Adi's Tech Site | Category Archives: The MHF Tech Show

The MHF Tech Show Episode 13 Show Notes

The MHF Tech Network is going to be launching our new site very soon. Hopefully, it should be available as an open beta next week so stay tuned for more updates on that one. Big shout-outs going to Nilima Patwardhan, Sharon, Ellie Bunce, Laura Ray, Becky Mario, Rose Ross, Francesco Aresta and Louis Slabbert.

The News

Our sources indicate that Microsoft might be limiting the number of Windows 8 editions to just six. The six editions are reported to be the 32 bit and 64 bit editions of Windows 8, Windows 8 Professional edition and Windows 8 Enterprise Edition.

Nokia has pushed out version 1.2 of their Meego operating system for the Nokia N9. The update is now available for download right from your device.

As part of their announcement, Nokia has put up some photos that have been taken directly from their announced 808 Pure view camera phone.

Feature

Mobile computing has come a long way since the early 1990s. Back then, I remember having a laptop running Windows 95. At the best, I could take on some of the best golf courses in Microsoft Golf 3.0 or despatch some alien denizens in Doom I was not really all that great, but boy were those games fun.

Now let’s fast forward the clock to today. Increasingly, more and more of us are using our phones, tablets and laptops as our main computers. These mobile computers allow us to do a lot of the things that a traditional desktop computer can do. Check emails, go shopping online, play games, write documents of many kinds, listen to music and so much more.

During this week, we will see the start of a trade show known as Mobile World Congress. A place where we can find out more about some of the Tablet computers, phones, and other mobile computers and technology which will be available to us in the near future. This years conference is taking place in the city of Barcelona between the 27th February and 1st March 2012. At the show, there will be approximately 1400 exhibitors. Amongst them will be some of the big names such as Huawei, Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, HTC, AT&T and Vodafone.

Alongside that, there will be some keynote speeches. Some of the confirmed speakers include John Donahoe(CEO of eBay), Eric Schmidt(Executive Chairman of Google), Dennis Crowley(CEO of FourSquare), René Obermann(chairman and CEO of Deutsche Telekom) and John Chambers(chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems).

So here are some of the things that have already been announced. To start off with, Nokia has announced its 808 Pureview phone which is said to be sporting a 41 megapixel camera phone for some super high-res photos of squirrels. Samsung has also unveiled their Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet which will run Google Android Ice Cream Sandwich and sport a dual-core 1.4GHz CPU. HTC have also unveiled their HTC One S and One X phones all of which will also run Ice Cream Sandwich(AKA Android 4.0).

Odd Box

A clever guy has been able to find a way to play your old floppy disk DOS games on your Android Tablet. All you need is a USB floppy disk drive which connects straight to your Android Tablet and A copy of DOSBox for Android and you are good to go.

Technology firms featured heavily in this year’s list of the 25 most oddball questions compiled by the US employment website Glassdoor. Careers experts said the questions were intended to make a candidate display a thoughtful approach to problem-solving.
As well as HP’s brain-acher, interviewees at other companies were asked:

“How many people are using Facebook in San Francisco at 2.30pm on a Friday?” (Google)
“How do you feel about those jokers at Congress?” (Consolidated Electrical)
“If you were a Microsoft Office program, which one would you be?” (Summit Racing Equipment)
“You’re in a row boat, which is in a large tank filled with water. You have an anchor on board, which you throw overboard (the chain is long enough so the anchor rests completely on the bottom of the tank). Does the water level in the tank rise or fall?” (Tesla Motors)

Glassdoor said that while technology companies included questions designed to catch candidates off guard, they also posed tried and tested queries such as “Why did you apply for this job?” and “What are your strengths and weaknesses?”.

You can now build your own TV antenna using a can of your favourite. First, cut a fizzy drink can in half, then staple the two halves to a piece of wood, hot glue a wire to run from the cans to the transformer, and you’re done. It’s a crude solution, but at least it works.

Picks of the Week

Chris’ Pick of the Week was a set of Wi-Fi bathroom scales available from FireBox. They are a little on the expensive side at £119 but this gizmo automatically records your weight, fat mass and BMI(body mass index) every time you step on it. It beams the information to your computer or iPhone over your WiFi connection, so you can track your results wherever you may roam via a password protected website or free iPhone app.

it is also compatible with online coaching programs such as Daily Burn and iPhone apps like RunKeeper and WeightBot. You can even sync with Google Health and share your progress via email, Twitter or Facebook.

Adi’s pick of the week was a category of tech known as Robotic vacuum cleaners. It can be an absolute chore trying to keep your house really clean. So what if you could have something else to do that for you? This is where a robotic hoover would come in. Just simply press the power on button, and let it do all the hard work, whilst you have a cup of coffee or play a quick round of Wipeout HD. Most of these hoovers will also know exactly where not to go and would return back to their charging dock whenever it needs a recharge. These are available on eBuyer, Amazon, Firebox and many other sites.

Send your feedback, comments and questions to mhftechnet@gmail.com.

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Until next time, watch those skies and back up your data.

The MHF Tech Show Episode 12 Show Notes

The MHF Tech Show Episode 12

Sponsors: CUBS the Computer Warehouse

We want to give a big shout out to Tom Merritt, Iyaz Akhtar, Scott Johnson and Tony Wang. Adi had a great time being a guest on FourCast .

As promised, our new iTunes feed is now live. Simply go to our show notes and click the button which says download on iTunes. We also have a button which allows you to subscribe to our shows using Miro. Simply click on the button which says Subscribe using Miro and you will be able to use Miro to download and listen to our shows.

News:

Comet are in big trouble, the electrical retailer were found illegally creating over 94,000 recovery disks for Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Lenovo has unveiled the specs for its upcoming ThinkPad Hybrid X1. The laptop sports a Gorilla glass display and a choice of either Intel Core i5 or Core i7 processor.

O2 have signed a deal with London’s Westminster City Council and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea

In our first feature, we talked about CES(consumer electronics show). With more than four decades of success, the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) reaches across global markets, connects the industry and enables CE innovations to grow and thrive.

The International CES is owned and produced by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), the preeminent trade association promoting growth in the $186 billion U.S. consumer technology industry. CEA represents more than 2,000 corporate members involved in the design, development, manufacturing, distribution and integration of consumer electronics products. All profits from CES are reinvested into industry services, including technical training and education, industry promotion, engineering standards development, market research and legislative advocacy.

The show takes place in Las Vegas, Nevada in the USA at the Las Vegas Convention Center and World Trade Center.

An independent audit, performed by Veris Consulting Inc., verifies all attendance, and the numbers for 2011 are in! More than 2,700 exhibitors showcased their latest products on more than 1.6 million net square feet of exhibit space, with a total of 149,529 in attendance.

CES attracts the “who’s who” of the technology and related industries, including 40,335 senior level executives from the entertainment, wireless and consumer electronics industries. Also in attendance were more than 12,000 retail buying organizations and nearly 30,000 final purchasing decision makers.

The International CES is the industry’s largest educational forum to help companies expand their businesses and understand new technology. Approximately 200 sessions and 500 expert speakers encompass International CES conference tracks and SuperSessions to discuss hot industry trends and topics.

