Tag Archives: Technology

The Queen of Code

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From FiveThirtyEight:

You probably don’t know the name Grace Hopper, but you should.

As a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy, Hopper worked on the first computer, the Harvard Mark 1. And she headed the team that created the first compiler, which led to the creation of COBOL, a programming language that by the year 2000 accounted for 70 percent of all actively used code. Passing away in 1992, she left behind an inimitable legacy as a brilliant programmer and pioneering woman in male-dominated fields.

Hopper’s story is told in “The Queen of Code,” directed by Gillian Jacobs (of “Community” fame). It’s the latest film in FiveThirtyEight’s “Signals” series.

Actually, I’m sure the readers of this blog DO know the name Grace Hopper. But anyway, this is a great film.

Hedy Lamarr

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Just a note to celebrate the life and times of Hedy Lamarr, who died on this day, 2000, at the age of 85.

Lamarr had a very interesting career that involved major acting accomplishments, milestone acting events, and direct involvement in the invention of the technology that now forms the basis of WiFi, BlueTooth and other similar modes of communication between electronic devices.

The story of Lemarr’s life is complicated and understanding that story is made even more difficult because of the way it has been told in the past, with multiple versions of multiple events told by biographers (perhaps including herself) who were not entirely honest. But there is one story I would love to know more about. (For that, I know, I just need to read her autobiography, Ecstasy and Me My Life as a Woman, and someday I may!) When Lamarr lived in Europe, she attended social events that were visited by the likes of Hitler and Mussolini. Lamarr’s evil husband was working with them. Because of that connection, Lemarr was exposed to conversations about science and technology vis-a-vis the military. This piqued her interest in such topics. Later, Lamarr escaped that situation and it was after that she invented a technology to be used in the war against the very fascists she was forced by circumstance to rub elbows with.

downloadLamarr invented a few other things as well, including an improved traffic light.

Lemarr’s looks, both how she looks and how she, well, looks, are iconic. But you may not know that a face some of you have been staring at for years, if you happen to use a certain computer graphics product, is hers.

catwoman-anne-hathawayAlso, Catwoman as played by Anne Hathaway, is based on Lamarr.

A few choice quotes from Lamarr:

“Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.”

“Hope & curiosity about the future seemed better than guarantees. The unknown was always so attractive to me…and still is.”

“I have never seen a wrestling match or prize fight, and I don’t want to. When I find out a man is interested in these sports, I drop him.”

Anyway, if you are reading this blog post on a device connected to the Internet via a wireless connection, take a moment to thank Ms. Lamarr and her colleagues.

10+ Things To Do After Installing Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn

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NEW: Very first look at Ubuntu Linux 15.04 Vivid Vervet Beta Mate Flavor

See: Ubuntu Unleashed

Here is a list of things to do after you have installed Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn.

There is some discussion of whether or not you should upgraded to 14.10 here, but the short version is, for most people an upgrade from 14.04 is not necessary but not a bad idea, and an upgrade from any earlier version is a very good idea. Mostly, though, you should just upgrade.

One could ask the question, should you be installing Ubuntu with Unity. You have to like Unity. I personally like to have a wider range of desktop options than Ubuntu with Unity allows, but for a notebook or laptop where you are going to be using one application at a time, usually use GUI apps, and like to have your computer integrated fairly seamlessly to social networking services, etc., it is a good option.

But, as is always the case with any operating system, you can either use it out of the box or change a few things. Because of OpenSource related licensing things a few things need to be done by you that would normally be done by the provider of the OS (but this is a free OS so you don’t get that) but most of these changes are just to make the OS more like you like it. So pick and choose.

First, before you do anything…

Run these commands to bring your system up to date, even if you just installed Ubuntu 14.10.


sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Reminder: When you start a command with “sudo” you will be asked to enter your password. If you use “sudo” again soon after, the system figures a bad guy did not konk you on the head to take over your computer, and it is probably you issuing the command so it does not ask for your password again. After a while, the system figures you probably did get konked on the head and will attempt to verify your identity by asking for your password.

Also, for the various commands being suggested here (and I should say you are totally on your own and I take no responsibility if you muck up your system, good luck and have a nice day) you may have to enter a “y” (for yes) or do some other things, so keep an eye on your computer.

Install Better or More Appropriate Graphics Card Drivers

Using Software & Updates ~ “Additional Drivers” tab ~ Do what it says there

Install Ubuntu Restricted Extras

This includes some fonts, java, the flash plugin, DVD playback ability, and so on. You need some of this stuff. Use this command:


sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

Install additional extras for multimedia

To install DVD playback ability:

sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

Some, many, users will want additional codecs:

sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly gxine libdvdread4 totem-mozilla icedax tagtool easytag id3tool lame nautilus-script-audio-convert libmad0 mpg321 libavcodec-extra

Adjust the degree to which the Ubuntu Unity Dashboard annoys you and violates your privacy

Method 1

System Settings ~ Privacy and Security ~ Turn stuff off, especially the online items.

Unity now has the settings people usually turn off unset by default, so you may not need this.

Method 2

If you do need to turn off all the settings check out Fix Ubuntu has a nice script that will maximally crack down on Unity. You can get the script and run it right away, if you are trusting (it looks trustworthy to me) with this nifty one liner:


wget -q -O - https://fixubuntu.com/fixubuntu.sh | bash

While you are addressing privacy, you may or may not want to disable system crash reports. Sending system crash reports to Ubuntu is probably the polite thing to do, but you may not want to. You will need to edit a file to do this.

