In Boston’s Back Bay one of the best parts is to look at all the architecture in the area. From the old brownstones to the newer buildings there’s a lending of styles that is incredibly specific and intentional. But a store opened today that sticks out like a sore thumb on Boylston Street.

Before I show you the problem child, let me show you a pair of buildings that fit in pretty well with the neighborhood.

Crate & Barrel have been in Boston for years and their store on Boylston Street fits in beaitifully with the Back Bay. The glass front and the arches lend right in, and even with the bold company name on the black band you don’t have any problem with it being among the historical buildings in the area.

The Mandarin Oriental Hotel is actually still under construction right next to the Prudential Center, but it still fits in pretty well in the Back Bay so far. We’ll have to wait to see what happens when they take the posters off the windows and let us see inside, but it looks like the area took great pains to make sure it looked like the hotel belonged in the Back Bay.

But a building opened this morning that when I first saw it (once they tore down all the scaffolding and drapes that covered it while it was being built) and I my first thought was how in the hell did the neighborhood association and the city planning office even let the damned thing get built like that?

Look at that thing. I have nothing against glass front buildings, but did they have to do it right smack dab in the middle of a block on Boylston Street? Even with as little of the buildings on either side of the store that I have in this picture you can get an idea for how much it sticks out architecturally. And this isn’t about my dislike for things Apple, because I won’t tell my Apple loving friends to go way the hell out to the Cambridgeside Galleria to visit an Apple Store if they work in downtown Boston, especially since the nation’s largest Apple Store is right in Back Bay. But come on, that glass facade sucks when taken along with the rest of the buildings in even a four block radius, even if you just stick to Boylston Street.

Of course today was the grand opening after yesterday’s preview day for the press and there was a line at 6:30 this morning of people who just had to get inside the new Apple Store as soon as it opened. You’d almost think they were selling tickets to the Celtics playoff game, but the line would be much longer for that.

I did take one other picture this morning, and it’s another worldwide conglomerate that some people love to hate.

Say what you will about Starbucks, but when they built their Boston flagship store on Boylston Street they paid attention to the area they were moving into. Of course there’s the basic black, which looks as tasteful here as it does down the street at Crate & Barrel, but with the bricks around it and those green umbrellas out front it makes you want a nice sunny (but not too warm) day so you can sit out front and people watch.

The inside’s pretty nice, too, especially with some of the friendliest people ever to hand you a cup of coffee.

What I love most (other than the nice bold coffee) is the fact that they have somewhere that you can actually sit to enjoy your coffee. And I don’t mean just vinyl covered stool at a cramped counter, either.

Yes, those are some mighty comfy chairs. Especially for someone like me who has a bad back and a pair of bum knees. If that’s not what you need, they have some small tables that two or even four people can sit at, and I’m often seeing some people from offices in the area having small meetings in the Starbucks. And if you need to meet with a few people there’s something for them, too.

(I’ve been meaning to post these pics all day, but the batteries in my camera were a little too low and we finally got some new batteries for the camera.)

[Updated to include our IDs. - Peng]

Leonardo Gomez posted an image to his blog of some great Ubuntu IDs that look so good I’d like to get one for myself.

I need to find the source material so I can make one for myself. And yes, Nanci, I’ll make one for you as well. Updated 15 May 12:03 pm: D’oh! The download links are below each ID’s sample. The fact that the page is in Spanish threw me. Here’s what our IDs look like:

Get more information (en Español), as well as larger images of each ID, from FS-WebDesiGn. Thanks to leogg for posting this on Planet Ubuntu so I could find it.

Less than a month ago I told you that you could order your free Ubuntu Hardy LiveCDs. Guess what. In what must be a new record, I got mine yesterday!

The cover is even prettier than the ones for Feisty and Gutsy were.

