What Does "Durability" Mean, Exactly?

Has anyone noticed a trend in electronics lately? No, I don't mean the tendency to make things smaller. No, not the switch from silver to black, or black to white, or whatever. I mean the lack of durability in modern devices. Things today just don't last as long. Really! Five years ago, one could buy a laptop, for example, and reasonably expect to be using the same laptop, the same way, with the same routine (provided one's requirements were the same) ten years later. Now? You're lucky if your laptop lasts a couple of years. Things fall apart all too quickly these days.

Take this Gateway tablet I have from school as an illustration. I got it from the main office about 13 months ago. Ten months ago, I noticed the plastic on the single hinge in the center beginning to deform, like there was a lot of stress on the joint. A month later, I could see an actual crack in the plastic. Eight months ago, the little piece of plastic bridging the gap in the top of the screen where the latch hooks in (an overly complicated mechanism, but that's another topic) broke out. (The thing wouldn't stay closed if I tried to carry it under my arm, and hasn't since. Only a magnet keeps it closed when it's on a table.) Now, after the last eight damage-free months, the spring mechanism that keeps the tablet pen in its carrier slot seems to have given out. Pushing the pen in and releasing it, instead of resulting in a click and a secure stylus, just kind of makes it sit there in its holster, ready to fall out if I try to carry the machine somewhere.

All this breakage makes me wonder if I should be performing daily backups of all my locally-stored data and programs. After all, the hard drive could be next. Why we are expected to go for $2,000 computers that we'll have to replace in a year or two due to ridiculous physical damage, I don't know. I just wonder how long consumers will put up with these fragile goods before realizing that things should be better, that they shouldn't have to change MP3 players and cell phones every year or two. It's probably only a matter of time, but it will be a long wait.

Email Job Offers: Are They Real?

Ever since I got an email account at the University of Minnesota, I have received occasional offers from people claiming to be foreign princes or artists needing U.S. representatives or business contacts or the like. The request all kinds of information, such as name, address, nationality (strange, since they seem to know already I live in the USA), country (again, they already seem to know), marital status, occupation, and phone number. Since I have never, ever given out the address, I tend to wonder about these offers coming from anonymous Hotmail accounts registered under the United States' .com domain. I assume these messages to be spam, and mark them as such in my Gmail account. I also report them as phishing attacks, because they usually ask for personal information as described above.

The question, though, is whether students using the U of M webmail system or their own POP client will know enough to realize that these messages are probably fake. Phishing test results, stated in statistics I have read, do not score the general public as being too bright; often, people will mistake fake websites for legitimate ones and divulge their secrets, thus giving the phishermen exactly what they want. I by no means believe that Google shares their list of phishing scams with random universities, and I don't even think the U of M has an anti-phishing filter on their mail. They appear to have a security hole or a user directory of some sort, though, because I am getting these messages every few weeks, even though I have never told anyone but Gmail the address of my University account (I don't use it). Hence, the situation is scary from multiple points. Should I worry more about how these spammers got my address, or the countless other students who have also had their addresses leaked and may be falling victim to these scams?

Apple Breaks Unlocked iPhones

While I haven't an iPhone, have no plans to buy one, and don't have friends who own or want to own one, I have been following the back-and-forth between hackers striving to unlock the AT&T-only device and Apple. Latest in the tennis match (or cat-and-mouse game, as PC World says) is Apple's 1.1.1 update, which removes third-party applications installed using the Jailbreak hack and bricks phones unlocked with the open-source anySIM software, which allows the use of non-AT&T SIM cards with the iPhone. Users reportedly get an error message about an unsupported SIM card, even with the AT&T card installed. It is impossible to move beyond the error.

The question here is, who's in the wrong? On the one hand, Apple's exclusive agreement with AT&T is very restrictive, considering the price of the iPhone (for $400, one should be able to use any carrier, in my opinion), but they invented the device and control the rights to its use. Software writers who develop unlocking programs might technically be infringing on intellectual property rights held by Apple; I don't know enough about the laws to be sure. It's really a difficult call, though I personally lean toward the right of the individual to use the carrier of one's choice. Devices such as the HP iPAQ phones and Apple iPhone that are tied to a specific carrier tend to turn me off, for the simple reason that I can't choose whose network to sign up with. HP restricts you to T-Mobile, while Apple's limitation is to AT&T, but both are nonetheless exclusive agreements, and, aside from the fact that my family happily uses Verizon Wireless, I do not wish to be forced into business with one company or the other.

