Shoehorned Mac OS X 10.6.3 on my EEE PC 1000he

Yep, it happened; and I got the picture to prove it:

I’m also not going to be one of those guys who holds it over your head. I will give you pretty much the exact list of things I had to do with a zipped up bundle at the end of the post (coming soon). A list of things that work include:

Wifi (stock, I have the model with the Atheros chipset)

Bluetooth

Keyboard and Trackpad (using VoodooPS2.kext, in the bundle)

Internal Display with Hardware Acceleration (have yet to test external display, don’t really need to)

Ethernet Port (support added with the ethernet extension in the bundle)

All USB ports

Speedstepping (downclocking the CPU except when computing power is needed)

Card Reader

The one thing that doesn’t work is sleep. If you attempt to recover from sleep, do it in a bright room; as the system does fully recover, but the backlight on the LCD does not turn on. Restarting or disabling sleep will fix this issue. Sleep is disabled by going into System Preferences, clicking on “Energy Saver”, then dragging both “computer sleep” and “display sleep” to the right-most position on the slider. Do this for both the battery and power adapter settings.

Now, for some disclaimers. Of course, I’m not responsible for screwing up your personal machine. Nor do I endorse doing this without supporting Apple in some fashion. Buying the OS is not a bad way to start (though this does break your license agreement…). Also, this is not for new computer users. A basic knowledge on how the operating system works is required, along with how the BIOS works. I will explain later on. If you feel the slightest bit uncomfortable with this procedure, do not attempt this. One more thing… this install guide assumes that you only want OS X on your hard drive. If you want a dual boot (like I have with Windows 7), things get a bit more complicated.

To get started, you need to get the OS on an external hard drive (luckily I had one gathering dust, but be sure to plan ahead for this if you don’t). Follow instructions on this guide to get it on there. Note that you can replace the “working Mac with Snow Leopard installed” portion of that guide with another Hackintosh (even one that runs regular Leopard). The only difference is when you go to install; you can’t do it the easy way. You can’t use a physical optical disk (you can make a disk image through Disk Utility). You can’t double-click the disk icon and click through the wizard. Instead you navigate to:

/system/installation/packages

using the Go>Go to Folder… command in the taskbar. Then double-click the “OSInstall.mpkg” file. The wizard will pop up with hardly any restrictions. Also, the guide I linked to recommends you use a program called “NetbookInstaller”. I have yet to have a good experience with that program, so I recommend you just install the Chameleon Bootloaderafter installing OS X. Since NetbookInstaller also automatically installs kernel extensions, I will tell you how to manually install kernel extensions. After installing Chameleon, uncompress the zip I have uploaded (again, coming soon), and put all the files labelled .kext (which are kernel extensions) files inside the Extra/Extensions folder. Copy the Extensions folder to your desktop, then download Kext Utility. Drag the Extensions folder onto the Kext Utility icon. A new file, “Extensions.mkext”, will be created. Then, put that file in the “Extras” folder, and delete the Extensions folder from your desktop (you won’t need it anymore). Also, make sure to copy the “mach_kernel_atom” file to the root of the hard drive you installed Snow Leopard on; otherwise, the computer can’t find the right kernel. You can then boot up OS X on your EEE.

Alright, the hard part’s over! Updating to 10.6.2 is pretty easy. Just download it and execute it. The same with 10.6.3. You should now have a working Hackintosh with 10.6.3! Any errors? Post them in the comments.

IE 9 Gains Support for CSS3, Gets HTML 5, Rest of Product Lineup Actually Looks Pretty Good

I recently gave the new beta of IE 9 a try and was actually impressed with modern standards support. All the popular new HTML 5 elements are present, accounted for, and performing as well as Chrome (at least that’s on my casual observance; actual number-crunching may vary). Web design gets a little easier with some support for CSS3; though the support is not fully baked yet. If you visit We Are Change Branson’s website (one I designed) with Chrome or Firefox and Internet Explorer 9, you will notice the gradient in the background is way different. This is because the beta does not include support for standards-compliant gradients yet. Though in CSS3, it’s hard to be standards compliant when each “engine” has it’s own markup. Notice the -moz-border-radius and the -webkit-border-radius in that link? The moz-border-radius tells Mozilla Firefox how long the radius of rounded corners are. The -webkit-border-radius tells Webkit browsers (Chrome and Safari mainly) how long the radius of rounded corners are. Does that sound stupid? Yes. Does there need to be a standard? Yes. Fortunately, IE 9 follows the border-radius standard markup, and that’s how it should be for all browsers. Hopefully that happens soon so we can reduce the amount of coding. As for security holes, I’m sure there are plenty. Maybe.

