I have had this issue with a number of mice and a number of different computers now. Some older USB mice will not work when you plug them into Windows Vista. What happens is a dialog appears saying installing software and then fails saying unknown device.

The fix for this as I just found out this morning is quite simple:

• Click on start
• Right click on computer
• Select properties
• On the left side of the dialog that comes up select device manager
• Scroll down the list of devices to the known device
• Right click and select Update Driver Software
• Select chose from a list of drivers
• Select Human Interface Device
• Select HID compliant mouse
• Click okay and the mouse should now work

Simple. And Windows had the drivers to make it work all along! Sometimes Windows does some really simple things wrong and as a result is just so frustrating. It is a mouse it should just work!

Just got a message from my hosting company:

The Linux server your website is hosted on will be rebooted due to scheduled maintenance between 12AM and 4AM Tuesday morning, 08/02/2010. We anticipate up to 45 minutes of downtime during this period as the file system check takes this long.

So don’t panic!

This video is a little silly at the start but later on does well to explain the inside workings of how someone can break into your computer when you do not have up to date security updates and anti-virus installed.

Okay I have now been working through the process of building Google Chrome OS for a little more than 12 hours. My main desktop computer has been on all night trying to sort out the development build environment so the code can be compiled. It does not help that we went over our data cap a few weeks back and are stuck on 64k internet until mid next week this makes downloading the required files ultra slow.

The build instructions provided by Google so far are quite clear and straightforward to follow. However, they are not very detailed. There are no timings for each step of the process or information about what each step does. So far I have downloaded the full source code (270mb) at uni so I would not have the dial up speed internet problem. However in order to compile the code it is required a strict development be provided. As such the compiling script creates a debootstrap environment virtualizing a minimal Debian OS. While this is a cool feature designed to ensure every build remains consistent it is a pain that this is not explained before the start of the process because the amount of data required to set this up is a lot more than the entire source code for the operating system.

Because the process of building from scratch is so long there has been a build snapshot uploaded onto The Pirate Bay. This is a good idea and I have seen on a few blogs comments that Google should be releasing a nightly build snapshot of the compiled OS. While this takes away the fun of building from scratch it does make testing the OS a lot more accessible. It is something I hope Google implement soon.

Hopefully my next blog on the OS will be a little more positive and lot more further down the building track.

From the wonders of xkcd

Yesterday I managed to get my hands on a copy of Windows 7 Professional through the MSDN Academic Alliance Progamme at Uni.

To avoid messing around with my current Vista install I decided to remove my old 160GB IDE Hard Disk from my old computer and install it into my new system (which isn’t that new anymore), being just out of warrenty I was safe to open the box and put in the hard disk.

First problem, whoever designed the motherboard and case layout in my new system never designed it for people to add stuff into. The IDE socket on the motherboard was located directly below the hard disk install location in the case, so the cable had to twist super tightly to get out from under the hard disk and then plug on a 90 degree angle into it. The second problem was the heat sync on my processor is so large I couldn’t get the drive into the drive bay without having to losen it a little and then reset it. The third problem was cables, the system had all the cables nicely cable tied down, however they had been placed into position so well that you couldn’t get to the spare power cables, once I had cut away some of the cable ties the mess of cables the required a number of unpluggings and rewirings so I could get enough slack on all the cables to get everything plugged in. Because of all this a ten minute job turned into a hour and a half of frustration.

Once this was completed I booted back into Vista and partitioned the newly installed 160GB drive into a 120GB partition for Windows 7 and a 40GB partition for installing Ubuntu 9.10 later this month. Once this was set in went the Windows 7 DVD. The installation of Windows 7 took less than 30 minutes and was incredabily straight forward. Easily the simplest installation of Windows I have ever done.

On a whole Windows 7 can be summed up in one word. Smooth. It is what Vista should have been. There are only minor differences in UI between the two operating systems, but those differents make a big difference in user experience. Gone is the quick launch bar, instead you can have programs always in the task bar, even if they are not running. The names of programs have vanished replaced with large icons. The sidebar is gone, you can now put gadgets anywhere on your screen. Windows Media Centre also has support for Freeview, which is great, no messing about with codecs and Media Portal. Windows Aero and animations are incredabily fast and crisp. So far I am very impressed.

The chart below shows my system rating on Windows 7. The values have increased slighty from Vista. (Vista scores in brackets).

The key things to note regarding the different scores are:

Processor – Vista is only 32 bit, Windows 7 is 64

Memory – Vista is only 32 bit therefore only has access to 3GB of RAM, Windows 7 has access to the full 4GB

Graphics – Aero doesn’t seem to take advantage of crossfire, so my system is always limited here. It is not a big feature anyway so I typically ignore this.

Gaming Graphics – This is the score that matters much more. For some reason on Windows 7 the score is a lot higher than Vista. The first reason for this is Windows 7 is giving crossfire 512mb more memory than Vista. I can only guess the second reason is newer graphic card drivers in Windows 7.

Primary hard disk – The decrease in score here is caused by using a older IDE drive compared to my primary Vista hard disk being SATA.

from XKCD.com

It was interesting returning to Auckland on Thursday night to find out that in the past few days the world has completely changed. Yes Google has finnaly let the cat out of the bag (but I think it actually escaped months ago) that it was developing an operating system to rival Windows.

