Two Slashes

Well, the iWork installation guide was so popular that I did the same thing for iLife ‘08 as well.  Hopefully this helps a few people out with their troubles.

Read it here.

Yeehaw!  In the interest of practicing the almighty onion-peeling skills, I’ve thrown together a how-to on how to get iWork ‘08 running on a non-10.4.10 OS X system.

I tested and walked through it using 10.4.8, so I’m not sure if it works on anything older than that, but the applications at least start up for me.  Which is enough, I guess.

If you’re interested or looking for the blasted write-up already, it’s right here.

Happy hacking.

A question was posed in the TechCentric IRC channel about why Linux seems to have taken a backseat to other, more graphical alternatives. Of course, Windows. Yes, Mac OS X. Hell, throw OS/2 in there for measure. Well, funny thing I mention graphics, because that’s what it’s all about.

Take a trip back to the age of the Apple II. Yeah, remember? Well, even if you don’t, or had little experience with one, it’s part of my point. If you noticed, they never had mice. Everything was keyboard-driven. There was no such thing as “point-and-click”; the monitor simply couldn’t sense what part of the screen you were pointing at. Think of it as talking to a blind, deaf person; they can’t hear or see you, but they can feel your touch - a la, you can’t dictate orders to it, and (like I said) you can’t just gesture at something and expect the computer to comply. You actually had to touch the thing in certain ways (typing commands, anyone?) to get it to do anything.

This form of input had a few limits to it. For example, you had to know how to instruct the computer to do what you wanted, whether it be some funky acronym for the Canadian French word for the command you wanted, or whether the command wanted to know your pants size in addition to what it needed to do. This required memorization, and a certain amount of brainpower (which is proving to be a really finite resource in today’s world). You couldn’t just type “Move File A on Disk B to Disk C as File D.” and expect the computer to comply with anything other than the DOS equivalent of “WTF?”.

There were some benefits to doing things this way. If you wanted to be anywhere near productive, you had to be able to provide input to the computer as quickly as possible. And if you can follow where I’m going, this isn’t a place for hunt-and-peck typing. Ah, yes…you actually had to LEARN the sacred art of touch typing, with as few mistakes as possible. You never know when one mistyped command makes your 200KB of hard-written letters disappear. (Oh wait, am I jumping ahead past the invention of the software word processor? )

So, fast forward to the introduction of the Graphical User Interface. And the mouse. “Hey! Look over here! I’m making gestures with this newfangled pointing device…and the computer’s following along! I don’t have to type the name of my programs anymore; I just ‘click’ their name and the computer starts them for me!” If you don’t get it already, this is where the trend starts to fall. People are no longer “learning” to use a PC by throwing commands at them or typing; they simply move a bloody box around and watch as the computer does all the important stuff like figuring out what the devil they’re trying to do in the first place.

(Admittedly, the Apple II did have graphics capability - very limited graphics capability - and you still needed a keyboard to control what you were doing. So call my mistake if you want, but you’re forgetting that there’s more than just a pretty red square at stake here.)

Ooh and ahh all you want, but like I said, this is where intelligence begins to lose importance as a prerequisite for computing. You don’t have to memorize commands; you don’t have to lay a finger on the keyboard unless you want to write a note at all. The mouse, with far fewer buttons than a keyboard, is part of the reason.

I’ll stop assuming you’re thinking about old copies of Mac OS a minute and lead you instead to earlier versions of Windows. Yes, my friend, there were Windows before 95. Again, people were dumbstruck by the simplicity compared to previous computers. Not only could people use their blasted mice like with the Apples, but (in the case of those who could remember what a console app was) console apps could be run too; a true case of having your cake and eating it too, if you will. Along comes good ol’ ‘95 - “Oh look! All my programs are accessible from this one gaping button, and all the stuff I’m doing shows up on this bar here!” - and people are further retarded by “technologies” such as Autorun. No longer do people have to browse to the blasted CD, find the appropriate application, and launch it; instead, they sit back and watch as the computer brings the contents of the CD to THEM. Same thing with getting a new peripheral; plug the thing in, and instead of installing anything (in most cases), Windows goes through that hurdle all by its lonesome.

