The Workbench, Reloaded

New Firefox makes browser war a fair fight

2010-02-01T10:47:00.000-08:00

If you regularly read this space, you'll notice how the Google Chrome Web browser kind of grew on me, and after my initial reservations I've come to love it. Something about its speed.

But now Firefox, with its new 3.6 version, has seen enough improvements to almost make it a fair fight.

Some of the benchmark tests comparing the two intrigued me. When you figure in that impossible stability+speed combination, reviewers are calling them almost neck and neck.

Now, we don't do that benchmark stuff around here. I don't have time to mess with all that, and I'd rather put a piece of software through its paces. I'd rather max it out, try to break it, and take note of my findings. I'm not smart enough or geeky enough to plug the whole thing to an oscilloscope or whatever it is those propellerheads do.

So, take any speed or stability tests I run with a grain of salt -- or maybe even the whole shaker. Whatever test results I get depend on what mood I'm in at the time, and what I'm trying to do with the software. But I will try to max it out.

I'm one of those computer users who runs underpowered equipment (scary to think my netbook is the most muscular computer I have) and overclocks it like crazy. And to do the things I want to do, I go for lightweight, faster programs when I can. Even my usual graphical interface -- Fluxbox -- is really little more than a plain background, taskbar, and menus that I write myself from text files. That's why I was so eager to get my Chrome on, because of its simple and fast interface.

Being the experimenter that I am, after reading some of the reports I had to download Firefox 3.6. I've always liked the 'fox, used it even in its beta days when it was called Firebird (or was it Phoenix?), and kept going back to it after trying other browsers. But I knew 3.6 would really have to show me something to dislodge Chrome from the front line.

But I'm pleasantly surprised. I'm not sure what the developer did, but it's a whole lot quicker than Firefox used to be. It's not quite in the Chrome league, but this new version might be as fast as Opera.

From what I've noticed, Web pages don't seem to get lost in that nether world that's probably populated by everyone's stray socks.

Lifehacker recently ran some tests of some of the favorite browsers available, with several versions of Chrome, Firefox, and Opera, and Safari. Sorry, Internet Explorer wasn't in these tests, which takes away a lot of comic relief. That would have been like bringing a duck to a cockfight.

Here's the stuff according to Lifehacker, with my comments:

Boot-up and warm loading; Winner: Opera - No surprises; Opera always was a fast loader.

Tab Loading; Winner: Chrome Stable - I use version 4.0.249.30 for Linux, which is in beta but built from the stable version. And there's no dispute there; it's the fastest "name" browser I've seen in a while.

JavaScript; Winner: Opera 10.5 Pre-Alpha.

DOM/CSS; Winner: Chrome Developmental version.

Memory use, no extensions; Winner: Firefox 3.6 - This is a surprise, and certainly worth my attention.

Memory use with extensions; Winner: Firefox 3.6 - An even bigger surprise here. Firefox has always been fairly quick until I start loading in my extensions. Then my browsing experience was like watching paint dry. If this test holds up in real life, then Firefox just made up for a lot of lost ground in the browser battle.

Overall winners, in order: Google Chrome Developmental, Google Chrome Stable, Firefox 3.6, Firefox 3.5.4: Opera 10.5 Pre-Alpha, Opera 10.01, Safari 4.0.4.

Will this new Firefox become my prime browser?

It's hard to say. I've always liked how you could add extensions to Firefox, but Chrome is starting to head in that modular direction too. And I like the independent tabs in Chrome; if one Web page gets stuck you only need to close that tab rather than shut down the whole browser. In Chrome I haven't run into the memory problems I used to encounter with Firefox. There's a lot to be said for both browsers.

Besides, it's still too early in my test flight for me to render a decision. I haven't broken Firefox yet. Or Chrome. Ask me then.

But if speed and memory use are your needs, it looks like this may finally be a fair fight.

###

Got my Chrome on -- finally!

2010-01-13T08:38:00.000-08:00

After a whole bunch of testing, tweaking, and head-banging, Google Chrome is now working on my Linux box.

At issue was an nss file; I'm not real sure what it does, but it makes Chrome work. That's all I need to know.

I couldn't find it on any of my Vector Linux repositories, so I had to do some serious Web searching to dig it up. But it's there, on a web site called slackfind.net -- of course, it is now bookmarked in my system.

Here's the file:

Keep in mind, this is for a Slackware version of Linux, specifically Vector Linux, which is the one I use. It's in .tgz format, for me a breeze to install.

And Chrome is as fast as I knew it would be.

Firefox? What's Firefox?

###

Chrome becomes headache on Linux box

2010-01-06T11:03:00.000-08:00

I'll admit it. I had my early misgivings about the Google Chrome browser when it was first coming out. Like, what's Google doing in the software business?

But after using Chrome a few times on Windows systems, it sort of grew on me. It's one fast browser, maybe even faster than Opera. It's less likely to blow up in memory like Firefox. I have a Portable Apps version that I use on borrowed Windows machines, though it doesn't seem to save my bookmarks.

On my Linux box, I'm always experimenting with browsers. I have Firefox, Seamonkey (which is built off the old Mozilla code), Dillo, Lynx, and Opera available to browse the Web, and I use them all. For the past few months Opera has been my go-to, and even that feels poky next to Chrome.

So I put myself on the Chrome mailing list, waiting for the Linux version to come out. A few weeks ago, the first version for MacIntosh and Linux was released, with all the warts.

Now, understand, this version is in beta. Which means it may or may not work. That's what happens when you go for such bleeding-edge software. You're volunteering your services as a crash-test dummy.

So far, only binaries of Chrome seem to be available in Linux; I haven't seen any source-code bundles just yet. I use Vector Linux, which runs with .tlz and .tgz binary packages, but I like to compile my programs from source. Best I was able to do was to download the .rpm binary (which Red Hat and Fedora use), and convert it over to .tgz. Here's what I did, from the root shell:

root:# cd /home/eric
root:# rpm2tgz google-chrome-beta_current_i386.rpm

From there, I was able to install it directly into my system. I was ready to go. I had my seatbelt buckled and my Tony Stewart racing gear on, 'cause this was going to be one fast browser.

A problem, though. I could only go so far; the sandbox (a security tool) wasn't configured right. My command shell told me what to do, so after a few days of deliberation I went ahead with the fix. Here's how, again from a root shell:

root:# su /opt/google/chrome
root:# chown root chrome-sandbox
root:# chmod 4755 chrome-sandbox

Then fired Chrome up from the command shell -- success, for a minute.

As it stands now, I can work Chrome all day, as long as I don't use it to go online. That's when it quits.

Seriously. Here's what I get in the command shell:

eric:$ google-chrome
[7241:7253:703254262:ERROR:/usr/local/google/home/chrome-eng/b/slave/chrome-official-linux/build/src/base/nss_init.cc(89)] Error initializing NSS with a persistent database (sql:/home/eric/.pki/nssdb): NSS error code -8174 Assertion failure: lock != NULL, at ../../../../pr/src/pthreads/ptsynch.c:205 Aborted

In non-technical language, that means it crapped out. Back to the drawing board.

Might need to download the next version, maybe attack one of the nightly builds. And if anyone has any ideas of their own, I'm willing to try them. But despite my early misgivings I see Chrome in my future, and I'm not talking about a chrome dome here.

I'm gonna keep trying, because I'm stubborn and enjoy fooling with software when it's in beta. Face it. I make a good crash test dummy.

###

(You tell me: How about the rest of y'all Linux users? Have you had any better luck than me? Use the comments section below.)

Single-tasking rules with new text editors

2009-12-23T08:01:00.000-08:00

Maybe it's a longing for a simpler time, or the realization that your computer is loaded with distractions, but lately I've been seeing lot of text-editing programs designed to narrow your focus.

Multitasking is out now. Welcome to the wonderful world of single-tasking.

I've been reading about the Darkroom program for Windows, and Writeroom for the Mac. Then there's WriteMonkey and PyRoom, two other programs that do absolutely nothing but give you a background to type your words on. Almost nothing to play with on any of these programs.

The big question here is, what fun is that? It's not like you can adjust your margins, change fonts, or add fancy graphics here. Your screen looks absolutely barren; even the desktop icons and Freecell game are blanked out.

I use PyRoom (which is pictured here), a text tool that shows you nothing but a green box on a black screen. My text shows up in green in that box. No formatting, no toolbars, no dancing paper clips -- just the text in a box.

When I wrote for the Fontana Herald-News, we used the old Harris typesetting system, which was ancient even in the late 1980s. PyRoom reminds me of the terminal I typed on back then. The only real difference was that there was a string of commands at the top of the screen, which were for setting the type and meant nothing to me, the writer. I was limited to eight characters for the file name (which we called a "slug" back then.

I was quite productive on these old-school screens because, well, there was nothing else to do but write. I'm easily distracted, so it's probably a good thing I don't have an Internet connection at home or I'd get nothing done.

Much as I've tried to multitask, I always do my better work when I'm going the opposite direction. That means when I write, I write. When I design the page, I design the page. Those two disciplines used to be -- and still should be -- kept separate. That's why I do most of my writing on a plain-vanilla text editor instead of something like OpenOffice or Microsoft Word.

With PyRoom you can set the background to a variety of color schemes, but I stick with the default green-on-black. And I understand with WriteMonkey you can even set the sound to give you the clacking of a typewriter; how cool is that? Other than that, your commands are pretty minimal with these programs. Here's the help file with PyRoom:

---------
Control-H: Show help in a new buffer
Control-I: Show buffer information
Control-P: Shows Preferences dialog
Control-N: Create a new buffer
Control-O: Open a file in a new buffer
Control-Q: Quit
Control-S: Save current buffer
Control-Shift-S: Save current buffer as
Control-W: Close buffer and exit if it was the last buffer
Control-Y: Redo last typing
Control-Z: Undo last typing
Control-Page Up: Switch to previous buffer
Control-Page Down: Switch to next buffer
---------

While Darkroom is a Windows program and Writeroom is ported to the MacIntosh, PyRoom has no real preference. It's written in the Python programming language, so it should work with all operating systems. It's also free.

I wasn't sure I'd like using such a stark text editor, but the more I use it the more I like it. And I get a lot more done when I'm using it.

###

Can't go outdoors? See weather virtually

2009-12-14T08:43:00.000-08:00

You know about those frequent computer users, be they writers, gamers, cubicle residents, and programmers. They spend hours squinting at an LCD screen to the exclusion of everything else. For some, computers have become a handy alternative to real life.

If you have to go to a weather site to find out if it's raining outside, then you're just the person I'm talking to.

I read this piece in FilePlaza about YoWindow, a program that makes it unnecessary to even go outside. Seriously. According to the article, it brings the outdoors inside.

From FilePlaza:

... a beautiful landscape changes over time, reflecting the actual weather. It's like watching the weather out your window. Watch the weather with pleasure!

Ugh, no thanks.

Admittedly, I spend a lot more time at the computer than a grown man should. But my favorite at-home workstation is out on the front stoop, with the laptop and a cup of coffee. If the weather is rough I'll sit in a chair by the propped-open front door. My favorite online place is a college campus nearby, outdoors, where there's plenty of scenery (yeah, that kind, too).

I guess YoWindow would have a special value to the office worker who is chained to his cubicle. I've never had one of those jobs, and I'd rather have a battery acid enema than work under those conditions. Even when I worked in newsrooms, I took every excuse to go outside and hunt up my stories in person.

So, if you're one of those folks who is indoors all the time and has a skin pallor that you can only get when raising mushrooms, you might want to take a look at YoWindow.

Or, better yet, find an excuse to go outside and enjoy the real deal.

###

An old scam takes a new homegrown tack

2009-12-12T09:39:00.000-08:00

You've probably seen this scenario in your email box a few times. Someone has lots of money they can't get to, and wants your help in securing it. Just send a reply, and that'll start the wheels turning.

But these can be sniffed out a mile away. They're usually from someone in Nigeria, or some other third-world country.

I received another one of these scam notes in my email, with a different angle to it. Instead of someone claiming royal blood in some country most people can't find on a map, this one looks all-American. Like, from a U.S. serviceman:

"I am Capt. Bruce Evan Roberts, with the US Navy Joint Special Operations,USS COLORADO around Gulf of Aden, I have $9Million US Dollars in my possession,which was seized/confiscated from somalia pirates between Yemen and Somalia Waters in Gulf of Aden, we want to move the funds out of the USS COLORADO around Gulf of Aden to a secure location to enable you assist us in investing it in a profit oriented business."

And here's the pitch:

"I need someone I can trust to actualize this venture, you will receive this funds through a secured US Military Delivery Freight duly authorized/legalize by Middle East Regional Command. The funds would be kept for us safely by you until I am discharge of my duties here in the USS COLORADO around Gulf of Aden by January 2010. Do respond back to me indicating your response so I can further discussions with you on the safe movement of the funds out of here and how much commission you shall be entitled to from the $9Million. Please do respond to my personal e-mail: brucerobertss@hotmail.co.uk ..."

A couple of obvious red flags. The letter did not come from his personal email box, but from mr.frankies@att.net -- and it's sent to "undisclosed recipients." Even inspecting the source HTML code of the letter doesn't provide any more information than that.

And then, the gist of the letter was enough of a warning. My personal bullscat detector, well, the needle was buried in the red.

Hey, uh, Captain Bruce, baby (if that's who you are). I'd like to extend the same advice I once offered in an online forum after someone responded to my opinions by flaming my shorts off: You just might want to check to see if your identity has been stolen lately. Some jerkface is using your name.

As for y'all email recipients, it goes like this. Despite the American-as-pizza-pie, score-one-for-our-country trappings in the letter, treat it the same as when some Nigerian gazillionaire or Moroccan princess or Venezuelan dictator offers a share in the booty via email. To wit:

See that key on the upper right of your keyboard, the one marked DEL over there? Yeah, that one. It's made for emails like that. Use it with extreme prejudice.

Supporting our troops doesn't include falling into some scam that's using the name of one of our servicemen.

###

Facebook security issues? It's the ducky's fault

2009-12-09T16:20:00.001-08:00

Gee everybody's so friendly on Facebook ... probably too much so.

