Shopping for a tablet

My wife came up with the idea of getting me a tablet for Xmas. I never really pushed to buy one before because of price and I thought I wouldn't really get my money's worth out of it. But as it is Xmas and the idea was planted in my head I decided to do a bit of research on it. After some research and consideration of my price range I was looking at:

• Google (ASUS) Nexus 7 -  This was the smallest one I considered, only 7 inches, but the reviews everywhere just praise this machine. It has great hardware, boasting 1920 x 1200 native resolution, 32Gb of storage but no SD compatibility. 2Gb of RAM and is the only one with Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean) out of the box. The machine is beautiful and it sounds like it has early access to apps via Google Play, although I'm still not sure what that means. I think if I could get the Nexus 10 I would have considered the google tablets a bit more seriously, however 7 inches was a tad too small for me. I really wanted something a bit more substantial.
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10" - One of my top contenders since it's a 10 inch tablet at a fairly reasonable price point. It uses Android 4.2, which is not the newest but it's close. It has 16Gb of storage which is upgradeable through MicroSD to 64Gb. It has 1Gb of RAM which is actually not very much and is the reason I didn't pick it. It weights 510g with a 1280x800 resolution. I considered the 8 inch one as well, which seems a bit better in terms of hardware, but the screen was too small for my needs.
• Microsoft Surface 32Gb Windows RT - The weekend I was looking at tablets, this one was hugely on sale for only C$199. In terms of hardware I actually thing it was easily the best option available. As you may or may not know, the windows tablets also come with virtually full featured office suite, which is great if you want a tablet for browsing and work. I was very close to buying this model, but I'm glad I didn't now. The keyboard doesnt come with the RT tablets, and it is sold separately for pretty much the same price as any other keyboard for Androids. The RT OS is actually pretty restricting, only allowing you to use RT software you get from the microsoft app store. This is unlike the Surface 2, which can pretty much run like a laptop, but those things are very expensive. As I said, in terms of harware, it's great. Resolution of 1366x768, 32 Gb of storage, 2Gb of RAM. It's a bit heavier, weighing 680g. But in the end, I realized I'm likely not going to be doing too too much work on this thing so I shouldn't buy something so restrictive. Apple and Androids just have so much more option in terms of apps.
• Sony Xperia Tablet Z 10" - It hast only 16Gb of storage although that can be upgraded with a SD card. It's 10 inches which I think is important to me. It's one of the lightest machines around and has the added bonus of being waterproof. It uses Android 4.1, which is a more dated OS but it is an Android still.

Anyway, I ended up decided on the Sony Xperia Z tablet. Despite not seeing it appear on a lot of review websites, I absolutely love the machine and now I can't believe I never had one before and that it doesn't receive more praise around. It is simply a perfect extension from my PC in the home. I love using it to connect me to all my devices and just have easy access to everything I need anywhere without needing my 5kg laptop. It also happens to be the only waterproof tablet around and it even has remote control capabilities, so I can use it to work my TV and whatnot. It's just perfect.

 

In terms of apps I actually use on it right now, I have evernote and dropbox for my cloud needs. I have Lemon SSH to connect to my home/media server. I use a reddit app and I downloaded Dungeaon Crawl Stone Soup for android which is availabe on Google play. It's actually not a terrible port to be honest. This tablet also has great integration with all my google accounts, including my schedule, my emails, my contacts. I'm still exploring what apps there are, but I'm very impressed with my Android so far.

As a last comment, I didn't really consider an iPad for 2 main reasons. First, it is fairly expensive for what you get compared to the Androids. More importantly, I hate Apple. I think they make good products and they have the best marketing team in the world as far as I'm concerned. However I hate what Apple stands for. They produce great products that unfortunately restrict their users to a lot of the software they want their users to use, instead of trying to open up so that users can have freedom if they chose so. How many times have I been stuck with a problem on one of my iDevices that I simply would not be able to resolve without a huge amount of headache if it wasn't for Linux. I can always just acces my apple machines with the help of my Linux and that usually allows me to have the freedom that Apple seems to always want to take away. A lot of people claim this is solely to protect users from making mistakes, but I think often it is to prevent users that are already paying a premium on their products from steering away from other products they will be happy to charge their customers for. It's just like Burton snowboards, that force you to buy the bindings from them and then the snowboard boots from them as well. People get tricked into buying their product, just to be stuck using all their other products in the end. I refuse to fund a corporation that uses these types of tactics to make money.

