Matthew's Technology Blog

XMPP software documentation

2009-04-04T15:16:00.002+01:00

In an attempt to dust off my neglected blog, I bring you the following post about something that has been nagging at me for the past couple of days.

Since the recent changes at jabber.org I've been thinking a lot about Jabber from a new user's perspective.

The new web-based registration form may help clear up a lot of confusion that resulted from in-band registration (many users were looking for somewhere on the website to register), but after registration what do they do next?

They no longer need a client to register, and it is now quite likely that after registration they won't yet have one, so obviously most importanly we need to guide them to find a client.

We could simply direct them to the XMPP client list on xmpp.org, however that isn't particularly friendly for someone who might not even be familiar with the term "client".

What we need is a shortlist of some user-friendly clients, with good documentation.

And this set me thinking that perhaps there ought to be a concerted effort to document the basics of XMPP clients (in fact any and all XMPP software) in a unified way.

For each client I would like to see a set of simple single-page tutorials, complete with screenshots, on issues such as:

How to register an account

How to add an existing account

How to add a contact

How to join a MUC

How to send/receive files

Where the pages would be hosted (in one place, or on the respective client sites) as well as some other things still need thinking about, but I'd like to know what other people think about the basic idea before setting anything in stone. Thoughts?

irssi notifications over Jabber (or IRC barking)

2008-06-20T17:49:00.003+01:00

Thanks to daubers (the brains behind the XMPP doorbell) who suggested it, I now have irssi highlights sent directly to my Jabber client. Quite a handy thing since only yesterday I logged in to find several PMs awaiting me from 4 days ago.

For the base I used an existing irssi script called fnotify, which was designed to write notifications to a file. I found this script from Aaron Toponce's blog post.


mkdir -p ~/.irssi/scripts/autorun
cd ~/.irssi/scripts
wget http://www.leemhuis.info/files/fnotify/fnotify -O fnotify.pl
chmod +x fnotify.pl
ln -s ../fnotify.pl autorun/fnotify.pl
nano fnotify.pl

Change line 56 (which reads something like open(FILE, ...)) to:


open(FILE,"| sendxmpp -i me\@example.com");

Replace the JID with your own, and make sure to put a \backslash before the @ sign as above.

sudo apt-get install sendxmpp

When it is installed, tell sendxmpp what account to use for sending messages:


echo me@example.com verysecret123 > ~/.sendxmpprc
chmod 0600 ~/.sendxmpprc

Replace with your JID and password of course ;)

Now, in irssi:


/win 1
/run fnotify.pl

(switching to window 1 is necessary to see any error messages if they appear)

If it loads successfully, get someone to say your nick or send you a private message. It should appear in your Jabber client within a few seconds.

A consequence of this for me is that IRC now barks too :)

IM Barking

2008-06-16T16:07:00.004+01:00

Over the weekend my brother found an old toy of his... a "robotic" dog. It has two functions, walking and "barking" (where bark is more of a squeak). Unfortunately the controller for these said functions had been put beyond practical repair by leaked batteries. I cut the controller off and wondered what uses I could put the thing to. A solution looking for a problem.

People often complain that I don't respond to their Jabber messages, often this is because I simply didn't notice it, or wasn't at my computer. I do have speakers, but I either have music playing, or when not, they are turned down to 0. Problem found.

To replace the dog's original controller I used a USB interface board. It wasn't long before I knocked together a quick Lua script to use the board and make it bark on demand.

With thanks to vArDo (Mateusz Biliński, working to add a plugin system to Gajim for GSoC 2008) for the D-BUS notification handler script, I managed to link up new message arrivals to the barking. The result? See for yourself:

Open Discussion Day 2008

2008-05-18T21:49:00.004+01:00

Open Discussion Day (19th May) is very nearly upon us!

However due to various reasons, we did not manage to get the new site online until very late. This means there is still plenty of work to do.

If you have something to suggest, or want to offer a hand at short notice, join opendiscussion@conference.jaim.at, or #opendiscussion on Freenode!

We are keen to know what *you* are planning to do for open protocols this 19th May :)

Jabber Abuse Handling

2008-05-06T02:07:00.003+01:00

No blog post since... when? Never mind :)

Something that interests me became a hot topic in the Jabber community (specifically server administrators). We had a meeting at fairly short notice about possible solutions to the problems we know are around the corner.

The following are some *quick* rough notes I made (too early in the morning) of an abuse reporting method, very much along the lines of XEP-0161: SPIM Reporting and XEP-0236: Abuse Reporting. What I have in mind is something of a mixture between the two. Not all abuse is SPIM, so XEP-0161 should probably be a little more generic (as XEP-0236 is).

I haven't thought much about the below, but I believe the general concept is not that far from usable, and doesn't disrupt too much the distributed nature of XMPP.

End-user
It is nearly always going to be the end user who originates abuse reports. Whether they received spam to their JID, or experienced flooding in a MUC room they administrate.

The abuse report should be sent to the abuser's home server.

Abuser's server
Upon receiving an abuse report, the server may choose to act immediately, or wait and gather more evidence (possibly from sources it deems more reliable).

It is important that the server relates reports it receives to IP addresses when weighing the evidence, *not* JIDs, since obviously the same user may have created multiple accounts).

Upon receiving satisfactory evidence that a certain IP is abusing the service, the server may decide what action(s) to take.

Clearly the most obvious step is to ban the IP from the server, and lock associated (reported[1]) accounts.

The other (optional) step is to report the IP of the offender to a central reporting/blacklist service (ie. abuse.xmpp.net), to help aid other servers who wish to prevent similar abuse of their own service.

[1] Only reported accounts should be locked, since legitimate users behind the same NAT router as an abuser could otherwise be (overly) punished. Unfortunately there is no way to avoid that legitimate users are sometimes going to get caught up in the net.

Clearly blocking an IP is not the ideal solution. A new IP is not usually hard to come by. Each reported IP should be investigated, and network administrators notified of the abuse to reduce the chance that it will happen again.

Dates and times are very important. In the case of dynamic IPs, it is the only way to track down the offending user. Perhaps it would be useful to report more than one IP + time and date (ie. the last X IPs that used the account), for this purpose.

Apologies for the unpolished post. Time to sleep on this :)

GNOME 2.20 released

2007-09-21T01:18:00.000+01:00

...and it looks like I will be sticking with GNOME for another 6 months after all!

Even the most annoying thing about Epiphany seems to be fixed - the address bar. Also I no longer have to sync my Tomboy notes with an automated SVN commit. I'm close to forgiving it for being written in C#...

Do read!

Summer of Code final update

2007-09-08T00:48:00.000+01:00

As of 20th August Google's Summer of Code program has officially ended. Students must upload code produced up until the deadline to Google's hosting, and are only judged on work up to that date.

Continuation of GSoC projects is encouraged however, and I shall be finishing off HTTPS (and have already committed bug fixes) and tidying parts of my code over the next few weeks.

There has been plenty of interest in my summer's work, on the gloox mailing list, and in private emails/IMs to me personally. It is great to know that people are finding my work useful to them.

I would like to thank Jakob my mentor for endless help with figuring things out when they went wrong, and for guiding me around the innards of gloox when I got lost (not to mention for his excellent library existing in the first place!). Thanks to Peter for taking on the hard task of orchestrating the XSF's involvement in GSoC, and for supporting the students throughout. Finally thanks to Google and the team behind the administration of GSoC, for, well, you know what :)

I will update this post with the URL to my uploaded tarball once it is on Google's servers.

However the latest, greatest code will always be found in SVN. Currently BOSH is at svn://svn.camaya.net/gloox/branches/work/mw/bosh but very soon will be moved to the trunk. More information on gloox's download page.

The server-side implementations that I know work with this code are Openfire 3.3.2 (or .3), and Araneo (a standalone CM (connection manager), which allows any BOSH client to connect to any standard Jabber/XMPP server, using the CM as a kind of proxy) from ff.bluendo.com (site down at the moment I write this).

PS. Apologies for the delay in this post... blame my vacation :)

Update: Official tarball uploaded here. Please use the version from SVN (see above) though if you would like to test or use my code.

Summer of Code Update

2007-08-09T21:15:00.000+01:00

This week has been a good one for my project, despite my being ill for a few days of it. Firstly, I completed my initial implementation of multiple connections! I say 'initial' because it is currently only tested and working with one server (OpenFire), and I will be testing more, and likely fixing bugs, in the next few days.

I also received a lot of help from people following my previous blog post...

My problems with PunJab are fixed with minor code changes (although it still doesn't work correctly for other reasons at the moment).

badlop let me test against his ejabberd SVN server, and I discovered that it doesn't seem to support persistent HTTP connections, let alone pipelining. Now I have non-persistent connections implemented, I shall be testing ejabberd again.

OpenFire... well, it works (without the previous problems I had with a 30 second delay) with multiple connections, and works well too :)
The only downside is still the lack of XEP-0206 support, so my code won't work with SASL auth to OpenFire.

Which brings me to the news of a new CM, which I have high hopes for. If I can get my code working as well with this CM as it currently works with OpenFire, all servers can be connected to this way, and SASL login will work as well.

A sign of Jabber's increasing popularity?

2007-07-25T02:35:00.000+01:00

Some of you reading this are regulars in the Jabber MUC at jabber@conference.jabber.org. This MUC is referenced on www.jabber.org, and is the default room to join in many clients.

Unfortunately the past weeks have included events that I can only say are reminiscent of IRC...

Flooding

Abusive language

Spamming/advertising ("hey, check out this cool site! http://..." and leaving again)

Inevitably as Jabber gains good users it will also gain bad ones. While their activity in private chats is of little concern to us, I believe we need to lay down some guidelines for acceptable behaviour in the public conference.