Two Facebook users, Daisy Felettin and Dinette Stonily, sent out friend requests to 100 Facebookers each, chosen at randon though concentrating on their own age groups. Between the two of them, 95 people decided to become their friends.

Except Daisy and Dinette don't exist. They were created by the IT firm Sophos to show how easy it is to convince Facebook users to reveal personal information to total strangers.

Daisy (using a photo of a rubber duck as her avatar), is known to Facebook users as a 21-year-old woman, while Dinette Stonily presented "herself" a, a 56-year-old with a photo of two cats as her avatar.

Daisy concentrated on younger Facebook users, and came away with 46 new friends. Of these 46, she got full birthdates from 89 percent of them, family/friend data from 46 percent, a town or suburb from 50 percent, a full address from four percent, and a phone number from seven percent.

Older Facebook users, when dealing with Dinette, were also quick to become friends. Of the 100 approached, 41 became friends -- but another eight approached Dinette of their own accord and befriended the cat-loving phantom. And of the 49 new friends, Dinette got full birthdates from 57 percent of them, family/friend data from 31 percent, a town or suburb from 43 percent, a full address from six percent, and a phone number from 23 percent.

Check out their names again. They're based on anagrams for "false identity" and "stolen identity."

Ugh. There are a lot of people who shouldn't be running computers.

At Sophos, they call this experiment the “rubber duck attack.” There's a purpose behind the goofy moniker, as it shows how you can gather someone’s personal info without any technical expertise, simply by working within the social network’s rules.

I can't stand Facebook. I'd rather not waste my time with it. I was ready to shut down my account when some friends -- real friends, as in people I know and like -- started contacting me there. For many of these friends, that's the online way to keep up with one another.

OK. It goes like this. Not everyone who says he wants to be your friend is really your friend. Got it? You wouldn't invite some random person into your living room just because he says he wants to "friend" you, as they say in Facebook. But then y'all already knew that.

Here's something revealing: The 46 people befriended by Daisy have an average of 220 Facebook friends, while Dinette's 49 new pals have an average of 932 Facebook friends.

I'm tired of belaboring this point: Nobody has that many friends.

Sophos (the duck people) offer their own social-networking security tips:

Don't blindly accept friends. Treat a friend as the dictionary does, namely "someone whom you know, like and trust." A friend is not merely a button you click on. You don't need, and can't realistically claim to have, 932 true friends.
Learn the privacy system of any social networking site you join. Use restrictive settings by default. You can open up to true friends later. Don't give away too much too soon.
Assume that everything you reveal on a social networking site will be visible on the internet for ever. Once it has been searched, and indexed, and cached, it may later turn up on-line no matter what steps you take to delete it.

And watch out for potential friends bearing rubber ducks.

###

Chrome browser finally available for Linux

2009-12-08T13:22:00.001-08:00

A beta of the Google Chrome web browser is now available for Linux.

About time!

Downloading now ... as I write this. Expect more after I install it.

Available in .deb (Debian) and .rpm (Red Hat/Fedora) binaries.

Try it with me, y'all penguinistas!

Running bombproof Vector Linux on netbook

2009-12-03T09:58:00.000-08:00

When it comes to computers, I'm always up to something. It's probably one of my failings.

Although my netbook works very well with the mini-Linux system I recently installed, I wanted to standardize things a bit. I've been working toward a "final solution" that mirrors the system I have on the desktop unit.

So, I was up until around 3 a.m. one Saturday morning, installing a new operating system on the netbook. I am now using Vector Linux, a Slackware-based, rock-solid OS.

It wasn't difficult, but then I've installed many a system on my computers. Really, the only part that was different was that the netbook doesn't have a CD-ROM drive. I was using a thumb drive for the dirty work.

But it's up, running, and all that good stuff.

Part of it is, as I mentioned, I just can't leave stuff alone. In fact, that's partly why I needed to make changes to the netbook anyway -- in full experimental flight I toasted the Windows XP installation, corrupted some system files, and was left with a rather expensive paperweight until I broke out the tools and thumb drives.

In the interim I ran Puppy Linux, a fast little system that weighs in at less than 100 megabytes for the download. It's one of those simple-as-it-gets systems, blistering fast and a joy to use. Really, it's almost too much fun to be on a computer.

But Puppy Linux is a little squirrelly when it comes to downloading and installing new software. That's something the developer is working on and while he's making some real strides, it's not there yet. Plus, I wanted my laptop to have the same system I have on my desktop. Some consistency is always a good thing. That's why I opted for Vector.

OK. Linux is Linux. It's all built around the same kernel, the same X windowing system, the same basic command-line programs you never see. Over the years the gap between the graphics-happy Windows and stodgy command-line Linux has closed, but the solid UNIX base remains. Plus, Linux is free, and tailor-made for those of us who keep experimenting and breaking things.

Vector Linux is based on Slackware, which is probably the most stable, most Unix-like of the Linux versions. I've followed its development for several years, and it was the version I've stayed with the longest. I'm using version 6.0 on the netbook, the same as on my desktop. In fact, it all came from the same download.

See, that's one of the things about Linux. The licensing is different. You can take a download and set up as many computers as you want with it, and there's no Bill Gates around to tell you you're a pirate. In fact, this share-the-love practice is encouraged. I can burn as many CDs of the system as I want, give them away, sell them for a few bucks, as long as the GPL license (which they call a "copyleft") is intact.

Again, installing is a little problematic on the netbook because there's no CD-ROM drive. The best workaround is by using Unetbootin with a thumb drive. I put Unetbootin and the Vector Linux .iso file (which is what you get when you download) onto the drive, then used a Windows computer (had to go to the library for that) to install Vector on the drive so it will boot up. Then clear up some room on the netbook hard drive, use gparted to create a partition for Vector, and reboot with the thumb drive. Follow the prompts on the screen (on my Acer, I hit F12 for boot options), and install Vector on the new partition, a process which sounds dangerous but it's a simple matter of following the prompts. Then put Vector on the GRUB boot loader (a simple cut-paste in a text file), reboot, and I'm running my new system.

OK. That's the simplistic version, and I know I lost many of y'all here. Let's just say I've done this a few times. Don't be surprised if I eventually put together something more detailed, something you can download.

The big zillion-dollar question: Did I lose my work files from the old Windows system? No. They're all there, and I can open and edit every one of them. What's even better, I have an emulation program called WINE that will run most of the Windows programs. In fact, the Windows installation is untouched. Should I rebuild my broken system files and get XP to work, then I have a choice of which system to start when I turn the computer on.

A couple of things still need work. At first Vector didn't recognize my onboard condenser microphone, ruling out recording. Strangely enough, though, I downloaded my favorite sound-editing software (Audacity) through Vector's repositories, and the mic works well with that. I kind of wish I knew why it would suddenly work, but I'm not going to complain. It took a bit of experimenting to get the webcam going, though it's not something I expect to use. So at least these issues are resolved.

I'm still looking for software that would put the laptop in hibernate mode when I close the lid. So far I'm not having much luck. The computer continues to run and the screen saver kicks on, so there's still some battery drain. Unless I find a handy program I can plug in, I may have to recompile the kernel. Now that's getting into territory that's way advanced for me.

But everything else works just fine. My wireless connection works as it did before. I added some of the pretties, installed Open Office, included my favorite news feed reader, and the netbook is battle-ready. With a system that's practically bombproof.

###

You tell me: Does the thought of installing a whole new operating system scare you? Do you break a lot of things while experimenting, or do you leave well enough alone? Any suggestions for my hibernation problem? Use the comments section for feedback.

Screenshot:

Vector Linux running on the netbook. The graphics interface is xfce4. Programs visible are Open Office, and xmms music player. Oh, if you insist, that's a command shell in the foreground, 'cause it IS Linux. I actually use mine. To the right is the gkrellm system monitor. I shot the background photo in Hawaii. Enough eye candy for you?

Chrome OS promising, but it's more for the future

2009-11-26T10:25:00.000-08:00

It won't be ready for the general public for another year, but the sneak preview of the Google Chrome OS is generating quite a buzz.

It may be a Windows-killer, some claim. It'll put Linux on the map, say others. It'll be a fiasco, say still more pundits. So far, nobody's neutral.

Google Chrome, built from the Debian GNU/Linux operating system (which I've always liked), is designed for the ultralight, ultracheap netbooks that are not really built for much more than Web browsing and lightweight office work. And the Chrome system is really little more than a front end for "cloud computing" -- the use of online applications and storage.

According to the Google blog:

... it's all about the web. All apps are web apps. The entire experience takes place within the browser and there are no conventional desktop applications. This means users do not have to deal with installing, managing and updating programs ...

That in itself is enough to really stir the pudding in the computer world.

I guess that's the future of computing, and it stands to reason that one may not even need a hard drive in the future. That's the trend I'm seeing carried out to its logical conclusion, though it doesn't mean I have to like it.

I've fooled around some with online applications, such as Google Docs. While they're OK, I have trepidations about using these for everything. I've also played with bubbl.us, an online mind mapping program. While these concepts are great for portability -- you can access your stuff from any computer without even a thumb drive. I'd rather keep my documents on hard drive. I'm even chary about backing them up online, and I like a lot more choice about what applications I do use. But from what I've read, the Google Chrome system throws you right into the future.

Although InfoWorld’s Randall Kennedy says Google’s Chrome OS will be a big failure, Robert Scoble thinks it's just ahead of its time:

... what about my son who is in high school? By the time Chrome OS comes along in big numbers he’ll be in college. Why take a $1,000 computer to class? Couldn’t he do everything he needs to do on a low-cost computer that’s lightweight, replaceable, uses low power, and just uses the web? Absolutely. InfoWorld is making assumptions that the world is going to stay the same. That simply is NOT true ... what will run on these new devices? A heavyweight OS like Windows 7 that takes me 40 seconds to boot up and does a ton of stuff I really don’t need, or a new OS that just has Google Chrome as its centerpiece?"

Even with nothing but a Web browser? Scoble says this:

... hey, I just wrote this post on Google Chrome while sitting listening to Marc Benioff at the TechCrunch Real Time Crunchup. I have not seen a single thing demonstrated on stage yet that won’t run on Google Chrome OS ... this is a winner, but on a new field ...

I may download the Chrome OS and give it a shot, though I'm not all that enthused about it. Since it's a front end with little more than a graphic user interface, a few core programs, and the Chrome browser, why does the download weigh in at around three gigabytes?

Out of the box, the download on my current Linux operating system is a tick over 700 megabytes. And that includes all the programs that make the computer a self-contained one. You can get surprisingly complete Linux distributions on a 100-megabyte download.

Still, I'm intrigued by this system, and hope it is adopted early and often. There's no secret that I'm a big fan of Linux, and the Chrome OS may finally dissolve the perception that Linux is too busy being geeky to be useful.

Now, understand that none of this is carved in granite, or even in bologna. This sneak preview is available in source code format, and it'll be a while before the final, battle-ready version is ready. In the interim, those who grabbed the download are essentially beta testers. Run it, crash it, make note of what you did, and report back to the developers.

The new operating system still begs the question: What will it do with Microsoft's death grip on the PC market?

Taking the pundits' comments and working the middle ground, the answer is not a lot. TechCrunch writer M. G. Siegler suggests Chrome will nibble into the bottom end of the Microsoft market -- the netbooks, the cheap computers. But until Windows 7 was released, Microsoft had conceded that end of the market. Most netbooks came with some form of Linux preloaded, while a few had Windows XP. Part of the game plan behind Windows 7 (which I'm not going to review; I'm more interested in open-source software) was to recapture some of the netbook users, and by most accounts the new Windows is one of the best systems Microsoft has ever produced.

Siegler writes:

... Google’s positioning for Chrome OS reads like a page out of Apple’s playbook, only from the opposite direction ... Apple, of course, takes the opposite approach, targeting the high end of the market with their high-quality and high-margin machines. If Google is successful with its Chrome OS netbooks (let’s call them ChromeBooks), what we could see is the squeezing of Microsoft, an idea I first laid out a month ago. With attacks from the top and bottom, Windows will be relegated to the middle. And ultimately, if Google has its way, marginalized ...

Stay tuned.

###

After rough start, Firefox marks fifth birthday

2009-11-10T10:16:00.000-08:00

I never would have expected this. Firefox is five years old.

Despite its promise from the jump, Firefox spent its beta period without any real identity. Literally.

At first no one was really sure what to call it. For a while it was known as Phoenix, then Firebird. I believe the developers had to come up with a fast name change because there's another piece of software called Firebird, and branding is a big thing in the computer world.

With such an inauspicious beginning, it's amazing to see that the product survived, let alone developed a reputation as a stable browser.

To further confuse things, Firefox is open source, meaning you can take the code, tweak it, build something else from it, and rebrand it. This was done with Debian Linux, as the Firefox brand is copyrighted though the source code is not, so that thing that looks and feels like Firefox is called Iceweasel or some such thing. I've also used BonEcho, a rebranded, stripped-down version of Firefox for the ultralight Puppy Linux.

For a while, one of the lesser-known and more tongue-in-cheek Firefox extensions available was called firesomething, which would put a whole different name on the browser every time you run it. The name on it may be SnowSnake this time, and maybe something like BlizzardLizard the next. It was a goofy extension, but brought a chuckle to this user who remembered Firefox's early search for a name.

The browser made it out of beta and released Version 1.0 five years ago this week. Within four days, more than a million people downloaded it. I was one of them.

I was one of the early Firefox adopters. I was running an assembled-from-scratch computer, and already I was sick of Internet Explorer's balkiness and security leaks. I went to the old Mozilla suite, and when that company announced it was throwing its resources into a new, browser-only project, I had to try it out.

The design was a thing of beauty. You were getting a basic browser, and you'd add whatever you feel you needed to it. Now, five years later, the modular design remains. My Firefox has the experimental Google Gears extension, plus the LastPass password keeper. But the biggest extension I have is ScribeFire, which allows me to compose blogs within the browser and post them seamlessly. ScribeFire is big, adds more bloat to the browser, and is sometimes buggy so I'm a bit lukewarm about it. But I use it.

