pimp-my-rig reloaded

INFO: What is RSS?

What is RSS? Whenever I mention this three-letter acronym to most people, their brows would raise like I was born in another planet. Either that or they seem to think I'm a metally challenged retard. So hopefully by posting this, I will just refer them here instead and impart a thing or two about RSS and its practical use(s).

But what really is RSS? RSS is a generally accepted format of web content that is used by millions to keep track of website changes or updates. Webmaster, bloggers, or authors would publish syndicated content of their news, blogs, and other content as an RSS feed to whoever wants it.

These are the generally accepted meanings of the acronym -- RDF Site Summary, Rich Site Summary and Really Simple Syndication. Whichever of the those, when used, pertain to the same thing. RSS feeds are sometimes referred to as news feeds or just plainly a feed.

Think of RSS as a modern implementation of a bookmark. In the ways of the old, you would bookmark a website and regularly check it for updates. RSS in a similar manner is a bookmark to the website, but the biggest difference is you will not have to visit the website. All you need is for an RSS reader or RSS aggregator to do it for you. Instead of you coming to the site for information, it is instead delivered to you. It will make more sense when you start using to use it.

A variety of RSS readers or aggregators are available on the web. Some are free and some are not. We had to go through several of them to get a better feel of the functionalities and complexities of each. The most popular web aggregator is Google Reader.

To get a better feel or looks of an RSS feed, click here to sample a feed of pimp-my-rig reloaded.

The above image is the icon for an RSS feed. Whenever you see that icon or its derivatives, it means the website is advertising its RSS feed available for you to subscribe. And the aggregator will automatically fetch updates for you without having to browse every bookmark. So now that you are aware of RSS feeds, grab an aggregator and start subscription to RSS feeds of bookmarked sites and see for yourself the influence of RSS.

FAQ: Disable Port 137, 138 and 139

dillagrfaq, security

"There’s No Such Thing As A Silly Question" -- does the cliche sound familiar? In this part of pimp-my-rig reloaded, technical questions are answered. Mail them to me and I will post the answers here. If you have a better answer, by all means share it with us.

In one of our FAQ entries, the disabling of port 135 was outlined. And it successfully shutdown port TCP/135. Now one of the questions asked was how to disable netbios ports UDP/137 (netbios-ns), UCP/138 (netbios-dgm) and TCP/139 (netbios-ssn). This procedure disables all three ports and the procedure is as follows.

[1] Right-click "My Network Places" and select "Properties" from the ensuing menu that opens.

[2] Executing the previous step opens a window showing the available network connections in the machine. Right-click on "Local Area Connection" and select "Properties". This step is almost similar to the previous.

[3] Scroll down to "Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)". Select it (to highlight it) and click "Properties". You will be opening another window similar to the one below.

[4] From the "Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) Properties" Window, click on "Advanced.." (toward the lower right). Then go to the "WINS" tab (like the screenshot below).

[5] Under "NetBIOS setting", tick "Disable NetBIOS over TCP/IP" and click OK to accept the change. Click OK to the other windows previously opened prior to this properties window.

The ports 137, 138 and 139 will have closed on the machine. If the machine has multiple network interface connections (or NICs), repeat the above for every connection.

Closing down the above ports for a Windows XP Pro machine has so far not impacted any application on my end. If it should impact an application you are running, please let me know so I can post them here for the information of others.

HOW-TO: Resolve Slow CD/DVD Burning Speed

dillagrhow-to

I have had a unique experience today (or at least unique is what I thought it was). I booted my Dell Latitude D630 with the secondary bay battery in. When I tried to swap the secondary bay battery with the NEC 6500A DVD-RW drive to burn a DVD, I noticed that the DVD burning was painfully slow. It used to take about 15minutes to complete, but now it estimates an hour. Something was terribly wrong.

Before doing anything, I documented this event and I know it would be interesting to post in Pimp-My-Rig after resolution of the problem. To give you a baseline, my D630 is running the latest SP3 of Windows XP Pro up-to-date with the November 2008 patches and has the recently released A14 BIOS installed.

The first area I checked was if the DVD-RW was working in DMA mode. And this was where the problem was -- the drive was working in PIO mode, as seen from the screenshot below.

I then tried to unplug the drive and re-insert it on the bay but then the PIO mode was persistent. Even when the IDE driver itself was re-installed, it didn't solve anything.

Before doing a reboot, I tried looking for answers from the internet and this site had the exact answer. It involves modifications to the registry, so in replicating the same procedures in your computer be sure to have a backup.

[1] Open Registry Editor. Start --> Run.. --> regedit.

[2] Locate the key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0000

[3] Edit --> New --> DWORD Value. Add the entry "EnableUDMA66" and give it a value of "1".

[4] Quit the registry editor and restart the computer.

After reboot, the NEC 6500A DVD-RW was now working in Ultra DMA Mode 2 and burning speed was back to normal.

I hope this experience also resolves similar problems you encounter.

FAQ: C Compiler Cannot Create Executables

dillagrfaq, solaris

configure: error: installation or configuration problem: C compiler cannot create executables.

Luckily for him, I have experienced this problem before and the solution is below..

Make sure you have the following packages installed on your system:

[1] for tools (sccs, lex, yacc, make, nm, truss, ld, as):
SUNWbtool, SUNWsprot, SUNWtoo, SUNWcpp

[2] for libraries & headers:
SUNWhea, SUNWarc, SUNWlibm, SUNWlibms
SUNWdfbh, SUNWcg6h, SUNWxwinc, SUNWolinc,
SUNWxglh, SUNWlibC, SUNWzlib, SUNWscpu

[3] for 64 bit development (in Solaris 10 these have all been merged into their non-"x" versions):
SUNWarcx, SUNWbtoox, SUNWdplx, SUNWscpux, SUNWsprox,
SUNWtoox, SUNWlmsx, SUNWlmx, SUNWlibCx, SUNWzlibx

[4] for ucb compat:
SUNWsra, SUNWsrh

To know if the package is installed, you may run this command:

root@host# pkginfo

Installing the above packages will alleviate the problem.

If you have encountered this problem before and have a different solution, pls let us know.

FAQ: Download Embedded Flash SWF Files (via Firefox)

dillagrfaq, firefox

"There’s No Such Thing As A Silly Question" -- does the cliche sound familiar? In this part of pimp-my-rig reloaded, technical questions are answered. Mail them to me and I will post the answers here. If you have a better answer, by all means share it with us.

FAQ: Most likely the webpages you view contain embedded flash media. And chances are you are/were fascinated with the way it was presented and you would like to keep a copy for yourself for keepsakes or offline viewing. But how do you extract and save those files?

Believe it or not, the ease in doing this task is primarily dependent on your choice of browsers. If you and I share the same taste (and chose firefox), getting this trick done is just as easy said and done.

Follow along as the simple steps will get you your flash media in a bit:

[1] Browse over to your favorite site containing the embedded media. For this example, I'm browsing over to my "hang-out" tech website tipidpc.com.

[2] Wait for the page to finish loading.. Then, on the tool bars of firefox, click Tools --> Page Info.

[3] Change over to the Media tab and from the menu select the embedded media you wish to save.

[4] Highlight the media (click on it) and click on Save As.... And save it to a directory of your bidding.

That is how simple it is to save embedded flash media or any other embedded media. And like I previously stated, your choice of browsers dictate how easy it is to download and save them.