STFU && RTFM

In my last post, I covered why I am not going to get the iPad. Those reasons were my reasons, based on my needs and wants. I’m not expecting everyone to have the same needs and wants as me, so here are a few more reasons not to spring for it.
 

1. No free software
   • Now, keep in mind, this is “free” as in “freedom”; not as in “beer”. By disallowing users to install apps other than from the app store, even though users might not have to pay money for their apps, they don’t have any actual freedom as to choice of applications.
2. No installing apps from the Web
   • This goes to the above point; lack of freedom means users aren’t allowed their basic consumer right of decision as to how, and for what, they use their devices.
3. No sharing music or books
   • Again, lack of freedom. When I download a book to use on my ebook reader, provided the licence allows for it, I can share it with more or less as many people I want. Same thing goes for music.
4. Apple can remotely disable your apps & media
   • Now, this is the real whopper. Remember a while back, when Amazon recalled, and deleted, George Orwell’s book 1984 from users’ Kindles? Remote wipe is nasty, and should never, ever be used against consumers. We are basically looking at the worst parts of Orwell’s dystopic future, right now.

 
Now, I am pretty certain I will not go for the iPad, for the reasons detailed in this, as well as in my previous post. If you still want to, be my guest. My goal here isn’t to kill Apple, who I think are doing a lot of exciting things. My goal here is for as many people as possible to know the drawbacks of this specific device.
 
Note: These reasons are taken from Defective by Design’s campaign as well as the article about it at Ars Technica.

Yesterday, Apple announced the long-anticipated, much hyped iPad. Looking like an overgrown iPhone, it sports a 9.7″ screen, with a resolution of 1024×768, multi-touch and your choice of WLAN (all models) 3G (some models) and 16, 32 or 64 GB memory.
 
A commenter at NRK Beta said it was disappointing that it didn’t have some sort of eInk technology. Now, while eInk is GREAT for reading comfort and battery time, it has a deadly flaw for a device like the iPad; it has a screen refresh rate on par with, well a book (never mind the fact that eInk is so far only available as black and wh … err … gray).
 
To me, the iPad is NOT ideal for reading, for the exact same reasons why a device with eInk is; backlight and screen refresh. The backlight and screen refresh makes your eyes go tired much quicker, and, eInk having neither, it is actually like reading off darkish paper.
 
The book function being less than interesting to me, my interest, which, I admit, is piqued, is fading. As a websurfing device, well, it just doesn’t fo it for me. If I want an instant-on, touch screen device, I’ll use my phone. If I want to seriously surf the web, I want a computer, complete with a mouse and a keyboard.
 
Playing music? Sure, I could, but why not use an iPod or a Creative Zen; they’re smaller and have better power usage times. As for reading and editing documents, I’d rather have a computer to edit and either paper or eInk to read, so that’s out. Photo viewing and editing? Again, I want a computer.
 

The iPad
 
The form factor looks good, but I am still critical of both the weight and how long the battery will last. I notice that, like the iPod and iPhone, the iPad does not look like you can exchange the battery yourself, which I find a curious choice. Sure, for a tiny unit like the shuffle, I can understand it, but for an everyday usage unit like the iPhone? I don’t get it.
 
Using iPhone OS is an obvious, albeit exciting choice. Apple are basically saying that the iPhone OS is mature enough and powerful enough to be used on this kind of device. Also, by all accounts, it does exactly what an OS for a device like this should do; IT JUST WORKS.
 
While the tech geek in me goes “OOOH! SHINY!”, the sensible guy sitting somewhere deep down, right next door to the justification department, is going “Meh. Yet another device I have no use for.” And that, really, is what it all boils down to, isn’t it? The answer to the question “Do I have any real use for this?”
 
