Oh dear – Looks like Education Queensland is in a pickle over the latest incidents involving their Government-handed-out Laptop per student scheme. The Courier Mail exposed the issue, in this article, that some laptops come equipped with a “security” screenshot program, that will regularly take screenshots of the laptop’s desktop, including Skype windows, web browsers, and other things.

Quoting the article:

One mother has provided proof her daughter’s high school-issued laptop stored timed snapshots of movies watched on the computer, the background screensaver and claims that even a Skype screenshot was stored.

Most parents are aware that elements of their child’s computer use are recorded but the extent of the monitoring by the AB Tutor Client Program has sparked privacy concerns.

And, additionally:

More than 70,000 computers have been issued to high school students across the state but Education Queensland was yesterday unable to say how many had additional monitoring software installed.

Queensland Council for Civil Liberties president Michael Cope said the complaint – if true – was a “violation of privacy”.

While laptop usage tracking is a concern, this level of tracking falls into the category of “Big Brother”. Education Queensland claims that a screenshot is only taken if you type profanity (checked by a local copy of a maintained list) into certain apps. However, you wouldn’t want people taking screenshots of your Windows Live Messenger conversation or Skype webcam session, would you?

For the full scoop, hit the articles’ source links. Ultimately, if one is concerned about the software and wants a solution-to-end-all-solutions, just nuke the laptop with the good ‘ol format utility (booting from a USB or disc, of course) – which will erase the government’s installed copy of Windows, allowing one to replace it with their own copy of Windows.

Article Source: Courier Mail Articles (1, 2).

Downside is that this new VPS costs more, and someone’s gotta pay the bills, however the performance of this VPS is better than our first VPS. I’m looking into using Flattr, which is a unique way of donating money to websites (like this one) which I can use in conjunction with our PayPal donations box. Another idea was to run some advertising (not AdChoices/Flash ads) that would be non-intrusive and related to Coburn’s Domain. This advertisement setup is not finalized, I wish to keep the site clear of ads.

Since we also use CloudFlare, we will try to move over to the new Tokyo-based VPS, so during this time, some parts of this site may be offline, and/or replaced with cached versions of the site. Don’t fret – we’ll be back to full capacity within a reasonable timeframe.

VPS Hosts have the dumbest of reasons to suspend VPS accounts. I mean, I’ve been using my VPS to run an IRC Network and also testing grounds for a new project. Our VPS, perrine.coburndomain.net, was frozen in ice this morning because it apparently was ‘spamming’. The one that I’m pointing the gun at, Exigent, the company that the VPS is hosted with gave a really blunt reason, quote:

Sending out SPAM.

Our VPS is monitored daily to ensure nothing malicious attacks it. It’s kept up to date with the latest software patches. However, this morning, after I was doing the rounds and checking a configuration file via SSH, the VPS got suspended.

A VPS means virtual private server. Think of it like a little server that we own, on a server that a company owns. We own the VPS – but not the “main” server. We’ve got our own servers that run in conjunction with other servers that make up the Coburn’s Domain network.

So, to put it simply, we got a door in our face – and we can’t pull files we need off the VPS until this matter gets resolved. I’ve already sent a support ticket flagged as urgent to clarify WHAT exactly triggered the automatic “you’re sending SPAM” suspension. It’s also been a good few hours. Phone support is broken and their support staff seem to be AFK, so they don’t have to put up with my rage.

I’m sure it’s an honest mistake and meant to flag someone else for spamming; but seriously, give me some decent warning next time. Geez.

I battled Corsair Force 3 Series SSD for some time, in which it turned out that the SSD had some odd quirks with the internal controller causing all sorts of random things to happen including complete system freezes, blue screens, etc. Having returned the SSD to my local PC store under warranty, I got notification yesterday that a replacement had arrived. To my surprise, the replacement was one of the faster Force GT Series – not the normal Force 3 series. Both SSDs are from the same family, however the GT series are optimized for speed with a better controller.

As you can see from the photo above, the SSD is red as red can be. The original one I had was “midnight black”. Both are the same capacity, 60GB. In this case, the SSD would contain a 64GB NAND Flash Chip, which would have 4GB for wear-leveling and cache, while 60GB is available for OS and application use.

So, let’s see how it performs:

Performance Test: Clone from HDD to SSD connected via USB
The Force GT SSD was connected in a USB SATA HDD enclosure, and Arconis TrueImage was booted from CD. I chose to clone the contents of my Lenovo G570′s 640GB HDD, which contained a OEM windows install plus drivers, to the SSD. After clicking next, next and finally, “Start”, the remaining time counter said 44 minutes.

However, that progress bar was rapidly filling – the counter kept clicking down and recalculating itself. In the end, it took just under 15 minutes – clocking in at 14 minutes and 37.8 seconds to finish the clone. That’s faster than installing Windows from a USB Flash Drive! Of course, the 480Mbps limitation of USB2 prevents the SSD from unleashing it’s full potiental, but if this was connected to a USB3 enclosure, then you’d have a seriously fast external SSD.

Boot-up Time Test
With our newly cloned SSD transplanted into the Lenovo laptop (out with the old and in with the new, as they say), the SSD was warm to the touch. The design of the SSD (the casing seems to be a mix of plastic and aluminum) helps prevent the SSD from cooking itself to death. We booted up the laptop, and Windows started.

