Rubenerd

Recorded in Singapore. Licence for this track: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0. Attribution: Ruben Schade.

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.

Spread the word!

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.

Podcast: Play in new window · Download

01:23:03 – Recounting childhood memories and obsessions from Melbourne, Ikea furniture, Lego, is Starbucks having a positive effect, my favourite coffee house closing, improved coffee quality, rant about public transport (are we better building new damned giant roads or new train lines?), general public's perception of security is wrong (YOU are the biggest security threat!), getting fascinating Bruce Schneier books for my birthday, security companies screwing consumers, using a non-administrative account on Mac OS X, comparing building your own computer and open source software to hot rod builders, being a 1990's kid, running Windows software on Linux and FreeBSD with Wine, why it's a great time to be alive, comparing open source software developers to independent musicians, thanks to Jim Kloss and Esther Golton for the inspiration, sorry for the sacrilegious comparison! Are people worth what they're being paid? Who's deriving more happiness from what they're doing?

Recorded in Singapore. Licence for this track: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0. Attribution: Ruben Schade.

Big and silly happy birthday wishes going out to my little sister and Rubenerd Show Computer Game Reviewer Elke Schade who turns 19 today. She's three years younger than me, and somehow more mature… speaking of which I used the most embarrassing photo I could find :-D

She's not as cool as those of us born in March, but she wasn't too far off. We can't all be perfect I guess :-)

Our boat arrived back from Batam and we've finally made it back home. Even though we were only gone for 2 days I feel refreshed and pleased to have seen and experienced a new place. I was under the impression Batam was more industrialised than Bintan and not as good for holidays, but there are some beautiful places, great food and very warm and friendly people there. I'll be uploading some of the millions of photos we all took and doing a Rubenerd Show about it soon, right now I'm off to bed because I'm damned exhaused!

For those not from around here, Batam is an Indonesian island just a stone throw's away from Singapore, and just to the left of Bintan. In Google Earth it's not marked (I guess they only just did JB!) but you can see it as the blunt trident shaped island in the picture below, just to the lower right of Singapore.

Though I try to keep this blog focused mostly on Free and Open Source Software and technology news (most of the time!), I can't help but post at least something about this disturbing UN report the BBC is reporting:

BBC News International: Women face bias worldwide – UN

Women are discriminated against in almost every country around the world, a UN-commissioned report says. It [reports] that 70% of the world’s poor are women and they own just 1% of the world’s titled land.

The report, which was prepared for UN Human Right Commissioner Louise Arbour, says rape within marriage has still not been made a crime in 53 nations.

Guess it doesn't help that every single major religion in the world disregards, is afraid of, and is biased against women in the first place. A darn good justification for being an atheist even if for no other reason right? Sorry, I couldn't resist! ;-)

It reminds me when Christopher Hitchens was asked how he would eradicate poverty. In his typical blunt, direct manner he said that charity was a waste of time and an insult to people's dignity; the best way to eradicate poverty is to liberate women. I question at the idea of giving up on charity entirely, but the latter idea would certainly be a welcome help and a desperately needed step in the right direction.

With all that said though, I don't agree that women should be given preferential treatment, or given guaranteed positions or percentages in government, education, or business; I think they should have their performance judged like any other person would be. In other words, respect a person's abilities without considering their gender (or genders, as the case may be) at all. We should strive for equality above all else.

I get the feeling it will be a long time before this happens though, and it's a shame.

At the risk of sounding cliche, this particular Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf at the Junction 8 in Bishan has always been special, not least because it was…

• where I had my first black cup of coffee!
• the closest coffee shop to Veritas, the first company I worked for when I left high school in those few months before uni started
• where Felix Tanjono and I would meet after school
• where I met my first lady friend :)
• where Felix Tanjono and I would meet for brekkie for their unlimited coffee before 11am!

Meeting someone from work today there I noticed that it had changed; they've extended it out and added more tables. Aside from that it's the same, and good to know it's still here!

It's come time once again (brace yourselves) to pay tribute to yet another useless Rubenerd Blog milestone, the posting of the 700th entry!

No no, Yuki is actually quite overcome with amazement, she's just containing her excitement. As I'm sure you are too. Does this count as blogging Dave?