Open the file with sudo because it is a file you can only modify and save as a quasi-super-user:


sudo gedit /etc/default/apport

Then find the line that says

enabled=1


and change it to


enabled=0

Save the file, close the text editor, and now at the terminal enter:


sudo service apport stop

Put your name back on the top menu bar panel

You might like the name of the user showing, especially if more than one entity uses your machine.

Name on:

gsettings set com.canonical.indicator.session show-real-name-on-panel true

Name off:

gsettings set com.canonical.indicator.session show-real-name-on-panel false

Put the damn menus where they are supposed to be

Ubuntu Macified their Unity experience a while back by moving the menus that go with applications to the menu bar on the top of the screen. This breaks the Linux Philosophy by requiring a menu bar in a particular place. Then, they made it even more useless by making the menus disappear until you run at them with the mouse. With 14.04 and now 14.10 you can undo this travesty.

System Settings ~ Appearance ~ Behavior ~ Show the menus for a window ~ In the window’s title bar

Resize menu bars and panels

Linux users apparently would not stand for having panels and menu bars unscalable. Another feature taken away by Ubuntu Unity, but now with 14.10, you can make this adjustment.

System Settings ~ Displays ~ Scale for menu and title bars ~ Use the slider thingies

Install TweakTools or Unity Tweak Tools

This will allow you to tweek things. TweakTools is a Gnome tool, Unity Tweak Tools is specificall for the Unity Desktop (that yo just installed). They are not the same, you may want both. They merely give you access to things that are already there that you can tweak.


sudo apt-get install unity-tweak-tool gnome-tweak-tool

Turn off the most annoying scrollbars ever invented

Some say you let designers design your operating system, and users will later catch up. I say to them, Baaaaa.

The odd weird looking essentially useless scrollbars that plague Ubuntu Unity can be gotten ride of by typing this command:


gsettings set com.canonical.desktop.interface scrollbar-mode normal

If you realize you like these new fangled scrollbars later, you can put them back like this:


gsettings reset com.canonical.desktop.interface scrollbar-mode

Turn Nautilus Recursive vs Typeahead Search Off and ON

After you play around with the newest version of the file manager Nautilus, you may find that you prefer one or the other behaviors in the search bar. I’ve not decided. Switch recursive search on:


Terminal Command:
gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences enable-interactive-search false

Switch to typeahead search:


gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences enable-interactive-search true

Set up your online accounts (facebook, twitter, etc)

Seetings ~ Online Accounts ~ Then do obvious stuff there

Laptop users: Power Management

There are things one did with 14.04 to enable power management and related features, or to improve them. I am not certain what the best course of action is for 14.10, so I’m not going to suggest anything here. I’ll update this section at a later time. (Feel free to make suggestions below.)

Meanwhile, you may have a look at this, which covers 14.04 and other distributions.

Install a bunch of stuff

Ubuntu is a bit light on file archiving software. You may want to install more:


sudo apt-get install p7zip-rar p7zip-full unace unrar zip unzip sharutils rar uudeview mpack arj cabextract file-roller

Adobe Flash Plugin


sudo apt-get install flashplugin-installer

Install the latest version of Google Chrome. I don’t think it will be found in the software center, so check here, or go here and press the right buttons. Then you can Watch Netflix on Linux!

Install Dropbox

and/or

Install Copy, which is similar to Dropbox. Slower, but you get more storage for free. I’ve been using it for a while and I like it. (I actually use both.)

Cleanup

Some people like to clean up after themselves. I tend not to, but I know I should. These commands will get rid of some of the chaff you may have created while messing around with your system.


echo "Cleaning Up" &&
sudo apt-get -f install &&
sudo apt-get autoremove &&
sudo apt-get -y autoclean &&
sudo apt-get -y clean

So, you totally screwed up your installation, what do you do now?

Not everything you broke above can be undone easily, but you can reset some of it. Use the following commands. Then see what happens. Good luck. Did I mention that you are totally on your own here and I take no responsibility for anything that goes wrong?


sudo apt-get install dconf-tools
dconf reset -f /org/compiz/
setsid unity
unity --reset-icons

Other posts of interest:

Also of interest: In Search of Sungudogo: A novel of adventure and mystery, set in the Congo.

One liner to turn a column of text into a comma separated list

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You have the following list:

Firstline
Secondline
Thirdline
Fourthline
Fifthline
Sixthline

You want to turn it into something that looks like this:

Firstline,Secondline,Thirdline,Fourthline,Fifthline,Sixthline

All you have is a stick of bubble gum, a broken lightbulb, and a bash shell with the usual tools installed. How would you do it?

Here are a few suggestions.

perl -pi.bak -e 'unless(eof){s/\n/,/g}' textfile

This will produce a backup called textfile.bak and modify the original file.

A rather involved sed one liner could do it:

sed -n 's/.*/&,/;H;$x;$s/,\n/,/g;$s/\n\(.*\)/\1/;$s/\(.*\),/\1/;$p'

Using tr:

cat textfile | tr '\n' ','

There are numerous other possibilities. Free to make suggestions. Also, how would you reverse the process?

The Ubuntu 14.10 Upgrade: What to do

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The Ubuntu 14.10 Release October 23, 2014

Ubuntu 14.10 will be released shortly and I know you are chomping at the bit and want to know all about it.

There is some important news, for some, and there is some exciting news for others, and there is some boring news, and frankly, some bad news.

Before diving into the shallow pool of Ubuntu 14.10 (shallow in a good way) I want to go over some other ground first. I want to address this question:

“I have installed Linux and I don’t like the default desktop. How do I change that without ruining stuff?”

