Losing your identity

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Category: Opinion

Published on Saturday, 05 May 2012 23:18

Written by Christian Dunn

Identity theft is the newest big problem online and this week I was the target, well kind of. Fortunately they only got as far as my email.

I discovered this week that my email account had been hacked to send out spam, apologies to anyone who received an email from the UK Metropolitan Police that may have come from me promising a lot of money. It's not until you don't have email for 24 hours that you realise how much you miss it.

After having to change my password 6 times it made me think how hard it is to remember all the passwords we have.

Do you have more than 1? Are they the same? Well if someone breaks into one of your accounts, then do they have the password to all your other accounts?

Fortunately I use different passwords, but definitely food for thought. After a couple of nights of long tech support calls from Australia to the US and changing passwords on multiple accounts I can now rest a bit better at night. As the 'cloud' becomes more prevalent and we are all becoming slaves to web based applications globally then all it takes is someone to break into your hotmail account, facebook, twitter or your gmail account to literally make your life a nightmare.

Now that I have scared you... go change your passwords.

Which OS is that?

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Category: Opinion

Published on Sunday, 29 April 2012 01:00

Written by Christian Dunn

I know I have been quiet lately but that's because I have been testing.

In the last few weeks I got the chance to play with a range of operating systems so here's a quick rundown on what's hot, what for and what not....

• Windows 8 Developer
  • The best preview demonstration of Windows 8 including some great sample gadgets. Some features in this version are not in the consumer version. Looking forward to this operating system, just wish my laptop had a touchscreen. Developers can download this from Microsoft for free.
• Windows 8 Consumer
  • This is the consumer preview demonstration for Windows 8 and while very limited in included features is fun to play with. If you have a spare computer at home you can give this a try. Remember not everything works and it isn't the final software so don't upgrade your main computer now. You can download this from Microsoft for free. See my review for how to install this as a virtual machine to test it without affecting your computer.
• Server Hyper V 8
  • This is the Hyper V dedicated version of server 8. Looking forward to finally seeing a competitive alternative to VMWare.
• Server 8
  • This is the fantastic new Windows server to come with Windows 8. The ability for a full and server core installation and great cloud enabled features provides a real competitor in the server market. Server 8 can compete for use in the secure core only style appliance or hosting markets and with full installations in the virtual desktops and traditional windows networking environments. This can be downloaded from Microsoft Technet.
• Windows Server 2008 R2
  • The current standard in Windows server the latest iteration provides some great new features and improved security and compatibility with Windows 7.
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Foundation
  • This limited version of windows server is designed for small micro server appliances or cloud focused businesses. It provides no support for Sharepoint or Exchange and the ability to support up to 15 users.
• Windows Server 2003 R2 x64
  • Old operating systems may appear dead but if you have an old computer that doesn't support the latest operating system you may be in trouble. This version of server 2003 enabled me to bring an old server back to life to use as a backup server when 2008 R2 could not support the raid or processor requirements.
• Mac OS X Lion
  • I have been building virtual machines and playing with OS X with both Entourage 2008 and Office 2011 in both domain and workgroup environments. I love the usability and simplicity of the operating system. Integration into a windows domain network is getting easier but there are still some tricks for beginners. I do admit I enjoy using it and keep playing with it.

Try Windows 8

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Category: Opinion

Published on Saturday, 10 March 2012 23:47

Written by Christian Dunn

This week Microsoft has released the Windows 8 Consumer Preview.

Now you can finally try it for yourself. There are 2 ways that you can download Windows 8. 
One is an in place upgrade program which will upgrade your current computer. The second option is an ISO file.

In this article I will show you how to use the ISO file to try Windows 8 as a virtual machine without affecting your current computer.

Getting Started

Download VMware Player (http://downloads.vmware.com/d/info/desktop_end_user_computing/vmware_player/4_0)
Sign up for an account, it is free to download.

Download the ISO file (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-AU/windows-8/iso)
You can run the 64 bit version in a virtual machine on a 32 bit machine if you have a capable processor. Most Intel/AMD processors under 4 years old (excluding atom) should be fine.

You will need at least 60GB of hard drive space.

You can use an external drive but performance may be affected.

Creating the Virtual Machine

Start VMware Player

Select Create a new virtual machine

When the wizard starts select your ISO file as the Installer Disc Image File.

When setting virtual machine memory always leave at least 1GB of RAM below the maximum available for your computer to operate effectively while you have virtual machines running.

