办公室趣味小玩意：USB温室

有了USB供电的人工灯光，这个温室中的植物即时没有阳光也能活的很好。只要打开电脑，这个USB温室盆景就能进行光合作用继续生长，真是适合那些太多没有时间照料盆景的办公一族。

这个USB温室的尺寸为17.2 x 22.6 x 17 cm ，重560g，附送万寿菊种子（当然也可以使用其他植物的种子）和人工土壤，配套软件可以监测内部植物的状态，不但会每天提醒你浇花，还可以记录自己心爱的花花草草又长高了几厘米，很贴心吧。

这款USB温室售价43美元，可以在这里购买。

iPhone 3G版11月12日德国首发

一张德国电信T-Mobile的宣传广告日前在互联网上曝光，揭示出了引起全球关注的iPhone手机在德国的上市消息。

最为令人关注的是，T-Mobile版iPhone将支持UMTS/HSDPA标准的WCDMA 3G/3.5G网络，最高数据传输速度可达到3.6Mbps，解决了目前美国版的iPhone由于网络限制在上网速度上的不足。另外，德国版iPhone 还可能打在16GB闪存，和近日刚刚发布的16GB iPod touch相同，也把目前销售的主力8GB版打成了低端（广告在这里的表示有些错误，标注为iPod）。

据称，德国版iPhone的售价将达到499欧元，但会附带iTunes音乐商店的折扣券。T-Mobile为iPhone准备了3种资费标准，分别为L、XL、XXL版，都提供无限制的上网流量，每月提供200/300/400分钟的免费通话时间，100/150/200条的免费短信，月租为 49.95/59.95/69.95欧元。

虽然没有任何正式公布消息，但T-Mobile已经被普遍认为是iPhone在德国的运营商合作伙伴，会在年底前推出iPhone。苹果在欧洲地区的其他传言合作伙伴还包括英国的O2和法国的Orange。另外，一家名为InterDigital在近日公布的财报中称，他们已经和苹果达成了授权协议，将授权部分2G/3G等无线技术专利，为期7年。其间苹果每季度向InterDigital支付200万美元的专利授权费用，这也从另一个侧面印证了 3G版iPhone的即将到来。

企鹅U盘：送给Linux爱好者的最佳礼物

这个小巧的企鹅USB闪存盘的确是相当可爱，放在电脑旁边绝对能让人眼前一亮，然而不幸的是，它的最大容量只有1GB——以现在的标准而言，可是不算多。

小企鹅的USB接口在脑袋里面藏着，要插在USB口上的话，还要更努力的向后仰头……可能有点不大舒服，不过没关系，你可以放心使用。

这个小企鹅可以用在Mac和PC上，还具备Vista Ready Boost功能。最大容量1GB型号价格3980日元，约合人民币60多。

苹果iPod Nano新品泄露

像iPod Nano？还是像shuffle？这张据称是iPod Nano的泄露图昨天惊现于网上，不过根据苹果的一贯保密条例，发生如此的泄露事件实在不应该。

目前苹果官方没有对此图片发表任何评论，有可能这就是下一代的Nano，但是也可能是某些爱好者的PS之作。在没有搞清楚之前，各位还是先睹为快吧。

下一代iPod nano谍照曝光

关于下一代iPod nano，几个月来已经传言不断，比如体型更短胖类似于黑莓手机，屏幕更大，依旧保持转盘操纵，界面类似iPhone等等。而今天，9to5Mac网站登出了一张据称是新一代iPod Nano的谍照，证实了大部分的传言。

这张照片上我们看到了5种颜色的新nano，确实短胖，有人说它丑的要命，也有人赞它胖的可爱。之前也有消息证实了这五种颜色，分别是银、黑、酒红、亮蓝和浅绿。

在登出这张照片不久，苹果官方已经向9to5Mac发出警告，后者随即撤下了该图片。这一事件也更加印证了照片的真实性。据传，下一代iPod系列将于九月分发布。

iPhone完全破解！登陆香港

不知道几时才会登陆马来西亚，好像拥有哦！iPhone很吊~

据香港Phonedaily网站报道，iPhone已被完全破解并开始销售！并且iPhone已经支持繁体和简体中文界面，中文MP3也能正确显示！


香港旺角先达广场2楼G-World公开了iPhone新界面，只要多花2千元台币，繁体、简体中文或日文界面任你选。店员更表示，加入了中文界面，iPod音乐功能的部份歌曲名称乱码问题，也能获得解决。不过店员的示范机里没有歌曲，无法论定真假，但初步看到繁体中文界面，字体美美地令人相当兴奋。



