A reason to NOT iPhone

I’m waiting for the first mass exploitation virus for the iPhone to arrive. With the iPhone ecosystem reaching critical mass, there can’t be much left in the way of roadblocks to prevent this. There has already been exploits that targeted ‘jail broken’ iPhones, more likely to have been created by Apple, or a fan of Apple DRM. Therefore the likelihood that a more potent virus will emerge is very high. The likely suspect, is one that exploits the ‘closed’ nature of the device, where the victim iPhone will show no indication of an infection.

Not that my chosen device is not subject to the same attacks, the Nokia N900 is also a target, but its just not as big a target as the iPhone. More or less the same argument that has been used to justify the lack of viruses on the Mac platform. I have a Mac also, and I feel safe, but not because it’s immune to viruses, it HAS been less targeted, and it has been ACTIVELY defended.

Another Reason to Love Nokia and Maemo

It’s not Google and it’s Deadly Power of Data I have always been leery of Power. I don’t buy Microsoft , and I’ve stopped playing into Apple fandom. The last computer I bought was a home-brew DIY Server built from parts I chose, powered by OpenSolaris So now it’s another validation of my still unshipped Nokia N900 and Maemo! Please let Amazon ship it soon 🙂

Is Apple Paranoid?

Paranoia is the only explanation for Apple Claiming iPhone Jailbreaking Could Crash Cellphone Towers. What is it with them, does AT&T have their thumb up their Apples? It more and more vindicates my decision to not buy into the Apple iPhone/iPod touch ecosystem. Android and Palm Pre are going to kick Apple’s AT&T! I guess that it’s true, Apple want’s to be the next Microsoft!

Webmin back door

NOTE: Do not accidently drop your own permissions to su to root.

{Unless you happen to remember to have Webmin running. }

This weekend while trying to get CUPS to print on my DYI-Server I managed to grant myself ‘CUPS management’ and lost all other permissions, including the ability to su to root. If you aren’t a sysadmin this is roughly the equivalent of locking your keys in your house. OpenSolaris, and most of the modern Linux distro’s don’t allow root login. So I thought I was thoughly screwed, until I calmed down, and realized that I had Webmin running, so permissions repaired. Yet another harrowing learning experience.

I’m learning too much that a classic, easy to administer desktop operating system might be beyond Linux and OpenSolaris. Windows and MacOSX have just managed to hide most of the pain involved from the average user. And believe me, there is a lot to hide. Unfortunately for Linux and OpenSolaris, the developers and discussion groups associated with these OS’s ARE NOT end users for the most part, and have little interest in the area of user experience. So if printers don’t print and webcams only work ‘sometimes’ that’s Ok, something of interest, just not a serious impact on their development or their perceptions of the impact to the end user experience.

I appreciate that OpenSolaris is reasonably stable, and features are abundant. I’d just like to snap a picture off the webcam, and play a DVD movie once in a while and not just marvel at ZFS time shifting and what not.

Now back to the books….;-)

A different thing in a real OS.

Through the weekend I believed that I had managed to screw up my OpenSolaris installation. So serious was my suspicion I was planning to erase the disk and reinstall the entire system. The sound system that I’d manage to get working wasn’t, the ZFS snapshot system kept failing into maintenance mode and the NetBeans IDE that I installed disappeared. Perhaps living in a windows world tainted me but in my ignorance, I recognized my lack of understanding and started Googling.

Sometimes panic can instill reason, and so with some illustrations and illumination from the OpenSolaris.org site, I discovered that the issue was the multiple packages that I had been downloading. The ZFS file system had been doing boot snapshots and I was rebooting into one of many boot ‘pools’ that were ‘confusing’ the system, when I was shown the tool for selecting the correct boot environment, and deleting the others, everything became stable. The sound works, the tools were there and it all works.

One note, the ZFS file system in OpenSolaris will surprise you, it takes a ‘snapshot’ of the ‘partitions’ you choose, and performs a type of backup journal of all the files there. Given that, the file manager, using a slide bar, allows you to ‘time slide’ the directory through the entire snapshot history to display the changes that have happened. Very interesting, but it takes a bit of getting used to. I have ‘time machine‘ on my Mac, though I have not used it, so I suspect this behaves in a similar fashion.

