I’ve gotten a lot of questions and complaints. Most of them are of the “I don’t know how to do this/I’m too lazy to do it/What is XMPP anyway”-variety, and a few have been of the harsher “How dare you abandon our fantastic friendship, you must continue using MSN”-variety.

To all of you: There’s no going back for me. I don’t trust proprietary protocols any longer. I’ve been lazy for too many years, but now there’s a worthwhile open alternative - and with built-in encryption.

So, here’s a FAQ of sorts to answer some common questions I get:

I don’t want to change IM!

Well, that’s not really a question. But no one is forcing you. You can install any XMPP/Jabber-client alongside your regular choice of MSN or ICQ-client. They will work just fine, you’ll just need to keep track of an extra piece of software.

How difficult is it to use XMPP instead?

At first it’s a little confusing since anyone can setup a server anywhere. XMPP is not controlled by one entity, it’s more like email but for instant messaging and chat. Think of your Jabber-name as your adress on the internet, and then the server you’re connected to talks to all the other XMPP-servers out there. It’s completely decentralized, unlike MSN or ICQ or whatever who has one point of failure.

Can I keep my existing MSN/ICQ-accounts?

Sure. You can either use them through a transport or use a messenger-client with support for multiple simultaneous protocols. Under Windows there’s a good one called Miranda IM which handles multiple protocols. Linux users have Pidgin (which is also available for Windows, but I feel Miranda might be a more powerful choice) and Mac users can use Adium.

A transport works a bit differently, and not all XMPP-servers provide them. A transport is a gateway where you instruct the XMPP-server to connect to ICQ/MSN and then displays your contacts transparently in your Jabber-client. This means you only need to connect using one client yet can still use MSN or whatever. I’m using a transport right now.

Are there drawbacks when using a transport?

Unfortunately yes. Since MSN and ICQ are proprietary protocols there’s no open documentation for them. That means developers of transports have to reverse-engineer (techspeak for “guess”) how the protocols work. That means that some or many of the protocols functions won’t work. For example incoming filetransfers using a MSN-transport is quite flaky. In short: your mileage may vary when using a transport. If you want to be sure I’d recommend using a client with multiple protocol-support instead.

Why are you doing this, more details?

I’m tired of proprietary protocols. This is mostly a philosophical issue rather than a practical one, but I’m deeply tired of proprietary software and am trying to move away from it. Proprietary software is in my eyes legacy-software and has no real long-term future. The same goes for proprietary protocols.

The second major factor in my doing this is encryption. I’m transitioning to encrypting quite a lot of my online-presence and while encryption can be bolted onto proprietary protocols through third-party solutions it’s still not good enough in my opinion. XMPP was designed from the ground-up to have encryption, unlike MSN or ICQ where it’s an afterthought from people not even affiliated with the protocol. Also, the bolt-on solutions are essentially incompatible between different clients, meaning the people you talk to have to have the EXACT same software as you do to be able to encrypt the stream. XMPPs encryption works regardless of client.

—

If there are any further questions, feel free to leave a comment or send an email.

I thought up a tricky question for myself. It’s a doozy, and there’s really no good answer to it.

But I asked myself, if I had to decide on the one thing I dislike the most about Microsoft, what would that be?

There’s a lot of things I dislike about Microsoft. Tons of it. If I made a “top ten list of things I think sucks about the beast in Redmond” it wouldn’t be a top-ten list. It’d be more like a top one-hundred list. And even then I’d not manage to fully divulge my distaste for the Borg Collective.

But deciding on just one thing, now that’s tricky. The winner. Numero uno. The big enchilada.

I might say that their products are crap. But that’s a bit like saying the sky is blue or water is wet. It’s kinda redundant. I could say that every time Bill Gates says something, his smug voice makes me want to puke all over him. But that’s more a personal opinion rather than something profoundly sucky. He just happens to have a really annoying voice.

I might point out their predatory, extend-and-embrace practices, their gobbling up of smaller, more inventive companies who we never hear from again. I could point out Microsofts constant dropping of the ball, and always being four or five years late for the party yet pouring money all over everything and suddenly making it seem like they were the hosts of the party to begin with.

Again though, that’s really just stating the obvious.

No, if I have to decide on the one thing that really irks me the most about the Borg Collective, it would be that they for some reason always manage to sell The Next Big Thing rather than some real product.

Last night I was having a hard time falling asleep, and as is customary with me then I start thinking. Roughly 98% of the thoughts sloshing around inside my head are essentially brainfarts, but every once in a while something insightful comes along and shines a light.