The first CES took place in New York City in June of 1967 with 200 exhibitors and 17,500 attendees. Since then, CES has grown more than ten-fold.

Products that Debuted at CES

Videocassette Recorder (VCR), 1970
Laserdisc Player, 1974
Camcorder, 1981
Compact Disc Player, 1981
Digital Audio Technology, 1990
Compact Disc – Interactive, 1991
Mini Disc, 1993
Radio Data System, 1993
Digital Satellite System, 1994
Digital Versatile Disk (DVD), 1996
High Definition Television (HDTV), 1998 Hard-disc VCR (PVR), 1999
Digital Audio Radio (DAR), 2000
Microsoft Xbox, 2001
Plasma TV, 2001
Home Media Server, 2002
HD Radio, 2003
Blu-Ray DVD, 2003
HDTV PVR, 2003
HD Radio, 2004
IP TV, 2005
An explosion of digital content services, 2006
New convergence of content and technology, 2007
OLED TV, 2008
3D HDTV, 2009
Tablets, Netbooks and Android Devices, 2010
Connected TV, Smart Appliances, Android Honeycomb, Ford’s Electric Focus, Motorola Atrix, Microsoft Avatar Kinect, 2011

International CES is not open to the general public. You must be in the consumer electronics industry to be eligible to attend the show. Our attendees are made up of more than 140,000 individuals including manufacturers, retailers, content providers and creators, broadband developers, installers, engineers, corporate buyers, government leaders, financial analysts and the media — representing the United States, Canada, Mexico and approximately 140 other countries. All attendees must be at least 18 years of age. Two forms of identification are required on-site (one photo ID and one proof of business affiliation/business card). registration is $100 US

A few of the main talking points at the show this year will be 4k TVs and Ultrabooks. With 4 days of awesome tech those who are going will be bathed in the glory of tech goodness will never be the same again at least untill the next CES.

It’s competition time here at the MHF Tech Network and we have a great one for you this time. Thanks to the awesome people at Drobo, we have one Drobo 4-bay to give away to one of you. This Drobo sports a USB 2.0 port, FireWire 800 port and a FireWire 400 Port and allows you to put in up to four hard drives. With Drobo’s Beyond RAID Technology, you can have two hard drives fail and your data would still be safe. In addition to that, you also pull hard drives out and put in new ones even when the Drobo is powered on. So how can you win one of these awesome prizes? Simply click here to find all of the instructions. The competition ends on Sunday 15th January 2012 so good luck and get those entries in as soon as possible.

In our second feature, we talked about Ultrabooks. We know for a fact that the mobile computing space has exploded in a big way. More and more people are using smartphones, tablets and laptops. Of course, there have been a few netbooks around. A netbook is a smaller laptop that is designed for simply surfing the web and it does not have much storage space. However, it is safe to say that there is a new category of laptop that will be one of the things that will make people get rid of their netbooks and want something new. Of course, that something new will be the Ultrabook.

So what do these Ultrabooks look like? Well, they are similar in size to some of the smaller laptops. They are super thin but they are as powerful as a regular laptop.

They combine some of the best things from a tablet with the best things from a laptop. So first of all, these ultrabooks rock what is known as the quick resume technology. You see, the problem with most of today’s laptops, is that you have to save your work, wait for your computer to shutdown and power it up again before you can continue your work. Sometimes, this can be a bit of a hassle.

Let’s take a look at an exmaple of what quick resume does. Let’s say I am on my ultrabook editing a video at the airport. however, it’s time for me to board a plane. about half an hour later, I feel like continuing my editing. So I take my ultrabook out of my bag, open the lid up and I can pick up my work right from where I left off within seconds.

One of the things that it does not have is an optical disk drive. If there is one thing that makes me think that the optical disk is nearly dead, then it could be the ultrabook. That being said, some of the manufacturers might provide an optical disk drive which you can plug into your ultrabook using USB.

Number 3 is smart response. On some computers, it can take really long for an application to start. With smart response, all of your applications will open super quickly.

This next one is really good and it’s called smart connect. A lot of you out there may already have an email account, use a social network, or you just have some applications for which you need to have all the latest information. It can be hard to keep up with that. With smart connect, your ultrabook will automatically update your emails social networks and other applications even when your ultrabook is asleep.

Here at the MHF Tech Network, we care about your security. We want to make sure that your data is safe. This is where Intel’s Anti-theft technology comes into play. So let’s say someone’s in the park with their ultrabook. A few minutes later and it turns out that the ultrabook gets stolen. With Intel’s anti-theft technology, you can lockdown your ultrabook from anywhere so that the thief cannot access it. Once you get your ultrabook back, you can then unlock it and use it as usual.

In addition to this, Intel have gone to the solid state drive as the storage solution for most ultrabooks. Plus most of these ultrabooks will come with a USB 3.0 port, and a HDMI port so you can play a few rounds of Angry Birds on a big HDTV.

All-in-all the ultrabooks may be super slim, but they pack quite a punch. So, can you get your hands on one of these? Of course! There are quite a few ultrabooks available right now. A few examples include the Acer Aspire S3, the ASUS ZenBook and the Lenovo ideapad U300. Intel has a list of a few of the many ultrabooks available right now on their site .

Picks of the week:

Adi’s pick of the week was the AKG K 495 NC noise cancelling headphones. The headphones can be charged using a USB port on your computer. In addition to that,

you get a nice flight adapter so you can use this with many in-flight entertainment systems. It seems like AKG K 495 NC headphones could be a real contender to BOSE’s noise cancelling headphones. A pair of these headphones will set you back somewhere between £250 and £300 . ($350 in the USA).

Chris’ pick of the week was the playstation Vita. It is going to release in the middle of February 2012.

The handheld includes two analog sticks, a 5-inch (130 mm) OLED multi-touch capacitive touchscreen, and supports Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and optional 3G. Internally, the Vita features a 4 core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processor and a 4 core SGX543MP4+ graphics processing unit, as well as LiveArea software as its main user interface, which succeeds the XrossMediaBar.
The device is fully backwards-compatible with PlayStation Portable games digitally released on the PlayStation Network via the PlayStation Store.

the device features a quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processor (3 of the 4 cores will be usable for applications)and a quad-core GPU SGX543MP4+. The device also features a rear touch pad, two cameras (a front and a rear), stereo speakers, microphone, Sixaxis motion sensing system (three-axis gyroscope, three-axis accelerometer), three-axis electronic compass, built-in GPS (only for the 3G version) as well as Wi-Fi, 3G, and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR connectivity.The two cameras feature the abilities of face detection, head detection, and head tracking. It also allows for customization and personalization.The PlayStation Vita will have 512 MB of system RAM and 128 MB of VRAM.The amount of RAM allows cross-game chat to be used on the system (in contrast to the PlayStation 3, which only has 256 MB dedicated to system RAM and 256 MB dedicated to VRAM).

