Tom Hayward

Take that Apple: hacked VPN on iPod touch

I guess if Apple can’t do it properly I’ll just have to do it myself. I jailbreaked my iPod touch. This made it easy to copy over Mail.app and MobileMailSettings.bundle from the iPhone firmware. After a quick restart my iPod touch had full VPN support! Works like a charm on campus!

This makes my iPod about twice as useful—I hope Apple understands this and decides to put in a VPN client legitimately.

Apple lied: No VPN client on iPod touch

My iPod touch arrived Friday. There’s no VPN client. I guess the lady at Apple lied to me to get a sale. Smells like fraud. I’ll bitch and moan to Apple and hopefully we’ll see a VPN client in a software update. If not, I hope the iPhone jailbreak guys can get into the touch soon—I’m going to need some 3rd party software, stat.

Confirmed: VPN on iPod Touch

Update: Apple lied: No VPN client on iPod touch 

First of all, if you haven’t seen the new iPods (including lowered price for the iPhone), you’re missing out. Check them out: www.apple.com. Apple finally did it right: solid-state widescreen/touchscreen iPod. No more dead hard drives.

I just got off the phone with Apple. They confirmed for me that the iPod Touch indeed has the same VPN support as the iPhone.

When I ordered my 16GB iPod Touch last night I didn’t think about the fact that the software might be different than the iPhone. For the most part it’s not, but Apple has chosen to leave a few things out (like Mail, Stocks, and Weather). But would they leave out a system feature like VPN? No, apparently not. So it will work with campus Wi-Fi—perfect.

On a further note, I’ve heard that the software is exactly the same as the iPhone. This means that the missing applications should be easy to install with Installer.app once someone with an iPhone leaks them. Third-party iPhone apps should work too (like Sudoku and OpenSSH).

Technology in the Classroom

Classes started this week. I’m taking 17 credits, including 3 labs. To keep up with this load I’m trying to keep everything as organized as possible. Everything goes into the computer where it’s easy to access, search, and back up. This plan worked well until Wednesday at 2:10 when I had my first GenEd 110 lecture.

While doing my best to take detailed notes, Dr. Swan started into a lecture about how electronics in the classroom are distracting, impractical (“you won’t be wired in the real world”), stunt critical thinking, and just aren’t fair. She finished, looked at me, asked if I understood, then asked if I would put away my laptop computer. I said I just wanted to finish up these notes, then I would put it away. She wasn’t pleased, so I packed up my things and left. I’m not willing to make the time investment required for paper notes.

Not only did I disagree with her rule, I don’t understand the reasoning. Distracting, maybe; if students are surfing the web or watching a movie the computer could definitely be a distraction. However, I obviously wasn’t doing either of those things, just taking notes.

I really enjoyed her comment about the real world not being wired, particularly an hour later. My next class was EE 214. One of the first things the professor (Dr. Clint Cole) said was that we’ve reached a point in electronics design where we can no longer use paper, the only way to manage all that information is on a computer. I almost laughed out loud. The other ironic part about her comment was that my laptop was completely wireless. It was (at the time) running on battery power, and if I were using the internet, it would have been wireless too—I understand this wasn’t her point, it’s just funny.

I have absolutely no idea how electronics could stunt critical thinking. Although this may be because I’m around electronics so much they’ve stunted my critical thinking beyond the point of understanding her point. /sarcasm

And how in the world are computers unfair? I work my ass off during the summer so that I have enough money to afford things like electronics. I paid for my laptop with my own hard earned money. Anyone can look for and get a job. The economy can be unfair, but if you really want a laptop computer, it’s not a terribly hard goal to achieve.

Now that I’ve torn apart Dr. Swan’s arguments and have had a chance to vent a bit, I’d like to mention the positive. In my free time after walking out of class, I contacted the head of the General Education (GenEd) department, Dr. Law. He had me transferred into a different section, conveniently at the same time. No harm, no foul. My trust in the university is restored (though I’ll remain bitter toward Dr. Swan).

Linux Lately

For years I’ve been using Linux on servers, but in the past few weeks I’ve found myself using it quite a bit more. If fact, this post comes to you from my newly Linux-loaded laptop.

 The other night I decided that although Vista has it’s place, it wasn’t on my laptop. Thinking about it, I’m surprised I held out on Vista for a whole six months—it never did run very well. Anyway, Ubuntu 7.04 is my laptop’s OS now. I was quite impressed by the install process. If you’ve ever installed Ubuntu before, you know that it’s a live cd, meaning you don’t have to install the OS to start running it and using applications—just pop in the CD. This is neat, but the best part is that it really works and everything is fully supported. I popped in the CD, waited 30 seconds, it found my laptop’s WiFi hardware, configured the drivers, and asked me which network I wanted to connect to. This amazed me. Even on Windows XP and Vista I had to search for drivers on the internet with another computer, then transfer them via USB thumb drive, before manually installing them. Bravo Ubuntu! More progress like this and you will be [more] mainstream in no time.

 Though not the primary operating system, Ubuntu 7.04 is now being virtualized on both my desktop and my work desktop (Mark (the boss) got was a little annoyed today when he couldn’t figure out how to get out of Linux mode) using VMware Server (newly free!). This works much better than I would have guessed. There’s a very slight delay between input and output, but it’s very usable and very convenient. The ability to boot Linux in a window within Windows eliminates all the short-comings of a dual-boot setup. At both work and home, I find myself using virtual Ubuntu almost as much as I do Windows. There just aren’t many things that can’t be done with Linux or can be done better by Windows.

 The other place I use Linux is the most interesting to me, but I’ll understand if most readers don’t share this passion. I’ve started working on an embedded Linux system at Harbortronics for—you guessed it—time lapse. So far it’s a neat little package, and easier to work with than I expected.  It’s basically just a circuit board based around a 180MHz computer-on-a-chip. It has USB, Ethernet, serial ports, a card reader: basically everything you need in a computer. It runs a form of Debian Linux (kernel 2.6). Currently, I have a web server, SSH server, LCD text output, and serial terminal running on it. I’m pretty optimistic about the future of this project, if I ever get some more development time. >

 Bleh: conclusion. So yeah, Linux, try it: ubuntu.com. It’s easier than you think and, did I mention, free?

I <3 NPR

NPR is always on at work, but until this summer I didn’t work enough to really soak in the full news coverage. After coming home from work today and watching the main-stream nightly news, I noticed how good NPR’s coverage actually is. They even beat Digg
a lot of the time. Last week NPR reported on a new phone available from T-Mobile that allowed the use of VOIP over WIFI instead of cell minutes. This feature works in your own home (free router provided) and with T-Mobile’s hot spots. It just made Digg today.

There is a downside though. NPR has been way too interested in politics lately. BOOORINGGG. That’s when I turn a podcast on.