Installing Apache on Ubuntu

Addison Berry provides a very nice video walking the viewer through the installation of Apache/PHP/MySQL on Ubuntu: http://www.lullabot.com/videocast/install-local-web-server-ubuntu

Security Profiteering

Reducing the chances that we'll ever get away from security screenings is the new view of the security checkpoint as a profit center. Airports, and now football stadiums have security checkpoints, long lines, and now faster, low-security lines available to customers willing to pay. This may be less objectionable in a stadium than in an airport, since stadiums have more room for more checkpoints, but it still seems to be primarily a way to profit off security theater. First of all, what reason do we have to believe that the background checks of those willing to pay the fees are actually effective? Second, in an airport, there is limited space for security checkpoints, so adding express lanes reduces the space for other security lanes, so people willing to pay for the low security line slow the rest of us down. Finally, a new segment in the security theater industry creates a new group lobbying against change. Once these fees are in place, and being funneled to "entrepreneurs" profiting from them, there will be lobbyists fighting any attempt to do away with these trusted traveler/fan programs. And we'll have another example of congress following the money rather than listening to the citizenry--who, BTW, don't seem to care enough to stay informed or to vote. The odds of being killed by a terrorist is nearly zero, but the probability of being inconvenienced by, losing privacy and liberty to, and footing the bill for security theater is 1.

Diebold can run (as Premier Election Solutions[sic]), but they can't hide

No comment necessary.

If I Had a Hammer...

I have my new RFID passport. I considered whacking it with a hammer and hoping that would kill the RFID chip. A lot of people are doing this, or at least talking about it. Instead I've gotten a new passport holder that doubles as a credit card holder and a Faraday cage. Now I feel better with the not easily testable assertion that when the passport's closed, it can't be read. Apparently the chip's easily read if the passport is open just a bit, and not so easy if it's closed. The Faraday cage adds a layer of security. Using a Faraday cage rather than a hammer has the added benefit of not being illegal. The US government says it's illegal to try to maintain just a little privacy. Soon we'll have Real ID with RFID chips, and the game will be over, game set match to the shadowy overlords. I really should get and play around with an RFID reader.

Gnome Caps Lock, Insert Keys

Some time back I discussed disabling the caps lock and insert keys in gnome. In Hardy Heron (Ubuntu 8.04) the caps lock suggestion I made stopped functioning. Here's the new fix:

#! /bin/sh
# Kills the stoopid caps lock and insert keys.

file=/tmp/capsLockDisabled

if test ! -e $file ; then
        /usr/bin/xmodmap -e "keycode 66 = "
        /usr/bin/xmodmap -e "keycode 106 = "
        /bin/date >$file
fi

I'm still amazed every time a new release of Gnome comes out and they still don't give the user a way of getting rid of these. As a system staffer in the Ohio State CIS department (Frank Adelstein? Frodo?) once said: "The caps lock key shouldn't be right next to keys that are used all the time. It should be somewhere off in the next room." Ok, that was a paraphrase, not really a quote, and I don't remember who I'm paraphrasing. Anyhow, the above script does it. I call the script from my .cshrc. Those of you who use bash (yuck) would put it in your .profile.

Evince Bug Workaround

Evince has been a continuous battle for me ever since I switched from KDE to Gnome. Ok, more of an occasional annoyance than a continuous battle, and the various problems I've had with Evince convinced me to install and primarily use kpdf for awhile. Well, I've got a fresh Ubuntu install, and didn't want to litter it with all the junk that comes along with kpdf, so I've been using evince. However, evince wants to print everything in A4 format. Yes, my printer defaults are letter. Yes, the PDF documents are letter size. Yes, /etc/papersize contains one line, letter.

I remember wasting an afternoon on this sometime back, so the question became tell evince to use letter every single time I print, go back to kpdf, or waste another afternoon with no guarantee of better results than last time.

First tried the obvious thing:

man evince

Totally useless. Instead of placing everything in one place, the evince folks have decided to scatter documentation all over the place at their web site. But, unlike last time, Google found me a solution, a recent blog entry by Dominique Cimafranca at UbuntuLiving. He apparently uses bash, and so suggests a change to the user's .profile. I use tcsh, and so added this line to my .cshrc:

setenv LC_PAPER en_US.UTF-8@letter

UbuntuLiving suggests that after making this change, one log out and then back in. Not necessary. Any new xterm opened from that point will have the correct setting, or one can just type

source ~/.cshrc

in an existing xterm (or gnome-terminal, or konsole, or whatever) and LC_PAPER is set. Then the next time you type the evince command, it'll actually print correctly with no gyrations by the user. Imagine that.

Is this a bug within evince? The evince folks may think not, but Google is unable to find any mention of LC_PAPER at site:www.gnome.org/projects/evince/ and the man page is useless, so the documentation is woefully lacking. Yeah, I'm using an undocumented feature. It'll probably break with the next release.

