Blog Jones

WARNING: Geekiness Ahead.

Well, I finally installed Ubuntu, relatively user-friendly version of linux, on my new desktop. I picked up a new hard drive (found a 160 gig SATA drive for $40 at Circuit City) and popped in the install CD.

Since the last time I installed Ubuntu on an old 600Mhz PC, the developers of Ubuntu have upgraded to a new version which  makes the install process even easier than it was before. After I answered some simple questions (like “What time zone are you in?”), it formatted the new hard drive and installed itself.

When I restarted my computer, instead of booting into Windows directly, a menu popped up asking whether I wanted to load Ubuntu or Windows. Into Ubuntu I went, ready to install the drivers for my wireless network card. I knew from previous experience that the card needed a little bit of driver juju (in the form of the ndiswrapper program) to work with Linux, so I thought I was ready to get things going.

Things went downhill pretty rapidly. First off, ndiswrapper is not installed by default in Ubuntu, so you face the paradox of needing to get onto the internet before you can get onto the internet. So, I popped open my laptop, downloaded the file, and put it onto my USB keychain. But when I plugged it into the desktop, nothing happened. A good hour of attempted diagnosis later, I was ready to give up.

I decided to try Kubuntu, which is another version of Ubuntu. No luck. I had given up on the project entirely, but I decided to try one more thing. When I had first downloaded Ubuntu/Kubuntu, I had downloaded the 64-bit versions of the software, since my AMD Athlon 64 processor can handle that.

Turns out that the 64-bit versions of Ubuntu and Kubuntu aren’t quite capable as the normal 32-bit versions, as there are a number of programs that don’t work properly in that version of the operating system. As soon as I installed the 32-bit version of Ubuntu, my keychain drive worked fine, and everything seems to be in order now.

So, my advice is to avoid the 64-bit version of Ubuntu for now. Maybe when they fix the USB drivers, it’ll be better.

…

On the same lines, there’s been a lot of discussion lately about whether or not Ubuntu is user-friendly enough for “regular users” to use instead of Windows. I think this has a shot at being user-friendly enough, provided that a tech-savvy person installs it.

Right now, there are a lot of little things that most users would not be happy about. For example, MP3’s aren’t supported out of the box due to licensing issues. It’s easy enough to get them supported (using Easy Ubuntu), but most users expect to be able to play MP3’s right away. And if there are any problems (such as the wireless networking not working properly right away), expect to spend a while googling for an answer, especially if you are new to linux.

But, once the system is set up, it should be pretty easy to use. In addition, Linux is every bit as capable as Windows for most applications (with the notable exception of games). It even comes installed with the Open Office suite, which do the same things as Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Outlook, as well as with Firefox and a media player. There’s even a dictionary and Solitaire. Based on what you get when you first install the operating system, you actually get more from Linux than you do from Windows.

It’s also virus/spyware-free, so there’s no need to run security software every week.

All in all, there’s a lot of advantages to giving your grandma a computer running Ubuntu. You just tell her “click here to write a letter; click there to go to the Internet” and it will work, and you won’t have to worry about her downloading spyware onto her computer accidentally. You’ll probably still want to warn her about sending your inheritance to those nice people in Nigeria though.

Blogged with Flock

An amusing children’s tale.

Blogged with Flock

The thing I least like about shopping in old-fashioned brick and mortar stores is my inability to easily comparison shop like I can online. When I buy a product online, I can go hit Pricegrabber or Amazon and find out if I’m getting the best possible price for what I want. But in the meatspace, I don’t have that ability.

Or at least, I didn’t until now. Yesterday, I discovered TicTap, a nifty service that lets you search Amazon via your cell phone. Just text-message their phone number (763-807-3927) with the UPC code (no dashes or spaces), ISBN number, or keyword that describes the product you want to search for. In a few moments, you’ll receive a response with the price on Amazon, the number of reviews it has received, and the average rating out of five stars that it has received from users.

It’s a free service, except for whatever your cell provider charges you for text messages.

(Via Lifehacker).

Blogged with Flock

I may have just discovered my new favorite browser. Flock, a browser built around blogging and social networking sites like del.icio.us (bookmarks sharing) and flickr (photo sharing), looks like it would make web publishing exceedingly easy. Right now, I’m typing this in Flock’s blog editor window, accessible via a toolbar button. I was able to upload the following photo to Flickr by dragging it from Explorer onto my Photos Toolbar.

