Who is Eugene Kaspersky? Find out more in www.kklub.net!

Who is Eugene Kaspersky? He's the founder of the antivirus company that we all come to trust, Kaspersky-Labs. Still don't know who he is yet? Remember seeing those Jackie Chan commercials fighting computer viruses in TV? Yeap! That's it.

Kaspersky Labs now plays a very important role in computer and cyberspace security. His interest in computer security was actually ignited when the Cascade virus was detected in his computer. From then on, he continued to further his interest in this field, and eventually formed his own company. What a journey isn't it?

He also qouted that "Everyone should and must have an identification, or internet passport,... The internet was designed not for public use, but for American scientists and the US military. Then it was introduced to the public and it was wrong...to introduce it in the same way."

Keep up the good work!

Want to know more? Visit the Kaspersky club at http://www.kklub.net.

Recycle your Handphone & Get Cash?

Remember seeing those plastic boxes at shopping complex where you can put your gadgets and batteries for recycling purposes? In the near future, we might be able to get some cash by just recycling our old gadgets like what we do with unused papers.

ecoATM or Automated Recycling Stations was recently launched to promote gadget or metal recycling to consumers. Li-Ion batteries in particular, commonly found in modern gadgets and handphones, cannot be discarded the same as normal rubbish. Batteries should always be recycled because they are harmful to the environment if discarded incorrectly.

So, what does this new ATM machine do? Once you dump in your item into its slot, it will examine the item and tells you how much your item is worth. Should you accept it, you'll get the cash. If the item is of no value at all, a "free item' will be issued and a tree will planted by your name. Sounds good?

Currently not available in Malaysia yet, but I'm looking forward to it. Hope the government will bring this fella in soon.

Source

Microsoft Security Essentials is finally out!

After being one of the lucky beta testers a few months ago, I’m glad to hear that MSE has finally reached release status. You can easily grab it from http://www.microsoft.com/Security_essentials/ . For beta testers, your beta version of MSE should prompt you to upgrade to the full version of MSE. My upgrade was painless and it just seemed like any other normal update. As for those who’s doing a clean installation, the size of the installation file is just approximately 8MB file, which is small compared to other free AV installers. The only hurdle in the installation would be the WGA process, which shouldn’t be a problem if you’re using a genuine version of Windows.

Some of my findings from the beta testing was MSE was really good in terms of scanning speed. A complete system scan (130GB filled with roughly 360,000 files) took only about 30 minutes. I read reviews from other online sources that if your system is infested with malware, it would take longer. That could be a sign that there are viruses lurking somewhere in your system if it takes unusually long.

I recommend MSE for Windows users who are looking for standalone ad-free antivirus solutions. MSE was included in the recent AVTest's tests at http://www.virusbtn.com/news/2008/09_02

Are Expensive HDMI Cables Worth It?

You bought a new LCD TV, AV System and well probably a PS3. You spent about RM 5000-6000 (that's about USD 1500-3000), so the sales guy approaches and persuades you to buy a branded HDMI cable which cost about RM300 ++ (Usd 50-100). Then you start to think, "I spent so much already, might as well spent a few more hundred to get a premium grade cable?"

STOP! For normal Home A/V use where most of your devices are close to each other, cheap HDMI cables is usually sufficient enough. Quality and material build may be critical for analog cables for analog speakers (those copper ones with the split red and black cable), they are not important at all for a HDMI cable. They do not affect the quality of the display and sound being projected by your TV and AV System.

Why? Unlike analog cables, HDMI carries digital signals which consists of 1's and 0's. This means its either the devices receives the signal successfully or not. If it does, perfect. If it doesn't you'll see distortion and rubbish on your screen because the frame is corrupted. This means as long your cable is able to transmit the signals from your source to your TV, your cable is fine, even if its made of iron!