Apple's statement of obligation earlier this month regarding preventing people from breaking into the iPhone's network policies and application restrictions especially surprises me. Aside from being the first time Steve Jobs has officially stated the policy, it seems draconian from a free-speech standpoint. Open-source software does not stand to benefit anyone financially, nor does it pose a threat to Apple. If any corporation is threatened by the unlocking hacks, it is AT&T, which stands to lose iPhone business to other carriers if the device can be successfully unlocked. It seems that AT&T should be going after the hackers, not Apple. But since Apple developed the phone, I guess it's only logical they should support their exclusive carrier in maintaining business, right? Maybe...

Goodbye, Old Reader Interface

Looking at the settings pages for Google Reader, Google has apparently dropped the option to use the original interface. Formerly available on the "Preferences" tab, the checkbox to "Revert to the previous version of Google Reader" has disappeared. My guess is, with the upgrades they've added like drop-down menus, custom-styled buttons, and search, the Reader team decided that they wouldn't bother integrating new features into an old, probably buggy, interface, designed before they even added Trends. Adding a search box, a Trends link, and all the subscription tools would be hard work, and it's likely that not many people still used the interface. The new one looks so much like Gmail, anyway; who'd want to use that old convoluted thing? Personally, I like the new interface, but when will they get around to rewriting the interface on the iGoogle gadget?

Google Docs Reviewed (Long Version)

As a kind of follow-up to my last short review of Google Docs, I've decided to write a lengthier review that compares the pros and cons of using Docs versus desktop Word or Writer.

Overall, the capabilities of Google Docs are pretty impressive, and it's sure a far cry from the text-only editors included in MediaWiki, Instiki, TiddlyWiki, etc. Considering that it's just some lines of JavaScript (OK, a lot of lines...), it can do quite a bit. Supported by the server back-end, Docs can import photos, generate charts, edit tables, and track revisions, not to mention a bunch of other stuff. While these are impressive capabilities, there is an equally lengthy list of what it can't do.

Even existing features have deficiencies. For example, when you compare revisions, even a document with three or four authors will often have only one change color, even if changes were made by multiple authors; they all get rolled into one color, despite the list of author colors at the top of the comparison screen. Also, chart generation is limited in Docs to creating dataset spreadsheets, creating charts, and importing a saved PNG file, requiring that you a) have temporary local disk access and b) don't put sensitive data in charts you temporarily save to public computers. (Admittedly, putting sensitive data in Google Docs may not be the best idea, but that's just Google; public computers are used by who knows how many different people, not all of them trustworthy and honest.)

Another point worth noting is the absence of border controls in the table editor dialogs. While you can change the background colors of the cells individually, by row, and by column, it does not appear to support selecting arbitrary groups of cells and editing them at the same time; selecting the "Change cell..." option modifies only the current cell, even if multiple cells are outlined in blue from Ctrl + click selection. These advanced controls are available from the "Edit HTML" pseudo-tab (it displays as a tab only while active, and as a plain link when inactive), but who wants to dig through complicated table HTML in what's supposed to be a WYSIWYG editor? If the desktop application is available, it's easier to create the table in there, format the borders, merge necessary cells, and set formatting in the application, and then paste it into Docs (though some extremely advanced techniques are simply impossible, regardless of what you do).

Now, for the highlights. I may have downplayed Docs' usefulness by criticizing it so much already, but I really want to praise Google for what they've built (bought?). Despite the limitations, Docs is immensely useful for the frequent traveler, especially if the only formatting needed is non-existent or very basic. While Docs doesn't support margins (in the interface; some will paste to inline CSS from apps like Word), many people just want to type, including me, mostly. I used to use a lot of margins in my homework, but Docs has helped remove the distraction of formatting and made me focus on the actual work. Instead of making every blank paragraph 12-point Times New Roman with no indent and setting my answer paragraphs (spaced with one blank line on top and bottom) to 0.5 inch indent with an additional half-inch first-line indent, I just type. In Arial, or Courier, or Times, or whatever font I'm given; I just let Docs set the basic formatting and I do the writing.

