Technical Geekery Blog

Blog Move Announcement

2011-09-25T09:55:00.002-05:00

I have a new blog posting tips and information about computers, that will include some things similar to what this blog was. You can also get a notification emailed to you every week when I post something new--check out the sidebar on the new blog. If you got here via Google or random blog search, take a look at it:

http://tips.thetechnicalgeekery.com

I don't anticipate posting anything more on this blog, as the new one will fill that role just fine.

Soren "scorchgeek" Bjornstad

http://www.thetechnicalgeekery.com

Microsoft is not the answer.Microsoft is the question.The answer is "No."

Annotated Command Prompt History

2010-08-30T17:13:00.003-05:00

Bash (the Linux command line) has a very useful and interesting feature that saves your last 500 entered commands. So this is an annotated version of my history output from three sets of history (my main computer, the administrator account on that computer ('root'), and my server). It's actually pretty funny in places. I think most people who don't understand the commands should be able to follow along. (ls gets a listing of files in current folder, cd changes folders, grep searches things, vim and emacs are text editors, sudo runs a command as administrator, and you should pick up the rest.)

UPDATE: This formatting is kind of a pain to read--the editor stripped out my tabs, which made it much easier to spot which were commands and which were annotations. You can see it on Google Docs with much better formatting at http://tinyurl.com/33fh3qj.

1 cd Desktop/anki-1.0/
2 ls
3 cat * -r
4 cat *
5 cat * |grep 'statistics'
6 cd libanki
7 ls
8 cd anki
9 ls
10 cat * |grep 'statistics' |less
Still can't find that elusive 'statistics'...
11 exit
12 sudo apt-get install SQLite3
13 cd Downloads
14 ruby
15 sudo apt-get install ruby
16 ruby anki1.0.rb
17 sqlite
18 cd Downloads
19 vi anki1.0.rb
Now I have to edit the script I just downloaded two programs to run?
20 telnet nethack.alt.org
21 telnet termcast.org
22 telnet nethack.alt.org
23 telnet slashem.crash-override.net
24 telnet nethack.alt.org
25 sudo /usr/games/nethack -D
26 telnet nethack.alt.org
27 telnet slashem.crash-override.net
28 sudo /usr/games/nethack -D
29 telnet nethack.alt.org
Playing enough nethack here?
30 ping 192.168.1.44
31 serverlogin
32 ping 192.168.1.34
33 ping 192.168.1.44
34 ??
35 serverlogin
Guess someone's confused about his IP address, based on the ??...
36 vi
37 vim
38 emacs
39 exit
Really can't decide which text editor to use. Guess I'll just have to leave.
40 cd Desktop/interhack
41 ls
42 perl interhack.pl
43 ssh soren@192.168.1.44
44 exit
45 kompozer
46 sudo apt-get install kompozer
47 kompozer
Whoops! Missing that program...wait, it's Ubuntu, I'll just install it instantly.
48 telnet termcast.org
49 qqqqclear
50 clear
Typing in the wrong window...
51 telnet nethack.alt.org
52 ls
Not sure what the ls was about.
53 exit
54 ssh soren@192.168.1.44
55 nethack
56 telnet nethack.alt.org
57 exit
58 lynx
59 exit
60 telnet nethack.alt.org
61 telnet termcast.org
62 telnet nethack.alt.org
63 telnet nethack.alt.org
64 telnet termcast.org
65 telnet nethack.alt.org
66 sudo /usr/games/nethack -D
67 telnet nethack.alt.org
68 nethack -X
69 irssi
70 exit
71 sudo /usr/games/nethack -D
72 telnet nethack.alt.org
73 telnet nethack.alt.org
74 telnet nethack.alt.org
75 sudo /usr/games/nethack -D
76 telnet nethack.alt.org
77 ssh soren@192.168.1.44
78 telnet nethack.alt.org
79 sudo /usr/games/nethack -D
80 telnet nethack.alt.org
81 crawl
82 exit
More nethack. And crawl.
83 sudo emacs23 /etc/init.d/rc
84 sudo vim /boot/grub/menu.lst
Still can't decide on a text editor.
85 sudo cp /boot/grub/menu.lst /boot/grub/menu.baklst
86 sudo vim /boot/grub/menu.lst
87 sudo update-grub
88 vim /boot/grub/menu.lst
89 bash
Go ahead--start bash from within bash. Not sure where that came from.
90 chrome
91 chrome-browser
What's that program called again?
92 sudo killall gdm
93 sudo telinit 1
94 ls /var/cache/apt/archives |less
95 sudo apt-get autoclean
96 sudo apt-get autoremove
97 ssh soren@192.168.1.44
98 crawl
99 telnet nethack.alt.org
100 startx
101 telnet nethack.alt.org
102 sudo /usr/games/nethack -D
103 SET SPLEVTYPE minetn-7
104 set SPLEVTYPE minetn-7
105 echo $SPLEVTYPE
106 echo SPLEVTYPE
107 env
108 cd /
109 find '*breaking*'
110 find *breaking*
111 find
112 find |grep 'breaking'
How do you breaking find again?
113 env $XDG_CACHE_HOME
114 cd
115 ls
116 cd .chrome
117 ls
118 ls -a
119 cd http://www.youtube.com/user/zmusicguy#p/f/0/rJXbwioyK8E
120 cd /home/soren/.mozilla/firefox/rs4s7t4h.default/Cache
121 ls
122 sudo /usr/games/nethack -D
123 telnet nethack.alt.org
124 ls
125 cat soren@192.168.1.44
126 ls
127 ./soren@192.168.1.44
128 telnet nethack.alt.org
129 emacs23; exit
130 emacs23&;exit
131 emacs23& ;exit
132 emacs23 &;exit
133 emacs23 & exit
Wait--how do you type & without hitting the ; key again?
134 cd Desktop/interhack
135 ls
136 perl interhack.pl
137 cpan -i $VT102.pm
138 ./interhack
139 perl interhack.pl
140 perl Makefile.PL; sudo make installdeps
141 ./interhack
142 ./interhack.pl
143 chmod +x interhack.pl
144 ./interhack.pl
145 telnet nethack.alt.org
146 ./interhack.pl
147 cd ./Desktop/interhack
148 ./interhack.pl
149 cpan -i $VT102.pm
150 cpan -i $Role.pm
151 cpan -i /.pm/
152 cpan
153 cpan -i
154 exit
155 perl interhack.pl
156 cd Desktop
157 cd interhack
158 ls
159 perl interhack.pl
160 cpan -i Calf
161 i
162 cpan -i /Calf/
163 perl interhack.pl
That ./interhack.pl doesn't like me...
164 %1
165 I had a question the other day: If everyone forgot everything they knew about computers, how many people would still be using Windows?
166 Imagine that you decided you were going to completely remodel your bathroom. Not being an expert on bathrooms, you don't know much about the various toilets, sinks, and bathtubs available, so you talk to a salesman, and he helps you pick out something that you think will work well. Then he says that you have a choice between the electric blue and lime green varieties of toilet paper. Let's assume that they look equally absurd, and you don't prefer one for its color. The salesman tells you that 90% of people buy the electric blue type. Naturally, you choose the blue, because you assume that if all those people use it, it must be the best.
167 But what you don't know is going to hurt you. Had you taken the time to do your research, you would have found out that electric blue toilet paper dyes your toilet a funny color, clogs the drain on a regular basis, and occasionally even spontaneously explodes. On the other hand, the green kind almost never clogs the toilet, contains much more toilet paper on the same roll, and doesn't lose its dye.
168 Making the situation even more complicated is the existence of the burnt orange variety of toilet paper. It is completely free, allows you to control the exact amount of toilet paper you want to put on a roll (allowing for dispensers of different sizes), lets you refill your toilet paper roll any time you want, and clogs your toilet only in very exceptional circumstances. Unfortunately, you can't buy it along with your bathroom--you have to install it yourself later. You also need to read the short manual in order to learn how to use it correctly. And the existence of this toilet paper is never even mentioned when you buy your toilet. A small number of people find out about and properly set up their orange toilet paper and are very happy with it, but when they try to tell others about the great toilet paper they found, those people only laugh and say, "Wait--you had to read a manual to use your toilet paper?"
169 Now I'm going to add some additional factors to the toilet paper debate.
170 1. The lime green toilet paper is significantly more expensive than the blue kind. The orange kind is still free.
171 2. People can break your toilet's security and damage or make your toilet paper unusable.
172 3. Occasionally, all types of toilet paper will stop working. However, green and orange toilet paper do this less often, and can usually be recovered within a couple of minutes. Orange toilet paper has the potential to be wrecked beyond repair if used improperly, but will almost never break of its own accord.
173 4. Once you have selected a type of toilet paper, you cannot use another one with the toilet without going through an hour-long process that converts it to a different type.
174 5. Blue toilet paper is much easier to find than green and orange toilet paper, and it's very likely that your neighbor will have some blue toilet paper you can borrow if you run out, but (due to their lesser popularity), this is often not true with other types.
175 6. People who normally use a different type of toilet paper may have difficulty using yours. People who prefer orange toilet paper are usually used to all the different types, and will often have no problem. However, users of orange toilet paper are quite rare.
176 So, summarizing:
177 * Electric blue toilet paper is very unreliable--it damages your toilet, clogs it frequently, and sometimes even explodes. It often breaks and can be difficult to repair, and malicious people can easily damage your toilet paper. However, it is very common and you will nearly always be able to find some, and nearly everybody can use it without any trouble.
178 * Lime green toilet paper uses different concepts than blue toilet paper, so people may experience a slight learning curve changing from one to the other. However, it's just as easy to learn to use as blue toilet paper, and is significantly more reliable. Unfortunately, only a small number of people use it, so your use of green toilet paper may annoy people, and you may have difficulty finding more when you run out. It's also the most expensive
179 I think we can all agree on the fact that if popularity concerns were removed, the blue toilet paper is an absolutely terrible deal and nobody would use it. Lime green and burnt orange toilet paper would then be the serious contenders. In this case, I would expect that roughly the same number of people would choose to use green toilet paper as orange. People who are willing to spend some money and don't like learning things would choose lime green toilet paper, while those who want to save their money and are willing to work a little bit to have better control of their toilet would choose orange toilet paper. In this situation, the issue of people having difficulty using other types of toilet paper would also be diminished--with only two types of toilet paper in use, and without one having a near-total monopoly, people would learn the basics of how to use the other type properly, even if they didn't like it much.
180 ---
181 If you didn't get it yet, my electric blue toilet paper represents Windows, lime green toilet paper represents the Mac OS X, and burnt orange toilet paper represents Linux. I may have exaggerated a bit on the instability of Windows, but I honestly have never used another operating system that occasionally chooses to melt down at an inopportune time and sit there with a guilty blue screen facing me. Although occasional slow performance and bugs are a fact of life with computers, Windows also seems to have more of them than any other operating system. And it's not like Windows has a terribly innovative interface or anything else to particularly recommend it, either. It does, as with blue toilet paper, have a wide user base (although more and more new college students, for one, are beginning to purchase Macs), and is compatible with nearly everything. Even that advantage is beginning to change, as more devices provide Linux drivers, more cross-platform software is developed, and the amount of extremely useful free software (free as i
Here I accidentally pasted a text file into my terminal. Most annoying when trying to run a search through my history.
182 telnet nethack.alt.org
183 ./interhack.pl
184 ~/Desktop/interhack/interhack.pl
185 cd Desktop/interhack
186 perl interhack.pl
187 cd ./Desktop/interhack
188 perl interhack.pl
More nethack.
189 top
190 ls
191 top
192 cd /tmp
193 ls
194 ls -a
195 cd .
196 cd ..
197 cd tmp
198 ls
199 ls -a
200 crontab -e
201 crontab -select-editor
202 select-editor
203 ed
204 man ed
205 select-editor
206 crontab -e
Guess we're still not sure on which editor to use.
207 at 1:40 today
208 at 13:40 today
209 atq
210 time
211 clear
212 atq
213 cd ./Desktop/interhack
214 perl interhack.pl
215 telnet nethack.alt.org
216 crawl
217 cd ./Desktop/interhack
218 perl interhack.pl
219 sudo apt-get install sbackup
220 ssh soren@192.168.1.44
221 hmm
222 exit
223 ??
224 exit
225 screen
226 exit
227 screen
228 byobu
229 exit
Exiting seems to cause a lot of confusion. Oddly enough, I'd always thought it was a fairly simple concept.
230 sudo halt
231 telnet nethack.alt.org
232 irssi
233 man irssi
234 sudo killall gdm
235 sudo killall Xorg
236 telnet nethack.alt.org
237 irssi
238 sudo halt
239 sudo /usr/games/nethack -D
240 cd ./Desktop/interhack
241 ./interhack.pl
242 cd ./Desktop/interhack
243 ./interhack.pl
244 cd ./Desktop/interhack
245 ./interhack.pl
246 crawl
247 telnet nethack.alt.org
248 cd ./Desktop/interhack
249 ./interhack.pl
Yet more Nethack.
250 ls
251 df
252 df -h
253 cd regextests
254 ls
255 cd t1
256 ls
257 rm A\ broken\ file
258 ls
259 cd /home
260 ls
Having a bit of trouble deleting a folder.
261 tar -?
262 history | grep 'tar'
263 ls
264 tar -cjf /media/Files/backup.tar.bz2 soren
265 tar -cjf /media/Backup/backup.tar.bz2 soren
266 telnet nethack.alt.org
267 telnet termcast.org
268 clear
269 cd /home/wizard
270 cd ./Desktop/interhack
271 cd ~
272 cd ./Desktop/interhack
273 ./interhack.pl
274 telnet termcast.org
275 ./interhack.pl
276 exit
277 sudo /usr/games/nethack -D
278 ssh soren@192.168.1.44
279 exit
280 telnet termcast.org
281 cd /usr/share/nethack
282 ls
283 cd /usr/games/nethack
284 ls
285 cd /usr/share
286 ls
287 cd ..
288 locate nethack
289 cd /var/games/nethack
290 ls
291 cd save
292 ls
293 clear
294 ps
295 ps -e
296 ls -1
297 ls -l
298 telnet termcast.org
299 telnet nethack.eu
300 exit
301 emacs23
302 firefox &
303 fg %1
304 telnet nethack.alt.org
305 telnet nethack.de
306 telnet nethack.eu
307 clear
308 sudo /usr/games/nethack -D
309 telnet nethack.eu
310 telnet nethack.alt.org
311 cd Desktop/interhack
312 ./interhack.pl
313 telnet nethack.alt.org
314 exit
315 crawl
316 exit
317 cd Desktop
318 ./nethackize
319 vi nethackize
320 gedit nethackize
321 ./nethackize
322 python nethackize
323 serverlogin
324 ./serverlogin
Even more Nethack. Getting tired of this in my history.
325 ssh soren@192.168.1.44
326 --
327 Soren Bjornstad
328 http://www.thetechnicalgeekery.com
329 "Using Linux is like driving a tank.
330 Not everyone knows how to drive a tank,
331 but once you learn how, you're driving a tank!
Another mis-paste.
332 exit
333 cd Desktop
334 mv Organize-Screenshot-* Organize-Screenshots
335 mv Organize-Screenshot-* Organize-Screenshot
That little s can be a pain.
336 ls
337 cd Organiz
338 cd Organize-Screenshot/
339 ls
340 echo Test\Test
341 echo \$Test
We like tests, don't we? Let's put some on the screen!
342 clear
343 crawl
344 telnet nethack.alt.org
345 crawl
346 cd Desktop/interhack
347 ./interhack.pl
348 ssh soren@192.168.1.44
349 exit
350 cd /home/wizard
351 ls
352 rogue
353 exit
354 cd /media
355 ls
356 cd cdrom
357 ls
358 cd ..
359 rogue
360 killall keepass
361 p
362 ps
363 ps -e
364 ps -e |grep 'kee'
365 killall keepassx
Oh, so that's what the program is called. (Strange, I had always thought the 'killall' command killed anything with part of the name in it.
366 ftp www.valpo.k12.in.us
367 ssh www.valpo.k12.in.us
368 ping www.valpo.k12.in.us
Wait, how do you access this server? (I'm not really sure what I was trying to do, actually--I knew perfectly well it didn't accept any connections.)
369 rogue
370 telnet nethack.alt.org
371 sudo /usr/games/nethack -D
372 telnet nethack.alt.org
373 exit
374 gksu nautilus /media
375 gksu nautilus
376 ssh soren@192.168.1.44
377 exit
378 rogue
379 crawl
380 exit
381 anki
382 lynx
383 exit
384 ping
385 ping 188.165.157.209
386 exit
387 cd ..
388 ls
389 tar -cjf /media/Backup/backup100823.tar.bz2 soren
390 sudo tar -cjf /media/Backup/backup100823.tar.bz2 soren
391 telnet nethack.alt.org
392 nethack
393 sudo /usr/games/nethack -D
394 telnet nethack.alt.org
395 sudo /usr/games/nethack -D
396 exit
397 ping www.ancestry.com
Not sure what's up with 397.
398 exit
399 ssh soren@192.168.1.44
400 ssh soren@192.168.1.44
401 sftp soren@192.168.1.44
402 rsync
403 rsync -e ssh
404 rsync ssh
405 cd /media/Digital\ Video
406 ls
407 scp * soren@192.168.1.44:/media/music
408 rsync
409 rsync * soren@192.168.1.44:/media/music
410 rsync -r * soren@192.168.1.44:/media/music
Just copying some of those files can be a bit troublesome...
411 sudo halt
412 sudo reboot
413 ls /dev
414 mt
415 mt --help
416 man mt
417 mt -f /dev/st0 rewind
418 sudo mt -f /dev/st0 rewind
419 ls
420 sudo tar -czf /dev/st0 Incognita.xptv
421 tar -tzf /dev/st0
422 sudo tar -tzf /dev/st0
423 sudo tar -czf /dev/st0 CablesDitching
424 sudo tar -tzf /dev/st0
425 sudo mt -f /dev/sd0 rewind
426 sudo mt /dev/sd0 rewind
427 sudo mt -f /dev/sd0 rewind
428 sudo mt rewind /dev/sd0
429 sudo mt /dev/sd0
430 sudo mt /dev/sd0 rewind
431 mt --help
Trying to learn to use a new tape drive. Took me a while to realize it wasn't working because I typed /sd0 instead of /st0.
432 mf -f /dev/st0
433 mt -f /dev/st0
434 mt -f /dev/st0 rewind
435 sudo mt -f /dev/st0 rewind
436 mt -f /dev/st0 offline
437 sudo mt -f /dev/st0 offline
438 sudo mt -f /dev/st0 rewind
439 sudo tar -tzf /dev/st0
440 sudo tar -czf /dev/st0 Incognita.xptv
441 sudo tar -tzf /dev/st0
442 sudo mt -f /dev/st0 rewind
443 sudo mt -f /dev/st0 status
444 sudo mt -f /dev/st0 erase
445 ls Downloads/
446 ssh soren@192.168.1.44
447 exit
448 ls
449 ssh soren@192.168.1.44
450 ls
451 cd /media/Files
452 ls
453 cd ..
454 cd /etc
455 ls
456 cd ..
457 exit
458 ls
459 tar --help | grep '-d'
460 tar --help | grep "'-d'"
461 tar --help | grep "-d"
462 tar --help
Grep didn't like me. I'll just have to read it myself.
463 ls -a
464 ls -a >listing.txt
465 gedit listing.txt &
466 history | grep 'tar'
467 tar -czf /dev/st0 /home/soren /media/Files /etc --exclude /home/soren/.cache
468 sudo tar -czf /dev/st0 /home/soren /media/Files /etc --exclude /home/soren/.cache
469 mt -f /dev/st0 rewind
470 sudo mt -f /dev/st0 rewind
471 sudo tar -czfv /dev/st0 /home/soren /media/Files /etc --exclude /home/soren/.cache
472 ls
473 tar --help
474 sudo tar -czf /dev/st0 /home/soren /media/Files /etc --exclude /home/soren/.cache --verbose
475 mt /dev/sd0 status
476 mt -f /dev/sd0 status
477 sudo mt -f /dev/sd0 status
478 sudo status /dev/sd0
479 sudo mt -f /dev/st0 status
480 sudo mt -f /dev/sd0 rewind
481 sudo mt -f /dev/st0 rewind
482 sudo tar -czf /dev/st0 /home/soren /etc --exclude /home/soren/.cache --exclude /home/soren/.local/share/Trash --verbose
483 sudo tar -df /dev/st0 /home/soren /etc --exclude /home/soren/.cache --exclude /home/soren/.local/share/Trash --verbose
484 sudo tar -czf /dev/st0 /home/soren /etc --exclude /home/soren/.cache --exclude /home/soren/.local/share/Trash
485 sudo tar -df /dev/st0 /home/soren /etc
486 sudo tar -tzf /dev/st0
Takes a while to get that right...
487 sudo mt -f /dev/st0 rewind
488 sudo mt -f /dev/st0 offline
489 chmod +x backscript
490 ls -l
491 sudo ./backscript
Now maybe I can just run the script instead of typing commands over and over and over and over and over again.
492 cat /media/Files/baklog.txt
493 cat /media/Files/difflog.txt
494 history
495 history | ~/history.txt
496 history > ~/history.txt
Takes a few tries to get the history properly.

