Technological Musings

All good things must end.  At least he did it suddenly without dragging it out and bothering someone with taking care of his old ass…

Ok, so it’s not technology related.  So sue me.

Firefox 3.0, out now.  Get it, it's definitely worth it.

Oh, are you still here?  Guess you need some incentive then.  Well, let's take a quick look at the new features.

Probably the most talked about feature in the new release is the "Awesome Bar."  Yeah, the name is kind of lame, but the functionality is quite cool.  The new bar combines the old auto-complete history feature with your bookmarks.  In short, when you start typing in the Address Bar, Firefox auto-completes based on history, bookmarks, and tags.  A drop-down appears below the location bar, showing you the results that best match what you're typing.  The results include the name of the page, the address, and the tags you've assigned (if it's a bookmark).

While I find this particular feature of the new Firefox to be the most helpful, many people do not.  The reason I've heard cited for this hatred is that this forces the user into something new, breaking the "simplicity" of Firefox.  And while I can agree, somewhat, with that, I don't think it's that big a deal.  I do agree, however, that the developers should have included a switch to revert back to the old behavior.  I did stumble upon a new extension and a few configuration options that can switch you back, though.  The extension, called oldbar, modifies the presentation of the results so it resembles the old Firefox 2.0 results.  The writer of the extension is quick to point out that the underlying algorithm is still the Firefox 3.0 version.

You can also check out these two configuration options in the about:config screen:

• browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped (default: False)
• browser.urlbar.maxRichResults (default: 12)

Setting the matchOnlyTyped option to True makes Firefox only display entries that have been previously typed.  The maxRichResults option is a number that determines the maximum number of entries that can appear in the drop down.  Unfortunately, there is no current way to revert back to the previous search algorithm.  This has left a number of people quite upset.

Regardless, I do like the new "Awesome Bar," though it did take a period of adjustment.  One thing I never really liked was pouring through my bookmarks looking for something specific.  Even though I meticulously labeled each one, placed it in a special folder, and synchronized them so they were the same on all of my machines, I always had a hard time finding what I needed.  The new "Awesome Bar" allows me to search history and bookmarks simultaneously, helping me quickly find what I need.

And to make it even better, Firefox 3.0 adds support for tags.  What is a tag, you ask?  Well, it's essentially a keyword you attach to a bookmark.  Instead of filing bookmarks away in a tree of folders (which you can still do), you assign one or more tags to a bookmark.  Using tags, you can quickly search your bookmarks for a specific theme, helping you find that elusive bookmarks quickly and efficiently.  Gone are the days of trying to figure out which folder best matches a page you're trying to bookmark, only to change your mind later on and desperately search for it in that other folder.  Now, just add tags that describe it and file it away in any folder.  Just recall one of the tags you used, and you'll find that bookmark in no time.  Of course, I still recommend using folders, for sanity's sake.

Those are probably two of the most noticeable changes in the new Firefox.  The rest is a little more subtle.  For instance, speed has increased dramatically, both in rendering, and in JavaScript execution.  Memory usage seems to be better as well, taking up much less memory than previous versions.

On the security side of things, Firefox 3 adds support for the new EV-SSL certificates, displaying the owner of the site in green, next to the favicon in the URL bar:

Firefox now tries to warn the user about potential virus and malware sites by checking them against the Google Safe Browsing blacklist.  When you encounter a potentially harmful page, a warning message appears:

Similarly, if the page you are visiting appears to be a forgery, likely an attempt at phishing, you get this warning message:

Finally, the SSL error page is a little more clear, trying to explain why a particular page isn't working.  That error looks like this:

There are other security additions including add-on protection, anti-virus integration, parental controls on Windows Vista, and more.  Overall, it appears they have put quite a lot of work into making Firefox 3.0 more secure.

There are other new features that you can read about here.  Check them out, and then give Firefox 3.0 a shot.  Download it, it's worth it.

As part of my day to day job, I've been working on a headless Linux client that can be transported from site to site to automate some network testing.  I can't really go into detail on what's being tested, or why, but I did want to write up a (hopefully) useful entry about headless client and some of the changes I made to the basic CentOS install to get everything to work.

