28 October, 2009

Ny oppdatering fra HTC til Magic

Inkluderes HTC sitt brukergrensesnitt "Sense UI"?
Dessverre, nei...

Er HTC Magic oppdatert til Android versjon 1.6?
Nei igjen...

Er det store forandringer i denne plattform-revisjonen?
Ikke vesentlige, nei...

Latterlig. Rett og slett.

Det eneste merkbare denne oppdateringen gjør, er:
  • å luke ut bugs
  • heve revisjonen fra 2.17.xxx til 2.40.xxx.
  • gjør det mulig å ha norsk som system-språk.
Samme Android-versjon (1.5) og samme UI.

Nei, det blir nok rooting og mod-ROM flashing på denne gutten.
Dette holder rett og slett ikke i forhold til det utlyste fra HTC.

Oppdatering kl.09:32:

Oppdateringen gjorde det mulig å skifte system-språk fra Engelsk til Norsk, men det den også gjorde, var å begrense hvilke programmer en kan søke etter og laste ned fra Android Market(!).

Jeg fant ikke programmet "Spotify", som jeg har brukt siden September. Og etter mye om og men, måtte jeg surfe til hjemmesiden til Spotify og innstallere programmet manuelt direkte fra nettleseren.

Nå begynner jeg å føle meg lurt, og er voldsomt irritert...

Oppdatering søndag 1. oktober:

Oppdateringen ordnet noen andre bugs jeg la merke til siden siste oppdatering (Aug'09):
  • når man sendte melding til en kontakt man ikke hadde sendt sms til før, ble det sendt 2 stk.
  • når man forandret favorittlisten brukte telefonen lang tid på å oppdatere dette dersom en benytter Google Sync via nettet.

26 October, 2009

Windows 7

Reading today's news headlines, you'll be sure to hit an article or two saying the Linux ommunity loves Windows 7. And yes, this is a fact. Even Linus Torvalds himself has been caught promoting Win7 (picture above).

From tuxradar.com: "It's official: we love Windows 7"

And according to them, their pagehits and search requests seem to indicate that people are actually validating operating systems before shelling off their precious $$$'s without as much as a question. Since the release of Win7, tuxradar has been receiving page requests for two specific articles on their site: Linux vs Windows 7 and Benchmarked: Ubuntu vs Vista vs Windows 7.

I find this really pleasing, foremost because if these visitors are non tech-savvy people, it shows that the efforts of the open source communities are finally showing some kind of influence on how people determine their computing needs.

This also shows the effect social networking has had on people's Internet habits, most of the hits on these pages are probably linking from blogs, social networks, IRC, twitter and the like. The electron-generations are finally getting recognition from 'the pinkies' (squares, conservatives, whatever you like to call them).

I've been testing Win7 RC myself in a virtual machine @ work, and I must admit, Microsoft has really pulled it off this time.

It's fast, secure, intuitive, goodlooking and it just works!

And as a result of all that linking, people are getting more aware about Linux and it's surrounding communities!

WIN - WIN

Norsk datasikkerhet?

Fant nettopp en blogg laget av en kar som heter "Michael McMillan", hvor han presiserer hvor sikkert norske personnummer og person-info egentlig er på nettet, og det er tydeligvis skremmende enkelt å hente ut fødselsnummer!

Jeg laget selv et enkelt BASH script og et tilhørende portert PHP script for å teste hvor enkelt det faktisk er å hente ut norske fødselsnummer på Internett, men Michaels PHP script er hakket bedre fordi det kryss-sjekker mellom to datakilder (henholdsvis nettstedsadressene skatt.nettavisen.no og finnfirma.no/person)

Scriptet (hvis kildekode kan lastes ned her, går under lisensen Creative Commons) trenger 3 statiske variabler fra deg som bruker. Fornavn, etternavn og stedsnavn. Etter du har satt inn disse variablene forsøker da scriptet å hente ut relevant informasjon fra de overnevnte nettstedene og korrelerer disse sammen til fødsesnummeret til aktuell person (i formatet DDMMYY).

Jeg fikk treff på samtlige av mine bekjentskaper, og fødsesnumrene deres stemte.

