N Y B B L E M O N T H L Y N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2009.11.01 Issue No. 215
Don't you just hate it when you have to do something, something you've done before long time ago, and now you can't remember how to do it properly? So I'm supposed to make a backup copy of this DVD. (Legally, ok?) I remember simply doing a copy and paste from the DVD drive to the hard disk. Of course, due to copy protection, Windows will only allow you to do this a certain number of times. Now it doesn't work for me. I did some bit of online research, and this is what I found out.
Basically, most DVD content are CSS-encrypted. Ever if they're in digital format, it's physically impossible to make a 1-for-1 copy of DVDs because blank DVDs have built-in anti-copy protection. What you do, download a copy of
DVD Decrypter. This piece of software is quite old already, and not publicly available. I'm sure you know where to search for it though. DVD Decrypter extracts the keys and uses them to decode the files. It's quite versatile - it can extracts the files to your HDD or it can save everything as an ISO image. Assuming your DVD is single-layer (4.7GB DVD-5), you can use the same software to burn the resulting ISO to a blank DVD. In my case, my source disc is a DVD-9, so I have to either split the files to fit 2 DVDs or re-encode to compress the movie into one disc. Another software called DVDFab can do both pretty good. It's so good, it can check how much disk space is left and adjust how aggressive the compression needs to be.
Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my way by clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss a topic. If you think Nybble is good enough, do tell the DVD rippers about it. Thanks.
_________100 PETABITS PER SECOND.KILOMETER_________
Scientists at Bell Labs have set an optical transmission record that could deliver data about 10 times faster than current undersea cables, resulting in speeds of more than 100 Petabits per second.kilometer. This translates to the equivalent of about 100 million Gigabits per second.kilometer or sending about 400 DVDs per second over 7,000 kilometers, roughly the distance between Paris and Chicago.
Such capacity increases on undersea cables are important. A single home isn’t sending about 400 DVDs per second, however, as video becomes increasingly available and downloaded on the web, entire neighborhoods and geographic regions will get there, and that capacity increase is reflected in the growth of long-haul networking demand. The transmissions were not just faster, they were accomplished over a network whose repeaters are 20 percent farther apart than commonly maintained in such networks, which could decrease the costs of deploying such a network.
To achieve these results, researchers from the Bell Labs facility in Villarceaux, France used 155 lasers, each operating at a different frequency and carrying 100 Gigabits of data per second. The team multiplied the number of lasers by their transmission rate of 100 Gigabits per second and then multiplied the 15.5-Terabit-per-second result by the 7,000-kilometer distance achieved. The combination of speed multiplied by distance expressed as bit per second.kilometers is a standard measure for high-speed optical transmission.
_________TAKING SHOWERS BAD FOR HEALTH_________
Showering may be bad for your health, say US scientists, who have shown that dirty shower heads can deliver a face full of harmful bacteria.
In the Proceedings journal, the study authors say their findings might explain why there have been more cases of these lung infections in recent years, linked with people tending to take more showers and fewer baths. Water spurting from shower heads can distribute bacteria-filled droplets that suspend themselves in the air and can easily be inhaled into the deepest parts of the lungs, say the scientists from the University of Colorado at Boulder. While it is rarely a problem for most healthy people, those with weakened immune systems, like the elderly, pregnant women or those who are fighting off other diseases, can be susceptible to infection. They may develop lung infection with M. avium and experience symptoms including tiredness, a persistent, dry cough, shortness of breath and weakness, and generally feel unwell.
When the researchers swabbed and tested 50 shower heads from nine cities in seven different states in the US, including New York City and Denver, they found 30% of the devices posed a potential risk. Levels of Mycobacterium avium in showerheads were 100 times higher than those found in typical household water supplies.
Since plastic shower heads appear to "load up" with more bacteria-rich biofilms, metal shower heads may be a good alternative. Showers have also been identified as a route for spreading other infectious diseases, including a type of pneumonia called Legionnaires' disease and chest infections with a bacterium called Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Hot tubs and spa pools carry a similar infection risk, according to the Health Protection Agency.
_________TIME TELESCOPE________
A "telescope" that can magnify time could dramatically increase the amount of data that can be sent through fibre optic cables, speeding up broadband internet and other long-distance communications.
It isn't possible to speed up the flashes of light that stream through the global network of optical fibres at around 200 million metres per second. But more information can be squeezed into each burst of light, says Mark Foster at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, using what he and his colleague Alexander Gaeta call a "time telescope" fitted with "time lenses". An optical lens can deflect a light beam into a much smaller area of space; a time lens deflects a section of a light beam into a smaller chunk of time.
The Cornell team made their time lenses using a silicon waveguide that can channel light. An information-carrying pulse made from a series of small laser bursts signalling digital 1s and 0s travels through an optical fibre and into the waveguide. As it enters, it is combined with another laser pulse from an infrared laser. The infrared pulse vibrates the atoms of the waveguide, which in turn shifts the frequencies of the data-carrying pulse before it exits the waveguide and passes into an optical fibre beyond.
The front of the [data-carrying] pulse is shifted down in frequency and the end is shifted up in frequency within the silicon waveguide. Because the speed of light passing through a medium depends on its frequency, the front of the pulse is slowed down while its rear speeds up. At the time lens's focal point, the rear of the pulse catches up with the front, producing a fleeting image with a spectrum encoding the entire light pulse.
