I’ve always liked music a lot, especially dance music. My favorit genres are techno & minimal and some other ones. I discovered that if you like this kind of music that there are some good sources to get more information on what is hot at the moment.

One site I would to mention is Beatport.

This is music download site (legal) that focusses on the dance music around the world, you’ll find lots of genres on their site. It’s there I discovered some of my favorit artists like Kolombo, Henrik Schwarz, … Prices are democratic but sometimes you just don’t want to pay for it. If that sounds like you I recommend the to beatport burners podcast. This is an interactive podcast that brings you the new release in the scene and you can listen to full versions. When you hear something you like you can use the interactive feature to go directly to beatport and purchase the track.

Another nice source is Essential Music Blog

This is a blog-like site – as the name indicates – where releases are posted. I haven’t been able to discover if this site is legal, but since it seems to be sponsored by beatport I guess it is. Anyways it’s an excellent source to discover new artists.

Podcasts:
Beatport burners (on itunes)
Beatport burners (rss feed)

Today I decided to browse the Itunes store again to see if they already are offering tv series in europe. I didn’t find what I was looking for, but what I did find was something called iTunes U.

The “U” stands for University. What this feature allows you to do is to download lectures from various universities like:

- Arizona State University
- Bowdoin College
- Concordia Seminary
- Duke
- Michigan Tech University
- MIT
- NJIT
- Otis College of Art and Design
- Pennsylvania State University
- Queen’s University
- Seattle Pacific University
- Stanford
- Texas A&M University
- UC Berkeley
- UMBC
- University of South Florida

So this means you can download lectures of various topics. For example I’ve downloaded 2 topic’s lectures from MIT:
- Introduction to Algorithms, Fall 2005
- Introduction to Copyright Law, January 2006

The first topic is about 24 lectures of audio material while the second topics is about 4 or 5 lectures but in video material. This is really nice you can actually follow the class given by the professor on your ipod. I’m not sure if they are interesting, but I spend a lot of time underway on the train and car, so I might as well try to learn some new things.

UPDATE: sorry no serials left!!!

The friendly people at prevx.com gave some keys to give away as a reward for putting up the banner of their product.

What is prevx?

File and Process Scan Engine This module scans both file based and memory based code. It includes a powerful mix of 7 signature combinations – 3 are focused on specifically identifying unique code objects; the other 4 signatures track family ties and similarities in the underlying functionality of the objects. Using the File and Process Scan Engine, the Prevx 2.0 agent builds and maintains a local inventory of code installed (in existence) on a client system. This local inventory enables the agent to rapidly identify that new code has been introduced onto the client. When a new code object is seen on a client system the Prevx 2.0 agent will immediately attempt to verify its status with the Community Watch Controller by reporting seven distinct signatures for that object. These are checked against a database describing more than 100 million objects. This check results in one of four possible states – safe, unsafe, known but undetermined and unknown. If an object is unknown, meaning it is the first time that specific code has been seen anywhere within the community, the agent can be configured to block any attempt to execute it. In the event that this option is not configured, then before any new code is allowed to be executed it is referred for analysis by the Malware Virtualization module.

Malware Virtualization

Allowing new code to run always represents a possible security threat. The Prevx 2.0 Malware Virtualization module allows the agent to gain an insightful preview of an object’s behavior while avoiding the risks of execution. The virtualization process exposes many of the behaviors that would be observed during real execution. These rich behaviors collated during the virtualization process are immediately reported to the Community Watch Controller and are merged with any ‘real’ observed behaviors gathered about that object from other clients/sources.

The virtualization process allows the Prevx 2.0 agent to identify the naked form of an object by defeating many of the obfuscation techniques that make today’s malware invisible to conventional signature based security products.

Behavioral Monitoring

Whenever a program is allowed to execute in the client environment, the Prevx 2.0 Agent will observe its behavior in detail. Around 300 different behaviors are monitored by the agent. These are soft and extensible, meaning that new behaviors can be remotely configured without changes to the agent software.

All behaviors captured by the Prevx 2.0 agent are reported to the Community Watch Controller where they are aggregated with other events for that program drawn from the entire community and including data from the malware virtualization process.

Agent Heuristics

The agent includes a powerful heuristics engine which is capable of mirroring some of the community based heuristics. However, this module is rarely configured because community based behavioral analysis has proven to be significantly more effective at early detection of new malware with greatly reduced risks of false positives.

TCP Packet Inspection

The Prevx 2.0 agent includes a TCP packet analyzer which is capable of tracking the behavior of any web page or URL. This includes a record of the DNS resolution of configured web sites and the relationship between any URL and the creation of code objects.

This information is reported to the Community Watch Controller where it is aggregated and correlated with other object behaviors.

Malware Removal and Cleanup

Prevx 2.0 includes a powerful, generic, malware removal and cleanup capability. This works in combination with the behavioral monitoring module which is used to implement dynamic ‘lock down’ policies that prevent an object’s attempts to persist during the removal process. The cleanup process also removes all executable elements of an infection including persistent registry entries.

It’s probably meant to be a joke, but nog official statements are given yet. Someone, probably from the Zune team, has put a bin in the headquarters of the Zune team where employees can throw in their iPod so they can buy (?) a new Zune. As you can see from the photo, not that a success

Source: Infoworld.com

We already had a Hill Billy, but this one looks like a mexican taking a siësta. (he’s indian actually )

Yes I can finally announce the long awaited photo of our own teamleader breaking the build.

Looks like a hill billy no?

Since the root of any storage card is represented as a directory inside of the root of the device, you can iterate all directories inside the root folder (“/”) and check their attributes to see if they comply to be a storage card. use the following code to look for a storage card:

 Public Function GetStorageCard() As DirectoryInfo
        Dim deviceRoot As New DirectoryInfo("/")
        For Each dir As DirectoryInfo In deviceRoot.GetDirectories()
            If dir.Attributes = FileAttributes.Directory AndAlso _
            dir.Attributes = FileAttributes.Temporary Then
                Return dir
            End If
        Next
 End Function

Enjoy !

I’ve added a new section called “Projects” to the blog. Here you will find all sorts of mostly small projects that kept me busy in my free time. Comming soon will be the WM 6.0 FileBrowser control and other stuff as well.

So check it out later on!