Blag

I got sent this little gem by a friend of mine. Start seems to be pro-RIAA/MPAA, but the punch line hits you half way in

Enjoy.

Epson Stylus Office TX300F

Seeing as there aren’t many reviews for the Epson Stylus Office TX300F, I’ll throw my opinion out there. Skip to the end for the summary. *See footnote. These are the only other ones I’ve been able to find on the internet:

• http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/review/printers_scanners/epson/stylus_office_tx300f/263373 ; http://www.news.com.au/technology/reviews/epson-printer-affordable-but-slow/story-e6frfrpi-1111117973160 ; http://www.goodgearguide.com.au/review/printers_scanners/epson/stylus_office_tx300f/263373#cb – NOTE – All 3 are the same article by the same author…
• http://www.pcworld.com/article/177825/epson_stylus_tx300f_price_102.html – Isn’t really a review… more of a “buy it if you can find it cheap”. (Part of a top 9 bargain printers for under $125 list).

Then there’s this moron (click to see profile/other reviews) who posted a review on Dick Smith Electronic’s website:

http://www.dse.com.au/cgi-bin/dse.storefront/en/product/XP8303

You’ll notice he gives sparkling 5/5 reviews to EVERY single product, and goes into hardly any relevant detail… he’d be great working in the advertisement industry, the way he writes up products. Sadly enough, people actually get suckered in and purchase products based on his reports. *See footnote

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Scathing comments aside, back to the printer.

Bought the TX300F from Dick Smith on special for $98, normal price was $128. It’s a standard multifunction printer – print, copy, scan but can also send and receive faxes as well. It also has a auto document feeder which is useful for batch copying or scanning documents. I also got a 3 year extended warranty through Dick Smith which sweetened the deal – it even covers wear and tear! Assuming I take the printer back when it breaks, that’s 2 printers for $54.

The printer uses Epson’s DURABrite pigment based ink – 73N series of cartridges (TO731N, TO732N, TO733N, TO734N) or an optional 73HN high capacity tank for black ink. These cost around $16 each, depending on the store of purchase, so it’s $64 for a complete set of ink cartridges. Calidad does offer drop in compatible cartridges – these come in a set of 4 + 2 free magnetic photo frames for $36. Unfortunately, these are the new micro-chipped ink cartridges, so refilling is more complex than drilling a hole and squirting ink in. (Dedicated 3rd party re-fillable cartridges or a CISS will have to be purchased).

In short, the Epson TX300F was disappointing. It takes quite a while to start up and shut down. Print quality and speed were a big let down for an otherwise worthwhile printer. Typical of most Epsons, draft mode is unreadable, but standard and high quality modes take much longer to print documents. While not unbearable slow, it IS noticeable compared to most modern inkjets. Text is crisp, but image quality is fairly average, on par with most $40-60 Canon/HP printers. Photo printing was painfully slow, at over 2 minutes per image. Comparable Canon/HP printers typically take ~45 seconds. Once again, this slow speed doesn’t translate into improved image quality. The TX300F is much better off as a small business workhorse than a home printer.

I cannot comment on scanner image quality, not knowing much about calibration or colour accuracy. Copying however works well, and apart from the speed, have no complaints. The user interface and menu are fairly intuitive, although the “are you sure you want to shut down” question bugs me. I do not have a fax service, and thus unable to test or use the scan function.

Typical of most sub $180 printers, the build quality is fairly mediocre, hence my joy at picking up extended warranty including wear and tear. Printer weight and size is fairly average, so it should fit in the existing space of you already have a multifunction. Being a office printer, it doesn’t have a built in memory card reader, or EXIF based USB printing. This printer comes with a USB cable, RJ11 phone cable and IEC power cord. Disappointingly, there was no sample pack of photo paper.

The software package included with the printer is fairly lightweight compared to other brands. The Epson supports Windows 2000 or higher (including 7) and Mac OS 10.3.9 or later. Apart from the printing drivers, a basic scan utility is also installed and a printer status monitor that sits in the system tray. I’m not a fan of this, but it can be disabled.

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Should you buy this printer? Canon PIXMA All-in-one printers with fax and ADF functionality are available for ~$125-140, can print faster and have higher image quality. At it’s RRP of $149 AUD, it’s not worth it, but on discount, as a document printer, it’s worth considering.