Software for the PlayStation Vita will be distributed on a new proprietary flash memory card called “PlayStation Vita card” rather than on Universal Media Discs (UMDs) Thank god!! what a bad idea that was forever waiting for things to load. used by the original PlayStation Portable.PSVita memory cards will be available in size from 4 GB to 32 GB.

The PSVita can now be pre-ordered from Amazon.

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Thanks for listening to this episode. Until next time, watch those skies and backup your data and remember: Strength Through Truth.

The MHF Tech Show Episode 11Show Notes

Posted on December 18, 2011 by Adi Khajuria Posted in The MHF Tech Network, The MHF Tech Show Leave a comment

The MHF Tech Show Episode 11

Sponsors: CUBS the Computer Warehouse

The MHF Tech Network are going to be taking a 2 weeks . However, we will be back in January 2012 with more great episodes. We want to give a big MHF shout-out to Louis, Sid, Liam, Jane, Tracy, Harley, Kevin, Adam and Amira.

The news:

In the USA, the RIAA and department of Homeland Security were spotted illegally downloading TV shows, music and other infringing content using bit torrent.

the untethered jailbreak for iOS 5.0.1 on many iOS devices is almost finished. However, iPhone 4S and iPad 2 users will have to wait for an untethered jailbreak.The chinese government are now tightening the screws further. They now require anyone signing up to a microblogging site to register with their real name.

There are just so many different websites on the Internet where you have to use a password. However, it can be hard to remember all of those passwords. In addition to this, all your passwords have to be long, complicated and something that is not in any dictionary. I for one know for a fact that I have lost count of the vast amount of websites that I have passwords for. In fact, I know that I’ve had to go to a site and have them send me an email so that I can reset my password.

So what can we do to help us manage these passwords? Well, let me tell you about lastpass. In my opinion, is a password management tool that allows you to securely manage your passwords. This service has been around since 2008 and for me, it has been my go-to password management service. With that being said, there are other password management services available such as KeePass and 1Password.

Now lastpass has been attacked in August of 2011 by a bunch of hackers. However, I am glad to say that LastPass is now safe to use.

So how does this service work? First of all, you have to go to lastpass.com. From here, just sign up for your free Lastpass account. When you sign up, you will have to create your master password. This will be the only password you will have to remember for a while, so make sure that it is a good one.

Once you have signed up, you will need to download and run the installer on your computer. At this point, the installer will install the Lastpass plugin onto the browsers installed on your PC. At this time, Lastpass is compatible with internet explorer, mozilla firefox, Google Chrome and Safari. As soon as the installer has finished, you will need to enter in your Lastpass master password and the email you used to sign up for Lastpass. if you have asked your web browsers to remember some passwords, then Lastpass should be able to save them over to your password library known as the lastpass vault.

Now this is where lastpass gets really cool. If you are signing up for a new website, Lastpass will detect that and would allow you to generate a password for that. You would be able to choose how complex that password is. Once you have signed up for the said website, lastpass will then store the password for this website in your Lastpass vault.

Now, this is all well and good, but how secure is Lastpass? Well, Lastpass is very secure. it uses 256-bit AES encryption. In addition to this, all of the passwords are never encrypted or stored on an off-site server. Instead, they are encrypted and stored on your computer. If you have recently bought a new computer, then that’s not a problem. Simply set up Lastpass on your new computer and all your passwords will be automatically transferred to your new computer automatically. Since all of the passwords in the lastpass vault are encrypted, the passwords will be seen as a bunch of gibberish when they go through the internet to your other computers or mobile devices.

Now, we know that many of you out there have a mobile device like a blackberry, an iOS, a google android device, a symbian device or a Windows phone. Well, lastpass has you covered. I am glad to say that lastpass has you covered on all of those devices, because they have an application on all of those devices.

So, that’s lastpass. It’s free to use and available on your mac, PC, Linux PC and mobile devices. However, if you pay a $1 a month you get access to the premium service. If you go for the premium service, then you can use a USB flash drive to use two factor authentication. In addition to that, you can get access to the lastpass premium application on your mobile device.

Thanks to our awesome and kind friends over at Drobo, we are going to be giving away a Drobo to one of you lucky listeners. These boxes will allow you to put between two and four hard drives of different sizes in them. For now, you need to go to our Twitter page and click the follow button. You will also need to go to our Facebook Page. We will have more information on how to enter this awesome competition very soon so stay tuned.

Picks of the week:

Chris’ Pick of the week was the Samsung series 5 ChromeBook. It is a laptop that is designed to run Google’s Chrome OS. It’s an operating system made by Google that is completely based around its Chrome browser There’s no desktop as such, just a browser window.

Chrome OS is designed to be a cloud OS – meaning that it functions as a device to access the internet and use software and tools that exist on server farms rather than on your actual device.

Samsung is ahead of the pack by releasing the first Chromebook in the UK – the Samsung Chromebook Series 5.

One of the biggest selling points about the Chromebook is its simplicity.
Where other laptops would boast of their specifications, cramming in powerful components wherever space allows, the Series 5 is proud of its pared-down simplicity. Google wants you to ‘just use’ the device, rather than have to tinker with and maintain it.

While this back-to-basics approach could seem limiting and frustrating in the wrong hands, Samsung has created a netbook that just runs a different OS so dont expect bells and whistles. Chrome OS is an open source operating system, This means that you can go into the code for the operating system and edit it to your needs. In fact, all Chromebooks have a jailbreak mode which allows you to do just that and install Windows on your Chromebook if you so choose.

In the show, we said that you could only pre-order it. However, it was released in July of 2011 and you can go ahead and order it online for just £349 for the Wi-Fi only edition and £399 for the 3G and Wi-Fi edition. it sports a 16GB solid state drive a webcam, and up to 8 hours of battery time. Chris gave it 3 out of 5. If you don’t have an internet connection, then this may not be for you.

Adi’s pick of the week went to Left 4 Dead, a great first person shooter.

Your task is to choose your weapon and take out those denizens before they beat you to death. Luckily, you have 3 other people to help you. You have a few single player stories to play through and of course, the online multiplayer for some worldwide zombie shooting fun. It’s available on the PC through steam and the XBox 360. Left 4 dead is a game that you really should have in your collection and it gets 4 out of 5.

Odd Box:

In the odd box, we looked at an awesome racing simulator that uses 5 monitors and an iPhone for performance stats.

Powered by an AMD Radeon HD 6870 graphics card, Chad Smith’s five screen racing simulator looks like it provides almost the same thrills as the military’s simulators, without requiring the military’s budget.

The setup is powered by an above-average gaming PC, which when combined with his graphics card is able to push a 9600×1080 image to the five LCD displays—at a consistent rate of 84 frames per second. Tucked behind his force feedback steering wheel is an iPhone running the iRaceDash app which connects to the iRacing game, providing real time race info like a miniature HUD. Mod inferno!. There is also a video of this simulator in action, which you can view below.

We also talked about Cleverbot, an Artificial Intelligence computer program developed by Icogno Founder Rollo Carpenter in 1988 and released to the masses in 1997, it “learns” from Internet users. Everything that is put into the program is catalogued and eventually repeated as a response. You can imagine what kind of delightful conversations will result when the general population of the World Wide Web is given cart blanche to say anything and everything to a program that has no feelings or physical capabilities .

