Posts filed under 'Software'
Windows Vista will be released soon, but I will not be an early adopter of this new operating system. I thought I would share my top five reasons for not upgrading:
5. Stupid licensing terms and anti-piracy protections
The new licensing terms for Vista only allow you to reinstall the OS once. I’m not a pirate — I have no problem paying for software I use, but I’d rather not have to purchase it multiple times if the OS itself breaks down. If a reinstall is needed (which unfortunately has been frequently necessary on my Windows machines), I would need to purchase a new copy of Vista. Plus, what happens if I decide to upgrade my CD drive to a DVD burner? What if my hard drive crashes and I need to replace it? Why can’t I reinstall the copy of Vista I already own? Also, some have pointed out potential problems with WGA, an anti-piracy application that will occasionally report back to Microsoft on the status of my copy of Vista, and can disable most functionality of the OS if it is suspected to be a pirated version. No, thanks.
4. Exorbitantly high cost
Pricing for Vista is out and it is expensive — the Ultimate edition comes in at $399. Ouch. Of course the other flavors and versions are less expensive, but with less functionality. Plus, remember this cost is only for the OS; and most users need other software to be productive. Shelling out so much cash for just the operating system requires considering alternatives to additional expensive software.
3. Nefarious malware
Windows has been and will continue to be the main target for malware. Spyware, adware and lots of other garbage can will turn your computer into a spam-messenger or bot awaiting nefarious commands of some remote hacker kid. I doubt a new OS will be totally hardened against it, despite Microsoft’s claims to the contrary.
2. Perpetual security issues
Even with a greater focus on security, critical patches and serious flaws are being found every month. Admittedly, Microsoft has made great strides to make their operating systems more secure, but it’s just not there yet. But, as stated above, Microsoft OSs are the biggest target out there. Exploits found in the OS is one way to get malware onto the system, the other way is user-error — usually by installing infected programs.
Also, all of Vista’s security features are new — which means they can’t be totally secure. Microsoft is rewriting all of the networking program stack, which is sure to be the focus of future critical patches. Only history can measure security. Look at how XP matured — it’s relatively solid now, but it took it to SP2 to get it even close to where it should have been. I doubt Vista will be much different.
1. Better alternatives
Microsoft should be carefully monitoring two competing operating systems: Mac OS X and Ubuntu Linux. Although neither is perfect, Mac OS X and Ubuntu Linux are shaping up to be tough competition for Vista.
OS X is notoriously easy to use and just works. Apple’s stock continues to rise because once people learn OS X, they won’t go back to Windows. The iLife suite provides functionality for all of the fun stuff computers can do and Apple’s hardware is sleek and sexy. My next computer will be from Apple, largely because of OS X and iLife.
Ubuntu continues to get better; it’s a great alternative operating system. Sure it’s another flavor of a million flavors of linux, but I like where it’s heading. First of all, you can’t beat the price — Ubuntu is totally free. And it comes bundled with tons of great open-source software. Once it’s installed, you have a whole bunch of great applications and the ability to easily download and install thousands more. I have been using Ubuntu for quite some time now on an older computer, and it’s great. I certainly won’t be replacing it with Vista.
October 27th, 2006
There is usually more than one way to accomplish this task, but I have struggled with how to create a scheduled ftp job in Windows for a long time.
I recently ran into a problem which forced me to figure out how to create a scheduled ftp job. I needed to post results from my fantasy football league draft to a website so the slackers who couldn’t be at the live draft could more easily follow along and know who had been drafted so far. The software I use to conduct my draft (FFLM) can automatically generate HTML reports after each pick. I needed to create an FTP job that would take those HTML reports and post them to a website for the remote drafters to see.
I’ve used Linux and cron before, and I was hoping to get something like that in Windows. Although it’s not too difficult in Windows, I needed to do a little research to figure out how to create a scheduled ftp job.
I found an article on the Microsoft Help and Support site that shows how to use an FTP Batch script. If you open up Notepad, you can create a simple file that contains all of the commands you need to type in for your ftp job. Just type in the commands you would use in the ftp command-line utility. For example, my .scr file looks something like this:
open 10.0.0.1
user
password
lcd "C:\Files\ToFTP"
cd website/Fantasy/Football/Directory
put DraftResults.htm
put TeamRosters.htm
bye
The first line connects to the FTP server, the second and third lines are the username and password to connect to the server. The fourth line changes my local dirctory to C:\Files\ToFTP, where my files are located. The fifth line gets to the proper directory in the FTP server, it’s where my files are going to be placed. The sixth and seventh lines transfer the two report files to the server. The eighth line disconnects from the server.
Saving this file as a .scr file means that I now have an FTP script to run. From the command line I can simply type:
ftp -s:Test.scr
The script will run and the two files will be placed on the server.
Now that we have the ftp script, it’s time to automate it. All we need to do is create a very simple batch file. Again, this can be done simply using Notepad. The batch file will basically run the ftp command line script as shown above. Here are the contents of the batch file:
::DraftFTP.bat
::Uploads Draft Files to Website
@ECHO OFF
cd "C:\Files"
ftp -s:Test.scr
The first two lines are comment lines. The third line tells the batch file not to display the command prompt as the commands are executed. The fourth line changes the directory to where the Test.scr file is located. You should recognize what the fifth line does from what we did above.
