A Man and his Penguin

Phenoms now good, apparantly

According to a new PC magazine I got today, AMD's new Phenom X4 processors equal the performance of Intel's hero Core 2 Quad Q6600, for about the same price. That's great news for all computer buyers, though unfortunately Intel is just about to release the Nehalem microarchitecture that will probably tilt the balance of power back to Intel.

If AMD's Phenoms can exceed the performance of the Core 2 Quads for a lower price, and if their discrete graphics cards gain 3D support in open-source drivers, I could be looking at obsoleting my current PC. My dream would be to have a passive-cooled Sapphire card and a fast overclocked Phenom X3. I imagine that the X3s should have a bit of scope for overclocking, but ideally we'd like to see AMD get their process down to 45nm to improve power efficiency and heat production.

Now with open-source video drivers and a cold

After having X crash earlier today while playing Torcs and uploading some more Doc Martin, and then after reading the Linux Format interview with the guy from X.org, I decided to make more of an effort to track down bugs in X and report them.

But then I realised that they are more likely to be bugs in the proprietary Nvidia driver, because I don't believe that driver to be of a high enough quality for desktop Linux use*. And apparantly if I try to send a bug report to X.org, they'll ask me to retest with an open-source driver.

So, I've actually switched to the open-source nv driver. It provides 2D acceleration only, so no Compiz and no Torcs. But hopefully also no Kdenlive crashes (resulting from running Compiz when I shouldn't be) and no full X crashes.

I might buy a proper racing title for the Wii to replace Torcs, and then I should be quite happy not to do any more Linux gaming (unless I decide to buy one of those gorgeous** silent Sapphire cards which hopefully should have 3D support with the open-source drivers...)

I should also e-mail Kirstie some time and thank her for indirectly causing me to watch Doctor Who. I am thoroughly enjoying the show. Although I had always sorta thought about watching it, it was only seeing her mention it on her Facebook profile that actually made me think "Right, you've got to find out when it's next on and watch it".

Right now I'm getting over a cold. How annoying. I bought some Codral today and I took the afternoon tablet, but I think it's a placebo as I feel the same as I did without it. I still think Codral should actually be called "Soldieron" or "Solgiron" because the jingle is easier to remember than the name.

Miscellaneous:
I haven't spoken to Rosemary lately.
My modifications to the Return Of The Spice Girls wikipedia entry have been rolled back.
Seem to have a pinched nerve in my back; it gets pinched when I turn my head to the left
Right now I'm trying to rip all the Open All Hours DVDs; not for Surf The Channel, but just for our own records. But there seems to be some sort of DRM on them that causes k9 to choke or silently fail to copy the whole title.

That's it for today.

*I just wanted to remind people that I have resolved to not be so nasty in my blog posts, and that my self-censorship seems to be working. I was originally going to say that the Nvidia driver "sucks hairy donkey balls".

**Statements including the word 'gorgeous' are not intended to convey a sense of homosexuality.

Your product key is invalid

After the IT support guys did a system restore of Windows on one of the computers at the shop, they found that Windows decided to need activation again, but that it wasn't accepting the serial number on the sticker on the side of the computer. I don't know if they forgot to chase it up, or assumed that maybe we had a pirated copy of Windows and didn't want to get involved, but that computer had been warning us for weeks that it needed activation.

When it reached 5 days, I decided to do the activation step. First, I tried putting in the serial number. Invalid. I thought "Maybe when the original activation happened, they accidentally swapped over the serial numbers with the other computer?". So I tried that, and once again it wouldn't accept it. It displayed an "Installation ID" number that I had to give to an operator so they could check whether I had genuine Windows.

So I had to call Microsoft. It was rather painless. The tollfree number connected straight away, I was asked to press 2 to get to Windows activation, and then enter the Installation ID on the phone keypad, six digits at a time. Once that was done, a recorded message told me that it had been installed more times (or on more computers?) than was allowed in the EULA. I doubt that. I HIGHLY doubt that. I don't believe those computers had been activated any other times since they left the Acer factory.

Anyway, I was put through to an operator, who asked me some questions like "Why did you need to reactivate Windows" and "Has this product been installed on more than one computer", and "Was this a preinstalled Windows or did you have to install it yourself". Then I gave her the first six digits of the installation ID and she was able to find the whole number, presumably from when I typed it into the keypad. She gave me another number to type into the Windows Activation program, which worked.

