Google and the Web OS

 Computing, Linux, Software  4 Responses »
Jul 082009
 
Google Chrome
Image via Wikipedia

We’ve commented on this before at Nerdlets, but now there is a definitive reason for doing so. It’s not really a surprise, but Google is about to tie all its seemingly disparate services together. Introducing the Google Operating System. Why a new operating system? Well, we use our computers differently now. We use them to access the web. Your browser, by and large, is your OS (at least according to Google), which is why Google has recently invested so much time into their entry into the browser wars: Google Chrome.

And the Google OS is actually the Google Chrome OS. According to Google, it is little more than a (Linux!) wrapper around Google’s browser. There is therefore no need to download, install, or develop applications. According to the official Google Blog post:

For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

There are advantages to this approach. Developers can spend their time programming applications that work on any Computer, and because users do not have to install, update, tweak, or otherwise fuss with their applications, developers can pump out updates quickly and efficiently. Furthermore, provided your browser is secure, you need not worry too much about viruses and malware, or at least not yet. And, of course, since all your data is on the web, you can access your files anywhere! Finally, since Google promises that it’s vision will remain Open Source focused, you (presumably) will not need to worry about Google hijacking your data. If Google does something you don’t like, you can just switch.

There are serious disadvantages as well. Your data is on a server somewhere, and not on your computer. There is also a certain amount of loss of control.

Windows, Linux, and OSX take a hybrid approach to the OS and browser relationship, and I prefer that personally. With the mainstream operating systems your data resides primarily on your computer, but is synced to the web at your request. This is what I practice, since I don’t always have an Internet connection.

So what do you fine folks think? Is the future of computing web-based services running in your browser, or is it something more like what we’re doing now? Your comments are welcome!

Update: Some excellent analysis by Louis Gray.

 Posted by at 8:09 am  Tagged with: , , , ,

Protect Yourself from the Conficker Worm

 Computing, How to, Software  2 Responses »
Mar 312009
 

You may have heard about a new threat to your computer: the Conflicker worm. Over 3 million computers are infected, and the scary thing is, you won’t know if you’ve got it until it’s too late. By too late, I mean tomorrow, when the worm “activates” and starts making a real mess of things. What will happen? NPR has the (slightly oversimplified) details about April 1:

That’s when many of the poisoned machines will get more aggressive about “phoning home” to the worm’s creators over the Internet. When that happens, the bad guys behind the worm will be able to trigger the program to send spam, spread more infections, clog networks with traffic, or try and bring down Web sites.

Technically, this could cause havoc, from massive network outages to the creation of a cyberweapon of mass destruction that attacks government computers. But researchers who have been tracking Conficker say the date will probably come and go quietly.

By “go quietly” NPR means that there will probably not be a massive world-wide shutdown of the internet. That’s all well and good, but your computer may still be infected, and this can and will massively slow down your own internet connection, as well as more significant problems. The best option is to fix the issue by following this excellent guide.

You may also want to consider using OpenDNS in the future, which is a faster and safer way to access the internet, and has been Conflicker-free for awhile now. It’s pretty easy: follow this guide.

As usual, Mac and Linux users are safe and sound.

 Posted by at 4:02 pm  Tagged with: , , , ,

SBL’s Unicode Greek Font Finally Released!

 Biblical Greek, Research Tools  1 Response »
Mar 062009
 

It’s been a long time coming, but SBL has finally released their promised Greek Font. The download page is here, or you can download it directly here. There is also a Hebrew font.

The fonts work in all Operating Systems (Windows, Linux, Mac). They are not open-source (so a couple of other fonts are still my top recommendations), but they are free to use:

SBL fonts are made available without cost to individual scholars for non-profit use. Commercial use by publishers is reserved for members of the SBL Font Foundation.

If you haven’t already set up your keyboard to support Unicode Greek, follow my guide (for Macs go here, or for Linux here).

SBL’s Biblical Font FAQ is also worth a read. If you’re not already familiar with the advantages of Unicode (as described, for example, in my guide), you may find their explanation of interest:

Why should I bother with a Unicode font? Isn’t it easier to keep using the fonts I have used for years?

