Archive for November, 2007
OS X to run Windows applications natively?
Nov 30th
Many in the IT world consider this to be a Holy Grail, a true ultimate in software milestones. Imagine you have a Mac, you like it, but you need to run Excel – and then running it without any other tool in between, just doubleclick it. No Parallels, no VMWare, not even Boot Camp. How does that sound to you? Amazing? It sure does to me.
And here’s the real juicy part: There seems to be an undocumented and so far very well hidden feature in Mac OS X Leopard, which could be counted as evidence that Apple’s developers are indeed brewing on the recipe for Windows apps and might add it to the meal.
This is not the first time that this subject come up. Rumor had it a lot of times that Apple might be working on such a thing, as there was one Code Name which never took form, but was mentioned. When Apple’s systems were older, and just called Mac OS, the layers for each framework (such as Carbon and Cocoa) were put in symbolic boxes, so that the entire thing was easier to understand.
Yellow Box:
The Yellow Box is the application environment for “Rhapsody” software, whether on the PowerPC or Intel platform. It is preemptive (applications must share the CPU; no program can take over), multithreading (several applications can run at the same time, not just coexist in memory), and memory protected (an application may crash, but that will not crash the operating system).
Blue Box:
Blue Box is how you run Macintosh applications under Rhapsody for PowerPC. It fully duplicates the Mac OS right down to its limitations, such as memory management and concurrent multitasking. (If it went beyond that and offered more robust services like Rhapsody does, many Mac applications might not work properly.) The first Blue Box release runs in full-screen mode, hiding Yellow Box; this may change in the future.
And the Holy Grail read as follows.
Red Box:
Red Box, although not confirmed by Apple, would be how you run Windows applications under Rhapsody for Intel – and possibly under Rhapsody for PowerPC as well. Like the Blue Box on a Power Macintosh, the Red Box will give Rhapsody users a way to run Windows applications.
A little more detailed information about the tree boxes can be found here.
But Red Box never took some interesting shape. Steven Edwards on the WINE mailing list points out that he has found some VERY interesting behavior of Leopard while trying to test something with WINE. It seems as if he has uncovered a hidden and undocumented feature that might lead show that Apple is indeed trying to make native Windows execution a reality. Without Windows.
In the below I have left out some parts, so that the more important information is directly visible.
When tracking down a crash in the kernel32 loader test, Dmitry found a
bug in the Mac OS loader when Wine tried to load his dummy PE file.
Upon further research I found that the Mac loader seems to have its
own undocumented PE loader built in. I did some further testing with a
windows binary and got some really interesting results.[...]
Its trying to load the dlls. I get this output:
[...]
steven-edwardss-imac:temp sedwards$ file procexp.exe
procexp.exe: MS-DOS executable PE for MS Windows (GUI) Intel 80386 32-bit
steven-edwardss-imac:temp sedwards$ open .
steven-edwardss-imac:temp sedwards$ ./a.out
dlopen(./procexp.exe, 258): Library not loaded: MPR.dll
Referenced from: /Users/sedwards/Library/Application
[...]So this leads to the question. Whats going on? Is Apple going to be
adding a win32 compatibility layer to OS X?
On the second reply he himself wrote in the thread, he has again listed outputs of commands, and further states:
PE Files were rejected on Tiger, which is interesting to me because I don’t
think that this is just a hold over from EFI support. I think it may be a sign
of future addition of a Win32 subsystem to OS X.
On the third (and in the moment the last) page, he states:
More information
(Link to more information at Apple Open Source)
[Note: You must be registered in Apple Developer Connection to access this code!]which contains
# local symbols to suppress
*PE*
*Win*The project file references ImageLoaderPE.cpp, but that isn’t included
in the source…
all the other files are here, so yes it really looks like they are
trying to hide support for
PE. Why would they go to all this trouble to hide Windows Binary support?
So. Steve. What’s happening here? Is you or is you ain’t implementing Windows Executable support in OS X 10.6 maybe?!
If you want to see all the output, go to Steven Edward’s WINE mailing list thread and read the three entries he has done, which do uncover very interesting information.
This could be a leftover from an earlier, unfinished project. But then, how are the same things rejected when attempted on Mac OS X Tiger, Apple’s previous system? Is Red Box taking shape? Or is it just weird behavior of Apple’s system, maybe throwing oil into the fire on purpose? I guess we won’t find out at the next MacWorld, but maybe at WWDC 09 or so.
Stay iTuned.
The touch is jailbroken
Nov 29th
I made a video showing the possibilities of a jailbroken iPod touch, in case you haven’t seen what the device can do with a little bit of work.
What do if my PC suddenly plays Fur Elise?
Nov 28th
Luckily this never happened to me. And it certainly won’t as I use Macs now. But what to do, if this should happen to you? Microsoft explains it to you. In detail. And why.