I’ll be fitting a CISS (Continuous Ink Supply System) to this printer, something that is MUCH easier to do on this Epson than comparable Canon models – one of the reasons I bought this printer despite it’s drawbacks. I’ll detail the installation process, and list ink/cartridge/CISS suppliers in the next post. (A CISS is a giant external tank for a printer, which supplies ink to the print heads via a series of tubing.)

Pros:

• Good value if on special/you have a discount
• Ideal small business/office printer
• Automatic Document Feeder + Fax functionality
• Includes USB and RJ11 cables
• Can be fitted with a CISS/Re-fillable cartridges/Compatible drop-in replacements

Mediocre:

• Photo printing speed and quality
• Re-filling is slightly more complex than other Canon/HP/Lexmark/Brother printers

Cons:

• Unreadable text and images in draft mode
• Build quality

*I am not affiliated with DSE, Epson, News Limited, PC World, GGG or DaleB545 in any way. Opinions expressed in this article are purely my own and written for my personal amusement. If you incur any losses as a result of comprehending and/or following the advice of this post, you hold the author free of any indemnity or damages claims. Please see the complaints page for more information. If you disagree with any of this, please leave this website immediately and clear your browser’s cache.

The box is locked, it is dangerous.

I have to live with it overnight

And I can’t keep away from it.

There are no windows, so I can’t see what is in there.

There is only a little grid, no exit.

Excerpt from “The Arrival of the Bee Box” – Sylvia Plath

It is the end…

…welcome to the dark side, so 5 people told me, all within a few minutes of signing away my life to Facebook.

I have caved in after 17.5 years. 17.5 years of hard work – staying anonymous to the rest of the world, keeping all my personal details out of address books, social networking websites, forums, SPAM and mailing lists – all to be undone in a few clicks of a mouse.

Welcome to Facebook, your account has been created — now it will be easier than ever to share and connect with your friends.

…the e-mail said. I personally think it should read:

Thank you for signing your life away – your business, is our business.

Facebook is such a ginormic waste of time, but a necessary evil to keep in touch with others and for Uni. I’m shocked at how long and how often people spend their free time on Facebook, and the amount of personally identifiable information floating around on there. Good thing profiles are set to private by default too, or I’d be in ICU by now on life support.

…it IS very addictive.

And yes my dear Bergamin, there is finally a picture of me on the internet. I am so not paying you the challenge money. Hmpf.

NB: Facebook is the ONLY social networking website that I will sign up to this year. Or the next. And the year after that. Ok, perhaps Youtube, but otherwise no more social networking! :@

Some moron with a jackhammer managed to cut through 400mm of concrete, straight through fibre optics and copper cables, knocking out internet, telephones, and mobile connectivity for thousands in the CBD. The repair bill is estimated to be $1,000,000 + probable compensation for homeowners and businesses. It will take over a week to pull and re-splice new fibre, and then longer to re-patch 10, 000 copper pairs.

http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/318725/thousands_lose_phone_internet_services_sydney_cbd

http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/cables-cut-cbd-phone-and-internet-services-lost-20090916-fq4h.html

But that got me thinking – all the western countries are all hyped up over the threat of terrorism. We have extra tight security at airports (or none, in some cases -.- ), anti-terrorism laws, warning speakers installed in the city, ASIO/FBI/M1X bla bla bla.

But what’s to stop a terrorist wreaking havoc just by taking an axe to a few telecommunications and power cables? Last time I checked, the telecomms ducts could be accessed relatively easily by a single person with a screw driver, nor are any of the vital cables physically shielded or hardened in any way.

I could cut internet and phone access to the (North Ryde) Business Park down the road from my house, just from being over-enthusiastic with a backhoe and digging a 50cm hole in my front yard.

Poof! There goes the 10G metro fibre rings. Goodbye, thousands of copper pairs. *Throws rope across street* Sayonara Telstra, Optus and Foxtel HFC networks. There’s so much fibre/hfc/copper running through my street it’s not funny.

If I remember correctly a similar case happened in the US to AT&Ts network. A disgruntled employee came along one night, lifted the hatch to a fibre duct, and went snippety-snip. Half the city lost internet access, phones stopped working and 911 calls disappeared into a black hole.