If you are a long time Linux user you know the answer has two parts. First, “Oh, hey, don’t worry, this is why Linux is so great!” and second, something like “sudo apt-get install yadayada, then log out and then log back in again with your new desktop” where “yadayada” is the new desktop. Easy peasy.”

Now, let is rephrase the question, and in so doing reveal the bad news.

“I have installed Ubuntu 14.04 and I don’t like the default desktop. How do I change that to gnome?”

The answer to the question is actually pretty simple, but has a very different form that I find deeply disturbing. Again, there are two parts. First, “Well, Ubuntu comes default with Unity, and Ubuntu with Unity and some other stuff under the hood does not actually allow you to just swap around desktops like you could in the old days without messing around a lot and depending on exactly how good the information you get on this is, and which desktop you replace Unity and all that with, you will probably break something.” Putting this another way, Ubuntu has broken one of the most important features of Linux, one of the features that makes Linux cool, and in so doing, Ubuntu has made Linux more like Windows. Ubuntu/Unity/Etc as a “distribution” is now vertically integrated across the usual layers to the extent that it is either take it or leave it (I oversimplify but not by much).

And of course, you can leave it. That is the second part of the answer. “You will need to essentially replace your current distro with another distro.”

How to replace Unity with Gnome on Ubuntu

There is a tool to do this, available from Ubuntu. This is actually a pretty amazing tool. It allows you to take a current distribution of Ubuntu and convert it to a different flavor. Ubuntu comes in many flavors. The default is with Unity and it is a desktop environment designed for the average user. Then there are alternatives that have either different desktops or that serve very different purposes, and mixing and matching is allowed to some extent. For example, Ubuntu can be a basic server, or a web server (called a LAMP server), or a mail server (or all three) perhaps without any desktop at all. Or, you can pick any of several distinct desktops like Kubuntu (uses KDE, which a lot of people like) or XFCE, which is what Linus Torvalds and I use, or Gnome 3, and so on.

The tool is called tasksel

You install and run tasksel (sudo apt update; sudo apt upgrade; sudo apt install tasksel; sudo tasksel) and you get a thingie that lets you pick a “Package Configuration,” which looks like this:

Screen Shot 2014-10-04 at 11.46.51 AM

You then very carefully follow the instructions or you will ruin everything! But if you do it right, it should very cleanly remove Ubuntu’s default desktop and install Gnome 3 or whatever. HERE are the instructions and HERE is an excellent episode of the Linux Action Show that goes into detail.

Important additional information: First, this information is current in early October 2014. If you are reading this much later than that, re-research because things may change. Second, it is not perfectly true that Ubuntu does not let you install new desktops and use them. It is true, however, that this is not seamless, harmless, or even recommended. A clue to the seriousness of this is that if you use tasksel to remove Unity and install Gnome 3, you can’t then install Unity because Unity will not cohabit with the version of Gnome you’ve installed. There is too much stuff in the middle that does not work right.

I have installed multiple desktops on top of Ubuntu 14.04, including Mate, Gnome 3 and Gnome Panel. It was the first time for me that playing with desktops broke my system and I’ve been using Linux (and Ubuntu) for a long time, and I mess around with desktop a lot. This is the new normal (for Ubuntu). You will see instructions on what you need to do to switch around desktops on Ubuntu, but frankly, that boat may have sailed other than the use of extreme measures such as tasksel.

I will give you a recommendation below if you are confused or uncertain about what form of Linux you might want to install, based on my own experiences.

Now, back to what you need to know about Ubuntu 14.10.

The first thing you need to know is that Ubuntu 14.10 is almost exactly like 14.04. There are virtually no visible meaningful differences as far as I can tell. So if you are using Ubuntu and are sticking with Ubuntu, don’t expect pretty fireworks. This will not be an exciting upgrade.

Second, 14.10 has an updated version of the kernel, the deep guts of the operating system, and this is important. It is good to have a current kernel. Also, this kernel has some important new hardware support. Some Dell laptops have the ability to turn off your hard drive if it feels itself falling, so the drive is not running when your laptop hits the ground. The new kernel actually supports this feature so if you have a newer Dell laptop, you might want that. There is some improvement in the handling of Dell touchpads as well. The point is, you should absolutely upgrade to 14.10 for a number of unexciting but still potentially important reasons.

Want a better desktop, mate?

No, we are not in Australia. The third item is the big exciting news. If you think Unity sucks, and you liked the old fashioned Gnome desktop (back in the days of Gnome 2.0) you will find this cool. Gnome 2.0 was the best Linux desktop for most purposes, in my opinion. With the new approaches taken by both Unity and Gnome 3, and since forever with KDE, I get the sense that the purpose of the computer is to have a cool desktop. For me, the purpose of my computer is to run certain software and manage files. The purpose of the desktop is to facilitate that, ideally in a way that allows me some customization, but that stays consistent over time so an upgrade does not break my workflow or force me to relearn how to use the hardware, and often, that means just staying out of the way. For me, Gnome 2.0 was the sweet spot in meeting those requirements.

But Gnome has moved on. The current thing that looks and acts like Gnome 2 is called Gnome Panel. It kinda works but it has problems, especially (in my experience) on a laptop. It is not being kept up like it should be to be a current usable desktop. So, sadly, Gnome is no longer recommended for those who liked traditional Gnome. This not to say that Gnome 3 (or for that matter Unity) aren’t great. But they aren’t. Just sayin’

But then there is mate.