As for traveling, I was on the road for two or three weeks at the end of the summer, one of which overlapped with the start of the school year, and I didn't have my computer. Simple solution: I used Docs. Now that I have my computer back, I don't want to go back to Word; Docs is more fun to work with, and it saves a window space on my taskbar (since my browser's always open anyway). And I can work on assignments with friends, collaborate on unrelated stuff, or even ask my parents for help over the Internet, and they don't have to stare over my shoulder/steal my spot; they can just load the assignment in another browser.

I can see more improvements coming, now that Google has launched their presentation app, and I truly believe that Google will continue developing their suite of services, and that they will keep making my life, and those of millions of other people, better. Until they add more formatting support, I'll just keep Word for posterity.

World Trade Center: Alternate Collapse Theory

I found a video on Google Video (originally posted on Google Video UK) through comments on another film that contradicts the currently accepted explanations for the collapse of the three World Trade Center buildings on September 11, 2001. What follows is an aggregation of my several comments, which had to be separated due to Google's comment length limits.

While I applaud the uploader of this video for taking the initiative and posting the footage, this can't possibly be true. Most of the reasons given for the impossibility of the buildings coming down as a result of the fires could indeed happen in the currently accepted version of events.

For example, this professor Griffin states that you can't take a concrete block, drop it from the height of the towers, and watch it pulverize. He says it won't happen. Yet the concrete in the buildings wasn't just falling; it was falling, banging into an increasing mass of other concrete, and getting fractured on the long way down, eventually turning into dust from the constant impacts of hitting additional floors.

Next, the steel columns. He states that they "conveniently" fractured into 30-foot sections, ready to be loaded onto a truck. The beams were bolted together when the buildings were constructed, from sections that arrived [drum roll] on trucks. So when the towers collapsed, the bolts failed from the excessive stress and the steel beams broke apart into their original lengths. Nothing we have heard about the construction of the towers suggests they were welded.

Pools of molten steel would have resulted from fire, not explosives. Admittedly, the symmetrical collapse of Building 7 is a bit suspicious, but chance is chance, and ideal situations can result from random events, however improbably.

The absence of detailed reports and reconstructions could be construed as suspicious, but is likely a product of post-disaster shock; it is probable that nobody wanted to do an analysis after the event due to the emotional stress.

Most of the debunking evidence ignores the fact that the two aircraft ejected massive amounts of jet fuel into the buildings. Regardless of the validity of the "pancake theory," the office contents were not the major heat sources in the fires.

The power-downs and evacuation drills are normal events for any large building; schools, for example, perform drills as many as two to three times per year. Powering everything down could be safety precautions for major maintenance to critical building systems.

Overall, there is a lot to think about, but not really a reason to doubt the current explanations.

Gmail to have a New Version?

According to some research by Garett Rogers over at ZDnet, Google may be working on a new version of Gmail. He discovered some messages in the translation console that suggest they might be releasing something in the next few months. The message he found to be translated was "New version", which, although Gmail already has a "New features!" message, which it uses, is something new in itself, since there has only been one version of Gmail. This sounds promising.

Along the same lines, the next day, he discovered a couple more messages that opened the path for speculation about new features. Two, "Gears is not installed" and "Disable Local Store", hint at integration with the open-source Google Gears extension, allowing Gmail to be used offline. He also found a large message that contained a bunch of constants and message strings with values appearing to belong in a new feature that allows users to view activity on their account going on elsewhere. Strings include: "Last account activity", "at IP", "This account is open in", "other locations", "This account is currently being used in", and "Details". (I've omitted messages like " ".) These text snippets sound promising if they are indeed indicative of a new version of Gmail with new features like offline use and account activity monitoring. I'll be watching for more news.

Cisco Clean Access Agent? What the Heck is That?!

Welcome to the wonderful world of paranoia. In its infinite wisdom, Augsburg College, a place I will be going often this year, has begun to require (not suggest, not recommend, require) a program called "Cisco Clean Access Agent." Fortunately, it only applies to Windows computers (well, that makes it better...), but you can't access the network without it. Actually, you can, but it's only a limited network that allows ports 80 (HTTP) and 443 (HTTPS) exclusively. No chat, no gaming, no POP, no nothing. Only surfing. Period. What's wrong here?

