Is your copy of Windows genuine?

I had encountered this one recently and it seemed that they didn’t recognize that using unlicensed software’s a very big issue. Or maybe, a lot worse – they might be even encouraging students to do the same thing.

As for its location, I better keep mum about it. Besides, I always make it sure that I’m using legal materials especially when delivering presentations or reports.

Politics and Fairness

Is politics really fair?

A term paper was a requirement in one of my subjects. If I remember correctly, I was the one that inquired first about the topic that was in my mind even before taking the course. The result of the inquiry was for me to wait for further instructions about it. Unfortunately, the result after those instructions was a lot worse.

On the first days of the class, the prof emphasized that when thinking of a topic, we should choose one that interests us so that our hearts will be dedicated to it. After a week, a session was used to discuss the topics for our term papers. There were topics suggested on the board but it was like 8 topics for about 9-10 groups. Now, here’s the worst part: the topics were on a first-come-first-served basis and it was actually unfair because the ones in front will obviously have a higher chance to be noticed by the prof and the ones at the back needs more effort to catch the prof’s attention. Since it was like 8 topics for more than 8 groups, my group ended up not having a topic at the end of the chaotic process. Afterwards, the prof began to add new topics on the board which made other groups who have secured topics already to request for changes. Wait, I thought it’s a first-come-first-served basis? I guess we should have been prioritized first to choosing the additional topics instead of the other groups. It’s actually better if the process of choosing topics was on a raffle basis where everything’s based on the lucky hands that will pick the topic out of the box.

Now, since we don’t have any other choice as of the moment, my group’s trying as hard as we can to produce topics that will interest us – the hard way. The prof emphasized that we should devote equal or balanced time with other subjects but to some of the class, it’s becoming more of a major.

Oh well, I just hope (and pray) that our suggested topics will turn out just fine this coming week.

Firefox Password Manager

Being a security freak, I tried going over an entry from my Netvibes page that reads: “Firefox password manager is not secure“:

The user who discovered the problem was sent a link to a fake Myspace page that requested his login details. Although the page was a fake, and not stored on the Myspace servers, Firefox still automatically filled in his details.

It’s nothing really new to me although it’s somewhat more threatening because of its existence in my set of article readings. From experience, it really does autofill text fields but before I test links, I always make it sure that I’m using a different browser that doesn’t contain any of my login or password details – usually, it’s actually the “cookies effect”. Lastly, it’s always better if you get to test a site by using different browsers just like what I did on my previous entry.

Eskwela.com

I was about to try it out by accepting an invite from a friend but I got this one on the site instead:

I tried reading the reviews (qwerky, inq7.net, etc) after encountering the error, and it seems that there was nothing about browser (in)compatibility. Now, I wonder if this will cater to Konqueror, Safari, and IE(?) too as far as web standards and usability are concerned.

Also, the Firefox icon with the text above it looks very familiar too.

On Security and Technology 2

It seems that the ID policy of UP’s becoming a very big issue to some of its students. Last week, I saw freedom boards where students can write and express their reaction about it. As expected, the board turned into what you can call literally as an “abstract work of art”.

Actually, there were lots of things that were posted on the board. Reactions ranged from pros to cons and neutral ones with regards to the implementation of checking/wearing IDs for security purposes. I have nothing against it but for me, to think of the thing as absolute, it’s pointless because nothing has changed – the extent of security is still the same. It just made students to be more responsible to carry IDs or maybe to others it adds a bit of inconvenience to show it to the guards or maybe to go look for it on the basement of their bags while standing on the entrance.

For the ID straps or laces, obviously you may use any kind because no one’s obliged to get a UP ID strap. If security’s to be questioned, do the guards have a way of detecting fake UP IDs? It’s actually easy to make one given that the barcode is being ignored.

Well, I actually have a funny experience last week about IDs. If you know my college, the faces of the students enrolled to it are usually familiar to the guards of the main library. I used to just go on and pass by the entrance without the need to show my ID because the guards knew me, but not this time! It was my first time to wear an ID strap and I was with a blockmate (wearing an ID strap too) during that period. When we’re about to enter the main library (for we have a class upstairs), the guard suddenly stopped me from entering and inspected my ID instead! It was weird because it’s ironic – considering what I used to do before. Also, the guard was not actually new. He was actually assigned there maybe for a very long time and usually lets me in due to familiarity. Really weird, huh? My blockmate told me instead that maybe the guard was curious on my ID pic. Hahaha!

Moving on to another topic, I have a prof this sem that reminded or warned the class to never trust anything on the Internet because all of the things in the Web can be hacked. In my opinion, it’s theoretically true but if that’s the case, is there still a thing or entity that we can really trust? Even the publications (books, etc) on the libraries can be easily modified if the publishing house is being compromised. Well, the prof only told us that thing because we have a term paper as a requirement and obviously, Wikipedia was blacklisted as a source or reference. Well, at least I can go to the ACM Digital Library and search for credible journals as references for my paper. I just wish that the ACM Digital Library will be more functional in terms of usability.

Anyway, I need to go for now since I have lots of papers to do. Argh. I just hope that my entry will make it to the Inquirer’s Contest 2bU contest on blogging. *crosses fingers*

World Usability Day shirt

Yup, I got myself another geek shirt from the World Usability Day event!

How has the Net changed your life?

The Internet has changed my life in many ways for the effects are very obvious – try to read my entire blog and you’ll see its massive impact to my identity especially to my career.

Thesis Problems

Err.. not again!

