I’m very, very impressed, so far, with the new version of Ubuntu, the Linux distribution created by South Africa’s spacefarer and dot-com rich kid, Mark Shuttleworth. The Hardy Heron, the latest long-term support version of the relatively new OS, is better than ever. The install was the fastest and smoothest I have ever experienced with any operating system, contrary to some earlier versions of Ubuntu, which kept throwing up niggly hitches, some of which would be dealbreakers for newbies.

The usual trouble with an OS upgrade is to decide whether to do a clean install, or choose an upgrade so you can keep what you’ve got. Last time, from the Feisty Fawn to the Gutsy Gibbon, I chose the upgrade, so I thought I’d clear out the cobwebs this time. The serious downside of a clean installation is not so much restoring mail and other settings, which is relatively trivial, but the time-consuming mission of finding, selecting and installing all the applications you had installed before. Granted, since everything is easily accessible in online repositories, it’s not as much of a mission than it would be under another operating system, but still, there are a lot of applications, plugins, utilities, tools, and fonts that accumulate over time. I have occasional use for programs such as QCad, Blender and Wings 3D, for example, and no Ubuntu installation is complete without Nethack and Battle for Wesnoth.

To solve this problem, a trick that worked like a charm is this tip from ArsGeek.

First, get a list of all the packages installed on your system. Type dpkg --get-selections | grep -v deinstall > ubuntu-files to do so. (Now now, don’t fret. The command line isn’t that intimidating, and this could save you hours.)

Save the resulting file somewhere other than where you’re installing your new system. If you want, you can review it in a text editor and delete things you no longer want. It’s probably also a good idea to remove entries you suspect might break a fresh installation, such as kernel files (search for “linux-”), graphics drivers, or other things you know a new installation will provide anyway. While you’re doing this, you’ll note that the list of packages do not have version numbers, so you can be sure you’ll get the latest versions from the new version’s repositories when you reinstall them.

Install the new OS from CD. Unless you’re resizing partitions, this shouldn’t take long. Watch where it wants to install, though. My install script saw a wide expanse of unspoilt hard disk and promptly headed in that direction. I had to point out that I’d prefer my OS to sit on the primary drive, not my shiny new portable one. Boot. Set up your internet connection, if necessary (some types can’t be picked up automatically).

Then put the ubuntu-files you saved earlier back in your home directory, and type the following in a terminal:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo dpkg --set-selections < ubuntu-files

This just primes apt-get, and pumps your complete list of packages back into the package manager, ready for installation. Easiest way to install the selected files is using sudo dselect, which will offer you a menu of options. Just hit “I” to install the lot, go have a coffee (my list of packages to be download was big, and took two hours), and return to a sparkly new system. Unless you installed Sun Java or Microsoft fonts, in which case you get a few dialog boxes that stop everything and scream “PAPERS!”

Another useful thing to know is how to safely backup your home directory, without having to fiddle around with multiple drag-and-drop operations and the ever-present risk that hidden files might get lost. Hidden files in Linux start with a period, and while many are just simple user configuration settings for various applications, they include things like your browser bookmarks, cookies and, most importantly, your mail file. Ignoring hidden files is dangerous. And the solution is a Unix command that’s older than I am: cpio

Create a backup directory somewhere. No, not on the disk or partition to which you’re installing. From your home directory run find . -print | cpio -dumpv destination This will ensure that your hidden files are also backed up, so you can restore the whole lot by doing the same in reverse, or copy selected directories (such as mail) back to your clean installation. Warning: always, always, always double check that your actions had the desired results. It really spoils a shiny new operating system when the first thing you find is that some typo, a full disk, or sheer thoughtlessness, caused you to throw out three years worth of mail archives.

Of course, if you really are terrified by the command line, you have two simpler options:

1. just do a version upgrade rather than a clean install, which is quicker and safer, but could leave old settings and data lying around, or
2. backup your home directory using a graphical backup tool of your choice, do a clean install, a backup restore, and then just go to add/remove programs (or the synaptic package manager) and select the software you want manually.

The Hardy Heron comes with new versions of most software, but I’m most pleased with the fact that Firefox 3.0 beta 5 has been included in the software repositories, in addition to Firefox 2. Even though version 3 isn’t yet final, it reportedly solves a ton of long-standing memory and performance issues. Beagle, the desktop search tool and system hog now also behaves rather more politely.

