Computers and all related things

Windows 7 RC1 made available for download

2009-04-30T20:27:00.002+02:00

I did not try all my chosen applications in Windows 7 beta and RC1 is available now.

I have to say I like better to wait some days for this RC1 to test it.

Windows 7 - II.

2009-04-08T06:04:00.001+02:00

When Windows 7 are running on the virtual PC, I have to try some software to ensure it is worth to think about upgrading to Windows 7 and leave Windows Vista behind. To be honest, I have to mention that I didn't try Vistas because I don't have enough powerful PC.

I chose Google Chrome, CCleaner and AdAware for the first part of experiments.

Tags: Windows 7

Windows 7 - I.

2009-03-08T08:11:00.004+01:00

I read many commendations about Windows 7 after Microsoft released first beta version and made it public. I became very curious and decided to install it for myself. I don't have spare computer for similar tasks (yes, I have some older PCs, but these cannot be used with newer versions of MS Windows than Windows 95 beta :-))) - or Linux, of course ;-) ), so I decided to use Microsoft Virtual PC on my notebook.
I assigned 512 MB of RAM to test machine (my notebook has "only" 1 GB of RAM installed) and hoped it will work.
The installation was successful as you can see on the screenshot below.

And the biggest surprise for me - it runs with only 512 MB of RAM (impossible to do the same with Windows Vista).

Danger of malware

2008-12-01T21:23:00.005+01:00

It seems that current "viruses" - like below mentioned AutoRun malware - attack by abusing social habits of PC users. Most of them (us) are trustful and this is their (our) weak point in the battle with malware developers.
See this article Is there no end to the AutoRun madness?.

ZDNet News : Net bombarded by heaviest ever attacks this year

2008-11-12T23:24:00.002+01:00

The more we all are online, the more we will be subjects of cyber attacks.
And I have to agree with this opinion Users = security holes in Talkback. Or we can reverse it - Biggest security holes are the users. Including me.

Intelligent mobile phone

2008-04-20T12:48:00.001+02:00

As I wrote in my other blog (My shared thoughts), I am currently in the hospital. And here is no wireless internet connection. So I started to explore features of my intelligent mobile phone (Sony Ericsson P990i). I had no problem to connect to internet, so I can browse the web (I am writing this using my mobile phone). It is amazing.
I think that I could not use my mobile phone as pocket computer for serious work, but it is very good as reserve "computer".

Software I.

2007-09-29T00:28:00.000+02:00

The main scope of my work is support of IS of one financial company. Of course I don't do it only by myself, I am a member and leader of small team, which is looking after company's IS and its users. Also we are developing small IS add-ons for better comfort of its users. We need to coordinate our activities and track their progress - as every team, I think. So I began looking for software which would support these tasks. (Of course open source software - see my blog)
First selected software was TUTOS, it is The Ultimate Team Organization Software by the words of author. And he is not lying. We have implemented this system, but we realised after short period of time that it is very software development oriented and its customization for our needs would not be simple. Complexity of the system and incompletion of module Requirements (although it is one of the few commercial modules) put us off of using it. I started to search again. But now I restricted searching to the issue tracking system.
At that time I acquainted myself with programming language Python and tools developed using it, so I focused on that area. I found out 3 interesting applications - Issue Tracker Product, zTracker and Trac. All applications are built in Python, first 2 use Zope application server, the last one is standalone web application. There are also others (e.g. Roundup), but I can't search and try indefinitely, it is not the scope of my work.
BTW: what attracted me the most on issue tracking systems built in Python were their lucidity and simplicity in comparison with PHP systems. Very interesting.
In the end I selected the Trac, mostly for very good integration of Wiki subsystem, other features are very similar in all preselected applications. Currently we are implementing this application.

Operating systems - using Linux IV.

