http://www.htc.com/europe/SupportDownload.aspx?p_id=283&cat=2&dl_id=996 pobeert u de bovenste link met uw serienummer dit zou moeten werken

Approximate Translation: Please try the above URL, this should work for your serial number

So I did and the download worked! I now have the necessary files and am preparing the Hero for updating. I dont like that it requires Windows, but Virtualbox up and running solved that too.

After some backing up (the upgrade apparently destroys all data and you cant be too sure so I backed up the SD too.) we re ready to Go! (More breaking news as the matter evolves!)

I guess the whole HTC sync to Virtualbox doesnt work as easy as I hoped – Sync and the phone dont find each other as they should.. I guess Ill have to find a Windows computer

But at least I now have what should be a working upgrade file for my wifes Belgian HTC Hero :s

Today, part of a conversation with a friend considering the HTC Wildfire and asking the iPhone question. A long answer ensued (even though by then he had already decided to buy the Wildfire, ruling out the iPhone quickly after seeing the outrageous price..) No better time to spew my own outrageous opinions!

En waarom is een iPhone dan eigenlijk zoveel slechter dan een Android? Concreet dan…
pf, er zijn allerhande problemen met de iPhone. Iedereen vind dat een fantastische telefoon maar in se is dat enkel omdat er een appel op staat en omdat Stevie zegt dat t DE telefoon is.
De iPhone 4 lost al enkele dingen op.. Zoals multi tasking.. small stuff zoals het feit dat ge nu eindelijk icoontjes in een mapje kunt steken op uw desktop. Ge kunt nu ook filmkes maken met uw telefoon; als ik me niet vergis kunt ge zelfs thethering (uw GSM data abbo gebruiken om over wifi met uw laptop of whatever op te surfen) doen, als ik het goed voor heb is het zelfs recent ook mogelijk om den wallpaper van uw telefoon te veranderen!!! …
Wat ge overgens Niet kunt .. Ge kunt geen batterij van vervangen, geen SD kaartekes in steken/vervangen, geen widgets (klok, kalender, weerbericht op desktop) en dan hebben we t nog ni eens over hun recente “Revolutionair Vernieuwende Antenne” blunder en (want in se is die blunder niet zo spectaculair) hun degoutante en arrogante reactie daarop.. iPhone werkt ook nog steeds met die vervelende proprietary kabels daar waar HTC met standaard mini-USB kabels werkt. En dan is er die vervelende iTunes nog; Geen pc nodig voor Android!
In se zijn er hopen kleine dingen die die telefoons gewoon achter doen zitten op de huidige tech..
Het was indertijd ne goeien telefoon, maar er zijn ondertussen betere telefoons (android telefoons) en als ge de prijs in rekening brengt hebt ge een Highly Overpriced piece of Shit – Verkocht als goud door goeie marketting en een leger van gebruikers met Stockholm Syndroom.

Then again, ik heb nog geen paar weken met een apple foon rond gelopen. … het is frustrerend om iedereen zo over die iPhone te horen preken alsof het gods linker testikel is. Een vraag zonder neutraal of echt kort antwoord dus..

Weete; een deel van het bovenstaande staat ook hier samen gevat:
iPhone4 vs HTC Evo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL7yD-0pqZg

Nog meer Then Again – [iPhone user name omitted to protect the victims] geniet met volle teugen van zijn iPhone stockholm syndroom .. dus fysiek onaangenaam kan het niet zijn. Anderzijds, na de procedure is een frontale lobotomie blijkbaar ook niet zo erg..

To highlight a few high points ..

• “Everyone thinks [the iPhone is] a great phone but in truth thats only because there is an apple on the device and because Stevie says its THE phone.”
• “[The iPhone is] a Highly Overpriced piece of Shit – sold for gold by good marketing and an army of users suffering Stockholm Syndrome.”
• “Its frustrating to hear everyone preach about the iPhone as if it were Gods left testicle”
• “Then again, [iPhone Users] fully enjoy their iPhone Stockholm syndrome .. so it cant be physically unpleasant. On the other hand, once the procedure is complete, a frontal lobotomy isn’t unpleasant either.”