The SSD took off like a rocket – the Windows bootup animation couldn’t even keep up with the speed of the drive. Within seconds, I was presented with my password logon prompt. After updating the Intel chipset drivers, more reboots were carried out to confirm it wasn’t a one-time fluke.

Thanks to Lenovo’s own boot-time checking tool, the SSD was booting Windows within 15 seconds – 13 seconds to be accurate – which beat the record of 45 seconds on the older 640GB HDD. SATA3 also provides additional speed benefits.

Final Thoughts
I’m seriously impressed at the speed so far. This drive is even better than the one I sent away for warranty, and it just screams. Benchmarks will come later, but if you’re looking for serious performance, hit up the Corsair Force 3 GT series SSD range. You may be paying more for your buck, but the additional cost results in absolute awesome performance – your OS and applications become like butter. It’s that quick.

My rank? Well, I’d have to give it a A. Better than my el-cheapo KingSpec 8GB SSD that’s in one of my older PCs, that’s for sure!

Let’s face it. When your tablet’s manufacturer updates the WiFi-only version of a tablet generation (we’re talking about the A50x series) to ICS, the 3G Models apparently get overlooked.

Not anymore, thanks to the bright sparks that are XDA-Developers, shchers has completed his first build of ICS for the A501 Iconia Tab.

However, installing this little gem is not for the newcomers – you will need to follow instuctions on installing a unlocked patched bootloader to enable ICS booting and installing a modified ClockworkMod recovery before attempting to install this.

Still reading this and wanting to give it a shot? Unleash your hacking skills and follow the full guide here in nice, clean english.

Seriously though, it begs the question:
ACER, Y U NO MAKE ICS UPDATE FOR 3G ICONIA TAB OWNERS?!
For now, it’ll just have to do. :)

Credit to @Amon_RA from Twitter for finding this interesting new startup company.

Four developers, spread across Sydney (Australia, that is) and New York (USA) started a company called “Collector’s Edition”, a new-breed entertainment group that seems to craft nifty websites and services. This time, for a mere $35, they will turn your timeline (or maybe someone else’s timeline…) into 4 rolls of toilet paper, ready for your bidding. Can’t get much better than that, can it?

Quoted from the VentureBeat article:

When you really think about it, $35 is cheap for a product that’s nearly performance art in its simultaneous embrace and mocking of our social media obsessed world.

Additionally, the Sh*tter website is spreading faster than Montezuma’s revenge. Whatever the case, this is sure to be the best version of Toilet Paper yet.

It may be chunky pixels but hey, you can’t blame a PC port of the beloved Super Smash Bros series that graced the Nintendo 64, Nintendo GameCube and Nintendo Wii consoles.

Dan Fornace’s Super Smash Land is what you’d expect to see on the original GameBoy or even a GameBoy Pocket. It features 11 stages, 6 characters, Arcade mode, 4-person multiplayer and even online leaderboards.

Piki Geek has the scoop, so get cracking and polish up your Super Smash Bros fighting skills.

Well, we just pre-ordered a Raspberry Pi through the Australian branch of element14, one of the resellers that are selling the Raspberry Pi (that $25/$35 PC that we’ve covered in our past articles). What could possibly go wrong?

You’ll cringe at the lead time – which is the timeframe they expect to have the units ready to ship from the warehouse. That timeframe is 143 days, apparently. Groan.

Secondly, there’s been a stuff up at the Raspberry Pi manufacturing plant. What happened is that the plant that’s making the Raspberry Pi forgot to put the “magic” inside the LAN port. So, instead, they’ve been fitting a LAN port that was a dud. Not good at all! You can read more about that stuff-up here.

Let’s just hope the Raspberry Pi isn’t obsolete by the time we get our hands on one.

Well, at the launch of another mini computer that we’ve been hyped up about, the Raspberry Pi, it’s not common for the web servers to melt under the load that guests put on the server as they flock to read the annoucement.

That being so, the Rapsberry Pi website server was overloaded and as a fail-safe measure, the foundation has replaced the site with a temporary static page explaining the show.

The final Raspberry Pi can be seen in the photo above. Our Australian newspaper, Herald Sun, said the following:

Well, that is one ugly computer – but it’s $35 and the size of a credit card so what are you complaining about?

You can read the news article at the Herald Sun website. Other things worth mentioning include the fact one of the companies servers that are managing orders for the Raspberry Pi also exploded due to the traffic surge.

Could the Raspberry Pi be a milestone to shake up the Technology Industry and turn it into a Frenzy? It could very well be. As soon as Coburn’s Domain can get a Raspberry Pi unit, we’ll give it our review.

Source: Herald Sun.

A new chapter in the life cycle of the Raspberry Pi begins at 6:00AM GMT tomorrow. Since Coburn’s Domain is based in Australia, this roughly translates to 4:00PM our time. A exciting annoucement is brewing for the R-Pi Foundation, what could it possibly be? You’ll have to find out via jumping on the Raspberry Pi website when the show begins.

As soon as one arrives in the Coburn’s Domain mailbox, we’ll give it a benchmark and see how well it performs against our SheevaPlug and the public-release CuBox.