Mate is a fork of Gnome that intends to maintain Gnome 2 coolness. It has been around for a while now. It has been updated regularly, and the tradition seems to be to come up with the newest version of the mate desktop in sync with Ubuntu’s release schedule. I’ve tried mate a few times, and I’ve had mixed experiences with it, but in the end it is probably the desktop you want to install if you want Gnome 2-osity on any form of Linux.

This is a bit confusing unless you are already used to concepts like the difference between the terms “desktop,” “desktop,” “desktop,” and “desktop.” Mate is a desktop. Most desktops come along with software that is not strictly desktop but works with the desktop. There are two ways to get many (but not all) desktops. One is to install a “distribution” that uses that desktop, like installing Kubnutu to get the KDE desktop. The other way is to have some normal form of Linux on your computer, then you install the desktop onto that and later, you can chose to log into the newly installed desktop, or some other desktop that happens to be on your system.

Mate was available as an Unofficial Ubuntu Desktop. This means that the mate people would take the guts of a current Ubuntu distribution, and replace various parts with other parts so when you download and install the unofficial Ubuntu mate desktop you get Ubuntu with mate as your desktop.

Now, after a period of regular development, mate is an official flavor of Ubuntu. This means that you can do exactly what you could do before, install Ubuntu with mate instead of Unity or KDE or whatever. But it probably has other implications. I assume that being an official desktop enhances the degree to with an Ubuntu Mate distribution will install cleanly and function well.

It does not exist yet. I understand Ubuntu Mate as such will be released on October 23rd, the same day as Ubuntu. And it comes at a time when Ubuntu continues in the process of seriously downplaying the non-Unity desktops. If you go to the Ubuntu site and see what is there and download and install it, you can be forgiven for not ever knowing that you could have installed Edubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Mythbuntu, Ubuntu GNOME, UbuntyKylin, Ubuntu Studio or Xubuntu. You have to dig through a couple of layers of the site and then you get to a scary page that most people will think is just for techies. In the old days, Ubuntu highlighted the diverse alternatives. Now, the bury them. That concerns me.

What you should do instead of automatically installing Ubuntu

There are a lot of Linux distributions out there, and you are of course free to mess around with them. But I’m happy to give you my current advice (subject to change frequently!) about what you might consider doing.

A given Linux distribution, which includes its own distribution materials, may or may not work fully and easily on a given piece of hardware. Considering that when you are looking at or working in a browser or your favorite text editor, the system you are using isn’t that important most of the time, the ease and seamlessness of the installation is really one of the most important features of a distribution. It is my belief based on recent experience messing around with installing several different distributions on five different computers (four laptops, one desktop) that Ubuntu, in one form or another, will generally install the easiest. This includes getting the install medium, doing the installation, and getting help when something goes wrong.

Having said that, installing debian, a traditional well developed form of Linux, on which Ubuntu is based (as are many other distros and most installations worldwide, I think) is pretty easy. Having said that, I quickly add that you probably really want to install one of the “extras” versions of debian, which includes “non free” material and is stored in a scary place and not so well documented.

So, my first piece of advice is this. Get two sets of installation media (this is not hard). One for Ubuntu, the other for debian. Try to install debian. If you run into trouble, switch to Ubuntu. You’ll get the job done. The installation process is not too time consuming or difficult, so this is not a big deal.

My second piece of advice is to figure out what desktop you like. If you actually like Unity, then by all means go over to the dark side and install default Ubuntu. Have a nice time communing with the devil. See you on Halloween!

But if you prefer a different desktop, like Gnome 3 or whatever, then follow my first piece of advice, trying debian than Ubuntu. If debian installs well, then go to town installing your preferred desktop if it wasn’t the default during your install. If debian does not work, then pick the flavor of Ubuntu that has your preferred desktop.

My third piece of advice I’m giving with an important caveat. The caveat is that I’ve not tried this yet so I have no business telling you to do it. But I am going to try this and I think it might be cool. If a Gnome 2 style desktop is your preference, then either install debian and then install mate on top of that, or install Ubuntu Mate 14.10 when it comes out. Just for fun. It might work great.

My fourth piece of advice is this. If you like the Gnome 2.0 desktop and you want to use a well tested and tried interface, consider using XFCE instead. XFCE is quite like Gnome 2 in many ways, but even less in your face. You could install Xubuntu, the Ubuntu flavor with XFCE as the default (or if you have Ubuntu Unity maybe you can use tasksel to switch, depending on things I don’t want to advice you on). Or, and this is probably the ultimate solution, you can instal debian with XFCE. Which, tellingly, is the default desktop for the canonical Linux distribution that is not Canonical. (See what I did there?@?)

And remember, there are only two things you need to keep your eye on. First, you need a computer that will run your software, and pretty much all of these solutions should do that equally well; the only difficulty here is the match between the distro and the hardware, and for a desktop computer, any Linux flavor with any desktop will probably work so you won’t be pounding your desktop in frustration. For laptops you may want to be more conservative and go with the herd (Ubuntu). Second, whatever you do, have fun. And there is nothing in the world more fun than repeatedly reinstalling your operating system, right????

What is Internet Slowdown Day?

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How much will the Internet Slowdown slow down my Internet?

It won’t. That is not what it is for or what it does even though that is exactly what it says it does. The name is more of an attention getter, and it is apparently working.

Who is slowing down the internet?

Nobody (see above) but it is these guyz here.

Why are they slowing down the internet.

They are not slowing down the Internet, please try to pay attention.