--------ROOT---------

1 clear
2 cd ~
3 ls
4 pwd
5 clear
6 reboot
7 halt
8 halt
9 reboot
Rebooting a few times should so *something*!
10 apt-get
11 apt-get remove kompozer
12 reboot
13 ls
14 clear
15 quit
16 exit
17 cd /etc
18 cp fstab fstab_backup
19 ls
20 nano fstab
Nano? This history must go back a long way, I haven't used nano in months.
21 clear
22 logout
23 cd /home
24 ls
25 rm -rf soren
This one scares me a bit, not sure why I was trying to delete my own user account.
26 ls
27 clear
28 reboot
29 nano /etc/fstab
30 rebooyt
31 reboot
32 ls
33 umount /home
34 ls
35 cd /home
36 ls
37 mkdir soren
38 ls
39 nano /etc/fstab
40 reboot
41 ls
42 umount /home/sore
43 umount /home/soren
Oh, I remember this time now. I tried to move my (Linux) home directory onto a Windows-formatted drive. Did not go well at all.
44 cd /home/soren
45 ls
46 mount /dev/sdb1 /media/files
47 mount /dev/sdb1 /media/Files
48 cd /media/Files
49 ls
50 cp "05 - Track 05.mp3" /home/soren
51 cp -r * /home/soren
52 cd /home/soren
53 ls
54 rm -r OldDocs
55 ls
56 du
57 df
58 ls
59 cd /media/Files
60 ls
61 cp [p-z,P-Z]* /home/soren
62 cp -r [p-z,P-Z]* /home/soren
Something wrong with the a-o folders? Not sure what's up there.
63 ls
64 cd /home/soren
65 sl
66 ls -a
67 rm -r "Tape Copy Project"
68 ls
69 rm -r "System Volume Information"
70 rm -r "Technical Geekery Website"
71 ls
72 df
73 du
74 ls
75 cd Music
76 ls
77 cd ..
78 cd soren
79 ls
80 du
81 cd ..
82 ls
83 du "SORDRIVE dump 4-19-09"
84 du "SORDRIVE dump 4-19-09"\
85 du "SORDRIVE dump 4-19-09"/
86 clear
87 df
88 ls
89 cd Videos
90 ls
91 clear
92 ls
93 cd ..
94 ls
95 cd hom
96 cd home
97 ls
98 cd ..
99 cd home
100 ls -a
101 cd ..
102 rm home
103 rm -rt home
104 rm -r home
105 ls
106 rm -r "SORDRIVE dump 4-19-09"
107 df
108 cd /dev/sdb1
109 cd /media/Files
An insane number of cd's, ls's, and a couple of rm's, especially ones of important system directories, can never fail to go well, apparently.
110 ls
111 ls -a
112 ls -a |grep .*
113 ls
114 grep
115 grep .*
116 ls
117 ls |grep .
118 ls -a |grep .*
Guess I didn't understand the grep command yet. That winds up searching for everything.
119 clear
120 ls
121 clear
122 ls
123 clear
I don't like the directory listing--get it out of here!
124 ls -a
125 cp .* /home/soren
126 cp -r .* /home/soren
127 cd /home/soren
128 ls
129 ls -a
130 cd ./.audacity-data
131 ls
132 du
133 cd ..
134 df
135 ls
136 ls -a
137 cd ..
138 ls
139 cd /media/Files
140 ls
141 ls -a
142 cp .??* /home/soren
143 cp -r .??* /home/soren
144 ls
145 cp --help
146 cp --help |less
147 clear
148 ls
149 ls -a
150 cp .*/ /home/soren
151 cp -rv .*/ /home/soren
152 ls
153 cp -rv /media/Files/.*/ /home/soren
154 ls
155 cp -rv /media/Files/.*/ /home/soren/
156 cd /home/soren
Copying didn't like me that day. Or I didn't like it. Or both.
157 ls
158 ls -a
159 mkdir .
160 cd .
161 cd /media/Files
162 ls
163 ls -a
164 cp .bashrc /home/soren
165 ls /home/soren
166 ls -a /home/soren
167 ls
168 ls -a
169 ls -a /home/soren
170 cp -rv .* /home/soren/
171 ls
172 cd /home/soren
173 ls
174 rm -r OldDocs
175 rm -r $RECYCLE.BIN
176 rm -r "$RECYCLE.BIN"
177 rm -r "$RECYCLE.BIN"
178 rm -r ""$RECYCLE.BIN""
How did you spell $RECYCLE.BIN again?
179 ls
180 du $RECYCLE.BIN
181 cd $RECYCLE.BIN
182 df
183 cd /media/Files
184 clear
185 ls
186 ls -a
187 cp ".*" /home/soren
188 cp ./"."* /home/soren
189 cp -rv ./"."* /home/soren
190 ls
191 ls -a
192 ls -al
193 ls -a |more
194 ls
195 ls -a
196 ls -a | dirs
197 ls -a > dirs
None of those listings any good. Especially the second time I ask for the same one.
198 nano dirs
199 clear
200 ls
201 dirs |grep .* >dirs2
Better filter everything out of the file and put it in another!
(For the record, the correct way to do this [search for a . at the beginning of filenames) is \.*)
202 nano dirs2
203 clear
204 ls
205 .*
206 ls -a
207 cp .bashrc /home/soren
208 cp .bzf /home/soren
209 cp -r .bzf /home/soren
210 ls -a
211 cp -r .cache /home/soren
212 cp -r .compiz /home/soren
213 cp -r .config /home/soren
214 cp -r .dbus /home/soren
215 cp -r .dillo /home/soren
216 cp -r .dmrc /home/soren
217 cp -r .esd_auth /home/soren
218 cp -r .evolution /home/soren
219 cp -r .filezilla /home/soren
Resistance is futile, computer! I'll do it anyway! (Making it even funnier, I didn't even know you could hit 'tab' to complete a filename, so I typed every one of those commands out.)
220 ls
221 ls -a
222 ls -a |more
223 ls -a >nano
224 nano nano
Not sure why I called that file nano.
225 ls
226 ls -a
227 nano dirs
228 clear
229 ls -a
230 cp -r .fontconfig /home/soren
231 cp -r .gconf /home/soren
232 ls -a /home/soren
233 ls -a
234 cp -r .gconfd /home/soren
235 cp -r .gegl-0.0 /home/soren
236 cp -r .gimp-2.6 /home/soren
237 cp -r .gksu.lock /home/soren
238 cp -r .gksu.loc /home/soren
239 cp -r .gnome2 /home/soren
240 cp -r .gnome2-private /home/soren
241 cp -r .gnome2_private /home/soren
242 cp -r .gnupg /home/soren
243 cp -r .gstreamer-0.10 /home/soren
244 cp -r .gtk-bookmarks /home/soren
245 ls -a
246 cp -r .ICEauthority /home/soren
247 ls -a
248 cp -r .icons /home/soren
249 cp -r .kompozer /home/soren
250 cp -r .kompozer.net /home/soren
251 cp -r .local /home/soren
252 cp -r .macromedia /home/soren
253 cp -r .mozilla /home/soren
254 cp -r .nautilus /home/soren
255 cp -r .nvidia-settings-rc /home/soren
256 cp -r .openoffice.org /home/soren
257 cp -r .openoffice.org2 /home/soren
258 cp -r .profile /home/soren
259 cp -r .pulse /home/soren
260 cp -r .pulse-cookie /home/soren
261 cp -r .recently-used /home/soren
262 cp -r .recently-used.xbel /home/soren
263 ls
264 ls -a
265 nano dirs
266 ls -a
267 cp -r .ripoff /home/soren
268 cp -r .Skype /home/soren
269 cp -r .sudo_as_admin_successful /home/soren
270 cp -r .sudoku /home/soren
271 cp -r .supertux /home/soren
272 cp -r .supertux2 /home/soren
273 cp -r .themes /home/soren
274 ls -a
275 cp -r .thumbnails /home/soren
276 cp -r .tomboy /home/soren
277 cp -r .tomboy.log /home/soren
278 cp -r .update-manager-core /home/soren
279 cp -r .update-notifier /home/soren
280 cp -r .w3m /home/soren
281 cp -r .wapi /home/soren
282 cp -r .Xauthority /home/soren
283 cp -r .xscreensaver-getimage.cache /home/soren
284 cp -r .xsession-errors /home/soren
285 cd /home/soren
Beat that! 175 commands to do something that should have been accomplished in one!
286 ls -a
287 ls -l
288 cd ..
289 ls
290 chown soren soren
Wait, soren should own soren?
291 ls
292 chown -r soren soren
293 chown -R soren soren
294 cd soren
295 ls
296 ls -l
297 chmod * 665
298 cd ..
299 chmod -r soren 665
The wonders of permissions.
300 reboot
301 halt
302 top
303 sudo reboot
304 halt
305 top
306 reboot
Guess we finally solved that one.
307 nethack -D
308 /usr/games/nethack -D
309 /usr/games/nethack -D
310 nethack -D
311 /usr/gamesnethack -D
312 /usr/games/nethack -D
313 /usr/games/nethack -D
314 nethack -D
315 /usr/games/nethack -D
316 nethack -D
317 /usr/games/nethack -D
318 /usr/games/nethack -D
319 /usr/games/nethack -D
320 /usr/games/nethack -D
321 /usr/games/nethack -D
322 /usr/games/nethack -D
323 clear
324 /usr/games/nethack -D
325 clear
326 /usr/games/nethack -D
327 /usr/games/nethack -D
328 /usr/games/nethack -D
329 /usr/games/nethack -D
330 exit
331 /usr/games/nethack -D
332 /usr/games/nethack -D
333 /usr/games/nethack -D
334 /usr/games/nethack -D
335 clear
336 quit
337 /usr/games/nethack -D
338 clear
339 quit
340 exit
341 /usr/games/nethack -D
342 /usr/games/nethack -D
343 /usr/games/nethack -D
344 /usr/games/nethack -D
345 /usr/games/nethack -D
346 /usr/games/nethack -D
347 /usr/games/nethack -D
348 /usr/games/nethack -D
349 /usr/games/nethack -D
350 /usr/games/nethack -D
351 /usr/games/nethack -D
352 /usr/games/nethack -D
353 /usr/games/nethack -D
354 /usr/games/nethack -D
355 /usr/games/nethack -D
356 exdit
357 exit
358 exit
359 /usr/games/nethack -D
360 /usr/games/nethack -D
361 /usr/games/nethack -D
362 exit
363 /usr/games/nethack -D
364 clear
365 exit
366 /usr/games/nethack -D
367 exit
368 /usr/games/nethack -D
369 /usr/games/nethack -D
370 /usr/games/nethack -D
371 exit
372 /usr/games/nethack -D
373 exit
374 /usr/games/nethack -D
375 nethack
376 /usr/games/nethack -D
377 /usr/games/nethack -D
378 /usr/games/nethack -D
379 /usr/games/nethack -D
380 /usr/games/nethack -D
381 exit
382 exit
383 exit
384 /usr/games/nethack -D
385 /usr/games/nethack -D
386 /usr/games/nethack -D
387 /usr/games/nethack -D
388 /usr/games/nethack -D
389 /usr/games/nethack -D
390 /usr/games/nethack -D
391 /usr/games/nethack -D
392 /usr/games/nethack -D
393 /usr/games/nethack -D
394 /usr/games/nethack -D
395 exit
396 /usr/games/nethack -D
397 /usr/games/nethack -D
398 /usr/games/nethack -D
399 /usr/games/nethack -D
400 /usr/games/nethack -D
401 /usr/games/nethack -D
402 /usr/games/nethack -D
403 /usr/games/nethack -D
404 nethack
405 /usr/games/nethack -D
406 /usr/games/nethack -D
407 /usr/games/nethack -D
408 /usr/games/nethack -D
409 /usr/games/nethack -D
410 /usr/games/nethack -D
411 exit
412 exit
413 /usr/games/nethack -D
414 /usr/games/nethack -D
415 /usr/games/nethack -D
416 /usr/games/nethack -D
417 /usr/games/nethack -D
418 /usr/games/nethack -D
419 /usr/games/nethack -X
420 /usr/games/nethack -X
421 exit
422 /usr/games/nethack -X
423 /usr/games/nethack -D
424 /usr/games/nethack -D
425 /usr/games/nethack -D
426 /usr/games/nethack -D
427 /usr/games/nethack -D
428 /usr/games/nethack -D
429 exit
430 /usr/games/nethack -D
431 /usr/games/nethack -D
432 exit
433 /usr/games/nethack -D
434 /usr/games/nethack -D
435 /usr/games/nethack -D
436 /usr/games/nethack -D
437 exit
438 /usr/games/nethack -D
439 /usr/games/nethack -D
440 /usr/games/nethack -D
441 /usr/games/nethack -D
442 /usr/games/nethack -D
443 /usr/games/nethack -D
444 /usr/games/nethack -D
445 exit
446 /usr/games/nethack -D
It took me quite a while, 139 runs in fact, to realize that running 'sudo /usr/games/nethack -D' was the same as logging in as root and running it.
447 top
448 killall xorg
449 killall Xorg
450 logout
451 /usr/games/nethack -D
452 portablelinux
453 ls
454 ls |grep 'portablelinux'
455 portablelinux
456 chown portablelinux root
457 chown root portablelinux
458 portablelinux
459 nautilus
460 portablelinux
461 chmod portablelinux
462 chmod --help
463 ls -l portablelinux
464 chmod 744 portablelinux
465 ls
466 portablelinux
Had more than a bit of trouble setting up a Linux flash drive.
467 ls
468 pwd
469 cd /tmp
470 ls
471 rm -rf /tmp/*
472 ls
473 tar -czf Incognita.xptv
474 tar -czf /dev/st0 Incognita.xptv
475 tar -tzf /dev/st0
476 mt -f /dev/st0 eod
477 man mt
478 mt -f /dev/st0 eom
479 tar -czf /dev/st0 GMAIL\ PASSWORD\ RESET
480 mt -f /dev/st0 rewind
481 tar -tzf /dev/st0
Not sure why I was logged in as root to do this.
482 tar -czf /dev/st0 Downloads/
483 tar -tzf /dev/st0
484 mt -f /dev/st0 rewind
485 mt -f /dev/st0 offline
486 ls
487 exit
488 history
489 history | /home/soren/historyroot.txt
490 history > /home/soren/historyroot.txt
I make the same exact mistake I did extracting the last one.

