MacBook Air vs. Lenovo X300

A while ago, a few friends showed me a video on youtube on Apple's release of their new ultra-thin & sexy MacBook Air.

Later on, Gizmodo had some *leaked* info & specs on Lenovo's ultra-thin Thinkpad X300.

Thinkpad X300	MacBook Air
+Battery is swappable	-Battery can't be changed
+Can add 2nd battery	-Can not add another battery
+Built-in DVD writer	-CD/DVD: Sold as an accessory
+Built-in fingerprint reader	-No fingerprint reader
+Max of 4GB RAM @ 667MHz	-Max of 2GB RAM @ 667MHz
+Max CPU speed: 2.0GHz, 800MHz FSB, 4MB L2 Cache	-Max CPU speed: 1.8GHz, 800MHz FSB, 4MB L2 Cache
+Max resolution of: 1440x900 @ 128 DPI	-Max resolution of: 1280x800
+#USB ports: 3	-#USB ports: 1
+#Mini PCI-Express: 2 Full, 1 Half	-#Mini PCI-Express: None
+Weight: 1.13 kg / 2.5 lbs	-Weight: 1.36 kg / 3 lbs
+Antennas: Bluetooth, WiFi 802.11n, WiMAX, GPS, WWAN	-Antennas: Bluetooth, WiFi 802.11n
+Wired network: Gigabit Ethernet port	-Wired network: Sold as an accessory
+Enclosure material: Magnesium-alloy for a sturdy & durable cage	-Enclosure material: Aluminum
+Built-in camera	+Built-in camera
-Video output: VGA	+Video output: DVI, VGA
-HDD: 64GB Solid State Disk	+HDD: 64GB Solid State Disk, 80GB PATA
-Looks: Sturdy, Rigid	+Looks: Cute, Sexy
-31.8x23.1x2.34 cm	+32.5x22.7x1.94 cm
Keyboard illumination: Backlit keyboard	Keyboard illumination: Backlit keyboard with sensor

Seems like the Apple crowd are sacrificing a lot here...

* Lenovo's laptop isn't out for consumers yet.
** Thinkpad's are IBM laptops. Lenovo handles them now, instead of IBM.

Arabic Spam: Origination & Continuation

I remember receiving the first bunch in the late '90s, and the start of the new millenium. If I'm not mistaken, the first batch of email addresses was harvested from Microsoft Hotmail's website, where they created default profiles for email users and associated it with their country, as set during the registration process. But that wasn't an easy way to collect the emails, and at the time, wasn't worth the trouble, as companies didn't see the benefit of spam, yet.

A few months later, things evolved and people started harvesting emails from email forwards. Whenever someone sends an email, they stuff all the emails into the "TO" field, and off they send it. When the recipient clicks on the forward button to forward the message, the header of the old message is dumped as part of the new message (the forward), containing the list of emails of all the people to whom it was sent to previously.
I know 4-5 people who actually spend time to clean the email list, before sending a forward. And the same 4-5 people, use the "BCC" field, instead of the "TO" field. Whomever receives the emails, doesn't see the list of emails.
Unfortunately, this continues to this day, and emails are still being collected and spammed, because of 2 things: E-Mail providers are too lazy to filter out list of emails, and people are too lazy to do the same!!!
If you're wondering why this is specific to Arabic Spam only, it's because non-Arab sites spam using Spamming services! They send emails using brute-force and don't actually care whether you're an Arab, or not.

DSL on Linux

I've been using QualityNet's silver Speedtouch 330 modem for the past 4 years on Linux, and it wasn't an easy task setting it up back then.

I don't like using routers because I don't have much control over them and limited to their restrictive functionality. I have a computer at home running as a gateway, on which I share my Internet connection with the rest of computers on the network.

[i] Internet provided over telephone lines (DSL) use PPP over ATM (PPPoA), where Internet over Fiber use PPP over Ethernet (PPPoE). Even if your ISP tells you to get a PPPoA router, and you have a fiber connection to your house, get a PPPoE and put your fingers in the technicians eyes!!!

Today, I wanted to run my HP ThinClient as gateway at home, instead of my old noisy & power-hungry Pentium4 box. I have Slax as my Linux distribution, using kernel 2.6.16, which according to Linux's Speedtouch FAQs, has built-in features to run the USB ADSL modem! This saves me the pain I had to go through last time on kernel 2.4!

On this page, you'll find the instructions, which I skipped to the part: "The Firmware" -- This is where all the fun begins!

[i] I had to download the firmware & its extractor on my current P4 box, because Slax doesn't have gcc, which means, you can't compile!

[i] If you don't have an existing Linux machine which has gcc, I suggest you download Knoppix, compile on the CD, then copy the 2 .BIN and the file "Makefile" to a USB flash disk. Open the Makefile file in a text editor and see where & how the files are supposed to go.

Create a file, in /etc/ppp, called "pap-secrets" and put the following inside it (including the double quotes!):

"username" "*" "password"

Moving to the next section: "Secrets" -- use the same settings as shown in the green field in the guide, but make sure to replace 2 things:
0) User should be in the form: "user" without the @isp part
1) Replace 0.00 with 8.35; these are the VPI.VCI values used in Kuwait, by the ISP.
Your "/etc/ppp/peers/speedtch" should contain the following:

noipdefault
defaultroute
user "username"
noauth
updetach
usepeerdns
plugin pppoatm.so
8.35

Almost done! What's left now, is to set the thing to automatically dial when it boots; for that, edit the file "/etc/rc.d/rc.local" and add this line:

`which pppd` call speedtch

Note: The characters surrounding "which pppd" are grave accents, not single quotes.

[i] On kernels 2.4.x & pre 2.6.10, the modem needed to be initialized, which took 37 seconds. Now, the modem starts the handshaking process with the ISP immediately.