Nå må de få slutt på all denne uendelige papirmøllingen, godkjenninger, møter osv. hvis vi i det hele tatt skal kunne sikre de sensitive dataene norske selskaper legger ut på nett uten noe som helst hensyn i forhold til personvernet i landet.

Var ikke mange årene siden banker var de første ut med slike megatabber. Bank-kunder kunne bare forandre visse variabler i URL-strengene til bank-nettstedene for å oppnå tilgang til andres kontoer og utskrifter. Og til og med idag ser vi de samme feilene oppstår i selskaper som burde ha sikkerhet aller først på agendaen når de jobber med såpass sensitiv informasjon som banktransaksjoner og kortbetaling (BBS).

SKJERPINGS!

As easy as Ubuntu


Ok, I'll have to admit.., I refused for quite some time to take Ubuntu Linux for a serious test-drive due to bad experiences with the distro while it was in it's alfa and beta-stages. But since then, Ubuntu has come a looooooong way. So, I decided I'd take Ubuntu 9.04 for a spin.

It's still kind of bleeding edge with regards to compositing and visual effects, but they do work out-of-the-box. And hey, if things work...why fix them? On compositing and the like, I consider compiz as an extraordinary piece of rendering-code, but I also think it's too unstable for everyday production-use.

Ubuntu's UI has undergone major modifications to better suit it's userbase requirements, and I like it :)

Ubuntu's updating and upgrading facilities have also been much improved, with the addition of a scanning-tool to determine if you have hardware-components that has alternative proprietary drivers available, and lets you activate them with simple mouseclicks.


Easy Peasy v1.5 (formerly Ubuntu Netbook Remix) is a distribution developed with netbooks and net-tops in mind.

Focused on low-power consumption and simple apps for simple tasks, it's actually a rather comprehensive collection of software compared to many other netbook-flavours.

Lightning fast and with an intuitive and stylish interface, it does what it sets out to do, and more!

My Asus Eee 900 netbook had Xandros installed by default, but this distro did not let me do the things I usually do on a Linux-workstation, like: programming, compiling, scripting, etc.

In addition to be very restrictive, it was also heavily modified from it's Debian codebase, and was thus very hard to customize and proved a challenge in adding new and unusual software to.

NVIDIA & Linux


Phoronix.com recently interviewed one of NVIDIA's core linux driver engineers --Alan Ritger-- along with their technical marketing manager --Sean Kilbride-- about their development processes, IDE's, test-tools, etc. It proved to be quite an interesting read.

According to Ritger, NVIDIA engineers uses 'Perforce' for code management on big projects and/or big modifications, but are also able to maintain their own source tree with either git or quilt before submitting their changes to Perforce for quality assurance and to be included in the mainline code tree @ NVIDIA.

Phoronix also asked which IDE's and/or text editors they use, and Ritger said most engineers @ NVIDIA use either emacs or vim for their day-to-day development work. We're talking hardcore oldschool command-line development tools here.

Ritger also said most engineers use x86 as their base platform for driver development, but also focus alot on x86_64 for testing because most OEMs utilize 64bit nowadays.

Testing (which won't come as a shock to most linux-enthusiasts) is mostly done with in-house OpenGL test-tools, modified by engineers to reflect additional OpenGL extensions that are added and to accomodate for new GPU cores to be thoroughly tested. Games used in testing range from Quake 3, Doom 3 all the way up to ETQW. Testing frameworks include Viewperf, Unigine Tropics, Maya and yes, they even tend to use glxgears as a simple sanity test from time to time ;)

What DID shock me in the intervew however, was the question of how much codebase is shared between Linux and Windows, and the answer is, the OpenGL codebase shares A WHOPPING 90%! Yes, both Linux and Windows share a massive 90% of the NVIDIA OpenGL codebase. The X Windows driver is more UNIX-focused, but shares some code from the NVIDIA display drivers from other platforms and systems.

The main focus of the Linux NVIDIA driver development groups are for the Linux workstations used in the TV/movie-industry for advanced 3D work. But since their test-tools include a few popular computer games, the gaming aspect of it all is not completely forgotten :)

Even Ritger himself does a round of xpilot from time to time ;D

Link:
http://www.phoronix.com/ - 8-page interview

19 October, 2009

iDon't - iLOL!