It took about 5 minutes and was rather easy. But I agree that there's some serious problems with Windows activation, if it doesn't accept legitimate product keys and you have to call Microsoft. It's not even like the hardware changed - it was just an in-place system restore!  I had thought that if the operator gave me any hassle that I could say "I have an Ubuntu CD in my hand. Here is the sound of me inserting it into the computer"  and see what happened; but honestly, the process was painless and apart from the pre-recorded message, I didn't feel like I was being treated like a criminal.

DDOS

A DDOS is a "Distributed Denial Of Service attack". It's where a malicious party uses a bunch of computers that have already been compromised by viruses and are under said party's control, to send malformed information to a target computer in the hopes of crashing it or slowing it down.

My favourite video-on-demand service, Surf The Channel, was the target of a DDOS attack yesterday. The STC server stayed up, but was very slow. Right now, I can't get into Megavideo.com. Is this the work of the TV studios, a cracker sympathetic to the studios, or a cracker trying to discredit the studios?

Whoever is responsible, one thing's for sure. They could not execute a distributed denial-of-service attack without their botnet. That's right - your computer could have this attacker's software on it, and probably lots of other crackers' software on it too. If it does, then your computer has been contributing to a very serious crime.

If you suspect that your computer has any kind of virus or infection on it, DO NOT just hope it goes away on its own, because it won't! Don't just assume that you're the only victim of it and that it won't try and spread to your friends through e-mail, MSN or Facebook! Immediately take your computer offline; unplug the network cable, turn off the wireless switch, whatever it takes. Then run a virus and anti-spyware scan.

Once you have removed the infection, put your computer back online, update your virus and anti-spyware scanner, unplug the cable again and run the same scans again as they will likely find brand-new infections.

UNTIL YOU HAVE REMOVED THE INFECTION, DO NOT ALLOW YOUR COMPUTER ONLINE. Not even to chat to your friends on MSN. And don't tell me to mind my own business, or leave you alone, because your virus problem just sent a hundred thousand spams and hindered the web surfing of ten thousand people.

If every computer owner was a responsible computer owner, it would not be possible for distributed denial of service attacks to be carried out. And if I found out that your computer was involved in the attack on Surf The Channel, and is still not cleaned, I'll have some very stern words to say to you.

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Looks like Youtube's anti-piracy measures are working in time for their appeal against Viacom: (click the image to see what I'm talking about)

Oh, and I ran my CPU at 100%, both cores, for quarter of an hour last night. Core temperatures got up to 46 degress celcius, which is well within tolerance, and the CPU fan didn't shift from 1050RPM (same speed as at idle). Cold room though, we'll see when summer rolls along. No worrying noises either like I was having before, and the PSU seemed to be cooler, so maybe the rerouting of the cables helped. I really want a modular power supply.

I've also noticed a problem with my Sony Walkman. For all new albums, it doesn't want to recognise the cover art stored as ID3s. I'll have to investigate properly some time. It's probably human error of some kind.

Q-fan disabled? What the heck?

I've recently become dissatisfied with the noise my computer makes. I've heard much noisier computers (usually computer-store-built) where the machine sounds like it's taxi-ing down your desk and preparing to take off. But I was still irritated with mine, especially in comparison to Linda's computer and my old computer.

I assumed it was due to more holes in the case. My old computer has a grille at the side, as does Linda's, and the whole front of her computer is a mesh. I was thinking of getting the drill out and putting a few more holes into my Antec Sonata case!

So I started thinking "Hey, this motherboard has heat pipes on it. Could I run it without a chassis fan?". After checking with the manual, it sorta seemed like it was possible, so I tried it. Disconnected the chassis fan and went into the hardware monitor of the BIOS.

And noticed exactly the same level of noise as before. The motherboard reached 30 degrees before I decided that the experiment was dumb. Just as I was about to kill the power, I noticed that "Q-fan control" on the CPU fan was disabled! I knew from past experience with Linda's computer that "Q-fan" is the feature on Asus motherboards that turns the fanspeed up when you need it, and turns it down when you don't need it.

I had assumed that this was turned on, as during the summer I had noticed the CPU fan increase in RPM as things got hotter. But this must've been an effect of hot air coming into the case and making the fans turn faster by some kinetic effect.

Long story short, I turned on Q-fan for the CPU fan, re-connected my chassis fan (manual speed control), and now my computer is whisper quiet.

Earlier on I also re-routed the cables inside the computer. In their previous configuration I think they were blocking airflow into the PSU.

I was getting a weird rubbing noise before when both cores were pushed to 100%, but I'm hoping that my cable management will help stop that. I have no idea what was causing it, to be honest.

