Rubénerd!

Stuff the 14th of February being Valentine’s day, tomorrow is day for Unix geeks in Asia Pacific to celebrate because this happens to be the day that is represented in Unix time systems as 1234567890. In the US (and I believe Europe), 1234567890 will be happening on the 13th of February… there’s something sinisterly poetic about that :).

If you like Bill Kurtis and don’t know (I’m not Bill Kurtis), Unix and Unix-like systems such as GNU/Linux, FreeBSD and Mac OS X store dates as a sequential series of numerals representing the number of seconds since the 1st of January 1970. There are caveats to this explanation, but that’s the gist of it.

There’s a problem though: because these numbers were traditionally expressed as 32 bit integers, in 2032 we’ll run out of dates we can keep track of. This problem would manifest itself In the same way for the same reasons as the Y2K bug.

ASIDE: As far as I know the BSDs now uses 64 bit time as does most GNU/Linux distributions, but don’t quote me on that.

In the meantime, Happy 1234567890 everybody! I’m going to be celebrating by staying at home and painfully coughing loudly while I have difficulty breathing, holding food down and my sinuses continue to flare up and down. Will be having lots of soup though and will be watching some silly anime shows and Warner Brothers cartoons from sixty years ago, exciting and enjoyable stuff I can tell you!

I wonder what would happen if Elmer Fudd and Daffy Duck met Suzumiya Haruhi in some time matrix thing? If they can make a Flintstones and Jetsons crossover movie, why not that? ^_^. Can you believe some people actually liked the cheesy Disney characters better than the sarcastic, hilarious Warner Brother’s Merry Melodies chaps?

If you didn’t see, I just posted another entry where I link to Duck Amock, a Daffy Duck cartoon that also happens to be the single greatest cartoon of all time.

Did I say Happy 1234567890 already? Happy 1234567890 everybody!

Food poising is not fun in the slightest, but fortunately by using a combination of soothing music and Tiger Balm my headache as of a few hours ago is completely gone. Mary Wallace and my GP suggested I eat bread, rice, apples and toast of which I'm eating right now. Provided I don't get out of this computer chair and don't eat too quickly I think I'll be fine.

With that in mind, I thought I'd share another quote, this time from the FreeBSD forums:

the daemon you know is better than the penguin you don't.
~ danger@

He's referring of course to BSD (the daemon) and Linux (the pengiun).

Reminds me of another similar quote by someone who I can't recall right now who said [paraphrasing] the best programming language for a job is the programming language you're best at and enjoy.

I've been learning a new programming language and a new OS to keep my mind sharp while I'm on holidays, you'll see the reviews of these in upcoming days. Ironically I started learning these because I thought I needed to broaden my horizons and get out of my FreeBSD, Mac, Ruby and Perl comfort zone. Those two quotes above pretty much shoot that down in flames don't they? I don't mind though, I still find them fascinating.

Without sounding too cheesy, I love learning new things, or using old things in new ways. It's one of the greatest pleasures in life.

Another quickie to serve as much as a reminder for me as a how-to post.

If you've configured the SFTP daemon on your target system to use a non-standard port as part of your security precaution mix, you can't pass this port number by appending a colon and the port to the address. Instead, use the SFTP options flag to declare the port:

% sftp -oPort [PORT] (USER@)[ADDRESS]

For example, to connect as user NotBillKurtis to a local 192.168.1.128 server on port 50000 you would enter:

% sftp -oPort 50000 NotBillKurtis@192.168.1.128

This is another post that's been sitting in my Drafts folder since the 27th of November 2007. In trying to clean out this backlog I'm finishing and publishing these posts now, even if this particular story is somewhat outdated and I was much cockier back then than I am now! Cheers ^_^

Ed Bott on ZDNet has listed a set of optimisations you can perform to make Windows Vista boot faster. It seems even fewer and fewer people are impressed with this OS, and the fact the inferior experience starts even before it starts is ominous to say the least.

I was in a down mood this afternoon given my mum's latest poor medical test results, so I decided to break loose and post some flamebait!

rubenschade@ -- FreeBSD Flamebait

My 1.3GHz Athlon machine with 256MB of RAM, FreeBSD 6.2 and a fully decked out KDE desktop boots up significantly faster than Vista on every brand new state of the art machine I've tried, and I'd argue I'm just as (if not more) productive on it.

Saying Windows Vista doesn't take as long to boot is like saying that a snail is faster than an amoeba. It's probably true, but it's a pointless statement.

ASIDE: FreeBSD+KDE also boots up almost twice as fast as Debian GNU/Linux+KDE too wink

I was excited that it didn't take too long for someone to reply after all, though I was disappointed by it's crudeness. I was hoping for something more astroturfy!

done@ -- Thank Dog!

The pathetic Linux zealot has arrived.

