DO NOT like GMail’s ever-changing UX; then you’ll like these Tips-Tricks

I love a better efficient UX web-app even if it uses more bandwidth than other 10-tabs open on its side. But what I don’t like it forcing numerous UX changes on me every now and then without option to turn selective irritable features off. And that too just so they can collect research my behavior and server me with better Advertisements. No Thanks. Now that’s the Rant. Moving on to Tips.

BEST TIP: Before using any link here or anywhere, take a look at actually what it’s pointing to and passing.

If you are totally pissed off… using below link, you can anytime move to PLAIN HTML, non-crappy just-work UI.

https://mail.google.com/mail?ui=html

Among all the recent changes pushed into GMail’s UX, the only feature I liked was to have a view of Unread mails only as those are the only one I wanna pay attention to when I’m not “revising” earlier conversations.

To get only Unread INBOX in your standard GMail view, using following link will work

https://mail.google.com/mail?ui=html&s=q&q=label%3Aunread+label%3Ainbox

what this does is pass on GET params for

“s=q” : allowing to set search parameters and applies it

“q=label%3Aunread+label%3Ainbox” : sets “label:unread label:inbox” in your query box on GMail

Now if you want a different specific view for labels or other search query, you can similarly switch those values for “q” GET PARAM.

FSF Richard Stallman reports Spying Ubuntu; Canonical getting offensive

this post was written in a lot of hurry and much more anger by a non-native English speaker and even I find it bad reading again…

one of the readers have been kind enough to proof-read and rewrite it here as comment (thanks): https://techiebond.wordpress.com/2012/12/11/fsf-rsm-reports-spying-ubuntu-offensive/#comment-14

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First a backgrounder regarding what happened recently to annoy me (and hopefully many others) to the point that I’m posting on my wtf-happens-in-tech-blog after so much time has passed.

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One of the most (in recent years) popular Debian-based GNU/Linux distros, Ubuntu, has been found to be using a feature which analyses user behaviour to serve advertisements more accurately targeted towards users perceived needs.

RMS (Richard Matthew Stallman) compared it to a proprietary malware product performing user surveillance for profit; As in Selling out users, who trusted the software because of promotion by various FOSS advocates and users… for money. Speaking for myself and some users known to me personally, Ubuntu was initially tried and used under the pretence that it fell under the guidelines of Free Software.

Richard’s report on User Spying Ubuntu: http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/ubuntu-spyware-what-to-do
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Ubuntu spying Users Activity

~

There have been replies to the piece by a few people, one of which being a ‘personal’ reply from Jono Bacon(Ubuntu Community Manager) which was brought to my attention via a HackerNews Top List.

Bacon claims that RMS is being childish for taking a stand against Ubuntu Dash sending user data to Canonical Servers and accuses him of spreading FUD (Fear Uncertainty, and Doubt) regarding the issue. Shockingly, while dismissing blithely all the factual points in RMS piece, Bacon then askes for facts?!

F***king **it, dumb software-issues-illiterate fan-clubs.

RMS for most of his life (longer than I’ve lived) has been promoting Free Software on the ethics of respecting users freedoms, privacy and self determination for users to choose how to use software. He is a super dedicated Free Software advocate loved and respected by the entire (ok, most of it) Free Software community for his devotion; Yet over the years has endured being insulted and dismissed as eccentric by people who see him only as an obstacle on their road to marketing software.

As for FUD, the truth is that if a piece of code on my system (that was installed by a service I trusted to respect my user freedoms) starts sending my usage data online to some server for any purpose without explicitly informing me…baby, that’s spyware!

Now, different organizations have been pulling loads of user data to their servers for to facilitate ‘better service’ for quite some time now.. nowadays it’s even jargonized as “TheBigData”. That doesn’t make it Ethical in any way though. Unless you are some FB teenager waiting for Likes on your post of new amazing shoes you bought with the help of a magical advertisement served to you that considered what your friends bought, which shops are near your home, and what kind of places you visit to determine your financial worth; It’s not particularly wanted either.

~

There was a piece posted a few months back by Mark Shuttleworth (founder of Canonical) regarding why it’s essential this chaos-creating product Ubuntu Dash be pushed in even before maturing enough to include a turn-on/off option. He said the encryption would be placed on queries in the release version and the turn-on/off setting would be controllable by the 13.04 release at the latest.

