Scott Granneman

Apps By Scott Granneman

No more Mozilla 1.8; in fact, no more Mozilla. Just Firefox.

In case you haven't already heard, it's over for Mozilla as far as future development is concerned. Oh sure, the Mozilla Foundation is going to keep maintaining the 1.7 branch, but that's it. All future work is aimed at Firefox & Thunderbird. This was announced years ago, but it finally became final this week, and evidently some folks are (justifiably) p.o.'d at the Mozilla Foundation for not making things clearer, sooner. (Of course, volunteers can still keep Mozilla going, and it looks like folks are trying to do just that. More news as it develops.)

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Really nice Flash-based OpenOffice.org tutorials - for 1.1 AND 2.0

I just found some really, really, really nice OpenOffice.org tutorials covering Writer, Calc, and the new Base. Even better, they're for both OOo 1.1 AND the upcoming 2.0, so you can get an advanced look at the upcoming release. Even better than that, they're in Flash, so you can actually watch the tutorial and see what's being described (finally, a good use for Flash!). Even better than that, you can download the tutorials to watch 'em on your machine. And even better than that, they're packaged for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. And really, there's nothing I can find at this point that's better. I'm bettered out.

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Computing By Scott Granneman

“Why isn’t BitTorrent faster?”, he asked.

I'm on a mailing list for web developers, & recently one of the guys on the list told he was using Tomato Torrent (a BitTorrent client) on his Mac OS X box to download a 1.3 GB file, and it had taken almost a day so far, & he was less than half way there. His point: "I thought the whole point of Bittorrent was to make the process FAST. I could have FTP'd 1.3 gig much faster." Here's my reply:

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Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity By Scott Granneman

A great series on SSH

If you don't use SSH or SFTP, and instead use telnet or FTP, you're asking for it. Big time. FTP & telnet send everything - passwords included - in the clear. Not safe at all. But, even if you use SSH (& it's descendants, SFTP & SCP), there's always more to learn. SSH offers an incredible amount of cool tricks that enable you to do an amazing amount of stuff. If you want to learn more, check out Brian Hatch's series of articles on SSH at SecurityFocus. They're well-written, & Brian definitely knows his stuff. Read 'em, learn 'em, live 'em. SSH Host Key Protection SSH User identities SSH and ssh-agent

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Computing By Scott Granneman

Sharing a file system among Linux, Mac OS, and Windows

When you're dual-booting (or triple-booting, or ...), or when you're sharing a portable USB2/Firewire hard drive among different boxes, all of a sudden, file systems become important. NTFS isn't supported by Mac OS, to my knowledge, and while you can read it under Linux, writing is still iffy. Fat32 is supported by everyone, but that's kind of a sucky filesystem. So what can you use? Ext2 isn't a bad choice, since it's supported under Mac OS X, Linux (duh), and even Windows, to some degree. Mac OS X - Ext2fsx http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsx/ Windows - Explore2fs http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/explore2fs.htm Mac OS X & Linux can read & write Ext2; Windows, however, can only read. However, with all OS's you get support for large partitions and large file sizes, which is great. Too bad you don't get journaling ...

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Firefox 1.0.1 released!

Big news today: Firefox 1.0.1 has been released! Don't look for new features - this one is mainly about bug fixes and security (especially the punycode/IDN debacle of a few weeks ago that I wrote about in SecurityFocus). OK, there is ONE new feature: better tab control, or, as the release notes put it, "You can now make links opened by other applications open into a new tab, reuse an existing tab, or open a new window". Cool. People have been asking for that for a long time. OK - so how do you get it? Head over to the Release Notes and follow the instructions. And fer gosh sakes, read the frickin' Release Notes, OK? There's some important stuff in there, like DON'T INSTALL THE NEW FIREFOX OVER AN OLD FIREFOX. There. I capitalized it so you'd see it. (For those of you who use BitTorrent, head to the Firefox 1.0.1 Torrents page and grab those torrents! But read the Release Notes anyway, 'k?) Go get it! (Or, if you're like me and you use Debian, the one true Linux&tm;, wait 'til it's in the APT repositories)

