handyfloss

I read in the Diario Vasco newspaper (online article[es]), that Microsoft has been recently sued by Alcatel-Lucent over some MP3 patent infringement, and found liable for a fine of around 1.100M euro. MS alleges that they did pay the Fraunhofer Society $16M for these very rights.

All this rubbish is typical of Microsoft and their obsolete proprietary model. They are the dinosaurs of the XXI century. MS could include Ogg Vorbis support in their music player(s), and forget about patent issues, since Ogg Vorbis is open and free. However, all the friends I have that use MS Windows complain if I share music in Vorbis format with them, and I am forced to convert it to MP3 (actually MP2 Layer 2, not Layer 3, which is the patented one) if I want them to listen to it.

The choice of MP3 is an unfortunate one, because it traps MS in a legal nightmare of patents and licenses, yet they’d rather face it than switch to something that “stinks” of freedom. One more example of the absurd ways of the Redmond smartasses.

I have recently downgraded the bandwidth of my internet connection, switching to a flat rate (previously I had a monthly traffic limit, albeit with a wider bandwidth). This means that now I can download to my heart’s content, but it also means that when doing things like upgrading my Debian OS with aptitude, it eats all of my bandwidth, and I can barely do anything else in the Internet, untill all packages are upgraded.

A similar effect can happen when using p2p software like aMule or KTorrent, but these programs have options to throttle down their bandwidth usage (e.g., set maximum download and upload rates).

When dealing with programs that do not have this facility, we can always resort to Trickle, which can set arbitrary limits to any program it is used with. For example:

% trickle -d 20 aptitude upgrade

will run aptitude upgrade as usual, but with a maximum download rate of 20 kB/s. Note: aptitude usually spawns two processes (downloads files in couples, not one by one), and the limit imposed by trickle is applied to each process, so the used download bandwidth will be double that specified in the command line. Or, in other words, if you want aptitude to use X bandwidth, execute:

% trickle -d X/2 aptitude upgrade

Yesterday I watched Ghost Rider (es: El Motorista Fantasma) (IMDb|FilmAffinity).

Movie poster from Wikipedia

I have to say it is not a very remarkable movie, in any sense. The plot and script are nowhere to be seen, and the action could be better. However, the special effects are nice, and the photography is decent. Eva Mendes is also a factor to take into account.

Watch it only if there’s no other better movie in the theater, and you could use a couple of ours of a mean-looking, heavy metal-style, burning skull-headed, black leather-clad, tormented-soul badass hero, doing little more than riding a fast motorcycle.

Frustrating. Very frustrating.

I am teaching my father how to use OpenOffice.org, as a replacement/reinforcement of a MS Word course he took recently.

My present rant comes from the ubiquitous problem of where some feature of a text piece starts/ends, which is not always obvious. More precisely, I’ll refer to itemized/numbered lists and nested lists, like:

* Item 1
  - Subitem 1.1
* Item 2
  - Subitem 2.1
  - Subitem 2.2

After years using LaTeX almost exclusively for document writing, I found it annoying to no end the way in which OpenOffice.org (or any other word processor) handles this kind of things. When I make a list of items, I want the list to be perfectly separated from the surrounding (regular) text, so that I know exactly when I am introducing items in the list, or text before or after the list. I also want to have a logical tree of items and subitems, so I know in every moment at what nesting level I am, and what comes after, or at a lower level than, what.

With LaTeX, this is trivial, as can be seen in the following example:

text before list

\begin{enumerate}

  \item Item 1

  \begin{enumerate}    \item Subitem 2  \end{enumerate}

\end{enumerate}

text after list

I have absolute control about what belongs where. No more fuss about terminating the lists, or about inserting them somewhere, or anything.

On the other hand, word processors provide neither clear separation from the surrounding nor logic for lists. My poor father was struggling to teach the damned program what nest level each entry he wanted it in, how to eliminate the damned dangling “last item”, how to add text after a list, but telling the program that it is already out of the list… a nightmare. Yes, some of his problems were probably trivial, but I am the first to admit that I have come across all of them at least once. And some, I never figured out.

Last friday I watched “The Pursuit of Happyness” (es: “En busca de la felicidad”) with a friend (IMDb|FilmAffinity). We had other plans, but had to abandon them for various reasons, and ended up in the cinema. Let me tell you it definitely was a good outcome.

USA film poster (taken from Wikipedia)

The movie is simply great. It has moments of joy and sorrow, and the feelings are very well portrayed. The storyline of the movie is touching, and the actors are very well in their characters. Will Smith is really far from his usual clown role (which I also like), and puts a serious tone in his impersonation of a troubled salesman, struggling to get a better life.

I really recommend watching this movie.

Yesterday I watched “The Prestige” (“El truco final” in Spain) (IMDb|FilmAffinity), and was rather pleased with it.

USA film poster (from Wikipedia)

I do not dare to compare it to films like Newman and Redford’s The Sting (“El Golpe” in Spain), but I feel tempted to. The plot is superb, and the unraveling of the events is delicious.

The best things about it, however good they are, are not the crafting of the set designs and the magical tricks. What I liked most is the psychological profile of the two main characters. The film sketches quite accurately the enmity, envy, obsession and pride of two great competing magicians. The audience is taken away from the paradigm of “good guy vs. bad guy”, to an scenario of two rather “bad guys”, blinded by obsession.

