Rubénerd!

The somewhat psychedelic after dealing with difficult people episode!

Spending more time dealing with people not problems, university folks moving from Windows to Linux and Mac, university assignments, compulsive fanboyism, SQlite, Microsoft C#.NET, squeaky clean OpenBSD, actually finding someone who likes Windows Vista, skies getting dark really fast, comments from Rubenerd Show 241, too many interesting people on Twitter, Twitter traditional news sources (Aussie ABC, BBC News, BBC SciTech, Reuters, Channel News Asia) and personal nuclear missile silos.

Download MP3 to listen ↓ 33:38, 15.5MiB

You can also stream this episode and view its Internet Archive page.

In this second post in my unintended short series on how to use Windows 2000 in a virtual machine (for pesky software you can't run under Wine on your efficient Unix-like machine or your beautiful Mac), I'm looking specifically at security software. If you use Windows all the time you probably already know about these, this is specifically for people who don't really use Windows unless absolutely necessary!

Service Pack 4 Network Installer

This absolutely goes without saying! I much prefer downloading the so-called Network Installer and running it separately, that way if in the future you need to re-apply it or even install it on another system you don't have to download files again.

Rollup Update 1

Download and run this after you install Service Pack 4, and you'll get all the updates that were released up to September 2005. You'll still have a lot more patches to install when you run Windows Update afterwards, it bit will go much faster.

Avast Antivirus or AVG Antivirus

Both of these freeware virus scanners are world class, fast, lightweight and miles better than any of the really expensive utilties such as Norton. AVG uses less system resources, but I like the way you can set Avast to update itself and its definitions automatically. Up to you, they're both fantastic. My only suggestion if you choose Avast would be to uncheck the "Skins" feature in the installer, the normal interface is the best.

Spybot - Search and Destroy

I've always preferred it to Lavasoft's AdAware; I'm not sure whether it's the cute message to his wife in the installer, or its no-nonsense interface :-). The latest versions even include a feature called TeaTimer which runs in your system tray and warns you when any application is attempting to edit the registry, very nice!

TrueCrypt

A very slick and easy way to create encrypted virtual folders, or you can use it to encrypt your entire drive, on the fly. According to some basic benchmarking by Steve Gibson on the Security Now podcast/audio magazine/New Time Radio programme, the latter method in fact even makes your drive perform better than without it! If you're running Windows 2000 within a virtual machine on Mac OS X it provides a great way to secure your virtual disk image without having to keep it within an encrypted DMG image as I used to do. And it's Free and Open Source!

GRC freeware tools

If you'd rather not poke around and change registry settings or hidden system files yourself, Steve Gibson has bucket loads of freeware software tools that can do more things than I have time to post here. Most of them can be downloaded, used once and archived, no need to install which is nice.

On April fools day I had noticed many people on Twitter were saying how they hated news stores and blog posts that were blatantly fabricated in a vein attempt to be funny. As I never like to irritate people, especially with fake blog entries, I tried my hand at posting a fake blog entry review of Windows Vista. Dave Wares and Sharon in Singapore saw right through me, but I did get one serious post!

Anyway to make amends and restitution for that post that made me feel downright ill after reading, I thought I'd post a screenshot and a brief summary of the only remaining Windows version and machine that I do actually still use: Windows 2000 Professional in a virtual machine on my MacBook Pro!

Unfortunately as resilient as the Wine compatibility layer is becoming, there are some Windows applications that just don't like being run on anything other than Windows. Surprisinly a lot of this stuff I get comes from my uni (argh), sometimes they're small utilities that only run on Windows... and then there's Solitaire.

The advantage of running Windows 2000 instead of XP (or heaven forbid the Vista trainwreck!) in a virtual machine is that you can reserve a tiny sliver of RAM for it and only 1 CPU core and it will still perform very, very well. This is especially useful when you're on a laptop: running XP or Vista alongside Mac OS X on battery power is not very fun or pratical!

Another consideration with Windows that makes 2000 useful is the commonly known fact that Windows installations degrade in performance over time to the point where it's just better to reformat your machine and reinstall Windows. With a Windows 2000 virtual machine file, the entire operating system is contained in a disk image thats only a few hundred megabytes. Compared to 1 or 2 gigabytes for Windows XP or the ridiculously bloated size of a Windows Vista install, it means it's a cinch to backup a fresh install of 2000 and restore it whenever you want.

Even Windows2000-tan admits Firefox-tan is better!