Brilliant anti-iPhone campaign from Verizon :P

13 October, 2009

TPB blokkering

Pleier som regel ikke å blogge så mye om torrent-teknologi eller sider som serverer torrents. Men når det juridisk sett blir så dumt som det nå har blitt, blir jeg forbannet på håndhevere av norsk lov.

Det finnes absolutt ingen grunnlag i å pålegge en ISP (Internet Service Provider) som Telenor å blokkere tilgang på innhold, det er en direkte trussel mot nettfriheten!

En ISP kan (BØR) ikke holdes ansvarlig for innhold, når det er TILGANGEN de faktisk tjener på.

Plate-/filmindustrien bør virkelig ta seg en skikkelig revurdering på hva de faktisk prøver å gjennomføre. De prøver regelrett å STRUPE folks tilgang til nett-informasjon, og å fortelle deres EGNE FORBRUKERE hva, hvor og når de kan bruke deres kopibeskyttede materiale som de har gjort i alle år siden 80-tallet.

Tape-kassetten (som forøvrig er TPBs logo) ble ansett som "musikkindustriens fall" når den kom på 80-tallet, men seriøst, kan virkelig et opptaksmedium med dårligere kvalitet enn originaler virkelig utkonkurrere en såpass stor og mektig industri som den amerikanske underholdningsbransjen?

I-THINK-NOT!

Derfor legger jeg ut dette innlegget med min egen formening om saken, og i tillegg, hvordan en eventuell blokkering hos Telenor mot TPB kan omgås på en meget enkel måte.

Telenor kommer mest sannsynlig til (holder på) å blokkere TPB ved hjelp av DNS-systemet, og har en peiling på denne teknologien, vet en med sikkerhet at det ikke skal mye til for å omgå slike sperrer.

Danske 'The Jesper Bay' har laget en how-to for Mac/Windows på å forbigå slike sperrer meget enkelt.

De kan blokkere alt de vil, men det vil alltid finnes en omvei. Enkelt og greit...

Android OS & security

Ok, so I've been ranting on and on about Apple's and Microsoft's bad patching habits the last 6 months. There's a reason for my constant nagging, and that is: someone has to make everybody using these devices aware about the vulnerabilities and security-holes, and the procedures that are in pace to fix these issues.

The average user does not even recognize, much less read about and/or research about such things.

Then it is really up to the geeks and nerds (like myself) to try to convey a simplified explanation on these kinds of things. And the Android platform is no exception.

Google's Android OS has seen even MORE security-holes and vulnerabilities than both Apple and Microsoft since it's initial release, BUT, the Google-team developing and testing Android has direct communications with oCERT (the Open Source Computer Emergency Response Team) and so receives regular updates on critical vulnerabilities in Android, which are then rushed for patching.

Just recently, oCERT discovered two rather critical issues regarding custom-crafted SMS messages that results in a mobile-network disconnect, and another where malformed applications can generate a DoS-condition; actually rebooting the device Android is running on.

However critical these security-holes where, they have been patched since the first v1.5 service release.

Not only is the response team rapidly patching the platform, but it is even pushing out the updates only to devices that are affected by existing exploits, proof-of-concept attacks are even patched before they're exploited in RL.

Link:

12 October, 2009

I thought it was dead...

For the past year, I've been rummaging through my computer-equipment boxes, throwing out and putting aside components. Which was a good idea, I've saved MASSIVE amounts of space by binning a lot of my legacy boards, obsolete hardware/software and determining which of my computers are still worthy as computing-tools.


And last week, I just finished the whole ordeal.

Then.., my netbook failed to boot up. My ONLY surviving workstation, craps out on me...
SH*T!

Next up: forum-surfing in text-mode on my Slackware Linux server, because I haven't really bothered to configure X for my Samsung LCD-TV.

To my surprise, I found a possible solution and explanation why my Eee900PC just would not boot, in a mere couple of minutes.

Turns out, the Eee netbooks from Asus (the early 7-900 versions) have troubles utilizing JUST the power-cord when the battery is totally drained... WTF!? I've used quite the ensemble of different vendor-notebooks and laptops over the years, but I've NEVER run into this problem before.

"O-K" I thought, let's try to plug the power-cord in after I've removed and inserted the battery-case, and see what happens.

