Law puts a halt on selling youth dirt bikes and ATVs

A new law is putting the brakes on youth dirt bikes and ATV’s. Lawmakers say the lead content in parts of off-road machines is too high and dangerous for children.

Dealerships filled with the newest in off-road vehicles are missing one big seller.

Jason Johnson/U Motors: “We can't sell a machine for a child 12 or under, currently.” Mike Hennebry/Wheels Inc: “Well, I kind of feel short changed on the whole situation.”

This comes after a temporary national ban on any ATV or dirt bike designed for children 12 and younger because some parts contain lead levels greater than 600 parts per million. And it has sellers fuming; one local company is losing 50 thousand dollars a year in sales.

Jason: “If there were a part on the machine that had lead, is the child going to eat the part off the machine? We don't think that that is normal.”

Until they get the OK to sell them again, dealerships in the F-M are either keeping their youth bikes on display or are wiping them off the floor completely.

And this ban is not only affecting sales, it could also hurt ridership. Kids could get on bigger, used bikes that aren't as suitable for them or not get into the sports at all.

Mike: “If you have a six year old and you want to introduce him to dirt biking, you'd have absolutely nothing to offer them at this point.”

Jason: “It's something I've enjoyed with my family and hope to pass on to my son, but now I don't know when or if that can happen.”

And the news may get worse for dealers, sales managers say they don't know if they'll be reimbursed by the manufacturers if the bikes are recalled.

Some youth bike manufacturers are getting around the law. Polaris has already sent out a new handbook for some of its vehicles, including new stickers that say no one, 12 and under, can operate this vehicle, allowing the dealers to sell the ATV.

Heavy Machinery Material Handling

Handling of heavy machinery is a task that requires specially designed equipment. Heavy machinery like pneumatic conveyors, milling machines and drill jigs are used in places like farms, docks and construction sites. It is difficult to transport this equipment from one place to another. This is when the powerful material handling machines like tractors, bulldozers, trucks and trailers are used.

The equipment used for handling heavy machinery varies, depending upon the location. Industrial trucks and tractors are used to handle heavy machinery and move material around warehouses, storage yards, factories, or construction sites. A typical industrial truck, often called a forklift, uses a hydraulic lifting mechanism and forks to move large and heavy objects. Industrial tractors are also available to pull trailers loaded with material, goods, or equipment within factories and warehouses or around outdoor storage areas.

Ship loading and unloading equipment, conveyors and hoists are used at docks. Specialized material-handling equipment such as shipping tank unloading equipment is also used in docks, to gauge or sample shipping tanks and test them for leaks.

Other heavy machinery handling equipment includes conveyors and mine cars that are widely used in mines.

Prior to taking a decision about the material handling equipment to be used, it is important to take into account the general characteristics of the equipment. One should then attempt to determine which equipment is best suited for the required heavy machinery to be handled.

It is advisable to consult the dealers before purchasing or leasing such expensive equipment. Several companies provide material handling solutions for heavy machinery through their websites. Online Business to Business (B2B) platforms that allow buyers to interact with several manufacturers and equipment leasing companies are an excellent option to find the best prices for the purchase or leasing of heavy machinery material handling equipment.

Material Handling provides detailed information on Material Handling, Material Handling Equipment, Material Handling Systems, Heavy Machinery Material Handling and more. Material Handling is affiliated with Walk Through Metal Detectors .

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jennifer_Bailey

Blockbuster, NCR to use DVD vending machines

DALLAS (AP) - Blockbuster and NCR today announced a pilot program to set up about 50 automated kiosks for DVD rentals.

Officials say the program could result in 10,000 kiosks within 18 months.

Dallas-based Blockbuster is the massive video rental chain.

NCR makes ATMs.

No word yet on where the first kiosks will be located.

Several smaller companies, including McDonald's subsidiary Redbox Automated Retail, have automated DVD rental kiosks in grocery stores, drug stores and McDonald's restaurants.