2007-08-17T10:25:00.000+02:00

I own an older notebook HP (Celeron 650MHz, 384MB, HDD 10GB) with preinstalled Windows 98, later I installed Windows XP on it. The computer was very fast with Windows 98, I cound work with it at time of the Windows XP configuration - office use and a little bit of development. But. Time went and new versions of ofice and development tools came and notebook was slower and slower. So what to do with such a device? I have purchased new notebook for my work, mainly application development, and planned to use the old one for testing. I tossed aside a thought about new versions of Microsoft's OSs or development tools immediately. So I grabbed Linux, also because I like open source software.
I began with Gentoo, but unsuccessfully, see my blog. Then I used Ubuntu Linux and installed it instantly. It is very usable system, also my wife can work with it without my assistence. So the usability of Ubuntu is the same as of MS Windows, because she previously worked only with Windows systems and she is mere user of personal computers and no PC professional. Probably she don't know how to install Linux, but it is the same as Windows installation. It is my job at home. And on the other hand I can't make beefsteak as good as she. (Note for feminists: maintenance of home PC is the part of housekeeping as cooking or laundering - from my point of view.)

Short thought about Linux vs. Windows battle

2007-06-13T22:01:00.000+02:00

Almost every day I read about the battle between Linux and Windows.
Linux aims to address desktop users, Windows tries hard to settle as the only one and true server platform. Linux depends on community, Windows uses Microsoft's commercial and financial power. The main reason for current Microsoft's successes is that all its effort is centralised and uses the newest psychological knowledge for their commerce.

Operating systems - Linux III.

2007-06-09T10:19:00.000+02:00

I have read an interesting blog article "Five crucial things the Linux community doesn’t understand about the average computer user" (Posted by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes on May 21st, 2007 @ 10:31 am).
I must agree with Adrian. And I want to add another reason - Linux community is community of enthusiasts, they are not mere users of computers. And average computer user wants to use computer as other equipment like car or coffee machine and no more.

Compliment of the Season

2006-12-24T23:55:00.000+01:00

Merry Christmas
&
Happy New Year

I am a thief

2006-12-22T16:52:00.000+01:00

I realized that I am a thief. :-(
Out Ministry of Culture have innovated its edict, that govern the additional charge for data storage media like CDs, DVDs, hard disks and similar. The reason is that everyone who buys it could store on them illegal copies of music or films and other works protected by Copyright Act. So they increased this charge so much that in some cases it is almost 10 % of the price.
I have to say that it is an example of very good lobbying of the organizations that take care of copyright fees.
But I am very sad, because I am a thief - when I buy a CD or DVD or even hard disk for data from my work.

Operating systems - Linux II.

2006-10-27T06:56:00.000+02:00

I have decided to install Linux on my spare notebook because Microsoft stopped support of Windows 98 that were preinstalled on it.
So I started to choose the most suitable Linux distro. There were 3 distros in my short list - Slackware, Gentoo and Ubuntu. Slackware because my favourite Linux LiveCD SLAX is based on it, Gentoo because it makes me to break into Linux deepest, and Ubuntu because it is the distribution very accordant with open source principles.
I tried Gentoo at first. The reason was very simple, I received an offer for server hosting and one option was to control the whole server using the application prepared for Gentoo. So I was wondering what this distribution looks like.
I made 3 attempts to install Gentoo on notebook - unsuccessfully. First time I stopped the installation after preparing partitions on hard disk and wasn't patient enough to read documentation how to continue. So I loaded Live minimal install CD again and started from scratch. To be able to copy and paste commands from documentation on web, I ran sshd on the notebook after booting Live CD and connected to it using ssh client. It went very well until the PC, I was connected from, crashed during the compilation of kernel.
Third time I determined not to be lazy and type all commands locally. It went slowly then "copy and paste" method, but I learnt a lot about installing Linux. Unfortunately installation wasn't again successful - OS loader couldn't find and load kernel. As I thought, I wasn't the only one with this kind of error (Kernel Panic), it was well described on the internet forums, but the solution didn't help me. Under pressure of time I gave up and grabbed another distro - Ubuntu.
I was successful with installing Ubuntu on the notebook (although the notebook is about 5 years old), but I have to tell that installing Gentoo was more fun and I learnt a lot about Linux.

