Well this is just a quick update on our progress at getting everything back together

• All the data is back except for a few images here and there
• TeamSpeak server is back up [ts.themodshop.net]
• Iogos on the main site and downloads section are back in place
• Databases are optimized

We will be adding some more content mods and additions soon

-Tracker

Want your TREO or other Palm device to look like a iPhone? Download THIS app. Its kind of neat and I am using it right now on my TREO (yes I made this video no comments on how crappy my treo looks)

As I said in the video the only problem with it is the side media controls do not work atleast not with real player but meh I can live with that.

So if you have a Palm OS device then go ahead and grab that program.

[Sorry for the crappy video quality]

[Disclamer: No I did not make this program and no I will not buy you a new palm if you break yours attempting to use this or anything else we post on this site]

-Tracker

This is starting to get retarded. If you keep up with the RIAA like I do then you know that this is just one of the many sad things that they do. The RIAA hates all music and all music lovers. Their only goal in existence is to hunt and destroy all who don’t throw cash at them. It is also these people who lobby for higher music royalties effectively shutting down other sites like pandora that Tracker has posted about. If only our wonderful government here in the states could get a handle on these crazy and sometimes insane companies that seemingly rule our lives. The average American is already at whits end with high gas prices and rising fuel costs. Why should music be so damn expensive? Its supposed to be an expression not a novelty item. I can understand that they need equipment, but that doesn’t mean they have to be rich. The idea of being a rich “rockstar” needs to end. It can still be exciting getting to go on tour and concerts. Thats where the money is for the artist anyway.

-Dark

Well I was messing around in hypervm and somehow it reloaded this vps’s os.

In doing so I lost all the data that wasnt in the backup(s). There was a good bit of images lost but thankfully no real content was lost. Within the next few hours I should have everything running back at 100%

[update] Forums are at 100%

The main site just needs its headder

Same for the downloads section

TeamSpeak will be setup tomarrow

Sad sad day…Back in March I wrote about pandora radio and anywhere.fm. Well its looking like Pandora is going to have to pull the plug on the site.

Founder Tim Westergren has stated that the service is approaching a “pull-the-plug kind of decision” for the service. Why is this happening? Last year, web radio giants were hit with outrageously ridiculous fees by a federal panel for every song that would be played on their stations.

I is sad . I just hope they can find a way to pull through and keep it going.

[Source: ReadWriteWeb]

-Tracker

Whats that? 7400 and 10,000 RPM harddrives are not fast enough for you? Well a source over at Slashdot writes the following

“Western Digital seems to be preparing for the onslaught of solid-state drives set to impact its market by developing a 20,000 rpm hard drive. Similar to the VelociRaptor line of drives, the new drives are speculated to be offering lower capacity as a tradeoff for faster seek and write times.”

I personally would rather have a 1tb 10000 RPM drive than a 500gb 20000 RPM one. Then again I am more for size rather than speed

-Tracker

Slow day in the tech world so I will share this joke with you that passed through my inbox not to long ago.

At  a recent computer expo (COMDEX),Bill Gates  reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated,

‘If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon.’

In response to Bill’s comments, General Motors issued a press release stating:

If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics (and I just love this part):

1.  For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash……..Twice a day.

2.  Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new  car.

3.  Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.

4.  Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

5.  Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive — but would run on only five percent of the roads.

6.  The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single ‘This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation’ warning light.

7.  The airbag system would ask ‘Are you sure?’ before deploying.

8.  Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.

9.  Every time a new car was introduced car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

10.  You’d have to press the ‘Start’ button to turn the engine  off

Like I said…very slow day

-Tracker

Well browsing my normal rss feeds I came across this post on Switched. It reads

The Communications Workers of America recently released a survey of national broadband speeds and penetration and, perhaps not surprisingly, Alaska was ranked dead last in Internet speed. The average download speed across the state was a miserly 0.8 megabits per second (mbps), barely fast enough to stream a YouTube video without hiccups. By comparison, the fastest average speeds in the rest of the United States were found in Rhode Island, where a speedy 6.8 mbps is the norm, which lets you download a song in less than 10 seconds

Of course, these speeds pale in comparison with other nations. Japanese surfers get average download speeds of 63 mbps, and even the French get 17 mbps. However, American averages are pulled down due to the 15 percent of the population still connecting via ancient dial-up networks.

[Source: CWA via Switched]

Now perhaps to you that does not seem bad. But to me it sucks. I download so much stuff in one day I kill my little 3mb connection. But as I kept reading my rss feeds I came across another bandwidth related post.

This one via slashdot reads

US Broadband Won’t Catch Up With Japan’s For 101 Years

An anonymous reader writes

“Internet speeds of users nationwide shows that the United States has not made significant improvements in deploying high-speed broadband networks in the past year, and if the average US Internet speed continues to improve only at the same rate it did from 2007 to 2008, the country won’t catch up with Japan’s current download speed for another 100 years, according to findings released by the Communications Workers of America’s (CWA’s) Speed Matters campaign.”

