42 reasons why the iPad is better than netbooks.
Now, in the following I take into note that the iPad is not meant as a replacement to your laptop computer. It is meant as an additional device, something extra you have. Because you like nice things.
Also, the “it’s expensive” and “you need to buy” argument is used a lot of times – I see that argument as invalid. It’s not a question about money, it’s a question about whether the device is great or not.
Actually, all of this is nonsense, as the iPad should not be considered a replacement for a computer, as mentioned. The iPad is an extra device you get, something more, when you’re out and you DO NOT have the need for a computer, but would like to watch some movies, listen to music, read books, show your friends pictures.
Also, being on a flight the iPad is EXCELLENT for movies, reading and you can sit with it in a relaxed position like a piece of paper or a book.
As a response to: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2358590,00.asp
1 ) If you want an iPad you must know that you want quality and that you want to pay for the fact that the product is extremely well created and beautiful. If you are poor and you use the argument that the iPad is expensive, that only tells that you are too poor to own it.
2) Beginning in november, Apple will launch iOS 4.2 for the iPad making it able to multitask.
3 ) Flash is annoying and it concumes a huge amount of CPU and memory. Also it introduces security issues.
4 ) With a photo kit an iPad does have USB. (Remember the poor argument when beginning to argument that this is pricey)
5 ) For the purpose of what you need an iPad for, you have absolutely no use for higher resolutions. Also, it scales down websites wonderfully.
6 ) If you want a bigger screen the device will be bigger and the smart size of the iPad starts to disappear.
7 ) You can get on-the-go charging kits for the iPad. (Don’t even think about it, poor guy)
8 ) Personally I have never, ever used the webcam for anything but fun and it is not something I would need in the device I use for movies and reading books.
9 ) You can buy a keyboard. The iPad is nice and compact without it with a wonderfully working on screen keyboard. (Again… )
10 ) The photo kit mentioned above you can use the USB interface from your camera or read the most commonly used card, SD. (…)
11 ) iPads have the potential of flash, taking over the world, doing your mom AND making coffee all at the same time.
12 ) The screen on a netbook is usually made from plastic that extremely easy gets scratched and ugly when exposed or just even touched. The iPad is covered with glass and made for touching. The glass on an iPad is very hard to scratch.
13 ) On a device the type of an iPad you do not need a faster processor.
14 ) On a device like an iPad you don’t need more than 64 GB space. Also, where did the “you can buy this and that but it’s too expensive” argument go here?
15 ) True story. A new version of the iPad with better specs will come when times require it. (No! you’re too poor! Remember that even Microsoft stated in their own advertisment that macs are for cool people)
16 ) On a device like the iPad you don’t need a full blown OS. In fact that’s one of the major FEATURES of it, not having the full OS. iOS is great for touch.
17 ) With an iPad you can get the apps you need through iTunes.
18 ) Square-ish? That argument is lame. I won’t even comment further on it. The iPad can rotate, period.
19 ) Wireless-N is indeed fast enough for HD video. The iPad is not a replacement for a computer, it’s an additional device.
20 ) Aaand.. the iPad can’t? My iPad plays 720p HD without any problems. You would NEVER need 1080p on such a small screen! Not even if it was 13 inches.
21 ) The battery argument again? It was in 7.
22 ) But! None of them even comes close to how beautiful the iPad is.
23 ) … Who wants to do that?
24 ) Again.. enough about the money! Apple stuff is for cool people who knows that good things cost good money – and those who can afford to be awesome. Don’t make money an issue, cheap ass.
25 ) Again the money issue. The connector, get it!
26 ) More advanced? It’s just flat and boring as hell. It’s very entertaining playing games on the iPad because you interact with it. You can even play scrabble and use it as your board and have your letters on the iPhone.
27 ) The iPad has built in 3G and you can readch your Plex/Nine at home with it to watch TV and stuff. You won’t need legacy ports on a iPad kind of device.
28 ) You certainly can on the iPad too. I just bought a data card from another carrier and put it in, BAM, internet on the iPad. This argument is directly wrong.
29 ) Get Apple Care.
30 ) You can do that from iPad too.
31 ) Yes you can, through apps.
