noel alanguilan

Note (2009.08.16): someone decided to sue lenovo denmark because they refuse to refund the price for windows vista even though it was clearly stated in the lenovo dk’s website they will refund the amount. i wonder if this can be done here in the philippines…

i was at a mall a couple of days ago looking over prices of branded notebook computers for a friend. on a whim, i decided to ask if i could possibly purchase a laptop that i wanted with linux installed or, at the least, come without an operating system.

i found out that i could get a laptop that i did not want with linux installed; that i could get the laptop that i want with only a variant of windows vista installed and; that i could not get the laptop without an operating system installed.

but there is no point in spending for what you do not want, eh? it would simply be a waste of money. and, as far as the sales persons i talked to are concerned, they will not refund me the cost of windows vista even though microsoft’s vista end user license agreement specifically states:

By using the software, you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, do not use the software. Instead, return it to the retailer for a refund or credit. If you cannot obtain a refund there, contact Microsoft or the Microsoft affiliate serving your country for information about Microsoft’s refund policies.

i tried contacting microsoft philippines via web/email but before i could reach any sort of contact form they first wanted me to agree to their help and support terms of agreement (yes they have that too) which i didn’t agree with. the forums weren’t much help on my particular issue either. so where does this leave me?

well, i was thinking of the option of just getting the laptop i wanted and then sell the windows vista license later on for an unforgivably low price–at least i’m sure i’ll get some money back.

this is a listing of helpful web sites of the software that are commonly found in a linux installation. most of these programs, with the exception of linux, also have a windows version. i’ll add more help sites as we use more programs.

evolution mail:
documentation, faqs

gimp:
documentation, tutorials, faqs

open office:
documentation, community forum, tutorials, faqs

thunderbird:
knowledgebase, support forum, faqs, help & tutorials,

ubuntu linux:
official ubuntu documentation, unbuntu forums

oracle is buying sun. oracle is into databases in a big way. sun is home to sparc, solaris, java, open office, and recently, mysql. a lot of people have been blogging about what will come out of this marriage. i’m just wondering about what will happen to open office, mysql, in that order.

oracle doesn’t really need mysql. it is, after all, a huge database company. maintaining a free open source sql database such as mysql may just eat away at the markets of its other database products. so mysql may be spun off or, more logically, ultimately die under the care of oracle. i’m not really worried as i know that mysql has been forked already so the line will go on.

what i’m really wondering about is what will oracle do with openoffice? oracle is known to be one of the top contributors to linux because it ultimately contribute’s to the company’s income. but i do not see openoffice contributing significantly to oracle’s bottom line. i reluctantly see openoffice withering under oracle which is a shame, really. should this actually happen i will be sad but not worried as there are other alternatives. as always is the case, with open source. there’s go openoffice which is an alternative build to sun’s openoffice. and then there’s ibm’s lotus symphony.

but i do hope that oracle will continue openoffice development or better yet maybe spin it off. its better than killing it off.

interested in what windows seven would look like? to me it looks a lot like vista but more polished. but as i said before, windows se7en could be called vista service pack 1. you can take look for yourself–infomation week has screenshots.

i have here with me a temperamental laptop. it has a new hard drive, you see. i have reinstalled windows xp and religiously downloaded and applied all the updates. lately, it seems that the laptop has the impression that something went wrong the last time it was used that it has been giving me the option to login in windows safe mode almost everytime i start it up.

i finally got fed up and decided to install linux on the thing just to spite it. i happily slathered interpid ibex (ubuntu version 8.10) on it. that took all of about 20 minutes. after thats done i immediately upgraded it–via the network–to the jaunty jakalope release candidate (ubuntu version 9.04). the upgrade took about four hours (slow internet connection, mate).

initial impressions. nice. very nice. it has that tiny bit more polish than the previous interface–showing signs of a “maturing” gnome. i good step, i think. and although i haven’t tested it yet, the kernel version that came with jaunty is suppose to support more usb wireless cards. i am also interested in trying out the new file sytem (ext4) but i’ll wait until they fix some issues with it.

before i forget, there’s this nice touch with the shutdown process in jaunty. before, when you click shutdown, the system immediately does shutdown. with jaunty, when you click on shutdown, there’s a dialog box that pops out with a 60-second countdown before actually shutting down and there’s a cancel and shutdown button. cancel, obviously, cancels the shutdown process and the shutdown button shuts down your computer immediately, ignoring the countdown. i think its a nice touch which eliminates that “dooh!” moment the old version that immediately arrives right after you click on shutdown option. but then that’s just me. some people would be irritated by the additional click or two just to power off the computer.

so now i sit here in front of my own workstation which is still sporting interpid ibex and i’m seriously thinking if i should upgrade to jaunty jakalope now even though its  still a release candidate. the other laptop is taunting and tempting me.