And I didn’t even mention the porn.

Unlimited internet? Well, no.

Turbonet and up customers can enjoy “Free Downloading”. You can now choose to pay for the perception of unlimited downloading. There still is a limit but they promise that that limit is so far beyond what you would download as a normal person that you will never run into the limit. And they wont set the bar. They will tally the users with similar packs and see to it that you dont over-use (twice the average use) compared to those peers.

Thats not unlimited, they merely made the barrier variable and invisible!

(1) De term “Vrij downloaden” betekent dat je een zeer grote hoeveelheid gegevens via het netwerk van Telenet kan doorsturen en ontvangen. Enkel bij buitensporig volumeverbruik waarbij het comfort van andere abonnees in het gedrang kan komen, zal Telenet je vragen je verbruik aan te passen.

Onder buitensporig volumeverbruik verstaan we verbruik dat minstens het dubbele bedraagt van het gemiddeld volumeverbruik van alle abonnees van je internetproduct. Telenet behoudt zich het recht voor om bij buitensporig volumeverbruik, wat dynamisch bepaald wordt en afhangt van het beschikbare lokale netwerkvolume, de downloadsnelheid te verlagen naar minimaal 512 Kbps tot wanneer de volgende aanrekeningsperiode begint.

“Vrij downloaden” mag enkel voor privédoeleinden gebruikt worden en in volledige overeenstemming gebeuren met de algemene voorwaarden en de gedragscode van Telenet. Dit betekent ondermeer dat de abonnee enkel legale gegevens mag verspreiden.
Source: http://telenet.be/219/0/1/nl/thuis/internet.html

My main problem here is the perception. This new formula is utterly misleading and frustrating. They appear to be offering unlimited data but instead they offer an invisible and variable barrier. One could say that this is necessary as to not slow down other users (in fact they say so themselves) but that’s turning things around. The consumer pays for a service, if that service-level is impossible to maintain on the current Telenet network; that network is at fault and not the users for using it. Ergo upgrading the network instead of throttling the users.

Now, There is nothing wrong with a more communal approach. We, the Telenet users, use this service as a group; the resources are limited and we all want decent speed. (And if memory serves me well, Telenet did start out like that..) so we ll just all be social about it and not overdo the downloading. And its even better if Telenet provides us the tools to do that..
But thats not what they re selling; thats not what they re advertising!

On top of that, their whole concept of fair use is measured using a set of parameters that are not exactly clear. Their meter shows your behavior up till the time of the month where you check it. If the meter is red, that means that if you keep up that downloading behavior they might throttle your speed at some time till the end of the month. Or at the very least you will be asked to change your use. Green means you’re up to par with your fellow users. (Telenet Helpdesk Page: Hoe interpreteer ik de nieuwe Telemeter voor abonnementen met vrij downloaden?)
“Buitensporig Volumegebruik” means more than twice the average your fellow users are downloading. But since the time of day still factors in, its obviously not that simple? So how is this number being computed? And where can I see the numbers and all the data that factors into it?
Today? Nowhere.

A quick search trough the dredges of their online support quickly turns up the introduction of the “Fair Use Policy” concept. With tips on how to use the service fairly. The question about what the actual limit finally is, is answered in the help: “Dat hangt af van je internetgedrag en wanneer je vooral surft: tijdens drukke of minder drukke periodes. Aangezien niet iedereen hetzelfde internetgedrag heeft, is het niet mogelijk om er 1 cijfer op te plakken.” Which is about the same as saying “we ve got some math to get there, but we d rather not tell you..” Sure sounds a lot like the Nighttime/Daytime counter renamed to regular and peak time.

Its a play straight out of their American colleagues book. They call it unlimited, add a vague “Fair Use” clause and sell the same product as before, but with a higher limit, less information, a different meter and a new point of view.