The cool thing was that it popped up a window asking for description information (title, tags, description) and asked me if I wanted to resize it so that it wouldn’t take up so much of my 20MB/month upload limit. (The $25/year “premium” upgrade to Flickr is definitely going on the birthday list.)

It also integrates Flock’s bookmarks with the del.icio.us, which I’ve begun to use as my primary bookmarking site anyways. Flock even has pretty good integrated RSS reader that I need to play with for a while.

Perhaps best of all, it’s based on Firefox originally, so it’s got the security you can’t get from IE and extensibility that you can’t get from Opera (although Opera 9.0 is pretty neat with the integrated bittorrent).

I had played around with Flock a while ago when the first alpha versions were coming out, and it has come a long way since then. This is Beta 0.7, so it may still have some bugs, but it’s definitely worth a look when you have some time to play with it.

technorati tags:flock, review

Blogged with Flock

Would you like a complete computer that could fit in a standard wall socket? Of course you would. It’s also energy-efficient: it can be powered by a network cable. Of course, the downside is that the computer isn’t very powerful. The idea is to plug a screen, keyboard, mouse, and speakers into it, then connect to a central server that does all the hard work of processing your files. But still, quite cool.

Story number two: How would you like to wear this thing?

It’s a jet pack. They’re finally here!

Finally: A 65-year-old woman, standing in her kitchen, praying for the safety of her family as they travelled in a storm, survived a lightning strike. Make of that answer to prayer what you will.

UPDATE: Fixed missing quotation mark that ate part of the post.

I just realized that I had not yet mentioned the new computer I built just after graduation.

Isn’t it pretty? I think so. It’s also very, very fast, at least as compared to my laptop. <geekmode>It runs on a AMD Athlon 64 3500+, using a FoxConn NF4SK8AA-8KRS motherboard. It has 2.5 gigs of RAM and single 256MB XFX GeForce 7600 GT XXX video card. Both the board and the card are SLI capable, meaning that in a few months, if I feel the itch to upgrade, I can pick up an identical video card (which will hopefully be cheaper by then) and plug it in, instantly (almost) doubling my video speed. All this wholesome goodness, plus DVD burner, floppy drive, and 250 gig hard drive are stuffed into the Antec Sonata II case, a beautiful, shiny black case that attracts fingerprints faster than a private investigator with a bottle of talcum powder.</geekmode>

It’s a very nice computer, paid for (mostly) by graduation presents and careful selection of items with rebates and sales. I just received the last piece today: My new flat panel monitor which I found at the astonishingly low price of $99 after rebates. It’s not a bad monitor either; no dead pixels, and the colors look good to my untrained eye. So, this is what my “workstation” looks like now:

I love it.

“Today’s scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.”
- Nikola Tesla

(Via Google Personalized Home Page)

I have just played the best strategy game ever made. Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords came out this week. I was sorely tempted to buy it on Tuesday, but I knew, I knew, that I would get nothing done for the rest of the week if I did. So I waited until yesterday, after school, after work, after the revival service at church… Finally, I was able to start playing last night.

This game is everything Master of Orion III should have been. These guys have done an incredible job.

GalCiv II is a turn based strategy game, where you start off with a single planet, a survey ship, and a colony ship and you go try to explore and expand into the galaxy, research new technology, and even get into intergalactic wars with other races.

The game has all kinds of great features that you don’t normally see in these games. For example, not only can you design your own ships in the sense of choosing what weapons, engines, etc. go on it, but you can customize how it looks. The ship design engine is amazing.

Stardock did a great job of polishing the game too. Not only are the graphics superb, but the attention to detail in the gameplay is excellent as well. For example, in most of these games you can trade technologies with other races. In those games, you can sometime give them obsolete technology along with current technology to get them to give you more stuff. In GalCiv II, you can’t–the opposing race will say ^~~It wouldn’t really do us much good to have that obsolete technology, now would it?^~~.

I love it. It’s $40, available at your local retailers and via download from Stardock.

According to the AP:

“The ability to really withhold information no longer exists,” Gates told a government forum on the Internet.
…
But the spread of free, private e-mail enabled users to disseminate information anyway, Gates said.