---------SERVER---------
4 logout
5 exit
6 sudo /etc/init.d/ssh start
7 sudo /etc/init.d/sshd start
8 ls /etc/init.d
9 sudo apt-get install ssh
This was the point that I realized, after about five hours of troubleshooting total, that I couldn't connect to the server with ssh because the ssh server wasn't installed.
10 ssh soren@localhost
11 exit
12 sudo /etc/init.d/shorewall start
13 clera
14 exit
15 sudo reboot
16 ls
17 uptime
18 ls
19 exit
20 ls
21 cat blogonpuzzlesquare.txt
22 less blogonpuzzlesquare.txt
23 ls
24 rm *.ttyrec
25 ls
26 rm ttyrec-1.0.8
27 rm -r ttyrec-1.0.8
28 ls
29 rm ttyrec-1.0.8.tar.gz
30 ls
31 scp blogonpuzzlesquare.txt soren@192.168.1.66:/home/soren
Some things that don't really belong on your server end up there when your computer breaks and you use the server for a couple of days.
32 ls
33 exit
34 firefox
35 lynx
36 call
37 open
38 gksu lynx
39 clear
40 ssh soren@192.168.1.64
41 ssh soren@192.168.1.66
Silly me, I let my IP address change, so I had to go look it up constantly to make a connection to my other computer.
42 exit
43 ls
44 uptime
45 cat info
46 cat ipbt
47 scp -r ipbt /home/soren
48 scp -r ipbt soren@192.168.1.66:/home/soren
49 ls
50 rm -r ipbt
51 ls
52 exit
53 ls
54 exit
Log in, get a listing, and exit!
55 ifconfig
56 ls
57 cd /var
58 ls
59 cd www
60 ls
61 ls !
Yay for ls!
62 ls ~
63 ls /home/soren
64 mv /home/soren/Techgeek\ Tips\ November-December.ppt .
65 ls
66 cd Windows
67 ls
68 cd archives
69 ls
70 cd ..
71 ls
72 cd pdfs
73 ls
74 cd ..
75 ls
76 mv current.pdf ./pdfs/2009_10.pdf
77 cd pdfs
78 ls
79 mv 2009_10.pdf tips_2009.10.pdf
80 ls
81 cd ..
82 ls
83 vi tips.html
84 cd ..
85 ls
86 mv Techgeek\ Tips\ November-December.ppt ./Windows/current.pdf
87 cd Windows & ls
88 cd Windows
89 ls
90 current.pdf
91 scp current.pdf soren@192.168.1.34:/home/soren
92 ls
93 cd ..
94 ls
95 mv Techgeek\ Tips\ November-December.pdf ./Windows/current.pdf
96 cd Windows
Can take a while to get your files in order.
97 ls
98 history |less
99 vim /etc/network/interfacews
100 vim /etc/network/interfaces
101 sudo vim /etc/network/interfaces
102 sudo reboot
103 exit
104 sudo vim /etc/network/interfaces
105 sudo reboot
106 exit
107 ls
108 exit
109 sudo apt-get upgrade
110 sudo apt-get
111 sudo aptitude
112 sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
113 version
114 v
115 ver
116 vr
117 clear
118 kernel
Not sure what that was about.
119 exit
120 cd /var/www
121 cd Images
122 cd images
123 ls
124 mv Google\ 2. png Google\ 1.png
125 ls
126 mv "Google 2.png" "Google 1.png"
127 ls
128 mv Google\ 1.png Google1.png
129 mv Google\ 2.png Google2.png
130 mv Google\ 3.png Google3.png
131 ls
132 mv Google?.png google?.png
133 mv "Google?.png" "google?.png"
134 mv Google?.png "google?.png"
135 mv Google?.png google?.png
136 mv Google1.png google1.png
137 mv Google2.png google2.png
138 mv Google3.png google3.png
Changing a capital letter to a lowercase one can take a while if you're too tired.
139 ls
140 cd /var/ww
141 cd /var/www/images
142 ls
143 mv google1.png Google1.png
144 mv google2.png Google2.png
145 mv google3.png Google3.png
And now we put it back. Don't even ask.
146 ls
147 exit
148 ifconfig
149 exit
150 cd /var/www
151 ls
152 vi index.html
153 exit
154 uptime
155 exit
156 uptime
157 exit
158 uptime
159 exit
160 uptime
For a while, I seemed to enjoy logging into the server just to check its uptime.
161 top
162 ls
163 cd /var/www
164 ls
165 cd ..
166 exit
167 cd /var/www
168 ls
169 cd Windows
170 ls
171 cd archives/
172 ls
173 cd ..
174 ls
175 cd pdfs/
176 ls
177 exit
178 sudo apt-get update
179 sudo apt-get upgrade
180 sudo apt-get
181 sudo aptitude
182 exit
183 uptime
184 last
185 sudo apt-get
186 sudo apt-get upgrade
187 sudo apt-get upgrade *
188 ls
189 exit
190 sudo halt
191 uptime
Upgrade. Upgrade? Upgrade!
192 sudo lshw -C disk
193 sudo fdisk /dev/sdb
194 sudo mkfs -t ext4 /dev/sdb1
195 tune2fs --help
196 sudo tune2fs -m 1 /dev/sdb1
197 cd /medis
198 ls
199 cd /media & ls
200 cd /media
201 ls
202 cd exthd
203 ls
204 cd ..
205 mkdir music
206 sudo mkdir music
207 ls
208 cd music
209 ls
210 cd ..
211 sudo vi /etc/fstab
212 sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /media/music
213 sudo mount ext4/dev/sdb1 /media/music
214 sudo mount ext4 /dev/sdb1 /media/music
215 sudo mount -t ext4 /dev/sdb1 /media/music
216 lol
'lol' is my inability to type the correct command in four attempts. The system's (lack of) cooperation was not the least bit amusing.
217 sudo reboot
218 uptime
219 clear
220 ls
221 cd /media/music
222 ls
223 cd ..
224 mount
225 mount /dev/sdb1 /media/music
226 sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /media/music
227 aaaaargh
Like that.
228 sudo mkfs -t ext3 /dev/sdb1
229 tune2fs -m 2 /dev/sdb1
230 sudo tune2fs -m 2 /dev/sdb1
Guess I'll just give up and reformat the drive so it works.
231 ls
232 gksu gedit /etc/fstab
233 sudo vi /etc/fstab
234 sudo mount -a
235 ls
236 mount
237 cd music
238 ls
239 cd ..
240 chown music soren
241 chown soren /media/music
242 sudo chown soren /media/music
243 ls -l
244 lsls
245 lsl
246 ll
247 lls
What's that one command with the 'l' and the 's' again?
248 ls
249 ls -l
250 cd music
251 ls
252 cd ..
253 ls -l /var
254 exit
255 cd /media/music
256 ls
257 cd Family\ Videos/
258 ls
259 cd ..
260 cd DOWNSTAIRS-BACKUP/
261 ls
262 cd new
263 ls
264 cd Red\ Alien\ Hacker/
265 ls
266 cd ..
267 cd newer
268 ls
269 cd ..
270 cd new
271 cd ../newer
272 ls
273 cd ../newest
274 ls
275 cd ..
276 ls
277 cd newerer/
278 ls
279 cd ..
280 cd new
281 cd ../newer
282 ls
283 cd ..
New? Newer? Newest? Newerer?!
284 ls
285 cd music
286 ls
287 cd Incognita/
288 ls
289 cd ..
290 cd Music
291 ls
292 cd ..
293 cd music
294 ls
295 cd /media/music
296 ls
297 cd Family\ Videos/
298 ls
299 cd ..
300 exit
301 cd /media/music
302 ls
303 cd Family\ Videos/
304 ls
305 cd ..
306 exit
307 sudo mount -a
308 ls
309 cd /media
310 ls
311 cd exthd
312 ls
313 cd ..
314 mount
315 cd music
316 ls
317 cd Incognita/
318 ls
319 cd ..
320 ls
321 ls /dev
322 sudo mount -a
323 ls
324 cd exthd
325 ls
326 cd ..
327 sudo vi /etc/fstab
328 sudo mount -a
329 ls /dev
330 sudo vi /etc/fstab
331 sudo mount -a
332 cd exthdd
333 cd exthd
334 ls
335 cd ..
336 ls
337 cd music
338 ls
339 cd ..
340 cd exthd
341 ls
Finally figured that one out.
342 sudo cp -r * /media/music/*
343 vi /etc/samba/smb.conf
344 sudo vi /etc/samba/smb.conf
345 sudo cp /etc/samba/smb.conf /etc/samba/smb.confbak
346 sudo vi /etc/samba/smb.conf
347 history | grep 'samba'
348 sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart
349 sudo vi /etc/samba/smb.conf
350 history | grep 'shorewall'
351 sudo /etc/init.d/shorewall stop
352 sudo vi /etc/default/shorewall
353 sudo vi /etc/shorewall/rules
354 sudo /etc/init.d/shorewall start
355 less /var/log/shorewall-init.log
356 sudo /etc/init.d/shorewall stop
357 sudo vi /etc/shorewall/rules
358 sudo /etc/init.d/shorewall start
359 sudo vi /etc/shorewall/rules
360 sudo /etc/init.d/shorewall start
361 info shorewall
362 sudo vi /etc/shorewall/rules
363 sudo /etc/init.d/shorewall start
364 sudo vi /etc/shorewall/rules
365 sudo /etc/init.d/shorewall stop
366 sudo vi /etc/shorewall/rules
367 sudo /etc/init.d/shorewall start
368 sudo vi /etc/shorewall/rules
369 sudo /etc/init.d/shorewall start
370 sudo apt-get install shorewall
371 sudo /etc/init.d/shorewall stop
372 history 10
373 sudo vi /etc/shorewall/rules
374 ls /usr/share/shorewall/macro.*
375 sudo vi /etc/shorewall/rules
376 sudo /etc/init.d/shorewall start
377 tail /var/log/shorewall-init.log
378 sudo vi /etc/shorewall/rules
379 sudo /etc/init.d/shorewall start
380 tail /var/log/shorewall-init.log
381 sudo vi /etc/shorewall/rules
382 sudo /etc/init.d/shorewall start
383 tail /var/log/shorewall-init.log
384 sudo vi /etc/shorewall/rules
385 sudo /etc/init.d/shorewall start
386 sudo vi /etc/shorewall/rules
387 tail /var/log/shorewall-init.log
388 sudo vi /etc/shorewall/rules
389 sudo /etc/init.d/shorewall start
390 tail /var/log/shorewall-init.log
391 sudo vi /etc/shorewall/zones
392 sudo vi /etc/shorewall/rules
393 sudo /etc/init.d/shorewall start
394 tail /var/log/shorewall-init.log
395 sudo vi /etc/shorewall/rules
396 sudo /etc/init.d/shorewall start
397 tail /var/log/shorewall-init.log
398 sudo vi /etc/shorewall/rules
399 sudo /etc/init.d/shorewall start
400 tail /var/log/shorewall-init.log
401 sudo vi /etc/shorewall/rules
402 sudo /etc/init.d/shorewall start
403 tail /var/log/shorewall-init.log
404 sudo vi /etc/shorewall/rules
405 sudo /etc/init.d/shorewall start
406 sudo vi /etc/shorewall/rules
64 commands to figure out the right way to state the firewall rules.
407 ifconfig
408 cd /media/music
409 ls
410 ls -l
411 cd ..
412 chmod +rwx music
413 ls -l
414 chmod +w music
415 ls
416 lls
417 ls
418 ls -l
419 chmod music 777
420 chmod 777 music
421 ls
422 ls -l
423 cd music
424 ls
425 ls -l
426 cd ..
427 chmod 755 music
428 ls -l
429 cd music
430 chmod 777 *
431 ls -l
432 cd The\ Ammonite
433 ls
434 cd ..
435 cd The\ Ammonite\ New/
436 ls
437 cd 6-20-2008/
438 ls
439 cd ..
440 cd Trinity\ Videos/
441 ls
442 cd ..
443 cd The\ Ammonite\ New/
444 sudo ls
Apparently sometimes having administrator privileges influences your directory list. Anything seems believable when your files just disappear.
445 cd 6
446 cd 6-20-2008/
447 sudo ls -al
448 cd ..
449 sl
450 ls
451 ls -r
452 ls
453 ls -l
454 chmod 777 * -r
455 chmod * 777 -r
456 cd ..
457 chmod 777 music -r
458 chmod music 777 -r
459 cd music
460 ls
461 cd ..
462 ls
463 ls -l
464 chmod music 777
465 chmod 777 music
466 ls
467 ls
468 ls -l
469 chmod 777 -r music
470 chmod -r 777 music
471 chmod -r music 777
472 chmod music 777
473 chmod 777 music
474 ls -l
475 man chmod
476 chmod music 777 -R
477 chmod 777 music -R
478 sudo chmod 777 music -R
That's a few commands to figure out the right combination of r, R, chmod, and 777.
479 ls -l
480 cd music
481 ls -l
482 history | grep cp
483 cp --help
484 ls -R
485 cd Music\ New/
486 ls
487 ls -r > contents.txt
488 cat contents.txt
489 ls -R > contents.txt
490 cat contents.txt
491 ls -R /media/exthd/Music\ New/ > /media/music/Music\ New/ > contents2.txt
492 ls -R /media/exthd/Music\ New/ > /media/music/Music\ New > contents2.txt
493 ls -R /media/exthd/Music\ New/ > /media/music/Music\ New/contents2.txt
Typing a bit slower may help.
494 ls -l
495 diff contents.txt contents2.txt
496 rm contents.txt
497 rm contents2.txt
498 ls -l
499 top
500 mount
501 history
502 ls
503 history > historyserver.txt
Glad to see I didn't make the same mistake yet again.

