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§ February 15th, 2010 § Filed under IT § 4 Comments
In many cases, it’s easy to track your browsing – thanks to JavaScript which is by default executed in most browsers. For example, any site can figure out did you visit a particular another site or not. Like, find out which social networks you hang in. So far, it was mostly about showing more targeted advertisements.
Nothing bad has happened to me because of this, and one may argue that targeted ads are better than non-targeted. But I do not like the idea of being tracked – and I shut off all web ads anyway with AdBlock. Additionally, I have NoScript always on (and allow sites selectively each time when “some site does not work”).
Today I have been told that there is a way to track me even without JavaScript and tracking images from spyhouse sites. It is demonstrated here:
https://panopticlick.eff.org/
I have quite long “accept-language” header set in my browsers, as I can read web pages in several languages. panopticlick shows that I’m one such user out of about half million (it might be that I’m just the only one with this value of accept-language, who made a check there).
I’m not feeling paranoid because of this. But I’ll be happy to know, is there a way to pass my (complicated 
) language preferences without allowing for easy fingerprinting.
§ November 29th, 2009 § Filed under IT § No Comments
Short summary of this post: HP Photosmart C8180 all-in-one printer works perfectly with Linux right out of the box.
§ Read the rest of this entry…
§ July 12th, 2009 § Filed under IT § No Comments
Nokia has released own online maps, “maps.ovi.com”. I have tried this, and found them to be so much inferior to the competitors that I even feel ashamed for its home country (which is now my home country as well). I think in this area Google Maps set the reference, so I’ve done a small comparison of the two. § Read the rest of this entry…
§ June 16th, 2009 § Filed under IT § 9 Comments
Has your web site ever been “infected”?
This happened to me today, first time in my life. Hello from go00ogle.net. Below are technical details on what exactly happened, why I did not suffer any damage, and what I recommend to do in order to reduce your own susceptibility. The article is written for a non-technical reader.
§ Read the rest of this entry…
Article at Groklaw.
My random pick:
“If Europe leads the way in this [allowing algorithms to be patented], I expect many Americans would want to emigrate so that they could continue to innovate in peace.”
I want to buy a silent Linux desktop computer. No need to be any “high-end” otherwise.
This turned out to be a nontrivial task. After hours of browsing and listening to advices (thanks to my friends who already gave some!), I see the following options:
§ Read the rest of this entry…
§ May 19th, 2009 § Filed under IT § 2 Comments
Wolfram Research, probably most known for their Mathematica calculation product, has launched an online service which makes various calculations and visualizations for free, and with just a web browser:
http://wolframalpha.com
This project makes me really respect Wolfram. I spent quite some time browsing the examples, almost exclusively from the “mathematics” part, picking like a shy visitor at other areas. Some of my online friends write that “knowledge becomes less of a fashion in our times”. I do not agree a bit. Just look at this product.
§ May 11th, 2009 § Filed under IT § 1 Comment
10 and more years back, when I studied mathematics, I was an active user and promoter of the (La)TeX typesetting system. Since then, I almost did not use it, but kept the warmest memories of this creation “by mathematicians, for mathematicians”. Yesterday… I can’t say I changed my mind, but I’m not so sure any more about my attitude.
I had to remake a one-page document, for which I already had an old LaTeX template source. Edit the source, “make”, and a nice PDF is ready. Well, now the text which I inserted contained the @ sign. And of course (pdf)LaTeX did not compile.
I did not remember what should one do to typeset ‘@’ literally. I certainly remembered it 10 years back, but that’s not the kind of knowledge which stays alive when not used. It took me about 15 minutes to find the answer.
And now I’m not sure whether I shall promote TeX at all. From my viewpoint, this 15 minutes is unacceptably too much for such “problem” (actually, the very fact that this made a problem, is unacceptable in my current view). I expected the first link in Google search to give the solution, but the reality was very far from that. And – unfortunately for the others – I consider myself as a quite experienced (La)TeX user: I followed news:comp.text.tex, created own document classes, which were also used by other people, and so on. I knew well how it works. I knew where to look for documentation, and what kind of documentation I need. And still this thing, which should never be a stumble at all, took me 15 minutes. I can easily imagine that it takes full day from a person new to the TeX world.
