I got the Kingdom Hearts PSP bundle today at the Gamestop.  First impression is that this is a nice PSP 3001 bundle with a game I’ve been wanting to play for a long time.  I never played the previous Kingdom Hearts becauce before now I’ve never had a Playstation.

I was a little disappointed that this PSP doesn’t have any identifying marks that shows its the special Kingdom Hearts edition, it is just a plain silver PSP.  The Pokemon themed Nintendo was a unique color and had pokemon images on the case.  I was expecting Mickey ears or some kind of Disney iconography on the case.  A Kingdom Hearts theme for the XBM would have been a nice touch.

There was also a bit of confusion about what’s included in the bundle.  The Gamestop website and the Sony PSP page still don’t agree.  Gamestop says you get the game, a 4G memory stick, the silver PSP and a movie voucher.  The Sony web site said the game, the 4G stick, the PSP and 50 songs from the Sony Music Store.  For a week or so Sony listed Madden 11 as part of the bundle, but I think that was just a typo.

The box contains the PSP, the 4G stick, the game, and a SonyMusicPass for 50 songs.  I’m new to the whole PSP and PS3 world so I was hopeful that the SonyMusicPass would be part of the PSN and I could get movies or TV shows but, no such luck.  It looks like I’m stuck downloading songs from a very limited selection at the Sony Music site… bummer.

I hope the game is good…

In order to continue selling Microsoft products to the Russian government, the Redmond Washington software company granted various agencies of the Russian government access to source code for Windows 7, Server 2008, and other products.

The government agencies listed in the agreement include the former KGB.  The source code access will help the Russian government to find security flaws in Microsoft products.  What the Russians do with this knowledge is unclear.

Ten percent of Microsoft’s $1 billion Russian business revenue comes from the Russian government, according to a Bloomberg web article.

This isn’t the first time that Microsoft has allowed foreign governments access to their source code.   They have a Government Security Program to grant source code level access to Microsoft products.  GSP started in January of 2003 as a more formal name for their Shared Source Initiative which started in 2001.

According to the GSP home page:

Microsoft offers eligible, participating national governments no-cost, online smart-card access to source code for the most current versions and service packs of Windows Client, Windows Server, Windows Embedded CE, and Office. In addition, subject to such requirements as U.S. export approval, qualified GSP participants may also obtain access to cryptographic code and development tools. The GSP also provides transparency through disclosure of Microsoft technical information. This engineering-level view of Windows architectural design provides greater insight regarding the platform’s integrity and enhances national governments’ ability to design and build more secure computing infrastructures.

The recent Russian spy story makes this a little sensitive for Microsoft as ghosts of the Cold War resurfaced in the news this week.  I wonder who else has access.  The GSP web pages touts that this no-cost partnership is available in 65 geographic markets.

I bought a new 1T USB drive to use for storage of vm images and other large files. I need to move between Windows and Mac machines. I knew I couldn’t get a Mac version of a usb drive because those are typically formatted for HPFS which a Windows machine cannot read. I opted for the Windows version of the drive and when I got it home I plugged it into the trusty Macbook Pro. The drive mounted read-only, because it was formatted with NTFS.

At first I figured why not reformat with FAT32, then I could use the drive with Linux as well as Mac and Windows. The problem with FAT32 is there’s a file size limitation. I remembered this after I reformatted and tried to copy a 4.3G vmware image to the drive. Ooops.

Some quick googling resulted in this article: http://www.tool-box.info/blog/archives/1193-Snow-Leopards-NTFS-readwrite-support.html

Using the schell script method I now mount any NTFS partition in read/write mode on my Mac.

Well here goes, I’m starting the iOS upgrade on my iPhone 3G.  Let’s see how it goes.  I don’t expect any big trouble, but I’ve had my share of upgrade troubles this week already…

The first attempt at a 3.0 update turned into a white screen o death. After a few changes to the plug-ins folder we’re back.

The 3.0 update still works with the iPad and iPhone WordPress apps.  I’ve tested both with this site and things appear to be running well.  I’ve also taken the time to updated the theme for the site to be a little more modern.  Now I just need to re-skin my moodle server before August…

Over the summer I’ve planned to revamp my CIS2230 System Admin course to include more Windows specific examples. I received a Windows 7 key from my department head in accordance with our college’s MSDN membership. I get Windows installed and type in the key and everything is fine for several months.