The thing is, I don't want to have another startup application running all the time just so I can access the Augsburg network a couple times a week. And I don't want to start it before connecting and exit before I leave; that's just too many inconvenience clicks. I wouldn't mind it having to be installed on all of their equipment; that's their business, and that would always be connected to their network. I do mind them forcing it on me. Now, if I lived at Augsburg, it would be one thing; my computer would be there 95% of the time. But I don't live at Augsburg; I live at my house, with its own, non-Cisco network (Linksys, thank you!), and the software would just waste RAM and CPU usage (plus disk space) most of the time. The only reason I come is because my mom takes classes and I'm sometimes stuck. So I work on the 'Net. I never had to do this before.

Last year they added authentication to the network, instead of just encrypting the login. Now this. I have no idea what data this application is transmitting to the authentication server, nor can I use anything without it. This is over the wired network. The wireless network doesn't yet require the agent, but it probably will in January. For now, I'll use the wireless to avoid having to run the agent, but I'll probably be forced anyway come next year. Ah, progress... Harrumph.

MediaWiki Developers are Quick

I submitted a MediaWiki bug this morning (bug 11438) and it was patched in SVN under 30 minutes later. That's just, wow. Of course, I have to either patch my current local installation or download a new SVN version (which might have unknown issues that will be fixed before the next release), but by hook or by crook it'll be fixed in the next release. Special thanks to Niklas Laxström for the quick fix!

A few details: I was trying out a new extension I installed that generates trees from lists and has expandable/collapsible nodes using JavaScript, and tried using it with the experimental Live Preview function in MediaWiki. I noticed the tree was getting cut off, so I reported a bug to the extension's developer on the extension's talk page at MediaWiki.org. After going back and forth for a few days, testing various issues, I finally decided it wasn't his problem, given the test results both of us were getting. I thanked him for his tests and tried something in my wiki (namely pasting a long article from Wikipedia, and then also trying to preview 50 paragraphs of "Lorem ipsum" text), noting that these were also cut off. I reported the bug to Bugzilla and it was patched just like that.

Whoops, gotta run; I have a message from Bugzilla that probably has patching instructions...

Deezer On-Demand Music (Formerly Blogmusik)

There is something to be said about the digital age we live in. Up until a few weeks ago, I had only seen a couple good music sites, not the least of which was Pandora, and never saw one that played exactly what you wanted, when you wanted it. Now that's changed. I saw a posting on Lifehacker last month that showed me the newly upgraded Deezer.com (formerly called Blogmusik) and how it could help me find on-demand music. So far it's had most of what I've searched for, though I have had to tweak the search terms more than a few times. What can you say; it's not Google. But it does play music pretty well, and some of the comments on the original Lifehacker post suggest you can save music from it. And you can upload your own MP3s (sadly, not WMAs, which is what I've got) to share with the world. Meanwhile, I'll read through the comments on Lifehacker to look at some of the alternatives people have mentioned.

Extra Content, Extra Bandwidth, Irritated Users

This is another course-related post, though it can be applied to the Flash-enabled Internet as a whole. A major problem these days in Flash animations is the overuse of the Flash file for mundane things like fade effects, which really don't add much to textbook-like content like courses. My accounting course is particularly guilty of this. Many times through the material, an animation will offer to help me understand something. The fade isn't really that bad, and sometimes it's handy, like when adding things item-by-item to a list of accounts, but what really burns me is the unnecessary voice narration that repeats the "offertory" text and then cuts out, serving no actual useful purpose. If the animation is headed, "This animation will help you to understand debits and credits," I don't need some random guy reading that aloud for no reason. Especially if he doesn't explain the rest of the animation.

People say that the Internet tubes are clogged these days because of all the video downloads and other multimedia activities. Useless audio information is another contributor. It does increase the file size of SWF files, and makes them take longer to load. I am fortunate to use broadband Internet nearly every day (like 364 days a year), but those of my classmates stuck on dial-up may have to wait minutes for the audio to load and the movie to be ready. I'm not really that fast of a reader, but the amount of text usually put before these is quite short most of the time, and takes no longer than 20-30 seconds to read. There is a reason for animations, and that is if you want to have games or narrated videos/slideshows presented on the Internet (though I have even had issues with correctly-used animations in the past such as in the AP courses I took last year); they are not for clogging dial-up connections with useless vain narrations.