There was one issue, of course created by myself, in and effort to get video on the system I purchased a Logitech 3500 video class webcam with built-in Mike. And while the Ekiga VoIP and video conferencing application could detect and use the video from the camera, the built-in mike would kill the sound system. So I’m operating without the camera, hoping for a bugfix.

The conclusion, more or less, is that the fixes I perform, did not require a drastic rebuild and the loss of my work. Only some understanding, and some learning on my part. Learning about how a real OS operates, and protects itself. Something toy OS’s from the past have made us all believe don’t exist.

Time to learn that something old, is new again.

Last Hurrah for TealOS

The Palm WebOS emulation ‘skin’ that is called TealOS has been forced to stop starting on Monday.

I’m sorry to say that at Palm’s request, as of this upcoming Monday, March 30,
we will no longer be selling or distributing TealOS.

So if you want it, go get it now. I did, and it works great. I did this to protest Palm’s move to block their own customers from enjoying the WebOS look and feel. Even in the face of Apple’s threat of legal action against WebOS, they struck first against a Palm Developer that has been supporting them for years.

Bad Play! Palm

PS: Don’t forget to download the more current Beta of TealOS 1.48 Beta here

Apple virus scanning

This evening I installed ClamXav_1.1.1 into my MacBook and scanned my home directories. I was expecting nothing as I almost never download anything serious. But the scan did question several of my blog MySql backups which were lingering around in gzip formats, and one curious Java File ms03011.jar-3847f8dc-7fafd5ef, so I googled it, finding nothing, but abbreviating it down to ms03011.jar and found all sorts of hits, mostly with regards to ‘Adware’. The AV software had no recommendation, so I move the file(s) with that name from the library directory, and logged out and back in, and , it might be my imagination, the whole system seem to respond quicker. It could be nothing, but it didn’t hurt.

Apple Slaps down developers again

Every day I’m more and more impressed with my Palm T/X choice as Apple extends iPhone NDA. Apple is getting genuinely proprietary about their iPhone/iPod app store. They are making a mockery of their own developer community and that won’t last, seeing as there is now the Google G1 Android phone and it’s open source development roots.

UPDATE:

Apple’s iPhone is closing the door on the future

After hearing about how the iPhone can phone home and kill apps? I knew that my choice to purchase a Palm T/X was the correct one. But this is even more a vindication of my choice of the Nokia 6300 to act as the modem for both my MacBook and Palm T/X when Apple pulls posted iPhone modem app Apple won’t even allow you to use all the abilities of something You Own! just because they made it. DRM be dammed, being slaved to Apple is even worse. And just when Apple was beginning to increase marketshare, Job’s paranoia is making Apple into another Microsoft.

Apple Ergonomics and Working from Home

While I worked away this past week in an unexpected working from home situation I was proud of the job my MacBook did providing a Parallel’s Windows XP environment to connect to my office in Dublin. But the Mac did not come away unharmed as shown in the following photo.


This is the result of my use of the keyboard to rest my ham handed fists on it while typing on it. It is not the only damage I have inflicted on my MacBook as there is another crack in an exact mirrored position on the opposite palm rest, a crack I believe I committed by squeezing it too hard while picking it up one time some months ago. But it is apparent that this is a weak area of the MacBook, and the plastic is clearly too thin to support my hands let alone my grip, a definite design issue.

While on that thought, I also determined that while typing, the actual design of the edge of the MacBook is also done poorly as it really does have a sharp edge on the lip of the palm area that cuts into my hand, making me wish for a external keyboard. I have gotten very used to the chicklet keyboard layout on the MacBook, but that edge has to go. That however, engaged my memory, the first iBooks that Job’s and company delivered were much more ‘organic’ rounder things than the current incarnations and it made me long for more of that old style design. Maybe in the new MacBooks soon to be released, probably not, so until then, I’m off to find a laptop stand and keyboard.