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Instead of having that bubble wrap, circular key style, these are more like capsules.  They seemed to have a better travel than the Kindle 2.  Also, the Amazon representative stated that the keyboard was better suited to actually laying the DX down and typing on it for annotations.

The other buttons on the device operate the same way.  The price seems a bit hefty, but if I had the chance to have this in college, I may have gone for it. 

I spoke with a friend of mine who has a biology background and we discussed how problematic it could be to see biochemical figures with only several shades of gray.  While the Kindle DX could replace a number of textbooks, it may not work so well for the sciences. 

U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D – N.Y.) is proposing biometric Social Security cards as a way to better curb illegal immigration into the country, according to a Newsday article.

Schumer has taken over as chairman of the Senate immigration subcommittee from Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and may play a more important role in immigration policy.

The senator plans to separate illegal from legal immigrants with “the linchpin: a biometric Social Security card that includes digital records of personal characteristics.”

It’s not clear from the article how the biometric ID card would be used.

The UK sheep farmers are seeing a shortage of sheep shearers due to the new ID card system attached to the migrant work-permit program, according to a Bloomberg news article. As the biometric ID cards that are required for the work permits cost roughly $300, shearers from New Zealand and Australia, where majority of the workers come from, seem to be opting out of coming to the UK

Since only one worker out of the normal 500 has confirmed making the trip so far, the British Wool Marketing Board is worried for the welfare of the animals that could go without shearing during the hot summer months. The 500 seasonal workers have been responsible for shearing roughly 14.5 million sheep in years past.

The Czech Republic started issuing electronic passports on April 1. Trüb AG is supplying the polycarbonate data pages with embedded chip. This chip stores the personal data, a facial image and two fingerprints of the document owner.

With this new passport the Czech Republic is one of the first European Union Member States to implement the documents. The personal data of the document holder can only be accessed with extended access control, a new algorithm has been introduced for this second generation passports with biometric features.

Gemalto has partnered with Precise Biometrics, a developer of biometric identity verification solutions, to create the Gemalto.Net Bio solution.

The product uses Precise’s Match-On-Card fingerprint authentication technology, which stores the cardholder’s biometric information on the card rather than matching to a database, to replace user passwords and create a system that enhances network security for organizations.

The solution will be demonstrated at the 2009 RSA Conference in San Francisco later this month.

Yesterday, Microsoft’s Windows Update showed the “Cypress - Other hardware - HX2LP Kit (3.03.0000.2)” update for my laptop. I installed it without finding out what it was for.

After turning on my laptop, the “AuthenTec  Inc. AES1610” hardware was no longer available in the Device Manager. Vista couldn’t find a fingerprint reader. I rolled back Windows a day before I installed the update, and the fingerprint reader came back.

In our branch office in Lyss, BE i run an RODC - not because it’s needed, but a production environment is always better to gain experience than a few VMs.

As almost all data from that RODC is replicated through DFS-R, backing it up wasn’t that important, we had a few more business needs that couldn’t be solved by using DFS-R to backup in our HQ in Horgen.

So we purchased a BackupExec Media Server license, and i tried installing BackupExec. It reminded me that installing on an RODC requires a seperate Windows installation that runs SQL Server. Well, we have Hyper-V and enough Windows licenses to do this, so i didn’t think of this as a big deal.

I’ve setup a VM with WS08, installed SQL Server Express with an Instance called “BKUPEXEC” and tried installing BackupExec, pointing it at the remote SQL Server Express (that was configured to allow remote connections).

The RODC is called LYS-RODC-01. The SQL Server Express VM is called LYS-SQLE-01, with a SQL Server Instance called BKUPEXEC.

It didn’t work:

08-08-2008,23:22:58 : There is no MSSQL$BKUPEXEC Service
08-08-2008,23:22:58 : V-225-212: Unable to connect to SQL Server. ***To search for information about this error, click here
08-08-2008,23:22:58 : Failed to configure SQL instance LYS-RODC-01\BKUPEXEC SQL instance to allow updates.
08-08-2008,23:22:58 : Action ended 23:22:58: InstallFinalize. Return value 2.
08-08-2008,23:22:59 : Action 23:22:59: Rollback. Rolling back action:

The error message seems strange. Why does it connect to the RODC - there is no SQL Server on the RODC, and i configured it correctly in the setup.