Conclusion: sorry, none at the moment…
§ January 12th, 2009 § Filed under IT § 4 Comments
A motivated-looking female character illustrates the software update process. Picture from nokia.com
Nokia gives an option to update the phone’s software, at least, for the more expensive models. I do not know, and would like to know, how other mobile phone vendors score in this area. Below is my rant about Nokia way of doing it. The writing is in negative tone, because things are noticed only when they
do not work as expected. I’m interested if there is a vendor who does it better (some do not allow the user to update firmware at all – you must go to the service center for that!)
§ Read the rest of this entry…
§ December 2nd, 2008 § Filed under IT § No Comments
What a vandalism is this? Turning a keyboard into two pieces of junk?
No, it’s just the opposite – Bringing the Order, and Getting Rid of Junk!
I never use the “numeric keypad” on the right side. And it takes valuable space from my right hand. So what’s the problem if I got the hacksaw? Read on how I did it (with pictures and instructions for followers).
§ July 23rd, 2008 § Filed under IT § 2 Comments
It may be fun to post to the blog from a mobile phone. Doing so via the default web interface is certainly not the most convenient way (lot of extra traffic). WordPress has blog by email solution, which is OK from traffic viewpoint, but I was scared by instructions – involving setup of a “secret email account” and a cron job. Also, it does not support insertion of images.
Scribe is a free Python WordPress publishing client for Symbian S60 phones. Worked fine so far on Nokia E90 – this post is written in Scribe. Insertion of images is still not supported though; seems that the only client capable of it is a commercial Wavelog.
Use case: I want to draw a bike route on a map, for own joy or for sharing with my cycling friends. Google maps are cool, and free. As they are, they are not perfect for this task… but you can make them perfect with a tweak. § Read the rest of this entry…
§ February 23rd, 2008 § Filed under IT § 2 Comments
The camera of Nokia E90 communicator is “3.2 megapixel”. Here is a cut of an image, made with this camera at best light conditions possible (even sunshine, not too bright). Close your eyes, photographers: you may get sick.
Such quality is not just ashaming; I’m now happy that I’m not working at Nokia any more
Manufacturers increase the number of megapixels, which sales well, but that does not make image any better. Sure, the file size grows, carrying these junk pixels. I always resize these “phone pictures” down at least 2 times (= 4 times file size decrease), often more, before I dare to show them. And the phone does not offer neither option to use lower resolution1, nor any software to resize the captured image. As I feel plain stupid uploading 1MB picture worth of at most 200KB to any web site, I have always to scale it on some other computer. This is called “Mobile life”, “My world with me”, “Always connected” or something like that.
I know that I should pay extra for better camera quality and I’m not objecting to this; what I do not like is the unnecessary pixels which I can’t disable. Next time I may be purposedly looking for a camera with fewer pixels!
Update: 1 I was wrong on this. Camera offers 5 resolutions, smallest 640×480 with file size about 40kB. Finding this menu was not intuitive for me, but one can blame my lack of intuition here.
§ February 16th, 2008 § Filed under IT § No Comments
I rebooted my home computer after a long uptime and suddenly the screen is terribly flickering. Reason? “I did not do anything” I installed software updates, added and removed users, but never mangled with the screen, as it was already tuned once and forever.
My Xorg.conf file has only one mode line, the one which works fine at 85Hz. Gnome graphical menu item for “screen resolution” gives only one resolution option… at 60Hz. What the heck?
The GDM screen was at fine refresh rate, but after I log in, it drops to that unbearable 60Hz. This at least gave me a hint that this may have something to do with Gnome. Search in .gconf directory of my home reveals two files:
.gconf/desktop/gnome/screen/default/0/%gconf.xml
.gconf/desktop/gnome/screen/[my host name]/0/%gconf.xml
which differ in one line:
<entry name=”rate” mtime=”1152558455″ type=”int” value=”85“>
Value 85 was different in the [my host name]-version, showing 60!
As a first attempt, I just change that value from 60 to 85; I did not actually hope that it will work… but it does. Now my refresh rate is as it was.
My questions to the audience:
- Where did this poor refresh rate come from? Was it some upgraded package, which decided to change my monitor settings? (I have Ubuntu 7.10 and Gnome 2.20.1)
- How is a user supposed to solve such problem?