32 ) Argument based on basically thin air.
33 ) What are you a hundred? Rent it online with iTunes.
34 ) As can you for iPad.Navigon, TomTom, CoPilot. iPad runs all iPhone apps.
35 ) The iPad gives you access to internet within 1 second. Also the iPad is an EMBEDDED DEVICE, not a computer.
36 ) Get a netbook for your child, I don’t have kids, I don’t give a crap about kid friendly.Besides, with the awesome games and the fun way to interact with them the kids will be entertained for hours with the iPad.
37 ) Again, go online and stream from Plex (and eyeTV). (But mommy, data is expensive, I’m poor.. waaaaaaah.. )
38 ) Say hi to Opera
39 ) True. Java is slow anyway so why use it? Like flash it consumes a lot of system resources.
40 ) iOS 4.2 in november. it’s okay to use upcoming and “possible” and “potential” in these arguments, as used earlier with the netbooks.
41 ) If you don’t have a computer already, an iPad is not a device you would use. It’s not a god damn replacement, it an addition.
42 ) Use files and streaming instead of physical optical media.
Setting up OpenVPN server
Please read through the entire tutorial BEFORE doing anything. If you do not read through this you might end up with some unanswered questions on how to do something, that is actually described further down. Thanks.
Test setup: XEN based VPS. 256 slice from Slicehost running Debian Lenny 64-bit
Let’s get started!
The first thin you want to do is install OpenVPN:
apt-get update && apt-get install -y openvpn
If everything above goes as it should, OpenVPN is now installed and we will continue to configuring it.
The following 4 commands will go to the configuration directory, copy easy-rsa (which we will use), copy a sample of the configuration file and unpack the sample.
cd /etc/openvpn
cp /usr/share/doc/openvpn/examples/easy-rsa/2.0/* .
cp /usr/share/doc/openvpn/examples/sample-config-files/server.conf.gz .
gunzip server.conf.gz
Now that these files are in place it’s time to start creating keys and configuration. For this we will use the easy-rsa package supplied by OpenVPN. This package makes the creation and signing of keys much easier.
Next thing we are going to do is set the variables for easy-rsa to use. These must be set every time you want to use easy-rsa if you have been logged out!
. ./vars
source ./vars
Make sure that our directory for keys exists, has the correct settings and such. Note! If you have any keys at this point, they will be removed!
./clean-all
Set up your Certificate Authority
./build-ca
We need a certificate and a key for the server itself, let’s build those. The second argument is the name of the server. If you choose to change this from server (there’s not really a reason to do so), then remember to change this as well in the config changes we make later on.
During the build-key-server process you will be asked for various information, you can choose to change this if you want, but for the setup to work it is not necessary. Just make sure that Common Name is server
./build-key-server server
We need to build the Diffie-Hellman parameters.
./build-dh
We are basically done with building the server now, but at this point no users will be able to log on and use the VPN. We use the build-key command (remember that vars MUST be set for this to work, if you want to create users at a later time). I will create a user called “fbh” for myself.
Again, I will be asked for some information and again I can choose whether to enter this or not.
./build-key fbh
Next thing we need to do is edit the server configuration file to know where these keys are located, use your favorite editor and open the server.conf file and find the part that holds paths to keys. Change it as following. (Note! If you change the servername from “server” above, this is where you need to change the keyname)
ca /etc/openvpn/keys/ca.crt
cert /etc/openvpn/keys/server.crt
key /etc/openvpn/keys/server.key# And a little further down
dh /etc/openvpn/keys/dh1024.pem
For now, leave all other parameters at the default.
You are now done with a basic OpenVPN server. If the LAN you are connected to uses the range 10.8.0.0/24 currently, you should edit the server.conf file and find the line that says “server 10.8.0.0 255.255.255.0″ and change it to something else, otherwise you will encounter a conflict!
Tunnel internet access through the VPN as well
With the above setup you will be connected via VPN to the network of the VPN server, however you will not be browsing the internet through the VPN server. As you might think, this configuration is not done in the client. You will need some changes to the OpenVPN server for this to work, as the server pushes configuration to the client.