So, returning to the question at hand. Why isn’t Linux or some other alternative operating system mainstream? You want the truth? The keyboard…it scares people. When they’re not using it to type letters to their grandmother (which by the way, is now so advanced that the letters can move, show up blue and big and bold, and appear as if on a wooden tabletop), most users don’t want to be hassled with it. It’s a reminder of times past; times where people could only make their computers go as fast as their little fingers could move (which in some cases was not all that fast at all). And with the surging downfall in the mental capacity of most people today, it’s becoming harder and scarier for people to actually have to do more than click a box and watch their worries disappear with the contents of their Recycle Bin.

You see, it isn’t just eye candy that draws people. Compiz Fusion (or whatever the heck it’s called), transparency - anything extra isn’t the primary focus, it’s just a benefit to make things look better while things are (purportedly) getting done. It’s simplicity and automation; being able to walk up, move the mouse as little as possible and avoid the keyboard at almost all cost, and go 1/8 of the way while the computer does the remaining 7/8 and then some. If people actually wanted to put physical movement into anything, would there be such a market or demand for dictation software? Would operating systems even need to include something like that?

People want the computer to follow the fallacy that it brings information to them, rather than bringing them to the information. This isn’t Google…its the operating system, and it’s supposed to make things easy, right? Perhaps we’ve gone too far, and people are just too lazy now to understand that to get the most out of anything, you need to put some of the work in yourself as well.

In short, it isn’t about what you can duplicate from another operating system that draws people to it (since they can get their calculator anywhere), it’s how much work they have to put in to get some sort of benefit to using the OS in the first place. The more maintenance, typing, or dabbling people have to do or hear others doing, the less they become interested in following that footpath.

This is the place where we have our major split. The average Windows users are lazy, and assume they are like magnets in that everything comes to them, be it the Internet, their music, viruses (you have to admit, most viruses DO come TO you), or a girlfriend (I wish. ), and that as far as they’re concerned they don’t care about their keyboards - they’re second class input devices. Mac users, well, they’re not as lazy, since there is still the extremely occasional typing to do, and the keyboard helps out in some of the applications they have. There are 10 types of Unix users as well: GUI users who have no idea what a shell is and are probably only using the OS because a relative with computer savviness realized that they had thirty installed copies of Bonzi Buddy and needed an out badly, and those people who don’t like their mouse, but prefer navigating around a system using all ten (eleven, if you somehow have an extra) phalanges and avoiding the mouse (aka the opposite of the average Windows user).

To sum everything up nicely:  to get the more “common” lazy man, you simply need to provide enough cupholders, and make sure there’s a built-in auto-sensing back scratcher too.  That’s all everyone really wants.

(Thanks to Randy for the post title idea. )

If you didn’t already know, Defcon is this week.  For the uninitiated, Defcon is basically the world’s biggest hacker convention, started by Jeff Moss.  (Well, I’d call them ‘crackers’, but for reasons of word association, they choose to use the word ‘hacker’ so that’s what I’m going to be using for the remainder of the post as well.)  Geeks from all over the world come together to trade tricks, put their skills up with or against one another (in fun), and give discussions about various topics people find interesting or helpful.  In fact, it’s such a popular place that attendees are routinely barred from entering the United States (the convention is held in Las Vegas) or sometimes arrested.  It’s actually so popular that numerous agents from the FBI attend just to get an idea of how far behind their skills are, and what the current “hot targets” are.