update error on Ubuntu Server 12.04

Recently I came across an annoying error on my headless Ubuntu Server. Nothing really had happened as far as I'm concerned in my home LAN, and all of a sudden only this distro could no longer run an OS update. I did upgrade my internet service recently but I'm not sure if that could be related. Anyway, the error I kept getting for days was:

 

"  temporary failure resolving 'us.archive.ubuntu.com'  "

Err http://us.archive.ubuntu.com precise Release.gpg

Failed to fetch http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/precise/Release.gpg

Temporary failure resolving 'us.archive.ubuntu.com'

Anyway, after a bit of googling, I came across a helpful comment by fossfreedom from the UK, which can be found here. The solution was simple for me:

1. Test to see if the problem is your DNS setting or an ISP issue. To do this type on the console: ping -n 8.8.8.8
2. If produces replies you can stop it with Ctrl + C. This indicates that it is not an ISP problem so there is no point in calling them.
3. Therefore, for me it was a DNS problem, which I have been having a lot of lately (likely due to my VPN usage). So I checked /etc/resolv.conf to see if I could find my DNS servers there. That's when I knew what my problem was. The file was empty, so I added the google DNS server.
4. This was done through: echo "nameserver 8.8.8.8" | sudo tee /etc/resolv.conf > /dev/null
5. After that, I just had to run the update via: sudo apt-get update

Xubuntu - Trying Xfce for the first time

To keep the theme of distro sampling I decided to give Xubuntu a go. As I mentioned on a previous post, I didn't find the Gnome Ubuntu to be an OS I would like to use personally. I thought the idea of simple, minimalist and intuitive sounded like a good match for me, less is not always more and simple functionalities that are not in Gnome are in my opinion an improvement over not having them and I don't see the need to remove them if they don't clutter or confuse things.

Anyway, my pick to try Xubuntu stemmed from the fact that I wanted a distro to run as a VM in my laptop, hence I needed something lightweight but with enough functionality to keep me happy. Xfce seemed like the place to go. As you may or may not know, Xfce is a desktop environment known for being lightweight, although not as barebones as some of the others out there like LXDE it still feel snappy and efficient.

I installed version 13.04 mostly just to try the most updated Xubuntu available. Nothing special about the installation process, it's much like all other Ubuntu distros I've tried, very easy to get going, even as a VM. This desktop environment definitely feels fast compared to Unity when I tried on my machine. I very much enjoyed the fact that the OS comes pre loaded with GIMP and a number of other applications I would have to install otherwise.

Update warnings show up on the taskbar in a discrete way and so far I feel it's very stable and user friendly. I appreciate that this distro still has multiple workspaces as default, which is no longer the case for Ubuntu. I understand that perhaps new user may struggle to understand the concept, but to be honest I don't think it's rocket science. But then again, I should assume Cannonical knows what their doing. Since I'm on this small tangent already, I would suggest that Ubuntu should have 2 options when you download, the newbie version which doesn't have default  options that may be unfamiliar to noobies and a version for more experienced users with defaults that I really miss such as multiple desktops, sticky windows with shortcuts and synaptic. I love Unity, and I would say it's my favorite Linux flavor but with every version of Ubuntu I feel they change it so I have to tweek more and more every time and I find that a tad annoying.

Anyway, back to Xubuntu, I highly recommend it to anyone that has some experience with Linux at all. It's not difficult to figure out, it is attractive despite it's light weight. Worth a shot for anyone that can't run Unity due to hardware limitations.

Lastly, for anyone curious, here is my conky config from this photo, it's nothign fancy but it's a nice config that works well out of the box.

-----

background yes
use_xft yes
xftfont Sans:size=8
xftalpha 1
update_interval 1.0
total_run_times 0
own_window yes
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_type desktop
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
double_buffer yes
minimum_size 200 200
maximum_width 200
draw_shades yes
draw_outline no
draw_borders no
draw_graph_borders yes
default_color white
default_shade_color black
default_outline_color white
alignment top_right
gap_x 12
gap_y 120
no_buffers yes
uppercase no
cpu_avg_samples 2
override_utf8_locale no

TEXT
${font sans-serif:bold:size=8}SYSTEM ${hr 2}
${font sans-serif:normal:size=8}$sysname $kernel $alignr $machine
Host:$alignr$nodename
Uptime:$alignr$uptime
File System: $alignr${fs_type}

${font sans-serif:bold:size=8}PROCESSORS ${hr 2}
${font sans-serif:normal:size=8}${cpugraph cpu1}
CPU1: ${cpu cpu1}% ${cpubar cpu1}