Last years, I was not much exposed to bullshit at work. In fact, almost not at all. Now I received an email with a brilliant example of the subject. A person has an email signature, which ends like this:
[MyCompany] is one of the global leading suppliers of Information Logistics
Solutions and Product Information. Our customers are global leaders, at
the cutting edge of the telecom, software, automotive and industry sectors.
High expectations and demands from our customers drive [MyCompany] to
strive for operational excellence.
[MyCompany] currently employs some 500 highly talented and dedicated
staff globally, with offices in Sweden, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary,
Ukraine, and China.
They should use some of the on-line bullshit generators to add, for example, “incubate innovative e-markets” or “syndicate customer-centric initiatives”. I think I’ll eventually point the author of the email to this post
§ January 12th, 2008 § Filed under IT § 3 Comments
Do I want a Content Management System (CMS) for my web site?
- My web site is small.
- It is not dynamic or interactive (and that’s how I want it to be at this moment. I do not want “dynamic spoon” or “interactive pants”).
- It is authored only by me, no cooperation expected in the future neither.
So I probably do not need any CMS. But on the other hand,
- I’m regularly catching myself that I’m not putting a new article because I’m fed up with copy-pasting of HTML
- sometimes I end up in poor places which do not have any putty/scp, so I just can’t do the update until I come home
- I have some articles in more than one language, and this is something which is pain in the neck to maintain
- I like my pages to be valid HTML, and this is an additional thing to watch when writing in the text editor.
But the most important of all: with static site written in the text editor, I have full control over my data. I can always do a full backup from my host (in fact I store an up-to-date copy locally). I can move all my site to another host at any moment in minimal time. Sure, backup of MySQL database + CMS system is also possible, but I’m afraid I’ll not do it regularly, and I imagine that moving to another host may turn out to be a very frustrating experience.
I’ve put to MediaWiki two of my pages which are kind of more dynamic than others: bicycling bookmarks and list of cafeterias around Helsinki. So far these are not pages which I necessarily want to be able to read 10 years later, so the portability here is not a keystone. Now I’m in musings, do I want to move more of my content to some CMS. And to which one? OpenSourceCMS lists tens if not hundreds different CMSes. The leading ones seem to be MediaWiki, WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. Read comparisons: Joomla vs. Drupal, more Joomla vs. Drupal, WordPress vs. Drupal, Joomla/Drupal/Plone.
The main question to me is, to repeat it, the portability. How easy is it to backup some CMS site, and how easy is it to restore it in completely different environment?
§ January 6th, 2008 § Filed under IT § No Comments
After publishing first-minute positive impressions about Nokia E90 communicator, first negative ones have not been waiting for long.
Naturally, when changing from one device to another, a user wants to move data from the old one. Mine “old” was Nokia 9500 communicator. Note, it is the natural predecessor model of the same manufacturer. Phones have “data transfer” menu item. But this transfers only contacts, messages and calendar entries – no documents. I have about 60 files, most hand-written once, like foreign words and travel notes. Moving them should be a trivial task?
1. Any file can be sent between the devices, for example via Bluetooth. But… you can’t send a directory. Manual sending of 60+ files does not look as an attractive option.
2. OK, fortunately there is Zip archiver in both devices. I compress the files I want to transfer to one archive, send it, decompress it. Guess what? I can’t open any of my files! They were saved in some proprietary format, which is not recognized by the new device!
Now I’m left with two options: 1) send all files one-by-one; believe or not, the texts are converted to Microsoft Word .doc format before sending :-/ 2) use Nokia own software to dig my data from the old device (this software is Windows-only).
I knew I should never store my data in a proprietary format, and I knew I’m doing a mistake saving my texts in default format 9500 communicator offered me. I naively expected that the same company will at least support its own formats. Beware!
§ January 4th, 2008 § Filed under IT § 1 Comment
Got a new device, the 2007 Nokia communicator edition, E90:
It is smaller than the previous 9500 communicator (in fact every new Nokia communicator model was smaller than the predecessor).
It has, in addition to what you’d expect from any such device, a built-in GPS receiver.
It is nice for touch. It has very sharp screen – both screens, in fact. 3.2Mp camera, FM radio, 512Mb micro-SD card. All data transfer technologies you can imagine: EGPRS, 3G WCDMA and HSDPA for cellular, Bluetooth and WLAN for short-range. See full specs here.