Click on the image, and read the information very carefully!
And if you don’t believe this is a real entry in Microsoft’s KB, then click here and behold.
Get me out of jail – with Touch
Nov 26th
Don’t worry. I’m not in a jail right now. And luckily, my iPod touch which I got yesterday, also is no more in jail. I helped him out with a procedure that is commonly known as “Jailbreak”. The legality of this is pretty much open to interpretation, as the procedure changes a device you own, and there’s nothing wrong with changing ones property. So Apple can say little to nothing about the super intelligent hackers that are out there, giving us the pleasure of open iPod touches. If you do this on an iPhone, I think it is more questionable as you would most likely want to unlock the phone. And at that aspect, I can understand when Apple gets mad. On the iPod however, I don’t think massive damage is done to the company.
And this is why I give you a quick rundown of what to do to Jailbreak your iPod touch, with current Firmware 1.1.2. Got the touch? Got some minutes? Let’s go.
What you need:
iPod touch, wireless LAN with web access, the sync cable, and iTunes.
What you have to do:
1.) If your iPod is on 1.1.2 already, you have to download the Firmware 1.1.1 from Apple, and downgrade to it. It’ll wipe the touch, but don’t worry, you can re-sync later.
2.) Connect your touch and open iTunes. In there, select your iPod, and then hold down the Option key (on Windows it’s the Alt key), and click on Restore. This will force iTunes to open a dialog from which you can chose the file from step 1. Let it do it’s thing.
3.) Once it’s done, unplug the touch and open Safari on the device, and navigate to JailBreakMe.com, scroll down to the end, and click on install AppTapp application.
4.) The touch will reboot and on your Springboard you’ll see the Installer icon. Your device is now jailbroken.
5.) To update to 1.1.2, open the Installer.app on the touch, go to Install on the bottom, then Tweaks (1.1.1), and select OktoPrep. This tool is really important for the upgrade. Once it’s installed, reconnect the touch with the Mac or PC.
6.) Now, download the 1.1.2 firmware from Apple’s servers. If iTunes asks you to upgrade, cancel it.
7.) Once the download completes, like before, in iTunes go to your iPod and Option-click (or PC: Alt-click) on “Update”. Again, iTunes opens a dialog. Select the new firmware downloaded from step 6.
8.) Cool. If you made it this far, you’re not far away from your pleasure. Now, download the 1.1.2 Jailbreak from the linked page.
9.) Got it? Good. Extract the zip. Connect the touch to your computer, and important: quit iTunes. Everything that has the name iTunes or iPod as running process must go. Seriously. Do this now.
10.) Alright. At this point, you’re very close. Open the folder into which you extracted the file from step 8. For Windows users, doubleclick the windows.bat file, for Mac users, the .JAR file. Make sure you’ve got Java installed.
11.) Wait. Watch it do it’s thing. When it’s done, your iPod will reboot 3 times or so, and there’s the Installer.app again!
—
Let the fun begin. If you want to install 3rd party apps, go to the Installer.app, and install what your heart desires. Ah yes, you’re running on 1.1.2 now. Cool eh?
If you made everything right, you can have a Springboard screen like this:
iPod touch showing multiple apps, including previously unavailable iPhone applications
Second page of my Springboard
Enjoy!
My music is where I’d like you touch
Nov 25th
Alright. So after having saved a little bit of money, I was finally able to replace my aged iPod Video, and it was time to come up with something new. So I went into the store, and got myself a brand new and shiny iPod touch today.
Don’t touch me now: synchronizing the iPod touch screen
All in all, the device truly is quite impressive. I have seen it already with Valentin, my housemate and friend, who got it earlier than me. I gave me the honor to touch his Touch, and it felt like Steve boomenized it in past Keynotes. But just playing around with it, or owning it and then play with it, is a complete different thing.
So here’s my verdict.
Safari
Yes! This is the browser you are looking for, when you’re at the airport, or you don’t want to take your laptop with you if all you do is browse the web while on the go. Full-fledged browser, even closes pop-ups. Cool.
YouTube
Like to kill time? Yes? Then YouTube is right beside the Safari icon and will aid you greatly in doing just that: killing time. However, the YouTube vids do have a clearer quality, the Apple/YouTube deal shows. I think it is better than standard YouTube on the web.
Calendar
Had no time to thoroughly check it yet, but it looks great. It imports existing iCal events with iTunes, and you can add new events which then are synced back to your machine. Cool.
Contacts
Nice. Syncs all contacts, all information, everything. Don’t know if you can add new ones on the go though. I will find out soon enough when I travel with the company again.
Clock
Well. Default is the clock of your time zone, but you can add a lot of clocks, so that you know what time it is when you go to some other place. Pretty handy if you have to travel a lot (like I probably will from now).
