Rubenerd

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.

I don’t like to get too political on this blog, but in this case I’m willing to make an exception to post a video Atuuschaw shared on Google Reader yesterday that really moved me.

In this YouTube video, American news presenter Bill Moyers from the PBS Journal Show discusses the little covered protest march to bring justice to those who have died during wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Gaza Strip. He then analyses with his calm voice what has brought us here, whether we really have achieved anything, and what the human cost has been.

As an atheist who’s a nervous wreck thinking about the negative effects that incompatible ancient holy books and justifications derived from them are having on a world with modern weapons, I also appreciated his references to the Bible and his explantion of "the oldest family feud in history". Something tells me as long as people think/know books can be 110% infallable words of their gods, this conflict and many others will never be solved. It’s not politically correct to say this I know, but eventually we will have to face and admit this.

Back to the video, from Salon’s Glenn Greenwall:

On his PBS Journal Show last night, Bill Moyers delivered a poignant essay on Israel/Gaza (video below). The whole segment is worth watching — it begins with coverage of a mostly ignored anti-war march this week in Washington […] — but Moyers’ essay begins at roughly the 2:20 mark.

SSL Blacklist showing that Gmail doesn't use the vulnerable MD5 algorithm, and that it's certificate issuer isn't on their black list.

I'm typing this post this evening on my beautiful 2002-vintage iBook with Mac OS X Tiger. Still going strong, definitely the most reliable and dependable system I've ever owned.

To be serious now though: it's official folks, there is now awareness of weaknesses of the MD5 algorithm used to sign secure certificates online. Sites that use the more secure SHA1 algorithm are safer, and RapidSSL is now offering it in place of MD5. Still, some are still using MD5, meaning if you connect to them you're not really using a secured connection.

From CodeFromThe70s.org:

An attack has been demonstrated yesterday that highlights the practicality of the well-publicized weaknesses of the MD5 algorithm. Essentially, any certificate signed with the MD5 algorithm may be counterfeit.

There is […] a large number of CAs out there, and it is certain that some of them will continue to use MD5 for one reason or another.

Therefore it may be prudent to avoid, or, at the very least, not place much trust in websites that authenticate themselves with the help of MD5. After all, there is no way to automatically distinguish between a chain with a genuine MD5-based certificate signature and a chain with a counterfeit certificate.

A solution to this is a Mozilla Firefox plugin called SSL Blacklist which places a small certificate notice in the bottom right hand side of your browser that indicates whether a page is secured with SHA1 or not secure with MD5. This allows you to make informed decisions when using secured sites, and to let existing web hosts know that they should upgrade.

Even before this vulnerability was demonstrated this plugin was a useful addition to the security conscious internet user's toolkit, but this lastest release makes it indispensable. If you don't have it in other words, grab it now! This is an order!

UPDATE: Steve Gibson also goes into great detail about the exploit and the plugin to protect yourself in Security Now 177.

Screenshot of the current release of the KDE (Linux, FreeBSD etc) desktop.
Wait, I mean Windows 7.

Ina Friend over on CNET News is reporting that Microsoft has made beta versions of it's Windows 7 operating system available for download. Normally I would have yawned at such an announcement, but given I was waiting for my sister to get ready before we headed out for lunch, I figured I'd skim it.

Microsoft has apparently decided that it has enough server capacity and has made the code available for the Windows 7 beta.

“The Windows 7 Beta is now available for download,” Microsoft said on its Web site. “Thanks for your interest and help with the beta.”

The software was supposed to be made available on Friday, but the company delayed the release after a day filled with Web site problems.

The real gem though that made me laugh out loud so hard that I might have broken a few windows was this:

Furthermore, the company cautioned that the beta is not the quality one should expect from a final release. “It can be glitchy–so don’t use a PC you need every day.”

Please, please… say no more, I'm wetting myself here! :-D

To be serious for a second though, I really do home Microsoft picks up the ball they dropped with XP and Vista. They won't of course, but for all the people in the corporate world who are stuck with Microsoft's subpar products (including my dad who I can hear swearing in the distance) I hope they at least make a sincere effort. Excuse me, I have to go laugh again!

Photo from the JudiciaryReport.com via a Google Image search. He's so creepy.

Given timezone differences this will be in some areas a few hours off and in other places up to a day off, but bear with me. Today is the first of the last single digit days that George W. Bush is in power. Doesn't that just excite the heck out of you?

As a caucasian person living in Asia, I am very much looking forward to being able to walk down the street without a few people glaring at me because they assume there's a chance I'm an American and voted for him. This has ebbed somewhat since Barack Obama won the election to end all elections, but I'll definitely feel more comfortable once he really has control of the ship.

