Jamie's Random Musings

Some very interesting reading in this story about Windows inherent lack of security being exploited. Read it and make your own judgment. I can hear the Windows apologists' shrieks now... "correctly configured, thoroughly protected, with Anti-Virus software, Anti-Spyware protection, Internet Security suites, blah, blah, blah...". For me, the "real world" situation is simple. These computers get used by ordinary people every day. Ranging from very young to very old, and everywhere in between. Those users don't want to invest something approaching the cost of the computer itself in additional software, in a (futile) attempt to glue "security" onto Windows. If your only answers are "solutions" which require knowledge and finances at the level of a corporate data center, then in fact you have no answers for average home users, so they are being left at the mercy of Internet attackers, and those attacks are likely to succeed a significant percentage of the time. The result? Over 90% of email traversing the Internet today is spam, or virus-infected, or both. Massive botnets assembled and waiting to launch the next attack on command. Spyware found on ridiculously high percentages of Windows systems.

Windows? Security? Clearly an oxymoron.

jw 9/2/2010

The final release of Linux Mint 8 (Helena) KDE Community Edition is available for download. I wrote about the Release Candidate of this a couple of weeks ago, so I won't add too much more now. I'm still more of a Gnome desktop user than KDE, but as KDE 4 gets better and better, and combined with the excellent integration with Linux Mint, this one is a real alternative for me.



The first thing to be aware of is that with KDE added on top of the Linux Mint distribution, the size of the Live Image is about 1.1Gb. Of course that's too large to fit on a CD, so we are talking about a LiveDVD here. That shouldn't be a problem these days, but it is worth knowing in advance.

For those who are not familiar with Linux Mint already, it is based on the latest Ubuntu distribution (9.10 in this case), with a lot of extremely useful and easy-to-use "Mint-utilites" added, and a lot of other additional packages and programs which make it a lot more useful "out of the box". For FOSS purists, be aware that the standard Mint distributions include various proprietary and non-FOSS software, but now they also have a "Universal Edition" which they describe as "without including proprietary software, patented technologies or support for restricted formats". (There is not a Universal Mint KDE edition that I know of, however).

There is a good "What's New" document that gives a lot of information about the new release. So, I am now in the process of downloading the image, burning it to a DVD, and installing it on some of my notebook/netbook/nettop systems. I will post again here when I have it running on a few systems. One thing I can already say, I like the graphical installer even better than the standard Mint (Ubuntu) installer. It may be that this is the same one used by Kubuntu, I haven't installed that in quite a long time so I don't know what it looks like any more. But this is nice, clean, easy to use and easy to understand.

Enjoy!

jw 7/2/2010

It seems there was another round of connectivity/reliability problems at Skype this past weekend. From their own Heartbeat Blog:

Some of you who've just tried opening Payment In Client window, making a call to Online number, making a purchase or using any other service, may have noticed some difficulties to do so. You may have received some error such as "Internal error" from the web or "Check your connection" from the Skype Client

Of course, as always, the entry concludes with empty promises to investigate and "share information". This is exactly the same empty promise that was made for the entry "Problems signing in, making calls to landlines and mobiles" on Jan 29, and the entry "Sign in server problems" on Jan 21. All three are marked "Resolved", with no additional information provided about how, why or what went wrong. I suppose that Skype's idea of "sharing information" with their "beloved customers" is adding "Resolved" to the blog entry title.

The positive side of this is that these sorts of unexplained problems are making it a lot easier for me to convince my friends who are still using Skype what a load of unreliable rubbish it really is, and to get them to get rid of it.

Of course, I can't tell people "ditch Skype" without an option, so the two places I point them are ooVoo (my favorite, a good product with good support) and TokBox, a newer product that seems to be gaining a good following.

jw 2/2/2010

Let's take a different approach. Instead of looking at what the Apple iPad has, and what can or can not be done with it, let's take a brief look at what it doesn't have, but probably should have:

- Webcam. Come on, this is a complete, total, absolute no-brainer. The thing absolutely screams for a webcam. Was the basic unit already so expensive that they couldn't stand the incremental cost?