Calculator
The buttons are Aqua.
Settings
A lot of options to set. WLAN, Brightness, and options for each functionality of the device. The standard “Shuffle / Repeat all” from previous iPod (Classics) has vanished. The only shuffling option is when you enter the Playlists list. Bizarre, but I still like it.
iTunes Store
Amazing. Buy songs on the go, bring it back to your machine. Need I say more? Guess not.
Photos
Like iPhoto 08? Yes? Then behold all your events, and photo roll names in the photo section of the device that has the Multi-Touch. It’s all there. By the way: set the slideshow effect to “Ripple”. Cool Dashboard-like effect!
Videos
Couldn’t test that yet, no videos or movies in my library (yet).
…and last but not least, which is what the iPod (initially) was all about:
Music
Wow. Amazing. Think you know music on the go? You ain’t seen nothin’ if you haven’t seen this. I’m serious. It’s like the iPhone, you have a lot of options you can set. The included earbuds are better than the old ones in my opinion, and man, they DO get loud. The Rotatometer (I know it’s called Accelerometer – but that word does not make sense!) works great (in everything by the way, Safari, Photos and so on). Turn the device, and it goes into Cover Flow – like Steve boomenized.
Go with the flow: when turned, the device activates Cover Flow for ya pleasure
So if you are looking for a nice Christmas present for that special someone – this is IT! It’s a small and 8mm thin thing, but trust me, it’s gonna make that person happy. For a long time. At least I’d like to think so, and I think you would agree.
…my music is where I’d like you to touch
Facebook runs CentOS!
Nov 22nd
In case you didn’t know, Facebook, the popular social networking site, runs on CentOS servers. I found this out after trying to add the Extended Info Application, and got this screen which I should probably not be seeing.
CentOS stands for Community Enterprise OS and is basically a community version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
20 years on: the Max Headroom TV hack
Nov 22nd
Many of you may not know this. Many of you may not even know Max Headroom. This was a fairly successful and popular Sci-Fi TV show, set in a post-apocalyptic world in which TV networks rule the world, and a liberation movements constantly tries to transmit their messages by hijacking the TV network’s signals with sophisticated technology. At the center stage was the fictional artificial intelligence Max Headroom, who became famous for his stuttering, his digital voice, and his sarcasm in many situations.
On November 22, 1987, an unidentified male person manages to hijack two TV networks within three hours in the United States. He is wearing a Max Headroom mask, and wears a suit, like the original, and appears on a rotating metal blinds background, where as the original had a sort of line pattern in the back, which however, also rotated. The hijacked networks were WTTW-11 and WGN-9.
The Max Headroom impostor
The first occurrence of the signal hijack took place during WGN-TV’s News at Nine. During Bears highlights in the sports report, the signal was interrupted by a video of a person wearing a Max Headroom mask, standing or sitting in front of a swaying sheet of corrugated metal imitating the background effect in the Max Headroom New Coke commercial. There was no audio. The hijack was stopped after only 20 seconds when WGN switched the modulation of their studio link to the John Hancock Center broadcast.
The incident left sports reporter Dan Roan flustered, saying, “Well, if you’re wondering what happened, so am I.”
But this was not all. The impostor returned a second time during a Doctor Who episode, this time on WTTW-11.
Later that night, around 11:15 p.m., during a broadcast of the Doctor Who episode “Horror of Fang Rock”, PBS station WTTW had its station’s signal hijacked using the same video that was broadcast during the WGN-TV hijack, but this time there was garbled audio.[1] The person in the Max Headroom mask appeared, as before, this time saying, “That does it. He’s a freakin’ nerd,” before laughing and jeering, “Yeah, I think I’m better than Chuck Swirsky. Freakin’ liberal.”
The pirate continued to utter strange phrases, including Coca-Cola’s advertizing slogan “Catch the Wave” while holding a Pepsi can (Max Headroom was a Coke spokesperson at the time), saying “Your love is fading”, humming the theme song to Clutch Cargo, and stating that he had “made a giant masterpiece for all the greatest world newspaper nerds” — the call letters WGN are an abbreviation for “World’s Greatest Newspaper”, in reference to the Tribune Company’s Chicago Tribune. He then held up a glove, said that his “brother is wearing the other one”, and put the glove on, but took it off because, he said, that it’s dirty. The picture then cuts to the person undressed below the waist and being spanked with a flyswatter by an unknown person, screaming and saying, “They’re coming to get me!” and “Come get me, bitch!”. The transmission blacked out and cut off, and the hijack was over after about 90 seconds.
Until this day it is unknown who the impostor is, who his accomplices were, and even more important, how he managed to hijack the signal. It would be apparent to assume that he must have tinkered with the signal as a live stream, as he did so in a news show the first time, which could not have been on tape. WTTW remains its broadcast from the Sears Tower top antennas until this day. It would require a serious deal of power to override the signal in the antennas, however, such equipment was available at the time for about $25,000. The impostor could have had access to such equipment, therefore overriding the signal to broadcast his surreal message.