How do you get down off an elephant?

You don't get down off an elephant, you get down off a duck!

The same joke applies whenever somebody asks "How do you install anti-virus in Linux?". You don't install anti-virus in Linux, you install anti-virus in Windows.

Lately, when you try to tell people that they don't need to install anti-virus in Linux, they say "People tell me that, but I want it anyway".

So, let me explain why you don't need anti-virus in Linux, and to do this we have to start with an explanation of what a virus is.

A virus is a malicious computer program, written to perform some sort of criminal activity with your computer. This can include deleting your data, but these days viruses are much more subtle. They don't cause mindless destruction. They use your computer to illegally profit their writers. As such, they attempt to evade detection, because as soon as you detect them you would run an anti-virus scan and delete them! They also always set themselves to start up when the computer starts up, which is dependent on them gaining administrator access to your computer.

Once they have administrator access, they can evade detection until you run an anti-virus program that knows about them.

We all know that Windows programs don't run in Linux. A virus is simply a Windows program, so it doesn't run in Linux. This is because Linux programs use a different format to Windows programs - Windows programs use the EXE format, Linux programs use the ELF format. Even if Linux could understand EXE, it would be pointless because the programs would be trying to interact with Windows shared libraries or (in the case of viruses) the Windows internals directly, which of course are not present on Linux.

If you download a Windows trojan and double-click it on a Linux system, you get a "Cannot open file 'boobs.jpg.exe'" message. Linux doesn't understand the EXE executable format, only the ELF executable format. If you install a program like Wine, that can understand the EXE format and also allow the use of Windows shared libraries, you'll still find that viruses won't work. This is because the viruses try to gain access to the running instance of Windows, and of course there isn't one.

Or, if they are programmed more conventionally, they manage to install themselves into a system-wide area in what they think is your Windows installation, but is actually just a Wine installation in your home directory. The result is that the virus might keep running until you quit Wine or until you restart. If you restart and then run  a Wine program, the virus still won't be run, because Wine doesn't perform a Windows startup sequence.

Even if a Windows virus was aware of Wine running on Linux, it still could not start itself up when Linux starts up. Linux's startup sequence requires root access, and there has never been any known way of getting a Windows program to give Wine the higher privileges necessary to modify the Linux startup sequence.

This is all fine in theory. I'm a big fan of the documentary series "Medical Mavericks", which documents the lives of medical self-experimenters, so I'll put my own computer on the line.

I started with a brand-new GNU/Linux computer that I used every day from its build-date in January, to early July. A virus scan with ClamAV today yields a clean result. No viruses. Also, Wine is not running at the moment, so no Windows viruses are resident. I also had a Windows computer that my father was using (verified as clean on the build-date of the Linux computer), but I had to stop the test early because it contracted zlob.downloader - a nasty form of Windows virus that actually downloads more viruses.

Both computers were connected via local area network, and only the Windows computer had a personal firewall. The whole LAN has a firewall. Neither computer ran any sort of anti-virus between the start of the test and the end of the test.

But what would happen if I took a Windows virus and actually tried explicitly running it in Wine? I found a virus on a Facebook group, downloaded it, and double-clicked it. Wine started running, and then immediately ended. Neither wine, nor wineserver, nor the virus program itself, was running anymore. I tried running Wine in a terminal, but no error messages were output. The virus started running, and then immediately stopped running. I checked again with ClamAV, and it found the copy of the virus that I was trying to run, but it didn't find any copies in /etc/init.d  or anywhere else on my hard disk.

So do you need an anti-virus program in Linux? No, absolutely not! Windows viruses do not run. There are no Linux viruses, partly because there's no place in the system for a Linux virus to hide, and partly because of all the security features in a modern Linux system. There are few Mac viruses, and all of those take advantage of Apple-specific security blunders.

If you still want to install an anti-virus program on your first desktop Linux system, after all I've told you, then I'm concerned that you won't be able to break the Windows habit. But I'm sure that most, if not all of you, now understand more about why anti-virus is useless on Linux, and I warmly wish you good luck with the rest of your Linux adventures.

Linux in Big W

Today I went into Big W, and got a pleasant surprise. I couldn't find a  single USB flash drive there that didn't advertise compatibility with Linux.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a single peripheral of any other type that advertises compatibility with Linux, but at least the flash drives are a good start. It was only about two years ago that I couldn't find a single peripheral of any sort that said it was compatible with Linux.