--
Soren "scorchgeek" Bjornstad
http://www.thetechnicalgeekery.com
Microsoft is not the answer.Microsoft is the question.
The answer is "No."

OS Popularity

2010-08-11T13:10:00.002-05:00

I had a question the other day: If everyone forgot everything they knew about computers, how many people would still be using Windows?

Imagine that you decided you were going to completely remodel your bathroom. Not being an expert on bathrooms, you don't know much about the various toilets, sinks, and bathtubs available, so you talk to a salesman, and he helps you pick out something that you think will work well. Then he says that you have a choice between the electric blue and lime green varieties of toilet paper. Let's assume that they look equally absurd, and you don't prefer one for its color. The salesman tells you that 90% of people buy the electric blue type. Naturally, you choose the blue, because you assume that if all those people use it, it must be the best.

But what you don't know is going to hurt you. Had you taken the time to do your research, you would have found out that electric blue toilet paper dyes your toilet a funny color, clogs the drain on a regular basis, and occasionally even spontaneously explodes. On the other hand, the green kind almost never clogs the toilet, contains much more toilet paper on the same roll, and doesn't lose its dye.

Making the situation even more complicated is the existence of the burnt orange variety of toilet paper. It is completely free, allows you to control the exact amount of toilet paper you want to put on a roll (allowing for dispensers of different sizes), lets you refill your toilet paper roll any time you want, and clogs your toilet only in very exceptional circumstances. Unfortunately, you can't buy it along with your bathroom--you have to install it yourself later. You also need to read the short manual in order to learn how to use it correctly. And the existence of this toilet paper is never even mentioned when you buy your toilet. A small number of people find out about and properly set up their orange toilet paper and are very happy with it, but when they try to tell others about the great toilet paper they found, those people only laugh and say, "Wait--you had to read a manual to use your toilet paper?"

Now I'm going to add some additional factors to the toilet paper debate.
1. The lime green toilet paper is significantly more expensive than the blue kind. The orange kind is still free.
2. People can break your toilet's security and damage or make your toilet paper unusable.
3. Occasionally, all types of toilet paper will stop working. However, green and orange toilet paper do this less often, and can usually be recovered within a couple of minutes. Orange toilet paper has the potential to be wrecked beyond repair if used improperly, but will almost never break of its own accord.
4. Once you have selected a type of toilet paper, you cannot use another one with the toilet without going through an hour-long process that converts it to a different type.
5. Blue toilet paper is much easier to find than green and orange toilet paper, and it's very likely that your neighbor will have some blue toilet paper you can borrow if you run out, but (due to their lesser popularity), this is often not true with other types.
6. People who normally use a different type of toilet paper may have difficulty using yours. People who prefer orange toilet paper are usually used to all the different types, and will often have no problem. However, users of orange toilet paper are quite rare.

So, summarizing:
* Electric blue toilet paper is very unreliable--it damages your toilet, clogs it frequently, and sometimes even explodes. It often breaks and can be difficult to repair, and malicious people can easily damage your toilet paper. However, it is very common and you will nearly always be able to find some, and nearly everybody can use it without any trouble.
* Lime green toilet paper uses different concepts than blue toilet paper, so people may experience a slight learning curve changing from one to the other. However, it's just as easy to learn to use as blue toilet paper, and is significantly more reliable. Unfortunately, only a small number of people use it, so your use of green toilet paper may annoy people, and you may have difficulty finding more when you run out. It's also the most expensive type of toilet paper.
* Burnt orange toilet paper is uncommon, but it allows you to do basically anything you want with it. It requires reading a short manual to familiarize yourself with its workings, and also needs a small amount of time to install and master. However, once you have done these things, you'll think it's great. It's also completely free.

I think we can all agree on the fact that if popularity concerns were removed, the blue toilet paper is an absolutely terrible deal and nobody would use it. Lime green and burnt orange toilet paper would then be the serious contenders. In this case, I would expect that roughly the same number of people would choose to use green toilet paper as orange. People who are willing to spend some money and don't like learning things would choose lime green toilet paper, while those who want to save their money and are willing to work a little bit to have better control of their toilet would choose orange toilet paper. In this situation, the issue of people having difficulty using other types of toilet paper would also be diminished--with only two types of toilet paper in use, and without one having a near-total monopoly, people would learn the basics of how to use the other type properly, even if they didn't like it much.

---
If you didn't get it yet, electric blue toilet paper represents Windows, lime green toilet paper represents the Mac OS X, and burnt orange toilet paper represents Linux. I may have exaggerated a bit on the instability of Windows, but I honestly have never used another operating system that occasionally chooses to melt down at an inopportune time and sit there with a guilty blue screen facing me. Although occasional slow performance and bugs are a fact of life with computers, Windows also seems to have more of them than any other operating system. And it's not like Windows has a terribly innovative interface or anything else to particularly recommend it, either. It does, as with blue toilet paper, have a wide user base (although more and more new college students, for one, are beginning to purchase Macs), and is compatible with nearly everything. Even that advantage is beginning to change, as more devices provide Linux drivers, more cross-platform software is developed, and the amount of extremely useful free software (free as in freedom, not as in free beer), much of which works on any system, increases daily.

What do you think? If you had to relearn everything you knew about computers and you knew nothing about the popularity (or compatibility, although as I mentioned, that's beginning to be less and less important) of operating systems, but only their features, which would you choose? Let me know in the comments.

--
Soren "scorchgeek" Bjornstad
http://www.thetechnicalgeekery.com
Microsoft is not the answer. Microsoft is the question.
The answer is "No."

Copyright 2010 Soren Bjornstad.
Verbatim copying and redistribution of part or all of this work
is permitted, provided this notice is preserved.

Who can you trust on the Internet?

2010-07-26T10:48:00.005-05:00

Introduction
Who can you trust on the Internet? It's a question we have to face all the time. Everyone knows that they shouldn't email their credit card numbers to that guy in Nigeria who really needs their help to keep his rightful inheritance of $1,988,356.76 away from the evil government (and will pay you an absurd amount of money to do it). But it gets harder than that.

Part One: Malware
There are lots of less-than-reputable websites that would love you to download viruses from them. There are also some sites that offer “ad-supported” software that puts so many ads on your PC that you can't do anything but look at ads (and it often can't be removed through normal methods either). Most of the time, you can easily tell when you've visited one of those sites. (Of course, there are clearly still enough gullible people that they continue making money, but I doubt you're one of them if you're reading this blog.) Unfortunately for us, there are plenty of borderline websites, where you can't tell if the site is reputable or not. I've personally never been burned by one of these sites (knock on wood), but you should always scan even semi-questionable downloaded files with a good antivirus program, and don't run any ActiveX controls or allow other security warnings unless you're sure about the site. Your antivirus software is not invincible, though, and ultimately the best defense against malware is to exercise common sense.

My No-Nonsense Download Checklist
1. Do you really need this program? If you need a word processor or a video editor to finish a project, then that's a good download. If you were just browsing the Internet and said, “Huh, that sounds cool,” think for a minute before you decide to try it. If you install it and don't need it, not only do you raise your chances of getting hit by malware, you also clog your PC with unnecessary garbage and waste time downloading and installing it.

2. Does the program make any mention of being supported by ads or requiring other (questionable-sounding) programs? If so, pass it by and find something else. Although it may seem like a fair tradeoff at the time, chances are very good you'll regret it later—and such downloads are far more likely to contain actively destructive or dangerous software.

3. Does the URL contain a load of unidentifiable characters? I don't mean at the end—that's normal. I mean, instead of, say, http://earth.google.com/download at the beginning, http://6ths7.free67.info/73nds. Junk programs, especially ones that will steal your personal information or reformat your hard drive, frequently have URLs that are cheap to obtain. Another common trick (for phishing sites too) is to use something like http://microsoft.d6shc.com. Although many people say “Oh, it's Microsoft.com, must be good then”, anyone can change the first part (microsoft, in this case), known as the subdomain, to whatever they fancy. The part right before the .com is the only part you actually have to register.

4. If the program didn't pass one of those requirements, or you just aren't sure about it, try googling the function of the program. Chances are very good you'll find another free program with a less questionable background, and quite possibly better features as well.

5. If you really want the program, and aren't sure of its legitimacy, download it, scan it with your antivirus program, and back up your files first or install it on a junk PC just in case. (Of course, you really should have a valid backup at all times; I've got an upcoming feature on making a backup script for yourself.) If your antivirus program comes up with a warning, ditch it and find something better. It's definitely not worth the trouble.

Despite my lobbying for the antivirus industry, I'm not saying the program always knows better than you. If your antivirus program comes up with a warning for a perfectly reputable program, like Microsoft Office or Spybot Search and Destroy, check the warning a bit more carefully, and do some research if you're not sure. Although viruses can infect and damage legitimate programs, it happens less and less nowadays, and it's far more likely that the scanner just made a mistake (or the program was performing a “suspicious” activity, like Spybot accessing a spyware-filled folder to remove spyware).

