Monthly Archives: March 2009

How to Jailbreak an iPod Touch 2G

As you may know, I’ve got an iPod for Christmas. The problem is that if you want to develop something for it, you’ve to pay to Apple a license. Even if you pay, the only way for others to install your application is by using the App Store, which means that Apple has to approve your application.

Couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about how to Jailbreak the iPod to bypass these limitations. However, that method was tethered… in other words, you’re iPod wouldn’t be able to boot by itself; it would need a computer to do it.

Some days ago a full Jailbreak was released. I’ve followed a simple instructions to Jailbreak my iPod Touch 2G and I haven’t had any troubles. As soon as I’ve enough time (which will be in May) I’ll try to learn a little bit of Objective-C to develop something for it 🙂

If you’re on Mac, you can try the method at iClarified, but I didn’t test it.

CURL library for C# ( dotNet )

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Couple of days ago I needed to download files from a TFTP server. I remembered that there was a CURL binding for .Net, so I checked it.

It was powerful and complicated. I just wanted to download a bunch of files, no big deal. So I wrote a small and simple wrapper for CURL in C# to do it.

I don’t know if it can be useful, but I’ve uploaded the library and a Visual Studio Project demonstrating how to use it. Feel free to use it 😉

Prize at the Student Research Conference

Last Wednesday 11^th of March was the Student Research Conference. Organized by the University of Portsmouth, the conference is opened to all the students of the University. I’ve taken part in it by presenting my research on distributed filing system.

My presentation “Harnessing the power of Peer-to-Peer technology to create a secure and low-cost filing system” was elected as the best. That was a total surprise! I’ve never thought about winning the prize, firstly because my English, and secondly because the level was really high. However it seems like I underestimate myself 🙂

There was a lot of amazing projects. I found the work conducted by Mark Bollman and Waheed Bhatti on “Cellular Automata and Genetic Behaviour” and “Nucleus – peer to peer information sharing”, particularly interesting. I know it is unlikely for them to read this, but if somehow you manage the way through here, you’ve to know you’re awesome!

If someone is interested, my presentation can be downloaded in PPTX, PPT and ODP.

Linux Kernel with Intel Compiler

It has been a long time since the last time I wrote here. I’ve been working on my project and it is almost done… just two milestones more and it should be ready 🙂 However that’s not the topic of this post.

Yesterday I saw a piece of news about the progress of the LinuxDNA group. I’m not using Linux right now, but I used to, and if you know anything about it, you know that GCC is everywhere. The kernel and the vast majority of all the GNU applications have been designed to be compiled with GCC. The LinuxDNA group has been working to bring the power of Intel C/C++ Compiler to Linux.

Recently they have been capable of compile the kernel in a Gentoo. According to their data, compiling the kernel with the Intel Compiler boosts up to 40% for certain parts and an average of 8.5%.

I don’t have an extensive knowledge about compilers, but it sounds to me like a good research without practical use. Don’t take this wrong, it’s an amazing work, I’m just saying that I don’t think this will make a difference in our machines performance.

We’re using GCC because it’s extremely portable. You can cross-compile whatever you want, and you can use it to compile all your system for a bunch of different architectures. With Intel Compiler we will boost our system around 8.5%, but only for those who run Intel processors… even AMD is out of the target!

In my opinion, we should wait until more performance date will be available and then, think if it’s worth.

Be that as it may, it’s a great research and another option to boost up our system 😉