aikiwolfie

CarrierIQ - FOSS Wouldn't Have Stopped It!

2011-12-06T16:37:00.001-08:00

There seems to be quite a bit of fuss going on around this whole CarrierIQ business. Specifically there seems to be some sort of misconception that a fully open source operating system would have some how prevented CarrierIQ from being used. What complete and utter nonsense. Lets consider how this software was discovered.

This thing was detected by security researchers. How many smart phone users out there are security researchers? How many smartphone users out there in the real world actually care what diagnostic software is installed on their "phone"? And now that we know about CarrierIQ, how many Android or Apple smartphone owners are going to do anything to remove it? Almost none is the answer to all questions. Just a teeny tiny minority of people using these devices understands the inner workings enough to even think to look for this sort of activity.

In deed one of the security researchers who discovered CarrierIQ, only found it because he was tracking down the source of some data packets moving across his companies networks that shouldn't have been there. The implication being if he hadn't noticed the rouge data packets. He wouldn't have found CarrierIQ.

Now lets consider how a fully open source OS would have helped. Could Google have reasonably stopped HTC, Samsung or Motorola from installing CarrierIQ? It's doubtful. If Google aren't involved in the installation of this rootkit then I see no way they could have stopped it. Even if it had been installed as a standard default app. Most people still wouldn't have noticed it. And even if they did. They likely wouldn't have done anything about it. The description would have read something like, "Reports performance metrics back to manufacturer for support purposes". Most folks would like then have considered it a necessary technical component and left it well alone. I mean I let my Ubuntu desktop report back to Canonical.

So in the end CarrierIQ would still be there. Most people would do nothing about it. As they are doing now.

If Google had created their own performance monitoring software could they have stopped this? Well no. Android is open source or at least mostly open source. And as with most general purpose operating systems today, Android is modular. That means any component can be changed out for an alternative part by those who have the know-how and will to do so. So Samsung and HTC could still be spying on you.

There is also another issue to look at. Data security on a network. How does open source software protect your data against monitoring once it leaves your phone? The phone companies know who their customers are and who's calling who, who's texting what etc. And it's not just the phone companies. Go talk about any subject or product on Facebook and then watch as the adverts you're served up on web pages match exactly what you were discussing ten minutes ago.

So what exactly is the fuss about? Are people still under the illusion they have some sort of privacy left in this world? Privacy died when the art of "data-mining" was discovered.

....

Just one more thing before the lights go out. I noticed a few folks crowing about how Windows Phone 7 devices don't have this rootkit. Well no they don't it seems however who needs a rootkit to ruin your day when Microsoft are involved. Sidkick, Office 365/BPOS, Windows, Xbox malware. Enough said.

Users Don't Know What They Want

2011-10-29T14:36:00.000-07:00

I was reading this article which quoted a comment by Richard Hughes. "User don't know what they want". Well excuse me for being to retarded to write an advanced GUI desktop on my own. But I can choose what to eat for breakfast in the morning. I manage to dress myself. Go out to work. Make it through the day and get home safely. All on my own.

When I bought my current PC. A Dell Dimension XPS 700. I did that on my own as well. I even paid for it. With a credit card. When I decided to make the move to GNU/Linux full time. I decided on my own to do it in stages. The first thing was selecting a GNU/Linux distribution. I experimented with Fedora and openSuSE. Then discovered Ubuntu. Now since I was using the hybrid hardware/software RAID array built into the 700 series system board the installation of a Linux based OS back then wasn't straightforward. Dmraid wasn't installed or configured by default on any of the distros I tried. And that's actually part of what drove my decision to go with Ubuntu.

Being stupid, I couldn't get dmraid working in either Fedora or openSuSE. Both distros use RPMs. Back then RPM hell was a term many people came to know. Basically there were dependency issues. Ubuntu with it's debs was better organised. No dependency issues. Although configuration was still a problem. But with a little research into the Ubuntu documentation I found what I needed to get it all up and running. Which meant I could now dual boot. Until that point I had been boot Linux from a USB drive.

So I'm not smart enough to write my own version of Gnome. I am smart enough though to know how to problem solve. How to make decisions. I know what works for me and what doesn't. Windows XP with all it's issues and problems wasn't working for me any more. So I made the sensible decision to find an alternative. What do you think I'll do now that Gnome doesn't do the things I want it to do? Maybe I'll find an alternative. It would seem to be the sensible thing to do.