But Mr.Space Cadet gives no proper justification for Ads (and denies any ads are being promoted in favour of Amazon or their ties to Canonical), he just says that he chose Amazon because most Ubuntu users use Amazon. Oh! Seriously…was it that easy now ?! On those Amazon ties: There is a very fine question asked in the same vein within the comments section of the very same piece regarding why the useful DuckDuckGo search service is not also used to enhance user experience experience. No reply to that; Maybe Mr. Shuttleworth just doesn’t read his own blog?

~
Although I haven’t used Ubuntu in the past few years, I have continued to use other GNU/Linux flavours. I would certainly not suggest Ubuntu, as I once did to new tux lovers, to anyone now.

So as RMS said….. boling his own words

to all Free Software supporters….. Ubuntu is shunned for spying.

I smell 3G ~ Gosling, Google & Go

Java’s Daddy, James Gosling after a long break… joined Google some time back.

March’28 2011 : officially joined Google

Suddenly, I come to hear a new spirit & raged promotion for Google’s pretty fine programming language Go.

Blog Release…

March’24 2011 : “Gobs of Data” ~ a language specific encoding

March’31 2011 : “Godoc” ~ Documenting Go code
April’15 2011 : “Gofix” ~ significant API change
April’21 2011 : “Go at Heroku”
May’10 2011 : “Go at Google AppEngine”
May’23 2011 : “Go at Google I/o 2011″…

now, I don’t see any other updates from Google suitable enough from the started braindump by J.Gosling

(and if there were any, I surely missed them… please point them out to me)

so, in a purely hypothetical & 100% guessing format… I smell Gosling, Google & Go

Open Virtualization Alliance ~ noble cause, don’t know about motive

Open Virtualization Alliance ~

{ (Intel+IBM+HP+RedHat+Novell+BMC+Eucalyptus)>VMWare? OpenVirtualizationAlliance:VMWareAppliances }

Open Virtualization Alliance has been setup by IBM, Intel, RedHat, & HP (as Governing Bodies) to promote adoption of OpenSource Virtualization Stack built over KVM Hypervisor.

Novell, BMC Softwares & Eucalyptus Systems are also backing up the cause being members of the alliance.

Alliance’s Link: http://www.openvirtualizationalliance.org/

KVM’s Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel-based_Virtual_Machine

noble cause,

their projected motives are
> increase awareness about KVM as an open virtualization alternative to proprietary
> educate users on best practices & provide technical advice
> encourage organizations/developers building a 3rd-party utility base around KVM raising it from commodity of HyperVisor to overall virtualization solution
> Intel is talking about making its chips work with KVM Technology Stack at scale
> IBM overlooks Xen HyperVisor as choice and says it continues support for Xen, but all new development will be in KVM

don’t know about motive

They are trying to catch-up VMWare (in their own words).

But, as they are projecting it ‘FOR THE SAKE OF OPENSOURCE’, doesn’t seem to be such prior concern for all the members… let’s have a look at members

>IBM is ‘IBM’, the (self-)claimed biggest contributor of OpenSource in past & one of the major players in the game of buying organizations… which starts favoring OpenJDK after an organization like ‘Oracle’ overtakes it & an organization like ‘Apache Software Foundation’ leaves JCP… nice new friends, all for OpenSource right

>RedHat, the BIG commercial organization  using the biggest OpenSource Project

>HP, they seem nice {I got nothing against them from what all I know…}

>Intel, was very ‘competition-friendly’ when AMD terrorized it reign… yeah sure, and the alliance still talks about their motive to remove monopoly

>BMC Software, they seem nice too {never read them enough…}

>Eucalyptus Systems, they are a nice open-source cloud contributor who also like to make some money… which is good until just the money part remains

>Novell, no need to comment on them and their patent issues…  the recent famous action by them was acquisition of ‘AttachMate’ and throwing out the ‘Mono’ guy ‘Miguel De Icaza’

They will drive KVM to a new improved level… it will be good if the don’t kill it’s charm for OpenSource lovers.
Biz-ocracy might lead to something good too.
…..

Oracle’s 7 recent deeds as Sun… and what ‘It feels like’

here are 7 recent & yet-to-come needs and deeds by Oracle via Sun… and how it felt being a Java lover from OpenSource community

Oracle’s 7 Deeds As Sun :: without any priority order ::

———-

link: http://blogs.oracle.com/otn/?msgid=3-3385778423

[1.] Developer Day Workshops
a lot of emphasis being paid on it being free… still free, always free

>>>>>It feels like: The right earned by dedication of OpenSource community, has been trademark-ed as Oracle’s charity work.