A caveat about Firefox: The more add-ons and extensions you install, the slower it will run. It's like running a car with all the options instead of a model with power nothing and the kind of air conditioner you get when you open all four windows. But even with a lot of chrome on it, Firefox is a good browser, stable, and secure. The developers stay on top of things, and are quicker to solve their bugs than the Microsoft people are at admitting there's a problem with IE. For a while, Firefox had a problem where it would blow up in your memory and consume every CPU cycle you had, but that was solved several updates ago.

Over time, Mozilla dropped its old browser and made Firefox its big Web browsing application. Recently, some fans of the old Mozilla browser took the source code, tweaked a few things, updated the whole thing, and released it as Seamonkey.

Now, Firefox is taking a decent chunk of the browser market. It's the main browser by about 25 percent of Web users, but that's a funny number. Firefox is not routinely installed on computers out of the box, and many users tend to stick with what's already on the box -- like Internet Explorer. Figure it. To use Internet Explorer you unpack the computer, plug it in, and double-click on the big "e" on the screen. You have to go out of your way to get Firefox -- and then install it yourself. But, Firefox now grabs a bigger share than the obsolete IE version 6, which is still a step ahead.

Recently, MozillaZine announced that Firefox was present on a majority -- 50.6 percent -- of computers, based on numbers by the exo.performance.network. So someone, somewhere, is doing an awful lot of downloading.

But while Firefox has seen some real growth lately, the year-old Google Chrome is growing even faster. Roughly four percent of computer users are making Chrome the prime browser, so that one has a way to go, but the growth rate matches the buzz it's generating. I played some with Chrome, but its development has primarily been on the Windows and, more recently, MacIntosh side. Still, I'm pleased by its lightness and speed -- by comparison a fully-loaded Firefox is kludgy -- but Chrome has an unfinished feel to it. I do suspect that, once it is ported to Linux, I may put it on my front line.

Firefox is still my go-to browser, but mostly because it works better with much of the stuff on the Web (particularly the experimental Google Labs widgets). It's probably a little bloated for my taste, though. Much as I tend to shy away from those large, do-everything suites (such as Open Office), I like Seamonkey (the rebuilt and reissued Mozilla browser suite) a bit better. Even with the built-in mail reader and HTML editor, its design is lighter than the browser-only Firefox. I do like Opera for the same reason, though it hasn't caught on in the mainstream computer world at all. Too bad. Opera is the only one that has a chance of outrunning Chrome in a speed test. Both of them are much quicker than Firefox, while IE lags so far behind you'd need searchlights to find it.

But if you want pure speed, Lynx runs circles around all of them, including Google Chrome. But since Lynx is text-only, you might have a problem watching those YouTube videos on it.

Many social-media games turning into scams

2009-11-02T10:58:00.000-08:00

I can't get into Facebook. I do have an account, though I use it more to communicate with some of my friends. And I can't see spending a lot of time on it to play the games.

I have some friends who are seriously into the Facebook games and applications. Farmville, Bejeweled, YoVille, and Mafia Wars are real popular among the people I know. I can't be bothered with that stuff myself. I go on Facebook maybe long enough to check my messages, say hello to a few friends, and log off to check my Twitter account.

At first glance the Facebook games seem to be harmless fun. I understand you play many of them in levels; you clear the first level and move up to the bigger and better stuff -- much like the old-school Mario Brothers game or Dungeons & Dragons. So far, so good.

But TechCrunch has been working on a series of articles on the social-media games, and writer Michael Arrington smells a lot more scam than score.

With a lot of these games, there are two ways to hit another level: Earn it by playing well enough to clear the level you're on, or pull a George Steinbrenner and buy a new level. With real money. Your real money.

Already you can see this coming, if you're half perceptive. The game gets you hooked. It's like any other "progressive" type of game, and I can vouch for that. I've spent many hours trying to crack the combination on FreeCiv, an open-source version of Sid Meier's Civilization. Next I know the sun's coming up, my legs are frozen in one position, my left hand is all cramped up from pushing the mouse around, and my butt lost all feeling hours ago. So I can understand that.

But crank in the buy-ins and the special offers, especially if you're frustrated at the %$&#! game and your brain is fuzzed over from a marathon session, then things get real interesting.

On Oct. 31, Arrington wrote this:

... these games try to get people to pay cash for in game currency so they can level up faster and have a better overall experience. Which is fine. But for users who won’t pay cash, a wide variety of "offers" are available where they can get in-game currency in exchange for lead gen-type offers. Most of these offers are bad for consumers because it confusingly gets them to pay far more for in-game currency than if they just paid cash (there are notable exceptions, but the scammy stuff tends to crowd out the legitimate offers). And it’s also bad for legitimate advertisers. The reason why I call this an ecosystem is that it’s a self-reinforcing downward cycle. Users are tricked into these lead gen scams ...

Here's one scam, according to Arrington:

... users are offered in game currency in exchange for filling out an IQ survey. Four simple questions are asked. The answers are irrelevant. When the user gets to the last question they are told their results will be text messaged to them. They are asked to enter in their mobile phone number, and are texted a pin code to enter on the quiz. Once they’ve done that, they’ve just subscribed to a $9.99/month subscription. Tatto Media is the company at the very end of the line on most mobile scams, and they flow it up through Offerpal, SuperRewards and others to the game developers ... nothing in the offer says that the user will be billed $10/month forever for a useless service.

Had enough yet? Here's another:

Video Professor ... users are offered in game currency if they sign up to receive a free learning CD from Video Professor. The user is told they pay nothing except a $10 shipping charge. But the fine print, on a different page from checkout, tells them they are really getting a whole set of CDs and will be billed $189.95 unless they return them. Most users never return them because they don’t know about the extra charge. Woot. Again, sites like Offerpal and SuperRewards flow these offers through to game developers ...

Slashdot, one of my favorite sites for geeky news, says this about the TechCrunch articles:

... the system is rife with scams, and many game developers turn a blind-eye to them, much to the detriment of the players and the legitimate advertisers — not to mention the games that rightly disallow these offers and fall behind in profits. The article asserts that Facebook and MySpace themselves are complicit in this, failing to crack down on the abuses they see because they make so much money from advertising for the most popular games ...

If you play these online games -- or if you're thinking about it -- I highly recommend these three TechCrunch articles, all by Arrington:

Part One - Social Games: How The Big Three Make Millions

Part Two - Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem Of Hell

Part Three - Two Companies That Said No To Social Media Scams

I'm getting awfully tired of doing these pieces on Internet scams. I'd rather do how-tos and reviews any old day. You think these scammers can give me enough of a break to pursue this? C'mon guys ... at least do it for my convenience?

###

Internet reaches middle age

2009-10-30T10:19:00.000-07:00

Although few had even heard of this Internet thing (then known as the "information superhighway" until the early or mid-1990s, it got its real start 40 years ago this week.

It was Oct. 29, 1969 when the first two nodes of ARPANET were interconnected between UCLA’s School of Engineering and Applied Science and SRI International (SRI) in Menlo Park, California. And unless you were one of the guys on the inside, you really didn't know or care.

I was a bit of a late adopter. It was 1996 when I used a noisy modem to link into an Internet provider in a nearby city. My computer was an old Leading Edge XP, with an 8088 processor, Hercules graphics card, DOS 5, and 2400-bytes-per-second modem. I used Procomm to link up, and the text-only Lynx browser to surf.

This wasn't the first time I'd used a modem. By then I was an old hand at sending text files point to point over the phone lines. I worked for a newspaper in Kingman, Arizona at the time, and generated a lot of stories from my home office in Bullhead City, 40 miles away. I'd call the publisher, Matt, and tell him to set up the computer for incoming copy, give him five minutes, then send the stuff. Soon Matt would see my text streaming across his screen, a character at a time. One of my other reporters would send me his copy from his home office, I'd edit it from home, then send it to the home office the same way. I was even able to execute commands on my home computer (the Dos-driven PC) from the MacIntosh at work, using an old-school program called Telnet.

Once I got the knack of surfing the Internet, it became a bigger part of my life. And I remember telling my parents about my experiments. Dad was already good with computers -- we'd traded software for several years -- but he wasn't sure about this online thing. A curious toy, he concluded.

At the time, Netscape was the go-to browser before Internet Explorer nuked it in market share. There were rumors that you might be able to surf on the same infrastructure that your cable TV used, and much faster than dialup. Companies began building their own primitive Web sites, and ordinary people were cobbling together their own Web sites on GeoCities (which shut down a few days ago). It was a whole new world out there, the Wild Blue Yonder.

It's been 13 years since I fired up my first Web browser (Lynx, by the way, is still available and still text-only). But a lot has changed since then. Rather than write for print, my work shows up in the ether of the Internet and many of my readers are on the other side of the world.

I've developed friendships with people I'd never met, and who live in places I've never visited. I've discovered musicians I've never heard before and downloaded their music. I've downloaded entire a lot of software and quite a few operating systems -- and asked questions about the software online. I've communicated with a Linux developer in Australia and let him know how I was able to get his system to run on computers that even he wasn't sure could be done. I've debated many a subject online. I've set up the computer to download news from several hundred sources at a time.

I'm an experimenter, and can't leave stuff alone. Besides Netscape, I've used Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Seamonkey (which is what Mozilla has become), Opera, and Google Chrome. Firefox is my most-used browser now, but I notice Seamonkey is now in 2.0 and it deserves a look.

Instead of listening to a whining modem, I go straight wireless. I have about a half-dozen places where I go to do my work -- some indoors, some outside, and I'll unpack my netbook, hit a few buttons, and talk to the world. In fact, once I left dialup I had no earthly reason to even keep a landline -- a cell phone on my hip, wireless Internet close by, a second, Internet-based phone line through Google Voice, all my communications needs are met.

Even then, I'm a bit of a primitive. My cell phone merely makes calls and sends off text messages. It doesn't browse the Web. I can send short text messages to Twitter or this blog, even an email, but my single-function LG doesn't stack up to those iPhones or Crackberries that do everything.

When you consider the all-purpose cell phones, netbooks, laptops -- and I recently read about a pen that's really a computer -- you just may see desktop computers as another dying breed. Even hard drives may become a thing of the past, what with USB thumb drives and online file storage. Some of your netbooks work with just internal flash storage and USB drives, without a hard disk in sight.

The folks at UCLA and Menlo Park had no idea at the time what they'd started.

(Screenshot: The old text-based Lynx web browser, where I made my first forays on the Internet, is still around. It's shown here with Firefox 3.5.3.)

###

You tell me: Remember your first time on line? Care to share? Use the comments section for your input.

Site outlines 10 ways to spot an Email scam

2009-10-29T11:44:00.000-07:00

I've spent a bit of time looking at some of the nefarious things that can find themselves on your computer courtesy of the Internet. You can get bad programs, spyware, viruses, and some eerie email at the click of a mouse.

What with the speed and ease with which one can send off mass emails, the scammer has all the tools he needs to separate many people from their dollars. And you've probably seen a few of these messages showing up in your inbox -- maybe even a few this week.

From switched.com, here are 10 red flags that the email you've received is probably a scam:

Look for things like requests for personal information, lots of misspellings, clickable Web links, innocent-sounding surveys, that "hot tip" you don't remember requesting, unsolicited attachments, and you-must-act-now pitches.

From Switched:

If you see the phrases "verify your account," "you have won the lottery" or "if you don't respond within XX hours, your account will be closed," it's a scam – every time. Hit the delete button and don't look back.

This is one you should delete, kill, whatever you do with it.

It's a jungle out there. But then you already knew that.

###

Facebook password-reset email carries a virus

2009-10-28T11:30:00.000-07:00

Sheesh!

These writers of viruses and other nefarious code will stop at nothing to spread the love. But while you can see many viruses coming a mile away, I understand this one looks official.

This one, a Trojan horse dubbed Bredolab, comes dressed up as a "Password Reset Confirmation Email" from Facebook. In the email you click on the link to -- you think -- get your new password. That's when the fun -- if you can call it that -- starts. That link downloads system-destroying files, such as rogue "anti-spyware" programs that inject their own spyware, into your computer.

Considering some of the problems Facebook has been encountering -- partly from increased traffic and partly from its own recent redesign, this email almost sounds plausible.

I haven't seen this one myself; I got the details from Mashable! and MXLab.

According to MXLab, here's the body of the message:

Hey vguysville ,

Because of the measures taken to provide safety to our clients, your password has been changed.
You can find your new password in attached document.

Thanks,
The Facebook Team

Here's the drill. If you see something like this from Facebook, watch out. It's probably not from Facebook. Bear this in mind:

- If you didn't request a password change from Facebook, you have no reason to receive a reset confirmation. Don't bother opening it; dispose of it immediately.

Enjoy your computer, don't be skeered of the virus bogeyman, but be wary when you go online. Cool?

###

Computer issues being resolved

2009-10-27T12:38:00.000-07:00

I can say it now: The laptop is back among the living.

Most of my software is back up. I've knocked off most of my to-do list. I'm writing this column on it, and soon I will upload it and download email and news. I'm extremely pleased.

One of the things I noticed is that, with the new configuration, it's handling power better. I haven't checked to see if I'm getting any better battery life, as I tend to forget about things like time when I'm online. Gee, I could fly a passenger jet ...

But I have noticed that it's running much cooler when it's plugged in to the A/C adaptor. Seriously. It's not like I took its temperature (I'm not sure where to stick the thermometer), but I can tell the difference. I take that to mean the CPU isn't working as hard, a good thing.

From my master list, I still need to locate a program that will put the computer into sleep mode when I close the lid. My temporary operating system had that, so this shouldn't be difficult to find or install. From there, most of the work is either convenience or cosmetic -- like rebuilding my menus so they'd be a little more intuituve.

I still want to find an uncorrupted version of the Windows system file I blew out (hal.dll), but there's no rush there.