So, the first-minute impression is very positive. Let’s see what it comes to when I start actually using it.
§ November 9th, 2007 § Filed under IT § No Comments
Stock ipsec-tools v0.7 does not build in RedHat EL 4:
Making all in racoon
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/octeon/src/ipsec-tools-0.7/src/racoon’
if gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I../.. -I./../libipsec -D_GNU_SOURCE -include ./src/include-glibc/glibc-bugs.h -I./src/include-glibc -I./src/include-glibc -I./../../src/racoon/missing -D_GNU_SOURCE -include ../../src/include-glibc/glibc-bugs.h -I../../src/include-glibc -I../../src/include-glibc -DSYSCONFDIR=\”/usr/local/etc\” -DADMINPORTDIR=\”/usr/local/var/racoon\” -g -O2 -Wall -Werror -Wno-unused -MT isakmp.o -MD -MP -MF “.deps/isakmp.Tpo” -c -o isakmp.o isakmp.c; \
then mv -f “.deps/isakmp.Tpo” “.deps/isakmp.Po”; else rm -f “.deps/isakmp.Tpo”; exit 1; fi
In file included from ../../src/include-glibc/linux/ip.h:26,
from isakmp.c:115:
/usr/include/asm/byteorder.h:6:2: #warning using private kernel header; include <endian.h> instead!
In file included from /usr/include/asm/byteorder.h:35,
from ../../src/include-glibc/linux/ip.h:26,
from isakmp.c:115:
../../src/include-glibc/linux/byteorder/little_endian.h:43: error: syntax error before “__cpu_to_le64p”
../../src/include-glibc/linux/byteorder/little_endian.h: In function `__cpu_to_le64p’:
../../src/include-glibc/linux/byteorder/little_endian.h:45: error: `__le64′ undeclared (first use in this function)
…and so on.
/usr/include/asm/byteorder.h really is a private kernel header in this distro. Does not look like a feature – at least it is fixed in RHEL 5!. But what if I can’t upgrade right now. Here is a really dirty fix to src/include-glibc/linux/ip.h in the ipsec-tools source tree (and it is a symlink to real kernel header, so make a backup), assuming that you are on little-endian machine. Replace the line #include <asm/byteorder.h> with #define __LITTLE_ENDIAN_BITFIELD.
Or, not to forget about the change when you stump into problems with this pernicious hack:
/* Uncomment the next line to compile ipsec-tools-0.7 */
/* #define WE_COMPILE_IPSEC_TOOLS */
#ifdef WE_COMPILE_IPSEC_TOOLS
#define __LITTLE_ENDIAN_BITFIELD
#else
#include <asm/byteorder.h>
#endif /* WE_COMPILE_IPSEC_TOOLS */
I wish I knew if there is a better way to fix this – short of upgrading to RHEL 5.
§ July 9th, 2007 § Filed under IT § No Comments
I was a customer of saunalahti internet provider. Happily connected to their machines via SSH and maintained my rudimentary web pages.
Suddenly, the machine unix.saunalahti.fi disappeared. Soon it disappeared even from the nameserver. I discovered it after maybe a couple of months not accessing it.
Calling customer support. After usual 15 min. waiting in the queue:
(I) The Unix shell does not work.
(Saunalahti) I take a look at it… (waiting) Oh sorry, the Unix usernames were all removed.
(I) ??? I need Unix shell.
(S) We can restore it. (waiting) It is ready now.
(I) So what machine should I connect to?
(S) The same machine you connected earlier.
(I) But it is not even known to the nameserver! And it is your nameserver I’m using.
(S) I’ll look at it. (waiting) The other machine is ftp.saunalahti.fi
(I, feeling suspicious about such hostname and trying to connect) It does not let me in. Says “Connection closed by remote host”.
(S) OK, one moment… (waiting) the SSH access is closed now. (points me to their web page, saying that my contract does not include SSH access.)
I have nothing more to ask. The SSH access was an important feature for me and one of reasons why I’ve chosen this provider among others. Now they silently removed this reason without even a notice. The only way to maintain the web pages now is by FTP (sending password in clear text). I complained about the issue also on Saunalahti own webboard, other users confirmed the issue. I’m in search for another provider.
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