${font sans-serif:bold:size=8}MEMORY ${hr 2}
${font sans-serif:normal:size=8}RAM $alignc $mem / $memmax $alignr $memperc%
$membar

${font sans-serif:bold:size=8}DISKS ${hr 2}
${font sans-serif:normal:size=8}/ $alignc ${fs_used /} / ${fs_size /} $alignr ${fs_used_perc /}%
${fs_bar /}
SWAP $alignc ${swap} / ${swapmax} $alignr ${swapperc}%
${swapbar}

${font sans-serif:bold:size=8}TOP PROCESSES ${hr 2}
${font sans-serif:normal:size=8}${top_mem name 1}${alignr}${top mem 1} %
${top_mem name 2}${alignr}${top mem 2} %
$font${top_mem name 3}${alignr}${top mem 3} %
$font${top_mem name 4}${alignr}${top mem 4} %
$font${top_mem name 5}${alignr}${top mem 5} %

${font sans-serif:bold:size=8}NETWORK ${hr 2}
${font sans-serif:normal:size=8}IP address: $alignr ${addr eth0}
ESSID: $alignr ${wireless_essid eth0}
Connection quality: $alignr ${wireless_link_qual_perc eth0}%
${downspeedgraph eth0}
DLS:${downspeed eth0} kb/s $alignr total: ${totaldown eth0}
${upspeedgraph eth0}
ULS:${upspeed eth0} kb/s $alignr total: ${totalup eth0}

Using an SSH Client on Ubuntu 13.04

Since now I have an Ubuntu Server setup at home, I feel the need to use a client from my Ubuntu 13.04 VM. In order to do that I followed this great concise guide I found from ubuntulinuxhelp.com (from garymacritchie)

---

The SSH Client

The SSH Client is the piece of software that you have on the computer you are sitting in front of and typing on. It sends messages to the SSH server which is on the remote computer (such as the webserver). We’ll assume that there is already a valid SSH server up and running that you are trying to connect to.

In Ubuntu, there is a SSH client installed as standard and it is called Open SSH.

To use it, you simply open a terminal and proceed any command with “ssh”.

For example, if you would like to log in to your remote server, just use the command…

ssh username@mysite.myserver.org

However, as this is a blog that likes to keep things simple (and annoy a lot of the die-hard Linux geeks), I’m going to suggest a different tool… PuTTY.

PuTTY is a client program for SSH (among other things) and gives a neat little interface for making SSH connections. It is also in my opinion one of the best pieces of software ever written. It has been around for ever and can also be used on Windows without installation (just runs as a .exe). Learn this little guy and you will never look for another SSH client.

Install PuTTY by typing the following into a terminal…

sudo apt-get install putty

You will then find the PuTTY program among your other internet applications.

(When you start it up, you will be able to enter the ip address or name of the remote computer you wish to contact and click connect. You will then be asked for password etc. If you are going to be using SSH regular, you can save that connection as a profile which makes things easier).

Linux distro sampling - Ubuntu GNOME and Kali Linux

I decided to try a few new distros this week after realizing that my current Ubuntu 12.04 install is wrecked. Before picking what to install next on my dual boot machine I decided to try out a couple of things in a VM form. So I downloaded VirtualBox, installed that, changed my BIOS to be able to run a virtual machine and off I went installing Ubuntu Gnome.

Ubuntu GNOME

I had seen a few videos of the distro and read some reviews of Gnome 3 and thought this looks quite nice, looked nicer than KDE and it seemed a bit more practical and fast than Unity. Well after installing it I'm not nearly as impressed as I thought I would be. I don't like a lot of aspect of this version of gnome. I thought I would like the idea of a desktop environment that's simple, clean and minimalist, but I don't. I like the search function of the DE but it's not even as good as Unity at that. Not having minimize and maximize buttons is annoying even if they are not essential. The color scheme is annoying and I can't find a quick way to remediate that without downloading something. I know this is probably not related to my desktop environment, but the software center in this distro has no search function, and that's just abnoxious. I ended up downloading synaptic which I do like but seriously. I'm also not a big fan of the file manager that comes with this distro, Nautilus in my opinion is superior. All in all I think I would go back to the regular Ubuntu as soons as I can unless I do find something better before I make the jump back.