This is a protest against big business trying to take over the free and open Ineternet and control it for their own nefarious purposes.

Can I slow down the Internet too?

Yes. Yes, you can.

On September 10th, sites across the web will display an alert with a symbolic “loading” symbol (the proverbial “spinning wheel of death”) and promote a call to action for users to push comments to the FCC, Congress, and the White House. Note: none of these tools actually slow your site down; they tell your visitors about the issue and ask them to contact lawmakers.

Click Here to learn more

Twitter Analytics? Inspect your Twitter feed for impact

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You can now see what happens when you tweet something. Twitter has a web page that tells you how many “impressions” a tweet has, how many “Engagements” (any kind of click on your tweet) and, for convenience, the percentage of tweets with which your tweeps engaged. There are also summary graphs for engagement rate, link clicks, and retweets. There is also a graph that shows your daily frequency of impressions from your entire twitter feed and a few helpful summary statements such as your current day’s impressions in relation to your 28 day average.

If you click on a tweet, you get a graph showing activity every several hours across the days since the tweet was born, with details of the kinds of engagements that happened.

Now you can obsessively track your tweets instead of just tweeting them.

This service was previously available only to verified users and advertisers Now it is available to anybody.

Click here to visit the page.

Twitter's New Filtered Feed Policy

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Twitter is about to ruin itself.

I’m convinced that the people who made and run both Facebook and Twitter don’t have a clue as to what Facebook and Twitter are for. And by “for” I mean how the users use them. I know, I know, if you are not paying for the product than you are the product. I get it. But it is also true that for a service to be successful it should meet a need or two, and knowing what those needs are is ultimately linked to success or failure. It seems like on line services like Facebook and Twitter are too big to go away or fail. And that is exactly how we humans tend to view established institutions right up until the day the go away or fail.

Twitter’s CFO has said that Twitter will start to filter your twitter feed in a manner like Facebook does. This probably means that your feed will contain a subset of tweets that you normally would see depending on who you follow, or what list of tweeters you are looking at. There may be a technological way around this, but any fix provided by an updated API will not be helpful because Twitter has a reputation for changing the API (the way programmers use to interface with it) in such a way as to stifle development of applications that actually use twitter. Any larger scale or longer term investment in Twitter requires using the simplest interface, with few bells and whistled, or the rug may be pulled from underneath your project.

One of the great uses of Twitter is shared conversations (like this one) or shared not taking at conferences. Other uses include data collection and communication of ongoing processes. People have used twitter to record the catch by fisherfolk in marine conservation projects, for example. If Twitter Facebook-i-fies the Twitter feed, none of that will be possible because those projects and others like them require reliability of the flow of tweets.

Mathew Ingram of Gigaom notes:

An unfiltered stream is a core feature: This might seem like a small thing, similar to Twitter’s move to insert tweets that other people have favorited into a user’s stream if there aren’t any recent tweets to show them. But as the controversy over that feature shows, the Twitter chronological-order model is at the core of what the service offers for many users — and a number of them have specifically said it is the thing they like most about Twitter when compared to Facebook.

Unlike.

Can't boot from a DVD/CD drive

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In order to install a new operating system on a computer, you can make a bootable DVD that includes the software to install the new system, put it in the DVD/CD reader, and reboot your computer. If all goes well your computer will boot off the DVD/CD reader and then you follow the install process and there you go.

But sometimes this doesn’t work. The most common reason is that your computer is not configured to boot from the DVD/CD reader first (if it has a bootable disk in it). You have to go into bios and change the “boot order” so “boot from DVD” is on top of the list, above “hard drive.” A less common problem is that your motherboard is old and not configured properly at a deeper level, which may require installing a new bios. Another, probably common, reason is that the DVD you made is messed up somehow. The “.iso” image you downloaded is corrupted or something went wrong during the burning process. One way to check that is to use the checksum hashtag to verify the image. Never heard of that? Just look it up. It involves obtaining and comparing two numbers which are constructed from the image. One number is provided by the maker of the image using specific software that does this, the other number is obtained on your final version of the image (or downloaded version) using similar software. If the numbers are different, the data are corrupted. This might be more likely if your computer was doing wonky things while downloading or burning, or if the drive you did the burning with is messed up. (Yet another possibility is that the disk is dirty or damaged, but if you just made it, that seems unlikely.) A typical run down of the problems, in the context of installing Ubuntu Linux, is here.

But I think there is yet another explanation that occasionally happens. It is possible that your DVD/CD reader will only participate in the boot under certain circumstances. This would be the case either with older DVD/CD readers, or possibly, a matter of a broken or dirty DVD/CD reader. I’m pretty sure this is the case because I have an old computer with a DVD/CD drive into which I can put known functioning bootable CD’s and get results, but that will not boot off a known functioning bootable DVD.

I could have cleaned the DVD drive, or I could have replaced it (they are cheap). I did not do the former for no particularly good reason, and I did not do the latter because a long time ago I learned it was better, when buying a new DVD/CD drive, to get a nice external drive so it can be moved between computers.

What I did do in this case was to burn a regular CD rather than DVD with a system. This is a problem if you want to install Ubuntu because, apparently, there are no longer such images available for current versions of the operating system. But, Debian sill has an image that does this. Since I was giving serious thought to installing Debian rather than Ubuntu (which is based on Debian but with a lot of changes that I don’t like), this was a good move. Someday I’ll clean the DVD.

