Just Uber

You may have read in the news that Microsoft has invested $240m (£117m) in social networking site Facebook.

Fear not freedom loving pals, as facebook runs on a Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP based infrastructure!

Indeed, despite the other major social networking site Myspace, running on a Windows Server 2003, SQL Server backend, MS still chooses facebook for its social networking investment.

So, you heard it here first folks. If you want to invest a few million quid of your own money in a venture, but are worried about a shaky infrastructure, follow Microsoft’s lead. Invest in Linux!

Getting into work early this morning, I decided to have a brief look at what’s going on in the world of IT. Despite feeling a bit fed up when I arrived, reading this excellent article on znet, written by Rupert Goodwin about his experiences of Gutsy really cheered me up!

Have a gander yourself. One particular comment by ‘ConceptJunkie’ about Microsoft’s new Vista campaign “100 reasons why everyone’s so speechless” made me laugh out loud.

“I looked. #23 is “Because it’s like a digital candy store.”

Puh-leeze. Bring up the Adept Manager in Ubuntu. Now _that’s_ a digital candy store. Over 20000 applications for doing almost anything you can imagine, and quite a few things you can’t. Running Vista is like being in a candy store that only sells black liquorice (I _hate_ black liquorice) at exorbitant prices. Oh, and you’re only allowed to eat the candy in the store. Plus each individual piece is really small and is wrapped in seven layers of cellophane, and the store won’t let you throw the wrappers away. You have to take them with you and throw them away at home. Plus they set off a grenade in the chocolate store across the street in the middle of the night and mugged the proprietors of the penny candy stand. Oh, and Microsoft are the ones behind the urban legend that red M&Ms cause cancer. That’s the kind of candy store Vista is.”

You heard it here first folks, Microsoft engages in urban candy terrorism….

Today we shall be playing with Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon and a dodgy bluetooth GPS gizmo bought for twenty odd quid on eBay….

First of all, note the extremely poor quality of the device and the way the power button sticks in when you press it too hard. Secondly, note the way that the ‘earth’ pin on the three pin socket adaptor snaps off in the wall. Hoorah for cheap electronics!

Right, on to the interesting bit. To start with, you’ll need to find the address of your new gizmo:

hcitool scan

You should get one or more device listings returned. Note the MAC address registered to your bluetooth GPS device.

00:11:67:80:xx:xx iNav GPS

Taking the address, you now need to create a serial port connection to your GPS device.

sdptool browse 00:11:67:80:xx:xx

Which then returns output describing your new shiny virtual serial port.

And then by editing this file.

sudo gedit /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf

And adding this text.

rfcomm4 {
bind yes;
device < YOUR GPS DEVICES MAC ADDRESS>;
channel 1;
comment “Serial Port”;
}

You artfully create a way to invoke your serial port quickly and painlessly by typing:

rfcomm connect 4

Well done. If you’ve got this far, your GPS device is now ‘theoretically’ connected to your computer. All you need to do now, is get some data from it. If you’re still having problems, visit this thread. Without it you wouldn’t be reading this..

You’ll need a gps daemon to talk to the device. Oh look, here’s one:

sudo apt-get install gpsd gpsd-clients

Now, You’ll get a prompt suggesting your reconfigure the gpsd service. That’s so it knows whether or not to start up automatically next time. This is entirely up to you…. You may or may want to give your system a reboot. I had to, you mightn’t.

Now, start gpsd

gpsd -n /dev/rfcomm4

And try the gpsd client to see if it’s working

xgps

Now, if everything is cool, you should get some output. If not, try the Ubuntu thread linked to above, or post a comment here.

When everything is running smoothly, getting your GPS going should simply be a case of running two commands:

rfcomm connect 4
gpsd -n /dev/rfcomm4

You might notice that Linux GPS software is a wee bit thin on the ground, but you can alway try gpsdrive from the Ubuntu repos, or gpsman. If you find any other decent stuff, please post here as I’d love to give it a go.

Welcome to Airstrip One, where the Ministry of Love has just issued a new law instructing phone companies to log every call and text made to and from any phone in the country.

Just to ensure that the information isn’t wasted, it is to be made available not only to the Police and Military, but to local authorities too.

In defence of of the decision, Glorious Minister for Security and Counter-terrorism Tony McNulty says that Councils will only be able to use the powers to “prevent and detect crime” and “not for the collection of taxes”.

Perhaps it isn’t the place of a mere prole like myself to point this out, but as not paying your taxes is a crime, collection of taxes will probably fall under the list of things that councils will use the data for, despite anything Comrade McNulty says.

Heil The Party!

Early last week, under the careful guardianship of Karoo fair-deal-seeker Dylan, the Karoo Unofficial Forums opened its doors to the public.

