JDPFu.com 2012

I use Firefox – whatever version that Ubuntu 10.04 LTS pushes. I don’t do beta testing – that is for the younger crowd.

Today, I found another extension that I’ll probably enable for shopping, but disable the rest of the time.

InvisibleHand

InvisibleHand is a browser extension that watches as you shop on 20-100 websites and suggests alternative, cheaper places to purchase the same item. When you finally get to a specific item page, it looks for that same item on all those other websites and show you where you can find it cheaper. It isn’t perfect, but WOW! For some items, you’ll see over 50% savings and for others, just a few dollars. Some of the suggested cheaper websites are not places that I’ve shopped before and for a few dollars, I’d probably go to NewEgg or Amazon first. Still, when Amazon isn’t priced right, seeing a $30 savings another company I’ve heard of before is nice. I found that most of the time, the alternative was exactly the same item, however, once it suggested the wrong model device, so definitely check that the suggested alternative really is what you want.

An article on Microsoft Trained Brain Syndrome that spells out some interesting points.

Still Need MS-Windows – Probably

Sadly, even if you do change to Linux for your daily use system, you’ll still probably need a Windows machine to run some software like TurboTax or the latest games. That’s just fine. If you don’t game, run Windows inside a virtual machine. If you do game, partition your drive with 60GB for Windows games – buy you’ll want to plan on 15 minutes and a reboot before playing so you can patch the system.

You’ll Prefer Linux

More and more you’ll find yourself in Linux and being happy about it. Trust me.

• You’ll be happy with the central OS and Application patching that Linux distros manage for you.
• You’ll like the added security because malware and spyware isn’t written for Linux.
• You’ll love all the free software that just works – 30K titles the last time I looked.
• You’ll love the really easy backup software that just works for either local or remote backups. Taking hourly snapshots is extremely easy.

Some days I feel like a broken record. For the last 5+ years, ever since USB v2.x has been available, people have been spending WAY TO MUCH to have an inferior portable hard disk. We won’t get into all the reasons that you’d want an external hard disk here – just know that they are fantastic. Also, we aren’t talking about the flash memory kind, rather the spinning HDD kind.

Here’s What You Should Know About Portable HDDs

I hike a few times every week. I prefer 3.5-8 mile hikes. Anything longer is a little too rough on my knees. The hillier the hike, the shorter so a very hilly Pine Mountain Recreation Area hike of 3.5 miles is very satisfying just like an 8 mile hike at FDR State Park. Almost all of these hikes will require hydration. In the summer, even when getting started very early in the morning, I’ve needed 3 quarts of water for some of these hikes, but most only need 1-1.5 quarts.

The List – Google Map Links

These are links to the trailheads and/or parking for each trail. Handy if you have a GPS.

We’ve all lost something in our travels. Last fall I was out hiking on a local trail and feeling good enough to jog down it after about 90 minutes of strenuous up/down hiking. Well, my legs couldn’t keep up with my mind and I took a spill off the trail and lost my sunglasses. I’ve been back on that same trail at least 3 times since that spill and always searched for a few minutes for the missing sunglasses, but never found them.

Until yesterday.

I haven’t been very active the last 2 months, so I took the reverse route on this trail thinking it was easier (that is debatable), anyway, as I was going up in the place where I had tripped previously, I stopped for about 2 minutes and searched. This time the glare of the sun off the frames was just perfect and I saw the lenses. Leaned over, picked them up and they appear to be no worse for being outdoors through 2 major snowfalls and sub-20 degF temperatures multiple times. Actually, they didn’t look bad at all.

Now if I could only get on the same airplane where I’ve left lots and lots of sunglasses in the seat backs. ;)

Anyway, it was a beautiful day for a hike, the sun was shining, temps in the mid 50s, the views from the peak were fantastic AND I found something I’d lost months ago. I couldn’t imagine any way it could have been better. I’m easily amused, but you know that already.

Came across this article form 2004 about a small business that dumped Microsoft after the BSA showed up and discovered 8 installed, but not used, pieces of software on their systems. Keeping up with software licenses is tough. The software marshals arrived, closed his business for the audit and found about 8 pieces of unlicensed software. $65K in fines and $35K in legal fees forced him to settle rather than fight.

The CEO got mad and told his IT guys to dump Microsoft. This was back in 2004. Back then, things were harder than today. That company doesn’t use any Microsoft products anymore, but they do use proprietary tools. Redhat Linux was their choice back then. I’d be curious to find out whether they’ve changed to CentOS on their servers or a different desktop.

Key Takeaways

Stolen from my comment over at LH …

1. Launch a Distributed Denial Of Service attack, DDoS
2. Setup your own botnet
3. Spread spyware
4. Release huge password databases
5. Release hacks for PS3s

Most of the time, Cloud Computing = Careless Computing.

Just because something is free and easy, doesn’t mean you should actually use it.

OTOH, there are times where using the Cloud makes perfect sense. When you want the widest distribution of data/info possible. In that case, remote, carefree computing is perfect.

When in doubt, don’t put it into the cloud because you can never get it back regardless of what the ToS say. IT security professionals are split on whether anything can be secured in the cloud. Certainly there are ways to accomplish it, but those methods are probably out of reach for individuals. I would have zero expectation of any real security on shared hosts or shared storage, but many people consider me paranoid. If it were your corporate data in the cloud, wouldn’t you want someone who is paranoid validating the security architecture?

You visit a web site and like the article enough to want to post a comment … of some kind. Then the website has a block that prevents you from posting. Comment-blocking. They do this by:

• login required or
• 3rd party service for comments
• non-working captcha
• requiring javascript for commenting of any kind (usually for anti-privacy domains like google.com)

Boo. The internet should be anonymous, if you want it that way. Sometimes you just want to say something without the repercussions to other areas of your life.

If I were not afraid of the repercussions, I’d setup a database of logins to websites that you could use to post with. If I had friends in foreign countries with servers, we could setup a loose federation.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to choose against privacy?

BTW, you can post on-topic comments here without a login.

I was listening to a Linux Outlaws podcast where I heard a quote from Mr. Richard Stallman that caught me as true. I looked up the real quote.

“I suppose many people will continue moving towards careless computing, because there’s a sucker born every minute. The US government may try to encourage people to place their data where the US government can seize it without showing them a search warrant, rather than in their own property. However, as long as enough of us continue keeping our data under our own control, we can still do so. And we had better do so, or the option may disappear.” Here’s the source link.

Careless Computing. Your data is stored someplace else and no longer under your control. A good, clear, and accurate term.

There are good uses of Cloud Computing, but not without lots of very careful thought.

Over the years, I’ve used a few different techniques to track UPS, USPS, and FedEx shipments. I’ve tried direct links to the shipper’s website, email status updates with cron, and just using the store’s shipment tracking. The email tracking interfaces have changed to be less-than-useful to me. Logging into the shipper’s website just to track a shipment became a hassle. No thanks.

None of these made me happy, so this morning I created a trivial CGI script + data file to track shipments. It isn’t anything too fancy and you need to edit the data file manually, but it feels better than the other alternatives.