I’ve recently started playing with twitter. A nice way to use it via the command-line (using curl) was suggested here. I have taken that and improved slightly on it.
Archive for Technology
The Case of the Odd NetworkManager Behavior
I recently purchased an Eee PC 1000HE. This is a very nice machine, and aside from one weird bug, Linux support is great. However, I’ve run into a very annoying problem with Fedora 10, and at the root of that problem is gnome-keyring-manager.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be flamed by a fanboy.
I feel the need to comment about this (and, subsequently, this and this).
First, a summary, for those who get a case of the tl;dr’s. A woman bought a laptop to use for her coursework at a local college. She accidentally bought a Dell laptop with Ubuntu on it. When she realized her ISP’s setup disk wouldn’t work, she tried to get Dell to swap the laptop for one with Windows. The Dell representative apparently convinced her to keep the one she had.
She claims that this problem, combined with a lack of Microsoft Office, forced her to withdraw from classes. The local news ran the linked article; it is worth noting that the bottom portion (the part where the news agency contacted the college and Verizon, and everything got cleaned up) did not appear in the initial article.
5 things I hate about Fedora 10
Every release of Fedora feels like a step in the wrong direction. I don’t say this lightly – I use Fedora at work and at home; it is my primary operating system. I have staunchly supported it in the face of critical Ubuntu fans for a while now.
First, a little background. I switched to Fedora from a mixture of gentoo and slackware around the time I started my current job, since it was far easier to keep track of one package management toolset, and several things about gentoo’s packaging system had started to irk me. The current release of Fedora at the time was 7. I have been using it since, usually upgrading to new releases (via a clean install) about a month after they release.
My needs are simple, but apparently elusive to Fedora. I use fluxbox as my window manager. I prefer to perform all of my system configuration from the command line. My graphical application use is minimal (firefox, games, pidgin).
Let’s explore the problems I’ve noticed have started creeping in, starting with the release of fedora 8. My solution/workaround for each problem is included, if I have one. For what it is worth, I realize that some of these could be the result of 3rd-party packages (such as Nvidia’s proprietary drivers). However, if any of these are the result of user error, then the solution should rightly be easy to find by searching documentation, which I have done extensively in every case.
An aside on Education
I first encountered Clay Burell on his blog Beyond School, where he had started a series of Unsucky English Lectures. These posts were brilliant, engaging, and poignant, and I followed them to their tragically early conclusion. (Clay, if you’re reading this, pick those back up, man!) It turns out that Beyond School was actually a blog about revolutionizing education. I just happened in while he was doing a special series. I kept following his blog, though.
At any rate, Mr. Burell now has a new blog at education.change.org. In particular, one recent post impressed me, and I wanted to increase its distribution, at least by the tiny amount that people actually view this blog :P
Why Schoolwork Doesn’t Have to Suck
There’s some important ideas here. The concept that our technology could (should, must) become the medium through which we engage in learning is as groundbreaking as it is obvious. Enjoy.
.com is the new .org
No, not an angry rant about proper gTLD usage. Instead, this is more of a Public Service Announcement: silenceisdefeat, my favorite provider of life-long free shell accounts, has had their domain name taken hostage. silenceisdefeat.org now redirects to an ebay auction for the domain name. As a result, they can now be found at:
I have updated my previous link to their site (in this article) to reflect the change as well.
Paranoid Security: Establishing a Connection the Hard Way
Recently, I was describing the personal setup I use to connect to my home machine over on watchingback (a group that has gone unfortunately silent). This setup combines port-knocking (with one-time sequences), disk encryption, and passphrase-protected rsa keys. Here’s a basic rundown of how it works from an end-user perspective (i.e., once everything is set up):
First, the user (me) inserts a USB flash drive with an encrypted partition. He mounts up the encrypted disk on a local machine (I’ll call this machine the ‘client’ throughout this article), providing the necessary password, and runs a script called ‘callhome’. He is prompted for his passphrase, and then gets a terminal session on his home machine (we’ll call this one the ‘server’).
Read on for details about this setup, and how to do it.
Nintendo and the Homebrew Arms Race
When I purchase a piece of hardware, it is mine to do with as I wish. This is a long-held understanding. If I buy a piece of clothing, I can have it altered. If I buy a car, I can change the tires. If I buy a television, I can kill myself trying to screw with its insides.
It might void the warranty, it might put my life at risk or potentially damage the thing I’ve purchased, but it is my right as a consumer.
Nintendo takes a different view on the issue. Owners of the Wii have long been able to employ a simple buffer overflow exploit in Twilight Princess to run custom code. This exploit, called the Twilight Hack, allows a user to install, among other things, an application called the Homebrew Channel, which looks like any other Wii channel and lets you run other custom code without using the Twilight Hack again. It’s the gaming console equivalent of installing a new stereo in your car.
Since the hack was made public, Nintendo has been trying to thwart it. They have, to date, released three firmware updates that included code targeted to stop the Twilight Hack. The most recent update succeeded at stopping it completely – it appears to detect the hacked save files and delete them, both on boot and whenever you insert an SD card.
So, all of this is standard fare. Whenever a console launches, homebrewers will make it run custom code. The console manufacturer will release an update to prevent this. The homebrewers will work around it. This process will continue in an escalating cycle.
However, Nintendo has delivered a low blow here. Along with the System Menu 3.4 update, they changed their terms of service.
We may without notifying you, download updates, patches, upgrades and similar software to your Wii Console and may disable unauthorized or illegal software placed on your Wii Console…
Now, that’s pretty cold – deleting our custom software? Come on Nintendo, all I want to do is play videos on my Wii! Also, the first time a fully automated background firmware update breaks something, the angry calls are going to pour like rain. Power outage in the middle of a night-time firmware update? Too bad! But it gets worse…
If we detect unauthorized software, services, or devices, your access to the Wii Network Service may be disabled and/or the Wii Console or games may be unplayable.