Sure, I’d get screwed by the AFP because willfully tampering with telecommunications is a federal offense but hey, I get my share of the limelight in the media! Now what was the number for Kennard’s Hire again…

GG to these asstards for making everyone’s lives better: http://www.itnews.com.au/News/155993,parking-rangers-add-to-telstra-outage-woes.aspx

Somehow or other, this blog (blag) has somehow made it into the indexes of over 15 search engines including Google, Yahoo, Live/Bing, Ask, Alexa & Netcraft. Amazing, considering there weren’t any inbound links to theparanoidtroll.com in the beginning yet somehow Google caught on within days of the domain being registered, and all the other followed suit.

Stats make for interesting reading -

• Average of 6-7 unique visitors per day (excludes RSS feeds, and returning visitors)
• 72.8% of visitors use Internet Explorer, 15.2% use Safari, 8% use Firefox, 0.9% use Chrome and the remainder are all random browsers/feed readers
• 95.9% of visitors are Windows users, Macintosh accoutns for 1.2% and <0.1% use Linux. I have no idea what the remainder is.
• Top 5 keywords were  – “cheap”, “discount”, “billion”, “KFC” and ”pointless”
• Top 10 countries are – Australia, US, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Spain, Brazil, Russia and Germany

I actually received 3 offers via e-mail from various dodgy SEO companies offering to ‘promote’ my site to make it to the front page of Google. It already does, thank you very much -.- No thanks to you, J. Walker, H. Ellis, and K. Lampton. All you succeeded in doing is wasting 15 kilobytes of space in my inbox.

In other news, more server changes to come

I’ll wait until I’ve moved all my websites and domains away from host “X”, before I tear into them, lambast their shitty service and name them publicly. The server load of 70.34 and memory usage of 88.20% is atrocious, let alone the support staff who ignore support tickets, or take 4-5 days before replying to those marked as ‘crtical’, or the high packet loss and latency. And that’s before I start complaining about corrupted SSL data, terrible PHP/SQL performance and the intermittent FTP service. -.- *rage*

For those not in the know, a typical server packed with hundreds of websites only has a load of 1 to 4, and memory usage around the 40-60% usage mark under normal conditions.

So, time to shift all my domain names to Layered Networks, and move my other sites to IGXHosting. (Free plug for Layered Networks here actually, they have very cheap domain names which come with free WHOIS privacy, which still beat Australian registrars for price, despite the AUD to USD exchange rate and conversion). This blog shouldn’t be affected as it’s already hosted by Layered Networks and the domain is already pointed towards their nameservers. Still, if something does bugger up, max downtime should be 24-48 hours, while your ISP re-caches DNS lookups.

Damnit.

Gotta re-evaluate the browsers again – Firefox 3.5 , Google Chrome 3 Beta, and Opera 10 Beta were all updated in the past few days.

Dunno if there are any ground breaking changes though – Firefox’s update only fixed a few security and stability issues, Opera’s was “numerous bug fixes” and a GUI update, but Chrome… well, given the number of bugs currently in it, any update is welcome.

a.k.a 32-Bit Web Browser Review

And now for a short detour in the multi-part series, onto the most extensive post I have written to date.

A few months back, I was searching for Firefox on Major Geeks (file download mirror that’s unmetered on my ISP) and came across a… let’s say, unique browser – 32-Bit Web Browser, developed by a small company called Electrasoft.

Click here to visit Electrasoft’s home page, and here for the product information page.

Seeing as I was auditioning browsers anyway, I downloaded 32-Bit Web Browser and installed it in a virtual machine to try out. The results made me cry

I didn’t even bother benchmarking it; instead, I shall endeavour to give the application a virtual anal tearing, point out it’s numerous (understatement of the year there) flaws, and why its author is a charlatan who is scamming money off unsuspecting parent and senior types who don’t know any better. Let’s just say I would rather use Lynx or Dillo, than go anywhere near 32-Bit Web Browser with a 15 foot barge pole, so to speak.

This will be a long and intensive post, so click to read more.

(There’s more text at the end, it’s not all images!)

Read the rest of this entry »

There are only a few browsers even worthy of consideration at the moment – due to lack of support, infrequent updates, security holes, performance issues etc, I’ve decided to ignore all other browsers except for the main five. Legacy browsers (e.g. Firefox 2.0, IE7, Safari 3, Netscape were excluded), and the latest versions and betas available at time of testing were used.The versions I tested were:

• Google Chrome 2.0.172.33
• Google Chrome Beta 3.0.193.0
• Opera 9.64
• Opera 10 Beta Build 1631
• Safari 4.0.2
• Firefox 3.0.11
• Firefox 3.5
• Internet Explorer 8

Aside:  FYI, I’ve long since lost all traces of browser loyalty – they’ve already wasted enough of my time and sanity for me to even bother blowing the X browser horn.

