Headphone in Linux on Dell laptop

The newer alsa sound in Linux kernel has an issue with the headphone jack... Most distributions have issues with the newer Dell, Asus and other laptops which have the Intel 5 series or H55, P55 etc chipsets. These use the IDT codecs and work well on the normal laptop speakers.

I got a Dell 1749 recently and had issues with alsa configuration which resulted in no sound from the headphone. The same problem with other dell studio and XPS laptops that are using that chipset. Adding model=dell-m6 in the /etc/modprobe.d/sound (or /etc/modprobe.d/50-sound.conf in opensuse 11.2) will solve the issue.

Processor Errata to be Next Big Virus Exploit

Writing cross-platform viruses were nearly impossible earlier and hence a virus would mostly affect only Windows or Linux or OSX, but not all of these together. Most Linux/*nix/Mac users felt viruses were only for Windows users, because of underlying OS protection in Unix user access model was good enough. But all of it could change if malware was written for common hardware platform such as Microprocessors or BIOS or Hardware Firmware. Well known author and security researcher, Kris Kaspersky is going to demonstrate how to create malware for processor bugs at the Hack-In-The-Box Security Conference (HITB) to be held from 27th-30th Oct, 2008 at Malaysia.

Processors from Intel and AMD often contain bugs known as errata and generally the way to fix these bugs is by updating the BIOS or Firmware in motherboards. Nearly every generation of processor has these bugs and if these aren’t any major bug, then no one even knows of them in normal computer functioning. But in some special cases these bugs affect some computers or software being used, and that’s when these bugs come into the light. Like the recent TLB Errata in 1st generation Opteron (Barcelona) processors from AMD would corrupt data in certain situations.

Currently, there isn’t a truly generalized way to exploit processor bugs and requires some detailed understanding of hardware and software combination. Most processor manufacturers don’t even mention deep details on the bugs and hence exploring them is a little more tough. Kris Kaspersky has claims to have found some way using JavaScript to exploit these bugs. Also, JIT compilers from Java Virtual Machines may be used to uncover and exploit the bugs, according to the Abstract of the Presentation at HITB.

If Kris Kaspersky’s “Hacker Disassembling Uncovered: Powerful Techniques To Safeguard Your Programming” book is anything to go by, we may have excellent and easy example by which he demonstrates the exploits. It could easily be replicated and understood by hackers and worked upon for other bugs. Stopping such exploits would be tough not just for anti-virus makers, but also for Operating system patches. And even if some fix is released on the motherboard BIOS, it is generally not implemented by all motherboard manufacturers... And user ignorance towards these BIOS updates is not even worth mentioning! This could easily be one of the tough and complex security problems to have come up!

Intel Works With 'Water Inside'

If you thought the guys from Intel wearing white astronaut-like suits and dancing was as stupid as Intel marketing could get, then you are for a surprise. Intel TV ads got even worse, when I saw their Centrino advertisement today. Instead of 'Centrino Inside' ...they should call it 'Water Inside'.

Intel is showing an advertisement on Indian television channels which shows that an assembly line equipment sprays colored-water at the back of an Intel chip and fits it into a laptop. The laptop then displays all the colored elements of GUI in a more vivid manner. Actually, the advertisement is meant to celebrate Holi, a festival of color and water in India. But when a chip manufacturer shows spraying water on its processors brings out better colors, its surely a little hard to digest.

And that brings me to the point whether Intel processors are water-proof and water-resistant. To try it out, I poured some colored-water on the pins of the processor and pinned it on my motherboard. I plugged the PC on... and BOOM... I had just burnt and blasted the Centrino!!

I'm still trying to find that TV on Youtube, but no one's uploaded it yet... May be I'll need to record it and upload it... Will do it as soon as they have it showing again!!

AMD's Overclocking App: Overdrive Demo (VIDEOS)

Found these exciting videos on YouTube about demo of the Overdrive, AMD's upcoming overclocking and performance monitoring utility. Overdrive brings the same technology of overclocking and performance enhancing using drivers, that have been in use by ATI and nVidia graphics cards.

Overdrive seems to be a very exciting application and will be released with the "Spider Platform", consisting of PhenomFX / Phenom (CPU), AMD 790FX/790X (Chipset) and the RV670 (GPU-graphics). The entire Spider Platform is expected to be released tomorrow (19th Nov, 2007), and hopefully will be available in quantities before the shopping season starts this year.

The videos have exciting presentation and editing, with nice before and after performance preview. Watch the videos and get excited for the release...

AMD OverDrive - Performance Tuning Utility

AMD OverDrive Utility - Before and After Demo

Run Windows Programs Without Booting Windows

Just found at Wired.com, about this new virtualization tool called "HyperSpace". Its a new hypervisor much like VmWare's ESX Server which is a layer just above the BIOS and can boot multiple OS. HyperSpace is something similar but not entirely an independent virtual machine. Instead it currently allows only Windows applications to run above it.

HyperSpace is developed by Pheonix Technologies, which is famous for developing BIOS for a host of motherboards. Pheonix Technologies says that this product has been developed considering that the boot times for Windows has increased so much that people need 5mins just to login to their computers to check emails. Also, Pheonix provides an argument that Windows has become bloated and people who want to use only simple applications, don't want to load that bloat...

Although all of the above arguments from Pheonix may be true, it doesn't make much sense to me. With quick sleep and hibernate available in Windows today, it really takes 4-5 secs to start using windows after you wake up from sleep. Even with hibernate, it takes less than a minute and in that time you just stretch your arms to start typing!!

I think virtualization should be directed at multiple testing environments and servers with different applications. Virtualization should ideally allow you to switch between operating systems by the click of a button. To me, this approach of virtualization is not very useful and does not have a large market. May be some people will use it, but Quick Sleep and Hibernate are for the general masses!!

Asus Doesn't Think India As A Market

While I was reading this interview at the Inquirer, I couldn't stop thinking of Asus' state of affairs here in India. The interview is with Asustek President, Jerry Shen.

Asus has no doubt been an excellent company in terms to product innovation and business growth, but there are few questions about its service to customers. Jerry Shen being outspoken doesn't bother to mince his words about other companies like Nvidia or AMD. But when he talks about those points, I think he forgets that atleast in India (and the reactions on Inq tells more) the service for Asus products hasn't been anywhere close to even "Satisfactory".

The customer troubles can be read at different forums like techenclave.com, thinkdigit.com etc. But if anyone is expecting any improvements in the service then read the interview again!! Jerry Shen mentions only about US, Europe and to some extent Japan and China as his markets. Although the Indian PC market is growing enormously, Asus seems to have completely ignored India as well as other Asian markets. Maybe he mentions, high-end to be his interest and India is not a high-end market. But then it somehow reflects the ignored state of Asus products and service in India.

Even after all that, Asus has the largest market share of motherboards in India. The products that Asus has in the market are wonderful and top-notch, but I wish, they didn't completely alienate the Indian consumer...