Archive for May, 2006

I’m away at a retreat and need to get back to my home computer. I’m sitting in a resort where the only Internet connection is wireless. From a security standpoint, this is as bad as it gets. By its very nature, wireless is insecure. I am about to type usernames and passwords that will get me into my email, my content system, my blog… a lot of things that I don’t want other people to ever get into.

Before I left my house, I installed a free VPN/P2P solution that let’s me do this in a secure manner. It’s called Hamachi.

http://www.hamachi.cc/

After downloading the program and installing it, the software goes out to a server where a permanent IP address is assigned to my computer. The number is a five dot number (the IP address begins with five). Five dot addresses are real IP addresses, but have never been used by anyone. Having a real IP address means that I can access that address over the Internet. After I have an IP address, Hamachi asks me to name my computer. I called it TrustyHome. Then it asked for a network name. I created a “Trusty” network. Then (and this is the most important) it askes for a strong password. This is what keeps other people out. I give it a good password. I’m done.

Now I repeat the process on my laptop. I do everything the same except I name my laptop TrustyTablet.

Now I’m a couple of hours from my house, connected to a wireless network. I use Hamachi to get back to my home network. Hamachi creates a Virtual Private Network (VPN) between my home computer and my laptop. To connect the two computers, Hamachi uses peer-to-peer technology (P2P). Everything between the two computers is encrypted. Even though I’m on a wireless connection, no one can sniff my information.

Now I can browse the Internet via my home Internet connection… which is secure.

http://opensuse.org/

It’s been a while since I’ve played around with Linux on the desktop.  I have a couple of servers, but SSH is quite a bit different than an environment that is used to create spreadsheets or listen to music.

In the past I have used Mandrake and Red Hat on the desktop.  I have never considered either as a replacement for XP (or Windows 2000 Pro, when I used it).  Now Dell is selling machines with SUSE installed on them.  I thought I would give it another test run… and I was thoroughly disappointed.

I downloaded the five CD’s.  That wasn’t a problem.  All the ISO files are available at

http://en.opensuse.org/Released_Version

I had all the file in a couple of hours.  I burned them to CD’s and started the installation with disk one.  I used a Dell Inspiron 2650 laptop (1.7 GHz, 512 MB RAM) with a blank hard drive.  The installation went very well.  All the components (NIC, video card, sound card, etc) were properly identified and the correct drivers were loaded.  It even recognized that my display was optimized for 1024×768 and set the screen to that resolution.  At the end of the installation I was asked if I wanted to do things like setup the firewall and automatic updates.  I did the updates and everything worked as it should.

After the installation a reboot took me into the OS.  I opened a browser (Firefox) and went to my start page at ProtoPage.  It looked bad.  The fonts were all goofy and hard to read.  I looked at some other content and had mixed results.  The UF Blackboard server looked bad (like my ProtoPage site), but Digg was fine.  It must be that certain style sheets have fonts that don’t look as good.  I could live with all this.  The disappointment came when I tried to play some music. 

It was fairly easy to connect to my Windows server and get to my Music share there.  I double-clicked an MP3 file on the server.  The music player (Banshee) opened but nothing happened.  Hmmm… I dragged the MP3 over to my desktop, and that worked ok.  I then double-clicked the MP3 now on my desktop.  This time it does open with the music player, but I get an immediate playback error - you do not have a decoder installed to handle this file. Apparently the MP3 format is obscure enough that you need a special codec to play them.  You can guess what happened when I tried to play one of my WMA files.  I looked through the Banshee menus to see if there were listing of decoders.  I couldn’t find a list or anything that explained how I need to add a decoder.

I switched over to something a little more practical - OpenOffice.  I started a Calc (spreadsheet) session.  I use OpenOffice in XP, so I’m used to how things work.  I did the million test.  It’s pretty simple.  Type a one in the first cell.  In the next down create a formula A1+1.  Copy that down and over until you get the number up to 1,000,000.  In Excel the whole process takes a few seconds.  In OOo, it takes a couple of minutes (in XP).  In SUSE it managed to finish while I had lunch.

That’s the main disappointment with SUSE as a desktop OS.  It is just too slow to be useful. Maybe tomorrow I’ll try Red Hat again.

Voice over IP (VOIP) has been around for a long time.  In the late 1990’s VOIP worked a lot like a 1970’s CB radio.  I few people had them.  If you could find someone to talke to, the quality was hit or miss and also half-duplex.  That means only one person could talk.  You could either talk or listen.

Just in the last year or so a company called Skype has offered VOIP that works well.

http://www.skype.com

Skype is free.  On top of that, the quality is nearly as good as a regular telephone.  The service is full-duplex; you can talk and listen at the same time just like a regular phone.  Using Skype you can call anyone else using Skype anywhere in the world… for free.

The only problem is that some people don’t have fast connectivity.  Skype requires a broadband connection.  That leaves a lot of people out, but Skype does offer SkyOut.  Using SkyOut, a Skype user can call a regular phone number.  The rate is around a penny or two per minute even for some international numbers.

Starting today, Skype users can now call any US or Canadian regular phone number for free.

This is my oldest.  She’s the best French Horn player in Northwest Ohio.  Here she is after one of your solos in the spring concert.