Again, edit /etc/openvpn/server.conf and add the following line to it:
push “redirect-gateway def1″
Now it will set the client’s default gateway to go through the OpenVPN server upon connect – however, it will not work yet and there are multiple things to this.
At first, you might currently be using your ISP’s DNS servers, and they will probably not allow you to do recursive lookups when not connected through their network. So you need to push a set of open DNS server as well, or set up your own on the server (this tutorial does not cover that). In this tutorial we will use Level 3 Communications DNS, as they have a set of free, public DNS servers that responds quickly. Add these lines to your configuration:
push “dhcp-option DNS 4.2.2.1″
push “dhcp-option DNS 4.2.2.2″
push “dhcp-option DNS 4.2.2.3″
We’re getting closer now, but it might STILL not work. Also, you must have NAT between eth0 and tun0 enabled in iptables. You will need to know the name of your public interface to do this. In most cases it’s eth0. To enable it run these commands:
/sbin/iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE
/sbin/iptables -A FORWARD -i eth0 -o tun0 -m state –state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT
/sbin/iptables -A FORWARD -i tun0 -o eth0 -j ACCEPT
If you want these to be run whenever the server reboots, to make sure this works, add the 3 lines to /etc/rc.local before the “exit 0″ line. This script is being run every time a multiuser level is started up on the server.
Almost there! The last thin you need is to enable forwarding, do this with:
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
And done! Restart OpenVPN and make sure that it starts up
/etc/init.d/openvpn restart
Your VPN server is now able to tunnel connections and you are able to connect to the internet through it.
When I have the time, I will be publishing a tutorial on setting up clients as well.
Multi Level Marketing… Seriøst?
Hvor blev de store planer og indtjeningsmuligheder i World Games Inc. og Global Investments Incorporated af? Nåh, ja det er da rigtigt – lortet forsvandt og lukkede.
MLM som oftest også er et pyramidespil er nemlig som regel total udnyttelse af alt for naive mennesker. På et eller andet plan har jeg ondt af dem, der er så naive, men omvendt set så er det også sjovt at håne dem for at være så dumme.
Jeg er klar over, at der findes nogle få som har haft success og tjent mange penge for en stund. Det er de få, som er med aller øverst og som er hyret til fast løn af bagmændene til at promovere deres løgn. Måske de første par ben herunder også laver nogle penge, men jo længere ned vi kommer jo mere naivt bliver det.
De tilbyder allesammen “en enestående mulighed”, hvor man bliver trukket med til et hjernevaskende oplæg, som fortæller om at man kan tjene penge på den og den måde, at man kan stige i niveau og jo flere sælgere man selv får under sig, jo flere penge tjener man. Hvis man er rigtig dygtig så kommer man med i en bonusklub – og den bonusklub holder så en årlig fest på Hawaii, med fri bar og strip. Alle produkterne er testet af en ekspert, hvis navn man aldrig har hørt før, men da det er akkompagneret med et pænt fotografi af en herre i hvid kittel, så må det selvfølgelig være rigtigt. Produktet er som regel testet på et universitet du aldrig har hørt om, men det er testet til at være rigtig godt.
Du bliver vist indtjeningsgrafer og hører om folk, der efter et halvt år kan leve af tingene – de tjener enormt fedt på det. Nu er din grådighed tændt, du bliver grisk og får dollartegn i øjnene… Men så tager samvittigheden og janteloven ved dig… Indtil du bliver fortalt at foretagenet har op til flere fonte, der bruger mange penge på velgørenhed. De viser nogle billeder af et par børn i afrika, som smiler og beskriver at dette blot er en af mange velgørenhedsprojekter som du kommer til at bidrage til. Så er din samvittighed stillet, din tvivl er afledt af at ukendte mennesker jo siger at det er godt, der er kommet udokumenterede beviser på at det kan lade sig gøre – og du hjælper tilmed andre mennesker. Det er jo HELT fantastisk, du er tændt og det er så nu du bliver fortalt at for kun 5000 kroner kan du være med… Men du betaler jo gerne 5000 kroner, fordi de er jo tjent ind inden den første uge! Det lyder næsten for godt til at være sandt………………… Regn selv ud hvad de mange punktummer betyder.