Blockbuster-branded kiosks initially will only do rentals, but could in the future also sell DVDs and video games, or accept downloads of new content.

Blockbuster showed off a downloading kiosk in May that could transfer movies to a portable media-playing device from Archos. The first 2 of those machines are expected to be used in Dallas this summer.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Snow Machines Fight Fire

RED LODGE - The fire is burning so close to Red Lodge Mountain so crews are trying out some unusual fire equipment.

irefighters are borrowing all of the resort's snow making machines to cover structures and land with as much water as they can. Crews say the machines can pump out more than 6,000 gallons of water an hour, which is a big help.

"They're working great. They're putting out a lot of water. There's huge man made lake up at the top of the ski hill that they use those snow machines in the winter anyway," said DNRC's Chris Davis.

Crews have used at least a dozen snow making machines non-stop since the fire started Saturday.

Stock Market Quote - Business News - Financial News

BEAVERTON, OR, Jul 31, 2008 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) -- The R&D group at a developer of wireless metrology devices for wafer processing equipment, CyberOptics Semiconductor, Inc. (CSI), has characterized a new MEMS sensor to improve by 10x and 3x the vertical accuracy and range of the company's latest incarnation of its wafer-like auto-leveling inclinometer for fabs, the WaferSense(TM) Auto Leveling System 2 (ALS2) Vertical, according to Dennis J. Bonciolini, the company's CTO.
Apps engineers at the company, a subsidiary of CyberOptics Corp. (CYBE:
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CYBE 9.95, +0.04, +0.4%) , report that, market-wide, fab engineers continue to employ longstanding manual-alignment techniques to determine the vertical inclination of wafer processing equipment such as ion implants and wet-station robots, according to Bonciolini.
The absence of more precise vertical inclination metrology data and station-to-station controls -- as tolerances continue to shrink -- effectively jeopardizes yield and device performance at ion implant and wet-station processes and causes engineers to take machines offline for prolonged re-calibration and troubleshooting maintenance, Bonciolini said.
"You really need insight into your equipment to rein in what have become significant margins of error in leveling vertical wafer alignments," Bonciolini said. "The data is basically going to improve downtime -- and eliminate any surprises -- and establish a clear relationship between inclination and yield."
Bonciolini added that the company's latest wireless auto-leveling device and software, LevelView(TM) and LevelReview(TM), are largely intended to allow fab engineers to obtain real-time vertical and horizontal inclination measurements. Engineers use the measurements to characterize equipment, conduct statistical analysis via log file data and establish uniform metrology standards for process equipment and preventative maintenance schedules.
The R&D group at CyberOptics Semiconductor worked to improve its wafer-like leveling device to "extend our reach in the fab" and "further automate production" of 300mm and 200mm wafers, Bonciolini said.
The company's WaferSense ALS2 Vertical improves the device's vertical accuracy from +/-0.5 degrees to +/-0.05 degrees and vertical range from +/-15 degrees to +/-50 degrees. The company also reduced the form factor of the device's carbon fiber composite housing to develop a light 300mm version. The light 300mm device weighs 200 grams, down from 240 grams, and is primarily designed to work on flat surfaces.
CyberOptics Semiconductor's WaferSense ALS2 Vertical is used as an alternative to the machinist levels, bubble levels and wired devices used by process engineers to calibrate equipment.
"When you start looking at the cost to shut down your process or damage wafers, eyeballing it just isn't effective," Bonciolini said.
The WaferSense ALS2 Vertical's key specifications and features include form factors of SEMI 200mm notch or flat and 300mm, horizontal accuracy of +/- 0.03 degrees within +/-7 degrees, horizontal resolution of +/-0.002 degrees within +/-14 degrees, operating temperature of 20 to 70 degrees Celsius, height of 6.3mm, weight of 150gm at 200mm, 240gm at 300mm and 200gm at 300mm (CL version), wireless Bluetooth link, four hour run-time per battery charge and use with Windows 2000, XP and Vista.
The WaferSense ALS2 Vertical package includes the leveling wafer, USB-compatible link, LevelView(TM) and LevelReview(TM) graphical software CD, charging case and suitcase.
The WaferSense family of products includes the Auto Leveling System (ALS), Auto Teaching System (ATS), Auto Gapping System (AGS) and Auto Vibration System (AVS). Each device follows the processing life of a wafer.
About CyberOptics Semiconductor, Inc.
CyberOptics Semiconductor develops automated products that seamlessly measure critical parameters in semiconductor fabrication processes and equipment. The company's pioneering WaferSense(TM) line includes wireless metrology devices for vibration, leveling, gapping and teaching semiconductor process equipment. The company is the largest producer of reflective wafer-mapping sensors and a leading provider of frame grabber machine vision boards under its HAMA Sensors(TM) and Imagenation(TM) brands. CyberOptics Semiconductor is a subsidiary of CyberOptics Corp. (CYBE:
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CYBE 9.95, +0.04, +0.4%) , one of the world's leading providers of process yield and throughput improvement solutions for electronic assembly and semiconductor capital equipment companies. For information, visit http://www.cyberopticssemi.com/, e-mail CSsales@cyberoptics.com or call 800-366-9131.
"Safe Harbor" Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: Statements regarding the Company's anticipated performance are forward-looking and therefore involve risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to: market conditions in the global SMT and semiconductor capital equipment industries; increasing price competition and price pressure on our product sales, particularly our SMT systems; the level of orders from our OEM customers; the availability of parts required for meeting customer orders; the effect of world events on our sales, the majority of which are from foreign customers; product introductions and pricing by our competitors; unanticipated costs or delays associated with the transition of engineering and manufacturing for SMT Systems to Singapore and other factors set forth in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Note: all trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