I don’t really believe in browser benchmarks – the only real way to test browsers out is to use them for a few days and monitor their performance and system resource usage.  The SunSpider and V8 “industry standard” benchmarks are utter crap – every tech blog, journal and media portal seem to toss their figures around willy nilly, yet fail to realise that both benchmarks are BIASED and UNFAIR when used to compare competing browsers. They were designed to test performance of different builds, updates, improvements and so on, not the performance of a completely different competitors product. SunSpider was developed by WebKit (the basis of Safari) as an internal benchmark, as was V8 for Google Chrome. The only “un-biased” benchmark currently available is ACID 3, but even that doesn’t really simulate real world usage.

So, I gathered 301 different websites – each laced with images, Javascript, Java applets, Flash, Shockwave, Silverlight, pop-ups and AJAX and loaded them in each browser to check for memory leaks, abnormal CPU usage and disk I/O. I then tried using each browser with 30 tabs open for a day or two each, to see how they performed over time. As a test of each browsers tagging, history and bookmark searching capabilities, I also imported my 8MB bookmarks.html (where possible).

Each browser was setup to a “usable” state – i.e. pop-up and adblocking enabled if available, dangerous javascript options disabled. All other options were left at default, as settings shouldn’t need tweaking out of the box for a browser to be usable.

Test system specs were:

• Overclocked  Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4ghz @ 2.95Ghz
• 4GB 4-4-4-12 DDR2
• 3x 250GB WD2500KS SATA Hard Disks in a RAID0 Array (used as system disk)
• Nvidia GeForce 7600GT
• Windows XP Professional SP3 32-Bit with latest patches as of 13/7/09 applied
• Norton Internet Security 2008 16.5

So by no means a slouch. Keep in mind the average PC will NOT be anywhere near as powerful.

More to come in following posts…

I am a whore for the internets. If I had the money, I’d have interwebs pipes as extensive as Paris’s sewer system connected to my house so I could stream HD videos and torrent all day, at 40Gbps via multiple redundant upstream backbone networks. Unfortunately, bandwidth costs about ~$250 per Mbit unmetered delivered via fibre, so that’s an $12,000,000 internet bill per month. Then add on installation costs of laying fibre from the nearest access point to my doorstep, priced at ~$200 per metre in suburban areas (of which 98% of that costs is for the trenchworks and council approvals), a Cisco ONS 15454 SONET backplane to terminate the Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexed fibres, with a price heading into the 6 figure range and my plan doesn’t look quite so rosy anymore…

Regardless, the web browser is still the weapon of choice when it comes to surfing the web. Interestingly enough, picking the right web browser has been a long and gruelling process for me (no really!). I have rather peculiar web browsing habits, some of which entail -

• Bookmarking and tagging any website that is remotely interesting, or possibly useful in the future – my bookmarks.html is so large that some browsers can not import it, and scrolling to the bottom of the list takes ~ 5-6 minutes.
• Looks interesting? *click* *open in new tab* – after only about 20-30 minutes, I’ll typically have 25-30 tabs open. After a day of browsing, it’s usually around the 120-140 mark. Just wait until I start opening new windows as well…
• Constantly opening and closing browsers, so the ability to “save all” tabs and “open all tabs” is VERY important
• And as a consequence of the above reason – a high performance core that can search through 8MB of bookmarks and tags, 180 days of history and handle a 800MB cache

I mentioned long and gruelling – up until now, not a single browser available was suitable, each having their own crippling flaws and perclivites. But now, with the latest wave of browser updates/releases/betas, that’s all beginning to change. Hooray, no more:

• Blue Screens of Death (BSOD) – yup, a *certain* browser forced me to reboot my PC constantly
• Massive memory leaks that would make windows page its own kernel to disk in an effort to free up RAM
• Disk thrashing as browsers try to re-open 120 tabs from the cache
• Constant tri-daily browser crashes
• Awful laggy performance worthy of sandpapering your face

Well, I compiled a list of 301 tabs of pages packed with images, Javascript, Java applets, Flash, Shockwave, Silverlight, pop-ups and AJAX and unleashed them on all the browsers I could get my hands on. The results may surprise you…

More to come in the following posts.

