Archive for February, 2008

They May Have Lost Their Name, But Wikileaks Goes On

Tuesday 19 February 2008 @ 11:02 am

The United States has joined China and Thailand in attempting to censor Wikileaks, however the site itself goes on.
A Californian judge ruled that Dynadot, the name registrar for Wikileaks.org, should remove all traces of Wikileaks from its servers and further should “prevent the domain name from resolving to the wikileaks.org website or any other website […]

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The MacBook Air could easily be the only machine

Tuesday 19 February 2008 @ 11:02 am

I’ve now been using the Air for some time as my only laptop. The Pro still hasn’t left the desktop and I doubt it ever will while I own it. My girlfriend replaced her regular MacBook with an Air as well. The verdict after extended use? L-o-v-i-n-g it. Both of us.

Gruber has a great post today on the appeal of the Air, which serves well to sum up the experience. The machine is plenty fast for everything I do with a computer. It’s plenty fast for emailing, browsing, photos, programming, and more. Probably the only people who wouldn’t find the performance of the Air good enough are the same people lusting after an 8-core Mac Pro.

That’s certainly a fair position. If you do computational intensive work, then you’ll want all the firepower you can get. Most people are not like that, though. I think we’ve reached the point where the computational firepower for laptops is simply Good Enough in the Innovator’s Dilemma sense of the term. Meaning that the puck is going to go somewhere else. That we’ll start caring about other things now.

For a laptop, those other things are exactly what the Air is optimizing: Thin, light, and sleek. But what I continue to be impressed with the most on the Air is simply the build quality. The MacBook Pro has OK build quality, but the regular MacBook frankly blows in this department in my mind. The plastic feels too cheap, it creaks and bends, and the black surface gets permanently smudged way too quickly. It just doesn’t feel tight in the same way the Air does.

The Air also works great with a 24” screen hooked up. I actually enjoyed working on one of those at the office the other day. No, it’s not as gorgeous as the 30” running at home, but it’s still pretty alright. So the only reason I still have the Pro is to run that 30” at home and even that is somewhat of a dubious argument if I hadn’t already invested in it.

That’s a long way around of saying I couldn’t agree more with Gruber. The Air is a perfect one-machine solution for a heck of a lot of people. Dismissing it as merely a 3rd computer vanity accessory, as I’ve seen many do, is misguided and not based on actually using one for a longer period of time.

If you fall into the category of feeling your machine is fast enough to do what you’re currently doing, I’d strongly encourage you to take a look at the Air and enjoy somebody optimizing for other factors than just performance.

BTW, I promise this will be the last love song I write for the Air. At least for a while

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Chinese Government May Be Concerned About Microsoft’s Takeover of Yahoo

Tuesday 19 February 2008 @ 11:02 am

An interesting report from Reuters/ eWeek suggests the Chinese Government may be concerned about Microsoft, a firm that uses “monopolistic tactics” buying Yahoo, which will mean Microsoft will become the biggest shareholder in Alibaba, one of China’s biggest internet firms.
According to the report Alibaba “will seek a stronger voice for its management team in Microsoft’s […]

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Microsoft To Announce WorldWide Telescope On February 27

Tuesday 19 February 2008 @ 10:02 am

A source close to Microsoft says the company will launch new desktop software called WorldWide Telescope on February 27 at the TED Conference in Monterey, California. Our guess is that this is what Robert Scoble was talking about last week when he said he saw a new Microsoft project that brought him to tears.
The […]

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Answer Our Career Poll to Win an iPod Touch! [Sponsored Poll]

Tuesday 19 February 2008 @ 10:02 am

Things are tough out there on the job market, but even if the pink slip-issuing grim reaper visits your desk this week, you can take comfort in a shiny new iPod. Thanks to our sponsor, CareerBuilder, one lucky respondent to today’s poll will win an 8GB iPod touch. Just pop in your response, vote, then send us your email address using the text box below the poll results for your chance to snag the free iPod touch.

Standard contest rules apply. Update: And we should have said that we won’t do anything icky with your email address—we just need it to notify you if you win the iPod. Cross our hearts.

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Retrieve Any File on Your Home Computer by Email [Remote Access]

Tuesday 19 February 2008 @ 10:02 am

The Murphy Mac weblog steps through how to retrieve any file on your Mac using a simple AppleScript in conjunction with Mail.app. When you’ve finished configuring the script, you can send an email to your home computer with a keyword subject and the full path to the file you forgot—say your homework or that big Keynote presentation—and the script will automatically email the file to you. Of course there are tons of other ways you could go about accessing your home files remotely, but Murphy Mac’s slick solution is a good option to add to the list.

