Crashed Pips - Computers, politics, emetic trash

Friday, March 30, 2007

Are you ready…?

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , — Jonathan Rothwell @ 16:33

Tomorrow, Microsoft Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh will officially expire. From then it will become like a shell - you won’t be able to open or save documents. And just to make the end more exciting, Microsoft decided they wanted to change the XML format that Office 2007 uses to save its files. And the final release of Office can’t open the old XML format files. Yipee.

To avoid having that hard work locked away forever by Microsoft’s accidental carelessness, you need to go through all the new format files that were created by Office 2007 and re-save them in Office 2003 format. Or then again you could just leave them and never touch them again. They might be only there taking up space anyway. Just go out and download a trial of Office 2007 or buy the full version - although the new interface takes some getting used to, you really won’t regret it.



Office on the Internet - ThinkFree

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , — Jonathan Rothwell @ 16:15

In the past I’d only ever used Google Docs and Spreadsheets as an online substitute for Microsoft Office - in my opinion the only half-decent piece of software Microsoft ever produces. But this afternoon I tried ThinkFree Office for the first time - and it is great. It might be a little slow to load first time, but after that it’s fast, clever and easy to use for people familiar with pre-Office 2007 users. However, I’ve yet to see an online suite that emulates Office 2007’s Ribbon interface.



Friday, March 23, 2007

Another hour of my life wasted…

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , — Jonathan Rothwell @ 22:27

…chasing down Wikipedia vandals, linking sockpuppet usernames, etc…

It’s obvious that Wikipedia’s policies need a huge overhaul - they worked fine when Wikipedia was small and only got a few thousand visits a day. But now people are editing by the second and signing up even more frequently, they need to be stricter about who can edit.  They need to, in my opinion,

  1. reduce the number of warnings before a block - they should only have one warning before a block.
  2. stop unregistered users from editing - that way it will be far easier to stop vandals and work out who they are
  3. automatically reject new articles if they do not reference at least one source.

Then we won’t have people saying famous celebrities are dead, uploading fake BBC News 24 schedules, or saying Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray’s large penis.



Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Fun with TFTs

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , — Jonathan Rothwell @ 18:23

I’ve been using a second-hand 15″ TFT monitor for just under two months now, and today came into a large, 17″ Medion SXGA screen. And my goodness, does it do the job well. I’m typing this now at a 1280*1024 pixels screen resolution, and the text is crystal clear, sharp and well-defined.

But it wasn’t at first. It was, when first plugged in, fuzzy, out of focus, cutting off around a tenth of the picture and had washed-out colours. And many people when buying a TFT for the first time probably don’t understand the reason for this.

There is a reason - it’s because the monitor is below its native resolution. The native resolution is the minimum screen resolution the screen can work with without the image appearing blocky or fuzzy. Normally it’s the highest resolution the monitor is capable of as well.

If your monitor appears mysteriously fuzzy, it’s because the screen resolution is set below the native resolution. You need to compensate for this by increasing the screen resolution.

In Windows, this is relatively simple (for something that Microsoft wrote not too long ago - my goodness…) - all you have to do is go to the Display Properties dialogue box (right click the desktop, select Properties), switch to the Settings tab, and drag the ’screen resolution’ slider as far to the right as it will go.

Resetting the Screen Resolution in Windows screenshot

Now click the ‘Apply’ button and wait. The screen may blank or flicker for a few seconds, but don’t scream and pull your hair out - this is only because the computer and monitor are adjusting themselves to the new settings.

Then, when your desktop reappears, if it does, click the “Yes” button within fifteen seconds - otherwise the machine will revert to the old resolution.

In Linux, if you’re not using a desktop environment that has an applet to control screen resolution, like the one in KDE and another in GNOME, you’ll probably need to edit the x.org configuration file - see your distribution’s documentation for information about how to do this.

Things to bear in mind

Note that you need to be careful when picking resolutions, in particular when it comes to the screen’s aspect ratio. Normal, non-widescreen monitors use the aspect ratio 4:3 (four pixels across to three pixels down). Widescreen monitors use roughly a 16:9 or 16:10 ratio. If you pick the wrong ratio for your screen, it’ll make the image appear squashed and probably break your screen as well.

There’s a simple way to work out the aspect ratio of a resolution - use a scientific calculator to simplify the fraction of the first number over the second number, eg 1280 over 1024. You could also simplify it by hand if you wanted.



Google. Now with themes.

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , — Jonathan Rothwell @ 18:20

I’m a huge Google fan. It’s simple, fast, and sooo much better than Microsoft in so many places. And now it’s acquired one crucial element that’ll help its Personalised Homepage service appeal to more people - the ability to change the style. And these new styles aren’t just dumb CSS scripts - they analyse the time and weather conditions in your location, and then apply the correct style sheet as necessary.

And the best thing about it is that it doesn’t impede Google’s trademark simplicity. Since its first day on Stanford University’s server as Backrub, it’s been simple and to the point. These themes retain that simplicity, adding a touch of colour and charm to them. So kudos to Google for that…



Monday, March 19, 2007

See an advert for anti-spyware software? Think again.

