Rubenerd

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.

http://whatthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com/

Lots of wasted potential, but still certainly better than before!

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.

O… M… G… :O

(Update 2017: I no longer support Oxfam, because they employ predatory chuggers. Please direct your charity to ethical causes).

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.

They’re my #4 and #5 but still very cute ^^

Yesterday someone approached me and asked if I could take a look at their laptop. Below is a tale of terror, horror and the eventual conversion of someone to Linux, of all things!

Hey, you look like a nerd!

So I was sitting at one of my favourite coffee shops in Sydney blogging about Malcolm Turnbull (Malcolm Turnbull’s 640KiB moment) when a person who will remain anonymous approached me and asked if I could take a look at their laptop. They'd noticed me sitting here furiously typing away and that I "looked like I knew what I was doing". Clearly he's never read anything here ;).

I agreed, and he came back with a giant ugly Dell laptop and put it on the table. I'm aware the term "ugly" is a tautology when referring to Dell in the same sentence, but threw it in there anyway. Hey, at least they're slightly less of a gross eyesore than HPs. Give me a sexy unibody MacBook Pro or a classy ThinkPad any day of the week. Or some of the new Samsung notebooks which are still generic glossy Plastic Fantastic but at least their styling is minimal and sleek. But I digress.

He claimed the general issue with the machine was general sluggishness and unreliable operation which gradually got worse after each boot. I could tell why as soon as it turned on, it was running Windows 7 with full Aero turned on in all its ugly glory. Hah, there I go with that word again ;). Oh yeah and I turned the menu back on again, sheesh.

Hey, remember when all the bloggers and reviewers and Microsoft were telling us with all those great astroturfing sites that Windows 7 was not only infinitely faster than XP, but was the single greatest thing ever invented in the history of personal computing? I called shenanigans on this back in 2009, and I still do!

Anyway, after disabling Aero and restoring a tiny shred of class to the Windows UI, the machine continued to act sluggish, albeit better than before.

Make it easy on yourself Norton!

A reference to The Shawshank Redemption, another movie that so many people love that you're not supposed to, but I don't care, its one of my favourite movies of all time. Its just behind The Count of Monte Cristo as my pick for the ultimate comeuppance story! I liked the movie adaptation, but you really have to read the book. Napoleon, you scoundrel!

I was then alerted to something else, and in a terribly rude fashion: Norton's AntiVirus product flashed onto the side of the screen and alerted us impending doom was inevitable because the owner of this machine hadn't renewed his protection racket. We're defenceless! All our email will have creepy looking bugs in them! We'll be spied on by people wielding large telescopes and even larger cricket bats!

The poor guy was running Norton, good heavens! You can't blame him though, most Windows machines are loaded up with it with one of those dodgy 12 months free then pay later deals. The technical term is crapware (Ed Bott misses reason for Windows crapware), the legal term is extortion. Are my biases showing through yet?

What followed was a hasty uninstallation of the offending software, and the hasty downloading and installing of Lavasoft's free AdAware product, Microsoft Security Essentials tool (which is surprisingly good even if it does ship with a phonebook length name and creepy corporate stock photos like virtually everything Microsoft does), and the latest monthly Malicious Software Removal Tool.

Oh… my… [insert deity here]

That's when we uncovered something fierce. AdAware had barely started its scan before it started reporting a litany of trojans and spyware apps, and Security Essentials took less than five minutes on a full system scan to detect what it reported as five "critical" vulnerabilities. The Malicious Software Removal Tool — which I refer to by its executable name MRT because I grew up in Singapore and get a kick out of it — found Confiker! No joke!

"The Mass Rapid Transit or MRT is a rapid transit system that forms the backbone of the railway system in Singapore, spanning the entire city-state.

The trains are faster, cleaner, more accessible, in more locations, more frequent, more reliable, more affordable (and ironically more profitable) than their Australian counterparts, and they wonder why Aussies love their cars. The carriages are also aware of dozens of Windows exploits and can clean them, surprisingly."

Are those Rubenerd Digression alerts getting annoying yet? But I digress.

Eventually I told the guy at the coffee shop his machine was far too compromised to be effectively cleaned, and the only way to be safe would be a complete clean system install. Because I'm a hopeless nerd loser I had a portable notebook drive in my bag which we used to backup his photos and music onto, then we reinstalled Windows 7.

Once his data was back in his Library or whatever silly, nonsensical thing Windows 7 uses, I reinstalled the security tools I'd installed before, then proceeded to re-install his software. Except… he had virtually none. He used Internet Explorer for the web, the built in image viewer and Windows Explorer for browsing, and Windows Media Player for his MP3s. About the only things he'd installed were the official BitTorrent client and… get this… Microsoft Works! XD

It had to be said

On a hunch, I asked him if he'd ever heard of Linux. I told him that while it was possible for average users to keep Windows machines running smoothly and securely, its frustrating and a lot of work, ultimately for little gain.

