A bug in Gmail allowed students at some schools to read each other’s emails. I don’t know about you but I’d rather not have other people read my emails. (Yes, I know the vast majority of emails are transfered in plain text. I does not entail that it is okay for my colleagues to be able to access my mail folders.)

Now, when I talk to other people about this, I’m told that I’m paranoid.  If I’m not keeping porn on my laptop, I have nothing to worry about.  If my laptop is stolen, no one will take time to look for banking information.  The techs who perform service are interested searching for porn, not financial details.  Basically, I’m told I’m worrying for nothing. (Now, logically-minded readers will have figured out that the flip side of this bad reasoning is that if I do worry about people snooping through my hard disk, then it means I must have porn on there.)

Well, well, it turns out that a Sky News undercover investigation that technicians do indeed look for financial information on the laptop they service and they try to use it to break into banking accounts.  OMG!  Who would have thunk?

The solution against unscrupulous technicians is to give them a clean drive: a drive which contains no sensitive information.  My point here is not that encryption is the solution but that unscrupulous people are indeed after your financial information.  Encryption is part of the arsenal of tools to protect against that.

“You love laptops! How about having one embedded in your face?!?”

Yes, yes, I know. Even without airbags it is dangerous but airbags make it much more dangerous.

“It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”

Let’s get this one out of the way. I’m not a craftsman, so there.

The power supply on my laptop gave out while I was in Taiwan. I quickly found the problem was located in the wire going between the power supply and the laptop. The internal sheath had broken so the wires made a short-circuit. I tried repairing it while I was living at Dharma Drum but that proved quite difficult due to the lack of proper tools. The only soldering iron available on the mountain was of terrible quality. It was barely getting hot enough to melt the solder. Moreover, there was no new solder available on the mountain. I eventually was able to reuse the old solder already on the board (gaaah!) and made some sort of temporary repair. I considered going into Taipei to get parts to finish the job properly but I gave up on that idea. It turns out that during my last few days at Dharma Drum my temporary repair gave out and I had to keep the wires in place with a piece of plastic tape. (Eeek!)

I came back home two days ago.  Yesterday, I bought heat shrink tubing.  This morning I gathered my tools and was able to finish the job in about 10 minutes.  It was a real pleasure to work with good tools.  No doubt someone adept at soldering would laugh at my work but… well… the power supply now works and I’m not pretending to be a craftsman.

I’m quite pleased with myself.  When I bought the laptop, I did not get an extended warranty.  I took the one year warranty and made the bet that if something were to happen I would probably be able to fix it myself.  It looks like I’m going to win that bet. (I’ll only win if the laptop is still working fine after 3 years of ownership.)

The Internet has proved indispensable in this process.  First, I found this guide on how to fix a power supply cord.  Sri1ram’s comment about using a blade to crack the glue holding the case together was very useful.  Second, I found Keith’s blog post on refitting a strain relief.  Before I found this post, I thought I’d get a new strain relief or I’d finish the job without the strain relief.   The problem was that I was unable to rethread the cable through the strain relief.  Keith had the same problem and solved it by drilling through the strain relief.  I got my wife’s Dremel out and did the same: it worked nicely.

The Firefox TableTools Extension

You can download this tool here. Once installed, if you left-click in a table, you get two extra menu items labeled “Sort Table Column as” and “Other Table Operations”. Using “Other Table Operations->Show/Hide Select Filters”, you can turn on an additional row at the top of a table which provides filters for each columns. In the Comparison of Wiki software table, for instance, you can filter the “Open source column” to “Yes” and get rid of all the useless closed source crud. How neat is that? Even neater is the use of “Other Table Operations->Show/Hide Search Filters”. This brings up search filter fields above each column. These filters support regular expression searches on fields. For instance, the “Stable release date” column can be filtered with the regular expression “[A-Z]” to eliminate fields which are empty or have “?”. This leaves only wikis with a known stable release date.