When ever a software developer, a programmer makes a comment like "users don't know what they want". It's a clear sign something is going very wrong in that software project. Which reminds me of another comment I read once in a article. Linus Torvalds once said something like "he who writes the code gets to decide". Meaning ultimately programmers participating in free open source software projects are the ones who decide which features to include and which features to drop. Which is fine. Until that is the software you are writing targets a user group beyond other programmers. And that's what desktop environments do.

Kernel developers like Linus Torvalds have a certain luxury of rarely having to interact with desktop users. The concerns of the desktop user are rarely the concerns of the kernel developers. In a sense what kernel developers do is invisible to desktop users. So we desktop users don't complain very often when they drop or replace features. Desktop developers however don't have that luxury. As Canonical/Ubuntu and KDE found out. Gnome should be learning lessons from these two groups.

When KDE 4.x series was released there was uproar. The majority of users hated it. Some of there anger was squarely targeted at being hit with the unfamiliar. The very same issue we have to overcome to get people to use a GNU/Linux based OS in the first place. Anybody would think we'd know better. Right? A lot of the anger however was squarely down to the fact KDE had changed things too much. Now so far as I know, KDE developers aren't known for being polite about people who criticise their work. But after all the bitching was done they knuckled down and started fixing the things people were complaining about. As a result KDE is now a more pleasant desktop environment to use with some pretty cool features. Everybody's a winner!

Canonical has experienced similar anger spat in their direction for daring to force Unity on it's user base. Unity started life as the interface to Ubuntu Netbook Remix. And it's not hard to see why Canonical would think Unity would work well on a netbook. Small displays means you have to be economical with the display. Low powered CPUs meant not much was being done by way of multitasking. But on a desktop? These just aren't considerations that are any where near the top of the list of all the things to be considered. However Canonical would not be deterred. It rolled out Unity.

Most people say Unity was rolled out too soon. It wasn't finished. And indeed they say the same of Gnome Shell. Rather than bitching or insulting it's user base though, Canonical it seems would rather just make Unity better. 11.04 delivered a stale turd of a GUI. With 11.10 Unity was now running atop the new and improved Gnome 3.x. They fixed some of the annoyances. Made the dash useful. 12.04 will focus more on stability and polish. Basically KDE and Canonical listened to their user base. And because they listened they could fix the problems that were pissing people off.

Listening and understanding users is the most important thing a developer working in the user space can do. If your not writing software people want to use then your playing to an empty house. I'd hate to see the Gnome Foundation playing to an empty house. Gnome has been good to me over the years. It's been relatively hassle free. Simple and easy to use and configure. It's developers need to respect the users and listen to what they are telling them.

It would be a shame to see Gnome implode and be crushed by the weight of it's own foot print. There are plenty of alternatives. LXDE, XFCE, KDE and Unity to name but a few.

The Nature of Metro?

2011-09-28T13:58:00.000-07:00

A few posts back I theorised Metro was either just a new skin for IE and a tieling mode for Windows window manager. Well here's the proof.

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/window-on-windows/tweak-windows-8-to-remove-the-metro-interface/5077?tag=nl.e101

The registry hack to switch off Metro and restore the Windows 7 task bar with start menu has already been found. Microsoft should just be distributing this as a service pack or add-on of some kind. Not a whole new OS.

Ubuntu Natyy and Unity - Update

2011-09-25T13:32:00.000-07:00

The stability gained from removing MediaTomb and disabling the screen saver is short lived. So Boinc is going to have to go. Although I suspect Unity is the real culprit. I've seen some reports that 11.10 Beta 2 is quite good. I might just go a head and install that. Or I could ditch Unity completely. Set up the Gnome 3 PPA and install Gnome Shell/Gnome 3. Alternatively I could go with KDE or LXDE.

I could of course simply ditch Ubuntu and opt for Fedora or Debian. I mean it's not like I'm a total newbie dependant on Canonical doing everything for me. I've had bad experiences with distros in the past that used RPMs. So Debian might be more up my street. It is after all what Ubuntu is based on.

Microsoft Sponsored FUD?

2011-09-25T13:22:00.000-07:00

Well here's an unexpected blast from the past. Which looks like Microsoft sponsored FUD. Windows Phone 7 suddenly gets some press coverage when everybody else had written it off and considered it a dead end. Just like Sidekick and Kin. So why is cnet suddenly covering Windows Phone 7 now?

Well unless you've been living in a cave you can't have failed to notice the Windows 8 hype machine starting to roll. The thing about this article that sparks suspicion other than the coverage of a virtually dead and buried mobile platform is that it quotes a study. A study which claimed the majority of the smart phone owning public are considering an Android based device. But yet the author chooses to focus on the Windows Phone 7 numbers? Why? Reads like FUD and propaganda to me.