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Computing By Scott Granneman

Reason #5490 that LAMP rocks and Windows+IIS sucks

The fine bloggers over at Lockergnome's Linux Fanatics blog have written an excellent, detailed rant about the huuuuuuuuge PITA they experienced when they migrated web sites from one Windows/IIS machine to another. Reading it, my heart was gladdened anew that I use LAMP (and MAMP: Mac OS X, or just plain ol' AMP, as Apple evidently wants to call it) for my client's web sites. I've run client sites on Windows/IIS before, and it is truly a hellish experience. Read this one from Lockergnome if you want to feel his pain, and appreciate why it is that you use open source software so you don't have to experience this stuff.

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Computing By Scott Granneman

Killing a Mac OS X machine

My buddy Robert Citek has been interested, over the last couple of years, in ways to kill Unix machines. In other words, he tries to create scripts that will bring *nix machines to their knees. His interest isn't malicious - he's one of the most honest guys I know - but he thinks that by understanding where the weaknesses are, it will better enable him to shore those up and turn weaknesses into strengths. Robert knows Linux really, really, really well (actually, he knows RPM-based distros really well; Debian-based distros are still something new to him), but he bought a Mac OS X laptop a year ago, so now he's focusing on ways to kill Mac OS X (which is still Unix, remember). Here's his latest report, from the CWE-LUG mailing list: <Robert's email> I was able to successfully kill my Mac last night with the following script [Scott: remove the blank lines from the script; this blog's wysiwyg keeps inserting them]: perl -le ' @foo=qw(hello) ; for (my $i ; $i<100 ; $i++) { push(@foo, @foo) || die "$i -- no more\n" ; print "$i" ; } ; print "size is $#foo" ; ' By killed I mean that without warning the Mac just turned off. When I powered on, it took a long time (probably doing an fsck) and then the time was set to January 1970. So, this was the hardest crash I have ever seen on a Unix box. So I figured this script would be a good test for ulimit (bash, ksh ; limit in tcsh, csh). But no matter what setting I used for the various ulimit options, the script kept running, sucking up more and more RAM, until I manually stopped it with a Ctrl-C. I'm curious to know if the above script kills anyone else's machines and if setting ulimit/limit options prevents it? </Robert's email> Jon, another member of the CWE-LUG list, is a big FreeBSD user, and he reported that the script did nothing on his FreeBSD box. It ran for 10 seconds or so & things slowed down, but then a warning appeared in the terminal - "Out of memory during request for 1012 bytes, total sbrk() is 535257088 bytes" - and things resumed as normal! On OpenBSD, the script ran for 4 seconds, maybe, and then gave an "Out of Memory" error, but there was no slowdown in performance. What about the rest of you out there? Try it - ON A NON-PRODUCTION MACHINE!!! - & let us know!

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Firefox is THE success story in tech right now

Don't believe me? IE's market share is dropping, dropping, dropping, & guess who's taking its place? Firefox. Microsoft's IE continues to be seen as insecure and buggy, but guess what browser has a much better security record? Firefox. Guess which browser has people asking why it's so gosh darn "compelling"? Firefox. (Note: ignore the first link in the referenced piece - it's an incredibly stupid cartoon.) What browser has folks in India, Boston, & Britain talking? Firefox. Which piece of software has reignited the browser wars, which everyone, including Microsoft, thought were over? Firefox. What's getting really super-knowledgable IT pundits to write about it? Firefox. Which browser's popularity is enabling developers to make money supporting it & writing addons for it? Firefox. What software is now at the vanguard of the FLOSS (Free, Libre, Open Source Software) movement? Heck, if you don't know that answer to that one by now, you just ain't been paying attention.

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Computing By Scott Granneman

Yellow Dog Linux 4.0 ISOs available!

I mentioned recently that Yellow Dog Linux 4.0 (runs on PowerPC machines, so you can run Linux AND Mac OS X on yer Mac) was out, but the ISOs weren't available at that time. Now they are. Terra Soft's FTP site FTP mirrors BitTorrent It's gonna be 4 ISOs: 3 around 630MB each, & 1 that's only about 162MB. Have fun!