Last week I opened up my Windows 7 vm image and started working on labs and presentation notes only to find that my copy is somehow no longer valid.

Oh well, looks like my new Windows lecture will consist of, “Don’t use Windows on mission critical systems because you don’t want your server to stop working because of bad licensing code”

As many other Unibody Macbook Pro users with Snow Leopard have experienced, I too have had fairly poor WiFi connectivity. One suggestion is to boot into 32 bit mode. I normally boot into the 64 bit kernel and during a recent trip I only had access to a hotel’s 802.11b network.

In 64bit mode I had three bars of signal but had extremely limited connectivity with high latency. I rebooted into 32 bit mode (reboot the mac and hold the 3 and 2 keys down through the startup noise)

Latency issues dropped to zero and my overall throughput increased by 300%.

I’m not sure why this fixed my poor wifi connectivity. I wonder if Apple tests the 802.11b drivers anymore.

A February 25, 2010 posting suggesting that Moodle content is being kept out of the general public has been getting some traction on twitter today. The author correctly points out that most of the learning content on Moodle servers around the world is closed to the general public. The article goes on to lament the lost learning because of this closed Moodle approach.

You can go to http://opensource.com/education/10/2/moodle-open-source-closed-doors and read the whole article.

Moodle isn’t just a content management system it’s a learning management system and many of the best Moodle courses aren’t simple slide-flipper presentation with a quiz at the end. The truly
successful courses include teacher-student and student-student interactions. The true power of Moodle is the assignment system and the gradability of all the activities. The ease and flexibility of bringing a virtual instructor led course to a group of students using an on-line platform is what makes Moodle so popular and that’s why there are so many moodle servers with so much content.

Don’t forget that Moodle is being used by colleges as well as public schools. Students pay hefty sums in tuition to go to college and that premium price deserves a higher quality student experience. How would you feel if you paid your $30,000 and you had to share your Linux admin class with 29 other paying students and 200 free loaders? I use Moodle at VTC and I’ve got it locked down to only those students who are enrolled by the registrar in my course. They paid top dollar they deserve a top dollar experience and not an experience diluted by non-paying customers.

Even in a public school setting: the school network, the IT staff’s time, and the teacher’s salary all come out of one school’s budget. It’s unfair to take advantage of one school district because they Moodled their 8th grade US History course.

In the spirit of Open Source people could produce moodle courses and place them in a repository for use, there are tools in Moodle 2.0 to address this structure. But at the end of the day, the content producers are the ones responsible for sharing learning content, not the learning management system. Remeber: content alone doesn’t make a Moodle course. Great courses are a combination of good content and an active student group and an engaging instructor.

Given the growing risks of being connected to the Internet it’s becoming more advisable to connect to those particular services that one wants and exclude the rest.  This idea runs counter to a lot of marketing approaches from several companies/products, for example Droid.

The Droid vs iPhone marketing plan is to show that Droid is open and can do anything.  That message will resonate with some people, but the great unwashed masses don’t write computer programs and aren’t network security savvy.  They get sucked into the idea that they can do anything with their phone without risk or responsibility for maintenance.  The tag line should have a disclaimer “Droid can” then add “provided you trust the authors of 3rd party apps or do your own source code review and network connection analysis.”

People are already acclimated the walled-garden concept and have used it effectively in other parts of their lives.  Thousands of people go to Disney World every day.  They are willing to pay the premium admission price to get a known vacation experience.  Is that bad?  Is Disney evil? No, of course not.  There’s a selection of people who don’t want to plan, coordinate, and book their own vacation using unknown hotels, restaurants, and attractions.  The same is true for homes.  Some people prefer to live in gated communities or in housing developments with home-owners associations.

There are people who enjoy being unfettered in all part of their life, who go camping for vacations and do all their own work (tenting, cooking, cleaning, etc.)  There is a great sense of self-reliance and accomplishment when you do things for yourself and people who enjoy the work and understand the risks win great self-satisifaction from these activities.

The problem is that not everyone can hike the Grand Canyon for a week or sail the west coast of South America by themselves.  The same holds true for the Internet.  Not everyone can protect themselves from crime, fraud, and poorly written software. Buying a product that has access to a walled-garden (iPad for example) is an appropriate way to experience the Internet in a more protected way.

I’m always fascinated by the flexibility of layered networking  models.   Here is the physical layer of the OSI model using Bongo drums, while still running a proper network stack with TCP/IP.  This rules!  http://eagle.auc.ca/~dreid/