Recently in Computing Category

Another search engine has come on line (online?) in the last week or two. It goes by the name of cuil - the name derives from the phonetic spelling of a trendy way of pronouncing the word "cool". I had a go with it, and it is definitely a bit different to the big old Google search engine experience. Looking at their privacy information cuil doesn't appear to be storing anything to do with who is searching for what, given Google's stance on privacy some might consider this new alternative.

I thought I'd give cuil a good chance by using them and thought that I might promote this search engine by writing a simple search plug-in for Firefox as there didn't appear to be one on the official Mozilla plug-in download page. If anyone knows how to submit search plug-ins to Mozilla then I'd be interested to know - I don't have the time in between all my charity work to find out this myself!

To install the plug-in just save the following text as cuil.xml in the "searchplugins" directory under the installation directory of Mozilla Firefox.

<SearchPlugin 
    xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/">
<ShortName>Cuil</ShortName>
<Description>Cuil Search</Description>
<InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
<Image width="16" height="16">data:image/x-icon;base64,R0lGODlhE
AAQAKUzAAAAAAABAQEBAQEDBQMDAwIJEgsLCwsLDAINHQwMDAwMDQQSJxARERQVFR8gISA
hIQskSAwmSiYmJwkvZhEzZDk6Ozo8PTs9Pj4/QEdISVhaXBdx8xdy9Rl1+X6BhYeKjoyQk
5CUl5CUmJKWmpOXm5SYnJabn5eboJicoJicoZmdoZqeopqeo5ugpJygpJyhpZ2hpZ2ipp+
jp////////////////////////////////////////////////////yH5BAEKAD8ALAAAA
AAQABAAAAZmQIBwSCwaj8ikcqlEAD6e5YSzWIWIAkBWm6UArEIQLNZAPQCyV6Tzva5UlhO
A5PiiIJs2wKQRBOZ1K3d5YC0gAAYAJRkALIN6GCUqIxIuJSkkjysiQxUMQhcECgkDBQAKB
0yqq0lBADs=</Image>
<Url type="text/html" method="GET" 
    template="http://www.cuil.com/search">
  <Param name="q" value="{searchTerms}"/>
  <!-- Dynamic parameters -->
  <Param name="rls" 
    value="{moz:distributionID}:{moz:locale}:{moz:official}"/>
  <MozParam name="client" condition="defaultEngine" 
    trueValue="firefox-a" falseValue="firefox"/>
</Url>
</SearchPlugin>

Happy browsing from the nofear.org technology team!

I don't quite know how this guy did it, but last time I tried to take my bicycle into a shopping centre - or rather the grand foyer of the library in Norwich - I was asked to leave.

Thus astounded I had to take a photo of this chap who not only seemed to have managed to get his bike into the Apple Store of Cambridge's Grand Arcade, but seemed to be allowed to use it as a comfy seat when test driving the laptop.

I applaud the Grand Arcade for allowing bikes in, or if it turns out not to be the case then I applaud the chap for successfully smuggling his two wheels into the shop. The Apple Store was one of the busiest outlets on the opening of the arcade and does seem to retain a certain degree of footfall, in other areas of the city shops are closing apace!

One other thought occurs to me, I wonder if the chap in the photo could be using this as a sort of hot-desking technique? Office space is pretty expensive (even though there is lots empty in Cambridge at the moment) so coupled with decent use of coffee shops and bars you could have a cheap mechanism for mobile working. ("Of course Genome" you cry, "you are out of date." people have been working like this for years, but give me my out-door working environment in the graveyard anytime...)

(Where else do you think all that DNA arrives from for the scientists to use?)

Here's my second search engine plugin for Mozilla Firefox, it's for the English language version of Wikipedia. The main deficiency with it is the crummy icon for it, but I'll change this another evening for something a bit smoother. It also uses google for doing suggested search queries which you may or may not want to keep.

<SearchPlugin xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/">

<ShortName>Wikipedia</ShortName>

<Description>Wikipedia English Language Search</Description>

<InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>

<Image width="16" height="16">data:image/x-icon;base64,I2RlZmluZSB3aWtpcGVkaWFfd2lkdGggMTYKI2RlZmluZSB3aWtpcGVkaWFfaGVpZ2h0IDE2CnN0

YXRpYyBjaGFyIHdpa2lwZWRpYV9iaXRzW10gPSB7CiAgMHgwMCwgMHgwMCwgMHgwMCwgMHgwMCwg

MHhDNiwgMHhDQywgMHhDNiwgMHg0OCwgMHhDQywgMHg0NCwgMHg4QywgMHgwMywgCiAgMHgxOCwg

MHgyMywgMHgxOCwgMHgyMywgMHgxMCwgMHgwMywgMHgzMCwgMHgxNywgMHhGMCwgMHgwRSwgMHg3

MCwgMHgwRSwgCiAgMHg2MCwgMHgwQywgMHgwMCwgMHgwMCwgMHgwMCwgMHgwMCwgMHgwMCwgMHgw

MCwgfTsK</Image>

<Url type="application/x-suggestions+json" method="GET" template="http://suggestqueries.google.com/complete/search?output=firefox&client=firefox&qu={searchTerms}"/>

