Month: October 2002

…and speaking of annoying ads, there’s one for some global conglomerate or another, that says among other things,

“…thanks to the computer programmers who keep us up and running…”

I’m sorry, to me this is an insult (the kind I’m subjected to at work every day). Programmers are not there to keep you up and running, they’re there to program – to create and modify applications. Tech support are the ones that are supposed to keep you up and running, if you can’t manage to do it yourself. This is like saying, “Thanks to the architects for fixing that squeaky floor in the hallway” or “Thanks to the chef for unclogging the toilet”.

Then there’s one for Edison that prominently features the John Lennon (and the Plastic Ono Band) song, “Power to the People”. (Wonder if it was Yoko that sold that one out to “the man”.) Does anyone get the irony here? Maybe Edison is telling us that it’s time for a revolution. There wasn’t a whole lot of substance to those lyrics but they sure as hell weren’t about buying more overpriced electric power from, well, back we are to the global conglomerate thing.

If you’re unfortunate enough to need to buy Windows XP, you’ve got several choices: you can pay $150 for the “upgrade” version (which means you have to dig out your previous OS every time you need to reinstall); or you can pay $300 for the “full” version.

Or you can go to Fry’s, and with any “computer hardware” purcase, get the “OEM” full version for $99. The salesman I talked to suggested the fine collection of hard drive screws for 49 cents, but I opted for the nifty casemod LED colored fan for $10. “It’s the same as the boxed version,” the salesman told me, “except you don’t get the box, or tech support.”

I looked puzzled. “Microsoft has tech support?”

Now that I’ve got XP installed, I know enough to regret it. Not only does it manage to hide settings under even more pretty layers than Windows 2000 (every tried to explain over the phone, “Go to start/settings/control panels, no wait, start/ settings/ network/ local area net/ (right click) properties/ Internet/ properties”? On the Mac it’s “System Preferences/ Network Preferences”) BUT it also is nagware – it keeps nagging me about more M$ junk. Do you want to register for a Microsoft Passport? Looks like you go on the internet, do you want to create a messaging service login? Have you verified your copy of XP yet? Would you like to give the richest man in the world, your credit card number????

“It’s not hard to remember to take the pill every day, it’s just easy to forget.” – from a contraceptive commercial. I guess this is aimed at people who think condoms are effective if they’re used “most of the time”.

If you’re a “digerati” you’ve no doubt heard of this new sport, which involves driving along looking for “open” 802.11/Airport wireless internet connections.

If not, here’s the story:
Back in ancient history (1983) when the movie Wargames came out geeks had just invented programs that dialed phone numbers in sequence looking for a modem answer (“Doesn’t that cost a fortune?” “Well, there’s ways around that, too.”). Then they’d try to “break in” to computer networks, as shown in the movie, by trying to guess passwords. After the movie, sequential-dialer programs came to be known as “wardialers” – this was real 37334 haxxor warez (“Elite Hacker Software”).

Fast-foward about 20 years. For a couple hundred bucks you can set up your own home or business wireless internet connection, so you can sit anywhere in the building and not have to plug your laptop in to a wire, to get an internet connection. And some places are even setting up public networks, for example, at Starbucks.

Now, when you plug these things in right out of the box, they don’t have security set up (probably saves on dumb tech support calls). So anyone with a laptop can walk up and start sharing your internet connection. Fine for Starbucks, that’s what it’s for. But for homes and businesses this basically amounts to “sharing” your internet connection. Which is probably fine; another user isn’t going to put that big a hit on your T1, you probably wouldn’t even notice.

Now, an external user (like me) most often wouldn’t use the connection to “break in” to the owner’s computers – instead they’d just surf the web for free from their car sitting in the parking lot of some industrial park. All of your computers that are connected broadband to the ‘net have good firewalls, don’t they? Whaddya mean what’s a firewall? In any case, looking for radiowaves is (marginally) legal; and using someone’s network if they don’t secure it is (relatively) harmless.(On the other hand, driving in the car while using the PC is illegal, so when you hear the signal detector find a network, pull over…)

So. I took off from work last night, and drove home (freeway to Escondido), then to my sister’s house (Vista) – about 20 miles total. Decided for fun to leave MacStumbler running. On the way it found something like 20 wireless networks. I didn’t stop to ping each and every one of them. But this morning I did pull over,

If you have a Wintel PC, you can try Netstumbler.

Now, excuse me, I’ve got to go find some chalk.

Yes, as a matter of fact, one of the things I read while surfing the web is the sort of garbage I write, about how programs should be designed and such.

This one from Usable Help made me chuckle:

“By the way, Apple’s Style Guide is also freely available. Download Apple Style Guide PDF. Finally, Microsoft’s style guide is available for purchase, if you can find it in stock.”