Windows 8 and UEFI

2011-09-24T09:06:00.000-07:00

I generally consider Windows 8 to be vapourware. There's no actual proper working copy of it yet. Although we do now know there is at least a developer version. Which Microsoft showed off recently. Which in turn led to much fan fair and excitement in some corners around the new Metro interface and it's Metro Apps. And I admit Metro does look good. So where's the catch?

Well firstly from what I can figure out, Metro is actually a new look IE designed to work with HTML5 apps wrapped up in an application wrapper. Which is actually how many Android and iOS apps are built. So nothing new there. Metro is basically a gimick. And gimicks are used to distract peoples attention from the small print. So what's in the small print of Windows 8?

UEFI is! UEFI is the proposed successor to the ageing BIOS. Microsoft is requireing that all OEMs and system builders participating in the Windows 8 logo program have a particular feature of UEFI enabled. This feature basically locks down the system so that it will only run approved OSs that have been signed with special security keys. Which isn't a problem if you're happy to just accept whatever Microsoft offer you.

It is however a problem if you like to tinker with your hardware. Remember you pay for the hardware. You own it. Hardware is not licensed unlike software. So surely it should be up to you what OS you choose to run? Well if Microsoft has it's way and OEMs ship their PCs with this new UEFI feature enabled, tinkers will no longer be able to use main stream OEM hardware.

UEFI with it's cripple ware feature enabled will require any OS you choose to install to be signed with those special "security" keys. Which poses problems for OSs like GNU/Linux and FreeBSD. It'll also create problems for project like the Haiku OS. A free open source version of the now dead BeOS. Developers of these operating systems would need to get every OEM to sign their OSs.

Which means at the end of the day UEFI basically excludes homebrew OS from being developed and run on mainstream hardware. Some people think this might violate EU competition rules. I don't know how true that is. What I do know however is that this makes me think Microsoft are getting really desperate and resorting to some of Apple's dirty tricks to protect their monopoly. Apple use a similar feature of EFI to lock OS X down to Apple hardware.

http://www.uefi.org/home

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/21/secure_boot_firmware_linux_exclusion_fears/

Ubuntu Natty and Unity - Update

2011-09-18T22:00:00.000-07:00

Just a quick up date. So no screensaver enabled, no MediaTomb and guess what? No crashing.The PCs been running all night quietly crunching numbers with Boinc. And it's still usable the next day. The system monitor does show one "zombie" process though, zeitgeits-datah. I'll need to do more research on that. But whatever it is. It's not stopping things from running smoothly.

How Much Is Gizmodo Paid For Fud?

2011-09-18T13:03:00.000-07:00

A few articles onGizmodo have caught my eye recently. Basically in all of them theymanage to mention Apple in a favourable light, support Windows 8 andbash Android or Google. Quite an interesting turn of events. NormallyI'd comment on these articles in the sites comment's section. But dueto Gizmodo's bizarre commenting rules I'm not allowed to commentthere. So I'll do it here.

The first article thatcomes to mind is “GoogleSMASH: Why No Industry Is Safe” by RobertoBaldwin. This arrived in my in box on the 14/09/2011. The basicpremiss of the article seems to be that because Google are soincredibly good at delivering what Internet users actually want. Theyshouldn't be allowed to compete at all. Much fuss is made about howGoogle have crashed everybody else's party and are playing in all oftheir backyards.

Which is true enough.Google were not the first kid on the block to offer webmail, on-linesearchable maps or indeed many other services that Google offers.Including web searches by the way. Yahoo, Altavista, AOL and manyothers were around long before Google as Google was around longbefore Microsoft's Bing. Of course Roberto has no problem withMicrosoft trying to crash in on the web and seemingly no issue withApple's iPod. Apple weren't the first to produce an MP3 player.Remember the Diamond Multimedia Rio?

One of the specificissues Roberto has with Google is they make things easy for people touse and do. The example quoted is Google's new Flight Search feature.Google have made it easier to use than the competitions web site. Soclearly Google are bad. Right? Well wrong actually. That's the natureof innovation and competition.

Company produces aservice or product. Company B sees issues with that service orproduct and decides it can do a better job. If company B succeeds inthe implementation and execution then company B wins and keeps thelions share of the market until company A comes up with an answer. Inthis way companies are forced to continue to develop better productsand the consumer always has a choice. So why are Google beingdemonised here? They've done what every commercial entity is supposedto do. Compete!

Other examples given inthe article include MapQuest, Firefox, Hotmail and Yahoo Mail. Inevery instance Google came to market with a better offering. Thecomment about Hotmail and Yahoo Mail stuck me as being particularlyodd.

