Rubénerd :)

Google Reader is wildly convenient on the iPhone, but is also one of the sites that crashes the most. Might be sticking with the desktop version for now.

Those who read this blog will know that despite my initial skepticism, I finally bit the bullet and bought an iPhone 3G in September. Looking back at it now, it may have been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made; it really is a phenomenal device. Other phones may have more features, or have features with higher specifications, but none I have ever used even remotely come close to the iPhone in usability.

With such constant glowing reviews, you might be under the mistaken impression that I think the iPhone is absolutely perfect and that I am now a blubbering fanboy. The fact is I have been taking notes whenever something has irritated me with it in the hopes I could create a post taking about the iPhone’s shortcomings and how it could be improved.

After a month, I feel it’s time to let ‘em rip, all one of them. And here it is: the MobileSafari web browser officially blows. It is the most crash prone, error riddled piece of s… oftware I’ve used in recent memory. It’s a shame because no other applications have been able to crash this iPhone, and a serious shortcoming considering it was billed as a phone, music player and an internet communications device.

It’s a shame, WebKit itself rocks.

Typically the scenario plays itself out like this: I’ll browse to a web page, scroll down leisurely, perhaps pinch and wipe around a bit to increase or decrease the size of elements. Boom, crash, back to the home screen. It doesn’t crash every single time, but I’d wager it crashes once for every time it works properly twice. A 33.3% reliability rate is hardly a glowing record.

Different activities seems to exacerbate the problem. If I enter any information into a field on a web form barring simple login screens, it will crash. If I scroll down a page too fast, it crashes. If I click a link, then click another link before the page finishes loading, it crashes. Generally the problem can be partially alleviated by restarting the phone every few days and making sure I don’t have more than a few tabs open at any one time, but it’s by no means a quick fix.

What I find interesting is that for every person on a web forum or blog post comment feed that complains about MobileSafari reliability, there are two or three that claim to have no problems at all with it. Here’s hoping the next software update fixes this for everyone; I’d love to be able to use MobileSafari carefree on this phone. WebKit is still one of the best rendering engines.

Stay tuned for my real world scenario review of the iPhone that I compiled last week but still need to clean up. It really shows how you can use this thing to take over your life and how fantastic that is… provided you stick to applications other than MobileSafari for most of the time :).

Sent from my iPhone.

As I’ve explained before, because of the way WordPress handles elements the ID of a post doesn’t correspond with the number of the post. For example, this post has an ID of 2431 despite it being the 912nd post. You can see the disparity by looking at the header of this site itself and seeing the post count in brackets next to the All Posts link.

What I didn’t expect was that given this post is 912, the previous post was 911. In said post I was talking about ominous and overarching internet censorship in Australia that would put us in the same league as China, North Korea and Iran. Coincidence? Synchronicity? Chuck Peddle?

I am my father’s son though: when I think of 911 this is still the first thing that comes to mind.

"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"
"Who watches the watchmen?"
- Juvenal, Satires, VI, 347

Sometimes you question the motives behind certain politicians decisions; sometimes you question their sanity; sometimes you question whether they in fact have any form of brain material in their heads at all; or more often than not it’s a combination of all three.

Steven Conroy is Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy in the Australian Federal Government who seems to think that not only a blanket filter on the entire internet in Australia would not only be feasible and technically possible (a little hint sir, it isn’t), but that it’s a good idea. If his plans go forward, Australia will have the most restricted online media in the Western world.

To re-use a phrase I originally wrote on a Sarah Palin post, the fact that some people think this is a good idea is blood chillingly scary, as well as head-smashing-on-a-table stupid.

The Australian Federal Government is pushing forward with a plan to force Internet Service Providers [ISPs] to censor the Internet for all Australians. This plan will waste tens of millions of taxpayer dollars and slow down Internet access.

Despite being almost universally condemned by the public, ISPs, State Governments, Media and censorship experts, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy is determined to force this filter into your home.

NoCleanFeed.com has been set up to inform people on why censorship should not happen to our precious intertubes. They also have ways you can help the cause, and a donation button for the Electronic Frontiers Australia organisation, the Australian equivalent to the EFF in the States.

What’s most ridiculous about this whole boneheaded proposal is not only will it slow down Australia’s already sub-par internet speeds, it will block legitimate sites by generating false positives and I fear will set a dangerous precedent that the Government knows best what people should and should not have access to online.

