Blackberry Status: Service Blocked on Send Email Message

One of our 70+ Blackberries in company (running BES of course) had a new and interesting condition just now, apparently the user just came back from b.t. in Europe. His blackberry stopped working: no new emails, on attempt to send a new ones we'd receive the famous red X and Status: Service Blocked.

Anyone cares to guess what happened? If you guess the Cell provider messed up - you got 10 points!! Before I begun to wipe the unit as my colleague suggested, I decided a quick call to AT&T wont hurt.

Guess what, to my "complete surprise" turns out that our dearest AT&T decided for us what this account from now will be a personal blackberry unit and not Enterprise as it should! Moreover I was mysteriously taken off authorized users list...

[sarcasm]
At&T Rules yet again
[/sarcasm]

Creative Shows its Real Corporate Face

Actually its a piece of news here for a change - Apparently there is a story developing about Creative. Someone named Daniel_K modified creative drivers for Vista, making them more stable and unlocking hidden features. His only fault, it seems he was accepting donations...

Of course there are few angles to look at the issue at hands, but in ether case Creative should have handled it differently - The whole practice of intentionally crippling drivers to force people buy higher end model is simply wrong anyway you look at it. Creative's fault is also pushing the limits how much crap it can drop on our (consumers) head. They forgot the power and might of todays Internet. Consumer power nowadays can bring companies on edge of bankruptcy (apple) to overwhelming success or on opposite take a look at Media Defender ....

Since I'm not a Windows Vista user, I can't add my personal experience about this matter, however one thing Creative is always pissing me off (and trust me I have/had SB products since forever) is the lack of REAL SPD/IF out on board itself!! How hard is it ?? And Don't tell the hack you can do with mono 3.5mm plug - Its NOT Real SPD/IF since voltages differs from standard.

More info here

Update: http://boycottcreative.com/BoycottCreative.html

How to put video on Iphone?

In fact its quite easy just need to know few facts about Iphone:

• Iphone can support movies with resolution upto 640x480, however its own screen is only 480x320, so if you have no intentions of outputting it to TV no need of higher resolutions than native [480x320]
• Although Iphone supports several formats, the most "open" and easiest to work with is H.246/x264 in MP4 container.
  
• x264 Encoding DOES support SMP (Multiple Cores) and having Dual/Quad cores helps a LOT!
  
• MP4 (for Iphone) requires Audio in AAC-LC format
  
• There are several absolutely FREE tools to convert your movies to iPhone (HandBreak and Ripbot264 just to name a few)
  
• Althought Ripbot264 doesn't work with DVD images and HandBreak does, I'd demonstrate the steps using prior since I had better results using it and I'd consider using handbreak only in mention case above.

And now to main part:
Download and install RipBot264 or from here. All necessary tools are included.
Open the program and click on ADD Browse to locate your video file, Ripbot264 will take up to few minutes to analyze the file.
Change Video Profile to Iphone and leave Audio Profile at AAC-LC 128. Leave Mode to 2-Pass, and kbps (the bitrate) - i found 256 works good, so I just encode all my movies at this rate, brave souls among you might want to try to go lower.
Select output file [UNC (\\) paths are not supported!]
Next Click on Properties and Select on Crop - Automatically.
Next step is very important and a bit tricky - Click on "Preview Script". Hopefully you have Media Player Classic installed and Configured to play AVS files.
Open Video Properties/Details and write down Video size [something like 720x480].
Divide the numbers - This is your aspect ratio and now divide 480 by that ratio. This is going to be your final video height.
Close MPC and select custom in Size field -> 480 in width and pick Height closest to number you got.
OK, Done and Start.
Add to Itunes and Sync - you done!

Enjoy

A few basic suggestions on How to remove Spyware

Some time ago someone asked on Linkedin Question - how to remove a spyware/adaware. My answer was selected as best and here it is :

I spent nearly 3-4 months of work time last year cleaning Spyware/Adaware and Trojans..
Virus per se are not existing anymore, worms are really scarce and mostly a dead bread.
Now how to Get rid of 'em? Lavasoft/Adware - some what decent detection, but awful at removal Spybot - is a good as its support is - very limited - therefor detection and removal are only mediocre.
I tried AVG on several machines but I wasn't really impressed.
Both Norton, McAffee and CA are not even worth mention - completely useless and waste of your time, since being most popular they are prime target for anti-detection.
Best tools are manual (and FREE!!) ones - HiJackthis, Autoruns and LSPFix.
In some cases even booting in safe mode spyware module still remains residential and can't be removed by regular means - then the really heavy artillery comes into play : BartPE- it allows you to boot into "Live Windows" from CD - access your file system and erase ANY file - be very careful !

For Commercial products best guideline to stay away from big brands, instead find smaller, probably east europe made software - ESET NOD32 - is a great example. F-Prot and Kaspersky are decent choices as well. But Best commercial spyware removal package so far i worked with is Webroot's Spy Sweeper - HIGHLY Recommend IT! Too bad even Trial ver doesn't do removal... Oh eah, almost forgot - Microsoft Windows Defender - is ABSOLUTELY USELESS, POINTLESS I EVER SAW. I NEVER witnessed A SINGLE detection from it, even on most spyware infected machines. It's Update engine always gets broken for some reason. Needless to say - STAY AWAY!!!

P.S: Sometime, then new breed comes out, neither of tools can remove it, thou some still detect something fishy - Nod32 is good example. In this case - best course of action is Google the name of module of that pest and see if specialized removal tools are available - sometimes even Symantec makes decent single threat removal tools...

HP xw9300 32 bit XP Doesn't Use Memory Greater Than 2GB

Some of HP xw9300 Workstations we got here running 32 bit XP and some 64 bit, I noticed on the 32 bit ones memory shows up only 2 gig instead of 4. After searching on HP web site, I found this solution:

The solution is to “disable Memory Remapping in the BIOS.
Reboot the workstation
Press F10 at the Computer Setup Utility ( F10 ) screen.
Change the Advanced>Chipset/Memory>Memory Remapping to Disable.
Save and exit.