Open Letter to eBay: Your policies protect criminals, and you profit from it.

Dear eBay,

I have reported a crime to you. Not only are you ignoring this, and refusing to take ation as a company, you are also withholding the information I require to pursue the matter legally myself. Pointing me to your 5000 word legalese user agreement may or may not cover you legally but it makes not one bit of difference to the ethical and moral issues here.

You have a system that allows criminals to prosper with no possibility for redress for their victims. The simple recipe for the criminal is as follows:

1. Ensure your postal address is not your residential address and, ideally, use an incomplete name (e.g. A Smith, rather than Mrs. Annabel Smith).

2. Buy something on eBay, preferably expensive and easy to sell.

3. When it arrives, report it as 'not as described' and wait for the seller to accept a return.

4. Send back an empty box.

5. eBay gives you, the criminal, a full refund, essentially completing the theft on your behalf.

6. The seller can't make a small claims court claim against you because they don't have your full details, and eBay will help you get away with your crime by refusing to give the seller your contact details.

7. eBay will also charge the seller their normal fees, hence profiting from your crime. Apparently, that's OK if you're an international tax-avoiding mega-corporation.

So, eBay, if what you are telling me is that this is how your business is intended to operate, then we're done here. If, however, anyone in your organization has the smallest chance of thinking this is an immoral way to act, then please pass this case on to them for their consideration

Hello Libreboot Thinkpad X200

 
When it comes down to it, laptop hardware basically hasn't improved for normal research use since at least 2009. A 2009 Thinkpad X200 has a 2.4GHz dual-core processor (Core 2 Duo) and 4GB of RAM.  The GMA X4500 HD graphics is also fine for most research purposes. The 13-inch screen is 1280x1024 pixels, which is fine. Not quite as beautiful as a Mac Retina screen, but very usable. And a docking station, gives you a DisplayPort to connect an external monitor for desktop use.

And, my god, these X200s are cheap - less than £100 used. And parts are readily available and easily replaced. I bought one in great condition for £80 including a charger, added a new 9-cell battery for £40, and an SSD for £50, and it runs Linux just as well as my 2-year old Macbook Pro (before it was bricked by a criminal).

But, the very best thing about them, is that you can add Libreboot - a fully free and open-source BIOS that disables the worrying Intel Management engine on all recent Intel machines and allows for a fully encrypted hard drive (including /boot). So, basically, much more secure, as well as free as in freedom.


Although, I'm now thinking that I might go even further, and build my own laptop, possibly something based around Novena.

And goodbye Apple, too

So, this one's a bit more subtle. The reason I was selling the Macbook in the first place (see earlier post) was that it's basically a massive pain in the ass trying to run Linux on Apple hardware. The EFI boot system is non-standard, the retina screen is poorly supported, and the wirless card does not have a free driver. It's a shame in a way, because Apple hardware is beautiful, and really robust. But Apple, in the end, are not a hardware company - they are an 'experience' company - they want to sell you the hardware, software, and services package, and they don't want to give you the freedom to go things the way you want to.

So, give up on Linux, or give up on Apple hardware? Not a hard decision really. I don't want an operating system that requires I have an AppleID. I don't want an OS that thinks it knows what I want better than I do. And, even for the hardware, the price premium you pay is ludicrous - see next post.

Goodbye eBay, PayPal.

Recently, I sold a 2 year old MacBook Pro in good condition on eBay. The seller raised a fallacious case that it was not as described, and I reluctantly accepted a return. When the item was returned, it was a brick - would not boot. Upon opening the back, I discovered that the seller had taken out the 512GB SSD and replaced it with a 128GB SSD. It also seems likely, although I am not sure, that the logic board was changed as the Thunderport ports were misaligned on return.  So, basically, the seller is a criminal.

I raised a case on this basis. eBay awarded the buyer a full refund. And, to rub salt in the wound, they charged me a total of £81 on top of that (reimbursement fee, return postage). So, now I not only have a laptop I can't sell, eBay feels it's OK to make a healthy profit from me being a victim of crime!

So, that's it for eBay. And also Paypal - a payment system that makes it far too easy for criminals to benefit from this kind of fraud.

Linux on Apple - success

A while back, I wrote I'd given up on trying to get Linux to run natively on my Macbook Pro Retina. The killer problem was that it didn't work reliably with my Apple Thunderbolt Display

Well, since then I sold my Apple display and bought a 25-inch Dell Ultrasharp, which is a great replacement without the Apple vendor lock-in.  So, I tried Ubuntu again (15.04) on dual-boot, following the same instructions as before, more or less. Everything's been fine. I've been using Ubuntu as my day-to-day OS for a couple of weeks now, and slowly transferring files across.

Lookin' good so far. And, more to the point, FLOSS (Free Libre Open Source Software).

Linux on Apple - Fail

Over the last month or two, I've been playing around with using Linux as my day-to-day operating system - on a Macbook Pro. This morning, I came to the decision that this is not going to work - Apple hardware is not the well supported, even within Ubuntu. When it comes time to replace my current Apple hardware, I'll look at the issue again.

Moving to Zotero (from Mendeley)

Mendeley is proprietary, closed-source software. It also requires the user to store citation data on its servers, and was bought by Elsevier back in 2013. In contrast, Zotero provides similar functionality, and is free and open-source (GNU Affero licence).

Although Zotero can be operated as a standalone application, it works best as a Firefox plug-in. It seems to be a pretty good system, but importing from Mendeley, particularly if you want to keep your PDFs attached, is tricky. Here's how to do it:

1. Make sure you have installed both the Zotero and the ZotFile plugins to Firefox. 
2. Under Zotero configuration (the 'cog' menu), search tab, make sure PDF Indexing software has been installed.
3. Export all references from Mendeley using .bib format. 
4. Move your .bib file into the same directory as the attached PDFs.
5. Use search and replace to change the file links in the bib file (see example below).
6. Don't try to import more than about 500 references at a time. If necessary, split the file made in step 3 into multiple parts, and import one at a time.
7. Use the import function in zotero (under the "+" menu).
8. If you have standard options set in Zotero and ZotFile, the PDFs will have been sensibly renamed and copied into the zotero directory which is inside your Firefox profile). So, presuming you have a backup, you should delete the directory from which you imported the PDFs.

Changing file attribute
Basically, you need to remove the path, and just leave the filename. You also need to remove the ":pdf" ending. So, from this:

file = {:Users/andywills/Documents/Research/0 - Paper archive/Abeles-M0-1995-001.pdf:pdf}

to this:

file = {Abeles-M0-1995-001.pdf}