The new provider commercial buzz words all float around unlimited downloading; no caps.
Yet these are invisible, variable download caps that we re getting instead.

So Im checking out “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart” in Perl!
The main concerns being Security, Legibility and Independence. Turns out a CPAN search for Captcha spits out 74 hits! Lots of Captchas for frameworks; not an option though..

Authen::Captcha – Perl extension for creating captcha’s to verify the human element in transactions.
Looks good. Had some concerns over the filename security, but after a short code review, those doubts have been laid to rest.

Authen::PluggableCaptcha – A pluggable Captcha framework for Perl
The concept looks great, but after losing too much time on the Imager module, Im droping this one for the time being. Cant figure out if the CAPTCHAs are worth anything if I cant generate an example

GD::SecurityImage – Security image (captcha) generator.
Does what is says; generate captchas. With some configuration effort it will probably even make legible captchas. I am looking for a full solution so none of that

LOTS of frameworks and irrelevant stuff..

Looks like we ll be giving the Authen::Captcha the spotlight. Hooray..

I got the card out of the phone (gotta love the fact that android doesn’t mind the hot swapping) and connected it to a reader and the laptop!

My hope that the files were there but just not being shown when using the phone was quickly squashed; the directory only contained the small amount of files I was able to see when connected to the phone

LOST.DIR
Android apparently has a LOST.DIR construct (reminiscent of EXT3s lost+found) where they attach files that are on the disk but not attached to some valid directory.

Which is where all my lost pictures were (needless to say I cried hot tears of joy – LOL)

This does of course screw up your filenames, timestamps, file extensions, whatnot.. luckily the picture meta data has all the date and in most cases even gps data you might need

Gotta love android & teh linuxiez

Not so for my wife however since she wont be getting that upgrade.

The upgrade is Over The Air for every Hero owner with ROM version 2.73.405.5. Viona however was early to the party and does Not have this version. No problem, there is an update on the site; you need windows to update but Ill even ignore that part for now. The page checks your serial number and if its found to be valid, you ll apparently be able to download the update. When I put Vionas S/N, the site answers: “Sorry, this software download is not suitable for your device.” Annoying; since I know of other Belgian Hero owners who did get the OTA upgrade already.

I was of course sad, I’m on CyanogenMod 5.0.8 with my Magic, so Ive been enjoying the 2.1 for a while now and I was really happy that the annoying issues that she s been experiencing would be solved. (She only sees One Google calendar, not the other ones like mine; thus really denying her most of the reason why we got it, namely being able to see each other agendas.)

So I sent a friendly email to the HTC people; asking what up.. And received a friendly answer within days:

Dank u wel voor uw vraag over de HTC Hero. Uw probleem is inderdaad bekend bij HTC, en momenteel wordt er hard gewerkt aan een oplossing. Dit zal waarschijnlijk een ROM upgrade naar 2.73 voor Belgische toestellen betekenen, en ik raad u aan de website in de gaten te houden. Ik verwacht dat de oplossing spoedig zal verschijnen

Which sums to

• Your problem is known within HTC
• We are working on a solution
• This will probably entail an upgrade to 2.73 for Belgian machines
• I advise you to watch the site and expect the solution to appear soon

More indefinite waiting? Thats a pitty; we ve been waiting for some months now :/ I guess keeping an eye on the HTC Hero Support page is all I can do :/

crontab
30 17 * * * curl -s ‘http://www.htc.com/europe/supportdownloadlist.aspx?p_id=283&act=sd&cat=2′ -o /home/gert/htc_moni/nu && echo DIFF $(diff /home/gert/htc_moni/oud /home/gert/htc_moni/nu) | /bin/mail -s “HTC Monitoring” “me@guesswhat” && mv /home/gert/htc_moni/nu /home/gert/htc_moni/oud

Lets hope this doesnt take too long

And Why not upgrade to Vilainrom or whatever? Trying to keep the waranty in tact for once And certainly since the official Hero 2.1 is SO close

I am sitting in my living room,

• Ubuntu booted on the laptop & watching comedy while I work
• over wifi.
• I also have a BASH console open
• with an ssh session
• to the server running Ubuntu.
• Where I have a screen session with several sessions;
• one of which an ssh session
• to Dara, the CentOS
• Xen server.
• Where I escalated privileges to root.
• To watch the xm console
• installing CentOS according to the definitions in a KS file
• on my webserver.
• With KickStart
• getting the data from a CentOS webserver.

