moving parts of the kasper clan

Repeat after me:

I will never, ever, ever, ever, never, ever, never, never, ever, ever, ever, never, ever, never buy a proprietary (read: non Open Source) computer ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever again, no matter how attractive the packaging is.

I don’t know what from the bowels of hell itself possessed me to buy a Powerbook, but it was quite possibly one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done.  It has been nothing but trouble from the day I got it (though it was a nice little mental exercise and challenge for a while in getting Linux to run on it).

I have given up on it for my own personal use. I’m back to using my work laptop for all things at work and home.

But I thought that at least I could let my darling bride use it for her personal stuff. You know… it’s OS X… what could possibly go wrong?

So, 8 hours ago this evening, I started trying to get OS X (freshly upgraded to 10.4.9, don’tcha know) to allow my darling bride to edit OpenOffice files that are stored on an NFS server downstairs. Nope. Cannot do it. Everything comes up read-only. And yes, I did play (for hours) with all possible permutations of setting/unsetting SAL_ENABLE_FILE_LOCKING in soffice. I even tried the new version of NeoOffice (it’s the only one you can download, by the way, which is also teh suck), the new version of OpenOffice, and version 2.0.4 out of desperation. SUCK! I don’t know what the flippin’ problem is, but it’s sucked 8 hours too much out of my life, thank you very much.

Pissed off in general and getting no sleep again…

Love,

Me

BLEH!

Got your attention, did I?

I run Linux on my Apple G4 Powerbook, which means that I don’t have the luxury of such niceties as… oh, I don’t know… FLASH!?!?! So I was happy to find that even though I can’t view Google Video’s Flash-based movies, I can easily enough still play them on my G4 Powerbook running PPC Linux. I whipped up a very simple and quick little script for it, as follows:

#!/bin/bash

PLAYER=kaffeine

INFILE=$*
TMPFILE=”/tmp/$(basename $0).tmp”
echo “got->${INFILE}< -... going to work..."
cp "${INFILE}" "${TMPFILE}"
URL=$(grep 'url' ${TMPFILE} | sed 's,url:,,' )

${PLAYER} "${URL}"

I then saved in in ~/bin/google-video-player.sh and chmod +755′d it. I then clicked on the download link on google video’s pages, told Konqueror (or Firefox, Opera, etc., etc.) to open the file with my little script, and sat back and enjoyed as kaffeine (or xine or whatever you like to use) opened up and played the video for me.

Now, Google, don’t you think it would be very non-evil of you to provide a player for Linux PPC yourself? =;)

My current employer uses Exhange 2003 as its current groupware solution. I have on-and-off-again been beating my head against the proverbial concrete wall in trying to get it to work nicely with LDAP and addressbooks other than Evolution or Outlook, for obvious reasons. Today, my geeky noggin’ has broken through the proverbial concrete wall and I now have both KDE’s kaddressbook and Thunderbird’s address book successfully using the Exchange server here at work.

Yay, me!

Two things I’ve found this morning that have helped my noggin’ and I’ll list them here for future reference for myself as well as in hopes of helping some other poor concrete/geek/proverbial/noggin’-banging soul.

First, I’ve found this post which lists a very helpful step-by-step approach for getting things almost working:

OK, here is how Mozilla/Thunderbird LDAP works with Exchange 2000-2003:

1. The default LDAP port for Active Directory is 3268 (not 389) so make sure you’ve got this port open thru the firewall, and make sure to configure it in your LDAP account settings in Mozilla/Thunderbird.

2. For Base DN, you MUST enter something like dc=yourdomain,dc=com (whereas Outlook Express lets you get away with putting NULL).

3. For Bind DN, you must enter a domain user which has permission to search the directory. You should enter it qualified by the NetBIOS domain name, for example: mydomain\username

4. For some reason, Thunderbird doesn’t always seem to recognize that it needs to log on before querying. The easiest, most reliable way I have found to force it is to go to the Offline tab in the Directory Server Properties and click the Download button. This function seems to “see” that Active Directory wants a logon, so Thunderbird will display the logon dialog to let you enter your domain credentials. For the username, specify exactly the same thing you put into Bind DN.

5. Results are returned asynchronously to the Thunderbird Address Book, so you might see “No matches found” immediately after clicking the Search button. Wait a few seconds, and your results should show up.

