I have a question for you all, would you trust technology over your sweet old grandmother? By trust I mean honesty, is technology honest with you?

The reason I ask this question is because the Colorado State Secretary Mike Coffman thinks that his state should do away with electronic voting and go back to paper ballots. Now the only people I have known to volunteer to count ballots are sweet old people. Where I live I can honestly tell you I would believe and trust 90% of the people that are over 65 years of age. If your 64 or under I wont trust you ….

I myself agree with Colorado’s State Secretary, I think electronic voting is one of the scariest things. I love technology, and I love how technology helps us out everyday, but electronic voting has been proven time and time again that it is not an HONEST way of voting. It has been documented that most voting machines can and will be hacked. We all only get one vote so I myself as a voter want my one vote to go the person I voted for. Its not the technology of the voting machines that scares me, its the people that create and drive that technology.

I honestly think it will be easier for the end user, or end voter to still use a paper ballot, and you get the assurance that no one else touches it before it gets put into that ballot box.

I want to know what you all think about this matter, do you TRUST electronic voting?

Hola everyone!

It’s been awhile since I sat down and chatted with you all. But I have been tinkering away in the wizard’s lair trying to come up with a vaccine for all of these disgusting RIAA/MPAA employees, but to their luck they are some form of hybrid disease. So we have to stay vigilant in our quest to smite these foul creatures.

Enough with the wizard talk. Do you own an iPod, Zen, Zune or any device that you have to rip from a CD so you can play your purchased CD on that device? I know there are not that many people that own these crazy futuristic devices, but if you’re like me you like to stay ahead of the times. If your answer is “Yes”, then the RIAA thinks you are a thief. So I guess I should not come out and tell you about my laser disc copying cluster I have in the basement. Even if you make a copy of your purchased CD then they think you are stealing. So backing up your music is a definitely a no, no.

“After years of battling in court and close to 30,000 lawsuits, making a copy of a CD you bought for your own personal usage is still a concept that the recording industry is apparently uncomfortable with. During the Jammie Thomas trial this fall, the head of litigation from Sony BMG testified that she believed that ripping your own CDs is stealing.

When asked by the RIAA’s lead counsel whether it was wrong for consumers to make copies of CDs they have purchased, Jennifer Pariser replied in the negative. “When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song,” said Pariser. Making “a copy” of a song you own is just “a nice way of saying ’steals just one copy’,” according to Pariser. ” Via ars technica

All of this leaves me to believe that once again the RIAA is scum. It makes sense to come after the end user, the small guy. It’s not like they are going after the companies that are making these things possible, like manufacturers of CDRW/DVDRW drives. The small guy does not have the type of money to fend these bloodsuckers off, but the large manufacturing companies do. That question has always been lying back in my head, why don’t we hear about any lawsuits anymore about the RIAA going after the source of what they call
“destruction of their media”. It started with CDR technology and the actual media. Why don’t they go after Microsoft, Apple, and many others for creating ripping tools built in to their software?

Maybe they have in the past, but I could not dig it up. But now all we hear is the RIAA attacking the little people. We can’t really use that excuse for Grokster, and Napster, but the majority of these attacks are against the end user, never against big business.

But once again the RIAA tries to take us all down a peg. But soon we will overcome!

Oh joy! Its that time of year again, when everyone starts to break out those famed holiday sweaters and vests. You know the ones with all the glitter and elves. Every year I dread it. Maybe I am a scrooge, or maybe I just need to get away. The last time I had holiday cheer was when I was 9 and I still thought some fat dude came rolling down my chimney to rob me of my cookies. I don’t know what it is, really I don’t understand why I get so bitter about this time of the year. It makes no sense to me anymore. Everything is about presents, the black Friday deals, the discounts, who has the larger tree. It also bugs me that people cannot say Christmas anymore, its no PC. I understand we are a diverse culture, but damn that is what has made me so bitter. Corporations, marketing groups, have ruined the holidays. Everyone is now pre-programmed to get out and start shopping the day after Thanksgiving, oh and don’t forget to get your Christmas Tree the 1st day of December, what the hell is that bullshit. The thing will be such a fire hazard by the 25th, I just don’t want to think about it. Oh and then comes the office Christmas parties, what a travesty to humanity those are.

So what is the solution to all this humbugging?

Hell if I know, but I do know something that will help me ease my temporary pain!!!!

GADGETS!!!

