Tech Smartly

I was writing my next blog post ( I’ve been rather busier nowadays, and will continue to be so for another couple of weeks), when I looked at recently cleaned up desktop. I had one picture on it, the first picture on my computer. Unfortunately, I did not realize at all it was a picture. Why? Because it had the quicktime icon on it! I didn’t remember putting a video file on my desktop, so this was very puzzling. Since I have a semi fresh install, I don’t have any pictures at all, except on my back up drive, which I don’t look through since I don’t need anything. It didn’t take long to realize who was at fault here: Apple.

Why must you always seduce people with your nice looking products? I admit, Macs are better at some things with windows, but again there are some drawbacks to macs. Not only that, but it seems like people forget that OSX, despite being all pretty is intuitive, is still a closed down OS using proprietary formats. My knowledge of Mac is quite small however. I only ever use macs when I go to the mac store to browse to anti-mac pages such as here, or here, even not everything I link to is entirely true. I’ve done this about 5 times, and one out of those five times the mac crashed on me. Of course, it could have just been a chance encounter, but aren’t they supposed to just work? Anyway, enough Mac-bashing. I don’t want people emailing me saying how wrong I am. I don’t like macs, and I’ll never use one without malicious intent. The fact is, Apple seems hell-bent on getting everyone to use what they think is best. You must use their ideas of what they think is good for you. For a grandma sitting at home, this isn’t all that important. But for a person who wants to make things work the way they want it to, it becomes a problem. So tell me Apple, why must you extend your influence to my windows partition?

I have a pretty clear Idea how this happened. I was installing iTunes, which installed quicktime. There was some little check box or list that I didn’t looked completely through. But why did Apple decide that it should force upon me it’s terrible software by automatically checking one item among so many? Granted, it’s not a big a problem as it wanting to install safari. in fact, it has a very simple solution. But that’s not what the problem is. I’m not complaining that Apple changed PNG’s to open with some program that crashes when I try to use it. I’m complaining about the fact that Apple is trying to feed me it’s own slow software on my computer, try to deceit me and hide from my watchful eyes. This is poor on Apples part. I want iTunes so I can sync my iPod (with rockbox!), and it also has to install quicktime, and change my settings so that it tries to open the pictures. Hopefully songbird can become good enough for my daily usage soon, so that I can rid myself almost completely from iTunes. I however still have DRM on some songs which I need to get rid of. Apple earns my big red mark of shame, which does not actually exist, but you get my drift.

First and foremost, I have a contact page set up for those who wish to contact me. You can use it to send in  what you think I should write next, questions, tips, spelling mistakes, and things you feel you should point out to me. As what will happen with all blogs that get tons of email, there will be a point where I will not have enough time to reply.

Now, let me start off by saying that I don’t think my computer has ever felt more violated. My computer was in the worst state I’ve ever seen it since getting blue screens of death from the creative drivers (I still haven’t quite solved that problem). I don’t know what made me think it was a good idea. I’ve been starring at the same desktop ever since when XP came out, sometimes changing my wallpaper. If my eyes were a CRT monitor, the start menu would have been burned into my eyes by now. I guess my excuse is that I was getting bored at looking at the sae scenery all the time. At least now I know it’s better just to download a theme. It is important to mention that I used the Vistamizer program, which may have had issues with my computer. However, what happened to my computer after restarting was terrible, almost unmentionable. I wish I had screenshots, but I couldn’t bare to have my computer stay like it was long enough for me to take some. It all comes down to 4 things.

• It’s terribly slow.
• It’s ugly!
• Too many processes were running.
• It changed my stuff and didn’t revert it.

It’s terribly slow

Now of course, this is quite a heavy task. Maybe even Vista itself would be faster than what my computer was. However, I have a very powerful computer. It can run Crysis on high at a smooth framerate. So why does my computer have to slow down so much just to handle all the effects? When I right clicked, it took half a second for the computer to do whatever it was doing. At least I got to see a pretty circle while I waited! When I use normal XP, I don’t see any cool looking circle, I just see a menu pop up almost as soon as I click. How dare I decide that functionality is better than staring at a pretty circle!

It’s ugly!

Wait, what is this? It’s ugly? Yes, it is quite ugly! The transparency doesn’t look nice, especially with things in the background. There were a few miner graphical glitches. The taskbar colors did not look nice. It just did not work well together. It’s not just because I’m not used to it, it’s because it’s actually ugly. I wouldn’t be able to stand using it after a while. Even the default windows setup is better than what I experienced.

Too many processes were running

I realize that there needs to be a lot of stuff going on to deliver the vista experience on windows. However, when I find myself looking at new things running in the system tray, I do not like this. Maybe I was hoping for too much, but when I use a computer, I don’t want too many programs running in the background. On top of that, there were perhaps many other processes happening in the background. However, I didn’t look because I wanted to change back to normal windows so quickly.

It changed my stuff and didn’t revert it

The first thing I noticed is that I had a new desktop wallpaper. The second thing I noticed is that my files were spaced farther apart. Fair enough. I didn’t really mind this at all. In fact, it looked OK, and I didn’t have any problems with it. The problem I did have, and still have (since I can’t be bothered to fix it), is that when I uninstalled everything, it didn’t change back to what it was originally. All the icons are still as spaced out as ever, and the order that it was has ben destroyed. Not only that, it set the desktop wallpaper back to the default. I had a nice Firefox wallpaper that I can not find anywhere which I found through stumbleupon. How am I supposed to get that back? I’m sure I can find it through enough googling, but why should I have to spend quite a bit of time just to fix what Vistamizer changed?