Phonedaily编辑马上亲手试玩，将CSL(香港电信商)的SIM卡插入手机，看见照片里的HK CSL字样，表示搜寻到讯号，E即代表接通EDGE高速数据网络。


支持EDGE，上网快吗？快，访问hk.yahoo.com、www.phonedaily.com、mobile.163.com两岸三地的网站主页，大约半分钟以内都下载完毕，可见香港的EDGE上网速度一点也不差，也证明这部破解iPhone，真正可以用手机GPRS上网。


最重要的电话测试，Video为证，示范拨打香港气象台查询，过程发觉没有问题，可拨出、接收电话，通话品质也和一般电话无异。

发售此手机的G World人员表示，从今以后，iPhone可以打通香港六大GSM网络之余，全球各地系统商门号也可以用。手机是真正unlock解锁吗？手机店负责人没有回答，有关改机、破解的细节也用商业秘密为由，拒绝透露。但他们表示，买机和升级时，必须把SIM卡同时留下，他们会在SIM卡及iPhone做一些设定才可以使用。店家也补充，被改的SIM卡依旧可在其它手机中使用。

CPU风扇也玩Quad

Scythe公司展示了其Infinity QuadFan产品，这是一款CPU散热器，你可以选择搭配1000RPM、1200RPM或者1500RPM KAMA FLOW风扇，最多可以安装4个。

根据Scythe的测试，当用Infinity QuadFan搭配一个1000RPM，两个1500RPM和一个1200RPM KAMA FLOW风扇为Core 2 Duo E4300散热时，全速运行时的CPU温度为36度，减掉两个风扇也能控制在37度，而采用Intel原装风扇时温度高达51度。Infinity QuadFan的效能看来的确不错，当然噪音也不容小视。

本U盘将于5秒钟后自毁

或许不会如《碟中谍》中的任务简报一样能够真正的自毁，但IronKey闪盘确实有如此强大的安全保卫能力。

该U盘采用了军用级的AES硬件加密系统Cryptochip芯片。所有的数据都经过加密存储，必须将芯片内的加密密钥和用户密码联合起来，才能解密其中数据。如果不轨之徒尝试输入密码连续错误10次，U盘的flash-trash技术会物理重写盘内的全部数据，绝对无法恢复。

这款U盘主要面对行业用户，1GB版本售价79美元，4GB版售价149美元。

谁是世界最小的PC

大型PC能提供高性能，但是小型PC可以应用在其他领域。尽管他们可能不能运行魔兽世界，尽管他们可能不能提供强大的性能，但是他们可能是最有用的装置。

下面有些微型PC给大家展示

1.picotux
picotux看起来并不漂亮，不能运行游戏，也不能提供很多功能。但是picotux是一台实实在在的计算机。它的宽和高都是19mm，拥有ARM提供的8M微型内存，以及100M网卡和一个55Mhz的CPU。它可以通过运行uClinux作为一台优秀的WEB服务器。


2.Calao
这是一个拥有64MB内存，网卡，VGA输出，和USB功能的集群运算用PC。使用它的方法很简单，把它插入USB hub即可。恐怕这是世界上最慢的集群运算系统了。


3.Pico-ITX
Pico-ITX是VIA最新的主板标准，占用4英寸空间大小。提供VIA C7处理器，自家产的GPU。跑跑MAME之类的模拟器应该没什么问题。


