Bluetrait

When I get around to it I want to look at XML/XSL

Here is an example (check out the source).

Well we headed off to CeBIT today. We got bored at uni so we left early and headed down to the exhibition centre.

It was a better turn out than I expected, thinking back now I may have been a few years ago (or to something similar), not sure.

Anyway the two big themes seemed to be networking equipment (heaps of rack mount gear and cases) and VoIP.

We headed over to the Freshtel stand where they had a phone that could make outbound calls. So we rang a mobile to test out latency. Unfortunately it wasn’t great. About 1 second.

We found out that everything is routed through Melbourne, so that would explain some of the issues. Although the call was usable and voice quality was decent.

Currently with VoIP you can only make outgoing calls. You still need your POTS line for incoming calls. This is said to change in the next 2 months.

One of the large concerns over VoIP was phone numbers. It isn’t possible to bring over your current phone number to VoIP. You are assigned a new number based on your location. This isn’t good for businesses (fine for upstart businesses and maybe home use), they don’t want to change their numbers. It is possible to route the old numbers, but it is messy.

So that left a bit of doubt in VoIP. Although it is still a pretty cool technology. It will get there one day.

Also we had a good chat to the iBurst guys. They currently have a good student deal at UTS. Pretty much iBurst kicks unwired in every aspect (excluding marketing). There were about 50 booths that made use of iBurst for their internet connectivity.

Apart from that there wasn’t anything fantastic at CeBIT. It was a good way to burn a few hours, probably be back next year though.

I decided to give Linux a shot again. I’ve never been a huge fan. Personally I feel much happier with BSD, but UNI runs Fedora Core 3 on most of the FIT computers so I felt I should give it a try again.

This time I didn’t feel like screwing around with installing Linux on my Athlon so I downloaded the live boot disc of Ubuntu version 5.04 for PPC (PowerPC) and booted it on my 12” 1.2GHz iBook.

To boot off a cdrom on the mac you need to hold down “c” as the system boots.

So anyway I’ve been using Ubuntu on my iBook for about 30 minutes and I thought I’d get down my first thoughts (I’ll probably write something more in detail later).

The system booted fairly quickly (remembering this is off a CD) and the first thing I noticed when Gnome (the default window manager for Ubuntu) appeared was that the mouse moved really quickly! Now when I say really quickly, I mean normal speed. Mac users take things slowly, so it was fast for ME!

Anyway the first test was network connectivity through the wireless card. Now I wasn’t really expecting it to work, considering it is a mac and all. Well it didn’t; no wireless. Aww. There is a good post about why it doesn't work here.

So I plugged in a network cable and turned on my network card and picked up an address via DHCP. Fired up firefox, working internet. Easy.

I then loaded “Music Player” and the first thing I noticed was that it seemed to support the iPod. So I plugged in my apple formatted iPod via firewire. Well it worked. The drive mounted and I could read all my music and files. Cool.

Only problem was that there is no MP3 support built in (or AAC for that mater). Oh well, not that hard to install.

apt-get couldn’t find some PPC binaries towards the end of the install but that didn’t really seem to break anything. MP3s now work, although the sound is really soft (and it is turned up to maximum).

I then decided to put the thing to sleep. The iBook quite happily went to sleep. So I went off to dinner. When I came back the laptop was still sleeping (good thing) so I opened it, bad idea. I got a blast of sound through the speakers, it didn’t stop. I quickly reset it (and no I didn't need to take the exploding iBattery out). Pity. There is a bit of information about it here

So I restarted back into Ubuntu to have a last play.

It is a bit hard to work with one button in Ubuntu; probably could bind the keys to something else, haven’t really looked.

Also the laptop seems to be working pretty hard. The fan does come on, which doesn’t happen much at all in OS X.

A part from those issues, it is fairly usable. The system runs really fast. I’m impressed. Video seems to work okay (the iBook has an ATi Radeon 9200, ATi aren’t known for their great linux support). I haven’t tried any 3D a part from the screen saver.

So final thoughts?

Would I use it?

No, not just yet. Lack of wireless and sleep support really make it hard to use for what I do. But saying that, I am impressed with the system. I wasn’t expecting much out of a mac version of linux, but it runs fine.

Hopefully in the future we’ll see better support for the mac hardware.

If I had an older mac that couldn’t run OS X then I’d probably seriously look at Ubuntu.

I think I could get to like Ubuntu, no wait I already like it. I’ll defiantly look at putting it on my PC which should have better support for everything.

Now there are probably ways around the problems I had, but I didn’t look all that hard into it. I did notice that the update system showed a new kernel version (not much use on a live CD) which might fix some stuff. But at the moment I’ll have to leave it.

