ack when I was in school, some friends of mine were addicted to on-line role-playing games (RPG) such as Ultima (interview with its creator just Slashdotted). One of them would spend his entire life (not literally as he was in school too) playing D&D-themed games, attending his friends’ on-line weddings and grabbing screenshots. The Diablo extravaganza was heated up too at the time, but it goes back to the age of 14 or 15.

I have just stumbled upon an entertaining essay by one such addict. It gives an idea of the scale and growth of this phenomenon. I will not be surprised if in the next decade we see people who are entirely disconnected from reality, constantly ‘plugged-into’ their computer screen, spending their life (physical) in a virtual world, provided they can financially afford it. Computers allow many to enter a virtual world where gaps between reality and imagination simply collapse. Let us not forget that computers stride on quickly while the rest of the world does not. In a few decades, the two might intersect at some level.

You may have heard about a guy who recently was convicted of murdering a man during a dispute over a rare, valuable sword. That sword that was not made of metal or anything solid, but rather of 1′s and 0′s inside a computer hundreds of miles away. It was a sword he had won in the MMORPG Legend of Mir 3.

Related films: The Lawnmower Man (1992), The Matrix (1999)
(note: mentioning of these films does not imply that I like them)

overnmental offices and agencies are expected, more than any other body, to cater for a large variety of cultures. This item is not a political one, but it refers to governments which unknowingnly support a commercial monopoly, which happens to be a majority. The benefit to governments taking this stance is scarce or inexistent. At the end of the day, cash only flows towards the folks at Washington state.

The city of Vienna has recently moved to an all-Linux infrastructure. Britain appears to be highly conscious of the diversity of browsers and operating systems out there (exception #1, exception #2) unlike many other countires I know. Some other governments have recently expressed willingness to follow suit and move to Open Source.

To spice up this write-up and give some fruit for thought, The Australian Tax Office adopted OSS and nonetheless, the Australian ‘e-tax’ system is Windows-only. If you talk the talk, you must also walk the walk.

There are at least 5 paradigms for opening applications in your operating system. These differ in terms of efficiency, versatility the the learning curve (experience) that is initially involved. If the average user invokes programs dozens of times a day, choosing the right invocation method is worthwhile.

Method #1 – Application Menus (Launcher) – familiar to most under the heading “Start Menu”, which of course corresponds to Windows users. Therein lie all the applications, well-filed and catalogued depending on their nature. Many users retain everything directly under “Programs” (no extra level of hierarchy), but installations of Linux often subcategorise programs by type, e.g. “Internet”, “System”, “Graphics” etc. (see image on the left, click to enlarge). Large Windows installations, which have hundreds of programs incorporated, often do likewise.

Method #2 – Command-Line Interface (CLI) – simply put, it is the case of invocation using text — textual commands and a trigger (e.g. ENTER). Windows will soon have Monad, which is a command-line tool that addresses a serious deficiency. Linux and Mac OS X (UNIX-based) already contain advanced command-line facilities, which are well ahead of the long-forgotten MS-DOS in terms of power and expressiveness. Monad will not be included in Windows Vista due to security holes that have recently been unveiled.

Method #3 – Dock/(child-)Panel/Launch Bar – the assemblage of many application icons in a small space. That space is usually visible at all time, even when windows are maximised (see example below).

Method #4 – The ‘Busy’ Desktop – a few people prefer to keep all their favourite programs in their desktop space. This can result in clutter and the major disadvantage is that icons are not always visible. Hence, icons (applications) are not accessible at ease. The notion of “Show Desktop” (START+"D" in Windows, CTRL+ALT+"D" by default in KDE) mitigates this inconvenience as one can minimise and then maximise all windows simultaneously.

PDF‘s, text files, HTML‘s and
directories in the KDE Desktop with previews (click to enlarge)

My Windows 98 laptop (click to enlarge)

Method #5 – Keyboard Accelerators – there is support in most (if not all) operating systems for assignment (AKA binding) of keys to certain operations or invocation of programs. A previous item in this site explains how this can be achieved in Windows and Linux.

Method #6 – Mouse Gestures – interpretation of mouse movement as to understand the user’s desire. I have not come across mouse gestures in a typical desktop environment. However, Opera and Firefox (some details here) already support it very effectively.You can navigate by moving your hands in special, distinguishable ways. The idea is reminiscent of voice commands.

ave you ever wondered how to extend the lifetime of your battery? Or perhaps reduce the electricity consumption at your home? Shutting off the machine is not the only option, as the remainder of this item explains with particular emphasis on state-preserving energy-saving schemes.

Most idle computers enter the screen saver mode after a certain, pre-defined period of time (some readers will prefer “screensaver” as one word, like “screenshot”) . Screen savers are by large the default and most common scheme, but it does not preserve much energy. As a matter of fact, with some of today’s screen savers, even more power is consumed when they are run. Resource-hogging screen savers, which make use of hardware acceleration, are among the most poplar too. Call it office vanity if you like, but that is an issue for another day.