i’m going to sleep on it for now. and start backing up my data…

the stock papt introductory letter

a client of mine recently received a letter from the pilipinas anti-piracy team shown on the left. with the exception of to whom the letter was addressed to, i received this exact same letter about a year ago. when i first got this letter i had the impression that the company i was working for is using pirated software. that’s strange. i know for a fact that all the software programs in the office are either properly licensed or legally free. reading the letter the second time puts it in perspective–its a reminder not to use pirated software, albeit worded rather aggressively so the first tendency is to panic. some might even consider it a veiled threat.

its nice to know that some people in government are doing their job.

so what do you do when you get a copy of this letter? first, do not panic. read that letter again. no one is actually accusing you of using pirated software. its just a notice.

next thing you do is to take their advise and perform a software license check. remember that for each kind of software there is a single corresponding license. so, if you have a windows set up like most of the world, each computer should have one license for microsoft windows and one for microsoft office. there is no one license to rule them all (we’ll get to the linux license later).

and the cost of those licenses add up–php7,700 for microsoft windows and php18,000 for microsoft office 2007; php25,700 in total. multiply that by the number of computers that you have. if you have 10 computers the cost is going to run up to a quarter of a million pesos. that’s jusT for 10 computers. that’s quite a hefty sum considering the recession and all.

if you do not want to spend that much on software there are legal alternatives. you can replace microsoft office with open office. that’s a savings of php 180,000.00 already for 10 computers. and yes, it can open all your word documents, excel spreadsheets and powerpoint presentations.

if you want further savings, replace your pirated microsoft windows with linux. that’s savings of php 77,000.00 for 10 computers. there are so many distributions (loosely, types of linux) out there. off the top of my head, ubuntu is a nice alternative if you’re coming from the windows world. you can look for more distributions over at distrowatch.

if you want to stay within the microsoft world then be ready to pluck down a hefty sum to use their software.

i have been preoccupied of late with security stuff. the first one is what they’re calling conficker.c which will activate on the first of april. no one knows what it will do but i would bet a beer that its not entirely good. symantec has a removal tool for this and previous versions of conficker (aka downadup).

+ + +

another news item that has been in that particular corner of my brain is the network bluepill aka psyb0t botnet. its a new botnet targeting routers/modems instead of pcs. these router/modems are the gadgets that give you access to the internet. imagine what bad things can happen when that’s been compromised. you can’t scan for the botnet either because the botnet code is not on your pc. according to dronebl–a real-time tracker of abusable ips–you are vulnerable if:

• Your device is a mipsel (MIPS running in little-endian mode, this is what the worm is compiled for) device;
• Your device also has telnet, SSH or web-based interfaces available to the WAN, and
• your username and password combinations are weak, OR the daemons that your firmware uses are exploitable.

the best way to ensure that you don’t get infected (or reinfected) is to perform a hard reset of the device, update the device’s firmware to the latest and change the administrative passwords to stronger ones, maybe use a passphrase instead.

+ + +

and then there’s the next version of ubuntu–jaunty jakalope or version 9.04–coming out by april (2009.04). that’s something to look forward to. at the same time i’ve been studying/ evaluating the server version of ubuntu as a replacement for some (or all my server installations).

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i have taken on a new project making a new website which will act much like a repository of information about a famous person. this will replace another project that i had to let go. its another php/mysql/apache install (spelled as web 2.0). this should prove interesting.

flash stores its own version of cookies in your computer. they are formally called local shared objects — linux planet just calls them flash cookies. unlike ordinary cookies, these things are binary files not readable by plain-text editors and, as you guessed, not readily accessed or removed also. you have to go to the adobe site and use their online flash settings manager to edit or delete these cookies.

wordpress 2.7 introduced me to post revisions — these are draft copies of your posts. these copies are saved in your wordpress database along with your posts, comments, etc. sometimes my revisions it gets to be ridiculously too many. apparently, the revisions are retained even after you have published the post thereby occupying unnecessary space in the database. so far, there is no built-in point-and-click method of getting rid of these revisions from the database.

i’ve found two ways to delete these revisions.

first, the hard way. fire up your phpadmin; choose your wordpress database; click on the sql icon and a window will pop up where you can enter and sql command:

DELETE FROM wp_posts WHERE post_type = "revision";

then click on ‘go’.

phpadmin will tell just just how many revisions were deleted. you’re done.

of course, there’s always the easy way. download and install a plugin called wp-optimize. this plugin can remove all post revisions plus optimize the database tables–the two functions that i usually use phpadmin for the maintenance of the sql tables (aka wordpress databases). other plugins have more database features but more is not necessarily better. its just more. this one’s right for my purpose.

i woke up with an update notice on the wordpress dashboard. i usually dread this event because it meant two days of updating nine wordpress installations that i keep. it takes two days because i have to backup my wordpress databases and files then manually delete almost all the wordpress files then upload the fresh. i have to do this nine times and my internet connection is relatively slow. tedious.

the good new is that with version 2.7 i can easily update my wordpress installations — they included a update script. heed the advice and backup your wordpress database and files before doing the upgrade.

once you got everything backed up and you’re sure that the backups are good take the jump and press that upgrade button. all of my upgrades were successful so far. there are two more upgrades i have to do.

i upgraded seven wordpress installations in less than an hour. that is a huge savings in time.