B-I-N-G-O! The netbook started flashing a red led-light (which means it's charging the battery), and it booted without any problems after charging the battery for a good half hour. But this was definately one of the most bizarre WTF-moments I've had in a long time. I had no idea super-compressed netbooks had to have battery-juice in order for the mainboard to draw power from it's PSU...

weird, for the sake of weird... huh?

Apple Inc.: "you're safe with us"


Herregud, seriøst? Det er nå avdekket en kritisk(!) feil i Mac OS X, som visstnok har vært der lenge. Apple har ikke kommet med hverken kommentarer, eller gitt noen klare svar på om det kommer noen fiks for problemet i nærmeste fremtid.

Slike feil hadde jeg ikke forventet av Microsoft engang, heller ikke at det skulle gå dagevis siden feilen ble avdekket til den ble lappet over...

Feilen ligger i det å logge seg inn på gjeste-kontoen i Mac OS X. Når en da logger seg inn på sin egen vanlige bruker i ettertid, skal mappen (/Users/"ditt-brukernavn") fortsatt være der, men er skåltom...

Det er liksom ikke helt uten grunn at jeg sier til folk at de må ta sikkerhetskopi av dataene deres tidt og ofte...

Så, Mac-folk, FFS:
TA BACKUP FOR DATAENES SKYLD!

Denne forhåndsregelen bør håndheves av ALLE databrukere, uavhengig av hvilket operativ system eller maskinvare som brukes!

Linux is evil

I just found this post at geeksaresexy.net, which spins on the love/hate of Linux.

A definate: LOL!

09 October, 2009

Man må jo le litt... XD

Fant dette innlegget i forumet på itavisen.no:
Bing sliter....
MS feiler stort på leveransen til London børs...
Zune floppet...
Mobilsatsing i krise...
Vista har vært en katastrofe...
Toppene i MS må kutte inntekt med 22% pga vanskelig år...
Flere og flere smartphones dropper Windows...
MS er sure fordi ooxml ikke er i referansekatalogen...
Microsoft er med andre ord ikke helt i balanse, hverken administrativt eller praktisk. Så det blir morsomt å se hvor software-giganten styrer skuta i årene fremover...

Punktene i forum-innlegget er fakta, alt kan søkes opp på itavisen.no eller digi.no. Jeg gidder bare ikke å sitte å finne frem alle artiklene atm.

Som de pleier å si: "Google it!"

Android -- niche-market or mainstay?

As a lot of news-agencies are catching up (veeeeeery slowly) on the mobile operating system market, Android seems to gain serious momentum with the big OEMs (LG, HTC, Samsung, Dell, etc). Which is a very good thing. The more in-house developers make applications for Android, the Android Market builds up a quite good variety of applications and suites for Android-based mobile phones.


Now, time will show if different vendor's apps will work on different vendor-hardware. Which was one of Google's main goals in developing the Android platform in the first place, in addition to provide their cloud-services on mobile devices that is... And it seems the apps developed with Android SDK are cross-compatible with different hardware that has been released thus far. Let's just hope and cross our fingers (fellow Android-users) that this trend will continue, to enrich and empower the Android platform as a standards-compliant major mobile operating system..., instead of it just phasing into oblivion as "one of those mobile platforms that just didn't evolve into something BIG".

From my talks and discussions with friends and fellow geeks/nerds, it seems Apple is catching the mobile market in Scandinavia, but not knowing how many techies sitting in dark, dimmed rooms.., tapping their Android-screens and maybe even developing the next major innovative application, it's not going to present any valid statistical numbers until Google has released their collected download-and usage-statistics of Android.

So for now, we'll just have to kick back, and enjoy our Android-powered smart-devices.., and wait...

07 October, 2009

LSE: Windows > Linux

Da ser det ut som London-børsen går over fra Windows til Linux.

I skrivende stund benytter LSE (London Stock Exchange) systemet TradElect levert av Accenture, basert på Microsofts .NET plattform. Nylig kjøpte LSE opp softwareselskapet MillenniumIT på Sri Lanka, som nå lover et bedre transaksjonsystem basert på Linux og Solaris. LSE sier at det egenutviklede systemet fra MillenniumIT er svært skalerbart, mye lettere, kvikkere og enklere å innstallere.