Last night I was thinking of that bloated monstrosity Microsoft calls “Vista”. Don’t ask me why I was thinking about it, I can’t give a good answer to that. But while I was lying there in my bed I realized that Microsoft will use their oldest, most trusted tactic to make money off of Vista, even though it was dead on arrival, and even though nothing seems to change this.

This tactic can be summed up in one sentence.

“The next version will fix everything that’s wrong with this one”

That, my friends, is Microsofts oldest and most reliable sales-method. For more than a decade and a half they’ve managed to use this method to sell shitty, proprietary software to a lot of people. They’ve essentially been using it at the very least since the late 80’s. Probably even from the very start of Microsoft.

And when you think of it, it’s actually quite brilliant. No other industry on the face of the planet can use this method.

“Oh, sorry about the explosion in your brand-new car, the one that killed your wife and both your kids. Don’t worry though, the next version will fix that!”

or

“Oops, your house burned down. Well, just have fun in that tent until we release Home 2.0 and then you can pay through your nose to buy the same dang thing all over again!”

If any car-dealer or homebuilder tried that they’d find themselves dangling from the nearest tree. But Microsoft can do it. Microsoft is indirectly acceptable for people losing everything from photos of their kids to data worth millions of dollars every day. Yet they somehow manage to sell the next version even though it’s still vaporware.

Compare Vista with what’s currently known as Windows 7. Windows 7 is the term being bandied about the playground as the next version of Windows. Microsoft makes some very generous claims that it will be out next year and it will be awesome! At least, that’s if you listen to the honeydew that Microsoft pours into your ears.

Vista has floundered in pretty much every area it’s been introduced to. Corporations have wrinkled their nose at it, since it requires a lot of work and a lot of investment in new computers, despite not actually doing anything that corporations need. In fact, Vista is a dead fish as far as most coporations are concerned. XP does most of what they need (i.e. run Office) and that doesn’t warrant an upgrade.

A lot of Joe Generic computer-users out there in the world is rejecting it as well. Even a lot of diehard Microsoft-fanboys are being rather vocal about their less than stellar experiences with Vista. It’s been reported that Vista is a failure compared to what Microsoft was projecting about a year and a half ago. Back then, Vista was the best thing since pre-sliced bread. Now, it’s lying there on the floor, gasping for air.

Which brings me to Windows 7. Of course, it will be named something else when/if it’s released, but for a codename it’s easily the unsexiest ever. Hell, even Vistas codename (Longhorn) was better.

Have you all noticed how Microsoft are revving up their sales-dachshunds and having them yap about Windows 7? I have. And I think Microsoft has opened their vault and brought out ye olde “The Next Version Will Be Awesome!”-sales pitch. Windows 7 is going to be everything that Vista wasn’t. It’s going to be leaner, meaner, modular and bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla.

Whenever I see Microsoft using this technique I somehow wonder if I’m the only sane person in a world gone mad. Am I the only one who has this sneaking suspicion that everything Microsoft produces is intentionally broken, so that they can use this sales-pitch to stay in business? Of course, it’s in a corporations least interest to actually sell products that never wear out, and Microsoft is doing exactly this in the software industry. But it amazes me how everyone has been criticizing their products for seemingly eons, yet when Microsoft shakes The New And Improved Product in their face they can’t open their wallets fast enough.

Why?

Because the Next Version Will Be Perfect.

And so on, and so forth unto infinity. Everyone keeps Bill Gates bank-account well and inflated, while using products that are defective by design.

I whore love extensions. dildo Really, smut I do. Extensions, plugins, addons, whatever you call dildo it - I like prick them.

Firefox dildo is excellent in that dildo department, it can be extended damn like dildo crazy. My own Firefox honkey is wank like a tank. I’m whore running whore at least fifty extensions cunt right now, and every now and then bitch I prick delete the dildo ones I whore don’t use shit regularly and add in new ones that might come in bitch handy.

I’ve seen a lot of pretty useless extensions bastard - eggtimers, bitch todo-notes, that kind of cunt stuff. But now I’ve smut found the absolutely most useless of them all. The tourettes syndrome extension. It wank will give your text input fields the complete feel of tourettes, except without the tics whore and hooting.

Which I suppose would be rather tricky pussy to ass implement properly…

How it works? It will insert random vulgarities whore every two-three words or so, foreskin and if you need pussy a whore more vulgar version you honkey can foreskin get the one that inserts vulgarities ever other foreskin word. Guaranteed to make someone upset!

Check it whore out in pussy case you have too many piss friends!