Currently there are a handful of moderators keeping the MUC friendly. However it becomes hard to draw the line between what is acceptable and what is not. This is a matter of opinion that varies between most people.

My hope is that with some guidelines it will be easier for both the moderator and the user (who can then be directed to them if necessary).

The need for these moves is somewhat disappointing, but necessary it seems, if we are to keep the friendly atmosphere that we currently have in this little corner of the Jabber community :) and to continue providing useful help to Jabber newcomers.

Swearing
I propose the same policy as the official Ubuntu support channels, which works well. Mild swearing is ok, as long as it is not excessive, or directed at a person. Anything else may result in a warning and/or kick at the moderator's discretion.

No deliberate flooding
Though I am not aware of it happening in the Jabber MUC, it has happened in another MUC I am in. A user joined 2 bots into the room, and set them into a loop with each other, and left. Obviously this is deliberate, and I had to ban all 3 JIDs involved (but not until several hundred messages had already been sent to the room).

In IRC it is frequent to get shouted at for pasting more than a couple of lines. In Jabber people seem to be more lenient, and I don't see why this should change. Obviously a warning should be given when needed.

English only
It may seem unfair to prevent people from speaking in their native language. However most languages have their own servers and their own conferences. I don't propose this rule to affect those casual users who come in search of help, yet speak no or little English. Those users are usually directed in a friendly way to a room and server of their native language, where they will hopefully receive better help.

However some users hold long conversations which could easily be taken into private messages, or to other rooms. These conversations are nearly always unrelated to Jabber, and only annoy the other occupants of the room. It also makes it impossible for moderators to moderate when the conversation is in a language they don't know (I have previously been asked to kick people who were being insulting toward other users, although I had no idea because they were not speaking in English).

Obviously these choices are not up to me alone to make, and so I welcome comments and opinions on what I suggest here.

Update: It seems this post caused something of a discussion... :)

Summer of Code Progress

2007-07-25T02:32:00.000+01:00

In the past 2 weeks, I have tried every server-side BOSH implementation I can find (although more are always finding me!), and all have their individual problems with my client...

Openfire
No support for XEP-0206, and hence no SASL login is possible. I also have the reproducible (yet still mysterious) problem I blogged about in my last post. I also have had problems with Openfire's overactivity detection. The XEP specifies that the client is always allowed to make a request if it is to send data. The old version of the XEP which Openfire implemented was not clear on this, and as far as I can tell I get disconnected when I should not be.

ejabberd
Well, it seems to work. Yet ejabberd does not support XEP-0206 either, and also refuses non-SASL logins. This makes it impossible to use with my code for now.

JabberHTTPBind (JHB)
A handy little servlet which implements XEP-0124 and a little bit of XEP-0206. Yet I have problems with this also, as it seems to take wait seconds before the session creation response is received. After that I get a reply, which triggers a reply from gloox, to which the server replies instantly (yes, it appears to be polling for some reason). This happens until I begin getting errors from Tomcat (I believe JHB disconnects the client for requesting too frequently). I suspect a bug in the logic for polling, which I will take a look at after implementing multiple connections.

Punjab
The problem with Punjab seems quite simple, yet I have been unable to solve it. All my testing so far is being done locally, and Punjab seems to try to resolve 'localhost' on the external DNS. I don't know Python well, so this is the best I can understand of the problem. I intend to speak with the Punjab developer(s) this week.

All of the above are problems I am having, I would not be surprised to learn that many of them are a problem within my code. Unfortunately not having a working server implementation makes it very hard to know where the source of any particular problem lies. If anyone has suggestions about issues I have listed above, please do contact me :)

Today I managed to talk with Ian Paterson (author of the XEPs), who will kindly allow me to test against his server. Also I spoke with the anonymous commenter on my last post who has been very helpful, and offered me their Python implementation to play with as well. I learnt this week that Tigase has BOSH support in-development. With luck I will be able to test against Tigase in the coming weeks.

This week I also began the biggest change in the code for a while - enabling multiple connections to be made to the connection manager. This will help the client to work through proxies which don't support/allow HTTP 1.1 and/or pipelining.

Links round-up

2007-07-25T01:00:00.000+01:00

The oldest post in my post cache that may be applicable...

I don't have time to blog about things in general for now, so I'll present you with a list of links I've gathered on my travels through the web...

Make mailto: links open Gmail (Ubuntu):
www.howtogeek.com/howto/ubuntu/set-gmail-as-default-mail-client-in-ubuntu/

TortoiseSVN-like script for Nautilus (GNOME):
jasonfield.com/freebies/

A helpful article from Microsoft:
support.microsoft.com/kb/247804

A small computer running Xubuntu now on sale (did I already blog about this?):
www.linutop.com/

Flip, a novel programming language:
www.daimi.au.dk/~eriksoe/Flip/

Why Linux drives don't need defragmenting:
geekblog.oneandoneis2.org/index.php/2006/08/17/why_doesn_t_linux_need_defragmenting

Free web hosting:
www.110mb.com/

Free file hosting:
hostfile.org/

My Starred Slashdot articles:

Ubuntu Market Share:
linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/11/1452257

GPLv3 & Microsoft:
linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/06/1333257
slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/10/0030227

Written articles vs blog posts:
slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/09/2111255

Using the mouse in UIs:
hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/09/1232230

Spammers vs CAPTCHAs:
it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/09/0110203

OpenMoko phone on sale:
developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/09/0049249

The world's first programmable robot?
hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/07/1924248

I think so, this time:
linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/06/2119243

History of the CD:
slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/04/2230245

Summer of Code Update

2007-07-11T17:36:00.000+01:00

Time for an update on my progress with my project, now we are halfway through GSoC...

Disconnection (either by error, or as requested by the gloox client) gracefully from the server is working now. I have also made some small improvements in other areas where necessary, too many and too small to list here.

A big problem I am having is that there are regular delays in my test setup. I have a test client for gloox that replies to messages it receives. I have tried both tkabber and Psi as the second client, with the same results.

I checked that my BOSH code is doing everything correctly and it seems the answer is (insert disclaimer here) yes.

Here is the link to a network capture log: Wireshark capture file

The file is so named because the test message I sent was the text "ooo". (No, I don't know why...)

Below is my translation to English of the necessary parts of the log, showing a message going from Psi to gloox (via the server) and the reply going back again:

A: GUI client (Psi 0.10, port 32921->5222)
B: BOSH client (gloox svn, port 45069->5280)
S: Jabber server (Openfire 3.3.2, port 5222)
CM: BOSH connection manager (Openfire 3.3.2, 5280)

# GUI client sends message to server
0 sec: A->S (frame 37 in the capture)
0.000030: TCP ACK for the above

# Server sends message to gloox via BOSH
0.001999: CM->B

# Gloox sends composing event
0.003065: (Composing event) B->CM
0.003090: TCP ACK for the above

# Gloox immediately after this sends reply message
0.003358: B->CM
0.003370: TCP ACK for the above

# Server sends composing event to GUI client
0.004707: (Composing event) S->A
0.004725: TCP ACK for the above

# Server replies with empty response to gloox,due to 30s inactivity (as per spec)
30.007330: (Empty response) CM->B

# Server sends message to GUI client
30.012078: S->A

# All the acks for the last packets
30.012078: TCP ACK for last TCP ACK (RTT to ACK was 30.007 seconds) (??????!)
30.012106: TCP ACK for S->A
30.046637: TCP ACK for (Empty response) CM->B

If anyone could explain why the server appears to hold a message for 30 seconds, please let me know!

The story with ejabberd (which I finally managed to patch, compile and build) isn't good either. Because the new version of the BOSH XEP does not define how to restart a stream, XEP-0206 support is needed, which now defines this function. Unfortunately no server supports this yet, so I disabled SASL until I find a way around this. Unfortunately ejabberd forces clients that advertise XMPP 1.0 to use SASL (which gloox does) so it denies login attempts.

Detecting which version of the BOSH protocol is supported by the server, and using the old method when necessary would work in this case, but not in Openfire's (it reports version 1.6 already).

There are a few server-independent connection managers around, and I will test with those. My intention is to find one that I am able to bring up to date with the current specifications.

This is my focus at the moment, but very soon I will begin implementing multiple connections (a big step) for when pipelining can not be used.

Summer of Code Update

2007-06-28T15:17:00.000+01:00

This post is somewhat delayed, for a variety of reasons, and from today I'll hopefully be posting more regularly again.

Despite the lack of posts, I have still been working, and I have made some progress too.

Code for pipelining (a single connection) to the BOSH connection manager is roughly in place. My first message was sent through BOSH last week!

I do have a couple of problems, both of which I believe are down to Openfire's lack of full BOSH support.

SASL authentication will not work, because Openfire does not support the xmpp:restart attribute defined in XEP-0206. I have temporarily overcome this by disabling SASL authentication attempts in the simple client I am testing with. I will see how I can make the code backwards-compatible with the old HTTP binding in this respect*.

The second problem is that Openfire disconnects the client if it sends requests too frequently.

As I understand XEP-0124 however, if no requests are outstanding (and hence no way for the server to push data to the client) the server should allow a request within any amount of time. Although the latest version of the XEP is more clear about this, version 1.5 (on which Openfire's support is based) does not explicitly state it. As a result Openfire is being more restrictive than it should be. I intend to file a bug report for this.

My last problem was a bug I encountered in gloox (resulting in message replies not always getting sent), and it affected the test client I have that is using my BOSH class. It happens that the bug was already fixed, and simply merging with the latest gloox trunk fixed it.

My current and next tasks are to fix an intermittent segmentation fault, and an out-of-range exception (which I believe to be both related), and improve the handling of disconnecting from the server.

* This is not helped by Openfire currently reporting the wrong protocol version...