With enough statistical mangling, nearly anything can be presented as plausible, but that’s not enough to cover up my envy of Asian broadband speeds.

[Source: Slashdot]

The irony in this? I was calling the cable company to see if the house we might be moving to can get there nice new 20mb service. No luck there… Stuck with AT&T’s crappy service.

Anyway…What are your average download speeds?

Back when I lived in Florida the city of St.Cloud put in free city wide wifi. And it was so sweet you could get broadband wifi while going around town. Worked fairly well when you were traveling even. But then I moved to Kentucky. Now when I got up here the only source for wifi away from home was Starbucks McDonalds and a few other small places. Then in spring of this year they launched a new service. There is free wifi service in the 35square mile city limits. This network is sweet. 1 bad part is you only get 90 minutes a day on it. But the speeds are decent and the coverage is almost flawless.

The main function of the network is for the fire police and city workers. But they allow guest access as well.

Outfitted with mobile computers in their cars, police officers will have constant access to information such as outstanding arrest warrants, police records, and license plate information. In lieu of returning to the office to fill out paperwork, they can file reports from their cars, via the wireless network.

fire fighters will have access to graphical information such as building maps, traffic information, and driving routes. The network will help them to determine which trucks are closest to a fire.

While Bowling Green initially planned the wireless network to aid first responders, city officials also want to use the city-wide Wi-Fi for other municipal applications. For example, Housing and Community Development workers will file building inspection information from the field, and completed inspections will be transferred automatically to a main database. They’ll also receive inspection requests from the field.

Now this is no small project. First off they had to get equipment that could work outdoors in power outages give good reception and support multiple networks. That is where the hardware comes in.

Bowling Green’s network is an outdoor wireless mesh solution, comprising outdoor Wi-Fi access points (APs) and centralized network controllers from Cisco Systems. The
Cisco Aironet 1520 Series Lightweight Outdoor Mesh Access Points are equipped with radios that support the 802.11a/b/g wireless LAN standard, which offers data transmissions of up to 54 megabits per second; They provide more than enough bandwidth for data communications and video feeds, according to Steve Milam, manager of network operations for Bowling Green. When the multi-phase project is completed in the spring, the network will include some 800 outdoor wireless access points, spread across 35 square miles. The mobile computers and cameras that connect to the network also support 802.11g.

Standardizing on a single wireless technology ensures that all the public safety departments can communicate with each other. This is extremely important. Incompatibility of radio systems is a common problem among rescue workers. In fact, it is the problem that led to the deaths of more than 100 New York firefighters during the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001; they failed to receive vital instructions from dispatchers because of failed radio transmissions.

In a wireless mesh, the network dynamically routes packets of information from access point to access point. A few APs have to be connected directly to the wired network, but the rest share a connection with one another over the air. Meshes are ideal for outdoor networks where a fiber connection is not always available. In Bowling Green, the majority of the access points will be attached to the city’s electrical poles, with the blessing of the local utility company.

Cisco’s Aironet 1520 Series wireless APs offer both a fiber connector and the option of running on battery power, which is crucial if there’s an electrical outage at any time. They’re also surprisingly hearty, which is important in cases of bad weather (Kentucky is prone to tornadoes) or bad drivers. While the network is still in its pilot phase, in a small section of the city, the access points have already proven their toughness, according to Milam.

“We had a drunk guy drive into one of the poles recently; the impact broke the pole in two, and knocked an access point onto the ground,” says Milam. “The AP fell 32 feet, and it kept working, running on battery. It had a couple of scratches on it, but it worked just fine.”

The access points also support Power over Ethernet (PoE) technology, which allows the transmission of electricity (along with data) over an Ethernet cable. To that end, network administrators can power the cameras on the network simply by plugging them into the PoE ports on the access points.

The wireless controller lets network administrators centrally manage all the APs on the network, troubleshooting potential problems and delivering software updates remotely. Mitigating the need for manual fixes is a boon for any network administrator, but it is especially important in an outdoor mesh network – where most of the access points sit 30 feet off the ground and out of easy reach.

The network also sports sophisticated security software that keeps hackers from gaining access to sensitive information.

If you want to read more about this then click the read more link

[Read more: Computer World]

You think building a huge wifi network is easy?

Try building a huge wifi network that is going to be used by over 9000 hackers.

Thats what they had to do at defcon this year.

There backbone was a cisco fiber switch and there firewall was a quad core xeon! (thats alot considering mine is abut 400mhz)

Defcon’s 20 megabit internet connection runs over a point-to-point wireless link to another hotel that has a point-of-presence in the basement.

So if this sounds like something you want to see check out the link below!

[Source: Wired]