Now we have a batch file. Double click it and it will run, placing the two files on to the webserver.
So we’re almost there. Now that we have the ftp script and the batch file to run it, all we need to do is create a scheduled job to automatically run the batch file at a given interval.
Open the Scheduled Tasks (Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Scheduled Tasks) and create a new Scheduled Task. Don’t bother going through the wizard, just right-click and select New > Scheduled Task. Give it a name and then open it up. In the Task tab, select the batch file you just created as the program to run. Then simply fill out the Schedule, Setting, and Security options as desired.
Then sit back and enjoy as the Scheduled Task runs your batch file containing your FTP script, automatically putting your files according to the schedule you have defined.create a scheduled ftp job
As mentioned above, there is usually more than one way to accomplish a task. If you know a better way to create a scheduled ftp job please share your tips below, or let me know if this solution worked for you.
September 19th, 2006
I am a big fantasy football guy. I have been playing fantasy football since 1998 and have done pretty well over the years. However, at the beginning of each season I struggle to find a team name worthy of my future league champions.
Try it now!
Because necessity is the mother of invention (and because I’m a geek), I started a project to build my own fantasy football team name generator using PHP. I wouldn’t consider myself a programmer of any particular merit, but it was a pretty easy task even for a beginner.
The key to the generator is populating several arrays, each holding a list of words to build the name of our fantasy football team. $adj holds mainly a list of adjectives, $noun holds mostly nouns, and $pnoun holds mostly plural nouns.
Then we simply take a random word from each list and put it together to form the fantasy football team name.
$first = $trim($adj[rand(0, sizeof($adj)-1)]);
Repeat the random selection from the $noun and $pnoun arrays and put the selections together to get the final $generatedname and display that to the user.
I added several additional features to my Fantasy Football Team Name Generator. First, I put it in a loop to display more than one value, which can be set by the user via a form. Also, I allowed overriding the random selection from the $adj array with your name so the result “Hungry Death Monkeys” becomes “Seth’s Death Monkeys”. I also added an option to limit the output to 20 characters to comply with Yahoo leagues.
If you have any questions, or generate a particularly enjoyable fantasy football team name, just let me know by adding a comment below. I hope you find a name worthy of your future league champions. Enjoy!
August 10th, 2006
Even though I don’t email top-secret information on a daily basis (OK, actually never), I would like the option to make my email secure. It makes me feel better to know only those whom I intend to read it can do so. Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is an email encryption computer program that didn’t sound promising, but after some research I found that it suffers from a humility complex — PGP is actually very strong, solid encryption. PGP allows you to encrypt your email communications so you can be sure the messages are only read by the person you intended.
I have been a fan of Thunderbird (read my review) for quite some time, and recently came across an extension called Enigmail which promised to give me the PGP security capabilities I was looking for. The Enigmail extension provides the security in a simple and straightforward way and nicely integrates into Thunderbird. The encryption is handled by the GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG), a free version of PGP.
Here is a simple example of how PGP works. Dave wants to send Jesse an email. Both Dave and Jesse have Thunderbird and Enigmail installed. Both use Enigmail to generate a key pair. Dave gets a private key and a public key, and Jesse also gets his own public and private key. The public keys are public; Dave and Jesse share those with each other. The private keys are private, they should never be shared. The two keys work together to encrypt and decrypt messages. If something was encrypted with the public key, it can only be decrypted by the corresponding private key.
OK, back to Dave and Jesse. When Dave sends Jesse an email, Dave encrypts the message using Jesse’s public key (Dave has access to Jesse’s public key because it is public). When Jesse receives the message, Enigmail will automatically decrypt the message using Jesse’s private key and Jesse will read the message. To anyone else viewing the message it would look something like this:
-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.3rc2 (MingW32)
hQIOA6x3yUQjMAdqEAgAvyC+x6frLRnxE8u67BRQAFb2Jrj
NQdBoN2uFKH6x2DGJeggTSL2aGyABsFSr8eva4j4QWSnVfa
DC5P5EOwEQykSvK65TC9Mi5nX6DpEaClQAz/FDIyM+gr3r0
WYWE560YS4KSKz8CHPkIK3E3MruZVNTSn7CVQjHNbzJmgpJ
fgij2jFt59PgXpUgYxX5idkV0TitdR2O7Uv/VBSbRJCpWlK
hQDcX/k21Gcd89sqES6g6iP/pYXYghCo36pitjIhIwf7Bhk
Tv7rCDjQ8QR4+WFnYk9UVjL9KbWlqbn2awBejVQOqSH2j/f
QV4ry7qPVDODGlY0plIy28nUv7WaNt18E+9mS1e+AcGc/5V
WswmxMwM65qV7/1MiqaJ9fc8NdzUsA3peAfiv56dJuJJQRp
W/PD5WKWf9dDUmwRX6Qql36MMQCguwcBfhZZ1rVFQuZYARh
aiMjOS1+Xhrk8FQZnRYu+rmEpT6sXdkpAdvKelE1y/v5lDs
PdLACAEOW7aQoaxAm03WL4w/jGZAI5FB70VUG9kyEN+Xy2E
fUPF2LBTc/72pjvDrxb6O7lMXtpfgy49Lt+2clg2yqvefBt
jg/GmbdxGZMz1rWXDUuZsd9GdfKwxrmvQN8fSTc7FKcIC7h
1uYv7X8dpubuVdParSQKS4WX7d+7J/CNgUQkWytrMtcdWuH
pRgPtdSlxbIC1GQ7
=OCNT
-----END PGP MESSAGE-----
When Jesse wants to reply to Dave’s initial encrypted email. Jesse encrypts the entire message using Dave’s public key and sends it to Dave. When Dave gets the message, it is decrypted using Dave’s private key. Neither person ever touches the other’s private key — it remains private. Dave and Jesse have now exchanged emails securely using PGP.