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GIMP goodness

If you're looking for great free, open source, multi-platform (Windows, Linux, Mac OS) image editing software, then look no further: you need the GIMP (which stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program). Most folks describe the GIMP as "open source Photoshop", but that's not quite true. For instance, the GIMP doesn't yet do Pantone colors (they're owned by one company, unfortunately), so output for print is a bit limited, but for most other graphics needs, the GIMP is great & always getting better; in fact, version 2.2 is supposed to be out later this month. Here's a couple of resources for those interested in learning more about da GIMP. The GIMP Gets Ready for 2.2 "As promised, this time it didn't take another 3 years for a new stable GIMP version to be released. 8 months after GIMP 2.0 hit the road, GIMP 2.2 is almost done. The GIMP developers released 2.2-pre2 today and unless any major problems show up, the GIMP 2.2.0 release is going to follow later this month. The GIMP Wiki has a comprehensive list of new features in GIMP 2.2 and here are some screenshots of the development version." (Scott's note: follow this links in the Slashdot piece to find out those new features & see screenshots.) GIMP 2.2 A list of some new features you can expect in the next release of the GIMP, with particular focus on the new GIMP Animation Plug-in, which allows you to edit movies. Wheee! Script-fu Tutorial (Scott's note: Script-Fu is a programming language for the GIMP that allows you to script actions.) "This is a short tutorial in Script-Fu programming. I'll try to give a short intro into the world of Script-Fu and explain how basic things works. We will create a complete script-fu step-by-step. The goal is to have a Script-Fu, which produces a metal style text. I assume, that the reader has a basic knowlege of Scheme, which is the programming language that is used in Script-Fu." (Scott's note: Note that this tutorial was written for GIMP 1.1.24, which is old, but it may still be useful. Also note that Tiny-fu is eventually going to replace Script-Fu.) Gimp-Python "Gimp-Python is a package that allows people to write plug-ins for The Gimp in the Python programming language rather than Script-Fu (Scheme), Perl, Tcl or C." (Scott's note: yes, it appears that this is also for GIMP 1, but I think it still works.) Other GIMP posts: Web site companion to the book Essential GIMP for Web Professionals Super-short intro to the GIMP

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Firefox & Mac OS X

Sure, Mac OS X has Safari, and Safari is quite good ... but Firefox also runs on Mac OS X. Here's a couple of articles for Mac users running Firefox. Make Firefox look more OS X-y with Firefoxy From Blogzilla: "Making Firefox widgets Apple-icious just got easier, thanks to Amake. His utility, Firefoxy, applies Kevin Gerich's Pretty Widgets using drag-and-drop." Firefox 1.0 to Gain More Mac OS X Features "On the Mac side of things, Goodger said Firefox 1.0 uses Apple's QuickDraw technology to draw to the screen, while the Windows version uses GDI. However, he said the next big move for the Mac version of Firefox would be away from QuickDraw." (They're moving to Quartz, btw.) And by the way - just how successful has our favorite browser been since it's release? Well, according to folks at the Mozilla Foundation, it was downloaded 1,000,000 times on the day it was released. Hoohah!