Even if such a system came into effect, creating an internet system similar to Iran, China and North Korea could and would be easily circumvented by people who wanted to get access to the full internet. Just like DRM, this internet filter would only hurt legitimate users.

The Freedom-proof Fence, Great Barrier Firewall, Firewall Australia, Great Firewall Reef or the Great Australian Firewall should and MUST not go forward. If you’re in Australia, contact your local member for parliament.

“Mawson Interchange in Adelaide next to our house. Taken by Ian Threlfall

It’s come time for another blog post to be submitted from my iPhone instead of my laptop. What can I say, my back says my MacBook Pro is a great machine but not exactly the lightest thing to be carrying around constantly. I think most of the time it’s just fine, but it’s nice to just carry an iPhone sometimes.

As I sit here at the Mawson Interchange train station whatsit I can see from the LED display that the train is arriving in 4 minutes. Problem is, that’s what it said 5 minutes ago. I’m not one to judge the accuracy of public transport message boards, but I’m judging this one to be inaccurate. Either that or somehow that display exists outside our regular space-time continuum and its some sort of time traveling notice board. One can’t help but think that the money used to buy a time traveling public transport notification display could have been put towards actually buying more trains to improve frequency times so such intentionally misleading displays would not be necessary in the first place.

ASIDE: Is that how you spell continuum? The iPhone dictionary says so, but it doesn’t look right to me. Not that I’m questioning my almighty iPhone mind!

The fact is, given I spent most of my life in Singapore (okay most of my life I can remember, I lived in Sydney and Melbourne before I was five but I certainly don’t remember it!) the whole concept of public transport timetables is completely foreign. In Singapore the buses, MRT and LRT systems don’t use predetermined times, they go by frequency. For example, if you stand at the Dhoby Ghaut MRT station you’re told on the screens that the trains come every two to three minutes.

Of course this system isn’t perfect, but the difference is over there they have enough confidence in their fleet sizes to pull off frequency rather than timetable timings. The ironic thing is quite often here (and most of the rest of Australia) timetables aren’t even a reliable guide anyway, most trains and buses run late every time anyway. I’m reminded of Captain Jack Sparrow’s line in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie: "The code is more of a guideline than actual rules!"

Want to battle climate change, reduce dependency on foreign energy, revitalise neighbourhoods and CBDs, clean up the air, dedicate more space to parkland, reduce stress on commuters, let people keep more of their money, increase aura and pride in communities and make sense… stop building expressways and artery roads, and build better public transport systems! Especially in times of economic uncertainty, public projects like this that keep people employed just make sense!

Punggol MRT station in Singapore, taken from my Flickr profile

Sent from my iPhone

It’s official, the first images and details of Microsoft’s up and coming Windows 7 operating system have been released to the press. The always interesting PC Pro in the UK has the inside scoop:

Microsoft has released the first pre-beta code of Windows 7, writes Barry Collins at the Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles.

The next-generation operating system includes a bevy of new features, including a revamped Windows desktop, support for multitouch, USB drive encryption and improved boot times and performance.

While all this does sound promising for people still using Windows, the preliminary screenshot definitely failed to impress. I’m hoping that Microsoft’s history of refining and modifying the interface to the point where it barely resembles the betas repeats itself, because this is just awful:

Screenshot of the first preview of Windows 7

Not only that, but I feel as though they’ve blatantly and unabashedly ripped off my beloved K Desktop Environment. The panel is pixel-for-pixel the same size. The layout is the same. The widgets look the same. Though for what it’s worth, you’ve got to hand it to them for taking such a gorgeous interface and making it look terrible!

I think it does make a strong statement though that a software company that has been so desperate to label free and open source software as a movement that largely can’t be taken seriously, then turns around and attempts to emulate the fruits borne from such projects.

Screenshot of the current release of the KDE Unix (Linux, FreeBSD etc) desktop

I continually find it amazing how Microsoft’s user interface standards have so dramatically slipped over the years. Our first home computer came loaded with Windows 3.0 with Multimedia Extensions which we later upgraded to 3.1. It was by no means perfect, but I’d argue in many ways it was superior to anything outside Amiga Workbench at the time. Windows 95 was clean and organised and personally I thought it was much slicker than System 7.x and all the other classic Mac OS’s. Windows 98 was marginally worse, XP’s cheap graphics looked childish, and Vista of course was an abomination.