For the geekus extremis among us, here's a printout of some of the basics. If your eyes glaze over when someone mentions "CPU," feel free to skip over this part:

-Computer- Processor : Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU N270 @ 1.60GHz Memory : 1022MB (267MB used) Operating System : Unknown distribution Date/Time : Tue 27 Oct 2009 01:31:22 PM GMT+5 -Display- Resolution : 1024x600 pixels OpenGL Renderer : Unknown X11 Vendor : The X.Org Foundation -Version- Kernel : Linux 2.6.29.3 (i686) Compiled : #1 Tue May 19 23:43:56 GMT-8 2009 C Library : GNU C Library version 2.9 (stable) -Current Session- Computer Name : epulsifer Desktop Environment : Unknown (Window Manager: Fluxbox) -Misc- Uptime : 17 hours, 5 minutes Load Average : 0.23, 0.15, 0.15

This "uptime" is interesting. Keep in mind, this is a laptop and I don't have that sleep-mode switch fixed, so it's been running, powered and plugged in, with the lid closed.

Just for yuks, I checked to see how long my desktop (which also runs on Linux) unit has been booted up without a restart:

7d 17:46

OK. I rebooted that computer a week ago. I usually only shut the desktop down when I'm experimenting with another computer (not enough power cords to go around), replacing a part, or moving the unit.

Just try doing that with Windows.

###

(Pictured is a screenshot from the laptop. OK, you may not recognize a lot of this stuff if you're a Windows user. The interface -- Fluxbox -- is pretty minimal, but it stays out of my way.)

Resurrecting laptop took plain & fancy fixes

2009-10-26T12:41:00.000-07:00

OK. I think I'm back up and running.

Was out of the loop for a few days; my main access to the Internet went south until I was able to fix it.

This laptop is my mobile workhorse. Although I do much of my writing on the home computer, it's strictly a standalone unit that doesn't conect to the web. To upload and download, I use my Acer netbook for all the dirty work.

The Acer was victimized by my tendency to experiment. I'm not even sure what I did. I jiggled when I should have joggled, and corrupted a couple of system files. Now, that computer is driven by Windows XP, which doesn't lend itself well to evil experiments. Anyway, when I boot up into Windows, an error message pops up letting me know just what I'd b0rked, and won't let me go any farther than that. A dead computer.

Thanks to some other experiments I'd run, the netbook wasn't dead in the water for very long. I have a few quick-and-dirty solutions that brought it back to the land of the living, but I'm not done yet. Working on a "final solution," but the duct tape and spit will work for now.

From quick-and-dirty land:

I have a Linux system installed on a 1-gigabyte thumb drive, and I set up the laptop's BIOS to look there first before booting anything else up (instructions are on the screen). I'm using a variant of Puppy Linux, which is great because it runs in memory. Once I'm booted up, I can pull the thumb drive and work without that thing hanging out of the computer. It's probably an OCD thing.

If you're a Linux user, you can set up any version to run with a program called Unetbootin. It's very cool. You grab the .iso image file of whatever Linux version from the Internet, install it to the thumb drive via Unetbootin, fire up the computer with the thumb drive installed, and you're running Linux. You'll be able to access the files on your hard drive as before. The only caveat is that, unless your version of Linux is designed to run completely in memory (such as Puppy Linux), you won't be able to remove the thumb drive without screwing things up.

On that USB drive, I have all the goodies I need -- wireless fixins, a Web browser, text editor and word processor, and a program to play mp3s while I work. I'm all set there, at least for now. And I have the same system installed on a smaller, 256-megabyte USB drive that stays in my cell phone case, so I have a backup.

That was my temporary fix, and it served me well. But it wasn't the final solution. The good news is that over the weekend I got much closer to something more permanent. A newer, more expandable version of Puppy Linux is now installed on my hard drive, and I can boot directly into it without using the thumb drive. Much cleaner, much more permanent.

One of the limitations of Puppy Linux is that its ability to install newer software is a little squirrelly. The developer, a nice Australian guy named Barry Kauler, built the system for speed and a small footprint, and many of the add-in programs had to be adapted for that system. But, through the "woof" project, one is able to import software from Ubuntu repositories or the Slackware-based .tgz format.

I know this means nothing to non-geeky types, but here's the upshot: Newer, better software. With the old Puppy Linux, I'm limited to version 2 of Firefox; now I'm able to grab the newer -- and in this case better -- version 3.5.

OK. Almost there. But something's still missing:

I'm a news junkie, and a big part of my blogging is my ability to capture all the news I need. Plus, I want something that would give me some flexibility. I want to be able to move all this news from my laptop to the desktop at home.

In short, I want a portable RSS reader that I can use online or offline.

For those who don't know about such things, an RSS reader is the world's greatest invention for news junkies such as myself. You subscribe to your feeds, download the news you want, and read it at your leisure. Most news websites and blogs -- including this one and The Column, Reloaded (which I highly recommend) -- allow you to subscribe; but some will just give the partial feed, a paragraph or two, while others give the full text and graphics.

My own feeds include a handful of news outlets -- Yahoo! News, CNN, Newsweek, the BBC, ESPN. Plus many blogs. I have tons of political blogs in my feeds -- Daily Kos and the Huffington Post on the left, The Heritage Foundation on the right, and the libertarian Cato Institute. Although my politics are pretty well defined, I like to see what all sides have to say.

I never bothered counting the number of news feeds I have, but I have more than 1,00 news items to sort through every day. Some, obviously, are good for little more than a glance at the headline. Others I'll read, mark, prioritize, quote from, and link to in my blogs. And still others I'll forward to friends.

If you're a Gmail user, you have access to Google Reader, which fits most of the bill. But I wanted my news to be more portable than that. Google Reader does have offline capabilities, but that's still experimental.

I considered using a second, 8-gigabyte thumb drive that I use as my mobile storage disk. That's where I keep my work files, plus my Portable Apps suite.

I love Portable Apps. That's where I have a handful of to-go programs. There's Firefox, Abiword, Thunderbird, a few games, and Open Office, all on a flash drive that I can plug into anyone's computer, do my work, and leave no trace. I wrote about Portable Apps in my other blog, and it's one handy tool. The developers have some great programs available, but no RSS reader. And I'm ticked. In a pinch Thunderbird will work, but it's a poor option at best. And, these Portable Apps programs are Windows-based, meaning I need to use an emulator -- such as WINE -- to run them. Useful as WINE is, that's one layer of software I don't want to mess with for something as crucial as gathering the news.

While running my temporary system from the thumb drive, I experimented with several Linux-based RSS readers, and none were satisfactory. But with the freshly-installed Puppy Linux I tried the multi-platform, Java-based RSS Owl, and so far the interface works. While uploading this blog, I will test my installation to see if it actually downloads the news. I hope so. RSS Owl was my go-to news reader on Windows, so there won't be any real learning curve.

Fast update: It's working! I'm excited!

OK. What's still unresolved is my ability to share my RSS news with my desktop computer. The only real solution I see -- and this is theoretical -- is to score a router and network the two computers. But that's another project I'll study on later. My plate is already piled so high it's ready to tip over.

Here's my to-do list:

- Laptop lid switch - fix. (One problem with my system right now is that it doesn't go into sleep mode when I shut the lid. This means I either leave it powered up, or shut the whole thing down.
- Firefox 3.5 (Will download this in a few days.)
- Thunderbird, with calendar (My favorite mail reader, and there's a calendar add-on that, well, keeps me organized. Shoot, keeping myself organized is a losing battle most of the time, but let's not go there.)
- A couple of games (I'm not real big on that, but it's not all work and no play, and I do like a lightweight game or two every once in a while.)
- Gantt (This is a program that I use for planning, when time is important and there are definite steps to be taken. The one I use on my desktop is a Java-based program, and it's a simple download and install.)
- RSS reader!! (As I mentioned, this is being addressed.)
- qt3 (This is a series of library files that are needed to run Scribus, an open-source page layout program.)

That's the more important stuff. The rest of the list is something I can attack later:

- GIMP (This is an open-source graphics and photo-manipulation program, on a par with PhotoShop.)
- Audacity (This is a simple sound-editing program. I've used the laptop to record band rehearsals. Also need to come up with something better than the lousy condenser microphone that came with the laptop, but that's not an immediate need.)
- Open Office (I do have that, via Portable Apps, on my thumb drive. In truth, I don't use it all that much.)
- TweetDeck (This helps me organize my Twitter account, and it's quite useful. Twitter, by the way, is great for keeping up with the absolute latest news, but it's also the biggest time-waster since the Internet was invented.)

Enough already!

Scareware a big business, but fake virus 'protection' can be removed

2009-10-20T11:34:00.001-07:00

Viruses and spyware are a real concern when you spend any time on the Internet, and some people are feeding on your fears for big bucks.

But while there are quite a few legitimate anti-virus programs out there, there are more that not only do not get rid of your viruses and malware, but install more of the same on your hard drive.

Symantec, which owns Norton, says more than 40 million people have fallen victim to the "scareware" scam in the past 12 months. According to the BBC, "online criminals make millions of pounds by convincing computer users to download fake anti-virus software." Which translates into an awful lot of dollars, not to mentioned the number of computers that are trashed by this cottage industry.

Over my years of surfing on the Internet, I've seen plenty of this. An ad shows up on a Web page I'm browsing, offering to scan my hard drive for free. Or flashing a message that would make even the most savvy Web surfer sweat -- that viruses have been detected.

The idea is that you click on the ad and it will scan your disk, or install a virus-protection device. That's what you think, anyway.

In reality, the scan or program is useless at best. At best.

At worst, the program or scan will install its own spyware, or its own virus, and really make hash of your hard drive -- and maybe even bill your credit card in the bargain.

Welcome to the rogue security software. They either are disguised viruses, trojans or are nothing but a sales pitch, trying to push another product to the user.

Call it scareware, because it's designed to frighten you into buying its product or download its own viruses, Trojan horses, or spyware.

Most of my Internet work is with this netbook, using Windows. But even while using Linux I've even seen these ads come up. I'm talking about the ads saying that viruses have been detected on my computer.

Which told me right away the claim was a bunch of horsesqueeze. For several reasons, Linux is not prone to viruses or spyware. Nor is MacIntosh, really.

OK. Time to check your computer. See what kind of virus protection you have. If it's from this list, you're in a bunch of trouble:

Cyber Security
Alpha Antivirus
Braviax
Windows Police Pro
Antivirus Pro 2010
PC Antispyware 2010
FraudTool.MalwareProtector.d
Winshield2009.com
Green AV
Windows Protection Suite
Total Security 2009
Windows System Suite
Antivirus BEST
System Security
Personal Antivirus
System Security 2009
Malware Doctor
Antivirus System Pro
WinPC Defender
Anti-Virus-1
Spyware Guard 2008
System Guard 2009
Antivirus 2009
Antivirus 2010
Antivirus Pro 2009
Antivirus 360
MS Antispyware 2009

These are rogue programs, according to ghacks. And if you have one of these, you'd better get rid of it awful fast. You probably clicked on something, downloaded what you thought was virus protection, and you may have noticed your computer running like crap.

So what do you do?

There's an article in ghacks which mentions "Remove Fake Antivirus," a portable software program for the Windows operating system that has been designed to uninstall 27 different rogue antivirus software programs from the computer system. You can download Remove Fake Antivirus here, and it's free.

I downloaded and ran it, though for me the on-the-workbench test was inconclusive. This is probably because I know the likelihood of me actually downloading and installing some of this scareware is really slim. The dialogue box showed, though, that it was removing each of these antivirus programs. My assumption was that this is the "default" dialog box. After running the program, you will be asked to reboot.

In truth, I'm a little chary of installing a virus-protection program from a non-company website (this is from a blog, how sketchy is that?) but sites like Download Squad (which gave it really lukewarm reviews), Softpedia, TechForums, and CNet (which rated it two-and-a-half stars out of five; not that great, and none of the readers reviewed it) carry links and product descriptions. Plus, I've never found reason to fault the information I get from ghacks.

A caveat: Here's one of the Download Squad reviews:

Well, I ran it, and it killed my main windows service and forced a restart. When the PC came back up, I had no internet connection. Warnings should be posted.

With that in mind, I checked things out when I rebooted. The Windows security service flashed a warning saying I had no virus protection, but I see ClamWin had loaded itself in the system, per normal. A glitch, perhaps? The good news was that my wireless Internet ran just fine. But be careful!

Menawhile, there are several good virus-removal programs out there. Some -- Norton and McAfee -- are the kind you pay for, while others -- AVG, ClamWin, and Avast! -- are free. The for-pay ones are probably a bit better than the free ones, but any of these are good for the computer and your peace of mind. That is, if you update them every so often -- there's always some idiot thinking that if he builds a better virus, the world will beat a path to his door. These viruses seem to be coming down the pike faster and faster. A virus protection program is only as good as its updates, and it's also useless if you don't run it regularly.

For spyware removal programs, only two are worth downloading -- AdAware by Lavasoft, and Spybot Search And Destroy. And neither one is perfect. But, unlike antivirus programs, you can have both installed and running on your computer. I highly recommend you run both, one after the other, as part of your regular security regimen. What spyware program one doesn't catch, the other one probably will.

Ways to keep phishers out of your email

2009-10-08T12:24:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I wrote about how phishing (Password Fishing) attacks exposed a lot of Hotmail user accounts. It turns out the attacks were much bigger than Hotmail -- Google's Gmail (which is my go-to email system) got compromised, along with Yahoo, Earthlink, Comcast, and AOL.

Shoot, it might be easier to list the major email carriers that didn't get hit.

Meanwhile, the major email carriers are in damage control mode, and many put out statements and how-to's for self protection.

Here are some basics, courtesy of Mashable. Most of these involve passwords, the user's first line of defense:

*****

Use different passwords on different sites — After all, if you use the same login credentials for multiple sites and one gets compromised, they all are. Since many of us use umpteen web services daily, it’s worth checking out a good password manager tool to help you keep the all straight — and safe.

Don’t use common words or sequences — Simple dictionary terms or sequential numerical sequences won’t cut it. You should make sure your passwords are a mix of letters, numbers and symbols.

