Every Operating System is Evil

How's that for an extreme headline. What I mean is every operating system (OS) locks you in and makes the switching cost hard, the cost being money to have a geek squad do it for you, or your valuable time if you got skills. Want to try a Mac but the data is hard to move from Windows? Or maybe you want to try Linux because it's free and sounds white and nerdy? You can, really easy, if you just separate your data from the OS. It's pretty easy to do once, and then it's brain-dead simple after that.

When a computer gets an OS installed, by default it wants the entire hard disk for itself. If you buy a prepackaged Dell, it comes that way. It'll make space for your data and applications along with the OS, all in the same partition, the drive letter like C: and D: in Windows. Data, Apps, and OS are put together in a mashup of folders. This is horrible! It's the proverbial putting all of your eggs in one basket. If the OS blows up, it's hard and sometimes impossible to get your data back because the situation becomes FUBAR. Your data is the critical information that needs to survive! An OS and the applications can be reinstalled, but if you don't have a backup, your data is sometimes gone completely.

And what if you wanted to try the new version of your OS? Like update from Vista to Windows 7? Do not try the automated upgrade! You must make a clean, fresh, install. And if you do that, won't the OS destroy your data folders? Yes or very special care has to be done, or new software bought. Forgeddaboudit!

There's an easy way to do this and I'll go through that in detail in another post. Simply, put your data and usual applications on a separate hard drive partition. The data doesn't die if the OS does. The data is untouched when a new OS is installed, whether it exploded or you got a virus. And the data can be backed up super fast by a partition or image transfer.

The catch is, if you buy a new computer, you have to repartition the hard drive to reduce the installed OS to a minimum and create a data partition. An extra step with a new machine but one which will be so much easier for you and save time in the future when the OS starts spewing chunks. See my sequel post, Part with your Operating System for more details.

Communications Revolution

I speculate how digital communication will radically change in my novel Entangled. Could this really happen soon?

You bet. It's the old adage about some scientists think they can, others think they can't, everything's already been invented, and so on. Quantum Entanglement has been known for a long time. Einstein called it spooky action at a distance (actually, it's an english translation of his german). That means that when two objects, like photons or atoms, are entangled, and one changes its "spin", the other object magically changes its own spin in exact response. Cool, I mean really cool. If it does work like I think it will someday, prepare for a revolution!

The first telegraph was based on flags. Different colors and shapes are a different message. Romans used this and navies adopted it at sea. American Indians used smoke signals. Not to magical, eh?

Even the first electric telegraph invented by Samuel Morse, of the Morse Code you may have heard, wasn't too magical. Electricity was well known by then and instead of a short wire between transmitter and receiver in the same room, a long telegraph (later telephone) wire was strung between two cities. People understood that, could physically touch it.

Next was radio. That was magic at first, the sending of information across the English Channel. No wires! Now that was cool, or like a college buddy told me, FM (fucking magic, but it really means Frequency Modulation in radio speak). Really, radios are cool. Your smartphone has one. WiFi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, they're all cool. You can search the web, send texts. Well, you know that today because cell phones are ubiquitous. But back before digital radio? We only had TV and radio (okay, I just gave away my age), and of course ROCKS to throw at one another, with or without a note attached.

So we have these ways of communicating. What happened to flags, and smoke signals, and radio. They're around still for special applications like sailing (flags), search and rescue (smoke), and driving (radio). Even High Definition television is still around using the old airwaves that analog TV used to own.

So what happens when Quantum "radio" appears? The old stuff will stay around for some applications, like personal area networks and GPS. But in my book I explore briefly the impact on the cellular market, WiFi, and Bluetooth.

Gone. Kaput. Did you know there are 4 BILLION cell phone subscriptions in the world? And what if each subscription averaged $50? That is a monsterous market worldwide. No wonder it's so cutthroat. Can you imagine if that disappeared overnight? I did imagine that in my novel.

So if Quantum Communication really comes about, I think it will decimate the cellular and WiFi industries. More so, I think it will free people from some tyrannical practices the service providers force us into, such as $0.20 text messages. Really? 140 characters for $0.20? That's skyway robbery;)

KILL YOUR SMARTPHONE

There has been increasing awareness that smartphones can record your conversation even when you have the phone OFF. In my novel, Entangled, Jason Angle uses this to do some investigation. Let's be clear about a smartphone being OFF.