- GPS receiver. This is just about as obvious as the camera. One of the basic apps is a map utility... and it isn't able to figure out where you are? Maybe I'm misunderstanding or overlooking something...

- An original name. Note that I have said "Apple iPad" everywhere above, to make sure there is no confusion with any of the several other devices already available with the same name. I can't imagine that this was carelessness, that they didn't know the name was being used already, but the only other explanation is arrogance, they just decided what name they wanted with complete disregard for the others. That would surprise me just about as much, though, if they knew they were going to have to battle Fujitsu for the name - another company with a lot of lawyers on the payroll.

- Normal/Standard external connections. The use that springs to mind is digital photography, getting pictures from a camera to the Apple iPad. No SD/MMC slot, and no USB port? I have heard there is an "iPod port", whatever that is, and one will be able to buy an "adapter" for either flash card or USB connection, or perhaps both, but how much will that cost, and who wants yet another dongle to have to keep track of?

- Keyboard. Yes, I know there is (or will be) a "dock" which will have a keyboard, but how much will that cost, especially compared to the base cost of the unit itself, and while that might be ok at home, who wants to have to take a dock along when traveling? There are a lot of nice, small, light, portable keyboards available - see previous comment about lack of standard connections.

- Normal phone calls. Am I correct in understanding that although this thing has a 3G Broadband Wireless chip included, you can't use it to make ordinary phone calls? Here we go again - are we assuming that everyone who buys one of these already owns an iPhone, so they don't want telephone capability?

- Adobe Flash playing. Steve Jobs might choose to ignore the huge blue square in the middle of the web page he was showing, but a lot of other people noticed it. A whole lot more will notice the lack of Flash capability when they start using it, too, and the number and volume of howls will increase.

- Multitasking. I've ranted about this already, so I will just add here - who thinks the first users of this thing won't want to have Twitter/FaceBook/MySpace/Browser all active at the same time?

These are only the most obvious things I could think of. Add to the list less common but perhaps equally desirable things like some sort of protection for the screen, and a changeable battery pack (I'm assuming the battery pack is sealed within the unit, as on the iPod and iPhone). I know that at least a few of the things I mentioned above can be "solved" by purchasing add-ons, but if getting what are essentially the basics doubles the cost of the unit, that needs to be taken into consideration when making the purchasing decision, doesn't it?

Have a nice weekend.

jw 29/1/2010

I am amazed at how little "excited chatter" there has been today, after the announcement of the iPad yesterday. I have to admit, I didn't pay much attention yesterday, as I understand it is not going to be available in Europe for some time, and it's not my kind of a device anyway (no keyboard = no Jamie, thanks very much). But I was still prepared for everyone to be doing back-flips today, more or less as they were the day after the original iPhone was announced, or even the MacBook Air for that matter. Maybe I've just missed the hoopla, but it seems very subdued to me.

So, what's the story? Is it boring, or are there just not enough details yet to make it exciting? Is it the wrong product at the wrong time (in which case it will go down in history and the "Newton II"), or is it not really a "new" product at all (in which case it will go down in history as the "iPod Touch on Steroids"). Or is it so great that everyone is just dumbfounded, and can't even think of the right words to express their feelings?

Anyway, here are the things I would like to know:

- Battery life: should it come with a very long extension cord?

- Screen quality: this includes both resolution and readability under varying lighting conditions.

- Durability: should it come with a roll of Duct Tape?

- Keyboard: Will anyone in their right mind be able to type in a long email (or blog posting), and still be in their right mind when they finish?

- Multi-tasking: Does it have real multi-tasking, open to everyone, or is Apple once again holding back the keys to the kingdom for themselves?

jw 28/1/2010