So here is my freakin Christmas list, or Hanukkah list, or Holiday list. Whatever, I’m pulling that sweater out, and first thing I am doing to it is add some more rhinestones and maybe another patch of Rudolph. Then I am going to get the biggest Christmas tree I can possibly find, so big that we cant even put the star on the top. I might not make it all the way through December with my false cheer, but that’s why I have a bottle of Lagavulin 16 sitting on reserve.

The Korg Kaossilator:::Link

Logitech Harmony 1000 Touch screen remote:: Link

Robosapien V2:: Umm yeah I still play with robots! Link:

IronKey:: It self destructs your data after 10 bad password attempts. Link:

Xbox 360 EarForce X2 Wireless Headset Headphones:So I can play the 360 without annoying anyone Link

USB Memory watch::Dont ask::Link

Roll up Keyboard:: Link

That’s not it for my list, I will be adding to it as my day progresses. So family, if you care for my Holiday well being then you know what to do.

Here is that ad we made. We threw it together to explain some of the problems businesses are having activating their iPhone’s. Businesses are left to only use the iPhone as a paperweight. We put this together in an evening, so expect a little more in our next mockeries. Enjoy, we had some fun making it.

Video: iPhone Commerical Spoof 1

About two weeks ago I broke down, again. By that I mean Apple’s shiny dark magic took over my thought process. I did not even know what happened; it was like I was in a trance. I found myself standing outside an Apple store with an iPhone in my right hand and my soul in the other. I turned around to look into the store and all that I saw were droves of people that looked the same, everyone was just a walking Gap commercial. I then saw myself in the window; I had my black hood up with my black Boston cap on, and my black down vest on. I looked like I usually do, but something happened to me at that moment. I knew in my heart I was different then these people, I was an individual, not some drone. But what the hell was I doing buying this novelty that I swore I would never touch ever again? I walked through the mall talking to myself and my conscience was fighting itself. Deep down my heart was telling me to go back and return it. One side was saying “Yo dude, this device is going to bring so much trouble in you life”, and the other was saying to me “All your friends will finally think you are cool”.  Steve Jobs and the Cupertino soul reapers got the best of me that day, but it will never happen again!

So once I purchased the phone I wanted to activate it. I wanted to activate the iPhone with our tax id number so I could charge it to the business. Well obviously the iTunes activation process would not allow that. So I had some extra time one day and drove over to the local AT&T store. I wanted to ask them a couple of questions and see if I could activate the iPhone with the tax id number. I was told by the AT&T rep that it is possible, so he gave me instructions on how to do it. So I went home hopped onto iTunes activation to see if it would work, nope no dice.

So I give AT&T customer support a phone call, I spoke to nice gentlemen and he transferred me directly to the AT&T iPhone division. I guess it was too late because they were not home. So I am starting to get pretty frustrated. I obviously do not want to activate this thing under my own social. I have had my identity stolen once before so now I am very weary of giving it out for anything. So the next day I run over to the same AT&T store, the store is packed. So I head on over to another AT&T store in our local mall. The customer support rep pretty much refused to look at me. He told me he could not help me at all, honestly he did not even look at me. I was just amazed at how poor his customer service was. So he tells me I need to go to the Apple store and talk to them. So I go back to the Apple store I purchased the phone at. I wait in line for about 20 minutes to talk to one of the Apple rep’s, he tells me that he has never heard of anyone activating the iPhone with a tax id number. I asked him how do businesses activate the iPhone then? He responded by telling my “they don’t, corporations have to have each individual user activate it under their own social security number, and they just use the companies billing address instead of their own home address.” He also told me that this was an AT&T matter not Apple’s. He gave me the AT&T customer support number I originally called. I was so furious at that moment. So I went back home, sat down and tried to relax. I told myself I would try one more time to get this activated.

So two days later I went to the original AT&T store thinking I might get lucky and find the original AT&T rep that told me I could activate it with a tax id number. Well no luck, but I did get a rep that seemed really informed on how to activate it with a tax id, he actually told me that he just did for a customer two days ago. So I am pretty excited at this point. So he is telling my how to do it on iTunes. He tells me I first have to have an AT&T number and account. So he signs me up with a 2 year contract and gives me a number and an extra nokia phone just in case I have some problems with the activation at first. He tells me when I start the activation process on iTunes that I need to put that “I am replacing an AT&T phone with the iPhone”. So I do so, I proceed to enter my AT&T mobile number he gave me and my zip code. He also told me “instead of entering the last four of your social enter the last four of your tax id number”. After that I hit the activation button, at this point I am on cloud nine, finally I will have this thing up and running! I wait about a minute and I get a message saying “iTunes cannot activate this phone with the current credit information.” I try it one more time, same thing happens. I am going crazy at this point!!