The Cornell team compressed a light pulse carrying 24 bits of data in this way. They used a second time lens to convert the compressed image back into a 24-bit light pulse like the one they started with. The second lens was more powerful than the first, however, so the second 24-bit pulse was 1/27th the length of the one that went in: the pulse duration shrank from 2.5 nanoseconds to 92 picoseconds, but no information was lost.
Put simply, the system is able to send 27 times as much information on the same wavelength channel. The only downside is a small lag (about a millisecond) in the data stream.
_________NSW'S UNHACKABLE NETBOOKS_________
The
NSW Department of Education in Australia is using asset-tracking software, RFID tags, and BIOS-embedded filtering smarts to roll out 240,000 netbook computers into what CIO Stephen Wilson calls "the most hostile environment you can roll computers into" - the local high school.
Over four years, some 240,000 Lenovo netbooks, funded under the Federal Government's
Digital Education Revolution initiative, will be offered to students in year nine. The netbooks can be kept until year 12, or permanently should the student finish his or her studies at the school.
They are armed with an enterprise version of the new Windows 7 operating system, Microsoft Office, the Adobe CS4 creative suite, Apple iTunes, and content geared to students. Although the netbooks are loaded with many hundreds of dollars of software, 2GB RAM and a six-hour battery, the cost to the NSW Department of Education is less than $500 a unit.
Underneath the covers of the netbooks - and within the network that controls them - lies a great deal more smarts to ensure that the total cost of ownership of each machine does not blow out. At the physical layer, each netbook is password-protected and embedded with tracking software at the BIOS level of the machine. That is administered through an enterprise services bus, which also connects the Remedy suite for asset management, Active Directory for authentication and Aruba's Airwave for wireless network management. If a netbook were to be stolen or sold, the department can remotely disable it over the network. Even if the hard drive of the machine was swapped out or the operating system wiped, it would be useless to unauthorised users. While there is a serial number and barcode on each computer, the department said that thieves or students might be able to remove them. To combat this, it is using passive RFID chips on every machine that will enable them to be identified "even if they were dropped in a bathtub".
The department used the AppLocker functionality within Windows 7 to dictate which applications are installed. Web access on the netbooks is filtered according to a corporate security policy (using McAfee's SmartFilter technology) plus an additional SOCKS-based proxy client, which provides web filtering at the network layer. The devices also use Microsoft's Forefront Antivirus technology.
_________NUCLEAR BATTERIES_________
Researchers have demonstrated a penny-sized "nuclear battery" that produces energy from the decay of radioisotopes. As radioactive substances decay, they release charged particles that when properly harvested can create an electrical current.
The University of Missouri team says that the batteries hold a million times as much charge as standard batteries. They have developed it in an attempt to scale down power sources for the tiny devices that fall under the category of micro- and nano-electromechanical systems (Mems and Nems).
Nuclear batteries are an attractive proposition for many applications because the isotopes that power them can provide a useful amount of current for phenomenally long times - up to hundreds of years or more. As a result, they have seen use in spacecraft that are fired far off into the cosmos. But for applications here on Earth, their size has limited their use.
The Missouri team, led by Jae Wan Kwon, employed a liquid semiconductor to capture and utilise the decay particles. They are now working to further miniaturise the batteries. And although the whole idea hinges on the use of radioactive materials, the devices are safe under normal operating conditions.
_________COMPUTERS TO MARK ESSAYS_________
The owner of one of England's three major exam boards is introducing artificial intelligence-based automated marking of English exam essays in the UK. Pearson, the American-based parent company of
Edexcel, is to use computers to "read" and assess essays for international English tests in a move that has fuelled speculation that GCSEs and A-levels will be next.
All three exam boards are now investing heavily in e-assessment but none has yet perfected a form of marking essays using computers – or "robots" – that it is willing to use in mainstream exams. Academics and leaders in the teaching profession said that using machines to mark papers would create a "disaster waiting to happen".
The
Times Educational Supplement (TES) reports that the
Pearson Test of English Academic, an Englishlanguage exam, was launched on 26 October. It includes essay questions and will be used in 20 countries, including the UK, to rate applicants' English skills before they are admitted to university. Computers have been programmed to scan the papers, recognise the possible right responses and tot up the marks. Pearson claims this will be more accurate than human marking, and eliminates human elements such as tiredness and subjectivity.
Other exam boards said the adoption of computers to mark beyond their current use in multiple choice tests was inevitable.
_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
Sugar on a Stick
LiveUSB Creator
ASCIIpOrtal
LegalTorrents
_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
I've heard that most of common house dust comes from dead human skin cells. If this is so why are abandoned houses so dusty?
_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
I think somehow we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
Is banging your head against a wall a waste of time?
Not necessarily -- Banging your head against a wall can burn up to 150 calories per hour.
Source: Arcamax Trivia
_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
These two strings walk up to a bar. The first string walks in and orders and the bartender throws him out and yells "I don't serve strings in this bar. The other string ruffs himself up on the street and curls up and orders. The bartender shouts, "Hey, didn't you hear what I told your buddy?" The string says "Yeah." The bartender says, "aren't you a string?" The string says, "No, I'm a frayed knot."
That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in progress. Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to improve Nybble. Just hit the reply button to you know, reply.
So what can you do with a Thinkpad X31 with no hard disk and no CD drive? USB boot, of course!
