Grow up!

A twenty-something OSNews author writes about the UNIX security hype. His contention is that no matter how secure a *nix-based system, at the end of the day it is rendered insecure by still allowing a user’s home directory to be deleted in the event of a malicious code attack, i.e. a virus or malware of any other form, even if it preserves the system files. It goes on to compare *nix-based OS with Windows – that it is no different since the more important user files can be affected anyway.

First, nobody says that *nix-based system are 100% secure. Second, having *nix on the core of your OS does not automatically mean that you do not need to backup your data. Third, while the most important part of your computer system is your data, the system is also very critical in ensuring that your data is always available.

Hypothetically, let us say that the author gets his wish and Mac OS Z changes its notion of security and ensures that user data are always kept secure. Virus named OSNews gets launched and it affects Mac OS Z’s system rendering the system unusable.

Question now is – which is easier to do – restoring backed-up personal data or re-installing the entire system?

Is there still hope?

Over at the PLUG mailing list, one of the topics being discussed is the talk of Ubuntu founder, Mark Shuttleworth, to the government CIOs yesterday. Mark Shuttleworth’s pitch to the government to support Open Source may have fallen to deaf ears as far as the majority of those in the PLUG mailing lists are concerned. These come from the fact that some of them have tried to help government agencies streamline their IT operations and budget by providing Open Source solutions only to be shot down by some government bureacrats incorrectly citing some bogus technical merits of some proprietary solutions!

Is there still hope? I still believe that there is. However, I do admit that it is not a pretty picture as well since I do know that there are people “in power” who are just plain and simple dumb-asses when it comes to procurement.

My take on this, let’s all try to counter these bad asses with good deeds and hopefully, somehow, somewhere, those good deeds will have its effect felt all the way up to Malacanang!

Unbouncing the addresses

Don’t you just hate it when services that you expect to work don’t? That is how I feel everytime I check my Yahoogroups for my classes – first thing to check is how many addresses have their bouncing status set. It has been several days since I posted about it but no improvement still.

I wonder what it will take for action to be done… a formal complaint perhaps? Maybe I’d create a survey to see how many folks are affected by unreliable services? Maybe I am just impatient. I apologize but for stuff like these, I am very impatient. I want immediate results since I know that the service is critical. Oh well.

Maybe I complain a lot for a service that is a privilege than a right. I am not paying for it anyway but heck, for the salary I am getting it should a guaranteed privilege! Shesh!

Semicon, equip your stores!

This afternoon, my wife, son and I went to the SM North branch of Semicon to have the charger of her Siemens mobile phone fixed. The charger won’t charge her mobile phone even if tested with my father’s mobile phone. My father’s mobile phone charger works on my wife’s mobile phone (ergo, my wife’s charger is busted). Anyway, we went there and was attended by a certain Sharon. After explaining the problem to her, she asked for the charger and the mobile phone to test it. (Semicon sells Siemens phones, they should have a unit for testing or demo). It took her an annoyingly long time to see if the phone is getting charged – we found out that they don’t have an adapter! Shesh!

After finally getting an adapter and testing the charger, Sharon said, “We need to test your mobile phone with our charger!”

What on earth was she thinking? The problem is with the charger and not our mobile phone. We already told her that the mobile phone charges using another unit’s charger!

After we got pissed, she told us that they will just forward it to the Siemens repair center in Ortigas! Shesh!  Anyway, we were asked to have our receipts photocopied and then she processed our request.

Oh well – two weeks to have it diagnosed… I wonder how long it will take to have it repaired!

When will you learn?

More and more sites from UP are getting exposed for their vulnerabilities. I do not know who is/are to blame but I hope that by the time this goes to press, so to speak, the vulnerability has been fixed.

Wake up, people! Our sites are starting to be a prime target for crackers! 😀

Unreliable service pisses me off!

I have been using Yahoo! Groups since it was still eGroups. In fact, with the mailing lists that I have created and managed, I even had the opportunity to earn some money off of it – thanks, eGroups! 🙂

Anyway, it comes as a natural transition that the same services will be used for my classes in the university. Although there is the UVLE, I still find Yahoo! Groups sufficient for my needs. However, to make sure that members of my lists are from the University, I made it my policy to require subscribers to use their University e-mail addresses — even to the point of having them sign-up and activate it. Believe me, my students in 2001 did not even have active University e-mail accounts until they enrolled in my class. They all use either yahoo or hotmail (yuck!).

This semester, however, I am starting to regret having this policy. The effort of having my students’ accounts reactivated every so often is taking its toll. Mailing list messages are all bouncing back to the Yahoo! Groups servers! Now students have an excuse of not being able to read my announcements and other instructions on time!

It has reached a point wherein I no longer use the University’s e-mail services as my primary e-mail account because it is unreliable! E-mail sent to that address gets forwarded automatically – not without delay, of course!

I know some of the reasons behind these problems but I just cannot figure out why it has not been a priority. New servers and more storage space are available – it is just a matter of making it priority! I know that someone is in-charge of it but how can he/she work on it if there are other tasks assigned to him/her? Pull him/her out of his/her current assignments and make him/her devote all his/her time attending to these critical services – but that is just me… I don’t exactly know what is happening behind the scenes, of course. 😛

One thing is true, though. Do not rely on your company or school e-mail services unless you plan on staying there forever. I am glad that I have other more prestigious forwarding addresses from IEEE and ACM. Heck, I even have my e-mail address from the University of Leeds! Make them all point to your Gmail account and you have 2GB (and rapidly increasing) of e-mail space for free. I also have my .Mac paid subscription in addition to the above.

Offline…

I am typing this entry offline using MarsEdit. PLDT decided to mess up my DSL connection and now I could not connect. I just got disconnected at 10AM and til now, am still trying to connect. I already re-started the DSL modem twice by turning the power on and off but still nothing. PLDT DSL Customer Service asked me to unplug it and plug it in — please tell me that it has a different effect than simply turning off the router.

Darn! Just when I need to get online at 11 for a con-call with UP and Apple. I just hope that they get this connection restored asap.

Update: Restored at 11:04. I hope that this is stable.

Hate you!

Just tried to buy a video from Google’s video store and it popped up a notice saying that it is not available in my country!!

Argh and double argh! This is like Yahoo! video as well. I wish that there is a way to be able to purchase these videos, too.

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What do you think these are?

My wife, my two sons and I went to Tokyo, Tokyo this morning to have lunch. My wife and I ordered Shrimp Tempura each and ordered a Chicken Katsu for the two kids to share. In addition, I ordered this

What do you think these are? Actually, this is the second serving already – not that I ordered 2 but the first one was burnt on the sides and still a bit uncooked at the middle. Weird, huh? Well, it was supposed to look like this

After two tries, I asked to see the manager of that branch and asked for a refund. I do not know if their cook will ever be able to make it correctly but I was expecting it to look like the one on their menu.

Since I am posting this rant about Tokyo, Tokyo, I might as well say that the Potato balls (from the Chicken Katsu) were cold, the Yakisoba (it might be cold to start with but am just not used to it) and the veggie salad that they serve (with the Tempura and Katsu) were cold as well.

So, if you are anywhere near the vicinity of a Tokyo, Tokyo restaurant, unless there is no other alternative, I’d recommend that you stay away from it! The only thing worth eating there is their Chicken Teriyaki. 🙂