Rubenerd

I just updated iTunes to 9.1, seems they're gearing up for the iPad release because my "Audiobooks" library is now a subheading in a new library called "Books". Wonder how many long years it'll take for books to be available in Australia and/or Singapore?

Oh and by the way Apple, when are we getting a Cocoa version of iTunes? I run Ecuote and Exaile, the latter of which is a GTK+ X11 app and it's still faster and more reliable.

UPDATE: I wonder if I can start dragging ePub books into this now? That'd be really, really, really cool!

My economics teacher in high school tried to teach us that deregulation was the answer to everything, so to rebel in my own way I printed a landscape A4 picture like the one above on my economics folder. Now that I'm all pumped about him again since reading Hoodwinked on Audible, I felt the need to recreate it and blog it here. Keynes is my Homeboy! Take that Milton Friedman!

I never did ring my economics teacher to ask him how all his massive deregulation predictions were working out for him recently. :P

Earlier this month CNET's David Carnoy compiled a list of 25 features he wanted for the next generation iTelephone. This is my own personal take on them… which isn't to say other people don't have different needs!

Bad ideas

• OLED screen. I want my screen to be readable in daylight and have my favourite colours last as long as all the others.
• RFID. REALLY BAD IDEA. I don’t want to have to carry my phone in a metal sleeve like those new passports!
• Flash support. Apple refusing to support it on their best selling platform is one of the primary forces behind the elimination of Flash.

Meh ideas

• Better sound from built-in speakers. Some people play music through the phone’s speakers on the train. I want them lynched.
• Better Google Voice support. Perhaps it’s because I don’t have a North American accent, but Google Voice never really worked well at all anyway.
• Expandable memory. Not likely, but it’d be cool I suppose. They could have a SIM card like slot if they’re afraid of dirt and disrupting the clean lines.
• HD output. Why?
• Less restrictive Bluetooth. As long as they gave the option to keep the restrictions in place.
• Improved voice control. Never used it in my current iPhone, and have never felt the need to. I suppose others might want it.
• 802.11n. I guess it’s the natural evolution, but if so give us the option to turn it off to save power.
• Removable battery. Would rather all that space for a catch mechanism etc be used for extra battery.
• Improved camera with video chat (camera on front). Ew, video chat.
• Multitasking. As long as it’s done well, and has the ability to be disabled. WiMo phones were terrible for this, and Android multitasking horror stories are everywhere.

Good ideas

• Biometric security. As long as it was implemented with sound cryptography instead of just being a gimmick.
• More memory. Would be nice to have more than 16GiB, but more likely I’d get the same amount which would then be cheaper.
• Reasonably priced tethering. For the same price that SingTel gives me GB, Optus in Australia gives me MB, and they charge more for tethering -_-.
• External keyboard support This has been what I’ve been asking for since I got my iPhone. Who would need a crappy netbook then?
• Better app organization and file management. I’d be happy with just a customisable heading for each page.
• 4G network compatible. Would be great to use in Singapore, but in most of Australia I barely get 3G. Can we get that working at least, Optus?!
• Trimmer, sleeker design. Having sides like the iPad would be schweet :)
• Improved 3D graphics. I’d be content with a more responsive UI, though I suppose I’m still on an iPhone 3G.
• Faster processor like the A4. This is where Apple really has all their competitors licked. I can’t wait to see the silicon that goes into the next iPhone!
• Better battery life. Another no-brainer.

I didn't include More carriers or Fewer failed and dropped calls because his critique was aimed at US phone companies.

Credit to designedbyitem.com for the gorgeous mockup image.

Facebook's constant terms of service changes almost seem designed to test the limits of what they can get away with, much like Microsoft in the 1990s. This is the creepiest part of their proposed privacy policy:

Pre-Approved Third-Party Websites and Applications.

It's as if they took slides from a Security and Privacy 101 lecture and used the headings to construct a sentence.

In order to provide you with useful social experiences off of Facebook, we occasionally need to provide General Information about you to pre-approved third party websites and applications that use Platform at the time you visit them (if you are still logged in to Facebook).