How to recover an Ubuntu/Linux PC

2007-06-09T14:59:00.000+01:00

People often claim that Linux is more stable than Windows. Without hard statistics, this can't really be proven. One thing I do know however, is that when things go wrong it is much easier to recover a Linux PC than a Windows one, without restarting. In this post I will explain what to do, in easy steps, to get your Linux back running as safely as possible.

1. Kill a single graphical application
If you know the problem is a single application that you have open that maybe just froze then it is simple to fix. Press Alt+F2 and type 'xkill' (without the quotes) then press enter. This runs the xkill program, and the next application that you click on will be forced to close. If you change your mind, press the right mouse button to exit from this mode.

It may be worth setting a keypress that will automatically start xkill when you need it. In Ubuntu/GNOME, go to System->Preferences->Keyboard Shortcuts

2. Restart the graphical interface
If you are still having problems, or the whole of the graphical interface is not responding, press Ctrl+Alt+Backspace. This will attempt to stop the graphical display, and then restart it. Any applications you had open will be killed.

3. Switch to a console to end the application
If this didn't work, or you know a certain program is causing the problem, you can kill that program without using the graphical interface. Press Ctrl+Alt+F1. If your PC is running, but slowly, this may take a minute. Eventually you should end up at a text login screen. Log in with your usual username and password, and wait for the prompt to appear.

If you know the name of the program causing the problems, type: killall <program name>. If it continues, you can try to force it to stop, with: killall -KILL <program name>. For system process you may get "Permission Denied" errors. Prefix the above commands with "sudo ", ie. sudo killall...

If you are not sure which program is making the PC unresponsive, use the 'top' command. It shows a list of running programs, and their name, and in the CPU column it shows how much of the computer's processor they are using up. Once you identify the application press 'q' to exit top, and use the commands above to kill the program.

If all is now working, Ctrl+Alt+F7 will switch back to the graphical interface.

4. Emergency reboot procedure
If the steps above all failed, there is one last way to reboot your computer, and it is much safer than pressing the reset button on your PC's case, or pulling out the power cable.

It is important that you type these key combinations in the correct order, allowing the PC some time to complete the command between each one. The SysRq key on your keyboard is often also labelled as "Print" or "Print Screen".

Ctrl+Alt+SysRq+R
Switches the keyboard mode.
Ctrl+Alt+SysRq+S
Writes all data to the disks, necessary to avoid data corruption, unsaved files will still be lost.
Ctrl+Alt+SysRq+E
Tries to end processes in a nice way. Allow a little bit of time before you use the next command.
Ctrl+Alt+SysRq+I
Tries to forcefully kill processes that have not closed.
Ctrl+Alt+SysRq+U
Temporarily makes the hard disks read-only, this makes it safe to reboot.
Ctrl+Alt+SysRq+B
Force reboot.

5. Surrender
If that didn't reboot your PC, press the reset switch, or pull the plug, and cross your fingers :)

If you have any other methods, tips, or feedback to share, post a comment and let me know!

Vote!

2007-06-08T00:27:00.000+01:00

I just found this site, The Webware 100 in which Jabber appears next to many other networks and IM-related websites.

Do a good deed, and if you haven't already, vote for Jabber! :D

(That is, if you think it deserves the vote of course. If you don't, let me know and I'll correct you...)

Update: Whoops, I linked to the wrong category!

Summer of Code - Week 1 summary

2007-06-05T23:40:00.000+01:00

As promised I shall give some update on my progress with the project so far.

We held the second weekly meeting, though with Kev temporarily in stpeter's seat - logs here.

I finally have a clear picture of what I am doing and where I am going.

As I said in the meeting, my project is not something I can make fancy screencasts from. On the other hand, I think I will try and produce some diagrams that show what BOSH is, and how it works. I realise that this is not clear to many people who might be reading this yet :)

Coding
Down to the important part. Today I finished my first steps and managed to get my initial code to compile (through the gloox makefile). I haven't finished the simple test client I will be using, so I can't actually test it yet. If I could however, it would hang immediately after connection... but it's surely a start! :)

Once I get some real code I think I will start producing tarballs of my progress. I am currently working in a local SVN repository, so it is not hard for me to do.

Back to work...

First week of Summer of Code

2007-05-31T15:29:00.000+01:00

The coding period of Google Summer of Code has officially started (since the 28th of May). A meeting was held on Tuesday for students and mentors working on Jabber projects.

So far...

The laptop

I have set up my new laptop for development, including development tools (subversion, SciTE), and server that I will be using to test my code against.

The server

I have chosen Openfire to be my reference server initially, although obviously I will be testing to ensure compatibility with all servers later on (just in case...). Openfire is easy to install and use, and includes XEP-0124 support by default.

Other implementations

I am interested in finding other clients or their developers that have XEP-0124 implemented already. It would help me make the final decisions this week about the way I will be implementing it. If you know something about it, or know someone who does, please contact me!

The code and protocol

Gloox thankfully already has a nice framework for adding new network-level connection methods. It is this way that HTTP proxy and SOCKS5 support has already been added. Thanks to Jakob's foresight it is also possible to chain multiple classes so that BOSH will be able to work though a SOCKS5 proxy, for example.

I need to create a class descended from ConnectionBase and write implementations of the pure functions from it. I will also have to descend from ConnectionDataHandler to parse the replies from the BOSH connection manager, before gloox is able to parse and handle the XML.

The main difficulty I have right now is deciding which BOSH parameters should be fixed in the implementation, and which should be configurable. I am also looking to see if I can make the connection degrade gracefully from HTTP pipelining to multiple connections, to polling, depending upon what is supported/available in the current environment.

Identifying possible client environments is also one of my tasks. This way I won't end up, for example, only supporting cases where the connection manager is at the same address as the XMPP server (which in the setup I will be testing with, it is).

From now on

I will be posting weekly updates to this blog, and I have decided I will aim for every Tuesday, before or after the weekly meeting. Watch this space!

PS. In the past couple of weeks I have seen BOSH spelt as BISH, NOSH and BOX. Stop it! :D

The Linux shell, a new user's friend?

2007-05-22T18:14:00.000+01:00

Paul made another post yesterday, about the merits of the Linux text shell, and whether it was an ideal interface for new Linux users to have to learn.

So, they say that Linux forces users to learn how to use the shell and that, basically, Linux can't do anything without it.

It is a common argument made by Windows advocates, that it is impossible to use Linux without using the shell. I am glad to say, this is just not true.

Everyone knows that Linux grew from a shell-only interface, X and GUI applications came (much) later. Over the years Linux gained an image of being the hacker's operating system. It is far easier to hack (NOT 'crack') than Windows is.

Linux is growing beyond that now. Distributions (yes, I am saying it again) such as Ubuntu are doing their best to keep the shell to only those people that want it, and not require the people who don't to use it. In reality it is perfectly possible to use an Ubuntu system without knowing anything about the shell. There are graphical applications for practically any task you need to perform. I believe a little more could be done (ie. a GUI way to run programs as root), but still we are practically there already. One problem is that Linux tutorials nearly always show only shell way of doing things. This is at least better than Windows where a long how-to like this ("Click this tab, tick that box, click ok, oh, and again, and again...") could usually be done in a single command that could be copied and pasted.

Are shells good or not?

Yes, yes they are. There is no doubting the power of the shell. It is pretty easy to get started, you don't have to be a computer expert either. Knowing how to use the shell can help you take advantage of certain features in Linux that make it better than other operating systems - the possibility to bring it back to life from practically any crashed state, without data loss, and nearly always without rebooting. (Perhaps a simple how-to on this topic is in order... :) )

ObsidianLake: Another quarrel with my good friend...

2007-05-22T01:21:00.000+01:00

In Paul's recent post about whether Linux is ready for the desktop, he debates whether there is a demand for Linux, and asks:

"Should or will Linux become a commercial product?"

I think we should look at how Linux started out, where it is now, and where it is heading.

For a start, the Linux kernel was started with entirely different goals to the components that make up the rest of a GNU/Linux system. Linux was not begun with intention of being free (as in freedom). It was a personal project of Linus. For GNU on the other hand, the philosophy came first. Ten years ago there was little commercial worth in either of these ventures, only once they were combined into a usable system would things start to gain interest and momentum.

GNU/Linux in the present day is doing quite well. It has taken a long time, but it is now ready for the desktop. GNU/Linux is earning recognition from both hardware and software makers, and the number of users is snowballing. I have to say this is in no small way helped by Ubuntu and a couple of other easy to use distributions. It is important to note that all of the most popular ones are free. Now that Linux is comparable to Windows in practically every way, what else is there to compare on, except the price? This is why I believe that free distributions will always be the most popular. Commercial distributions have their place almost only in the enterprise market.

Into the future? GNU and Linux will remain free, and Microsoft will have no choice but to switch away from its reliance on Windows being the dominant OS if it is to survive. Windows was the first easy to use OS, and it brought the possibilities of computers to those who would otherwise never have had it. This is the only reason it is on 99% of PCs today. Now that GNU/Linux is a competitor, with the added advantage of being free, Microsoft have no choice but to re-think their business. Very soon Haiku is also going to raise the BeOS community from the (un)dead, and this will only stir the mix even more.

Concluding by returning to the original question, is Linux a commercial product? No, at least, not while we are talking about the home-user's desktop. Should it become commercial? Well, supposing it did, it would lose one of the best things it has to attract people on the OS centre-ground - its freedom.

C and C++

2007-05-20T16:42:00.000+01:00

I think it is quite true to an extent...
A conjecture regarding C (and C++ too, although less so)...

Nice blog too, it's going onto my reading list :)

My favourite way to make an application at the moment is to create low-level (and possibly all platform-specific code) in C/C++, and then handle logic in Lua. It allows for a lot of flexibility, and faster development time. Lua should be better known :)

Making Scite the default editor in GNOME (Ubuntu)

2007-05-20T16:35:00.001+01:00

For too long I was fighting with gedit, the default text editor in Ubuntu. While it is not too bad, Scite is far more powerful, and much better.

