Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Beta 2
April 22nd, 2012Today I did a new installation of Ubuntu 12.10 64-bit. It had been a while since I had installed this and one of the first things I did was add my unity and Record My Desktop from the Ubuntu Software center. I also installed Synaptic Package Manager. This installation of Ubuntu came with the full Gnome-desktop already installed so that it could be selected from the login screen. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DDmMswem5E is the Youtube video that gave me the idea for installing MyUnity. Long story short, I went with Gnome 3 and installed Docky. I then setup my extensions and have a pretty nice and quick system. The main reason for doing this is Ubuntu One integration across multiple devices.
Tags: 12.04, Dock, Gnome, Precise, ubuntu
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Great resource to find out file reputation
January 27th, 2012http://www.isthisfilesafe.com/ is a great file library and it is from the Emsisoft Anti-Malware Network. This is good for identifying what a running process is or who created a file that was downloaded long ago but forgotten. Many of the top search results for file names are actually sites trying to get people to download some program or something. Emsisoft is a very good security suite. I say this based upon regular tests results by MRG Effitas.
Tags: Emsisoft, Files, Malware, Security, Windows
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iCloud is an incredible piece of work…
January 11th, 2012iCloud is an impressive piece of technology. It syncs data across every Apple device and some of the data on PCs. Of particular interest to me are the productivity gains from universal contacts, calendar, as well as the power of having files and media available anywhere. The data is stored encrypted on the Apple servers and the data is transmitted encrypted as well. I have been unable to locate specific details about the key setup for that encryption. The music is stored at the normal iTunes facilities and can be re-downloaded to the end user. The calendars are synced across multiple devices and so are the contacts. This functionality may not be as useful as it could be because of data caps. Data caps might not be much of a problem if WLAN is used. The main point of this summary is to say that iCloud is an incredible piece of work. There is still a fundamental problem and that is licensing. Apple signed a license agreement with many content providers to do this service. This means that the service could stop. It cannot be relied as a long term cloud solution because someone could simply pull the rug because they no longer felt you should have access to a particular song anymore. Recent history contains many examples of this. This is the major problem facing the rentier society is a sudden pulling of the rug out from under feet and the risk associated with all of the funds paid suddenly reaching an end wherein there is nothing of substance to hold on to.
When everyone rents content solely for themselves with no way to pass it to others lest it be a felony (Tennessee and digital movie delivery) and the terms and conditions for everything mean the purchaser owns nothing so they leave nothing to their friends and families. No books left to libraries, no movies left to children, etc… When a mother or father departs, the beloved content their children were so fond of departs with them since it was only rented. What if in a divorce all the children’s movies and books went with one parent without any recourse because they had been rented instead of purchased and the terms stipulated that the content couldn’t be transferred? What to be a jerk and your wife stay with you? Have everything your kids own be on some cloud or in some e-format in a world of devices that legally cannot be given to them. Who cares if the children of some divorce get daddy’s kindle? All the reading material was tied to his account and not the device.
The capabilities of the cloud however are so impressive and enabling as to be unstoppable. The rub is to leverage the cloud in a way that creates wealth – real wealth and not fiat currency, and enhances freedom, opportunity, and capability.
For this reason I fawn over the potential of iCloud but I must find something better where my content is unrented. Where I can give it to someone else. Where a content provider can’t suddenly say revoke their ability to watch old Ernest movies and lock the Disney vault with DRM that is restricted to each child.
This isn’t going to be a piece of cake. Thrifty, freedom, the future. The key point is owning your bits. Possessing your media and choosing the options that empower you, not options that leave the other guy in charge. That is going to be the purpose of this blog.
Tags: apple, Cloud, iCloud, Jungle Disk, ubuntu, Windows 7, Windows 8
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Google Chrome on Ubuntu 11.10
October 20th, 2011
This was the error message I got toward the end of the installation. Basically the gist is this:
In order to compete in the OS war of the future, Canonical is going to a remove feature fest just like Microsoft. Everyone wants to have you get your software from the exclusive app store and through that monetize their operations. Luckily Linux is a bit to well conceived for such nonsense. I do not trust adding strange PPA to my apt get database so I don’t. I downloaded the 32 bit debian package from http://www.google.com/chrome. I couldn’t install it using the Ubuntu software center because of some cryptic error. I then ran the
sudo dpkg -i google-chrome-stable_current_i386.deb
and it came up with the error:
pkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of google-chrome-stable:
google-chrome-stable depends on libxss1; however:
Package libxss1 is not installed.
google-chrome-stable depends on libcurl3; however:
Package libcurl3 is not installed.
since I am veteran of Debian since 1.3 and the black and white dependency hell installation process I knew that meant simply finding out what was missing. So I went and did the sudo apt-get install libxss1 and got some error message about another dependency. Ah, nostalgia for the 90′s and that BOOT magazine CD that introduced me to you.