With the bar now set so low, let’s hope for the sake of people who still must use Windows that this latest version gets some serious cosmetic changes before it ships in 2049.

Windows 3.1 in all it’s glory!

While I don’t entirely agree 100% with his methods of delivering facts, or even some of his assertions, I have a pretty positive view of Michael Moore and find his films incredibly thought provoking and wildly entertaining at the same time. I can remember going with the whole of my year 10 English class to see Bowling for Columbine at the Lido Cinemas on Orchard Road in Singapore, and later seeing Fahrenheit 9/11… twice.

ASIDE: I’ve probably permanently lost half my American readers with the admission that I like Michael Moore. I’m tempted to say that the better half have stayed, but that would dig me down even deeper so for the sake of preserving my own life I think I’ll just leave it right there. I like Mike!

Anyway it seems Mighty Mike (no I’m not talking about our state premier Mike Rann!) may have the goods, but his site administrators are stuck in a Web 1.0 mindset. Heavens almighty how I hate the "Web 2.0" moniker!

In a tip of the hat to my presence, Jim Kloss from Whole Wheat Radio has stated including some nerdier links in his Google Reader weblog and pointed me to the fact that MichaelMoore.com… doesn’t even have an RSS feed! Come on Mike, you’re nerdy readers need this! Even Fox News has RSS feeds!

For what it’s worth, as an XML guy I infinitely prefer Atom to RSS but I know many readers still choke on it. Alas we’re stuck again with a standard that’s good enough, and despite Atom being superior it’s not a compelling enough upgrade for enough people. I could go on talking about Betamax and Plan 9 and United Linux and waffle irons…

Taximetre plus SG$50.00! Where to?

And why don’t we have pink taxis? In Adelaide they’re all white (get it… they’re all white? They’re all right? Right? White? Oh come on, that was funny!), in Singapore they’re mostly yellow and blue with a few reds and teals, why not pink? Think of it, you could paint a really cute anime character on the side, hire cute people in ridiculous cosplay costumes to drive… I know I (as well as other desperately lonely nerds) would pay a huge premium for such a service! You could even update the nerds who would want to travel in such a taxi by creating an RSS feed that contains the locations of the entire fleet at any given time! It would work perfectly!

RSS, Jim Kloss, Atom, Betamax, Pink, Google, Michael Moore, Shuffle, Whole Wheat Radio, Plan 9, Bowling for Fahrenheits on Shaw Road in Orchard Theater… come on people it makes perfect sense!

Excel Airways Boeing 737-8Q8 photo by Rui Sousa

Somehow, I think I’d feel somewhat uneasy about boarding a plane that had so much damage done to it that it required a door replacement… though you can’t argue it’s not shiny!

Reminds me of a story my dad told me about a business trip to the United States back in the mid 90s. He and some of his American work colleagues were walking across the tarmac to board a Continental Airlines DC-9 when his boss abruptly stopped dead in his tracks and said he refused to fly on such an old plane. He later revealed that he was an airline enthusiast and that he recognised the registration printed on the side from a fairly serious accident and that they had obviously just patched the plane back together again. Scary stuff.

Suzumiya Haruhi: the ultimate superuser!

As a person used to using Unix-like systems such as FreeBSD on a regular basis, I know how important it is to use a restricted account for day to day use, and an all powerful administrative root account only when system maintenance needs to be performed. It is the absolute golden rule for every Unix system.

In the world of Mac OS X the story is somewhat different. In a similar fashion to Windows installations, when you install Mac OS X a user account is created with the name of your choice: the problem is the resulting account is an "administrator" with which you can modify most aspects of the system with little to no restriction (differs somewhat from a root user, but that’s for another post). This of course flies right in the face of the golden rule.

Creating the accounts

Fortunately it is possible to modify your existing account for regular use and create an administrative account:

1. Launch the Accounts preference pane and click the "[+]" in the lower left hand side. You may need to click the lock icon to make changes.

2. Create a new administrative account by filling in a name (I chose "Senpai"!), a solid password and make sure you set the "New Account" type to "Administrator". Click "Create Account".

3. You may be asked if you want to disable "Automatic login". Definitely a good idea.

4. Disable administrative access rights in your current account by selecting it in the account column and uncheck the "Allow user to administer this computer".

5. Hide your admin account by clicking "Login Options" and changing the "Display login window as:" radio button to "Name and password".