With older, non-Unicode fonts, character glyphs were simply mapped over Roman characters. So, with SPEzra for example, pushing “b” displays a bet, and “[” displays an ayin. However, the computer understands these characters as “b” and “[.” Thus, when the document is transferred to a computer that does not have that specific font installed, the computer displays those characters.

Unicode seeks to allow for transfer of encoded documents between platforms and independent of fonts. So, if a document is typed using one Unicode font, it will also be viewable using another Unicode font. Likewise if the font is not installed, the computer simply defaults to its normal Unicode font. If one wants to use a different font for aesthetic (or other) reasons, one can change the font just like one would do with English. Additionally, the computer understands the characters to be the ones that the screen displays. So, an ayin both displays as an ayin and is encoded that way. This makes cross-platform text transfers and searches possible, because texts can be encoded with the characters in which they are written. Even though learning to switch to and use keyboard layouts for other languages takes a little bit of time to learn, the benefits of Unicode more than make up for this small initial investment of time and effort.

HT: Rod Decker

 Posted by at 9:32 pm  Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

Unicode Guide for Mac Users

 Biblical Greek, Christianity, Software  No Responses »
Mar 062009
 

If you ever type in Greek, Hebrew, or any other language that requires special characters, then you need to make sure you are using a Unicode font. I have written up a pretty thorough guide to using Unicode fonts in Windows and/or Linux, but my Mac knowledge is flaky. If you’re a Mac user and are interested in typing in Greek or Hebrew then follow this guide.

Regardless of your operating system you might also be interested in my introduction to Unicode.

 Posted by at 9:00 am  Tagged with: , , , , ,

Bibleworks Warranty and Mac/Linux Support

 Software  No Responses »
Feb 062009
 

As an addendum to my guide to setting up Bibleworks 7 and 8 in Linux, I should mention this encouraging statement from the Bibleworks Website:

BibleWorks comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. If you purchase BibleWorks directly from us but cannot get it to work with your Windows emulator, you may return BibleWorks for a refund (shipping not included).

 Posted by at 5:11 pm  Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

How to Run Bibleworks 8 (or 7) in Linux

 Biblical Greek, How to, Software  No Responses »
Feb 062009
 

Bibleworks 8 now runs in Linux through WINE.

I posted a guide awhile back walking Linux users through the steps required to get Bibleworks 7 up-and-running in Linux (using Wine). It has recently been confirmed that the steps used in that guide also work for Bibleworks 8. If you are interested in running Bibleworks in Linux (Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE) you can find the guide here.

Surprisingly, it appears that some problems that plagued Bibleworks 7 in Linux are no longer issues in Bibleworks 8. This is good news!

 Posted by at 3:48 pm  Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

Is Ubuntu Linux Mainstream?

 Culture, Linux  1 Response »
Jan 122009
 

The New York times recently covered the increasing popularity of Ubuntu’s flavor of GNU/Linux, attributing much of its success to Mark Shuttleworth’s leadership and wealth.

There’s a lot of sensationalism in the article. Like this:

But rather than preparing to code for the highest bidder, the developers were coordinating their largely volunteer effort to try to undermine Microsoft’s Windows operating system for PCs, which generated close to $17 billion in sales last year.

I don’t think Linux coders are all that subversive—we just want more control over our software. But still, it’s nice to see Linux getting some mainstream attention.

Christopher Tozzi at the excellent WorksWithU blog responds to some of points made by the NYT, offering a little balance and perspective. It’s worth a read.

 Posted by at 11:10 am  Tagged with: , , ,

Dropbox Saved my Butt Today

 Webapps and Websites  No Responses »
Jan 022009
 

Well, I’m back after the holidays. Quess what happened on my New Years?

For reasons that boggle the mind, I decided to type in the Linux equivalent of “format c:/”. Seriously. The result? My entire Windows partition is irrevocably gone.

Not a problem. I back up my data. Everything iimportant is safe, and all my dissertation research is secure, largely because of an excellent backup utility called Dropbox. I put all my important files into my dropbox and they are automatically synced accross multiple computers, and online. So after a little drag-and-drop, I’m back to work.

