BIOS Feature

I have mandatory BIOS password on my work computer. Some Catbert character thought of it as good security feature. Now, whenever I need to reboot my computer, I need to sit next to it.

I used to grab cap of coffee while it was rebooting and all I needed to do was to log into Windows once that is done. Now I need to sit next to it through whole shutdown process waiting for BIOS password and only then I can get a coffee. If there is some update in progress, that waiting period usually puts me in “I will kill this guy” state. I really hate waiting…

During that useless time my mind often wonders to my first Pentium-class computer. There you could set “stealth” BIOS password (I forgot official name of that feature). If such password was set, system would boot up without asking for anything. Everything seemed normal until you tried to use keyboard or mouse - they were locked. Only once you entered your password BIOS would release control of PS/2 ports and Windows would take over. Since Windows worked normally even without password, you could rely on this feature even across reboots.

I have pretty good idea why that feature is gone - USB. BIOS can intercept and handle PS/2 keyboards quite easily even once Windows are up and running. Since Windows talk with keyboard over BIOS, it can choose whether to pass characters or not. With USB things get complicated.

Once Windows take over USB control (and that is fairly early in boot process) there is no simple way BIOS can restrict it. Only approach that would work in that case would be some hardware virtualization. BIOS would have control over physical USB and Windows would get virtualized version controlled by BIOS.

I am quite sure that someone would do it if there weren’t three big problems - compatibility, performance and cost. Compatibility would be easiest to solve. Performance (latency) could be lowered by employing ASICs. However cost to do that would be high. And all that because of feature that is not that necessary to begin with.

Sometimes I long for simpler times… :)

Bing Maps - Presentation Done

Another presentation is now done. I do hope that everything went fine and that everybody present had much fun.

This one was about Bing Maps and you can download all materials here.

For everything to work you’ll need GPS device that supports Windows 7 API. In absence of it you can GPSDirect NMEA Sensor Driver with any GPS that has serial port support (either physical or virtual).

If you preffer working inside, you’ll need emulator. Unfortunately there is no official support for any so you are on your own here. I used both Geosense and GPSDirect NMEA Sensor Driver (simulation mode). While Geosense will give you sensible result, location will not change. GPSDirect will update “your location” but simulation mode is based on random numbers instead of file input. That means that Murphy will locate you somewhere near either south or north pole.

Do not forget to put your Bing Maps user ID and password in App.xaml.cs since I cannot share mine. If you do not have developer account, you will need to get one.

This example uses Bing Maps staging environment and thus you must use token service. Non-staging service can use keys and that is definitely better solution than having your user name and password available in program. Bad side is that access to it counts against your daily limits (1000 request).

P.S. It seems that every time during presentation I forget that NMEA stands for National Marine Electronics Association and not, as I probably said, “Nautical something”. :)

The Only Winning Move Is Not to Play

I own BeBook mini for quite some time now. Once it gets noticed I get quite a few questions. Usually people wonder about eInk screen, supported formats, battery life… Lately question that comes quite often is “Are you sorry?”

They point that there are bigger devices, better screens, shinier features… New e-book readers come out almost every month.

With current progress in technology, I am not sure that there is single moment you can make purchase and not have something better and cheaper coming out in next month or two. You will not spend your money on unnecessary purchase only if you don’t purchase anything. That is not destiny I wish to share.

And no, I am not sorry.

WinDays 10

Biggest Croatian IT conference WinDays will be held in Rovinj this year. And, as two previous years, yours truly will have one presentation.

This year I will be talking about Bing Maps and presentation will be held on Wednesday, 21st April 2010 at 11:00. If you, readers of this blog, happen to be in Rovinj that day (or day before/after) I would like to meet you in person.

As always, presentation will be available for download minutes after I stop bothering attendants.

Am I Secret Admirer?

Most of my YouTube playlist consists of Starcraft and cooking videos. From time to time I also take look at YouTube recommendations since they usually reflect my taste. But sometimes I just have a laugh.

I was quite surprised when I saw Susan Boyle video among those recommended for me. Fortunately YouTube also told me why. That left me even more puzzled since YouTube though that I would like Susan because I watched Starcraft Winners League match between Samsung Khan and Estro. I dare not think how many Starcraft fans watched both those videos for YouTube to connect them.

Starcraft fans are peculiar bunch…

Startup Customizations

My BeBook e-book reader is just rebranded Jinke and as such there is quite a lot possibility of customization. I will save discussing all different versions of firmware for some other post, this time I will just discuss changing logo.

