by Alan Langford | 2008-06-09 | Observations on Everything
This weekend the Toronto Star announced the death of the SUV. One of the reasons this came up has to be the closing of the General Motors truck assembly line in Oshawa. It seems that as the price of gas gets above about $1.25 per litre (or $4/gallon in the U.S.), the number of people who “need” an unsafe gas guzzling SUV drops off pretty quickly. Now these same people “need” to unload their luxury land barges. There’s nothing like a flexible definition of needs.
This is a good start. There’s going to be a lot fewer road trips in the family road boat this year. Some people will argue that this is a bad thing, that families should be able to get out there with their kids to see all that this vast country has to offer. These people haven’t actually seen a family in one of these vehicles. The parents are happily enjoying their time “together” while each kid is in their own isolated space with individual DVD players and noise-reducing headphones. They see as much of the countryside in their basements. Besides, a lot of travel options remain open. Our geography is every bit as dramatic from a train. Better yet, on a train it’s a lot easier to get your kids to come out of their multimedia shells and look at something without risking a major accident. (more…)
by Alan Langford | 2008-05-29 | Observations on Everything
This one probably isn’t new, but it’s worth noting. An associate recently got this bogus “security warning”. Appropriately named “irony”, the message warns the user that “Security Center has detected Malware” and directs the user to a site where they can download a patch. Click on the image for a full sized version.
The “patch” will install malware on the user’s computer. At least they can’t forge the link as belonging to Microsoft, but this could easily fool an unsuspecting user.
by Alan Langford | 2008-05-23 | It's a Code, Code World
…that means “Gentoo is too hard for me.”
This line came from a chat with another developer, and I had to write it down. It has a lot of truth to it, as I watch my system compile the latest point release of KDE, while telling me I need to compile a new kernel and rewrite my MBR with the latest version of grub. Sigh.
Maybe it’s not so much “too hard”, but just “too much trouble.” Don’t get me wrong, I love Gentoo. I’ve made my Gentoo box do some really neat things, and most of the time I know I have the latest and greatest installed and ready to go.
On the other hand, my Kubuntu laptop is a lot easier to maintain, even if it’s not right up there on the cutting edge. An Ubuntu maintenance update takes minutes; KDE will be compiled in 5 hours or so, and there will be manual steps to be done after that.
Then there’s the matter of “not by me” maintenance. If I put Gentoo into a production server, how long will it take me to train someone else to take care of it? What are the odds that they’ll fail? If they quit, how easy will it be to find a replacement? It used to be that I planned to build a stable binary build on a stand-alone machine, then use it to send binary packages to production servers, but even that still needs someone willing to deal with Gentoo’s quirks and complexities on the back end.
Tossing Gentoo and moving to Ubuntu may be copping out, but it’s a lot simpler. It’s not the “best” solution from a bit-head’s point of view, but from the management side, it’s “Keep It simple, Stupid” in action.
The biggest problem will be moving all the development tools and demos across. Switching distributions isn’t something to be taken lightly. It’s a job for when I have a few days to play… like that’s about to happen.
by Alan Langford | 2008-05-12 | It's a Code, Code World
The decision to drop PHP4 support in the next version of Joomla was made yesterday.
There’s going to be some controversy over this one, but in my opinion, it’s the right move. It’s actually something I’ve been (gently, I hope) lobbying for for months.
Top reasons to move to PHP5:
- By the time 1.6 comes out, PHP4 will be completely unsupported.
- We can make Joomla run faster under PHP5.
- The only people this will cause a really serious problem for are lazy ISPs who haven’t got their act together. Hosting providers who don’t have PHP5 support in place by now probably have all sorts of other maintenance issues outstanding and deserve this pain, in my opinion.
- It makes my AP5L ACL code a candidate for use as a “rights provider” in the next release, which would makr my first really significant contribution to the project.
- PHP5 is a lot nicer to code in.
Very happy.
by Alan Langford | 2008-04-24 | Observations on Everything
This is simple and effective. If you suspect that the company who is calling you is not legitimate, ask the caller for their web site address.
If the call is a fraud attempt, the “agent” probably won’t be able to give it to you. One of these things will happen:
- They won’t “remember” it. For extra bonus fun, ask them if their sales manager knows it.
- They’ll give you a legitimate site that isn’t theirs. Ask them to hold on while you pop it up. If that doesn’t make them hang up, ask them where the information relating to their offer is. They might tell you it’s an exclusive offer that’s not available on the web, but if the site has nothing that seems to be related to the offer, it’s a big warning that they’re not telling the truth.
- They’ll give you a fake site that is theirs. This would be pretty stupid on their part, since it would provide the authorities with a path back to them. Do a search on the site to see what the world has to say about them. If they’re not in the search index, then the site was probably set up a few days ago. More sophisticated users can do a whois lookup on them… look at the registration date. Also if the site owner is masked for privacy, you can be sure it’s not a large established company. Either way, report the site to your local authorities as soon as possible.
These fraud schemes depend on leaving the smallest possible trail back to them. Legitimate businesses want to open as many possible channels of communication with their potential customers as possible.
So it’s as easy as this: no web site equals no legitimacy. Protect yourself.
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