Microsoft’s product line-up is looking better by the day. The new Xbox is a good-looking machine, Windows Phone 7 looks to be a promising mobile OS for those who don’t want Android (for some weird reason) or the overly-simple iOS. Windows 7 is still being good to a lot more people than Vista was good to, and IE 9 is also catching up to other browsers.

If They Shrunk the Size of the Screen, They Blew It

So the new iPod line-up is out today. Very welcome upgrades across the board by me. The Shuffle gets buttons and the Touch grows a set…of features. Whateva. Social networking also made its way into iTunes. I have yet to use it, but usage from a web browser would be welcome by me.

But this post isn’t about me. It’s about two things; the iPod Nano, and the first of Harry McCracken’s list of ten questions after the September first keynote; blockquoted for your convenience:

Is the main message of the new Nano that the old Nano was irrelevant? It’s basically got two new features: It’s way small and it has a touch-screen interface. But it has a smaller screen than its predecessor (1.54″ vs. 2.2″). It doesn’t have a camera anymore (looks like it’s official that the camera-enabled Nano never killed the Flip). I assume it can’t play video. The pedometer is presumably gone. It’s essentially a different device–more like a Shuffle with a screen than a more fully-evolved Nano. If you want video and a camera, Apple is saying, buy an iPod Touch–a larger, pricier, more complex gadget. It’s logical advice for a lot of people, but is there nobody left who wants a fairly feature-rich iPod with the simplicity of the old interface?

These were my sentiments exactly. The fact that you now have to plunk down $200 or over to get a new-gen device that plays video is a bit of a downer to say the least. The complexity is not lost; you can still buy an iPod Classic, but buying a fifth-gen iPod Nano will be cheaper (then and now) and less complex. Believe it or not, there still is a market that wants a cheap flash storage based player that plays video. There are other options, though. Just sayin’.

A Reply to a Rumor Round-Up

So it seems like Apple is getting ready to unveil some new things tomorrow, probably based on their entertainment products line up based on the image of the invite sent to people (it’s pictured on the right). This would most certainly include iPods, as they have been “refreshed” every September. I’m hoping there is also a new service built in to iTunes which is based loosely on the Zune Pass music service.

What the meat of this post is about though is the “expected features” list on the new iPod Touch that’s due to come out tomorrow posted here. Here is the list reposted for the convenience factor:

• FaceTime
• Rear Camera
• Form factor similar to the iPhone 4
• 3G Enabled models
• Retina display support

All of those things would make a stellar iPod Touch. However, the things italicized are the things that are almost a certainty in this newer model. We can count on one thing; at least one of those listed italicized items will make it to the new model to make people want to upgrade. Let me break my logic down.

FaceTime is a bit of a throw-up. There has been FaceTime email invitation support in the latest beta, but remember; it’s a beta. Some say the very presence of FaceTime would ensure that a front camera is thrown into the mix. Don’t be so sure. While it would be counter-intuitive to mix FaceTime conferencing with a rear-facing camera only, it has the possibility of happening. Anyone remember the lack of physical volume controls on the first-gen iPod Touch? Expect no FaceTime if no cameras are on the new one (obviously).

The rear camera seems like a gimme at this point. The fifth-gen iPod Nano has one, the iOS has baked-in support for cameras, and it was certain that the third-gen would get one. But, it never happened. Maybe in this release. There’s no excuse now. A mic built-in to the unit would be more welcome in my eye.

