Microsoft’s I’m not cool enough for a Mac Awesomeness
So, Microsoft’s new add that highlights how much more expensive a Mac is compared to a similarly specced Windows PC has caused a lot of comment, on Zdnet for example.
It makes a good point and it is very amusing reading the SAFB writing in comments to defend Mac.
The truth of the Mac matter is, due to its price, Macs are set at a price point that only people with a high disposable income can afford them. Buying one shows that you earn a decent amount of money and care enough about outside appearances that you want to own a laptop that ‘looks cool.’ Most of the comments I have read about current Mac owners wanting to upgrade to a new Mac talk about the newer Mac ‘looking cooler’ and even Apple’s own advert on TV for its most recent Mac book talks about how it looks amazing (milled out of one piece of metal with a glass screen etc.), in fact it makes no mention of if it has any performance improvements at all.
If you ask me, the reason SAFB get so angry about defending their precious products, it is because deep down, they feel a little guilty that they have spent so much money on what is the laptop equivalent of buying a big red Ferrari.
I HATE APPLE/iPHONE
<rant>
I just dont get some people.
Why do people love Apple and the iPhone so much. Ok, granted, it is a clever use of of a UI, but apart from that, it does NOTHING that many other phones can do. The phone itself has been so oversold and it so under-delivers. Everyone knows the huge flaws of the device (copy/paste, battery issues, push email, dropped calls) but people still talk about it like it is the best thing ever made.
Then, Apple has the gall to release OS 3.0, for which users have to pay for, that introduces features that all other phones have by default (copy/past and bluetooth) and people actually think Apple is doing them a favour!!
WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE, Apple is taking you all for a ride and the SAFB lap it up and ask for more, whilst at the same time slagging off MS because, hey, why not.
Apple have done some great things with shaking up the Mobile Telecomms world, but it also does some terrible things as well (err, marketing the iPod as if it can hold 160GB of songs when in actual fact it can only hold around 140GB).
SAFB forget that MS invested in Apple in the first place, without Bill, Steve’s company probobly wouldn’t exist, remember that next time you criticise MS.
All I am asking is that the hero worship of Apple is just toned down a bit.
</rant>
UPDATE
How ironic, Google Adsense whacks an iPhone add beneath this article!! Awesome work google. Reader, please click away for some super dooper irony 
Finding missing packages when building from source on Ubuntu
So, you are building a program from source on Ubuntu and you have run into dependency issues, what do you do?
One solution is to use apt-file. Install this with sudo apt-get install apt-file. Then run apt-file update to update it’s cache. Now, you can use it to search for your missing dependencies by running apt-file search mymissingfile.so (replace mymissingfile.so with whatver you want) and it will show you what packages provide that dependency. The go ahead and install that package to solve your problems, it even shows you where that dependency is installed to!
Bluetooth controlled motion start-up script
So, after messing with ZoneMinder and creating a bluetooth script for it, I am now messing with motion instead, and have modified the script accordingly.
For kicks, I have hosted it on google code
http://code.google.com/p/bluetoothmotion/
It also details a fix for the problem with motion on Ubuntu and the /etc/init.d/motion stratup script.
motion 1 zoneminder 0
So, after messing around with ZoneMinder for a few weeks, I finally gave up. I then decided to try out motion instead, which I had heard a lot about, but largely ignored because it didn’t have a fancy website or nice looking web GUI.
Oh how wrong I was. Motion is so much better than ZoneMinder, I am sorry to say. It has a very basic web interface, allowing you to start and stop motion detection and view a live stream from one camera at a time. However, it really beats ZoneMinder into a cocked hat when you look at support for webcams. I had so many problems getting my webcams working in ZoneMinder, but in motion, you just tell it your video device locations (/dev/video0 etc) and off it goes.
There are some additional php packages out there allowing you to create webcam stream montages and view previous alerts created by motion. Although all configuration is done via a text config file, the file is well laid out and well commented and thus easy to understand.
I would highly recommend motion over ZoneMinder and am using it now as my main geek project. I am thus updating my bluetooth script to work with motion and will post the new version soon.
Turn programs on and off with Bluetooth in Ubuntu
Having recently been messing around with ZoneMinder for home security, I wanted to turn on and off the program using Bluetooth. Basically, the idea being that when I am around, the server will sense my presence (no Darth Vadar jokes please ;)) via the Bluetooth on my phone and turn off ZoneMinder. Then, if I leave the location of the server, it will no longer be able to sense Bluetooth on my phone and thus will turn on ZoneMinder.
So, I hunted around for such a program, I came across bluemon and BlueProximity, but they both only worked on proximity, i.e. they relied on you being near by, as far as I could tell, there was no option of running an action when the phone was completely unavailable.
So, I decided to write my own script to do what I wanted. Now, bear in mind I have very little skill when it comes to Bash and scripting and what I wrote was a result of trial and error. It all revolves around a tool called hcitool that can be used in Linux to control Bluetooth connections.
