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RAM, all computers need it, and there are more types of it than you can shake a stick at (excuse the pun), and people often take it for granted, however faults with RAM are one of the quickest ways to screw up your computer, more so than almost any other component except perhaps a dodgy power supply (QTech anyone?). I have personally busted entire Operating System installs with bad ram overclocks- times like that you better pray you weren't stupid enough to leave your valuable documents ect on the same partition as Windows.

So RAM stability is the cornerstone of a reliable computer, and whether or not you overclock your components, knowing that you computer is stable is peace of mind that you can't put a price on, but how do you go about testing your system to see if all is running well, or if you have hidden faults waiting to surface and destroy your valuable data?

In fact with a little know-how you can do it totally free if you have a spare hour or two (mostly unattended), and this brings us to the topic of this brief(ish) article....... MemTest and Memtest86+, the only RAM testing software worth talking about.

MemTest is a tiny windows exe that allows you to input the amount of memory that you wish to test, and then chuggs away happily testing it, telling you its progress by a % of the RAM you have assigned it, while you do other things (though beware it will use up a substantial amount of CPU power as well), leave if running for a hour or two, and if it has any errors then your RAM is unstable. There are fundamental limits on the reliability of this though, as the amount of RAM being tested by a single occurrence of the program is 1184MB (this can be circumvented by running two versions at once however), and also as the program obviously cannot access RAM being used by the Operating System, or by the user, you may miss "Bad" sectors of your RAM by the fact that they are being used!

Memtest86+ is the bigger brother of MemTest, and treats the testing with a rather more serious approach. Rather than a Windows program, you have a bootable CD, or a USB/Floppy EXE for use from DOS. This more rigorous approach allows you to test the entire RAM (bar the few kb in takes up), rather than the small amount you assign MemTest to use, as there is no Operating System or other programs running. Memtest86+ also has a series of different "Tests" that it runs, of differing complexities, in each "Pass". To make life even easier, many Linux CD's carry a copy of Memtest86+ accessible from the boot menu, so there really is no reason why you shouldn't have a copy close to hand. If you don't have a linux live/install CD handy then you can obtain via a small download a version to run from a floppy or USB key from the official site.

 

RAM that produces ANY errors on Memtest86+ is faulty and should be removed from the system ASAP, and preferably returned for replacement. Leaving it in the system can cause problems varying from occasional program freezes and crashes, through to corruption of files and total Operating Systems. Most RAM has an extensive if not lifetime warranty, so there is no reason to run the risk of running faulty RAM.

I personally use both the programs, MemTest for quick testing while I have other things to do, often when i am trying to initially test the stability of an overclock, and then Memtest86+ when i am either trying to analyse for long term stability, or trying to identify RAM with an inherent fault. The pictures you see above come from recent tests of my own system, analysing my 4 RAM sticks for errors, 2 of which you can see have been diagnosed as faulty and need replacing and has since been removed from my system.

So whether you are an overclocker looking to squeze that extra bit out of your system without compromising on stability, or just someone that wants a computer they can depend on, MemTest and Memtest86+ are great tools that will allow you to rely on your computer with certainty.

I have known about the openbios / linuxbios project for a little while now, but today I discovered a video demonstrating an early build running on a standard 2Mb flash EEPROM. Not only does it completely replace the standard Award BIOS but it boots to a graphical (if lightweight) X11 server in just a few seconds. Although this project is still fairly new (shown by limited compatibility) the concept of having a unified, free bios that allows fast prebooting into a graphical environment is appealing. I believe Macs do something similar, they boot into a very stripped down GUI giving graphical boot options. This idea is not new and ASUS demonstrated a couple of weeks back a motherboard that has an embedded linux distribution ready to boot before windows. The technology is called Splashtop and allows access to email, skype and the web from a stripped down linux environment.

More and more I am seeing a trend towards 'at-an-arms-length' computing and I have mixed feelings about it. Whilst linuxbios would allow better / more efficient booting into a Linux (or other OS) distribution, having a stripped down environment where you could then VNC or telnet into another more powerful system is an interesting idea with lots of potential applications. Imagine a media center PC that was fast (as in instant) to boot and silent due to all the processing being done on another machine on the network, it would be an ideal mediacenter environment. Similarly there is a low murmuring that has been increasing in volume for the last few years concerning a complete shake up of the traditional computing environment. It essentially started with web '2.0' i.e. applications as a service. The whole idea of being able to log into a personalised environment in a web browser is an appealing one, be it a web operating system like eyeOS or just a social networking environment like Facebook. Not only can you have access to your personal space/files/environment remotely, but instead of buying a powerful machine and maintaining its software and hardware, buying a thin client and computing entirely online. Many people simply do not have the technical expertise or the time to properly maintain their home computers. Simple tasks such as regular defragmentations or temporary file cleanup and data archiving often are not done regularly. Many computers I see do not even have basic security programs running. A secure thin client running on a whitelist basis would not need such constant attention and any security would be handled remotely by the application provider. Potentially providers could offer really cheap, low power machines with a monthly payment, which would serve as a lease for an online operating system and storage space.