Kali Linux

After trying to get my old copy of Backtrack 5 running on my newer laptop and having a lot of issues to fix I decided to go ahead and download a more recent version of BT which would be BT5R3. Well I discovered in this process that there is a whole new distro that is the next BT called Kali Linux. I did a bit of reading and despite my natural propensity to avoid change I went ahead and downloaded Kali. First thing I noticed was how much smaller the ISO file is compared to BT5. The OS uses KDE and it isn't nearly as sleek looking as BT5 was, but obviously aesthetics of a distro with this kind of purposes is kind of a silly thing to worry about. The bottom line is that I'm extremely impressed with this distro. I don't think I will ever touch BackTrack again after experiencing Kali. It's faster, lighter, does the job with minimal problems. It also took a lot less configuring to get things I needed working to work such as the network adapter. I would strongly recommend anyone using BT to try Kali next chance they have, it's a wonderful change from BT in the sense that it does what you need it to with minimal to no headache. Great move by the developers.

Ubuntu Server 12.04

Since I'm at it and this was something I did recently I figured I'd post it here too... I mentioned in earlier posts that I'm also working with a server distro on my old laptop. I'm using it headless with Putty on my desktop machine. Right now I have it running a samba server which shares any HD attached to my dock, and this week I installed miniDLNA on it to share media over my network to other machines as well as my PS3 (mainly to my PS3 really).

My experience so far with this distro has been very positive. It's so fast even on my old shitty laptop. Working on it through a command line and no GUI has actually been quite an interesting experience. I'm not going to say it's not a bit more challenging to work on it this way (at least for a noob like me), but I feel like I'm learning quite a bit and it just makes the whole experience "cleaner" if you understand what I mean. It's nice having such a minimalist OS running in my server.

Overall (tl:dr)

Ubuntu GNOME 13.04 - I want my unity back, sorry Gnome 3 but it's just not going to work out.
Ubuntu Server 12.04 - Fast and reliable, what else do you need from a server?
Kali Linux 1.0.3 - An upgrade from BT5, I didn't think it was possible. It was love at first ARP spoof.

Media Server install on Headless Ubuntu Server 12.04

As I mentioned in a previous post, I've been playing around with Ubuntu Server 12.04 on an old laptop of mine. One of the purposes of putting it together is to stream media over my home network. As I mentioned earlier, I'm running this server headless using Putty. So here is a set of instructions I found to work very well with my install. Credit goes to folks at UbuntuForums.org and damo12 for putting this post together. Another potentially useful link in case there are still questions after this post can be found HERE.

 ----------------------------

Guide to Installing and Running MiniDLNA on an Ubuntu Server

I have recently been experimenting with running MiniDLNA on a headless Ubuntu Server and have hit a few snags. After a lot of search and a few pointers from this and other forums I have finally managed to get it running fine. In case anyone else has this problem I have written this guide to hopefully take some of the pain out of installing and configuring an amazing program.


The Hardware

My server is a headless HP Microserver running Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS 64 bit edition accessed through Putty and Webmin (www.webmin.com). I have also tried this using a virtual setup using Virtual Box and that also worked fine.

As a receiver, I am using an LG HX806SH Blu-ray player connected to my LAN by a Homeplug adapter. I have also tried using Windows Media Player and they both work fine. I would like to try this with VLC to test it on a Linux desktop but configuring VLC to receive streaming media from a server is beyond me right now.


The Server Setup

The server has a standard headless setup including Samba installed (a combination of Windows and Linux machines share files stored on it). If you need any help installing and using Webmin, I suggest you have a look at the excellent guide at http://www.kelvinwong.ca/2010/05/22/...-04-lts-lucid/.


Installing and Configuring MiniDLNA

For some reason, when I tried to install MiniDLNA, through Putty I received error messages. From reading around, it turns out that this is a common problem as some repositories are missing.

In the end, these commands installed the package:

Code:

sudo apt-get install --reinstall python-software-properties && sudo dpkg-reconfigure python-software-properties

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:stedy6/stedy-minidna
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install minidlna

I would also recommend installing the Webmin MiniDLNA module from https://sourceforge.net/projects/minidlnawebmin/

If you are accessing the server through Webmin and are not sure how to install the module, save it to a local location (such as your desktop on your computer). Select the "Webmin Configuration" module which is under the "Webmin" tab. Select the "Webmin Modules" and choose to load the module “From uploaded file". Once the module has been installed it will be automatically be configured and it will be available under the "Servers" tab.

Once this is installed, you need to configure the MiniDLNA conf file located at /etc/minidlna.conf.

You can use your favourite text editor or if you are accessing this through Webmin, you can use the "Edit" option in "File Manager". If you have installed the Webmin module, you can also change all of the settings from there.