I thought we'd have to wait longer.. but thank Dog - here he is!

When Linux runs programs people NEED TO WORK is when it will become a mainstream OS.. until then, it's a fun curiosity..

An ad hominum attack, followed by an fundamental mistake a quick glance over at Wikipedia would have prevented? I was all ready to pen my smiley face response but a few generous souls beat me to it.

bmerc@ -- Hey clueless...

If you're gonna trash talk someone for driving a Ford, take the time to make sure they're not actually in a Chevy before you open your yap.

BSD is not Linux. The fact that you don't know this tells me everything I need to know about your knowledge of Linux and OSes in general.

zaine_ridling@ -- I can vouch for that

FreeBSD is amazingly fast. Even on my 5-year old machine, it boots in 12 seconds, twice as fast as any Linux distro I've installed in the past 18 months.

In retrospect it probably wasn't a good idea to post about FreeBSD on a Windows blog, but I reckon it's important to let people know sometimes that a particular piece of software isn't the be-all end-all. Sure Vista can be made to boot faster... but it's still akin to rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. Or claiming that I'm Bill Kurtis, which isn't true.

An uncharacteristically short how-to post from me. It's probably because I'm not Bill Kurtis.

Burning a typical ISO image to CD, using the standard /dev/acd0 CD drive device and where johncleese.iso is (surprisingly) the name of the image to burn:

# burncd -f /dev/acd0 data [johncleese.iso] fixate
% echo "Ruben is not Bill Kurtis."

The FreeBSD Handbook has more details.

This is another post that's been sitting in my Drafts folder since the 20th of June 2008. In trying to clean out this backlog I'm finishing and publishing these posts now, even if this particular story is somewhat outdated. Cheers ^_^

Robert Vamosi over at Defence in Depth has reported that Mozilla Firefox 3 has suffered a vulnerability since being released on the 19th of June.

Less than one day after its launch, Firefox 3 has a vulnerability.

According to Tipping Point's Zero Day Initiative, the vulnerability, which it rates as critical, was reported within the first five hours of Firefox 3's release.

Although the Zero Day Initiative team does not offer specifics until the vendor has a chance to patch it, the blog post did say this vulnerability, which also affects Firefox 2, requires user interaction and could result in an attacker executing arbitrary code.

There were the usual posts from people ignoring past trends and decrying that Internet Explorer is therefore obviously better, but by some miraculous feat of asserted association, Tbird1996 somehow managed to twist the story into a anti-Mac fanboy story.

..ok...it's better than anything that MS has to offer. Mac guys...sorry you're soooo insignificant...and when Linux get just a little further down the road...we'll all be better for it.
(why do the Mac people trash Linux so badly when their OS is based on Linux...?' eh?)

Don't get me wrong, I hate it when vocal Mac users loudly proclaim everyone else as stupid for not having Macs, but I do agree it's a superior platform for many uses. I also don't like it when generalisations are made, by people on either side of an argument. This was my response:

I'm a Mac user and I love Linux. Most Mac users I know acknowledge Linux as a positive force. Please don't whitewash entire groups of people.

Oh and for the record, Mac OS X is not based on Linux. Please check your facts before submitting such comments.

Though to be fair, I actually "love" FreeBSD and "like" GNU/Linux, but I suspect if he thought that they were the same in asserting that Mac OS X is based on them, he/she wouldn't know the difference.

For what it's worth, Mac OS X is based on NeXTSTEP and FreeBSD with a Mach kernel. Despite having a few GNU userland tools and common commands, Mac OS X and Linux have almost no code in common, and one is certainly not derived from another! The funny thing is a 30 second look on Wikipedia would show this.

Despite being a heavy Wikipedia user, it's been a long time since I checked out the FreeBSD article (yes dad there's a Deutsch version too!)

Never being one to pass up the opportunity to advocate my favourite operating system, I thought I'd pass on a select few passages:

FreeBSD has been characterized as "the unknown giant among free operating systems."

You can definitely say that again!

FreeBSD has been characterized as "the unknown giant among free operating systems."

Oh har har.

FreeBSD is generally regarded as reliable and robust. Among all operating systems which can accurately report uptime remotely, FreeBSD is the free operating system listed most often in Netcraft's list of the 50 web servers with the longest uptime.

I'm not one of those people who determins the value of the systems by their uptime, but even I admit that's pretty good :).

As for it's similartieis with Linux and other Unix-like systems:

[FreeBSD] is not a clone of UNIX, but works like UNIX, with UNIX-compliant internals and system APIs.

FreeBSD is developed as a complete operating system. The kernel, device drivers and all of the userland utilities, such as the shell, are held in the same source code revision tracking tree, whereas with Linux distributions, the kernel, userland utilities and applications are developed separately, then packaged together in various ways by others.

