[Tue Sep 23 16:43:33 CEST 2008]

We received the kids' textbooks a couple of weeks ago and, while perusing the contents of one of them (the English book), my wife noticed that it included a CD with some additional materials, audio, etc. So, she inserted it into the CD-ROM drive of her laptop and realized, to her surprise, that it contained an installer for Windows and... another one for Linux! So, why do I mention this? Because it goes to prove that the typical complaint one hears so often about Linux not being so easy to use because, among other things, it is not easy to find the drivers for this or that particular device or because this or that particular application doesn't run on it is, for the most part, unfair. It's not a problem with the operating system at all, but rather with the market and the manufacturers. Since most public schools over here run Linux (Guadalinex, a distribution based on Debian and Ubuntu), there is an obvious incentive for manufacturers and book publishers to make sure that their products do work fine with the OS, at least if they have any interest in that particular market. {link to this story}

[Mon Sep 22 09:13:51 CEST 2008]

Remember Scott McNealy's "the network is the computer"? Well, it has become such commonplace by now that even computer illiterate have assumed it. A couple of days ago, an uncle of mine called me to see if I could drop by his house and help him with a computer problem. According to his description, "the Internet is not functioning". I told myself: "it must be a problem with the router or perhaps the TCP/IP stack on his Windows machine". Wrong! When I finally made it to his house, it turned out that he was referring to a problem with the computer itself. His daugther had run out of patience while performing a software update and hit the power button to turn the system off. Next time she tried to boot it up, Windows showed a black screen giving her a choice between starting Windows or repairing it. Needless to say, the OS wouldn't boot. So, we chose to repair and... after 6 hours or so chugging along with an interface that showed absolutely no information whatsoever about its progress —not to talk about displaying the gory details of what it's doing, which certain companies don't want to scare customers with—, it was still stuck there. All you could see was a bar moving right and left, like the cool car in Knight Rider. Other than that, no information was shared with the clueless user, of course —gotta love this "the customer doesn't truly want to know" philosophy that certain operating systems have!

Next, we moved onto the OS media but, to my surprise, my cousin had no such CD. Apparently, Acer had not given them any. They did have, though, a recovery DVD. I take a quick look at it and notice the label on the front: Blank Recovery DVD. Uh-oh. Inserting it in the DVD-ROM tray didn't make a difference. The system wouldn't boot from it. I inserted it onto a different computer I had handy and... sure enough, it was blank. In other words, the manufacturer had not provided the customer with an OS install CD, simply a recovery DVD that the customer himself has to somehow burn, I assume that using a little app that the computer comes pre-installed with. One way or another, they are completely stuck now. They have no way to reinstall or repair the OS, other than trusting that it will repair itself if they let the automatic repair tool run long enough —how long is long enough? 10 hours? 15 hours?

Yes, in case you were wondering, this is indeed Windows Vista we are talking about. I suppose that, in order to avoid piracy, Microsoft is not allowing manufacturers to give the actual OS media to their customers. It's just a guess, based on the fact that I've already seen three people who purchased computers with Vista pre-installed and neither of them had the installation media. All they had was a rescue or recovery CD from the computer manufacturer. That's all. It was, altogether, a horrible experience. I'm glad that my home became an Apple and Linux heaven sometime ago. {link to this story}

[Wed Sep 17 13:47:49 CEST 2008]

Ever had the need to export the list of contacts from Evolution just to find out that it only allows you to save it in vCard format? While the GUI doesn't appear to show any other option, the fact is that the command-line does. Try this:

evolution-addresbook-export --format=csv --output=/tmp/list.csv

The end result is less than perfect —I managed to then import that file into my GMail account, although quite a few entries were distorted and lacked information—, but it works. {link to this story}

[Wed Sep 3 10:52:19 CDT 2008]

Without any doubt, yesterday's big news in the technology field was the release of Google Chrome, the new browser developed by Google. But what's so exciting about a new browser? It's such an old and well established technology by now that sure they cannot surprise us anymore, right? Well, not according to the reviews I've read. For example, this is what eWeek had to say about it:

...right now, based on this short amount of testing, Google Chrome may just be the most impressive new Web browser that I have ever seen. While there are still a few beta hiccups, much of the experience of using Google Chrome just feels like the way that a browser should work.

Of course, a lot of the credit for the solid features and capabilities of the Google Chrome beta should go to its competitors, including Firefox, Opera, Safari and, yes, even Internet Explorer. That's because there isn't much in Google Chrome that is completely new. Most of the features, from tabs to private browsing modes, are already found in competing browsers.

But the way that Google Chrome implements these features is done very well in most cases, resulting in a browser with excellent usability and core capabilities.

(...)

As one surfs using Google Chrome, more of the features start to take shape. Clicking a new tab shows thumbnails of frequently visited sites and links to bookmarks. I liked this feature although I would have preferred if it let users customize the thumbnailed sites rather than only using the most visited sites.

Like Internet Explorer 8, Chrome has a private browsing mode, which is called incognito mode. A new window can be launched in this mode or you can choose to launch a window from a link directly into incognito mode. In this mode no traces of a Web surfing session (such as cookies) are saved, and users know when they are in incognito mode by the spy figure shown in the upper left-hand corner of the browser.

The address bar in Chrome combines both search and standard URL entry. This took a little getting used to but once I got the hang of it I liked this single-box method of using a browser address bar.