Also, until this day, it is not entirely clear what his motives were and to whom the message was directed. All we know is that someone out there pulled off a great stunt, showing off his skills and knowledge about TV networks. Such an intrusion has not occurred ever since that day. It remains one of the greatest hacks ever done, although the methods and goal are unknown.
The TV interruption, subtitled (as it is hard to make out what he says). Notice the metal background, manually rotated by someone in the back…
The incident has become one of the most interesting moments in TV broadcasting history, he also makes a chilling prediction as he says “made a giant masterpiece for all the greatest world newspaper nerds”. What he meant is unclear, but his interruption appears annually in many newspapers, and now even on YouTube.
Later on, in the movie “Hackers”, in the beginning ‘Zero Cool’ is working on his computer, his mother asks what he is doing. Zero Cool states “I’m taking over a TV network”. It is seen that he remotely controls a machine in an unnamed TV broadcast network which pulls out tapes and puts them into a sort of player which then transmits whatever is on the tape. I believe this to be a reference to the Max Headroom attack.
Damn Interesting: Remember, Remember, The 22nd Of November
Max Headroom Character
The Max Headroom Pirating Incident
Hackers (Film)
Do Not Laugh!
Nov 20th
Why do the Japanese people have the best TV shows? This one’s called ‘Do Not Laugh’ or something like that. The goal is to keep a straight face. Failing to do so will be punished severely. Man, this show would be great over here!!
Do Not Laugh
And if you can’t get enough:
Do Not Laugh – Star Wars
Top Gear: Bugatti Veyron vs. Eurofighter
Nov 18th
Sounds like an insane test? It sure does. This is why Richard Hammond of Top Gear takes on the challenge of going against the cutting edge of military airplane technology, the Eurofighter. He does so in a £1,000,000 super car, the Bugatti Veyron.
‘Nuff said!
Going on a galaxy quest
Nov 18th
Who is into video games, knows this guy. Red cap with a capital M, blue overall. He has defeated the enemy in countless adventures just to save his princess, and he doesn’t get tired of it, nor do his enemies, especially Bowser, the boss of the bad guys. I am speaking of course of Mario, the most recognizable video game character in history.
So I got my hands on Nintendo’s latest and greatest flick for the Wii. To find out why it has been rated the highest of all games of all time, I have thrown the disc into the console. Pretty cool thing right away: in order for the console to support all the new features, it updated right after I put in the game. This went much faster than usual download, as you can imagine.
After the reboot I could select the Galaxy Channel, and I was greated by the cool looking logo, and Mario’s voice. The game started off pretty straight forward and easy, and overall makes good use of the system’s UI (well Nintendo wrote it, so…). I could select a Mii or choose an icon, I chose my Mii. After that, the game started off and began to show its might.
The starting sequence is – as rumored and posted on YouTube – the celebration in Mushroom Kingdom, when suddenly Bowser’s Battleship Fleet appears, and then not only takes the princess, but also the entire castle with him. Quest: Rescue the princess… again.
What’s to say? Well… you first have to complete an easy tutorial, and then you’re in the game. The hub is the Observatory, from which you can access “Domes”, which again can transport you into the all the Galaxies available. Each level is uniquely designed, the enemies are children-friendly, but they’re also quite cool to look at for adults. Goombas walk around, sweep the area, and when they see you, they try to rush to you and kick you… You can see they get angry, and if you make a jump, you can see their eyes follow you! However, the bigger enemies, the boss fights, will make you drool and just want to behold of what the console is capable of. And I haven’t even seen bowser yet. But I heard it’s mind-blowing.
Controls? It truly is the perfect blend between old-school and the Wii’s motion sensors, there truly is no problem whatsoever, you get used to it very quickly.
Graphic wise? Stunning. SMG shows off what the Wii is actually capable off, also introduces a new physics model. Meaning each object can have its own gravity, and when you float in space, you simply float into the one direction you jumped to. But not to worry, you won’t float forever, there’s always an object to pull you down. Imagery so far is pretty amazing, it makes you scratch you head about how much work must have gone into each and every single map, each enemy, each detail.
Overall? If you don’t have it already, you can’t be helped. I give this the full 10 of 10. Once you have seen it, you understand while it was time for Ocarina Of Time to retire from the number 1 spot of highest rated games. Go to the next shop and buy it. Make sure you’re ready for some nostalgia; some tunes are from past games, as well as power-ups (I found the invincibility star! I also found a level with a tune from SMB 3!). Ah yes, you remember Airships, don’t you? Well. Not gone yet? Go get it already, before your store runs out of copies. I bet they will run out very fast.