I call the AT&T store back, and that last rep I spoke to answered the phone. I proceed to tell him what is going on. He tells me to try again in the morning, and proceeds to pitch me wood to get me off the phone. At this point I am ready to drive my car into the store. So I call AT&T customer support. I finally find someone that really knows her stuff. She was amazing. I proceeded to tell her about my past week and all of the drama that occurred. She starts to apologize, and then I tell her what the last rep told me. She flat out said that he took me. She said in no possible way can you activate your iPhone with a tax id. She said even the largest corporations cannot do it. She told me Disney could not even do it. They had to have their employees activate them with their own social and bill the company. At this point I was just dumb founded.

She took all my information down; she took the last reps information down as well. She cancelled my two year plan, and told me the rep most likely lied to me so he could get a commission. She told me even if I cancelled my account he would get credit for the sign up. She was a breath of fresh air. She and I chatted for about 10 minutes on how lame the activation process is for businesses. She fully agreed with me that Apple could have sold a lot more iPhones if they would allow tax id activations.  

So at this point I feel better, I still have the iPhone, still not activated, and I am most likely going to take it back. I should have listened to my conscience, at this point the allure and luster has worn off. I still love my ppc6700 with my hacked WM6 rom; I will be sticking with that until I can get the HTC touch via Sprint. 

So again Apple almost gives me a heart attack, the stress this device caused me was incredible. Some of you will say “why don’t you just use your SSN to activate it”. Because I have principles, and I will not give in just to get a novelty.

Oh and to top it all off I have the last AT&T in store rep on tape telling me how to do everything, from start to finish. I also have the nice lady I spoke to last on tape. If anyone from AT&T or Apple would like to hear them then feel free to contact us. I don’t think it is necessary for us to release these tapes publicly; we don’t want anyone to get in trouble.

The Geekery’s own iPhone commercial will be published in about an about 30 minutes or so.  

We here at The Geekery have problems of staying on topic with our posts. So we are enjoying our themed week posts. So next week we are dedicating a week to “rants”. Rants about everything we despise about technology and the companies that fuel certain technologies. This next week will be a fun week so stay tuned. We will cover everyone from Apple to Zobo, knowing us it will probably be all about Apple, and maybe a little more about Comcast . I have added more fuel to my Apple fire, man oh man have I. I want to begin now so very badly!

Readers here at The Geekery might know how much we respect and envy our pals over at TorrentFreak. I read this story quite some time ago and it just blew my socks off. I have never seen actual figures for how mainstream P2P has become. So we wanted to give this story some more traffic, it’s a couple of months old but still worth the read. Engimax and Ernesto are genius’s. They are the hub that funnels information for the p2p community. We usually are not in the fashion of posting someone else’s story but this is just too good. Either go to there site and give them some more traffic or you can read it here. Actually do both. This story makes me feel like ZeroCool. Don’t forget something by Armin Van Buuren, I suggest episode 260. Enjoy this one.

BitTorrent Survival: The Way of the Hydra

Written by Enigmax from TorrentFreak

As more and more people hear about BitTorrent, each day the major sites get bigger, with more and more visitors, members, seeds and peers. Mainstream awareness of P2P is driving this new surge but with copyright and law enforcement agencies clamping down hard, some are considering tactics for survival.

The BitTorrent community is growing at an almost alarming rate, its popularity is surging and more people than ever before are discovering its wonders. The mighty Suprnova captured the imagination of millions around the world, giving huge momentum to this file-sharing phenomenon, collecting millions of daily hits before its demise.

Today, sites like Mininova and The Pirate Bay are enjoying unprecedented levels of interest. Mininova served up 1 billion torrents in their first 2 years of operations, then stormed to 2 billion in just a further 6 months whilst capturing almost double the daily traffic of Suprnova in its prime.

The Pirate Bay almost needs no introduction, such is its size and comparable infamy. A jaw-dropping BitTorrent behemoth, gathering thousands of visitors each day who between them download 4 million torrents. Its visitors make 86 searches per second, its servers handle 1150 requests in the same time-frame and it tracks 50% of the world’s torrents.