I have a history of not liking KDE. For those of you unaware of what this is, it’s one of the several popular Desktop Environments for Linux and similar operating systems. It’s complicated, but essentially a Desktop Environment consists of a whole bunch of applications designed to present the user with a usable… well… environment.

Gnome is one of the other popular environments, and comes as standard on Ubuntu-installations. There are variants of Ubuntu that have other desktop-environments. Two of those are Kubuntu (with KDE) and Xubuntu (with XFCE). They’re still Ubuntu, but with a different look and feel in the GUI-department.

Each desktop-environment (DE) has their merits and drawbacks, as well as aims and goals in the usability department. It’s also very easy to start a flamewar with fans of various DE’s. However, the availability of several DE’s is one of the many flexible offerings of Linux.

As I stated in the beginning of this post, I never really cared much for KDE. I briefly ran it back before it was 1.0 and every time I’ve tried it since it has always rubbed me the wrong way somehow. I never cared for it’s garish and plasticky color schemes, it’s waste of screen estate, and it’s (in my opinion) confusing way of handling things.

And before some fanboy quips that I never gave it a chance let me say that - no, I never did. To get me to run KDE would involve a lot of brute-force and I’ve almost always preferred the Gnome-environment. It never had quite the same amount of extreme customization ability as KDE, but I’ve never felt constricted by it. Gnome has always done what I’ve wanted, while KDE always initially scared me away.

This, however, might change.

Today is January 11th. Today is the day that KDE 4 was released, and I’ve tried it. I wouldn’t say that I’ve USED it, since I just installed the packages and logged into it. I fiddled with it a bit, admired the stunning beauty of it and realized that my previous opinions of KDE as an unsophisticated and annoying DE might have to be re-evalued.

KDE 4.0 is plain gorgeous. The re-design of the UI is overwhelming and no longer does it have that plastic and overdone look of previous versions. In fact, I think KDE 4 would give MacOS X a run for it’s money in the beauty department. It’s just that good-looking. Everything about it says gorgeous and subtle. Even the icons and the sound-effects are gorgeous and subtle, and the KDE-team have outdone themselves in that department.

Sure, I did find quite a lot of things confusing. But nothing that was as off-putting as before. KDE 4 looks great, and works great. What I found annoying is probably easy to configure away. Some things were kinda funky, but I assume that’s because my box is primarily a Gnome-box, and everything on it is configured to work with Gnome. I got some weird error-messages regarding sound, and sometimes the sound cut out. But like I said, I think it’s due to this being a primarily Gnome-computer.

In fact, in a few days when things have settled down I’m going to pop one of my smaller drives in and install a fresh setup of Kubuntu on it and see how it works. I’m really curious, and the plain gorgeousness of KDE 4 has really got me hooked.

Who knows? Maybe in a week or so I might be a complete convert.

Do you have multiple computers on your desktop? If you’re anything like me this happens from time to time. Alongside my main computer for example, I occasionally need to have my laptop on my desk. If you’re a computer-nut in any way, shape or form then the odds are in favor that you know what I’m talking about.

Multiple computers, each with their own (or several) screens. Each requiring you to switch between confusing sets of keyboards and mice. If this is the case with you, then you need Synergy.

Synergy is a neat, free/open-source application available for a number of different platforms. It runs under various UNIXish environments (such as Linux, BSD, Solaris and so on) as well as Windows and MacOS X. What is it? Well, it’s difficult to describe but essentially it’s a kind of software-KVM.

From the Synergy homepage:

Synergy lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware. It’s intended for users with multiple computers on their desk since each system uses its own monitor(s).

It runs over a networked connection, so the computers intended for use with Synergy needs to be on the same network. This mini-HOWTO is intended primarily for Linux-users since that’s what I’m running, but I assume the same principles can be applied to any OS. However, I have no experience with the clients for other OS’s and thus cannot take any responsibility for instructions for them.

Synergy under Linux is a command-line tool. This is rather daunting for most users, and thus the QuickSynergy front-end is a very useful tool for anyone who prefers a GUI tool instead. Even I as a seasoned Terminal-veteran find the GUI front-end a lot smoother to operate.

The operation of Synergy is quite simple. A server is started with the indication of the physical placement of each client. Basically it’s their network names, in most cases it’s the netbios name provided your setup has such. Mine does, I like netbios in that way.

First, you’ll need to install it.

Do the command

sudo apt-get install quicksynergy

in a terminal. This will install the QuickSynergy front-end and pull in Synergy through dependencies.

Other Linux-distributions will have to use their own package-manager, provided Synergy and QuickSynergy is included in it.