Part Two: Collected Information
You don't just have to deal with malware, though. Most websites collect information about you, and you have to decide who you can trust with that information. When you visit a website, a certain amount of information can be collected about you automatically, and you can't do a thing about it. This information includes the browser and operating system you're using and your IP (Internet Protocol) address, which uniquely identifies your computer on the Internet. Normally, the website also collects any cookies the website has stored on your computer. You can turn this off, but it has a number of adverse affects on your web browsing, and only total privacy freaks (or the same Internet purists who refuse to use any Web content besides plain text) choose to do so. (One note: Cookies are not programs that can look through your files and steal information. They're not even necessarily bad. That said, cookies can be used to track your browsing and shopping habits; see http://www.tomsarazac.com/tom/opinions/cookies.html for more information about cookies.)

Most of this information isn't really earth-shaking; if you really care about hiding any of it, check out http://the-cloak.com/. It's what you give websites that really matters. For instance, Google, with some settings, collects information about what websites you visit in order to personalize your searches. Most of the time, you have to decide how much privacy you're willing to give up in order to get useful functions.

Try this: Head over to http://www.google.com/dashboard and log in with your Google account. (If you don't have one, just follow along.) Scroll down and check out all the stuff Google has stored about you. Bet you didn't know they stored all the websites you visited after searching while logged in, and all the searches themselves. And even though you knew they stored your contacts, emails, voicemails, and so on (if you use Gmail or other Google products extensively), it somehow seems a lot more impressive and scary when it's all in one place.

Check out these three screenshots:
http://www.thetechnicalgeekery.com/images/Google1.png
http://www.thetechnicalgeekery.com/images/Google2.png
http://www.thetechnicalgeekery.com/images/Google3.png

In the first one, you can see most of the Google searches I made in the last two days, and that I've made 4,913 searches since Google enabled Web history. This catches nearly all of the searches I've made on my home computers, since I'm nearly always logged into Gmail, but I'd say that it probably still only represents about half my searches. (Interestingly, I found that there were searches on my history page I hadn't made today, meaning that I had accidentally left myself logged in on the family computer—oops. If you ever accidentally leave yourself logged in on another computer, you can log in to Gmail, click the Details link at the bottom of the page where it says “This account is open in x other locations...”, and choose Sign Out All Other Sessions.) Still, Google has stored, and still has accessible, about half of my searches all the way back to January 2008. That's kind of cool, and a neat way to look through what you've done on the Internet in the past, but it's also naturally a concern if someone else gains access to your Google account (besides being able to log in and represent you on any Google service, and some others). The other two shots show other parts of my history, including all my stored emails, documents, and many phone calls and texts I've made through Google Voice. Not displayed is also contact information for over 100 people.

The good news is that if you're scared by the web history, you can easily stop it from collecting items or clear some or all items from the history. Just open up your Web History from the dashboard and select Pause or Remove Items, on the left. (It should be noted that Incognito Mode in Chrome does not prevent Web History from collecting items, although you are not logged into your account in a new Incognito window and therefore cannot have your searches collected. If you want to browse totally privately, stay logged out of your account or pause the web history.) Other services like Gmail are harder—you can't really use email without leaving tracks with *someone*, be it Google, Microsoft, or your ISP. However, I generally trust Google with my information; they've had a fairly good record of not throwing your information out the window, especially compared to some other websites. (I've heard some people worried about what might happen if Google was bought out and had a change of ownership; I say that's not currently a valid question, as Google is not within reach of any purchases.)

Facebook is much more questionable. It seems that they change their privacy policy about every six months, and every time they seem to have some absurd clause designed to make them more money that quickly gets picked up by the media and causes public outrage. (Then they provide a public apology and reverse that change, but some others may remain.) Although (at the time of this writing), the privacy policy is fairly reasonable, it's still clear that they track everything you do and keep all your information and posts, and who knows what could happen with them, especially since the privacy policy can change at any time. (For a while there was even a note that stated that Facebook gained ownership of anything you posted on the site.)

The most important thing you need to worry about with your Google, Facebook, and other accounts is that nobody steals your password. If anyone ever gained access to my Google or maybe even Facebook accounts, they could easily impersonate me—they immediately have many of the websites I've visited and therefore know what I'm interested in, all my email, contact information for all my friends, family, and more people, and can change my Google Voice settings so they get my calls. Besides being much easier to do than, say, a cracker stealing half their database or the company deciding to release your information to the public, having your password stolen is one thing you can easily guard against. Choose a strong password, don't write it down, and make sure nobody gets it. Sign out of the computer when you leave it, and immediately change it if there's a chance someone else has stolen it. See http://thetechnicalgeekery.blogspot.com/2009/10/ten-ways-to-keep-your-passwords-safe-we.html for more information on the ways passwords get stolen and how to protect yourself.

I'm seriously considering keeping any information I'm even the least bit concerned about off Facebook and maybe even off other websites, and put it on my own website instead. I run the server, so nobody is going to mess with my information except by breaking into it.

EDIT: The blog was capitalizing the image links, causing them to break. I renamed the files and the links.

--
Soren "scorchgeek" Bjornstad
http://www.thetechnicalgeekery.com

Yesterday it worked
Today it is not working
Windows is like that

Copyright 2010 Soren Bjornstad.
Verbatim copying and redistribution of part or all of this work
is permitted, provided this notice is preserved.

Random Failures, SimCity, and the Core i7

2010-03-24T21:16:00.003-05:00

These don't seem to go together, do they? In fact, if you think the title makes sense, you're lying, crazy, or you've been following what I've been doing the past couple of days.

Everything started when I woke up on Monday, my first day of spring break. I slept until about 8:30, woke up, and figured I'd check my email and maybe read the news before breakfast. I walked over to my computer, which was in standby, hit the power button, and...nothing came up. The fans started, but the monitor stayed in power-save. Thinking nothing of it, I rebooted.

Guess what? The monitor still stayed in power-save mode. Okay, suppose the monitor's bad. Or maybe the cable; the last time the screen was all green, I unrationally suspected the graphics card and bought a new one before I realized the cable had died. But my second monitor wasn't picking the signal up either. So I walked down the stairs, grabbed our 21-inch TV, which has a standard computer input, lugged it up, and plugged it in. Power back on. Nothing.

I started thinking, "Hmm, what have I changed that might have caused this?" Thing is, I hadn't installed or changed anything. I had recently installed a sound card, but that was about a week before, and it had worked flawlessly up until then. No, it seemed to point toward some sort of random hardware failure.

I guess the graphics card has to be bad, right? Pull out the graphics card and plug into the graphics built into the motherboard. No luck there either. Maybe the settings are still set to use the nonexistant graphics card? Reset the BIOS settings. No luck.

The computer didn't seem to be POSTing (passing the power-on self test), since it wasn't making the usual sounds it did right before it went to the boot menu. Only problem was that I couldn't see where it failed, since the monitor wasn't working. And the oh-so-unhelpful motherboard (which came in the HP system I bought a couple of years back) didn't make any error beeps or have any helpful lights to tell me what the problem might be.

I did some googling, and found someone who suggested I unplug the computer, hold the power button for 30 seconds, and plug it back in. Worth a shot, I suppose. Surprise, surprise, it didn't work. I removed the battery that holds the settings and tested it, and the battery tester said it was low. I suppose it's worth a try, right? So I bought a new battery. Guess what? The battery tester said it was low. Guess the battery tester's broken too (or at least can't measure that type of battery properly). Naturally, the new battery didn't fix anything.

I started taking out RAM, unplugging the sound card and hard drives, and more, trying to isolate the source of the problem. The same thing kept happening. I was absolutely stumped.

Defeated, I called the Best Buy Geek Squad, and they told me they would look at the system for free. So I dragged it over (getting envious looks and exclamations of how large my case was from employees), and had them look at it. They swapped out the graphics card and had no more luck than I had. The final report was that my motherboard was probably bad.

That was what my assumption had been, too, but I hadn't really wanted to admit it. With nothing else left to do, I went home and ordered a new one. Having a fair amount of money sitting around, I decided that I might as well make the best of it and buy an upgrade that would last me a while, so I bought 6 gigabytes of RAM, a Core i7 processor, and a motherboard. The total bill was a somewhat painful $720.

When it came today, I spent three hours or so cracking the case open and installing the stuff. I had never installed a processor before, and I'm not sure I did such a great job at applying the thermal grease (which goes between the processor and the heatsink), as it seems to be idling at a fairly high 44 degrees Celsius. (I set an alarm to notify me if the temperature breaks 60 degrees, so I know it's starting to heat up and I might need to fix this.)

Nevertheless, my new setup just flies. I installed a clean copy of Windows (and experienced inexplicable freezes during the start of the installation), and there are hardly any delays. I actually feel like I should be typing and mousing faster to compensate! I installed SimCity 4. On my largest city (which I had nearly stopped playing because of the annoying frame rate and delays), the scrolling is totally smooth, I don't have to wait on dialogs, and it loads in a fraction of the time it used to.

I should reiterate how annoying this whole thing was. To have done nothing at all wrong and to suddenly have the system not work at all is unbelievably frustrating. In all our expectations of reliability, remember that someday your computer could just quit working--yet another reason to have backups and have some sort of plan for how to keep working if your computer suddenly fails.

I uploaded four screenshots of SimCity 4 (in the city I was talking about) so you can see how the graphics take some oomph to be displayed properly. Note that this is only medium detail, too.
http://snipurl.com/v1nmy

--
Soren "scorchgeek" Bjornstad
http://www.thetechnicalgeekery.com

Microsoft is not the answer.
Microsoft is the question.
The answer is "No."

Copyright 2010 Soren Bjornstad.
Verbatim copying and redistribution of part or all of this work
is permitted, provided this notice is preserved.

Concept Idea: The Phone Control System

2010-03-11T19:15:00.004-06:00

Concept Idea: The Phone Control System

Note: the Concept Idea is a new series I'm hoping to start describing technology I envision. They are not anything that has happened, nor is necessarily going to happen.

We've all experienced someone's cell phone ringing at an inconvenient time. Even more annoyingly, people have developed a nasty tendency to ignore everyone around them at times when they should be paying attention and use their phones instead. Even more importantly, there are problems with people communicating information that is supposed to be kept secret. This can be done by text message, or by taking a picture (for instance, a student sending a picture of a test to his friend who is going to take the test the next period). Some people suggest jamming signals to prevent people from using their phones in certain places, but this hardly seems like an ideal solution. Something better would look like this.

Point 1: Control zones
Any institution that desired to put restrictions on cell phone use could purchase a control box that allows them to do so. With the control box, three other nodes would be provided, which would end the controlled zone and form a restricted-area triangle. These nodes would prevent any restrictions beyond the location of the triangle. When setting up the zone, the people responsible would have to make sure that the zone did not extend beyond their own property. (If a conflict were to occur, there could be an inspector to make people adjust the controlled area.) I don't know exactly how such a thing could be set up, but this is, after all, a concept.

Point 2: Control Levels
Level 0: Unrestricted—cell phones would work normally as if they were outside any control zone.
Level 1: Silenced—If sound level was above vibrate, the level would automatically be lowered to vibrate on any phones that were on. (Leaving the area would restore the previous setting.) Incoming calls could be received, but answering the call and placing calls would be prohibited. Attempting to place or answer a call would give a message instructing the user where to go in order to talk. Text messaging and internet use would be allowed, although the backlight level would be lowered to minimize distraction to surrounding people in the dark. This would be a good mode to use in many public places, like concerts and movie theaters, because it would allow people to be notified of important calls and events (because, let's face it, there are some times when being in contact can actually be important), but not distract others.
Level 2: Communications Blocked—Calling, text messaging, internet use, and any other activities that used a cell phone signal would be blocked, as if there was no signal available. Once again, attempting to do one of these things would trigger a message pointing the user to an unrestricted area. The camera, calendar, calculator, some iPhone apps, etc., would be unaffected.
Level 3: Communications+Camera Blocked—To prevent removal of important information (like pictures of tests) from the area, the camera would also not work. Attempting to use the camera would trigger a message stating that no photography was permitted in the area. (Although one could bring in a dedicated camera to bypass this restriction, someone using an actual camera would be easily spotted.) This would probably be a good level for schools, so that students could use tools that would be appropriate for academic use, but not be able to use phones to cheat or talk to friends.
Level 4: Cell Phone Blocked—Any cell phones that were on upon entering the area would turn off. Attempting to turn on the phone would result in a message directing the user to move to an unrestricted area to use his phone. This would be a good mode to use, for instance, in testing environments. For instance, when I recently went to take the SAT, people were discouraged from bringing phones in, and anyone whose phone went off during the test would be dismissed and have their scores canceled. For me, I needed my phone to call for a ride home when the test was done, so I resorted to removing the battery and placing both the battery and the phone in my bag. Having this mode would remove the problem completely.

Point 3: Emergency Use
I can just see the people who are opposed to this sort of control going, “But what if there's an emergency?”

o An emergency switch would be located inside the battery compartment of each phone (to prevent accidentally triggering it). Turning the switch would allow the phone to pass through the communications and phone blocked modes (after answering a question on the screen as extra confirmation). To prevent abuse, the phone would immediately and automatically connect you to 911.
o The control box, which would be located in a public place, would have an emergency lever that would call 911 and activate emergency mode.
o Emergency mode would be triggered by turning the switch on one's phone or by pulling the lever that would be situated on the control box. Emergency mode would have the following effects:
--The mode would immediately be set to unrestricted, allowing anyone to make any calls.
If the mode was triggered from a phone, the control box would also submit an emergency call.
--Whatever device triggered the mode would be connected to 911.
--An event would be logged on the control box stating what device triggered it, to track down people setting off false alarms.
--An alarm would sound on anyone's phone who had been blocked from switching it on within the past few minutes, allowing them to make any important calls they had been trying to make. A message stating that an emergency mode had been triggered would also appear on the control box.
--The mode would remain in unrestricted until an administrator reviewed it and reset the mode.

Point 4: Control Box
The control box would be located in a public, easily accessible place. On a display at the front of the control box, anyone would be able to see the area the zone extended to and the mode the area was currently in. An administrator could also log in from the control box to change settings, the mode, and review logs and emergency events. Logging in would require a key and a passcode, to avoid anybody messing with it. The control box would also log any failed logins.