It’s because of this last item that one of the Defcon activities exist.  Called “Spot the FBI Agent”, it consists of nothing more than convention members ratting out people they feel are FBI agents.  Purely out of fun, it’s designed just to play to the paranoids and very detail-oriented individuals.  In fact, any journalists attending need to get permission to do almost anything, ensuring the security of people admitting any crime they may have committed as long as the journalist and their group honors the “contract” they have signed.

Of course, regular attendees only have their code of honor as a safeguard against people being arrested over admissions of guilt, among other things.  Which is why one of the Dateline producers, Michelle Madigan, was caught and publicly lambasted for trying to covertly record admissions and proceedings inside the conference without anyone’s approval…and without a journalist’s badge.

All I have to ask is…why?  I’m sure it might be interesting to record and play back to the world the underground goings-on of the security world (there’s more than just computer security at stake at the conference, you know) and spin them in a broadcast in such a way as to make people paranoid over using postage stamps or doing trivial things…but as we all (at least, those of us in even the loosest of circles) know, not only does this all happen without a glance by “civilians”, but it’s a necessary problem.  Yes, I said necessary.  Afraid?  (I’m more than happy to discuss it, but not now.  Get in touch with me or wait for me to post about it.)

Anyway, back to the why?  What would possess someone to attempt to infiltrate a meeting of the utmost professionals of the stealth/surveillance/underground attack trade just for a five-minute story?  I mean, FBI agents can’t even walk around,and they’re not even supposed to make any indication that they’re an agent; it was only a matter of time before someone discovered the plot.

This isn’t “To Catch A Hacker.”  This is people sharing knowledge and helping to make the present and future a better place, even if it costs some people their freedom or a few dollars (in bandwidth and beverages of course).  Remember, without testing our current systems, we cannot strive to improve them, and consequentlythe quality of life as well.  How are we to compare our level of quality of life if it’s always the same?  How would we know how much better it could be?  This is people improving the lives of others; sometimes at great personal risk.  I mean, there are people who write virii just to patch the holes the virus uses to cause damage (alright, in the case of that link, the backdoor was a bit over the top…but all in all it did help, right?).  And as much as anyone wants to believe it, there are good people in the fight too.

To be really lame and create a chess example, picture the board full of all the pieces you have at the start - bishops, rooks, pawns, and so forth - and the colors stand for both sides of the puzzle.  Picture a game going on, but when a piece is supposed to be taken off the board, it merely gets moved somewhere else on the board.  All in all, it sounds like a game with no clear-cut winner, right?  But think of it this way as well - both sides get to continue to see how each person plays, improve their own game, and experiment with various counterattacks in a neverending cycle.  (Alright, maybe this example is lame, but it gets the point across.)

Gah, I’ll shut up now and quit reporting news.  Though I can only hope, with any luck she’s probably clearing her desk sometime, not only because of being fired, but out of her public humiliation.  And I smell a new game (or modification to an existing one ) for next year.  It’s just a shame I couldn’t go.

Eons ago, I vowed never again to write an article bashing MySpace or social networking. As you can see, my favorite topic to bash has once again made an appearance. So much for promises…

Judging from the growing popularity of all manner of social networking sites and the increasing rate at which they seem to be introduced, it’s a hard point to make saying they’ll be disappearing anytime soon. For a world that once prided itself in being separate entities, it almost seems as though everyone wants to remove those borders in their attempts to communicate with the world. I’m not just talking about blogging; people of all shapes, colors, nationalities, religions, and any other classification are reaching out not just to each other, but to other people.

Yeah, yeah…your response is a resounding “No s**t”, right? The funny thing though, is that even though better, more polished options continue to be released, people still continue to flock to the big names like Facebook and MySpace. My question is, why go for the bottom of the barrel when there are much more suitable and professional options available?

If I may, I’ve compiled a list of what I feel are the biggest reasons why people seem to flock to the crappier solutions.