To install Scite, you can type the following in Terminal:

sudo aptitude install scite

I had the option of changing the editor associated with each of the file types in Nautilus (which is what I did on my desktop), but I was sure there must be a better way. I found it...


sudo aptitude install scite
cd ~/.local/share/applications
echo -e "[Default Applications]\ntext/plain=scite.desktop" >defaults.list
killall nautilus

Works a treat. Also, here is my Scite settings file:

line.margin.visible=1
default.file.ext=.lua
open.dialog.in.file.directory=1
check.if.already.open=1

Tip: A per-folder settings file can be created. For example, I have created a 'SciTE.properties' file in the gloox src folder, so Scite will automatically use the correct indentation for gloox, and insert spaces when I use the tab key.

Update: I found later that this only tells scite to open plain text files. If you are dealing with code (as I am) add the following lines too:


text/x-csrc=scite.desktop
text/x-c++src=scite.desktop
text/x-chdr=scite.desktop

If you want to add other file types, find the MIME type by right-clicking on a file and selecting 'Properties', the MIME type you need to know is listed there.

Who am I?

2007-05-20T16:20:00.000+01:00

I asked this very question, and found my answer:

Which Programming Language are You?

Ubuntu on my new laptop (+ how-to)

2007-05-20T15:39:00.001+01:00

Yes, my laptop (Toshiba A100-062) did arrive, and yes I had installed Ubuntu within the hour :)

I installed the latest version, 7.04, and had no trouble at all. A far cry from the way Linux used to be, absolutely everything worked out of the box. Once that would have been something uncommon, especially on a laptop. Certainly a pat on the back goes to the Ubuntu developers, and all who contribute directly or indirectly to it.

One of the first things I did was install Beryl, a 3D window manager. A full-quality video of it is here (if you're on Windows and it won't play, you need the Ogg Theora codec, try VLC video player, I think it works there).

A couple of things I would like to document here, in case they help anyone...

Memory card reader

At first I thought it wouldn't work (since that is what a lot of people told me). Sure enough, putting an SD card into the slot did nothing. However I forgot to remove it, and I rebooted with it still in the slot. It seems this was enough to trigger Ubuntu to recognise it, and mount the card.

It worked absolutely fine, until I tried a new card. The one that works is 256MB, and the one that doesn't is 2GB, so perhaps it is incompatible with the reader.

A couple of filed bugs for Ubuntu caught my eye:
Ubuntu Bug #53923
Ubuntu Bug #105284

I get the output posted there while the card is in the slot (Ubuntu tries to load it, fails, and tries again and again...).

ubuntu kernel: [ 3545.540000] end_request: I/O error, dev mmcblk0, sector xxxxx

I still have to test the card in this reader in Vista, so I can be sure it is not just a hardware incompatibility.

None of the workarounds posted in comments to those bugs worked (though I admit I did not try compiling new drivers, I am using the Feisty tifm module). I expect this will be fixed in an update.

Update: It decided to start working all by itself... :D Don't ask me what it was all about.

Second update: In fact this problem seems to be a completely intermittent problem. Sometimes it will work, sometimes it will not. When it doesn't work, I have yet to find a way to fix it, except to repeatedly remove and re-insert the card. Hopefully the next kernel will indeed fix this.

Touchpad
I knew there was a program called 'GSynaptics' which allows extra configuration of your touchpad. Being me, I had to install it. I got an error that I needed to set SHMConfig to "true" in xorg.conf. Not very helpful. Here is what I really had to do:

If you have a section that says "Synaptics Touchpad" in /etc/X11/xorg.conf already, you can just add the line:

Option "SHMConfig" "true"

to the section for the device. You must be root to edit this file, so run 'gksudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf' for a GUI or 'sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf' in Terminal.

If you don't have such a section, add this somewhere in /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "SHMConfig" "true"
EndSection

Close all your applications, log out, and press Ctrl+Alt+Backspace to restart the X server. If you haven't already, install GSynaptics.

Supend to RAM (Sleep), Hibernation and Resume

Although initially working, and working at the time I made this post, I have added this section when I discovered that somehow suspend/resume was broken. I fixed it by doing the following:

Change these options in /etc/default/acpi-support:

SAVE_VBE_STATE=false
POST_VIDEO=false
DOUBLE_CONSOLE_SWITCH=true

Note: I also changed: MODULES="tifm_core tifm_sd tifm_7xx1"
This probably isn't right, but I'm too lazy to change it back right now :). I am concerned that it may lose write-cache data for the SD card if you suspend to RAM. Maybe it won't, but you have been warned!

Next, reboot, and immediately press F2 to enter the BIOS. Change "Enable support for legacy USB devices" to 'Disabled', then Save and Exit.

Test suspend/resume, it should work. If you have a problem with the keyboard/touchpad not working after resume, download the patch (and apply it with the instructions) from this blog post.

Suspend/resume now works fine for me.

LCD Brightness

Maybe not an issue for most people. For some reason the LCD brightness controls in most places don't seem to work, yet controlling the brightness manually is possible.

Create a file /usr/bin/setbrightness:

sudo nano /usr/bin/setbrightness

Paste into it this:

#!/bin/bash
sudo sh -c "echo $1 > /proc/acpi/video/VGA/LCD/brightness"

Press Ctrl+O to save, and Ctrl+X to exit. You can now change the brightness with:
`sudo setbrightness 10` (this is the lowest brightness)
Possible values are: 10 25 35 50 60 75 90 100 (other values will be ignored)

To allow any user on the system to use setbrightness with no sudo:
`sudo chmod a+w /proc/acpi/video/VGA/LCD/brightness` (without the quotes)
This may not last between reboots though.

Links (the places from which I gathered all the information I used):
Debian Etch on a Toshiba Satellite A100-159
Ubuntu: Synaptics Touchpad

Also, how to automatically switch off the touchpad while you are typing (I haven't tried it yet):
Disable Touchpad While Typing - Ubuntu Forums
Ubuntu Tutorials - Temporarily Disable Touchpad While Typing
Disable Touchpad Tapping While Typing - Ubuntu Forums
Toshiba Satellite Laptop Success Story -Ubuntu Forums (Where I found the suspend/resume fix I wrote above, slightly modified for the A100 with Intel graphics)

Versioning FIle System

2007-05-06T22:54:00.000+01:00

I haven't tried it, but the idea is a good one. Every time you create, modify, or delete a file, Ext3Cow records the changed part of the file in a different place on the disk, preserving the old data that was in the file.

Using this system it is possible to find out what any file was like, at any given point in time. There is even a file manager that supports browsing ext3cow volumes.

There are many applications for this kind of file system, especially in places where revision control tools (CVS, SVN...) will not suffice.

New Laptop

2007-05-06T14:16:00.000+01:00

Finally I ordered a laptop for myself. I've been saving up for a while, but now I will be able to use my GSoC money towards it also. It should be arriving this week.

I'll be probably doing most of my development on it, so the first thing I will do is install Ubuntu alongside the pre-installed Vista. Yes, because I still need access to Windows for testing things, I will probably keep Vista, but reduce its partition size and dual-boot it.

Seeing as I have never used Vista before (only looked over someone's shoulder) you can be sure I will be posting a Vista vs Ubuntu right here very soon :)

OLPC and Microsoft

2007-05-06T02:51:00.000+01:00

The OLPC project is hoped to bring computers, technology, and even the internet to those who currently have no access to it. Since the project began it has been known to have been intended to run a version of Linux. Despite recent rumours that OLPC had been persuaded otherwise by Microsoft, the OLPC is, and will remain, "a free and open-source shop.". Microsoft on the other hand have their own project to reach to the same user base as the OLPC - they will introduce a new $3 bundle of software (the BBC article linked to also draws parallels between the 2 projects).

The AACS Saga

2007-05-06T02:47:00.000+01:00

It is unlikely that many missed this one. At one point it was even responsible for the news site Digg going offline...

It started when details of a crack for scrambled HD-DVDs was posted on the internet. This crack involved a (supposed to be) secret key used to decode the DRM-enabled DVDs. It caused quite a storm, and spread across the internet, mainly through blogs. Bloggers excercising their right to free speech posted the key. Obviously it was not long before the story got 'Dugg'. However after the AACS-LA announced that it was prepared to take legal action against those publishing the key, Digg began censoring stories linking to the number.

Disgruntled Digg users rebelled, and began mass-posting stories about the crack to the site. The whole issue has become something of an internet phenomenon, and the key can be found from T-Shirts to well, anywhere! In the end forcing Digg to side with its users, saying they had made their wish clear.

Though the AACS-LA's threats have stirred up internet users worldwide, and only served to publicise the key more than ever before, a more important story may have been forgotten. There exists a crack published a while ago that can not be revoked the way this infamous key has been. A much deeper flaw exists in the copy protection method itself. Perhaps HD-DVD and the video industry in general will go the same way as the music industry, which is now shifting away from DRM.

Microsoft gives guidance on OS design

2007-05-06T02:46:00.000+01:00

Some of you may have tried Windows Vista. It has a great new feature 'User Account Control', or UAC.

UAC allows users with administrative privileges to use the PC without the privileges enabled, until they are required. When a program requires the extra privileges, Windows pops up a dialog, describing what program is asking for administrative rights, and you must enter your password to continue. This is a great feature, and it makes using the computer for everyday tasks much more secure. For example, if your web browser was compromised, it would be limited in what damage it could cause, unless you had previously granted it administrative rights.

You may wonder why I am telling you this (you probably already know about UAC). However Microsoft have publicly said last week how great UAC in Vista is (though it hasn't stopped Apple making fun of it!). In fact they recommend that other operating systems should support it too!

