Monthly Archives: May 2011

Computer setup – part one: Hardware and OS

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[Updated: Added a new paragraph to the end describing my success in getting rid of gnome-panel.]

I thought it might be nice to write about my computer setup.  I haven’t made a post like this in years and I just recently upgraded my operating system so it felt like a good time.  I’ll begin here with part one which discusses my operating system installation and hardware setup.  Part two will talk about the software I use and part three will focus on Firefox 4 because, well, like many others, my browser is where I spend most of my computing time.

Hardware
I know how to build a computer.  I know how to choose high quality parts that operate great together and cost altogether much less than pre-built systems.  However, after spending far too much time fixing these by diagnosing the issue, finding replacement parts on eBay (if I get exactly the same part I don’t need to reformat) and then realising problems are still present and starting over, I chose another approach to computer hardware: buying very common, pre-built DELL systems.

The reasons for this are numerous.  First of all, they’re so easy to get hold of.  I went for the small form factor Optiplex 745 from a few years ago and if I ever want to get another one there are many, competitively priced, local options on eBay.  The small form factor version is a little less common than the standard desktop system, and I need to make sure I get one with the correct CPU, but I imagine it will be simple to get hold of one in an emergency for quite a few years to come.  Second, as a person who doesn’t feel comfortable buying ‘new stuff’, especially electronic equipment, this allows me to buy used computers and still have access to fairly decent technology.  I know I could build a computer with better specifications, but, really, I’m not going to notice the difference.  Third, speaking of specifications, packaged systems tend to be quieter, have lower power consumption, and take up less space than something I’d build myself.  Fourth, these can be incredibly cheap!

Lastly, and perhaps the most important point here, because I have two of these computers in the house, if my main computer has a problem, I can simply remove the hard drive and put it in the not-as-important media computer located in the lounge room.  Let me put that another way: if my computer dies, I can be back up and running within a few minutes!  I could fix the problem in my own time, and have the luxury of looking for and waiting for a replacement when I get around to it.  The biggest problem I have with computers is immediately, heavily dissipated.  As long as I keep good backups of my files, my productivity should never receive a major hit.

The only changes I need to make to these computers is to: put in a simple, low-profile, passively cooled (read: quiet) NVIDIA video card that has a DVI video output (I can’t stand the quality of D-SUB); find a good, second-hand monitor on eBay; change the hard drive if I have a spare one of larger capacity; remove the ‘Made for Windows’ sticker on the front and replace it with a ‘GNU/Linux INSIDE’ sticker (I got some after a Richard Stallman talk and they’re awesome), and; reformat the computer so it uses my currently preferred flavour of GNU/Linux.

Operating System
I’ve been running GNU/Linux as my primary (and often only) operating system since about 2004, back when having non-standard hardware meant you received a crash course in unix commands and software compiling.  After various tinkering with GNU/Linux as a dual-boot playground, I began using Slackware as a primary OS because I liked how configurable it was and its tendency to force me to learn how the operating system functioned.  I soon moved to using Kubuntu due to its larger support community and ease of use – I realised I spent a large portion of my time fixing things and wanted to be a bit more productive, and I preferred the configurability and look of the KDE environment over that of Gnome.

Last year, feeling a bit bored with the KDE interface and wanting to try out an alternative, I came across the Linux Mint project.  The aim of this OS, an offshoot of Ubuntu with interface improvements and media codecs as standard, can be summed up by its motto, ‘From Freedom Came Elegance’.  It looks great, is incredibly intuitive to use, and releases updates when they are ready rather than keeping to a proposed release date at the potential cost of stability.

Another important difference in this latest release is that Mint has chosen to retain the Gnome environment rather than switching to Unity, which many long-standing Linux users vocally dislike.  (I haven’t used Unity, but from the videos I’ve seen I don’t believe I’m the right audience for it.)