New market place for used trucks by MinuteMachine

(PRLEAP.COM) MinuteMachine.com, one of the leading Internet marketplaces for used construction equipment, has just released it new website www.MinuteTruck.com to enlarge their previous offer.

The international market place for used construction machinery www.MinuteMachine.com, where dealers and final customers can publish second hand equipment for sale, is online since 2006 and had an astonishing pace of development during the last two years. Today the Internet Portal receives about 16.000 visitor’s every day and more than 20.000 used machines are advertised.

Because of this huge enthusiasm and demand, the company will open up their market to the transport and commercial vehicle sector.
The CEO Inga Gerstenberg said "During the last two years we put all our effort in the construction machinery. We achieved in a very short period of time being one of the leading market places worldwide. Now it is time to be concerned with a new strategy to expand our repertoire to other branches of the industry sector."

MinuteMachine and MinuteTruck would like to facilitate companies around the world to establish contacts with potential customers, a B2B concept especially for a niche markets like construction machinery business or transport business.

The company already received an important feedback of the new strategy, because yet there are advertised more than 6.000 used trucks and trailers at MinuteTruck within a few weeks.

MinuteTruck is a market place for used trucks, where dealers and final customers can publish their used trucks and contact with a worldwide audience.

Electronic Voting Machines: Are They Safe?

Right since its first trial in 1982 in a bye-election in Kerala, India, doubts have been expressed by stakeholders like contesting candidates and political parties as to whether Electronic Voting Machines are safe and tamper-proof. Even though use of EVMs was made universal from the 2004 Parliamentary General Elections, as recently as on 20 June 2008, on the eve of municipal elections in the state of West Bengal, political rivals clashed over the issue of testing EVMs and a 12-hour strike was called in Burdwan by three political parties. After the 23 February 2008 Assembly Elections in the state of Tripura, the Tripura Congress demanded a National Police probe on suspected EVM manipulations. On 9 June 2008, a delegation of Trinamool Congress urged the Election Commission of India not to use EVMs in the 2009 Parliamentary Elections. In respect of the 2007 Manipur elections, an application was filed under the Right to Information Act to get precise data on the specific EVMs used. Television talk shows and long essays in newspapers have been keeping the debate alive: are EVMs truly safe and immune from high tech rigging?