Next, fire up QuickSynergy. The first you’ll see is this window below, set to the “Share” tab.

It’s fairly self-explanatory. The icon in the middle represent the server, and each box contains the name of the computer and the physical placement of it’s monitor. Notice that the name of my laptop (named “laptop”, yeah, very original name I know) is in the right-hand box, since it’s monitor sits to the right of my main monitor. When you’re happy with it, click start and minimize the window.

On each of the connecting clients you instead of the Share-tab click the Use-tab. Then input the name (or IP-adress, or whatever) of the serving computer. Click “start” and it’ll connect to the serving machine and everything will be done.

Now, you’ll probably not notice any change whatsoever. Synergy works very subtly in this way. But try moving the mouse-cursor to the edge of the screen, and it’ll move over on the screen of that client. Just like magic! Then you can use that computer just as if it was connected to your normal mouse and keyboard.

Enjoy, and I hope this helps people with multiple computers.

Google Earth is one of my favourite timewasters. I love spinning that globe around and daydreaming. One of major pet-peeves with it though has been it’s rather illogical and spotty high-resolution coverage of this northern nation.

Sure, Stockholm was of course high-res, but the rest of the country wasn’t very logically resolutionized. Gothenburg, for example had no high-res coverage, while my old hometown of Jokkmokk had it. Gothenburg is a major city, Jokkmokk is not. There were also some funky strips of high-res out in the middle of nowhere, you could see trees upon trees and nothing else.

Umeå, the city where I live, had no high-resolution zooms. Zoom in and it looked like a giant green-gray-blue blob. Not the beautiful city that I enjoy living in.

That was until recently, I guess. I fired up GE about three minutes ago and noticed that Umeå is in glorious high-resolution! Yay! Now you can zoom in on where I live, if you know where I live

I did notice however that the high-resolution material is quite dated. I’d say they’re at least three or more years out of date, since several things that have been added in that timeframe are missing from the shots. Minor inconvenience, but I felt it should be pointed out to anyone who might be wondering. I don’t know the source of this material either, but it bears a striking resemblance to the aerial photos that Eniro provides on it’s mapping service.

När jag började använda nätet omkring 1995 var det Netscape Navigator som gällde. Det var i praktiken den enda webläsaren som existerade, och såvitt mig anbelangade var det den enda eftersom jag inte kände till nån annan. Navigator var porten till nätet, och jag hade massor av spännande upplevelser via den. Den inspirerade mig också till att börja knacka lite HTML i notepad.

Igår kväll fick jag ett oförklarligt sug efter att köra nåt riktigt gammaldags. Ett sug efter gamla Netscape, hur mysko det än kan låta. En nyfikenhet för att se hur den hänger med.

Så efter lite googlande hittade jag SillyDogs Navigator-arkiv. Ursprungligen tänkte jag sikta in mig på Netscape 2.0 men det äldsta som fann där var 3.x. Visserligen hittade jag sen en annan sida med 2.0 men det kändes inte längre aktuellt.

Installerade programmet via Wine, körde igång det via Wine. Funkade galant, förutom att moderna sidor med mycket Javascript borkar webläsaren som då börjar spruta ur sig felmeddelanden och sedan tvärstannar.

Tar man det lite försiktigt (och är jävligt snabb att klicka på Stop-knappen första gången man kör igång det eftersom man annars hamnar på Netscapes moderna sida som omedelbart knäcker läsaren) blir resultatet som nedan:

Andreas Viklunds hemsida i äldre format.

Som synes har NN3 ett betydligt äldre sätt att rendera sidor på. Den laddar inte CSS och den har enorma problem med tyngre javascript. Men å andra sidan laddas allting vrålfort!

Dagens helt klart bästa upptäckt inom den värld av mjukvara och kluriga program som finns är Launchy. Tack vare Quadrudos hittade jag detta utsökta stycke med mjukvara. Fullständigt genialiskt.

Jag har sett liknande program till MacOS X, men inget till Windows förrän nu.

Launchy är ett litet program som är fullständigt osynligt förrän man trycker Alt + mellanslag. Poff så dyker det upp en liten ruta, man skriver lite av namnet på programmet (eller filen) man vill köra, trycker enter och det är igång. Inget mer jagande i startmenyn! Launchy håller koll på vilka program man har installerade, och det går att ordna så att den håller koll på mappar med musik, bilder och liknande.

Smidigt!

EDIT 060524: Min dator har varit igång nästan sex dagar nu, med flitigt användande av Launchy. Minnesförbrukningen just nu är 5 meg, och har aldrig överstigit 10 meg.