Although there are potentially a lot of benefits, there is something about relying entirely on a network that is outside your control, (the Internet) a service provider that could have a dubious privacy policy (look at AT&T) and a locked down client which does not appeal to me. I have very much bought into the F/OSS philosophy and the concept of being locked into a proprietary system does not appeal at all, let alone relying on a foreign (i.e. outside my home system) network - especially with my ISP's service record.

"The chemicals [in the iphone] are suspected of causing birth defects and gender-bending effects."

According to the article from the Independent, the iPhone contains several classes of compounds not known to play well with the environment or the human body. Among them are phthalates (?) which are cheifly emplyed as plasticisers and used to lower the glass transition temperature (Tg) of plastics making them more durable. I dont fully believe all the effects claimed in the article, but it makes for an entertaining read.

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Is anyone else starting to get concerned about the Storm Bot net? This is a topic that seems to have avoided mass media interest, despite having first cropped up in January this year. There are a number of factors which make this worm very different from prior such outbreaks. Up to now, worms would spread as fast and far as they could in order to achieve maximum power and publicity before activating a payload. This historically has been in the form of DDOS attacks. What makes storm so dangerous, is that it appears to be extremely well coded. Once a windows machine is infected, it silently joins the pool without any overt signs to the end user. The way in which the worm spreads also makes it hard to both detect and provide an effective countermeasure against as the worm's code changes twice an hour as well as its constantly evolving social engineering based attacks. Users have been lured with offers of free music or emails purportedly to be emergency notifications of a dangerous weather front in Europe. In fact the name of the worm comes from those initial emails.

Each infected node communicates with others via a specially designed peer to peer network, rather than a single central server and each node can function independently should it need to. It is hard to get an estimate as to the number of infected clients are present throughout the world. Estimates vary wildly from 50-70 thousand to 1 to 50 million. Think of the bandwidth this worm not has available and how devastating such a DDOS would be. In the past DDOS attacks, when not virus related, came from a fairly narrow range of IPs allowing the targeted systems to block provinces or even continents of IP addresses. Whilst this would render the site completely inaccessible from genuine users in those areas, at least the site could provide partial service to other areas of the globe. With Storm, there does not appear to be a way to defend against an onslaught on such diverse scale given the world wide distribution of infected clients. Worryingly the bot net has not yet been very active, experts estimate it as running at around 10% capacity with a small number of nodes (tens of thousands only) spreading the infection and other nodes either dormant or sending out spam messages. It is conceivable that over ten billion spam messages have been sent already. There are signs the bot net has been retaliating against efforts to halt its progress with several sites either being hacked or suffering DDOS attacks.

Whilst I do not wish this post to sound like I am scaremongering for the sake of a post, I am genuinely concerned as to the lack of public knowledge / media attention on this matter. Whilst a google search of 'Storm Botnet' will yield a fair amount of information, a conversation with several of my informed friends revealed very little in the way of awareness. Certainly for me, a bot with purportedly enough power to wipe countries off the Internet is a cause for concern as it should be every windows PC user.

The Playstation 3 was recently released and this platform has made quite a significant impact to the overall processing power at the disposal of the project teams. Infact, it would seem I greatly underestimated the overall contribution the PS3 client has made. At the time of writing, the combined power of a quarter of a million PS3s is generating almost SIX (5.77x) times the power of ~200,000 desktop computers (x86 and PPC architectures across OS/X Windows and Linux flavors.) It appears that in the last few months the project broke a Petaflop(?) of total distributed processing power, having ~740 Teraflops in mid march as reported by Techreport. To see the current stats broken down by machine type and architecture go here. I have also re-uploaded the themes on the Geexbox page. If I get a moment I will make some more soon, if anyone wants free hosting for their theme please feel free to contact me.

I was rather surprised today to discover a potential supplier of materials useful to terrorists. Its one that has a huge online brand presence, one everyone knows about, even the layman on the street. This company, which I shall not name, has practically invented online auctioneering with its catchy name and multicoloured characters. I should explain the back story at this point. Recently I have become rather interested in amateur rocketry. Having a Chemistry Degree, I was pondering the pros and cons of possibly making my own propellant. Whilst searching for the availability of potassium nitrate (or saltpeter) I was shocked at both the quantity and availability. Kilograms purchasable of not just saltpeter but other chemicals which could very easily be turned into gun powder (or black powder) but also chemicals required to make 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT). Whilst the latter requires a little skill due to the deactivational nature of the nitrate units during successive nitrations on the toluene, the former can be as simple as mixing three powders in varying ratios. Its no small wonder people can fashion devices from easily obtainable compounds. Look at the 07/07 London bombings, TATP was used which was made from acetone. Acetone can be bought in great quantity easily in the form of nail varnish polish remover. Whilst I would be the first person to object vocally if such materials were no longer available, it does make me wonder if we are inviting problems. Greater accessibility and availability also requires greater responsibility.

And its going to be a lot more than just moving the images around. I have a whole new redesign in the works which I will upload shortly. Come back in a couple of days and I hope to have a site that looks like someone other than a trained chimp worked on it Whilst I am posting this, I would like to point people towards Slashdot Review. Its a daily (M-F) podcast that summarises the news from Slashdot and other sources. These podcast are in 15 minute segments and make for good listening. If you are a geek or nongeek I definitely recommend it. I have a lot of things to add / write about - its been a busy few months