This extension does not always work perfectly. For instance, if you just sort on a column without being careful you can end up with table headers in the middle of the table. It is possible to tweak the extension behavior in the preference dialog to minimize the likelihood of running into trouble. At any rate, these quirks are pretty minor and understandable. If a table is badly coded there is only so much the extension can do to work around that problem.

This extension works well when you only want to manipulate a table for your own purpose and if you don’t need to results to be permanent. What about if you want to share or store the results of your manipulations? Or what if you don’t want to install an extension? There is another solution.

Google Docs

I think there is a lot of hype out there about Google Docs but I am finding more and more cases in which Google Docs is a valuable tool. Manipulating web tables is one of these cases. The procedure is as follows:

1. Select in your browser the table you want to manipulate. This can be tricky for long tables. TableTools has a utility to select tables but every time I’ve used it, Google Docs complained that I cannot paste that much text. So I select my table with a click and drag.

2. Select the first cell of your Google Docs spreadsheet. If you don’t do this, it is likely that Google Docs will not paste the whole table. Then, hit Ctrl-V to paste. Check that you have pasted the whole table.

3. Perform any sorting you want. Be warned that Google Doc’s sorting capabilities are really primitive: alphabetical or reversed alphabetical and that’s it.

4. Select the content you want to filter. Most likely, this will be your whole table.

5. Go to “Insert->Gadget…” to bring the list of gadgets you can insert. Click the “Add to Spreadsheet” button of the “Table” gadget. It is described as “An interactive table with filters and grouping.”

6. Chose the gadget settings you want. I suggest manually setting the “Number of headers row” rather than leave it to Auto. I tried with Auto and Google Docs was confused. Click “Apply and Close” when you are done adjusting the settings.

7. The Gadget will be in its own separate little dialog box, floating above your sheet of data. I suggest clicking the down arrow on the top right part of the gadget’s dialog frame and selecting “Move to own sheet…”. Google Docs will move the gadget to a new sheet.

8. You are done. You can go to the new sheet and use the combo boxes to filter your data.

Note that the Table gadget is not able to filter data as powerfully as TableTools. It is possible to do more precise filtering in Google Docs by using formulas but for the novice spreadsheet user learning the proper use of formulas is more complicated than using the gadget or TableTools.

Moreover, it is possible to copy the table from a web page and paste it into OpenOffice Calc or Gnumeric rather than Google Docs. Both do a good job of parsing the table content into something intelligent and both have more powerful filtering capabilities than Google Docs. Where Google Docs shines relative to Calc or Gnumeric is its instant publishing capability.

Let’s clarify a few things first. I understand that Palm is doing what it believes it needs to do to survive. Yes, Palm’s situation is that dire. If they do not pull out of their spiral dive quickly, they are going to crash and burn. They need to sell devices and they need to appeal to a vast customer base. Based on what I’ve seen, it seems that the Pre is a nifty little device and think it has a pretty good chance of selling well. I’m ready to concede that Palm probably achieved its goals with the Pre.

My point of view, however, is not the point of view of the executives at Palm who are trying to save the company. I see the situation from the perspective of someone who bought two Palm devices (true, that does not make me a big client), someone who has bought software which runs on the Palm, someone who relies on keeping his data synced between his Palm Treo and his desktop. Before the launch of the Pre, I used to say that my next phone/PDA combo would probably not be a Palm device. This statement came with the caveat that if Palm proved able to release a device I’d want to buy, I would change my mind. I don’t want to buy the Pre. Therefore, my statement stands.

1. The Pre is not backward compatible with old Palm software. This is where Palm could have had a real exclusive but they gave it up. I guess the executives calculated the cost of providing compatibility and decided that whatever customers they would lose by not providing it was not enough to offset the cost of offering it. The end result for me is that whether I buy the Pre or some other device, I won’t be able to bring my software over from my Treo. There are rumors that maybe a third party like StyleTap will provide support. However, I’d rather not have to pay extra for it. (Just like I don’t pay extra when I buy a new laptop to continue running my old software.) Moreover, relying on a third party for compatibility does not inspire confidence. It is just likely to result in extra problems for me.