6. Log out of your account, and log back in to save changes.

Now whenever you log into Mac OS X, enter your now restricted account username and password.

Accounts preference pane in System Preferences

Advantages

• Whenever you want to install a new piece of software by dragging it’s icon to the Applications folder, Mac OS X will ask for your admin username and password, just as it would if you were using an installation assistant. This means applications can’t install without your explicit permission.

• If ever a trojan horse or malicious application installed itself on your system (barring extenuating circumstances) it would be limited to your standard account which means it’s potential to cause damage would be greatly restricted.

• The potential for you to cause unintentional damage to the file system or system files is greatly reduced because you simply not allowed to do it. Often you’re the greatest threat to your system!

• The best thing about this arrangement is that you never actually ever have to login to your admin account at all, you just use it’s username and password whenever you want to make changes to the system.

Conclusion

It’s a shame that Apple doesn’t create standard/restricted accounts by default for people. Fortunately it’s not a hard thing to change, and once you do you’re well on your way to hardening the security of your Mac.

One thing to keep in mind is that if you use the Terminal, as a restricted user you don’t have "wheel" priveliges anymore. To be able to use the sudo command, first login to your admin account by entering su [account name].

For more information, check out the Apple Knowledge Base article on creating user accounts, the Wikipedia article on superusers and the FreeBSD Handbook page on superusers for a general overview on on why it’s a good idea to use restricted accounts on Unix systems.

Screenshot of my short lived, high performance FreeBSD Xfce desktop :(

As I wrote in a previous post, I was wildly exited that I had managed to get FreeBSD booting side by side with Mac OS X Leopard on my original generation MacBook Pro. Not only that, but the performance was phenomenal: above and beyond anything graphically possible on a flimsy virtual machine. While this is true, a few more days of experimentation have led me to remove the FreeBSD partition again.

Unfortunately despite my discovery of several more articles on triple booting Intel bases Mac laptops, I still haven’t been able to get it right. Alas given university work I need a copy of Windows handy occasionally, and again virtual machines don’t cut it. This means that any FreeBSD partition would have to share the drive with two other operating systems.

The problem stems from an issue I keep running into with booting Windows once FreeBSD has been installed. If you know anything about partitions and multiple operating systems on Macs, these steps I took should make sense:

1. Boot Leopard install DVD and use Disk Utility to create 3 partitions
2. Install Mac OS X Leopard on the middle and larger partition
3. Install the rEFIt boot loader and activate it
4. Install Windows XP in the last partition
5. Install FreeBSD in the first partition, converting the file system to UFS instead of deleting the partition and creating a new one as so often instructed

Once this is done, I am left with a functional installation of Leopard and FreeBSD, but Windows flashes a blue screen of death and restarts every single time. If I install FreeBSD first then Windows, FreeBSD complains that it can’t find a bootable volume.

I’ve recreated the partitions and started from scratch three times, I’ve installed Leopard in the first partition instead of the second/middle partition, I’ve attempted to use the rEFIt Partitioning Tool but it throws an error and doesn’t solve the GPT and MBR differences.

ASIDE: For what it’s worth, the folks who created rEFIt have done a phenomenal job with their tool; the boot menu is wildly convenient and it boots the right system every time. Now only if the operating systems would play nice!

I desperately want to get this right, but this is a production machine and I’m running out of time. I suppose for now I’ll just have to stick with Windows and Mac OS X on this machine, and FreeBSD on a virtual machine unless I can think of something else between now and Wednesday. Frankly I’m just getting sick of watching the Leopard, XP and FreeBSD installers!

This machine has won the battle, but the war is not over. Stay tuned.

Mac OS X Leopard Date & Time preference pane showing the Australian Eastern timezone

For those who haven’t installed Mac OS X from scratch before, some of the steps you go through during the process are selecting your country and filling in registration information which optionally includes your address. Despite entering "Adelaide" as my city and "South Australia" as my current state of residence, Mac OS X is still configured to use the Australian Eastern Timezone as shown above.

This has caught me out so many times I can’t count! Fortunately I haven’t missed any classes or meetings as a result of looking at a freshly installed Mac, but the opportunity is still there.

Is it normal for Apple software to just choose the most populated timezone in a country, or to select the timezone where the capital city is located? Why does it ignore the state you enter before?

For some reason I can’t quite understand, I never had this trouble in Singapore.