Operating systems - Linux I.

2006-09-29T01:57:00.000+02:00

I met with Linux long time ago.
Personally (I have installed it on my computer) it was 6 years ago. It was SuSE Linux 6.2. It worked very well, but there was no use for it in my work or for my family - unfortunately. So I tried some things, but when I needed that computer for my relative, I had to reinstall MS Windows 98 on the computer so he could use it. From time to time I worked with various distributions (SuSE, RedHat, Ubuntu, Aurox, ...) and currently I favour so called live distributions, mainly one called SLAX (as you can see in my Links section).
The reason is very simple, big companies in the Czech Republic (and I work for one of them) use largely MS Windows operating systems and office applications. I think that it is mainly for the conservative approach of their management and also there was no reasonable alternative to it 3 or 4 years ago.
So the use of Linux was only my personal hobby and you know the consequences of hobbies - no free time for family etc. I had to steal my time for making the acquaintance of Linux. Some time ago I met a student who was very familiar with Linux and actually prepared his own Linux distribution - one of the first live Linux distros called SLAX (initially Slackware Live, because it is based on the well-known Slackware distribution). These live distributions are very good for familiarization with Linux and the specialty of SLAX is that it fits on small (3.14") CD-ROM so you can put it in your pocket and take it anywhere with yourself. Another reason, I like SLAX for, is that it has very good hardware support - it was the first Linux distribution that worked on my notebook.
And from that time I started to investigate applications that I could use on Linux. And also on Windows in the better case. So I began to explore the world of open source, but it is another story.

The Idea of Open Source

2006-09-06T17:53:00.001+02:00

I like the idea of open source.
I found out during my life that I need to communicate my ideas with somebody. It isn't the same as asking for advice. Sometimes only the fact you have to formulate your idea helps you to understand it and to see it from another point of view. And then you see it, you can solve the problem (if there was any), you know how to continue in your work. Without any comment, without any help.Sometimes it is easy.
Another good idea of open source is that you can contribute to projects if you wish and know how. And even you can evolve it.
So there are more ways how to "repay" the effort of other contributors. The donation is not the last one. :-)

Beginnings VI.

2006-08-30T17:45:00.000+02:00

After these jobs (that helped me to familiarize myself with the world of computers and other parts of information technology) I was proposed to take a part in project - developing human resource information system. It should be database application running on PCs! Details aren't important, the contract was very complicated (it was in the old communist's regime), but I have to admit that the amount of renumeration was very interesting for me (as a student). Unfortunately we didn't finish the project because I graduated shortly after the start of project and then I had to get in obligatory military service.
It lasted one year. And the Velvet Revolution began one month after my return to the civil life.
Everybody knew that the changes would be very dramatic so the project was frozen.

Security issues II.

2006-08-25T10:09:00.000+02:00

Every day we can read about computer related crimes or crimes committed using computers. Frauds are the most attractive because amount of non-cash transactions could be very high (try to write down on paper digits representing an amount of one hundred - it's "1" + "0" + "0" - and then change it to one thousand - you should only add a "0" - it is very easy contrary to adding cash ;-) ).
Many of these crimes are committed by stealing passwords - this is very old method already used by picklocks (or safebreakers or safecrackers). They knew that many users of very reliable safes couldn't remember password (or were lazy to remeber it :-) ) and wrote it down and the paper laid to the memorable place. Secretaries placed it under desk pad, in the current time they stick it under keyboard or similar place. It is the same as to write your PIN code on your credit card - very memorable place, but for all people who will deal with card.
Why am I writing about this old bad practice?
Because there are many methods and tools for securing any kind of property - for example safes :-) - that are sufficient in most cases, but people annihilate their safeness by theirs bad habits.
And it applies also for computers and computer supported technologies. People are the weakest link.

Security issues I.

