When I have to connect to Windows systems, except for the known issues with the en_CA language, CoRD is a great Remote Desktop. If I could connect using MacOSX-bog-Standard stuff, then clearly this en_CA issue wouldn’t happen… and http://www.smoothblog.co.uk/2012/01/10/configure-vnc-vmware-esxi-5/ will show you how to do that. Continue reading »
Consider the effect of inaccuracy on Engineers when posing a task or asking a question. It may reveal why you’re not getting what you expect.
A friend asked how to configure a VPN on Kindle Fire; the short answer is that it’s difficult, resisted by the manufacturer, and can go away in a heartbeat.
Users tend not to know the exact credentials for ServerXY, but rather the possibilities; should we configure for this in software?
Providing configuration options for what a user actually knows versus what would be proper and correct might be faster for the user, and allow for incremental addition of resources, but may offend users or appear confusing.
SOPA and PIPA are two attempted bills in the US that seek to stop online piracy. These two acts are incapable of actually stopping piracy, yet remain fully capable of an “internet death-penalty” against innocent sites.
Consider arriving in a strange, new city during the era of prohibition. In order to find stores, markets, and local associates, you pick up two telephone guides. Remember the White Pages and Yellow Pages? Consider those as your resources, except that your phonebooks update instantly.
You’re able to look up your friend Mike, who has invited you to dinner. His address is in the white pages, telling you “Mike Smith: 123 Main St”, and you know how to get there. Mike lives above a tailoring shop, and has a market nearby, which you’re able to find to buy some beef enroute to dinner.
What about a bottle of wine? That would be nice, but it’s prohibition, everything with any alcohol is illegal.
On the way to Mike’s, beef in-hand (a couple of excellent steaks), you notice that the tailor shop below him is closed, yet many people keep entering and leaving. That’s odd. Mike is happy to see you when you get to his door, and he makes a great dinner; he suggests doing so again next week.
Next week, Pork’s on the menu, but you have to look up the market again. You wrote down the name (Joey’s Eastside Butcher) and your whitepages tell you where it is. Mike tells you on the phone to be careful, police have detected that the Tailor shop is a Speak-Easy, and is illegal. As a lawful citizen, despite that you’d like a drink occasionally, you tend to stay away from that sort of place anyhow.
Off to the butcher’s, but wait… where’s Mike’s place? The whitepages no longer list his building at all. From your always-updated whitepages, Mike’s entire building is gone. You ask a friend, they have one that doesn’t update as quickly, and it shows that last week, Mike’s address was 123 Main St. yeah, that’s right. Another friend has a version of whitepages from Germany, and although in a different language, it does show the local city, and it agrees: Mike’s address is still 123 Main St. Good thing you wrote down Mike’s phone number itself rather than his name, or you’d lose all contact with Mike. You should get yourself a German phonebook, or use one that doesn’t delete entries, just adds them.
Arriving at Mike’s building, you notice that the Speak-Easy is doing a brisk trade. It hasn’t been shut down! The police haven’t lifted a finger, just “hid” it by removing Mike’s building from the whitepages. Everyone who goes there often knows exactly where it is; if they haven’t, they’ve written down the phone number already, or have it on speed-dial.
This is how these new bills work: they don’t stop crime, they simply allow it to become unlisted quickly, without any recourse, any due-process. They just make it harder to find, quickly. The internet whitepages is called “DNS”, and is controlled by many different countries. DNS updates take up to 72 hours to occur, and even after that time, the services are still open. Anyone using these services knows where to find them without having to look them up, but if they need to, they can use alternative listings to find the same address. The piracy isn’t even affected, it continues unabated, but common people are affected: new arrivals at a website or an interest group, and those who have to find their websites when they move (which happens about as frequently as people change homes)
Worse, with some allusion to Brazil, and perhaps to some implementations of photo-radar speed-traps, there’s no double-checking of errors, no due-process. Due to an error, not only is a building, and all it’s businesses gone, while they are barely making it through the recession. I’m sure the people who think this is a good idea are not the small businesses and private citizens who can vanish immediately due to error. … and we know the Department of Homeland Security makes no mistakes.