Retina Display support (inclusion) seems to be the safest bet (for me at least) for a one-spec upgrade between generations. This screen is beautiful, and needs to be brought across to the iPod Touch. It would make the most sense too, since the Touch is all about media and gaming. Of course, to draw all those pixels; the internals would need to be updated as well. I’m expecting the iPod to be updated with the same internals as the new iPhone 4; sans the signal-shorting-happy phone antenna.

On the not-italicized front; I’ll begin with the 3G data. People seem to easily forget about different product “classes” in computing. You got the computer, and the portable device, and the tablet. These “classes” distinctly describe why the iPod Touch should not get 3G data; as the iPod Touch would cannibalize into iPhone territory. While VoIP providers are realizing this and charging for it, cell companies in the US would be less-than-enthused because iPod Touch customers would eat up bandwidth on the data channel while paying less than iPhone users. Not to mention, the functions of texting and calling are easily duplicated over the internet; giving iPod Touch users a “free ride”, not something communications companies are keen on doing. Its portability also ensures that more people will buy it, compounding the issue. People are less likely to bust out an iPad while walking down the street, so the amount of data transmitted is less compared to what the iPod would be.

This is just a personal opinion, but I don’t think the new iPhone looks all that great. Sure, after the treatment in Aperture it does, but in the “real world” or “in the wild”, it really doesn’t. I would almost venture to put the new internals inside a 3GS case. If the new design of the iPod resembles the new iPhone; I seriously hope they make material changes. Instead of sticking to the iconic chrome backing, Apple should make the backplate out of brushed aluminum; and make it bevelled just a little around the edges, like the MacBook. Stick the logo and text on the back in black, and it would be awesome! Not to mention scratches wouldn’t show as easily. The front should remain the same.

Obama Warns Oil Spill Will Impact Local Economy, so 2+2=4?

Way to state the obvious, Mr. President. So in other news, the way to spell “the” is T-H-E, the iPod is the best-selling MP3 player of all time, and wood is highly combustible. Great.

So, since this is what passes as an educated comment these days, let’s break down how he (likely) arrived at this conclusion. It probably involves some gooey black liquid flowing out of a pipe and to the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. This gooey black liquid (oil) gets all over the local wildlife and beaches, therefore killing the fishing and tourism industries. Nobody wants to get tar balls all over their sandals and nobody wants to eat oily seafood. I’m not a big fan of that fishy taste, and I heard oil takes that taste right out, just don’t try to cook it! It also impacts the local photography industry as nobody wants to look at pictures of an oily crane (well, the press has a sick appetite for those). Anyway, Obama is counting on BP to justly compensate for its damages. This is one rare instance where I would align myself with the social justice crowd.

There are all kinds of analyses of this issue coming from all directions. Those that align themselves with the mainstream liberal viewpoints pin all the blame on BP. They are waiting on the all-knowing federal government to assert themselves responsibility and get the mess fixed. I guess it’s really not that simple. That would kind of be like putting the White House in charge of a car company, when nobody in the government has run a successful car company (or successful business for that matter). Those on the right want either BP or the private sector to fix it. There are some good solutions out there, and I feel that the private sector would do a better job fixing it (or at least in cleaning up the mess) than the government would. The amount of finger-pointing from the Obama administration kind of ruined my confidence in them.

The Mad Grab for Your Data

I was reading this Gizmodo article and it helped me come to a rather shocking conclusion; there’s a mad rush out there to grab your data.

If you haven’t introduced to the next-coming trend in computing, take a look. It’s called “cloud computing”, and it means a lot of things to a lot of people. Some people see it as a drive on the internet to which they can dump data to. The pundits see it as an entire operating system and program suite that resides on the internet. Tech-heads see it as a way to publish data that is easily consumable between many different devices and different computers. Whatever it is; there is one thing that is very clear, and it’s also the thing they try to sell you on: it’s easy to access your data. There are three major companies out there that are making the most transparent efforts to advance cloud computing; Google, Apple, and Microsoft.

