1. The network sucks
True, the network is the weakest link in the entire Software as a Service design. But I think John fails to see that the companies who are delivering online applications are depending on this business model. And no company wants to have a defective business model. From the provider to the hosting company, everyone wants their products to be stable. Your provider will do their utmost best to keep you connected to the internet and your software provider will have redundant and stable servers.

For me, I have had more broken hardware keeping me from working than offline servers or disconnected internet access.

2. There’s no protection from government spooks
3. Industrial espionage is easy
Sure John. Whatever John. Let’s get serious here. Ever heard of SSL? Secure, encrypted communications from server to client. Despite myths and folk tales, there is no way to break a secure SSL connection. If the government or big company really wants your secrets they’ll hire a bunch of goons or professionals to get your servers, online software or not.

4. It’s too expensive
At first it may seem that SaaS is very expensive compared to software that you buy in a box. But you have to take a look at what you’re getting. You can never loose this software, never have to install it. If your computer breaks down you sit down at another PC and you can continue working. You sometimes don’t even need backups, your software provider has plenty of redundant servers, loosing data only happens when you screw up. Likewise, system administration costs go down. No (noticable) downtime for upgrade, no need for lengthy installatino procedures when a new workstation is bought. Expensive is relative.

9. Users have no control over versioning
Who needs or really wants that control? That is a problem no user should worry about. Online software implies that all users are using the latest version so who cares about an update?

Perhaps a list of the benefits of shrink-wrapped software should have been included in the article. Besides a shiny box that will get in your way one day and a ‘feeling of ownership’ I don’t see many pro points. The only one I can think of being the slightly higher processing speed, something SaaS catches up too with new software like Google Gears or improved browsers.

To me the many benefits of Software as a Service are obvious and things are as bad as John makes them seem.

Wikileaks describes itself as:

The first ingredient of civil society is the people’s right to know, because without such understanding no human being can meaningfully choose to support anything, much less a political system. Knowledge is the creator of every political process, every constitution, every law and every regulation. The communication of knowledge is without salient analogue. It demands recognition as the founding guide of civilization.

Be it an oppressive regime in a third world nation or privacy intruding laws in a western democracy, Wikileaks offers a place where one can post, discuss and analyse information without fear of prosecution.

In it’s short lifespan Wikileaks has already helped make public information like Scientology’s Prison System, US Iraq rules of engagement or the fact that the US violates the chemical weapons convention.

There is no doubt that Wikileaks will play an important role in the continuing freedom of information movement that is building all around the world. If you have any classified information that you think should be made public, don’t hesitate to submit it to Wikileaks.

Last february the researchers were able to bypass all disk encryption schemes by freezing a computer’s memory with liquid oxygen and retrieving the encryption keys from the frozen memory banks.

Contrary to popular assumption, DRAMs used in most modern computers retain their contents for seconds to minutes after power is lost, even at operating temperatures and even if removed from a motherboard. Although DRAMs become less reliable when they are not refreshed, they are not immediately erased, and their contents persist sufficiently for malicious (or forensic) acquisition of usable full-system memory images.

The source code that they used for their research can be found here.

Besides the Neo Freerunner itself, you get a USB cable, USB recharcher, an OpenMoko branded carrying pouch and a cool stylus that features as a styles, a ballpoint pen, a laser pointer and a led light! With that much features it must be an open source stylus!

My first impression: awesome! There is nothing more pleasing to a geek than to be able to SSH to your phone and run gedit (or any other X based application) on it. Heck, I even played Gnome Blackjack on it for 15 minutes! Would it run Frozen Bubble? Unfortunately no. There is such a thing as over doing it

I installed some extra applications on my Freerunner to add some usefull stuff. No point in having a portable Linux computer only to call someone right?

The excellent ePDFView is also available for the Neo Freerunner. Just like any other software package installation on a Linux based computer it only takes you a couple of minutes to get it running. Voila, a mobile PDF reader, with a bit of a small screen I admit.

If you checked out the Freerunner specs you can’t have missed the built in GPS chip. Neo Freerunner, meet tangoGPS.

tangoGPS is a lightweight and fast mapping application. It runs on handheld devices like the Openmoko Neo1973 as well as on the eeePC and the Linux desktop. By default is uses map data from the OpenStreetMap.org project; additionally a variety of other repositories can easily be added.

Installing tangoGPS is nothing more than installing a software package: piece of cake. Seconds later you’re tracking your road trip or Geohashing your way to fellow geeks!

Being an open source phone, there is no hack limit (is there ever a limit for hackers?). One of the things I tried was installing a different software stack. The Neo Freerunner is the phone hardware itself, the software stack is comprised of a Linux kernel (or any other compatible kernel for that matter), an X server and GUI programs. I downloaded a special QTopia version for the Freerunner and flashed it to the device: voila, QTopia powered Freerunner!