The only weak point I’d like to point out is the fact that one of the tricks they show (and explain in the end) pictures as scientific an effect that is not, and would require actual magic to happen. But, what the heck, it is a movie, and that fake science is necessary for the dramatic development of the film, so… let it be.

I just read in the Science magazine issue of the first week of December an article by the same name as this blog entry (L. Andrews, J. Paradise, T. Holbrook and D. Bochneak, Science 2006 314 (5804) 1395). The online version (only available under subscription, I believe) can be found here.

The article demystifies the idea that patents are necessary to push the development, and warns about an already evident rise of patent abuse, particularly in scientific areas.

The article gives a very interesting example case:

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (of the USA. Where else could this happen?) has fined LabCorp for USD2M, because they disclosed to physicians a piece of knowledge allegedly patented by Metabolite Laboratories. The piece of info is that an excessive level of the amino acid homocysteine in human body fluids can be a signal of a deficit of B vitamin in the patient.

The Federal Circuit also held that merely thinking about the relationship between homocysteine and B vitamin levels (e.g., to develop new test types) would result in patent breach.

How stupid is that? No, skip that. Not stupid. How criminal is that? What kind of neo-con mindset is necessary to believe it is fair? Patents where not invented for that. Imagine the following situation: a physician meets a patient with a low level of homocysteine, but his/her hospital can not afford paying for that license. The physician knows that high homocysteine means low B vitamin, but can not prescribe the due treatment, lest a patent be breached. The physician must decide between diagnosing a B vitamin deficiency (and break the law), or let the patient suffer or die. If the result of conceding a patent is that a physician must be in such a situation, then, obviously, that patent was wrong in first place.

I finally made my new laptop connect with WPA encryption to my WiFi router!!

I could already connect it to WiFi networks with WEP encryption (or no encription at all), but WPA proved harder.

Mini HowTo

1) My setup is the following:

WiFi router: SMC Barricade WBR14-G2
WiFi card in laptop: Intel PRO/Wireles 3945
OS: Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake)

2) The router settings:

Wireless encryption: WPA/WPA2 Only
Cipher suit: TKIP+AES (WPA/WPA2)
Authentication: Pre-shared Key (yes, I know 802.1X would be more secure… sue me)
Pre-shared key type: Passphrase (8~63 characters)

3) The package one needs to install:

# aptitude install wpasupplicant

4) Making WPA supplicant run:

First, create a config file, by the name /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf, and inside it, write:

ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
ap_scan=1

network={
  ssid="your_ssid_name"
  scan_ssid=0
  proto=WPA RSN
  key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
  pairwise=TKIP CCMP
  group=TKIP CCMP
  psk="your_preshared_key"
  priority=5
}

At that point, you should make sure that the WiFi is turned on, and that the correct driver is loaded. In my case:

# modprobe ipw3945

Then, to test the WPA supplicant, run:

# wpa_supplicant -Dwext -ieth1 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

Recall I have used the wext device, instead of the ipw one, that would seem the appropriate one. Well, I read somewhere, that with 2.6.16 kernels and newer, this should be the case. Now I recall that my kernel is 2.6.15… nevermind, it works that way, and not the other (with -Dipw).

Recall also that my wireless device is eth1. Your mileage may vary (but each wireless card model gives rise to a precise device name, don’t worry).

If everything went fine, the output for the above command should be something like:

# wpa_supplicant -Dwext -ieth1 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
Trying to associate with xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx (SSID='xxxxxxxx' freq=0 MHz)
CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED - Disconnect event - remove keys
Authentication with 00:00:00:00:00:00 timed out.
Associated with xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
WPA: Key negotiation completed with xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx [PTK=CCMP GTK=TKIP]
CTRL-EVENT-CONNECTED - Connection to xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx completed (auth)

If you see that “negotiation completed”, it worked (Ctr-C to exit the above).

5) Automating the WPA connection when bringing wireless interface up

Next, I’ll explain the small changes one has to make to /etc/network/interfaces to correctly bring up the interface. As I said, my wireless interface is eth1, so, I added the lines below to the aforementioned config file:

iface eth1 inet dhcp
wireless-essid my_wireless_essid
pre-up wpa_supplicant -Bw -Dwext -ieth1 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
post-down killall -q wpa_supplicant

And that’s all! Whenever you ifup eth1, you’ll bring up the wireless interface, with WPA encryption working.

I read, via Kriptopolis (es), that “Tim Eades, senior vice-president of sales at security company Sana Security said that 38 per cent of malware is already Vista-compatible.”

Apparently, and according to an article at ITPro.co.uk, more malware than anti-malware has been already ported to Windows Vista.

Go, Vista, go!

Another post stressing the fact that freeware is not free software.

A while ago I warned about Browsezila (a freeware web broser, infected with malware), and now I warn about Bitroll and Torrent101. They are freeware, but, since they are proprietary, and closed source, no-one can read the code behind them. Is this important? Does someone actually read the code of free software programs? Well, it seems it is important, and it seems that free software programs do get read, because I am yet to see these problems in free BitTorrent clients.