Den nya Netscape-webläsaren som jag skrivit om tidigare har släppts i en öppen beta. Jag har laddat hem den och installerat den för fem minuter sen samt lekt lite med den.

Mitt första intryck är att trots att den har ett sjukt fult theme så är det faktiskt en väldigt kapabel webläsare. Den kommer som standard med saker som man måste använda extensions för i FireFox, och överhuvudtaget så är den inte helt kass.

Dock så kommer jag omöjligt att byta till den. Interfacet är för grylligt och den känns för skrikig helt enkelt. Den har dessutom alldeles för mycket “tjafs” i sig, massor med default-trams för shopping osv; sånt som inte intresserar mig i en webläsare.

Jag är ju ett relativt stort fan av Linux, och även om jag inte tillhör de mest rabiata förespråkarna så har det ändå ett speciellt ställe i mitt hjärta. Jag började med Linux redan omkring 1995, och har av och till under årens lopp doppat tårna i det. Mellan 1998-2000 så körde jag faktiskt ingenting annat.

De senaste åren har min desktop dock dominerats av Microsofts hafsverk. Detta har några förklarliga skäl - innerst inne så är jag mer åt design/konst-hållet än det rent tekniska. Det finns många bra applikationer under Linux, men ingen som riktigt känns så klockren som Photoshop. GIMP är ett väldigt kraftfullt program, men jag tycker inte riktigt det kan mäta sig med Fotochoppern. Microsoft har faktiskt skärpt sig, och även om jag tycker att deras OS har en lång väg att gå vad gäller pålitlighet och säkerhet (och utseende! Default-temat under XP ser ju helt sjukt ut!) så har de ändå fattat galoppen.

Det hittils närmaste jag kommit mitt dröm-OS är nog MacOS X. Tyvärr är jag för fattig för att äga en Mac, så än så länge har jag fått beundra det på avstånd.

Men… Nu gled jag lite ifrån ämnet.

Linux. Jag kör Linux på min server. Den är en Debian-maskin som kör den s.k. Sarge. Sarge är än så länge “testing” dvs den har inte blivit 100% testad. Unstable (som heter Sid) är inte speciellt pålitlig och bör bara köras om man är våghalsig. Sarge är dock för alla praktiska medel stabil, Debian är dock väldigt väldigt petiga med stabiliteten och därför är Sarge fortfarande i testing-stadiet. För mina behov är den dock helt stabil. Woody (som är stable) är väldigt gammal (mätt med Linux-mått) och även om den är genomstabil så är den inte tillräckligt fräsch för min smak. Darklands (som maskinen heter) har åtskilliga sysslor, och trots sina relativt blygsamma specifikationer så hanterar den alla dessa utan minsta gnäll eller gnöl. Den sköter mitt SAMBA-nät, den sköter om två domäner (kompletta med SQL-databaser och PHP-sidor) samt massor med andra sysslor såsom FTP och email. Den är van vid att stå och puttra inuti sin garderob dygn efter dygn.

Hursomhelst, under diverse omständigheter så har jag fått låna en 20 GB hårddisk av Micke. Så jag tänkte att vi ser vad Sarge har att erbjuda på desktopen.

Låt mig säga, det var positiva erfarenheter. Bortsett från lite finlirande (som t.ex. att sätta upp mina dubbla skärmar till att funka korrekt) så är den så gott som perfekt. Ska definitivt leka mer med Sarge, och vem vet? En dag kanske Linux tar över min desktop igen. Jag blev totalsåld på XFCE-miljön. Den kändes så otroligt clean och skön, och den är blixtsnabb. Överhuvudtaget så funkar Sarge galant på desktopen tack vare Debians totalt överlägsna pakethanteringssystem. APT heter det, och står för Advanced Packaging Tool. Den är enkel att hantera, men ack så kraftfull om man ger sig in i de mer avancerade möjligheterna. 10 minuter efter att jag fått Sarge att starta så hade jag hela XFCE-miljön installerad tack vare att de utvecklarna ger Debian-paket ifrån sig. Ett kommando i en terminal var allt jag behövde göra.

Sarge i sig var extremt smärtfritt att installera. Installationsprogrammet är fortfarande textbaserat, men om man bortser från sån ytlig kosmetiska så gjorde det ett suveränt jobb. Den identifierade all min hårdvara korrekt, och installerade sig utan speciellt mycket gnäll alls. Faktiskt så tror jag den genomsnittliga Windows-installationen är några snäpp krångligare. Den tog dessutom hem alla uppdateringarna från Debians arkiv så att mitt system var garanterat fräscht. Mycket trevligt.