———-

link: http://blogs.sun.com/arungupta/entry/oracle_user_group_leaders_summit

[2.] Several User Group Leaders Summit 2011 Report
Henrik on why Oracle will strive to make sure Java is successful: “There are 20K developers working on Java inside Oracle, can’t mess with Java.”
Steve Harris on Why didn’t Oracle shutdown GlassFish: “The developer community of 10million downloads is very dear to Oracle.“

>>>>>It feels like: Being Oracle!

———-

link: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/eol-135779.html?msgid=3-3385778423

[3.] Java SE and Java for Business Support RoadMap
Normal Java SE releases are updated with bug-fixes for a period of at least 3-yrs.
Java for Business releases will be supported for upto 8-yrs.
Oracle also provides option of Lifetime Support to corporates with Java for Business reaching their license’s End-Of-Life; covering your entire technology stack from database to middleware to applications.

>>>>>It feels like: Microsoft version of Java Services.
I don’t know why initial news of IBM trying to buy Sun Microsystems make me worried…
I’d have setup a Save-OpenSource-Community-Fund to aid IBM if knew about Oracle’s plans of buying.
Looking at Oracle’s actions, give me a feel-good notion for Microsoft‘s current stage.

———-

link: http://www.sonatype.com/people/2011/02/hudsons-bright-future/

[4.] Hudson’s Bright Future
Oracle and Sonatype are each putting a number of full-time engineering resources on Hudson.
Oracle’s lead on Hudson, Winston Prakash created a detailed documentation simplifying how Hudson can be improved.

>>>>>It feels like: Gosling left Sun, Apache left JCP… thankfully Koshuke had an option, he left Hudson and got a new butler Jenkins.

———-

link: http://blogs.oracle.com/java/2011/01/java_me_enables_facebook_to_run_on_billions_of_phones.html?msgid=3-3385778423

[5.] Java ME enables Facebook to run on billions of phones
Facebook just announed immediate availability of their Java ME version.
Facebook has been working on it with Snaptu.
It works on more than 2500 devices from Nokia, Sony Ericsson and others.

>>>>>It feels like: Sued Google for Android, forked IcedRobot in name of OpenJDK… now helping JavaME version into ventures where it needed no help.

———-

link: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/java/briangoetzchief-188795.html?msgid=3-3385778423

[6.] Looking Ahead to Java SE 7 & 8 : discussion with Oracle’s Java Language Architect
Project Lambda, an element of Java SE 8 providing closures and related language features for Java, as well as upgrades to Core Java libraries to more easily express parallel calculations on collections.
JSR292 – InvokeDynamics would work in making JVM more deeply interactive with other language compilers running over JVM like JRuby, Jython, etc

>>>>>It feels like: if Sun had the same shine as before instead of the new O-Factor, I’d have wanted it sooner… but now, let it come when it has to…

———-

link: http://mreinhold.org/blog/jdk7-fc/

[7.] JDK7 is feature complete

>>>>>It feels like: Yay!!! great… but thats not it.

———-

OpenLeaks whistles… when ‘Right’ to Information gets ‘Left’ behind… does it?

another Whistleblower… but not similar another portal like Wikileaks.
Is it GooD_or_BaD, good to have but doubt its effectiveness.

IN   ITS   OWN   WORDS:
It is there to fill the gaps left behind by Wikileaks and not to just mimic the already existing facets. Working to make it more widespread and safer.
It aims to be a democratic portal and not just influenced by one man’s political agenda.

IN   We!rD   THOUGHTS:
[1.] OpenLeaks does promise anonymity (nothing new in it), hope it doesn’t leak the identity too

[2.] It does offer more and better categorized availability of leaked information. The informant can decide when, where and to who-all the information gets leaked.
Now, this is nice in some cases but completely contrast to fundamentals of Wikileaks and the thing we (or at-least I) like it for and that is every information concerning lives is out their to all alive without boundaries.

[3.] OpenLeaks is all Democratic and that is lovely (yes lovely is the best-suited adjective). Because a democratic front with several owners has a better chance of early going bureaucratic and corrupt which is the exact cause to work against.
Its way better to have few separate strict fundamentalist doing good to society with their blunt sense of humor.

so call me a.Lone.Ranger, but it’s how I feel (or say that’s how my emo-sensors pick up worldly vibes)

its good to have it, it’s good to have a new perspective… but in no way it replaces need for Wikileaks… call me paranoid or else, but initially when I heard its launch then I thought that it’s some government reaction to take out Wikileaks by giving faked competition; that would have been real lame of Governement right LOL!!! 🙂

Nagios Trademark Issue (in-1-Word: ‘Shameful’)

Nagios, one of the best organization level IT Infrastructure Monitoring solution that I used.
If you don’t know what’s Nagios itself, look here : http://www.nagios.org/about/overview

Now, on 29-Sep-2010 I saw a post by creator of Nagios, Ethan Galstad telling how a German Company has violated and misused the name of ‘Nagios’ to promote itself. Ethan stated how this German Company, NETWAYS used ‘Nagios’ trademark to promote their stuff by hosting ‘NETWAYS Nagios Conferences’ and registering domains using the trademark. Ethan also states how he has been trying to stop this since he first came to know about this in year 2006… and till date their was no positive response.