First up was the issue of headless operation.  We're using Cappuccino SlimPRO SP-625 units with the triple Gigabit Ethernet option.  They're not bad little machines, though I do have a gripe with the back cover on them.  It doesn't properly cover all of the ports on the back, leaving rather large holes where dust and dirt can get in.  What's worse is that the power plug is not surrounded and held in place by the case, so I can foresee the board cracking at some point from the stress of the power cord...  But, for a sub-$800 machine, it's not all that bad.

Anyway, on to the fun.  These machines will be transported to various locations where testing is to be performed.  On-site, there will be no keyboard, no mouse, and no monitor for them.  However, sometimes things go wrong and subtle adjustments may need to be made.  This means we need a way to get into the machine, locally, just in case there's a problem with the network connection.  Luckily, there's a pretty simple means of accessing a headless Linux machine without the need to lug around an extra monitor, keyboard, and mouse.  If you've ever worked on a switch or router, you'll know where I'm going with this.

Most technician have access to a laptop, especially if they have to configure routers or switches.  Why not access a Linux box the same way?  Using the agetty command, you can.  A getty is a program that manages terminals within Unix.  Those terminals can be physical, like the local keyboard, or virtual, like a telnet or ssh session.  The agetty program is an alternative getty program that has some non-standard features such as baud rate detection, adaptive tty, and more.  In short, it's perfect for direct serial, or even dial-in connections.

Setting this all up is a snap, too.  By default, CentOS (and most Linux distros) set up six gettys for virtual terminals.  These virtual terminals use yet another getty, mingetty, which is a minimalized getty program with only enough features for virtual terminals.  In order to provide serial access, we need to add a few lines to enable agettys on the serial ports.

But wait, what serial ports do we have?  Well, assuming they are enabled in the BIOS, we can see them using the dmesg and setserial commands.  The dmesg command prints out the current kernel message buffer to the screen.  This is usually the output from the boot sequence, but if your system has been up a while, it may contain more recent messages.  We can use dmesg to determine the serial interfaces like this :

[friz@test ~]$ dmesg | grep serial
serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
serial8250: ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A

As you can see from the output above, we have both a ttyS0 and a ttyS1 port available on this particular machine.  Now, we use setserial to make sure the system recognizes the ports:

[friz@test ~]$ sudo setserial -g /dev/ttyS[0-1]
/dev/ttyS0, UART: 16550A, Port: 0x03f8, IRQ: 4
/dev/ttyS1, UART: 16550A, Port: 0x02f8, IRQ: 3

The output is similar to dmesg, but setserial actually polls the port to get the necessary information, thereby ensuring that it's active.  Also note, you will likely need to run this command as root to make it work.

Now that we know what serial ports we have, we just need to add them to the inittab and reload the init daemon.  Adding these to the inittab is pretty simple.  Your inittab will look something like this:

#
# inittab       This file describes how the INIT process should set up
#               the system in a certain run-level.
#
# Author:       Miquel van Smoorenburg, <miquels@drinkel.nl.mugnet.org>
#               Modified for RHS Linux by Marc Ewing and Donnie Barnes
#

# Default runlevel. The runlevels used by RHS are:
#   0 - halt (Do NOT set initdefault to this)
#   1 - Single user mode
#   2 - Multiuser, without NFS (The same as 3, if you do not have networking)
#   3 - Full multiuser mode
#   4 - unused
#   5 - X11
#   6 - reboot (Do NOT set initdefault to this)
#
id:3:initdefault:

# System initialization.
si::sysinit:/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit

l0:0:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 0
l1:1:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 1
l2:2:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 2
l3:3:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 3
l4:4:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 4
l5:5:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 5
l6:6:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 6

# Trap CTRL-ALT-DELETE
ca::ctrlaltdel:/sbin/shutdown -t3 -r now

# When our UPS tells us power has failed, assume we have a few minutes
# of power left.  Schedule a shutdown for 2 minutes from now.
# This does, of course, assume you have powerd installed and your
# UPS connected and working correctly.
pf::powerfail:/sbin/shutdown -f -h +2 "Power Failure; System Shutting Down"

