RE: PA School Webcam Spy Case
24-Feb, 2010
Amongst all of the rumors, accusations, and FUD lies one statement that will certainly cause heads to roll:
Another interesting aspect of the case is whether or not the laptop was reported as stolen or missing. A Washington Post article, by Maryclaire Dale, states
If the laptop was not reported missing or stolen and the school turned on the webcam to gather evidence showing that Blake Robbins (the student) was “engaged in improper behavior in his home,” the school district is screwed.
I also liked the following quote from Ron Todt’s Associated Press article:
Erm…um…right. The families and students were not informed of the possibility the webcams might be activated in their homes, so why would the students think about the need to put tape over the camera? There are less intrusive ways to track lost or stolen laptops.
Then there’s the whole “student who leaves her laptop open in the shower to listen to music” thing. Jesus Quincy Adams.
Chromium/SRWare Iron Niceties
16-Feb, 2010
I’ve been playing around with SRWare Iron as a possible Firefox replacement and I must say, I’m pretty impressed. SRWare Iron is based upon the Chromium browser and sets itself apart from Google Chrome by implementing privacy options built right into the browser. One feature that I particularly like is how the Chromium browser shows the relative location of search terms found throughout a given web page. Although the search terms are highlighted in the actual page (“hacker” in this example), this clever feature provides useful information in existing, normally unused space.
MacBook Air Hack: SSD Upgrade
15-Feb, 2010
It’s time for yet another Mac-hack here at penkapp.com! If you haven’t seen them already, feel free to check out my previous posts on how to upgrade your old Mac mini’s WiFi card and install an SSD drive in your MacBook Pro. My wife kept complaining that her MacBook Air (MBA) is slow, so I decided to replace the slow-ass 80 Gb 4200-RPM factory drive with an SSD. This install was a little more involved than my MacBook Pro SSD upgrade (for reasons I’ll describe below) but it was worth it in the end. Let’s get hacking.
The Hardware
- 1 RunCore Pro IV 1.8” PATA ZIF Solid State Drive SSD for Macbook Air Revision A ($229 for 64-GB model)
My wife purchased the first MBA (early 2008, Revision A, MacBookAir1,1) so, make sure you purchase the correct drive. The RunCore models come in two flavors for the MacBook Air, a 1.8” PATA ZIF Solid State Drive SSD for Macbook Air Revision A (link above) and the 1.8” SATA II LIF Solid State Drive SSD for Macbook Air Revision B & C. Note that the more recent MBAs (Revision B & C) support the faster SATA II interface while the early 2008 (Revision A) models are only compatible with the slower, PATA interface. Apparently, Samsung makes these tiny 71mm × 54mm × 5mm drives as well, but I went with RunCore. The RunCore drive kit comes with the drive (duh), a high-speed USB 2.0 HDD enclosure, USB cables, Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper! cloning software, screw drivers and RunCore brand stickers.
The Tools
- #0 Phillips screwdriver
- #0 flathead screwdriver
- Tweezers
- Adult beverage of choice
Data Transfer
The RunCore kit comes with an external enclosure to plug into your soon-to-be hacked Mac and it’s recommended that you simply clone your current drive onto the new RunCore SSD. The backup can be easily performed by plugging in the SSD using the provided USB cable and either SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner (both are already on the SSD). I opted not to put the SSD into its provided enclosure and simply connected it to the MBA “naked.” Copy the cloning software from the SSD to your hard drive and install one of your choice. Run the Disk Utility application built into Mac OS X and double check that the SSD drive is formatted as Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) and the Partition Map Scheme is set to “GUID Partition Table.”
A little snafu occurred. I noticed the data transfer rate was a very sad 0.66 MB/s as SuperDuper! copied the contents of the current drive onto the SSD. WTF? The USB cable provided by RunCore uses two USB connections (at least the one I received), one for data and the other for power. Well, the MBA only has one USB port, so I connected a USB hub to the computer, connected the RunCore drive to the hub, and started the SuperDuper! backup process. Do you know why I was getting such a crappy copy speed? The flippin’ USB hub was bus-powered, the kind that draws all its power from the host computer’s USB interface and doesn’t plug into a wall outlet. Clearly, the drive was underpowered.
The problem was that I couldn’t find a USB hub in the house that wasn’t bus-powered. Frick. As a result, I had to backup the original drive (via SuperDuper!) to a different external drive, connect the latter drive (via FireWire 800) and the RunCore SSD to my MacBook Pro (2 USB ports), and transfer the data onto the RunCore SSD by making the external FireWire drive the source and the RunCore SSD the destination. The SuperDuper! “erase and prepare” segment took about 4 minutes and the data transfer rate was now a healthy 28.6 MB/s effective copy speed. You got all that? Jesus.
Cracking it Open
For the love of Mike, page through the most-excellent MacBook Air tear-down tutorial from ifixit.com and back up everything on your current hard drive to an external drive with SuperDuper! or Time Machine before you start triple bypass surgery on your MacBook Air (see “Data Transfer” above). Then, take a big swig from your adult beverage and dive in.
Click on the thumbnail image (right) to view my photo-set of the tear-down. Be very, very careful about keeping track of the 10 Phillips case screws; some screws are different lengths. You do not need to remove the battery to replace the factory hard drive.
Swapping the Hard Drive
The hard drive is nestled into the laptop via 4 Phillips screws and a mounting cage and sits beneath the USB, micro-DVI, and audio ribbon cables. Carefully lift/pry the cables (including the drive cable) off the motherboard to gain access to the drive. Next, unscrew the 4 Phillips #0 screws located roughly at each corner of the drive. The top-right screw is actually hidden underneath a small, plastic tab (weakly glued to the drive cage) that helps guide a small, black wire along the top side of the drive. Lift the drive out of the laptop and carefully remove the drive from the metal cage and rubber frame.
Make note the orientation of the ribbon cable and the old drive. Detach the hard drive ribbon cable by gently rotating the black, plastic ribbon lock upward to its unlocked position (angled upwards) with a #0 flathead screw driver and your fingers, thus releasing the cable from the drive. Leave the foam padding on the old drive. Then, set the new RunCore SSD into the rubber frame and metal cage. Make sure the long, black, plastic ribbon lock on the SSD is in its unlocked position (angled or rotated upwards), slide the hard drive ribbon cable into the slot, and lock the cable into place by angling or rotating the ribbon lock downward towards the flat plane of the drive. Reapply the small strip of black tape to the ribbon/drive interface.
Set the new SSD into the laptop and secure the drive with the 4 Phillips screws. Reattach the hard drive, USB, micro-DVI, and audio ribbon cables to the motherboard. Reattach the small, plastic tab (once glued to the drive cage) that helps guide the small, black wire along the top side of the drive onto the top-right screw of the hard drive. Carefully guide the latter wire into its slots along the top portion of the drive. Place the back cover on the laptop and close it up with the 10 Phillips screws. Done.
The Results
I used a few lines of code that would provide decent stats:
Write speed test
Read speed test
Make sure the count= value is greater than your total RAM. The numbers? The write speed: 67 MB/s and read speed: 86 MB/s, which is on par with the listed max read/write specs. Booting the machine is still slow for some reason1, but launching applications and copying/moving data is much faster. Basically, the SSD is 2x faster read, 1.5x faster write when compared to drive specs for the original 4200 RPM drive posted on the Interwebs.
1 I speculate that the slow boot time is a result of the 800 MHz front-side bus, the 1.6 GHz (P7500) Intel Core 2 Duo processor, and the 2 GB of 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM.