Nå, men det korte og det lange i alt det her er, at jeg godt kan lide at grine af naive mennesker. Jeg kender mange som er trådt i de fælder, og jeg kan se hvor et mega stort arbejde de ligger i en meget lille indtjening. Folk glemmer fuldstændig hvad deres tid er værd. Hvis man skal bruge 2 timer på at sælge en flaske et-eller-andet med en fortjeneste på 100 kroner (wow), så har du arbejdet til 50 kroner i timen. Sæt dig selv til en enormt lav timeløn, lad os bare sige 150 kroner. Læg alle dine udgifter til, so mdu bruger på marketing og gang dine timer. Så har du din udgift – matcher det virkelig op med indtjeningen?
Og nej! Der er ikke noget der hedder “jamen skal jo lige i gang” – for jo flere timer du bruger, jo minder bliver dine timer værd i det lange løb.
Must-have software for your Mac
Add time goes by, I convince more and more of my friends that Macs are simply awesome and that they must own one. As I do that, more and more also requests a list of must-have software for their newly bought wonder.
I have therefore decided to make a list of the software I think you must have for your Mac.
Adium
Adium is simply the best Instant Messaging client for OS X. It features MSN, ICQ, Yahoo, Facebook, Jabber, gTalk and whatever you like of instant messaging. You can customize it to have just the look you like, and that’s awesome!
Website: http://adium.im/
BetterZip
BetterZip can handle your archives. It handles all kinds of archives and even takes RAR multipart. The built in unarchiver is somewhat okay, for those it support. If you only need to extract RAR files, and you don’t want to pay for it you could use “Rar Expander”.
Website: http://macitbetter.com/
Coda
If you develop web, you will love Coda. It has built in FTP/SFTP client, SSH client. You can preview the pages on the server without opening a browser separately.
Website: http://www.panic.com/coda/
Cyberduck
The only FTP/SFTP client you need. It is very lightweight and easy to use. It integrates with the OS X keychain.
Website: http://cyberduck.ch/
Google Quick Search Box
I could spend a long time explaining why you need this. You simply just do. It helps you opening programs, search contacts, e-mails, control iTunes, check stocks or whatever you like, without moving your hands away from the keyboard. Try it, give it a chance. Once you get used to it, you will love it. Remember to disable the feature that sends stuff to Google.
Website: http://code.google.com/p/qsb-mac/
Perian
Enhance your Quicktime to play almost whatever you throw at it.
Website: http://www.perian.org/
VLC
The player, that will definitely play everything Quicktime w. Perian won’t.
Website: http://www.videolan.org/
Surftown – hoster dig så længe folk ikke hader dem for det.
I aftes offentliggjorde Ekstra Bladet en artikel med overskriften “Børn sex-mishandles på lovlig hjemmeside” – kort set omhandlende en hjemmeside med en masse fantasier (læs: fiktion) om sex og tortur med børn. Artiklens overskrift fremstiller websitet som værende skadende over for levende børn, men det er ikke tilfældet så allerede her er overskriften totalt misvisende.
Kort efter offentliggørelsen af denne artikel vælger Surftown at poste et indlæg på sin blog med overskriften “Skal vi lukke en side som ikke er ulovlig?” – hvor stilen bliver lagt for holdningen til dette. I teksten skrives:
Vi modtager løbende anmodninger om at lukke diverse hjemmesider. Det kan være alt fra intime billeder af ekskæresten til virksomheder der sælger kopivarer. I alle disse tilfælde beder vi forudrettede om at politianmelde hjemmesiden.
Så spørgsmålet i denne konkrete sag er, hvorvidt vi skal lukke en side som ikke er ulovlig?
Der spørges altså her til om de bør lukke en hjemmeside som allerede ér blevet undersøgt for ulovligt indhold. Første udgangspunkt er at det skal den ikke. Men det vælger de alligevel at gøre klokken 9.40 efter pres fra en hel del kommentarer på deres blog og på Ekstra Bladets artikel.
Det vil dermed sige at Surftown fra dags dato vælger at blande sig i, hvilket indhold deres kunder har liggende på sit webhotel, udover hvad lovgivningen siger. Ud fra det kan man igen konkludere, at Surftown går ind for censur.