Instead of having the problem of thinking about topics for my thesis proposal course, the call for dissolving of my section seems to be a harder one. I’m not really open to changemat forms because I hate doing last-minute changes. If I remember correctly, the 2 sections of the said course have enlisted not more than 10 students each.

Actually, before even enlisting on that course, I was able to ask my adviser if the dissolving of such a course is possible. My adviser told me that such a case is rare because it’s a thesis proposal course. That answer gave me a feeling of relief but now I don’t think I still have that same condition. The suggestion I’ve heard was there’ll either be a fusion of sections (one section moving to the other’s sched), form a new section/schedule for both, or just retain everything if the 2 former cases are not possible to implement.

Well, I might be somewhat OC on scheduling but the mere fact that the last case (to let everything as it is) was there, I don’t get it why they’re making life hard for the students. CRS was there for a purpose. Not only does it show the class/section lists but also lets the students to form the schedule they prefer by integrating all of the selected courses in a single diagram.

I guess, I just need to wait for the resolution. For now, I’m wondering how each of my other subjects will turn out in the succeeding days..

Is it the beginning or end of Vista ?

I guess you might have heard of the news about the anti-piracy technology being in-build in Windows Vista, but the issue there is, is it really hardened enough to block crackers out there? Another question: Is Microsoft happy that there’s a ‘larger market share’ provided that some percent of it use unlicensed ones? In the article, a reader commented that a Windows system will never be as productive as a nicely configured Linux/BSD system because there’s no “out of the box” on the latter. Well, I don’t think I have to defend the “out of the box” thing for I’m proud that I had switched (or at least dualbooted) some people to Linux (usually Ubuntu) and they were really satisfied. I had even assisted one to compile and install Gaim 2.0beta via chatting on Gaim on Ubuntu recently!

For the record, is Bill Gates a technical wizard? You might wanna read the article, Hasta la Vista: Microsoft’s final death march:

Unfortunately, Bill Gates is not a wizard. Even worse, he is a bad programmer. When Martin Eller, a Microsoft programmer, found an error in the flood fill routine of the MS-Basic interpreter, he exclaimed “Which moron wrote this brainless sh*t?” only to find out it was Gates himself who wrote the “brainless sh*t”. I think it is safe to say that Bill Gates is hardly the technical wizard he would so much like to be.

Some weeks from now, Vista and Office 2007 will be launched on November 30 as publicized through digg. There will be five versions of Windows Vista that will be somewhat problematic when it comes to consumers. I guess this will be more confusing to people as compared to their previous release of WinXP Home and Pro editions (that might be even better than Vista’s features) in which the differences were somewhat more established.

I used to work before in a technical helpdesk that offers open source and the experience I had there was that people want to have Linux (on their CD/DVD) but they don’t have any idea on the different distributions of Linux. Usually, the suggestion to the consumer will depend on the agent that was assigned at a particular schedule but actually it’s only either Ubuntu or SuSe. That was actually simpler – no need for numerous editions of an OS, for in my opinion the consumer should have the freedom to choose what he/she wants. Nowadays, Linux installations are more customizable for it allows choices to installing packages (server, development, etc) and even disabling them without necessarily making the system handicapped.

Is there a Synaptic/Yum/Yast counterpart on Windows? I don’t think so. It’s just somewhat funny how some people were so afraid to test softwares due to virus threats because Windows users don’t have any choice but to install third party applications – even worse if the application is not authenticated or trusted by Microsoft Windows. In my Ubuntu box, I usually test a new software every week and I’m not afraid of viruses and its forms for I believe that the open source developers out there are active all the time in patching security flaws. They’re active as far as turn-around time processing is concerned. So if in case I get to encounter a bug or some critical flaw, most likely someone had already experienced the same thing and had the fixed for the problem as well!

On the other side of the fence, take the recent YM trojan as an example. It clearly shows that there’s no point of getting anti-virus applications installed on your Windows system. I really don’t know (fyi, i’m windows-free) but the fix for that instance involves tweaking some Windows system configuration file if not an antivirus software solution. Actually, I tried clicking those links and as expected, nothing happened. I just suggested Gaim as an alternative. But wait, I thought Windows was user-friendly? Is the Help thing really helpful? How about a manual? Those Vista developers should really watch the Spotlight feature on the Mac OS X State of the Union presentation. Besides, they should consider it assuming that Mac OS X imitation is included on their goals. Haha. When I was watching that Spotlight demo – it was like a jaw-dropping wow! That’s what you call software usability! Well, I hope that Linux can do the same thing via Beagle.

Since we’re talking about Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X, let me show you one of my experiences:

The photo above shows people looking over Mac OS X (with Parallels software running WinXP, Ubuntu, and Solaris 10 as virtual machines) and Kubuntu Linux while Vista RC1 was the OS featured on the right. I was supposed to test Vista on Parallels too but actually the support was only released a week after my presentation. Looking over the image, do the people look interested on Microsoft Windows Vista? What do you think?

For me, it is not the end of Vista’s beginning that’s near, but rather the beginning of Vista’s end is near.

University of Pila

In cases such as this:

…you might need this:

The first photo was shot 2 days ago by a friend of mine whereas the second photo was taken from a LJ community blog. The first photo features the New UP Gym where students enlist their PE (and HK) subjects. Funny thing about it was the reaction of the students when the registration assistants (RAs) have arrived at about 2pm in the afternoon. The students in the line welcomed them like they were some sort of stars (superstar, or whatever)! There was clapping and shouting everywhere!

Well, at least my purpose on going there was only to cancel my 2nd PE subject. No sweat. *grin*