Jinke decided to make it’s LogoMaker available for all owners to change both boot and shutdown images.

Preparing is easy. Just create two bitmaps (one for boot and one for shutdown) and save them as .bmp images. Start LogoMaker and give path to those two images just created and you will get logo.bin and logo.md5. Those two files are all you need.

Create /jinke/logo on SD card. Easiest way is to do this is to connect BeBook mini (or Hanlin V5, or Pocket PRO, or whatever clone there is) to USB and copy it from there, but choice is yours.

Once both SD card and logo files are in place you can go into Settings. There you will see “Update boot and shutdown logo” option available. Once selected, update will happen very fast and device will be turned off.

Once you turn device back on you will be able to enjoy your new startup screen.

Probably most difficult thing is selecting proper logo for it. I decided upon “Don’t Panic” statement. If you wish it, you can have it too.

I Forgot :)

I was having a beer with some friends in Berlin and talk came to Avatar. Yes, that 3D movie that everyone is so fascinated with. I had one more night to fill in Berlin so I decided to go and see what is that all about.

Unfortunately, there was no show playing on Wednesday (my last day in Berlin). Fortunately, I have friends who know German and she was kind enough to find a show that night and to reserve a seat for me. :)

As soon as I left U-Bahn station and went into Sony Center, I was amazed. I spent a lot of time in Berlin last few months and I cannot believe what I have missed. Yes, I was on Potsdamer Platz before, but it was during day time. I had no idea how beautiful it looks during night hours.

I got ticket for my first IMAX 3D movie, bought a pretzel and I was ready to see some 3D action. As lights dimmed I placed glasses on my nose and got ready to enjoy movie. Movie started and I could hear unprovoked wow from some girls behind me. After few more wows I was puzzled. There was nothing that interesting on screen.

I took me few more wows before remembering that I have diagnosis of congenital strabismus. I was diagnosed with it at age of four but I cannot say that it bothered me too much. It really has only one consequence - no depth perception. As you may guess, it is very hard to see anything in 3D when your eyes are not used to work together. To make it short - 3D was not working for me.

I spent rest of movie trying to get my eyes aligned. Not an easy task considering that I haven’t manage to do this for my whole life. Of course, I failed.

Nevertheless, it was an interesting experience and night well spent. :)

Blog.jmedved.com

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7 Is a (Hopefully) Lucky Number

It seems that Microsoft likes number 7.

New version of Microsoft’s OS for mobile phones looks like nothing we’ve seen on their mobiles before. And, taking all into consideration, I must say it is a good thing.

There is video on Channel 9 with whole demo and I will just make short summary here.

Biggest change is start screen. It works like all screens on modern phones and OEMs will not be able to change it anymore. At last there will be common interface among phones and not whole variety that we used to see.

Internet Explorer got rework. Finally it works like mobile browser should. It has all touch-gestures you would expect. Even complicated pages can be rendered and while one page is being loaded, you can switch to other tab to check something else. Yes, you read it correctly, it has multi-tab support.

E-mail and calendar along with Exchange integration are still remain strong sides. Nice addition is ability to have business and personal calendar displayed side-to-side.

And finally there are more stricter hardware requirements. It requires capacitative screen, accelerometer, GPS… It also restricts screen resolutions to manageable number. Older versions of Windows Mobile had bunch of screen resolutions and rations added over years and it was pain-in-the-ass to support them all.

Viewing all these things make my heart hurt a little since there is no talk about my favorite non-touch screen devices. It seems that their days are numbered (and that number is not seven).

I do hope that this operating system will have better adoption than Windows Vista had and that Microsoft takes back some of Smartphone cake. They do have best development environment for mobile phones. I hope that they will finally have Smartphone worth enough for it.

P.S. You might also wish to check Windows Phone 7 Series website.

Kingdom for a Spoon

I love Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Since that particular brand is not available in Croatia where I live, I like to indulge myself when I am in Berlin.

Since tonight I was having sweet tooth decision was made, for the first time, to try big 500ml box. It came quite costly but I didn’t care. I was eager to go into my hotel room to be alone with it…

However, unlike small cones, big packaging does not include any spoon-like contraption. That presented quite a problem since there was no spoon in sight.

For benefit of those among you that cannot handle horror movies, I will not go into too much details. I will just say that I managed to eat it. And I will remember to pack a spoon on my next trip. :)