Being an objective, intellectual blogger *kuch*brag mode*kuch* there are some downsides to the Neo Freerunner. The current software stack is a bit lacking, it can get slow sometimes and at worst it’s unusable untill you reboot it. The OpenMoko team is working on a newer software stack, ASU, that will remedy this problem. Besides the software stack it also suffers from a general problem: the touchscreen. Don’t get me wrong, it’s awesome, cool as hell and crisp as a widescreen TV. But sometimes a lack of buttons can get quite annoying.

My verdict: Need a phone? Buy one from the store around the corner.
f you’re a geek, willing to wrestle a couple of months with a not so complete software stack and have tons of fun with a portable linux phone/computer/gps then go for it!!! Purchasing a Neo Freerunner will help support the OpenMoko project and things can only get better in the future. Perhaps one day phones will be as free as computers are today.

To ease the pain (or increase it?) I’ve been scourging the web for reviews, pictures and the likes. There don’t appear to be many Freerunners delivered yet (or people don’t find time to blog about it) but I finally found a short review and a list of gorgeous unboxing pictures!

In this series of articles, I’m going to turn you into a proficient awk coder. I’ll admit, awk doesn’t have a very pretty or particularly “hip” name, and the GNU version of awk, called gawk, sounds downright weird. Those unfamiliar with the language may hear “awk” and think of a mess of code so backwards and antiquated that it’s capable of driving even the most knowledgeable UNIX guru to the brink of insanity (causing him to repeatedly yelp “kill -9!” as he runs for coffee machine).

The printer that was acting up was a Dell 5210n, a huge black output monster that generally works extremely well, fast and reliable… except today. After all the standard troubleshooting stuff it still wouldn’t print (and even now it stills refuses). The printing itself works but there is a problem with sending a file from the computer/server to the printer.

Anyway, after an hour or so I decided to portscan it (this is a networked printer). Don’t ask me why I released nmap at it, I just did.

PORT      STATE SERVICE       VERSION
21/tcp    open  ftp           Dell 5210n laser printer ftpd NS.NP.N224
79/tcp    open  finger        Dell Laser Printer 5210n fingerd (Status: No Job Currently Active)
80/tcp    open  http          thttpd
515/tcp   open  printer
631/tcp   open  http          thttpd
5000/tcp  open  upnp          Lexmark C524 Laser Printer UPnP
5001/tcp  open  tcpwrapped
8000/tcp  open  http          thttpd
9100/tcp  open  jetdirect?
10000/tcp open  printer-admin Lexmark printer admin

One of the open ports is TCP port 21 otherwise known as FTP. Strange… so I ftp’d the printer and got a standard prompt.

Next test: uploading a text file Right after the file was uploaded the printer printed the contents of the file! That’s what I call hackable!

The Dell 5210n uses Lexmark internals and apparantly network printing through FTP is one of the features. I had never heard about that feature but it sure is quite nice!

Don’t know what Awk is? Let’s see what Wikipedia tells us:

AWK is a general purpose programming language that is designed for processing text-based data, either in files or data streams, and was created at Bell Labs in the 1970s^[1]. The name AWK is derived from the family names of its authors — Alfred Aho, Peter Weinberger, and Brian Kernighan; however, it is not commonly pronounced as a string of separate letters but rather to sound the same as the name of the bird, auk (which acts as an emblem of the language such as on The AWK Programming Language book cover). awk, when written in all lowercase letters, refers to the Unix or Plan 9 program that runs other programs written in the AWK programming language.

If that didn’t cut it for you, let’s have a look at a typical Awk program:

df|awk -v PCT=70 ‘NR==1||substr($5,1,index($5,”%”)-1)+0>=PCT’

This command pipes the output from df to awk. Awk then only prints out the mount points that have more than 70% usage. I think this example shows the power that is wielded by a proficient Awk programmer.

Feel like giving Awk a try? Then have a look at the Awk User’s Guide.

Perhaps the best thing about identi.ca is that its an Open Network Service, meaning the software running the service is Free & Open Source and the data it publishes is Free. Identi.ca runs on the Laconica microblogging software (source code) and the posts are available under a Create Commons Attribution 3.0 license.

Another compelling feature to use identi.ca instead of one of the other microblogging services is the OpenID support. Instead of adding Yet Another Account to your life, identi.ca simplifies your life by enabling OpenID logins.

Identi.ca also implements the OpenMicroBlogging specification, which makes it possible for other microblogging services to receive your posts. While this spec is still in its early stages, it looks promising and a large user base on identi.ca will increase the leverage the specification has towards other microblogging services.

So that are the pro’s, there are however a couple of con points I need to make. Being a new service identi.ca isn’t as well features as established names such as Twitter. The most lacking feature being support for mobile blogging through SMS or other mobile technology. Another less implemented component is the interface. It’s adequate but that’s about it. A bit more AJAX (a useful hype if you ask me!) and a public timeline that reloads every X seconds is a basic feature for a service like this.

I had my time on Twitter, slacked off a bit and now I’m on identi.ca, microblogging my life. If you’re microblogging then perhaps you should give identi.ca a try and enjoy your new found freedom!