As someone who grew up using various flavours of Windows from 3.x to XP before I made the final switch to Mac OS X, FreeBSD and Linux, I say without reserve that the Windows 2000 interface is still the best that Microsoft came up with. Luna on Windows XP looked childish and the Vista interface can cause serious eye damage for a laundry list of reasons.

And the final reason why Windows 2000 is more bearable than XP or Vista? No product activation! That's right, as a legitimate licence holder I'm not treated like a criminal every time I have to restore an image! It's so refreshing!

In my next post I'll be listing some of the software I use to make Windows 2000 more bearable and feel more like a real OS, such virtual desktops, snapping windows, SSH clients and whatnot, if you're forced to use a flavour of Windows at some point.

With all my talk on FreeBSD and Mac OS X, as well as my generally unfavorable attitude to Microsoft's operating systems, I decided today to finally install Windows Vista on my primary desktop to do a more in depth review and to see if Service Pack 1 has fixed some of the more irritating problems.

This morning with my paycheck I marched down to Best Denki at Ngee Ann City and purchased a copy of Windows Vista Home Premium. I figured there was no point getting the Ultimate version seeing as I don't really play many computer games, and the Ultimate Extras offerings have been less than stellar. I bought the upgrade version because I already had a copy Windows XP Home Edition already from 2002; the one I had for less than a week before I wiped my machine and reinstalled Windows 2000 Professional.

Beforehand I used my trusty older copy of PartitionMagic 8.0 (the last version released by PowerQuest before they were bought out and destroyed by Symantec) to resize my FreeBSD partition down by 64GiB to allow space for Vista to install. FreeBSD really doesn't like sharing hard disk space with other operating systems, so it's usually a good idea to have it installed first before you start installing Windows, or Linux for that matter.

I couldn't post any screenshots of the installation given that it didn't have an OS on it to do so (for obvious reasons!), but not having the kludgy DOS screen like messages was certainly a fresh and welcome change from previous versions of Windows; no doubt the FreeBSD sysinstall folks could learn something from it. It detected all of my hardware flawlessly, including a troublesome 64-in-one card reader that even my MacBook Pro with Leopard had difficulty with.

Within a few minutes of finishing the install, activating online and adjusting the resolution to fit my widescreen 1680x1050 Samsung display, I was firing up Internet Explorer to download Mozilla Firefox, The Gimp, Inkscape and OpenOffice.org. I still find it thrilling that Windows has such a fantastic assortment of powerful, capable, reliable and high calibre Free and Open Source software available for it that's completely unmatched on any other platform.

My fresh Vista desktop, with Mozilla Firefox installed in the Quick Launch bar

As excruciatingly painful as it is for me to admit this; using Vista for a few hours, checking out the new Windows Explorer, the new layout of the Start Menu and the Control Panel... I must begrudgingly say that I'm enjoying the experience (pun intended!) more than I thought. The new Aero interface is quite pretty and leaves KDE 4.0's and Compiz Fusion's graphical effects in the dust; Mac OS X Leopard still looks better but it just uses so many system resources in comparison to Vista's visual effects I figure it's just not worth it.

Because this isn't a laptop I can't comment on Vista's battery life or wireless connectivity capabilities, but from a desktop perspective it's pretty good. I'd be hesitant to say I'm ready to give up FreeBSD on all my desktops, but I'm sure I'll keep Vista around on this primary machine.

Stay tuned for more screenshots and compatibility reports.

For some reason this evening while searching for information about how to grate cheese using only rubber bands MacGyver style (or maybe while I was searching for SQlite information for Ruby, I don't remember) a random message box popped up:

Given I'm on FreeBSD (they didn't even check whether their victim was running Windows?!), just for a laugh I decided to click OK and see what they showed!

I was expecting the usual silly looking website with affiliate links for piles of overpriced and unnecessary security software, but instead a new fake web software screen appeared, complete with animated progress bars and an evolving list of "infections" that the "software" had "detected". When it was done another fake message appeared which linked to an executable file to download, presumably containing spyware or a virus. Taking a look at the source on the page itself, each button triggered the same JavaScript download function.

ASIDE: The JavaScript code took up more space than any of the HTML. I've never seen that before, quite eye opening. Scams like this need more 1337 programming skills than I thought. And all the more reason to disable JavaScript except for trusted sites!