Most software that runs on Linux can run on FreeBSD without the need for any compatibility layer. FreeBSD nonetheless also provides binary compatibility with several other Unix-like operating systems, including Linux. [...] No noticeable performance penalty over native FreeBSD programs has been noted when running Linux binaries, and, in some cases, these may even perform more smoothly than on Linux.

Ripping CDs while reading my iBook to maintain my sanity!

As I've mentioned previously, one of the Christmas presents I gave to my dad recently was a pledge to rip every single music CD we own before I head back to Adelaide to resume studying and whatnot. To put it into perspective, I've ripped 1419.1 days of music so far according to iTunes and we think we're about half way. Whew!

One of the things I've been doing to maintain my sanity while I rip these CDs on our DIY desktop downstairs here has been reading up on Google Reader, doing some fun Ruby programming and reading emails from my webhost explaining why they were unaware their pants were on fire. Because my MacBook Pro is upstairs in my room plugged into four external hard drives, an external monitor and various other riff raffy nonsense, I thought I'd save myself the trouble of dismoutning and unplugging each of said devices and just bring my little 2002-vintage iBook G3 downstairs with me.

What I've found interesting is that, for the tasks I described about, this 800MHz G3 PowerPC iBook with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger (the previous release for you non-Mac heads) has been more than capable. Sure it's a heck of a lot slower opening applications than the MacBook Pro, and it's 640MiB (128MiB + 512MiB) of memory means I can't have too many applications open at once, but if you adjust your workflow accordingly and don't open nine thousand tabs in Firefox, it's perfectly fine. The only addition I've made to this machine in the last few years was an aluminium Cooler Master NotePal active cooling pad with fans which makes this otherwise toasty machine just mildy warm.

Where am I going with this? Well if you'd let me finish instead of interrupting me with questions I'd be able to answer. What this experience has taught me is that just because a computer is old, doesn't mean it's not useful.

My 2002-vintage iBook G3, still working beautifully in 2009!

Our family has never thrown away a computer, much to the contention of my late mum when she was still around and shaking her head at the mountians of computer equipment in my room! Every machine still has a useful purpose; if they don't have network cards I buy one, hook them up to our messy cable router network and get them working either on compiling huge packages like KDE for FreeBSD, or working on medical research with the Folding@Home project, etc and so forth.

This experience with this iBook though has taught me that older computers aren't just useful for running as headless (aka without a monitor) drones that process input and that's it, but they can also be used productively to write blog posts, check email and so forth as I've been doing here. It seems obvious, but it's taken a personal expeirence to really realise it.

I guess using the tiny Armada M300 hand-me-down from my dad's office as a netbook is another example of this. FreeBSD on that svelte lighter-than-a-MacBook-Air laptop with Xfce makes a very usable machine, provided you don't do any video editing!

My 2002-vintage iBook G3 and Google Reader

Curiously the only thing this iBook G3 hasn't been able to do that I thought it could was watch YouTube videos. In my previous post about the Israel Gaza conflict, I was able to listen to the video but couldn't watch it because it would skip every second frame. I seem to remember this machine had no trouble viewing DVDs or older MPEG2 compressed video, but later MPEG4 or DivX videos were too heavy. Perhaps it takes more effort to decompress and view such material? I'm not sure, I don't pretend to be a video expert.

In any case, this cute iBook which I studied for most of my high school exams with, and that I took to my first university lectures, and that I took to my first crush's house (the girl, not the laptop, shaddup) is still running great and it's a real blast to relive the old days while blogging and programming instead. I guess I'm a nostalgic fool in that way!

In fact, I took this iBook to my first real job after high school back in 2005 before I started university too. I learned Perl on this machine. I learned a lot of Unix commands playing around in the Terminal on this machine. Good times. Funny how it was when I upgraded to a MacBook Pro that my family and our lives in general started going downhill... the "Schade Family Recession" as it were. Perhaps I'm onto something here.

Your asking me for drivers for "Unknown?" Yeah, thanks!

Given I've spent the better part of the last few months defending how I was able to tolerate Windows in the past, you could be forgiven for thinking I was growing soft for the OS again. I admit I was feeling slightly nostalgic too. I remember Solitaire, I remember Reversi then Minesweeper, I remember pointless utilities such as WINVER.EXE and how Microsoft Word was called WINWORD.EXE to differentiate it from Word for DOS.

Well over the last few days I've been working to reinstall Windows XP Tablet Edition on my dad's Fujitsu Lifebook after it contracted a series of persistent spyware infections. Let's just say it completely refreshed my disgust for the platform!

Windows is an unabashed disaster. It really does have an inexcusably horrible and counter intuitive interface. While I put up with it back in the early years, it took me moving to FreeBSD and the Mac to really realise it. I mean, it is BAD.