6. Mozilla and Thunderbird default to a Search Filter of (objectclass=*) which will return lots of useless (non-email address) entries from Active Directory. You can override this with something like (objectclass=person) on the Advanced tab of Directory Service Properties. Depending on what kinds of addresses are in your Active Directory, you may need to refine this filter more (for example, if you’ve got mail-enabled Public Folders which you want to display).

7. The Address Book UI in Thunderbird is just clumsy. You CANNOT search an LDAP directory by simply selecting it on the left hand side and then entering your search in the “Name or Email contains” textbox. You MUST click the Advanced button to define an LDAP search. After you find your desired address(es) in LDAP, you “should” be able to copy it to your local addresses but the stupid UI only lets you look at the Properties or add it to the recipient list for a new message (by clicking the Write button).

And then there’s this page that helped me finally get it all working:

You can add a new address book with the following properties:

General tab:

Name: …
Hostname:
Base DN: dc=company,dc=com
Port number: 389 (non-secure) or 636 (secure)
Bind DN: YOURWINDOWSLOGONDOMAIN\yourwindowslogonuser

Advanced tab:

Don’t return more than [ 100 ] results
Scope: Subtree
Search filter: (objectClass=person)

If your organisation is large you may have to change the Bind DN so it only returns your unit (e.g. ou=yourdept,dc=company,dc=com) as otherwise Thunderbird may decide to act a bit strange.

You can force a read by clicking the Download Now button on Offline tab, although you won’t see any contacts afterwards, you have to search in the Compose window.

If you still get no joy you can download and install Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 Support Tools and run ldp.exe against the exchange server. You don’t even need to install it if you decompress with WinRAR (or possibly WinZip) and look for the executable.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/892777

That way you can find out the Bind DN and search filter. First use Connection > Connect against the server, then Connection > Bind with your user and password then use View > Tree with a blank string and you can find a tree view of your Base DN and go into departments and retrieve user data to find out their objectClass if it’s not person.

Finally in Tools > Options > Composition > Addressing tick Automatically add outgoing e-mail address to my [ Collected Addresses ] as it’s much faster than searching the server.

Granted, these are instructional in getting Thunderbird to work with Exchange, but the same applies to KDE’s kaddressbook.

In general, I think the sticky wicket that really got things working for me was using Microsoft’s ldp.exe tool to browse the Exchange LDAP tree and see its innards. Specifically, I had to do this:

server: [active directory server]
base dn: CN=Users,DC=XXX,DC=XXX,DC=com (important to start with Users for me!!)
port: 389
bind dn: [windows domain]\[username]
search filter: (objectclass=*)
scope: subtree

The trick was, I think, that I had to provide a more specific base dn to the address books.

Hope this helps someone else out there, wherever your geeky proverbial concrete-bashing noggin’ may find you. =:)

I know, it’s old news, but this eWeek article was a refreshing read that I ran across today.

And let say it one more time: OpenDocument is an “open” format. Anyone, including Microsoft, can write to it.

Of course, Microsoft doesn’t want to. The Redmond, Wash., giant makes its billions from locking users into its way of doing things. OpenDocument frees users. If everyone started using OpenOffice for their office documents they could decide, for instance, that StarOffice 8 for, say, $50 is a better deal than Microsoft Office at $500.

I know, I know–it all sounds heretical and conspiracy-theory-ist to suggest that Microsoft might not be the best thing in the world, but come on and smell the 21st century!!

Please explain to me why, in… what year is this again… 2005… people… nay, COMPANIES… insist on using stupid, dumb, ridiculous, unnecessary, proprietary, exclusionary, browser-sniffing, One-Platform-ONLY “solutions”????

CNN, please explain to me how you can legitimately not care whatsoever about the growing population of Internet users who might like to use your site who CANNOT or CHOSE NOT TO run Internet Explorer, Windows, or Windows Media Player??? Just because I choose not to (or maybe can’t afford to??) use Windows, you think I’m unworthy of seeing the videos that make up the user experience on your site??? How about doing something sensible like providing a link to the media file regardless of what OS your visitor might be using, and maybe following it at the bottom with a disclaimer along the lines of “this site might not work if you don’t run Windows and have WMP installed”, if you absolutely think that’s necessary???

If you care, here’s where you can tell CNN what you think about their absolutely ridiculous exclusion of non-Windows/non-WMP site viewers.

As if I wasn’t already in a foul mood….

VERY nice post on usability over on icefox’s blog. It’s always good to keep these things at the forefront of our collective geeky brains, since as is stated yonder, “users will suffer until good design comes along.” This is precisely the point that so many people miss–good design is not an option or an afterthought. It is a must and it must come early in the process.

