Unix and Linux Systems

Kerio Configuration by Anthony Lawrence

2008-05-09T13:20:00.000-07:00

2008/05/09

Kerio offers a 30 day full featured demo you can download from
http://www.kerio.com/kms_download.html. You can install that on Windows, Linux or Mac OS X.

Once you have done the initial setup (domain name and Admin password),
you'll do the rest of the configuration using the GUI administration console.
You can install that on any machine - Windows, Linux or Mac OS X again. It's
a free download, so install it where ever you like. For example,
you might want to be able to administer this server from home. As long
as your router lets port 44337 through to your Kerio Mailserver, you
could do that.

I'm not going to go through the entire configuration here (though
I'm happy to do that by phone or even on-site if you are near me), but
there are a few areas I want to make sure you are aware of.

IP Address Groups

You want to go here first. As you can see, Kerio has defaulted to
using the common private IP address groups for your local lan. You'll
need to edit these to reflect your lan setup and remove any subnets
that don't apply. If you have VPN's, you probably want to add
those subnets here too.

Services

In Services, you define the services and port numbers for Kerio. Shut
off services you aren't using and set their Startup Type to Manual.
Here you can also limit services to the local lan if appropriate and
set the maximum number of concurrent connections allowed. Choosing
a suitable number can keep your server from being loaded down in
the event of DOS (Denial of Service) attacks. For example, if you
only have forty people in your entire organization, there's no reason
to allow 1,000 concurrent HTTPS connections to the server.

In the picture below, I changed the default port for HTTP to 8080
because this server runs a webserver on port 80. Kerio uses HTTP for
a limited Web based administration tool (users who have access to that
can add and maintain users and change passwords but can't access other
Admin functions).

Deleted Items in Domains

You probably want to enable this option. It makes your life easier
when users accidentally delete things they should not have. If this is active, you can just visit the Domain Settings -> Users section and click
one button to recover Deleted Items.

SMTP Limits

There are several limit settings in the SMTP Server section that can
help prevent DOS attacks and cut back on spam.

Content Filter

The spam and anti-virus sections are easy enough, but you'll need to
spend some time in the Attachment Filter section. You need to decide
exactly what your policies will be for attachments; which to allow, which
to block.

Archiving and Backup

Be sure you understand that Archiving is done before the mail is delivered
to the user or sent out, so all messages will be captured (you have options
for only capturing inbound, etc.). Backup is a snapshot in time and also
includes the very important configuration files.

Advanced Options

Do peek in here. There are more security options that you probably want
to set. For example, there's no reason to tell connecting clients your
software version, and there is no reason to let anyone know your lan
ip scheme. Check those to hide those things.

Logs

It's very important to set your log rotation and retention policies.
If you don't. your logs will just grow and grow, By right-clicking in
the log area, you can get a menu that includes "Log Settings". Choose
this to set how many logs to keep and how often you will rotate them.

Other things

Of course there is much more to look at and possibly configure. Much
of it will be very obvious if you have worked with other mailservers. Kerio
does have extensive manuals on-line at http://www.kerio.com/supp_kms_manual.html and of course you can
also call me.

My SCO Knowledge (and interest) is fading fast by Anthony Lawrence

2008-05-08T15:00:00.000-07:00

2008/05/08

The other day someone called me about removing hard drives previously
added to the kernel configuration.. my mind went blank.

I said that I knew it was "mkdev dot-something" and told him to
look in /usr/lib/mkdev with "lc -a". I was too busy to look
there myself (and didn't have easy access to a SCO box right then anyway)
but told him to look through the "." files in /usr/lib/mkdev to see if something looked
right. I also told him that it could be done manually and quickly referred
him to http://wdb1.sco.com/kb/showta?taid=105052 and hastily said "You need to take the stuff out
of mscsi, remove the device files.."

And I didn't mention space.c and for some reason he didn't read that
article (maybe he wasn't able to get email where he was) so he got
all screwed up.. had to restore parts of /etc/conf from backup.

Here's the thing, folks: my knowledge of SCOish details is fading. My
*interest* in things SCOish is going away even faster. Yes, I can
still help you with most things, but that list of things is slowly
getting smaller because I'm simply forgetting it - it's not
getting used often enough, so it's going away.

It is time to get off SCO. Way past time. Think about it.

Using Skitch for support by Anthony Lawrence

2008-05-07T10:31:00.000-07:00

2008/05/07

Last week I had someone ask a few questions about Kerio Webmail. Nothing serious, just a new
user a little confused about how to do certain things.
I did get them straightened out, but it took two emails and one
brief phone conversation. I wish I'd known about Skitch then.

By the way, I found out about Skitch from The Big Book of Apple Hacks. There's a lot
of other good stuff in there.

Skitch runs on Mac and lets you capture screen shots, annotate them,
and then drag them where you want them (or store them on the
Skitch.com website). It's a free, time limited beta right now, but
unless the final price is outrageous, I'll definitely be buying this
because it really makes support easier.

Here's the problem: someone asks me how to do something. If it's
a command line task, that's easy. I can either tell them what to type or
if it's really complicated I can send it in email. But when it's
graphical, it's much harder. "Click up by the, umm, well, right next to
where the first column is.. but kind of to the right?"

Yeah, that's helpful. But if I had known about Skitch, I could have created this:

The user wanted to use the "flag this message" function, but was
clicking on the flag at the top of the column rather than where he actually
needed to. Using Sketch would have let me show him exactly where to click.

He also couldn't see how to delete people from a distribution list
he had created. It's pretty simple; a Skitch shot would have
told the story quickly:

The beautiful part about that is how easy Skitch makes it. Click the
little camera in Skitch, surround the area you want, click it, and there it
is in Skitch. Annotate it, shrink it, grow it, and then then just drag it
to where you want it - it's that easy.

Skitch can also import image files, which is how I made this:

I did a normal Shift-Apple-4 to capture Skitch itself, then had
Skitch open it. I marked it up, sized it, and dragged it to my desktop -
all done!

Skitch can also capture images from your iSight camera:

OK, maybe that is a little too much annotating. But you get the idea:
Skitch is a great tool for your Mac.

Why won't companies track Windows downtime? by Anonymous

2008-05-07T05:10:00.000-07:00

2008/05/07

Anonymous

The author of this post requested to remain anonymous because
he still does work for companies mentioned here.

I have worked with Ericsson for 4 years followed by Cisco Systems for 6 years. Both companies were very advanced users of hi-tech. Both insisted on extremely accurate time reporting for every imaginable task, both refused to open tracking items for PC wows. The sort of thing like you arriving the office and need to reboot your PC 3 times before it get onto corporate network ( e.g. 30 min lost). Or PC (almost) hangs or becomes very slow as it has run out of memory and you have important docs open so you you spend the next 40 min slowly closing every open application to ensure a safe shutdown. In Cisco all PCs were spec'd for email and internet use. However over 50% of staff were engineers in the field and we all got the same crummy 512M of RAM. Smart engineers went and bought their own.

No effort was ever made to track time for now applications to calculate the actual cost of introduction in terms of lost productivity. It allowed IT departments to hide behind sloppy products they supply to their clients. Sure, outsource your whole IT to Bangalore (Cisco) But at least allow everyone to track how much time they waste attempting to explain so some half English speaking indian what your problem is.

I think if more companies like IBM did trials with MACs and accurately recorded the user non-productive time due to not having full PC availability then you would see big wigs suddenly wake up. Microsoft has been so successful because they have hidden behind the vested interest of IT departments refusing to expose just how much time their clients are losing because of MS Windows. Its called saving your own asses.