First of all, Windows is so maddingly (is that a word?) verbose. I don't care that you can see a wireless network, I'll tell you when I want you to connect to one! I don't care that you've 74% downloaded an update, just tell me when it's done! Don't tell me I don't have antivirus software installed after I just installed Windows fresh and therefore wouldn't have even had an opportunity to do so! I don't care what the serial number for my battery is, just tell me the percentage of power remaining! Don't patronise me by instructing me to click the Finish button when I'm done a pointless three screen wizard that could have been condensed into a succinct one window screen. I know you've found nine new hardware devices given I just installed Windows, so don't automatically shove nine consecutive Add New Hardware Wizard windows that when I close one another appears! Don't perform a Windows Update, then tell me to restart, then perform another Windows Update, then tell me to restart, then perform another Windows Update!

There is an anti-virus installed, it's called ClamWin you jackarse! It's free and open source, why would you refuse to... oh wait.

Then there are the downright, head-banging-on-a-table stupid ideas. Product Activation? Someone really thought that would make a difference while proposing it in a board room somewhere... and the others agreed with them?! They really thought repeatedly asking questions for the most mundane of tasks would somehow improve security? They really thought that unzipping a ZIP file needed a wizard? They really thought Areo Glass in Vista with all it's ugly translucency and the ugly blue and green XP interface were great?

I think if someone can survive the first 20 minutes of a fresh Windows install, they're prepared for anything. What a nerve wrecking experience. And to think less than 10 years ago I used to think this was normal!

Unfortunately my fabulous father doesn't have a choice and has to use Windows for his work. He's been having fun with my 800MHz iBook G3 with Mac OS X Tiger though, he said it's so simple and easy to understand... and there are no irritating stupid popup windows or balloons! He's said the same thing with my Armada M300 FreeBSD laptop with the beautifully crafted, lightweight and simple Xfce Desktop which you can take a tour of here.

ASIDE: Fortunately once you've pulled the reins and brought the Windows Beast under control it is possible to make it a more palatable machine to use. The trick is to launch Internet Explorer to download Firefox, Opera or another browser of your choice, then going to Add/Remove Programs and removing everything. From there you can download from Firefox or Opera everything you need.

I think Windows users tend to label other things as difficult because it's just unlike how Windows does things, not necessarily because of any difference in technicality. The next person who tells me that Windows applications and hardware are easier to install than on Mac OS X or even FreeBSD will get a roaring, hearty laugh!

Whew, I needed that :). Now if you'd excuse me, I need to restart that blasted laptop. The network driver installation wizard has been sitting on the same screen at with the same 98% complete indicator for the last 45 minutes. It needs a fist through it, that'd make it work. Unbelievable.

Okay it just finished. What, Hardware Add Failed? You can't find the driver you say? I just gave you the exact location where the darned drivers are you stupid, stupid, stupid operating system! Look again!

Why can't you just add a single line to your /boot/loader.conf or /etc/rc.conf file? Because it would be too hard? Yeah, that's right... a darn wizard that fails more than it works is much more user friendly!!!

That does it, it's 2am now and I'm walking down to the 24 hour prata shop for a bite to eat and for some teh tarik. That'll cool my nerves.

This has happened to me so many times I thought I'd post a clarification here to help myself remember, while passing it off as a legitimate blog post topic. Clever yes? Don't answer that.

Having moved to Unix-like systems from Windows when I finished high school I'm used to firing up my shell and entering ifconfig with either the -a option or by specifying a specific network interface such as eth0 to find out DHCP assigned IP addresses, subnet masks, grilled cheese sandwiches and the like.

Xfce Terminal on FreeBSD with ThinIce theme

As shown below, on Windows the command is deceptively similar in all but one letter: ipconfig. As with the classic DOS goodness Windows replaced the commands also accept flags with forward-slashes instead of short dashes.

Command Prompt on XP with the least ugly Windows theme

ASIDE: According to the completely infallible Wikipedia, ifconfig sloppily stands for "interface configurator", whereas ipconfig stands for "internet protocol configuration". Don't you just love unambiguous commands?

It's interesting how our minds change isn't it? I started using our DOS desktop back before I even started primary school and I got so used to the commands they became second nature. Since moving to the wonderful world of FreeBSD and cross pollinating my knowledge on similar GNU/Linux, NetBSD, Mac OS X and OpenSolaris machines, my DOS knowledge hasn't been forgotten, but it's become something I have to "think" to use. If I had a cent for every time I attempted to type and use ls and top on Windows machines now, I'd have at least enough cash for a grilled cheese sandwich with at least avocado and onions.

Mac OS X Leopard Terminal.app

Two grilled cheese sandwich references in one post, three including this sentence. I'm on a roll. Wait I'm not discussing eating a "roll", it's a "grilled cheese sandwich". Wait, that's four times. Grilled cheese sandwich.