“You may be able to take a very visible Web site and say that something shouldn’t be there, but if there’s a desire by the population to know something … it’s going to get out very broadly” via e-mail, Gates said.

The internet has killed censorship. Bill Gates gets it.

Orwell’s 1984 society will never happen to an internet-connected society.

Well, virtually. See it on the U.S. News and World Report website.

One of the best innovations to come out of the computer industry in the last few years is USB: It’s small (esp. when compared with, say, a parallel printer port), and, more importantly, it’s universal: I can plug my thumbdrive into my laptop, my linux machine, and a Macintosh, and they all know how to handle it.

Now Belkin (and other companies) are going to take that innovation one step farther with wireless USB.

Can you imagine how cool this is going to be?

According to Gizmodo, the Belkin CableFree USB Hub will run at speeds 100 times faster than BlueTooth. It is scheduled to come out this spring, and will cost $130.

When the price drops below $50, I’m definitely going to buy one.

One thing I almost immediately wished for when I started using my linux machine was a way to use my keyboard and mouse with both it and my laptop at the same time. I wanted to be able to move the mouse off the edge of my monitor and onto my laptop’s screen.

It seems I’m not the only one: Synergy, a free, open-source utility, does exactly that; even better, now the machines can share a clipboard, meaning that I can copy stuff easily from one to the other.

It’s also cross-platform, meaning that it would work with two windows computers, two linux boxes, or, as in my case, one of each. Best of all, it’s really easy to set up and use, esp. when you compare it to a lot of other open-source software.

If you’ve got two (or more) computers on your desk, you really ought to check this software out.

I’ve taken another step into all-out über-geekdom: I’ve installed linux for the first time. I’m using the Ubuntu version of linux; like most versions (called “distributions” or “distros”) of linux, it’s available for free. I just downloaded the install software from the website, burned an install CD, plugged it in, and rebooted. I had to answer some fairly simple questions, and then it wiped out the old Windows ME data and replaced it with linux. (Good riddance, I say.)

It works quite well, from my first 24 hours with it. Unfortunately, because I’m a complete linux n00b, everything is taking forever to do. For example, it took me a good hour to figure out how to update FireFox from version 1.0.7 to version 1.5.

Despite the new user frustration, I find it fairly interesting and fun. For example, I think it’s cool that you can do everything from the command line (if you know what you’re doing). Another cool thing is that I’ve figured out how to set up both SSH and the Remote Desktop, so I can control my linux desktop from my laptop. (Right now, I can only do it from my local network, but it is theoretically possible to control it from anywhere in the world).

One thing I think is neat is the way it handles private data. Every user gets their own “home” folder which stores stuff like the Desktop and any documents you have. By default, these are “private,” meaning that someone who logs in on a different username will not be allowed to even look in your home folder, unless you explicitly allow it. This is, I imagine, possible in Windows, but it’s the default in linux.

It’s kind of a neat experiment. If you want to play with linux without installing it on top of your system, I’d recommend downloading a Live CD. After you burn the downloaded file to a disk, you put the cd in the cd drive, restart the computer, and have it boot from the CD drive. It will then load linux from the CD; it’s slower than if you install it on the hard drive, but it’s good for playing with and seeing if you like it.

In summary:
The Good: Free; good handling of user data; lots of free software available
The Bad: Much, much more complicated than windows; some software packages (like an MP3 player) can’t be included for legal reasons
The Ugly: The installation software looks primitive compared to other OS’s; the fonts are kind of “off” too.

Update: Microsoft has now released a patch to fix this security hole. You should run windows update and download the patch.
—

If you run Windows XP or 2000, you need to install this file right now without fail:

Windows Metafile Hotfix

There is a huge security hole in windows that allows image files to carry any type of malicious code including spyware, malware, viruses, keystroke loggers, and more. If you install the file above, you will render your computer invulnerable to these attacks.

More details on Security Now! and F-Secure.

To my Mom: I’ve already installed this file on your computer, so you don’t need to worry about this.

It’s a SwifferBot! Cheaper than a Roomba Vacuum robot, and cuter too!

(via Engadget - www.engadget.com)

I once heard the iPod Shuffle referred to as a “value-subtracted product.” The Apple marketing division was able to sell a lack of a feature (the screen) as a benefit (”You never know what’s coming next!”). Now, I’ve found another great example of an attempt at a value-subtracted product:

NEC has announced their new Parafield product: A laptop without a hard drive. Sales price: Almost $4,000.