I would estimate that while working with Win XP I would spend minimum of 10% of my productive time solving WinXP issues. On a MAC maybe 1-2%. At least when a MAC crashes it just goes down quick and hard! but Apple have basically stuck to the Unix principle of keep it small and simple and let the combinations of different flexible programs tackle your problem.

All this is a huge hidden cost for companies who would be aiming at 500k-1000k $USD per employee in terms of revenue. They should wake up and smell the coffee..

p.s. I'm suffering on MAC without a good ssh client.The only reason I run Parallel is so I can continue to use SecureCRT. I have hundreds of machines to maintain and there seems to be nothing for MAC that allows good complete telnet/ssh/Sessionstorage/logging/password storage/Key strorage and generation. Any suggestions?

Essential Linux Device Drivers by Anthony Lawrence

2008-05-06T08:33:00.000-07:00

2008/05/06

"_self">Index by Subject

Sreekrishnan Venkateswaran

Prentice Hall

9780132396554

Regular readers here know that I have been very disappointed with
most Linux kernel and device driver books. I did like The Linux Kernel Primer, but until
this "Essential Linux Device Drivers" book landed on my desk, that
was about it.

I admit that it's very hard to write a good book in this area. You
simply have to make assumptions about the readers knowledge - if you don't,
you'll be writing an encyclopedia or two. However, I still think
that my complaints have been justified, and this author proves that
you CAN write a readable, information packed book about Linux device
drivers without glossing over vast areas.

Well, that's not entirely true: vast areas are still passed by
at break-neck speed, but there's a difference here: every chapter
tries to give a high level overview of the area to be discussed,
which is then followed by very well explained examples of code, and
finally finishes up with pointers to the parts of Linux source code
that are relevant. That's a formula that works, and the author also
often includes pointers to other relevant resources too. With a little
Googling, you should be able to really get a lot out of this book.

As you'd expect, this starts out with an overview of the kernel itself, and
it's probably the best I've ever seen. Individual Linux boot messages are
pulled out, explained, and the the source code that produced them is examined.
It then goes on to discuss kernel locks, briefly looks at procfs and memory allocation, and closes (as each chapter does) with pointers to where to look in the source for the subjects discussed. The next few chapters cover more
basic concepts like kernel locks and threads, and then the rest of the
book is all device drivers.. starting simply and progressing to
more complicated hardware, but always following the format of first giving an overview of the how and why, then presenting sample driver(s), a bit on how to most easily debug, and finally pointers to real kernel sources.

Very well done, and I recommend it. It is a bit expensive, but I think
it's worth it.

"126" height="32" alt="graphic of book cover" /> Order (or just read more about) "http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0132396556/aplawrencescouni" target="_top">Essential Linux Device Drivers from Amazon.com

Big Book of Apple Hacks by Anthony Lawrence

2008-05-04T08:10:00.000-07:00

2008/05/04

"_self">Index by Subject

Chris Seibold

O'Reilly

9780596529826

This is the Mac book I've been waiting for! It's actually
more than a "Mac" book; as the title implies, it also has
content for iPods, iPhones and Apple TV - I don't happen
to own any of those other things right now, but that's OK: this is a great
book even if all you have is a Mac!

Wow - two exclamation marks in the first paragraph.. I don't
do that very often.

But this compilation deserves it. This isn't the often silly
or cosmetic hacks you'll find all over the web; some of that is
here but there's a lot of real geekery included. The very first
hack in the book covers booting your Mac from a USB thumb drive, the
last covers (with pictures) disassembling and cleaning a Mighty Mouse.
In between there's stuff about swapping out your drives to get more
space or to boot an entirely different OS, using your Mac with X10
controllers and the like, building a small battery backup for your cable
modem.. oh, it just goes on and on.

There are some mistakes here.. well, not necessarily mistakes, but
old hacks. For example, this talks about enabling Safari's Debug menu.
That option is gone now; the Developer Menu replaces it and that can be
turned on or off in standard Preferences, no "hack" needed. But
there is so much of value here we can easily forgive a small oversight
like that!

I'd have to say that so far, this is my choice for "Best Book of the Year"
in the geekish genre.
You want this book if you own a Mac. Really. Click the link below
now while you are thinking about it. You won't be sorry.

"126" height="32" alt="graphic of book cover" /> Order (or just read more about) "http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596529821/aplawrencescouni" target="_top">Big Book of Apple Hacks from Amazon.com

Did you really lose half a million dollars? by Anthony Lawrence

2008-05-04T04:51:00.000-07:00

2008/05/04

I was talking to someone about my early business failures and
mentioned that my mistakes cost me a little more than $100,000 and
that it had taken me quite a few years to dig myself back out from that.
My companioned exclaimed "That's nothing, dude: I lost more than
half a million!"

I expressed surprise and shock. "Wow - how did you manage to
get out from under?", I asked.

"What do you mean?"

What do I mean? I mean how did you get back to solvency after
such a horrible loss? I've known other peple who have suffered
like that and some of them never did recover - my hundred thou
was pretty tough, but five times that or more is unthinkable, at
least for me - it would take me fifty years to climb out of a hole like
that!. I wondered how he had built himself back up.

"Well, I mean that if XXX hadn't screwed me on the deal, I would
have been able to sell my share of the business for half a mill. Thanks
to his lawyers, I got thirty thou."

Ahh.. slight difference there. You see, I actually LOST money.
I went into debt. I OWED money. I had to pay it back, drop by
painful drop. My companion simply got less than he thought he
deserved. That's not the same thing at all.

I was reminded of that when someone else complained about losing
money on an investment. The stocks had been riding high, but took a recent
tumble. He'd "lost" money.. or so he said. But in fact the stock was
still worth far more than he had paid for it, so really he hadn't lost
anything - in fact he'd done pretty darn well. Again, that's not
a loss.

I certainly understand that it's disappointing to get less than you
expected. I've experienced that myself, but I don't think of those
as losses. Real losses hurt, they don't just disappoint. And they can
keep on hurting for years.

I did crawl my way back. Those days are far behind me now. But
I sure do remember what it felt like, and never want to be there again.

Linux Lunacy by Anthony Lawrence

2008-05-02T15:50:00.000-07:00

2008/05/02

After closing off comments at Linux in the long run (I closed them off because nobody
was saying anything new), I did receive one final email..

I'm not going to publish this person's name or email to save them
embarrassment (and perhaps harassment). I do want to show it
to you because it shows how ignorant some folks are about Linux.

Here's how it starts:


The  essence of the pudding is in the eating.
Why did Suse, Red Hat and many other version gone out of the market?
Fedora is stagnant...

I didn't know that any of these folks had given up and gotten
out of the market. It's probably news to other readers, too. I wish they'd
take down their websites, don't you?


I agree Windows is stupid. But why didn't Linux replace that stupid
product?

Linux (5+ versions or brands) people should have addressed this long
long ago!

I'm not sure what this actually means. Is he complaining about
the "5+ versions" (maybe he should check Distrowatch and see how many
"versions" they think there are!) or something else? That's definitely
the kind of question where you have to shrug your shoulders, isn't it?
Yes, somebody certainly should have addressed this long, long ago! Whatever
"this" is..