Another interesting feature of Google Chrome is its integrated use of Google Gears. Called application shortcuts in the browser, this feature lets users take any Web application and save it as a desktop-based Web application, with its own launch icons in the Start menu, Quick Launch and desktop.

In other words, with this WebKit-based browser, Google is not breaking new grounds but it apparently has managed to put together all the nifty features from different competing products into a single application and more (I say it "appears" because as a Linux user I still cannot install it on my computer).

Now, the most interesting question here is why did Google decide to release a new browser. As anyone could imagine, conspiracy theories abound. eWeek, for instance, has published an article stating that Google Chrome could nuke Microsoft from the Internet market. I think that's taking things out of proportion. For starters, I'm convinced that Google's management truly let a thousand flowers bloom to see what sticks, and this is no exception. Or, to put it a different way, not everything they release is necessarily part of a well thought-out corporate strategy to conquer the world. Rather, they do let their employees come up with new tools, release them to see if people like them and, after the fact, decide whether or not they are going to keep them. We are just so used to the straight top-down approach that most companies take that most analysts simply miss the point that Google truly seems to function in a completely different manner. As far as I can see, it's one of the few major companies that has truly understood how the new technologies have come to influence our societies while all others are still struggling to live with it. But second, and this is far more important, I think, it seems clear to me that the overall philosophy here is to build a workable web platform to run applications bypassing the unerlying operating system. In other words, with the arrival of AJAX and similar technologies, it has finally become clear that the old dream of building a web-centric paradigm may be within reach. In this sense, I'd recommend Steven Vaughan-Nichols' The real reason Google is making Chrome article:

There are five reasons why Google is doing this... First, Google wants a browser where its applications like GMail, Google Docs, its just introduced Google Video will run as quickly as possible. To do this, Google is introducing a new multi-threaded JVM (JavaScript Virtual Manachine), V8.

(...)

Google also wants a browser that can run multiple applications at once. As it is, the mainstream browsers are single-threaded, single process programs. So, for example, if one JavaScript-based program is slow or hung, everything on the browser runs slowly or not at all. In Chrome each tab has not only its own thread but its own process. By using multiple threads and processes, each browser tab runs at full speed even if one tab's application freezes up.

Next, Google wants a browser that can handle large Web-based applications. To make that happen, Chrome includes better memory garbage collection for both its Web tabs and for its V8 JVM. The net result is a Web browser that takes up a bit more memory when you first run it, but doesn't have the memory leakage problems that cause other browsers to slow down the longer you run them as they slowly but surely eat up all available memory.

If you're going to be running a lot of Google applications, Google knows that you want to be sure your work is secure. To help with that, Google is sandboxing tabs. Sandboxing is a tried and true security measure that gives an application, or in this case, a Web tab, only the permissions it needs to run. Google will be using a relatively strict permissions system, where a tab requires express permission before it can do anything with data on your system.

Finally, Google is using WebKit, the Apple/KDE-based open-source Web browser engine. WebKit is also what Google is using for its Android mobile phone system.

WebKit is best known for being small and efficient. That's one of the reasons why it's in Android, Nokia uses it in some of its mobile devices and Apple uses it in the iPhone.

Now, what do you get when you put this all together? You get Google designing not so much a traditional Web browser, but a Web application platform. And, it's not just a PC Web application platform, it's one that will work equally well, without any changes on mobile devices like the increasing popular mini-laptops and MIDS (mobile internet devices).

You see, killing Internet Explorer isn't really Chrome's goal. No, killing Microsoft Office is Chrome's goal.

(...)

Great free Web applications or pricey Office applications... Hmmm... Ballmer and the rest of the Microsoft crew should be worried. Very worried.

Now, to be fair, a Microsot Office replacement is not something that will be happening anytime soon. For the time being, all the free web-based office integrated suites I have seen are quite limited and still don't feel quite right. Of course, that will be fixed sooner or later and, in any case, it is obvious to me that the web-centric paradigm is the wave of the future. It has been so since the days when Netscape was still a force to be beckoned with. Yes, Microsoft ended up smashing them, but it definitely looks as if they won't be able to do the same with Google this time around. There are now two obstacles on their way: first, governments are more technology-savvy, learnt from their past mistakes and know that whatever happens in this field is key to the future of their countries; and, second, Google itself has also learnt from Netscape's mistakes and is taking a far more intelligent approach. The next few years should be very exciting indeed. {link to this story}

[Wed Sep 3 10:31:29 CDT 2008]

The same way we have irresponsible sensationalism in the mainstream media, we also see it all too often in the technology news... and Slashdot is the king of the hill without any doubt (well, OK, perhaps The Register and The Inquirer can be considered very close run-ups). Take, for instance, a story recently published on Slashdot: Microsoft patents "Pg Up" and "Pg Dn", the title reads. Of course, the first thing anyone does is to scream in disbelief. That's right before uttering a few unprintable words against Microsoft and their obsession to control everything. But then, if one takes the time to go a bit beyond the title and the first few comments, one quickly realizes that things are a bit murkier than that. As it turned out, of course, Microsoft is not patenting the page up and page down keys on your keyboard. That would be moronic. What they appear to be patenting, rather, is a method for scrolling up and down the same amount of lines or space regardless of any zoom factor, which is quite more useful. Sure, it still is not as if they made any life-changing discovery but that's also true for the vast majority of discoveries and inventions that happen every year. In other words, perhaps some people out there should cool off, calm down and let go off flogging Microsoft for everything bad. If nothing else, it will definitely diminish their chances of getting an ulcer. {link to this story}