<Url type="text/html" method="GET" template="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search={searchTerms}">

</Url>

<SearchForm>http://en.wikipedia.org/</SearchForm>

</SearchPlugin>

To use this you want to paste the text into an xml file, I called mine wikipedia-en.xml, then save the file under <whereever firefox is installed>\searchplugins

For some reason one of the internet connections I use fools google.com into thinking I am German, so I end up with their German search page. I'll save the discussion about enforcing access to region specific servers and censorship until another day. In the meantime I've written my first, and very trivial, Firefox search plug-in:

<SearchPlugin xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/">
<ShortName>Google UK</ShortName>
<Description>Google UK Search</Description>
<InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
<Image width="16" height="16">
data:image/x-icon;base64,R0lGODdhEAAQAOeUAAATVg8SnwsWpAAilhUfgAAlvRoljxMsoCgmixUqqg4qywQ2sSkwdBMzuhMx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</Image>
<Url type="application/x-suggestions+json" method="GET" template="http://suggestqueries.google.co.uk/complete/search?output=firefox&client=firefox&qu={searchTerms}"/>
<Url type="text/html" method="GET" template="http://www.google.co.uk/search">
<Param name="q" value="{searchTerms}"/>
<Param name="ie" value="utf-8"/>
<Param name="oe" value="utf-8"/>
<Param name="aq" value="t"/>
<!-- Dynamic parameters -->
<Param name="rls" value="{moz:distributionID}:{moz:locale}:{moz:official}"/>
<MozParam name="client" condition="defaultEngine" trueValue="firefox-a" falseValue="firefox"/>
</Url>
<SearchForm>http://www.google.co.uk/firefox</SearchForm>
</SearchPlugin>

To use this you want to paste the text into an xml file, I called mine google_uk.xml, then save the file under <whereever firefox is installed>\searchplugins
Next time you start Firefox you should have a new search icon. You can move that to be the highest under "Manage Search Engines" on the search drop-down.

From Thursday this week (26th of April) until the end of the weekend Cambridge will be seeing a rather interesting set of exhibitions, demonstrations, and a very trendy conference. The photo on the left is the initial setting up of the domes that will host some of the displays and events.

‘Enter Unknown Territories’ or ‘Enter_Unknown Territories’ as it is funkily entitled is a 4 day festival that is bringing together art and new technology. It seems that much of the City will be involved with this. I myself will be attempting to attend a few of the shows or displays. Since Chenapan – our mad cheese-eating friend – will be visiting the town it’ll be interesting to see if we can coax him into coming along to this potentially bizarre series of events.

I noted that one of the major contributors to the organisation of the festival is the famous Bill Thompson. In recent years Bill appears to have become rather a centrepiece of Cambridge life. From his work at last year’s Cambridge Film Festival, to his work with the BBC, it is good to know that Cambridge is home to such diverse and colourful characters!

Returning to the subject in hand, I noticed that one of the major events is a picnic on Parker’s Piece on Sunday at 2pm. This could be a very community spirited event, or it could be totally overrun by scavvers. Only time will tell. If I obtain any interesting footage in the next few days it will, naturally, be shared here on nofear.org!

Click the various links above for more information.

Writing about taking photos brings me to comment on what I considered the inevitability of Flickr being taken over by Yahoo.

What is so astounding about the public reaction is that people who are inconvenienced by this change seem so surprised by it. When a free, or cheap, service becomes a monopoly it always becomes the target for larger enterprises seeking to bolster their funds. In this case Yahoo seems to be keen to grab hold of the membership of Flickr.

I've enjoyed looking at photos on Flickr for quite some time, but have always seen photo sharing as a slightly peculiar hobby. I applaud the skill that goes into quite a lot of the media that appears here, especially when compared to the tripe that arrives on YouTube. Yet I am still amazed that people would entrust even small portions of their photo collections to a 3rd party. Once one does this one essentially loses ownership of that property.

The icing on the cake in this instance was that Yahoo came along, snapped up the whole thing, and insisted on getting Flickr users to adopt Yahoo usernames. This is the problem with the Internet, people are getting so used to free services that they seem to forget that things can, and do, change. It’s great that you can get a free email account that will hold several gigabytes of your emails, but I wonder how many people realise the long term implications of allowing corporations to store all these personal communications – no matter how unimportant they seem now?

This lax approach by users seems more amusing given the noise being generated by people lambasting the “trusted computing” paradigm now being introduced by Microsoft Vista. It pains me to say it but I completely understand that the reality of computing is that one will either have to pay for, and/or trust, someone or some organisation to use a computer. Even using Linux has costs associated with it. Unless one writes their own operating system and tool set there is an element of trust involved. Who has honestly read all of the code of an open source system to check that all the code is acceptable and safe to use? We hope that the collaborative nature of OSS gives an in-built safety, but with the number of computers in the world running compromised software it seems that bot-nets producing spam, attacks, hacks and their facilitation of global fraud will be here to stay for a good while yet.