My minidlna.conf file reads as follows:

 [refer to link for the full text, but the only changes I had to made were adding the following]

# set this to the directory you want scanned.
# * if have multiple directories, you can have multiple media_dir= lines
# * if you want to restrict a media_dir to a specific content type, you
#   can prepend the type, followed by a comma, to the directory:
#   + "A" for audio  (eg. media_dir=A,/home/jmaggard/Music)
#   + "V" for video  (eg. media_dir=V,/home/jmaggard/Videos)
#   + "P" for images (eg. media_dir=P,/home/jmaggard/Pictures)

media_dir=V,/media/server/server/Media/Films
media_dir=V,/media/server/server/Media/TV
media_dir=V,/media/server/server/Media/Commedy
media_dir=V,/media/server/server/Music/Videos
media_dir=A,/media/server/server/Music/Music
media_dir=P,/media/server/server/Stuff/Pictures

# set this if you want to customize the name that shows up on your clients
friendly_name=MiniDLNA Server

[Basically you need to add the path to the appropriate folders you want to share, and where it says "friendly_name" you can change to something you can easily identify in your network.]

As you can see, I've made a few changes to the standard file:

• I have added various sources of videos
• I have changed the name of the server so I can recognise it easily on the network
• I have moved the location of the database to a location that I backup each day and is shared by Samba (this is for my personal benefit only)
• I have added extra filenames to the "AlbulmArt" section as I usually call the front cover of an album "Front"

Despite the line “# default presentation url is http address on port 80” MiniDLNA does not have a webpage that it can be controlled from. From what I can gather, this was going to be a future feature that was not completed for whatever reason. However, the Webmin module takes care of everything that you need.

From the "Command Shell" in Webmin or through an SSH session using Putty, you can control MiniDLNA using the commands:

Code:

sudo /etc/init.d/minidlna stop
sudo /etc/init.d/minidlna start

At first run, MiniDLNA will scan all of the folders (and their sub-folders) it has been pointed at and make all of these files available. The scan is extremely quick (less than 10 minutes to scan about 12,000 files).

The Webmin module has a "Restart" button but for some reason (on my set-ups) it does not work properly. It will stop MiniDLNA but when it tries to restart it, it fails. Trying to manually start it using the command "sudo /etc/init.d/minidlna start" after using this "Restart" does not seem to work and the only way I have found to resolve this is to restart the whole server.


Adding or Removing Files of Folders from the Database

In my experience, MiniDLNA tends not to notice if a file has been added or removed from the folders so the database does not update and new files are not shown on your device and old files are still shown even though they have been removed. This seems to be a problem with MiniDLNA and not the receiving soft/hardware. If you change the name of the server, the soft/hardware picks that up fine.

Some people have had success with the command:

Code:

minidlna -R

or by removing the file /tmp/minidlna/files.db and restarting the server using the command:

Code:

rm -rf /tmp/minidlna

Someone else suggested using the command:

Code:

minidlna -R -f /tmp/minidlna.conf

However, I have found the easiest and most successful method is to use the "Rescan" button in the Webmin interface. This button deletes the MiniDLNA database and rescans from scratch. On my system, this new scan took less than 10 minutes to scan about 12,000 files. After the scan, any new files appear in the database and any deleted files are removed.


Outstanding Problems

The only thing I have not been able to get MiniDLNA to do so far is display my photos properly on the Blu-ray player even though they display fine on Windows Media Player. On the Blu-ray, it shows all of the folders where my pictures are stored and even gives me the option to search by camera but when I try to view the pictures or look into the folders, the folders are all empty. This suggests it is something to do with the Blu-ray player and not MiniDLNA however, to be honest this is not an issue for me as my main aim was to stream videos and music and it works perfectly for that.

If anyone can point me to a walkthrough of how to receive streamed videos and music on VLC I would be grateful so I can test this set-up on that and add it to this guide.

I hope you find this guide useful and it takes away some of the headaches I've had with setting up this excellent program.

Continued rant about capitalism and our imaginary democracy

But what can we do? Well, I may be pinned as an idealist, a socialist (as if that's an insult), a communist or worst for believing what I believe. But I firmly think there are several areas we need to change.