Og siden Oslo Børs er en av samarbeidspartnerene til LSE, skal vi ikke se bort ifra at de tar i bruk det nye MellenniumIT-systemet også. Men i første omgang vil de benytte TradElect mot slutten av 2010, nettopp det systemet LSE nå forkaster.

Link:
http://www.digi.no/ - norsk artikkel

Oppdatering torsdag 8 oktober:

Nå ser det ut som Oslo Børs vurderer å se an hvordan LSE gir tilbakemelding på MillenniumIT-systemet. Istedenfor å gå over til TradElect slik som de hadde planlagt, ser det ut som de heller går for Solaris/Linux-løsningen LSE nå går over på allikevel.

Link:
http://www.hardware.no/ - Oslo Børs vurderer Linux-løsning

06 October, 2009

NetBook Linux

I've been testing and trying to install a few untraditional Linux-flavours on my Eee 900 PC netbook. But much to my dismay, a lot of the distros targeted at netbooks are highly unstable on my Eee 900 for some reason (the unstable one's are usually ubuntu-derived, which dosen't really surprise me that much, I've had problems with all the ubuntu-flavours I've tried, even on standard desktop PCs).

But, that doesn't discourage me at all. I'm still trying to find an ubuntu-derivative that WILL work on my Eee 900.

So, next up I'll try CrunchBang, a minimalistic and stripped-down netbook-distro that reminds me of Slackware for some weird reason(?). It utilizes an OpenBox-based right-click, simple gestures UI.

But.., shouldn't CrunchBang work, I'll try my last resort, namely Slax. I know Slax works out-of-the-box on just about anything x86-based, the only thing I don't like about it, is the way it handles installing additional software. It takes a rather high-level approach (package-modules) compared to Slackware's original approach (gzipped tarballs), and I don't know if this is a good or a bad thing. I can say I haven't always had good experiences using this package-system, running into problems ranging from software that just won't run no matter how much I tweak configs after installing them, and even throwing the machine into a panic after installing slax-modules from the online respository.

Anyway, I'll come back to how it went, and if it went well, I'll post a walkthrough on how I did what I did to make it work.


Update friday oktober 16th:

CrunchBang didn't work, nor did any of the other various Ubuntu flavours and derivatives that I tried to install on my Eee900. I'm completely giving up Ubuntu and Debian flavours, they just give me headaches.

If the website of my next distro-attempt is up, I'll be trying "SlackEee".

Good'ol Slackware derivatives. What would I do without Slack?

Update monday november 2nd:

I made my choice. And yes, it fell on Ubuntu-derivatives :P I chose the Norwegian-developed distribution "Easy Peasy 1.5".

Here are my reasons:
  • it installed without supervision.
  • it has all the apps I need.
  • it is not power-hungry.
  • it is quick and intuitive.
  • it is based upon major-distro's (Debian/Ubuntu).
  • it has exponential security patching and regular update intervals (Ubuntu).
  • it has source-repositories for easy compilation and a plethora of non-standard repo's online which alltogether offer a massive software collection.

oldest distro gets a major overhaul

Slackware LinuxThere's been a few articles about Slackware Linux lately, much to my enjoyment ;D Today I found a review on distrowatch.com that describes the latest changes as quite overhauling.

Oh, and I made the title-logo displayed at the top of this post. I made it to reflect my vision of what Slackware should look like. It's a simple vector-image made in Inkscape, and the original can be found on my picasaweb archive here.


I've even submitted two variants of the image as SVG-wallpapers at kde-look.org, take a peek ;D

05 October, 2009

UPnP media

If you want a complete newbie how-to on making a spare linux box your mediaserver, this link may be helpful.


I, on the other hand, am utilizing Slackware Linux ("The Swiss army knife of Linux") to suit my serving needs. I won't touch Ubuntu with a ten-foot pole, mostly because they focus on bleeding edge technology, which doesn't necessarily mean "stable".

And, I use "FUPPES" (Free UPnP Entertainment Service) instead of mediatomb. In my opinion, FUPPES is better equipped to transcode untraditional coded video- and music-formats. And when I tried to use mediatomb, I had trouble recognizing the service on my PlayStation3, no matter how much I tweaked the config.