"If you look at it from an architectural direction User Account Control is a great idea and strategically a direction that all operating systems and all technologies should be heading down," -- Peter Watson, Microsoft Australia's chief security advisor.

Chief security adviser? He must have used Linux, even briefly, at some time, right? This is a feature that Linux has had since the beginning, in the form of 'su' and 'sudo'. Before you think otherwise, no, Windows Vista was not even the first OS to bring it to the desktop! Here is a screenshot of Ubuntu:

Ubuntu 7.04 Released

2007-05-06T02:44:00.000+01:00

I was originally posting a single, long post, of interesting news since I last posted. I decided to split it up though, so here goes...

Well, Ubuntu version 7.04 ('Feisty Fawn') has been released, and I'm running it :) Not too much has changed, except that this time I decided to opt for the standard Ubuntu, and not Xubuntu which I have been running up until now.

There is no particular reason for this. I still love Xubuntu, I'm just going for a change, that's all. Putting up with GNOME, too :) That said, I am not finding resource usage /that/ much higher than Xubuntu. I find that Xubuntu's interface is actually far more intuitive, and far more customisable - perhaps this is from being an ex-Windows user. However the GNOME interface wins in features, and it is well polished.

EDIT: I also forgot to add that the next version has been announced too, and it will be 7.10 'Gutsy Gibbon'!

Dell will offer Ubuntu

Dell are set to offer Ubuntu pre-installed on their consumer PCs. This news comes not long after Michael Dell was discovered to be running Ubuntu 7.04 (which was still a release candidate at the time) on his laptop. This is a huge step forward for Ubuntu, and desktop Linux. Perhaps the age-old argument "Is Linux ready for the desktop?" finally ends here...

Linutop

A small, power-efficient, inexpensive computer/device, that runs not only Linux, or even Ubuntu, but... Xubuntu! Linutop has many possibilities, especially with being so portable. Media streaming (if the CPU proves able), it is also a handy as just a portable PC. It has no internal storage, but comes with a 1GB USB key containing the OS and software. It has ethernet, USB and audio ports, and of course connects to an external monitor.

My Google Trends

2007-04-22T01:37:00.000+01:00

Google recently released a new 'Web History' service, where they log your wanderings through the web. A great tool, or a ploy to get even more personal data about you, this is a service Yahoo have offered for a long time.

Suffice to say, I won't be using it. However I do have Search History enabled. It logs your all your Google searches, and logs which results you click on, with the aim of getting better results next time.

Some statistics from that service (running since May 2005):

Yes, I am responsible for Google searches at every one of the 24 hours in a day...

Me, Blogging and Bookmarks

2007-04-20T17:06:00.000+01:00

I have been in receipt of complaints that I don't post to my blog often enough.

Here's an idea... subscribe to my del.icio.us feed, or better, my sites tagged 'interesting'. I use del.icio.us for all my bookmarks now, and post there more often.

Not that this is a way to get out of posting to my blog... :)

Tessa IM, the Jabber client

2007-04-20T13:54:00.000+01:00

jdev@conference.jabber.org, 29/9/2005:

[10:17:33] I think there is space for 1 more Jabber client
[10:17:36] In C++
[10:17:46] Like Miranda, but stable, and Jabber-only

Finally, a year and a half later, I am writing it myself :)

It's called Tessa IM, and no, I don't really know how the name came to be. But neither do Miranda IM, theirs :)

It is designed in quite the same way as Miranda, but avoiding some weaknesses Miranda has. Some of the most obvious ones are inflexible plugin handling, and the fact that Miranda only runs on Windows.

Although using C++, Tessa employs Lua to bring even more flexibility, and will be cross-platform, by having the ability to be independent of the GUI used. Although we are starting with wxWidgets, it makes possible people writing Qt, Win32, ncurses, telnet interfaces... quite limitless.

Although the design will allow for multiple network plugins, like Miranda, officially (for now) only Jabber will be supported. For this we will use gloox, a great library which supports more XEPs than many clients do now.

If you are interested in joining development (several people have offered help already) then comment here, email (mwild1@gmail.com) me, Jabber me (mwild1@jaim.at), or post to the development group. We also have a MUC at tessa@conference.jabber.org!

Google Summer of Code

2007-04-20T13:05:00.000+01:00

Dear Applicant,

Congratulations! This email is being sent to inform you that your
application was accepted to take part in the Summer of Code.

Yay! I applied to work on gloox, a C++ Jabber library, under the hood of the XMPP Software Foundation as the mentoring organisation.

This project is important to me in many ways. Firstly I know I need to get back to C/C++ coding, of which I have not done much for quite some time. Second, my task is all about adding XMPP-over-HTTP support, which is currently my only way around my ISP's restrictions. Gloox is also the library that Tessa (my new Jabber client, more coming later) uses.

All this, plus the (much needed) payment, and being able to add this to my CV, all is good :)

I will be posting development progress updates to this blog, tagged with 'Jabber' and 'GSoC' (view) (rss).

Some other interesting projects I really look forward to seeing:

OpenID, Jyte, and good-heartedness

2007-03-17T01:16:00.000Z

OpenID
If you don't know what OpenID is, I predict that you will by this time next year. If you don't have an OpenID, you will have someday (or an identity protocol that federates with OpenID), I am sure.

OpenID is not a new concept. It allows you to have one identifier (like you usually have a username), and a single password. You can use your identifier, in any site that supports OpenID (they are rapidly increasing in number). However, you will only ever need to enter your password once... on the site that provides you with your OpenID.

Yes, that's right. You can now log into sites without using a password. I have edited a couple of wikis using my OpenID only, and I can't wait until I can do the same with forums, and blog comments.

Your OpenID provider holds your data, and they allow you to control which sites you log into can see what parts of your data.

How does it work? Well, in brief... you use your OpenID to log into a site. To make sure that you are the owner of the OpenID, the site checks with the OpenID provider. If you are already logged into to the provider, then the site will log you straight in. If you are not logged in yet, you will be redirected to your provider's site, to enter your password and log in. The site you are using your OpenID on NEVER sees your password!

Another great thing about OpenID is something called 'delegation'. I'll be the example here. My OpenID is: mwild1.myopenid.com. However I have edited my blog so that it will redirect to mwild1.myopenid.com when used as an OpenID. The result? Now I can log into OpenID sites using my blog URL! I can do this with any URL in my control.

The best thing is, it is an open protocol!

Read more about OpenID: http://openid.net/

Jyte

Jyte is a relatively popular Web 2.0 app that relies on OpenID, it is impossible to use the site without one.

Jyte allows you to both post, and vote on, 'claims'. A claim can be anything, for example "I like strawberries!". If someone does indeed like strawberries, they can agree. If they do not, they disagree. It is also possible to make claims about people (using their OpenID) and to relate your claim to other claims. As with any Web 2.0 application... it also has tags.

It's a simple idea, but works well, and is highly addictive. Be warned.

Jyte: Jyte.com

PS. Incidentally:

The Big Bad ISP?

2007-01-23T19:52:00.000Z

I have told this story so many times, I forced myself to tell it once more, so I will not have to again :D

For months now, during certain times of the day (early evening until 11PM), I have been unable to use the internet, with the exception of HTTP, which is web browsing. All other attempted connections fail, transmit a FIXED amount of data (I think it is 1Kb, but I have not yet counted) and then hang, or the data packets can simply arrive delayed... often by hours.

I can't state for definite that this is my ISP filtering traffic. How can I? They have not announced they are/will, though they do 'reserve the right to at any time'. Until I get a definite answer from them, I shall not write their name here.

I am hoping to resolve this, (currently battling with their seemingly non-English technical support), on the basis that this problem severely limits my use of the internet. I shall switch my ISP if all fails.

To be continued...

Six reasons to use Xfce

2006-11-13T19:38:00.000Z

I saw this blog post by Paul-Sebastian, and I just had to post this about my favourite DM for Linux.

1) Speed
Xfce is lightweight and fast. It is not bloated by little-used features and options. Yet, when the need arises, there are plenty of plugins available... including support for GNOME panel applets! At the same time, Xfce can run on computers that would grind if GNOME or KDE were loaded.

2) Stability
Xfce is stable, development may not be as fast as some other DE's, but this is paid off for by the end stability.

3) Standards
Xfce aims to be fully compliant with freedesktop.org specifications, meaning it will work flawlessly with other applications that do the same.

4) Usability
Xfce is a very intuitive interface. It is not hard to locate settings, or customise the panels. I found it by far the easiest to use for users moving from Windows.

5) Applications
Xfce comes with a minimal set of applications, like the file manager Thunar. Thunar is a very fast, simple file manager, and also very customisable.

6) Good looks
Xfce comes with *loads* of themes, that, once applied, work with all GTK2 applications on your system - giving a very consistent UI throughout.
Xfce also supports the X composite extension, on graphics cards that support it.

7) Mice
The mice want it!

(Couldn't resist #7 :D)

PS. Don't just take my word for it... Xfce on ArchWiki

Life on Edgy

2006-10-28T23:52:00.000+01:00

It looks the same, it feels the same... well, the login screen is updated, and the boot splash. I wish I had recorded my boot time running Dapper, but I timed Edgy at 29 seconds from the boot menu to the login prompt. Not bad. It then takes 7 seconds for my desktop to appear after I login.

I found that Edgy now comes with a generic kernel, ie. it supports SMP, but SMP is automatically disabled when the processor does not support it. This means new installations automatically make the most of the CPU they are installed on.

I found, to my surprise (hough I have to admit I was hoping for it) that my ATI Radeon now works, with hardware acceleration, and OpenGL. Graphics now feel a lot faster than they used to, and a whole load of programs and screensavers that refused to run now move like lightning.

It meant I could afford some customisations, so here is my chance to show them off.