Honeywell, HP and finally Windows...None of them is worse than vi! One
has to be a totally crazy person to even consider vi! Vi was born in an
age when Unix was developed using an old PDP-8 or 11 machine. The field
has gone forward,, but not vi! There is no shortage of manuals...anyway

I thought that only emacs people had such hatred for vi and vice versa.
In fact, vi has changed a little, but the real point is that it
hasn't changed radically because it didn't need to. It's
a powerful programmer's editor. If you don't understand WHY vi remains
popular after all these years, then you either don't need a powerful
editor or you are already using one.. or you are too hopeless to ever
understand.


I didn't say Windows is better than Linux as a Webserver. But the
attraction for ordinary people was lost when you could test a Webserver
even on an XP.

I guess the fact that most hosting companies use Linux or BSD webservers
isn't important. He's right: XP makes a great webserver.. if
you like low uptimes.


I did install StarOffice on Linux (in 2000).. was a disaster! Now in
2008, things might be somewhat better.. but eight years is a long time..

Right: Open Source office Suites have remained absolutely
stagnant. Don't bother to go download anything - nothing's changed since
2000!


Linux and to a certain extent Unix too are for hackers! On commercial
platforms, the modern software application development (Oracle, Java
etc) is a failure.... empty buzzwords like SOA etc dominate the market!
This failure is the main reason for the Outsourcing business ... The
failure of application development in the USA and Europe,  is covered up
by outsourcing the development to India by most companies!! A kind of
ostrich syndrome!

Oracle must have gone out of business around the same time RedHat and
Suse did, right?


The first Unix clone (you might know it already) was not Linux. In fact
there was a beautiful product called COHERENT sold for 100 dollars in
early 90s.  Coherent was a fantastic product with a 1000 page manual...
Far better than any of the initial versions of Linux. But it went out of
the market because it was not a free product!

You mean this: 1991 Review of Coherent?

Coherent did have a good manual, and it was good value at $100.00. But
it was a crappy, very broken product..

I don't know.. is this typical of Windows users? Are they really
this ignorant, this out of touch with reality? If so, it's no
wonder Windows remains popular.

Twitter Types by Anthony Lawrence

2008-05-01T12:50:00.000-07:00

2008/05/01

I recently started using Twitter, but initially couldn't imagine what all the fuss was about.
Apparently there are people using Twitter for different reasons:

Classic, or Whassup?: Way back when (must be like years
and years ago now), Twitter was conceived as a way for friends
and family to keep track of each other. Amazingly enough, some
people still use it for that (though I don't actually know anyone
who does so).

Stat Builder: How many Twitter followers can you have? How
many tweets have you written? Both worthy statistics, and especially
the latter, as anyone who is willing to post every single random thought
can quickly build up high numbers. Attracting followers may seem more
difficult, but in fact most of us will automatically follow back anyone
who follows us, so no, it's not that hard. But if you are also a Tweet
count builder, it gets more tricky, as your constant posting may
annoy your new found followers..

Look at me!: Some use Twitter exclusively to toot their
own horn, twittering each and every one of their blog posts. A lot
of these are really 'bots, but some at least take the trouble to
put a human touch on their advertising.

Look at that!: These folks point out interesting things
they've noticed around the web or comment on news items we've all
seen.

Good night, Chet: These Twitterers confine themselves to
saying "Good Morning" when they first get up, and "Good Night" when
they are done for the day.

Whiners:: I hate my job. It's too hot in here. The guy in
the next cubicle smells bad.

Spread the Joy!: I love my job! I love the World! Life is Grand!

Weather Twits: It's raining here. Is it raining there?

Special Interests: Good examples: Tomato Guy and Twittilate (Not safe for work)

Lurkers: Never say anything. They just read. Or maybe they
forget they signed up and aren't really there at all.

Mixed bag: A mixture of all or most of the above.. and
that's probably most of us, right?

If you can't say anything nice.. by Anthony Lawrence

2008-04-30T20:10:00.000-07:00

2008/05/01

I had gotten up early this morning and wandered out to my
computer still wearing pajamas. Because it was a little cool,
I had thrown on a plaid jacket too. Appararently the combination
of pajamas and this jacket was a little startling, because
when my wife got up an hour or so later, she burst out laughing
upon spotting me. A few moments later she left and then came
back carrying a pile of clothes which she requested that I
put on "as soon as possible". She then walked off, still chuckling.

OK, I have no color sense. I know that - well, really I don't
know it, but I know that I have to rely on other people to tell
me that color X pants are hideously garish when combined with color
Y shirts. Oh, I know the no brown socks with black shoees and only
whites with sneakers basics, but beyond that, I'm clueless.

As it happened, I was reading this Should You Tell People Their Blog Design is Ugly? post when my wife first came in. I guess some people get
hurt feelings when someone points out their fashion gaffes or notes
a defect in their blog design. I don't: I know I have no talent
for colors, typography, layout. I just try to copy what seems to
work for other people and hope for the best.

So: if you are someone with aesthetic sensibilities, please do
feel free to tell me what you don't like. I might not change it,
perhaps because of technical difficulty or sheer laziness, or
perhaps because it's something like my logo that I have sentimental
attachment too, but I will listen and I won't be offended. And
if it a technical lack ("Dude, you abso-freaking-lutely need to
have..", I will pay even more attention.

Your Mileage May Vary when installing and using Linux by Anthony Lawrence

2008-04-29T17:30:00.000-07:00

2008/04/29

I was reading the long string of comments at Linux in the long run and noticed
a few folks mentioning Linux installation problems. I can
sympathize, though I do have to say that most of my Linux installs
have been smooth and uneventful.

I can't tell you how many Linux installs I've done. It
probably isn't thousands yet, but it's certainly in the hundreds. The
distros run all over the map: plenty of RedHat and Suse, a few
Ubuntus, some Debian, a couple of Slackwares.. and those are the
ones that were on real hardware for a real purpose: there have been many
others installed on Virtual Machines just to take a look-see.

As I said, most of these were easy, successful and left no
scars. A few here and there were painful and difficult: unsupported
hardware preventing a nic card or the gui from working can be
annoying. An unsupported
card just makes you run out to buy something that will work, but
of course that's not always easy (notebooks) and sometimes it's
a specific piece of hardware that you really need - Fedora Core 2
caused me some grief over an Iomega REV drive a few years back. There's
not always a way around an incompatibility, but there usually is.

You can find plenty of Linux install horror stories on the net. Some of
these are exaggerated complaints written by people with a vested
interest in Windows, and a few are people so technically challenged
that you have to wonder how they use any computer, but some do
have more than a kernel of truth: the person ran into real problems
and experienced real frustration.

But most problems are easily solved by a little Googling or a
little experimentation. I do understand that some folks don't want
to have to Google or experiment: that's exactly why I bought a
Mac for my notebook machine. I didn't want to expend any
effort (and I was also just plain curious about Macs), so
I wimped out.. I've posted here that I carry some "Linux guilt" because of that, but it's
definitely true that Linux on laptops can be challenging.

However: things only get better in Linux-land. What was unsupported
yesterday might be supported today. I have a retired X86 laptop
sitting idle right now; it resisted Linux a few years ago but I bet if
I try it now it might just all fall together and work. And if
not.. well, it might be the particular distro, so I could try
something else..

We may get some negative comments here in the "Linux sucks" vein.
If you had a bad experience and need to vent a little, that's OK, but
please try to keep it intelligent and useful. A comment that
warns about a bad driver for a FooBar Model 78 rev 6 Widget is
potentially useful, a pointless "Linux Losers bite me!" comment
will just get deleted.

