thinking of the Amazon Kindle?

Don't be SWINDLED!!!

http://www.defectivebydesign.org/blog/1097

(malware) Dim Vista

Don't know why I didn't come across this till now... yes it's a little old but so much fun to read, and from a non-tech magazine like Forbes too!

http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2007/0226/050.html

Some good quotes:

• "Vista is at best mildly annoying and at worst makes you want to rush to Redmond, Wash. and rip somebody's liver out."
• If I can find plenty of problems in a matter of hours, why can't Microsoft? Most likely answer: It did--and it doesn't care.
• His reply: "Does any other operating system do that?" That tells you all you need to know about Microsoft. The real slogan: "No innovation here."

:-)

is LWN worth it?

I pay 54 USD a year for access to LWN.  I have never doubted that it is worth it -- Jon Corbet is the best.

But there are times when it feels as if $54 is a bit low, for what we are getting, and if I were living in the US I'd probably up my subscription :-)

Consider this masterpiece from http://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/261820/ba3e6e870fa9a1c5/ , where he is working on getting home videos from an old video camera onto the computer:

Another possibility was mencoder, a tool which is packaged with mplayer. Your editor does not doubt that mencoder is capable of acquiring a video stream from this device, converting it into any format one could imagine, and, while it's at it, changing the camera angle and improving the musical talents of the children being filmed. But anybody who has read the mplayer/mencoder man page knows that it is a masterpiece of its kind - a work written to a length that less verbose authors (Neal Stephenson, say) could only dream about - though Stephenson does do a better job of keeping the plot moving.

(security) protecting yourself against phishing

[feel free to pass this on to whoever you wish to. This is written at a "user" level]

SImple rules to avoid phishing and such scams, as much as possible:

(1) Do not ever click on any links sent via email. Ever. No respectable bank or money related site will do that anymore. If they do, stick to paper dealings with those banks -- don't do anything online with them!

(2) Typing in the URL yourself everytime is good, but beware of "typo-squatters", who register domains with similar spellings to the legitimate site in the hope that someone will mis-type the URL and come there.

(3) The best method is to type in the full URL once and bookmark it. From then on, use the book mark.

(4) Do not use IE. Even if you are forced to use Windows for whatever reason, at least install Firefox. Get the latest firefox and keep it updated. Firefox does this automatically anyway.

(5) Do not browse to any unknown sites while logged in to the bank site. In fact the best way to access your bank site is to do this:

- close all tabs
- click on "tools", then "clear private data" (or use the Ctrl-Shift-Del shortcut keys)
- in the prompt that comes up, select ALL the boxes except the first one ("Browsing History")
- open the bank site using your bookmark, complete your work, and log out of bank site when done
- (do not open other tabs with any other sites while logged into the bank site)
- once again "clear private data" as above
- surf other sites normally

This will protect you against any (unintentional) Javascript vulnerability in the bank site or malicious (intentional) Javascript in other sites.

Caveats:

All this will still not protect you from any viruses or trojans, or key loggers that may have been installed in your computer without your knowledge, if you're running Windows. A lot of programs that are supposedly "free" (but not open source) and "useful" are actually spyware, and in many cases the user himself has installed it without knowing there is something bad. Such software can track your keystrokes, and mouse movements. Coupled with tracking your web accesses, this kind of software can get your password regardless of what precautions you take. Some examples of spyware are here.

great day for me...

A few days ago a friend of mine managed to install, after a couple of false starts, Mandriva 2008 on his desktop all by himself.  Which means he is more techie than he claims to be, or Linux really is getting easier :-)

And today, he managed to get a PCI wireless card (WG311) working using ndiswrapper.  Without using the command line!  And my only contribution was to give him the names of the files that constitute the Windows drivers.

In other words, Mandriva has become that easy to use :-)  This is so totally awesome, because if a device needs ndiswrapper, it means the manufacturer has not released enough specs for the open source folks to write a driver for it, so you are forced to use the Windows drivers somehow.  This sort of stuff does not always work as expected, plus we were using the Mandriva Free DVD (the "priced" one would have done all this automatically anyway).

---------------------------

I am so glad it was not possible for me to go to his home and install it my way :-)  If I'd been able to do that, we'd never have known how easy the GUI really is, which is really, really, important for evangelism!

(funny) What If Gmail Had Been Designed by Microsoft?

Great stuff -- makes you realise what life will *really* be like if the
borg takes over the whole world :-)

http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-11-20-n35.html

more drool maal...

yep -- that's a whole PC with a 40GB hard disk.  Just add monitor, USB keyboard, and USB mouse.  No fan, so extremely quiet.  Runs on a 5V adaptor, consumes only 3-5W of power.

http://www.fit-pc.com/new/images/stories/fit_pc_images/fit-pc-with-cd.jpg

Ideal for a simple home PC for non-geeks or a good second PC for geeks...

(photography) 15 Spectacular Lightning Images

Brilliant, in more ways than one!

http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/15-spectacular-lightning-images/

(criminal,malware) Linux Today - Lessons from Africa: How to Kill Your Own FUD

As someone said on slashdot, you know you're really really corrupt when the government of Nigeria steps in to stop your scam :-)

"in a world where Windows is supposed to be so much better than Linux on every platform, how come Microsoft has to pay people to get them to use it instead of Linux?"

http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2007-11-09-030-26-OP-MD-MS

(funny) ASUS Eee PC: Exclusive Inside Look! :: TweakTown

Very funny. Beat me at my own game (see previous post about Kubuntu and Mandriva)

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/1213/2