Have you gotten yours yet? What do you mean you haven’t ordered them yet? They don’t cost anything, not even a shipping charge, and it’s the single best way to see how Ubuntu Hardy will respond to your computer. Just pop in the disk so you can boot from it and you can see if you’ll have any issues with your video card, network (wired or wireless), or any other hardware you have. It’s also the very best way to check out the open source operating system that so many of us are raving about. It’s a little slower running from the LiveCD than from your hard drive, but that’s to be expected since it’s having to use a RAM drive (it uses your system memory to run rather than working off your much faster hard drive). You can also install part of it to your Windows computer to check out a little of Ubuntu, although the better test is to run it from your LiveCD because then you’re simply running Ubuntu rather than Ubuntu on top of Windows.

So go ahead. Order your free Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron Live CD now!

A bug was discovered that made the random number generator that helped create your .ssh/id_rsa key less random than it should have been. What does this mean in plain English? It means that if you created an SSH key with Ubuntu Feisty, Ubuntu Gutsy, Ubuntu Hardy or Debian Etch you need to update an important OpenSSL file and regenerate your key ASAP.

I’m going to follow Philip Newborough’s lead and reproduce the security notice in its entirety.

===========================================================
Ubuntu Security Notice USN-612-1 May 13, 2008
openssl vulnerability
CVE-2008-0166
===========================================================

A weakness has been discovered in the random number generator used by OpenSSL on Debian and Ubuntu systems. As a result of this weakness, certain encryption keys are much more common than they should be, such that an attacker could guess the key through a brute-force attack given minimal knowledge of the system. This particularly affects the use of encryption keys in OpenSSH, OpenVPN and SSL certificates.

This vulnerability only affects operating systems which (like Ubuntu) are based on Debian. However, other systems can be indirectly affected if weak keys are imported into them.

We consider this an extremely serious vulnerability, and urge all
users to act immediately to secure their systems .(CVE-2008-0166)

This advisory also applies to the corresponding versions of Kubuntu, Edubuntu, and Xubuntu.

== Who is affected ==

Systems which are running any of the following releases:

* Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty)
* Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy)
* Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy)
* Ubuntu “Intrepid Ibex” (development): libssl <= 0.9.8g-8
* Debian 4.0 (etch) (see corresponding Debian security advisory)

and have openssh-server installed or have been used to create an OpenSSH key or X.509 (SSL) certificate.

All OpenSSH and X.509 keys generated on such systems must be considered untrustworthy, regardless of the system on which they are used, even after the update has been applied.

This includes the automatically generated host keys used by OpenSSH, which are the basis for its server spoofing and man-in-the-middle protection.

The problem can be corrected by upgrading your system to the following package versions:

Ubuntu 7.04:
libssl0.9.8 0.9.8c-4ubuntu0.3

Ubuntu 7.10:
libssl0.9.8 0.9.8e-5ubuntu3.2

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS:
libssl0.9.8 0.9.8g-4ubuntu3.1

Now’s a great time to update your SSH keys, and if you’re a member of Launchpad you’ll need to update your key there as well.

Big thanks to Philip Newborough and Steven Harms for posting this to both Planet Ubuntu Users and Planet Ubuntu itself to make sure we got this very important information. And as Zak B. Elep states in his post about the issue, this concerns you if you’ve created a key in the last couple of years. Ouch, indeed!

It’s a known issue that Peng and I would rather use Firefox 2 than Firefox 3 and we figured there were more of us that hadn’t posted our displeasure online. There’s now another person who has posted a less than glowing recommendation for Firefox 3.

Matt Hartley has posted his review on OSWeekly.com, and while he does mention some good things about Firefox 3, especially for Vista (and he has a fantastic recommendation for Vista fans), he has found an area where Firefox 3 has yet to give him reasons to leave his current browser, Flock: RSS, which still isn’t as nice as Flock does RSS.

You can read his entire review on OSWeekly.com. And thanks for your comment on Peng’s post, Matt. I’m liking the Bug as well.