In other words, they know many people will be using Facebook with other browser tabs open, so they'll be exploiting them using a "legitimised" kind of XSS. Oh well, I suppose I could run Facebook in a sandbox or a separate browser that deletes cookies and history each session. Wait, no, that won't work because…

Similarly, when one of your friends visits a pre-approved website or application, it will receive General Information about you so you and your friend can be connected on that website as well (if you also have an account with that website).

I already knew my less security and privacy conscious friends were making a worryingly large slice of my information available when they installed any application, but this means it'll extend to sites as well? Really?!

Fortunately, we have nothing to fear because of all this stuff:

In these cases we require these websites and applications to go through an approval process, and to enter into separate agreements designed to protect your privacy. For example, these agreements include provisions relating to the access and deletion of your General Information, along with your ability to opt-out of the experience being offered. You can also remove any pre-approved website or application you have visited here [add link], or block all pre-approved websites and applications from getting your General Information when you visit them here [add link].

Malicious users who are able to exploit a bug in the implementation of this on a pre-approved third-party server don't sign agreements. They're also banking on the fact most users don't know or care about the technical workings of their Facebook accounts and won't do anything.

In addition, if you log out of Facebook before visiting a pre-approved application or website, it will not be able to access your information.

So you're admitting that as long as they're logged into Facebook in another tab in their browser you'll continue to perform your aforementioned suspect activities, while legitimising it by saying once they log out it'll all be peachy?

You can see a complete list of pre-approved websites on our About Platform page.

Whew, first good piece of news I read, I'll have some URIs to add to my DNS blacklist. Hope they're not sites I frequent otherwise I'm stuffed.

Other sections

Other parts of this new Privacy Policy are dodgy, but not any more than usual. This one about cookies didn't seem right, though perhaps that's just because I've never "interacted" with an advertisement before. TACO might have something to do with that though :P.

We also use [cookies] to confirm that you are logged into Facebook, and to know when you are interacting with […] our advertisements.

The final word(s)

As with many users, I'm really torn when Facebook does crap like this. I already decided last year to stop updating my profile and delete all my applications, but if this goes through I'll delete all my data save for my email address and name (folks from high school still sometimes contact me through it). Surprising though it may seem, I haven't found any way to permanently (though even that's debatable) wipe a Facebook account short of deleting it and starting again.

Sometimes I go to bed feeling great about humanity, most nights I don't.

Our latest Europe trip has rekindled my interest in Germany, which I'm sure my old man will appreciate :)

In some of my spare time I've been reading up on modern German history, and given the 20th anniversary of the falling of the Berlin Wall (and the Iron Curtain in general) there seems to be a resurgence in interest.

Of note for me was just how nervous the Western powers were with the prospect of a united Germany even as late as the 1990s. Margaret Thatcher was perhaps the least keen, going as far as telling Gorbachev:

"this would lead to a change to postwar borders, and we cannot allow that because such a development would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our security."

Did Thatcher do or say anything right? Whoa, I'd better step away from that loaded cannon, I'm not touching that Pandora's box! Seriously though, you didn't read that. Pretend that question was never asked. What question? Very good, I like you style.

She should have followed the marks (marx?)

Two terrible puns, in one heading? A new record!

What interests me isn't how such doomsday political and military predictions turned out to be unfounded, for one both Germany and Japan have been on their best behavior since World War II. What they did manage to do was go from literal ruins to being the forth and second largest economies in the world. People often attribute this economic success to the Marshall Plan as the US bailing them out, but Germany received only a fraction of the funds both France and Great Britain were given. As Baldrick from Black Adder would say… "I have a cunning plan!"

Apologies for the terrible grammar, it's late at night and I'm half asleep but I just finished reading a book on the German reunification and I have all these ideas floating around inside my head.

I often wonder what would have happened if the Iron Curtain hadn't come down, if Reagan hadn't taken all the credit for himself, and whether East and West Germany still existed just as Korea remains divided today. Why did wars over political ideologies have to be fought in innocent proxy states?

Credit to Thomas Wolf on Wikipedia for that amazing photo of the Brandenburg Gate. I've been to Munich, Frankfurt am Main and Stuttgart but still not Berlin.