Complete the wizard and your new virtual computer will start.

The windows 8 installation should begin automatically. Follow the Wizard.

Congratulations

You have just created a virtual machine. You can turn this off and on and use it like a normal computer.  You can configure Windows 8 to test all the features without affecting your own computer.

Where's the Wifi? Travelling with internet

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Category: Opinion

Published on Sunday, 27 November 2011 11:01

Written by Christian Dunn

I have just returned from travelling overseas (I landed four hours ago after a 17 hour trip on 3 trains and a plane.. and feeling it) but I wanted to share one application I found invaluable and some tips, from experience.

In this modern age we can get used to the services we have at our fingertips in our community but this can be a lot harder to figure out when travelling.

Heading to Japan I assumed internet would be fairly easy to come by. Interestingly many hotels do not have wireless still. Mobile roaming data is over $20/mb for Australians. Your best bet if you need to use your devices and have truly mobile internet is to walk into a phone store and rent a 3G or 4G dongle (most even have built in wifi) or sign up for an account (this is important).

When you do see free wi-fi, check it really is. Wireless was free on trains and in coffee shops etc but once you connected to the wireless you then needed to login to your provider, otherwise no access. Unlike here where free wireless means internet access. Without an account, and in some cases without a translator, this proved a little difficult.

There is of course always the internet cafe option. Very cheap, cheerful, usually found within a few blocks, often not very nice, unless you are at the airport.

My wife and I had this discussion packing for the trip. We have between us an iPhone, an Android phone, an iPad, a netbook, a kindle and a small android tablet. What do we really need?

The phones were in, as was the kindle (it has it's own 3G which is another story), but do we take the iPad or the netbook? The other android is kindle sized, so we decided it was out immediately. So why do we want it? Well we like to get into the action and explore new cities, so it is always great to book rail tickets, buy tickets for shows, get a map of the area and look up places to see the night before heading out into a new city. This can be painful on a phone. Without wireless I argued we should take the netbook as we can't plug anything else in and use it in the hotel room and we always had free (properly free) LAN internet. If we only had the iPad we could be in trouble.

This turned out to be correct but we don't really like using the netbook as much and unless we needed to book something big we do prefer to use our phones. So what I wanted was a way to make a wireless hotspot in our hotel room taking advantage of the free internet.  I didn't want to fork out for a rental dongle or a plan and all we needed was access at night.

First thing I thought was can I setup an adhoc network. Fired up the netbook, opened the browser, hit OK to connect and then set it up using the Wizard in Windows 7. Only the iPhone worked. Tried Wi-Fi Direct on the Android phone but the laptop was not compatible.

That's when Connectify came in (see my review here). Connectify is an application for Windows that creates a proper wireless hotspot from your laptop (not an ad-hoc one) and it just works. In each hotel I simply plugged my laptop in, resumed it from standby the night before, saw connectify start, opened the browser and walked away. I could leave it there my whole stay and every time we walked into our room we had wireless internet on all of our devices. I can't praise this more highly.

Lastly, the Kindle.  The Kindle Keyboard may look old fashioned but GET IT WITH 3G if you travel!! With this model 3G is free if you purchase the device with it built in and hidden in the experimental settings is a browser. While my wife loves to use it to read books at night, I should caveat, it is hers... I found it invaluable on our trip as I could steal it on long train rides to catch up on the news websites, we could do a quick search for maps, travel timetables or location suggestions as we travelled all for FREE on 3G.  Yes it is painfully slow at times and the browser doesn't work with lots of stuff but on a 2 hour train trip, I could afford to wait. I am packing it next time.

Happy travels.

Talking while moving

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Category: Opinion

Published on Wednesday, 16 November 2011 22:52

Written by Christian Dunn

Travelling with the Internet and mobile phones can be an expensive exercise.  It is very easy to incur very large phone bills on your return to add to your holiday hangover.

So how do you get around big bills and stay in touch?

1) turn off Cellular Data while roaming. This allows email, Internet and apps to work while roaming but charges for roaming data are usually excluded from your cap and the current rate is about $20/1mb.

In real terms;

1 x 6mb newspaper/book/large app download = $120

1 x app ,~2mb =$40

1 x days email 20 emails, 1 with picture ~1.5mb = $30

Turn data roaming OFF especially if your email or apps synchronize or update automatically.