The first Release Candidate is now going through the early stages of preparation in advance for it’s release later this month, and when I do I’ll be recommending a lot of you give it a try to see how it works for you.

It’s no big secret that I’m not thrilled with Firefox 3 and it has a lot of changes from what you’re used to in Firefox 2, but as long as you don’t mind all of the changes they have in store you could love this newest breed of our favorite red panda.

For now you can keep an eye on the progress of the first Release Candidate on the wiki. I don’t have a tentative release date for the RC, but we’re looking at Firefox 3 being officially released next month. Once it comes out I’m going to recommend that as many of you as possible get it and check it out so you can help see if there’s anything else that absolutely, positively ha to be fixed before it can be officially released.

I’d also recommend getting familiar with the process for transferring your information to a new profile since you really should have a new profile to use with Firefox 3. Even if you don’t think you’ll want to go back to Firefox 2 after trying Firefox 3, I’d have a new profile ready just to be on the safe side.

To be honest with you there’s one thing I like better than Firefox 3, and even better than Firefox 2.

I’ve long been a proponent of buying ground meat in multi-pound packs and separating it into meal-sized Ziplock bags before I put it into the freezer, but I StumbledUpon something today that is so cool I’m going to have to try it.

Not only do you put your ground meat (or thick sauces) into Ziplock freezer bags, you also separate each bag into individual portions so you can just thaw what you need. Cool!

The Lunch in a Box article not only has a picture illustrating this awesome tip, it also has the logic for pressing the contents as flat as you can.

Now I just hope I didn’t throw away those chopsticks the last time we had Chinese.

Friendly greetings! No, it’s not Torley, nor do I play him on SecondLife, I just love the way he starts most of his vids and since this post is about his videos I thought I’d borrow it.

Torley’s posted 20 new quick tip videos, plus he’s reorganized his list of videos and tips so it’s easier to find tips for what you’d like to do. There are actually some great new vids, so if you haven’t checked them out you should set aside a nice big block of time and check them all out. as always you can easily save favorite tips to your hard drive to refer back to them from time to time. You should definitely let your starting point be his blog post about the update.

Alberto Milone, the developer of the Envy line of programs foe automating the installation of Nvidia and ATI graphics drivers, is working on the next upgrade for EnvyNG and would like some help from testers.

Several bugs have been patched since EnvyNG was accepted into the Ubuntu repositories and he needs people to help test them so he can get the update moved into the repos.

You will need to have Envy installed from Ubuntu’s repos, then turn on the hardy-proposed repos and run sudo apt-get update. Once you have, and before accepting any of the updates that Update Manager finds, install version 1.1.1ubuntu15 of envyng-core. Then run EnvyNG, uninstall the current graphics drivers, and let EnvyNG install the new drivers for you. If you don’t uninstall the drivers before you install the new ones you will probably get an error message due to a known error.

I was hesitant to run EnvyNG since I had my drivers work well “out of the box” and there were some odd issues using EnvyNG when I was upgrading to Hardy (they’re all fixed now) but I wanted to help Albert get this update to a program I love ready to rock so I gave it a spin. At first I had some problems, but it was because I didn’t see that I needed to manually uninstall my Nvidia drivers first, but once I did EnvyNG with envyng-core version 1.1.1ubuntu15 worked like a charm. I definitely recommend helping test this update if you can, and especially if your video drivers gave you problems in Hardy.

Get more information and links to file bug reports from Alberto’s blog.

Well, not quite. But someone put together a pretty nice little video with pictures of animals (Cheezburger fans should recognize a few of them).

Big thanks to T-Gun for sending me the vid.

I disagree with a few of the editing choices, but I get picky like that. You should have seen me putting together my “West Wing” fanvid a couple of years ago. I drove my roomies nuts trying to get the edits just right, but I have spent time in video production in addition to my years as a sound guy/recording engineer and I’ve always been a bit of a perfectionist while doing production work.