NickStallman.net Where the Cheater prowls

Well I've finally snapped.
After three years of receiving Microsoft marketing email from QUT, I've finally told them that they are infact breaking the law.

Over here it is illegal to send:

• Unsolicited commercial email with a Australian link
• Commercial email without a unsubscribe link (including solicited email)

The law also has a few other points. QUT was breaking those two.

The email in question was for a $75 copy of Office 2007 Ultimate, RRP of $1150.
Marketing crap straight from Microsoft about their 'Its Not Cheating' campaign.
I did not ask for the email nor did it allow me to unsubscribe.

Lets see where this goes. :)

This is simply a wire from the hole next to the USB port which supplies 5v to the positive hole next to the power supply which feeds it.

The Diode prevents the USB port from being fried if you plug a wall wart in.
You can see my crudely drawn marker telling me the polarity of the diode under the shrink wrap.

Well I got a replacement NGW100 to replace the one I borked.
That was a expensive mistake. :(

I've got it successfully modded so it can now be USB powered. :)
There is a convenient hole next to the USB port which is the USB's 5v rail.
You just need to run a wire from there to the positive pin of the power supply, next to the double set of IO pins.

I put a diode in place as well so I can swap power supplies on the fly and 12v cant go and fry the USB port. ;)
I also put some heatshrink over it to make it look professional and reduce the chances of shorts.

If you haven't read the His Dark Materials series then you really should.
The trilogy (at the moment) includes The Northern Lights aka The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass.

Its a sci-fi fantasy series written by Philip Pullman and they integrate a wide range of issues including religion.
The books have won numerous awards. The Northern Lights was selected by judges for the Carnegie Medal to be one of the ten most important children's novels in the last 70 years.

Well on the 31st of March there was Earth Hour.
The general jist of it is at 8pm you turn all your lights off for a hour to save the planet.

In Sydney, the power reduction was 8.4% which is....crap.
C'mon people if your going to 'save' the environment you've got to do a tad better than that.

So now there are hundreds of thousands of people world wide with a nice fuzzy feeling inside because they are helping to save the environment.
Which would be really great if they weren't the only person in their SUV on their daily commute.

Well I got my NGW100 last night. :D

If you dont know what it is, its basically a tiny board which runs Linux.
It features two network ports, SD slot, serial pot and a slave USB port and its designed to be a simple yet powerful Network GateWay (NGW).

Ugh. I put my website up and then wake up to two emails from Club Penguin people.

Club Penguin is too simple to hack. Its no challenge.
No I wont make more hacks.

Talk to RancidKraut, not me. :P

Well I thought I should get my website back on its feet. :)

Where has it been? Dead because my home server died.
The power circuitry on the motherboard was fried and it took 2 months to get it repaired (note: not replaced).
Then it came back with a nasty bug which would (my current theory) stop the CPU clock every now and then.
At the moment the CPU clock never starts. No BIOS, no beeps, nada.
Tip: Stay away from Gamedude computers. They refuse to recognize the motherboard's 3 year warranty.

So now my site is hosted on my US server instead of at home and I'm using a crappy router.