The first attempt at my script can be found here and with another link below.
It is only designed to work with ZoneMinder and there isn’t much advice within the code, but I shall update it as time goes by to make it more useful
Here is the full link to the script:
The Quest For Security
So, I have been pretty quiet of late, sorry about that. Well, the main reason was it was Xmas a while back, but also, I have been doing LOADS of research into security on the web.
For the past few months I have been toying with the idea of implementing a security device on my network that would take all the leg work of antivirus and intrusion detection and prevention off each PC on the network and get a dedicated machine to do it.
It turns out there are lots of options out there to do this, so I dabbled with a few.
The first I checked out was http://www.untangle.com/. Untanlge basically is a special Debian distro with lots of preconfigured security tools, like ClamAV for antivirus, snort_inline for intrusion prevention and iptables for a firewall. It comes with a very easy to use web interface making it idiot proof. However, I came across a few problems. First, it needs a PC with two NICS to be used as a dedicted server, something I didn’t have. Second, you can use it on a Windows XP machine, but it installing a Virutal Machine via VMPlayer, it then automagicaly reconfigures your network so that all traffic is routed through it first. However, this also wasn’t a great solution since it means you need to have a machine effectively running to OSs at once (Windows XP and the Virtual Machine) and also it did not work with my Vista lappie. Finally, it also prevented me from browsing gmail, so it was a no go for me - although some fix to do with Socks5 was the cure.
Second, I tried rolling my own system using snort_inline (http://snort-inline.sourceforge.net/), ClamAV, iptables and Ubuntu. This is what has taken me an age. I have never built any app from source before and it took me a long time to figure out what to do. Plus, I wanted to run this on a low power box and the only one I had available that had two NICS was an old thin client that runs of a USB 2.0 harddrive, so it aint that fast at all. However, I have finally managed got snort_inline running, with a ClamAV preprocessor and logging to mySQL. So far it is only scanning all the traffic coming into my network, I haven’t yet got it to actually prevent anything yet.
I finally tried out an interesting solution http://packetprotector.org/. This is kinda like the untangle solution, except that it all runs off your router. Sadly, all the routers it currently runs off are pretty hard to get hold of here in the UK, but from what I see, it might be the best solution. You get an advanced iptables firewall, snort_inline, dansguardian (content filtering) and ClamAV all running on top of OpenWRT. The only negative I can see is you need to be a bit of a linux guru to know what you are doing if you want to start to customise it (though it does come with the WebIF interface) and that it can bog down pretty quickly. However, to me it seems the best solution, until I get some super powerful server that I can run untangle, or monowall or IPcop or EasyIDS on. There are loads of solutions out there, you just need the right old PC to run it on, or a PC that you think is going to be quiet enough
A touch interface for Windows Mobile
Ever since the iPhone came out, all Windows Mobile users have felt a little bit left out. I have always been a little bit mystified that even though PDAs have had touch interfaces for the past five years, it took the iPhone for developers to realise you could use your fingers to interact with a device.
Taking this on board, a software developer called Pointui introduced a user interface (actually a home screen plugin) for Windows Mobile devices in 2008, called Home. It was generally a good little app that gave access to weather forecasts, your appointments, applications and contacts.
Well, the developers have recently released details of Home 2 and from the looks of posts on their website, it seems they have been working closely with Microsoft and hardware manufacturers like HTC in the development of the next version of Windows Mobile.
Here is a video of a development version of Home 2 running on an HTC Diamond apparently itis an Xperia.
Finally us Windows Mobile users will be able to feel a little smug around those iPhone users (and you can already try out the original version of Home to whet your appetite).
How to update Windows Vista style
I am usually a big fan of Windows Vista, it seems to work really well. However, there are some aspects of it that seem, well, so half arsed.
For example, this morning, Vista was moaning at me that it had some updates to install, but as I had some work to do, I clicked on the Postpone button. Ten minutes later up popped the reminder again and I clicked on Postpone again, but this time selected 4 hours. Obviously Vista didn’t like this, because, ten minutes later, up popped a command prompt, all my programs closed (giving me no time to save) and Vista logged off to install updates…….and then it BSOD….nice one Microsoft
After an automatic restart, a few seconds of some weird looking command prompt view, Vista loaded in Safe Mode and it informed me it had suffered an unexpected shutdown and that updates had failed to install. Hmm, you don’t say.
Open source programming sketchpad reaches version 1
Processing is an awesome open source programming language and sketchpad that allows you to write graphical and audio applications, as well as other tools. It has been embraced by the artistic programming community and has spawned countless beautiful and interesting images and videos.
processing
After what seems like an eternity in beta, is has finally reached version 1 (Gmail, are you listening?). I am not a programmer and so never have got to grips with it, but I am always impressed by what people have created using it. One such example is the Audi TT Movement advert that went ‘viral’ last year.