It seems as though Kevin Rudd and Barack Obama finally have something they disagree on: the US government has expressed concern over Senator Stephen Conroy's plan for a mandatory internet filter. Guess that old headline above somehow isn't as true anymore :P.

According to The Punch:

US State Department spokesman Noel Clay said: “The US and Australia are close partners on issues related to cyber matters generally, including national security and economic issues.

“We do not discuss the details of specific diplomatic exchanges, but can say that in the context of that ongoing relationship, we have raised our concerns on this matter with Australian officials.”

It's been ages since I've posted something on Slashdot but I put in my $0.01. It would have been two cents, but the other cent was used to pay taxes to fund some massively expensive filter thing.

This news isn’t on the scale of Google redirecting mainland Chinese search results to Google.cn but has more in common than Senator Conroy here in Australia would like people to think. Wait, no, that isn’t even right, he’s openly compared the proposed Great Firewall of Australia to the filters in China.

When Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Federal Labor won the last election and Barack Obama and the Democrats won the elections in the US, Australian newspapers reported their first meetings as being one with kindred spirits, in much of the same way as George Bush and John Howard. This filter is perhaps the first large(ish) crack in this relationship, and I’m really hoping the Americans kick up as much of a fuss about Australia’s laws as China’s if the filter in Australia goes through.

The problem for the voting public here is in our version of the two party system, the opposition are considered the more conservative party, and its new Christian far-right leader Tony Abbott has been fairly silent on the whole issue. One can imagine he supports it in spirit but doesn’t want to seem as though he’s agreeing with Labor. Either way, we’re royally stuffed.

In the meantime if you’re an Aussie, don’t forget the Electronic Frontiers Australia is accepting donations for their Open Internet campaign.

As is typical of someone with my writing style, I could probably have written that entire posting in a few lines. Verbosity and I get along really well, she's like a really dorky girl with huge glasses that hangs out with me and strings together huge paragraphs of words for fun on lazy autumn evenings :).

Did that trip a filter? Anyone? If you can't read this sentence, let me know.

Since installing my new student licenced copy of Windows 7 Professional in VirtualBox over the weekend, I've been testing how well my Windows-only software runs in it compared to my trusty ol' Windows 2000 VM. So far as good as can be expected, but there are few very strange anomalies.

Case in point, my copy of Visio 2000 no longer works, but to my surprise the Microsoft Office website offers trial downloads of both the Professional and Standard versions of Visio 2007 I went ahead and clicked the download link for the trial of Visio Standard 2007, and was given another Digital River executable stub file. This time I was in Windows not on my Mac though, so it was less irritating.

After downloading the real file I was given the above error message from the verbosely titled Program Compatibility Assistant telling me the application didn't run correctly. I had suffered a crash and all my gadgets disappeared an hour previously, but this application didn't terminate strangely or unexpectedly, and the Visio installer worked without a hitch. Very strange.

I did find it amusing that I downloaded the latest trial version of an application, and ran it on the latest flagship version of a vendor's operating system, and an application titled the Program Compatibility Assistant told me the application didn't run correctly.

I remember back in the old days whenever I downloaded something from Microsoft it would go through Conxion, was that the name of it? When did they replace them with Digital River?

Each morning I get out of bed, check batteries, have a shower, check batteries, brush my teeth, check batteries. While going through this morning's ritual I stopped dead in my tracks, not because I had run out of battery power, but because of a realisation: I don't own these batteries, these batteries own me.

I always forget to plug them in

I'm one of these obsessive people who has to have his computers doing things while he's asleep, generally either compiling huge FreeBSD ports or doing some heavy file compression. I can't really do these tasks during the day because I need my machine so I can follow along with the lecturer's dull university PowerPoint presentations with three hundred words crammed into each slide, amongst other production needs.

Blu-Ray anime needs a heck of a lot of processing power to play. Wait, you didn't read that.

What I try my best to do is charge batteries while I sleep for the same reason, but I nearly always forget to charge something, which entails a frantic mad dash in the mornings to plug them in so I can get at least a 20% charge before I have to run out the door. I'm notorious for doing this with my iTelephone which is even worse given I use it as an alarm clock.

