Thin client hacking
For the past few weeks I have thought about setting up a thin client pc for my kids, over the weekend a fried decided to give me an unused compaq T20. These are tiny devices with no hard drive and a minimal operating system , they are pretty gutless but are designed to access other terminal servers.
Any way the one one I got was still provisioned to another company so i set about re-flashing the firmware back to factory settings. on the HP web site you can get a utility called netxfer which is a bootp/tftp server to deploy the new firmware , unfortunately after trying to set it up on 3 computers all i could get was
"Unable to start the application--the Java Virtual Machine cannot be loaded.
Class not registered"
So I gave up on that idea and set about hacking back some admin rights. This machine came out of a business enviroment so was locked down but not compleatly untouchable. By defualt when it was turned on it booted into a session and automatically started an ica client. all other apps were removed from the start menu , right click disabled , run command killed, browsing in explorer disabled. So what to do ? well my first goal was to get a command shell opened , from there I at least had something to work with.
First I opened the control panel , this was locked down with very few tool available but the address bar was showing so I typed in a url, when the site opened I selected view , source, this open in notepad. Then I deleated all the contents and replaed it with , cmd.exe , then I selected to save this to the desktop as a batch file. At first this failed, only flashing up then closing, so i edited the file wo be cmd.exe pause cmd.exe. Saved , now this work I have command prompt.
flop.co.nz Review / Rant
The most difficult part of this review was actually finding the site after running across it earlier, I had given up after 20 minutes of googling only to find it again advertising on facebook.
After clicking on the facebook ad I was presented with a nice red screen for around 30 seconds while I waited for the most engaging and dynamic flash based site to load. Oh cant wait ...
Then suddenly flop.co.nz in all its awesomeness loads. I would have been very proud of this site if I had of built it, if I was 12 and it was 1992.
The navibar icon is simply a small blue arrow that gives you no indication of what it does untill you click it.
You have no idea of the prices of the items untill you click them.
You cannot highlight any text to do reasearch.
There is a nice banner which reads "You can use the same username and password to shop flop and 735pm !" wtf is 735pm? why didnt you link to it ?
The big pixeld cammo background is insanly distracting.
When you click the flop icon every thing dissaperes. Why ? People may accidentally click this and not realise how to get every thing back so there only option is to leave the site.
If I was to change the site I would dump the flash , the only reason I can think of to use flash is to provide rich interactive sites , clearly they missed the boat here and while I am not a coder I think all the features they have can be renderd in html with some scriptaculous. Feature wise they should consider inplementing rss feeds and maybe a mailer, while they may reduce daily page hits it makes my life easier when you tell me what bargins you have in my morning email and rss checking. Rather than expecting me to check your site every day.
I would also suggest hiring a company that specialises in desgin to come up with something more unique than 9 squares.
Service wise , well I dont know becouse I will never oder a thing from a site like this despite how safe you tell me it is.
How much news are you getting from websites?
Above is a highlighted screen shot from nz herald. RED = external ads like adsense and other cpc or cpi stuff , green is the actual content. Without too may metrics It would be fair to say the page contains less than 25% of what you requested.
My take on TAX
Well lets face it , your gonna have to pay them, but here is an idea. Howabout every person gets a community card then a proprtion of your tax goes onto the card. Say 15% is credited to this card and you can use it to " upsize " or subsidize various activities like school fees, doctors or what ever.
Capitalism
Ya know the funny thing about capitalism? Well when you got into a supermarket and see cheese is really expensive and you still buy it, you screw up the system a little.
When you see a house for sale and get a mortagage and you can only afford the intrest only part, you screw up the system a little.
Its all supply and demand , want it to be cheaper , dont buy it now. Come back in a few moths and try. The biggest problem I see now is supermarkets know what you are prepared to pay for your food and wont drop prices in a hurry.
Another new theme
I noticed another kiwi blogger ( ben.geek.nz )was using the same theme as I was so now I have changed mine untill I can be botherd haxing one up for my self. I am also making an effort to edit my images to fit better, okey dokey smokey ?