4.Whiskey a Go-Go
没看错，这不是一瓶Whiskey，而是一个利用VIA微型主板MOD的成功例子。


5.Blast off
这是Orbit上一件设计品。它只有300MHz的CPU，64M的内存，VGA输出端口，网卡，SP/DIF输出以及USB端口，当然，还有一个CF卡读卡器...虽然它的速度不快，但是还是比你10年前的PC还是快多了吧。


6.Mac mini
这款产品不需要做太多介绍。现在已经可以通过安装Boot Camp安装Windows系统。所以，可以把它归为相对较小的PC机了。


7.Truly
Truly微型PC可以用来作为车载PC，除了提供GPS导航，音乐播放外还可以为车上的乘客提供游戏平台

手机也玩变形金刚

刚才介绍的是 MP3 Player，现在轮到手机了。

《变形金刚》电影和游戏的同步热发让十几年前已经火爆过一次的汽车人和霸天虎们再次活跃起来。除了汽车飞机录音机会变形外，据说新一代的手机也支持变形，并且韩国人已经设计出来了。。。。。。



下面是一段完整的变形动画，如果真的能做到。。。不知道iPhone还会有人要买吗？

变形金刚mp3登场

Transformers 越来越热了，连 MP3 也来玩变形。

斯皮尔伯格监制的《变形金刚》真人版电影无疑带动了整个模型/周边市场的销量，厂商们亦绞尽脑汁，不失时宜地推出各种以变形金刚为主题的新电子产品，“榨光”F粉丝们的钱包。

著名反面小角色——音波（Soundwave）刚刚成功升级，从卡带式录放机成功进化到现代社会，成为一台MP3版音波。

这款MP3版音波通过SD卡存储音乐，同时有耳机插口以及控制按键，上市价格100美元左右。

iPhone是能这样玩的。。。

iPhone越来越cool，很想买来玩。看过之后你也一样会有心动的感觉。

你将看到：

1.iPhone可乐
2.iPhone剃须刀
3.iPhone X-Ray
4.iPhone 存钱罐（这段最为精彩）

Ubuntu Install CD Customization (Feisty 7.04)

This guide is for the Alternative Install or Server Install CDs

Copy the entire installation CD to a directory on your hard drive. This guide will assume your CD image is in /opt/cd-image/, but you can put it wherever you like. It will take around 1GB of hard drive space.

If you have an ISO file, you can mount it and copy files out of it without burning it to CD:

mount -o loop /image.iso /mnt
mkdir -p /opt/cd-image
cp -rT /mnt /opt/cd-image

Changing isolinux.cfg to identify your preseed

We will create a preseed file called 'my.seed', which will live in the /preseed folder of the CD-ROM. We tell d-i where to find this file by modifying the boot-loader configuration file, located in isolinux/isolinux.cfg, to pass appropriate parameters on the kernel command line. In /opt/cd-image/isolinux/isolinux.cfg, add a new section labeled like this:

LABEL my
menu label ^My Installation
kernel /install/vmlinuz
append  file=/cdrom/preseed/my.seed locale=en_US
console-setup/ask_detect=false console-setup/layoutcode=us
priority=critical initrd=/install/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=16384
root=/dev/ram rw quiet --

If you want to set the default action to booting with your custom seed, change the DEFAULT line to read 'DEFAULT my'.

You must specify a locale and keyboard on the command line, as these questions are asked before the seed is loaded. You can also set priority=critical here to ensure you don't see any unnecessary debconf questions.

Writing the preseed file

A preseed file has 4 fields per line:

1. identity of the program which will pick up this command

2. name of the variable whose value will be passed

3. variable type

4. value of variable

It looks something like this (from the default ubuntu-server.seed on the 7.04 CD):

# Always install the server kernel.
d-i     base-installer/kernel/override-image    string linux-server
# Don't install usplash.
d-i     base-installer/kernel/linux/extra-packages-2.6  string
# Desktop system not installed.
d-i     archive-copier/desktop-task     string ubuntu-standard
d-i     archive-copier/ship-task        string
# Only install the standard system and language packs.
d-i     pkgsel/install-pattern  string ~t^ubuntu-standard$
d-i     pkgsel/language-pack-patterns   string
# No language support packages.
d-i     pkgsel/install-language-support boolean false

The easiest way to create a preseed file is to start with an example and modify it:

https://help.ubuntu.com/7.04/installation-guide/example-preseed.txt

If you can't find the option you're looking for you can generate a comprehensive preseed file based on your own install time choices by using debconf-get-selections

debconf-get-selections usage:

sudo apt-get install debconf-utils # It is part of the debconf-utils.
debconf-get-selections --installer > somefile.txt
debconf-get-selections >> somefile.txt

This will output a list of all debconf options you've chosen throughout your install; you can pick options out of this and put them into your preseed file.