“Hotmail and Yahoomail? Totally respectable providers—until Gmail. When Gmail betalaunched in 2004, it offered a full 1GB of storage, compared to thepaltry 2MB-4MB offered by other email services at the time. Now all aHotmail handle's good for is a punchline.”

First off all Googlehave done here is offer a better product. Nothing about what Googlehas done should have suddenly made Hotmail or Yahoo Mail suddenlysome how “evil” as opposed to “respectable”. Many Roberto wastalking about “respectable” in the other sense? Meaning they wereperfectly good products. Well no they weren't. 2MB-4MB even in 2004was incredibly limiting when you started adding attachments toe-mails. Just one or two e-mails could scupper your quota. Which iswhy I waited until Gmail came along before getting a webmail accountat all. Before Gmail, I stuck to my ISPs offering. It had fewer spacerestrictions. And it's exactly that 1GB of storage that originallymade Gmail so appealing.

So unable to actuallyfind a flaw with Googles products. Roberto decides to attack Googlesbusiness model. Now it's no secrete to most who are educated andunderstand how the Internet and how businesses work, that Googlemakes much of it's money from on-line advertising revenue. Indeedthis is a major source of income for Google. So naturally they seekto do everything they can to capitalise on that. And well with Googlebeing firmly based in the worlds greatest capitalist economy, whowould expect anything else?

Yes it's true Googlehave moved into many other markets purely to expand the scope ofInternet advertising potential. That was the whole drive behindAndroid. To create a mobile platform that would deliver on the needsand wants of users that would also enhance Googles advertisingbusiness. And frankly it's a win, win, win, win scenario.

Google gets a mobileadvertising platform that can deliver standard web pages and thusstandard Google adverts to consumers. Companies advertising productsget to advertise to potential consumers throughout the day and notjust when they're stuck in front of the TV or PC. Handset and mobilenetwork providers get a free OS to distribute on their devices thatcan meet all of these demands. Consumers win because they get a richuser interface, access to a well stocked application repository and ahand set that does more and does it better than before. In fact theonly parties that don't win are Google's main rivals. Apple andMicrosoft.

Now this is the realsmash. Google have built their business without resorting tolitigation to compete. They have invested massively ininfrastructure. Often driving up standards in technology. Which itshould be mentioned their competitors have benefited from.Competition is not a bad thing. Competition is what drives themarket. Google are forging a path of innovation. Others can jointhem. Or sit around complaining and become obsolete.

The next article thatcomes to mind is this one. "IfYou Already Hate Windows 8 Then You Hate Technology” by MattHonan. This landed in my inbox on the 15/09/2011. Now clearly anarticle like this is going to make comparisons. We'd expect nothingless. However there are a few things I don't understand. One of thembeing the need to berate Android and claim Apple has no competitionin the tablet market?

This is an interesting comment. Least of all because Apple's iPad andiPhone products have been given such a run for their money byAndroid, Android now easily owns the smart phone market and Samsung'sGalaxy S range of tablets were so enticing to consumers. Apple feltthe need not only to have them banned globally. But they tamperedwith evidence just to get the point across. The point being Samsung'snew Android powered tablet was so good Apple wouldn't have been ableto compete. So they chose to litigate instead.

A few other things I didn't understand about this article. How is itWindows 8 goes from being so awesome at the start of the article it'sthe only competition in town for the iPad. To not actually reallyworking properly yet and being a bit crap at the end? And yes I readthe “IT'S ONLY A DEVELOPER BUILD” disclaimer. It's mentionedalmost in hypnotic fashion by every journalist covering Windows 8right now. Well that's all great and everything. But what exactly is“sub-optimal” hardware? Is that maybe hardware that's notpowerful enough to do the job properly? Just what would be theoptimum hardware configuration for Windows 8? Surely Microsoft mustat least know what they're aiming for? I mean this new “Metro”interface can't possibly be asking that much can it?

And just what is this “metro” interface any way? By all accounts it'sa tiling mode for Windows 7's window manager. And you can only use itto run certain applications. Metro Applications. So not a tileingmode then? Probably more like IE with a new skin. Which sounds moreplausible given that these “Metro applications” are basicallyHTML5 web pages in an application wrapper. Hardly revolutionary.Other OS's have a tileing mode for their window managers and manysmart phone apps are just HTML5 in an application wrapper.

So the killer app Microsoft are delivering in Windows 8 then is aninterface for smart phone style apps on Windows 7. I'm struggling toget excited here. But then again according to Matt. That means I hatetechnology.

