iPod nano - What's Inside

Ever thought your iPod nano looked a bit fragile? Think again after you read this review.

Also have a look inside to see what makes an iPod nano tick.

EVENT DETAIL - Make 2006 Your Best Year Yet

Hope you had a great Xmas and holiday break, welcome to 2006!

Made any New Year Resolutions yet? How did your 2005 ones go? Study harder, Save more money, Get fit, Spend more time with loved ones, etc. Did they kinda disappear by the start of Feb 05? :)

It's probably because they were actually dreams - things that would be "nice" to have and not concrete things you were determined to achieve. It's time you turned new year resolutions into achievable GOALS.

My friend Dale Beaumont is presenting a fantastic goal setting seminar and workshop this Sat (7th Jan) afternoon from 6pm to 10:30pm at a Sydney CBD venue (Wesley Centre, 220 Pitt Street) just 10 min walk from Town Hall station.

The seminar is open to everyone and is great value at only $20 to cover venue costs, and you even get a free book!. A commercial seminar like this would cost in the $hundreds$. I can highly recommend this seminar and would suggest you make the effort to come along and bring some friends to kick start 2006 and make some great achievements this year.

Download the brochure and let me know if you can make it and i'll grab a ticket for you.

Kevin

Outside Looking In: The BSD Operating Systems

By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

A while back, someone asked me why the open-source BSD operating systems aren't as popular as Linux. It's a good question. Technically speaking, the BSDs are often every bit as good as Linux. Indeed, when it comes to security, OpenBSD is the best of breed.

Indeed, you can argue that BSD is actually more successful than Linux on the desktop. I'm referring, of course, to MacOS X, which is based on Darwin. Darwin, in turn, is built on top of Mach 3.0 operating-system services, which runs on top of the 4.4 BSD operating system.

However, developers usually see Darwin simply as the foundation for MacOS X and its Cocoa and Carbon toolkit-based application. Apple says it would like Darwin to become an operating system in its own right for both its native PowerPC and Intel's architectures. In practice, though, Darwin has made little progress as an independent operating system.

So why hasn't mainstream BSD become widely popular? The answer is that there is no mainstream BSD. Like the many Unixes of the past, it shot itself in the foot long ago by dividing into several different variants: SunOS, Wind River's BSD/OS, FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD. With five major forks, not counting Darwin, only SunOS, which became part of Solaris, has had great commercial success.

Click the heading to read the 3-page article

See you at RUXCON!

Hi everyone!

RUXCON is on today, doors open 8:30am, entry is $50 for both days.

Remember you can get $$ rebated for going along because you're a MITS member, just remember to get a receipt for us!

Hope to meet some of you this weekend.

Kind Regards,
Kevin Wong
MITS Founder

DEF CON 2005 Calendar of Events

You can get a quick look to see what is going on in hackerdom.

EVENT DETAIL - Linux Seminar: Software Freedom Day

September 10 is Software Freedom Day! Since that's a Saturday we decided to hold something during the week so we can all attend.

Come and join us on Wednesday the 7th of September in C5C.T2 at 1pm for a talk by special guest Jeff Waugh from Canonical Ltd -- makers of the new and popular Ubuntu Linux distribution.

Come and find out what it means for software to be free (as in free speech, not free beer) and why the most famous piece free software, Linux, is becoming so successful. You can pick up some free CDs with full Linux distributions on them, including a LiveCD that you can boot from your computer to test out Linux before you change any files on your hard drive.

See you there!

UPDATE 1: Check out the poster we've been putting up (153KiB).

UPDATE 2: The event got a mention in the Sydney Morning Herald!

UPDATE 3: Thanks to the CSIRO, software demos and pizza-eating will take place in the CSIRO conference room in E6B from 2pm (after the talk at 1pm). Stick around after the talk and we'll walk over as a group.

Update 4: We snuck into The Word, the uni magazine from SAM (page 9).

EVENT DETAIL - Free BBQ for MITS members!

One of the many perks of being a member of MITS is the free food! This Tuesday on the 30th of August, MITS is putting on a BBQ for all current MITS members (and any new ones who would like to sign-up on the day). Just flash your MITS membership card and get treated to a mouth-watering hot-dog and a can of softdrink! Non-members can also purchase hot-dogs for $2 and cans of drink for $1 (frankly, it's a lot cheaper than most of the food in the Quarry).

Come and find us outside the newsagents (near the old SAM spot) from about 11am or so. See you there!

Jobs available at Jay Car Electronics

"ATTENTION ALL ELECTRONIC ENTHUSIASTS COME OUT FROM UNDER THAT ROCK!

Jaycar has been trying to recruit new staff for our expanding empire with only limited success. We have been advertising in all the usual places but we need more staff!

If you work in this industry (say for a competitor of ours) and are bored with your job - call us!
If you have left school and have found that TAFE/UNI is not for you now (but may be later), why not try us for a couple of years - call us!
If you are just a reader of Silicon Chip and not necessarily in the industry but are interested - call us!
Jaycar prides itself on its first class, motivated technical staff. We pay well, have great work conditions (with Staff Purchase Scheme so good you will die) and a quick path to Store Manager and the BIG BUCKS. No age barriers either!!

So call us on (02) 9741 8555 or email jobs@jaycar.com.au
What have you got to lose? We will train you, to TAFE accreditation, to become a highly effective communicator with loads of self-confidence which will stand you out from the crowd for life. And we guarantee you will have FUN! - CALL US!"

Download PDF the flier here

Predixis Music Search

MusicMagic™ acoustically finds music based on computer analysis of the sounds in the music.

A MusicMagic™ search can help you discover artists, albums, and songs that complement the sounds of music you know and like.

Intel Extended Memory 64 Technology (EM64T)

"Explore the advantages the Intel Pentium 4 Processor with HT Technology 600 sequence and Microsoft Windows XP Pro x64 Edition can give."

Click the heading to watch a presentation or download a PDF.

[Ed - Note that Tom's Hardware Guide has found that the Intel 600 series CPUs (all 64bit + 2Mb L2 cache) are slower than the 500 series (some 64bit + all 1Mb L2 cache) because of the extra overhead in addressing the extra cache.

To realise the full power of the 600 series we need 64bit everything - motherboard BIOS, OS, applications, drivers, etc. Still in it's infancy on home computers, 64bit has a long way to go before we see real speed advantages.]