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Technology

Technology By Scott Granneman

The media covers Firefox; or, links to collections of links

The release of our favorite web browser hasn't gone unnoticed by the media; in fact, many fine publications provided their readers with several articles on Firefox. If you're lookin' to find a surfeit of Firefox, you've come to the right place, matey. eWeek These guys went hog-freakin'-wild with the Firefox coverage. Jeeminy! Mozilla Launches Firefox 1.0 Just the facts, ma'am. Firefox 1.0 Lives Up to Hype The review. Short summary: he loves it! "[T]he hype is well-deserved. During tests, we found Firefox 1.0 to be extremely intuitive, with probably the most minimal learning curve imaginable. In addition, the Linux and Mac OS X versions of Firefox are functionally identical to those on Windows, making Firefox an excellent cross-platform solution." Firefox Flaws Flagged, Fixed "According to information released by Mozilla, multiple security holes have been plugged in all beta versions of Firefox to correct flaws that could lead to security bypass, exposure of sensitive data, privilege escalation and DoS (denial of service) attacks." Firefox and Beyond: Mozilla President Browses the Future A lengthy interview with the Mozilla Foundation's president. Definitely worth reading. Mozilla: No Google Browser in the Works They're not. So quit asking, k? CNET News.com And the winner for most articles goes to ... CNET! One page links to all the articles provided by News.com - tks, CNET! Mozilla releases Firefox 1.0 "After 19 months of development, two name changes and more than 8 million downloads of its preview release, the Firefox browser is finally turning 1.0." Google stars in Firefox's new browser I was surprised by this myself - Google is now the default home page in Firefox! Review of Firefox 1.0 "Move over, Internet Explorer. Feature-studded and secure Mozilla Firefox 1.0 is a safer, better choice for Internet browsing. 8.0 out of 10" Firefox maps its next moves "The coals are still hot from Tuesday morning's Firefox 1.0 release, but the Mozilla Foundation is already cooking up its next moves to challenge Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser dominance." Firefox 1.0 fans clog Mozilla site I noticed this too - you couldn't get the Firefox Extensions page to load for days after Firefox came out. Microsoft getting nervous about Firefox? "Has Firefox reignited the browser war? CNET News.com has incontrovertible evidence that Microsoft is once again on war footing. The proof? After years of neglecting Internet Explorer, killing its standalone version and satisfying reporters' requests for interviews with terse, prepared statements, Microsoft representatives on Monday took the unusual step of placing an unsolicited call to News.com in anticipation of the Firefox 1.0 release." Microsoft says Firefox not a threat to IE "Just days after the launch of open-source browser Firefox 1.0, Microsoft executives defended Internet Explorer, saying it is no less secure than any other browser and doesn't lack any important features." This was also discussed on Slashdot. British Our friends across the pond have some good stuff to say about Firefox. The Guardian: "Hunting with Firefox" "Firefox deserves to succeed, but even if it does not it will have highlighted the astonishing success of open source, well known inside the web community but not outside. Among other services, it has its own operating system (Linux), an acclaimed alternative to Microsoft Office (OpenOffice), and its own encyclopedia (Wikipedia) with a million entries. The open source movement has become one of globalisation's unexpected treasures." BBC News: "Firefox browser takes on Microsoft" "Microsoft's Internet Explorer has a serious rival in the long-awaited Firefox 1.0 web browser, which has just been released." vnunet: "Mozilla Firefox 1.0" "The best browser around. Period." (Scott: it don't get much more succint, do it?) International Firefox isn't just for Americans (or Brits) - it's a worldwide phenomenon. More International Media Reports on Mozilla Firefox 1.0 Speak Portugeuse, German, or French? Wanna find out what folks in Brazil, Germany, or France are hearing about Firefox? Then check this one out. (For more from France, also see FireFox, le petit panda qui veut grignoter Explorer) Aljazeera.Net The English language web site of the Arab TV station reports that "Mozilla's Firefox renews browser war" Australia: "Open-source browser set for challenge" "A new front has been opened in the long-dormant browser war, with an open-source program called Firefox aiming to challenge Microsoft's dominant Internet Explorer. But Microsoft Australia says there is no threat and Internet Explorer users do not want features that Firefox offers." Newswires Newspapers & other publications often just take AP & other pieces & just run them. In Firefox's case, that's cool, 'cause the wire services have good things to say about it. AP: "Firefox Browser Alternative to Microsoft" "Web surfing has belonged almost exclusively to Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)'s Internet Explorer ever since it buried Netscape's pioneering browser. That doesn't seem to have bothered the developers of the Mozilla Firefox, a feisty new kid on the block that's worth a serious look." Reuters: "Firefox Browser, a Microsoft Rival, Fully Released" "'Open source projects have a much higher standard,' said Chris Hofmann, director of engineering at the Mozilla Foundation. 'It's the engineers that actually build the software that label it as done.'" American technology publications The techies weighs in. Wired: "Firefox 1.0 Makes Flashy Debut" "A decade ago, geeks greeted the release of Netscape's new web browser with great anticipation. A similar sense of expectation surrounded each subsequent version of Netscape Navigator and, to a much lesser extent, updates to Microsoft's upstart Internet Explorer. All that excitement came to an end three or four years ago, when Microsoft seemed to have won the so-called browser wars and promptly stopped adding new features to IE. But it was dj vu all over again Tuesday, complete with swamped servers and abused refresh keys, with the release of Firefox 1.0. " Linux Today: "Quick Look: Firefox 1.0 is End Users' Dream Machine" "... this is one heavy-duty browser. And coupled with some excellent extensions, this is by far the best browser I have ever used. But while everybody says that, I wanted to highlight an aspect of Firefox that I don't think many have touched upon. I'm talking about the installer. This installer is simply one of the best installation routines I have seen on any platform. It's fast, it's robust, and by golly it gets the job done right." TechTarget: "Firefox's 'Peter Parker' complex" "In both the films and the comics, Spiderman's alter-ego Peter Parker was given some advice from his uncle: 'With great power comes great responsibility.' With more than 8 million downloads recorded for its preview version alone, an irrefutable trend exists with the Web browser Firefox, Mozilla Foundation's most popular creation: it's on fire." PC World: "Mozilla Mulls Desktop Search Features for Firefox Browser" "Having launched the much-awaited version 1.0 of the Firefox browser on Tuesday, the Mozilla Foundation is busy planning future enhancements to the open-source product, including the possibility of integrating it with a variety of desktop search tools. The foundation also wants to place Firefox in PCs through original equipment manufacturer (OEM) deals with PC hardware vendors and to continue to sharpen the product's pop-up ad-blocking technology." (Slashdot also discusses this article.) Slashdot: "Firefox 1.0 Released" 1109 comments ... & counting. Mainstream American media The non-tech press has things to say to - & Mom & Pop will probably read these articles! CNN: "New browser to challenge Microsoft" "Microsoft's dominance of the Web browser market faces a fresh challenge on Tuesday with the release of the final version of Mozilla's Firefox browser." L.A. Times: "Goliath's Newest David" "Six years after Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer defeated Netscape Navigator in the signature fight of the online age, a direct descendant of the pioneering Web browser is exacting a small measure of revenge." ClickZ: "Crazy Like a Firefox" The Firefox community from a professional marketer's perspective: "Call it open-source marketing, or viral/buzz/word-of-mouth/community/advocacy/guerilla marketing. Some dub it 'consumer control,' the theme of this week's AD:TECH. Whatever you call it, and as marketers blah-blah-blah about it, it's out there happening ??? and the results are stunning. Firefox really is a kick-ass browser." I love that woman! Whew! Yes, this is my only post for today - this post has taken hours!

