Computers | Peterism

Acer TM8210 Running Windows 7

Purchased in Oct 2006, my Acer TM8210-6880 came with Windows XP SP2. I tried installing Vista 64-bit and 32 bit on it, but the performance just wasn’t as good as it was on XP with ATI (now AMD)’s MobilityRadeon X1600 driver. Now that Windows 7 is officially out, I decided to give it another try.

Since I wasn’t able to find a 64-bit optimized graphics driver, I decided to installed Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit. I gotta say that after additional drivers (for OrbiCam, SmartCard Reader, etc) have been installed, Windows 7 certainly runs pretty smoothly with the polished Aero look. Here are some screen shots:

[caption id="attachment_316" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Screen shot of Windows 7 Ultimate on Acer TM8210, screen resolution at 1680x1050."]

[/caption] [caption id="attachment_317" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="TM8210 on Windows 7"]

[/caption] [caption id="attachment_320" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="TM8210 Windows 7 Performance Index"]

[/caption]

Micro-controller Projects

I don’t have a lot of time these days to play around with little sensor/micro-controller projects these day, but thought I would start putting together a reference for when I do have the time. One of the projects I did was a curtain controller which closes and opens a curtain on command through a USB cable connected to a spare laptop. I didn’t use a wireless module because at the time I couldn’t find a solution that was cheap enough, but I just saw a few options at Sparkfun that might work. Other possibilities might be to incorporate a few photo(ambient light) sensors and a temperature sensor to provide additional inputs so the curtain can open and close itself, in addition to being able to operate by SSH’ing in to the laptop from a remote location.

Micro-controllers:

Arduino‘s website calls itself “an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software.”
Crossbow seems to have gone a bit more proprietary since the last time I looked (in 2006).

Fairly affordable components available at:

Sparkfun

Other resources for circuits ready to build:

UCLA CS113, Introduction to Distributed Embeded Systems

This course will introduce basic concepts needed to understand, design, and implement wireless distributed embedded systems. Topics include: a) design implications of energy, and otherwise resource-constrained nodes; b) network self-configuration and adaptation; c) data routing and transport; c) applications; and e) software design issues. The course will be heavily project based. Working knowledge of C programming in the UNIX environment (particularly GNU/Linux) is assumed.

Click to continue reading “UCLA CS113, Introduction to Distributed Embeded Systems”

TLS Vulnerability to MITM Attack

TLS is the underlying technology used by modern browsers and web servers to encrypt data communicated between them. (Since TLS is a transport layer facility, it can be used in any other application layer protocols like SMTP, POP, etc, in addition to HTTP.) While the encryption itself has been regarded as “secure enough” by online banking services (encryption relying on 4096-bit public key as of 2009), among others, there is another type of attack which is independent of the strength of the encryption used – man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack.

Here’s a blog post demonstrating one way it can be done. Browser security patches should be on their way.

Chip Layout with Electric

Screen Shot

An open source VLSI design tool written in Java. Download at http://www.staticfreesoft.com/productsFree.html
Thanks to Professor Pamarti at UCLA for introducing to me this nice app.

Tether Sprint Mogul with Windows 7

*Updated Nov 4, 2009
Forgot to mention that you may need change your Mogul’s registry setting in order for tethering to be allowed by WinMo 6.1. Please see my earlier post on that.

Yeah, it was only a matter of time before I tried to tether my slightly beat-up Mogul with recently-upgraded Windows 7.

Since I am an 1L these days with much diminished leisure time tinkering around with pet projects, I’ll have to make this post very brief, at least before I find more time to revisit.

So, like many others out there, I had trouble tethering my Toshiba NB-205-312BL after upgrading it to Windows 7 (Windows 7 Ultimate to be exact). To make the story short. Win7 didn’t recognize my Mogul, and wouldn’t install RNDIS needed for the network layer. Windows Mobility Center which came with Win7 was no help, but Windows Mobile Device Center(WMDC) 6.1, which is an additional download, solves the problem. WMDC’s site even says that it’s compatible with Windows 7. My question is, why didn’t MS just put WMDC in Win7 to begin with?

Anyway, despite the additional foot work, I’m pretty impressed with Windows 7 so far, even before the first Service Pack comes out.

Now back to reading criminal law….

Ruled-based Citation Checker Using Finite State Automata

I was trying to review my crim law reading last night in bed, and thought of the idea of using FSA to check legal citation.

If citation in legal writing conforms strictly to some predefined rules (either Bluebook or ALWD), then there’s no reason why the problem can’t be solved by a FSA which describes the finite number of rules set forth in those citation manuals. The solution seems pretty straight forward, and can be implemented fairly elegantly in either python or perl, off the top of my head. On the other hand, a functional language like list or scheme can probable implement achieve the same with significantly fewer lines of code.

More to come later…

http://www.xarg.org/project/php-facedetect/

Peterism

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Acer TM8210 Running Windows 7

Micro-controller Projects

UCLA CS113, Introduction to Distributed Embeded Systems

TLS Vulnerability to MITM Attack

Chip Layout with Electric

Tether Sprint Mogul with Windows 7

Ruled-based Citation Checker Using Finite State Automata

Department of Defense New Guidance On Open Source Software

How To Display Form Fields Based On Selection With Or Without jQuery Cookie

PHP Facedetect Extension

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