Category Archives: Software

HP Running the ATi QA Show?

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
7

ATi's RubyFrom the day I built my PC a few years ago until just last week, it’s been impossible for me to play a game (pretty much *any* full-screen DirectX/OpenGL game) without the ATi drivers crashing. (For reference, stock ATi HD3870 on an ASUS RoG Maximus Formula II motherboard). I’ve tracked down each and every possible lead, and solved a number of crash-inducing issues in the process, but haven’t been able to completely prevent the display driver crashes from the days Vista or now on Windows 7.

There were issues pertaining to dual-displays in a mixed VGA/DVI environment (one display DVI, the second VGA) which were never resolved by ATi (to the best of my knowledge) and were worked around by initially downgrading the DVI to a VGA connection and later replacing the older monitor with a new DVI-based display. There were issues related to the refresh rate. There were issues related to the resolution. There were issues related to the games. There were issues related to the OS. Basically, wherever you look, there were problems caused by poor development practices and crappy QA all around.

There were issues that Microsoft/Windows’ new WDM model caught, triggering a restart of the graphics subsystem without causing a BSoD. And there were (unfortunately the majority) of the ATi display driver crashes that caused BSoDs left, right, and center.

Today, my Windows 7 PC surprised me with an interesting question:

Send info to HP?

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TEDxDeadSea 2011

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
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Just a quick note: TED is coming to Jordan in the form of TEDxDeadSea this Saturday (April 30, 2011), at the Kempinski Hotel in (cue tautology) the Dead Sea, Jordan.

I’ve been honored with the opportunity to speak at this event, and will be discussing my take on entrepreneurship and some of the obstacles of running an international company from the Middle East.

I’m looking forward to all the exciting speakers and performers that will be at TEDxDeadSea and would love to meet anyone interested in engaging in some quality, thought-provoking talk! In the meantime, you can follow me @mqudsi, NeoSmart Technologies at @neosmart, and TEDxDeadSea at @TEDxDeadSea…

Never Buy Domains from 1&1

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
32

Never, ever buy domains from 1&1. Why? Let’s just put it this way: if a domain was a physical good that had to be shipped from one end of the USA to the other, or even imported from Europe to the States, it wouldn’t take as long for you to get it as it does when you buy from 1and1.

I’ve bought my fair share of domains via 1and1, and to be honest, on the few times in the past when I’ve needed the domain name ASAP, generally got the domain I bought within 24 hours. But now it’s been 4 days and 1and1 still hasn’t handed over the domain name that I bought and paid for. Instead, the domain shows up in the list of purchases with the status “The domain has been requested” – as if I care! I just want my domain name, and I want it now! The clients are waiting!

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Happy Pi Day 2011, Everyone!

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
1

It’s that time of the year again – our favorite holiday for the past decade. Pi Day. A reminder of the math geeks that have brought wisdom and light on our planet for centuries past.

Depending on who you ask, they all have different terms for Pi. Transcendental, irrational, easy, hard… but we prefer the term ‘magical.’

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Open Source, 100% Compatible ln for Windows (and Junction Point library)

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
17

We’ve been huge fans of symlinks for forever, and even posted about Windows Vista’s new mklink commandline utility with quite the passion back in 2006 when the ability to create soft-links from the commandline was first added to Windows.

However, there are a few things that have forever irked us about the ln lookalike called mklink.exe:

  • It’s called mklink and not ln. (I mean, you just get can’t get around that fact)
  • The arguments are switched around. `mklink something_doesnt_exist actual_file` is just…….. wrong!
  • By default, mklink will create softlinks and not hardlinks. ln requires the /h flag to create a hardlink.
  • mklink isn’t smart enough to distinguish between files and folders. You need explicitly tell it via the commandline.
  • Even then, mklink has two different switches depending on the type of directory link you want. /D for softlink’d directories, and /J for hardlink’d directories.
  • mklink can’t be used outside of cmd.exe (such as in PowerShell). (Hat tip: Jason)
  • And, of course,  mklink isn’t open source.

So we made our own.

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OS X 10.7 Lion Adds TRIM Support, But Not For All

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
9

I just happened to upgrade the firmware on my Crucial C300 256GB SSD drive in my MacBook Pro (13″ Unibody, Late 2008) on the same day that I upgraded to OS X 10.7 Lion. In my previous post, I touched briefly on the fact that 10.7 in the renamed “System Information” app under the “Serial-ATA” section does not detect my SSD as having TRIM support.

This is one of the very top SSD models out there in terms of performance and size, and it’s been proven in multiple benchmarks (though with the C400 coming out, things are set to change once more); and has proven to be a popular choice for MacBook owners due to the large size and incredible performance even without TRIM in previous versions of OS X.

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C300 Negotiated Link Speed on OS X

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
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This is just a quick note for anyone using the most wonderful Crucial C300 on OS X.

If in the “System Profiler” (now renamed to the more apt “System Information” in OS X 10.7 Lion), you see:

Link Speed: 3 Gigabit

Negotiated Link Speed: 1.5 Gigabit

And are wondering where your remaining 1.5 (or 4.5 if you have a 6 Gbps SATA controller) gigabits went, then you need to upgrade the C300 to the latest firmware. This appears to be an issue with the 0002 firmware that is resolved in 0006. Unfortunately, this does not seem to make OS X 10.7 aware that the C300 supports TRIM.

Also a tip: if after upgrading to revision 0006, your OS X will hang at boot, re-run the upgrade. It won’t actually upgrade it again (and will finish instantly), but it appears to fix something important.

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The Death of BCC?

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
32

In the age of Facebook, in an era where privacy and anonymity are a thing of the very distant past, quite a few “features” of technology have been banished from daily use, forced to languish in the corner in a sad state of disuse and disrepair. But perhaps none have suffered such a miserable and regrettable fate as the BCC.

Quick: if you’re fighting with a friend and want to let your BFF know what’s going on as you send your frenemy a nasty messsage — what’s the best way to pull that off?

If you’ve completed the switch to Facebook mindset, your convoluted answer would consist of something to effect “Send a message to X, copy and paste it, and send it to Y.” And you’d be right – Facebook doesn’t give you another way of pulling this off. FAIL!

Let’s say your technical skills are not in such a pitiful state and you have enough sense to still use email for day-to-day communications. What’s your answer then? “I’ll just send X an email, then forward my result to Y.” aaaaaaaaand that’s another fail.

See, there’s this oft-overlooked feature my commandline mail client from the 80s has that solves this. It’s called “Blind Carbon Copy,” or BCC for short. You can send an email to more than one person without all your recipients knowing who you sent it to!

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UPDATED: As Arabia Protests, Libya Blocks Internet Access

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
8

In light of the ongoing battle of citizens against corrupt and unjust regimes throughout the Arab world (more on Wikipedia), protestors have been increasingly reliant on social media websites to rally their numbers and organize their meets.

Over the past two days, protests have flared up considerably in Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain resulting in mass casualties at the hands of government security. We now have reports from friends of NeoSmart Technologies in Tripoli, Libya (stay safe, guys! Please!) that the government has ordered ISPs to block access to most websites. Currently, most websites are unavailable and internet access is, by and large, being blocked.

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