I don't know enough about American politics, but is it possible to impeach him and Dick Cheney after they've left office? As in, would it theoretically be possible to screw up their legacy and have them officially disgraced? It'd be getting off easy after doing what they and their cronies have done, but it'd be start.

You know your blog has gone up in the world when you've been linked to on the J-Walk Blog, and you know your blog has gone up even further in the world when a blog post from your blog is featured in it's own separate entry on the J-Walk Blog!. Did I mention it's the J-Walk Blog and link to it?

From the 9th of December 2008:

Rubenerd combines three topics into a single blog post: On Google Reader, the iPhone and J-Walkyness.

By the way, if you’re ever in a bookstore, go to the spreadsheet books section and adjust the display such that my books are facing out. Even if you have to move some of the other books to the Religion section to make room. I do it, Rebenerd does it, and you should do it.

And because it's the J-Walk Blog I'm not even offended that he didn't spell the name of my blog properly in the last line!

His assertion is true, I did in fact take said Excel book and put it in front of a stack of other books, and I've been making it a habit of doing so. Jean Luc Picard would be pleased with that last line.

Curiously if you do a search for Rubenerd J-Walk in Google, you get exactly 1,110 hits. I'm not sure if that's a decimal number or whether Google is telling me 14 in binary. Heck it could even be 4,368 in hexadecimal. That definitely sounds more impressive than 14, let's just leave it at that.

Steve Jobs at the 1997 Macworld Expo

At a time eerily close to when I was writing my previous post about Steve Jobs' health and the end of MacWorld, it seems a rumour is spreading that Apple may in fact appear at CES:

Apple is ditching MacWorld to instead exhibit at CES next year instead, according to one source.

The source, citing “friends who work at Apple,” insisted the company is ditching MacWorld because it will “go large” at CES, which typically runs concurrently with MacWorld in early January.

The International Consumer Electronics Show, or CES, is the big annual gathering [of] the consumer electronics industry. Held in Las Vegas over several days, it attracts more than 2,700 companies from all over the world, including technology giants like Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo.

Apple has never had a presence at the show, exhibiting at MacWorld instead.

I'm treating this rumour from a friend from a friend from a friend as… well, a rumour. Still it presents an interesting scenario: Apple competing head to head with their arch rivals under one roof at CES would certainly be quite a spectacle.

While I love Apple products and the Mac OS X operating system, if Apple does something that I think is stupid or if they're caught making something up, I call them out on it, as I hope I do with every technology company who's products I use and endorse.

I will be interested to see how Apple's diehard apologists explain this after they've been explaining Apple's decision to leave MacWorld was about giving up on expensive trade shows. If this CES appearance rumour is true, that whole argument has just been shot down in flames.

I'll be most interested to see Daniel Eran Dilger over at Roughy Drafted explain this. I've thought his coverage of Apple related topics have been spot on in the past, but his post last year about why Apple ditched MacWorld was uncharacteristically shaky. Will he be able to reconcile this CES appearance after he's been saying the trade show paradigm is dead and Apple ditched MacWorld to save cash and to release products on their own schedule instead? I don't see how he'll be able to do it.

Then again this is just a rumour, and as with most rumours I suspect it's bogus. If it turns out to be true though, prepare to read some serious backtracking across the blogosphere!

A bit of a belated post regarding this topic, but it's one I think still needs to be addressed. Photo is of Steve Jobs holding a MacBook Air at MacWorld Conference & Expo 2008 by Matthew Yohe.

It seemed Apple made up a phony excuse about the "reduced relevance of MacWorld" as the reason why Steve wouldn't be presenting the final keynote and dismissed rumours of his health, only later to backtrack when a letter from Steve was published.

I can understand. When my beautiful late mum was going through the last few years of her own battle with cancer and the side effects of the chemotherapy, she didn't like anyone in the outside world to know she was ill because she was scared of being treated differently, and she wanted it to remain in the family. Life threatening illnesses do generate some weird responses from people, during high school people even treated me differently just because I was the guy with the terminally ill mum. Some of that treatment was nice, some really wasn't.

Steve Jobs' health should not have been made into a public spectacle, no matter how important some shareholders perceive him to be to the value of their stocks. Yes, that's how shallow I see these people as. Morals and ethics of business have long been oxymorons, but personally I take two things seriously: health and family. Both should be off limits.

When someone is going through a crushing illness like that, the last thing they need is back seat doctors, media speculation and endless strings of questions by people who should know better. "Should" being the operative word.

I wish Steve the best in his recovery and hope he's spending some quality time with his family. Don't let those arses in the media get to you sir.

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.