In all, the entire installation took me maybe 90 minutes, not counting download time. This included restoring all my backed-up data and settings, and installing a boatload (three gig’s worth) of applications. The only company that conspired to irritate me during this process was iBurst, the state-protected cartelco (to coin a term), which charges a right fortune (as I wrote on ITWeb) for supposedly always-on wireless broadband. Ubuntu may be free, but it delivers. And this time it did so without any hitch whatsoever. Well done to the Hardy team. Consider me impressed.

Finally, lest anyone think my preference for open source software suggests I’ve taken leave of my free-market capitalist senses, consider this: would I be a good capitalist if paid through the nose for a vastly inferior and far more limited product, when I can exploit socialists who offer me a world of shiny free stuff instead?

In 1979, Jerry Pournelle, a science fiction author famed for his columns in computer magazine, Byte, wrote a non-fiction book, titled A Step Farther Out. The book was a fascinating collection of essays, rich with ideas and ideals. It would probably bear re-reading even three decades on.

Pournelle decried the defunding of space exploration, arguing that the moon had become viewed as a destination, rather than merely a first step of man’s journey into space. Motivated, no doubt, by apocalyptic visions of the population explosion, his argument was that not only was this the first generation that had the resources to expand into space, but it might well be the last. Moreover, the solutions to the world’s energy crisis and resource shortage, lay in space.

I think this is what he had in mind:

My word, Jerry Pournelle turns 75 this year!

This video is funny. But it is so much funnier with the brilliant headline above, which I owe to Luboš Motl, a Czech physicist. His blog is well worth reading frequently; I bet Vaclav Klaus does.

I’ll let Luboš explain in more detail, but simply put, it involves solving a problem that a computer cannot solve in any reasonable amount of time. Enter Simon. Simon is a Jack Russell, not a computer:

I have two Jack Russells and a cat that thinks it’s a Jack Russell. This is going to be fun. “Come, doglets!”

Some people have way too much time on their hands. But we love ‘em for it. Here’s the secret history of the defeat of HD-DVD:

Only days later, he shot himself.

This is cute. Wired magazine reports that the Federal Aviation Administration, the US air regulator, is worried that the Boeing 787 Dreamliner’s in-flight passenger network is physically connected to the network that manages the aircraft’s control systems and also connects to ground-based maintenance and booking networks.

One might have expected the aircraft’s control network to be physically isolated from outward-facing networks, since any such connection in principle poses a security threat. Who needs box cutters when you can just hack your way into the cockpit, fire up a flight sim client, and fly the plane yourself?

Writes Wired:

Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner passenger jet may have a serious security vulnerability in its onboard computer networks that could allow passengers to access the plane’s control systems, according to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration.

The computer network in the Dreamliner’s passenger compartment, designed to give passengers in-flight internet access, is connected to the plane’s control, navigation and communication systems, an FAA report reveals.

The revelation is causing concern in security circles because the physical connection of the networks makes the plane’s control systems vulnerable to hackers. A more secure design would physically separate the two computer networks. Boeing said it’s aware of the issue and has designed a solution it will test shortly. […]

Currently in the final stages of production, the 787 Dreamliner is Boeing’s new mid-sized jet, which will seat between 210 and 330 passengers, depending on configuration.

Boeing says it has taken more than 800 advance orders for the new plane, which is due to enter service in November 2008. But the FAA is requiring Boeing to demonstrate that it has addressed the computer-network issue before the planes begin service.

According to the FAA document published in the Federal Register, the vulnerability exists because the plane’s computer systems connect the passenger network with the flight-safety, control and navigation network. It also connects to the airline’s business and administrative-support network, which communicates maintenance issues to ground crews.

ZDNet picked up on the report, and quotes Bruce Schneier on the subject.

(Via p2pnet.net.)

PS. The Wired article quotes one Mark Loveless, which it calls “a network security analyst with Autonomic Networks, a company in stealth mode, who presented a conference talk last year on Hacking the Friendly Skies“. If you’re in stealth mode, isn’t giving presentations at conferences a dead giveaway?