NEC’s target market is large corporations. The idea is that a lost laptop represents a huge breach of security, because sensitive documents that your competitor might use against you are stored on the computer. So, NEC’s designed a computer that you can’t store files on. Instead, you have to save your files to another computer on the network (the corporate file server) or to a USB thumbdrive.

Programs–like Windows XP and Office–are stored in 3 gigabytes of flash memory in the computer. Otherwise, it’s not much different from an ordinary laptop. The specs listed on the site are actually inferior to this $1,400 laptop from Gateway, which has a higher-resolution screen among other things.

So, NEC’s marketing is trying to sell the lack of a feature (no hard drive) as a benefit (supposedly better security–personally, I think that a USB thumbdrive is mucheasier to lose or steal than a laptop).

The one advantage I can see to this is that the corporation doesn’t have to worry about viruses or spyware on these machines, but I think that that advantage will be outweighed by the disadvantages: Among them, inconvenience and lost work if the network goes down and you don’t have a USB key handy in the office.

Not to mention the price: three times as much as you would for a normal laptop!

Executives, don’t be swayed by the word “security”: This product isn’t worth the price.

(via Gizmodo)

My laptop was having problems.

The right hinge on the screen was broken, and so the lid to my laptop would either fall onto my hands while I was typing, or else experience a fainting spell and fall backwards.

It was well-nigh unusable. So, my Dad ordered a replacement case off of eBay, but the repair looked more challenging than we expected, and I had planned to take it to a repair shop.

But then I found out that a guy who lives across the hall from my brother in the dorms repairs laptops. I mentioned my laptop problems to him, and he offered to repair it. So, tonight I took the laptop to his room.

The process actually took a couple of hours. To fix the laptop, he essentially had to completely disassemble it, move the motherboard into the new case, and reassemble it. I felt bad, because I know he hadn’t planned to burn his whole evening on this thing.

But now my computer works perfectly. Drew knows what he’s doing with laptops, and I’m very, very happy. I can actually use my computer in class again!

So, that’s my shout-out to Drew. If he ever opens a laptop repair business, I’ll refer you, my loyal readership, to him. For now, he’s got my gratitude.

This is cool:

This is the world’s awesomest shower head. I’d tell you how much it costs, but Dornbracht’s incompetently designed product website doesn’t say.

But still! A fun shower head. I want one….

I just found a great presentation from Lawrence Lessig that explains what’s wrong with perpetual copyright, software patents, and other injustices of our intellectual property law. Worth your while.

Donate to the Electronic Freedom Foundation.

GAAH! I hate Sony’s obsession with proprietary formats. They started with the Betamax (the competitor to VHS for video tapes). Since then, they’ve tried to make a proprietary version of virtually every medium and every format. They’re trying it with the Blu-Ray disc, which is competing with HD-DVD as the successor to the DVD. I mean, even their original MP3-player devices couldn’t support MP3’s; you had to convert your music over to the proprietary ATRAC format that nobody uses!

The one place where their business incompetence most shines is in their Memory Stick formats–there’s the Memory Stick, the Memory Stick Pro, the Memory Stick Pro with Magicgate, the Memory Stick Duo, and so on and so on. Note that I can’t use my 512MB Memory Stick in, say, a Sony PlayStation Portable, because that only accepts the smaller Memory Stick Duo’s.

Well, now they’re adding another version to the pile: The extremely tiny Memory Stick Micro M2. It’s 15mm by 12mm by 1.2mm, which Engadget tells me is about a quarter of the Memory Stick Duo’s size. Not only is it another memory stick format, it’s so small that you’re likely going to lose it. In fact, you could probably inhale this Memory Stick if you weren’t careful.

In case a Sony exec is reading: This kind of fooling around is why I’m extremely skittish about buying Sony products. I know they’re great, high-quality products, but I get sick of getting stuck with overpriced ^* proprietary formats. Quit trying to mess with your customers and stick with standard formats that everyone uses. Like Secure Digital.

*Worse than the proliferation of the memory sticks formats is their cost. Right now a 512MB SD card costs $26. A 512MB Memory Stick Pro is $43–a 60% difference!)