Almost immediately, the new forums began to see an influx of Karoo users ready to discuss their experiences of Hull’s only Internet provider.

If the first week is anything to go by then I can’t wait to see what the future holds for Karoo Forums.

To see what I mean, and to find out the answers to mysterious questions such as - why Karoo operatives staked out a womans to try and make her swap freeview boxes with them, and how much Karoo will sell Internet to resellers for, check out karooforums.net now.

If you want to say hi to me, you’ll find me in there as lefty

If you pirate copyrighted material, you might as well go out and kill a policeman. But don’t worry, the DMCA will catch up with you eventually!

I know this is just a joke advert, but why do they put these on DVDs anyway. Surely if I were to copy a DVD, this message could be removed in the process!

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Like many people, I’ve got loads of photos stored over at Flickr. This is a sensible thing to do given my love of re-installing Linux every few minutes with total disregard for the files stored on my computer. That is, until I discovered that you can’t actually print directly from flickr if you live in the UK.

I found myself searching for a tool which would allow me to download all of my photos as a batch, so that I could then upload them again to a photo printer.

The best tool I found for Ubuntu is actually a firefox extension. It’s called ‘Firefox Universal Uploader’ and you’ll find it here.

This firefox plugin supports Flickr, Picasa, Youtube, Box.net, Facebook, Webshots and OmniDrive, although I’ve only tried Flickr personally. Downloading is a breeze, and after identifying your account, your photos and folders are shown in a familiar FTP like format. Simply select the ones you want, select the location you want to save them to, and click on the arrow.

Just how I like it, Simple.

Battlestar Galactica: Beyond the Red Line is a 3D space combat simulation which takes place inside the Battlestar Galactica universe. The game is free, and the good folks over at Game Warden have also released a Linux client for it. Here’s how to get it up and running on Ubuntu.

1> Download the game
2> Install GTK 1.2 Libraries “sudo apt-get install libgtk1.2″
3> Run “./BtRLDemoInstaller.run”

Helpful hints

Make sure that you tick the ‘mouse’ tickbox in the options menu, the game is setup as default to use a joystick. You’ll have to repeat this for both single and multiplayer.

If you want to change the screen resolution, edit the file fs2_open.ini which you’ll find in a hidden folder in your home directory called .btrl_demo

Visit the BSG site on GameWarden.com to get the game. Currently only a bittorent file is available. If that’s no good to you, send an email to chris at justuber put-a-dot-here com and I’ll send you a link to download it from my own server.

I set up a desktop the other day which I intend to store some files on. The problem is however, I usually use my laptop, and I’m too lazy to walk upstairs to the desktop.

I’ve always just used ssh to administer servers through the command line, but in this case, this being a desktop, I wanted a GUI.

I’ve tried VNC, remote XSessions, and to be honest they’re both horrible - Not a patch on RDP.

After a quick Google I came across NoMachine NX, and it’s the dogs genitals…..

First of all, install SSH (sudo apt-get install ssh) on both the client and server machines, then follow this procedure for the server machine: (for the client machine, you only need install the client)

Visit the nomachine.com download page

Download and install the .deb files in the following order - client, node, server

Check that nxserver is running

sudo /usr/NX/bin/nxserver --status

and start it if it isn’t

sudo /usr/NX/bin/nxserver --start

Now start the nxclient

/usr/NX/bin/nxclient

Bob’s your uncle. A nice, quick smooth running remote admin tool

This ain’t no technological breakdown, this is the road to Hull.

KC is naughty, very naughty indeed. Not only will KC not share its toys with the other ISPs like it’s supposed to - it hasn’t been looking after its things either…

Telling tales out of school, one cheeky chappie chips in with the news that KC are using special wire so that any companies trying to connect their kit to KCs network (like they’d have to, to sell internet in Hull and area) will find it won’t fit, and that buying compatible gear will cost them a small fortune. Mooowahahahaha!

As if that wasn’t enough KC then went and broke its connection to the rest of the world. Yup, that’s right - Unless you’re interested in browsing websites residing upon the KC network (members of the Hull UFO Society breath easy), you’ll find that your internet connectivity is flakey at best. Don’t worry though, the network only went tits up four days ago, so it should be fixed soon. Honest.

This has all been too much for Hull MEP Diana Wallis, who’s now gone and told the European Commission how naughty KC have been in the hope that they won’t be afraid to give KC the good spanking that the British government never would….

Here’s hoping!

Update: After being approached by a fellow Karoo user for help, Just Uber was happy to give a home to The Unofficial Karoo User Forums. They’re run by a nice chap called Dylan who is trying to build a place where Karoo users can talk about their experiences. You can find me in there under the name lefty