I must say, despite the fact the Windows logo is different in four different places and the grammar is terrible, the animations and fake scan results are pretty well done. For most savvy and intermediate computer users the flaws would be pretty obvious and they'd probably laugh them off, but the scary thing is I'm sure there are plenty of people who would find this whole shameless charade convincing. Just like all these hoaxes, they seem to target this group; heck if they can net one person out of a few thousand, the whole exercise has been... how does Richard Quest put it... profitable.

Malware distributor, I stick my tongue out at thee!

For what it's worth though, and on the bright side, it was really hilarious seeing this whole thing act itself out... in KDE on a FreeBSD machine where the windows look completely different, the colours don't match, the fonts aren't even the same and the .exe file it tried to download to the machine wouldn't have been able to run itself even if it did make it to the hard drive to start off with!

Sorry guys, there's no Microsoft Windows code to exploit on this machine!

If you read CNET's News.com you may have seen they've added a separate news bar along the top of all their pages that link to their partner networks. In particular they give TechRepublic a lot of coverage, which I guess targets similar people.

Some of the headlines and their corresponding articles though I think have been funny :):

Windows Services That Can Be Disabled
One of the most effective ways to secure a Windows XP workstation is to turn off unnecessary services.

I know an even more effective and bulletproof way to secure a Windows XP workstation... uninstall Windows!

Apple's new keyboards stink
As you can see, I don’t have much good to say about the new keyboards. Just about everything with them is bad. Apple is putting form over function with the new design and for something as critical as a keyboard, it’s a grave error.

I've been using one for two weeks now, and it's been a real pleasure to use. I don't know if the reviewers have been throwing dead fish on theirs which would make them stink ;).

Alien Vs. Predator 2 invades FilmSpot
The intergalactic battle continues in a sleepy Colorado town. The Aliens inhabit a small town and the predators arrive to sanitize anything that can come in contact with them.

Argh I can't stand movies that are lifted from computer games, and the first AVP movie was the worst of the lot!

How to disable 10 annoying Word features
f you've gotten more than your share of support calls from users trying to wrestle Word into submission (or pulled out your own hair on a few occasions), this list will help you quickly cut Word down to size.

That's nothing, I know how to disable ALL of Microsoft Word's features... uninstall it and install KOffice or OpenOffice.org!

Vista DRM: wrong, wrong, wrong

Headline is half right. Vista itself is just wrong ;)

The Leo Laporte 2003 TechTV Technology Almanac episode!

Testing a new Rode NT3 microphone, flying these days is a bitch, discovering Uranus on the 13th, Adobe Photoshop 7, quotes from Leo Laporte's 2003 TechTV Technology Almanac, a brief history of TechTV from the outside, Leo Laporte's evil smile, out of sync background music, needing QWERTY on a phone, academic discounting, Aeroline buses between Singapore and KL, Merdeka 2007 in Malaysia, ridiculous numbers of PCs, South East Asian colonialism, the southernmost tip of the Eurasian mainland, Freecycle, resetting GNU/Linux passwords, Larry Craig Pervert Scandal Is Tip Of The Iceberg, Warp's Artificial Intelligence series, silly sports, Patrick Norton installing GNU/Linux in 2003, hardware router firmware things, WinPopUp, Schmap Guide photo finalist photos, driving from Inverness to Singapore, airports in the middle of nowhere, way too much time on Mobile Twitter, a Nokia e61i mobile phone review, Frank Nora's Bagel Report and his head on 3G, fantasy football in America, FreeBSD versus Linux security, people on Twitter (Felix, Frank, Andrew, Dave, Manny, Roel, Dadaist), ticket and medical guinea pigs, cable versus DSL, and meeting people on the stair, posting 666 sites in del.icio.us, moving back from Zooomr to Flickr, secret Windows software, waging on horses and people who walk up the stairs who aren't actually there.

Some overdrive audio errors in parts of this episode. I've calibrated this new mic for the next episode.

Download MP3 to listen ↓ 1:10:00 minutes, 32.10MiB

You can also stream this episode and view its Internet Archive page.

Anyone who used the internet in the 1990s would remember Netscape Navigator, the standalone web browser before Netscape Communicator that you originally had to pay for: the software that Microsoft was so successful in burying all those years ago in the first internet browser wars. I used Netscape Navigator, Eudora and ICQ... sniff, so many memories!

Well I'm now typing away on Netscape Navigator 9 for Mac OS X. After all those years of feature creep, slower speeds and bloated executable sizes, the new Navigator is lean, mean and noticeably zippier. It's based on Firefox instead of the former Mozilla Suite and it shows. Plus, it supports nearly all the Firefox plugins and themes too.