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , — Jonathan Rothwell @ 20:45

Just because something is advertised on the Internet, it isn’t necessarily safe, as most people with any common sense would know all too well. And what really annoys me is the proliferation of fake ‘anti-spyware tools’ on the Internet.

New users tend to be lured in by dire warnings along the lines of “however you’re already protected, it won’t stop spyware unless you install this product”, followed by the user blindly rushing through the confusing EULA, which includes a passage deep in its depths that says something along the lines of “by clicking ‘next’, you consent that we can examine your usage data and install sponsor applications on your computer”. And so on.

Often these ‘cleaners’ will claim that antivirus software can’t remove spyware. Erm… yes they do, albeit not as successfully as real dedicated spyware removers.

Anyway, this suspicious site then proceeds to install itself, and the included malware, on the user’s computer. What they don’t realise is that more often than not, these ’spyware killers’ don’t actually get rid of spyware. They instead install spyware on the machine.

This kind of scam also occurs in programs that dub themselves “Whizzo PC Tuneup 2007″, “Brand X Registry Cleanser 8″, etc that generally attempt to lure users in with the promise of a faster computer etc.



Converting batch files to .EXEs

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , — Jonathan Rothwell @ 19:37

I commonly use batch and script files in Windows and Linux respectively - they’re easy to code, save time for the end user and work instantly on a single double-click (well, most of the time). Sometimes however, it’s useful to convert them to an executable format to stop well-meaning users unintentionally fiddling with them.

Over on Daily Cup of Tech, Tim Fehlman writes about how to turn a Windows batch file into an executable.

That’s all well and good, but I can see at least two problems with this:

  1. What if the batch file needs to be modified? It can’t be edited by the end user unless they edit the source .bat file and then recompile it.
  2. There’s no way I know of to do this for Linux. Any ideas?
  3. It’s not technically been compiled, it’s just a wrapper around the batch file.
  4. What if the file in particular being called by the batch file doesn’t exist? There is no way I can see to handle exceptions in batch files.



Hackers and Crackers - what’s the difference?

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , — Jonathan Rothwell @ 12:57

Journalists have, since computers and the Internet have been around, talking about the evils of ‘hackers’, and how they can get into your computer and steal your data and then sell it on to a scammer.

Well, not always. The term hacker is a very broad term - it defines anyone who either

  1. modifies a device or program to suit their own ends
  2. gains access to a computer by working around security measures.

So, let’s dispel some of the myths about hacking in the second sense, which is what this article concentrates on and journalists generally define hacking as.

Number one: hackers are people who write viruses. Well, technically they don’t. They may write them as an experiment to check the security of a system, or as an evil attempt to take over the Internet. But people who do the latter are technically called virus writers.

Number two: hackers always have malicious intentions. Not necessarily - most hackers are either

  1. employed by a company to test the security of their computer system and network,
  2. acting in good faith, attempting to warn users or companies about insecurities in their system,
  3. attempting to create the ultimate, one-size-fits-all killer security solution.

Some hackers are even employed by the police to hack into criminals’ security systems, or to help educate people on the risks of leaving their computers open to attack. These are called ‘ethical hackers’.

Technically, people whom the media brand simply ‘hackers’ should be branded as malicious hackers or crackers.



Ubuntu Fiesty Fawn, Herd 5

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , — Jonathan Rothwell @ 11:06

THE best version of Ubuntu ever… well, so far, at least.

And it does have its faults. For example, the default Live CD installer is slow, cumbersome and crashed when I tried to install it. I do hope they sort this out when the final version of Fiesty comes out.

Then there’s the artwork - a horrible, grey, milk-chocolate coloured wallpaper is the default, and the login splash screen is similar. They don’t even closely resemble skin tones, and in my opinion the orange and caramel colours in the windows look much better. I hope this is sorted by the final release.

But now we turn to the positve parts of Feisty Fawn - such as the no-longer-terrifying boot screen. Basically it shows a glowing, glossy Ubuntu logo, and one of those lovely orange progress meters beneath it. Instead of the terrifying (to a Linux newbie) text scrolling underneath that used to accompany booting.

But the system sounds are annoying - I installed 7.04 over the outdated 5.10, which had one of the best startup jingles ever. The new sounds (started in 6.10?) aren’t bad, but they just lack something that the previous set had. But at least it beats Windows’s set.

I do like the new applications, ie Tomboy, Disk Usage analyser etc. And also, the big advantage of this new version is its SPEED! It boots within thirty seconds, around half the time of the old 5.10 release. That’s a very nice surprise, as normally an OS would get slower on the same hardware in later versions. Closedown also happens remarkably quickly, as no more than twenty seconds pass between my hitting the “Shut Down” button and the machine powering off.

So, while Ubuntu 7.04 does have its faults, it’s the first version of Ubuntu I’d be truly happy to install on my computer in place of Windows.

Well, if they had drivers for my WLAN adapter and printer I would…



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