When all’s told, my interest is piqued, but I am not convinced, and I doubt that I will shell out the $499-$699 for one of these units. There are three main reasons for this:
 

1. Lock-In
   • To a certain degree, Apple=Lock-in. Now, if they’d announced an Android version in addition to the iPhone OS version, I might be more interested. Now, Apple is obviously never going to do that, which is fine, but it is, to me, an argument in the “Cons” column. I also keep in mind the problems with applications in the App Store, and I assume that Apple will, in practice, have total control over the iPad, and what’s on it.
2. Not enough connection options
   • Once more, I’m annoyed at Apple’s insistence on using their own proprietary solutions for connection and charging, as well as the fact that they have not included what I would have thought was an obvious feature for a device such as this; a memory card reader. The counter argument, I suppose, is what memory card format to choose, which I would counter by telling them to give us an SD(HC) reader, which is likely to cover the needs of most users.
3. Size
   • To me, the iPad would be too big and heavy to use as any kind of music device, while it’s too small for a lot of other tasks, such as photo viewing and (especially) editing, document editing and web browsing.

 
In the end, to me it comes down to this: If I have a small-ish laptop (say 13.3″) and my ebook, I am covered, and with better battery capacity than I would have with the iPad. Sure, I’d lug around more weight, but I don’t always have my laptop with me. I almost always have my ebook with me.

One of the things that really annoy me about Linux is the fact that every time I start my computer, I have to enter a separate password to unlock the Gnome-Keyring, so as to log on to my wireless network. While I appreciate the need for a keyring, I really think it should be unlocked automagically. Luckily; there’s a way.
 
What we need to do is to install a package called libpam-keyring, which can be found in the package manager. Once installed, a little bit of configuration is needed, by way of adding a couple of lines to the configuration file. Follow this next step carefully. If you put the line in the wrong place it may cause problems with other parts of machine authentication.
 
Edit the /etc/pam.d/gdm file and append the following line to the end of the file: @include common-pamkeyring
 
Once this is done, the gnome-keyring will be handed your login password, and unlock at logon, provided they are the same. If your login password and gnome-keyring password are different this will not work. To resolved this, you will need to ensure that they are the same, either by changing your login password, or by changing the gnome-keyring password, as detailed here

A few weeks ago, I needed to change the password for the Gnome-Keyring, as I wanted to lend my computer to a friend. This can be done using either the command line or through the GUI, the latter being the one I prefer for its simplicity. Here’s how:
 

1. Navigate to Places > Home
2. Press ctrl-h to viewhidden files
3. Navigate to .gnome2 > keyrings
4. Delete the default.keyring file

 
That should do the trick

A while back, I was tipped off about an application called Glary Utilities, billed as “The #1 free, powerful and all-in-one utility in the world market!” This piqued my interest, and I installed it, deciding to try it out, as it has received favorable reviews from several places, including CNet.
 
The installation is just as simple as it should be, the only annoyance is that it offers to install the Ask.com toolbar, as well as set ask.com as the default search provider. While I harbor no antipathies towards ask.com, I don’t particularly like toolbars that don’t add any new functionality.
 
According to GlarySoft, Glary Utilities offer a wide array of functionality, from system optimization to spyware removal. The main window looks like this:
 

 
It looks to me like they might be trying to do too many things in one utility, but all in all, it looks like a decent tool, and can be found here.

Spending as much time online as I do, Google is an integral part of my day to day routine. This is my top five list of Google apps:
 

• 5: Google Search
  • Google Search has been the market leader for search for years now, and that is not a situation that looks like it is going to end anytime soon. Being the driving force behind many of their other apps, it clearly deserves a spot on this list.
• 4: Google Documents
  • Using Google Documents means that most people can get away with not having any Office-suite installed, such as Microsoft Office, OpenOffice or others. It integrates excellently with Google Mail, and is, in my opinion, the best choice for Netbooks.
• 3: Google Calendar
  • Google Calendar is a perfect example of how a web-based calendar should work. It is simple, intuitive, and allows you to create as many different calendars as you could wish for, as well as subscribing to other calendars.
• 2: Google Chrome
  • The browser wars are definitely on, and one of the contenders is Google Chrome, running on WebKit. It is light-weight, and my second choice for browsers, beaten by Firefox, except for on my Netbook. It seems to run smoother than Firefox on low-end computers, and is yet another example of how a thing like tabbed browsing can be done. I also like the fact that there is no separate search field. Instead, search queries are prefixed “?” when you hit CTRL+K.
• 1: GMail
  • As far as e-mail goes, GMail is the neatest thing since bread came sliced. It is intuitive, simple and quick, and the use of labels rather than folders makes retrieving messages simple. With the power of Google Search behind it, finding an email, more or less any email, is quick and simple.