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Technology

Technology By Scott Granneman

Firefox 1.0 released!

After a long gestation time, Firefox 1.0 is finally out. Fly, little fox, fly! Go get it!

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Big ol’ collection of Firefox articles, part tres

To cap the day off, since tomorrow is the day our boy Firefox is supposed to come out, here's the 3rd collection of Firefox articles, coming, of course, after part 1 & part 2. Can Mozilla Beat Godzilla? "An increasing number of individuals, businesses and governments are beginning to see the advantage of open source software. ... I have no idea whether Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates stays up at night worrying about his empire but, if he does, he may very well be losing sleep over the Mozilla Foundation." Mozilla vs. Microsoft "Although increasing defection from Internet Explorer isn't a reason for Microsoft shareholders to panic, it does represent a slow slippage in users' trust. Meanwhile, as the hacker community's favorite foe, Microsoft has got its work cut out for it as far as making users feel secure again — and eventually, that could be a threat to the top line." I Love Firefox But Can't Escape Explorer "If I want to use the online banking services, I have to use IE. Why? No good reason I can fathom. Heaven knows IE isn't more secure than Firefox (oh, were it so!). I suspect they simply didn't bother to check other browsers when they built their site. Then again, customer service and banks often don't seem to go hand in hand." Firefox aims for 10 percent of Web surfers "Netscape open-sourced the source code to 'harness the power' of the open-source community. Now, six years later, this vision is finally coming into fruition. To get over the finish line we needed a non-profit organisation, which allows us to build new partnerships and do innovative marketing." Grassroots campaign for Firefox "Later this month or early next, the New York Times will run a full-page ad for a free, open source Web browser called Firefox, which continues to make inroads against Microsoft's Internet Explorer." (Scott's note: this links to page that offers a 5-minute Real Audio file of the radio interview on Future Tense, a public radio tech show that's always worth checking out.)