Actuallyit means I'm bored to the back teeth with Microsoft delivering toolittle too late and then buying media attention for stuff everybodyelse has already done and left by the way side. Microsoft aren'tfashionably late to the party. They're belligerently ignoring theinvitation and then complaining when they're left out in the cold.Microsoft should try doing something that genuinely adds value. Likethe way Sony has integrated it's new tablet with the PS3 and it'srange of Bravia TVs.

So far as Windows goes. It will always be fighting the reputationMicrosoft has earned. Please take not of that. Microsoft earned it'sreputation. Microsoft are big enough to play nice. But instead theyvery often choose to be dicks.

Ubuntu and Natty -Update

2011-09-17T04:40:00.000-07:00

So another day and another quick update on life with Natty. Yesterday I hit a new problem. Ubuntu kicked me out to the GDM login screen with no warning. I'm not even sure what log to check to find out what went wrong there. But logging in again was no big deal. I also had something of an epiphany.

When I upgraded to 10.10 I was running MediaTomb. Which made the OS somewhat unstable. Removing MediaTomb and reinstalling it fixed the problem. So for the time being. I've ditched MediaTomb. The improvements have been instantly felt. Boot ups no longer require the filesystem to be checked on every boot.

However I was also messing around with Kubuntu on a VirtualBox virtual machine. I'm thinking maybe VirtualBox still has some issues with Ubuntu Natty. It seemed a bit slow at time. However that may be due to Boinc which I also have running in the back ground. Boinc is next on the hit list. I think I may confine it to a virtual machine. First though I need to figure out how to make a minimal Ubuntu installation disc.

The reason I was playing with Kubuntu was because I'm thinking of ditching Unity and Gnome altogether and moving wholesale to Kubuntu. Which raised a question in my mind. Why aren't Canonical putting all their efforts into Kubuntu? KDE already does more or less everything Canonical are developping for the Unity interface. Not only that but all the effects and features of KDE are integrated with the desktop environment already. Certainly there's room for improvement. But so far as i can see. Everything Unity offers is already there in KDE. It seems to me KDE is a much better launchpad for Canonical than Gnome will ever be.

Ubunty Natty and Unity – Update

2011-09-12T13:12:00.000-07:00

Well another day andmore problems.

Firefox crashesconstantly. Why is this Canonicals fault? Well Ubuntu doesn't comewith vanilla flavoured Firefox. It comes with integrated UbuntufiedFirefox. Which might I also note didn't update to revoke DigiNotarsecurity certificates. I had to remove them manually.

Any extended period onin activity seems to kill Ubuntu. It won't even shut down or reboot.I keep having to press the power button to force the whole machine toshut down. Not good.

All I can say isOctober is feeling like it's a really really long way off. The silverlining is I discovered ALT+F2 actually does still work. I think I've going to have to keep a better diary of problems I encounter.

Ubuntu Natty And Unity

2011-09-11T08:28:00.000-07:00

WhenI wrote my last piece on the Unity interface I was criticised for notgiving Unity a chance. Which one could argue was fare. Unity wasstill in development at the time. Now that Unity has been the defaultdesktop interface for Ubuntu desktop edition. Introduced to Ubuntu11.04 (Natty Narwhal). My fears about Unity have not yet changed.

Unitysimply put is lacking in basic features and Ubunty 11.04 as a wholeis somewhat unstable. I've just noticed at some point the CDautomount feature crashes. Apparently this is an issue with gvfs orsome such. And lets not forget compatibility with MusicBrainz isstill broken.

Soto date what are the major problems with 11.04 and Unity.

CDautomount invariably crashes. There appears to be no work around orfix other than rebooting.

Speakingof rebooting. For the first time ever my system is now regularlyhanging on reboot. This seems to be a Plymouth issue? I could bewrong. But I've never had this before. All my hardware checks out. Sothe problem must be software.

Unityhas no way to clear the “recently used files” list. This is abasic feature that has existed on most desktop environments foryears. Decades! Even Microsoft can pull this one off without ahitch.

Unityhas no way of creating a custom launcher from with in the Unityinterface. This again is a very basic feature. A launcher is just alink of a sort. Nothing special about it. Why this feature isn'tthere is a total mystery. It begs the question which type of peopleCanonical thinks the Ubuntu community is made up of? The work aroundis to create the launcher manually using Gedit. Not really somethinga beginner would think of. More time than it's worth for a “poweruser”. I can see why people are abandoning Unity. Unity isn't evenaware /bin exists. Anybody would think any sort of “run applicationprompt” in Linux would at least be aware of /bin. But no. That'stoo hard. But it gets worse. Unity doesn't even let you type the pathname of your application. It just doesn't accept it.