Danskerne har travlt med at råbe op om, at vi skal have ytringsfrihed og at de er glade for, at bo i et åbensindet land med plads til alle. Eller.. det er ihvertfald holdningen indtil der er nogen der ytrer noget, de ikke synes om. Vi er gode venner så længe vi er enige! Det holder ikke.
Personligt, så synes jeg at indholdet på den omtalte hjemmeside er på alle måder frastødende, men det er ikke ulovligt. Derfor bør man ikke lukke eller fjerne indholdet – for det bevidner i høj grad at folk ikke længere synes om nogle af landets grundværdier – og end ikke har respekt for vores grundlov, som siger:
§ 77. Enhver er berettiget til på tryk, i skrift og tale at offentliggøre sine tanker, dog under ansvar for domstolene. Censur og andre forebyggende forholdsregler kan ingensinde påny indføres.
Igen, så har materialet været anmeldt og det er blevet afgjort at det ikke er ulovligt.
Men hvis man hedder Surftown, så er censur og lukning af folks hjemmesider, hvor pøblen ikke er enige i indholdet vejen frem. Derfor har jeg tabt min respekt for Surftown, som ellers var ét af de meget få discounthosts jeg generelt havde respekt for og kunne finde på at anbefale til venner og bekendte.
Time Machine via network and automount
So, after changing my entire storagesetup at home to go through network, both to keep my desk simple but most important, to get rid of the humming from the external disk, I was facing one problem: Time Machine, how to network with it?
Well, now I’ve found out the complete and perfect solution for this problem.
This guide assumes that you have a running server, NAS or whatever with some shared storage running. Also, this guide assumes that the fileshare is an AFP fileshare. Although, using Samba instead should be quite simple.
Scenario
I have my NAS with the name “filecontainer” and I have created a share /Backup which I would like to use for Time Machine and other backup. Also, I have created a user with access only to this share (more on why later), also my NAS has 3 TB available, and I would not want it to be full of Time Machine data, so I want to limit this to 300 GB. Furthermore, I don’t want spotlight to look at this data.
Follow these steps.
For the steps in my procedure, you need to use Terminal.app for all commands. If you have no experience whatsoever with the Terminal, do not do this.
First, we need to have the fileshare mounted automatically when we power on the computer, so Time Machine can find it when it needs to. Do this by:
sudo vi /etc/fstab
Within that file, you put this line, editing the text that I posted in bold:
nas_name:/Backup /Network/Backup url auto,url==afp://backupusername:backup_password@server_IP/Backup 0 0
So, now you should be able to run this:
sudo automount -cv
And then try to access it, by:
cd /Network/Backup
If you do not receive any error, then try:
touch testfile ; ls -la ; rm testfile
If that works you should get a list of files 
Now, networking works. Let’s prepare Time Machine for what we are about to do. In Terminal, use this command:
defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1
After that, we need to have this enabled so you need to log out and log in again (reboot not necessary, although you can reboot to test your automount)
When your computer comes back to life, we need to create a “sparsebundle” in which Time Machine will store your backupdata. For this we need the MAC address of en0 interface, as this is what Time Machine will look for, to get it use:
ifconfig en0 | grep ether | sed s/://g | sed s/ether//
Now we’re ready to create the sparseimage, see this and read below for further info on editing the bold parts:
sudo hdiutil create -size 300g -type SPARSEBUNDLE -nospotlight -volname “Backup of My Mac” -fs “Case-sensitive Journaled HFS+” -verbose ./Computername_MACaddress
300g: This defines that the sparseimage can grow up to 300 gigabytes, meaning that this virtual disk will have this size (although, it will not allocate the diskspace immediately)
Backup of My Mac : Whatever you think sounds nice for a backup device.
Computername_MACaddress: This is important, for it to work. The sparseimage must be called your computers name, followed by underscore and then the MAC address we extracted just before.
Now this gives you some input, but in the end you should have a .sparseimage with your options. Move it to the Backup share on your storageserver.
To set up Time Machine, go to “System Preferences” and then “Time Machine”, choose your Backup share as the disk. It will initialize and create the first backup, this will take a while
Congratulations! I hope you found my guide useful!