Google Chrome OS is not planned to be released until late 2010 however the source will be released later this year (so in some ways you could start using it later this year). The full announcement is here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html

The points that I am most interested in are:

• This is not Google’s first OS, in fact it is their third. In house they use Goobuntu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goobuntu) which is a modified version of Ubunutu Linux. And at the end of 2008 they released Android an open source operating system for cellphones, and it rocks.
• Cloud Computing. The operating system is going to be very light weight on the end users system and plug directly into the internet. This is going to be a lot like the Android where it is always on and things are straight away at your finger tips. This works really well for a cellphone but I do wonder how much functionality it is going to have for more high end activities. Sure you may be able to edit a word document etc, but what about being able to do some coding, or playing a game. In those realms I think that a full desktop environment will still be a lot better.
• It is free. Well being open source and based off linux they really didn’t have much more of a choice. Having said that it really gives Microsoft a kick up the pants with the cost of Windows even at OEM price being really expensive.
• The number of companies involved: Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba. This shows that it has some major industry support and the chances of success are high.

I am excited about what it can deliver, but building a web browser that gets 30 million users in 9 months is one thing. Building a operating system that can deliver a smooth user experience without bugs or issues is a whole lot harder.

Okay in the last week I have had to do a windows installation and a linux installation onto a laptop.

In the past the windows install would have won hands down in terms of getting everything running out of the box. But not any longer, I now think that over the last two years linux has really come of age and is just simple to use and for the most part just works.

Firstly my experiences in windows installing.

• Insert CD rom and install OS – about 30 minutes.
• Remove cd rom restart do end user install, about another 30 minutes.
• Boot into windows remove norton anti virus, install avast and do a boot time scan to ensure that in the few seconds between norton and avast nothing snuck onto the system – 1 hour.
• Download and install windows updates 10 minutes to download 1 hour to install.
• Reboot and install firefox and thunderbird 30 minutes.

All up for a basic working machine: 3.5 hours.

Linux installation.

• Install OS from cd rom… 20 minutes
• Reboot do end user install 10 minutes.
• Get wireless networking drivers working – 1 hour.
• Download and install updates less than 30 minutes.
• Install anti-virus… not needed it is linux.
• Install other software… apt-get install software name… under 5 minutes per piece of software.

All up… 2 hours… an hour of which was getting drivers for a wifi card to work, and if hardware vendors properly supported linux you could have a fully functioning up to date OS in under 1 hour.

Two years ago a linux set up would have taken days because of driver problems and even dependancy problems, but now linux has really matured and unless windows can improve its security a lot then in the long run linux will just become more and more popular.

….

Now of course people are going to come back and say that windows has more security holes because more people use it so therefore it is easier to break and if linux increased in popularity more people would write viruses and try to break it too. I do think there is half a point here. However for the most part linux makes you manually do stuff where windows if sometimes just a little to smart for its own good. I placed a flash drive into my computer yesterday that had a virus on it set to autorun, lucky for me my system stopped it. However, why windows insists on letting flash drives autorun is just plain weird… so windows getting lots of viruses is as much microsoft’s slack approach to system security as is it the fault of the virus writers themselves. Then again if there wasn’t security holes in windows norton and mcaffee would be out of work so there is an economics side to viruses as well.

Okay, now there is no excuse for any geek or anyone with a keen interest in computers to not try out linux.

For the past year and a bit I have been playing around with Virtualbox and virtualization, the major problem here however is the speed of booting, and drivers etc as it is in an emulated/simulated environment.

Enter WUBI. Wubi is an installer that allows you to install Ubuntu and Linux Mint on an NTFS partiation and use the windows boot loader so it does absolute nothing to windows at all. And to make matters better you can access your windows files straight out of the box.

I have now had a WUBI Ubunutu set up for the past week and it is brilliant.

I am now trying a new distro called Linux Mint which is aimed at end users.

If you want some help getting it installed or just want to try it out just contact me, it is brilliant just really awesome.

The maths to create this footage kept me up to the wee hours of the morning. But I am pleased with the outcome.

Like Flying Pig did in the late 1990s it was today annouced that Ferrit is going to be shut down.

Unlike Flying Pig I have never used Ferrit to buy products. I have only used it to try and locate prices for products and typically Ferrit’s prices were more than I could pay elsewhere anyway.

I guess Amazon.com is still ruling NZ online shopping, with TradeMe taking care of the second hand market and then the smaller players holding their own ground too, like Mighty Ape, Fishpond, Woolworths, Computer Food etc.

I suppose in life mega malls like Westfield Albany work because despite being under one roof every outlet inside the mall is unique and different, where Ferrit just made everyone the same.

What weird creature/animal will come next?

New Laptop (Jan 09):

Desktop (Jun 08):

Laptop:

Desktop:

Laptop:

Desktop:

In summary both systems are quite similar. On a performance race the Desktop would win hands down, but for a laptop it is fairly powerful.

And today’s other top story.

NZTA was told in mid December they had security issues but did nothing.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10550914

I have been laughing over the last few days as the New Zealand Transport Authority has become more red faced over the massive security hole in their toll road payment system.

On January 25 the Silverdale to Puhoi motorway extension will open, however to drive on it you will need to pay tolls, and for the last two months or so the NZTA have been advertising the www.tollroad.govt.nz website heavily so regulary uses of the new road can set up accounts.

On Monday a computer user realised that the website was not encrypting credit card information which means that anyone who knows anything about packet snifting or the like could intercept peoples credit card details as they used the website.

Now first and foremost this should never happen. Not on any ecommerce site, let alone a government website. Ecommerce programing 101 would surely teach you that first you must always encrypt data through using SSL and HTTPS not plain HTTP.

But what was more funny is that the red faced NZTA denied that there was anything wrong with the site! Refusing to take it offline or stop processing accounts.

That was until today when with egg on their face they took down the site for maintenance and admitted they stuffed up. Time to get new programmers one thinks.

Read more here:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/connect/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501833&objectid=10550614

and

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10550744