Now this is only one opinion. For some people, Vistamizer might have worked perfectly. In fact, another vista pack could work better than vistamizer did for me. I don’t know until I try all of them (the popular ones at least). However, until then I think my computer wants a rest, especially through what it has been through.

Click for bigger image

It seems like nowadays, privacy is becoming more and more a thing in the past. Google stores your search data indefinitely, although now they will anonymise searches longer that 2 years if I remember correctly. I get 10 spam emails every day, from signing up to websites and making comments. In fact, I got my very first spam email that bypassed the filter two days ago, and I’ve had my email address for more than a year. I was surprised, considering I have not seen a single spam email except when I venture into the spam vaults for a good laugh. How can you not get a laugh out your friends when you get an email like this:
Your rod and balls will become candy after taking our special formula.

So maybe this isn’t your type of humor, and instead what happens is you sit in front of your computer, contemplating on the security of email. You go on a trip, thinking about the proliferation of spam, the rise of phishing, and other techniques dependent on user intelligence. Lost passwords, stolen credit card numbers, private data available in a database for sale. All these things exist. That’s why you must protect yourself against privacy violations, and identity theft, as well as everything else out there. Now it’s not like you must mistrust everybody, but you must always be careful with what you send out. You may feel a need to run under your computer desk (your chair works OK if you can’t fit under your desk), but before you do that, you must continue reading on before you live the life of a hermit.

One of the most simple things you can do to protect yourself is to know whether or not you’re submitting info over SSL. If you wish to learn in depth about SSL, you can visit the Wikipedia article about SSL. SSL stands for secure sockets layer, created by Netscape. Nowadays, SSL is used whenever any important data has to be transmitted. Everything sent over SSL is encrypted. In fact, sending your data over SSL is the most secure it will ever be. Once it reaches it’s destination, what happens there is completely dependent on the security of the servers. So what does this mean? When you’re sending you private info, whether you’re signing up for a website, or you’re doing anything you would not rather anyone see, make sure it’s in SSL!

“But, Joe, how do I know I’m using SSL?”, I hear you say. It’s very simple. Look for an icon looking like a lock on your browser UI. Using release candidate 1 of Firefox 3, I get the lock on the bottom right corner. It’s been such a long time since using internet explorer though, but I do believe that the lock appears on the url bar. Now, as long as you have that lock, you are safe. No, not really. You are only safe against a 3rd party. Just because there is that lock there, doesn’t mean that your info can not be read by anyone. This is protection against others trying to steal what you’re sending. This does mean that the website you’re sending the info to has access to it. Even if you are using SSL, the website that you are sending it to can abuse that information, even if it is illegal to do so.

So how can you fully protect yourself against all those terrible and nasty people out there? It’s a simple answer really, and all you really need is common sense. Is a website you don’t know asking to install a plugin? Are you signing up for everything you see? Do you click on email attachments without knowing before hand there would be one? The stop right there! Think! It doesn’t take a trained eye to know when someone is trying to violate your privacy, although it does help.  When you’re dealing with the internet, and are one of the few people who wish to keep as few people as possible knowing about their info, the best thing is not anti-virus, it’s not living in a cave for the rest of your life, it’s common sense.

First off, this won’t work without Firefox. If you aren’t using it, then why are you on this site? OK, fine you have to use it at work/your grandson told you to click on the big e/Insert excuse here. I won’t hold it past you this time. If you’re curious to know what Firefox is, then click on the banner below.

Got Firefox 2 installed now? Feeling adventurous and got Firefox 3? Well, read on.

If you are unaware of the rick roll phenomenomenom ( can never remember how to spell that word), then most likely you won’t need to read the rest. Or maybe, you got rick rolled and didn’t recognize what it was. If you don’t know what it is, then this wiki page can explain it.

Now if you’ve gotten rick rolled before, and you’re wondering how to stop it, I found a very nice solution. It requires the Ad Block Plus add on. What it is, is that there is a website in which users can submit links that rick roll people, and it is added as a blocked advertisement. It’s very simple, and it only requires that you subscribe to the list. When I say subscribe, I’m talking about a two click process here, not as in giving your email or name. It’s a very nice solution, and I don’t remember a time that I have been rick rolled.

Head over to the Rick Roll Database to rid yourself of all rick rolls forever, or find some rick roll links that most people never heard of and rick roll your friends (as long as they haven’t read this blog post as well).

I’m sorry, but the kLife series will have to be delayed by a few months for two reasons.

1) My tight schedule wouldn’t allow me to give it the time it needs to be a Tech Smartly quality article! I’m currently going through a career “crisis”. (No, not in the sense that I’m anywhere close to loosing my job, but more in the sense of an overload of work!)

2) KDE4- Most of the programs I am going to review are currently going through a rewrite, or have recently gone through a rewrite, to port them to the Qt4/KDE4 platform. Therefore, if I write something, in a matter of days or weeks it could be inaccurate. Therefore I will wait for now, and over the summer, after the release of KDE4.1, I will be able to write these articles.

Thanks for understanding!

J.R.