Update: Blue Crab Boulevard notes a new form of spam, which reaches printers directly from the internet, via a browser vulnerability, and demonstrates the inherent dangers of connecting networks. That they’re supposed to be separate and designed to be separate is no guarantee that they really will be separate.

Voir la vie en steampunk:

For a year from September 2005, under the nose of the Panthéon’s unsuspecting security officials, a group of intrepid “illegal restorers” [known as the UnterGunther] set up a secret workshop and lounge in a cavity under the building’s famous dome. Under the supervision of group member Jean-Baptiste Viot, a professional clockmaker, they pieced apart and repaired the antique clock that had been left to rust in the building since the 1960s. Only when their clandestine revamp of the elaborate timepiece had been completed did they reveal themselves.

More details and pictures of this spectacular stunt by the clandestine urban explorers can be found at what appears to be the UnterGunther’s own account, and over at greg.org.

Just to be a drip, I’ll note that I’m a little surprised that the court cleared them of breaking into the Panthéon. The court’s duty is surely to apply the law, not make exceptions for horological Robin Hoods? These guys might have been both good and competent, but doesn’t a message that says, “It’s okay to break in, as long as you fix things, not break things,” set a somewhat disputable precedent?

Still. It rocks. Around the clock. (Sorry.)

I’m increasingly pleased about having left Facebook. A couple of weeks ago I posted about advertising that appears in your news stream, cannily disguised to look like a photo update from a friend. Now, things are getting even murkier.

A guy named Joe discovered that not only were his purchases on Facebook partner sites like Overstock and Yelp being tracked, but they were being posted to his news stream. He didn’t opt in, and claims (justifiably, it would seem) not to have been given a clear and unambiguous way to opt out.

An AP story shows the implicit dangers of embarrassment and worse of this feature, which Facebook dubs “Beacon”. One guy discovered what his girlfriend had bought him as a present. Another found his movie ticket purchases displayed to his friends. The article not only shows how tricksey the feature is, but also notes that users cannot withdraw completely from the programme, but merely decrease the frequency of the relevant items in their news feeds. (Just like my account at Facebook is merely inactive, and cannot be deleted.)

This feature is remarkably offensive. “Hey, everyone, Jimmy bought some lube! Do you want some?” Or more realistically, as one source in the AP story says, “What if you bought a book on Amazon called ‘Coping with AIDS’ and that got published to every single one of your friends?”

Joe asks, plaintively: “Facebook, it is not OK to collect information about me from other sites. Please stop.”

Sorry, Joe. You agreed:

Facebook may also collect information about you from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services, and other users of the Facebook service … in order to provide you with more useful information and a more personalized experience. … We may use information about you that we collect from other sources, including but not limited to newspapers and Internet sources such as blogs, instant messaging services, Facebook Platform developers and other users of Facebook, to supplement your profile.

However, not being able to opt out of this offensive feature is contrary to Facebook’s own privacy policy, which states: “And you control the users with whom you share that information through the privacy settings on the My Privacy page.”

Turns out the privacy policy and terms of use are there to bind users, not Facebook. It also turns out, as I discovered when I wanted my account deleted, that once you agree, you can never revoke any permissions you gave Facebook. Not even when circumstances — such as Facebook’s shareholding — change. They own you and the lemons you buy. Forever.

Update: Duncan McLeod has published a Financial Times article on the subject on his website.

Since leaving Facebook (the story of which is told here, here, here and here) I’ve been waiting with some anticipation for news of Google’s plans for social networking. Paul Jacobson has found some news on the subject. Says he:

As I understand this plan, Google is releasing a bunch of APIs, probably initially focussed on Orkut, to be rolled out across most, if not all, of Google’s properties. This would result in a kind of social network/interactive layer over these sites and services. Developers would be able to develop apps based on these APIs, presumably for distribution across the Google network and use on Google’s sites.

… I think this is going to be a new beginning for a new paradigm of the social web.

Sounds promising. Very promising.

This is somewhat surprising. In this picture, you might see expensive toys. Dr Gaurav Khanna saw the makings of a cheap supercomputer.

