Author: Dave Farquhar

Java. My bestest buddy.

Dave Farquhar War Stories

I patched Java on a bunch of systems this week, by hand. It was the first time I’ve done such a thing since probably sometime in 2007. So no one would blame me if it didn’t go 100% as planned, and, predictably, it didn’t. I did eight systems, and it worked on all but the first and last. Of course I didn’t discover that it failed on the first one until later in the day. Java itself seemed to work OK, but the log collector that requires Java didn’t.

The log collector is the only reason we have Java installed, so that’s not OK, of course. Read more

Advice on building your own PC on the cheap

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , ,

Lifehacker published a guide yesterday on saving money on DIY PCs. I agree with most of it, and violently disagree with one very important part of it. Read more

Give your antivirus software a workout

Dave Farquhar security , ,

Via PC Magazine, I found the AMTSO website, which is designed to test your antivirus software for proper operation. I think this is good for two reasons. One, it gives you a chance to see if antivirus software is operating properly. Two, it gives you a chance to see how your browser and antivirus software behave when something bad is going on. Read more

The good-enough $99 Android tablet

Dave Farquhar Android , , , ,

Last month, low-end television maker Hisense introduced two new 7-inch Android tablets. The $149 Hisense Sero 7 Pro is a fairly close clone of the Google Nexus 7 that adds an SD card slot. With its quad-core processor and 1280×800 display, a lot of people are excited about it. Overall, the reaction I’ve seen on xda-developers has been very positive. The $99 Sero 7 LT, which is decidedly below the Nexus 7 in capability, hasn’t gotten as much attention.

But I found this teardown. Their verdict: Nothing to get too excited about, but it’s good enough for the average user most of the time, much better than the other sub-$100 tablets on the market, and as good as or better than most of the sub-$149 tablets on the market. The two weak spots are the wimpy camera and weak battery.

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Are video games a good investment?

Dave Farquhar Retro Gaming , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

An article on Slashdot asked this weekend whether video games were a good investment. So are video games a good investment? Will they appreciate over time?

The answer is generally no. Collectibles in general are not–they follow a boom and bust cycle. I’ve seen it happen in my own lifetime.

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Brief first impressions of the Hisense Sero 7 Pro tablet

Dave Farquhar Android

I picked up a Hisense Sero 7 Pro tablet this evening. I’ve only spent about 90 minutes with it, but my first impressions of it are very favorable. It’s fast and smooth, the screen is sharp, and the price is right at $149. I’ve seen people at xda-developers say it’s the best $149 they’ve spent in a long time. While I won’t go quite that far, I’ll say this: If you’ve heard of this tablet and you’ve been thinking you might be interested, you’re interested. You won’t regret it.

I’ll talk about it some more this week, I’m sure, but here’s the lowdown on it: It’s a no-name tablet, sold in discount stores, that uses the same chipset as the Google Nexus 7, but it adds a video port so you can connect it to your TV for video playback, and it adds a microSD card slot for expansion. So it fixes the only two flaws the Nexus 7 had, but costs $50 less. It’s probably not as rugged as a Nexus 7 for that price, but for $50, you can buy a carrying case to ruggedize it a bit.

Once the word really gets out about these tablets, I think they’re going to be able to sell them as quickly as they can make them. I’m that impressed, and that’s with the stock ROM on it. I understand that if you’re willing to load a custom ROM, the first custom ROM to come available for it removes some bloat and performs even faster.

New security features for Evernote

Dave Farquhar security

This comes courtesy of Dan Bowman: If you’re an Evernote user (I’m not, at least not yet), it now has three new security features, including the all-important two-factor authentication. Those of you who rely on Evernote would do well to look into enabling two-factor authentication, at the very least.

Something strange is going on

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized

I’ve been noticing a lot of slowness that I’ve traced to DNS issues lately, typically with the caching DNS in routers. It happened to me, and it happened to my mom. We have different routers from different manufacturers, and they probably even use different embedded operating systems. Hers almost assuredly runs Linux; I have an oddball one that runs FreeBSD.

But the caching nameservers aren’t working well lately. I haven’t investigated why just yet. The solution I found was to hard-code the DNS settings on all my computers rather than letting them pull it from DHCP (my oddball router won’t let me specify external DNSs to use–lovely). Be sure to pick the best ones for your network.

Making that simple change fixed my mom’s dog-slow computer, and fixed my unreliable one.

 

No, this doesn’t mean Ubuntu and Linux are giving up

Dave Farquhar Hardware, Software , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This week, Mark Shuttleworth closed the longstanding Ubuntu bug #1, which simply read, “Microsoft has majority market share.” Because Microsoft didn’t lose its market share lead to Ubuntu, or Red Hat, or some other conventional Linux distribution, some people, including John C. Dvorak, are interpreting this as some kind of surrender.

I don’t see it as surrender at all. Microsoft’s dominant position, which seemed invincible in 2004 when Shuttleworth opened that bug, is slipping away. They still dominate PCs, but PCs as we know it are a shrinking part of the overall computing landscape, and the growth is all happening elsewhere.

I have (or at least had) a reputation as a Microsoft hater. That’s a vast oversimplification. I’m not anti-Microsoft. I’m pro-competition. I’m also pro-Amiga, and I’ll go to my grave maintaining that the death of Amiga set the industry back 20 years. I have Windows and Linux boxes at home, my wife has (believe it or not) an Ipad, and at work I’m more comfortable administering Linux than Windows right now, which seems a bit strange, especially considering it’s a Red Hat derivative and I haven’t touched Red Hat in what seems like 400 years.

What Shuttleworth is acknowledging is that we have something other than a duopoly again, for the first time in more than 20 years, and the industry is innovating and interesting again. Read more

Who are the 10 people you’d call if you were laid off tomorrow?

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , ,

I found some good advice on Lifehacker today about building a professional network. Not just having 500 connections on Linkedin, but having a real professional network made up of people who help one another advance their careers.

I stumbled into this completely by accident. Read more