Would you give the “Internet Kill Switch” to the TSA?
Criminals will simply go to other countries’ DNS, or just use the numbers, leaving only the lawful to be the victims of bad legislation and the zealots who support it.
Crime should be stopped by actually stopping crime, not by making it and its innocent neighbours into unlisted addresses.
If you want a consistent, easy-to-use repository, use a script to build directories and copy in your content, which gives consistency as a side-effect of making things easier to move around.
Anyone who has tried to download software form a repository can tell when the ownership changes hands: the directory structure changes in subtle ways. There’s a dot in the path now, there wasn’t before, or capitalization changes. This isn’t a problem until you try to use the repository in an automated fashion: scripting and tools. Suddenly, a change from “V” to “v” requires an entirely new case, as if it’s a whole new repository on a different server.
NOTE: if the files are moved around manually, and the owner of those hands doing the moving is a bit flakey or random, then this sort of speed-wobble might as well count as changing the ownership, only more frequently (every release)
People will have a problem with this, but they’ll never tell you just as they’ll never tell you that your shoes don’t match your belt… but unlike fashion faux-pas, inconsistency with directories actually impacts others.
Don’t be a flake. Be consistent. A script helps you do that.
Additionally, if the script is the final part of the build process, it reduces the manual steps to a build. I would recommend either right before or right after running your self-tests.
Recently I’ve been bothered by the concepts such as censorship, Arab Spring, crowd discussions.
Many of the censorship tools in-use are just tools built by engineers who are not political, just building tools. Just doing their jobs. Often the desire to fulfill a challenging objective can blind the engineer to the possible uses — or the engineer simply doesn’t care (i.e. has bigger issues to care about than some foreign country’s citizens’ free speech).
I have an Idea I’d call Qloak (compression of “Quacking” and “Cloaked”, and “Quacking” based on what Chinese guys call gossip) that would allow:
A lot of this technology is the way I used to configure the “ext” system as a phonebook at a past employer; as well, acting as the head of a TOR or a VPN connection may consistently get through.
I don’t judge Eqypt, or Libya, or China, but I worry over the limiting/chilling/hushing aspect of some engineering talent mis-applied.
I would prefer that more people are in the conversation.
Countries, Companies, people who claim to support freedom of speech should act to support it. Build a TOR gateway. Support free opinions in other countries. Listen to everyone, even the Gay, the Religious Fanatic, the Type-B personality, the Nature Fanatic, the Raging Republican — whatever grouping you put people into, those people will be oppressed in other countries. Listen to them, however much you may disagree.
Yes, if I built an App for this, I would give away free signups to anyone at an email with a domain such as .cn, .ly, etc.
After some false-starts on iPhone cases (burned off my previous one, and i kinda don’t miss it), I wanted to post a quick note pointing others to a detailed description of some key differences.
iCollectGadgets shows a few great photos, but the key is in the following two (with permission, I’m willing to host a copy of these on my site to reduce any bandwidth-stealing):
Button Alignment:
Earbud 3.5mm Socket:
I would strongly recommend checking out the original site: https://icollectgadget.wordpress.com/2011/10/09/how-to-choose-cases-for-iphone-4s-and-iphone-4/
Teo phones taken from chargers this morning at 8:00: the latest HTC Android, and an iPhone 4, not a 4S. The iOS device has all manner of 3G, wifi, location services activated, the HTC perhaps the same.
IPhone is 80% battery, HTC is 57%. Sure, optimal conditions rate the content the other way, but we all know our wifi access points will hit 300 feet / 100meters range in an optimal situation: real life differs, and for my usage, HTC with MAYBE the same services active is burning battery twice as quickly.
Not sure Android is winning yet.
So I suddenly saw this:
Fatal error: Call to undefined method WebRequest::getIP() in extensions/ConfirmEdit/Captcha.php on line 202
Apparently, this is due to rev 106097, which replaced wfGetIP() with a wgRequest->getIP() that doesn’t exist. Maybe it’s in Yesterday’s version of WikiMedia only. 
My fix:
cd extensions/ConfirmEdit
svn update -r 106096
I’m putting this blog entry so that others may see it and make use of it.