2006-08-24T09:35:00.000+02:00

Security ! It's a very important thing that people are interested in all the time from the beginnings of their being. Their interests range from personal security over tangible property security to intangible property security (currently it is mostly intellectual property).
At the present time we use personal computers on a daily basis as a helper (or assistant or aid) in work and also at home. So there is much information stored in computers' internals and the most of it is very important for us. And some information is confidential. But hardly anybody is aware of this. We find the true value of our property at the moment we lost it - or somebody takes advantage of it. (It is similar to our interest in our tangible property.)
I know that it is well-known truth, but when I see what the computer users can do and can't do, I am not so sure about it.

Beginnings V.

2006-08-23T12:03:00.000+02:00

Concurrently with studies I tried to earn some money not to be dependent on my family support.
I started as a night watchman of a "big" computer which was located in one big room together with its peripheral devices. There was air condition in the room to keep stabilized environment of the room. I worked here for almost 2 years and I liked this job, because the team was very friendly and I didn't have too much duties.
Next job was in another computing centre and I was helping to start using a PC reasonably. As I remember, the manufacturer of PC was NCR, it has 2 floppy disc drives and external Winchester disc with capacity 10 MB (!). I don't remember size of internal memory nor type of processor. It ran on MS-DOS 2.11 and I could use Turbo Pascal v3. I remember that I developed one - hopefully useful - printing utility for them during my one year long part employment. Not much? ;-)

Beginnings IV.

2006-08-22T18:11:00.000+02:00

And the "revolution" in IT - called PC - was going on. Also in the Czech Republic.
We obtained the first PC for our Department (of Probability and Mathematical Statistics). That PC was assembled by agriculture cooperative - one of the funny things of those years at the end of communist era.
I had a little experience with Turbo Pascal, that was very popular at the time, so I could start to use this PC as one of the first users and I also prepared part of my dissertation project on this PC. But I had to write the written part of my dissertation on typewriter, because there were no text editor for this purpose with Czech support. The first and good one was Text602, which evolves to 602PC Suite (see Software602 Inc.).

Beginnings III.

2006-04-08T19:41:00.000+02:00

Learning without practicing and experimenting is not much fun. So I left Fortran and started with Basic because from time to time I could lend home computer Sinclair ZX Spectrum from my friend and try programming on it. It was better, but it was only for limited time.
I was studying on the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of Charles University in Prague at this time. There we had a big computer hidden somewhere in one of the buildings of faculty. We were typing the code of our programs on "programming cards" (1 card = 1 row of source code), gave them to the queue for processing and waited for the output (printed on many papers). I remember that one time I forgot to discard ONE card with wrong code and after 2 days I obtained output - listing of source code with one wrong code, so it couldn't be compiled. :-( I threw off the wrong card and waited another 2 days for output. The result was that we were more careful about the cope we were programming and typing.
We were programming in PL/I (= Programming Language One). I didn't use it from then.

Beginnings II.

2006-04-04T12:11:00.000+02:00

As we need to tell computers what they have to do, we need to communicate with them using language that they know - the programming language. In fact - computers know only one language - the machine code, but the smart people prepared tools for us, mere mortals, to be able to tell computers our wishes and commands in so called higher languages (e.g. Basic ;-) ).
I decided to start in the middle of these approaches and started to learn Fortran (partly looks like machine code, partly like Basic). That was in early eighties and I didn't have access to any computer, IBM compatible PC were just born and there were only first messages about home computers like Sinclair ZX Spectrum or Commodore 64. So I was learning programming in Fortran only theoretically. I don't know how successful I was, because I didn't compile any row of Fortran code. :-)

Beginnings

2006-03-27T17:33:00.000+02:00

I had the first contact with computers in my teenage years. My brother was working as operator of "big" computer and he let me play a game on this computer one or two times (the game was text based). I was sitting by one console and the computer peripherals were huming around. Very impressive.
All staff was wearing white gowns and was walking around the computer boxes respectfully. I remember that respect till today because I can't see it anywhere now (not only in the means of computers).

The very first post

2006-03-22T23:25:00.000+01:00

I started this blog because I work in computer industry for a long time (over 20 years) and want to share some of my thoughts and experience.