A web page is more than a pretty face by Anthony Lawrence

2008-04-28T16:10:00.000-07:00

2008/04/28

Recently one of my clients hired someone to design a secondary
website. He had mentioned to me that he planned to use this for
coupons and other promotions related to his present site and business,
so of course I was concerned that his web designers would do a good job.
Too many so called "web designers" really are not: they are artistic
types who have learned to use something like FrontPage but really
don't know much about mechanics and SEO/SEM (Search Engine Optimization,
Search Engine Marketing). Really designing a true business website
today is a lot more than a pretty face and a few keywords stuffed
into meta tags.

Designing a web site without knowing the mechanics is like
building without knowing engineering. You may do fine building
a shed for the dog, but it wouldn't be good to turn you loose
on a skyscraper project. A pretty face is not enough.

So I took a look at these designer's websites and the websites
of clients they referenced there. As I later explained to my
client, I was a little disappointed: the sites weren't bad, but
they definitely weren't superlative. Looks? I'm not qualified
to judge, but I assume that was fine. My concern was with the
underneath: did the sites validate through W3C, did they have
appropriate meta tags, alt tags and inter-site linking? They
did not: none of the sites validated, and most showed poor
SEO efforts.

Let's take up validation first, because the response from
clients often is "Looks ok to me".. and it probably does.
But that doesn't mean that it IS "OK" - it just means that it
looks OK on your browser on your operating system and at your
screen resolution. Now being W3C compliant doesn't guarantee
that page will display beautifully under all conditions, but it does
guarantee that you've given the browser intelligible information
about how it is supposed to look. As I explained to my
client: "Why not do it right?". There's really no excuse, is there?

Well, there might be an excuse for specific conditions, but
I'd expect to see something very unusual in that case - not just
sloppiness. Sloppiness is what I saw here.

Actually, I was even more concerned about the SEO side. Tags ("alt" and
"title") and link anchor text are very important today - probably
more important than header meta tags. Yet most web designers don't
pay much attention to them, or if they do, they don't do them well.
For example, adding 'alt="Top"' to an IMG tag will satisfy W3C, but
it's not very helpful to a search engine, is it? It's not helpful
to a blind person, either. And while
"title" tags are optional, they can add value both for search 'bots
and for the visiting user.

Another area that concerned me is SEM (search engine marketing). I
have to assume that a coupon site is going to be paired with a SEM
campaign. Did anyone mention how that campaign is going to be
measured? Will Google Analytics be tied into an Adwords campaign?
Has anyone defined the possible goals here (printing a coupon,
visiting the main website..)? I can't tell that from looking
at reference sites, but I did prep my client with some questions
to ask.

This stuff is IMPORTANT. Designing a web page is much, much
more than making it "pretty".

Do you really want a popular blog? by Anthony Lawrence

2008-04-27T18:50:00.000-07:00

2008/04/27

OK, raise your hands: how many of you bloggers out there want
a popular blog? Ayup, I know: you beg for Diggs and Sphinns, ask
your friends to Stumble your post.. you'd love to be able to
brag that you had to move to another host because the traffic was
just getting overwhelming..

Do you really want that?

Maybe you do. After all, there are bennies attached: fame, maybe
even money.. what's not to like?

Well, there is a dark side, and I see it every time one of my
utterings gains a bit of web traction and a few thousand people
show up to read it. There's no nice way to say it, so I'll
just blurt it out..

Stupid people

Before you get all PC on me, hear me out. Some people are
smarter than others. You know that. If you have a hundred friends,
a few of them are obviously a lot sharper than the rest of your
bunch and a few obviously are not. It doesn't mean they aren't
nice people, it doesn't mean you don't like them, it just
means that they aren't quite as quick on the uptake as the rest.

They are the ones who sometimes say some pretty dumb things, right?
Maybe a little embarrassing sometimes? Yeah, you know what I mean.

So what happens when one of your posts catches fire and a bunch
of people you've never seen before coming flying in to read it?
Well, obviously some of those people are smarter than others. And
some are not.

The dumb ones leave dumb comments.

Wait, I know what you are going to say. Yes, it's true that
the smart ones leave smart comments, so it sort of balances off,
doesn't it? Well, not for me, no. You see, the crowd who
visits and comments here regularly already is smart. Their
comments are sharp, enjoyable, sometimes pretty darn funny. I
enjoy those people. But when a boatload of new folks stop in
and a few of them drop off inane and truly dumb comments, it
feels almost like uninvited guests at a party. Who wants
these jerks? I don't.

The most recent example was this Linux post. It got picked up by a few of the big Linux
sites and the hits came pouring in. Most of the comments were fine..
but a few were.. well, less than intelligent.

It bugs me. It's not the criticism - I don't care about that. It's
the repetition of what someone else already said, the careless reading,
the foolish misunderstandings.. I just don't suffer fools easily, sorry.

A Modicum of Success

Really. That's all I want. I don't want to be super popular,
read by millions. I know some people can handle that: they'd bask
in the adulation and ignore the stupidity that comes with it. Not
me. It would constantly tick me off and I'd be miserable.

If you are like me (and I know a lot of you are), the old
"be careful what you wish for" warning comes to mind. Yes, we
all want success, we all want to be popular..

But just a little bit, right? Not so much that the dumb ones
find us..

Google adds benchmark comparisons by Anthony Lawrence

2008-04-27T06:10:00.000-07:00

2008/04/27

Google has recently added benchmark comparisons to
Analytics. This could be extremely useful and interesting, but unfortunately
is not.. well, perhaps it's just too early; this may get better as more
people join.

Right now, however, the categories you can choose from are pretty limited,
and worse, Google has divided them into three buckets: small. medium and large.
Their explanation:


What does "sites of similar size" mean?

Based on the number of visits each site receives, sites of similar
sizes are grouped together under three classifications: small,
medium, and large. This way, you can compare yourself to other
similarly sized sites. You are not able to view benchmarking data
for sites in other size classifications.

Okay. But what's "small"? Am I "small", or "medium" and where
do I fall wherever I am - near the bottom, the middle, the top? Without
knowing that, I don't really know what to make of these comparisons.

And why can't I compare outside of that classification? If I'm "medium"
but am near the bottom or the top of that bucket, it would seem very
reasonable that I might also want to see the data from the next nearest
set, right? I can't imagine that would be difficult, so it seems
very arbitrary to me.

Of course this is new - I only heard about it a few weeks ago,
and immediately joined: in order to compare yourself, you have to
agree to anonymously share your own data. As more folks hear about this
and share their Analytics data, the choices available should improve,
and possibly Google will allow a bit more flexibility and provide
more information about what we are really comparing against.

By the way, it turns out that "small" is really small - I
have another site that gets less visits in a month than this site
has every hour, but Google was able to show me comparisons for that
(and it does pretty well in its category, actually). The "small"
benchmark for monthly pageviews showed up as 419, so don't be afraid
to join this if you were thinking your site is too tiny.

What's your game? by Anthony Lawrence

2008-04-26T10:30:00.000-07:00

2008/04/26

A couple of years back I wrote What do you do for a living? and was surprised to
learn that I'm not the only person who hates that question.

This week I read Let's Play a Game - What's Your Small Business? and of course
that reminded me of my previous writing.

As I haven't known what I do since I started this gig in 1983, I don't
think I really need to have answers, but I'll do my best. That
post asks a few questions:

What's your game? What do you do?