My letter to Apple Developer Connection:

I love being a Select Developer member, but I just can’t afford the $500 to renew it right now. But I thought I’d offer some feedback on the program.

This membership has never really fit me anyway. I aspire to become a MacOS developer and it’s GREAT that you continue to include the developer tools with the OS. Maybe someday I’ll get time to use them. For now I’m a Perl/PHP/mySQL developer.

But my relationship with Apple is really that of Super User/ Enthusiast/ Evangelist. Maybe I’m a “Switch Facilitator” or maybe a “Freelance Genius”. One of my missions in life is to convert people from those other inferior operating systems to MacOS. Here’s how you could help me: offer some sort of membership that would include:

-A subscription for all operating System updates.
-Trial copies of ALL (Apple) MacOS software. (I’d love to try/reccommend ARA but I can’t afford it!).
-(small) hardware discounts – including some that I can pass on to others.
-special t-shirts and tchotchkes (free and/or for purchase), including some I can pass on to others.
-Special newsletters or something.
-Apple store parties and sneak previews?
(no software seeds)
(no developer disks)

This should be priced at about double the system upgrade price, say around $250/year.

I’ve always said that customers love Macs so much that Apple should sell them through multi-level marketing – maybe this would be a step in the right direction (plus it’s not bad when your salesman pay you to sell your products!).

So now there’s yet another new virus out there, “Bugbear”.

Simple steps to protect yourself against viruses:

-Don’t use Microsoft Outlook. “I know, let’s build scripting into the email client, and let scripts run automatically when emails come in!” Idiots. Outlook is the only program I could imagine letting a malicious virus grab all email addresses and mail random user files to random destination addresses appearing to come from you. Not that Sendmail (Unix) would NOT be able to do this, but you’d be more likely to know if you were about to run it.

-Don’t use Microsoft products at all. Unix or MacOS are far less likely to get viruses, partly because they’re less common but also because they’re inherently more secure and better-written. I have NEVER been “infected” by a Mac virus, and I use email on the Mac a LOT more than on Windows where I’ve had “close calls” with several (and had to deal with many more).

-No matter what OS/email client you have, run (and purchase if necessary) the latest updates. The security hole that allows this one was plugged over a year ago, if you’ve been running Microsoft updates regularly. (Of course, the way M$ does it, there’s the possibility of a really nasty virus masquerading as an update…)

-Separate your data from your applications. Data in one folder, applications in another wherever possible (Quiz: where is your email stored? Go ahead, try to find the email files. Are they in your documents directory?). BACK UP YOUR DOCUMENTS FOLDER. The best way to do this for now is to copy it to CD-ROM every now and then; once a week would be best. CDs are really inexpensive. Recreating lost data is really expensive.

I think that part of the motivation for virus writers must be a need to demonstrate other people’s stupidity – be that of people who write insecure junk like Microsoft, or the people who run it (without proper attention/precautions).

Sure, I’m a Mac bigot. The other day a co-worker bought a new computer to replace his old one that had “died”.

“Did you get a Mac?”
“No, this was a lot cheaper.”
“What, you want to _keep_ having problems?!?!?”

In case you’re checking for updates, I’ve figured out how to put archived entries down below on the left. I’m writing the software that runs this blog in PHP, which I sure like better than ASP (the Microsoft semi-equivalent) for various reasons; but lately I haven’t bothered to keep it up to date. I’m also working on a photograph display/comment program which I’ll announce here when it’s ready.

Thanks for reading!

If I were ever on “Who Wants to Be a Millionare” (or someone’s phone-a-friend) I’d do really well if I could use Google. Also a good way to practice your Google skills.

Today for lunch I went to the ATM and the gas station. The ATM always asks me “Do you want a printed receipt?” (even when it’s out of receipts and later asks, “I’m out of receipts, do you want to continue?”) And I always say yes (I’m a receipt collector – the whole Quicken thing). Then at the gas station I pay with a credit card, and it wants to know if I want a receipt. And makes me choose a grade of gas even though I always pick the same grade (as far as I know, anything higher than standard unleaded is a waste and causes more pollution).

Why can’t these machines have options of “ALWAYS” and “NEVER” in addition to “YES” and “NO”? I would think most people (like me) who want a receipt ALWAYS want a receipt, and those who don’t (like the slobs who answer YES then fling them on the ground near the ATM), NEVER do. Certainly this would be easy for the bank to add (as well as a selection of PREFS from the main menu to change it back).

Of course this would be more difficult at the gas station – especially if the preferences couldn’t be stored on a “smart” credit card itself. And what if you had two cars that took different grades of gas (probably pretty rare)?

And while I’m thinking about it, back when we had “regular” (leaded) and “unleaded”, whose idea was it to call standard unleaded “regular”? Was it that hard to come up with a different word, or just call it “unleaded”? In any case, “Viva Nova Sin!”.