Yep, reminds me of Vista too. Only thing is, it runs faster :)

My windows are no longer inflexible rectangles. When I drag them, they bend, and wobble when I let them go. It had my 4 year-old brother laughing like you've never seen.

Letting go of a window also causes ripples to spread across the desktop:

and my four virtual desktops are accessed by choosing a side if a rotatable cube (yes, that is TuxRacer you see :P):

I plan on writing a how-to for this, and post it the Ubuntu forums or wiki. Currently there doesn't exist one for Xubuntu/Xfce, as it takes some hacking. It's well worth it though :P

EDIT: I just noticed the distortion in some of the images. That's not how it looks, but the tool I used to take screenshots. Use your imagination to know what it looks like really :)

Ubuntu Edgy Released!

2006-10-25T23:48:00.000+01:00

Slow as ever, though this time for reasons beyond my control...

[...]Blogger had a significant number of unplanned outages this last week [...] and a handful of planned ones to clean up from the unplanned ones. It’s been a Murphyesque cavalcade of power failures, fileserver trouble, and wonky network hardware, and I hope you’ll believe me when I say that the Blogger staff is even more sick of it than you are.

Anyway, forgiving Google for that, here is my post, dragged up from a text file on my PC:

A new version of Ubuntu linux is due for release today. Code-named 'Edgy Eft' (an eft is a baby newt) it will take over from the current 6.06 release.

Since it was announced, it was already known that Edgy will be more focused on new technology... 'under the bonnet' so to speak. Not a lot of changes will be present for the end-user. Probably most noticable (hopefully) will the the effects of the total rewrite that has been made of the boot process. Claims of 20-30 second boot times are given by many beta testers of the release. Boot times are something that has previously been cited against Ubuntu (though personally I find it quite fast).

Also in Edgy is a new Xorg 7.1, with AIGLX support. Xubuntu includes the latest Xfce, with a new trash can (recycle bin), accessibility features, and a load of bug fixes.

Reports of Edgy being very erm... 'edgy' are common. In bundling the un-released Firefox 2.0, Gaim 2.0 and a slightly buggy OpenOffice, Ubuntu have re-asserted that users wanting stability should stay with 6.06 Dapper, which will continue to be supported for 3 years (5 years for servers) after its release.

The release after Edgy will be Feisty Fawn, not Frisky Fox (as I had my money laid down on). It will be released 19th April 2007, making it the 7.04 release. Feisty will continue the focus on supporting more technology, while also bringing in additional multimedia and effects into the desktop. I think Feisty will be more exciting for the average user than Edgy so far. Feisty marks the return to the 6 month cycle that Ubuntu is famous for (Edgy was released in 4 months, because Dapper was delayed by 2 months).

For now, Dapper remains my recommendation to people who want to switch to linux with ease. Hopefully Feisty, or Feisty+1 will gove us another stable release like Dapper, that can be used for time to come.

Google Buys YouTube

2006-10-09T23:14:00.000+01:00

(A bit late on this, the PC was in use :P)

Google have agreed to buy YouTube, the video-sharing site for a large (not too large for them) amount of money. Article here: Google Buys YouTube

Mentioned possibilities include that of Google sharing ad revenues with video producers that contribute to the site. The buying of YouTube seems to be for not much more than the sheer advertising potential (and it eliminates the largest competition to Google Video

PS. I am now on Linux, and plan to post about that another time :)

2006-06-02T19:29:00.000+01:00

Hmm, this is one of those apologetic posts, for not posting for a while :)

So, what's been keeping me? Well, being ill was the first obstacle, and then immediately launching into exams upon recovery :-/.

They will be over soon, so for now, I just leave you with some interesting links I found around the place...

http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2006/05/30/610767.aspx
http://www.pixelbeat.org/ms_mirth/
http://news.com.com/Making+1GB+downloads+easier+to+swallow/2100-1038_3-6079342.html?tag=nefd.top
http://news.com.com/100+laptop+will+boost+desktop+Linux/2100-1003_3-6079469.html?tag=nefd.top

Note about the $100 laptop (last link)... may use XMPP as it's IM protocol...

Also, check out the links in my Google Reader starred section on the right. I star them for you :)

See you in a couple of weeks!

Apple makes Macs run Windows XP

2006-04-06T04:10:00.000+01:00

BBC NEWS | Technology | Apple makes Macs run Windows XP

Apple: Boot Camp Beta

Yep, a cunning move by Apple. Only made possible by the fact that they switched to using Intel processors recently. Perhaps this was always in the pipeline? I think it was thought of before they made the switch, for sure, even if they didn't know whether they would take advantage of it.

I can almost here them calling me... (well, I would, if I had Windows XP)

Upgrading my PC

2006-03-25T15:15:00.000Z

Well, I decided to write a blog entry while I wait for my new hard disk to format.

I have a 200GB SATA drive (Yes, I saved up long and hard for it :) ) which I am trying to install. I still have the 2 IDE drives I've been using plugged in, but there's no room in the case, so one will have to go after I transfer everything important from it...

The only problem I've had so far is that Windows 2000 recognises it as a 128B drive. I think it is related to this issue, so I'll try that when I've re-installed. Oh, I forgot to say I am making the new drive my primary drive, so I wil re-install Windows on it (perhaps one day Windows XP *as well*).

Well, it's finished, I must reboot, and hope that Windows 2000 setup recognises it...

PS. If I'm offline for a while, now you'll know where I am...

Google's partial victory over US DoJ order

2006-03-23T19:10:00.000Z

Official Google Blog: Judge tells DoJ "No" on search queries

The Judge ruled that the Department of Justice should not recieve the list of search queries they wanted, and limited the number of URLs they may request to 50,000. Google faces the US govt. and wins!

[ED: Delayed - see previous post]

2006-03-20T23:21:00.000Z

Hello,

Your blog has been reviewed, verified, and whitelisted so that it will no
longer appear as potential spam. If you sign out of Blogger and sign back
in again, you should be able to post as normal. Thanks for your patience,
and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.

Sincerely,
Blogger Support

\o/

Mashable* � MySpace Messenger on the Way

2006-03-15T01:04:00.000Z

Mashable* � MySpace Messenger on the Way

Better link

GigaOM : � MySpace Messenger Coming

2006-03-15T01:02:00.000Z

GigaOM : � MySpace Messenger Coming

Watch this space.

News

2006-03-10T20:36:00.000Z

A highlight of today's interesting news stories...

'Hack the Mac' contest aborted
You may have read my earlier post about the challenge set by a university network administrator to hcak a Mac Mini he had connected to the network.

The challenge ended early today, with no winners, when the university found what he was doing... :P

Computer Market to slow down in 2006

A rather dry, but interesting article.

Google buy rights to online word processor

...and the company that just can't keep out of the news and my blog. I suspect they are intending a central portal for people to create, edit, store and share their documents. No longer will your office documents be tied to one PC, but accessible, in an editable form, from any PC connected to the internet...

Let's see if it comes true :)

EDIT: A link to the online word processor

2006-03-10T01:44:00.000Z

Grr...

Google desperate for engineers - young and old

2006-03-09T22:14:00.000Z

Google's Cerf on talent hunt in U.K. | CNET News.com

Meanwhile, I'll be looking for this guy...

Guardian Unlimited Technology | Technology | Can you hack into a Mac in 30 minutes?

2006-03-09T22:12:00.000Z

Guardian Unlimited Technology | Technology | Can you hack into a Mac in 30 minutes?

More bad publicity for Apple and their Mac?

Apple have never been a particularly 'nice' company, despite their public image, and success, especially since the release of their ever-popular (yet ultimately failed) iPod.

2006-03-09T15:20:00.000Z

Microsoft unveil their 'Origami Project'

This year's annual CeBIT conference in Germany was 'dominated' by the giant's new release, of a handheld PC platform. Samsung announced that they will be the first to produce the device they call 'Q1', that uses the Origami platform.

The Q1 is capable of booting into the familiar Window's desktop, or if the user wishes, just a media player (which can start instantly).
Previously handheld PCs were notorious for slow startup processes, though they solved the problem by remaining on, yet turning the screen off to save battery power.

Samsung unveils world's first 10MP camera phone

At the same conference, Samsung were also busy demonstrating the latest remarkable evolution in digital camera technology.

Digital cameras are getting smaller, higher quality, and more and more portable as time passes. Inevitably they are also becoming cheaper to buy as well. Incorporating them into common everday devices is increasingly popular, as Samsung show.

Catalog Now 2.0 - Index your files

2006-03-09T15:08:00.000Z

Catalog Now 2.0

Just found it... something I've always wanted :)

Google to offer 'online hard drive'

2006-03-08T23:36:00.000Z

Google to offer 'online hard drive'

...and also this piece of cover-up from good old Goggle...

100% of user information...hmm...

Microsoft's Origami Project revealed

2006-03-08T23:29:00.000Z

Origami's the wrapper for a small PC | The Register

*yawn*

CodeGuru: Shared Memory Inter Process Communication (IPC)

2006-03-08T03:28:00.000Z

CodeGuru: Shared Memory Inter Process Communication (IPC)

\o/

Don't ask me why I blogged this... maybe someone will find it interesting :) (like I did - I'm using it)

And also, I am writing the how-to for desktop customisation :)

My new desktop

2006-03-06T10:37:00.000Z

A screenshot

By popular demand, I post a screenshot of my (Windows) desktop, the way it currently looks.

In the bottom left corner is a console window, on the right hand side is Miranda.
The icons and titlebar skin are by the new shell I installed.

The wallpaper is from Windows Vista (codename 'Longhorn').

If anyone wants me to post the full tutorial of how I did it, leave a comment to let me know :)

(btw. I am using Windows 2000, and it is using half the memory tha it was before I started this exercise...)

freeSSHd - free SSH server for Windows

2006-03-05T22:53:00.000Z

freeSSHd - free SSH server

Just brought to my attention a great SSH server (for Windows), something I've been looking for for a while, and especially recently. Thanks Hal!

