Categories
Technology

ZenOSS: A Call for Better Documentation

ZenOSS is a good piece of software, but when you want to do more than obvious items, good luck finding out how to do so. Documentation is spread out among 4 or 5 papers that do not seem logical to me. And in the interface a lot of times, it gives you a freeform textfield when it only accepts certain items (i.e. Multi-Graph Data Points). No Ajax pulldown. Not even a hint listed in the documentation. So please, spend some time on your product, and if you expect to get anywhere with the commercial version, you’re going to need to make the open-source version slightly better.

And don’t expect your users to be able to travel to California for Q&A. We don’t all have jobs and extra cash that allows us to go 600 miles for this.

</rant> Thank you.

Categories
Programming Technology

Hex Slideshow

This is totally and utterly pointless, but in case someone finds it interesting besides me, here’s a page I like to call “Hex Show”.

Hex Show

It does have some pretty neat JavaScript, and it’s not too complicated. Feel free to use, modify, or steal the code, just put my name on it if there’s enough of it to matter.

Categories
Technology

My Take On Google Chrome

Google Chrome is the new web browser that has changed the way I browse. There’s lots of things I like about it, and lots of bugs that I wish would get fixed.

They’ve really cleaned up the screen space in the program. They combined the title bar with the tabs, which is a real plus. They removed the status bar, which was a bit annoying at first as I like to see what link I’m clicking on, but it turns out the status area pops up when you hover over a link.

I also like that search and the url bar are one bar. It comes in handy when you don’t exactly know if you’re looking for a .org, .net, or .com. It’s pretty hard to go back to Firefox when I get used to Chrome though.

I really miss the “/” to search. In Firefox, you could use “/”, and you would press enter to follow the link. In Chrome, the user must press Ctrl-F, and the enter key goes to the next search result. To follow the link, I either have to click it with the mouse (annoying), or press escape to exit search, and enter.

I don’t quite understand the tab-unresponsive dialog. When the tab stops working correctly, it says I can close it or wait, but the only button on the dialog is “Wait”.

While there are other various bugs, it’s a pretty good program so far. I’ve really been a big fan of Firefox from the beginning, but sometimes it takes a whole new program to create new ideas. I hope to see even more improvements to Chrome, and maybe Firefox will join some of the ideas to create a more stable browser for Linux.

Categories
Uncategorized

Business Idea

A lot of churches have either moved or are moving to using overhead slides, but a lot of them don’t know a lot about the hardware and software available to them. I think by advising these churches on a good solution, I could know the right solution to save them money, and get a portion of the money that was saved by the congregation for my service.

This idea stems from a website I did for a guy that advised people on a another issue, but it’s consulting work, which is this idea.

Maybe I won’t have to charge a lot if I have another full time job, and just charge enough to cover costs, but if I decided to try and use this as an income, I don’t see any immediate problems with it. I might could even build some of the hardware, and become a wholesaler to make the product even cheaper while retaining more of the profit. Both sides would benefit.

Categories
Programming

A Website in BASIC

So I’ve gotten a lot done on this website. It feels like I’m hammering nails with my head. What a tool! At least there’s a little bit of information on it out there, but google doesn’t like to actually find stuff about BASIC when I type in the word (it’s basically stuff about simplicity 🙂 ).

Categories
Programming

Programming a Website in BASIC

I’ve been given a new job, to program a website in BASIC. I feel like I’ve gone from using a motorized screw driver back to using a manual one by hand. I don’t even know BASIC, but I’m trying to learn it. Besides that, I have to learn exactly how http works, because I’ll have to do it all manually. It will be good to learn, but it’s going to be a challenge without the shortcuts that PHP has to offer. No cookie, or session handling. The only security will have to be coded by me.

I’m building a website that was previously in COBOL, and even though I don’t think moving to BASIC is a very big step, the previous program only allowed Internet Explorer.

Categories
Uncategorized

Why Foreign Jobs Aren’t a Bad Thing

I know a lot of Americans who absolutely hate the idea of our products coming from other countries. They whine and complain, saying, “they’re stealing our jobs,” or they state that in fact, the workers are underpaid and oppressed in their jobs because it is a 3rd world country.

In fact, when our factory jobs go overseas, it’s a good thing. Not only do we stimulate the economy of the countries, and add wealth to the country, we get a good product as well, at a lower price. They are happy to have a steady income, that probably pays more than they would get without the factory, and our pocketbooks are better off because the wages of paying their employees are lower.

Does it take away American jobs? In a way. Do we as Americans want to work for $5.15/hour (actually more now that minimum wage is going up)? Do we want mundane factory jobs? No, most of us do not. Our nation is moving away from the low, hourly rate jobs, and into the educated, high salary jobs. There are plenty of jobs for the uneducated, and even though it hurts when 1,000 people lose their job to a factory relocation, without change, our economy will never grow.

It’s important to remain informed on the major issues. A lot of times, politicians will tell us what we want to hear, but it’s  not always what’s best for us in the long run. So, before you complain about the economy, make sure you know the facts.

Categories
Technology

Being a Responsible Adblock User

I’ve been using firefox in combination with adblock plus for a long time now, and haven’t really second guessed myself. A lot of websites aren’t there for the users, but in fact just there to make money. I don’t appreciate when there is less content than there is advertisement, so it is sites that abuse their power to advertise that make me use adblock.

One of the things I’ve learned in microeconomics this year, is that in a free market society, you can often help yourself the most the most by helping others. This is how Christians can be profitable business people, because in fact by being fair to customers, they are in in fact helping others while making a profit.

Back to the adblock issue, I’d like to reward more people for being responsible, and using a fair amount of advertisement, but I’m not quite sure how this can be done with adblock right now. Maybe the feature that I’m looking for is an opt-in for each website. What I mean is, I disable ad-blocking for all websites. If I visit a site, and they are using more than three ad-banners, I put them in a list that blocks all advertisement for that site.

I see over-advertisement as being as offensive as spamming. I think the web community as a whole needs to start discouraging bad behavior. This would be another toolkit in the users toolkit that I think would help the web as a whole.

Categories
Technology

Things To Know About Passwords

Doing this project for my work, which requires me to crack passwords from a long list of users, has taught me a lot of general things about passwords. I’ve actually figured out 600 745 of the 2000 passwords from users just because they were pretty weak passwords.

Passwords that are words in the dictionary (or multiple words combined) are easy to figure out. Never use your username, information about you that can be easily found out, “password”, or information about the site your account is on as your password. Fully alphabetic or numeric passwords aren’t too hard to figure out either. Combining them helps, but using “animal1” won’t get you too far. Passwords that are short (less than 6 characters or so) aren’t too hard to figure out either.

The best password is something that’s really random, and not even your closest friends could figure out. A word that is rarely used, such as an exotic animal, food, action, or tool, is a good starting place. I would then add multiple numbers to one side of the word that you can remember, but is not something public to the rest of the world (license plate is no good). Capitalize a random letter or two in the word, and maybe even change some of the letters to special symbols (a -> @, T -> 7, A -> ^, S -> $). If you don’t replace letters with special characters, put some in between, after, or before your password. Finally, it’s a good idea to use the different password for different accounts if possible.

Categories
Programming

Crack Project

So I’ve got a 3rd project now. I’m supposed to see if I can break passwords from a computer. This will be used to email them and let them know that they need to change their passwords. It involves cracking, but for a good cause. It’s going to be a fun project if I can figure out the best way to do so.