The concerns expressed through these discussions and debates are varied. One line of argument compares Assembly polls that used EVMs with Panchayat elections conducted with paper ballots and concludes that better results were obtained by opposition parties where EVMs were not used. Another line of argument goes on to state that it is theoretically possible to reprogramme the resident software to favour one particular political party only. Then there are those who refer to introduction of upgraded versions of the machine to hint that the earlier designs were faulty. Yet another class of doubts stem from the controversies over voting technology in America's presidential election in 2000 and alludes to a wide variety of literature available in the public domain doubting the Diebold-based touch-screen voting machines used in the US. The last group bases its objections on the apparently very forceful logic that if indeed India’s EVMs are so good, why aren’t these adopted by the international community? Why do almost all advanced democratic countries still rely on the good old ballot papers?

A basic reason for a large part of the debate surrounding use of EVMs is that insides of an EVM cannot be seen like an empty ballot box. The transparency with EVMs is demonstrated by conducting a mock poll in each polling booth before the voting actually starts. In this mock poll phase, each polling agent of contesting candidates presses few buttons of the EVM after which the votes recorded are counted and tallied. This is repeated if necessary and after satisfying all agents, the contents of the machine are cleared a final time, the cover concealing the ‘clear’ and ‘results’ buttons is closed and the agents are invited to put their seals on the lock.

But isn’t it possible in theory at least, so the argument continues, to so programme the software of the chip inside an EVM that after the first 100 votes or so – to take account of the mock poll - all subsequent votes could be recorded in favour of only one political party? Even without looking at the software technicalities, it is easy to see why this would not be possible by noting that ballot papers are pasted on its balloting unit alongside the buttons while the sequence of names written on the ballot paper is arranged alphabetically in three groups of recognised political parties, registered parties and independents. This sequence is determined after the list of validly nominated candidates is finalized by the Returning Officer, usually only a few days ahead of the poll, and is thus distinctly different in different constituencies. In other words, since it is not possible that candidates of party X appear only at the, say, fifth button everywhere, even a hypothetically rigged set of EVMs cannot ensure party X’s victory everywhere. Besides, the commissioning of the EVMs is done in full view of the agents of the candidates and the whole operation is video-graphed. For added transparency, the EVMs are assigned randomly to different constituencies and the serial numbers of the machines are carefully recorded for reference. After the ‘candidate setting’, the EVMs are placed in a dedicated strong room with 24x7 armed guards under the watchful vigil of polling agents till their deployment in voting booths.

In a much publicized event soon after the General Assembly Elections in West Bengal in 2006, a public demonstration on how EVMs could be manipulated was organised at the massive Science City auditorium in Kolkata by a group of people who alleged that the just concluded elections used rigged EVMs. It turned out to be a damp squib where only a Power-Point presentation projected few dummy EVM models and some hypothetical scenarios of hi-tech rigging of EVMs. “We never said that EVMs had been actually tampered with” remarked one prominent organizer later. “We merely pointed out that there is a theoretical possibility that this could be done.” In a 2005 case in the High Court of Bombay, even a computer expert of the petitioner challenging the use of EVMs admitted to the Court that no one could hack into the EVM system because the hardware and software used in EVMs were not known.

Nobody has been able as yet to prove that EVMs can be doctored or tampered with.

The Election Commission of India goes to extraordinary lengths to ensure that the secrecy of the hardware and software in the EVM is maintained. The machines are manufactured only by two public sector enterprises, one of which is under the Ministry of Defence and the other with the Department of Electronics, Government of India. The micro-controller chips are non-erasable and are encoded in machine language that cannot be understood by human beings. The encoding and chip manufacturing is done not in India but in a foreign country and its details are a business secret. The memory is non-volatile and even if the battery is removed, no data is lost. If the connecting cable is damaged or cut, the letters “LE” (Link Error) are displayed. If the memory device is removed, the micro controller detects it and declares that the machine is in an error state. The encrypted code and data is unchangeable and indelible by anybody, even by the manufacturer. Little wonder that the Election Commission has been challenging anybody to show them how to rig these EVMs.