UnlessUnity is made aware your application exists via the creation of alauncher, it's no dice. And unity has no way to create a launcher. Soin the age of the ultra slick GUI we're reduced to typing at thecommand terminal just to launch a simple application. And don't getme wrong. Users shouldn't be afraid of the command terminal. Butusing just to launch a single app is over kill. It's geekmasturbation.

MusicBrainzcompatibility is broken. MusicBrainz as I understand it was re-jiggedto be Gnome 3.x compatible. Ubuntu Natty is still dragging it's healsat Gnome 2.x. This is a major let down for an OS that claims to be“social from the start”.

Theseproblems might not seem massive. But for a desktop user they can beshow stoppers. When your music app can't even tell you the name ofyour audio CD or even mount it automatically in the first place. Itdoesn't look good. In fact it looks really, really bad. It's not thesort of OS you want to hand out to people. How can we recommendUbuntu when Canonical are getting such basic features wrong? Youcan't recommend an OS and then say “oh never mind if X doesn'twork. Canonical will fix that in the next 6 monthly release”. Itjust doesn't fly. The only positive note is Unity does inprovesomewhat in the future. It gets better. But who knows if Canonicalwill address all the stupid issues that should never have arisen.

Atthis point in time I feel Canonical would have been better offleaving Unity on the netbook. Developing it in the background whileusing Gnome 3.x for the time being. Unity just isn't ready formainstream usage. It gets in the way more than it helps. And whenyour OS is getting in the way of your work, play or whatever. It'stime to find a new OS.

Edit: Alt+F2 still brings up a run command prompt that actually works. Unity is damn confusing. Which brings to mind something else that's missing. An introduction to Unity and what it does.

Ubuntu Natty Alpha 3 - First Impressions

2011-03-07T15:30:00.000-08:00

This will be a short post since I haven't played with Ubuntu Natty for long. But first impressions are mixed if I'm to be kind. On the upside Ubuntu is still usable. On the down side, it's not what I'm looking for in a desktop OS.

The new interface just sucks for desktop users. It might make sense on a tablet where only one application is being used at any given time. But it just doesn't work as a desktop GUI. I don't like it. It's not what I'm used to and I don't want to be "converted". Imagine my eation then when I discovered the "Ubuntu Classic Desktop" option at the log-in screen. Then imagine my disappointment when I realised it didn't actually do anything yet.

Mono is once again a sore point. I just don't see the point. Mono doesn't bring anything to the mix that isn't already there. Other than possible legal troubles of course and a ridiculously bloated install foot print. So as you might expect I tried removing it. And guess what? Ubuntu didn't seem to lose any functionality that couldn't be replaced by installing alternatives. The applications I lost included Gbrainy, Tomboy Notes and Banshee. All of which I can live quite happily without.

OpenOffice.org has been replaced with Libre Office. Again I'm not really sure what the advantage is other than Libre Office has been contaminated with OOXML support. Canonicals leanings towards Microsoft technologies is beginning to annoy. I moved to Linux to get away from Microsoft. Please for the love of all that's still pure in the world don't drive me on to a Mac.

The Gimp was notable by it's absence. Which means I'll have to install it since I was planning on doing a clean installation for 11.04. It's not a hard thing to do. But the Gimp has been a standard application on the Linux desktop for so long. It just doesn't seem right it's not there any longer. I'm a Gimp user. So I need it.

The one thing that did really impress me with this installation was the new Ubiquity installer. Hopefully I'll have a video posted to YouTube soon. This is the one part of Ubuntu that has gotten better with every version of Ubuntu. This time around basic information is collected as the system is being set up. So it's no longer a case of collecting data and then copying files. Files are copied while basic user data is collected. Which does speed up the whole process by a few minutes. And lets face it. Anything that helps cut down installation time has to be good.

File Sharing Options In Ubuntu

2010-12-12T07:20:00.001-08:00

Since October was my last post on this blog I thought it was about time I posted something at least somewhat useful. As someone who owns several PCs something that interests me is networking those PCs together so that they may share files and common resources. This is actually something many people struggle with all the time. For those who can't solve the problem they may resort to cumbersome methods like using USB sticks. So what are the file sharing options available to Ubuntu users?

Well as I've just mentioned, you can use USB sticks. It's a reliable method guaranteed to work. It is not however terribly efficient. The next option involves networking and there are 3 main ways to share files over a network in Ubuntu. We have Samba, which is an implementation of Microsoft's networking protocols for Windows. Next we have NFS which is commonly used in most POSIX compliant OS's. The third and final option in the "cloud".