More Inter-Team Communication Issues

As I commented before, online courses are often riddled with inconsistencies resulting from poor communication between text content teams and others, such as media and programming. I have more examples. The past couple days saw me studying my accounting course intensively, even bringing in a parent to help. Together, we discovered a plethora of errors, all in one section of the unit, and all related to pictures and animations. While the text was always correct, the images and animated examples often contradicted the text or just plain confused you with misplaced signs, misnamed accounts, missing numbers, extra numbers, you-name-it. I took extensive notes, but one animation forced me to give up detailed record-keeping and just say "thoroughly check the whole thing" because of the sheer volume of errors in the one file. It just goes to reiterate the importance of consistency and communication, because without such, courses get too confusing and contradictory to learn anything from.

Happily Folding and BOINCing Away...

Since the other day, my computer has been happily Folding and BOINCing, in tandem, all quite well. So far, I've completed 82 frames of the 250 assigned in my Folding@home work unit, and have already submitted two for Spinhenge@home, with credit pending. Each Spinhenge unit took around 4,000 seconds of CPU time, though I have no idea how long Folding@home has been actually computing. All I know about F@H is that it takes anywhere from 20-60 minutes a frame, depending on what I'm doing (what programs are running, or if the computer is idle). I've definitely been leaving it on more, to contribute more time to the projects, though that may change; I'm considering the impact constant-on will have on a laptop hard drive, seeing as how I've already had one crash on me. Plus it uses power, and I won't be held responsible for $20 increases in the monthly electricity bill because I want to contribute free CPU time to scientific research.

I did have one problem, indirectly related to the calculations, the night before last, though. For some reason, the power jack in my laptop is having issues, and AC power will jiggle in and out sometimes multiple times a second, throwing the battery-based computation switches (I have both computation programs set to stop on battery power) into chaos. My log in BOINC is filled with "Suspending computation - on battery" and "Off battery - resuming computation" entries. The computer did turn itself off when the battery hit 3%, but it was the first time it had ever lost power while sitting next to my favorite working chair. A strange event, and one I'll watch for in the future. It lost power just after I set it down and went to bed...

BOINC Follows F@H

So, I decided that doing Folding@Home calculations wasn't enough. I found and downloaded the BOINC program from Berkeley and found three more (so far) projects to contribute to: SETI@home, Rosetta@home, and Spinhenge@home. SETI@home is pretty self-explanatory - it analyzes telescope readings for signs of life. Rosetta@home and Spinhenge@home are less obvious. Rosetta@home also folds proteins, but for a different reason than Folding@home. Spinhenge@home assists in nano-magnetic research. So just think, it could be my computer that discovers the secret to 100 TB hard drives next year. :)

Update 20:57: I have also added ABC@home, a project that searches for three-number sets in which A+B=C.

Update 21:01: Found the last project I'll add for now: Predictor@home. This project aims to predict protein structure from sequence.

I'm Officially Folding@Home (and @Work)

Lured by a recent article in PC World news, I have installed the Folding@Home program from Stanford University and begun simulating folding proteins. So far, I've completed about 1% of my first work unit, so nothing much has been accomplished yet, but I've given the program permission to use about 80% of available processor power, and it estimates completion in a little over five days (!). That means, unfortunately, more like ten or fourteen days, since this computer is off more than half the time, but progress is progress. Being part of a One Petaflop (yes, I said "Peta") computing project does wonders for one's ego; helping solve complex problems in the spare time of one's computer (and I might try convincing friends and family, too, and form a team) gives you that warm and fuzzy feeling that the world is full of cooperation and achievement, and you're a part of it.

Careless Programmers Make Frustrated Students

If you're a programmer of JavaScript, and you work for a company that develops online courses, please, please, please make sure you coordinate with your content team. Really. I've come across so many errors having to do with badly-programmed little "quizzes" within courses that could have been solved by better communication between the content and interactivity teams. Take an example from this past weekend: A "self-check" quiz (not graded, just helps students learn the material) asks that the user convert a series of measurements from one unit to another. It explicitly specifies that the numbers are not to have commas in them. Then, having dutifully entered comma-free answers, the user clicks the button to check their answers, and finds all the questions marked wrong. Why? The script was checking for answers with commas. And it marks a decimal 0.04 wrong if you attach that first zero (it wants ".04"). Strict grading like this leaves no room for a student's possible variation upon the convention. So strip out your commas, use parseInt() and parseFloat(), and make sure things work well. Don't frustrate your students; they already have enough to worry about.