It is therefore no surprise that the Supreme Court, High Courts, Government Standing Committees and Expert Technical Groups have over the years subjected the EVMs to the strictest scrutiny and found them to be totally secure and safe. The Goswami Committee on Electoral Reforms that was set up in 1990 included a report of a technical sub-committee consisting of experts from Defence Research and Development Organisation, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and Electronics Research and Development Centre, Trivandrum in which the tamper-proof functioning of the EVMs was fully established. In a Supreme Court case of 2004, the Court examined a scientist who was a co-designer of the EVM as an expert court witness; in its judgment, the Court observed that the EVM was a great invention, a national pride. The same year saw the nationwide roll-out of EVMs during the General Parliamentary Elections 2004 involving 670 million electors.

To understand why the EVMs used in India are quite different from the touch screen voting machines used in other countries like the USA, it is necessary to look at the origins and raison-d’être of the Indian EVMs. The design of the EVM was mandated in India purely by its own needs: to capture and reflect accurately the voters’ intentions, to save money and to make it difficult for miscreants to stuff ballot boxes with bogus unused ballot papers in the dying hours of the poll day. In the paper ballot era, ambiguous or multiple markings on ballots resulted in invalid votes and it was not unusual to find that the number of invalid votes were greater than the margin of victory. Complaints of deliberate counting errors by allegedly biased counting officials were also common and led to frequent recounting pleas and court cases. Reduction in consumption of thousands of tonnes of paper on economical and environmental grounds was also a strong motivation. Because each vote occupied a prescribed predetermined time interval in the EVM, quick loading of false votes were not possible. Above all, the initial design was consciously made to be as close to the system of marking on ballot papers as had been evolved from the third General Elections in 1962 so that the average voter had no difficulty in exercising her franchise.

The Indian EVMs are thus strictly stand-alone devices that record people’s voting intentions accurately and store it in its non-volatile memory till they are counted. The EVMs still have to be physically carried under armed police escort to the counting centres for machine-by-machine result counting in presence of agents of candidates, much like the ballot paper days. In contrast, in all other countries where e-voting is attempted through voting machines, the emphasis is on networking, centralized data transfers through public communication channels and for enabling remote voting by people who are away from their polling areas on the date of poll. In such a scenario, in spite of various levels of security firewalls, there is a larger possibility of hacking from anywhere in the network pipeline. The concerns for using EVMs are thus overwhelmingly different in countries other than India where no networks is attempted, nor any non-resident voting permitted, except for a very few government employees who are entitled to vote by post. Little wonder, therefore, not many advanced countries are keen to adopt the India’s stand-alone EVMs. To extrapolate the controversies over EVMs in other countries to the Indian context would thus be rather fallacious.

Why then do controversies continue? A survey conducted by the Centre for Study of Developing Society in 1999 indicated that 90.6% of the public preferred the EVMs in the 1998 assembly polls spread over two states where EVMs were used. It can be safely presumed that this figure has gone up now. Even so, few skeptics possibly remain. It is necessary to also win them over by publishing white papers and launching a carefully crafted awareness programme. For the just-defeated crest-fallen political candidate, however, the EVM can be a scapegoat to nurse his wounded ego: we think of the legal fight instituted in the Kerala High Court by a contesting candidate challenging the first ever use of EVMs in 1982. He won the election and lost the case. His political rival lost the election and filed an appeal.