I read through the logfile multiple times. Didn’t find a mistake. Reinstalled the SQL Server VM a few times using a variety of SQL Server and OS combinations.

I contacted Symantec Support (which was a bit of a letdown, first i had to talk someone in one of the Eastern European countries who could barely speak German, and next i had to talk to someone from India who could barely speak English, much less German). After almost a month, i still wasn’t anywhere near a solution.

I’ve spent a few more days playing around until i finally tried something that worked.

I changed the name of the SQL Server instance from BKUPEXEC to SQLEXPRESS.

This fixed the problem.

The Wall Street Journal has a story about not one, but three rogue iPhone app stores, the most popular of which - Cydia Store - is planning to become a full-fledged competitor to Apple’s app store.

It’s easy to see why these unofficial app stores appear; if you’re a developer whose application was turned down for any reason, you can always offer your app on the grey market, where the rules are, well, absent. Apple’s relatively strict policy on what can and cannot appear in the official App Store basically gives no other option to refused developers, and as long as this is so, the grey market will not cease to exist.

Just as in the “real” app store, some of these applications aren’t free, but payment is usually by PayPal. According to the WSJ, Cydia Store plans to introduce a centralized payment system, which will make it a real competitor to Apple. I doubt that Apple will let this happen without putting up a fight, and Cydia Store found Jay Freeman has a lawyer ready. It’s good to be prepared, but somehow I sense that Apple has more lawyers; it definitely won’t be an easy battle for Cydia.

What I’m most interested in is how can the end-user benefit from the grey iPhone app market? You can definitely find some interesting apps that’ll never reach the app store; Freeman’s Cycorder, which turns your iPhone into a camcorder, is one of them. If you’re the hacker type, or you really must have every iPhone app there is, you’ll love the extra choice. I also reckon there’s a large choice of adult applications out there, which also might be interesting to some.

On the other hand, these apps haven’t been rigorously examined by Apple, and they can be buggy or even a threat to your data. If you plan to use them, you should backup everything that’s important on your iPhone regularly.

If I were Motorola this week, I’d be feeling a bit nauseated.  The company took some particularly bad hits this week—hits that would take the wind out of almost anyone’s sails.  Let’s give you a rundown of the fun this week at Moto.

Good news, everyone: Motorola’s co-CEOs have declined to take their bonus for 2008.  On the surface, that sounds like a great thing; Motorola can use that money to help the company out.  However, in reality, the bonuses were mainly from stock awards, which would be virtually worthless considering Motorola’s current stock price.

The bad news: Motorola had to shut down one of its plants in China and let go about 5000 employees.  This should be another good cost-cutting measure for Moto.  And it is going to need that money to pay its legal fees because Motorola is being sued by its former CFO for retaliatory discharge (usually this refers to a firing in response to an employee acting in the public interest).  If his allegations are true, and Moto is firing people who are looking out for the public interest, it is time to be afraid of who they are keeping around.

That is just one week of Moto news from this year.  Who knows what will happen next week?  My predictions for next week:  1. The Moto RAZR will have a huge product recall due to the phones melting after being exposed to air;  2. Moto will be sued for trademark infringment by Warner Bros. for using a bat-styled logo too similar to that of the Batman, and 3. There will be an outrage by the remaining employees when they are told that they will be charged an “existence fee” for the privilege of being on Moto property - a plan actually secretly meant to get people to voluntarily quit. 

If none of these happen next week, it wil be a good week for Moto.  On the other hand, if any one of the three happen, I am heading to Vegas.

Prefabs can go bizarre but trendy too at the same time. If the Hemeroscopium House was a bit too peculiar for you then you can set your eyes on Adam Kalkin’s “Quik House.” Adam is a New Jersey-based architect who specializes in ultra-modern and trendy prefab house construction that is made from old shipping containers. The houses developed by Adam are constructed in just 10 weeks after the order is received.

The size and the design are altered according to user requirements, which are then charged at the rate of $150 per square foot. The designer now hopes to top the Quik House with a smaller and trendier house known as the “A-Pod,” which will be released sometime later this year with a price tag of $50,000. Some of his prefab homes are a single room in a single container, while the others feature a range of structures built inside them with that luxurious touch.

Apart from the high cost, the prefab house is a boon for all those who need to live in a luxuriously green apartment.

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