Most of the time, this (intelligent, well-thought-out design) is overlooked until it’s painfully obvious that it’s broken–and this is also (not conincidentally) the most inopportune time to be thinking about it, since in most cases what is required to fix the problem is deeper than cosmetic changes, going down into deep architectural problems and costly redesign issues.

A close cousin to this problem is that which presumes that everybody that you need to care about runs Windows, Internet Explorer, a < 2-year-old computer, is ignorant about standards, and likes paying money through the nose to use his/her equipment.

Blah. I just got myself into a foul mood again.

/me looks around at the Asylum again and feels just a little more hope having been eroded away. =:/

I came across ruurd’s post the other day (probably found it on planet KDE originally). It’s all good, and it’s really hard not to just copy and paste the whole thing here, but I’ll try…. The following quote from this NewsForge article about Microsoft’s shady dealings with the state of Massachusetts is very well-worded and very accurate, from my experience in IT:

Alan Yates’ letter reveals the worst of Microsoft’s behavior and signals their limited recourse when competition is enabled. The letter betrays many of the company’s flaws of character, its propensity to lie, and its petulant entitlement to customer fealty.

And, as ruurd pointed out, the following excerpt from a letter from Microsoft gives a nice example of just this very thing.

The draft policy identifies four products that support the OpenDocument format: Sun’s StarOffice, OpenOffice.org, KOffice, and IBM Workplace. In reality, these products are slight variations of the same StarOffice code base, which Sun acquired from a German company in 1999. The different names are little more than unique brands applied by the vendors to the various flavors of the code base that they have developed. In essence, a commitment to the OpenDocument format is a commitment to a single product or technology. This approach to product selection by policy violates well-accepted public procurement norms.

To which ruurd eloquently pointed out:

LIAR! LIAR! PANTS ON FIRE!

I agree. I saw this exact same treatment of lying to customers and potential customers by Microsoft’s elite team of “experts” when an employer of mine asked Microsoft for their proposal for our Internet solution. Bunch of lies, nothing but.

You see, in this situation, it was convenient for Microsoft to mis-represent the truth so that it would make itself look better than it is. (No, wait, isn’t that always the reason?) They were trying to say “hey look, the solution you’re looking at still isn’t any more open than ours is, since all of the solutions you’re looking at are really coming from the same basic product, so you might as well use our one available solution than that other one solution (with various flavors)”. Unfortunately, Microsoft was lying here since there are more providers (more than one code base) for the requested solution than just the OpenOffice.org code base. But the truth wouldn’t have been helpful here, would it?

The above, combined with some golden nuggets from ESR’s really scathing reply to Microsoft’s attempt to hire him, pretty much sum up for me what is so infuriating about dealing with Microsoft. They make no apologies for lying, twisting the truth, spinning the propaganda machine, whatever you want to call it. And why should they? Who’s going to call them on the carpet for it?

From ESR’s blog (which I won’t link to directly here since he uses certain “sentence enhancers” that I don’t happen to want to encourage in my progeny….

This didn’t surprise me. Microsoft’s profit margins require a monopoly lock on the market; thus, they’re stuck with being predatory evil bastards. The moment they stop being predatory evil bastards, their stock price will tank and their options pyramid will crash and it will be all over.

That being the case, negotiation is pointless. Microsoft is not reformable. Jeering at offers like this is actually the most constructive thing we can do.

Oh, and I find particular humor in this too:

On the day *I* go to work for Microsoft, faint oinking sounds will be heard from far overhead, the moon will not merely turn blue but develop polkadots, and hell will freeze over so solid the brimstone will go superconductive.

But I must thank you for dropping a good joke on my afternoon. On that hopefully not too far distant day that I piss on Microsoft’s
grave, I sincerely hope none of it will splash on you.

LOL. Okay, back to work, Borg. And for the rest of you, don’t forget your aluminum foil hats….

Out of curiosity, I wanted to look at the latest, breaking news on CNN for Hurricane Rita, but CNN has apparently decided (not without precedence or companionship in this kind of decision) that it will only cater to Windows users for its streaming videos. Hm. Yeah, that’s a really nice decision. Reminds me of FEMA’s also-really-stupid decision to be lazy, slovenly, and stupid in the same way.

Good job guys! Welcome to the 20th century! Hope you don’t get any reality spilt on ya….