I am not certain that I’ve isolated an actual problem, but when I search around for explanations for what I observe, I tend to find the same thing over and over; the usual explanations are repeated and the user with the problem is left wondering. So, I’m putting this on the Internet for people to run into while searching for answers.

Scrivener on Linux: Oh Well…

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UPDATE (January 2, 2016): The makers of Scrivener have decided to abandon their Linux project. Kudos for them for giving it a try. The Scrivener on Linux users were not many, and almost nobody donated to the project, and as far as I can tell, the project was not OpenSource and thus could not have attracted much of an interest among a community of mostly OpenSourceHeads.

So, I’m no longer recommending that you mess around with Scrivener on Linux, as it is no longer maintained. Back to emacs, everybody!

Scrivener is a program used by authors to write and manage complex documents, with numerous parts, chapters, and scenes. It allows the text to be easily reorganized, and it has numerous ways in which the smallest portion of the text, the “scene,” and larger collections of text can be associated with notes and various kinds of meta-data. It is mainly a Mac program but a somewhat stripped down beta version is available for Linux.

In some ways, Scrivener is the very embodiment of anti-Linux, philosophically. In Linux, one strings together well developed and intensely tested tools on data streams to produce a result. So, to author a complex project, create files and edit them in a simple text editor, using some markdown. Keep the files organized in the file system and use file names carefully chosen to keep them in order in their respective directories. when it comes time to make project-wide modifications, use grep and sed to process all of the files at once or selected files. Eventually, run the files through LaTeX to produce beautiful output. Then, put the final product in a directory where people can find it on Gopher.

Gopher? Anyway …

On the other hand, emacs is the ultimate linux program. Emacs is a text editor that is so powerful and has so many community-contributed “modes” (like add-ins) that it can be used as a word processor, an email client, a calendar, a PIM, a web browser, an operating system, to make coffee, or to stop that table with the short leg from rocking back and forth. So, in this sense, a piece of software that does everything is also linux, philosophically.

And so, Scrivener, despite what I said above, is in a way the very embodiment of Linux, philosophically.

I’ve been using Scrivener on a Mac for some time now, and a while back I tried it on Linux. Scrivener for the Mac is a commercial product you must pay money for, though it is not expensive, but the Linux version, being highly experimental and probably unsafe, is free. But then again, this is Linux. We eat unsafe experimental free software for breakfast. So much that we usually skip lunch. Because we’re still fixing breakfast. As it were.

When you create a Scrivener project, you can chose among a number of templates. The Scrivener community has created a modest number of alternatives, and you can create your own. The templates produce binders with specific helpful layouts.
When you create a Scrivener project, you can chose among a number of templates. The Scrivener community has created a modest number of alternatives, and you can create your own. The templates produce binders with specific helpful layouts.

Anyway, here’s what Scrivener does. It does everything. The full blown Mac version has more features than the Linux version, but both are feature rich. To me, the most important things are:

A document is organised in “scenes” which can be willy nilly moved around in relation to each other in a linear or hierarchical system. The documents are recursive, so a document can hold other documents, and the default is to have only the text in the lower level document as part of the final product (though this is entirely optional). A document can be defined as a “folder” which is really just a document that has a file folder icon representing it to make you feel like it is a folder.

The main scrivener work area with text editor (center), binder and inspector.
The main scrivener work area with text editor (center), binder and inspector.
Associated with the project, and with each separate document, is a note taking area. So, you can jot notes project-wide as you work, like “Don’t forget to write the chapter where everyone dies at the end,” or you can write notes on a given document like “Is this where I should use the joke about the slushy in the bathroom at Target?”

Each scene also has a number of attributes such as a “label” and a “status” and keywords. I think keywords may not be implemented in the Linux version yet.

Typically a project has one major folder that has all the actual writing distributed among scenes in it, and one or more additional folders in which you put stuff that is not in the product you are working on, but could be, or was but you pulled it out, or that includes research material.

You can work on one scene at a time. Scenes have meta-data and document notes.
You can work on one scene at a time. Scenes have meta-data and document notes.
The scenes, folders, and everything are all held together with a binder typically displayed on the left side of the Scrivener application window, showing the hierarchy. A number of templates come with the program to create pre-organized binder paradigms, or you can just create one from scratch. You can change the icons on the folders/scenes to remind you of what they are. When a scene is active in the central editing window, you can display an “inspector” on the right side, showing the card (I’ll get to that later) on top the meta data, and the document or project notes. In the Mac version you can create additional meta-data categories.

Scrivenings Mode
Scrivenings Mode
An individual scene can be displayed in the editing window. Or, scenes can be shown as a collection of scenes in what is known as “Scrivenings mode.” Scrivenings mode is more or less standard word processing mode where all the text is simply there to scroll through, though scene titles may or may not be shown (optional).

A lot of people love the corkboard option. I remember when PZ Myers discovered Scrivener he raved about it. The corkboard is a corkboard (as you may have guessed) with 3 x 5 inch virtual index cards, one per scene, that you can move around and organize as though that was going to help you get your thoughts together. The corkboard has the scene title and some notes on what the scene is, which is yet another form of meta-data. I like the corkboard mode, but really, I don’t think it is the most useful features. Come for the corkboard, stay for the binder and the document and project notes!

Corkboard Mode
Corkboard Mode
When you are ready to do something outside of scrivener with your project, you compile it. You can compile it into an ebook, a file compatible with most word processors, a PDF file, a number of different predefined manuscript or script formats, etc. Scrivener does all sorts of magic for writing scripts, though I know nothing about that. There is also an outline mode which, in the Mac version, is very complex and powerful. In the Linux Version it is not. So I won’t mention it.