Point 5: Technical Aspects
Setting up a system that could control phone use effectively would be fairly complicated, but could be accomplished by having phones listen for signals from control boxes. The signal would state the current zone the system was in, and would immediately cause their respective effects on the phone when received. Also, all communications would be intercepted by the control box, and provided that they weren't from a banned phone, sent on to the tower. To lower the chance of phones' restrictions being cracked and broken, it could be made simply illegal to own such a phone. Therefore, anyone caught using a phone breaking restrictions would be automatically pointed out as guilty. In addition, control boxes could be set up to block all communications from a phone (ban the phone) that had been caught breaking the restrictions. As extra defense against this, control boxes could log events that occurred on the phone, such as a ringtone sounding. (Perhaps that's a little bit overboard, as it could be seen as an invasion of privacy; it could also possibly be spoofed by having one's cracked phone firmware send incorrect messages to the log. If the system really worked, anyone whose phone went off in violation of restrictions might be so unaccepted by society that someone would report them anyway.)

Point 6: Setup
Of course, phones can't be made to respond to these signals out of the blue, nor can my suggested emergency switch be reasonably added to phones that already exist. The simplest way, therefore, to get any such system to work would be to simply include the necessary software and logic on all new phones, and after some period of time (say, 7 years), all phones that were purchased before that time would simply cease to work (after sufficient warning from the provider, of course), and the rest of the system could be implemented.

Point 7: Conclusion
Naturally, I have no leverage whatsoever to get something like this working. It's a very ambitious concept, and I have severe doubts that our society will welcome anything like this. Maybe you don't agree with me on all the points; maybe you don't even agree that something like this is necessary. The thing to remember is that having phones ringing during performances and at other inappropriate times is extremely annoying, and that people have a tendency to try to use phones when it is not reasonable to do so. If we can't trust people to take care of this themselves (and it seems that we can't, from the past few years), I see no other real solution than to implement some kind of control. I don't even trust myself to always turn off my phone at the right times (and I'm writing this)—more than once, I've discovered I've left my phone on during school, or an equally bad time.
--
Soren "scorchgeek" Bjornstad
http://www.thetechnicalgeekery.com

Microsoft is not the answer.
Microsoft is the question.
The answer is "No."

Copyright 2010 Soren Bjornstad.
Verbatim copying and redistribution of part or all of this work
is permitted, provided this notice is preserved.

Complex technology...better?

2010-02-24T20:24:00.003-06:00

At my old school, the administration once had a brilliant idea. All the clocks were frequently unsynchronized, and so people didn't know what time the bell was actually going to ring. So they decided to buy atomic clocks for every room, naturally assuming that such clocks would always be right. Great idea, you say? Not quite. They bought all the clocks, put them up, and followed the directions to synchronize them. Unfortunately, the time that they synchronized to was simply incorrect. They ultimately had to put all the old clocks back up and were left with a huge stack of non-working atomic clocks that they apparently couldn't return.

Why is it that complex technology invariably just doesn't work as well? Of course, the easy answer is that there's simply much more to go wrong. But, even if you assume that everything works perfectly, simpler stuff tends to work better anyway. I've tried numerous methods of keeping calendars, lists, and reminding myself to do various things. Ultimately, I always find something new, think it's a great idea, and then I end up missing things anyway. The only method I've found that actually works nearly every time is putting a sticky note on my monitor.

Why does this work? First of all, I look at the monitor whenever I turn on my computer and while I'm working on it, which is fairly often. Also, the computer is in the middle of my room and on a desk where I keep other assorted objects, so I end up looking at it anyway. In contrast to a computerized calendar like the one included in Microsoft Outlook, it simply works better. With Outlook, my computer may make a noise at the right time or send me an email, but sticky notes can't accidentally be turned off, nor can a bug prevent them from working. They may fall off, but that's a small chance compared to the possibility of me accidentally deleting the event or having the program closed. Besides, it's much harder to miss a sticky note that is in your line of sight than a window buried under your 60 tabs of internet work or an email in your 150 unread messages. I have even tried my cell phone. For some people, this works okay, but besides the hassle of inputting an event using your phone keypad, I don't always have mine with me. When I go out, I usually do, but it's frequently turned off because I'm in school or something similar. In the rare instances when I actually get the notice, I do, in fact, remember, but this happens so rarely that it doesn't actually help. All this just goes to show that, despite the fact that there are plenty of complex organization systems that work, if you do something extremely simple and get in the habit of looking at it, you'll be very well off. (I once read a story about a professional attending a conference about cutting-edge mobile technology who was using a paper planner.)

This same thing came into my head when we recently learned about the accelerator issue in certain Toyota cars. If you're reading this far in the future or never picked up on it, accelerator pedals were simply getting stuck, which had been an occuring issue on those cars (nobody apparently saw fit to fix the problem earlier). The bigger problem, however, was that the brake pedal was not designed to override the accelerator, since it was computer-controlled. (Of course, here, a possibly more relevant question is "What idiot decided that going faster was more important than stopping?") In fact, if you held down the brake and then stepped on the accelerator pedal, your car would still move. In certain cars which recover power when braking, having the brake electronically is a necessity. But in most of them, a mechanical brake would have worked just as well, and the problem would have been simply annoying, rather than life-threatening, when one could actually stop. What's the point of adding another unnecessary layer of complexity?

I've come to the conclusion that simpler things are nearly always better. Don't let the crazy marketing fool you.
--
Soren "scorchgeek" Bjornstad
http://www.thetechnicalgeekery.com

Microsoft is not the answer.
Microsoft is the question.
The answer is "No."

Tech Support

2009-11-26T10:34:00.002-06:00

Let's face it: We all know that tech support in this day and age is horrible.

You have to wait for ages to actually talk to someone, only to be put on hold again because the first person who answers can't do anything more than tell you to restart (even if the problem is that your computer won't restart). You can often barely understand the person who's supposed to be helping you, and they most likely have had almost no training. After an hour of this, you often get told to call someone else.

What's with this? Plenty of people I've talked to say that years ago, when computers were still not too common, you could call tech support and immediately get people who knew what they were talking about and exactly what needed to be done. In reality, I think users are partly to blame for calling about issues they could resolve themselves, making call centers more ready for those types of calls. Most experienced users call only as a last resort, because they know that they're going to have to deal with this, only to be met with an hour of redoing stuff they've already done. More to blame, though, are the vendors, who can save money by assigning calls to people who know nothing about the product. In fact, I doubt that it really helps much, because it just leads to more unsatisfied customers and more time spent on the calls. In a country where we can go back to the store and return almost anything with no questions asked, am I the only one who thinks this is absurd?

I don't even care to count how many hours I've spent talking on the phone with people who often don't resolve my problem, but it must be at least thirty. Recently, someone I know bought a new computer, only to find that the sound card had a known problem. We were trying to copy a cassette tape to the computer, and we weren't sure exactly what we could do, but decided to call support in the hopes of having a working sound card sent to us. After explaining the problem, the rep had us download software that let her access the computer remotely, then proceeded to check that the volume was up. After this, we got transferred no less than four times, often without doing more than explaining the issue. The best part, however, was when one of the reps said, “Well, if you want to hear sound from your tape recorder, you should just hook it up to the speakers.”

The next day, we got back on the phone, and after another two hours of being transferred, and a time when we were on hold and they were doing things remotely on the computer without our consent, we finally gave up, went to Best Buy, and bought a new sound card, which worked perfectly. But afterwards, I realized that we actually knew more than tech support, after just a little bit of experimenting and searching Google. It's just pathetic, and what a waste of four hours.

Another time that was even worse was when I bought a new computer in 2005. It was an HP (a brand which I have since decided to avoid if there is an easy choice), and at first, it felt great, coming from a Windows ME computer with a 900Mhz Pentium and 64MB of RAM. But after about a month, I started to notice weird things: the computer rebooted randomly with Blue Screens of Death, I got messages (related to that) that said “The system has recovered from a serious error” on startup, the NumLock key wasn't working right, and when I put programs full-screen, the screen would go black when I exited, and I would have to put it in standby mode and come out again to fix it.

I called tech support a few times about this, and none of it actually worked. Finally I got sick of the full-screen problem, and after I had called about something else, when the rep asked, “Is there anything else we can help you with today?”, I told him about that problem.
I was told that it “was a problem with the operating system” and that I would have to reinstall Windows. So I did. However, once it was done, the problems were worse than before. I tried completely reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling again, and had no more luck. So I called again, and, after about an hour and a half, finally made it to someone who agreed to let me ship it in for repair.

When it came back from repair, I was told that they had found a problem with the real-time clock and that it had been fixed. Nope, same errors, and to add insult to injury, the system didn't turn on, and we had to actually tape the power wires somewhere to get it to turn on (I suspect it was a loose connection). I had it sent in for repair again, and they replaced the hard drive. Same errors. Finally they shipped out a completely new system. It only had the full-screen problem, so I decided just to deal with it. It worked fine after that until about a year later, when it completely crashed. I tried to install Windows and, after a few confusing dialog boxes on first startup, ended up at a screen telling me to input a license key, which I didn't have. The system was out of warranty, but I called anyway and they agreed to help. We reformatted the hard drive yet again (the fourth time in the computer's lifetime), and it worked, although the full-screen error was still there.

About a year and a half later, I bought a new computer (an HP, because the specs were too good to pass up for the price). Only recently, I managed to get rid of the Vista installation that had gotten so screwed up that it took over ten minutes to boot, two to shut down (so that I usually just hit the reset button), and a few seconds to switch programs. This installation had only been on for a year, and it's not like I had been abusing it.

There was also the time that a hard drive I had bought (it was labeled “Certified Repaired”, which meant it had broken in the past, so I was only using it for backup) completely broke within the stingy 180 day warranty period. I called the support number (which by the way, was a long distance call for me), waited on hold burning money for ten minutes, and eventually was told that a return request had been approved already. Turns out I had already submitted one some months previously for an issue that had been my fault, and was never notified that it had been approved. What bad service.

There are, fortunately, a few success stories, like the time I dealt with a brand-new computer that had a CD burner that was making a noise like a jet engine. After about fifteen minutes, we were told that a tech would be coming to the house the next day to replace the drive, which worked perfectly.

I have a feeling that computer stores with support services are going to be getting a lot more business if this keeps up. People just don't have time to deal with this sort of thing, and they are willing to pay if their computer works again in a couple of hours without any more work than driving their system a couple of miles. One statistic I have read stated that 20% of all computers are returned. Now what does that mean? When you return something, you either discovered you didn't want it or need it, it was broken, or you couldn't get it to work and gave up. People don't make purchases like computers without knowing that they really want them, and the other two both mean bad reliability and bad tech support.

After my experiences, I've decided that I'm not going to buy another desktop from a manufacturer again. I'm more than willing to put one together myself to save a few dollars, and I'd much prefer to know that what doesn't work is my fault and figure it out myself, especially since I'm fairly confident in my ability to do it right.

--
Soren "scorchgeek" Bjornstad
http://www.thetechnicalgeekery.com

Microsoft is not the answer.
Microsoft is the question.
The answer is "No."

Personal Information on the Internet

2009-11-19T17:54:00.000-06:00

The amount of information you can get on the Internet about someone is scary. So, just for fun, I decided to see how much information about myself I could get using nothing but Google and my name. I hoped to at least come up with my name and address. So I started by Googling "soren bjornstad". First up were two Twitter pages, but they were dead ends. Nothing but screen name and status updates. Next was a Family Links page. That's better: names of family members and a link to my web page. The site looked a bit broke, but I found an email, and better yet, the domain name. I visited whois.com, ran a database lookup, and whatdayaknow, there's my phone number, address, city, state, and country. While you can have your information removed from the WHOIS listing (for a fee, of course), I don't feel that one should be allowed to hide one's information if running a website, so I naturally don't do it.

Of course, this would only be available if you happen to have a website. So back to Google to keep looking, pretending I only have the name still. Oh, look--I was in Science Olympiad at Ben Franklin Middle School in 2008. Oh, look--Facebook. But unless I'm a friend of myself and logged in, I can't access anything but a picture that barely looks like me and an unrelated comment. But, there are some names of friends that might be able to tell me something if I looked them up. On to the second page. Here's an obituary, with names of family members that I might be able to look up and/or call to get more information from.

Oh, look--I play violin too, in the Benjamin Franklin Middle School orchestra. Ooh, I played violin at a concert in Munster too. There's my grade, and my city, if I hadn't gotten that already. And then I'm kind of stuck, so I try putting in other information I have with my name to drag up more specific stuff, but no luck.

At this point, though, I have many other names. Chances are that if I look them up, I'll get some contact information, and I can probably trick one of them into giving me, say, my email or phone number (perhaps I have an opportunity for me to play violin for something, or to participate in Science Olympiad camp). (I didn't try that, since it would take time, and I didn't feel like purposefully fooling people I knew, plus there would be a pretty good chance they would recognize my voice). Let's try that. With my phone number (which won't be too hard to get) I type it into Google, and--huh, there's my address and parents' names.

I should also mention that, not having any major legal documentation yet, my name doesn't appear in many directories. Try searching on yourself. It may be rather enlightening.

--
Soren "scorchgeek" Bjornstad
http://www.thetechnicalgeekery.com

Microsoft is not the answer.
Microsoft is the question.
The answer is "No."

Installing Windows

2009-11-19T17:48:00.001-06:00

Microsoft and many people on the Web are claiming that Windows can now be installed by a novice computer user. After installing on my computer, I thought that installation had certainly come a long way. But after my experience helping another user install on his computer, I beg to differ.

Our plan was to back up everything, take some Windows settings with Windows Easy Transfer (a program for moving settings and files to a new or freshly installed computer), wipe the hard drive, and create two partitions: one for data and one for the system files. Fairly standard procedure. (For those of you who don't know, a partition is just a section on a hard drive that appears as a separate drive, allowing you to, in effect, split one physical drive into multiple drives.) So we backed up, put the CD in the drive, restarted, and got into the partitioner. We set things up as planned, then moved on with the installation, which was amazingly simple, elegant, and fast.

Then we got into Windows for the first time after waiting about 20 minutes for copying files. It looked great until I realized that we had selected the data partition as the system partition and vice versa (one was significantly larger than the other). Oh, well, haven't done much yet, so just re-install. But it would have been nice if the installer had been clearer, because once you're done partitioning, you would naturally hit "Next" in the installer. The only hint that it wasn't quite so simple was the title "Select the drive you want to install Windows on," indicating that the entry you had selected when you hit Next would select the system drive. It would have been much better to open a second dialog box if you wanted to modify the partitions, and not provide a way to change partitions from the selection window. Minor bad design there; a novice user would probably not have changed the partition table, though, and thus would not have hit this problem, so I can't really cite this as part of my argument.