PGP is strong stuff. Famous cryptographer Bruce Schneier said PGP is “the closest you’re likely to get to military-grade encryption” (Applied Cryptography, p. 587). The reason it is so strong lies deep in PGPs cryptographic and mathematical roots, which we won’t delve into here. Just know that it’s not going to be cracked. Experts doubt any groups, even large government agencies, are capable of decrypting PGP messages. It’s good encryption.
Another great tool I found for PGP encryption and message signing is WinPT (Windows Privacy Tray). It’s a free, open source program that manages your PGP keyring (your public and private keys) and the public keys of others. One of the cool things about WinPT is that it’s a standalone application that you can use to encrypt or sign messages in a regular text document. So, for example, if you’re at work and don’t have access to your Thunderbird application, but you do have webmail access, you can still send encrypted and signed messages from your webmail client. You can also decrypt messages sent to you. All you need to do is copy and paste the plain text into the WPTray clipboard and select the Encrypt, Decrypt, or Sign options. WPTray will do the dirty work, and you simply copy and paste the results into the message body and send the email.
You can check out my public key page to import my public key into your PGP key manager so you can send me an encrypted email. Please don’t send anything which may compromise national security, but if you want to keep Mom’s famous apple pie recipe safe, PGP is great encryption, and using Thunderbird and Enigmail together make it easy and available to the masses.
May 3rd, 2006
I have an older computer that is no longer my primary machine. However, my family still uses it often, mainly for the basic computing tasks: surfing the web, emailing, word processing, listening to music, and playing a few games. Because I’m not on the older computer often, I worry about it getting infected with viruses and other malware, having the kids mess up all of the settings, and having to spend the time to fix all of those issues.
I decided to install an alternative operating system. Even though I own a license for Windows XP Pro, I decided to use Ubuntu linux as the primary operating system for the machine. I used Ubuntu for several reasons:
- It has what I need
Ubuntu is a linux distribution, meaning it contains the operating system (linux) and a collection of other open-source software packages. When I install Windows XP, I don’t get a whole lot included with the operating system. I still have to purchase or download free alternative software for word processing, virus scanning, image editing, etc. With Ubuntu, most of the software I need was included on the installation disc.
- It’s free
I can’t afford to shell out big dollars for software, and I’m not a software pirate. The operating system and included software are totally free. The folks who create Ubuntu will even ship you the CDs for free.
- It’s secure
With Ubuntu, I don’t need to worry about viruses or spyware. Because Ubuntu is a *nix-based OS, the user accounts are not machine administrators and each user has individual settings and storage space. That means the kids can’t change system settings and wreak havoc on the computer. They don’t have access to other users’ files, meaning they can’t destroy Mom’s recipe cards she has been typing up for the last two weeks.
There are several other reasons why I chose Ubuntu. Installing new software and updating software is a breeze, so system maintenance is drastically decreased. I can also use the system as a file server, so it can act as a central repository for all of our mp3s, photos, other files, and backups. The data can be accessed from Windows, Mac, or other Linux computers on our home network. Ubuntu can also act as our print server, so all other computers in our home can print to the printer hooked up to the Ubuntu machine.
However, Ubuntu isn’t perfect. I didn’t like that it didn’t support mp3s and other video formats out of the box. It also didn’t have support for Flash or Java. However, I have discovered a few scripts (Automatix and EasyUbuntu) which can easily add all of the formats, codecs, and other niceties missing from the install discs. One other thing missing is power management. Since this computer can go long periods of time without being used, I would like to have it go to a standby mode to shut off the hard drives and monitors after a period of inactivity; but it would need to support wake-on-LAN. I have read power management is currently being developed for the next version of Ubuntu, so I am looking forward to easily updating my software for this feature.
Overall, Ubuntu has been great for my needs and is getting better. I have had some issues getting the file and print sharing just right (fodder for future articles), but Ubuntu has been a great alternative operating system so far because it has what I need, it’s free, and it’s secure.
March 30th, 2006
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