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Why Linux Desktop Does Not Spread - the Curse of Being Free

Tuesday 19 February 2008 @ 10:02 am

This is a philosophical post on why Linux hasn’t grown to challenge Windows as the most popular operating system. From the blog post:

Linux isn’t very popular on the desktop. It’s a far third behind OS X, which is a very far second behind Windows. Most people cite pre-installed operating systems as the reason. But as a student of psychology, I see something most people don’t. There’s one big factor in why Linux isn’t popular on the desktop. Linux is free. I know this sounds like complete dog’s bollocks, but hear me out before judging my sanity.

My personal experience suggests that people don’t use GNU/Linux on desktop because :

Steep learning curve
Software incompatibility or doesn’t run the software they want
Installing and obtaining drivers may be issue for average joe
Finally, human psyche is complex subject. There are people who buy expensive apple hardware and install Linux on it. You just can’t predicate human behavior.

I use Linux on desktop because I work with a Linux / UNIX server all day and I find that using it on the desktop as well actually makes my life easier. You know one-size-fits-all approach may be unrealistic in a real life. I see my workplace desktops fully loaded with mix of Linux, OS X and dominated by Windows XP pro.

=>Why Linux Doesn’t Spread - the Curse of Being Free (via slashdot)

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Just posted! Canon PowerShot SD850 IS review

Tuesday 19 February 2008 @ 10:02 am

Just posted! Our concise review of the Canon PowerShot SD850 IS (the IXUS 950 IS in Europe / SE Asia). This model is an upgrade to the previous SD700 IS, headline feature changes include an eight megapixel sensor, a higher resolution LCD monitor, face detection and new Auto ISO shift. See how the SD850 IS shaped up and how it compared in our review.

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Linux Configure WPA2 for RT61 based Wireless Card

Tuesday 19 February 2008 @ 10:02 am

I’ve already written about configuring and using DLink wireless card with the help of RT61 driver. However, few readers like to know more about Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA and WPA2) secure wireless configurations.

Step # 1: Configure Router / AP with WPA2 Security Mode

First you need to configure WPA2 security mode on the access point. All devices on your network must use the same security mode in order to communicate. Open router configuration by visiting default IP https://192.168.1.1/ and setup

Security Mode: WPA2 Personal
WPA2 Algorithm: You may choose from AES or TKIP+AES. Choose TKIP+AES if you have both WPA and WPA2 devices on your network.
WPA2 Pre-Shared Key: Choose a unique key to authenticate with other devices on your network. The Pre-Shared Key must be between 8 and 63 characters in length. You can generate unique key by visiting this webpage. You can also use standard UNIX / Linux utilities to generates true random passwords (key) by using the /dev/random feature of Linux.
Group Key Renewal: This settings determines how often your group key changes.

(Fig. 01: Configure WPA2 for your router / access point)

Step # 2: Configure RT61 Wireless Card

Open /etc/network/interfaces file and make changes as follows:
$ sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces
Output:

auto ra0
iface ra0 inet dhcp
pre-up iwconfig ra0 mode managed
pre-up ifconfig ra0 up
pre-up iwconfig ra0 essid nixcraft
pre-up iwpriv ra0 set AuthMode=WPA2PSK
pre-up iwpriv ra0 set WPAPSK='|zdUkK(!X)_'G!}@1|@OS/6RA#'+}eq8b&V@x1%OZyyDVV:Xwp8UmwLFNS^7=A+'
pre-up iwpriv ra0 set EncrypType=AES

Save and close the file. Make sure you replace device name (ra0), essid and WPAPSK with actual configuration parameters. Restart the networking:
$ sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

Other simple security suggestion

Change the default admin password on the access point / router.
If possible turn off administration feature on the access point for wireless interface
Set up an access control list by Mac address of all devices you want to associate with the access point.

Please note that above instructions are only tested using RT61 driver under Ubuntu Linux. However, instructions should work with any other Linux distos and drivers with minor or minimum changes.

First Look: Kluster’s Market Approach to Crowdsourcing

Tuesday 19 February 2008 @ 10:02 am

Crowdsourcing may work for Wikipedia, but few commercial companies have figured out how to make it work for them. The basic concept is to get outsiders, preferably customers, to swarm together to design a product or complete some other project. Crowdsourcing is quickly becoming a crowded field—there’s Innocentive, Cambrian House, the soon-to-launch CrowdSpirit, […]

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