Busywork, Busywork, Busywork...

Working this past weekend on my Physical Science course, I have seen nothing but busywork for the last two days (and a lot of stupid mistakes in the material). The written assignment on the Metric System I started over an hour ago is still keeping me busy, not because it's hard, but because it repeats the same exercises over and over and over again ad nauseam in a multitude of ways. I can understand the need to drive fundamental concepts like unit conversion into students' heads, but the difference between ten questions and a hundred is like the difference between nicely handing a gift to the recipient and dropping it on their head from ten stories up. One's nice, the other gets really annoying.

My point is not that assignments containing repetitive exercises be eliminated - they do help drill the concept - but that they should not be overly long. Long assignments tend to dull interest in the topic at hand, leading to students who procrastinate (doing fun and interesting things that change) instead of doing their (tedious and long) assignments. I can testify to this by mentioning the fact that I was tinkering with my local MediaWiki installation and playing games more than I was working on homework, overall. Not the best use of my time, and it was all because the assignments are so boring.

Internet Explorer 7 Doesn't Layer Properly

In the process of developing a new website I have, I discovered a major flaw in Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) that shows itself when a floated element has background-color: transparent set in the CSS properties. It appears that if the element is floated inside another element with an opaque background, that background becomes transparent also in the area under the transparent element, effectively showing the page background. I have tested this with tiled image backgrounds, however it may show up in colored backgrounds as well.

I spent about two hours tonight alternately searching for solutions on Google and discussing the problem with another designer. Neither of us came up with a solution. Nevertheless, this issue needs to be fixed, or else I will be forced to come up with some completely new colors for the site I'm designing, just so IE7 doesn't hide content that is the same color as the page background but should be on a different color.

Update: I just fixed the problem by removing an unnecessary fix CSS rule, which was actually the source of the problem.

And I Wondered Why Nobody Knows How the Internet Works

This Web design course I'm taking at school doesn't have much in the way of accuracy. In this second workshop, for example, there is a "Spotlight On: Default Pages" sidebar that states (my emphasis in italics):

Default Page

The Default page is the first page of your Web site that visitors see. This page will most likely contain links to other pages in your site.

Every Web site has a Default or Index page. When you type a Web site address in a browser, it automatically looks for a file called Default or Index. It is important to make sure that the very first page in your Web site has this title, otherwise user's browsers will not know what page to show first, and your page will not work.

Pay special attention to the italicized phrase, and the sentences surrounding it. Bad grammar aside, it contains a big mistake. The users' browsers won't know which page to show first? More like the server won't know which page to send first. The browser doesn't care what the default or index page is named; it just wants the file that corresponds to the request. The server's responsible for telling the browser what to display, not the other way around. The browser just takes what it's sent and displays it.

Another sidebar in the same section, titled "Spotlight On: Working and Published Files" states (again with my emphasis):

Working and Published Files

In this course you will create and use both working and published files. Let’s make sure you know the difference.

• Working files are Web Dwarf files that are stored in your Working folder. You will use these files to build your pages and make changes later. These are not the files people will see when they visit your site.
• Published files are HTML documents stored in your Published folder. These files will go on a server for people to view through a browser. These files can't be edited. If you want to make changes, you'll have to edit your working files and then republish them.

WHAT?!?!?! HTML files can't be edited without going through that idiotic Web Dwarf program?! What are they teaching?! The files generated by Web Dwarf (or, as I've dubbed it, Web Dumbo) may be highly complex, utilizing paragraphs of inline CSS and absolute positioning, but they can be edited with any text editor on the planet. This crazy notion that HTML files can only be created and edited by programs is an absurd thing to teach. I've written entire websites in Notepad++, without ever touching a WYSIWYG editor. And the pages were smaller for it.

The code Web Dwarf generates is monolithic. An "Invitation" page that was supposed to contain an image, a title, and a short info section, all about 1 kb of markup, turned out to be more than twice that, with two images. Why? The program converts the title elements into images. Which makes it even harder to edit the page.

