Taking SSD's to The Extreme

I received an email from a guy calling himself Vincenzo from TheViralFactory.com and he asked me if I could re-post a Youtube video his group did for Samsung to demonstrate the awesomeness potential for their SSD (Solid State Drives).

I get a lot of random solicitation emails through my contact form on the blog, so I decided to check it out to see if it was Bauer-Power worthy. Well, guess what... It is! These guys take 24 SSD drives, and RAID them together for 6TB of storage, and some eye popping performance!

From their Youtube description:

We took 24 256GB Samsung MLC SSD's and put them in RAID to make this awesome computer! See how we did it, and what the results were!

Here is their video:



Pretty crazy right? I mean, opening up all of Microsoft Office in 0.5 Seconds? I can't even get Outlook to open in under 30 seconds by itself on my work computer!

Any of you out there going to try this? Have any of you tried something similar? Let me know in the comments!



Technorati Tags: Samsung, SSD, MLC, record breaking, Skulltrail, QX9775, 8 cores, 2 GB/s, super fast, solid state drive, multi layer controller, hard drives, 256 GB, gigabyte, extreme, HD

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Open Source Laptop Recovery

Back when I used to work for Websense, there was a lady in the Marketing department (who shall remain nameless) that would go through laptops like you might go through underwear.

She would go to traveling shows, and conferences with her crew and she would often times come back saying that her laptop was stolen, or lost and she needed a new one. We often joked that we needed to start monitoring her eBay account.

In all seriousness though, what we really needed was something like Lo-Jack to track all of these laptops. If they were truly stolen, then we could alert the authorities to get the laptop back. That would be ideal if it weren't so costly. Perhaps that really isn't an issue in the corporate environment when losing a lot of laptops can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars over time, but for the average user, it may not be that practical.

I have found a free solution though. It isn't the best, but it does beat not doing anything...Oh, and its free so why not?

You see, back at Toorcon I sat through a presentation on a free, Open Source tool that you install on your Windows, Linux, or Mac computer, and it periodically sends an encrypted file out the the service giving identifying information about the location of the laptop. All it needs is an active Internet connection. This software is called Adeona. Here is a brief overview from their website:

Adeona is the first Open Source system for tracking the location of your lost or stolen laptop that does not rely on a proprietary, central service. This means that you can install Adeona on your laptop and go — there's no need to rely on a single third party. What's more, Adeona addresses a critical privacy goal different from existing commercial offerings. It is privacy-preserving. This means that no one besides the owner (or an agent of the owner's choosing) can use Adeona to track a laptop. Unlike other systems, users of Adeona can rest assured that no one can abuse the system in order to track where they use their laptop.

Adeona is designed to use the Open Source OpenDHT distributed storage service to store location updates sent by a small software client installed on an owner's laptop. The client continually monitors the current location of the laptop, gathering information (such as IP addresses and local network topology) that can be used to identify its current location. The client then uses strong cryptographic mechanisms to not only encrypt the location data, but also ensure that the ciphertexts stored within OpenDHT are anonymous and unlinkable. At the same time, it is easy for an owner to retrieve location information.

Now the one big drawback (that pretty much everyone at the conference was thinking) was that this product assumes that if a laptop is stolen that the thief will not wipe the drive. The thief would have to be a friggin' idiot not to do that!

However, it did occur to me that most laptop thefts are probably done by "average user" company employees. They know they could take the laptop, and just report it stolen to get another one, and BAM! They now have a free laptop that your company just bought them. Whats more is that they may not be as smart as the thief, and will most likely NOT slick the drive. If that is the case, then this tool could prove useful by both getting your company's laptop back, and also firing shady employees who take expensive office equipment.

In conclusion, I look at this product as a nice to have, free-so-why-not, better than not having type of product. Other than that, if you truly want to get your stuff back at all costs, then you need to go with a more reliable solution like Lo-Jack.

Whats your opinion on this? I want to hear from you in the comments.

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Friday Funny – Ultimate Car Battery Hack

Hey guys. It is my last day in Colorado, and I am killing time at Denver International Airport, so I decided to write a piece for for tomorrow (I guess it is today now isn’t it?) Trouble is I couldn’t think of anything good to write, so I did what any other blogger would do. Look for a cool vid to show you guys.

Today’s video is pretty hilarious. I was actually looking for a video on hacking, and stumbled on this one. It is obviously full of crap, but funny as hell! I decided to post it to give you all a nice, well deserved Friday chuckle!

Here it is, The Insane Car Battery Hack!

What did you guys think of this “hack”? What’s your favorite part? Mine was the light saber vs screw driver bit. Let me know your favorite part, or if you thought it was LAME in the comments!

Technorati Tags: humor,funny,insane,car,battery,hack,spoof

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Just Say STOP to StopSign Antivirus

I was chilling with my folks this week in Colorado. They are pretty laid back, and don’t do too much. In fact, when I come to visit, we usually sit around watching old westerns and Fox News.

Well, after the westerns were over a commercial came on TV for StopSign Antivirus. They were saying stuff about how bad viruses, pop ups, spyware etc is. Then they come out and say that their product will keep you computer secure. They also go on to say that their product is the only product you will ever need.