To put it quite simple, I compiled FUPPES with only traditional Slackware stock-packages and libraries (where mediatomb demanded I compile a plethora of non-standard Slack-packs), added the device-IPs to the whitelist of FUPPES and opened FUPPES-designated ports to my local LAN subnet.

Thus, limiting access to the service from anything other than my internal LAN hosts.

Things FUPPES does that mediatomb does not (or at least not on my Slackware-machines anyway):
  • Converts untraditional coded video to standard-formats
  • Plays DivX and XviD off-the-bat without hassles what-so-ever
  • Plays almost ALL audio-formats with standard libs
  • Displays every image-format I have on-disk

02 October, 2009

Linux servers

Well, it finally happened. My long-time friend "slamd", the experimental Linux server box, has died.


( The picture shows the pub-machine 'slackr' )

I got it from my brother about 4-5 years ago, when it had been obsolete for almost 2 years already. It was not a custom power-house, nor was it bleeding edge technology.., it was MINE. And it did what I had in mind for it, and it did it pretty damn well too I must add.

It was a scruffy AMD Athlon XP 2500+, running on a special legacy ATX-board made by 'ABit' --not the most stable hardware I've ever used--, with 2GB Corsair DDR RAM, a GeForce 6600 GT GFX card, some USB 2.0 extension cards and a Creative Audigy 2 ZX 7.1 digital surround soundcard.

I used the box as:
  • a house-central secondary NAT router
  • an UPnP multimedia server
  • a network fileserver
  • a central database server (for hosting web-content served by my public-machine)
Lately, the motherboard just wouldn't boot up properly. My suspicions fall on the rather dusty CPU-chip I had put in it, but for all I know, the motherboard has met it's end of days...

So, I had to disconnect my public-machine (a dusty, dirt-old Pentium III 800MHz box), throw out 'slamd', put in the public-machine as a temporary replacement and route all the public requests in to my private internal LAN where the pub-machine acts in it's own DMZ.

Then I had to re-compile my UPnP mediaserver software because 'slamd' had it's software repository stored on one of it's internal IDE harddrives, and I just couldn't be bothered about doing backup-jobs and the like... so, I went with 'K.I.S.S.' like I usually do ;P

01 October, 2009

MySQL, Oracle og EU

I et tidligere innlegg, skrev jeg om Oracle's oppkjøp av Sun Microsystems, og deres relasjonsdatabase MySQL, og hvorvidt applikasjonen konkurrerte mot Oracle's eget database-produkt...

Nå har EU-kommisjonen som var ansvarlig for den europeiske valideringen av Oracles oppkjøp av Sun Microsystems Inc frigitt resultatene av spørreundersøkelsene de sendte Suns kunder og samarbeidspartnere angående markedskonkurransen til MySQL.

Oracle uttalte seg også i forhold til deres databaseprodukt:
Standpunktet til Oracle er at MySQL ikke konkurrerer mot deres database, men mot SQL Server fra Microsoft, og at de vil satse på MySQL nettopp for å skjerpe konkurransen mot Microsoft.
Så MySQL ser ikke ut til å forsvinne allikevel. Men stiller seg sterkt innenfor Oracle som en direkte trussel mot Microsoft.

Why you should try Slackware

From Alien Pasture > Linux Journal interview with Eric Hameleers


Really interesting read if you're into Linux. The article takes up points about how and why Slackware Linux should be considered one of the de-facto Linux distro's out there ;)

Using descriptions like "since 1993 (...) the operating system has maintained a minimalist approach to computing" gives it more credability as the most Unix-like Linux-system available today.

Eric's notes also give more credit to Slackware as the definitive vanilla-distro.
"Slackware has an extremely lean design, intended to make you experience Linux the way the software authors intended. This is accomplished by applying patches as little as possible - preferably for stability or compatibility reasons only."
"The testimonials of ‘converted’ Slackware users at LinuxQuestions.org and other forums show that Slackware’s philosophy of giving full trust to the system admin is an eye-opener to people who struggled with the other distros before. This continuous influx of ‘converts’ is one of the reasons that Slackware has not disappeared into oblivion. Slackware assumes you are smart! This appeals to people."
And his best quote-worthy saying, which to me has become alpha-omega.

"To me, Slackware remains the Swiss army knife of Linux."