# If power was restored before the shutdown kicked in, cancel it.
pr:12345:powerokwait:/sbin/shutdown -c "Power Restored; Shutdown Cancelled"

# Run gettys in standard runlevels
1:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty1
2:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty2
3:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty3
4:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty4
5:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty5
6:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty6

# Run xdm in runlevel 5
x:5:respawn:/etc/X11/prefdm -nodaemon

Just add the following after the original gettys lines:

# Run agettys in standard runlevels
s0:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -L -f /etc/issue.serial 9600 ttyS0 vt100
s1:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -L -f /etc/issue.serial 9600 ttyS1 vt100

Let me explain quickly what the above means.  Each line is broken into multiple fields, separated by a colon.  At the very beginning of the line is an identifier, s0 and s1 in our case.  Next comes a list of the runlevels for which this program should be spawned.  Finally, the command to run is last.

The agetty command takes a number of arguments:

• The -L switch disables carrier detect for the getty.
• The next switch, -f, tells agetty to display the contents of a file before the login prompt, /etc/issue.serial in our case.
• Next is the baud rate to use.  9600 bps is a good default value to use.  You can specify speeds up to 152,200 bps, but they may not work with all terminal programs.
• Next up is the serial port, ttyS0 and ttyS1 in our example.
• Finally, the terminal emulation to use.  VT100 is probably the most common, but you can use others.

Now that you've added the necessary lines, reload the init daemon via this command:

[friz@test ~]$ sudo /sbin/init q

At this point, you should be able to connect a serial cable to your Linux machine and access it via a program such as minicom, PuTTY, or hyperterminal.  And that's all there is to it.

You can also redirect the kernel to output all console messages to the serial port as well.  This is accomplished by adding a switch to the kernel line in your /etc/grub.conf file like this:

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE:  You have a /boot partition.  This means that
#          all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
#          root (hd0,0)
#          kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/hdc3
#          initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hdc
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title CentOS (2.6.18-53.1.21.el5)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-53.1.21.el5 ro root=LABEL=/ console=ttyS0,9600
        initrd /initrd-2.6.18-53.1.21.el5.img

The necessary change is highlighted above.  The console switch tells the kernel that you want to re-direct the console output.  The first option is the serial port to re-direct to, and the second is the baud rate to use.

And now you have a headless Linux system!  These come in handy when you need a Linux machine for remote access, but you don't want to deal with having a mouse, keyboard, and monitor handy to access the machine locally.

In the late 1990's, Circuit City partnered with an entertainment law firm, Ziffren, Brittenham, Branca and Fischer, to create a new type of video standard called DIVX.  DIVX was intended to be an alternative to movie rentals.  In short, you'd purchase a DIVX disc, reminiscent of a DVD, and you had the right to watch that disc as many times as you wanted within 48 hours of your first viewing.  After 48 hours passed, you had to pay an additional fee to continue viewing the disc.

This all sounds fine and dandy until you realize a few things.  This was a new format, incompatible with DVD players, which had come onto the market a few years earlier.  As a result, expensive DIVX or DIVX/DVD combo players had to be purchased.  These players had to be connected to a phone line so they could verify that the owner could play the disc.

The DIVX format quickly died out, leaving early adopters stranded with unusable discs and useless players.  Another fine example of the usefulness of DRM schemes.

Fast forward to 2008 and to Flexplay Entertainment.  Flexplay is a new twist on the old DIVX format.  This time, however, consumers only have to pay once.  Sort of.

Flexplay is a fully compatible DVD disc, with a twist.  You purchase the disc, and after you open the package, you have 48 hours to watch it before it "self-destructs."  According to How Stuff Works, a standard DVD is a dual-layer disc that starts life as two separate pieces.  After the data is written on each piece, they are glued together using a resin adhesive.  The adhesive is clear, allowing laser light to pass through the first layer when necessary and read the second layer.

Flexplay works by replacing the resin adhesive with a special chemical compound that changes when exposed to oxygen.  Over time, the compound changes color and becomes opaque, rendering the DVD useless.  Once the disc has become opaque, it gets thrown away.