2. The Pre relies on cloud computing instead of desktop computing. Palm did not make both possible on the Pre like they are on the Treo. They simply did not provide support for desktop computing. That means no syncing with the desktop. The apologists will probably point out that it is possible to get the data onto the desktop by first going through the cloud. Here’s my problem: I don’t want to entrust my data to the cloud. I do not trust the reliability of the could and I do not trust the cloud to keep my private data private. Don’t get me wrong, I put data into the cloud but only the data I don’t care to lose or that I don’t care to keep private. As I was writing this post, I learned that CompanionLink will be offering software to sync with the desktop. Too bad it is not geared towards Linux users. Too bad also that it would be an additional cost to me.

3. The emphasis on cloud computing means that the device becomes seriously impaired when it is out of range of a signal. I am currently using my Treo in Taiwan. I use it as a PDA because the phone part does not work here. Good enough for me but I would not be able to do the same with the Pre because it would not be able to access the cloud.

4. The emphasis on web technologies rather than a proper OS-level SDK for development means that applications I’m currently using probably won’t be available on the Pre. PlecoDict is the one application which I’m using now and probably won’t be able to be ported without a proper SDK. (PlecoDict’s developer said so himself.) There are, again, rumors that there may be an SDK eventually and that Palm is in talks with some developers to provide them access to that SDK but these are all just rumors.

5. Palm does not seem to be ready to fully open the platform. webOS is a mixture of open source and proprietary parts. In addition, the same rumors which predict a future OS-level SDK imply that some privileged developers will have access to that SDK whereas the others won’t.

6. The Pre has no expansion slot. So if I run out of memory, I have to get a new device. Thanks Palm.

7. There is the first generation rule: never buy version 1.0 of anything. This is not Palm’s fault really but I have to consider the relative maturity of the Pre vs other offerings. Even if the other offerings are still fairly new on the market, Pre will be behind.

I will be ready to buy a new smartphone this summer or early fall at the latest. Will Palm announce new features for the Pre which will address my concerns? Only time will tell but for now it seems that an Android phone may be the answer for me.

The good:

1. Open Office 3.0 feels snappier than 2.4. I don’t have hard statistics but it feels like it starts faster and various operations are faster.

2. Extensions designed for 2.4 work in 3.0 without modification.

3. A window bug in 2.4 which was triggered by compiz has been fixed in 3.0

4. In text documents, it is now possible to see the content of notes on the right side of the document. I would go as far as asserting that before 3.0, Open Office’s support for notes in text documents was so badly broken as to be unusable. In 3.0 it is possible to put notes to good use. And I would say that this feature alone is what made the move to 3.0 worthwhile for me.

However all of the positive above is undermined by long-standing problems in Open Office which still have not been fixed in 3.0:

1. Open Office’s support for notes is still deficient. It is not possible to associate a note with a span of text. I find this very annoying because I usually think of notes as comments on spans of text. It is currently not possible to select part of a paragraph for instance and add a note saying “this passage is incorrect” which would clearly be associated with the selected passage. If you select a passage and add a note, the note will be inserted at the start or end of the passage without any indication of what exactly it applies to. So you have to write in the note “The passage from A to B is incorrect.”

2. It is still not possible to get a split-screen view in Open Office. This may be due to just how abysmally ill-designed the underlying architecture of Open Office is. I often find myself wishing for such functionality. Sigh…

3. Open Office is just as likely to crash as before.

4. As I intimated above, the underlying architecture of Open Office is just as horrible as it ever was. If you have never tried to write extensions for Open Office you have no idea just how bad it is.