Samba
Samba is great. When it works. Not only does it allow other Linux machines to share files and other resources like printers. It also allows both Linux and Windows machines to share the same resources on the same network. Which is great. When it works.

And that is the biggest con for me when it comes to Samba. Not only did the Samba developers succeed in developing software that could network both Linux and Windows PCs together on the same network using Microsoft's SMB protocols. They also succeeded in reproducing the reliability of Microsoft's networking protocols. It could just be my incompetence. But frankly I've never been able to get a home network to actually work reliably with Windows and Samba has never work consistently and reliably for me in Ubuntu either.

I will however concede that there are many people who do appear to have Samba working just fine. Another advantage is that shares are dynamic and browse-able. By that I mean a new share will appear on the network as they are made available.

So Samba is flexible but not reliable.

NFS
NFS or Network File System on the surface looks a bit scary. Setting it up requires using something called the "terminal" and editing "configuration files" with "root privileges"! For the purposes of a home network based on Ubuntu machines it's actually very simple. Install 3 packages and reboot the PC. Then you can start sharing stuff. Which is where you need to start editing files. Well actually you don't.

Ubuntu has a GUI that lets you select shares for either NFS or Samba. It can be found in System>Administration>Shared Folders. In the case of NFS this will create all the entries in the /etc/exports file for you. All you need do is supply the basic information. The folder to be shared and the clients (other PC's) who have access to it. Editing the /etc/exports file directly does however give more flexibility and certainly isn't something any home user should shy away from. Simply make a copy of the original file. That way if you screw things up, it's easy to fix.

One of the biggest draw backs for me using NFS is that it's static or not browse-able. At least as of yet I haven't found a way to browse through a PC's NFS shares. Each and every share on the network needs to be "mounted" manually or via the fstab file for automatic mounting at boot time. Which can be inconvenient if you can't remember the exact name of the share. I also haven't yet figured out how to share a printer with NFS. If it's even possible.

NFS server and client software is available for Windows. However I've never used it and therefore can't vouch for it.

So NFS is reliable but inflexible.

The Cloud Services
There are at least two "cloud" based file sharing services that spring to mind when it comes to Ubuntu. The first is Canonical's own service. Ubuntu One. This is installed by default in Ubuntu 10.10 as part of Canonical's "social from the start" initiative. You do however still need to create a user account.

The other service and probably more popular service is DropBox. DropBox is the more mature and better established of the two services. Which means more of the bugs have been ironed out. I've used both services and DropBox is definitely my choice for the moment.

The thing that interests me most about these services is the ability to share files securely wherever there is an Internet connection. Not only do they share files but they synchronise them as well. Which means the latest version of a document should always be available. There is a significant limitation however. Cost!

Unlike using Samba or NFS to share resources on a home network using a cloud service limits the amount of data you can share at any given time. That's because the cloud services operate by copying the files to an on-line storage space and then to each client. This on-line storage needs to be paid for by someone.

Users do however get some free storage space. With DropBox it's 2GB and with Ubuntu One it was 1GB when I tried it. Which in today's world of massive MP3 libraries, digital photos and perfectly legally ripped DVDs isn't much. Once you've reached your reached the limits of your on-line storage capacity you must move files out of the shared space or pay up actual real money for more space. On a monthly or annual basis. Which means you're actually paying good money to access your own files.

On the plus side however these services do tend to "just work". Which is why they are popular and why people are actually prepared to shell out money to get that extra storage capacity. Cloud services are also said to have another important function. Off site back up. In reality this only works if you go to the trouble of setting it up that way. Remember these services automatically synchronise their shares. So if you delete a file in the shared space on your laptop. It will be deleted in the shared space on your desktop as well. However as a cheap off site back up option it's not a bad idea.

So cloud based file sharing services are reliable, flexible, browse-able but potentially expensive.

The Conclusion
Each file sharing option here has it's pros and cons. The important thing for people to realise is there are options out there. You don't have to stick with a one size fits all and doesn't actually work properly for anybody solution. My solution is to use a combination of services. I use DropBox for files I need access to when I'm not at home and can't connect via my own home network. And I use NFS for my home network.

I have chosen these options for their reliability and simplicity. They both "just work" and very rarely throw up any problems. Not having figured out how to share a printer with NFS at the moment if it's even possible isn't a huge issue. In the modern age why are we still printing stuff anyway? There's no real "need".

ConDem-ed

2010-10-05T15:22:00.001-07:00

This is just a quick observation. The other night I was watching the news. There was a report on the cuts the ConDem-ed government intends to make along with the welfare reforms. I couldn't help but notice everything major that has been mentioned so far will not be implemented in this parliament. But in the next parliament.