Mint 11 was released last week and I’ve experienced the simplest – and quickest! – OS installation ever.  For the first time in years, I decided to make it a dual-boot system so I could use Windows without having to open the case and change the hard drive.  (I have a few ancient games I like to be able to play, even if it’s rare, and I’m not yet able to submit my tax return using GNU/Linux.)  I first used the DELL recovery CD to install Vista, allowing it to use 80Gb of my hard drive, and run updates, which took almost two hours.  In contrast, Linux Mint 11 along with its updates took perhaps twenty minutes from USB boot to me being logged in, transferring my documents.  (I know this is an unfair comparison to an OS that has numerous years’ worth of updates, but even without them Mint was quicker by a long shot.)  It’s strange using Vista again, even briefly; it’s far less intuitive than Mint (and GNU/Linux systems in general?) and is really starting to show its age, visually.

Also making the Mint install process quick was not having to install much additional software.  Almost everything I need is right there, as standard, and is updated automatically.  Apart from games, the only additions I installed were icecat, avant-window-manager, wine and emusicj (more on them later), only the latter of which was not done through the software manager.  And in terms of hardware, my printer ‘just works’, my digital camera is detected and uploads photos after a simple declaration of file preferences, and my video card runs superb after prompting me to install proprietary drivers for it.  I encountered absolutely no issues with sound or network, as was common with GNU/Linux distributions and my hardware many years ago.

Here’s what my desktop looks like after configuration:

Linux Mint 11 with awn(Click to see larger version on flickr)

One day in and I only have one issue with my current setup: getting rid of the default Gnome panel.  I like to use the OSX-dock-like Avant Window Navigator for everything.  It has a menu, lists the few programs I access regularly and is set to ‘intellihide’ so it disappears when a window goes near it – simple, yet powerful.  However, it’s not easy to get rid of the Gnome panel completely (I’m still looking into a simple method, but the one everyone mentions does not work in Mint 11 – more research needed).  For now I remove all the items I can from the panel, put it in the top-left of my screen and set it to auto-hide.

gnome-panel hidden

gnome-panel hover

Its presence is a little irritating, but at least it doesn’t get in my way.

Update: Thanks to david4dev, I found a way to get rid of gnome-panel.  The details are outlined in my Linux Mint Forums comment here.  Now, the only remaining annoyance I have is that I can’t configure the Cairo Main Menu as well as I could the default one.  The result is a slightly more bloated menu list than I’d prefer – I never use ‘Session’ or ‘Recent Documents’ links – but it’s still a major improvement.

Update 2: After installing this same version of Mint 11 on my server in late October, installing awn, setting it to run on startup, running system updates and then restarting the computer, it appears that the fix no longer needs to be applied – the gnome panel disappears automatically.

Bullying in the networked public

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I was bullied two days ago. I was at a bus stop with a few other strangers when a ‘P plater’ with two friends stopped a car on the side of the road opposite us and began heckling. I was listening to a podcast and trying to ignore them so I didn’t hear exactly what they said to me, their final victim, before driving off, but I believe the taunts may have raised witty questions about the status of my sex.

I wanted to tell myself that this didn’t get to me, but it did. It wasn’t that I felt insulted – if anything, that I heard the same taunts from twelve-year-olds when I was growing up is an insult to their wit – it was because people felt this sort of behaviour was something they could get away with. Words can hurt, badly, and this just isn’t acceptable. But what could I do about it? Paying attention to bullies only makes it more enjoyable for them, and responding can escalate the situation.

As a common target for bullying, I was no stranger to the ‘light bulb moment’ experienced soon after a confrontation when you realise the wittiest response you could – but rarely ‘should’ – have made. This time it was different, though; rather than the typical, verbal, “No, sir, I think you’ll find it is you who is silly looking”, a better idea better came to me, something frightening in its simplicity to change the uneven power structure I found myself in:

Pull out a camera. Say nothing. Begin filming.

This digital disarmament would work because, even if they drive off laughing at their victims, there is a looming question about what did and what will happen. Would I give the film to the police? But they can’t do anything – can they? Would I give it to local high schools and attempt to contact their parents? What if I managed to find them and attempted blackmail? Would I post it on YouTube, using their license plate for the video title, and attempt to find more identifying information about them to better illustrate the monument to public shaming, forcing them to own their actions for the rest of their lives?