Cleverbot’s creator, Carpenter, envisions a world in which customer service calls will be received by robots who will do farmore than ask for the last National insuarance no. number—they’ll be able to talk about the weather for your flight’s destination, or even solve problems. Artificial Intelligence, like many technological innovations that came before, will replace human jobs with machines—hopefully these machines will be smart enough that the job replacement will be accompanied by customers’ peace of mind. The machines will have to come a long way from Cleverbot for that to happen. Check it out at cleverbot.com.

to get the show notes for this episode, visit bit.ly/mhfttechnet .

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The MHF Tech Show Episode 10 Show Notes

Posted on December 13, 2011 by Adi Khajuria Posted in The MHF Tech Network, The MHF Tech Show Leave a comment

The MHF Tech Show Episode 10

Sponsors: CUBS the Computer Warehouse

We here at the MHF tech network have teamed up with those great people at Drobo to bring a great competition where one of you lucky listeners can win an amazing awesome Drobo. It has a USB 2 port and a FireWire 800 port.

We want to give a big shout out to Mr Matthew Potter who is listening to us in Canada, MatinsBigtech blog, Drobo, pc tech stream.com, black bear IT.com , Oldgold tec, tech dune, sophiecools on youtube , pizza football, random chinese guy, Coolism tv, blubrry, Natasha Simmons and Ben Roberts.

The News:

After only being open for approximately a year, Apple’s Mac App store has reached the milestone of 100 million app downloads.Google has updated the web-based version of the android market place so that users can search by release date or how good the app is.Huawei’s honor smartphone will get the Google Android Sandwich Sandwich update. The software update is now available, so download it now.

The games room:

Today, we turned the clock back to 1997 and had a look at star fox 64(AKA Lylat wars in Europe) for the Nintendo 64.

The game takes place in a group of planets known as the Lylat System. The evil scientist known as Andross who was exiled to the planet venom has attacked the Lylat system and littered it with his bad guys.

You play fox McCloud who leads the Star Fox team, comprised of Peppy Hare, Slippy Toad and Falco Lombardi. Your mission is to rid the Lylat system of Andross.

You get to fly through 7 missions from a choice of 15 missions and there are two different routes through the entire game. The right hand path is the easiest in difficulty and the left hand path is the hardest. If you compelete all of the objectives in a missions, then you will go to the hard path. However, if you do end up on the hard path, you can actually choose which path you want to go down, which is a great mechanic. In each mission, you score points based on how many enemies you kill. The more enemies you kill, the more points you get so make sure that you kill as many of those bad guys as possible.There are also two different ways to do missions, there is the on-rails approach, where you go pretty much forwards all the time. You also get to play in the so-called all-range mode, it is more of an open format, which is used in some of the levels. I personally prefer the on-rails styled levels as it encourages me to challenge myself and go for the highest scores.You also get a multiplayer section of the game where you can play with up to four people on the same console. The first of the two ways to play multiplayer is a point match. You basically have to go and destroy each other a certain amount of times(say 3 or 5 kills). The winner is the one who reaches the target score. Then, there is the battle royal mode, the goal is to be the last player standing. If you perform well in the story mode, then you can use the landmaster in multiplayer mode. You can also go on foot, I am dead serious. If I had to pick a favourite, it would be the battle royal. Alongside the Arwing, you can also play in the Landmaster and walk around on foot.Graphically, a lot of the levels in there looked really great for their time. Especially the first level corneria. In terms of general gameplay, this game plays really well. The only thing that puts this game down is the below average voice acting. However it is still a classic game. There has been a re-release of this on the NIntendo Wii, you can get this game on the Wii’s virtual console. In addition to that, there has been a remake of it which released on the Nintendo 3DS called Star Fox 64 3D, which is basically a remastered version of the original game. There were also other sequels which were Star Fox Assault, Star Fox Adventures and Star Fox Command, all of which were really bad and would get 2 out of 5.All-in-all, Star Fox 64 is a great game and we give it 4 out of 5. It’s a game that is Truely worth having in your collection.

Last week in the news David Blunkett today revealed he made two private trips to the U.S. to plead with authorities to let Gary McKinnon stay in the UK while he faces court proceedings.The former Labour home secretary has visited Washington twice to argue that British alleged computer hacker Mr McKinnon should remained in Britain while facing court proceedings in America.Asperger’s sufferer gary , 45, has been the subject of an intense extradition batte but would be jailed in the UK if Mr Blunkett’s plan is successful. A suggested six-month community service sentence by UK police quickly turned into a maximum 60-year sentence once America took over.Gary himself states that he was merely looking for evidence of free energy suppression and a cover-up of UFO activity and other technologies potentially useful to the public.
Gary was indicted by a US court in November 2002, accused of “hacking” into over 90 US Military computer systems from here in the UK. Gary embarrassed the U.S. by highlighting their cyber security as pitiful, as they had no passwords or firewalls on their computers.In his interview with the BBC, he also claimed of “The Disclosure Project” that “they are some very credible, relied-upon people, all saying yes, there is UFO technology, there’s anti-gravity, there’s free energy, and it’s extraterrestrial in origin and [they've] captured spacecraft and reverse engineered it.” He said he investigated a NASA photographic expert’s claim that at the Johnson Space Center’s Building 8, images were regularly cleaned of evidence of UFO craft, and confirmed this, comparing the raw originals with the “processed” images.He claimed to have viewed a detailed image of “something not man-made” and “cigar shaped” floating above the northern hemisphere, and assuming his viewing would be undisrupted owing to the hour, he did not think of capturing the image because he was “bedazzled”, and therefore did not think of securing it with the screen capture function in the software at the point when his connection was interrupted.

gary stated the image was approximately 256 megabytes in size, yet that the craft’s details were still distinct in the greatly inferior 4-bit color and low resolution he had to reduce the viewing image to appear across his mere 56k modem connection (approximate transfer rate 5.4 KB/s).

The charge ”the biggest military hack of all time” is dissmissed by gary who characterises himself as a “bumbling computer nerd” who undestructively accessed open, unsecured machines while under the influence of cannabis and that the destruction claims were manufactured by embarrassed US authorities after the fact, in order to meet the dollar amount required to seek an extradition, to make him a poster child and intimidate any snoopers, especially those interested in the alien technology subjects he believed the public had a moral right to know.

as suffering from an autism spectrum disorder compounded with clinical depression.
McKinnon’s mother, Janis Sharp, claimed that he was suicidal and that he would not survive a U.S. prison incarceration

promising news for gary is when last week A motion calling for ‘urgent reform’ to the US/UK treaty which is being used to try to wrestle him to America was passed uncontested by MPs.

A No vote was called when it became clear the motion had overwhelming support after being backed by a string of heavyweight speakers from all parties. The motion is not binding on the Government, but sends a clear message to David Cameron that MPs want changes to both the 2003 UK/US treaty and a separate extradition deal with Brussels.