Back up Zotero

As many of you know I am a big advocate of Zotero for research and bibliographic management. It is worth noting that by default Zotero puts all required files in your Firefox folder, which is generally not backed up by most software. You can always add it to your Dropbox, but a better idea is to change your settings. Go into Zotero’s Preferences dialog and the Advanced Settings to set a new location for Zotero files. Put it in your My Documents folder under a subfolder called “Zotero.” Almost all backup software will backup you My Documents folder by default, so this is the safest place.

One Dropbox Limitation

One thing to be noted: Dropbox is not true backup software. True backup software archives your files on a periodic basis. Dropbox does something a little different; it mirrors you files. Any changes you make on your computer are automatically changed in your dropbox. If you overwrite or delete a file, it will be overwritten or deleted in dropbox.

This might be a problem, except Dropbox saves all revisions, so if you do something stupid, and then your stupidity is mirrored by Dropbox, you can “undo” your changes by going to the Web interface and clicking “Restore my files.” That’s what I had to do, and it worked flawlessly and quickly.

Thanks Dropbox!

Make a New Year’s Resolution

I have two suggestions for nerdy New Year’s resolutions: (1) Backup your data, (2) Use Super-User priveledges responsibly.

 Posted by at 10:46 am  Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

A Great Wireless Card for Linux

 Linux  No Responses »
Dec 242008
 

This is a post I wrote awhile back, but now includes a significant update (see below) that makes the whole thing worthy of re-purposing. Windows and Mac users should stop reading now lest their heads explode.

A Great Wireless Card

Switching to Linux from Windows is no longer as difficult as it used to be. I hope to post a full-fledged guide on switching to Linux in the near future, but in the mean time I would like to address one difficulty that has plagued would-be Linux users for some time: wireless cards and driver support. The persistent problem with Linux is that hardware manufacturers only program for Windows. The Linux community, with all its hacker ingenuity, has overcome this obstacle for most hardware, and big companies such as Intel and ATI have recently come-around and opened-up their drivers. Two problem areas remain, however: graphics cards and wireless cards.

The latter has given me a problem for some time, particularly with our old laptop. Built in cards usually work fine, but those PCMCIA and USB cards rarely include native Linux support. So, to cut to the chase, for all those Linux users out there, let me recommend the ASUS WL-107G. It redefines plug-and-play, which is not one of Linux’s strengths. Seriously, I removed my old card, stuck this in its slot, and with every expectation of needing to poke and proud, was sorely dissapointed to discover that the card in question “just worked.” OpenSUSE (and later Ubuntu) immediately recognized the card, installed the driver, accessed my WPA2-AES network, and was up-and-googling within 30 seconds. Amazing. If I hadn’t spend 2 months trying to get my Linksys card to behave, I would have said something like “Let’s see Windows do that!”

In short, the ASUS WL-107G is a PCMCIA notebook wireless card that runs in Linux, Windows, and Mac. It supports WEP, WPA, WPA2, with either TKIP or AES. In short, it will meet whatever security needs you have, in whatever Operating System you run, and for about $40 less than most other wireless cards with these specifications. If you are running a Linux box, and have had trouble with wireless, this is the card for you.

Important Update: Increase your Speed

For this and other cards based on the ralink 2×00 chipset (the WL-107G uses the rt2500 chipset), you may run into slow internet speeds when you first install. I did in Ubuntu. This is because the ralink drivers for some reason default to a 1 mbs data rate. To fix this, type the following into a terminal:

sudo iwconfig wlan0 rate 54M

You should be operating at normal speeds. You can use http://speed.io to test your speeds before and after marking the change.

 Posted by at 8:00 am  Tagged with: , , , , , ,

Another Online Storage Service, from Microsoft

 Webapps and Websites  1 Response »
Dec 212008
 

Ok, so here is a list of Microsoft provided online storage/sync solutions, all of which are free. Windows Live Mesh offers an alternative to Dropbox if you need more than 5 gb of storage space and don’t need Mac/Linux support. These are all good options.

 Posted by at 10:51 am  Tagged with: , , , , , , ,
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