Don’t base passwords on personal data — Hackers often use “social engineering” techniques to greater effect than running actual lines of code. Since we routinely share various bits of personal data with others, things like pet names, middle names, birthdays and so on don’t make a good basis for passwords.

Don’t leave your password somewhere visible — If you simply must write it down, don’t put it on a post-it attached to your monitor. Relatedly, if you keep a list of passwords on your computer, name the file something more cryptic than "password file."

Make sure your password recovery questions are also secure — Strong passwords that lack semantic meaning are unfortunately also easier to forget. Many sites allow you to reset your password over email or after answering one or more Security Questions you set up when creating the account. Make sure these aren’t based on common-knowledge personal data either — try to make them difficult to guess, and avoid any information you’ve posted publicly online anywhere as well.

*****

Good advice, that. An analysis of the data from Hotmail showed the most common password among the compromised accounts to be '12345.' I mean, duh! You don't need expensive software to crack that password, and it appears there are quite a few folks around that have no business running a computer. But that's fodder for another rant.

Here's more, from gHacks:

*****

The most powerful weapon against phishing is common sense and the following rules that every user should oblige to.

If you are not a customer of the site delete the email immediatly. Don´t click on the link or reply.

If you are a customer and you are not sure if the email is legit do one of the following:

Contact the institute by phone or contact at the official website ( do not use the email link of course) and ask if the mail is official.

Instead of using the link provided open the website by typing in the official link there. The site should have news about the email on their starting page. (most of the time).

*****

There's plenty more on that site. I highly recommend checking it out.

If you're using Firefox (as I am), go into the Tools > Options > Security in the Firefox options to set up your protection levels. I really recommend you do this now, while you're reading this. If you don't find these options, you're probably using an older Firefox. You'll find more Firefox phishing protection and testing tricks here.

Also, I did download LastPass, though I haven't installed it yet. I see where it involves creating an account online, though it's free for private use. According to the manufacturer, the password information is stored on your own computer. Still, I'm a little chary of using any Web-based password keeper. I'll install it and take a look at it, but my instincts tell me it's not a perfect solution.

In the meantime, enjoy your computer. It's a great tool, and the more plugged-in the world is, the more your computer will become a part of your life. But be careful. It's a jungle out there.

Phish tales: My Twitter, 1000s of Hotmail accounts hijacked

2009-10-06T11:14:00.000-07:00

I'm fairly new at this Twitter thing, and I'm still prone to rookie mistakes. And for a few days, I was paying for one.

I occasionally get worthless tweets from folks about quick-and-dirty ways to build my traffic. Most of them are pure crap, by the way, but while some are harmless crap, others are more nefarious. I came across one -- GET 1000's OF FOLLOWERS, with a link. OK. I could smell the crap all the way from here, but I thought I'd take a look at it to, well, see what was going on. Research purposes, you understand.

I clicked on the link and immediately got the warning that the site was possibly one for phishing. For those who don't know what that is, phishing is when someone is trying to harvest information from you. Valuable information that you wouldn't give out otherwise. Like a password.

As soon as I saw that warning, I clicked on it to basically abort the mission. Supposedly, that was the end of that.

Not so. Soon after that, I noticed I had been making some real strange tweets, or more correctly, some jerkface was sending them out under my name. Every day. There would be some message credited to me, advertising some "service" that gives you thousands of followers. Or something. In social media, followers and friends are the coin of the realm. The more followers you have, the bigger your network and the more valuable your site. I use Twitterfeed to link my writing directly into Twitter, and all of my followers (right now about 40 of them) gain access to my work.

Soon I noticed these posts linking to the phishing site started going out every day, with the link and my name on them. Some idiot hijacked my Twitter account, and I became a spammer.

I tried a few quick damage-control measures. Blocking the original source of the link. Adding a disclaimer to warn followers away from that link. Part of that was saving face -- letting my followers know it wasn't me sending those things. And the spam messages still showed up, every day.

Final analysis: There seems to be a simple fix, a real no-brainer. Change your Twitter password. I did that, and the messages stopped. D'oh!

Meanwhile, those who use Hotmail for email (I'm not sure why you'd want to) are getting phished big time. According to gHacks Technology News:

Microsoft has recently confirmed that thousands of Windows Live Hotmail customer’s credentials were exposed on a third party website. According to Neowin the account information were posted by an anonymous user at the pastebin website. The list that was posted contained over 10.000 account details of accounts starting with the letters A and B which suggests that additional lists might be in the hands of the attackers. Initial investigations suggest that only accounts used to access Windows Live Hotmail were affected (which includes email accounts ending with hotmail.com, msn.com or live.com ... Microsoft determined that the attack was not a breach of internal Microsoft data and believes that the account data was gained by a phishing attack. Phishing attacks are common ways these days to lure users into entering their account data on websites that look like the real deal but are not ...

Again, the gHacks-prescribed fix is a simple one: Change your password. Now.

There are a few before-the-fact and after-the-fact ways to protect yourself here:

Changing your password is the best back-end fix, though it is a pain in the butt. Even more painful now, when you access your accounts through a third-party application or site. For me, this meant changing the passwords on TweetDeck and Twitterfeed. As I write this, I'm pretty sure I haven't checked if my feed on this blog has been fixed yet; probably not. Note to self: Fix.

I haven't really checked it out yet, but there's a program called lastpass that's supposed to make it easy. It was mentioned in the gHacks piece, so I downloaded it and will give it a go. Might have something to write about there; stay tuned.

Also, the other standard self-protection rules apply. Don't click on Twitter links unless you know the source. Pretty much the same rule as opening email attachments. I know I'm screwing myself here, as I get a fair bit of blog traffic through Twitter. But y'all pay attention to what the link is. If the link is attached to a blog post (in my case it's prefaced with a COLUMN or WORKBENCH) it'll be OK. Those attachments will only mess with your mind, not your computer or Twitter account. If the preface is something like GAIN ZILLIONS OF FOLLOWERS, MAKE MILLIONS WHILE SITTING ON YOUR BUTT, or LOSE 20 POUNDS OF DANGEROUS UGLY FAT WITHOUT CUTTING OFF YOUR HEAD, the link is probably real sketchy and you'd do well to ignore it. But you don't need me to tell you that.

This last is going to require some extra vigilance, as so much Twitter traffic involves passing links back and forth. Especially mine. Looking at the last 40 tweets from my network (representing about two hours), 31 have clickable links. Most will refer me to a blog post or a news story. This is probably disproportionately high, as many Twitter users merely use the account to keep track of some friends. Mine actually doubles as a news feed, so I'm going to have a higher percentage of links.

Sometimes it's tempting to cut all cords and wireless, eschew all technology, and go back to quill pen and foolscap. But that's not an option, not if I wish to function in today's hooked-up dialed-in world.

###

You tell me: What protective measures are you employing here? What works? What doesn't? Do you have any horror stories you wish to share? Use the comments section below.

Twitter's appeal: People love the mundane

2009-09-23T11:08:00.000-07:00

I'll have to admit, this Twitter grows on you.

A couple of years ago, I hadn't even heard of Twitter, and even a year ago I wondered what the point of it was.

Twitter is called a "microblogging service," which allows one to post whatever he wants online, as long as it's no more than 140 characters. Twitter basically asks the question, what are you doing now?

And most of the posts (called "tweets" in Twitter parlance) indicate that a lot of people have no real life, and should stay away from computers. I mean, how many posts about the mundane can you endure?

It's this mundane stuff that seems to be much of Twitter's appeal. And, it's become huge. According to ComputerWorld, people are tweeting from the car, the theater, from restaurants, even from the can. But, the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology studied these short messages -- actually from Jaiku, a microblogging platform that Twitter is practically edging out of existence -- and suggests most of the posts are beyond inane. And the Oxford University Press studied 1.5 million "tweets" and came to the same conclusion.

Newsweek columnist Daniel Lyons calls Twitter "a playground for imbeciles, skeevy marketers, D-list celebrity half-wits, and pathetic attention seekers," citing folks like Shaquille O'Neal, Kim Kardashian, znd Ryan Seacrest as regulars in TwitLand.

"It's morbidly fascinating, kind of like the forbidden thrill you get watching Maury Povich's show or professional wrestling," Lyons wrote. "You know it's awful. You know you shouldn't enjoy it, yet you can't look away. That, I'm afraid to say, is why I've come to believe that, of all the hellish things that have been spawned in the fever swamp that is the Internet, Twitter may turn out to be the most successful of them all—not in spite of its stupidity, but because of it."

Lyons said that one recent study -- though he didn't cite it in his article, so the findings are immediately suspect -- said that 40 percent of tweets were "pointless babble." Only 40 percent? My own study, using a time-honored methodology called "pulling numbers out of my butt," suggests close to 70 percent of tweets are mindless, worthless wastes of server space.

Shoot, I don't want to know what you're having for dinner, unless I'm invited. I personally don't give a rip that you're going to the bathroom now, and I REALLY don't want to know how it came out. Are we on the same page here?

Twitter is one of those things where the machine is invented first and you find out what you can use it for later. And, so far, a few put it to good use. It was someone on Twitter who brought us up to speed, real-time, on the election protests in Iran a few months ago. Someone else used the microblogging service to send us the first pictures of that plane crash in the Hudson River in January, the one where the pilot did such an incredible job of keeping all his passengers alive.

I've picked up a few blog ideas from tweets, and some interesting reading has come my way through Twitter. A few job leads. And, I notice businesses use Twitter to introduce product lines, throw out ideas, you name it. Used properly (and I'm sure there's a trick to it), one with good leadership chops can build his own ready-made parade to get in front of.

When you do the Twitter thing, you find out who else is using that service, and you may elect to "follow" a person. Or someone else may opt to follow you. For a minute that seemed too strange for words, like I'm being stalked or something. But that's how word about something can get out quickly. I have a mixed bag of followers on Twitter. Most are legit, the kind of folks I wouldn't mind chatting with over some coffee. But other followers are nothing but smarmy hucksters with an agenda. But since I'm the one making the tweets, I'm calling the shots. I'm pretty selective about who I follow, but am less discriminate about who chooses to follow me. Hey, if the sketchier followers click on the link and make it to this article (and if they're not easily offended), we're all cool with it.

Admittedly, I wasn't really sure what to do with my Twitter account once I opened it. I used it for a while for short, newsy items via text message directly into a sidebar on one of my blogs -- like dispatches from last November's election -- until I found out how to post directly to the blog from my cell phone. But after that I figured out how I can use Twitter.

I'm finding it another vehicle for getting word out on my blogs. Both -- The Column, Reloaded and The Workbench, Reloaded -- automatically drop links into Twitter through a service called Twitterfeed, so you can open my prose directly from there. As soon as I started using that, my readership jumped considerably.

Occasionally I'll send out a tweet on something else I'm working on, sort of a teaser for this blog. I've done this from the computer, and often via text message from my phone. (If you see a ~E at the end of a tweet -- or a short blog entry -- it means I turned my cell phone into remote control. I love showing off.)

Ooooh, I'm doing something really stupidly mundane now, and I've got to let my followers know all about it. A 140-character review to follow.

(Lest I forget: Follow me on Twitter!)

Plug-in turns Explorer into nemesis Google browser

2009-09-23T10:55:00.000-07:00

Who would've thunk it?

So you don't like Internet Explorer. You'd rather play hand grenade volleyball than use IE to browse the web, but the computer isn't yours. It may be one of those work-issued laptops and you're stuck with what you have.

Google came out with a plug-in that basically turns IE into Google Chrome. I find the whole concept a real hoot, as there is no love lost between Google and Microsoft. According to TechCrunch:

... Google seems to dislike IE so much that it has spent its own time improving it. Google claims its goals are noble. Talking to Group Product Manager Mike Smith and Software Engineer Alex Russell, they tell us that they simply want to make a more seamless web experience for both web users and developers. That said, they are only targeting one browser, IE, right now ... and that seems fair. IE, which is of course made by Google nemesis Microsoft, is both the largest web browser and the one with a poor history when it comes to web standards. Things have gotten better since IE6, but that’s really not saying much ...

The way I understand it, ChromeFrame builds a whole new frame inside of IE that is really the Google browser. You'll lose some resources because you're running two browsers, but Chrome is plenty fast. Even with the extra load on your system, using the "fake" Chrome on top of IE is still a sight faster than running IE straight.

Years ago, before I discovered Mozilla, I came across what was then called Crazy Browser. It also ran on top of IE, but it offered a popup blocker and tabbed browsing. At the time, popup blocking was in its infancy (you needed a third-party application to do it), and tabbed browsing -- the greatest invention for ADHD Web surfers -- was still several years in coming for IE though Mozilla was playing with a kludgy rough draft of it. And even on my dial-up connection, Crazy Browser was blistering fast. I found this especially amazing because IE (I was then using the abortion called IE 6) was, to put it kindly, glacial. Call it fuzzy math -- extra memory used to run Crazy Browser atop the IE framework should not equal faster, but it really did.

Crazy Browser more or less disappeared off the face of the Web, but I see it's back. Just for grins, I downloaded it to check it out.

I've tested out the real Chrome, and I like it so far. It's a little goofy in handling bookmarks, but I think most of that is because I'm not used to it. It's a fast browser -- to my nonscientific touch-annd-feel tests, it's right up there with Opera in the speed department, and of course it handles my Google applications easily. For the most part, though, I use it for posting blogs and little else. I'll admit I haven't really scratched the surface as far as Chrome's capabilities; I don't know if it has all the extensions and plug-ins you'll find in, say, Firefox, but it's a whole lot better than using IE.

In case you're interested, you can get ChromeFrame here.

Torvalds: Creeping feature-itis bloats Linux

2009-09-23T10:53:00.000-07:00

Linus Torvalds is getting nervous about the growth of his creation.

At a LinuxCon conference in Portland, Oregon, Torvalds said the Linux operating system is "bloated."

In 1991 Torvalds, then a student in Finland, created the original Linux kernel -- the base of the free operating system -- and is still involved in developing the kernel.

According to Slashdot:

... while the open-source community has long pointed the finger at Microsoft's Windows as bloated, it appears that with success has come added heft, heft that makes Linux "huge and scary now," according to Torvalds ...