I’m sure you heard all the jokes about Google and how they are the forerunner to SkyNet. Those may not be far-off! The cool thing about Google is, they’re very transparent about indexing data, and they tell you up front that they do not aim to sell your personal data, just use it to curtail advertising to your specific area/tastes (based on your search history). Anyway, when you sign up for a Google account, you use all their services with that one account. Picasa, Calender, Gmail, Google Docs, etc. You can upload personal docs to these services, and Google will index and sort them and make them as available as you want them to (and as most of the default options lean towards “share this with the world”, they encourage you to do so). This makes data easily accessible among multiple devices and computers, as all you need to access most of these services is a web browser. This can be a pretty large security risk, as auto-logins are often saved.

Microsoft is slightly less transparent, but trend-spotters will be able to spot this one a mile away. Quite a long time ago, Microsoft began offering many online services, but each required its own login. When Microsoft began rolling out various “Live” services, they began selling the point that one login combo could unlock so many possibilities. After rolling out the Live services, they integrated these previous services into the Live “suite”. The Live suite now includes Windows Live Mail, Photos, “Spaces” (a MySpace ripoff), Xbox Live, SkyDrive, Live Mesh, etc. Again, Microsoft is rolling into cloud computing by opening up these services to many of its own devices. There is a fundamental difference between Microsoft’s approach and Google’s approach however; openness. You can access 99% of Google’s internet services through a web browser. Microsoft on the other hand generally requires you to either buy one of their products or download a program to access these services. You need an Xbox to take advantage of Xbox Live (obviously) and you need a program to use automatic file syncing in Live Mesh. This allows Microsoft more control over the access points of your data (think of gate-keeping). It also give Microsoft an excuse to keep on using its proprietary methodology (like the certain Office file formats).

Apple’s offering is even more locked down than Microsoft’s (who would’ve thunk of that?!). Their MobileMe service is pretty much the same thing as the Live service; though you have to pay for it and it is supported by Apple (meaning His Holiness Steve Jobs will attempt to solve your issues on your Apple-branded device or computer if you run into one). You again have an online disk service to which you can upload anything you want, and you can access that disk through both a browser or Finder if you own a Mac. This makes access to your files pretty easy, as long as you stay logged in.

The answer to this upcoming trend is simple; while you still have control over what you upload, please watch what you upload. Don’t upload things with personal info on it please. There is always a way to read that.

There’s a Culmination Going On…

Okay, one of my more moderate siblings has said it. Sam has said it. There are some general feelings about it among those are awake up in Springfield. I have felt it sense the beginning of this year. Something big will go on. As to what sector and geographic location of the world is a good question. A lot of people have been feeling like some form of violent domestic terrorism will go down some time this summer. I feel something different.

I feel like there will some form of economic terrorism that will occur some time this summer. We have highlighted the great crash of May 2010, and its equally great and swift upswing. What I’m feeling is something of that magnitude, with no upswing. Who are the terrorists? Government, reaffirmed by this article from MarketWatch; from which this quote comes from:

The move “symbolizes how credit risk has been transformed from corporate to sovereign risk, as the solution to the financial and economic crisis was government intervention,” Hans Mikkelsen, credit strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, wrote in a note to investors at the time.

You see that guys? Putting tax money into the corporate structure transfers corporate financial risk into financial sovereign risk. What can we learn from this? The American government will make us purchase health insurance to be an official citizen; the first government to make its citizens purchase something from the private economy to be a public citizen. But wait, you have to purchase something from the private sector; so how is this going from corporate risk to sovereign risk? Well, those who don’t report enough income must opt for a subsidized insurance plan. This is subsidized by new taxes. So, tax money is going in to the health care industry. That can be equated to an act of financial terrorism, as the risk that would have only been eaten by corporate is now being transfered to the citizens of the country. Privatized gains and socialized losses, with a socialized source of income. Of course, pouring money into entitlement programs does not help either; and expanding these programs to unreasonable sizes can also be seen as an act of financial terrorism, as doing this necessitates more money than taxes and other income sources can generate, collapsing the entire setup; kind of like bombing a skyscraper’s foundation and having it collapse to the ground. It is well-noted in that article that the cost of insuring against sovereign risk default in Europe has peaked over the amount in America for the first time since measurement