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I've been listening to the Spice Girls again lately. Their ballads - Oxygen and Goodbye especially. It occurs to me that on the Spice Girls' worst album, Rodney Jerkins also produced his very best song (Let Love Lead The Way).

Still waiting for the kids to get off school though...

HDMI suggestion

Can I make a suggestion to the consortium of companies that came up with HDMI?

For the next revision of HDMI, can you please make the connectors much less of a hassle to fit? I find that it's easy to insert HDMI cables when you can see the plug and the socket, but it's physically impossible to insert them when you can't see the socket.

Considering that you often don't have enough space behind a TV to see all the ports, I find this lack of non-visual testing to be a complete oversight. It's also discriminatory to blind people, but then so is Component Video (or do they not care if their TV picture looks purple?).

For the next revision of HDMI, could you please either make it wireless, or test the plugs and sockets for their ability to be used when you can only feel where they need to go.

Viacom Big Score

Viacom have successfully convinced a judge in the US to force Google to give up:

1. All videos that have been deleted from Youtube
2. 12 terrabytes worth of database on who has watched what, and how many times videos have been watched. (which could be submitted on "three over-the-shelf 4TB hard disks", but I hope will be submitted on 1,000,000,000 sheets of A4 paper).

They didn't succeed in gaining access to private videos or Google's source code.

Here's a comment on the story that I found hilarious:

Any video ever pulled, eh?

Well here's hoping that some corporate shill at Viacom has to watch 50,000 duplicates of 2girls1cup.

But Viacom doesn't want this information as some kind of anti-piracy crackdown.  It's simple: If you get a list of who (by country) watches what video, what each video is rated and what each video contains, you've got a massive amount of demographic data there. That TV production company will know what people want to watch.

The source code that Viacom didn't get, would have been very handy for them to create a Youtube clone. But they're not weeping; they now have access to one of the most valuable databases in the world. Not only will they know how well-watched their own shows are online, but they will also know how well-watched their competitors' shows are.

I'd be very surprised if this decision doesn't get overturned, though. The vast majority of deleted videos from Youtube are not Viacom's intellectual property, and by the laws that Viacom are claiming to enforce, this is now allowed. A higher court will surely find the original decision to be invalid.

Let's not forget the Streisand effect; Viacom's actions will just encourage people to put Viacom shows online. Or the Napster effect; people will start putting their shows up on a non-American video sharing site so there's no way for Viacom to find the people behind the videos. Of course, we'd probably find that all other sites will put a rolling-delete system in place, whereby old logs are deleted perminantly, and deleted videos are irretrievably erased.

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I found out today that I still don't forgive the Spice Girls.  I don't even forgive them for the song Right Back Atcha, much less "Tourgate". I notice they haven't released a live DVD here yet either. Maybe they were telling the truth when they said that they hadn't recorded one.

Nvidia backlash

It seems that lately, there has been a backlash against Nvidia cards in the Linux community, due to the proprietary driver required to get 3D acceleration.

This has probably been sparked by the news that ATI's open-source driver is actually pretty good, and that AMD/ATI is working with the open-source community.

I was very disappointed with the Nvidia driver. It caused kernel panics (oopses) once or twice a week when I installed Gutsy. Then I updated to the next version of the driver, which fixed the problem but introduced another bug - this time, all my videos had too much green in them. (or not enough of another colour).

I sent a detailed bug report to Nvidia. They asked me how they could reproduce the problem. I recieved no further answer after that; not even anything like "We've got a new driver out, try it now" or "Try xyz".

In the end, I found a workaround - changing the video output settings in all my video programs and in gconf-editor from their default "xv" to just "X".

The Nvidia driver is not developed in tandum with X, so a new X version can be released without an Nvidia driver that works with it. This hurt Fedora recently. Nvidia's driver causes kernel panics, is a bit floppy as regards mode changes, can cause problems with Aleph One, and is simply not something I want to deal with on an everyday basis anymore. Due to its license, you cannot have it working 100% out-of-the-box on Linux, which does feel strange for new users who are used to having their graphics card drivers out-of-the-box on a preinstalled Windows system.

By comparison, my colleague's integrated ATI chipset works alright; Google Earth flickers when you're running Compiz, but at least it doesn't turn green. And there's a more recent driver without that problem, apparantly... I just need to SSH back into her computer to apply the update :-)

My next graphics card will either be an OGC2 (yeah, dream on) or a passively-cooled ATI card. Something by Sapphire with a lot of copper piping... yeah!