Modify pool structure to include more packages

Probably the prime motivation to build your own install CDs is to modify which packages are installed; in particular you may want to add some packages to the CD.

The easiest way to do this is to build an 'extras' repository structure, containing only your extra .debs, and merge these into the CD file hierarchy before rebuilding the .ISO image. This guide will step you through how to do this.

This requires you to generate the Packages files that defines what files are in your repository; the Release file that indexes your Packages files, and the signed Release.gpg file, approving the repository as being official.

Create an "Extras" component

Create directories for your new component (substituting your version where appropriate):

cd /opt/cd-image
mkdir -p dists/feisty/extras/binary-i386 pool/extras/ isolinux preseed

Put all the extra .debs you want on your CD into pool/extras.

Create the file dists/feisty/extras/binary-i386/Release with the following content:

Archive: feisty
Version: 7.04
Component: extras
Origin: Ubuntu
Label: Ubuntu
Architecture: i386

You will need to run apt-ftparchive (below) to generate the Packages file.

Generating a new ubuntu-keyring .deb to sign your CD

In order to sign the Release file, we need to use GPG. The install system will then check the signature against the public keys held in the package ubuntu-keyring. You do not have a private key that matches one of the ones in the shipped ubuntu-keyring, so we need to build a custom version of the ubuntu-keyring package. Install the gnupg package if you do not have it already.

To create a signing key, enter gpg --gen-key. Accept the defaults, (for this use, it is probably OK to use "No expiry"). For your Real Name and E-mail address, you might like to use something like "XXX Signing Key" and "packages@xxx.example.org". Enter an appropriate passphrase.

In another directory (I use /opt/build/), we will download the source for the ubuntu-keyring package, unpack it, add our own GPG key, and rebuild the package. These steps import the 2 Ubuntu public signing keys into your main keyring, then exports them, along with your own public signing key, into a replacement keyring. "YOURKEYID" should be replaced with the 8-digit hexadecimal code that gpg tells you when you do the --list-keys command."Signing Key Name" is what you used in the previous step, when running gpg --gen-key.

To clarify, below is an example 'gpg --list-keys' response. In this example, "YOURKEYID" immediately follows the '/' on the line beginning with 'pub' (which in this example is '437D05B5'.)

gpg --list-keys
pub   1024D/437D05B5 2006-09-08
uid                  XXX Signing Key 
sub   2048g/79164387 2006-09-08

Here is an example, which you will need to customize to suit your own setup:

cd /opt/build
sudo apt-get install fakeroot   # requires the fakeroot package
apt-get source ubuntu-keyring
cd ubuntu-keyring-2005.01.12.1/keyrings
gpg --import < ubuntu-archive-keyring.gpg
gpg --list-keys "Signing Key Name"
gpg --export FBB75451 437D05B5 YOURKEYID > ubuntu-archive-keyring.gpg
cd ..    # you are now on ubuntu-keyring-2005.01.12.1
dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -m"Your Name " -kYOURKEYID
cd ..  # you are now on /opt/build
cp ubuntu-keyring*deb /opt/cd-image/pool/main/u/ubuntu-keyring

You will end up with a udeb file for the installer, and a .deb file for the system. Both files need to be copied into the main component of your CD, because the CD will not check the extras directory.

Building the repository with apt-ftparchive

apt-ftparchive builds the Packages and Packages.gz files, needed by the installer. In order to use apt-ftparchive we will need to provide it with some configuration and some index files.

