Linux, programming, computers and life

There are a lot of web sites lately which extremely annoy me. Those overuse flash and use popup windows. I’ll start with the second item:
I want to decide whether i want the link in another window, tab, etc. Why the hell you decide it for me? Firefox has popup blocking abilities and i lately find myself leaving the site which tries to open popups instead of letting firefox open it.
And now to the first. Flash is ok for a photographer’s, painter’s or designer’s site. But a site which intended to be used should avoid it. Why a user must see annoying animation before using the site? A bookmark cannot be done inside full-flash site - why should the user tolerate this?
I’m certainly not the first to say this, i was just too annoyed by next flash site.

Technorati Tags: flash, web design, popups, annoying sites

Morning - part of day when you envy the unemployed.
Translated from bash.org.ru

Technorati Tags: funny, quote

I don’t own an ipod. I do have an mp3 player, which is conveniently is recognized as storage device (yep, regular drive) and in order to copy music to it, i just use my favorite file manager. (yes, i know than newer ipods also can be used this way).
I’m mentioning it in order to explain why i saw itunes for the first time several days ago. Someone asked me to help him with it. He, in turn, got asked by a friend . The problem was itunes copied all the music on the computer to the ipod, while only several songs were needed. “It should be easy, after all it’s apple product and it’s famous for it’s ease of use” - I thought to myself (at least that an impression i had).
The plan was simple: remove all the files from the ipod and copy there the needed ones. Well, deleting was simple enough - just select the ipod, press Ctrl-A and then press Del. I was happy . But copy was not that easy. I managed to find “control music manually” checkbox, add the needed directory to the library, click “recently added” (btw, i don’t know how to find not recently added music) and drag and drop the files to the ipod. I was happy again, but it was to early to be happy. Now, since i marked “control music manually” checkbox i needed to unmount (eject) the ipod. There’s a button for it, but it just didn’t work - dialog was displayed, saying “Cannot eject ipod, files are in use….”.
I admit, itunes beat me. I’ll stick to simpler mp3 players. Can someone explain what should i have done?

Technorati Tags: ipod, itunes, user experience

I never understood fancy/3D/interesting/etc screen savers. Screen saver is supposed to protect the screen from burning in certain points. As far as i understand that means dynamic picture. It’s not supposed to load the CPU/memory/graphic card/whatever and waste electricity. Besides, screen saver is when you are not near the computer. Can anyone explain why they are so popular?

Technorati Tags: screensaver, screen saver

Continued light linux applications (previous post): roxterm. That’s fast and light terminal emulator.

Technorati Tags: linux, roxterm, terminal emulator

I just read this. How to deal with annoying telemarketing calls. I curenly have only cell phone so i get less of those, but they are still annoying. In US, it’s even possible to sue them. I wonder whether there’s such a law in Israel. While it’s a hassle to deal with Small Claims Court, it’s still a nice option to have.

Technorati Tags: telemarketing

I just found out about port knocking - nice method to increase your computer security. Simple and beautiful idea. There are a lot of implementations too.

Technorati Tags: port knocking, security, port scan

Just a reminder. C++ is not C. memset is a useful function (you know, take-memory-location-and-length-and-fill-it-with-char). But there’s no reason whatsoever to use it in order to reset an object. Define a Reset() method (or choose your own name) and use it.
I’m not just saying it. It’s coming from a frustrated person after looking for a memory bug for day and a half. The bug was memset which reset some variable which was used in other memset and reset a lot of memory this way.
Two lessons learned:

1. memset is for buffers, not for objects
2. electric fence is really helpful

Technorati Tags: c++, c, memset, electric fence, efence

That’s something i planned to do for a long time - to start a bot on my computer which will allow me to do stuff. Just never got to it so far. Well, imified is almost such a bot. You can connect to it via every IM network (i obviously use jabber) and configure it to use predefined services - such as todos, reminders, notes, blog postings and so on. While it still is not as flexible as having my own bot - it’s MUCH easier and safer. This post is made via gaim . I’ll probably change some test to links later manually. BTW, i wonder whether the bot will ask me about technorati tags (it did not, i added them manually)

Technorati Tags: im, im+bot, bot, imified

I sure am not the first to say so, but Linux in not more complicated than Windows. The problem with Linux is you need to know relatively a lot in order to configure it the way you want. (BTW, a lot of distributions aim to make it easy, ubuntu, knoppix and mepis for example). Windows has another problem. Sure, if everything is OK you have to click several checkboxes here and there and everything works. But what if it doesn’t? Then you have to know A LOT in order to debug the problem. BTW, reinstalling windows is also not an easy task, and it must be done from time to time.

I’m a programmer, not system administrator, but many people do not understand the difference. Furthermore, i’m not using windows at home for a long time, so i’m not in shape with regard to fixing problems there. Each time somebody asks me to fix something, i’m trying to avoid it, but i’m not always able to do it - especially if family is involved . These times i really prefer if they had Linux installed - for me i’d be easier to fix it. Moreover, i’d be able to teach people what am i doing and why. Windows is a mystery. In windows i just go over all the options looking for clues and do uninstall-install cycles - and hope for the best.

Technorati Tags: linux, windows