Don’t just take my word for it, here is their ad from Youtube:

What they don’t tell you is that their software started out as a rogue antivirus program. You know the kind that pretends to be an antivirus software, but actually causes virus like symptoms like throwing up pop-ups saying their full version is the only thing that can remove the alleged infection. If you didn’t want it it was 1.5 bitches to remove it!

Now, I saw one CNet forum thread saying that StopSign has since stopped those practices. Still though, there are so many better programs available. Why would you use a product that was born out of rogue-ware?

If any of your relatives ask you about this product, do them a favor, and point them to something more trustworthy like AVG, Avast, Comodo etc.

Are any of you using StopSign? Know anybody who is? Let me know in the comments.

Technorati Tags: stopsign,stop,sign,antivirus,rogue

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Hide and Go Seek With Power Outlets at The Airport – A Rant

By the time you read this I will already be in Colorado working on a colocation facility build out. I am currently writing this from the San Diego airport while waiting for my plane. Just thought I would give you that little tid bit of info, so you know why I am complaining about this now.

I have been business traveling off and on for a few years now. Mostly with the Navy, and starting last year for my current employer. One thing has remained constant the entire time. THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH FRIGGIN’ POWER OUTLETS!

Now, I was lucky enough to get to my gate with plenty of time to spare. I was one of the few lucky S.O.B.’s to find one of the three friggin’ power outlets available. Of course it wasn’t at my gate. No, it was two gates down! After sitting around tweeting, checking email, and browsing the net, two more people with laptops came up. One guy got his laptop out quicker than the other, and was able to get to the open jack before the other poor sap. Survival of the fittest at its best!

Just stop and think for a minute. If you work for an airport, stop and think with me too. How many business travelers come through each and every day? How many of them carry laptops? Not to mention those that aren’t business travelers, and carry laptops, portable DVD players, or anything else that needs to be plugged in? I am thinking somewhere in the thousands. What about you? Do ya think two or three hidden power jacks is sufficient to support all those people? No, I don’t think so either!

Sure you might say, “Thats why you have batteries.” Well what if you are going to be on a four hour cross country flight, and you want to save those batteries for the plane? I guess you could always lug around multiple laptop batteries, but that is just too much of a pain to deal with.

Anyone else share this frustration? There is no way I can be alone on this one. Let me know your take in the comments!

Technorati Tags: airport,rant,power,outlets

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My Favorite Free Web Host

Well, I guess that should read my free favorite web host next to blogger. I mean I do have two of my blogs on blogger. Still, there is a really awesome web host you have got to check out. Especially if you are looking for you own web hosting, and you are a cheap ass bastard like us here at Bauer-Power!

Yes, my new favorite FREE hosting company is called 000WebHost. I do mean absolutely free. Not like those ass clowns over at FreeServers.com that only give you a subdomain, and plaster banner ads all over your site! I mean free, as in here you go, do whatever the hell you want!

I can even tell you this, they are currently hosting our official, unofficial beer sponsors Taurino Cerveza! (LOL)

With 000Webhost you get the following for absolutely NOTHING!

• 1500 MB Disk Space, 100 GB Data Transfer
• PHP with MySQL Database Support
• cPanel Control Panel
• Fantastico De Luxe 1-Click Autoinstaller
• Website Builder Software

Of course if you want some additional features, more bandwidth and other bells and whistles, they also offer paid hosting packages. If you don’t need anything too fancy though, this might just be the solution you are looking for!

Know of any other free hosting sites? Let us know in the comments!

Technorati Tags: free,web,hosting

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CD/DVD Drive Not Working

So since I’ve moved over to web development I haven’t had too much Tech Support type stuff to write. But now I do. I had to load a Virtual Box to test site in XP SP2 with IE 6… yeah I know some people are still using that :( but anyway. My CD drive wasn’t working when I went to go mount it into my virtual box. I tracked it down and found out in the Device manager I was getting an error stating that it couldn’t load my CD Drive. Well like with most things I didn’t read the error and just shut the PC down and re-plugged the power and IDE cables.

The PC came back up and I notice that it wanted to boot from the CD. So I thought to myself. Well it must be working. Windows came up and I logged in but still no CD Drive. “Damn it, I hate when stuff doesn’t work!” So I decided to actually look at the error and noticed it was one I’ve seen before:

“Windows cannot start this hardware device because its configuration information (in the registry) is incomplete or damaged.”

Oh well that’s not too hard of of a fix. I just had to track down that registry key again, which was an Epic Pain in the arse. So I figured I’d tell you guys about it and without further adieu:

To fix a CD or DVD drive that is not working due to the error:

“Windows cannot start this hardware device because its configuration information (in the registry) is incomplete or damaged.”

Click Start

Click Run (Or press Windows+R on the keyboard)

In the run box type REGEDIT and hit ok or press enter

Make a backup of your Registry (as always when you make any changes)

Navigate to the following Registry Key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

There will be keys named UpperFilters, LowerFilters and Installer32

Delete all those keys

Close Regedit

Right click on My Computer

Click on Manage

Click on the Device Manager

Find your CD Drive that has the Yellow exclamation point on it

Right click on that CD Drive

Click Uninstall

Click OK on that Popup

Now Right click on any device in there and click Scan For Hardware Changes

And that should fix it. If not try to reboot. I’m not sure exactly what causes this but I’m assuming probably software like Nero or what not. Let us know if this helps you out at all.

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