Once this worked, we opened Registry Editor and told it to put the desktop and other data folders onto the data partition in folders we had set up, finishing the partitioning arrangement. (If you don't get that, you don't need to to understand the rest.) Worked great. We installed a few other programs, then took an image backup of the hard drive in case we had to restore it later. Then, satisfied that the installation had finished, and that the user could copy his data files back the next day, I left.

The next day, I headed back over to deal with any problems, and to explain some of the new features. When I arrived, I learned that there was a sound problem. Uh-oh. We had installed a new sound card fairly recently (and the reason is the topic of another rant), which was infamous for having bad support.
The user demonstrated the problem, and I did a little thinking. Audio played on the computer worked fine, but audio in web video was horribly distorted into booming sounds (as if it was way too slow), and squeaking sounds (as if it was way too fast). That led me to suspect Flash, the program that plays most of those videos, as the culprit. So, first thing we tried (after rebooting and using a different browser, of course) was to reinstall Flash. That was easy, but the problem was just as bad as ever. We did a load of googling and came up with nothing. (At this point, I realized that two people less technical than us might have given up.) We tried installing several drivers and packages that other people said worked, but they refused to install because they "couldn't find a product installed", or simply crashed. (The driver is software needed to control a hardware device, and possibly the problem here.) We tried installing the driver found on the CD that had shipped with it, but it blue-screened. Then I had to leave and promised to come back as soon as possible.

While I was gone, I considered switching out the sound card to see if it was the problem, but when I came back, the user had another idea. After visiting the Rocketfish website (the people who made the sound card), he had found a driver listed as compatible with Windows 7. This wouldn't have been odd except for the fact that when we had looked two days before, there had not been any drivers or support or even a mention of the product on the website. We downloaded and installed it, and, wonder of all wonders, it worked.

A week later (knock on wood), there have been no more problems. But if someone thinks a novice user is capable of doing something like that unassisted, I want to talk to them. Naturally, that will only happen on a small percentage of installations, but if it does and you have nobody to help you, you're in a major jam.

--
Soren "scorchgeek" Bjornstad
http://www.thetechnicalgeekery.com

Microsoft is not the answer.
Microsoft is the question.
The answer is "No."

FOSD-0.1 Guidelines

2009-11-11T06:27:00.002-06:00

I apologize that the outline formatting got a bit messed up as I copied and pasted from Word. If you want the real correct formatting because you want to use it somewhere, email me at webmaster@the(RemoveBeforeSending)technicalgeekery.com.

EDIT: My outline uses the following headings, in descending order, if you can't figure out because of the tab order:
I, II, III...
A, B, C...
1, 2, 3...
a, b, c...
i, ii, iii...
--End EDIT--

FOSD-0.1 Guidelines

I. Purpose of Free & Open Speech & Debate

A. FOSD is designed to attempt to regulate crazy discussions on the Internet. There is too much off-topicness, useless flames, and more out there right now.

B. In addition, with administration tools like ban and delete, some administrators go crazy, deleting and/or banning anybody who has differing opinions from theirs.

C. Finally, we need a set of rules to go to in the case of a dispute between administrator and user over whether an action was justified. With nothing, the administrator becomes too powerful and can destroy the spirit of debate and respectful disagreement.

II. Reuse

A. If you like and agree with these guidelines, you may use them anywhere.

B. Conditions:

1. Be sure to include the text “Conforms to FOSD Version X.x” somewhere accessible to users, and provide a link to a full copy of the text.

2. You must actually conform to FOSD to claim that you do.

III. Allowed Topics/Posts

A. Terminology

1. The term “topic” will refer to:

a. Any single thread-starter post in a forum

b. Any status update to a social networking website

c. Any blog post

d. Any website update

e. Or anything else similar to this

2. The term “post” will refer to:

a. Any reply to a topic in a forum

b. Any comment on a website, blog, or anywhere else

3. The term “flames” will refer to personal attacks on another user.

B. Topics

1. You may post anything you desire, with the exception of:

a. Any topic that is clearly intended to be offensive to a certain group of people (jokes are certainly allowed).

b. Any topic that is located in an inappropriate spot for said topic (for example, a post about video games on a network administration forum). If there is a “general” section in a forum, follow rules about acceptable posts in that section.

c. Advertisements that are not posted with approval from a forum administrator (or unless you own the site)

d. Random content or randomly typed letters that have no good purpose and will only annoy people without providing any benefit to anyone

e. Profanity where it does not belong. If it is made clear that your website contains such content and you have a decent reason to post it, it is okay.

f. Plagiarized content. Sources must always be included when applicable.

g. Flames.

2. Topics that do not meet these guidelines may be deleted by an administrator. If you claim to conform to FOSD, post topics in violation of one of these, and a user calls you out on it, you must immediately remove said topic or your FOSD compliance notice.

C. Posts

1. For the purpose of this discussion, a post is a reply to a topic.

2. You are free to post anything except:

a. Anything that is clearly intended to be offensive to a certain group of people (jokes are certainly allowed).

b. Off-topic replies. Posts must have a direct and obvious connection to the topic they are associated with.

c. Advertisements of any kind.

d. Profanity, except where it is in response to a topic where profanity has been okayed.

e. Plagiarized content. Sources must always be included when applicable.

f. Flames.

3. In addition, posts must:

a. Have something meaningful to add to the topic. Posts stating simply “I agree” may be included, with the following constraints:

i. A debate must be close or tipped in favor of the other side.

ii. Signatures should be removed unless absolutely necessary.

iii. You must include who you agree with in the topic, or your post will be meaningless if there are lots of replies.

iv. You must not post things like this simply to increase your post count.

b. Include the name of the person you are replying to, and, if it requires scrolling to find the original post, a quote, if posts do not “stack”, or become indented based on who you are replying to.

c. Be understandable. If you include terms that some people may not know, be prepared to explain them.

d. Follow any and all rules set out on the forum or website you are posting on.

4. Posts that do not meet these guidelines may be deleted. Offenses in section 3, above, are not serious and merit the user receiving a warning or polite notice and only being deleted for repeated and annoying offenses.

IV. Administration

A. Terminology

1. The term “delete” refers to the removal of a post or topic due to it not meeting FOSD guidelines or the rules of the forum/website.

2. The term “ban” refers to the semi-permanent removal of a user's ability to access and/or post to the site.

3. The term “warning” refers to the administrator informing the user that he/she has done something wrong and should fix it, without taking disciplinary action.

4. The term “modify” refers to changing the content of a post, with or without record that such has been done.

B. Deletion

1. Topics or posts may be deleted only because they did not meet FOSD guidelines or the forum/website's rules.

2. Topics or posts may NOT be deleted for the following reasons:

a. The administrator disagrees with the personal opinion of the poster or the opinion stated in the topic/post.

b. The information in the topic is incorrect. A post should be added stating this, or an email sent to the poster informing them of the misinformation.

c. You're tired of debating something.

d. You don't want to get into an argument. State that and stay out of it.

e. It serves your purposes conveniently.

f. Any other reason not included in the guidelines.

3. Users who have had their posts deleted without a good reason should contact the administrator. They also have the right to repeatedly repost the topic/post, since it should not be deleted.

4. Users may delete their own posts at any time.

C. Modification

1. Users may modify their own posts at any time. Add what was changed and the reason for changing it at the bottom of the post after the word “EDIT:”. Fixing typos or grammatical errors that you notice later, as long as they don't change the meaning of the post, is encouraged and does not require adding the EDIT information. If you were unclear, fix it, then state what it said before and the fact that you fixed it after “EDIT.”

2. Users may NOT modify their posts because they were on the losing side of a debate and want to make it look like they were right and others were stupid. Users that do this may be banned immediately with no warning.

3. Administrators may not modify other users' posts for any reason.

D. Warnings

1. Administrators may give warnings at any time to any user for any reason. Before being banned, a user must usually be warned at least once; see the “banning” section below.

2. If a user has done something that merits having their post/topic deleted, the administrator should also send a message to the user stating the reason why their topic was deleted, so that the user does not believe he/she has the right to keep reposting his/her topic.

E. Banning

1. A user may be banned only under the following circumstances:

a. The user has been warned at least once, excluding insta-bans (see below)

b. The user has broken FOSD guidelines or forum/website rules and knows that he/she has done so.

c. The problem cannot easily be resolved any other way.

2. Provided that the above guidelines are met, the user can be banned at any time. The administrator should send an email or message, if possible, stating that the user has been banned and giving a reason for the ban.

3. Insta-Bans

a. A user may be banned without warning under the following conditions:

i. The user is attempting to crack, hack, or damage the site.

ii. The user is making it difficult for other users to use the forum by posting many posts of flames or random text in a very short amount of time.

iii. The user has previously been banned for another offense and has returned.

b. For all other offenses, the administrator must provide a warning before banning.

V. Flaming and Useless Discussion

A. Flaming is insulting personal attacks that generally have nothing to do with the discussion.

B. Users that are engaged in flamewars may be banned after a single warning. If a user wants to flame someone else, he/she is encouraged to take it up via email or a different mode of communication, rather than on the forum. Nobody needs to see that, and it just clogs up the forum for everyone else.

VI. Conclusion

A. Version Number: FOSD 0.1

B. Licensing: Free to reuse with listing of version

C. Next Update: Unknown

D. Enters effect: Upon adoption

--
Soren "scorchgeek" Bjornstad
http://www.thetechnicalgeekery.com

Microsoft is not the answer.
Microsoft is the question.
The answer is "No."

Input Methods

2009-10-28T18:26:00.000-05:00

I don't actually remember learning to use a mouse. Ever since I can remember, I've just been able to click on what I want and move the mouse where I want. But when you think about it, the mouse isn't actually the most intuitive input device. You move it sort of where you want the cursor to go, but the direction and distance doesn't really match the action of the cursor on the screen. And most people are temporarily confused when learning about computers for the first time by the fact that you can pick up the mouse and move it to a completely new location without changing what's on the screen at all. Furthermore, you click over a certain location when you want to activate something. But you have left-click, right-click, and zillions more options to choose from. And sometimes you don't actually click to select something. We have learned to use mice and done so much work with them that it requires no conscious effort to do something on the screen.

I do remember learning how to type properly, though. I went through multiple programs and did lots of practice on my own, and by the time I reached sixth grade I could type about 60 words per minute. The problem is, after three more years of keyboarding, I have barely improved at all, because I had already nearly reached the upper limit of how fast my fingers could go. This is a major limit to typing, but as I will talk about later, it still has certain features that no other current technology can offer.

We (and I am often guilty of this) frequently talk about being able to input or write something “as fast as you can think.” And it's true that you can only think so fast. For instance, before I started writing this sentence, I stopped typing for a few seconds to get my thoughts together about where this post was going. But when you get a thought about something you're trying to write, you are still limited by the speed that you can type it. For that matter, the same thing happens when speaking. It's just that it seems much more natural for some reason, and that we've somehow trained ourselves not to notice. This problem is basically unsolvable, but it's one of the things to keep in mind when talking about input; how close can you get to that limit? Some technologies, like typing and speech recognition, can do fairly well. Others, like texting, entering text on graphing calculators, and using those little tiny keyboards that come on way too many mobile devices, do very poorly. Writing by hand comes somewhere in the middle. Generally, if entering something into a device is slower than hand-writing it, it's not worth my time.

There's also the question of errors. How likely are you or the machine to screw up? When there's an error, you have to spend time correcting it, and could potentially screw something major up, like deleting an irreplaceable file or buying something you didn't really want. We have to accept some errors or it would be nearly impossible to go through our lives, but too many and people start to get really frustrated. If you wanted to never miskey a letter when typing, you would type at about one-quarter of the speed you could reach otherwise. Most typists simply accept the fact that they will make errors and simply backspace them just as fast as they made them, go on, and not even notice that they spend half as much time fixing errors as they do actually keying new text. If you had to never click the wrong button, you would have to hold your hand steady and triple-check before clicking every button. Obviously, if you're about to do something that cannot be undone, some caution is warranted. But most of the time, you have to find the right balance between speed and errors.

Currently, most people use a keyboard and mouse to work with their computer. If they're working with a mobile device, they might use a touch-screen and mini-keyboard or telephone keypad instead. And this works perfectly well. The problem is that they're not perfectly efficient and they tend to create ergonomic problems.
Option 1: Touch screen
Touch screens make plenty of sense on many levels, and are about as intuitive as you can get. Touch a place on the screen, and the cursor moves there. Want to zoom? Just put two fingers on the screen and pinch it based on which way you want to go (assuming your screen supports multi-touch). Unfortunately, conventional touch-screens are very uncomfortable to use because you have to reach way out in front of you to use them. If you were to solve that by placing the screen on your desk, then you have to strain your neck to look down. Either way, there's that nasty problem of blocking your view of the screen with your fingers.

Option 2: Voice Recognition
Voice recognition seems like a great idea on the surface. You don't have to learn to type or use a mouse, and you can just tell the computer what to do instead. You can easily dictate documents, too, and most people can speak faster than they can type, so that works better.

In reality, it's not that great. First of all, voice recognition only has a stated 99% accuracy, and in many cases, it's a bit less than that. The errors are not intolerable, but they are certainly annoying. In actuality, the number of errors is less than most people make while typing, but typing errors can be corrected in less than a second by fast typists. Voice errors take a long time to fix; you either have to reach for the keyboard and fix it or go through the laborious process of scrolling to the word and reading it out to be selected (and if it doesn't recognize that word, you might have a hard time selecting it) and then hope that it recognizes the word the second time around. Most good packages can “learn” and thus have less errors over time, but our voices are so complex that a computer has a hard time understanding what would be simple to us.

However, if we decided voice recognition was the way to go, we could work hard on the technology and greatly improve the accuracy, which is getting better all the time. Unfortunately, that's not the extent of the problems. First of all, there's the issue that speaking makes noise. If you're in an office environment without closed doors, not only will loads of people be distracted by what other people are doing, there's a chance that the software might get confused too. Also, people like the fact that others can't tell what they're typing. It would be hard to do something even semi-privately in a crowded area using voice recognition. Next, there's the fact that it's much harder to erase large blocks of text. If you type a sentence that doesn't work, you can just backspace it in a couple of seconds or even correct it in places using your arrow keys. Correcting text takes forever, because it's not easy to speak about appearances. I'm going to reference a Science Olympiad event called “Write It Do It” here. In this event, you get something built out of Legos or Tinkertoys, and you have 25 minutes to write directions for your teammate. Then he has to try to build an exact replica with only your directions. The same basic problem exists here. It's much simpler to point and click at the word you want to delete than to describe where it is located on the page. Revising long documents could potentially take hours just because simple tasks like scrolling and deleting words require long, multi-part commands. And finally, our voices don't like talking for long periods of time. Just as people today hurt their wrists and fingers from typing too much, workers who talked for eight hours a day without stopping wouldn't be very happy about how they felt afterwards.