Gnome's Messed-Up GLSlideshow

For some inexplicable reason, in Ubuntu 8.04, the screen saver GLSlideshow has no configuration options. There's a long discussion of this issue in the Ubuntu Forums, suggesting that a lot of people have found this perplexing. I think the best how-to on managing GLSlideshow is provided by Bits 'n Pieces.

Mark Berg Climbs Kilimanjaro

First, the Boston Herald article
The NHL has a day-by-day log of the trip:

• Day 1
• Day 2
• Day 3
• Day 4
• Day 5
• Day 6

[ Added 2011-12-30: the NHL seems to have deleted the day-by-day log, but they have a video, likely shot by Mark, at http://video.nhl.com/videocenter/console?id=22732 ]

Memorex: Explain This, Please...

I had need for CD-Rs and the only brand at the University bookstore was Memorex. I had very bad luck with their 5.25" floppies in the early or mid '80s, but that was a different item a long time ago. The cylinder's wrapping said "Cool Colors." Fine. Like I care. It turns out I do care. Several of the CDs are black. How exactly do I write on those? I don't think it matters what color Sharpie I use, it's not going to show up.

Considering Google AdWords?

A post at Securosis suggests that maybe it's really not worth it.

Privacy Naiveté

The State Department has placed RFID chips in the identity card usable for surface travel between the US and Canada or Mexico. On the page Where they describe this card they state have the following question and answer: Won’t this chip violate Americans’ privacy?

There will be no personal information written on the electronic chip itself. The chip will have only a unique number pointing to a stored record contained in secure government databases.

However the card will have a unique identifier--the number State is using as a database key--and this number can be used to track specific individuals and to detect the proximity of a US citizen. Carrying one of these outside a Faraday cage will threaten the bearer's privacy.

OpenOffice Calc 2.4.1 Read Only Mode

As long as I'm on the topic, another aspect of OO 2.4.1 Calc that can only be considered a bug is that when one opens a spreadsheet in read-only mode, it's not possible to select and copy parts of a formula from the formula box. The closest one can come, so far as I can tell, is to copy the entire formula out of a cell. Why can't I copy read-only text? This is a copy I'm trying to do, not a cut, not a modification.

Disabling OpenOffice's Stupid Autocomplete

[ An updated version of this information appears here. ]

With autocomplete, OpenOffice has managed to make a completely useless, very annoying behavior default. They've also done a good job of hiding the menu options to disable the "feature," and have hidden it in different places in different tools. This is a case where consistency would reduce the impact of a stupid default. Anyhow, as others have mentioned, whenever I'm using a freshly-installed OpenOffice (e.g., after installing a hopefully less-buggy version of Ubuntu), OpenOffice reminds me how much I dislike this "feature." And I spend too much time hunting down how to kill it.

First, in OO Writer it's not really that well hidden. Copied from http://nowacki.org/blog/2004/05/disable_autocomplete_in_openoffice.html: * Tools -> AutoCorrect/AutoFormat… * Word Completion tab * Uncheck “Enable word completion” 

Unfortunately, this doesn't disable the "feature" in OO Calc, and the OO Calc option is very well hidden. Today I really was having trouble figuring it out--it is, of course, not in what passes for help in OO--which led me to nowacki.org via Google. From their blog entry: Tools -> Cell Contents -> AutoInput

Of course, this is the root of the problem: we're supposed to magically know that in OO Calc they call it autoinput rather than autocomplete. What, if anything, are the OO folks thinking? This has been a usability problem and unnecessary time sink for a lot of people for a long time now. When will they disable it by default, or at least make it possible to find the option in OO Calc? Or maybe talk about disabling it in OO Help?

Charter Communications' Unethical Browser Hijacking

Tony Bradley at about.com has a very interesting article on how his ISP is hijacking Microsoft's Windows Live Search. This is a very good example of why we need strong net neutrality laws.

• June posting from Lauren Weinstein on net neutrality
• Recent post by Bruce Schneier on ISP's hijacking the DNS
• CavTel is also hijacking the DNS

What's Wrong With This Sentence?

Sentence: "Sequoia blamed the discrepancy on pollworker error and said the problem could be fixed with a software update, but state clerks wanted a third-party investigation." Context: A Computerworld article describing irregularities in the February NJ presidential primaries in which the electronic counts in Sequoia machines didn't match the paper log counts of votes.

According to Computerworld, the county clerks had asked Princeton's Ed Felton to look into the matter, but, hearing this, Sequoia threatened legal action saying that Felton's investigation would violate the terms of the licensing agreement. Upon asking the NJ AG for help in dealing with Sequoia, Sequoia chose an outside firm--one of their choice--to analyze the systems and deliver the result to Sequoia and the AG's office. The article closes Even if pollworker error was to blame for the voting discrepancy, the issue should still be addressed, Dressler said. "There should be a fail-safe measure so the election workers can't do that." "This is too important of an issue to be swept under the carpet," he added. "If there is any issue with the Sequoia machines, we should shed a light on it."

Oh, and what was wrong with the sentence? Fixing human error with a software update seems tenuous at best, and it totally ignores the issue of that particular election.