In other words, the Euro is on shaky grounds, and trillion dollar bailout packages to Greece won’t make things any better. Again, as I said in a recent rant, whatever goes down in Europe affects us, and the exact same thing can happen to us as well, only on a state>federal relationship instead of a country>regulatory commission (UN) relationship. So say the Euro tanks. Our stock market will probably shred a conservative estimate of 20% of itself simply due to the fact that the value of business lost in Europe would be pretty significant. We would be able to stay afloat, but a rather large hit would be dealt to our crew. Besides, who says the stock market equals what’s going on in our economy anyway. I mean, we show periods of gain even as faith in the job market sours. If we default on what we owe to Asia or the IMF, say sayonara. The value of the dollar would plunge into nonexistence and we would be slaves to the majority holder of our debt, which looks to be the Chinese, in more ways than one.

It Does Not Look Like Trader Error

Originally posted here by Jim Davidson.

It looks like a huge profit taking. They sell high, buy low, and make billions.

Procter and Gamble (NYSE: PG) was at $61.72 on 6 May 2010 at 14:42 hours. Volume traded was 87,110 shares or so.

Procter and Gamble went to $39.37 at 14:48 hours. Volume traded 165,560 shares.

PG went to $61.46 at 14:52. Volume 138,490 shares.

Now, there were hundreds of thousands of shares traded in this one stock on the way down and hundreds of thousands traded on the way back up. Go to a good chart engine like finance dot google or finance dot yahoo for details.

But, roughly, let’s say 100,000 shares changed hands every minute for those ten minutes. It isn’t clear to me that I can know how many shares actually moved without access to the actual trades on the actual machines.

Keep in mind that for at least 90 seconds of the deepest part of that drop, NYSE had frozen the stock. On their system, I think the lowest recorded price was $53.99. Trading from their point of view ceased. But it continued on the computers of the big investment banks.

So, on the order of a million shares change hands. Figure the programmed trading activity accounted for only half of that volume. The rest was people tagging along and suddenly calling in orders. Really, that’s very unlikely because hardly anyone was in a position to see the drop and act. My guess is more like 95% of the activity was programmed.

Those who got the good side of the trading sold at $61.72 and bought at $39.37. They made $22.35 on those shares traded – call it 160,000 shares for $3.6 million. They sold at $61.46 and bought at, say, $44 on average. Call it $17.46 on a further 340,000 shares for $5.9 million. Call it $9.5 million with a very conservative 500,000 shares of the total in trade.

If you could make ten million dollars in ten minutes time, you’d do it, right? Well, if you had no ethics like an investment banker, say. Okay.

Then run the numbers on the whole Dow Jones Industrial Average. On 6 May 2010 at 14:40 the Dow stands at $10,458.20. At 14:48 it stands at $9,977.39. At 14:58 it goes back to $10,479.74. It looks like about 460 million shares changed hands during the day’s trading of Dow stocks. Let’s be conservative and figure that only about 100 million shares changed hands during the critical eight minutes. Now you have something like $460 or so on average between buying low and selling high, or selling high and buying low depending on which end you ran. Not all trades could get executed so I’m not using the whole $480.81. Even so $46 billion was made on these trades in these scant few minutes, not to mention order volume executed because of trailing stops and other attempts to protect themselves by traders and individual investors all over the world.

If you could make $46 billion in 18 minutes, would you? Would investment banking gangsters? Okay then.

And those are only PG as an example stock and the Dow Jones average as a fairly narrow (30 stock) market. There were about twelve billion shares traded on the whole NYSE on Thursday. The NYSE composite fell $208 in a critical 12 minute period. Figure 2 billion shares traded by the banking gangsters in that window. That’s $416 billion.

About 4.6 billion shares traded on NASDAQ. A whole lot of stocks show that same blip. On the NASDAQ the composite went from $2290 to $2203 and back to 2305 in 12 minutes (14:42 to 14:54). Figure 800 million shares moved during that period (just a guess, I don’t have hour by hour volume numbers for the whole exchange so I’m just dividing daily volume by about 6 – but we can predict that a lot of trading volume was focused on those minutes). So $87 profit selling high and buying low, or the other way around. There’s another $69.6 billion.