My own thoughts here: You mean he finally figured this out?

Before the DVD became popular, the size of a Linux download was measurable in CDs. I always preferred the smaller, lighter versions that would take up, at most, one CD. One version of the Debian GNU/Linux operating system, though, weighed in at 14 CDs.

This bloat factor took off as Linux packagers tried to make a more user-friendly (read: more like Windows) system. And one of the selling points of Linux -- that you can run it on computers long deemed obsolete with each new version of Windows, became more of a stretch.

My own favorite Linux distribution, the Slackware-based Vector Linux, morphed in the past few years from a run-on-anything download of less than 400 megabytes to a bit over 700 megabytes. More features, more eye candy, but ... more bloat. To be sure, you can still get some extremely usable out-of-the-box versions that can run on anything from a Pentium on up, but they're getting a) harder to find and b) less visually appealing than before.

Firefox now on more than half of computers

2009-09-19T11:04:00.000-07:00

I'm glad to see I'm finally in the majority about something here. Firefox is my go-to browser (I'm using version 3.5.3).

This is from MozillaZine. Have to admit, this site is a little biased, as Firefox comes from Mozilla. I feel better, though, that they quote from other sources:

... it finally happened. After years of building momentum -- and more than a few false starts -- Mozilla's Firefox Web browser has finally reached critical mass. There are now more users running some variant of Firefox (50.6 percent) than not running it, according to the latest statistics from the exo.performance.network, which tracks the actual usage and configurations of thousands of PCs globally, providing a real-world snapshot ...

A couple of things come to my attention here. Firefox is not normally bundled on Windows computers. To get it, you have to take the initiative and download it. This suggests users are getting more savvy about their computers, and less likely to use whatever software set they're given.

And it's an indicator of how lacking Internet Explorer really is.

I've fooled around with nearly all the browsers that are used these days -- IE, Firefox, Seamonkey (which is really just the old Mozilla code with a new name on it), Opera (which I really like), Google Chrome (which is promising), and Netscape (which still exists). Plus a handful of browsers you may not have heard of -- Lynx, Konqueror, Skipstone, and eLinks. Not to mention Iceweasel, a rebranded version of Firefox which is more in line with the the GNU (free software) user agreement.

I do have my crochets with Firefox. I've had problems with it blowing up in memory and eating system resources like popcorn, though it seems to be less of an issue with 3.5. And it's real easy to load up extension after extension, making it one real bloated piece of software. But I still recommend Firefox.

People may pay $100 bounty to crack your Facebook account

2009-09-19T11:00:00.000-07:00

It's a jungle out there.

From computerworld.com:

... security vendor PandaLabs has discovered an online service offering to help those so inclined to hack into any Facebook account they choose for a price: $100 ...

Be careful out there!

A totally peripheral note: Must these idiots be referred to as "hackers?" Ask anyone in the programming community, especially those folks who create some really good free software. They call themselves hackers, and it's not the same thing. Hackers build things, they say, while "crackers" tear things down.

Careful of the ad, even if source is copacetic

2009-09-15T11:49:00.000-07:00

This is must reading if you spend any time online.

... while reading the New York Times online, I was confronted with an attempted security attack, apparently delivered through an advertisement. A window popped up, mimicking an antivirus scanner. After "scanning" my computer, it reported finding viruses and invited me to download a free antivirus scanner. The displays implied, without quite saying so, that the messages came from my antivirus vendor and that the download would come from there too. Knowing how these things work, I recognized it right away as an attack, probably carried by an ad. So I didn't click on anything, and I'm fairly certain my computer wasn't infected ...

Source: Freedom To Tinker blog.

Like the man so tiresomely said in Hill Street Blues, "Be careful out there."

Gmail account note probably work of fools

2009-08-26T13:25:00.000-07:00

I've had Gmail accounts for several years now, and just today I received a most disturbing message:

Dear Account User,

This Email is from Gmail customer care and we are sending it to every Gmail accounts owner for safety. We are having congestion due to the anonymous registration of Gmail accounts so we are shutting down some Gmail accounts and your account was among those to be deleted. We are sending this email to you so that you can verify and let us know if you still want to use this account. If you are still interested please confirm your account by filling the space below.Your User name, password, date of birth and your country information would be needed to verify your account.

Due to the congestion in all Gmail users and removal of all unused Gmail Accounts. Gmail would be shutting down all unused Accounts, you will have to confirm your E-mail by filling out your Login Information below after clicking the reply button or your account will be suspended within 24 hours for security reasons.

* User name: ............................

* Password: ................................

* Date of Birth: ............................

* Country Or Territory: ....................

Warning!!! Account owner that refuses to update his or her account within Seven days of receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently.

Thank you for using Gmail !

The Gmail Team

G MAI L BETA

Anyway, that's the message.

So far as I know, it's all crap.

Just swallow down that bile rising in the throat for a moment, OK?

A couple of things:

Why anyone would want my account name and password is beyond me, unless it's for nefarious purposes.

Check it:

If it was from Gmail, they'd already have all that.

Got it?

I had a partial answer here, which if nothing else confirmed what I'd already figured.

So if you have gmail and received that message, ignore it. Keep in mind, that's what happens when we have idiots on the Internet.

(Posted simultaneously in The Column, Reloaded and The Workbench, Reloaded)

Netbook or laptop? It's harder to tell the difference

2009-08-20T08:19:00.000-07:00

As more features are finding their way into smaller packages, the lines are blurring between netbooks (like that tiny Acer I'm using to maintain this blog) and "real" laptops.

At least that's according to CNet:

Color, screen resolution, battery, Wi-Fi, Webcam? The same. And they both lack an internal optical drive. The differences, though relatively small, can be summed up in the 11z notebook's 1.5 inches of extra screen real estate, a more powerful Celeron processor, 1GB of extra memory, and a larger hard drive ... plus, by getting the notebook with Vista, you have an automatic free upgrade to Windows 7. With any computer with XP, it costs around $100 to get Windows 7 Home Premium Edition ... the specs are so similar that the average shopper would likely be confused as to why one is better than the other.

I know that, even with my bargain-basement unit, folks are amazed there's room for a hard drive ...

Here are some easy hardware fixes

2009-08-01T19:47:00.001-07:00

Rather than spend a lot of money on a new computer, or worse, on repairs, here are some fixes that just about anyone can do -- as seen on the website Lifehacker.

Personal note: I've done many of these myself -- replaced a hard drive, changed out a motherboard, installed RAM, replaced a power supply, and (in part) built my own unit.

OK. What do I win?

Mossberg: Windows 7 looks good except ...

2009-07-23T10:09:00.000-07:00

Y'all Windows junkies can't wait for Version 7? According to Walter Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal, Windows 7 beats the pants off Vista (which isn't difficult) and even seems a lot sturdier than XP. (It remains to be seen how it stands up against Windows 98SE, the American classic).

Mossberg says everything's copacetic about Windows 7 except ... except ... the upgrade process. Might be better to buy a whole new computer?

Best engineering happens when system dies

2009-07-11T14:20:00.000-07:00

Psion Teklogix's 7530 is a Windows CE .NET-based handheld that combines an ultra-rugged flashlight terminal with the flexibility and large screen of a Windows CE PDA. This is a fairly large and heavy (over two pounds) handheld that's engineered for extreme ruggedness, according to the manufacturer. This particular model is no longer available, but I use it at work.

============

You've got to love this high tech stuff. For the most part, I sure do.

But this past week I've relearned some of the pitfalls that come with putting so much reliance on fancy toys.

I have one of those wonderful nonessential jobs that really should be civil service. I work at an intermodal (truck and railroad) yard, and my task is to keep track of all those trucks that come in. Or maybe it's shipping containers. One of 'em, anyway. It's equal parts security and inventory work, and whatever the job actually is, I do it well enough to fool the boss.

On the job, I keep track of all incoming and outgoing shipping containers, chassis, and truckers. We do this by computer, and my own unit is a Psion Teklogik handheld, model 7530. It's not a half bad rig, for one that's been discontinued for a few years. Runs on Windows CE, which was the OS of choice for the old Pocket PC. Connects with the main system via wireless. Bluetooth connection to the printer hanging from my belt. And it's built tough. According to the manufacturer's website, you can run this thing in the rain, drop it from six feet up, or work it in a freezer. I've dropped this a few times (whenever you do, always make it look like an accident) and run it in tropical storms and freezing weather. I've also thought of using this unit as a hammer, crowbar, or occasional argument-stopper -- all in the interest of beta testing, creating a better product. Of course.

The system is not that well maintained, and sometimes it's temperamental. Bogs down. Takes forever to print. Some of our units have issues with the display. The alphanumeric keyboard is not designed for a full-sized hand, and although I'm fairly quick on it (using the index and middle fingers on my left hand), it's really best if you're used to thumb typing -- which I'm not.

On Wednesday I came to work, clocked in, made coffee, and fired up my handheld. And it froze up. I tried a hard reset. I tried a different handheld. I tried dropping it again. I tried a different battery, then a different handheld. Forget it. All our mobile units were dead in the water. And already a few trucks were lined up, waiting for me to open the place.

Fortunately, we still have a box of the old two-part forms hanging around, leftovers from the days this work was done by hand. It took a few minutes to familiarize myself with the forms, and soon I was good to go. The three of us -- me, coworker Michelle, and supervisor Elaine -- worked out some of the bugs, smoothed out the operations, and pretty soon we were able to do as good a job on the old forms as we did on the handhelds. Michelle and I would fill out the forms and pitch them to Elaine, who typed them into her desktop. It went very well, with very few glitches. When the computer system was back up shortly after noon on Friday, we could not help but feel good about what we accomplished.

And now we know what to do next time the system goes down, which it will.

A revelation here: Although we were a bit slower with the forms (always an issue with many of our truckers who want everything yesterday), we were probably more accurate. But there's more.

The job became simpler.

Really.

As I explained this point with one of the truckers, the job suddenly had all the fat trimmed off of it. Rather than go through a bunch of keystrokes (it takes about 20 keystrokes to do the simplest task, to check in a trucker who is not pulling anything; just bobtailing), just dash it off on the form, get a signature, and give the driver a copy. And, writing the stuff down on the form, many drivers were impressed we actually knew their names; on the computer they're just a six-digit code.

Yeah, sometimes I bring a sardonic sense of humor to the job. "How you like our giant technological leap forward?" I asked some of the drivers. But I was only half kidding.

OK. I love technological toys. Got to have my computer, Internet, cell phone, mp3 player, and all the goodies. I know how to use them, and I also know how to get under the hood and tweak things for higher performance. Tech is convenient. Tech is fast.

What high tech does not do, though, is make your task any simpler. If you think it does, you're fooling yourself.

I keep my budget on a spreadsheet. It's pretty intuitive now, but it took hours of fine-tuning to get it the way I wanted it. Honestly, a ledger and plenty of black (and for me, red) ink is every bit as good. And if the computer geeks out? Forget it. You'll send for some guy who can barely speak English. But he'll baffle you with BS and charge you big bucks for the privilege.

While the Internet speeds up the research process, whatever time and effort you save will likely be swallowed up in plucking the pearls of usable information from the ordure. And I hope you wash your hands after that.

I can carry a whole bunch of music on my mp3 player. Convenient, but mp3's -- or even CDs-- don't have the sound quality of vinyl.

While computers were a factor, we really used a clipboard and slide rule to put man on the moon.

Chrome OS: Odds not good, says Wired

2009-07-09T07:40:00.000-07:00

Ambitions or not, the new Google Chrome operating system has an uphill battle if it plans to nibble into Microsoft's edge on the netbook market. But Wired isn't betting the ranch on this happening:

Google's netbook-friendly Chrome OS takes direct aim at Microsoft, whose eight-year-old Windows XP leads the netbook market. But the odds are stacked against Google.

Despite its buzz, the odds are stacked against Google's Chrome OS becoming a serious rival to Windows. In competing with Windows, Google Chrome OS will have to deal with many of the same challenges Linux has: compatibility, usability, and unfamiliarity. The record isn't good ...

Also -- what's this talk of a monopoly? I mean, MS was accused of this in an antitrust case, some years ago. This is from the L.A. Times ...

Google Chrome-based OS a fit for netbooks?

2009-07-08T12:30:00.000-07:00

I sure wasn't expecting this, though I probably should have. Google is looking at netbooks (those mini-laptops like the one I'm using) and systems that can run them. This announcement is from Lifehacker:

In a sudden, if not unexpected, announcement this morning, Google said it would release an open-source operating system based on its Chrome browser. The OS will be free, geared (at first) toward netbooks, and focused on "speed, simplicity, and security." Google executives told the New York Times that Google Chrome OS would be available online "later this year" as a free, open-source download, while specially tailored netbooks running the operating system are targeted for the second half of 2010 ...

Battery life: The ABC's of YMMV

2009-06-24T07:23:00.000-07:00

Wonder why your laptop batteries don't seem to last as advertised?

Here's an article in Newsweek on how battery life is figured, which illustrates exactly what "your mileage may vary" means.

False advertising? You figure it out, but first tell me if there's any other kind.

(For the record, my Aspire One gets about two hours per battery charge.)

Review: Are Netbooks hip or hype?

2009-04-18T11:33:00.001-07:00

I've joined the laptop crowd, kinda sorta.

Recently I acquired an Acer Aspire One, one of the new breed of mini-laptops that they in the industry call "netbooks." A pretty handy little device; about the size of a hardback book.

It's not a full laptop, and if you put it up against one of the larger, faster portables you'll definitely see a difference. But these smaller units have caught on, sold like crazy, and created their own category: netbooks.

A bit of history on these netbooks: The idea came about a couple of years ago with the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. This effort was to design a mini-computer rugged enough to tote everywhere, with wireless connectivity, no hard drive, and cheap enough to be distributed among third-world children. Or something like that, anyway. The designers hoped they could make a tough little $100 laptop. Of course this concept didn't work out in the real world as it did on paper, but the Acer -- like the Asus Eee, is a direct descendant of the OLPC project.