At the end of the previous decade we began to see monitors that were more energy-efficient and environmentally-friendly. They supported auto-shutoff schemes and consumed less electricity than predecessors even though their size grew. With today’s TFT screens, things continue to improve.

Laptop sales in the States exceeded sales of desktop last year, so they are definitely here to stay (and expand). Due to the nature of laptops and their pricy batteries, energy saving in laptops is worth greater attention.

Stand-by mode is a popular energy saving scheme, which results in an idle system state, but the user would be killing off expensive batteries by opting for stand-by. The big pro is the quick wake-up time. You will frequently be advised not to use stand-by mode unless you leave your laptop connected to the socket or return shortly. With stand-by as standard, you will opt for data retention on RAM, which uses up power. Come back after a few days, and your battery might be flat. Sources I can recall claim that a battery in the body of the laptop never benefits, even if the laptop is bound to a source of electricity. Then fluctuation between 90% and 100% battery capacity also appears to be unhealthy.

As opposed to stand-by, another scheme exists which is called hibernation. Hibernation will mirror the memory and place it on non-volatile magnetic storage device — the hard drive. Maintenance of laptop batteries sums up as a whole ‘bible’ on its own and will not be discussed further for the time being. Overall, battery drainage depends on memory, laptop’s architecture, O/S and battery’s capacity (or type). The user can experiment to determine the battery’s lifetime. However, such a curious user often assumes that the battery meter shows depletion linearly, which is rare.

Also worth mentioning are mechanisms by which hard-drive rotation stops whenever operations involving the disk appear unnecessary. Moreover, there are schemes such as the lowering brightness (laptops and PDA‘s in particular), which is also a phase that is invoked automatically. When the user presses no key (or taps the screen) for some period of time, brightness (or backlight) is significantly lowered.

Lower consumption of power in desktop computer does not just cut the bill, but also has positive effects on our environment. This argument is boosted particularly today as we hear about global warming and its impact in Siberia. In terms of security, switching off of our computers has often been advised to Windows users, who are exposed to more attacking attempts (last critical patch two days ago). Likewise, in large computer clusters, switching off is an issue that extends beyond energy savings. It prevents accumulation of zombies across computer clusters worldwide.

or those who have not followed the headlines, Apple ditched their IBM processors and made a decision to sidle next to Intel. Since Intel represent a Microsoft monopoly to most (most latterly the DRM outrage), the move resulted in flames, as well as isolated loud voices of support.

Quickly after the move, Michael Dell showed interest in shipping Dell boxes with Mac OS X. Steve Jobs (Apple co-founder, CEO) declined any such requests, probably since Apple wish to cash in on overpriced hardware. Yet, quite inevitably, hackers have successfully taken the Intel (x86 architecture) version of Mac OS X and made it possible to install Mac OS X on any box. Consequently, there are many Mac OS bit torrents on the Net at the moment. Some say it is exactly what Apple had at the back of their minds, but Apple strongly deny it, as do other skeptics including myself.

KDE‘s Konqueror menu bar

Firefox menu bar
Firefox is Mac OSX-themed (Download/install)

t is no secret that various software vendors use similar conventions for menu layouts, icons and so forth. As an instance, have a look at the one-to-one correspondence in the screenshots above (Edit, View, Go, Bookmarks, Tools, Help) where even menu accelerators are identical. It is inevitably so because consistency needs to prevail. Users who moves from one piece of software to another must be able to re-orientate quickly by identifying familiar phrases and labels (terminology) or images.

What impact does that have on innovation and diversity though? The most rational interface will not necessary make it easiest for the user to adapt to. For example, Windows users are accustomed to going to “Start” when they want to End the current session. Is that not preposterous? Yet, if this convetion gets changed, this will probably result in confusion.

Software that is most usable is one which implements control interfaces that most users are familiar with. Familiarity of the novice users is influenced by high-impact software such as Windows or Photoshop. Due to the nature of this trend, imitation becomes easier to claim. In fact, this would be one reason for the scare among anti-software patents activists. The main sufferer would be the user who needs to master different distinct interfaces and ends up in a lock-in situation, whereby migration between software packages become an ardonous experience.

Finally, let us consider a practical example where the damage of patents is apparent. Xerox sued Palm for the use of Graffiti — a one-stroke method for inputting text, which they claimed they had patented. As a result, Graffiti 2 (see criticism) emerged so Palm users had to throw away years of experience, learning a new ‘handwriting’ method, which involved 2 strokes rather than just one.

mericans can take advantage of a database/map of nearby Wi-Fi HotSpots. This Web site, WiFiMaps.com, is of course far from ethically acceptable. Perhaps it will force system administrator to finally change the default, out-of-the-box settings on their routers. It is amazing how penetrable Wi-Fi connections have become.

Related links: (external)

• WEPCrack
• How To Crack WEP
• Cracking WPA

The links above are posted as a word of caution. You must ensure that you are not exposed to such hacks, which probably affect old devices the most.