It has been said that compared to the shiny touch-screen Diebold-system based US voting machine, the Indian EVM is rather ‘simplistic’. Perhaps. But it is reliable and robust. Born in India, it understands its needs. It can be easily transported in its plain plastic carry-case to the remotest villages through the heat and dust of rural roads. It can be set up by a village school teacher acting as a polling officer on the election day, helping him by displaying messages whenever the cables are incorrectly connected or the batteries run low. It works without electrical power or complex networks of connectivity. It is friendly even to literacy-challenged voter. It can accurately record and count our votes. It can be trusted to keep our votes safe and secret. It may not be much to look at but it is difficult not to be a bit proud of this rather lovable little machine.

Voting machines ready

Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson stopped in Warren County Clerk Dot Owens’ office Thursday to display and demonstrate the optical-scanning voting machines that will be used here this fall.

Grayson’s aide wheeled in a waist-high black plastic case. Most of that is a bin into which paper ballots drop after they’re read. The actual scanner is a laptop-sized device on top. They brought sample ballots, with small rectangular boxes next to names for party straight-ticket and the presidential race.

Deputy clerks and two members of the Warren County Board of Elections - secretary Mary Stahl and new Democratic board member Harold Miller - looked on as Grayson described the machine.

Voters will be asked to completely fill the box next to the candidate of their choice. Pencils or pens can be used.

Miller asked what will happen if a box is only partially filled.

“It looks to me like that would be a problem for some people,” he said.

The machine successfully reads those “99 percent of the time,” Grayson said. If it can’t, clerks can still count the paper ballot by hand, he said.

Owens said the machine will take unmarked ballots or those that it can’t read, marking them as “undervotes.”

“The only way it’ll reject it is if it looks like you’re voting for two or three people in the same race,” she said.

If a ballot is rejected and returned to the voter, that person can get a replacement from poll workers, Owens said.

The machine not only tallies the vote and keeps the paper copy, it scans a double-sided image as a backup, Grayson said. Owens said that since the actual scanning goes so quickly, people can fill out their ballots anywhere in the voting room and feed them all through one machine.

Counties are phasing out old voting systems, but Warren County will still have the handicap-accessible eSlate electronic screen machines available in each precinct, Grayson said. Those and the new scanners, called eScans, are made by the same company. That should simplify and speed clerks’ vote-counting, he said.

“The machines work very well together,” Grayson said.

At a secretary of states’ conference last week, Grayson said, he was told that by 2012 Congress will probably require all elections to leave a paper trail.

Jefferson County has used paper scanners for 20 years, and probably half of all voters in the country will use such machines this fall, he said. Seven Kentucky counties used paper-ballot scanners in this year’s primary, and about 30 are expected to this fall, Grayson said.

“The voters really liked it, the poll workers liked it,” he said. “It really went better than we hoped.”

Owens said the machines have already been used for local absentee ballots, with no problems.

The machines’ cost will be reimbursed by the state, through federal funds from the 2002 Help America Vote Act, Grayson said. The $4,500 price for one machine is available for each precinct, he said. Almost every county has signed a contract to get money for this over the next two years, Grayson said.

Review: Mocha VNC and Mocha VNC Lite for iPhone

As I walk the vast expanses of this Macworld Oregon Branch Office (otherwise known as my home), there are times when it’s useful to see what’s happening on a given machine—did my never-ending iPhone backup process end? Did the backup of the mini generate any errors? Is that file upload to the server done yet? Answering these questions used to require me sitting in front of one of the Macs in the house—using screen sharing, I could then connect to the machine in question and see what it was doing.
Now, with the App Store, though, all I need is a first-generation iPhone with the 2.0 software and MochaSoft’s Mocha VNC (or the free Mocha VNC Lite version). Mocha VNC allows you to connect to machines running OS X, Windows, and Linux using the industry-standard virtual network computing desktop sharing system. There are built-in VNC servers in OS X 10.4 and 10.5, so you can connect to your Macs with a minimal amount of work.