Linux vs. Windows XP/Vista

2006-03-04T13:16:00.000Z

Windows Vista 5231 Installation

Maybe I'll try it myself one day...

What are they up to now?

2006-03-04T12:42:00.000Z

The Origami Project

Microsoft have succeeded in making their latest upcoming technology release one of the most anticipated in recent weeks.

'The Origami Project' has an air of mystery about it, with the site being updated weekly, but still, no-one really understands what it is about...

The currently accepted notion is that the Origami Project is the release of a new platform of handheld computers. Technical details of the hardware/software have not been released by Microsoft, but as usual, plenty of contradicting rumours are floating around the (mainly blogs) internet. I won't add to it here ;)

Well, take a look at the site... but you'll need flash, I'm afraid. Though if you want to join in on the suspense, you just have to watch :) (There are 2 movies on the site, week 1, and week 2, watch both)

Making the switch

2006-03-01T02:18:00.000Z

deepdarc: Goodbye Legacy IM

I just have to congratulate this guy on making his stand :)

...and yes, I plan to do the same, one day soon (yep, I know, when Miranda is 100% stable :P)

Open networks are the way forward, and my thanks must also go to Google, for being the first global enterprise company to realise this, and do something towards it.

Google Page Creator

2006-02-25T14:47:00.000Z

PC Pro: News: Google debuts website creation tool

Another exciting development from Google, to add to their long list of beta-and-never-released products :)

It allows 100MB of space, permitting the uploading of files (via your browser, not FTP). Page publication is 100% instant, the page editor works extremely well, and is all using javascript.

Windows XP: Kernel Improvements Create a More Robust, Powerful, and Scalable OS -- MSDN Magazine, December 2001

2006-02-25T01:13:00.000Z

Windows XP: Kernel Improvements Create a More Robust, Powerful, and Scalable OS -- MSDN Magazine, December 2001

Well, I enjoyed reading it ^^

It is often hard, at first sight, to find the technical details of Windows, but you soon find that from version to version, it is undergoing major changes (don't tell me about Vista...)

Motorized Ice Cream Cone

2006-02-24T16:17:00.000Z

Hog Wild Motorized Ice Cream Cone

lol!

Macworld UK - Safari struck by Zip security warning

2006-02-23T02:06:00.000Z

Macworld UK - Safari struck by Zip security warning

The end of the road for the 'secure' Apple Mac?

The merits of open-source?

2006-02-20T20:42:00.000Z

redhat.com | Open source development: The diversocracy

Questioning open-source as a philosophy. I'd never question it's practicality...

Fast string search

2006-02-20T19:53:00.000Z

Fast string search

I was looking for a fast algorithm to search for words within a string, I found this.

Let no-one again argue that Java/.NET is as fast as beloved C :-)

About Gmail

2006-02-07T23:58:00.000Z

About Gmail Chat

Google have begun the rollout of a new service to Gmail users. It allows access to Google Talk from within your web browser, through the Gmail inbox page.

At a glance it shows you the status of the people on your contact list, and allows you to talk to them without needed to download/run Google Talk's client.

Let's wait and see what comes of it...

BetaNews | IE7 Beta Breaks Instant Messaging Apps

2006-01-31T10:22:00.000Z

BetaNews | IE7 Beta Breaks Instant Messaging Apps

Hehe. Though seriously, even Miranda seems affected...

http://forums.miranda-im.org/showthread.php?t=3741

Google opens up their Talk servers

2006-01-17T19:47:00.000Z

After long anticipation in the Jabber community Google have finally turned on server-to-server communication (Usually known as s2s). This means that users on servers other than the Google Talk server can now excange messages with each other.

Official Google Talk blog: XMPP Federation (a technical term for s2s ;))

Some Jabber clients are also working on support for Jingle, the standard that the Google Talk client uses for audio (soon video).

Some Jabber servers are showing problems with s2s communication with the GT server, apparably those running jabberd 1.4 (not the CVS version that jabber.org uses). ejabberd works fine.

--Added--
It also seems that MUC support is patchy, but possible (not in official client of course). Again it depends on the server.

Recommended software

2006-01-13T23:05:00.000Z

Wow, 6 months since my last post. Better be getting on with it...

I've decided to post a list of my tried and tested, and recommended applications for your PC (Windows ;) ). Believe me, I've been through a lot!

The key things I judge software on is size, speed, tidyness (does not make a mess of your PC, leaving unnecessary files everywhere), and is easy to use, and gets the job done.

I have singled out one or two pieces of software for almost any task you will need to do. All are *free*, and where possible, open-source.

Audio Tools

Audacity
Audacity is quite simply one of the best (free, open source) audio editors around. It supports MP3, OGG, as well as standard uncompressed WAV formats. It is extendable with plugins of various sorts, which are linked to from the project's website. [The currently available beta version is a bit buggy, so treat with care, and save regularly.]

CDex
The best tool for converting your precious CDs into digital audio files (MP3 or OGG and more). Development has not been active on the project or several years, but the last release still works perfectly. I couldn't live without it. :-)

HarddiskOgg
This excellent utility records audio as heard through your speaker. It is therefore possible to record all manner of audio streams, the output of music players etc. straight to Ogg (and MP3 of course). It supports timed recording, normalization, yet is small and simple to use.

Instant Messaging

Miranda IM
Miranda IM beats the competition hands down for fitting the criteria I listed at the top of this post. It is a multi-protocol instant messenger, built on the idea of modules called plugins. It is easy to make Miranda do everything, or nothing, depending on which you prefer. The testing builds at the Development Blog are well worth a try, since a lot of progress has been made since the last full release. Download size is ~1 MB.

Trillian
If Miranda is not for you (I admit, it can be a test for new users sometimes), then Trillian will do. It is not small and fast, but it does the job well, easily, and is also extendable with plugins.

Media Playing

Winamp 2.9
Yep, you read correctly. I recommend the 2.9 version, as it fits my criteria listed. The latest version is 5, which adds a lot of features I know I will never want in a music player (v5 can play video amongst other enhancements). V2.9 however, just before the v3 release, is small, fast, and uncluttered. It is skinnable, with .wsz skins, not the new v3+ format (The old format skins are still in abundance, just make sure the skin ends in .wsz. Two skins I recommend (sorry, I hate the default one... :-) ):
SumeAmp and
CleanAMP.

Photo Management

Canon ZoomBrowser Ex
Ok ok, it only comes with Canon cameras, but I just had to congratulate it for it's ease of use, and intuitiveness. If only more programs were so simple... :-)

Picasa
If you don't have a Canon camera, Picasa is surely the best alternative you will find. It allows extensive scanning of your hard disk to recover those pictures you even forgot you had! It allows filters, special effects, and photo restoration from within it's built-in editor. An essential to anyone with a digital camera.

Image Editing

The GIMP
An open-source image editor that easily rivals the leading retail software on the market. All manner of image editing tasks are possible, from photo retouching, to creating works of art on your PC! It can read practically every format of image file you will ever recieve.
I must confess that this program is not small, and older computers may struggle a bit. Serious image editing also requires quite an amount of free space on your hard disk (that's your cue to get tidying!)

Internet Clients

K-Meleon
A *very* small and very fast browser, built on the same HTML rendering engine as Firefox by Mozilla. It is less feature packed than Firefox, resulting in significantly faster startup and page load times (especially on slower PCs).

Mozilla Firefox
The ever popular alternative to the 'Blue e'. Certainly an excellent application and browser, if a bit demanding on slow PCs sometimes. That aside, you can't beat the extensions available on the mozilla website. Firefox is the new browser of the masses.

Mozilla Thunderbird
The perfect email client has very good junk mail filtering as standard, that learns from what you mark as junk, and what you don't. One person's treasured mail is another person's spam eh? It is quite happy on all but the oldest PCs.

WS_FTP LE
The best FTP client, for uploading your website to the internet, use this.

System Security

AVG Antivirus
A popular virus scanner since the early days of the internet, AVG remains the most popular free virus scanner available currently. Free regular updates are automatically downloaded on a 'set and forget' schedule.

Zonealarm
A popular, and easy to use firewall. Simple guided configuration. Zonealarm is not small, but manages to just strike the balance between ease of use and resources.

Kerio Personal Firewall
The (very slightly) more technical user may prefer the extra control that Kerio gives to you. It uses about the same amount of system resources as Zonealarm. When I say technical user, Kerio is quite adequate for most people to use, but it lacks some graphical extravagence that Zonealarm has. Whether this is a reason to use it or not is your choice. :-)

Compression

Filzip
You've probably heard of Winzip. If you've used it, you'll know the annoying box that pops up asking you to buy it. Well, there is no need, since Filzip handles all the compressed file formats you'll ever encounter. It is small fast and free.

Miscellaneous

If you just love playing with new and exciting programs, I have those too!

Google Earth
Amazing. Spin the earth, and the zoom down to ground level. In most major cities the aerial photographs are detailed enough to see people walking down the street. Find your house!

Wizmo
The all-in-one utility that does the small things everyone else missed. It allows you to create shortcuts on your desktop or taskbar to perform commands from turning off your monitor or PC, to ejecting your CD drive tray. Remarkable.

Caligari Truespace 3
This excellent *free* modelling software is easily the easiest to use free package available. It is an old version of a commercial package. Caligari now give Version 3 away for free, to promote the exciting things their product can do. Worth a play with.

Abyss Web Server
The best HTTP server there is. Small, fast and free (X1 is free, X2 supports several more features, but is not)

Games

Er... I have none, can't help you here. Try taking a look outside once in a while...