It has come to my attention that a certain company has been successfully importing illegal terrorist weapons into Australia. Some of these weapons have unfortunately fallen into the hands of a seriously evil terrorist. These weapons come in all shapes and sizes. The latest of equipment can be found in certain model “Laptops”. These laptops contain the deadly exploding iBattery.   

In an attempt to cover up their actions this company has announced a fake recall of these iBatteries.

Unfortunately it is very hard to detect the dangerous iBattery as the detonation is completely automatic and spontaneous. Unlike their older model iBattery which can be found in a product called the iPod.

The iPod device requires a washing machine and screw driver to successfully detonate.

It is also thought that this company has created another weapon, under the code name “Airport Extreme”. This device can be found secretly hidden under the keyboard of late model iBooks. It is thought that this device maybe a biological weapon that is used to cause cancer. It is also possible that it could be used to cause extreme conditions in airports!

I've been told this is me

We're going to CeBIT on Tuesday after our lecture. What fun.

The 10.4.1 upgrade is out.

About an hour ago I was attacked by two kids who were probably about 12 years old. A group of us from uni were walking back from broadway after having dinner. We were on our way to a lecture when 3 kids came up to us. A tall 16-18 year old and the two younger kids. As we were walking one of the kids opened my backpack without me noticing and tried to steal what ever he could find.

I noticed and pulled his hand out of my bag. He then punched me in the face! I stepped back a bit stunned, I wasn’t expecting a 12 year old to attack me! The next smaller kid then ran up to me and punched me in the face also. This time it really hurt. Blood went all over my face and hands.

My group of uni friends ran up to try and protect me. Another adult who had seen what had happened ran over too.

At this stage the 3 kids ran off. We called the police and I gave a description of the kids. I still cannot believe the age of the two smaller kids. They both attacked me and tried to steal my stuff. They were like 12!

Lucky no one was seriously hurt and nothing was taken.

Obviously I didn’t go to my lecture.

Still can not get over this

One of the most used reasons for users to switch to Firefox from Internet Explorer is that it is more secure. Linux zealots bag out Windows users because their operating system is so insecure.

We hear a lot about buffer overflows and crazy stuff like that.

Personally I think security problems of this source are overrated.

If needed I would feel perfectly safe to do my internet banking using IE (of course under the assumption that the computer is free from spyware).

The reason I don’t use IE is that I really dislike the “feel” of the browser and the serious lack of standards support.

But anyway. Most (not all) computer systems are compromised because of human error and not because of a serious flaw in the operating system or program. Sure there are times when there have been serious issues, but for the general user their main problem is themselves.

Off topic slightly. If you’re on a wireless network make SURE you’re using secure POP3, IMAP, web forms etc etc. It is just too easy to capture these packets.

My brother has been playing this lately. It's really crazy. Think of Warcraft III in a web browser. It runs pretty fast too!

Sorry for the lack of postage. I've been pretty busy of late.

There has also been a far bit (relative) of downtime lately. The video card in my server cooked and locked the system, still need to replace that. Also the router had issues yesterday when I wasn't around, so sorry about that.

In other news I'm getting a 24u rack at some stage. Cool.

Yep hopefully I'll have time to post something more interesting, I've got a few assignments due this week and then exams in June (two on a Saturday!).

[added]

I got a friend's old ibook today (G3 500MHz, 320MB Ram etc) to try and upgrade the operating system. It was running Mac OS 9.2.2, pretty old. So anyway I pulled out my newly purchased Tiger DVD and put it into the laptop. Oh dear, it only had a CD rom drive.

So anywhere there is a way copy the installer DVD onto your ipod and boot straight off it.

Here is what you need to do:

1. Connect your iPod (make sure it is formatted to the Mac OS, NOT FAT32) to a Mac with a DVD drive and ensure that you have enabled mounting of your iPod as a disk. You should also insert the Tiger DVD.
2. Launch Apple's Disk Utility applet, found in /Applications/Utilities/
3. Choose any disk listed on the left hand side and select the "Restore" tab.
4. Here you will see a "Source:" field and a "Destination:" field. On the left you should be able to find your iPod drive and your Tiger DVD. You want to drag the Tiger DVD to the "Source:" field and the iPod drive to the "Destination:" field.
5. Next click Restore. You need not check "Erase Destination".

Once that is done, simply plug the ipod into the ibook via firewire. Boot the system and it should detect the ipod and start installing tiger (you might need to press "C" while starting the system, I don't remember).

So anyway now I carry around a copy of tiger on my ipod just incase I need to install it on a system. Ah apple make it so easy :)