Being a nerd I also had a memory key in my bag that'd I'd imaged with with Fedora 14 x64 LiveCD. We rebooted his machine and he thought Gnome was so "clean and simple" I started the installer and dual booted his machine with it!

Less than five minutes of instruction and he knew how to run Firefox, VLC, Nautilus, Eye of GNOME, Exaile, OOo and Transmission instead of their Windows counterparts, and he even had some extra games installed with Yum. There was a software update available on the menu, so it installed itself and we rebooted. No muss, no fuss.

This was an unprofessionally long post

We kept Windows 7 on the machine just in case he'd ever need something Windows specific, but he'll be trialling Linux for everything else, especially internet banking!

Now granted I'm still more of a FreeBSD guy, but I have to give kudos where kudos are due, the Fedora folks have done a wonderful job developing a cohesive system for people who have lives outside computers, and they now have a new user in their ranks :).

This post originally appeared on the Annexe, in a post series pointlessly documenting every train I took.

M15 from Museum to Bardwell Park

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.

This post originally appeared on the Annexe, in a post series pointlessly documenting every train I took.

S29 from Bardwell Park to Museum

I'm pretty much over the whole Google Chrome WebM debacle, but John Gruber summarised it better than anyone else at the end of a recent Daring Firewall post. I'd leave a comment there, but… y'know ;).

How Google’s decision to drop native H.264 playback from Chrome serves to prop up Flash Player. […]

The least amount of work these companies can do now, to continue serving video to Chrome users, is to keep using H.264-encoded video via Flash Player. There is no sign that any of these companies share the idealistic concerns of H.264 opponents, and every sign that they’re satisfied with H.264’s technical merits and legal status.

Thus, dropping native H.264 playback from Chrome while still allowing H.264 playback via Flash Player isn’t going to drive adoption of WebM. It just means that Chrome users will get H.264 via Flash.

Budda-boom

Exactly. As Alexander Sadlier pointed out in the comments thread in my previous post, WebM doesn't need Flash to be played in most browsers. I'm hugely relieved I was wrong about that.

Unfortunately, this doesn't negate the fact the immediate effect of removing the H.264 codec will be to push more people onto Flash. Say what you will about the legal status of H.264, but at least it can be played in an HTML5 <video> tag without the need for a closed, proprietary plugin.

The wrapup

• Google claims they’re removing H.264 because they want to encourage open innovation, but they keep the closed and proprietary Flash plugin.

• Google lambasted Apple for being exclusive rather than inclusive at Google IO, and now they’re being exclusive. Had Apple said this about Google, the tech media would be foaming at the mouth reporting how evil, closed and two-faced Apple is, but because its Google they’ve largely ignored it. Grilled cheese sandwiches.

• Most sites will likely save themselves the trouble and continue serving H.264. It has an enormous hardware install base, mature video editing tools (we’re kidding ourselves if we think a ffmpeg stopgap counts) and can be delivered via Flash to Chrome users.

• WebM has its own legal and technological shortcomings; for example, did you know Google offers no patent infringement indemnification?

• I once walked down the street backwards in Raffles Place just to count how many people stared at me. Surprisingly, very few did because they had their faces buried in their smartphones.

• The legal issues with H.264 have been greatly exaggerated by an easily excitable tech press. I never thought I’d partly agree with Ed Bott on something :O.

• I also maintain a little conspiracy theory that this is a strategic move to cozy up to Adobe to counteract Apple and Microsoft (and HP/Palm… do people still care about them? Damn I’ve always wanted a Pre), rather than a philosophical position as they’re claiming. They’re proporting to be for openness on the one hand, while pushing people onto Flash with the other. Its an absolute master stroke of geniusness.

I have two footers

Anyway, I'm over this and ready to move on. I don't use Chrom[e,ium], nor do I even watch video through a browser. If I'm going to be downloading video on a relatively crappy Aussie internet connection, I may as well use BitTorrent and create a local copy so I'm not having it counted multiple times on the metered quota thingy. The Bird is The Word.

The complete lyrics to the radio edit of Duck Sauce's Barbra [sic] Streisand transcribed manually by moi for your convenience.

Barbara Streisand

Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo, Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo
Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo, Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo

Barbara Streisand

Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo, Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo
Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo, Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo

Barbara Streisand

Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo, Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo
Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo, Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo
Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo, Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo
Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo, Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo

Barbara Streisand

Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo, Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo
Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo, Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo

Barbara Streisand

Ooo Ooo Ooo Ooooo, Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo
Ooo Ooo Ooo Ooooo, Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo

Barbara Streisand

Ooooo Ooo Ooo Ooooo Ooo Ooo, Ooooo Ooo Ooo Ooooo Ooo Ooo
Ooooo Ooo Ooo Ooooo Ooo Ooo, Ooooo Ooo Ooo Ooooo

Barbara Streisand

Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo, Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo
Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo, Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo

I'm expecting a South Park Mecha Streisand remix by someone at some point. Barbra Streisand. The Bird is still The Word though.