    1. Fair trading - The idea of fair trading is an interesting one to me, looks very appealing, but also feels a bit idealistic. If there was any way to introduce fair trading practices in the world, at least some of the issues raised on my last post would be considered. Fair trading would attempt to provide fair jobs in developing countries. Instead of having people working at almost slave conditions, we would trade with countries like India, China and Bangladesh in a way that may ensure the growth of a middle class, which is the only real driver of prosperity as seen in history. Sounds great, doesn't it? But I did say it also feels a bit idealistic. One of the problems with this idea, is that it would clearly cut down profits. If the main drive for outsourcing cheap labor to these countries is profit, fair trading would diminish the interest in the idea. I believe that this is the main reason the only time you see "fair traded" labels involves food and other exotic commodities. By that I mean, you can't produce coffee as easily in Canada, so we need to export it from the tropics, no other options there so the big players can afford to push for fair trading. With sweatshops, you don't get that. If all of a sudden local business owners in Bangladesh decided that their working conditions isn't good enough, hence they push for fair trade, Wal-Mart and Fresh Co will just go ahead and shop around other desperate countries to provide the same service for cheap.

    2. Rational protectionism - One other way to prevent some of the problems outlined in my last post is to introduce tariffs to products imported from countries like Bangladesh. I don't think a blanket protectionist policy is a good idea, but I do believe that using tariffs to regulate prices of goods that are coming from developing countries and are made from inhumane conditions can help. A capitalist economy has profit at the bottom line, not global or social prosperity. So they don't care if 300 people have to die in Southeast Asia in order to be able to make large profits. What they do care about is profit, and if these profits are getting chopped at the border because of tariffs, that will change their practices. Maybe implement conditional tariffs that try to enforce accountability, so for instance if a falling building would make it so that from now on, Fresh Co will have to pay significant tariffs to our government because of their negligence in choosing appropriate manufacturers. I hope this point isn't mistaken by people, and make them think I don't believe in globalization and free trade, I do, I just think it needs to be done responsibly. I also think accountability isn't a real factor in the free market, so this is one way to add accountability to the picture.

    3. Tax things we don't like - Another way the government can help this situation is by taxing things we don't want, and giving benefits to things we do want. In this situation, one approach would be to give more tax benefits to businesses that hire locally, and contribute fairly to the local economy. This would obviously impact commodity prices, but I just see it as a necessary evil. Nothing in this world is free, so when we pay so little for things, we have to wonder how this is possible. Efficiency is one possible explanation, but another very real explanation involves the fact that people cut corners. Corners that sometimes should not be cut. For instance, in Canada recently, it has made the news that big banking conglomerates have been firing local workers in order to hire, cheaper, temporary replacements from abroad. They use our government programs in order to increase profits while putting Canadians out of work. Again, this is where taxing or giving benefits comes in, our government is rewarding corporations for bad behaviour. To me this is even more of a problem when you start to talk about the whole "trickle down economic policies", which clearly, and I mean, CLEARLY, is complete rubbish. Businesses want to make profit, they don't give a crap about how they treat employees, or how the overall economy is doing. They just want to make money.

    4. Criminalize lobbying - This brings me to my last point. We do not live in a democratic country here in Canada or the USA. We just call it a democracy, but the truth is that when money is involved, the popular opinion isn't a factor. There are two things that move our countries towards changes. These two are money and power. The government and corporations have a complete monopoly of these two commodities, if you will. Corporations make huge loads of money, that they then turn around and pay for lobbying that furthers their agendas. Lobbying is essentially the exchange of dollars for political power. This is where politicians take corporate money, to not only fund their propaganda during election, but also this is the money that moves politics. Money that prevents stricter gun laws in the USA, when 90% of the population supports the motion. It really doesn't matter what people want, if politicians can just sell bits of their influence to corporations, so that they can fund their next election. Elections nowadays are a joke. It's basically a bunch of corporate puppets paying absurd amounts of money to tell us what we want to hear so that we vote for them next time. I mean, just look at the Conservatives in Canada, spending tax payer dollars on advertising to convince us that the Harper government is environmentally conscientious. While at the same time they are developing and destroying the Tar Sans, they are closing down research facilities in Ontario focused on environmental issues and global warming and they are trying to move us away from freedom of research by muzzling Canadian environmental research. So it really pisses me off to see my money being spent to convince me of a complete lie. So people, wake up! While we are all still comfortably employed, living a relatively comfortable life in Canada, our nation is moving in a very terrifying direction. The direction of a plutocratic nation, away from the democracy we like to say we have.

After installing Ubuntu Server 12.04 (a noob's perspective)

Hello everyone, I just finished installing Ubuntu Server 12.04.2 LTS on my spare laptop. I basically am looking to put together a home server for fun. I think this post may be useful to people that are absolute noobs to this stuff since I'm an absolute amateur and I think I may bring up some difficulties that other new users may experience as well...