Then there are batteries I have that are so shot as to be useless in any practical sense. As I blogged back in January, despite being the forth one I've bought since 2006 the battery in my MacBook Pro barely holds enough charge to keep the machine running if I unplug it to take it to another room. It has single-handedly justified the existence of my tiny ThinkPad X40 which I take to all my classes. Ironically I bought this machine with it's original battery second hand for peanuts and I can still get a solid three hours out of it!

Where are my jetpacks and ultracapacitors?

I'm doing computer science and information technology not computer engineering so I'm ill equipped to discuss this topic, but I was under the impression even as late as last year that ultracapacitors were going to take over the world and give us lightweight super high capacity energy that could charge so fast you'd blow every fuse and circuit within a few hundred kilometres. Alas here I am still with heavy, bulky batteries.

Do you have a regime for recharging your batteries? Do you do the recommended full discharge once a week? Why did I think of that episode of Futurama where Honest Bender disposes of the toxic waste into the mutant's underground world when I asked that previous question?

One would think a website celebrating Singaporean SMEs would be sponsored by, say, the Development Bank of Singapore not the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation! I suppose it's like the Bendigo Bankbuying the short lived Bank of Adelaide despite the latter having 17 times the population of the former.

Aiyo, bank make no sense, lah.

A couple of years ago I wrote a post about rzip, and I'm still getting emails and comments from people about it. I've decided to dedicate this post to answering some of these questions so I can point people to it. Grilled cheese sandwiches contain tastyness.

For people coming from a Windows or classic Mac background, file compression on Unix-like operating systems (such as GNU/Linux and BSD) can seem a bit confusing. Unlike the ZIP format which can accept multiple files, most Unix compressors can only work on one file at a time, so we use an archiver to bundle up the files we want to compress first, then feed that archive to the compressor.

Step one: archive files

Overwhelmingly the most common file archiving tool on Unix-like systems is the tape archiver (tar). This command creates a new tar archive from a folder which may contain files and other folders:

% tar cvf NewArchive.tar ./FolderToArchive/

An alternative is pax, which I prefer because it tends to be more consistent, it archives symbolic links (aka Unix shortcuts or aliases) instead of following them, and it has a few nifty features like being able to specify files that fall within a certain date range.

% pax -wf NewArchive.pax ./FolderToArchive/

Step two: compress the archive

The amount of time and CPU power you have will determine which compression algorithm you'll employ. On Unix systems the two most common are gzip which is fast, and bzip2 which is slower but generally gets better compression ratios. Here are some examples of both compressing the archive we made in step 1:

% gzip -v NewArchive.tar
% bzip2 -v NewArchive.tar

With both gzip and bzip2 you can adjust how much compression they perform by specifying a numeric flag from 1-9. Specify --help for more information.

Step three: just do one step

Now that we know the difference between archiving and compressing, we can save ourselves some time and do them both in one step. Most versions of tar support an extra flag that tells it to compress an archive with the tool of your choice after its been made. "z" specifies gzip and "j" specifies bzip2:

% tar czvf NewArchive.tar.gz ./FolderToArchive/
% tar cjvf NewArchive.tar.bz2 ./FolderToArchive/

Step four: unarchiving

Basically the reverse of what we did before, and again tar can take care of it for us:

% tar xzvf NewArchive.tar.gz
% tar xjvf NewArchive.tar.bz2

Recent versions of gnutar take this shorthand one step further with the "a" flag which automatically determines what compressor to use based on the file name you provide it; for example NewArchive.tar.bz2 tells gnutar with the "a" flag to use bzip2. Unless you're running a very recent Linux distribution or have installed it specifically though, you probably don't have it.

Other compressors

There are many, many other compressors you can use. My current ones of choice are xz and rzip which both achieve far higher compression ratios but require a fast machine with plenty of memory to run in a reasonable amount of time. I discussed rzip back in 2007, but I'll be dedicating a new post on its and xz's use later this week.

Links

Wikipedia	tar	pax	gzip	bzip2
FreeBSD manpage	tar	pax	gzip	bzip2
GNU/Linux manpage	tar	pax	gzip	bzip2

I hope this helps folks :).