Do you think these people would be unhappy tripping a whole lot of customer sell orders (automatic trailing stops, for example – an investor sees he is in profit territory so he programs a trailing stop about 5% below the recent price so he gets out if the market plunges; but the fun part for the investment banking gangsters is they don’t guarantee to sell at the stop loss price – they may sell minutes later and screw you for everything you had in the stock) and earning commissions on all those trades, while at the same time making $70 billion, just on the NASDAQ? Or $416 billion just on the NYSE?

Of course they would be delighted to do exactly that. And what if they are caught at it? What if the SEC stops watching Internet porn for a few hours and fines each of the investment banking firms, say, $100 million? It wouldn’t be a bad deal, $70 billion in 12 minutes trading minus $100 million. Laugh all the way to the office, which is the bank.

If you are in the markets for any reason, you are being played. I suggest you not trust any of these people more than you must. Buy gold and silver coins and keep them at home. Upgrade your locks, buy more guns and ammo, keep guard dogs, and consider cheap video cameras tied to a server grade computer for monitoring what’s going on.

The fortune you preserve may continue to be your own.

I think the banking gangsters made about $500 billion in roughly 20 minutes of trading. Figure six or eight banking giants were in on the kill. Call it $62 billion each? Who knows?

You might think very seriously about pulling your money out of their brokerage firms and banks and “safety deposit” boxes. (It is not your safety they have in mind when they offer to rent you such a box. It is theirs.)

Since he asked in the comments, we suggest that you visit http://indsovu.com/ (the Individual Soverign University website).

Renewed Focus on Racism

Yesterday, I was alarmed on two fronts about the propagandizing of racism. It’s the twenty-first century; and we are still talking about racism? Seriously?

I’ll take this opportunity to say that I love and respect all races equally. Each race (and individual really) adds a uniqueness to our country’s culture; and the whole world’s culture really if you step back and take a look at the world as a whole.

But, it’s the petty aspects of division that keeps getting brought up. If anyone watched The Cleveland Show last night, you’ll notice the rather brash racist jokes being fired off one after another. Now, I usually make an exception for racist comedy as most racist comedy laughs at racism instead of with racism. It seemed like that was the case with this show.

I was tipped off by Infowars for this next case; which is a movie called “Machete”. Here’s the trailer:

The movie is looking like it’s about a radical Mexican slaughtering the authorities and politicians who try to keep Mexicans from crossing the border with ease. It stars such people as Jessica Alba and Lindsay Lohan, and the cinematography looks really good; but the content is rather scary. Just by looking at it, I would say that the “protagonist” in this story is a Plan of San Diego advocate.

Now let me say again; all people (no matter what race, gender, etc.) are beautiful, and the human race is a beautiful and stunning example of what nature (or God) can churn out. Violent revolutionaries, house-moms, executives, everyone out there; you are beautiful, don’t let people talk you, a certain race, a different gender, your circle of friends, etc., down.

A DWI Check? I Can’t Refuse!

Tipped off by James Green, Missouri law enforcement is now preparing to set up “No Refusal” DWI checkpoints. They say they need to be more proactive instead of reactive; which is something I agree with up until a certain point, in this case, the right to refuse is being infringed. Officers claim they have responses ready for those that refuse a blood check, of which the warrant is obtained legally just by a phone call to a judge. While that is constitutional, the “No Refusal” DWI checks are not.

This story was brought up on Cinco de Mayo, which is a popular time for Americans to get drunk, so I can see where they’re coming from. Public safety is in everyone’s interests. At the same time; this is like being treated as if you’re guilty until you’re proven innocent. In case you’re wondering how checks work, officers sit on the side of the road or go walking through towns packing breathalysers, and they check everyone that goes through an area. One defense attorney cited in the story says this; which I completely agree with:

…kinds of checkpoints have been deemed legal. However, he also says officials need to make sure the quality of information is specified in facts, not just conclusions. In other words, at a checkpoint, officers should have more than a refusal to determine probable cause. Rather, the attorney says, they ought to have solid evidence to make them believe an individual is driving impaired before moving forward to obtain a warrant.