It will strengthen his hand in any future talks with the EU and the Americans – who were desperate for the motion not to pass. It seems unfair that a America can extradite anyone from britain with no evidence of a crime committed but if Britain wanted to extradite someone from America they would need clear evidence that a crime had been committed. And even then America could decide not to extradite.Gary McKinnon’s mother, Janis Sharp is indefa in support of her son, and is now using Twitter to help to keep friends and supporters informed.

Odd Box:

Remember those odd images that Google Maps discovered in the Gobi Desert last month? On Friday, a new explanation surfaced, along with an accusation that the Chinese ripped off American technology to make them.
According to Nathan Cohen of Fractal Antenna Systems, the strange patterns in the Gobi sand are just that: fractal antennas, designed to reflect radar waves and conceal objects hidden in the ground beneath them.
The strange patternsemerged in mid-November, when Google and gadget site Gizmodonoticed the strange shapes. The story was later picked up by news outlets all over the world, all without any good explanation for what made the strange shapes in the desert, although the Chinese government almost certainly had a hand. Their purpose, though, remains unknown.next up Brooke Greenberg (born January 8, 1993), is a now 17 year old girl from Reisterstown, Maryland, who has remained physically and cognitively similar to a toddler, despite her increasing age. She is about 30 inches (76 cm) tall, weighs about 16 pounds (7.3 kg), and has an estimated mental age of 9 months to 1 year.Brooke’s doctors have termed her condition Syndrome X. Scientists are hoping to gain new insights into the mysteries of ageing by sequencing the genome of a 17-year-old girl who has the body and behaviour of a tiny toddler.Brooke Greenberg is old enough to drive a car and next year will be old enough to vote — but at 16lb in weight and just 30in tall, she is still the size of a one-year-old.

Picks of the week:

Adi’s pick of the week was the Canon Powershot SX120 IS it takes some great photos which he has put up on Flickr .

Chris’ pick was the Smar Touch gloves from firebox.

Until recently she had been regarded as a medical oddity but a preliminary study of her DNA has suggested her failure to grow could be linked to defects in the genes that make the rest of humanity grow old.If confirmed, the research could give scientists a fresh understanding of ageing and even suggest new therapies for diseases linked to old age.We are going to be giving away a Drobo to one of you. For now, follow us on twitter and Like our facebook page for more information.

The MHF Tech Show Episode 9 Show Notes

Posted on November 27, 2011 by Adi Khajuria Posted in The MHF Tech Network, The MHF Tech Show Leave a comment

The MHF Tech Show Episode 9

We want to give a big shout out to

Steph , Jane, Liam, Tracy, Jack, Jo, johnny and cliff

Just to let you all know, we are working on a new iTunes feed and a Bit Torrent server, so you have many ways to download past episodes of our shows. MHF expanding above and beyond.

The News

Through the power of Google Plus, Naturalist Mark Thompson was able to recover a camera that was laying at the end of a Wharf in Vancouver, British Columbia.In the USA, many police forces are now taking steps to fully encrypt their radio communication system.

In a GFK study, 84 percent of iPhone users surveyed said that they would replace their phone with an iPhone, showing that most iPhone users are brand loyal.

The Games Room

Now, a lot of people in the media have said that computing is heading into the cloud, and if this is the case, then gaming may be heading to the cloud as well. Today, we will be taking a look at OnLive

So, what is OnLive you might ask? Well, OnLive is a new way to play games using your PC, HDTV or mobile device. So how does it work?

The way it works, is that you have to sign up for an onlive account(click here to make your OnLive account). Once you have made your OnLive account, you have to download the OnLive application to your PC, or mobile device.

If you want to use OnLive through a TV, then you will need to buy an OnLIve console, which will hook up to your TV and comes with a wireless controller and a HDMI cable to plug into your HD TV or projector if you have one

Once you have installed and launched the OnLive Application, just log in and you will be presented with the main OnLIve menu. Let’s talk about the actual game-playing aspect. So, you are probably thinking that you are going to need a really high-end PC to play these games right? WRONG!!!!! Completely wrong!. In fact, OnLIve have data centers where all of the hardware and storage required is there.

Basically, they send the video for the game you are playing, and you only send back the inputs from your keyboard and mouse or wireless controller if you are using the OnLive game system. I tested this out for myself. Recently, I was playing some Dirt 3 on my six year old laptop and the game was playing smoothly. I simply fired up a free trial of Dirt 3 from within OnLive and I was in. I was playing dirt 3 on a laptop that would no be able to cope with demand of such an intense game. This means that a lot of older PCs that cannot handle some of the latest PC games on the market will be able to connect to the internet and run these games using OnLive.

So why is this so good?
First of all, because the games are stored in the cloud, there are no disks to insert to play the games and no downloading. That means no going to bricks and mortar store and waiting in line to buy your games.

Because OnLive is an internet-based service, you can play what you want, when you want. This means that you don’t have to be limited in terms of the opening hours of a bricks-and-mortar store.

As I said earlier, you don’t need to have a high-end PC. I will have a link in the show notes as to what you need to have to use OnLIve, but essentially, you just need to have a computer of some kind(be it a netbook, laptop or desktop PC) and a decent enough internet connection and you are good to go.

Now what is bad about OnLIve?
Well, because it requires an always-on internet connection, it might cause trouble if your internet connection has some silly restrictions that your ISP imposes upon you. According to OnLive’s site, you need to have an internet connection which is capable of download speeds of at least 2mbps. For the best experience, OnLive recommends a connection that is capable of doing a download speed of at least 5mbps. Now, some of you out there have an internet connection of 10, 20 or even 50mbps. This is all well and good, but because it is streaming video as well as sending inputs, you need to have 2mbps or even 5mbps consistently.

Whilst OnLIve may seem like the future of gamingI think that onlive and cloud gaming in general is going to take off for a fast but will the connections keep up?

Feature

In our feature, we were reviewing Parallels Desktop 7 for Mac. We have to say a huge thank you to Ellena Bianchi-Barry for sending us a copy of Parallels Desktop 7 for Mac.

Now, on the mac, there are two ways of running Windows. Either way, you still have to go out and buy your own copy of Windows. The first way, is by using the a feature called boot camp. This feature is available on any mac running OSX Leopard with an intel CPU. Basically, it would split your Mac’s hard drive into two parts or paritions, to use the right terminology. So, after you bought your copy of Windows 7, you would put your Windows 7 disk into your mac and install Windows on your mac. You are effectively saying to your mac “OK mac, let Windows take over the computer until I want to go back to mac”. Now, this is a great solution, but the problem is you have to restart your mac, just to get into Windows.

Now, we can do this in desktop virtualisation. Basically, desktop virtualisation allows you to run Windows(and other operating systems) on a mac without having to restart. More importantly, you can run Windows application on your mac that you would not be able to otherwise. Now, I know there is an application called Wine, which allows you run Windows applications on a mac and a Linux PC. In some cases, applications will not work correctly.