Okay, at this point I feel it is crucial to point out a couple of things. First, these quotes come from two documents, the Wii Network Service Privacy Policy and the Wii Network Service EULA. Both of these documents are required, not to use the Wii in general, but to use the Wiiconnect24 services (the Shop channel, Nintendo channel, and Nintendo’s other online content channels). So, to use their network, you agree that they may disable your system completely. This means two things:
1. You can perfectly legally run hacked code on a Wii that does not use Wiiconnect24.
2. You grant Nintendo the right to break the law (destruction of private property) if you choose to use the Wiiconnect24 service.
Now, according to a lawyer I know, a contract cannot override criminal law, even if signed in full knowledge as opposed to clicked-through (the enforceability of click-through EULAs is still up for debate in the US). So this clause is, by necessity, unenforceable.
So why is it there? Nintendo has a juggernaut legal team, famed for its ruthlessness. They can bankrupt any individual consumer with the legal proceedings necessary to challenge them, and it is unlikely that this will raise enough stink to get a class-action suit started.
I used to have some respect for Nintendo.
Linux on the Desktop – a partial solution
Lately, I’ve read a number of “Windows user tried Linux for a week and hated it, and this is why” articles. Then, while holding back the urge to scream during a Windows XP install, it hit me: we’re holding a double standard, here.
In the last year, whenever someone talks about “whether Linux is ready for the desktop”, the complaints that always crop up revolve around the fact that a user can’t throw in a Linux install CD, click next a few times, and have a fully functional desktop environment in half an hour. Several things plague these proverbial users: the lack of mp3 support is probably the most problematic now, as is the lack of 3d graphics support. The complaints further, er… complain, that the user has to know what she is doing to enable/install all of these components.
What most people overlook, though, is that installing Windows is no cakewalk, either. Windows ships with almost no real video or audio hardware support – everything must be downloaded from 3rd party websites, and more importantly, the user has to *know* what vendor website to go to, and how to navigate the vendor’s site (with some vendors, that can be a real pain!).
So now, let’s be fair. I’m taking a Windows XP install, out of the box, and comparing it side-by-side with an Ubuntu Linux install. Okay, here goes.
Ubuntu Linux
No mp3 support
As a user, I have to install several non-free packages, which means changing my available repositories and running a few commands (or using the graphical tool). If I prefer the less-questionably-legal route, I would purchase Fluendo (28E for their entire set of plugins, with perputual updates, as of this writing. Still about 1/4 the price of Windows’ most basic version), and follow their instructions to install it.
Of course, I also have to *know* about these options. A quick google search (“MP3s in Ubuntu”) and a forum gives me the answer, in step-by-step format.
No 3d graphics acceleration
This is even easier. All we need is to install the nvidia-glx or xorg-driver-fglrx packages, depending on the card. They’re also in the restricted repository, but we’ve already enabled it previously. If we hadn’t, the google search “3d graphics in Ubuntu” gives us the correct answer immediately.
No flash player
Another quick google search turns up the answer, as always with step-by-step instructions.
And, that’s it. Everything else I need to do to be productive is already provided by Ubuntu: web browser, office suite, multimedia software. Note: I never had to restart Ubuntu during this whole process.
Windows XP
No audio
First, I have to figure out the name of my audio chip, which Windows doesn’t tell me. All Windows will say is “Unknown Multimedia device”. By booting Linux and running lspci, I discover it’s a C-Media chip, and go to their website. I have to give them the exact chip model number, and they give me a driver to download. I have to restart Windows.
No 3d graphics acceleration
Again, the video controller is just called an “Unknown display adapter”. Foreknowledge tells me I have an Nvidia Geforce 6600 GT. I go to Nvidia’s website (much easier to use than C-Media was), and get the driver. I have to restart Windows.
No flash player
Well, this one installs automatically. Doesn’t even need a restart! 1/3 isn’t bad, I suppose.
The Conclusion
What’s the point of this exercise? Am I trying to say Windows is teh sux0r? No, that’s not my message today. I could extoll the myriad problems with Windows that make Linux a better option (spyware, viruses, openness and all the benefits thereof, etc), but that’s not the point.
The point is this: when it comes to installation, Linux and Windows are roughly equivalent in complexity. Linux has its installation issues; so does Windows. They tend to break roughly even, in my experience, although Linux has a much more readily available support structure in the form of community forums. But both OSes require a lot of user knowledge in order to get up and running. They assume you already know how to do things. What they really assume, underneath, is that
a technical person is doing the install.
The Solution
Most Windows users never install their OS; some technician installs it, either OEM at a factory, or at the local computer shop, or the in-law programmer who gets drafted for technical work (ahem…). Linux users have seldom known this luxury; instead, whenever someone talks about Linux, they assume that the end user is doing the install.
The solution is to treat Linux installation the way we treat Windows installation. Someone who Knows What They Are Doing ™ sets up the OS and delivers it to the end user. One practical advantage for the Linux community is that all the time spent on fancy installers could be channeled elsewhere (not to say we don’t like our hardware auto-detection, et al. But a curses-based menu is just fine, thanks). Make Linux installation work like OS installation always has before: technical users install their own OS, everyone else leaves it to the techs.
At least don’t hold us to a double standard.
Then They Fight You
Microsoft threatens to sue the entire FOSS community
Where have I seen this kind of threat before? Hmm… SCO, anyone? Is MS really desperate enough for that? SCO only sued IBM because they were losing money in copious amounts, flirting with bankruptcy. Vista seems to be the straw that’s breaking Microsoft’s back.
