Archive for February, 2010

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Log me in, Scotty

February 7, 2010

I’ve been using a remote access service for a couple of years now and I’ve been so pleased with it that I thought I’d give it a post of its own.

LogMeIn logoIt’s called LogMeIn and it does everything I need and then some. I get remote desktop access, remote file access, remote printing and even remote audio (assuming there’s enough bandwidth to make it tolerable).

One of the nicest things is that you can use it free as long as you like (though you do give up some features in the free version). I did that for the first few months to test drive it, before deciding it was well worth its subscription price.

I use it to get to machines in my home office when I’m at client sites and to get to client machines when I’m at home. I use it to support my neighbor’s computer. It works like VNC or WebEx (and unlike Windows Remote Desktop) because it gives you a session that’s concurrent with the logged in user, if there is one.

Naturally, it reminds me of Citrix‘ software. I’ve always liked Citrix’ stuff and have recommended it to corporate folks several times. I’ve done a couple of Citrix Metaframe deployments and have been very impressed with Citrix’ management software. For organizations that need to publish applications or virtual desktops to large groups, Citrix is hard to beat in my view.

But when I tried Citrix’ GoToMyPC a couple of years ago, I wasn’t too impressed. (As a minor point, I didn’t like the lame name.) After the all-too-brief evaluation period I was granted, I didn’t become a paying customer. Part of the problem was the price included things I didn’t need or want.

That’s about the time I came across LogMeIn and it was the clearly better choice for me. I appreciate that this market changes quickly and maybe things have changed since then, but I’m happy enough with LogMeIn that I don’t want to spend the time to re-evaluate.

I’d say the same thing about using VNC. I’ve used VNC packages in the past and liked them. Most of them are free, so they compare well to LogMeIn in a features per dollar contest. But I like the way LogMeIn manages multiple machines in its web interface and I especially like the security LogMeIn provides through the web portal. Again, maybe there are later-model VNC packages out there which provide those features but I don’t want to spend the time searching them out.

So I’ve been spreading the word about LogMeIn and my friends like it too. One day a friend and I were fooling around with it and got this great infinite series of desktops when I brought up a LogMeIn session on the machine I was working at. (You can do that, as pointless as it is.) This is LogMeIn running in Firefox using its plug-in.

LogMeIn infinite desktop screen capture

LogMeIn has been developing a whole line of products since I started using their remote access stuff. I don’t know much about those new offerings, but it looks like they’re expanding beyond simple remote access and support software into the VPN and desktop publishing arenas.

Posted in Geekery | Leave a Comment »

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A cabal exposed

February 7, 2010

Paul sends a link to an op-ed by Margaret Wente in The Globe and Mail. It summarizes some of the more dubious and fraudulent claims made to support the IPCC’s reports on climate change. RTWT.

The great global warming collapse

In 2007, the most comprehensive report to date on global warming, issued by the respected United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made a shocking claim: The Himalayan glaciers could melt away as soon as 2035.

These glaciers provide the headwaters for Asia’s nine largest rivers and lifelines for the more than one billion people who live downstream. Melting ice and snow would create mass flooding, followed by mass drought. The glacier story was reported around the world. Last December, a spokesman for the World Wildlife Fund, an environmental pressure group, warned, “The deal reached at Copenhagen will have huge ramifications for the lives of hundreds of millions of people who are already highly vulnerable due to widespread poverty.” To dramatize their country’s plight, Nepal’s top politicians strapped on oxygen tanks and held a cabinet meeting on Mount Everest.

But the claim was rubbish, and the world’s top glaciologists knew it. It was based not on rigorously peer-reviewed science but on an anecdotal report by the WWF itself.

One of the lessons I’m taking from Climategate and its aftermath is a growing disbelief in any objectivity at the United Nations. This may not be news to those who follow the U.N. but it seems even more prone to power-hungry factions than the U.S. government. (And that’s a pretty low standard for unbiased policies that actually, y’know, benefit citizens – as opposed to simply expanding government power.)

Until now, I’ve been giving the U.N. the benefit of the doubt. But no more Mr. Nice Guy.

That’s one of Ms. Wente’s points: a cabal in the AGW camp has destroyed a lot more than just confidence in their case for climate change. They’ve damaged everyone’s confidence in finding objectivity among scientists and among people at the United Nations. They’re making a lot of people look like the Boy Who Cried, ‘Wolf!’

I’ll bet there are many people now wondering whether any scientific evidence can be trusted. I wouldn’t be too surprised to find people putting scare quotes around the words scientific evidence.

That would be a very scary thing since we rely on technology to the extent we do.

Posted in Climate | Leave a Comment »