The compile process is cumbersome, esoteric, complicated, and requires training, so it is PERFECT for the average Linux user! But seriously, yes, you can compile your document into a pre-defined format in one or two clicks, but why would you ever do something so simple? Instead, change every possible option affecting formatting and layout to get it just the way you want it, then save that particular layout for later use as “My layout in February” or “This one worked mostly.”

The Powerful Compile Dialog Box.
The Powerful Compile Dialog Box.
One might say that one writes in Scrivener but then eventually uses a word processor for putting the final touches on a document. But it is also possible that you can compile directly to a final format with adequate or even excellent results and, while you may end up with a .docx file or a .pdf file, you are keeping all the work flow in Scrivener.

This fantastic and amazing book was compiled in Scrivener directly into ebook format.

You have to go HERE to find the unsupported and dangerous Linux version of Scrivener. Then, after you’ve installed it, install libaspell-dev so the in-line spell checking works.

A scrivener project file is a folder with a lot of files inside it. On the mac, this is a special kind of folder that is treated as a file, so that is what you see there, but in Linux you see a folder, inside of which is a file with the .scriv extension; that’s the file you run to open the software directly from a directory.

Do not mess with the contents of this folder. But if you want to mess with it you can find that inside a folder inside the folder are files that are the scenes you were working on. If you mess with these when Scrivener is using the project folder you may ruin the project, but if Scrivener is not looking you can probably mess around with the contents of the scene files. In fact, the Mac version gives you the option of “syncing” projects in such a way that you work on these scenes with an external editor of some kind while you are away from your Scrivener base station, i.e., on your hand held device.

Since this data storage system is complicated and delicate, it is potentially vulnerable to alteration while being used by the software, with potentially bad results. This puts your data at risk with cloud syncing services. Dropbox apparently place nice with Scrivener. I’ve been trying to figure out if Copy does, and I’ve been in touch with both Scrivener developers and Copy developers but I’m not sure yet. I use Copy for the masses of data on my computer because it is cheaper, and I use a free version of Dropbox for Scrivener files, just in case.

I would love to see more people who use Linux try out Scrivener, and maybe some day there will be a full Linux version of it. As I understand it, the Linux version is a compiled subset of the Windows version code base (yes, there is a Windows version) and the Windows version is a derivative of the Mac version.

I should also add that there are numerous books and web sites on how to use Scrivener, and Literature and Latte, the company that produces it, has developed an excellent and useful manual and a number of useful tutorials. Literature and Latte also has an excellent user community forum which is remarkably helpful and respectful. So be nice if you go over there.

How to write a computer book

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I’ve designed an outline, which can be used as a table of contents, for a computer book about anything. In this case, about foo bar.

Preface
Forward
Introduction
Overview
What is foo bar?
Before you start
A brief history of foo bar
A longer history of foo bar
Why you want to use foo bar
Why you might not want to use foo bar
Alternatives to foo bar
Obtaining foo bar
Installing foo bar
Getting help on foo bar
Getting help on reading this book about foo bar
Alliterative methods of installing foo bar
Installing foo bar from source code
Installing foo bar from alternate binaries
Installing foo bar on dead badger
Why we wrote this book about foo bar
About the authors
About the reviewers
About the publishers
About the concept of “about”
How to download the code for foo bar
Typographical conventions used in this book
How to read this book in black and white
The plan of the book
What each chapter will tell you
How the chapters in this book are organized
A history of prior revisions and printings of this book
A word about this book’s font
foo bar basics
Advanced foo bar
Futher Reading about foo bar
Index

NSA Claims That Linux Journal Is A Forum for Radical Extremists? THIS MAY BE FAKE (Updated)

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When I first became a regular user of Linux, several years ago, I tried out different text editors and quickly discovered that emacs was my best choice. By coincidence, about that time I ran into an old emacs manual written by Richard Stallman in the dollar section of a used booksore. In that edition, near the end of the book, was a section on “Mail Amusements.” This documented the command “M-x spook” which adds “a line of randomly chosen keywords to an outgoing mail message. The keywords are chosen from a list of words that suggest you are discussing something subversive.” (I note that the term “spook” in those days meant “spy.”) Stallman notes in the current edition of the manual,

The idea behind this feature is the suspicion that the NSA and other intelligence agencies snoop on all electronic mail messages that contain keywords suggesting they might find them interesting. (The agencies say that they don’t, but that’s what they would say.) The idea is that if lots of people add suspicious words to their messages, the agencies will get so busy with spurious input that they will have to give up reading it all. Whether or not this is true, it at least amuses some people.

It is amazing to see how things change over time. But this, unfortunately, is not a good example of change over time. As I’m sure every Linux user knows by now, the National Security Agency has included “Linux Journal” (the journal and the site, apparently) as an indicator for potential extremist activity. If you subscribe to the journal, visit the site, mention it in an email, or anything like that, your internet traffic will be subject to additional special attention.

Apparently the NSA captures all, or very nearly all, of the Internet traffic for just long enough to sort through it for key indicators, which they use to pull out a subset of traffic for longer term storage and possible investigation. If you visit Linux Journal’s web site, your internet traffic, apparently, is subject to this treatment.

Why?