Honestly, I really don't know. I do a LOT of different things, all generally related to 'puter stuff, but it all keeps changing. In the 80's I did a lot of programming, in the 90's it was a lot of troubleshooting, today.. I don't know what's predominant today. I do whatever it is that I can make money doing.

Why do you do it? Do you love it, or do you just have one of those creepy knacks?

Knack. Just a generally bright person with a very good memory.
I don't "love" computers. They are just tools.

Who are your customers? What kind of people would need or want what you offer?

Don't know. Anyone with a computer, assuming they have a problem worth my time and within my skill set and interest. As my skill set and
interest changes constantly, so do my potential customers. At
one time I would have been happy to write you an accounting program in
Business Basic. I wouldn't do that today: I wouldn't write
anything in Basic, and I definitely wouldn't write an accounting app.
Who knows what I "definitely won't do" tomorrow?

What's your marketing USP (Unique Selling Proposition)? Why should I buy from you instead of the other losers?

Don't care. Seriously. Other than my first year in business, I've always had more work than I wanted and have always turned people down or passed them to other people. I don't need a USP.

What's next for you? What's the big plan?

No big plan. No idea what's next. Computer technology changes almost
daily. My business today bears little resemblance to what it was five
years ago. I'm sure that it will change again. And again.

.....

Now for my questions.

Why do people think this kind of stuff matters? I've been in business
a long, long time. I have no business plan, no unique selling proposition,
no Vision Statement.

I've never needed any of them.

Not once has a customer asked me for a Vision Statement. Not once
has a customer approached me and asked for an elevator pitch.

No, people approach me with problems, or, in the case of existing
customers, I might point out opportunities they aren't aware of. But
nobody ever cared about any of this stuff.

I can certainly see how it might be applicable to other business.
Maybe YOU need a USP. Maybe you need a business plan to
guide your business. I really hope you don't need
a Vision Statement - I think those are completely asinine - but
if you think you need it, by all means, write one.

Me? Not a chance. I've lasted this long without any of that;
I don't think I need to change now.

Internet Anonymity Laws - bad, bad idea by Anthony Lawrence

2008-04-25T15:50:00.000-07:00

2008/04/25

If you are a regular reader here, you may know that I live
in a Massachusetts town that could be hosting an Indian Casino
someday. As I'm sure you can imagine, feelings run high on
this subject: most townspeople either want the casino or don't
care either way, but there is a loud minority who sees it
as dangerous and destructive (I'm on the "pro-casino" side,
if it matters to you).

Because of the high running emotions, there have been strident
letters to local newspapers and many, many blog and message board
postings on both sides of the issue. Some of these postings from
the "anti's" have crossed the line and might be considered libelous
- some have even been interpreted as threats. It's been pretty
nasty..

Because of this, some folks on the "pro" side have taken up
the issue of Internet anonymity (the postings mentioned have
been anonymous). They want to form a group to push for
legislation to prevent anonymity on the Internet.

I understand their frustration. Anonymous attacks on a person's reputation
and business can be very disturbing. Nonetheless, legislation would
be a very bad idea.

Aside from the fact that the U.S.
Supreme Court has consistently protected anonymity as necessary
in a free society, the technological challenges would make this
impossible to enforce. Even weak efforts at cloaking that could
be penetrated would require considerable effort, and that would mean
that law enforcement would be unlikely to devote resources to it
except in extreme cases. So in addition to being philosophically
opposed, I think these laws would be impractical.

Free speech CAN be unpleasant.. that's really the point of it, isn't it? We don't need free speech to tell George Bush he's doing a wonderful job - we need it to do exactly the opposite.

If people had to prove their identity before posting anything, what
would corporate or government whistle-blowers do? They'd have
to keep their mouths shut - that's why we don't want this sort
of law.

As for supposed damage to reputations, I think it's overblown. We all know the phrase "Consider the source" - anonymous sources are always heavily discounted. But even if some fraction of readers do believe the libel, I still think that protecting free speech is more important than any damage caused.

By the way, all ISP's will fight this tooth and nail also, although for more selfish reasons. Their influence on legislators would be tremendous. The ACLU will oppose, and I expect most Republican conservatives will also. You'd have an uphill battle all the way (and almost certainly get struck down by the Supreme Court if you got that far).

So, I'm against this on technical, philosophical and practical grounds. I won't support any efforts toward legislation and in fact will actively oppose such.

A good write-up on the history of law in this are is at PRESERVING ANONYMITY ON THE INTERNET. I really recommend reading that if you are still thinking such laws are
justified.

Download DVD movies. iPod films to buy

2008-04-25T06:02:00.000-07:00

Tutorial Index

0-9 - A
- B - C - D
- E - F - G
- H - I - J
- K - L - M
- N - O - P
- Q - R - S
- T - U - V
- W - X - Y
- Z

0-9

007 Diamonds Are Forever download

007 For Your Eyes Only download

007 Goldfinger download

007 Licence to Kill download

007 Live and Let Die download

007 Man with the Golden Gun, The download

007 Moonraker download

007 Octopussy download

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007 The Spy Who Loved Me download

007 View to a Kill, A download

007 You Only Live Twice download

1408 download

15 Minutes download

16 Blocks download

2 Fast 2 Furious download

2001 Maniacs download

28 Days Later… download

300 download

3000 Miles to Graceland download

3:10 to Yuma download

40 Days and 40 Nights download

48 Hrs. download

4: Rise of the Silver Surfer download

4th Tenor, The download

50 First Dates download

51st State, The download

6th Day, The download

8 Mile download

88 Minutes download

Ablaze download

About a Boy download

Abyss, The download

Accidental Spy, The download

Ace Ventura: Pet Detective download

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But I need windows! by Anthony Lawrence

2008-04-24T15:30:00.000-07:00

2008/04/24

My wife had a small epiphany a minute ago. I was having
her reboot her stupid XP machine yet again when she suddenly
had a very puzzled look on her face:

"Wait a minute - you aren't running Windows.. how can you
have different windows on your screen?"

I laughed, mostly because she's hardly the first person to
ever say that. People may say 'I need Windows", but that
may not be because they have some Microsoft only app they
need to run. It may just mean that they think they need
Windows to get windows.

"Why are you laughing? Didn't Microsoft invent windows?"

That's another commonly held misconception. I've had people
tell me that Bill Gates must be incredibly brilliant to have
invented all that he did.

Most of the time those people refuse to believe the reality that Bill
Gates and Microsoft have never invented anything.

I do have to admit that calling their OS "Windows" was clever, though
I doubt they realized that at the time. I'm not saying that a lot
of possible Mac or Linux users have stayed with Microsoft
because of this sort of belief, but I bet it's far more than
a handful..

So the next time someone says "I need Windows", make sure they
really said it with a capital "W". It may be that they just
want "windows".

More on PTR Records by Anthony Lawrence

2008-04-23T17:10:00.000-07:00

2008/04/23

Quite some time ago I wrote up Basic DNS: PTR records and why you care. I realized today that it is far
too geeky: I sent someone experiencing a PTR issue to read that and
he came back still thinking that either his Mac or Verizon were to blame.

Why does he think that? Well, I suspect mostly because he got bad support
from Verizon AND Apple. His problem was that email he sent to someone
with a Comcast address got bounced back with a message like this:

Comcast requires that all mail servers must have a PTR record with
a valid Reverse DNS entry. Currently your mail server does not fill
that requirement.