This, unfortunately, represents the level of technology education present in today's world. Most high school students have typed and saved maybe one Word document, if they're lucky, by the time they graduate. Many don't even know what HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are. In this world where we can socialize, communicate, shop, and even learn online, a basic, correct understanding of how the Internet works should be required. No more errors like teaching students that browsers determine what page to display. No more telling teenagers that their HTML files can't be edited. They can be! The server determines what page you see when you ask for a particular address. If we continue like this, the Internet will likely collapse in the next century because nobody will know how it works!

Google Book Search Gets Personalization

On the official Google Book Search blog, the article My (own) library on Book Search announces the addition of a feature I'd noticed added recently, but hadn't really checked out. Turns out the "My library" feature is a list of books that you personally own (or whatever books you want to add, really). You can search just within this list when you search Books, and you can rate books, write reviews, and label them for organization.

Google's mission is to organize the world's information, and Book Search, still in beta, is a huge step toward that. Publishers, libraries, and individual authors have partnered with Google to upload their books and have them full-text indexed, making them searchable throughout the world. I used Book Search a while back to get information on a project I was doing, and now it's even more useful, because it appears to include fiction as well. (I hadn't noticed fiction books in the lists before.) Now, I'm not a super Google geek (actually, I am, but that doesn't matter), but I think this service could be almost as useful as the Froogle Wish List, which I'll blog about later. Keeping track of the books you have is a good thing to do, especially when you think of a quote from one of your books and want to find its context.

Why Installers Want You to Reboot

I found a great article over at a newly-discovered blog (thank you, Mr. Bass*), and thought I'd share the link. Though written in 2003, the article is still true, and it provides a very detailed look into the reasoning and logic behind requesting a user to reboot after an installation. Now, most of us should know by now that Windows locks in-use files, but did you know that there is a mechanism to tell Windows to overwrite a specific file on the next system reboot? Some of you might, but don't yell at me for telling you something you know. ;)

Anyway, take a look at the article on myShoggoth, and see if you find it useful. I certainly did.

* - I receive a newsletter from Steve Bass, an editor and columnist at PC World, and he recently linked to a small app, WhyReboot?, which linked to this article. Therefore, he's responsible for my discovering this, however indirectly.

More Google Docs Comments

Now that I've been using Google Docs for the better part of a week, I must say I'm pretty impressed with its capabilities. I can edit assignments from any computer, have other people review and edit them from anywhere, email directly from the composition window without saving a file to disk, and even edit at the same time as an advanced collaborator. Amazingly, Docs does not support charts, though you can insert them as PNGs exported from Google Spreadsheets, somewhat defeating the convenience. It's either dummy spreadsheet or Word time for me, because I have an assignment that requires graphs...

Other issues are just about everything with a checkbox on the Google Docs & Spreadsheets suggestion form, but I assume Google's working on those, or will eventually.

Gmail EXE Block Workaround

What I'm going to do, as a little short, is teach you to send EXE file attachments in Gmail. I've sent this workaround to many people (friends, family), but apparently have never published it in this blog. It's probably useful for programmers emailing samples of their small apps to friends and family, or for sending system-saving programs to a non-techie whose computer is dead.

The way Gmail filters attachments appears to be, at least now, by extension. This means the filter is tricked very easily. There are only a few steps to this workaround, and it's reasonably straightforward. The only potential requirement is a user on the other end savvy enough to change file extensions, just like you.

1. Locate the file in Windows Explorer (or whatever non-crappy explorer you use)
2. Hit F2 to rename
3. Change EXE to EX_
4. Browse for the file and upload it to Gmail
5. Include a brief note in the message detailing how to make the file work on the other end (for the receiving non-geek who'll ask, "How'd you evade the filter?")
   
6. Send the message

You can do the same thing with ZIP files containing EXEs: just use ZI_ instead of EX_, and include appropriate instructions. You probably already know that a lowercase ex_ will work as well as uppercase.

Like all workarounds, this one may not work if Google ever catches on; however, in the present, it works (I tested before publishing).