By OFF, most people think that means when they hang up a call. Okay, let's use that definition. In this mode, you can still use your smartphone, right? Calendar, ToDos, music, they all work because your smartphone is not off, only the PHONE is "off." Anytime you see those bars, the signal strength indicator on your phone, you are connected to a cell tower (service provider, Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, etc). Your phone sends some data once in a while to tell the cellular tower that you can accept incoming calls. It also tells the tower where you are to within a 100 meters or so. And lastly, as has become news recently, an agency can have the tower tell your phone to send them whatever your microphone picks up. If you have speakerphone capability on your smartphone, this means you and others near you. Yes, that's right. Without you knowing, someone can listen to your conversations. And this also happens with your landline phones.

I used to design the chips, those integrated circuits, that went into smartphones. All this snooping capability is in software, which just controls the hardware at times. There are applications out there, like Window's system processes or Linux's daemons, that can live and run covertly in the smartphone operating system - it's just a computer program. They are like computer viruses. And smartphones are basically computers with a cell phone as a peripheral, like WiFi. These computers are capable of turning your cell phone function on at any time without you knowing, and send whatever the microphone hears, masking any visual clues. That's easy to program, really. The trick would be to get it on the smartphone without you knowing. That's another story.

By DEAD, I mean the battery is either really out of power, dead as roadkill, or the battery is removed. You can't use your smartphone to see your calendar, or read an ebook. It doesn't work at all. That's DEAD.

So, what to do? Even with wiretapping laws, some people and agencies don't follow them. Even if it's illegal, they can know what you're doing. They don't have to use that stuff in court.

I like my privacy sometimes. So if I'm ever anyplace, like a meeting with a publisher, and I really want my new book to remain secret, I kill my smartphone.

If you want to be lost somewhere or need real privacy, KILL YOUR SMARTPHONE.

Linux has its uses

Why Linux? It doesn't do gaming as well as Windows or Mac. Windows is the default gaming platform and will stay that way for awhile. Even Apple computers lag the gaming that Windows can do.

Linux is good for everything else, as good as the others, and almost always free. There's an application for everything that Windows has, yet they're named differently so finding them is sometimes harder. But your employer doesn't let you use an application you want?

So what? If you need to create text, multimedia, drawings, or art, Linux does that as good or in some cases better than the other operating systems. And you can work without being noticed, in private, do your own thing your own way. Put in an honest day's work and then do your work your way without the peeping CEO.

Take a USB flash drive, 1 Gigabyte is enough if you don't have a lot of data. Install any of hundreds of flavors of Linux on the drive. A good, small footprint Linux is called Puppy Linux. Even Ubuntu can fit on 1 Gigabyte with enough room for hundreds of megabytes of data.

Make your computer boot from the USB flash, and voila! Whenever you need privacy, reboot with USB.

An alternative - run Linux in virtualbox or some other virtual machine as an application in Windows or Mac. Easy to do. It looks like your machine is still connected with the employer too. But if your employer has a keylogger running, you'll still be watched. The safest way is to reboot into Linux, then back into Windows.

In Entangled, Jason uses Ubuntu Linux to work on a presentation to the Board of Directors while at work. He can't be tracked, traced, or seen if he doesn't go online. This keeps him safe from the prying eyes of his nemesis. Does he have a moral problem with this? Do you?

Entangled synopsis

In his first real challenge, following the mothballing of the company's highest priority research, Jason Angle finds that technical excellence can't trump political skill as he fights timeless greed to keep his revolutionary invention from being stolen from within.

After the death of his young wife, Jason Angle threw himself into his job with his research team accelerating the invention of the first quantum communication system. When his project, the company's highest priority, gets mothballed, he can't stop working for fear of spiraling back into depression. The continued work threatens plans of an ambitious corporate Vice President who tosses Jason into the middle of her game board. Dejected and uncertain, Jason realizes the gift from his short marriage is his best therapy. Unless he rolls his own dice soon, he may find he's lost the game, his job, and the future of all communication.

Copyright for Entangled

I filed for copyright on 5 Apr 2010, although the draft was completed in 2009. This could take up to 6 months apparently. Next is to get an ISBN.

New novel

Jason Angle, scientist at the former Bell Labs Holmdel campus, is working his heart out to achieve Quantum Communication for his company, Terra Wireless Products. Will he succeed before his invention is ripped away from him? Why is the FBI involved? Find out more soon.