Aside from the obvious changes under the hood, the new Navigator has also been redesigned on the surface. The new toolbar icons are much clearer and instead of a separate search button next to the Address bar there's a dedicated search box. The toolbar, tabs and titlebar with these changes noticeably take up less space. Compared to Safari and Camino (my current primary browser) the difference is tiny:

Really I can't see enough compelling reasons to switch if you're already a Firefox user, but for me there's something so nostalgic and pleasing to grace my modern computer's dock and Applications directory with that venerable serif N on a black planet scape with the teal sky. I'm so sentimental (^_^).

A couple of days ago I finally gave in and purchased a copy of VMware Fusion. Having used the demo versions of Parallels Desktop and Fusion on my MacBook Pro I decided VMware's product was much more suited to my needs. Parallels seems to be great for running Windows, but my main use is for FreeBSD and other Unix-like development which Fusion has better native support for (official additions for FreeBSD and Solaris anyone?). And with a special offer of $39.00 for first time beta purchases before the final version came out I figured it was the best choice. I should have taken a PR course at university instead.

So now I have the final, official retail release of VMware Fusion running on my MacBook Pro, and I'm loving it. Having a dual core processor with VT support really kicks some serious virtual arse.

Below is a screenshot of fresh virtual machines running OpenBSD 4.1 sitting at the shell, NetBSD 3.1 with a basic OpenBox window manager session, ReactOS and an installation of Windows 2000 Professional humming along:

I do admit I do run a purchased, fully licenced copy of Windows 2000 as a virtual machine to run a few apps that don't work so well on Wine, and for testing of my websites using Internet Explorer 6. Windows XP and Vista just add useless features and require more system resources, so 2000 works just nice. Well, as nice as Windows can.

Below is a screenshot of AutoPatcher running under Windows 2000 using the Unity feature of Fusion which makes it look as though Windows applications are running on the Mac OS X desktop. I much prefer to use AutoPatcher than Windows Update because it means I don't have to run Internet Explorer to use it, and I don't call home to Microsoft.

And here it is running in it's own window. I actually think I prefer having it this way:

I just love having virtual machines. I can tinker away with really fascinating operating systems and learn so much, without stuffing up anything when I do something wrong. It's great for sand boxing, and it also allows me to run a scaled down FreeBSD machine with just the bare basics so I can study without distractions. Not to mention compiling applications for different platforms... the possibilities are so exciting!

Or maybe I'm just easily excited ;).

Being a (generally) open source advocate and user I shudder when people say that they can't kick their Microsoft addiction (Windows, Office, SQL Server, Phua Chu Kang Pte Ltd) because either they're so dependent on it and have developed infrastructure that can't easily be replaced with alternatives, or they're just so accustomed to Microsoft stuff they can't see themselves changing.

The truth is you don't need to ditch everything Microsoft you use in one go, it can be a gradual processes. Just like an addiction to illicit drugs or tobacco the best way to kick the habit is through a gradual transition process... my German uncle quit cold turkey but most of us don't have the ability!

Step One

If you're in a sinking ship you don't bother re-painting the staterooms! This means you should stop adopting even more Microsoft products. Don't upgrade your expensive software to the latest versions (Windows, Office, SQL Server, Phua Chu Kang Pte Ltd) which inevitably will deepen your dependence on Microsoft.

Step Two

Develop some form of roadmap that you want to follow, not what Microsoft wants you to. Your software should adapt to what you want to do, not the other way around.

Step Three

Start using alternative programmes where it's feasible or appropriate. Use Mozilla Firefox instead of Internet Explorer, OpenOffice.org instead of Microsoft Office and so forth.

Understandably, if you don't want to take the plunge of installing new software that you're not used to on your production machines, consider trying out a memory key toolkit that has open source software on it: this way you can try the software before you commit to it.

Step Four

When you're comfortable using alternative open source programmes, you'll realise that Windows is not actually necessary any more! Take a look at some of the very polished alternative operating systems such as Ubuntu Linux or PC-BSD! Again take it slowly and try before you buy, so to speak.

For programmes you must run such as Adobe Photoshop, there's always Mac ^^. Although they can be just as expensive as Microsoft products, and aren't entirely open source, it's still a good platform and much more trustworthy.

Step Five

Take a nice long holiday with the money you've saved from paying expensive Microsoft taxes, and with the reassurance you've gained from the improved reliability and quality of the software your business is using. And send a check for 10,000 Singapore Dollars to Ruben Schade. Hey, it can't hurt right?