Rubenerd

Links shared from del.icio.us today:

How to install FreeBSD 7.0 under ZFS | ish

(categories: zfs bsd freebsd storage software foss sun)

Upon reading an article Atuuschaaw had shared on Google Reader and subsequently clicking the heading for it so I could read more, I came across the Daylight Atheism blog.

What I want to know is: why can't I write tag lines as good as that? I must have gone through half a dozen here since I started, and they've all been just terrible. "Software and internet commentary that's occasionally on topic" blows.

For better or worse (I’ve heard plenty of convincing arguments from both sides) I’ve resigned myself to the fact most of my thoughts in life will be expressed by being funnelled from my brain, through my nervous system to the muscles in my fingers where they’ll twitch and spasm in predictable ways with the resulting actions being directed at some form of computer keyboard.

After listening to some more recent episodes of Security Now where Steve Gibson has talked at great length about his coding practices I’ve been really interested to learn specifically about the keyboard he uses. Despite having numerous new machines over the years, he still uses his original Northgate Omnikey 102 he purchased in the 1980s because he claims it’s more solidly built and gives superior tactile and audible feedback compared to the cheap, disposable keyboards most of us now use.

Looking into this further I’ve found out there’s an entire cottage industry online for the maintenance and reselling of second hand, early generation keyboards; people literally swear by their timeless designs. It seems with the commoditisation of personal computers, keyboards gradually became the victims of cost cutting measures which resulted in cheaper materials being used, membranes instead of dedicated mechanical components and generally crappier and flimsier designs.

The two series of keyboards most sought after seem to be the IBM Model M and the Northgate Omnikey. I believe they both use the buckling spring system which give the characteristic clickety-clack keyboard sound. It’s been joked that Northgate went out of business because when people bought one of their keyboards they were so solidly built people never needed to buy another one!

It's my nature to fixate on something obscure like this and research it to death for several weeks. You'll be reading more about it.

What's a better use for a 64bit FreeBSD 7.2 Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 desktop with 6.0GiB of Kingston Low Latency RAM? Commander Keen in DOSBox of course!

I dare you to come up with something more productive.

Here's another Rubenerd Fun Fact for all you rabid Official Rubenerd Fun Fact fans.

If you count backwards from 10 to negative infinity, at some point you’ll reach 9.

Shannon Whitley (a interesting and very nice guy, I encourage you to follow him) shared a link to an article on Twitter (Why I Hate Social Media) which I only needed to read the first few lines of to know I agreed with it:

At the risk of being branded a heretic or perhaps just being shown the door by my agency HR director, I have to say it: I hate social media. Why? Because it’s just media. And since when was media ever interesting?

People are interesting. Ideas are interesting. Stories are interesting. Real stuff is interesting. Brands are interesting (or, at least, some of them are). Even ads can be interesting. But media? Media just connects those things. It’s a conduit. Media is not interesting. Not even the “social” kind.

Right down to Matt Jones' use of the word conduit, his views are broadly the same as mine. Being a programmer I'm fascinated by the intricate details of how systems work, but I'm also aware that the ideas and thoughts published on such platforms are (potentially) far more valuable than the system itself. This is different though from saying the platform and medium are worthless, mind.

I think we often tend to judge material based on the medium they're published in instead of looking objectively at the media itself. Not a day goes by thesedays without us being told major newspapers are in trouble, that satellite radio is faltering, that grilled cheese sandwich irons are more difficult to use, that Wikipedia is "unreliable" and that there's no "point" to Twitter. There are plenty of other examples I'm sure we could both think of.

How much of this furore is being stirred up by people merely accepting that newspapers are automatically better than blogs, and that Britannica is better than Wikipedia? In some cases they very well could be, but I see enough examples where the opposite is true to think that it's nowhere near as black and white an issue as we're led to believe.

I assert more thinking—and less assuming—needs to be done.

Little tip for those who use Qmax for their Wireless@SG provider, because you're not using SingTel or StarHub it means you can log into the free WiFi services at both Starbucks and the Coffee Bean (to use the places I frequent as examples) regardless of the carrier and use the "local roaming customers" option, very cool!

One thing you have to keep in mind though is how you enter your username. On SingTel when you select Qmax the username field will be populated with @qmax.com.sg so you just have to enter your username at the beginning. On StarHub when you select Qmax they fill in the email address part but only after you've hit the [SUBMIT] button! In this case don't worry that you've only partially entered your details, when you enter your username and submit the form it'll still work.

Now if I could get the Singapore Information and Development Authority to pay me for help posts like this we'd be in business.

More disturbing news is appearing regarding Israeli treatment of Palestinians. I don't know why I find it more abhorrent, but I feel much sadder when I know it's children being abused.

From the Dissident Voice by Jonathan Cook:

Nazareth — The rights of Palestinian children are routinely violated by Israel’s security forces, according to a new report that says beatings and torture are common. In addition, hundreds of Palestinian minors are prosecuted by Israel each year without a proper trial and are denied family visits.

The findings by Defense for Children International (DCI) come in the wake of revelations from Israeli soldiers and senior commanders that it is “normal procedure” in the West Bank to terrorise Palestinian civilians, including children.

I'm aware there are Palestinian extremists who routinely sent rockets into Israel that harm and kill innocent civilians, and I am also aware that Israel has the right to defend itself. That said, they're not doing their cause or standing any good by being just as morally objectionable and lowering themselves to the same level as their enemies.

I've said this on Twitter before: this far-right wing government in Israel is scary. Which is a shame because Israel is one of the places I'd like to visit one day.

According to the website, Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books).

Not that I'm biased or anything, but it seems when we though Microsoft couldn't do anything sillier (aside from naming their search engine Bing) Microsoft Australia has now come out with a contest encouraging people to download and install Internet Explorer 8, or Windows Internet Explorer 8 or Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer 8 Enterprise Edition SP1 or whatever it is they're calling it now.

The gist is, if you install IE8 and find a specially crafted page that only it can view, you'll win a cash prize. Several thoughts on this:

1. Are they so desperate to get people to use IE these days and given they’ve long since lost so much of the public’s confidence that they have to resort to measures like this to promote their software that mention nothing about features, performance or security?

2. The page is disingenuous. Viewing it on my FreeBSD or Mac machines I’m told to upgrade to IE8 when clearly I can’t even if I wanted to.

3. What’s to stop me modifying my user agent?

4. There’s nothing like creating a page that only one browser can view to demonstrate to the world that you’re company is finally getting serious about adopting open standards.

5. The exact phrasing is "get rid of [Firefox] or get lost." To be honest, I’d feel safer getting lost!

They have billions in the bank and some talented people; and this was the best they could do? As Todd Tyrtle on Twitter said, who knew I hated Internet Explorer so much that they couldn't pay me $10,000 to use it!

If I've said it once I've said it a hundred times, I'm constantly bewildered and baffled by Microsoft's antics. The Microsoft from my childhood has long since died.

Great news for us who use Singapore's Wireless@SG WiFi hotspot programme, the free service has been extended to 2013! From Channel News Asia:

SINGAPORE: Singaporeans who have become used to surfing the internet on the go will be able to do so for another four years. […] The government says it will be enhancing and extending the Wireless@SG programme till March 2013.

Acting Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, Lui Tuck Yew […] said since the launch of the Wireless@SG programme in 2006, the programme now boasts 7,500 hot spots across the country and 1.3 million subscribers.

The new enhanced programme will include improvements to access speeds of up to one megabit per second, double the current bandwidth, and using a new seamless login process.

I first talked about Wireless@SG on Rubenerd Show 191 back in 2006, ironically when I was living in Malaysia.