Anyway, I went through the installation of the OS to my laptop. For this I followed fairly simple instructions from "The Official Ubuntu Server Book, 2nd ed." as well as this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SgX15CpT64) video found on YouTube. There are other videos as well if needed, but honestly the process of installing the OS is fairly straight forward if you have ever installed Ubuntu before. There is one thing I would say though, when you are installing the server to your machine, I recommend you plug your machine to your router directly before you start. I started off trying to use the wifi, and that just wasn't going to happen, I only later realized that my original challenges were due to this simple fact.

Once you finish installing Ubuntu Server on your machine, reboot it and I would recommend running an update. In order to accomplish this you need to type:

sudo apt-get update
sudo aptitude safe-upgrade

This is of course all done after you have logged in with you username and password. By the way, make sure you don't forget any of the passwords you have for your server since I'm pretty sure you can't get them back later. Also if you are really new to Linux, sudo is the command you use to gain root access, which is sort of like having administrator privileges. Anytime you use "sudo" you need to use your password.

I also added vim to my server by typing

sudo apt-get install vim

I think that if you are completely new to linux commands, another important one to learn is

sudo shutdown -h now

which turns off your server, as well the command to restart your machine:

sudo shutdown -r now

The last thing I would like to mention, which is what you will need if you want to run the server headless (ie. without a keyboard or monitor directly connected to the machine), is that you need some kind of software that allows you access to your server. For that, one of the more popular options is the use of putty.exe which can be obtained at http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html

Once you download putty.exe, run it. There you will type your Host Name or IP address. The hostname is the machine's name you types during the installation of your OS. Make sure SSH is selected in the connection type. This will obviously only work if you have the SSH stuff installed on your server. Save a name for your session, I'm just using the server's name for reference. At this point you can select your session and click "open".

Click yes to the pop up box that will show up (PuTTY Security Alert). At this point you will get a command prompt box, where you can operate your server as if you were typing directly into it. Quite cool really for anyone like me who has never done this before.

Waco explosion, Bangladesh factory collapse and the free market

In the wake of two recent tragedies, I think we should all revisit this idealized notion of Free Market. First there was the West Fertilizer Company explosion in Waco, Texas on April 17th. This was a very destructive explosion that has killed at least 15 people, injured 160 and damaged over 150 buildings within its blast radius. Horrible tragedy really. A study conducted after the blast, indicated that this plant was last inspected by Occupational Safety and Health Administration over 28 years ago. In this inspection almost three decades ago, the agency found several serious violations including improper storage and handling of anhydrous ammonia, and improper respiratory protection for workers. Although, this did lead to a $30 penalty for the company, which I'm sure would normally have tremendous impact on any multi million dollar operation, and of course lead to the appropriate changes.

I think it's important to remember, we're talking about Texas here. The Rick Perry state, where conservatism and capitalism are as important as the bible. This is  a perfect representation of what I think is wrong with republicans in the USA, and conservatives in my country up north. Conservatives and libertarians love to preach about the tremendous benefits of their version of a "free market". They love to say that Adam Smith's capitalism, much like Christianity, is overseen by the invisible hand. That supply and demand are the most relevant regulatory forces we need. I have a lot of problems with these notions.

While there may be measurable benefits from unregulated capitalist policies - and I'm not advocating that there is - there is a much more problematic hidden caveat. Conservatives claim that this so called "free market" is what will pull the world out of a global recession, they forget that lack of regulation is what put us in the recession in the first place. On top of that lack of regulation, is the bottom line need for profit, which is what led the factory in Waco to be holding over 100 times the allowed amount of ammonia, which arguably was a cause for such a violent explosion.

Alright, let me continue with another event from this week. I'm talking about the collapse of the garment factory in Bangladesh. This has killed over 300 people so far, causing a tremendous amount of pain to thousands of family members and friends. For those that don't follow the news, this week, on the 24th, an 8-story commercial building collapsed in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. This was a building that housed several clothing factories that produce garments for exportation to industrialized nations such as the USA and Canada.

Basically this is a building that would not be allowed to be used in the industrialized world. It was dilapidated, just falling apart. There were major cracks on the walls, and clear signs of a safety problem, which even led the factory to briefly shut off the day before the event. Well, it would cost a very large amount of money to fix, or rebuild structures such as these around developing nations. It would cost a lot of money that they are unwilling to spend because that would mean they can't produce sub par t-shirts for a few cents. People! this is the direct result of several major flaws of what we call today capitalism.