That’s 50% of ALL public torrents. That is a dangerously high number of eggs in a basket that’s frequently coming under an attack of one form or another.

With the authorities always looking to take the biggest scalps to grab the headlines, sites such as LokiTorrent and EliteTorrents stood no chance, especially considering the huge financial implications of residing in the USA. Major BitTorrent site admins realized this and mainly moved their operations to the Netherlands, a location which is now looking less of a safe haven. The Dutch situation is of particular concern - there are dozens of strategically important torrent sites hosted there.

So what is the solution? brokep of The Pirate Bay has some thoughts that I happen to completely agree with.

“There are too few sites and trackers right now” he said, “things have been to concentrated to the big sites and that really sucks!”

Although it’s great initially for the mainstream to have visible big ‘brands’ such as The Pirate Bay, Mininova and TorrentSpy, it’s a precarious situation to have such a top heavy structure to the BitTorrent community. It’s great having a ‘multi-headed hydra’ but not so great when just one of those heads carries half of all the public torrents. This situation must be addressed. Resources need to be spread around in a manner which ensures that a few ‘big bombs’ are unable to dismantle major parts of the infrastructure.

There is a solution, as brokep says, “I really love the small specialized sites, I hope to see more of them. I would love to help out with starting up more, but it’s also important that we who already run sites do not start more of them.”

He’s right. The more sites like The Pirate Bay provide what the BitTorrent community want, the less likely it is that people will venture out on their own to create their own sites. In the current environment, the hydra needs thousands of heads which are resource-hungry to target, not just a dozen juicy fat ones which stay nice and still, with the authorities just waiting for a subtle change in, or interpretation of, the law. A change which is inevitable, in both Sweden and the Netherlands.

TorrentFreak asked the admin of a US-based tracker how they manage to stay alive, despite having 20,000 members. “People are too hung up on MPAA and RIAA content. There’s an enormous library of material out there which you can track and no-one bothers you. We’ve got over 4000 torrents and we’ve had just two or three informal takedown requests in the last couple of years. If people want to start a tracker, indexing non-RIAA/MPAA content and specializing in something else is a great way to start building a community, even when you’re hosted in the States”

brokep gets the last words. Very wise words;

“So public message to people - start up your own torrent sites, make the internet the hydra it is and needs to be. If there’s hundreds of sites, they can’t all be shut down. And well, if they shut down the few that are today, there will be hundreds of sites, I’m sure, but let’s start them before so we can spread the word of them easier.”

Take that chimps!

Planning to dual-boot with your Intel based PCs with Apple’s OS X Leopard, or just want to install Leopard on your Intel PCs? Well here is how you do it: the crew at OSx86 scene managed to break the barrier with Leopard and found a way to install it in Intel-powered PCs, and just the day before the launch of the highly acclaimed OS. Installing Leopard on an Intel based pc requires the following items: burnable DVD and USB thumb drive.

OSx86 managed to work out two installation methods, first of which uses a DVD-RW to mount a DVD image of the OS, or just setting up a partition to load the install files from. The steps may look difficult at first glance, but the how-to steps are thoroughly outlined so there shouldn’t be any problems in trying it out.

Still want to make Windows walk the plank? Check out that list first before deciding to install Leopard first.

My experience is mixed, obviously their are some driver issues, but nothing a little hunting a pecking wont fix. But right now I am running Leopard pretty flawlessly, not really any huge issues that have came up. Most users have experienced a very long install time; I as well have experienced that same problem. It took close to 1 hour and 45 minutes to do the install. 

Overall I am pretty happy with the results; I am impressed with the tools that OSx86 crews have developed as well, kudos to them. I am currently living in a Windows based world, and it is sometimes is nice to venture out to something different, but Leopard really is not that different. Time machine is neat, but really that is about. You will never be able to knock Apple’s UI’s, but I personally don’t feel like anything is that different from other recent Mac builds. One thing I can say is that Apple is trying to make the switch easier for Windows users. I find myself eerily intrigued by the new finder, which some what resembles explorer.

Now the last question I face myself is if I would do this to my other machines? The answer is yes. Their are a lot of features that I absolutely love with OSX that I just cannot do with Vista, and vice versa. OSX is like that weekend vacation, its soothing, calm, and fun. But when it comes to the work week Windows is God, so I love them both, I will be doing this to most of my machines, but I think I might wait a little longer to do it though. OSx86 promises better builds that are a bit tighter in the code department.

