Free hosting for open source projects

I will soon to be setting up a new web host off of my reseller server that I own. Since I’m passionate about open source projects, I will be offering completely free web hosting to open source projects. Applications will be done by a case-by-case basis and will be directly handled by me. All accounts will be hosted on a Linux server in the States.

If you’re interested, quickly drop me an email to andy<at>microplop<dot>com and don’t hesitate to comment on this post, and I’ll get back to you asap.

Personal website complete

I had a spare few minutes the other week so I finished my personal website.

www.andycallaghan.com

Have a lot of fun.

Lots of work, stress and virus troubles. Cancel or Allow?

I have got alot of work to complete recently – my algorithms assignment, software engineering and final programming project (to be uploaded in the not to distant future).

So I, Andy Callaghan, officially blame Windows Vista for making my life even more stressful by ‘contracting’ a virus mid-programming and doing my work.

Due to the Windows virus, I got banned from the Uni network. The viral traffic was detected by the Universities firewalls. They completely locked me down… no email or web (except the windows update site, naturally). I was crapping myself. I couldn’t access (still can’t to a degree) my network drive in the University so none of my work could be accessed.

After installing all the anti-virus software they could throw at me, they unbanned then quickly banned me again a day after with the same reason – Poebot virus traffic.

All of this, was occurring on a fully up-to-date legal version of Windows Vista – reportedly the most secure operating system that M$ have ever produced. Safe? Yeah right. The user-access control is a joke! (but you can Cancel of Allow anything that the system may do!).

It is simply not sensible to trust all my work and grades in an insecure system.

I duly formatted the Vista infestation off of my machine, and reinstalled Win XP.

To add insult to injury the Windows installer, of course, completely scrubbed the boot sector of my drive for it’s own boot loader, erasing GRUB – so I couldn’t boot into openSuse. I rebuilt the boot-loader from the openSuse disk, to then find that Windows had corrupted my root drive for Linux.

A re-install of openSuse allowed me to see that my t’internet connection had been re-enabled as my entire machine was functioning in openSuse. However in Windows, after a fresh install and driver install of what I could, the following still don’t work.

• Network
• Sound
• Dual screen (even with Nvidia drivers installed)
• Webcam, printer and scanner (but these are less important)

I am now enjoying openSuse, merely because it works perfectly and is a lot less likely to lose my work by viruses. Kdevelop rocks!

This is a picture of my openSuse desktop, in all of it’s dual-head transparency loveliness.

Ending comments:

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Grinds my gears: The decline of mobile phones

The mobile phone business is big. Really big. This in turn generates many competitors in the market for mobile phones. Arguably this is a good thing in terms of MS-style dominance, but bad in an other – it breeds fashion, style and battling statistics.

To some people, the only distinction between old and new handsets is how many features they have, how many different fascias you can buy for it, or how many mega-pixels can the camera capture. Some of my friends have even bought hugely expensive handsets as they looked ‘purty’.

This has meant that some mobile phones have merely morphed into a fashion accessory rather than an object of engineering brilliance. After all the technological advances in voice transmission, it can simple come down to how nice it looks.

Voice-over-IP is one of the best leaps in technology as far as phones go that we’ll see in along time, but why do no phone support it? It could be because each new phone that comes to market is backed by one or a few networks that try they’re best at locking out all competition. This is where my rant this evening lies

Smartphones are the future, but phone locking features heavily in all Windows Mobile OS phones. Devices running this operating system have a bootstrapping-style chip which prevents not only the OS from being replaced, but also forbid the change of network (easily).

You may say that this is only just Microsoft that are being anal about their Operating system’s security but no… Apple’s new iPhone not only block OS and network changes, but they lock out all third party apps from being installed. This is a step down a path that is very difficult to come back from in my opinion. The mobile phone’s future will be locked, proprietary, expensive and slow to progress if this style of OS implementation keeps going.

In my eyes, the future is with a small fully open sourced phone called openMoko. Not only is it stylish, but any programmer or hacker is able to change any part of it’s OS design and functionality. I can’t wait to get my hands on one.

To change the mentality of all phone manufacturers, a major mobile phone producer like Nokia would need to produce a phone which was completely open source and be successful with it. All the hard-nut Linux-followers would buy it, and perfectly normal, Joe Doe users like me would too.

An open source mobile phone future is a much better one – locking for MS phones yes, but also the choice for a free and unrestricted platform with a huge and promising future.

How to synchronise iPods with Amarok

It has always been tricky to find a way to sync ipods in Linux, but I’ve found a way.

1. Get Amarok (version >= 1.4.4)

2. Make sure you have libipod installed – this allows iPod file functions.

3. Initialise all music in Amarok.

4. Initialise iPod

5. Goto ‘Playlist’ on the left menu bar

6. Under ‘Smart Play lists’ -> Collection -> All Collection.

7. Right click -> Synchronise to media device.

8. Goto ‘Media device’ on left menu bar.

9. At the bottom of the left pane under ‘Transfer Queue’ it should now read ‘All Collection’

10. Underneath the top menu bar select ‘Transfer’

Sorted!

Windows Live OneCare fails basic virus detection tests

An independent security group that test the effectiveness of the major virus scanners have failed to certify Windows Live OneCare because of it’s crappy performance in the tests.

The following programs were tested:

Avast
AVG
AVIRA
BitDefender
Dr.Web
eScan
NOD32
FortiClient
F-Prot
F-Secure
AVK
Kaspersky
McAfee
MS OneCare
Norman VC
Symantec Norton
Trustport AVW

WIndows Live OneCare on average detected only 80% of infections, whereas other programs such as AVK can boast over 99.4% detection rate of all the viruses detected.

See the report here

Repugnant Idiotic Ar*ehole Association (of America)

In a strangely horrifyingly horrendous (but non-suprising) move, the RIAA are now going after university and college students in the US, after issuing over 600 letters of settlement to persons across the states.

Sweetly, the RIAA have set up a website where the students who receive the letter can enter in a code and settle the case online, as if justice through the courts wasn’t even and option to them.

What made me so angry upon reading this website was that the RIAA had been quoted saying the following to the defendants:

… to help fund the fine of the copyright infringement of music, you can drop out of college of university …

Are they serious? Destroying young lives as well as old?

To quote their website…

The unauthorized reproduction and distribution of copyrighted music is JUST AS ILLEGAL AS SHOPLIFTING A CD. Burning CD’s from peer-to-peer networks like KaZaA, Morpheus or Gnutella is against the law

So, if I walked right now into a music store in America and a CD, I wonder how much the RIAA would sue me; Almost worth trying…

Say if I stole an ice-cream from you. You would no longer have that tasty ice-cream. Whereas if I chose to ’steal’ an album over the internet the company who sell it still have it, the artist still owns the all the songs and Johnny Public can still sleep safe at night! Stealing involves physical objects. Music sharing is not stealing.

Shoplifting is a completely different crime, involving physical objects and material and not groups of ones and zeros. Filesharing is caring, not stealing.