School Email Sucks

Today's generation of Web servers can do a lot of things: Run a store, provide static information, publish random writings (like mine), host sites anyone can edit (Wikipedia, specifically, and wikis in general), bring news updates instantly (RSS/Atom), and run schools. That's right, run schools. Built on the Apache Tomcat server base, the Blackboard Learning System has been adopted by many schools, including Augsburg College (which has since switched to Moodle, mentioned below) and the notorious Houston, MN, School District, better known as MCoOL (those are the ones I know). Other platforms like Moodle don't seem to be as popular, though Moodle, at least, runs in PHP.

I won't go into specifics -- that's a topic for another day -- but with schools like MCoOL built entirely upon Web-based activities, with no physical attendance, teachers and students need a way to communicate. Fortunately, we don't need to rely on forum-style communication within the software (though such systems are present). Email was invented years ago, before most people even used the Internet, and we can use it for this purpose. Have an assignment to send in? No problem; just attach it to an email and send it to your teacher. Need help? Ask questions via email. It's so convenient, especially with massive systems like Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, and Hotmail to support students with free, feature-rich (some more than others) email accounts.

When we get into proprietary systems, however, problems arise. MCoOL, for instance, started their own Moodle server (to provide home-brew and non-Blackboard courses), with a webmail interface on another port (port 8000). This is OK, and it's great for students just getting involved in the online world. They get an email address (admittedly, one that purges itself every year) and an easy way to get connected with their teachers, without exposing personal information to one of the giants of the Web.

When the administration tries to force geeks like me, however, into using their underpowered system, all that happens is either 1) a frustrated, begrudging geek using a horrible system or 2) an intense email war that goes on for days and eventually will probably result in 1). The situation can be exacerbated when administrators and "IT" staff (who probably have pictures of Adolf Hitler above their desks and on their computer desktops and likely wouldn't know Linus Torvalds from 50 Cent) insist upon closing the system, disabling email from non-organizational addresses, preventing filters, blocking settings pages, and generally making the system (even more) difficult. And all this under the umbrella of "It's more secure for our system."

A school that has AVG Antivirus installed on all its office computers, and uses that system's Outlook add-on vigorously, wants to attribute the "necessity" of a closed system to preventing viruses from outside emails that may probably have better virus filtering than their own. When I send a message from Gmail, for instance, the attachment is scanned for viruses on upload, and will be blocked if it's infected. You can't even send EXE files, not even within ZIP archives (though there is at least one workaround). This, combined with the scanning on the other end (evidenced by AVG taglines in the messages they send), should be enough to prevent viruses.

Gmail's not the only service with virus detection, either. Yahoo! Mail has integrated Norton Antivirus software that scans attachments, too. On every message open, just like Gmail. Even Hotmail has Trend Micro scanning (they used to use McAfee). With this plethora of free services offering antivirus scanning by default in their accounts, why insist that emails from external sources could be tainted?

GrandCentral Active

I just used a site called InviteShare to get an invitation to Google's GrandCentral service. The site enables you to ring up to six phones from one number that will never change (unless they have a carrier problem like they did a couple weeks ago). Switch phones in the middle of a call, ListenIn™ on a voicemail, record calls... So many features! And everything's free while the service is in beta period. I'd recommend it already. It has a few shortcomings (such as numbers disappearing from the availability list while searching and no contact integration with anything, even Gmail), but these will probably go away in future versions.

Google Reader Graduates from Labs

I just noticed that Google Reader has graduated from Google's Labs development area and has moved on to become a full-fledged service. Not only has the interface been tweaked, but they actually show you the exact number of unread items you have (instead of displaying "100+" once you surpass 100) and have finally implemented...a SEARCH BOX!!! This is a big day for Google Reader fans, and I expect this to generate some buzz in the blogosphere, if it hasn't already started. Looks like all those feature requests to the Google Reader Group were being taken to heart after all.

Google Docs Reviewed (Short)

I just completed a first draft of a document using Google Docs, the collaborative editing suite for the Web. I was editing with one other editor, and we were both making some quick changes, but Docs managed to keep up with 99% of them, only occasionally displaying a conflict notice. The system is pretty sturdy, and it tells you who's editing with you, something MediaWiki won't do (at least, not without an extension).

The formatting options aren't so great, but the suite is still in development, so such things are to be expected. Right now it won't replace Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.org, but it's good for basic word-processing with collaboration from people all over the world. I had a document open in three states, and the system just kept on merging changes. This must be one descendant of Google's JotSpot purchase. I'll definitely keep this in my toolbox.