Option 3: Touchpads/Graphics Tablets
Touchpads are those annoying tiny little things you see on laptops. Graphics tablets are basically big touchpads that you use with a pen. Either way, you point at an absolute location on the screen, rather than move the pointer relative to its current position like you do on a mouse. If you're confused, think about how you can pick the mouse up and move it to the other side of the keyboard and the pointer will stay in the same spot. That's relative, because your movement of the mouse moves the pointer relative to its original location. In contrast, in absolute location, tapping in the upper-left corner of the pad will always move the pointer to the upper-left corner of the screen. Hitting in the middle will always move to the middle of the screen, regardless of where the pointer was before.

Basically, touchpads offer many more options than a mouse, because you can manipulate them with more than one finger at a time, provided the pad and software supports multi-touch. Some concepts have taken this to the next level (see http://10gui.com/). They also may offer better ergonomics.

Option 4: Thinking
It can't possibly go mainstream anytime soon, but being able to manipulate your computer simply by thinking certainly offers a lot of possibilities. First of all, it completely eliminates the issue we've always had before of somehow transferring what you're thinking into a physical medium so what you're doing can be tracked. Second, all the problems that have been discussed earlier are solved: you don't have to reach anywhere, it's silent, and you don't even have to move.

There are a few problems I can think of, though. First of all, there has to be some way to distinguish between what you're considering and what you actually want to do. If I'm typing or using voice recognition, I can think before deciding what I'm going to write, then input it. If the computer is just trying to turn my thoughts into words, will it just place random words that are going through my mind on the screen? Will it know when I'm just paused to collect my thoughts and enter completely unrelated things?

Also, we're used to having to do something to have something happen. It would not be a particularly easy transition. People might turn away to do something else and not realize that they hadn't turned it off and strange stuff would be happening on the computer. Perhaps having some sort of dummy device would be helpful (say, a mouse that didn't do anything). Would you be able to reliably think about where you wanted the mouse pointer, and once again, would it be able to tell the difference between considering and actually wanting to click somewhere?

Conclusion
I'm sure there are many other things you can think of; these were just my first thoughts. Feel free to add your thoughts by clicking on the “Comments” link; if there's something good, I may add it to here. And by the way, I noticed that I have overused semicolons in this conclusion; they are quite useful, though.

--
Soren "scorchgeek" Bjornstad
http://www.thetechnicalgeekery.com

Microsoft is not the answer.
Microsoft is the question.
The answer is "No."

2009-10-17T18:43:00.000-05:00

Ten Ways to Keep Your Passwords Safe
We all know that other people stealing your passwords is bad, because then they can get into your stuff and do all sorts of bad stuff. But many people do things that can get their passwords stolen every day, because they don't believe that something bad will happen to them, because they're too lazy, or because they don't realize what they're doing. (I apologize for sounding like a 3-year-old while trying to generalize.) In this note, I will explain some of the ways people can get your password as well as some tips for how to prevent it.

No computer system, no matter how secure, can resist attack indefinitely. There is always some way to break the security. The goal, then, of security, is simply to slow down attackers so much that the method of break-in is impractical or they give up and move on to an easier target. If your computer looks well-secured, unless crackers have a very good reason to target you in particular, they're likely to move on.

First of all, don't forget that your passwords should ideally all be different, or at least some of them should be different.

1. Giving someone your password
It seems stupid that I need to include this, but people do it quite a bit. Are you sharing any kind of account with someone? You just gave them your password. Saved a password in your browser on a shared computer? You just gave them your password. (And not only can they log on there, they can also find what password is stored and write it down for use later.) And plenty of people share their passwords with others so they can easily log on.

Now I'm not saying that sharing passwords is inherently bad, just that you need to be cautious. Every person that knows a password multiplies the risk of having it stolen or social-engineered (more on that later). Just because you trust someone completely doesn't mean that they will keep your password with the most care possible. If you need to share your password with someone, make sure you know for sure that they will not write it down or save it and that they are smart about social engineering.

If for some reason you need to share a password with someone you don't know much about, you can always change your password temporarily and then change it back later.

2. Shoulder surfing
Although it sounds like one of those stupid things people try to do at rock concerts, it's almost undoubtedly the oldest and most low-tech way to steal a password. All you have to do is get behind someone and watch them enter their password.

Since passwords were developed, login screens have hidden the typed characters in password fields from view to make shoulder surfing much more difficult. However, someone who gets lucky, has sharp eyes, or tries multiple times will have a fairly good chance of getting your password by looking at the keyboard. . Since most people use the same password multiple times (hey, even me, and I'm writing about security here), stealing one password will allow them to get into multiple accounts. (And by the way, this problem isn't limited to computer terminals; you should always cover the PIN pad with your hand when entering numbers at an ATM or store checkout. Besides the chance of someone walking behind you and spotting your number, crackers have been known to place cameras aimed at the PIN pads to catch unwary users.)

Obviously, if your computer is placed in a closed room, it's going to be pretty hard for someone to sneak in behind you and shoulder-surf your password without you noticing. However, be careful if you invite someone you don't trust into this area; shoulder surfing is one of the things people tend not to think about. If your computer is easily visible, especially in a crowded and noisy area, you have a much bigger problem. Not only are you less likely to notice someone sneaking up behind you, people will also feel much more confident and are more likely to try to steal your password.

There are a few things you can do to try to prevent your password from being shoulder-surfed. There are two parts to successfully stealing a password in this manner, seeing the password and remembering the password until you get a chance to write it down. You can do quite a bit to help in both areas. First of all, the more complicated and nonsensical the password is, the less likely someone is to remember it. Also, it will be much harder to see what is being entered. A password like “password” has a pattern that will be easily recognized, but a password like “e5^8flc” is very unlikely to be “read” correctly, and even more unlikely to be remembered. Also, avoid long strings of contiguous or repeating letters, like “qwerty” or “adadadad.” Everyone can easily spot these. Secondly, learn to type your password as fast as possible. If you hit the keys so fast that nobody can see what you're typing, you're automatically safe. Thirdly, learn to touch-type. It will improve your overall computing experience tremendously, and it might take a while to figure out, but it's totally worth it. For security, not only are you able to type your password much faster, your fingers also cover the keyboard without any effort. Finally, if you're in a high-risk environment (open area, crowded, noisy, public), look behind you before you enter important passwords. Although it seems paranoid, you might even consider getting a monitor mirror, which clips onto your monitor and shows you what's behind you (see http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/accessories/2940/). Not only will it allow you to catch shoulder surfers in the act and know when someone has stolen your password and you need to change it, crackers are also far more likely to move on to an easier target.

3. Search and you will find...
Many people have difficulty remembering passwords, so they write them down on sticky notes and throw them in desk drawers or stick them to the monitor. Enterprising crackers can easily find these notes and...voila, they have a valid password.

This one's easy to combat—don't write your password down. Never write your password down. Never, ever write your password down. Period. By writing down your password, you work against the whole idea of a password. If you must save passwords in your browser, make sure they're not important, and make sure your computer requires a login password while you're away from it (e.g. lock the workstation, make screen saver require password after it kicks in, log off, etc.)

If you have trouble remembering your passwords, consider using a password manager (see http://keepass.info/). A password manager stores all your passwords securely so you only have to remember one (strong) master password or plug in a flash drive and unlock all your passwords. After a timeout, when you log out or lock the file (when you leave the computer, hopefully), or when you remove your flash drive, the file that stores your password is unloaded and becomes inaccessible. This will also allow you to more easily use stronger and different passwords.

4. Security vulnerabilities
No program of any significant size is safe from bugs. Matter of fact, no program is safe from bugs. So it follows logically that most major programs have, at some point, suffered from security vulnerabilities. This is not a problem in itself; the problem is that people often fail to patch these vulnerabilities in a timely manner. Nearly all security holes are patched well before they are successfully exploited, so as long as you pay attention, you have very little to worry about.

In terms of passwords, there are relatively few exploits of this sort, but it's always a good idea to keep everything up to date. Make sure automatic check-for-updates features are turned on, update to the latest versions of programs periodically, and keep a lookout for any published security advisories.

5. Database cracking
Database cracking is one of the most dangerous threats today. In database cracking (which isn't an official name, but it works, and I don't think there is an official name), a cracker or group of crackers breaks into a large database kept by a company on a secure server and steals all the information on it, which can be worth huge amounts of money. Database cracking is more commonly talked about in terms of identity theft, but it is also an easy way to steal emails, passwords (they are part of your identity, after all), and more.

Unfortunately, there's very little you can do about database cracking; you just have to trust that everyone you give your information to will do their best to keep it secure.

6. Guess the password
Since too many people use simple passwords, a cracker has a decent chance of being able to sit down in front of a computer or login page and guess the password within a few minutes, especially if he or she knows the person.

To combat this, you should make sure your password meets all of the following guidelines:
Does not include your username or any part of your username
Does not include your real name, birth date, address, phone number, email address, etc.
Does not include any personal information that could be easily obtained by a cracker; includes any information you have ever posted on the internet
Is not a phrase like “password” typed with your hands shifted.
Is not any of the passwords or similar to any of the passwords on the “Top 500 Worst Passwords of All Time” list at http://www.whatsmypass.com/the-top-500-worst-passwords-of-all-time.
Includes at least 8 characters, the more the better.
Also see the “Dictionary Attack” section for more guidelines.

7. Dictionary attack
A dictionary attack is basically a high-tech version of guessing the password. In a dictionary attack, a cracker runs a program called a dictionary cracker on the login screen they want to get the password from. The dictionary cracker comes with a dictionary file containing the most common passwords. The cracker program will try each password until it runs out of passwords, it gets locked out for too many incorrect password attempts, or it guesses the password correctly, in which case it will stop and tell the cracker what the password was.

To protect yourself from dictionary attacks, make sure your password meets the following guidelines:
Is not any of the passwords or similar to any of the passwords on the “Top 500 Worst Passwords of All Time” list at http://www.whatsmypass.com/the-top-500-worst-passwords-of-all-time.
Does not include many sequential numbers or letters, letters contiguous on the keyboard, or a combination of the two.
Is not a common English word.
Also see the “Guess the password” section for more guidelines.

8. Brute-force
A brute-force attack consists of trying every possible password until the right one is found. No matter what security measures are used, a brute-force attack is guaranteed to eventually come up with the right answer. However, a brute-force attack takes a really long time (unless it gets lucky); if you have a strong password, it could take centuries to crack it using powerful computers.

To combat brute-force attacks, make sure you have a strong password, using the password guidelines for #6 and #7.

9. Keylogging
A keylogger is a program or hardware device that stores all the keystrokes entered into a computer. Someone can install a keylogger, then later come back to retrieve the data collected, search through it for sequences that look like passwords, then attempt those passwords.

To protect yourself against software keyloggers, make sure you have an anti-malware program that includes spyware protection installed and that it scans regularly. To protect yourself from hardware keyloggers, make sure strangers cannot easily access where your keyboard plugs in, and check occasionally to make sure there are no odd devices plugged into the system (keyloggers are usually plugged in between the keyboard and the computer).

10. Social engineering
Social engineering (in a security context) is simply the process of trying to trick someone into revealing confidential information or doing something that will compromise the security of a system (like disabling security measures). Social engineering is rarely attempted in person, but there's no reason why it cannot be. One of the reasons why it is so successful is that, in many cases, it is not actually a crime, so even if the attacker is caught, they cannot be arrested. The person has chosen to give the information, after all.

To protect yourself from social engineering, you should be aware of the fact that it is likely that someone will try to do it to you at some point. First of all, never give your password to anyone else. Period. IT does not need to know your password. Nobody ever needs to know your password because of a “database crash”. If there really was a database crash, they'll make arrangements to get it fixed, and you won't be able to log in until then anyway. That really polite guy in Afghanistan who wants to deposit $112,378.26 in your PayPal account does not need to know your password.

If there's ever any doubt about whether someone really needs to know a piece of information, hang up the phone or close the email, call or email the person yourself with a number/address you know to be accurate, and ask them if they asked for it. Better yet, walk or drive there yourself (if possible). Most likely, they'll be very interested to know that someone was trying to represent them.

Never send your password or confidential information by email. There is not a single legitimate organization or website that will ever ask you to email them information about your account. Delete the email immediately, or better yet, report it to the organization that was supposedly sending it.

Finally, if someone you don't know ever calls you and asks for your information, it's best not to give it. If they want you to take a survey, fine, but they don't need to know your name, address, and email for it. If someone gathers enough apparently innocuous information, one bit at a time, they could soon have enough to impersonate you and steal more information or money.

If your password gets stolen
Immediately go change your passwords for all websites and other logins that use the password that has been stolen. Write them down temporarily (hopefully making at least some of them different to avoid this in the future). Store them in a password manager if you aren't going to remember them, then burn or shred the password sheet and throw it away.

If the cracker has changed the password, attempt to recover it. Get in touch with the company or follow a “My password has been stolen” procedure. On many sites, like Gmail, you can fill out a long form telling about your emailing habits, then the Google staff checks it against the logs and can often give you your account back. Of course, in the meantime your email may have been read, information stolen from it, and deleted, but at least you have your account back. If you think any other passwords may have been compromised by this account being taken over, go change them too.

Conclusion
I hope to have included most of the ways that passwords get taken. Read it, make sure you follow all the guidelines, fix a few things if you haven't, then go on with your life knowing you're that much more secure than other people. Remember: There's no way to stop the crackers, only slow them down and hope for the best.

--
Soren "scorchgeek" Bjornstad
http://www.thetechnicalgeekery.com

Microsoft is not the answer.
Microsoft is the question.
The answer is "No."

2009-10-17T18:41:00.004-05:00

In this blog, I hope to publish things about technology whenever I get the chance. Duh. Soon I will link this on my web page too, so you can access it more easily.

Any questions? I think I'll get to the first post. Feel free to leave any comments and pass the URL along to your friends. (To access comments, click the "# Comments" link at the bottom of the post.)
--
Soren "scorchgeek" Bjornstad
http://www.thetechnicalgeekery.com

Microsoft is not the answer.
Microsoft is the question.
The answer is "No."