Category: Compgeeky

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I’ll Hand This to Apple…

The Iron Fist with which Apple Rules Its Software Realm means that stupid things like I ran into on a lil netbook recently are less likely to happen with Macs. Of course, they simply do NOT happen on ‘nix computers anyway, because of the way apps install and uninstall so very cleanly (for the most part, unlike Windows apps), so the Iron Fist of Apple™ is really not all that necessary, but still: minor advantage to Macs.

OK, here’s the deal. About 2.something years ago, I installed Stardock’s freebie subset of Windowblinds on a lil HP netbook as the easiest way for the user to kludge around Win7 Starter’s stupid “No, you may NOT change the desktop background!” restriction. Later, I upgraded that lil netbook to Win7 Pro for the user and the Stardock app was no longer necessary, so I uninstalled it. I thought.

“No, no!” said Stardock, “While we know you want to uninstall the product and you have explicitly stated that you want ALL the product uninstalled, we’ll leave the Stardock service to run on the computer, eating up limited Atom chipset resources. Because we can (and because we just don’t give a damn what YOU want).”

After disabling the Stardock “service” and manually deleting files and references to the product in the Registry, it’s FINALLY gone.

I think. *heh*

I swear, Stardock software is almost as inconsiderate and intrusive as Apple software on a Windows computer. Almost.

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As If I Needed Yet Another Reason to Use the Opera Browser

The short story for anyone browsing the web is summed up in this M$ warning about issues with the TLS 1.0 security protocols used in “secure” connections by most browsers. By default, Internet Exploder, in Windows 7, uses TLS 1.0 which is vulnerable to a “man in the middle” attack that could compromise a user’s personal information. In XP, this “default” is also the only level of TLS that is available, but by jumping through a few hoops, one can enable TLS 1.1 in IE in a Win7 environment.

Chrome and Firefox are still awaiting patches that would enable them to use TLS 1.1.

Meanwhile, TLS 1.1 and TLS 1.2 have been available to Opera users since 2009.

Click-Click-Click-Click-Click-Done. All without having to mess with some external download from a M$ “Knowledge base” article or mess around with “Internet Options” (that only affect IE and then only allow adding implementation of the older TLS 1.1).

Built into the thing from long since before the problem was identified by other browser developers. Nice.

Enjoy your online banking with IE, Chrome or Firefox!

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Tech Lust Drool

Update: While I’m not exactly holding my breath in anticipation of the presser this A.M. (just 5 or so hours away at this time), I do eagerly anticipate getting some hard news on this device. Of course I’ll at least wait until the first revision hits sales (by some reports already semi-halfway scheduled for Q1 2012), V.1 of almost any new hardware is a silly purchase, IMO. And again, maybe this is not the tablet I have (not) been looking for… *heh*

Amazon has been holding its cards pretty close to its vest, as these things go, but Amazon isn’t exactly Secret Squirrel, now it it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXZNkxJFiQ0

This could be just the thing to get me to change some priorities (including sadly consigning my lust for the Notion Ink Adam’s transflective screen to the back burner *sigh*).

The Kindle Tablet will sell for $250, much cheaper than competing tablets. It will come with an Amazon Prime membership which provides free shipping on some Amazon purchases, a $79 value. Amazon will likely tie other purchase incentives to the Tablet, and will likely integrate Amazon’s Kindle library book service.

*feh* That’s just $60 more than the 3G Kindle. Of course, the Kindle Tablet is Wi-Fi only making a comparison to the $140 Kindle more proper, but still… It also has no eInk capabilities, but still…

*heh* The feature list and description here does make the ole tech lust saliva run.

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Another (few) Data Point(s) in Favor of the Opera Browser

*heh*

Frankly, my primary reasons for preferring Opera as my primary web browser all revolve around its elegance. Every other browser is klunky and incomplete by comparison. Example? Mouse gestures. I can’t live without them when browsing. Sure, they can be added to other browsers via extensions, but that’s just so very kludgey, and often the add-on is broken with browser updates.

Etc.

But it’d be silly to not prefer Opera for its technical excellence as well. Take for example its standards-compliance, an area where Opera claims to be further along than other browsers. Is this claim true? Could be. For example, its compliance in implementing javascripting (something that’s almost omnipresent on the web) is just one of the many areas where it shines. On the emerging ECMAScripttest262, Chrome, a pretty darned good browser, returned these test results:

Not bad. Almost a 95% pass rate.

What about the Opera install I’m using right now to write this?

Oh, wait. That’s a 99.95% pass rate*

Of course, that’s just one of many test suites for web standards compliance, but my own experience running the standard test suites on the Opera installs I use regularly and installs of other browsers on the same computers (installs that are ALL kept up-to-date) just reinforces my appreciation for the lil browser that could. *heh* Sure, on some HTML5 test suites, Opera lags Chrome by as much as 23 points out of 450 (70% vs 75% compliance), but since that’s a still-emerging standard, I’m willing to play wait and see there. Acid3? On the limited subset of tests Acid3 is designed to look at, 100% pass for both, so that’s a push, although the Webstandards.org site does say,

“In other regards Opera is a clear leader. It is the only browser that supports more than 90 % of the SVG test suite. It is the only browser that implements Web Forms 2.0, currently being merged into HTML 5. They supported media queries and SMIL long before Acid3 came out.”

And for an overview of the extensive SVG Test Suite results for various browsers, including an older version of Opera than the one I now use, see here. Look at all that green (PASS) under the Opera column… 😉

Just sayin’. 🙂

Continue reading “Another (few) Data Point(s) in Favor of the Opera Browser”

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On a “Compgeeky” Roll Here

Numerically, my last few posts have been dominated by some computer-related stuff. Well, here’s another one. I had just read an interesting post on the economy and the higher education bubble (They told me if I voted for John McCain young women would be forced to sell their bodies to pay the rent… “ ;-)) and was about to click off, when I saw an add in a sidebar. Now, I ordinarily ignore ads (and indeed, have most ads blocked), but this one intrigued me, so…

I CLICKed on over to see what Jerkstopper was all about.