2) Use hotel Internet or wi-fi. Look for free wireless networks. In Melbourne, Australia, Federation Square provides public free Wi-fi. Usually some limitations but email and web browsing will work

In more densely populated countries than Australia (which doesn't leave out much), there are often more Wi fi networks available free to use as it is more economical to provide and reduces the strain on the mobile networks. A good option is often McDonalds for wireless access across the world.

3) Turn it off when not needed. Most providers charge for sending AND receiving calls and messages on other providers networks. This also means you may be charged if you forward or divert calls as you pay to have it come in and go out. This means it costs even when friends or family sms or call while you are away. Is it worth the money? Turn it off when not required.This may not apply to work phones... You wish you could turn it off...

4) buy local. Buying phone cards or a local prepaid sim or phone is almost always cheaper than using your own. Especially hander for longer trips to call loved ones and receive SMS messages. Try the local

Why is this my topic of choice this week? I am traveling overseas tomorrow.

Less Penguin in my diet

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Category: Opinion

Published on Monday, 24 October 2011 10:27

Written by Christian Dunn

I have to agree with David Gewirtz that while Linux is substantially better and more stable for specific functions it fails in the business application and support test.

http://m.zdnet.com/blog/diy-it/why-ive-finally-had-it-with-my-linux-server-and-im-moving-back-to-windows/245?pg=2

Recently I have rebuilt a Linux server that was failing backups due to corruption but I had to save the primary partition as it also ran Asterisk voip and to make it harder the backup applications (rsync) were using older package versions that had to be retained on the different servers.

In effect, without consistent updating across Linux environments this will be an ongoing issue.

Even though most Linux distributions come from Debian or Red Hat the various flavours, the various packages and the lack of an integrated automatic updating tool mean that there will always be a problem with different versions affecting upgrades.

Unfortunately in the enterprise this is not acceptable...

Samsung v Apple - Broken patent law?

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Category: Opinion

Published on Tuesday, 30 November 1999 11:00

Written by Christian Dunn

In 1988 Apple sued Microsoft for copyright infringement on the Windows GUI. The case lasted 4 years and the final appeal wasn't heard until 1994. Halfway through the case Xerox sued Apple for infringement on it's GUIs in the hope that if Microsoft lost, they would be the beneficiary not Apple. Apple lost with the court ruling "Apple cannot get patent-like protection for the idea of a graphical user interface, or the idea of a desktop metaphor [under copyright law]...". Apple cited that this type of copyright would affect innovation. Over the next 15 years it became one of the most innovative companies in the world.

Apple is well known for using litigation and has been constantly involved in legal action, in one form or another, for this time. You will notice in the list of cases most major global IT manufacturers and there is a certain pattern to cases of copyright, patent law or trademarks.

Why is this important? Well this is the background for the latest case in Apple versus the world. 24 years after that original case Apple is suing Samsung this time under patent law, for a combination of features that include both GUI and physical components. You have probably heard about the results in a dramatic case in the US, where a jury has ruled in favour of Apple with Samsung having to shell out over $1 billion and they are now fighting over blocking sales of samsung products? Don't be confused this is not the end. There will be an appeal, and what you may have missed is that in South Korea there was a ruling of infringement by both parties and there are cases pending in other courts all around the world. What really got me in this case (although I am not a technical lawyer and am not pretending to be) is how Samsung was sued for components of the interface that are Android features. I don't believe Apple could have sued Google successfully with the previous precedent set but how can these even be considered in a patent case with Samsung.

Let's be honest, EVERYONE IS COPYING EVERYONE ELSE. That is called innovation. Five years ago my phone didn't have a camera, now both my phones have two. So who came up with that idea? Ten years ago my phone had a basic LCD display which allowed me to make calls and text messages. Today with iOS and Android I have millions of programs and features at my disposal and I read the paper on my android tablet. So whose idea was a screen? or a bigger screen without a keyboard? My iPAQ had this many many years ago. The first mobile phone I had was the size of a housebrick in the mid 90s but it was a rectangle and it had slightly rounded corners, so I am concerned Apple believes they have a patent on a rectangle with rounded corners... um.. isn't that every mobile phone? So really shouldn't everyone be paying someone, or maybe everyone should pay no-one we call it even, or better yet, competition. Maybe a patent on a new idea should only be valid for 2-5 years allowing items that are popular to flow into the mainstream by being adopted a few years later still giving the designer a head start? Otherwise we are going to have this perpetual problem. What if the first person to invent a flying car that actually flies then patents the concept? Does every other flying car company for the next millenium have to pay them?