When it comes to desktop virtualisation on the mac, there are three main solutions out there. there is VirtualBox, a free and open source virtualisation application for the mac, Windows PC and Linux PC. There is also VMWare fusion and of course, we are looking at Parallels Desktop 7 for the mac(or PD7 for short). So what is new in this release?

well, Straight off the bat, PD7 comes with full support for OSX Lion(the latest release of the Mac operating system), this means, you can rest assured in the knowledge that PD7 will work with OSX Lion and make good use of Lion right out of the box. What’s more, the experience is really seamless. In my testing of this product, I can say that this is completely true. For example, in Lion, the OS saw my Windows 8 Virtual Machine as a separate space, when I opened up mission control. In addition to this, you can run your windows apps like they were native mac apps using what Parallels calls coherence mode. For example, I was able to run Microsoft Paint, google chrome in full screen as if it were a native OSX Lion application.

This next one is a killer feature for me of PD7. Within the application, Parallels have built what I like to call a Windows 7 store. From here, you can pay for download and install Windows into a virtual machine right from Within PD7. No need for a disk. Now this is really useful, especially when you have a super fast internet connection. Now here’s the kicker. In addition to Windows, you can also go download and install Ubuntu Linux, Fedora Linux, Google’s Chrome OS and the developer preview of Windows 8 right from within PD7 and install them with as few clicks as possible.

Now, in PD6(paralells desktop 6), I thought that the 3D graphics support was very limited, even though it has the best 3D graphics between PD6 VMWare fusion and virtualbox. However, I am glad to say, that PD7 has improved upon this. When I used PD7, I was able to play some games without lag.

Now, PD7 has a free companion app called parallels mobile. If you have a parallels account, then you can use an iPad or iPhone to remotely control your PD7 virtual computers remotely and you can also control your mac remotely. I have to say, that it is not ideal for watching flash videos from youtube. That being said, you can move your windows around without any lag.

Parallels desktop 7 is going to run on a mac with OSX Leopard 10.5.8, OSX Snow Leopard 10.6.7 and OSX Lion 10.7 or later. You will need to have an intel based mac with an intel Core 2 Duo CPU or better and at least 2GB of RAM, but 4GB is recommended if you want to run Windows 7. You will need to make sure that you have at least 700MB of hard disk space free. Most importantly, you will need to have an internet connection for downloading updates to PD7 and downloading a copy of Windows 7 from within the Parallels app.

All-in-all, I think that it is a great peice of software and I would definitely recommend buying it when you get the chance. It normally costs £65($80 US), but if you are quick enough, then you can snag it for £50($60 US). If you already have Parallels Desktop 6, then it will cost you £28($40 US) instead of £35($50 US) to upgrade to PD7. Overall, this software gets 4.5 out of 5.

Picks of the week:

Adi’s pick of the week was uTorrent(click here to check it out). This is a bit-torrent client that is better than a lot of the bit-torrent clients out there.

So chris whats your pick of the week old chap? well adi my pick of the week would have to be The 55-inch, 1080p, 3D-capable Viera TX-P55VT30Bplasma TV which is the second largest in the range. But, at around £2,500, its wallet busting its not cheap! It incouprates the lastest Viera Connect internet TV platform. This includes a number of applications, for services such as the BBC’s iPlayer, the Acetrax movie-rental store, Dailymotion and YouTube. Along with these, you get support for a number of social-networking sites, including Facebook and Twitter, and there’s also a Skype app that works in conjunction with an optional HD webcam, which will set you back around £135. The TX-P55VT30B doesn’t drop the ball when it comes to 3D either. The set comes with two pairs of active-shutter glasses, with extras pairs setting you back between £80 and £100 each.

port crazy? yes indeed its has four HDMI sockets and the usual Scart and component ports. Panasonic has also added three USB ports, as well as an Ethernet jack. When you’re using the bundled Wi-Fi USB adaptor, you’ll still have two spare ports for connecting up other devices, like hard drives or the optional peripherals that can be used with the set’s Viera Connect online software.

Overall, it’s the menus are reasonably fast and easy to navigate. it gets 5 of 5 mhf stars. So you might treat yourself to one of these this Christmas.

We are now on blubrry and you can find us by clicking here

You can find us on YouTube by clicking here

We are on iTunes. You can find us by clicking here

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The MHF Tech Show Episode 8 Show Notes

Posted on November 13, 2011 by Adi Khajuria Posted in The MHF Tech Network, The MHF Tech Show 1 Comment

The MHF Tech Show Episode 8

We want to give a few shout-outs to Simon Patterson, Nick, Susan, Logic games and tiwana.net.

The news

Activision announced that Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 had sold approximately 6.5 million units, making it the most successful entertainment release in history.

iOS 5.0.1 for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad was released. The new update features some fixes for some of the battery life problems users have been experiencing and adds multitasking gestures to the original iPad.

The digital game store Steam was hacked. Valve are investigating the matter but they are advising their users to change their Steam passwords as soon as possible.

Mailbag

Today was a networking theme in mailbag. Kevin in portsmouth was doing a Cisco Networking academy course called CCNP. It’s a great course to do. He asked us how to set up a Cisco Switch to allow for HSRP.

A basic HSRP configuration on a cisdco router requires configuring the standby IP and the HSRP priority on an ethernet interface. If more than one HSRP group is needed, the standby ip address and other HSRP parameters are configured for each group

To activate HSRP on an interface and configure an interface as a member of an HSRP standby group , enter the command STANDBY {group number} ip {ip addres[secondary} in interface config mode.

Then if the group number is omitted , the default group no is 0. Remember listners always include the group number when configuring HSRP groups, I know loads of people make this common mistake in this part of the configuration.

Also remember that the ip adress parameter is the virual or standyby ip address. if an adress is specified use that as the HSRP adress for that particular group.If of course there is no IP address , the virtual address is learned via HSRP HELLO messages

For HSRP to elect an active router at least one router on the cable must have been configured with , or have learned the virtual IP address . another note to remember is configuring the virtual ip address on the active router always overrides a designated address that is currently in use so be carefull!

The secondary option is used when associating a virual ip address with a secondary ip network already configured on the router interface . When the standby ip command is issued , the interface changes to the appropriate hsrp state. If you want to remove an interface from your HSRP group, you can enter no standby group ip command.

Thats just the plain basic vanillia configuration . You could also configure the HSRP priority, HSRP Preempt, the authentication , HSRP tracking and hold down timers if you so wished all these are covered in our show notes for more information.

Next out of the mailbag was Charlie from Sidcup. He wanted to know how to set up VOIP on a cisco router. Well Charlie, stay tuned, as we will be covering this and more topics in an upcoming episode of MHF How-Tos.