Whose mail server does not fill that requirement? His Mac Mail.app is set to use "outgoing.verizon.net"
as its outgoing server. His machine NEVER TALKED TO COMCAST. It's not
supposed to: it's supposed to talk to "outgoing.verizon.net". It's
THAT machine or some other machine of Verizon's that will talk to Comcast. So
if Comcast is complaining, it's something at Verizon they are complaining about,
and nothing to do with whether or not he's using a Mac or a PC!

It's beyond amazing that no one at Apple or Verizon was able to
help him with this and that they each kept bouncing him back to
the other.

Specifically, Comcast rejected "206.46.173.5". I just checked and
that's NOT "outgoing.verizon.net" but it is in Verizon's block, and
it doesn't have a PTR record so Comcast is right to complain. Verizon
needs to assign a PTR to that address and that wll be the end of
his problem.

Nothing to do with OS X or anything else. Just Verizon itself.

Why I like Linux and Unix (and Mac OS X too!) by Anthony Lawrence

2008-04-22T16:50:00.000-07:00

2008/04/22

There's plenty of stuff out there that tells you why you
should embrace Linux and make it your own.

That's not what
this is: if you want to run Windows, go ahead. You
may be perfectly happy with what most of us Windows non-users
think is pretty awful stuff. Great - by the way, why are
you reading this? Maybe you think you are missing out on something?
Maybe you should use Linux or OS X or BSD because that's what all
the cool kids do?

Maybe. But I use Unixish operating systems for other reasons.

A little personal history

First, a bit of history. I have been doing 'puter stuff since
1967. Back then it was punched cards and expensive hardware, but
ten years later I bought my first computer, a Radio Shack TRS-80
Model 1. I had Tandy Model III's after that, a Model 16 running
Tandy Xenix, an early IBM clone running Windows, and as I
have been doing computer consulting full time since 1983, I have
worked on just about everything you have ever heard of. When
I say "worked on", I mean used and programmed, not took apart
with screwdrivers (though I've done that too).

So, I have seen it and used it: Sun-OS, Solaris, HP-UX, SCO Xenix,
Microsoft Xenix, Tandy Xenix, Novell, CP/M, TRS-DOS, Pick, DOS, Wang,
Windows, GEM, Macs, Coherent and of course many flavors of Linux and BSD.
Been there, done that, paid my dues.

And here it is flat out: I like Unix OSes. All of them, though obviously
the newer Unixes are better than the old. I dislike Microsoft Oses. All of
them. I don't know where I'd have to draw the line and say "Yeah, I'd
rather have XP or Vista than THAT", but it would be pretty far back.
I'd definitely take even a crappy old SCO 5.0.6 machine over Windows XP,
and trust me, SCO 5.0.6 would be a painful choice.

Why Linux/Unix?

So why? Why would I suffer a ten year old badly done Unix rather
than a modern Windows system? Remember, I'm not ignorant of Windows:
I actually attained MSCE certification at one time (NT days, see
Certifications).
I use Windows machines almost every day at customer sites and I have
Windows XP running in a Parallels VM on my Mac. It's not that
I haven't given Windows the opportunity to win my heart - I have,
but Unix always wins.

Why?

Command line

A powerful command line is absolutely necessary or I will be
very unhappy. Even Microsoft belatedly has recognized that, though
in my opinion they screwed it up completely.

Why is a shell so important? Because I don't wait for other people
to write the tools I need. No, I don't mean accounting apps or
word processors; I mean the day to day stuff. Maintenance, analysis,
slicing and dicing, trouble-shooting. Little tools for little
jobs. These could be written in C or whatever, but the shell is
quick and handy. It's often much quicker to bang out a shell script
than to do anything else.

Source

Open and available source code is important. It lets me fix
things, it helps me understand things. There is more Unix/Linux
open source than a Windows acolyte can even begin to imagine. Now
it's true that some Unixes are NOT Open Source (SCO, for one), but
even then you can find source that's probably pretty darn close -
it's better than nothing. And nothing is just what Windows gives you.

Those two things alone are enough to make me dislike Windows and
cast my lot with Unix. That's all it takes: everything else either flows from
there or is of minimal importance. I have other reasons to dislike
Microsoft: their rapacious and immoral business practices disgust me,
their piss-poor record on security is abysmal, and the glacial
slowness of their OSes is always a source of annoyance, but none
of that is as important as having a strong Unixish command line
and available source code.

Philosophy

But there's more. There's what we call the "Unix Philosophy",
which is that small tools should do one thing and do it well, while
being designed so that they can get whatever input they need from
the output of something else and vice versa. It's pipelines,
stringing together little tools to get big results. Windows programs
just are NOT written with that in mind - if they do allow command
line use at all, they spit out too much on the output side and aren't
even smart enough to do so on a different file handle so that you
can pick what you really need. That's why working at a Windows
command line is so frustrating.

So, Windows fans, enjoy your insufficient OS. I'm sure most
of you will never understand why it is deficient - you don't see
the advantage of a command line or pipes and most of you wouldn't know
what to do with source if you did have it. So wallow in your
ignorance.

In the meantime, we'll be over here, using REAL operating systems.
Yeah, I know, that sentence is harsh. It's the way I feel. Windows
is a poor excuse for an OS, for me at least. If it meets your needs,
good for you. It's hard for me to imagine how it could, but so many
of you use it, that must be the case, right?

htfsdebug by Anthony Lawrence

2008-04-21T17:10:00.000-07:00

2008/04/21

You can download "htfsdebug" from Amit Singh's "Mac OS X Internals" site.. It's a tool
that will examine your HFS+ filesystems and report various statistics. Although
presented as a "debugger", it's really not: this is strictly read-only. However,
it can provide a lot of useful and interesting information.

For example, here is it's "summary" output. By specifying "-t 10", I
asked it to only list the ten largest files it found on my disk:


$ sudo  hfsdebug -s -t 10
Password:

# Volume Summary Information
    files                          = 526923
    folders                        = 102959
    aliases                        = 0
    hard links                     = 5552
    symbolic links                 = 32556
    invisible files                = 222
    empty files                    = 8062
  # Data Forks
    non-zero data forks            = 518689
    fragmented data forks          = 1335
    allocation blocks used         = 17195327
    allocated storage              = 70432059392 bytes
                                     (68781308.00 KB/67169.25 MB/65.59 GB)
    actual usage                   = 69052849691 bytes
                                     (67434423.53 KB/65853.93 MB/64.31 GB)
    total extent records           = 521165
    total extent descriptors       = 541078
    overflow extent records        = 2476
    overflow extent descriptors    = 19519
  # Resource Forks
    non-zero resource forks        = 1068
    fragmented resource forks      = 2
    allocation blocks used         = 15638
    allocated storage              = 64053248 bytes
                                     (62552.00 KB/61.09 MB/0.06 GB)
    actual usage                   = 60915072 bytes
                                     (59487.38 KB/58.09 MB/0.06 GB)
    total extent records           = 1068
    total extent descriptors       = 1071
    overflow extent records        = 0
    overflow extent descriptors    = 0

896 files have content in both their data and resource forks.

