Yearly Archives: 2008

Computers

Naivized by Linux

I’m all for Linux. Really. I love it, even though it’s from time to time a hate-love. However, I just realized one thing Linux has done to me that isn’t so good when you are forced to work and live in Windowsland.

I’ve become totally naive when it comes to certain aspects of the Windows world.

A couple of weeks ago I was looking for a program to help me keep my local hard drive synchronized (or in fact, backed up) to the network drive. A few factors have made this an issue for me, bad network performance but also the ability to just pick up your laptop and not worry about network connection to mention a few.

Anyway, I browsed around, moderately annoyed trying to avoid all the $oftware in favor for something simple that could do the job but wouldn’t cost money… just like home in Linuxland, right?

So I came a cross one really promising piece of software (no need to mention which since they’re not lone sinners :o), downloaded, tried it out and thought… hey this works! It had good integration with the desktop and a clean and simple UI and simple yet powerful features.

Great. Then today I spoke with a colleague who had been on the same mission and told him this was good software. He was rather surprised, since he had long ago figured out the software was not at all free (even though it’s listed as free software on several places, and they say it is free). The surprise will come after 30 days when the software stops working, for all intents and purposes unless you pay them money.

There’s nothing bad with companies asking for money. After all, I ask for money for working for a company, so the company should ask for money for selling my work, right? However, the serious problem is the lying part of the deal, where software companies say they are delivering free software where in fact they aren’t. In my case it ended up wasting several hours setting up the sync for real and would have wasted even more time had I been caught unaware when the 30 day trial was up. This, the lying seems, to me, to be a direct symptom of the software development model used…

There are no such thing as a free lunch, not even in the Linux world, but there you pay with time, and your apps aren’t programmed to stop work after 30 days. They might, because you’ve downloaded beta software, but that’s because some one did not program, or program right, not because someone did.

Anyway, I was baffled, totally unprepared and realized Linux naivized me! Wooh!

Uncategorized

Weather Report: “Rain Mist”

Even though it’s usually considered too polite to talk weather, the kind of weather I just passed through on my way to lunch does merit a comment.

Usually when it rains in Sweden it pours down so violently you have 5 cms of water covering the ground, or if the rain has decided to stay the whole day it drizzles, making book reading and Monopoly gaming a viable alternative if you’re a kid and having summer break, oh memories… sorry… well not that we have summer breaks in the autumn, not even in Sweden but we have more or less the same rain in the autumns as in the summer, no hailstorms though.  And colder!

Today was strange though. More of a rain mist than a real rain, and it took me a while to recognize it. It was like someone had placed sprinklers all over the place, and they were set to produce that fine mist of water some sprinklers are capable of.

Strange and unusual experience, and a first for me, ever!

Computers

Hacking Windows Remote Connection (MSTSC.EXE)

WARNING: The below tip will kick out one of the already logged in users. This behavior may have been added after I came up with this advice, or I’ve always been the evil person on the block 😀

Ever been turned down by a Windows machine over Remote Desktop because it already had too many connections?

Even though there are no way to connect using the standard remote desktop program you can still “hack” a connection. Sure the limitation exists, probably to sell more licenses or to protect the host server from getting too many connections, but to get past it you do the following:

mstsc /v:myhost.com /F /console

Where myhost.com is the name or ipnumber of the server you are trying to remote to. /F means a full screen connection, /console means to connect to the “console session of the server” (whatever that means, it anyhow results in you getting in although the server would otherwise refuse you).

The full format of the MSTSC command call are:

MSTSC [<Connection File>] [/v:<server[:port]>] [/console] [/f[ullscreen]]
[/w:<width> /h:<height>]

<Connection File> refers to an rdp file to be used with the connection (good if you need to make local drivers or other resources available or set up the connection otherwise).

You can also call MSTSC with the “/edit” switch if you wish to edit a connection file:

MSTSC /edit <Connection File>

Finally you may also migrate files by using the “/migrate” switch (not 100% sure how this is done though since I don’t have an older version file to test with).

Creativity and Recreation

Stargate Atlantis: Whispers (4/5)

Episode 7 of Stargate Atlantis season 5 starts on a foggy Gate World planet where two persons, apparently natives make their way through the fog. As they move on they come upon a sitting figure turned with her back at them. They approach and we can all see something bad is going to happen. One of them touch the figure who leaps on her feet, growling. Screaming, running and dying ensues and one of the scarier episodes of Stargate Atlantis starts.

This episodes continues a theme development in Atlantis that at least I noticed already in previous episodes (not sure if it was in the Shrine or Ghost in the Machine I noticed it first…): The use of women not only as bosses or doctors (which to be honest is just a continuation of the age old matriarch and caretaker roles assigned to women). This time we see them as grunts. And although the episode had me biting my nails and turning down the volume (in preparation for the bang-crash- monster-attack- heart-attack sequence of events) none of the women came even close to the classic horror movie almost-naked-blond- running-screaming-through-the-forest- when-she-should-be-home- with-her-door-locked moves.

This fresh and interesting episode only features Joe Flanigan from the permanent cast and I’m giving it an 4 out of 5. Its only demerits would be that it is a rather uncharacteristic Atlantis episode, and that the cast-dynamic suffers a bit from not having any of the other permanent cast members.

Computers

Office 2007: Microsoft shoots itself in the foot?

I have the somewhat dubious pleasure of working at a place where the migration from Office 2003 to 2007 is halfway done. Now, usually this should be no problem, but a couple of factors have cooperated to make it one.

Office 2007 uses a new (and improved?) format (they added an x to all their file name extensions, read more about them here). This could be all good and well if it had not been for the fact that new versions of Office now uses these formats per default. Okay, a user a bit savvy might sooner or later notice the “x” at the end of all filenames… but only the users that have disabled the setting in Windows to hide these formats…

This leaves us with senders, running Office 2007, unable to tell if they saved the file in docx or doc format, and the recipients with Office 2003, unable to read these files. Even though there is an update, a lot of users aren’t comfortable with doing that… heck, I’m scared of doing unneccessary stuff to my wobbly M$ installation!

The end result becomes pretty predictable: chaos, disillusioned users, and … a great day to start talking about OpenOffice.org? (even though it does not yet support the Office 2007 format).

Computers, Science and Society

Open source v.s. Closed source

Working with closed source products (Microsoft Visual Studio, .NET, ASP.NET, SQL server, and Oracle) while at the same time experimenting with open source products (Eclipse, Java, MySql, and Spring) I am constantly baffled by the persistance of closed source developers and business people in their handling of second grade support, bad information, and lacking products.

Continue reading Open source v.s. Closed source →