I have to say that the idea makes sense: a strain relief for notebook power cables. Heck, I do an informal strain relief system on my own and my Wonder Woman’s notebooks now and recommend ANYONE with a notebook do so. What we do is simply make a loop in the notebook’s power cable within about 6″-8″ of the plug into the notebook and place that loop under the notebook. It seems to work well.

But an actual device to formally install a strain relief designed to avert damaging the power connection seems like a good idea, if it’s actually engineered well, as I have seen more than a few notebooks that exhibit the problems outlined on the site as associated with damaged power connectors:

Continue reading “On a “Compgeeky” Roll Here”

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Fun Fun Fun

So, decided to check my email one last time before being mugged by the rack monster last night. Mistake. Hit the desktop in my Junk Room (also laughingly referred to in some quarters as my “home office” *heh*).

Nothing. No, not “It wouldn’t wake up.” Nothing. A power cycle didn’t even bring it to life. No video; no beep codes. Nothing.

Left it and let the rack monster have its way with me.

Today, tracked down the faulty component. Finally able to boot and access the CMOS setup screen using only one well-cleaned (with DeoxIt Gold contact cleaner and conditioner) DIMM installed in memory sockets after removing and replacing the memory modules produced a beep code for memory errors.

CMOS battery dead.

Ha! Replaced CMOS battery and cleaned/conditioned all other memory modules. Running fine, now.

Went back and treated all accessible electrical connections (peripheral cards, drive cables, power cables, etc.) with DeoxIt–either gold or regular, depending on the contacts–just for good measure. Hadn’t done that on this machine in two years, I realized later. Blew out dust bunnies while I was at it and just did some general housekeeping.

Oh, heck, while I was at it, a little rationalization of cables, re-tasking of onboard USB connections, and even dusting of the desk seemed in order, so there I was.

Nice, fun Sunday afternoon.

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Again With the Win8 “Developer Preview” Thingy

[UPDATE:be sure to check out a mini-micro-factoid mentioned at the end of this post in a note ;-)]

So, I decided a VM wouldn’t offer a fair look at the thing and took a spare, relatively small as these things go nowadays, drive and popped the developer preview onto a 64-bit machine with 4GB of RAM–a fair MOR machine.

I’ll tell you up front that I was right: I hate the “You’re too stupid to use a computer” interface on the “Start Page”. Already, recent versions of Windows have dumbed the interface down to the point that it’s a pain to dig into customizing things. Not as bad as Apple makes it with its desktop/notebook OS, but close. THIS interface says, “You are an idiot. Don’t even THINK about doing anything but what we want you to do with your computer,” just like OS X, et al. Continue reading “Again With the Win8 “Developer Preview” Thingy”

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If You’re a Windows Geek…

…(“geek” for Windows values of geekiness *heh*) this might interest you: Windows8 Developer Preview available for download.

I’ve not had a look at the different builds yet, but I may install a couple of VMs and see what they look like. Chris Pirillo says,

“Windows 8 may be the first version of Windows that would compel a hardcore Mac user to either switch hit or switch outright.”

That might mean that it will be a tad off-putting to me… *heh*

OK, it will install in a VirtualBox VM. I’ll see what I think as things go on, but for now, here’s some M$ propaganda:

Fortunately, the default interface, designed for tablets and other touch devices, can be ditched.

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Inside Browsing

If I had said “Inside Baseball” non baseball fans might not have–might have, but maybe not–gotten it.

Lil thing that just adds to my appreciation of the browser I use most, Opera: the recent DigiNotar flap. Within a few days, Chrome and Internet Exploder had removed DigiNotar certificate authorization with a push patch. Some complained that Opera had not yet done so. Ignorant boobs.

Referring to the issue in answer to these ignorant critics, Opera Software noted,

“…Opera does not require a fix for this issue. Opera always verifies that certificates are not revoked, and unlike other browsers Opera does not display sites as secure if access to revocation servers has been blocked by an attacker.”

That’s right. Google Mozilla and Microsoft had to push notification to their browsers. [N.B. I had that wrong earlier; Google imitates what Opera’s done for years with certificates.] Opera Browser users were automatically protected by Opera’s normal mode of operation. I checked, and even those Opera installs I have which haven’t had the September 1, 2011 10.51 update yet have removed DigiNotar, just as a matter of normal operation.

Just one more lil elegant way Opera deals with things that other browsers kludge through.

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I Love It When a Plan Comes Together…

I’ve been in an email/phone dialog with someone who wants to make over an older P-4 computer as a Media Center PC. He wants to use Plex running in a Linux environment.

Well, I may be close to doing just that for him. In fact, it may even be easier using the distro I would prefer to use than using the distro he has suggested and the procedure he found. Using Ubuntu, as the Pex site suggests, requires editing a system file. OK, that’s actually quite easy to do, and in fact can be done entirely from within the package manager itself, but still, using Linux Mint 11 (which is Ubuntu-based) is easier still, since the code line suggested by the Plex site fails and the package manager in Mint already has the source for Plex listed… Just one or two steps easier, not a biggie, really.

But… what I’d really like to do is take the Puppy Linux 5.2.8 distro I have installed to run off a USB flash drive and install Plex to it. Looks like it’ll have to be compiled from a Slackware versions, though, since Puppy just doesn’t seem to want to use the Ubuntu/Minty sources. *sigh* A couple more steps. I may just be too lazy for that. *heh* But… the OS and media server both running off a flash drive? That would be cool.