# Largest Files (data forks) on the Volume
# Using 1 KB = 1024 bytes, 1 MB = 1024 KB, 1 GB = 1024 MB
rank      size       cnid path
1      7.40 GB    9079398 Macintosh HD:/Users/apl/Library/Parallels/Microsoft 
Windows XP ie6/winxp.hdd/winxp.hdd.0.{5fbaabe3-6958-40ff-92a7-860e329aab41}.hds
2      4.79 GB    6254336 Macintosh HD:/Users/apl/Library/Parallels/Microsoft 
Windows XP ie6/winxp.hdd/winxp.hdd.0.{5e74b8f6-c1ea-432d-8227-4a33b2cf8447}.hds
3      2.99 GB    8659761 Macintosh HD:/Users/apl/Library/Parallels/Microsoft 
Windows XP ie6/winxp.hdd/winxp.hdd.0.{3887679c-52c3-4dc7-9199-a4240cf61062}.hds
4      2.97 GB   10390184 Macintosh HD:/Users/apl/Documents/Virtual Machines/
Ubuntu.vmwarevm/Ubuntu.vmdk
5      2.43 GB    6265728 Macintosh HD:/Desktop/vmware/vmware/SCO/SCO.vmdk
6      2.37 GB    6524650 Macintosh HD:/Users/apl/Library/Parallels/
Ubuntu/lin26.hdd/lin26.hdd.0.{5fbaabe3-6958-40ff-92a7-860e329aab41}.hds
7      2.00 GB    9446500 Macintosh HD:/private/var/vm/sleepimage
8      1.83 GB    8655591 Macintosh HD:/Users/apl/Library/Parallels/Microsoft 
Windows XP ie6/winxp.hdd/winxp.hdd.0.{aa7d9a8c-9391-4324-b35e-12255889da67}.hds
9      1.16 GB    6267051 Macintosh HD:/Desktop/vmware/vmware/SCO507/SCO507.vmdk
10   1024.00 MB   10979700 Macintosh HD:/private/var/vm/swapfile5

I probably could have guessed that VMware and Parallels images would
be my biggest files, and I wasn't surprised to see a swapfile mixed in,
but what is that /private/var/vm/sleepimage? Well, actually that's
something I don't need now because I use RAM Sleep Mode, so I could save myself a bit of space by removing it (and I did).

This can also show fragmentation, though Amit says HFS+ defrags on the fly
anyway and does other things that make fragmentaion a non-issue. Tallying
up fragmented files can take quite a while to run, but does give a summary at
the end:


# Top 5 Files with the Most Extents on the Volume
rank    extents   blk/extents       cnid path
1         10497          4.17   10480743 Macintosh HD:/private/var/log/system.log
2          2025        957.97    9079398 Macintosh HD:/Users/apl/Library/Parallels/Microsoft 
Windows XP ie6/winxp.hdd/winxp.hdd.0.{5fbaabe3-6958-40ff-92a7-860e329aab41}.hds
3          1255        623.78    8659761 Macintosh HD:/Users/apl/Library/Parallels/Microsoft 
Windows XP ie6/winxp.hdd/winxp.hdd.0.{3887679c-52c3-4dc7-9199-a4240cf61062}.hds
4           819       1533.34    6254336 Macintosh HD:/Users/apl/Library/Parallels/Microsoft 
Windows XP ie6/winxp.hdd/winxp.hdd.0.{5e74b8f6-c1ea-432d-8227-4a33b2cf8447}.hds
5           679       1145.24   10390184 Macintosh HD:/Users/apl/Documents/Virtual Machines/
Ubuntu.vmwarevm/Ubuntu.vmdk

Out of 518680 non-zero data forks total, 517346 (99.74 %) have no fragmentation.
Out of 1068 non-zero resource forks total, 1066 (99.81 %) have no fragmentation.

So that looks pretty good, doesn't it? By the way, Amit has a number
of very interesting articles at http://www.osxbook.com/book/bonus/ and I do recommend his excellent Mac OS X Internals Book also.

Bash Brace Expansion by Anthony Lawrence

2008-04-20T18:50:00.000-07:00

2008/04/20

The new tricks Bash has picked up in 3.0 are exciting and
useful, but simple brace expansion has been available
for some time now, and yet we seldom see it used.
I suppose that's because the need doesn't come up too often.
The classic example from the Bash man page is:


mkdir /usr/local/src/bash/{old,new,dist,bugs}

which expands to


mkdir /usr/local/src/bash/old /usr/local/src/bash/new /usr/local/src/bash/dist /usr/local/src/bash/bugs

The man page also gives a more complex example showing nested braces:


chown root /usr/{ucb/{ex,edit},lib/{ex?.?*,how_ex}}

That's a little harder to follow, but if you replace "chown root" with "echo"
you can see it:


$ echo  /usr/{ucb/{ex,edit},lib/{ex?.?*,how_ex}}
/usr/ucb/ex /usr/ucb/edit /usr/lib/ex?.?* /usr/lib/how_ex

There are other possibities beyond nesting:


$ echo foo{1,2}{a,b}
foo1a foo1b foo2a foo2b

And did you know that you can leave out the arguments? As long as you have
the comma, this works:


$ echo foo{,}{,}
foo foo foo foo

And so does this:


$ echo foo{,,,}
foo foo foo foo

Braces can get pretty complex:


$ echo foo{1,2,3,4}bar{7,8{foo,bar}}
foo1bar7 foo1bar8foo foo1bar8bar foo2bar7 foo2bar8foo foo2bar8bar foo3bar7 foo3bar8foo foo3bar8bar foo4bar7 foo4bar8foo foo4bar8bar
# with 3.0 bash the "foo{1,2,3.4}" can be "foo{1..4}"

But when would you ever need anything like that?

No plans for a Mac or Linux version by Anthony Lawrence

2008-04-19T17:10:00.000-07:00

2008/04/19

I was reading Brett Legree's 6 Weeks site and followed a link to Q10 because
it sounded interesting.

Imagine my surprise when the first text to hit my eyes was this:

Q10 runs under Windows.
No version for Linux or Mac is planned.

Ehh? Folks don't usually go out of their way to tell you what
their product WON'T run on, do they? I suspect some hard feelings
here, maybe somone who has been mishandled by a few Linux or Mac
Fanboys?

Or maybe (and wouldn't this be ironic) the developers are tired
of hearing requests for Linux and Mac versions?

Well, whatever: this product is for Windows only and they want
to be darn sure we Unixy cretins know that. So don't bug
us about it, okay, because NO OTHER VERSION IS PLANNED.

Yeah, yeah, Linux and Mac market share are growing by leaps
and bounds, but NO VERSION IS PLANNED. Got it? Yes, we know
Vista sucks, even Microsoft execs know that, but you just aren't
listening: NO LINUX OR MAC VERSION IS PLANNED.

Well, sure, yes, it is a free product so we really would have
nothing to lose and everything to gain by suggesting that someone else might
want to use that source and hack out a better.. I mean "diffferent"
version, but sheesh, we can't do that because NO VERSION IS PLANNED.

And yes, we could do it ourselves, we know it isn't that hard, but
we aren't going to dirty ourselves like that. Windows is Pure, and
Mac and Linux are all yucky and demeaning and that's why NO VERSION IS PLANNED.

So: download our Windows version and run it under emulation if that's
what you need to do because (and I'm only going to say this one more
time) NO LINUX OR MAC VERSION IS PLANNED.

OK? Are we all on the same page now? Windows version, yes, Linux
or Mac version, no. It's really very simple..

Why are you all starting up your email? No, you are not going
to send email requesting a Linux or Mac version, are you? It's not
going to do any good - I already told you, NO VERSION IS PLANNED.

A thousand meanings never meant by Anthony Lawrence

2008-04-19T06:50:00.000-07:00

2008/04/19

In the current New Yorker, there's a great quote from Royall Tyler's autobiography. Apparently he imagined a reader 200 years in
the future (he wrote this in 1825). I quote:


The sprawling letters, yellow text,
The formal phrase, the bald stiff style
And in the margins gravely notes
A thousand meanings never meant.