Feature:

so what are the threats out to not only you the personal user but nation states ?Cyber threats to a control system refer to persons who attempt unauthorized access to a control system device and/or network using a data communications pathway. This access can be directed from within an organization by trusted users or from remote locations by unknown persons using the Internet. Threats to control systems can come from numerous sources, including hostile governments, terrorist groups, disgruntled employees, and malicious intruders. To protect against these threats, it is necessary to create a secure cyber-barrier around the Industrial Control System (ICS). Though other threats exist, including natural disasters, environmental, mechanical failure, and inadvertent actions of an authorized user,we even have to make sure that the

Hackers

Although the most numerous and publicized cyber intrusions and other incidents are ascribed to lone computer-hacking hobbyists, such hackers pose a negligible threat of widespread, long-duration damage to national-level infrastructures. The large majority of hackers do not have the requisite tradecraft to threaten difficult targets such as critical U.S or europe networks and even fewer would have a motive to do so. Nevertheless, the large worldwide population of hackers poses a relatively high threat of an isolated or brief disruption causing serious damage, including extensive property damage or loss of life. As the hacker population grows, so does the likelihood of an exceptionally skilled and malicious hacker attempting and succeeding in such an attack.
In addition, the huge worldwide volume of relatively less skilled hacking activity raises the possibility of inadvertent disruption of a critical infrastructure.
hackers are subdivided as follows:

Sub-communities of hackers
Script kiddies are unskilled attackers who do NOT have the ability to discover new vulnerabilities or write exploit code, and are dependent on the research and tools from others. Their goal is achievement. Their sub-goals are to gain access and deface web pages.
Worm and virus writers are attackers who write the propagation code used in the worms and viruses but not typically the exploit code used to penetrate the systems infected. Their goal is notoriety. Their sub-goals are to cause disruption of networks and attached computer systems.
Security researcher and white hat have two sub-categories; bug hunters and exploit coders. Their goal is profit. Their sub-goals are to improve security, earn money, and achieve recognition with an exploit.
Professional hacker-black hat who gets paid to write exploits or actually penetrate networks; also falls into the two sub-categories-bug hunters and exploit coders. Their goal is profit.

Here are some of the worst ones still out there

I LOVE YOU
I think everyone who has owned a computer has heard about this dreaded virus. I LOVE YOU is believed to be one of the most dangerous computer invention among viruses, worms and Trojans. It was developed by VBScript and was discovered on 4th May 2000 in Philippines. In just 24 hours it had affected PCs in every country of this world leading to a loss of USD $5.5 billion. Everything started from an email message which arrives in the user’s inbox with I LOVE YOU as the subject. After entering the system, the virus used to attach a copy of itself on each file of the computer. In addition to this it used to send a copy of itself to all the users who would be on the victim’s contact list. All the affected users had a Windows Operating System.

Conficker
Ranking in the top 5 in the list of current computer viruses and worms, Conficker was born in November 2009 and it affected more than 5 million PCs in a short span of time. Conficker is credited for creating a secure worldwide infrastructure for cyber crime. This worm duplicates itself and spreads via a buffer overflow weakness in the server of machines using Windows Operating Systems. Once in the machine it affects services like Windows Update, Windows Defender, Windows Security Center and Windows Error Report. Today having the best antivirus 2010 is a good option as it is able to destroy this worm which had created hell in countries like India, China and Brazil.

Sasser
This nasty worm ruined everything and was the talk of the Internet for many months. This computer virus spread by penetrating into a vulnerable computer network. It create havoc wherever it went, from the British Coast Guard to Delta Airlines which had to cancel some of its flights after its systems were infected by Sasser.

Asprox Botnet
One of the most recent computer viruses and worms, the Asporex Botnet is the reason for many phishing scams. Discovered in 2008, the Asporex Botnet has been used to launch many high profile attacks on different websites to spread malware. The botnet makes itself ready in a very unusual way and infects mostly those websites which are running Active Server Pages. The Botnet always attacks in waves and each wave is designed to infect as many websites as possible.

The games room

We had a look at the racing game, Dirt 3 for PS3, Xbox 360 and OnLive.

The main portion of the game is career mode, you have many different race styles, such as the point-to-point rally race, rally x and the head to head race. There is also a multiplayer mode, where you can go online and race against other players worldwide. You also have a single player mode if you don’t fancy playing with others.

Overall, we gave it 4 out of 5 and recommend going out to the shops and picking up your copy.

In picks of the week, Chris chose the Motorola Xoom. This tablet runs Honeycomb 3.1. It has a 10.1 inch screen, cameras on the front and the back, 4G connectivity, Adobe flash support and much more. Chris gave it 4 out of 5.

Adi’s pick of the week went to a free, open-source piece of software called LibreOffice. It does a lot of the stuff that Microsoft Office does and it allows you to save your documents in the usual Microsoft Office file formats. Adi gave it a 4 out of 5.

Sponsor: CUBS, the Computer Warehouse. Call 0208 343 8223 or visit cubsuk.com.

The MHF Tech Show Episode 7 Show Notes

Posted on November 5, 2011 by Adi Khajuria Posted in The MHF Tech Network, The MHF Tech Show Leave a comment

The MHF Tech Show Episode 7

To download right-click the link above and select save as. Make sure that you save it as a .mp3 file

We have a few people that we’d like to thank.

Natasha Simmons from Touchdown PR
Ben Roberts
Liam
Adam
Roger
Leo
Tony C
Kevin Dowe
Charlie Drake

We are hard at work on a new iTunes feed to replace the current one and an IRC chat room, so all of you can talk tech even when we are not posting shows.

The News:

- Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser has dropped below 50% market share heralding the end of an era

- Apple have acknowledged the battery problems that users have experienced after upgrading to iOS 5. A software fix for this will be available soon.

- United Airlines and Continental Airlines are hard at work at putting Wi-Fi in 300 of their aircraft (http://engt.co/sD0MmB)

- Due to the floods in thailand, there is a shortage of Hard Drives, meaning hard drive prices are increasing. Therefore, it’s time to hoard your hard drives.

Mailbag:

Here are the questions that our listeners sent in today.

Tony – How do I flash my bios?

Bert – How do I trace an IP address? what software do I need, and how do i actually track down the location of some one through their IP address?

Simon - who will win the tablet wars? Amazon/ apple or some other company?

Tony Kent - How do i set up some NAS for my home computer? what did I need, how do I do it and how much will it will cost?

We mentioned freeNAS as one answer to Tony Kent’s question. for more information, go to www.freenas.org

Picks of the week:

Chris – Hotspot Shield: click here to check it out

Adiman423 – Skitch: click here to check it out (this program is only for mac and google Android at this time, but Skitch is coming to Windows soon).

Feature: Acronis True Image Home 2011 (5 out of 5)

We thank David Blackman of Acronis for giving us a copy of Acronis True Image home 2011. For your free trial, click here

This episode of the MHF Tech Show is sponsored by CUBS the Computer Warehouse. Call 0208 343 8223 or visit www.cubsuk.com and don’t forget to mention the special password, “MHF” for a discount.

The MHF Tech Show Episode 5 Show Notes

Posted on October 10, 2011 by Adi Khajuria Posted in audio, The MHF Tech Network, The MHF Tech Show Leave a comment

The MHF Tech Show Episode 5

(to download this episode, right-click the above link and select “Save link as” or “Save target as”).

We want to give a big shout out to Blain Tarvish listening to us from New Zealand. It’s good to know that we have people that are listening to us worldwide. We will have a new website coming soon so stay tuned for more info.