Before you begin fearing for the environment, Flexplay has a recycling program!  Flexplay offers two recycling options, local recycling and mail-in.  They claim that the discs are "no different in their environmental impact than regular DVDs" and that they comply with EPA standards.  Of course, they don't point out that regular DVDs tend to be kept rather than thrown away.  The also offer this shining gem of wisdom, just before mentioning their mail-in recycling option:

"And of course, a Flexplay No-Return DVD Rental completely eliminates the energy usage and emissions associated with a return trip to the video rental store."

It's a good thing mailing the disc back to Flexplay is different than mailing a DVD back to NetFlix or Blockbuster...  Oh..  wait..

And this brings up another good point.  The purpose of Flexplay is to offer an alternative to rental services.  With both Netflix and Blockbuster, I can request the movies I want online, pay a minimal fee, and have them delivered directly to my house.  At worst, I may drive to a local rental store and rent a movie, similar to that of driving to a store selling Flexplay discs.  With Netflix and Blockbuster, I can keep those movies and watch them as many times as I want, way beyond the 48 hour period I would have for a Flexplay disc.  And, for the environmentally conscious, I then return the disc so it can be sent to another renter, removing the local landfill from the equation.

In short, this is yet another horrible idea.  The environmental impact this would have is astounding, if it ever took off.  Hopefully the public is smart enough to ignore it.

Well, looks like the early information on Windows 7 might be wrong.  According to an interview with Steven Sinofsky, Senior Vice President of Windows and Windows Live Engineering at Microsoft, there are a few details you may have heard that may not be entirely true.  But then again, it seems that Mr Sinofsky did tap dance around a lot of the questions asked.

First and foremost, the new kernel.  There has been a lot of buzz about the new MinWin kernel, which many believe to be integral to the next release of Windows.  However, according to the interview, that may not be entirely true.  When asked about the MinWin kernel, Mr Sinofsky replied that they are building Windows 7 on top of the Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista foundation.  There will be no new driver compatibility issues with the new release.  When asked specifically about the minimum kernel, he dodged the question, trying to focus on how Microsoft communicates, rather than new features of Windows.

So does this mean the MinWin kernel has been cut?  Well, not necessarily, but I do think it means that we won't see the MinWin kernel in the form it has been talked about.  That is, very lightweight, and very efficient.  In order to provide 100% backwards compatibility with Vista, they likely had to add a lot more to the kernel, moving it from a lightweight, back into the heavyweight category.  This blog post by Chris Flores, a director at Microsoft, seems to confirm this as well.

The release date has also been pushed back to the original 2010 date that was originally stated.  At a meeting before the Inter-American Development Bank, Bill Gates had stated that a new release of Windows would be ready sometime in the next year or so.  Mr Sinofsky stated firmly that Windows 7 would be released three years after Vista, putting it in the 2010 timeframe.

Yesterday evening, at the All Things Digital conference, a few more details leaked out.  It was stated again that Windows 7 would be released in late 2009.  Interestingly enough, it seems that Windows 7 has "inherited" a few features from it's chief competitor, Mac OSX.  According to the All Things Digital site, there's a Mac OS-X style dock, though I have not been able to find a screenshot showing it.  There are these "leaked" screenshots, though their authenticity (and possibly the information provided with them) is questionable at best.

The biggest feature change, at this point, appears to be the addition of multi-touch to the operating system.  According to Julie Larson-Green, Corporate Vice President of Windows Experience Program Management, multi-touch has been built throughout the OS.  So far it seems to support the basic feature-set that any iPhone or iPod Touch supports.  Touch is the future, according to Bill Gates.  He went on to say:

“We’re at an interesting junction.  In the next few years, the roles of speech, gesture, vision, ink, all of those will become huge. For the person at home and the person at work, that interaction will change dramatically.”

All in all, it looks like Windows 7 will just be more of the same.  With all of the problems they've encountered with Vista, I'll be surprised if Windows 7 becomes the big seller they're hoping for.  To be honest, I think they would have been better off re-designing everything from scratch with Vista, rather than trying to shovel in new features to an already bloated kernel.