Microsoft recently released, then withdrew a piece of software called Windows 7 download tool. Originally released under GPLv2, it was withdrawn as some of the code included had licensing problems, and as such could not be released under GPLv2.
 
Having fixed this problem, they have now re-released it, as free (as in freedom and beer), open source software, under the terms of GPLv2. The fixed tool is now available at Microsoft’s CodePlex open-source repository.

After a long run of anti-trust suits, Microsoft has finally come to an agreement with the EU about how to solve the internet browser problem. The problem is that Microsoft delivers Windows bundled with Internet Explorer, which competing software developers claim is a breach of anti-trust laws.
 
The solution? When a fresh install of Microsoft Windows is made, the user gets a ballot screen, in which twelve candidates are displayed. The candidates are:

• Chrome (Google)
• Firefox (Mozilla)
• Internet Explorer (Microsoft)
• Opera (Opera Software)
• Safari (Apple)
• AOL (AOL)
• Maxthon (Maxthon)
• K-Meleon (K-Meleon)
• Flock (Flock)
• Avant Browser (Avant Force)
• Sleipnir (Fenrir)
• Slim Browser (FlashPeak)

 
The ballot screen will first display this page:

When you click “OK”, you will then be taken to this page:

From here, all you need to do is simply to choose the browser you want, and that is what you’ll get. If you want more, you can of course download and install them on your own.
 
My only issue here is the sheer number of browsers, and I’ve got to admit, while I had tried a few of these browsers, I had never even heard of half of them. Still, the fact that the five dominant browsers are listed first, is a good thing, the other seven will only be shown if you actually scroll right. If you’re interested, you’ll do just that. If not, you won’t – simple as that.

An old joke says that there are three kinds of lies; black lies, white lies and the internal polling data of political parties. The latter example is typically statistics, and while statistics can be presented in such a way as to prove almost anything, raw, unprocessed statistics are a great tool.
 
One of my habits when troubleshooting troubles is to have a look at the event viewer. While event viewer allows you to see specific events, it can sometimes be difficult to see trends. In Windows XP, we don’t really have a choice, we’ll have to look through the data, and parse it ourselves.
 
Enter Windows Vista, and Windows Reliability Monitor. As the screendump below shows, it will show you, as a graph, when things have started to deteriorate. You can look through the history, and see on what days there have been many errors. It also gives you a reliability index rating, from 10 to 1 (Ten being very good, 1 being exceedingly bad. Coupled with event viewer logs, Reliability Monitor makes it that much easier to read logs, and solve problems.
 

Click the image to see the full size version

In migrating many of our users to Lotus Notes 8, we have recently found that some of them have experienced problems with week numbering, as 2009 has 53 weeks. Week number 53 is shown as week 1. This error carries over to 2010, meaning that week 1 is shown as week 2, and so on. Users using Lotus Notes 6.* and 7.* are not experiencing the problem.
 
This is apparently caused by a setting in the operating system, but can be fixed in Lotus Notes. Here’s how:
 

1. In Lotus Notes, open File -> Preferences, then expand Calendar and To Do, and select Regional Settings like so:
   
2. Then move the radio button from “Use my operating system regional setting” to “Always use the ISO standard” like so:
   
3. Accept the warning that some settings do not take effect until you have restarted Lotus Notes.

That has solved it for me, and for the users that have experienced this problem.