1. Popularity. Yes, the user count. The number of people who actively use the service and have accounts. For places like MySpace, I would not be suprised that the service has more members than there are people in the world. Why? For starters, people seem to enjoy creating bogus profiles in the names of their friends, enemies, and even random people they meet on the street, either making them seem like they’re better people than they actually are, or defiling them into a smoldering pile of garbage.

   Of course, there are more than your average users. How about the numerous people who sit around scamming people out of their passwords and e-mail addresses simply by recreating a login form in the image of the site they’re on. I mean, how stupid do people have to be to not realize that even web development today has evolved beyond inserting your username and password into the URL string or having to enter them every time you want to do something. Or, while I’m mentioning URLs, the fact that most sites have a “login” domain or similar for just this purpose.

2. Customization. Sure, flashing backgrounds that alternate between bright pink and lime green might look cool to you, but to most people they merely trigger their epilepsy. There’s a reason the “smarter” sites only give you one theme, or a choice of a few predesigned ones. They look well with other profiles, and they don’t drive anyone blind trying to read the text. Not to mention it (again) makes things too easy for people to make fake pages. In short: Not everyone’s a designer; that’s why you hire professionals to make sure things look good rather than trying to do everything yourself…especially when you don’t have an eye for it.
3. Friends and the Popularity Contest (not to be confused completely with number 1). Why would someone join a service that their friends are not all on, and that they can’t use to prove to their friends that they’re the most popular person they know? What’s more disturbing is that this popularity isn’t all based upon real friends either; it’s a mess of random people asking others to indicate their friendship merely out of trust and a desire to increase their numbers. After all, who needs friends like these? And those are just the tip of the iceburg; I’m sure everyone is friends with a pair of ladies’ panties or someone who appears in the same picture displayed on a few different profiles (single person, aka portrait, not group photo where it might actually make some sense…)
4. Backend and Coding Language [geeky]. Why is it that the crappiest sites need to be written in such a way that always causes them to break? MySpace is example numero uno, complete with buggy scripts that need to constantly be “updated” by Tom to handle the constant breakage that occurs. Now, for sites like Adobe’s where they use ColdFusion (even though the site doesn’t exactly look the best) and there are probably just as many hits per day on the same script, I’d like to know why MySpace can’t keep their stuff working. It’s not a server problem, and bulletins don’t just start posting their f**king damn selves for no reason…it’s called write the code so it works, and don’t introduce “bugs” into it so you can claim it’s dead and take it down for a while. For example, Pownce is still in beta, and it hasn’t once given me trouble, unlike my MySpace account (Note: Notice that MySpace ISN’T beta?) which suddenly began informing me that all the friends in my list were banned last night as I was flipping through old bulletins. Maybe it’s just me, but people seem to find these bugs almost attractive. I’m drawn to stuff that seems odd or out of place, but I don’t mean in poorly-coded computer-oriented areas; I mean real-life stuff.
5. Sharing. Sharing information. Sharing files. Sharing…well, anything that might be interesting or necessary. And in one respect, the bigger the site, the easier it is to find anything you’re looking for with fewer problems. Ironically, I’ve yet to see anyone allow the sharing of anything beyond an MP3 and the entire contents of one’s phone book. But it seems for some concepts (ideally, the ones most people don’t bother with, but would be more interesting to someone with interests outside the realms of looking like a complete idiot) people looking for such a sharing capability are lost. Take MySpace’s new download section, for instance. Sounds like a great place for a freeware developer like myself to be - all these people running amok - it’s any traffic analyst’s dream…right? Yeah, right…take one look at the utilities on that page and explain to me just what reason a person needs to see a list of downloads for that stuff for. Why can’t people, erm…share…their work…even if it’s made of bits and bytes of assembly, script, or anything along that line? (Admittedly, it might be a security measure, but all the same it could be set up so that people can add to those lists if their software passes some sort of inspection.)

Alright, I think I’ve gone on enough. And considering I didn’t keep my promise this time around, chances are there are several more articles that will be posted. But that’s a post for a different day altogether.