We will put the index files in /opt/indices:

mkdir -p /opt/indices /opt/apt-ftparchive
cd /opt/indices/
DIST=feisty; wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/indices/override \
.$DIST.{extra.main,main,main.debian-installer,restricted, \
restricted.debian-installer}

Create the files apt-ftparchive-deb.conf, apt-ftparchive-udeb.conf, apt-ftparchive-extras.conf, and release.conf in a directory (/opt/apt-ftparchive), substituting /opt/cd-image/ for the path to your CD image directory, and /opt/indices/ for the location of the index files, if they differ.

/opt/apt-ftparchive/apt-ftparchive-deb.conf:

Dir {
ArchiveDir "/opt/cd-image/";
};

TreeDefault {
Directory "pool/";
};

BinDirectory "pool/main" {
Packages "dists/feisty/main/binary-i386/Packages";
BinOverride "/opt/indices/override.feisty.main";
ExtraOverride "/opt/indices/override.feisty.extra.main";
};

BinDirectory "pool/restricted" {
Packages "dists/feisty/restricted/binary-i386/Packages";
BinOverride "/opt/indices/override.feisty.restricted";
};

Default {
Packages {
Extensions ".deb";
Compress ". gzip";
};
};

Contents {
Compress "gzip";
};

/opt/apt-ftparchive/apt-ftparchive-udeb.conf:

Dir {
ArchiveDir "/opt/cd-image/";
};

TreeDefault {
Directory "pool/";
};

BinDirectory "pool/main" {
Packages "dists/feisty/main/debian-installer/binary-i386/Packages";
BinOverride "/opt/indices/override.feisty.main.debian-installer";
};

BinDirectory "pool/restricted" {
Packages "dists/feisty/restricted/debian-installer/binary-i386/Packages";
BinOverride "/opt/indices/override.feisty.restricted.debian-installer";
};

Default {
Packages {
Extensions ".udeb";
Compress ". gzip";
};
};

Contents {
Compress "gzip";
};

/opt/apt-ftparchive/apt-ftparchive-extras.conf:

Dir {
ArchiveDir "/opt/cd-image/";
};

TreeDefault {
Directory "pool/";
};

BinDirectory "pool/extras" {
Packages "dists/feisty/extras/binary-i386/Packages";
};

Default {
Packages {
Extensions ".deb";
Compress ". gzip";
};
};

Contents {
Compress "gzip";
};

release.conf

APT::FTPArchive::Release::Origin "Ubuntu";
APT::FTPArchive::Release::Label "Ubuntu";
APT::FTPArchive::Release::Suite "feisty";
APT::FTPArchive::Release::Version "7.04";
APT::FTPArchive::Release::Codename "feisty";
APT::FTPArchive::Release::Architectures "i386";
APT::FTPArchive::Release::Components "main restricted extras";
APT::FTPArchive::Release::Description "Ubuntu 7.04";

To build the repository, sign it, and update the MD5SUM file, you can use a script like this:

BUILD=/opt/cd-image
APTCONF=/opt/apt-ftparchive/release.conf
DISTNAME=feisty

pushd $BUILD
apt-ftparchive -c $APTCONF generate \
/opt/apt-ftparchive/apt-ftparchive-deb.conf

apt-ftparchive -c $APTCONF generate \
/opt/apt-ftparchive/apt-ftparchive-udeb.conf

apt-ftparchive -c $APTCONF generate \
/opt/apt-ftparchive/apt-ftparchive-extras.conf

apt-ftparchive -c $APTCONF release $BUILD/dists/$DISTNAME \
>$BUILD/dists/$DISTNAME/Release

gpg --default-key "YOURKEYID" \
--output $BUILD/dists/$DISTNAME/Release.gpg \
-ba $BUILD/dists/$DISTNAME/Release

find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 md5sum > md5sum.txt
popd

Building the ISO image

IMAGE=custom.iso
BUILD=/opt/cd-image/

mkisofs -r -V "Custom Ubuntu Install CD" \
-cache-inodes \
-J -l -b isolinux/isolinux.bin \
-c isolinux/boot.cat -no-emul-boot \
-boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table \
-o $IMAGE $BUILD