I am more worried about someone actually figuring this out because our courts would be backlogged for the next 50 years with cases between every manufacturer suing for their patent for a screw in a certain place in a laptop or a power cord that actually detaches from the computer (wonder if anyone has claimed that yet?). Yes, technically I shouldn't be able to patent this as it is now considered 'common' but I reckon in 5 years having a phone with a big screen and one button could be considered 'common' so can we patent against the future? Or is this aridiculous war against ourselves that is wasting time and stifling competition and innovation. Sorry Apple, but you lost the first time and proved yourself wrong so why do you want a $1 billion dollars from Samsung. If you left them with it they could probably invent something really different? OR do you want to take it easy, conquer the world with iOS and sit back on your laurels, waiting to be sued for something you copied from them? OR, would you rather put the money you just paid those lawyers and the time you wasted in our courts and the money you will waste on the next case against you and actually design more things people really want? It has worked for you so far. Isn't imitation really the sincerest form of flattery and there will always be similarities and differences between the market leaders. We haven't even got to other vendors like Microsoft yet, if Apple now have the patent for rounded corners then Microsoft must be preparing to patent the rectangle with square corners for their new lego, Windows 8 and Windows phone interfaces with their large 'formerly known as Metro' interface. The similarities between these devices are the features consumers want and differences between all of these devices and operating systems are called innovation and competition and the best thing of all, there will never be a winner, and that's how it should be.

So maybe someone needs to tell the patent office?

Why i won't get an iphone 5

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Category: Opinion

Published on Tuesday, 30 November 1999 11:00

Written by Christian Dunn

Let me start by saying I carry an iPhone 4s, a Samsung Galaxy S2 and an iPad.

So how do I use them?

I love the user friendly interface on the iPhone. Email is great, easy to use  (apart from attachments) and I have anywhere up to 10 accounts at a time all clear and easily navigable. The phone is simple but flexible. I prefer it for basic phone functions such as Email, Phone Calls and Messaging. I love the calendar if a bit tight on screen (although the bigger iPhone 5 screen should improve this) and I use it as my alarm every day. Android Just can't compete in this space.

However I don't buy many apps. Yes, I have a newspaper subscription but mostly I go with the free stuff. On the iPhone that is a problem. Sometimes there is no program that does what I need, other times it is too expensive and finally I find they can't do exactly what I want as they don't have capability in iPhone. So when do I use the Galaxy? When I need to do stuff. Citrix works better, my voip phone works better, my security camera app works better and for $1 streams audio (that was $10 on iPhone with a similiar app), I can save and edit Office documents and see websites with flash. With chrome I have all the HTML5 capability of my iphone too, so it just works. My android phone is also packed with wifi network signal strength testers, activesync tester, terminal apps, network scanner, rdp client, network tester, skydrive, google drive, dropbox and remote access software for controlling my phone. All the tools for an engineer when diagnosing client networks. Yes, I can get most of these on an iPhone but different programs with different capabilities and at a cost.

And Maps. I use my phones for everything, they are my GPS too. When I wanted to go somewhere in the car I used the Galaxy and ran the Android Navigation software which gave me turn by turn directions for my car. When I went sailing I used Tracks to record our course. I loved Google Maps on the iphone too and I used it to look up locations frequently and it was better to use than on the Galaxy. I could also lookup the bus to the city and track it's progress. Also means I get off at the right stop. This worked great until iOS 6. Since updating my iphone I have found that Google Maps is gone and Apple Maps has appeared. Now I have no google maps (although I did make a homepage shortcut to the web version). Apple did take on an ambitious task but why deliver a maps application without public transport (and expect third party apps to provide this service), with inaccurate and insufficient data. The galaxy is now my permanent GPS.

So now I have a choice. When I need to replace a phone do I go for an iPhone 5 or maybe a Galaxy S3?

Well in the iPhone 5 I get another row of icons, a slightly thinner phone, a better camera (although my Galaxy S2 is 8MP already) and Apple Maps.  I also need to buy some new USB charging cords (I have 4) to fit the new connector. In the Galaxy I get a bigger, faster and better version of my S2 but with 4G. Unfortunately I just can't find enough wow to justify an iPhone 5. Honestly I think I keep the 4S going as long as possible and maybe upgrade my Galaxy to the next version and see what the iPhone 5S or 6 might have in store for us....