Anyway, I installed Synaptic package manger from the Ubuntu Software center. Let us hope that Canonical does not get crazy and decide to remove that functionality totally. The libxss1 were already marked as installed and so were the libcurl3. I marked them for reinstallation and applied. Once they were reinstalled I again ran the command line install for Google chrome and it worked like a charm. I made this post using it.
Note: Prior to getting Synaptic installed I had to run sudo apt-get install -f which fixed the error message in the associated screenshot.
A bit of dependency hell to be sure, but fun nonetheless, especially when joined with a bit of Sam Adams and his Octoberfest. I did this post in response to Source Seeker and his 11.10 article over at Network world.
Tags: Chrome, Cloud, Debian, dpkg, ubuntu
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A Real cloud application
October 20th, 2011A real cloud implementation. Prior to the posting of this article the cloud has been a term bandied about by a great many people and organizations and each of those with their own varied interests. It seems that a lot of people think the cloud is simply another way of saying “hosted applications”, in other words, they think the cloud is marketing parlance for mainframe computing utilizing a wan. This is not how I define the cloud. I know for employment purposes, and marketing purposes, and perhaps some other purposes of which I am yet to become familiar I should refer to the cloud as such. But not really. The cloud is the space between. The cloud is the IT version of the atmosphere. To illustrate this point I will describe my own cloud application using software that I had nothing to do with at all.
The task follows the user. In other words, what I want to do, I can do wherever. For purposes of my illustration I am a bit handicapped in that it doesn’t work on tablets yet because of the lack of a sea monkey or Thunderbird port.
My own cloud application: Email and newsgroups on every machine and every operating system that I use, complete with user profile, signatures, saved messages, etc…. Realistically that amounts to two operating systems and several machines. I do not use MAC OSX but it could be involved as well. I am transitioning my family to a Linux world, but this procedure also worked with Windows 8.
Answer:
Sea Monkey Profile stored on a Jungle Disk Network Drive. This is a local application and I own the data for it since it is on Jungle Disk, which to the best of my knowledge is one of the best secured applications around. It also creates a WAN network drive.
I triple booted Windows 7, Windows 8 Developer Preview, and Ubuntu and stored the Sea Monkey profile on the Jungle Disk network drive. I now have a universal mailbox and newsgroups reader that contains a half dozen email accounts and its fully encrypted with the keys stored locally. It follows me around greatly. Talk about an exchange killer. IMAP with the same profile everywhere. Sea Monkey as front end, OS Whatever as foundation, and Jungle Disk Network drive as the “water evaporation cycle” and you have one heck of a cloud.
That is a cloud ladies and gentlemen. A collection of components, built by a system. Not some hosted mainframe business, but a transcendent use of technology that enhances power and freedom in the future.
The same thing should work with Thunderbird.
Tags: Cloud, Dropbox, Jungle Disk, Mozilla, Sea Monkey, ubuntu, Windows 7, Windows 8
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Google Music one Way
August 21st, 2011Google Music is an outstanding service for my needs thus far. The one catch is that there is no way to download the music back to my hard drive. I have no way of even knowing what bit rate or format the music is stored in on Google’s servers. Over the past month I have been uploading an 80GB music library and I was hoping to use this site as both a real time streaming cloud service and an off site backup. I didn’t want to double upload this much data. I am running a risk of becoming one of Comcast’s power users.
Nonetheless the service rocks on my Sprint phone while running on the treadmill at work. I don’t hear any “tinny artifacts” as I would expect with a low bit rate mp3 on streaming playback. The uploads range from 256k to 320k in quality. The majority were Lame with a much lower number of FhG encodes. and few “standard” from my brief affair with eMusic. The bulk of what I use on the treadmill is Tiesto and Armin Van Buuren so low quality transmissions through my ear phones would definitely be noticed. The service is outstanding so far. It should be noted however that my stereo/microphone headset has a top end of 20khz. Classical might not be so impressive through the service. I am going to test it via streaming in the car. The Cloud has the power to rain on everyone. This competes with satellite FM to be sure.