The last laptop I'd used was an old Toshiba Satellite, a 486 system running Windows 95. I can't remember how much RAM it had, but it certainly not enough to handle today's software. And for years I used a roll-your-own laptop, which was little more than a Sony Clie handheld (with a Palm OS) hooked up to a foldout keyboard. This was the ultimate in portability -- I could stow the two pieces in my coat pocket -- but I was limited in what kind of files I could move. This setup didn't have Internet access, though I could connect up by piggybacking through my desktop rig. This was great for what I really needed to do, keeping myself organized (always a monumental task) and editing text files away from home.

For a long time I had my eye on a cheap (read: thrown-away) laptop, but that wasn't forthcoming. Instead, I opted for the Acer, which goes for about half the price of most laptops, has wireless connectivity, allows me to work on the go, and is small enough to stow in my backpack. At a little less than two-and-a-half pounds, we're not talking about any significant load at all, and I keep it in a zippered document bag that fits it nicely.

It's lightweight under the hood, too. My unit has 1 gigabyte of RAM, an Intel Atom processor with 1596 mHz CPU speed, and a 160-gig solid-state hard drive. This last part is cool, as many Netbooks lack a hard drive, leaving you to save files to a USB thumb drive).

For connections it has three USB 2.0 ports, an Ethernet port, a six-in-one memory card reader, and a slot for an additional storage card. Add some nearly-useless stereo speakers and a minimal built-in Webcam, and that's the package. None of it is truly outstanding, but that's where you decide exactly what your needs are before buying the Aspire -- or if you're half smart, any other computer.

Personal note: My desktop/workhorse is quite old (256MB RAM, 1.3 GHZ, 80G hard drive, running Linux), so the minimal hardware on the Aspire is not as big an issue with me. About the most memory-intensive thing I do is editing and mixing sound files, and I try to stick with software that's as bloat-free as possible. Plus, I'm not above a little vest-pocket engineering. I'm saving most of my files on a thumb drive anyway so I can work with them on the desktop (Linux) computer, and you can pretty much do anything with a USB drive that you can do with a CD-ROM -- including boot the computer directly from it.

Because it's a subminiature, it will take a lot of coordination and patience to use the Aspire. The screen is small -- a teeny 8.5 inches on the model I have, though some are 10 inches or larger. This one ... well, I find myself maximizing all my windows to fill the screen just so I can see them. The LCD screen is quite clear, though, so reading it is not a problem. On many Web sites, memorize where your PgUp and PgDown buttons are. You'll be using them a lot.

The keyboard is likewise small, in fact the same size as the Belkin foldout keyboard I used with the handheld. Although I'm good with a keyboard, I end up making more typos with this one because of the smaller keys and because I basically have bricks for hands. I don't recommend using this keyboard for long stretches.

The touchpad is a little squirrelly, too, mostly because I've never used one before. Like on a lot of laptops it's below the space bar, in the middle. In fact, right about where my thumb thinks the space bar should be. My unit did come with a half-sized USB optical mouse, so that's an option if that touchpad drives you buggy.

No real problems with the graphics, though sound leaves a lot to be desired. Even using headphones, playing music through it doesn't sound as good as it does from my desktop or mp3 player. I tried recording with the built-in mic, and immediately decided it's pretty bad.

Now that I've eviscerated the Aspire ...

I find it's best at going on line just about anywhere. The other day, bicycling home from work, I stopped off at a college campus, plunked my butt down on a bench, dragged out the Aspire, found a wireless signal, and went to work. Email. Downloaded a few songs. Checked a few Web sites (if you must know, some sites with info on how to put Linux on the Aspire!). Edited a column or two. Got quite a bit done. The only real on-the-road drawback is that battery life is limited to between two and three hours, so if there's some heavy work ahead you might want to pack the two-piece A/C adaptor.

I'm also keeping my most important files -- particularly my mp3 collection (at more than 1,800 songs and growing) -- on this unit's hard drive as a backup. That in itself is huge.

I'll grant you, this unit is nowhere near as powerful as the newer laptops or desktops you can get. Not even close. It clearly won't run under Vista, and Microsoft has been keeping XP around mostly for these Netbooks. That in itself doesn't worry me; Vista is an abortion anyway.

What was almost a deal-breaker for me is that most netbooks -- including the Aspire One -- have no CD-ROM drive. And the keyboard is much smaller than even your average laptop's. But the Acer isn't really designed to be someone's main unit, and even the limited specs make it a whole lot faster than my ancient desktop.

Another almost-deal-breaker for me is that it's very difficult to install or run a different operating system on this rig. Some versions of the Acer come with Linux, but this one is loaded with Windows XP Home Edition (Service Pack 3) -- ironically, Linux is my preference. Theoretically, I can install Linux via dual-boot, using the thumb drive in lieu of a CD-ROM to load the system. I'm still toying with it, and this will become fodder for a future posting.

Here's some bottom line stuff:

Don't buy the Aspire One because it's "cute," although I'll admit the little bugger IS cute. Don't get it if it's the only computer you have, unless you will only use it to go on line. Don't buy one expecting the latest gee-whiz bleeding-edge software. Don't get it if you plan to use the keyboard a lot, or have problems with smaller keyboards, or need a large display. Don't get it if you want Vista or whatever operating system Microsoft develops to replace that abortion. Don't get it if you can't leave stuff alone. Don't get it if you already have a perfectly good laptop, unless you're looking for a spare.

Get it, though, if you need to go ultraportable, if you want a mini-laptop that can go with you everywhere, or if you're looking for a cheaper option for a laptop.

==========

[You tell me! What's your experience with netbooks? Do you have one? Do you love it or hate it? Use the comments section for your input.]

Word processors? Bah!

2008-10-07T15:02:00.001-07:00

(As seen on my home computer: MetPad in the front, Geany in the rear.)

Although a big part of my life is working with words, I don't process them.

In the past I have used most of the major word processors -- Microsoft Word since version 3.0, several Lotus programs, Open Office, and some of the old DOS-driven oldies such as PC-Write and Leading Edge. I've fooled with Google Docs. My computer has AbiWord on it, but I seldom use it.

Sounds almost blasphemous, especially for a writer. Why wouldn't I be interested in a word processor that does everything, checks my spelling and grammar, offers tips with that little animated paper-clip dude, and makes my coffee?

Although I'm cheap, it's not a matter of cost. AbiWord and OpenOffice are free. It's not because I use an old, resource-challenged computer -- my word processor doesn't eat that many CPU cycles. And it's not because I don't know how to run the software -- not with my background.

Part of it is simplicity, but the biggest issue is flexibility. Very little of what I write finds itself on a printed page. If you do much work with a computer, you might find this to be true yourself.

Most of my writing shows up in the blogs I keep. Some will be sent as email. Quite a bit of it stays on the hard drive, as notes to myself. It's a very rare occasion when I'll need to print something. Maybe a business letter to someone who does not have a computer or email (all three of them), occasionally song lyrics or lists for some of my musician friends, and that's about it. I don't even own a printer, and I don't plan to get one any time soon. If it wasn't for all of my on-the-go notes written out on yellow legal pads or index cards, I'd have a paperless office.

There was a time when word processors were the greatest thing since the toilet seat. But those days are gone, and that breed of software is fast becoming passe.

OK, so how do I write?

On the computer I use a text editor. Think of Notepad that comes with your Windows installation -- and that's a poor example of an editor. There are no font settings to mess with. There is no spell check. It's just text. Chances are your files will be saved with the .txt suffix, which is a magical word in these parts.

Try this sometime. Send someone a document as an email attachment, written with your favorite word processor. Is your recipient able to read the thing when he gets it?

If he has the same version of Your Favorite Word Procesor as you do, then there's no problem. But if you wrote it in, say, OpenOffice 2.x and he only has Microsoft Word or OpenOffice 1.x, there may be a problem. He may or may not know what that .ods suffix means when he's used to .doc or .sxw, and there will be translation headaches. Back in my word processing days, I'd let the reader know what word processor I used and maybe include instructions on how to convert the document, but most people won't do that.

With a .txt document, there is no translation issue. Something written in .txt can be read and edited by any word processor without any effort at all. It can be uploaded into a blog, added to a Web site, or filed away. And without all the font parameters and formatting, the document takes up less space on your hard drive and takes less time to upload.

But don't I miss the spell checkers and other fancies?

Not really. Your spell checker merely determines whether a word is in the dictionary. OK. So you meant to type "from" and got "form" instead. Your spell checker is not human, it knows nothing other than whether the word is in the dictionary. It will miss that error, but your reader probably won't.

While spell-checkers are a marvelous convenience, I believe they do not help writers write. The software does all the work; it becomes less necessary to edit the document. Or at least that's the perception. In truth, with all these conveniences, Americans have regressed in their ability to spell, to write, to communicate.

What's worse, a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) word processor forces the writer to pay attention to how the document looks rather than what is being communicated. If anything, the whole process is bass-ackwards. When you write, you think about what you're trying to say first, then worry about how it looks. At least that's the intention.

After I'm done writing the document, I'll decide what I want to do with it. If it's for print, then paste it or open it in a word processor or LaTeX formatter. If it's going into an email or in the blog, I'll just paste it into Gmail or ScribeFire, whatever I want. Old-time computer operators call this the "workbench" approach -- get it written first, save it, then format it. If this sounds like an extra step, that's the idea. You're taking off your writer's hat and putting on your typesetter's hat, and those jobs should be separated.

On my Linux box I'll use one of several word processors. The one which I used for this blog entry is MetPad, a variation of the old "vi" that gives me all the mouse usability and a sackful of keyboard commands (and I find the commands a lot faster than moving my coffee cup out of the way to get to the mouse). But I'll also use Geany, Nedit, or several others.

Windows users may find themselves considerably behind the curve when it comes to text editors. I mentioned Notepad, and it's horrible. The default setting gives you no word wrap (a function I insist on), but if you hunt around in the menus you should be able to find it. Your Windows box may have WordPad, which is a lot more useful. I recommend that one. Or if you can get Scite, that's even better.

Part of why there's so much more choice among text editors with Linux users is because many of us are programmers. I myself am not, but I've written a few small shell scripts to automate a few functions and did a lot of work with home-brewed .bat files back in my DOS days. Text editors are designed more for programming, but don't let that throw you.

You can use those same industrial-strength text editors to write a letter to Grandma. Or dash off a short blog entry. Or maybe your next million-seller novel.

You might not even miss your word processor.

It's like carrying a computer in your pocket

2008-10-04T12:41:00.001-07:00

In recent days my wireless Internet connection has been extremely troublesome, more down than up. Borderline worthless, in fact. I guess you sometimes get what you pay for.

So I'm using library computers to post blogs and check my email. A pain, yes, especially in taking the time to get to the library, but other than that it's not that big a problem.

I'm not a fan of the software set you find on most public computers. I seldom use word processors when I write, and I'd rather take a nitric acid enema than surf with Internet Explorer. Plus, I don't necessarily want the next person on the computer to know where I've been.

No worries. I carry my own software in my pocket. Plug in a USB thumb drive, and it's like I'm using my own computer without lugging the hardware around. For sheer portability, this even beats a laptop and it's a lot cheaper.

For the price of a USB stick and a quick download, you can get a suite of software that you can run on just about any Windows-based computer, privately. Browser history, cookies, bookmarks, and preferences stay on the thumb drive. Called Portable Apps, the programs fit nicely on one of the older 256-megabyte drives. Default programs in the smaller version include Firefox, Abiword, ClamWin, and a couple of games.

While I've added a couple of other programs to my Portable Apps suite, just having Firefox makes it a worthy download. I have several must-have extensions to Firefox, including ScribeFire, my blogging workhorse. All of this is set to my specifications, saving me a lot of hassle when I'm working in one-hour sessions with different computers.

So when I'm using a public unit, I plug in two thumb drives: A 256-meg oldie that has my Portable Apps, and a 1-gig drive which carries my files. And even that step is probably unnecessary; I can just as easily use one thumb drive for everything. But no matter; I'm still carrying my own computer in my pocket.

Here's an unexpected bonus when running Portable Apps: Many public computers are set so you can't download. Which makes sense; a real good way to trash a computer system is to allow random people to download whatever they want. What with all the viruses and malware around, that's the quickest way to spread the love.

But using the portable Firefox, I've been able to download all sorts of goodies, up to entire operating systems, on public computers.

I haven't tested this part out, but theoretically you can surf sites that are blocked, such as your myspace page, from a work computer while using an outside browser. My supervisor's work computer allows you to only surf the company web site, and I suggested (we obviously get along very well on the job) that she can surf whatever she wants using the portable browser. However, she's afraid to try, and I'm not going to attempt it on her computer, so this idea remains theoretical in my book. Maybe one of my readers is willing to try it for me, and I'd welcome any input.

If this theory proves correct, Portable Apps may well be a screw-off's best friend on the job.

AbiWord is the word processor that comes with Portable Apps, and on those rare occasions I use such a program (give me a plain-vanilla text editor any time), AbiWord is what I'll run. It's a lot lighter than Microsoft Word, has many of the same functions, plays well with .doc files, and is free and open-source.

ClamWin is a virus protection program, and in truth I've never experimented with that. But I can see the usefulness here. You'll find a couple of other Mozilla-based programs, too: Sunbird, a calendar. Thunderbird, a mail reader. And a Sudoku game, if you have a little time to burn off or are totally addicted to that !!#$&!! game.

The folks at Portable Apps have been developing several other programs that you can plug in to your suite, and I snagged a few of them. There's Audacity, a sound editor that I've used for recording my band's music, and Notepad+, a text editor. And a whole bunch of others, allowing you to carry a whole set of software on your key chain.

Unless you can get a whole operating system on a USB drive (which is doable, and this is something I may write about in a future entry), you can't get much more portable than that.

Gettin' Geeky 1: Personal to-do list

2008-09-13T20:10:00.000-07:00

Personal to-do list:

Deadline: Whenever.

- Install second hard drive (has Windows XP), put it in lede position. Reconfigure Grub boot loader. Partition; XP may get 10 gigabytes if I'm feeling generous. Use the rest for experiments.