The news:

Amazon recently announced some new tablets. The Kindle(minus the keyboard) the Kindle touch(similar to the kindle with an e-ink touch screen) and the Kindle Fire, an e-reader powered by Google’s Android operating system

US mobile phone carrier Cincinnati Bell had prematurely leaked the hardware specifications for Apple’s upcoming iPhone 5.

http://www.slashgear.com/iphone-5-specs-leaked-by-cincinnati-bell-01184707/

Finally, Dell seems to be readying some new laptops which are allegedly a direct shot at Apple’s MacBook range.

http://cnet.co/pS9w2B

Mailbag:

Ravi wants to repair the master boot record(MBR) on his hard drive. He would want to use the installation disk for his operating system. If he is on Windows XP, the installation disk will allow you to enter the recovery console and use the fixmbr command. If he is on windows 7, he will need to load the installation disk to launch the command prompt and type in the command bootrec.exe /fixmbr.

Mic wants to image the hard drive on his laptop, so he could use it on another computer and use it as normal. There is some good news and some bad news on this one. The on the software side of things, you can look at Acronis True Image(click here for a free trial). It may cost $50US(or £40), but it’s worth it. There is a free alternative called clonezilla.

Now here is the bad news: In short, Windows will detect instantly that you have changed your hardware and you will need to activate it again before you can access the Windows desktop.

Finally, Blain Tarvish wants to set up a simple website where people can leave messages for each other. We recommend that he gets a domain name and some paid web hosting from Fasthosts. Sure, there are some free web hosting solutions out there, but we recommended that you do it right and get a paid hosting solution from fasthosts. Most of the paid web hosting solutions will give you an easy one click installer for message board systems such as phpbb. To learn the code, you can get tutorials from the W3Schools website(click here). W3 Schools have easy to follow tutorials on PHP, CSS and HTML.

Into the past:

We looked at DOS(disk operating system). The original iteration of it was called PC DOS, which was made for IBM’s 8088 microprocessor. There was also another iteration called QDOS(quick and dirty operating system) for Intel’s 16-bit 8086 CPU card for the S-100 bus, before it was made available to the public as 86-DOS.

Microsoft then purchased it and called it MS-DOS(Microsoft DOS) and introduced it in 1981, which also drove IBM’s OS/2. The final version of MS-DOS was then renamed as PC DOS 7.10 and it was released in 2003. MS-DOS was also the basis for Windows 3.11, Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows Millennium Edition. Now is it still available today, of course you can. If you are on Windows XP, Windows 7 or Windows Vista, then you can still access DOS from your start menu. If you are using the Windows 8 developer preview, then you can type “CMD” and you can get back to the command line.

OddBox: We looked at the DIY air drones which have the capability of breaking into Wi-Fi networks and control computers remotely for $600(nearly £400). It sports a GPS unit, a 3G card, two Wi-Fi cards and a Linux computer.

The drone can fly through any urban area in surch of Wi-Fi networks through the control of a botmaster using 3G. This means that they could be flying over you as you read this, so keep on the look out.

The pace of the discovery of candidate planets(planets that can support human life) has recently increased. Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory in Chile announced the discovery of 16 “Super-Earths”.

Be sure to follow us on twitter.com/mhftechnet and subscribe to us by looking for “The MHF Tech Network” on iTunes.

Sponsor: CUBS The Computer Warehouse – For more information, call 0208 343 8223 or visit cubsuk.com.

Where possible, please visit mhftechnet.adiman423.co.uk and click the “donate” button to donate anything you can so we can continue to make these great shows, which sound awesome.

The MHF Tech Show Episode 6 Show Notes

Posted on October 9, 2011 by Adi Khajuria Posted in audio, The MHF Tech Network, The MHF Tech Show Leave a comment

The MHF Tech Show Episode 6

(to download this episode, right-click on the link above and select “save target as” or “save link as”.)

Big shout outs to Zoe fisher and Paul. Our new website is up and running, so click here to go it. Whilst you are there, please sign up for your free account. Alternatively, you can connect with your facebook, twitter, gmail or yahoo account and leave your comments, questions, suggestions and feedback below.

News:

The tech world is in mourning, as Steve Jobs(Former Apple CEO) has passed away.

Book seller barnes and noble have decided to stop selling some books from some of their stores. http://cnet.co/pMzXey

The Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu had a google plus hangout(Google’s Video conferencing system within google plus). http://engt.co/qD6cr4

Odd box: In today’s odd box, we covered 10 of the worst computing disasters which are listed below.

1.Laptop shot in anger

2.PC thrown out the window to destroy evidence before police arrived

3.Laptop fell off a moped and was run over by lorry

4.Laptop dropped in bath while doing company accounts

5.Stolen PCs rescued after three weeks in a river

6.Red wine spilt on laptop over dinner

7.Server rescued after running unchecked 24/7 for years under layers of dust and dirt 8.Computer thrown against a wall

9.Latte-covered laptop rescued

10. Laptop left on car roof as owner drives off

Feature(A tribute to Steve Jobs):

We came to learn that Steve Jobs had passed away on the morning of Thursday 6th October 2011(UK Time).

Steve was an amazing man and we want to take look back at his works.

We started with 1984, and the Macintosh 128k. Back then, the idea of having a computer in the home was a new one. There were no flash drives or hard drives, you had to load your applications and games onto 5.25” floppy disks. The last one was called the Macintosh TV(one of the first colour screen Macintoshes. However, Steve Jobs was fired shortly after the release from Apple and started a company called NeXT, which made the NeXT computer. They also made an operating system called “NeXTSTEP”, if you are interested in it, you can download something called “GNUSTEP”(click here).

In 1997, Apple bought NeXT and bought Steve Jobs back with him. In 2001, Jobs changed the world with the release of the iPod and iTunes(a free music management and music store application). iTunes then made the jump from just being an Mac application to a Windows application.

In 2007, Jobs introduced the iPhone and turned the smartphone market on it’s head. However, he wanted to have a go at the Tablet market. In 2010, Jobs introduced the iPad, which showed the world how a tablet should be done.

Of course there were some other works such as FaceTime(a video calling solution.

Sponsor: CUBS The Computer Warehouse. When you buy a Western Digital 1.5TB hard drive for your desktop PC or a 750-watt power supply for your desktop PC, use the password MHF and you will get a discount on each of them. Fore more information about the other great products, visit cubsuk.com or call them on 0208 343 8223.

The MHF Tech Show Episode 4 Show Notes

Posted on September 18, 2011 by Adiman423 Posted in The MHF Tech Network, The MHF Tech Show Leave a comment

The MHF Tech Show Episode 4

We want to give a big shout-out to iJustine(AKA Justine Ezarik). Adiman423 was lucky enough to meet her at a recent YouTube meet-up in London. If you want to see her videos, then click here

news: Microsoft have just released a Windows 8 Developer Preview. You can download it by clicking here.

Google are working on an app to rival FlipBoard, Zite and other content aggregation applications(read more).

Finally, the iPhone 5 could be coming out on October 15th(read more).

Odd box: In the odd box, we talk about humans and cyborgs getting married, automated sports reporrt writing and the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence.

Feature: In this feature, Adiman423 talks about his initial experience with the developer preview of Windows 8(which is essentially, Windows 7+ with a tablet-friendly overlay).

website: mhftechnet.adiman423.co.uk

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