Well, this should be obvious. Linux users are extreme. Linux is extreme. If I was the NSA I’d be keeping a close eye on the Linux community because that is where a major national intelligence agency is most likely to find useful, and extremely good, security related ideas. GNU/Linux, FOSS, OpenSource – these are all keywords I’d be watching because this is where the cutting edge is. LAMP systems are the most secure servers used on the Internet, by and large. Linux-like operating systems are the preferred systems for devices that need both reliability and security. I’m sure the NSA itself uses Linux as its primary operating system because it is the most adaptable and secure one they can get. If not, they probably use a cousin or hybrid of some sort.

Also, penguins. Penguins are known to be extreme. They wear tuxedos, who does that anymore? They live on the Antarctic Continent. I can’t think of anything more extreme than this. The adoption of Tux the Penguin as the symbolic mascot of GNU/Linux is a huge red flag for the entire intelligence community.

I do find it amusing that people are a bit up in arms over this. Did anyone ever seriously consider the idea that the Linux community and their Penguin friends would not be the subject of special NSA attention? It would be rather disappointing were it not. Stallman added M-x spook to emacs decades ago. We’ve known for years that the NSA snoops on everything and everyone. Linux is a widely used extremely important operating system. Linux Journal is a key publication used by a wide range of Linux extremists, er, users and developers. Of course the NSA is watching.

Kyle Rankin at Linux Journal who is a known Linux user notes that there is a more specific reason the NSA would view the Linux community as a hotbed of potential extremism. This is where things like Tor and Tails exist as projects and are mostly used. These are, of course, technologies to be more anonymous on the internet. Tor comes form a project originally funded by the US Naval Research Laboratory and DARPA with early work on it supported by the radical Electronic Frontier Foundation. It has also been funded by the US State Department and the National Science Foundation. The original idea was to allow communications over the internet to be untraceable so sailors (or others) could write home and keep their lips tight (loose lips sink ships and all that). With subversive beginnings and evil intent such as this, naturally the NSA would want to keep an eye on it.

I’m sorry to tell that if you’ve been reading this blog post you are probably on the NSA list of extremists. I use the terms “Linux Journal,” “Linux,” and “Penguin” several times in this blog post. And you are looking at this blog post in your browser. You are so screwed.

I would like to challenge the OpenSource/FOSS/GNU/Linux community to take up Stallman’s initiative and bring it to the next level. Let us M-x spook the spooks. Apps, browser add-ins, cron scripts, and other small scale technologies could be used to add subversive terms such as Linux Journal and Penguin to all of our Internet traffic, all the time. The NSA would quickly run out of disk space and someone would tell them to get back to work and do something useful. Real extremists just made a radical extremist Caliphate in the Middle East forchristakes. I would think the NSA would be more focused on such things than on Linux Journal, or Linux. I can see keeping an eye on the Penguins, though.

UPDATE: Charles Johnson send me THIS and THIS. This whole thing could be fake. Go have a look and tell me what you think.

Copy vs Dropbox UPDATED: iOS and Linux

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UPDATE: Linux Install.

Installing Copy on Linux was pretty easy. You go to the web page, download a tarball, upack it, then inside the tarball figure out the folder that matches your OS (i.e., 32 vs 64 bit) and go into that folder. Then run the Agent. That may, if you are good, put a thingie on your notification area. Click on that and then sign in and install and stuff, that’s it.

There are two pages you might find useful, one for Ubuntu the other for Copy more generally if needed.

Notably, the install on Linux was easier for Copy than for Dropbox. Dropbox install LOOKS easy but never goes as planned, in my (extensive) experience with it.

Copy is a new cloud storage service that may be a serious competitor to Drobbox. I just installed it and I like it.

Dropbox gives 2 Gigabytes for free, 100 Gigabytes for 9.99 a month, 200 Gigabytes for 19.99 a month, and 500 Gigabytes for 49.99 a month.

Copy gives 15 Gigabytes for free, 250 Gigabytes for $10.00 a month, and 500 Gigabytes for 15.00 a month (cheaper if you pay by the year).

I know for a fact that Dropbox works well with Linux and Mac and I assume Windows. Copy claims to be compatible and well integrated with all of these system. I’ve not thoroughly tested Copy yet, but they do seem to work differently.

To make Copy work on my Mac, I installed the app from the menu by downloading the image file and doing the drag and drop thingie. I then ran the application and after a few short steps I had a new folder on my computer called “Copy.” It was place within my home directory, though I had the option of using a different folder. The installation program conveniently (or obnoxiously depending on how well you keep your lawn trimmed) placed a short cut on the shortcut bar in “finder.”

At a couple of times during the process of signing up and installing I was given the option to just move everything from my computer, or from “another cloud storage device” to Copy, which I chose not to do because that would have certainly involved upgrading to a paid account; I wanted to try this out with the free storage first, though I’m not adverse to buying storage if I need it, especially at rates so much lower than Dropbox.

The first thing I did was to attempt to drag and drop a folder that has several files in it into Copy. The folder held a handful of subdirectories, several hundred files, and was in all about 1.2 gigabytes in size. Within a few seconds upload started. Seemed to be about on par with Dropbox, but I did not take any measurements for comparison. Copy allows local syncing, which of course I’ve not tested yet.

It is difficult to recommend for or against Copy until it has been out a while longer, but at the moment it seems to be essentially the same as Dropbox but cheaper. Will Dropbox lower its price? Will Copy be amazing like Dropbox is? Will this work just as well on my Linux machine?

Tune in next week for another installment of …. “Copy vs. Drobox”

UPDATE: I’ve installed the iPad app. Installed cleanly, much crisper, easier to use, better laid out than Dropbox, a total win. And it functions fine.

Tomorrow PM I plan to install Copy on my Linux laptop. Later in the week, on the Linux workstation.