"A thousand meanings never meant". I see that often with some hit and run comment from someone who thinks I mean something I don't mean at all.. had they read more of my blog they might have had a better understanding of who I am and
the unlikeliness of my holding the opinion they think they just read.

You might
argue that if I had written more clearly the misunderstanding might also
have been avoided, but as Royall implies, context is everything, and
we bloggers often assume knowledge we should not. Royall realized
that a future reader would not be aware of the context in which he
lived, so his words could easily be misconstrued. In our case,
we bloggers don't want to bore our regular readers by pedantic explanation of
every nuance of our opinions, so we tend to leave some of that out..
and the new reader sometimes thinks we hold positions that we do not.

What to do about it? I think there is little you can do about
those who mangle your opinions; it's going to happen no matter
how careful you are. Do read your posts with an eye toward that new reader,
of course, but remember that web readers are often hasty, so they
will misinterpret sometimes.

You can and should practice careful commenting yourself. Before you tear into
someone at their blog, take a moment to at least read a few more of
their posts, check out their "About" page, try to learn a little about
what makes them who they are.

And then shred them into miserable little bits for the trashman.

Vista Home Premium by Anthony Lawrence

2008-04-17T14:30:00.000-07:00

2008/04/17

At Vista Home Premium - Installation I explained how I installed Vista on a very low
end machine and was somewhat surprised to find that it performed at all. However, I did not get too far as Vista didn't like my NIC.

It's true that every Linux I ever put on this long suffering machine
recognized and used this NIC, but I can hardly fault Vista: when I
pulled it out even I was surprised to see that it was a Kingston KNE100TX -
had I really put THAT in this box? I guess so - you know how it is, you
are throwing something together and you throw in what you have at hand..
in my case, it must have been that.. and Vista didn't like it.

So today I stopped by Best Buy to try to find a suitable card. All
they had were wireless cards, so I drove over to Office Dept and found
a Netgear FA311 - the box said Vista compatible, the price was silly ($16.50)
but what the heck, I was there, I wanted to do it today, so I bought it.

Upon returning home I popped it in right next to the existing card -
this machine probably won't have Vista on it very long and it's always good
to have more than one card.. well, it can't hurt unless you are trying
to install Vista, I guess. Vista only saw the "bad" card - the card it
had no drivers for. I had to physically remove the Kingston before
Vista could see the Netgear. I guess since this isn't a server OS, why
look beyond the first card you see? Brilliant Microsoft logic.

However, after that this just worked. I "activated" and was now
free to explore Vista. And there's the rub.. I'm so Anti-Windows
that I had no interest in exploring anything. I know I'm going to
trash this whole installation within a few days and never look at
it again so it's hard to get excited.

But I gritted my teeth and dug in. First: can this puppy see
other computers on the network? I clicked on "Network" and then
turned on "Network Discovery and file sharing", and ayup, within
a second or so the other machines on my Network appeared. However,
the shared folders on my Mac did NOT appear - does Vista not like Samba?
I suppose that's a stupid question..

How about sharing a folder from here? I created a folder, right clicked on
it and chose "share". This then sent me to the "Network and Sharing Center"
(made me think of people in tie dyed shirts serving communal soup) where
I turned on "Public Sharing". Son of a gun, the Vista box popped up
in my Finder window on my Mac.. but when I tried to actually open
it, it failed. I'm beginning to think Vista doesn't like Samba very
much..

Well, I had not set "Password Protected Sharing" to "off". Maybe that's the
problem? Well, no immediate success after that change, but maybe it
or the Mac needs some time to sniff each other and decide what they
think about a possible mating.. I'll give it a little time. In the
meantime, back to Vista.. umm, where's "Start->Run"??

Oh, yeah - almost forgot: Win-R. Good thing this keyboard HAS
a Win key - first time I've ever used it! Actually you can right click
on the Windows icon that has replaced "Start" and reenable "Run"
in Start Menu->Customize so I did that - even though I'll be trashing
this soon, I will probably want Start->Run again soon. For now,
I did Win-R and "\\Macbook-2" but again it showed nothing but "Printers" ..
stupid Vista, even the XP machine can do better than that!

Back to the Mac again.. I tried "Connect as Guest" and yes, now
I can connect, but to my surprise, it did not show just the one
folder I had shared.. it showed a BUNCH of stuff!

So Vista just automatically shares all that by default? How presumptuous
can you get?

Next question: how do I map a network drive? It's not immediately
obvious.. and oh, by the way, where the heck is Help?? It's not
at the top of open windows, but fortunately it is in Start.. and that's
how I found that "Map a Network drive" is now under "Computer".. I
do not like this new Vista non-menu menuing..

OK, enough.. I can't take much more of this. Obviously Vista's
ability to play nice with other systems is typical Microsoft isolationist
policy and that's only one of the many reasons why I could never use
this as my daily OS (the others being lack of a decent shell, and
that Microsoft is Not Unix). However: I am impressed and surprised by
how decently this performed on minimal hardware.. not only that, but
I realized that while I thought I had 512MB in this box, closer inspection
showed it was only 384MB - below Vista's bare recommended minimum, and yet
the darn thing actually worked! Sheesh, maybe I ought to dig through
my boxes and find some more RAM.. but no, that wouldn't help: it's still
Windows.

Tell me this: Why do new Explorer installs NOT have the menu bar shown
by default? How are new users ever going to realize that IE has Tabs?

Unix and Linux Systems

Kerio Configuration by Anthony Lawrence

IP Address Groups

Services

Deleted Items in Domains

SMTP Limits

Content Filter

Archiving and Backup

Advanced Options

Logs

Other things

My SCO Knowledge (and interest) is fading fast by Anthony Lawrence

Using Skitch for support by Anthony Lawrence

Why won't companies track Windows downtime? by Anonymous

Essential Linux Device Drivers by Anthony Lawrence

Big Book of Apple Hacks by Anthony Lawrence

Did you really lose half a million dollars? by Anthony Lawrence

Linux Lunacy by Anthony Lawrence

Twitter Types by Anthony Lawrence

If you can't say anything nice.. by Anthony Lawrence

Your Mileage May Vary when installing and using Linux by Anthony Lawrence

A web page is more than a pretty face by Anthony Lawrence

Do you really want a popular blog? by Anthony Lawrence

Stupid people

A Modicum of Success

Google adds benchmark comparisons by Anthony Lawrence

What's your game? by Anthony Lawrence

What's your game? What do you do?

Why do you do it? Do you love it, or do you just have one of those creepy knacks?

Who are your customers? What kind of people would need or want what you offer?

What's your marketing USP (Unique Selling Proposition)? Why should I buy from you instead of the other losers?

What's next for you? What's the big plan?

Internet Anonymity Laws - bad, bad idea by Anthony Lawrence

Download DVD movies. iPod films to buy

But I need windows! by Anthony Lawrence

More on PTR Records by Anthony Lawrence

Why *I* like Linux and Unix (and Mac OS X too!) by Anthony Lawrence

A little personal history

Why Linux/Unix?

Command line

Source

Philosophy

htfsdebug by Anthony Lawrence

Bash Brace Expansion by Anthony Lawrence

No plans for a Mac or Linux version by Anthony Lawrence

A thousand meanings never meant by Anthony Lawrence

Vista Home Premium by Anthony Lawrence

Why I like Linux and Unix (and Mac OS X too!) by Anthony Lawrence