Now all I have to do is get Ubuntu 7.10 back up and running again, anyone up for a tri-boot? 

I have a quick question for everyone that purchases Apple products, what the hell are you thinking?

Over the past couple of years Apple has had so many dangerous faulty products that harm you; I just don’t understand why people purchase their products anymore. I myself have fallen for Apple’s tricks numerous times. They get you with the sleek and stylish products, they advertise with actors and musicians, they make you think all is well in the world of Apple. But all is not well. We as consumers are blinded by actual good products these days. Yes the iPhone is an absolute marvel, this is undeniable, but over the years the iPod, iMac, and PowerBooks have just been a consumer nightmare. It’s a crap shoot now days to get a product from Apple that works to its full functionality as advertised.

I am not angered by the innovative UI’s or even ease of functionality. Apple’s UI’s are usually the best compared to other products in the sector they are in (except for this), what I am talking about are the actual devices, the hardware. Do you sacrifice health, safety and sanity just for something that is slick and stylish? Obviously the overwhelming rate of which these Apple products sell at are the end answer. So I ask myself why? I feel like since I purchased my faulty iPod touch I have seen more and more people bringing up the fact that Apple’s hardware simply blows, in more ways then one. So let’s take a journey into Apples sometime scary and shady past and present of hardware failure…….

2002: We will start with the past, with the eMac. The eMac was made essentially for public education purposes but was soon released later to the public. Well this gem had a ton of issues, we first start with a thing called raster shift. Raster shift can mean a lot of things, but in this case it meant only about half of the screen was viewable. Then we add the attraction to static because of lexan like plastic. Then later down the road owners discovered that the motherboards in the eMac were riddled with bad capacitors.

Raster shift at is finest moment. Don’t forget these piles were intended for our public schools.

2004: Nothing like a little MagSafe melting, lets add a little fire. Everyone that owns an Apple notebook knows about that MagSafe power adapter. It’s a neat little feature included in all Powerbook power adapters. It creates a magnetic connection to the power input. It’s a neat feature, but none the less it catches on fire.

2005: The macbook, what a disaster. This one would take just too long to describe. So click here to see a laundry list of problems it had. This device might be close to the worst.

2006: The start of something scary, the original iPods start to get their bloat on. Just like the macbooks, and PowerBooks, the batteries were starting to bloat up from the battery. What happened next was inevitable, iPod nano’s started to blow up and catch on fire while they were being charged. These issues are still happening to this day!

2006: Welcome to Judgment day, computers are finally trying to kill us. (I knew we should have listened to Sarah Conner) Now PowerBooks are trying to drive hot molten Lithium Ion into your body.

2007: Present day, we are now riddled with the same problems of the past, just with new devices. People are complaining of dead screens and tilted screens in about every version of the iPod, the new iMac screens are an utter disaster (raster shift again?). Just simply poor build quality with every device.

So why do we all still purchase their devices? I think we buy from them because Apple still makes us feel warm, fuzzy and unique. They have excellent customer service and great marketing. But overall Apple has fixes for these issues usually pretty quick. I have only listed a small fraction of the faulty products Apple has made, but for that list they have came out with a fix for each one. Frustration and anger overcome my thought process every time I purchase a DOA device. I will on longer purchase Apple products until I feel that Cupertino wants to make an effort in proper build quality. I have been burned to many times by Apple, no pun intended.

So I leave you with this question, why purchase a device that will leave you frustrated, stressed, burnt, and possibly blind?

We are happy to announce a new addition to our duo, now making us a trio. We welcome our new friend and colleague Maktar Rabin. Maktar recently graduated with a BS in MIS from Delhi University in India. Maktar will make a great addition to our team. He brings a wealth of knowledge and Zen like wisdom at his young age of 25. Look out for future posts from Maktar, he has a lot of bones to pick, and it will be interesting and probably very funny on how he picks them.

Maktar will specialize in Internet Security news, and he will continue to keep us all updated about new topics on online piracy. We ask everyone to welcome Maktar to The Geekery team!

We asked Maktar if he would allow us to put a picture of him up on the site, and he sent us the picture below. He said “this isn’t me, but this is what Americans think all Indians look like.”