Or, perhaps, I wasn’t even filming at all. This ambiguity is, I would argue, far more concerning than a single act of cowardly verbal abuse toward a stranger – in many cases, at least. Where the abusers had control over a brief situation, I may now have control over personally identifiable and incriminating information about them – information that is infinitely reproducible and not ‘lossy’. The power dynamic is immediately reconfigured. The uneven power has been dissipated from my transgressors and I immediately have the upper-hand.

With the average citizen’s gradually increased potential to be an instant surveillance recording device, such a response becomes more and more likely. In fact, ‘license plate titled YouTube videos’ and similar responses could easily become a ‘thing’ that – once public knowledge – parents, employers, schools and other authoritative institutions may routinely search for.

The part of me who remembers growing up as a daily target of bullying can certainly see the benefits of such technology trends. Once people realise their actions may be monitored, the tendency to taunt others could be reduced, and this is certainly a positive result.

However, such a lesson may be learned at the expense of (for lack of a better term) ‘reverse-bullying’, which could produce longer lasting effects. Not only has the bully’s power been reduced, the victim is now able to respond with a retaliation action that has potential negative consequences larger than the original act of bullying. And this new power, in the hands of one who has been forced into a defensive position, may be difficult to restrain.

Education becomes an important issue here. In addition to the many complex concepts about information flows and identity ‘the youth of today’ need to learn in order to protect themselves in our digital society, we need to make explicit the consequences of recording devices. On the one hand, we should not post things about others. On the other, we shouldn’t bully because others can post things about us if we do, or our actions can be easily traced (cyber-bullying and IP addresses) and we can be punished. But disarming both actions through education could make everyone paranoid about surveillance.

Education is not my area of expertise so I may leave the questions on teaching children about surveillance and the effects this has on social freedom for another time. The issues around reverse-bullying strongly resonate with me, however, as a person who strongly believes in the power of reform over that of punishment. The temporal nature of digital media increases the power of punishment exponentially in this scenario, and the act of passive retaliation – say, having a camera visible to make a statement of ambiguity but not recording at all – is only successful if there is a sense that punishment effects are a real possibility, which would not be the case if everyone was passive. So, in short, people are going to get hurt.

But people have been getting hurt for many, many years as the victims of bullying. Even if the odd tragedy is inevitable, I do feel the popularisation of digital recording devices could improve the situation overall. I just wonder if I’m being overly optimistic.

What’s in a blog name

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I’m terrible at naming things.  There’s a lot about the arbitrary nature of names that makes me uncomfortable, and the part of me that does believe they can have positive value can never be satisfied that a name is ‘just right’ for its use.

In short: I’m a perfectionist, and a philosopher.  (A terrible pair of traits to have!)

So when it came to starting a new blog I loved the fact that I could just start writing in WordPress and change its name later on.  I could produce posts and easily move it to a different address once I think of the perfect handle!  I started with my real name because, while boring, it’s just a simple, obvious place to begin.  As long as I don’t care about anonymity it’s a good way to use an existing brand in a new setting.  But I also feel my real name is an inadequate representation for who I am.  Yes, its meaning grew with my actions, but it encompasses the sum total of these actions over my lifetime.  I wanted something else, something that represented who I am right now.  The easiest way to do that is to start from scratch, create a new pseudonym and just start participating.

One of my best qualities is that I am quite good with puns.  While this helps with picking out a cool name, I encountered issues of relevance and originality.  My first new blog from last year was called ‘eTheChange‘ (it’s still alive), a take on the oft-quoted Gandhi phrase, and this wasn’t too bad except that I felt limited in content.  I would happily write about activism and social change using digital media (my research focus in 2010) but anything else just felt out of place.  I then recently began a new blog with the working name ‘dailyontology’.  It sounds like paleontology (I wanted to dedicate my life to this when I was young, like every other kid) and I could use it to post about my own, daily existence (or something).  Still, I wasn’t happy with it – not everyone understands what ontology means, and I didn’t want to suggest that I’d post daily.

