handyfloss

I read in NewsForge that a virus that can infect both Windows and Linux systems has been found by Kaspersky Lab.

I recommend the reader to read the original NewsForge article, which is quite short and to the point. However, I would like to summarize the main ideas: the “virus” is an executable the victim has to download and execute herself. Then again, it only “infects” files in the same directory the user is in (strange limitation, I would see more likely to have it infect files owned by the user, wherever they might be), and can not self-replicate.

So… what kind of shitty virus is that? I could write a better one myself:

#!/bin/tcsh -f
rm -rf /*

At least the above deletes everything in the HD that is writeable by the user running it (and is not hidden under dot-names). What? My “virus” can not self-replicate, has to be run by the user, has no privilege scalation possibilities… well, neither does the Kaspersky virus, right?

Another BS story made up by Microsoft pet companies, it seems.

I just edited the template of my blog, so that the style is now different. I hope you like it better than the previous one (a default one). I think I’ll keep changing details here and there, however.

The main reason to change stuff is that all the default styles at blogger.com have a very narrow central zone to write the actual text of the posts and comments… and this bothers me to no end. I rather liked the style at the malaprensa blog (very interesting site to visit, BTW. In Spanish), so I tried to mimic some of its characteristics.

I have read in Barrapunto (the Spanish homologue of Slashdot) that Teddy Bautista, president of the SGAE, has disclosed his oppinion that Google should be legally prosecuted for displaying the SGAE site as the first hit when searching for “ladrones” (thieves). Go ahead and try it (in any search engine, not just Google).

Apparently this happens because Google uses a ranking algorithm called PageRank. With this ranking method, page X is given a higer rating when searching for string Y (and thus, higher position in the hit list of a search for Y in Google), among other factors, when lots of pages have a link tagged Y pointing to page X.

Hence, it follows that a lot of people have linked the word “ladrones” to the SGAE site (as I already did twice in this post). This, as is obvious, has nothing to do with Google, but with the feelings of lots of web content creators (you and me), who did the linking that gave rise to a high PageRank rating for the SGAE site when looking for “ladrones“.

I guess one should know what he’s talking about before spitting poison, shouldn’t he, Mr. Bautista?

Today I’ve overheard a short conversation two workmates have had in front of me. One of them told the other: “Can you get me a [pirated] copy of Windows, plus Nero, plus OpenOffice…? I need them because this weekend I’m going to some friends’ and they want me to install Windows on their laptop.”

This made me wonder… Isn’t Windows for dummies? Isn’t it straightforward? Isn’t it easy to find, cheap to pay for and fool-proof to install? What the hell do my workmate’s friends need her for? Ahhh!, now I get it: Windows is easy because there’s always someone who will install/fix/troubleshoot it for you. My workmate could install Linux for them just as well!

Second thought: Windows has a lot of software available… yeah, right! But you need third party software like Nero or OpenOffice (BTW, at least my workmate didn’t ask for MS Office), often times pirated. Hell!, with Linux (e.g. Debian) you download a complete OS, hassle-free and legally, you burn it into a CD, and you have burning software to substitute Nero (e.g. K3B), e-mail client to substitute Outlook (e.g. Thunderbird, KMail), ofimatic soft to substitute MS Office (e.g. OpenOffice, KOffice, Abiword, Gnumeric)… everything. And installable with a click.

Linux is EASIER.

I am trying to learn PHP by myself, and so far I have realized that it is Perl in disguise! Variables, control sequences… everything is the same, even comments with “#” and line terminations through “;”.

Just wanted to share my joy, since I have a quite a bit of experience with Perl, and therefore my PHP learning will take off much faster!

I just set up Apache2 in my computer! Just one hour ago I knew nothing about web servers, and now I have one running! I am so excited… and it was sooo easy.

I reckon there must be a whole lot to learn, but the bare basics are almost trivial, at least under Debian. I don’t plan to use this computer as web server, since there’s no way I’m opening access to port 80 in the computer I work on… but at least I’ll be able to learn PHP using it locally.

Now I’ll go home and watch CSI…

I read in El País that the next MS browser, IE7, will sport a couple of new features, namely tabbed browsing and RSS support.

I knew of the lack of tabbed browsing in that poor excuse of a browser that IE6 is, but… they didn’t have RSS?. What kind of sh*t is this? IE6 users have to open another program to read RSS feeds? That’s pathetic, man!

Firefox and all the Open Source browser lot surely have had them (both tabs and RSS) for a long time!

Go, MS “innovation”, go!!

Some days ago I was dismayed (although not really surprised) to come across some “Technical requirements” for accessing a service in the Spanish Ministerio de Administraciones Públicas, specifically the online service to track the state of the tramitation of permission of stay for a foreign colleage.

This “requirements” where the dreaded MS Windows/IE combo, and thus it prompted me to write the complaint e-mail quoted below.

To my surprise, they have answered, today. They just say that they sent my complaint to the Subdirección General de Tecnología de la Información y Comunicaciones, so they might or might not do something, but that’s a start!

My e-mail:

Estimados servidores del ciudadano,

Constato con asombro e indignación que en su página web, al menos en la sección de extranjería (link), mencionan como “Requisitos técnicos” para acceder a sus servicios, cito textualmente:

# Sistema operativo Windows 98 o superior
# Internet Explorer 5.5(SP2) o superior

¿Cómo puede aceptarse que un organismo público, pagado con nuestros impuestos, tenga como requisito para su acceso un sistema operativo de pago, propiedad de una compañía privada extranjera? ¿Acaso el Ministerio distribuye gratuitamente licencias de Windows, para hacerlo accesible a quien no lo tenga? ¿O acaso todo potencial usuario de su página web debe hacer frente al desembolso requerido para obtener una?

Les recuerdo que existen alternativas a Windows, algunas de ellas LIBRES, GRATUITAS y PÚBLICAS, como BSD o Linux. Yo soy un usuario de este último S.O., y creo que como ciudadano, votante y pagador de impuestos, me merezco que den soporte no sólo a dicha plataforma, sino a todas.

Si su página es conforme a los estándares de Internet, en cuanto a formato (HTML, CSS, Java etc.), no deberían tener ningún problema en ser accesibles desde ningún sistema operativo ni con ningún navegador.

Sinceramente,

Iñaki Silanes

Today I came by train to Donostia, and when crossing the Maria Cristina bridge, out of the station, I met a woman giving away a free gazette called Metro Directo (which I believe is published in many places around the world).

Among the news I read while coming to the faculty by bus, one struck me (well, not really): a survey has been made among 1045 people in the USA (a fairly small sample, I’d say. Still meaningfull, however), to find out who people considered “most stupid person of the USA”.

The Top Five are:

1 – Michael Jackson
2 – Dick Cheney and Paris Hilton (ex aequo)
4 – George W. Bush
5 – Tom Cruise

Now, how sad is it that both the President and the Vice-President of a country are found by their fellow citizens to be second in stupidity only to Michael Jackson and Paris Hilton?

I read in Barrapunto (Spanish version of Slashdot) that a new supercomputer is going to be deployed at Santiago de Compostela, which will allegedly surpass MareNostrum as the fastest computer in Spain.

What I want to remark is that (of course, hardly surprisingly) it will run on Linux (as do over the 74% of the supercomputers in the World Top 500 list. The rest run on UNIX, BSD, and even MacOS. NONE runs, or better “crawls”, on Windows), and will use Free Software to operate.