Almost 8,000 tracks to upload and I will have a great streaming service that I suspect will eventually rival the quality of Netflix when it comes to opinion/like/dislike prediction. The world is definitely going to a state of I. Ayn Rand would be proud.
Tags: Backup, Cloud, Google, music, streaming
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Project East Side
June 2nd, 2011East Side is a small independent Missionary Baptist church in Franklin Kentucky. They church body at that particular facility has decreased over the last couple of decades and the church decided it was time to do a little bit of reaching out. To that end, I began the east side website project. We also wanted to update the sound system in the church to allow recording the sermons and streaming them on the website. We determined a budget of $750. We were going to have recurring costs each month with a little bit of onsite audio editing after services but we changed that plans in the name of economy.
We procured some wireless microphones, a lavaliere and a carotid. We also got a Steinberg CI1 USB Audio Interface
I was hoping to get everything going with Ardour but that requires a lot of knowledge of hardware specifics that is not too easy to find with random integrated chipsets on the lowest cost laptop you can acquire. We recorded the sermons using the wireless microphones and a Toshiba laptop running underneath a bench in the A-Men corner. I setup the site on the hosts control panel, installed the necessary software and plugins, and built the site which is located at http://www.eastsidemissionarybaptist.org. The pastor has an administrator account and plans to do more of the updating if the project continues. The laptop disappeared.
Tags: audio, Cloud, East Side, gospel, Project, streaming
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Google Cloud Connect already broken
May 15th, 2011It saved two, and then started giving cryptic errors. They are different each time I open documents but generally say something about could not retrieve document information. Duh. It never synced it in the first place. It’s trying to retrieve information for a document that isn’t there.
Tags: Cloud, documents, Google, office
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Cross-Platform Personal Cloud
May 14th, 2011I installed Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office which gave me this new bar in Word.
I have been working on developing my own personal cloud strategy for some time and Cloud Connect is a major component. I set this up with my regular account rather than the Apps account because extra space with Apps costs significantly (~12x) more than for the personal accounts. It does not work on Publisher which annoys me because that is where my business does a great deal of card and label design. I don’t particularly use Google Apps but I did buy extra space for Picasa Web Albums, and soon will be buying even more. This works as an always on backup.
I use Dropbox for easy sharing between Windows and Ubuntu. Sure, setting up all that Samba and file sharing makes me more knowledgeable and experienced, but the opportunity cost is too high when I can just drag a file over. So I can’t ditch drop box. It’s hardened against attackers, or so they say, and has a good web interface in a pinch. Drop box is in, specifically for use as a Drop Box.
I have been using Jungle Disk. For numerous machines, multiple OS’s, and gigabytes of files you can’t beat the automatic backups of Jungle Disk, and it creates a network drive that isn’t synced unless you want to select particular folders. Jungle Disk is the best application of it’s kind. Google storage costs beat it on price. My intention is to archive documents forever. Things created in Word, Excel, and other similar programs. I will then archive all the music library on Google which will cost $30 per year with a one time upload. I use Picasa for images and video and sync to Picasa web albums automatically within Picasa. It even converts the videos so that I can play them back in 480p through the browser when looking at my private albums.
I still have to have Jungle Disk because of the backup for all the other things created, such as html pages, text documents, zip files, and other special cases and it runs from every PC and can access the network drive without syncing it. What this has in essence created is a local copy of everything, a remote copy of all the media and dual remote copies of the office documents; dual remote copies are great for things that a lot of work goes into.
Did I mention that all of these run cross platform and allow me to have a smoking fast non-hard-thrashing-update-obsessed Ubuntu laptop and various Windows 7 machines with the same media, documents, and interfaces?
Tags: Cloud, Dropbox, ubuntu, Windows 7
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Applets for Natty
May 3rd, 2011Natty changed the way the default applets appeared on the menu bar. Many of them were no longer showing and some of them I could no longer find because of package updates, removal, or not knowing what the particular name of the program was. I checked the website for Natty which includes a list of updated applets and indicators. To install these I opened a terminal. I use quake because it’s awesome.
To add the ppa I used the command
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:<repository-name>
Then run the command
sudo apt-get update
And lastly
sudo apt-get install <package-name>
I did this for all the various indicators that I wanted. I couldn’t get caffeine to do anything and lookit only works with the new unity interface. I switched back to classic over unity because I find it much more functional. Lookit did not work under classic.
Tags: ubuntu, unity
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