Technology is Awesome. And certainly when we just forget how Fucking COMPLICATED and INTRICATE it all is. Just forget and USE it

From: Garry Butkovich
Site: Some cookierecipes blog; Actual url removed
Submitted on 2009/12/30 at 9:17pm
A great idea for future recipes this. Thank you for sharing it. Have you noticed how so many people appear to be cooking again? I wonder if the lack of funds due to the current climate has something to do with it and we all appear to be cooking again! its great!

Great post no; with a link to a blog with one cookie recipe on.. Just another blogging, enjoying the Web2.0

Except that it was a reply to an ancient rant about cookies in web browsers! (The rant isnt even normally accessible on my blog at the moment) Utter techno babble, no recipes or even anything that could be mistakin’ for one!

Sad.

(The weird Garfield colored rug to the right IS indeed our cat.) This first brick will run its storage on 2 disks, each 2Tb, over a raid controller, configured to behave as RAID 1.

The orders were placed, packages received (very timely I might add!) and the assembly was adventurous!

First step, installing the Motherboard.

Connecting some cables and installing the daughterboard for RAID comfort..

Installing the first HD, top left standing behind the unit

Then the 2nd HD (this one had me puzzled for a sec..) under where the slimdrive CD drive might go

Finally, making sure all is well ordered before closing up

And checking the new server out in all its Freshness. Front

And back; Cant wait to boot this puppy!

Time to get out and enjoy the sun! And drink lots of jummy water!

The linux package is called gish153-1.tar.gz or something alike. You will of course need this to install the Gish! Buy it at http://www.chroniclogic.com/gish.htm (its worth it!)

Installing it is pretty straight forward, as it is simply extracting the archive and putting it where you want to keep it. The .tar.gz (or .tgz) file is an archive file; a lot like the more known .zip or .tar files and extracting them is really simple.

You can extract the file in several easy ways

• By double clicking it. This will open the file roller or whatever its linked to depending on what linux distro you have. Click extract, choose where you want to extract it and done.
• By right clicking the file and selecting “Extract Here”; this will extract Gish in the map you have the archive in.
• By navigating the commandline to the map where the Gish archive is and typing “tar -xvzf gish153-1.tar.gz”. If this doesnt work, check that the archive is in that map and check if the archive name in the command here is correct. This will extract the Gish archive in the map run the command in.

After extracting, you ll have a map with all the Gish files in. You can simply run the “gish” file to play. You can store this map anywhere you want, but do it somewhere logical because you ll navigate there every time you want to play it.

And thats how its installed. Simple, no

Now, you ll probably also want to launch it from your Gnome menu and simply adding the link will have the Gish start without any graphics (this is because the paths are relative and the app as such doesnt find the files it needs.) You can create a new launcher using the menu editor under System > Preferences > Main menu; there select the Games menu and click “New Item”. You can quickly solve this by following the guide on their forums Gish Launcher in Ubuntu or by using the following starting link for your app menu launcher command (The command assumes you have the Gish installed in your home directory; for example “/home/yourname/gish153″. If this is not where you put it; change that Bash will probably be in /bin but if it doesnt work, do check that too.)

/bin/bash -c “cd ~/gish153/ && ./gish”

The mechanics are that you have bash change the working directory to the right path and start the gish from there. Ill see about posting this to the forum thread too, but I honestly dont have the time right now to do the registration dance & all..

Id never have thought of writing this, but since there was a search hit for it, I guess its something people have questions about. I hope its of use to someone!

Edit: As blogs are a fleeting medium, this is maintained at gertschepens.be