper distribution of certain software which is the property of other companies. However, we did not make it as clear as we would have liked that we do support driver development by independent third parties. The huge task of developing driver updates to accommodate the many changes in the Vista operating system and the extensive testing required, including the lengthy Vista certification requirements for audio, makes it very difficult for Creative to develop updates for all past products. Outside developers have been very helpful to Creative and our customers by developing updates for many of our Sound Blaster products, and we do support and appreciate these efforts. This however does not extend to the unauthorized distribution of other companies’ property. We hope to work out a mutually agreeable method for working with Daniel_k in supporting his efforts in driver development. Going forward, we are committed to doing a better job of working more closely with third parties to support their development for our products and our customers.
And also following direct questioning, O’Shaughnessy, the company’s vice president of corporate communications said:
If we choose to develop and provide host-based processing features with certain sound cards and not others, then that is a business decision that only we have the right to make. The main issue is that Kawakami has been including support for features that Creative didn’t intend to enable on certain cards.
In response to the threat, Daniel K responded that he didn’t believe he was a hacker and that modifying drivers is common practise – take modified nVidia drivers that allow SLi in non-SLi chipsets boards, or the GeForce to Quadro mod. The full list of features which were disabled in Vista by Creative and succesfully re-enabled by Daniel K are as follows:
Dolby/DTS decoding
CMSS, CMSS2 and Stereo Surround
Advanced EQ and Special FX presets
DVD Audio
Hardware MIDI synthesizer
Equalizer
WaveRT
Overall, his general opinion of Creative is summed up in the following quote:
They publicly threatened me just to show their arrogance. If they had contacted me by email or private message, I would have done the same thing (remove everything) and no one would know about their dissatisfaction.
There was no need for Creative to remove everything that I’d posted on the forums even if it was unrelated to the modded drivers. If they can’t provide better drivers, then let people make their own choice.
And I must say, I feel exactly the same – as I’m sure other people do.
If you want to check these drivers out you can find them on various torrent sites and also links here
Asus EEE PC: Remote On/Off
Apr 19th
I originally bought my EEE PC intending to use it as an upgrade/replacement for my current Car PC as it is much smaller, consumes less power, and uses a solid state drive (SSD) for data storage (meaning no moving parts while booting the OS and frontend etc).
There were a couple of problems I needed to overcome though – it would not be a case of simply swapping units over.
The first thing I needed to do was figure out a way to connect the EEE PC to my existing M2-ATX PSU so that the ignition was still able to control the PC turning on and off. On the existing system, this is done using a simple connection to the header on the motherboard. When the PSU recieves the ignition signal, it shorts these two pins together and the system powers on.
On the EEE PC, there is no header that I could connect such a lead to, so I had to rip things open and add one myself…
How to Get at the Internals:
- Remove all screws from the underside of the unit
- On the top edge of the keyboard, there are a couple of springy clips holding it in. Use a flat screwdriver to hold these in and prise the top edge of the keyboard out. The whole thing should slide upwards now and will be attached to the main chassis by a thin ribbon cable.
- You can unclip the ribbon cable to get the keyboard out of the way (carefully!)
- With the keyboard out of the way, remove the black screws holding the top half of the chassis down. You don’t need to remove the two either side of the screen. There are also a couple of plastic clips on the rear – by the screen pivots. These need prising apart (again – either a flat screwdriver or case splitter will be fine). The cover should lift off, revealing the motherboard.
- There are a couple of retention clips on the bottom side of the motherboard which can be released by sliding the motherboard up slightly. It should pop out.
- The VGA port also needs to be levered slight to release the side of the main board. When this is done, it should come loose and if you remove the mini-plug for the fan connector, the board can be removed entirely.
For the purpose of this guide, I was interested in the power button, located near the right hand side screen pivot point. The images below show the switch with what appears to be 5 soldered connectors. With a bit of testing and a flat screwdriver, I determined that the pins which needed shorting together to initiate turn on / switch off were the top two.
So I went about soldering some fly leads and threading them through the chassis, making them secure so they couldnt be pulled off easily.
Putting the EEE PC back together again and plugging it in / connecting the battery, allowed me to test that it all worked properly. Touching the two fly leads together (same as ignition ON) starts the PC up. Once booted, touching the leads together again initiates shutdown (same as ignition OFF).
Next problem is to sort out is the difference in voltage supplied by the regulated PSU (12V) and the input required by the EEE PC (9.5V). Stay tuned…
A Year Older, But Definately Not Wiser
Apr 14th
I woke up this morning and realised that I was 22. It’s a bit strange how an entire year elapses overnight. It was only yesterday that technically, I was 21. And I got no “Happy 21st” wishes yesterday thankyouverymuch.
I then realised that 22 is just an awesome number because it contains two of the same number – one after the other – no spaces in between or anything! First and foremost, it makes remembering how old you are that little bit easier. When you get to my old age, your memory starts to fade and having one less number to remember makes all the difference in the world.
Another reason which leads me to elevate it to its ‘awesome’ status is that consisting of two number 2’s, and there are two digits, and 2+2 = 4, and 4 / 2 = 2, and 1+1 = 2. Also, thanks to my old friend Pythagoras, a^2 + b^2 = c^2. That actually bears no relavence whatsoever, I just have a thing for Pythagoras. And his theorem is pretty funky too.
You also know when you are a bit geeky when you get lots of emails from forums you are registered on wishing you Happy Birthday. It’s also slightly disturbing to come to the realisation that you regularly post on a lot of these forums. It’s also a bit disconcerting to have to stop yourself from going immediately to said forums and post “Its my bday lol”.
Not that any of this happened to me – its just a passing comment.