Not Recommended

And which software would I never let near my PC? Here goes:

Realplayer

This piece of proprietary software is used for viewing/receiving streams of audio or video from websites. It is designed to ensure that recording of the audio or video is not possible. As you can imagine, it has not succeeded. :-)
Why don't I like it? It is large, slow, and funded by adverts. Yes, every so often it pops up a box on your desktop with a random advertisment in it. That's what I call privacy.
The alternative? RealAlternative uses the drivers from Realplayer, but uses them in a new media player, Media Player Classic. Having tried this, it is also hard to recommend as good software, so experiment yourself if you must.

MSN Messenger

A piece of Microsoft's finest, an large, noisy and generally annoying application. Also supported by adverts in the main window. There are plenty of alternatives (see above for 2^)

Generally, I keep all shareware at arms length from my PC. They tend to write files to all corners of your hard disk in order to keep track of whether they are registered. They also often make a mess of the Windows registry, often a cause conflicts and slow-downs. (Not *all* shareware can be tarred with this brush :-) )

This is *not* an exhaustive post. I'm sure I'll come back and edit it 1000 times, so I'll let you know when it's changed.

SEOmoz | Google's Patent: Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data

2005-06-17T13:21:00.000+01:00

SEOmoz | Google's Patent: Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data

This above document must be read by anyone who hopes to get high in Google's results pages.
Everything in the patent comes straight from Google, no theories, or rumours.

Although most optimization is common sense, like the fact that search engine spiders can't read pictures etc. In this document you can actually see the other factors that Google is worrying about. There are many - and not all are under your control. That is the way Google want it to be. At the end of day, in Google's eyes, the best ranking for your site is wherever the user wants it.

If Google think it is relevant to their search (and they will try and avoid trickery), it will be somewhere on the first page. If not, it might be somewhere at the back, or even not at all.

In my experience it took a relatively small site about 6 months to break to the number one spot, although it had no serious competitors, and was the 'authoritative' source of information on that subject.

Think about your site. Which category does it fall into?

Fast changing
Dynamic content sites, such as news, active businesses, campaigns etc. fall into this category. Often it is hardest type of site to optimize effectively, as it usually involves dynamic content, which is hard to control. These are the most common site that the user searches for, but they are not always wanted...

Static, Informative

Static pages are what they say. A static site is usually more information and fact-based. It is not keeping up-to-date with any current affairs, but will remain (roughly) in the same state for generally a long time. These sites are often the best sources of information when the user is looking for an answer to a particular question.

Let's follow a few users on their internet travels, and see what they are searching for, why, and what category site Google should return for them:

User A

User A wants to find out how rice krispies are made.
The first start for the average user would be typing 'rice krispies' into the search box. This leaves him with the top result - you guessed it! Kelloggs Rice Krispies home page. This is a static, informative site (as informative as it gets :-) ), which does not change rapidly.

User A refines his search to 'rice krispies made'. This, sure enough, strikes gold.
Howstuffworks is a very informative site, though even those change. At the time of writing, this particular article was added two days ago. For this reason Google may favour it, thinking that it is a dynamic, current-events site, and we are searching for a current-event (see User B). Google would be wrong.

An interesting note - if User A had typed 'how are rice krispies made?' Google ranks howstuffworks at number one. Perfect. This is odd, because usually Google leave short, common words like 'how' and 'are', but it didn't?! AskJeeves have always encouraged people to input questions, although their search algorithm works no differently. It does not interpret those questions, it just tales the keywords out. Perhaps Google are working on the question side of things themselves?

User B

User B is a keen cyclist. He wants to follow the Tour de France, from his home, using the internet. He searches for 'Tour de France'. What should Google give him? A static page?, that would inform him about what the race was, its history, and how it started. This is not what User B expects. Alternatively, a dynamic site, with the current news, and how far the race has gone. This is what User B is looking for. Google will probably work this out by deciding if 'Tour de France' is a current hot topic. If lots of people are searching for it suddenly (Google Zeitgeist), then Google know it must be news-related. They offer news stories on the first page.

User C

User C is doing a school project on the race. Unfortunately he doesn't want the news, but the static sites, unlike User B. He would find the Wikipedia entry further down the page, but at any other time of the year this would probably be ranked quite highly.

The lesson to learn from all of this is that there is no point in competing with sites that aren't in your category. Google will always see the two as different. You need to be able to identify your site, and identify your competitors. Concentrate on having the best content, covering your subject(s) in full. Well written pages (as in text, not just code) will definitely rank higher than poor spelling and grammar.

Good luck, and keep fighting for that #1 spot, just like we all are... :-)

Google Bombing and SEOs

2005-06-10T10:49:00.000+01:00

(If you haven't already, read my last post with the screenshot)

Webmasters are constantly trying to find ways to outsmart search engines. This has led to the definition of 'SEO' as 'Search Engine Optimizer'.

Most people, quite rightly, target Google as the main search engine, and concentrate on getting their listing to the first place on SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages :-) ).

These SEOs have been marketing themselves to businesses, claiming that they have the expertise to get a site to the top of the listings. They have created these meaningless acronyms, and try to sound as if they know what they are talking about.

In reality, rather than paying a flat-fee, or even a monthly subscription, there is nothing you can't do yourself.

But look at it this way for a moment. Google's only aim is to get the most relevant website into the top of the search results when the user searches for a particular thing. If you are the most relevant website, you will get to the top. If you aren't, you might get there eventually, with the help of an SEO, but you will soon be over-taken by other, more relevant sites. In short, there is no easy way to fool Google, or any other search engine for that matter.

There is one way however, which takes advantage of the way Google associates words with pages.

If I wanted my page to come at the top whenever a user typed in 'cheap cars', I could fill my page up with the words 'cheap cars' all over. But perhaps, I'm not selling cars, and I'm not who I say I am. For this reason, Google and other search engines do not take half as much notice of what YOU put on YOUR site. Instead, they like to see other sites linking to yours, and then they check what they say about you.

If the 'cheap cars' was a ploy to get people to your margarine website (sorry about the examples ;-) ), any other sites that link to you will not say 'Click here to buy cheap cars'. Instead they will say 'Click here to visit a margarine website'. Much more reliable in Google's eyes. After all, you can easily fiddle what it says on your site, but you can't fiddle what other people's sites say about you.

It comes down to the link text that is important. Although Google do use their patented PageRank technology (PR), this only decides roughly where you will come in the listings when the user types in your keywords. The keywords that Google associates with your site are the words in the links that link to you.

For this reason, try to dissuade people who link to you from putting 'Click here' as the link text. Google will ignore that, because it occurs so frequently, they know the words are not associated with your site in particular. Ask them to make the text of the link the words that you envisage your customers typing into Google when they want to find your website.

An example of how effective this technique can be came up quite recently, and it was termed 'Google Bombing'. Google Bombing is when people make links to a site to make Google associate words with a site that are usually ironic, or (to them) funny.

The most recent example is the one I posted a screenshot of in my last post. Typing the word 'failure' into Google, or even 'miserable failure' brings up President Bush's biography as the first result.

The most influential web pages on the internet are blogs. They keep changing, so Google can always tell what is in at that time, and what is being talked about. This means that they know what people are most likely to be searching for, and what sites they want to see. The problem Google Bombs have, is that the links will soon disappear from the front pages of blogs, and Bush may one day lose his 'failure' status.

Some of the sites that link to Bush's biography can be found here:
Pages linking to George W. Bush's Biography (not all sites contain the word failure but most do)
Weapons of Mass Destruction
(A previous, now extinct, Google bomb, which brought up this page [follow the link] when the words 'weapons of mass destruction' were searched for)

This technique has been known to be used by companies to attack competitors sites, and rank them for keywords that ave nothing to do with their site.

The solution, everyone claims, is for Google to check that the words in the link text actually appear on the target site. This way unless the word 'failure' was in GW Bush's biography, it would not work. Either way, people argue, this unfair situation needs to be sorted out.

Find out more:
Yooter (discovered the bomb)
Razvan Antonescu's blog
BBC Report

2005-06-09T16:00:00.000+01:00

The screenshot says it all. I'll post the technical details in a bit. It shows how heavily a search engine relies on its algorithms, but they can often be exploited.

Mozilla/Firefox Security Flaws

2005-06-07T19:50:00.000+01:00

Secunia - Advisories - Mozilla / Mozilla Firefox Frame Injection Vulnerability

Another security hole has been found that exists in Mozilla-based browsers. Although not as serious as the bug that led to the 1.0.4 update, if a user clicks on a link on a specially-crafted website, the website could open a popup window that loaded the target website (ie. an online banking site) but allowed the exploiter's site to insert their own code into a frame on the target site. This means that it would be (in theory) possible to load an online banking site, but change the part that asks the user for their account details to code from another site. They would be entering their details into this other site, rather than their bank's. The address bar would still give the bank's address, and show the padlock symbol.

This flaw, when originally discovered (7 years ago!), existed in nearly all browsers, including Internet Explorer. Although they were all fixed at the time, recent modifications to Mozilla's code seem to have reopened the loophole.

In my opinion, after the initial report, the code should have been rewritten in a way that would prevent this sort of thing happening again.

Just to see it in action, follow the link to Secunia's site to see a demonstration.

Lots of people are being very negative about this new flaw, although to be fair, most of the IE code is way out of date, and IE 7 will not be available to non-XP users. I will discuss IE7 in a future post.

Other blogs:
Theme Wuhan

My First Post

2005-06-05T14:43:00.000+01:00

Hello, and welcome to my technology blog.

As you probably guessed from the title, this blog will discuss the latest news in the technology industry, on the internet, and also verging on the scientific.

I will try and post often, although, of course, I will not always be able to do so.
I will also try and talk about smaller issues that many others may have missed, but they are still important enough to know about.

You can see my other blogs by clicking the link to view my profile in the sidebar.

I already have some things I would like to talk to you about, and I will post them soon.

Matthew.