5. The documentation is just as inadequate as before. I’m talking not only about the documentation available to people writing extensions but also the documentation for end users.

Lately I’ve found asking myself why I’m putting up with Open Office and why I’m writing extensions for it. I keep having to remind myself that although Emacs would be more pleasant to work with, it is not a likely tool for most of my colleagues. Word would sit at the top of the list of most popular tool but due to ideological reasons (Word is not open source software) I’m not going to develop for Word. This leaves Open Office. I’ve checked again this morning what was available in the open source world and as bad as Open Office is, there is really no other contender. In my opinion, other office suites are either incomplete or not supported well enough on other platforms. I’m not fond of Windows but I’d rather develop extensions for an open source suite which is fully ported to Windows rather than an open source suite which is only half-ported or badly ported. Ditto for OS X.

I’ve upgraded from Hardy to Intrepid and found a slew of problems. First the problems which are not fixed:

1. Gnome does not want to start the gnome-terminal which is saved in the session configuration. After further investigation I found that session saving in gnome 2.24.1 does not work at all. This is a regression bug and a major one at that.

2. Update: I can’t sync to my cell phone using bluetooth. The bluetooth driver is there and working but to be able to sync there need to be some configuration performed. The configuration of the bluetooth tools has significantly changed since Hardy so this is not a trivial thing to fix. And the documentation seems nonexistent. One step forward, two steps back.

3. Evolution displays negative total number of emails.

Then the problems which I have been able to fix:

1. The guys working on compiz have decided to go from 0-based indexing of viewports to 1-based indexing. Of course, user settings are not automatically upgraded so I had to go into my configuration and fix that manually. I think the change is good because 0-based indexing makes sense only to programmers. However, not providing for an automatic upgrade of the configuration data is asinine.

2. scim initially refused to start. It turns out that skim was preventing it to run. Not skim directly but there was a session script which checked whether skim is present or not and if present would refuse to run scim.

3. Evolution at first did not want to connect to my mail server. I fixed this by switching from TLS to SSL for the connection protocol.

4. Update: Hardy and Intrepid run different versions of rsync. Unfortunately, the two versions do not speak the exact same protocol. There is some degree of compatibility so not all uses of rsync between an Intrepid and Hardy machine are doomed to fail. However, I use rsync in such a way that Intrepid’s rsync cannot talk to Hardy’s rsync. I’ve backported Intrepid’s rsync to Hardy to take care of that problem.

5. Update: Skype initially was not able to produce audio. Changing my sound out and ringing devices in the “Sound Device” tab of the “Options” dialog to the value “pulse” fixed the problem.

6. Update: Spamassassin’s cron job fails. A workaround exists.

7. Update: The Eclipse version bundled with Intrepid is both ancient and buggy. To be fair that is also a problem with Hardy. The problem has been reported and a newer version of Eclipse exists in one of the PPAs.

8. Update: Evolution displays a huge “Show:” button. I fixed this by going into the gconf registry and removing the key at /apps/evolution/mail/labels.

I will update this page as I find more.

Eventually, I should go through older digital albums and clean them up cause nobody wants to see the same temple under 10 different angles… unless perhaps they are into temple architecture. Another thing I should explore is subdividing albums into “highlights” and the rest. This way, if I want to show the album to someone I can just show the highlights while at the same time keeping the opportunity to go into more depth if I feel like it.

I have to say though that it is a little bit disturbing to select what is worth remembering.

Update: After further investigations, I have decided to go with Skype even though I hate Skype’s attack on the GPL. The WengoPhone software (i.e. OpenWengo) proved flaky and moreover was not able to show any video. That’s a total deal breaker. Gizmo5 looks good in theory but it is flaky on the amd64 platform. I’m still going to investigate how well Kopete handles video. Gnome-based solutions like Ekiga are not an option since I use KDE. (I prefer to stick to one DE, thank you.) Twinkle looks promising as a good softphone but it still does not support video.