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Big ol’ collection of Firefox articles, part deux

I just posted a list of articles about our favorite web browser, due to be released tomorrow, and now here's some more. Get busy reading, dang it! (And remember - you may see some stuff in here about Firefox's kissin' cousins, Thunderbird and Mozilla, as well.) Mozilla Firefox: It is Microsoft vs. Online community "November 9 is the D-Day when Firefox announces its presence to whole world, through a full-page advertisement in a major newspaper in USA and other online campaigns that they are ready to rock Microsoft. If they can succeed in upstaging Internet Explorer by dropping its usage numbers even more, maybe the next giant step would be to launch Linux in a similar ways!" Firefox Is a Worthy Adversary "I can't think of a very good reason for people who are, for whatever reason, unhappy with IE not to use Firefox. And if it makes you feel better to make some sort of an anti-Microsoft statement through browsing, go for it." (Scott here. David Coursey in the above article has obviously never heard of a little thing called "Firefox extensions", so his bitching isn't entirely correct). Microsoft's Worst Nightmare "Firefox, a free open-source browser that loads twice as fast as Internet Explorer, has already been downloaded 2.7 million times, and it has siphoned off nearly 2 percent of Microsoft's browser market share, now at 93.7 percent. Along the way, Firefox is fast becoming the browser of choice for anyone fed up with all the nasty things polluting the Web (pop-ups and viruses and spyware, oh my!)." FireFox is Looking Foxy "... you might be forgiven if you got the sense that this thing just might be for real and could very well slice into Microsoft's share of the browser market. Considering that IE has been dormant for at least two years, and might be dormant for another two years until the next Windows is released, it's beginning to seem that FireFox has some real momentum." Google to back Microsoft browser foe? "The Firefox browser is looking for allies in its quest to challenge Microsoft's dominant Internet Explorer and Web users are buzzing about a potential link-up with search company Google."

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Big ol’ collection of Firefox articles, part 1

Firefox is supposed to be released tomorrow, and in honor of the big day, here's a list of articles about our favorite web browser (and yes, some of them are critical of the browser, and that's OK - reasoned criticism is good). Oh yeah - you might notice a few mentions of Thunderbird and Mozilla in there too. Hey, it's all one big happy family. The Fox Cometh "The source of this momentum isn't really very hard to find. FireFox is a fantastic browser, with an eye on security and compelling user tools like tabs, a download manager and a team of seasoned developers behind it. In addition, because it runs on multiple platforms, it has given the Linux market a world class browser to work with. " Give me Firefox, or give me death "In the minds of nearly 10,000 web-surfing proletarians the iron fist is Microsoft, and the way to liberty is an open-source browser called Firefox. Taking a page from the social action playbooks of Middle East peaceniks and political activists, a band of Firefox fans pooled their money to take out a full-page ad in the New York Times. " Comparing Mozilla Thunderbird, Firefox to IE, peers "IT pros have peppered SearchEnterpriseLinux.com with questions about the two new Mozilla offerings. In turn, we asked our resident expert Nigel McFarlane to answer the ones that popped up most often." Firefox, bah humbug "Most here would admit that IE does a better job of inferring proper behavior from incomplete or improperly-used HTML. That's a GOOD thing, and Firefox would do well to learn the same lesson." (Scott here - I disagree with the above sentiment, but I'm including it so you can read his opinion.)

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