Instead of paying the government $5,000 a session to rent time on its supercomputers, this enterprising physicist simply clustered eight Sony PlayStation 3 games consoles, and gets the same power, indefinitely, for the grand total of $3,200. And the machines were donated by Sony, so it cost him nothing. With a headline you’d expect to see in The Onion, Wired has more on the story: Astrophysicist Replaces Supercomputer with Eight PlayStation 3s.

There is, of course, a reason Khanna doesn’t use, say, Microsoft Xbox 360 gaming consoles. Nice machines are useless if you can’t hack ‘em. Khanna runs Linux on the PS3 consoles, and discovered something remarkable about the Cell processors at their core:

Overall, a single PS3 performs better than the highest-end desktops available and compares to as many as 25 nodes of an IBM Blue Gene supercomputer. And there is still tremendous scope left for extracting more performance through further optimization.

Khanna uses the parallel computing power of the eight-unit PS3 cluster to research fascinating but very complex arcana such as the gravity waves produced when two black holes merge.

I think this story makes a fairly good point about the notion of governments and their capabilities. Often, when I argue that the private sector is inherently better suited to provide products and services than the public sector, I hear examples of government innovation and research that the private sector didn’t, couldn’t or wouldn’t engage in. And to be sure, such innovations exist, especially when the research is directed to the needs of tax collection or the defence sector.

In response, I point out that a government is worse at innovation not because it is inherently less capable, innovative, or efficient than any one company (though that is often the case). It’s because a government funds one project, to find one solution, and when it fails, can only really repeat this process in series. If something succeeds, the innovation stops. By contrast, the private sector consists of multiple actors committing risk capital to trying multiple solutions in parallel. They all compete with each other on performance, features, cost, and time-to-market. So not only are the chances of rapid success that much higher, but even those that succeed face competition from other, possibly better, solutions.

When a government does develop a solution, which it often does by excluding potential private sector competitors either just by tapping the almost bottomless well of taxpayer funds for capital, or by explicitly legislating to forbid competition, who’s to say whether the solution it comes up with is actually cost-effective? There’s usually no market to benchmark it against. Until someone like Dr Khanna comes along.

Is it any wonder, then, that the government, as a large end-user with diverse and advanced needs, does sometimes manage to innovate in its own interests, to meet its own needs, but that even when it succeeds, those innovations are soon made obsolete by the private sector? That the government developed the first electronic computers, but that it took IBM to turn the super-expensive behemoths into efficient computing machines for general use? That the government developed the embryo of the internet, but that it took thousands of private sector companies to bring its costs to within reach of ordinary consumers, and develop its full utility by developing new features, better usability and compelling content?

Is it any wonder that the US government runs expensive national supercomputer facilities, but it takes one researcher with a begging bowl and a brain to build a dead simple, dirt cheap lab hack that thrashes them all?

So next time your kid asks you for a PS3, know that he could deploy powerful tools to investigate the ripples binary black hole systems create in the fabric of space-time. Literally.

If you’re going to play legal footsie with pirates over paying for music, best you pay your internet domain fees. This site used to belong to these guys. Jacqui Cheng at Ars Technica has the story.

(Hat tip: Bretton Vine.)

This is a little psychopathic perhaps, but then, fantasies of how we’re destroying the planet (and how we can “save” it) appear to be fairly common, so perhaps indulging our inner psychopath isn’t so abnormal after all.

LiveScience.com has a thing about lists. So they put together a useful collection of techniques they think might be destructive on a planetary scale. Things you and I might be able to pull off. From messing about with strangelets or black holes to hacking away with planetary-scale earthmoving equipment, from building a self-replicating earth-eating machine, to being a little careless with the energy trapped in a lightbulb. Don’t let your kids read them: I have no doubt that a suitably geeky six-year-old with a chemistry set and an electronics kit will figure out a way to make this stuff happen.

Mostly consisting of a cutesey, flashy casing and an operating system that is remarkable only for the fact that it isn’t Windows, Apple’s products have long struck me as expensive fashion items of little real value. Much like a quarter of a million dollar Chanel handbag. Now there is finally a serious reason to aquire one:

MacSaber 1.1

MacSaber uses your Mac’s sudden motion sensor to detect movements, fast and slow. As you move your laptop, MacSaber plays varying levels of Light Saber sound effects, from a waving sound to exciting saber crashes.