E-Musings Mon Immorata

Have You Been Nicked? Today's choices are between predatory software pricing that makes you choose between paying often unreasonable license fees or walking the wild side with pirated software, or just selecting from the vast open-source software universe Just the other day, I read an anti-piracy rant from Nick Bradbury. Sometime developer of TopStyle (WYSIWYG CSS Editor), Feed Demon (RSS reader) and in the not so distant past, HomeSite that constitutes the core of Macromedia's Dreamweaver web site development tool. Nick was raving about software piracy and how perfectly normal people are willing to not pay a few extra bucks for truly usable software. Instead would risk almost all to download then use a hacked or cracked copy, or use illegally created serial number. Nick actually disguised himself as a cracker then posted a hacked (but Trojan Horse) version of TopStyle on a warez exchange site. Included was some hidden spy ware that pinged Nick every time the Trojan Horse was installed. He was surprised to discover that more people used the pirated copy than had purchase a legal one! A sad but not uncommon facet about web-downloadable software. As an aside, while I used Nick's FeedDemon RSS reader utility for free during the Beta test period. At $30 its well nigh unaffordable for me, and I've somewhat sadly gone back to using the feature-limited but open-source FeedReader. This doesn't give the same functionality and ease of use, but its 100% free. Of course for every great shareware application there exist at least 2-3 equally excellent and full-featured freeware tools. Which is what the focus of every column tries to be about. However, as the Internet (and its users) have matured, many freeware have become shareware or time-limited demos. I blame the low- to no-acceptance levels for ad-supported software at the doorsteps of the Net advertising networks who didn't come clean on what information they were extracting from user computers. As well as on account of the pop-up and -under advertising that plagues too many web sites today (including the one of which I host my personal site). A few years ago, in a well-publicized instance, perhaps because Microsoft was the offender, a Windows software update sent system information and usage details "back home". But as a web master and site owner, I welcome such data because it helps me better service visitors. As it is, using Javascript, I can gather details like browser used including version number, screen resolution, and operating system. Try this example script. Of course any statistics so gathered may be tainted by browsers emulating other browsers (Opera running IE6 emulation mode being a good example), by firewalls blocking information exchanges or by proxy servers that only provide their details instead of their clients. I also read with concern the misinformation several Indian computer and infotainment magazines are publishing about the availability of free software. They need to engage their brains before opening their mouths. For every Microsoft Office, there's an OpenOffice. For Microsoft Exchange, there's OpenGroupware (available only for non-Windows platforms). For Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle, there's MySQL and its big brother: the enterprise-ready MaxDB. Today several Linux versions are available including Knoppix (downloadable in a single bootable ISO file) and Fedora (3 640 MB ISOs) for the desktop or FreeBSD for your server. There's the Mozilla browser project and its spin-off Thunderbird email and news client. And the Jabber platform offers separate chat server and client. Or the open-source Gaim instant messaging (IM) client connects to almost every IM server platform available including MSN, Yahoo, ICQ and AOL. The list is almost endless. As a proponent of free software, look no further than the very large open-source universe that's best represented by SourceForge and FreshMeat. But stay alert for a search hijacker that runs Freshmeat.Org that supposedly contains the best Linux links yet tried to hijack my browser! There's also the GNU (GNU is not Unix; pronounced guh-noo) who also lists true open-source software in its own Software Directory that categorizes applications available. Now at work, after nearly two decades of using Windows, I've finally ramped up to Fedora Core 1; the open-source consumer Linux version just out from Red Hat. I have Fedora running on a Pentium II with 192 MB RAM and other than a few hiccups understanding how to download, compile and install software packages I'm quite impressed by the bang I get for my few bucks. The graphics are stunning, even without a dedicated 3D-accelerator. And the computer is great for browsing the Web, receiving and sending email, instant messaging, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and listening to music. There's even a Windows shell so I can run the few Windows-only programs I may need to use. Contrary to previous Linux versions, the latest crop are extremely easy to install and configure as long as your hardware is brand-name. While some esoteric chip sets of Asian-origin pose compatibility problems hardware from name brands like Intel, AMD, Adaptec, Seagate, Maxtor, Texas Instruments, Rockwell, or National Semiconductors work great "out-of-the-box". Finally, this week's free choice is Fontifier which allows you to develop your own custom font. The service seems to be free (for now), so don't delay. You will need access to both a printer and a scanner. Begin by downloading then printing out the GIF image template. Next fill-out the boxes with examples of your handwriting for alphabets (upper- and lower-case), numbers and most commonly used special characters and typographic symbols. Use a black felt-tipped pen to get the best post-scan results. Save the scanned handwriting sample as a GIF image and upload it. You should get your custom font soon after. That's it for now, stay safe and same time next week. Click Here to Email Me