Another thing that confuses consumers is the various versions of HDMI. The sales guy might tell you that you need to replace your HDMI 1.2 compliant cable with a HDMI 1.3 one if your TV is HDMI 1.3 in order to get full utilization of the higher bandwidth, speed and resolution. Again, this is just another marketing talk. Physically, from the birth of HDMI up to HDMI 1.3, there is no difference made to the cables. In fact, HDMI 1.0 cables were already "prepared" to handle future enhancements without the need to alter the cable. Perhaps for HDMI 1.4, you might need to get new cables due to the slight alteration in the cable characteristics, but that's in the future. There's no HDMI 1.4 devices in the market yet anyway.

The only time when you really need to purchase these premium cables is when distance is an issue. If the cable length is only 3-6 feet in length, the cheap cables will do. However, the length exceeds that, you may need to consider those premium cables. Due the strict timing in data transmission, the cable have to be robust enough to transmit those gigantic bursts of data, especially across long distances. This is where the build and material quality of those premium cables shine. This is also the reason as why there are specific length when you look at premium HDMI cables, and they must never be altered after production. This means you can't cut a cable to be shorter and terminate it yourself. You'll end up burning your cash in the end.

If premium cables are still the way to go, I'll recommend Monster. If you are looking for cheap, affordable ones and living in the US, check out Optimization World. They have pretty cheap cables with free shipping.

The AudioHolic guys also did testing on various HDMI cables here. If you're interested, go have a look. You'll see that at 6 feet, all the cheap cables passed.

Snow Leopard? Update your flash player now!

According to the blog on Adobe, it seems that the installation of Snow Leopard will downgrade your Flash Player to an old version which has some bugs and vulnerabilities. It is recommended that all users to upgrade to the latest version of Flash Player (10.0.32.18) for security purposes. You can download the flash player from http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer

Source

Telling Your Oven to Start Cooking, With Your Mobile Phone!

Recently, there was a news report about an oven being turned on, and started cooking at the highest setting on its own. Its trigger? Its none other than your mobile phone. All you need to do is to leave your mobile phone near the oven, and dial it.

Recall that you leave your phone too near a computer speaker, there is this “bee-boo-bee-boo” sound emitting from the speakers, or your monitor screen gets distorted when a call comes in. This is caused by “electromagnetic Interference (or EMI to Electronic Engineers). This is also the reason why you should NOT place your mobile phone near your chest if you are using a pacemaker. This is the probably why how the mobile phone could turn on the circuitry is the oven, and then trigger it to cook without any human intervention.

On the bright side, you can now leave your turkey in the oven and place a mobile phone beside it before you go to work on Thanksgiving Day. After you have lunch, all you need to do is to dial to your mobile phone!

You can read the news article on the link here. Most ovens are safe from this though, I assume.

Win a iPhone 3GS or Western Digital Hard Disk?

In conjunction with the 52nd Merdeka Celebration, Exabytes is giving prizes to lucky people who is participating in their contest. All you need to do is register and put their banner in your site / blog. Don’t worry, its a just a small button-size banner that would reside on the top right of your site. What are you waiting for? Just hop in my clicking the banner on the top right of my site or here . Oh yeah, you can put my email hongaun@gmail.com as your referral, otherwise you won’t be able to register =P. If you win, I’ll win too!

Merdeka Malaysia!

Super Mario AI Competition

In association with the IEEE Consumer Electronics Society Games Innovation Conference 2009 (ICE-GIC) and IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG), a Super Mario AI competition is being organized. Those interested can still submit their codes as the deadline is August 18th (ICE-GIC) and Sept 3rd (CIG). Meaning you probably have to crank up the codes in the space of a month. The competition is based on a modified version of Infinite Mario Bros by Markus Persson, which was coded in Java,

Cash prizes are as follows:

ICE-GIC (Deadline: August 18th)

Prizes – USD 200,100 and 50 to respective winners

CIG (Deadline: September 3rd)

Prize – USD 500

For more information please check out the competition page at http://julian.togelius.com/mariocompetition2009/index.php

Current AI prototype clips available (not done by me!):

The one below tries to follow the mouse.

Good luck everyone! Programmers, open up your IDE!