Then, reading some Asimov the next week, I thought I could use the pseudonym ‘andrewoid’!  Robotics is cool, and my first name is Andrew . . . but it made me worry that it created associations between me and a particular mobile operating system by Google that I have never actually seen let alone have a well informed opinion on.  And it appears a few others are using the name already on various social media sites.  I know it’s becoming increasingly difficult to have a simple and original name, but I didn’t want to encroach on somebody else’s established brand.

The next day I came up with the best name so far: ‘threadpoet’!  But this didn’t feel relevant to my planned content unless I got back into regular sewing projects.  I’ll happily settle altering it for a sewing group name, however: ‘The Thread Poet Society’!

The final, and current name comes from a conversation I was part of.  A friend was recounting an adventure that led them to a park bench where they were subjected to the not-so-modest actions of very public pigeons.  Being especially quick that day I said, ‘They were exhipigeonists!’

It didn’t immediately seem right for a blog name, but it began to grow on me.  I’m researching networked publics and I’m making an effort to be more open than I have been in the past, so it actually had some relevance.  And besides, doesn’t everybody like birds?  (And didn’t they used to be dinosaurs?!)  The final persuasion came when I did a quick google search for ‘exhipigeonist’ and it came up with zero results!

I think I’m set on it, at least for the time being.  The name’s not as important as what you do with it.  And even if it’s not ‘just right’, my actions will inform a new identity around it, forcing it to cohere.

So the next big question is where to begin.  Luckily, I already have a list of topics!

A few quick notes on passwords and security

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I recently read through Thomas Baekdal’s ‘The Usability of Passwords’, a great piece on the relative strength of passwords under various methods of hacking attacks. (Also check out the updated FAQ!) Rather than seeing mixed case passwords with random symbols as the epitome of secure, we find that, in fact, passwords “can be made both highly secure and user-friendly”.

The 3 common word password ‘this is fun’ can last 2537 years under a common word attack. In contrast, the 6 random character, mixed case, symbol and number password ‘J4fS<2′ only lasts up to 219 years under a brute force attack. Obviously, the difference between them is negligible in practice – how long can such attempts realistically proceed before being noticed and stopped? – but the point is that being forced to use the latter within various IT services is partially unjustified. (I say ‘partially’ because some people would still use ‘god’, one of the top-five most common passwords according to Hackers, if given the opportunity.)

So, really, there’s not too much need for a ‘Ultra High Security Password Generator‘. Yeah, it’s a secure password, but it’s probably more secure in practice to have a random set of words you remember than to require a written down (or typed!) string of 63/64 characters you need to have constantly accessible (read: actually not secure).

Relevant side note: incorporating complex rules for passwords (at least one vowel, up to three digits, two consonants in the second half of the alphabet, two letters that rhyme with but don’t appear within eight places of ‘J’ in the alphabet, &c) actually makes a password less secure because there exist (publicised) rules to limit the iterations needed for cracking. This is why I felt smugly but probably irrationally secure using my original 6-character password for my old Hotmail account years after they revised the password requirements to 8-characters minimum – if it was a password that did not comply with the rules, then it would probably not be attempted. Yeah, I was probably naive, but the account is closed now so w’evs.

A few days ago I was also linked to a PC World article that talked about Google’s new(ish), optional two-step login process. I don’t know why I wasn’t aware of this earlier! The standard authentication model relies on “something you know–and that something is often easily guess[ed], cracked, or otherwise compromised”. Google’s two-step login, however, requires two pieces of information, “both something you know–your username and password–and something that only you should have–your phone”. Every time I go to a new computer and log into Google I have to type my password and also include content from a text message they send to my mobile. On my work and home computers I just need to go through this process again every 30 days – an added security measure just in case I accidentally leave myself logged on at another computer.

A bonus side-effect of this added step is that I can change my Google password to something more fun – like ‘fluffy bunnies’ – and not concern myself with the associated, potential security risks! (Of course, I probably shouldn’t now that I’ve said it publicly. Damn you, blog readers!)

If anyone out there is interested in setting this up, you can find instructions on the gmail blog.

Anyone have annoying password anecdotes to share?