my sometimes-skeptical social commentary

Archive for the ‘computer stuff’ Category

Need a secure OS?

As featured on DesktopLinux.com, Tin Hat is an open-source operating system designed to run in RAM (which means no physical hard drive holds the OS) and is completely encrypted. The project is driven by the nominally paranoid Dr. Anthony Basile, who is a friend of mine.

I use Google’s applications with my domain name WoodsWebDesign.com quite a bit, and I use Gmail separately, so I have noticed that there are some differences in what features are available through those separate services. What I want from Google is for every feature/service that’s available in the low-end version of their free services (i.e., everything that’s offered in Gmail) to be available to users of their mid-range free services (i.e., Applications).

When Gmail came out with themes this week, I was glad to see they had done something to update the Gmail service. And other innovations, such as video chat built-in to the Inbox, are cool, too. But why can’t all of those services be made available to those of us who have made the leap and are using Google Applications?

Last week, the Code Weavers company made good on its promise to give away licenses to use its Cross-Over program, which lets users run software applications designed for one operating system on some other operating system.

Code Weavers promised that if gas prices came down below $3/gallon during President Bush’s term, they’d give away licenses that normally cost $40 each.

I got a license so that I can run Windows programs on my Mac, and today I finally got around to installing it.

Right of the bat, it offers to install a bunch of programs that are in its list of “supported” programs, and those are most of the popular programs people use, such as all the Microsoft Office programs, and a bunch of other stuff. (Note: Microsoft Office for Mac is fully compatible with all the files created or opened by Microsoft Office on a Windows computer, so it is probably redundant to have both.)

I didn’t install any of the supported applications, because I generally have what I need on my Mac already, such as Office for Mac, for example. I used Cross-Over to install a Windows-only program that I bought a while ago, a photo/clip-art program that came with thousands of royalty-free stock photos.

So far, so good, and I’m glad I upgraded my Mac’s RAM to 2 GB, because Cross-Over uses the WINE emulation code-base to act like Windows, but it is running on top of the Mac OS, so it is a little like running to OS’s at the same time. I don’t think my Mac would be very happy doing that much work on the 1GB of RAM I had when I bought it.

The first thing I did after browsing through the photos on the CD was start exporting them as GIF’s into a folder on my Mac’s hard drive, so that I won’t have to run this program every time I want to select a stock photo for the projects I’m doing.

Here’s one of the photos from this collection:

David Monroe moved to Buffalo and found he missed rockwiki – the people’s guide to Rochester, NY – and decided the way to stop missing it was to create a similar resource for his new home town. He invited me and a few other people to help get it started, and you know how I feel about building new web sites to connect people!

In fact, I’ve been mulling over the idea of a wiki about Buffalo for a while now, but recently, when folks from out of town were going to visit me, they asked me for a list of things to do while in Buffalo, and my Google search didn’t find any one web site that was dedicated to an encyclopedic description of our fair city. So I was ready to help, and that day I set up the framework of a wiki site so that we can start filling in the blanks.

On his blog, David wrote:

To that end, I’ve started a Google Group http://groups.google.com/group/buffalo-wiki?hl=en that is made up of Buffalonians, and computer savvy folks from outside of Buffalo to create a wiki just like the one I know and love. So far, we have some excitement and interest. If you want to lend a hand, join the group and give your opinion.

What do you say, are you the wiki type? Want to start writing wiki entries about the Buffalo topics you love?

Well, what is a wiki type, anyway? To write entries for a wiki, you just need to know about your topic, you don’t have to be a computer nerd. You just log in, do your best writing, and then wait for someone else to come along and try to prove that they know even more about the topic than you do.

Just be sure to proofread your work carefully, because otherwise, you’ll be one of the writers we post about on ShamefulTypos.com.

I’ve been trying to plan a lunch meeting at a restaurant near work, and I want to show the other two guys at the meeting how to log in and do stuff with the web site I made for our community group, so the restaurant needs wi-fi. I haven’t found (yet) a comprehensive list of wi-fi spots for Buffalo, NY.

I may start compiling my own, but the problem is that it takes a lot of work to keep a site like that updated. I think the way to do it is to set something up with Google’s mapping API so that people can add hotspots via a map interface. If only I had paid better attention in the Java class I took, because that’s the language Google uses.

I’m sure I’ll find that someone else is already doing this… it’s the internet, is there anything new out there? Is there any topic not already covered?