Making room space

Why i didn't do that long ago? Tired fighting for a free space on the /data partition i just have moved the most huge .apk files to the /system/app folder and restarted the phone. Now I have whole 40Mb free on /data part. Silly amount for a modern device, but quite valuable for me.

PlayBook <-> PC

Wanted to copy a big amount of music to the PB... Easy task? Duh!
First thing, after I plugged it to the PC, it was found as a mass storage device. But it contained only drivers. Hm.. Fine, let's install them. The driver sees the device, but how to open it to transfer files? The USB file sharing is on... What's could be possible wrong? The message on the playbook suggest go and download the "BB Desktop manager". The size? 110Mb. OMG! But let's give it a try. I can always uninstall it, right? Now a huge crapware is installed and actually does nothing except showing me the error "Cannot connect to PlayBook...". Great!.. Ok, long story short, it turned out, I just can treat the PlayBook as a network device. Just go to the "My Network Places" and search the device there. If it fails, look for the USB IP address and type in it in the explorer address bar as a UNC name (i.e. \\169.256.224.209). Tune your windows firewall if it prevent the CIFS(SMB) from working. So, it seems the mass storage mode is not an option at all. Why???

Sharing

Some collected facts about windows sharing.

1. There are two modes: when the "Simple file sharing" (SFS) is ON or OFF.
2. XP Home has only "simple" mode.
3. On every else (including Windows 6.x Home ?) can be changed that in the Explorer's Tools->Folder Options->View->"Use simple file sharing".
4. Also, the "Guest" account has to be enabled.
5. When it's on all connected users are considered as "Guests" (It's not a name but status).
6. To check the current mode, open the Computer Management->Shared folders->Sessions, or just by the command "net sessions"
7. There is policy "Limit local account use of blank passwords to console logon only", when enabled (by default) an account with blank password is not allowed to access the window shared folders.
8. jCIFS browses the network when the NtlmPasswordAuthentication is ANONYMOUS
9. It accesses a "simple" share when no credentials specified as GUEST.
10. So, the shared folders should have rights to the Guest account and/or for Everyone

windows passwords

to manage users and autologons in windows:
control userpasswords2

DTV

We decided to do some downshift and cancel the cable TV service.

Since Verizon did not include some good channels which could be picked up from the air, and everything else is available via the internet (using such services as hulu+ and Netflix), that's a pretty smart move.

To pick up broadcasted digital channels I bough this antenna (but much cheaper than on the manufacturer site). Using this antenna I was able picked up a -56.8dBm station which is 44miles away from me (34dB noise margin, according the tvfool.com). Pretty impressive.
But to do that I had to hang the antenna to the wall on the second floor, close to the ceiling and mount it on the bracket which comes with the antenna. The result is not quite aesthetic, I say, because now I have that black spot on my white wall. It would be better if the antenna be sold in different colors to let the customer pick the right one. But we have what we have.
This antenna is not omnidirectional, so it provides a good pick up of weak stations from one direction and only strong signals which come from all around.

I bought also a DTV converter box to be used with my video recorder (PVR) running on a PC, since my TV already has an ATSC tuner. The functionality of this converter is much better than the TV provides, for instance, the box can show the scheduled programs short or with description, the TV can't do that. And the video quality is decent.

What is not exactly good - the box is pretty hot. Since I need it be turned on whole night to record some morning shows, I concern is it safe to left it unattended. I hope it won't break.
Minor wishes: Would be nice if it showed the clock when it turned off, and would be great, if it had a RS232 port to control it remotely from my PC.

One thing has disappointed me about this product. The description says it has a "learning" RC, but apparently, it's just a regular universal RC. Need to study the manual though.

Another question was, how to record the shows. I already had an old PC with Windows XP Media Center edition on it (unfortunately, I need Windows to play the Silverlight stream from Netflix), connected to the TV panel, which was used to watch the Netflix and other online streams. This PC has an analog TV tuner LeadTek WinFast TV2000XP which takes the video from the converter in fine quality. The software bundle includes a PVR with an ability to record show by timer. But the UI of the software is way not perfect, so I tried to find an alternative.
It turned out none of the PVR and HTPC software I tried worked with this card. Microsoft Media Center says there is no the tuner in the system at all (and a quick internet research says it won't work with a tuner without a hardware MPEG codec on it). All other,such as NextPVR
(very glitchy), Got-All-Media do not see the tuner as well.
It's very strange, because when this tuner was used in a Linux machine, all the TV software I tried (MythTV, etc.) worked very well.
I put the PC to the Standby mode (S3) and it wakes up on time by a special created windows schedule task with the option "Wake the computer to run the task". I wonder, will the PVR wake up the PC by itself? The manual says, it will. Need to test that.

So, RIM made a gesture and sent me new BlackBerry PlayBook tablet for free. I really appreciate that, thank you, RIM.

Now, about the device. What's good:
1) It's well made. The display is superb, the case is sound.
2) It has 16Gb memory on it, no SD card slot though.

What's not so good:
1) It's pretty heavy. Bot since the case is covered with rubber plastic, there is no problem to keep it in hands.
2) Although it has on the most capacious battery in the class, it discharges very fast, even when the tablet just lays on the shelf doing nothing (and wifi is off). And there's no way to replace the battery.
3) It does not support regular android applications. Even if the application package is converted and signed, there's a high probability, the app will refuse to work properly. And I think it was a bad idea to let the recent application icons be shown in the android player after an android application has closed. It makes the android applications look like foreign pieces and not desirable when an user searches for an application in the AppWorld.

I wish RIM will review its vision and make the Android platform the primary, leaving the ability to run the AIR applications as well.

passing an array from vbscript to .net

.net < 4.0 does not support passing an array to its COM visible method by reference.

So, if there is a .net method in an object:
void f( object ary );

from VBscript it has to be called this way:

dim aa(1) : a(0)=1 : a(1)=2
obj.f( (aa) )

Note the extra parentheses around the array variable!