    1. Capitalism is a profit driven idea  based on competition for markets. In no way I think there is a problem in this foundation, the problem with our modern view of capitalism is the importance of the bottom line, profit. Yes, of course profit should be the goal of a business, however, this should not come with lives on the price tag. Wal-Mart for instance reported a net income of 15.4 Billion dollars in 2011 with a 24.7% gross profit margin. These numbers alone are simply astounding, and I firmly believe that success stories like this are inspirational. However, when these types of profits rely on absolutely unacceptable conditions for the people behind the scenes, my view of it is certainly changes. When this 24% profit margin only exists because as consumers we accept that people in the third world are allowed to literally die to produce my cheap sweater, that I'll use gardening so I don't get my nice clothes dirty, there is a problem. I'm not at all free of guilt as consumer, but I think eventually we need to look at how to fix this problem.

    2. Businesses like Wal-Mart not only exploit the third world for profit, but they also do it by removing jobs that used to be local. They move manufacturing outside of our respective countries to places like Bangladesh. Now, that alone isn't a big deal, the problem is that fair paying jobs here in Canada and the USA are being destroyed to produce poverty sustaining jobs in the third world. So we mess up our own economy, to allow developing countries to exploit their population by giving them the absolute bare minimum.

    3. So who wins here? The big players! Massive profit margins definitely benefit the billionaires running these businesses. In terms of economic growth, our economies have been growing in the last few decades, but this growth has mainly been in the top 1%. The billionaires are getting better at making profit, and this is in part done through cutting fair paying jobs to give out unreasonably bad paying jobs in the third world.

Well, some may say, well that's just the dark side of capitalism, there isn't anything we can do. That's where I disagree. What needs to happen is regulation, and accountability. Right now in North America, there are tax benefits involved with importing goods from developing countries. The way the government sells us these benefits is almost as if they are convincing us they are doing good in the world. Of course allowing easier trade with Bangladesh will help their economy grow, where is the harm in that? The harm is in the fact that while this sounds good in theory, the reality is that across the ocean big corporations abuse the fact that there are desperate people out there in order to give them horrible working conditions for their profit. There is no oversight of these conditions by the big corporations for obvious reasons. The lack of oversight by Canada and the US is partly because of the important of economic influence (lobbying), and the lack of oversight by third world authorities is an attempt to maintain their country as a viable source of almost slave labor which does help their economies to some extent.

This is where I would like to challenge all my conservative and libertarian friends to tell me how this Ayn Rand capitalism is good for anyone besides the top dogs?

Gas consumption over one year (Dodge Caliber 2007)

Well, this post may appear fairly arbitrary. If you know me at all, you know that I am a bit of a statistics whore and ultimately I try to graph a lot of things I am curious about. This includes my gas consumption. At first I thought, who the hell would want to know how much gas I use over a year? Well maybe someone that has the same car as I do, or someone curious about gas usage over the course of a year. Anyway, that's why I'm posting this information.

Some background:

I started driving last year when I moved from Toronto and all of a sudden I needed a job to get to work. So I have a 2007 Dodge Caliber, which I mostly use to get from home to work and the university. I live around 40Km away from work and from my school.

A very significant chunk of my driving is on the highway, most of it between 70-90 Km/h. This will obviously affect my mileage, since that range falls pretty much on the most gas efficient range for a car like mine.

 I drove somewhere between 25-30k Km in these 12 months and I change my oil every 10k Km because I have been using the synthetic stuff (mainly for convenience since the cost doesn't seem that different).

 So just to clarify the figure. Series 2 is the one that accounts for each time I pump my gas. I note how many liters of the regular gas I pump, and using that number I divide the difference in kilometers from the moment I pump the gas to my last pit stop. It may seem obvious to some, but maybe not to all.

Gas Consumption = (mileage now / mileage last time) / litres pumped

There are some missing points and whatnot, which I apologize for, I just never thought I would have to show my work to anyone as I was doing it.

Anyway, that's for series 2, series one is a moving average, basically taking into account the cumulative average, which produces a much smoother curve and an interesting trend. Note that when I began my measurements around 53K my gas consumption was around 12 Km/L. That was around March/April of 2012. The trend was definitely upwards until it peaked over the summer months. I live in Canada, so once we started to see winter my consumption went up; and then once snow started to be a factor, well you can tell when that happened.

Anyway, the data isn't perfect, but it does give a nice little clue on how my car performs over the year, also gives me a good grasp of how much gas I'm burning with this vehicle. I hope this is useful to someone at some point, if I get some feedback on this I might do my next little project, which will be looking at creating some data for the gas dial in my car so that I can perhaps compare different speeds and different scenarios to see what's the most efficient way to drive for me.