- Install Vector Linux 5.9 on back end of "new" hard drive. Test it; potential blog TK. Want to pay attention to how it handles wireless; was a deal-breaker in v. 5.8. Potential blog entry?

- Check out website on getting Chrome to work through WINE emulator. Maybe give that a shot?

Google Chrome license agreement fixed

2008-09-13T08:17:00.001-07:00

Update on Google Chrome: The End User License Agreement has been fixed to remove the most objectionable qualities (the ones I mentioned in previous posts).

This looks a whole lot better. (This is taken from the download page, as you can see from the "accept and install" button.)

Personal footnote: Nealy all of the software I use is under the GNU GPL, what the folks there call a "copyleft." So, to me, the Chrome EULA seems a little heavy, but it wouldn't be if you're used to using proprietary software anyway.

(Still waiting for the Linux version of Chrome; I must test it out.)

Some stats ... 'cause I can

2008-09-10T17:43:00.001-07:00

Just for giggles, I was able to compile stats of the last 50 people who browsed on the sister site, The Column Reloaded, to illustrate which operating systems and Web browsers are being used by my readers.

Operating systems:

4 used Windows Vista.
38 used Windows XP.
7 used Apple OSX.
1 used what was called an "unrecognized" operating system.

Web browsers:

22 used Internet Explorer. Of those, 13 used version 7.0, and nine ran 6.0.

22 used Firefox. Of these, 16 used version 3.0, five were on 2.0, and one used version 1.5. Interestingly, that one was running the unrecognized OS.

6 used Safari.

(I used The Column, Reloaded because this tech blog is too new to generate any meaningful statistics.)

My blog is certainly not a real good sample of what people are using in their computers. In fact the numbers are practically useless, though they are interesting.

Interesting that Vista hasn't shown up more in my readership; I'd figured with all that hype somebody would have bought the system. But even brand-new, made-for-Vista-with-the-system-preloaded can be downgraded to XP, and I understand quite a few people have gone that route.

Being a dyed-in-the-wool Linux user, I'm disappointed there are no fellow penguinistas in the mix.

If I was a betting man, I'd say that "unrecognized" operating system is a BSD type. More of an industrial-strength UNIX, largely unknown among the masses but there's a following there. I'd fooled with BSD systems here and there, but really little more than a test drive. (Linux, too, is built from a UNIX base, and OSX -- the MacIntosh system -- has its roots in BSD.)

I'm intrigued by that even split between Firefox and IE. Now that's a real anomaly; in the real world Firefox doesn't have that big a market share. Most computer users, I'm afraid, think that big "e" icon on the desktop means Internet.

I'm also surprised no one was using Opera. I've run that off and on, and always liked it. It's fast, but you can't add all those extensions like you can with Firefox.

As for myself, I'm using a Debian Gnu/Linux derivative, with the Sid (unstable -- bleeding edge) build. To surf the Web I'm using Iceweasel, an unbranded version of Firefox 3.0.

Where did I get my statistics? Through Feedjit, which provided that "Playing In Traffic" box on this site. Another of those cool tools every blogger should have.

Google promises privacy fixes in Chrome

2008-09-10T16:37:00.001-07:00

Google is taking steps to mask the identities of those who use the new Chrome browser, the Washington Post reported.

According to Jane Horvath of Google, the company -- which dominates the Internet search world (when people do a Web search they're more likely to say they're "googling" it, making the company name into a verb) -- will anonymize IP addresses and cookies in the interest of privacy.

The privacy issue has been a major one on the Internet, and intensified as Google released the browser last week.

"My main concern is the ability to collect users' Web addresses, and
therefore your complete surfing on the Web could be tracked," Germany's
data protection commissioner, Peter Schaar, said of Chrome. "The Web
is, in fact, a second life. A virtual mirror of one's real life, with
information about one's interests, activities, perhaps sexual
orientation."

All of which is true. If you want to stay totally private, forget the Internet. The question, though, is whether the browser will make that much difference.

=========

Meanwhile, columnist Gary Cutlack of Tech Digest suggested there's little difference between Google Chrome and the Firefox browser -- some of the Chrome features that turned his head were already in Firefox, except he had to hunt for them.

"All Google's effort has done is left me appreciating Firefox even
more, and extra-extra confused about why Google has gone to so much
effort to put out a product so incredibly similar to its rivals," he wrote. "So
thanks very much, Google. You've made me bring my browsing habits bang
up to date. I'll remember to click on a few of your adverts some time
as a thank you."

OK. Bottom line here. Am I going to try Chrome when the Linux version comes out? Of course. If for no other reason than to satisfy my own curiosity, I must give it a shot.

Am I going to like Chrome? Hard to tell, though probably not. For me, the selling point will be its speed. Firefox occasionally blows up real big in memory, especially when I have a lot of browser tabs open. That, and whether the privacy issues and license agreement are ironed out.

License agreement for Chrome has ugly aspects

2008-09-04T20:02:00.001-07:00

With all the publicity of Google's new Chrome browser, there are a few issues that are turning up.

There seems to be a security vulnerability with it, as outlined in Infoworld. It can be serious especially if you're not all that computer savvy.

"... serious vulnerability could result in Chrome users downloading malicious code. The problem is due, in part, to the fact that Google uses an older version of WebKit, the open-source browser technology also used in Apple's Safari browser, that includes the vulnerability."

OK. Chrome is in beta, meaning it's still being fixed. Allegedly.

But there's something even more serious. The End User License Agreement (EULA), which is all that fine print you usually ignore when you download something, has some really ugly problems.

An example is with the rights to anything you pass through that browser: "By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a
perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive
license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly
perform, publicly display and distribute any content which you submit,
post or display on or through, the services."

Also, Google has the right to update Chrome automatically, whether you want it done or not. Shades of America Online, and more recently Windows.

From the EULA: "You agree to receive such updates (and permit Google to deliver these to you) as part of your use of the services."

Ugh.

If this EULA is a problem with you, then you just may want to stick with Firefox. Or Opera. Or Konqueror. Or Lynx. Maybe even (I must be kidding here) Internet Explorer.

I'll still check it out when it's available in Linux, but the EULA makes me nervous.

(My sources here: Slashdot and CNet.

(There probably will be more to come on this matter.)

Poll: Is "About You" freaky, or what?

2008-09-03T15:56:00.000-07:00

OK. I did kind of put the issue of Internet security in your face here. It's a little hard to miss, those "About You" graphics at the top of this blog.

What do you think? Did they freak you out, or what? Why or why not?

Let me know by answering the poll on this site. Hey, I might even make a blog entry out of that.

OK. I'll start it off ...

Google goes Chrome

2008-09-03T03:30:00.001-07:00

I'm watching as the new kid on the browser front, Google Chrome, makes its first real flight in the wild. I'm reading the reviews, and so far they seem pretty good. A lot faster and less memory-intensive than Firefox, the early reviewers say. As a sample, here's one from Information Week.

As soon as it's ported out to Linux, I'm going to give it a try, and you'll probably find something on it here. Stay tuned ...

These tools better than a tinfoil beanie

2008-09-02T15:11:00.000-07:00

(Disclaimer: I just love these mailbag requests. It indicates
someone's reading, paying attention, and maybe doing something. Or
making suggestions. This one came from Kelly Sonora, who has a tech
blog, "All Things Internet/Web World Wide." The article she sent me was
interesting -- especially 'cause I'm interested in Internet security
and I like free stuff. I ran this a few days ago in The Column, Reloaded, but it really belongs here -- but you really won't see a lot of cross-posting.)

In the past I'd written about how public the Internet really is. In cop-show parlance, every time you surf, your business is hung out on the street.

This is indeed true. To illustrate, check out the box called "About You." (For those who are reading this in RSS-land, hop over to the blog site, read it, and flip out.) You'll probably see your approximate location,your IP address, and your operating system and browser staring right at you.

Us oldsters remember when things were a lot more private. Plus, the world has
changed since 9/11, Homeland Security, and all these other events that changed our world. Civil liberties just ain't what they used to be. Even if you're a normal Joe, not any more paranoia than the next fella, one quick dip through the news may make you think a tinfoil beanie is a pretty good idea.

Paranoia or not, it's just good sense to surf defensively when you go on line. A lot of valuable information -- such as credit card and bank account numbers floats around in cyberspace all the time. Weirdos lurk all over the place, and that nice fella on myspace could well be a 55-year-old Michael Moore lookalike, sitting buck naked at his terminal (for the visually minded, "buck naked" means he's not wearing any socks, either). People work overtime to put together worms, viruses, Trojan horses, and spyware to either cripple your computer,
mine it for information, or just scare the spit out of you. Every time you surf, you leave little bits of code on the hard drive telling exactly where you've been, and those pieces of code are as good as a fingerprint.

But you get the point. It's a jungle out there. But there are tools to hide you, to cover your tracks, and to protect your information. And if you're feeling paranoid without reason, there are tools and sites guaranteed to give you something to be paranoid about. Whether you're normal (whatever that is) or a screaming nut job, there's probably a tool for you, too.

Here are some of my favorites from "50 Free Internet Tools for Tin-Foil Hat Wearers", written by Alisa Miller:

Portable Firefox: I love this one. I used it quite a bit when reduced to library
computers, which ordinarily means being stuck with the porous Internet Explorer. Portable Firefox comes with a suite of open-source applications which I use a lot anyway -- the AbiWord word processor, Audacity sound editor, and a handful of others. I carry them on a thumb drive with some of the documents I'm working on, which basically gives me a computer in my pocket. And I leave no trace on the host computer. My bookmarks and cookies -- those little bits of code that can tell you where I've been -- also stay on the thumb drive. And surprisingly, I've been able to download stuff using a library computer. Good luck doing that with the as-is system. I highly recommend this one.

Bugmenot.com: Of course I resent the idea of having to register (and get on a mailing list) just to read a few news articles, so of course I swear by this one. I use it via a Firefox extension, and I can't think of the last time I've registered for anything.

GrandCentral: It's by Google, and supposedly it consolidates all of your phone numbers into one that's untraceable. Sounds intriguing, but it is by Google, so take that any way you want.

Clusty and Scroogle: Search engines. Clusty is supposedly highly secure. To my experience it's also slow. Scroogle is a front-end for Google, which uses encryption and a few other things that supposedly mask your existence while you use Google.

ShieldsUp! and Junkbusters: Both will let you know how secure your computer really is. The more information your computer puts out, the more vulnerable you are to attacks and attempts by nefarious types to sip into your information.
ShieldsUp! tells me my computer is practically invisible.

AVG Anti-Virus: It's virus protection. They update regularly -- more often when some real baddie comes down the pike. And it's free. That was my guardian
during my Windows days (viruses are not an issue with Linux). The on-the-fly virus protection is, last I looked, somewhat lacking, but the program picks 'em off the hard drive with ease. Virus protection is big business, and it's a cash cow for some large software companies that play on people's fears, so if a free one does the job for you, go for it. I understand they've added spyware protection since I last used it; a good thing.

Avast! Another free virus protection program. I tried it years ago, and found
it to be slow but thorough. For ease of operation -- based on my tests then -- I'd give the nod to AVG. But unlike spyware programs, you can only run one virus checker at a time.

Ad-Aware: By Lavasoft. One of only about two spyware-sniffing programs that is
worth anything. The other one, which is not mentioned in the article, is Spybot Search & Destroy. And unlike virus scanners, you can have several spyware checkers on your system. In fact it's recommended, because each of these two will occasionally miss something. Whatever you do, DON'T order spyware protection from any Internet source that hawks its product through a pop-up box on your browser. Not only will those not work, they're probably not free and they're usually spyware themselves. I told you it's a jungle out there.

SiteAdvisor: Haven't used this, but heard good things about it. Supposedly lets you know that you're going to a site that is loaded with spyware or harvests your information. Worth a look.

This isn't on the list, but if you really want to play it stealthy, you can try one of the small Linux systems loaded via QEMU, an emulator. I have one (with the ultra-small Puppy Linux) on a USB thumb drive. Plug it in to a USB port, click on the icon, and you're running Linux on top of Windows. it's so secret even the host computer doesn't know what you're doing. There are some real drawbacks -- it's extremely slow, and you really need to be fluent in Linux to use it well. And it can't print or play music, but I can surf on a library computer and leave absolutely no traces.

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Anyway, that's my own list. Some things worth checking out there.

In fact, I recommend the whole blog. It's full of good security information.

Nooo! Not another blog!

2008-09-02T15:06:00.001-07:00

This new blog is my attempt at some housecleaning.

Readers of The Column, Reloaded can expect to get news of all kinds -- the mainstream, the sublime, the ridiculous, the geeky -- with a healthy dose of commentary on all of the above.

Somehow, though, some articles of a more technical nature has been finding its way into the blog. While there is a value for that material, it is oddly out of place there. It doesn't really fit the equation.

But, as I said, there is value in the tech stuff, so in a moment of madness I created this, the sister blog. Welcome to The Workbench, Reloaded.

It probably won't hurt for me to explain where I'm coming from here. I like computers. I'm good with them, and they're a great tool for my work. But the computer doesn't do my work for me, nor does it run my life. Really.

My home computer is not state of the art. It's an oldie -- a Compaq Deskpro with Intel guts. The little sticker on the front says it's "designed for Windows 2000 Professional." Ugh. I don't have Windows 2000 on it, or any other Windows. By choice it's a Linux system, designed and tweaked to run on minimal hardware. Partly because I'm cheap, and partly because I can make it work.

If you want reviews on the latest whiz-bang Windows system or application, you're not going to find it here. But if you want to get ideas on how to get maximum performance out of minimal equipment, this is a good place.

(An exception: Soon you'll find my take on the brand-spanking-new Firefox 3.0 web browser. My software is not heavyweight, but it's not dated either.

Here you'll read of some tips and tweaks (some Linux, some not), the occasional review, and the "How I Dunnit" feature, which has some of my favorite "hacks" as I find them.

You'll also find occasional forays into Web security ... in fact the first "real" article (which recently ran in The Column, Reloaded) will be reprinted here.

Have fun ... just remember to step away from the computer occasionally.