There are some limits with Mocha VNC—it only supports a single monitor on the remote system, and the maximum resolution of that monitor is 1,680-by-1,200. You can, however, zoom in and out on the screen as you would with a web page, and display the remote screen in portrait or landscape mode simply by turning your iPhone or iPod touch. Buttons along the bottom of the screen provide access to features such as the on-screen keyboard, Mocha VNC’s menus, a right mouse button, and a button to control what happens when you drag a finger across the screen—one mode moves the remote mouse pointer, the other just scrolls around on your zoomed-in display.

There aren’t many differences between the free and paid version of Mocha VNC, but the differences that exist are significant. The biggest limitation in the free version is that the only provided keyboard is the standard iPhone virtual keyboard—so no function keys, and no other special keys. (There are onscreen buttons for Control and Command, but not Option.) While this works OK for controlling Macs, you really need Control-Alt-Delete to work with Windows boxes, because otherwise you can’t login.

The full version has a second keyboard that contains all the function keys, the Windows key, page navigation keys, and two special Windows meta-keys: Control-Alt-Delete and Alt-F4. (There’s still no on-screen Option key, however.) With the paid version, you also get a dedicated on-screen right-mouse button, and support for macros (recorded bits of text you can send to the remote host with a couple of taps).

I found the speed of Mocha VNC to be decent on my home’s wireless network. The initial screen draw on a larger screen took some time, but updates were relatively quick, and typing worked at a decent, but not great, speed. However, because there’s no real keyboard or mouse, you won’t want to tackle any complex projects with your iPhone or iPod touch—it’s just too hard to work the buttons for the virtual keyboard and mouse. Instead, Mocha VNC is best used as a monitoring tool, or to do something fast and simple on the networked machine, such as starting a download or running Software Update.

While MochaVNC supports encrypted transmission of the VNC connection’s password, your actual session data is not encrypted—so this is a tool best used within a local network, behind a firewall. The program would be more useful if it supported data encryption for the entire data stream, and not just the initial connection password. On Mocha VNC’s FAQ page, the developer explains the lack of support for encryption by writing, “There is an issue with exporting 128 encryption from the USA, where the App Store server is located. 128 bits is seen as a dangerous weapon.” (Mocha VNC is located in Denmark.)
The biggest issue I have with Mocha VNC (both the full and lite versions) is that it seems to peg the AppleVNCServer process at nearly 100-percent CPU utilization much of the time. I tested this with connections to both my Mac mini and my Mac Pro, and it happened on both machines, not every single time, but quite often. I even reinstalled Mocha VNC, just to be sure something wasn’t wrong with my version of the program, but the high CPU utilization persisted. In practice, today’s CPUs have enough horsepower that you won’t notice this issue unless you ask the remote Mac to do something CPU-intensive, such as encoding a QuickTime video. However, it does mean that you may find the fan on your Mac really running fast the next time you walk past the machine—which is exactly how I discovered this CPU utilization issue.

There’s no apparent reason for the CPU utilization to be so high—connecting from one Mac to another with screen sharing, for instance, doesn’t drive the AppleVNCServer process to anywhere near 100 percent. Connecting to my Mac Pro from my MacBook Pro, as a test, led to the AppleVNCServer process generally using between 5 and 15 percent of the CPU, not 100 percent. (And that’s displaying two monitors at full resolution, versus one at a maximum of 1,680-by-1,200.) Clearly Mocha VNC is doing something different that’s driving the CPU utilization up, and hopefully this can be addressed in a future update.

If you have a lot of Macs and/or other machines in your home, and you want to keep an eye them from your iPhone or iPod touch, then the full version is worth the $6 cost. The added keyboard keys and right-mouse screen key in the full version are both very useful—and the extra keyboard keys are a requirement if you want to work with Windows machines. However, even the free version may be sufficient if you’d simply like the ability to occasionally view the screen of a Mac on your network. You won’t want to use either version for large, complex projects, but for simpler stuff, Mocha VNC can save you a walk down the hallway.