So, for the meantime, I shall be developing my own secure internet system based on a clean virtual machine for surfing. All other functions will be carried out “sans-Internet” for the foreseeable future. Even this won’t guarantee complete security.

After reading the following article about the online role playing game "Project Entropia" - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4104731.stm. I felt compelled to write a view on this weird situation. The article is based around the fact that a player of this game spent about £10,000 on some virtual real-estate. Intrigued I did a bit of hunting around, including the Project Entropia web site, and also at http://www.mmorpg.com/ for a slightly less biased view.

Now this sort of thing isn't entirely new, most on-line games require a payment
up front for the software and then a monthly fee. The idea of trading items on-line isn't new either, it's been happening for some time. To my cynical eye it strikes me as obvious what is really happening.

The difference about Project Entropia is that essentially the game is free (of course you need a decent internet connection), and there is no monthly fee. What you do pay for is basically everything else in the virtual world. So to
actually climb the invisible ladder you need to "invest" in your character with hard cash. The exchange rate is 10ped to $1.

I won't go in to all the details, because it is way too boring, but the idea behind this sale was that the gamer who bought it (!) would be able to raise revenue faster from other gamers by selling parts of his/her island and taxing residents or people who work there. Now this seems a bit stupid, ultimately the company that runs this thing needs to make money, so obviously they create this real-estate to sell to generate extra revenue, and everything else in the game is some way or another getting money to them eventually. From what I've read I gather that if you do make a profit and try to get out of the game it can take a very long time to get hold of any real money! So ultimately something which seems quite cheap is in fact one of the most expensive games of this kind.

More fundamentally is the social aspect of this game, this is roughly the way the world works anyway. People with the majority of the power and money use it as alternately a carrot or a stick in which to control the masses. So why play it in a game and risk losing twice? I read one review that used the phrase "pyramid marketing", well I agree. Sounds like the price is too high in this case...

UPDATED - 17/12/2003 - After a nightmare 1 1/4 hours on the phone to BT Monday, they actually called me yesterday afternoon with the password needed - I now have VOIP running. See bottom of article for details.

--

I read an announcement last week from BT that they were offering a VOIP product to the consumer market. As I would find a second telephone quite handy, this seemed like something worth investigating.

Signed up to the service via their webpage last Tuesday. The site indicated that I would receive two emails, one to confirm my order, and the second with all the setup information needed to get the service working. I'd also receive a Broadband Voice Telephone Adapter (Cisco ATA 186).

Well the ATA-186 turned up today, but no sign of the emails that were promised. A call to the BroadBand Voice helpdesk on 0800 028 3228, and the lady I spoke with said ALL their calls today had been from people with the same question, "I have my telephone adapter, but no email with the setup details!". She promised that this would be looked into on Monday, and I'd get a call back.

Aside from this, I figured I'd try and proceed the configuration as far as I could. This involved plugging a telephone into the ATA-186, and the ATA-186 into my ethernet network. The ATA-186 is configured by default to get an IP address via DHCP, and if it doesn't get an IP address (determined by dialing 80# on the telephone and listening to the computerised voice read out it's IP address), then you're supposed to telephone the helpdesk.

I quote: "

Step 7
Dial 80 followed by a #. Make a note of the numbers you hear. If you hear "0.0.0.0" you'll need to change your router settings. Call us on Freefone 0800 028 3228 and we'll talk you through the steps.

The first call ended up with me being put through to BT Faults by the chap on the BTBroadbandVoice helpdesk, who had no idea why I'd been put through to them. We both agreed that it would be best if I rang the helpdesk back up again.

The second call, and the lady I spoke with said that the system should have read out it's telephone number when I dialed 80#, and had no idea why it said 0.0.0.0. (arghh!!)

Bugger that I thought, and went to the cisco website to find out how to do this manually.

read on...

I finally have native IPv6 connectivity to the network here, and hopefully within a few days the nofear.org webserver will also be available on ipv6.

It is supposedly the future of the internet..

Read more at ipv6.org

Oh wasn't I pleased to discover that the failed disc was from that batch of flakey drives that Fujitsu rolled out about two years ago. I'm suprised the damn thing has lasted this long. Despite being one of the faulty models, they wouldn't replace it until it went wrong. Now they won't replace it because it is (just) out of warranty.

Fortunately, I managed to do a full system backup using the Windows XP "Automatic System Recovery" feature. Dumped a huge backup file onto my laptop over the network.

Well the fun started when I tried to restore the data to the new Seagate drive. In order to reboot a system with this magic ASR feature, you need to have the original XP cdrom. Could I find the damn thing? windows 2000, 98, 95 (!), no problem, but no sign of the XP Cdrom (I did have one before you start casting aspersions.