(By the way, I do realise my web browser usage is NOT in anyway representative of most users, but the debilitating flaws in some browsers would still affect the average granny, logging into her ISP e-mail once a week to check for messages from the kids).

Copied verbatim from their blog post:

As always, check back at http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-trial-the-verdict-090417/ and Torrent Freak for the latest news.

Today is a sad day for Internet users, torrent trackers, ISPs and network operators worldwide.

The Pirate Bay 4 – Guilty.

1 Year jail term, and $905000 fines each.

The Pirate Bay will stay running of course – the trial was never about the tracker, just the 4 admins who ran the website behind the scenes. They do have 2 courts (or opportunities) to appeal their sentences though, the first of which must be lodge by the 9th of May 2009. It may be years before an outcome is reached though.

http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-trial-the-verdict-090417/ is the most accurate and constantly updated source. (Torrent Freak is the de facto site when it comes to file sharing news.) Check back constantly.

The outcome will be very interesting though as this is a landmark case, and it could mean that ISPs may become responsible for policing their users download habits. The outcome of this case LITERALLY could halt the development of broadband worldwide. Let’s face it, with P2P file sharing accounting for 2/3 (and growing) of the data transmitted over the Internet, the ripple effect from these legal proceedings could make 4 companies VERY rich, many companies very broke and land millions of citizens in jail (or at least considerably lighten their wallets anyway).

Speaking of which, iinet vs. AFACT isn’t going too well either… I’m sure Senator Cuntroy is happy, but every Australian ISP is on the edge of their seat watching the drama unfold.

This story is from a few days ago, as I waited to see if anything else would unfold. As it turns out, nothing did, probably as all the journalists got threatened with anal penetration if they reported anything unfavorable about the FBI. (No, I do not like the FBI if that isn’t already apparent.)

The FBI went nuts over in America. In their scramble to kiss Hollywood’s arse (and find the perpetrators of the leaked copy of the movie Wolverine), their search led to a datacenter in Dallas. Apparently the company who had leaked the movie was a client of Core IP Networks, several years ago, but that didn’t stop the FBI from walking in unwarranted, telling all the security guards to piss off, and ripping out indiscriminately every server they could find over 2 floors.

Problem – the servers belonged to many major corporate businesses, ISPs, telcos, web hosting providers and telephone network operators.

Result – several hundred thousand websites offline, people without Internet, e911 calls failing to connect, businesses losing millions by the day and telephone and cable TV services cut to the suburbs in the surrounding 10km radius.

Corporate clients heading to the datacenter to find why all their hardware had gone offline got told by the FBI to literally “fuck off, or you’ll be arrested”. The owner of Core IP Networks (one of the businesses in the  datacenter) got served with an arrest warrant, for doing absolutely nothing wrong. In his words (truncated):

Today at 6:00am, the FBI conducted an unwarranted early morning raid of our 2323 Bryan Street Datacenters, on the 7th and 24th floors.

I received a phone call at 6:05am from our NOC that the entire network was powered off. I called Capstar Commercial and TELX, our landlord, and was told that the FBI was in the datacenter with a search and seizure warrant. I asked that the agent in charge call me immediately.

I received a call 15 minutes later from FBI Agent Allyn Lynd. Mr. Lynd would not tell me why he raided our datacenter or what he was looking for. He also accused me of hiding inside my house in Ovilla, Texas. I was actually in Phoenix, Arizona when this happened. I told him that, and he told me that he was “getting the dogs” after me, and hung up on me. I found out from an employee that there were 15 police cars and a SWAT team at my home in Ovilla.

The FBI has seized all equipment belonging to our customers. Many customers went to the data center to try and retrieve their equipment, but were threatened with arrest.

If you run a datacenter, please be aware that in our great country, the FBI can come into your place of business at any time and take whatever they want, with no reason.

In conclusion, the FBI are idiots, Allyn Lynd needs to stop watching B grade action films at 3 am and all the affected businesses and citizens should sue the FBI for damages. There probably is some obscure clause in the US Patriot Act that makes claiming compensation from government entities a threat to humanity.

Edit: The morons are now going through server by server, looking through several petabytes of data for the non-existent traces of a movie.