the stinkin' blog

I do a fair amount of reading various articles throughout the day in a vain attempt to keep on top of technology. I recently came across this sensationally titled article “GNU/Linux Security: Ubuntu has been Cracked!“. You were drawn in by a sensational headline only to be suckered into reading an article about security, Linux, and proactivity. We all know that Ubuntu is a very secure OS with proof by hard-core hackers at a recent “crackfest”.

Read the article. It has good information, but left ONE open question for me. “HOW” do you get proactive with users. What tools, techniques, and avenues can we use to get people to open up to a new way of doing things? Human nature is to resist change with all of our might.

Help me out with this. I run a local Meetup and have a good crowd, but the attendees are already geeks. Most of them run secure alternatives to Windows. How can we be proactive?

JP

I recently purchased an Android based phone. The MyTouch3g from T-Mobile. It is a HTC Magic phone and is running Android v1.5 (Cupcake). I was digging around with it and started playing with SDK in an attempt to “root” the phone. Turns out rooting it is a little more than I’d like to get into right now. Give me a few more months playing with it and I will. So far I like the phone.

To get started with the SDK…
1. You must download the Android SDK. You can find the Android 1.5 R3 here.

2. You must setup a udev rule
a. As root create this file: /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules.
sudo gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules

For Gusty/Hardy or newer, edit the file to read:
SUBSYSTEM==”usb”, SYSFS{idVendor}==”0bb4″, MODE=”0666″

For Dapper, edit the file to read:
SUBSYSTEM==”usb_device”, SYSFS{idVendor}==”0bb4″, MODE=”0666″
b. Now execute:
sudo chmod a+rx /etc/udev/rules.d/50-android.rules

3. Now you need to ensure USB Debugging is turned on.
a. Settings ->Applications -> Development -> USB Debugging checkbox is green!

4. Now connect your device via a USB cable

5. Verify you can see the device
a. From the android sdk cd tools
b. run ./adb devices
c. if you see your device, you have done everything correctly

6. Now you can play with your device

7. If you want to get some details or screenshots
a. run ./ddms

Enjoy. More to come on playing with the Android phone.

Thoughts on Ubuntu 8.10.

I get a big kick out of trollbait articles like this one. For starters he starts with a problem that manifests itself in only a few computers and instead of helping developers by informing them that he has the problem as well, he simply complains about the problem and points out that others have it as well.

The 2nd beef is the “hope clause”. I “hope” that a problem “gets fixed”. Hope is not help. Go to launchpad.net and enter a bug. Help fix the problem instead of complaining about it. The idea behind open source is community involvement.

You see, Microsoft has $$$billions$$ of dollars and thousands of developers that do one thing – continue to slather crap onto Windows. Ubuntu has neither of those resources. If it did, you can be assured the problems you see would not happen.

Get up, be a part of the community. Give back to what is given to you.