He asked for all community believing in him to tweet/scrap/* the matter and make the matter socially more important. I also tweeted, scrapped and talked about the issue. And, just 1 hour back I get a reply from owner of NETWAYS (which other reponders would also have received).

Owner and MD of NETWAYS, Julian Hein just replied with a link to post on his website explaining his part on the story. He discussed there why initially  due to creating Nagios based services and absence of Ethan’s venture in Germany he started using the Nagios Trademark. He also writes why due to the popularity of his domains and integration of his Nagios related services (in several Suse and Debian distros), he was not able to change them. But he has agreed to transfer the Trademark.

Not only this, but he also tells how Ethan did a similar thing with French Nagios Community and Shinken to force them giving up their relation to Nagios Trademark.

Now, I’m in a confused state of which part of whose viewpoint is correct or even if both are correct what could be justified solution.

But, what I know is that there are enough corporates out there ready to hinder opensource by their lawsuits, so we as a community of OpenSource supporters should not indulge in internal fights. Where one should respect creative rights, then at the same place one should encourage other’s creation related to his own… that’s how the open-thought can stay alive.

Ethan’s Appeal: http://community.nagios.org/2010/09/28/nagios-trademark-truth/

Julian’s Counter: http://www.netways.de/en/de/info/trademark#Nagios

Its leaving the soul of OpenSource, if anyone’s viewpoint about another is true. I hope its a mis-understanding that they could resolve quickly.

[August 2010] :: 7 Highlights

[] Oracle vs Google
lawsuit for patent-breaking over Java usage in Android

[] Google + Verizon
proposing no Internet Traffic to be prioritized over another… they are calling it  Network Neutrality Proposal

[] DefCon, BlackHat
major Hacking conferences took place successfully making my stand over No-Complete-Security stronger

[] OpenStack
an open-source cloud computing project from RackSpace, accepted by NASA… its cool

[] Outburst of Closed OpenSolaris
Oracle is really great at what it do, making idiotic decisions on killing priceless community support for few dog biscuits

[] node.js
is an evented I/O framework over V8 Javascript built by Ryan Dahl as a Research Project… lets you develop Server level projects using Javascript

[] HTML5
its the next Big Thing in web-development being promised since past few years, now actively integrated in new-generation browsers to test

IE 9 [they say its good… they say it again]

just read about IE 9 Preview thing… went to the Microsoft’s hosted page

hosted@ http://samples.msdn.microsoft.com/ietestcenter/
downloaded the 14.3mb preview installer before reading much (testing is better)
started the installation
and b00m… no support for Windows users of Version previous to Vista SP2
grrr8… as if I was gonna use it as my default browser… 1 more reason to leave or may call it mutual exclusion

they stated all gr8 stuff ’bout the browser comparing stats to other brosers…

‘n celebrated Acid Test support raised to 55/100, but didn’t compared there with others 8)

supporting Direct2D (there reason for non-compatibility with prev. Windows Version)… think gonna go more slower

supporting HTML5, SVG1.1, CSS3,… hope without any Security flaws this time

would test it later when get a way around it… newayz all browsers giving me tough time going slow or I browse a lot 😉

Microsoft Hacked Tax Policies

Link:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/sep/23/microsoft-tax-avoidance-questions

Info:
Microsoft mainly based at Redmond, Washington State.
Past 13yrs. Microsoft’s software licensing is recorded in Reno, Nevada.
Why?

just to bypass tax on software licensing imposed by Washngton state, Microsoft record its licensing revenue through a Corporate Office in Reno, Nevada where there is no licensing tax. According to estimates Microsoft has avoided paying more than $707 million.
Seattle reported in one of its news that Washington’s Tax Revenue is declining by $238 billion, that complements to $430 billion biennial revenue, deficit is expected to grow further.
Note that Microsoft’s total tax evasion (since it started tax avoidance in Reno, 1997 is more than $446 billion and profit of $124 billion) is large enough to aid this deficit.