I'm by no stretch of the imagination a political heavy weight. But that rather seems like an ideologically driven approach rather than austerity measures. The cuts the ConDem-ed government are planning will be intended to last well beyond this and the next government. And there is one more odd thing about this ConDem-ed government.

Details. The devil is always in the detail. But the ConDem-ed government are very light on details. Before the election I was criticised by some for calling out the Conservative manifesto as being utter nonsense. All head lines and no substance. Those who would play devils advocate defended that manifesto, claiming an election manifesto should only set out the "vision statement". Well frankly that's just not good enough for me.

Before the election the Conservatives were pushing out some radical Thatcher-ish sounding policies with no actual meat in them. Today in government they are doing much the same thing. How can a government function for this long after an election and not have actually done anything? Why are the opposition parties holding them to account?

Something has gone very, very wrong in British politics.

deviantArt Munro

2010-08-11T05:38:00.001-07:00

There are people in the world who doubt the usefulness of the Internet and the World Wide Web. These same people are the people who are currently talking down the transition from the desktop computing model to the "cloud" model. They are also the same people who stand to lose the most from this transition.

I've read articles in the past that talk about the security concerns related to "cloud computing" or "fog computing". There's a lot of scaremongering going on in the industry and in popular media. And disasters like Microsoft's Sidekick disaster are routinely trotted out to add weight to the claims being made. All of those articles however ignore one simple fact. We already live in the "cloud". As I've said in various forums in the past, cloud computing is simply a return to the client server model where applications are hosted by a server and interacted with via a client. The server does the heavy lifting. The client provides the interface. This is how the web works. It's how it's always worked.

So why all the fuss? Well traditionally web applications have always been limited to the capabilities of the web browser. Primarily Microsoft's Internet Explorer which has been a ball and chain shackled to the ankles of the Internet since Microsoft forced it upon it's customers in Windows 95. But that has changed. Microsoft no longer dominates the web in a meaningful way. It's market share is falling continuously. New versions of IE cannibalise market share from older versions of IE while the over all market share for IE falls. Microsoft's competitors are stealing the march on the web. Apple, Google, Opera and Mozilla have all released HTML5 aware web browsers. And it's HTML5 that will set the web free.

HTML5 is what powers Munro from deviantArt. Munro it's self is nothing special. It's a painting application that allows you to publish directly to your deviantArt account. What is important is how Munro is delivered. It's free to use and is delivered to the user via the deviantArt web site. There's no plug-ins required. No installation required. No configuration required. No lengthy serial number to input for activation. It is essentially the ultimate plug 'n' play application. The only thing the user is required to do is figure out how to use it. Which isn't hard.

Munro isn't the first HTML5 application to pop up. There are quite a few out there now. Discreetly integrated into web sites. Users simply take them for granted without even noticing how painless the whole experience was. Because it was painless. This is how the web was meant to be. Free and easy to use. Simple and transparent. Accessible to all.

Why does Wall Street hate Microsoft?

2010-07-26T15:47:00.001-07:00

Why does Wall Street hate Microsoft? is the question posed on the Microsoft Blog. The answer the author arrives at, extremely quickly, is Windows is just not exciting enough. Hmm okay then. I'm no expert on the stock market or on how investors behave. But I think it's a safe bet they're more interested in the profit margins. Not just from one or two products. But from the whole product line. And there in lies the problem. With the exception of Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows very few Microsoft product lines ever seem to make any profit at all.

Take Bing for example. It was supposed to be the next best thing since sliced bread. It wasn't. Hardly anybody uses it and Microsoft's on-line efforts are haemorrhaging something on the order of $2,000,000,000 per year. Vista was a disaster and despite the supposedly good figures for Windows 7. The business world is sticking with Windows XP. Which is why Microsoft has extended downgrade rights to 2020. And Windows Surface was also essentially still born.

There was Zune. Which only really sold in the USA and even then wasn't so popular. There's the Xbox. Hugely popular, yes. Shame it's a technical disaster with at least half of all units sold at one point being returned as duds. Which one might think was enough disappointment for one product. But no. Microsoft had plenty more disappointment for Xbox fans. First they decided to lock out third party peripheral devices. Then they decided to cut off early adopters by ending support for their version of the console. There was the sidekick debacle. Then there was the still born Microsoft "Kin Phone". Which nobody wanted. And then of course there is a list longer than your arm of product lines Microsoft has recently discontinued.

All of which is very telling about Microsoft's understanding of todays market. They just don't get it. For some unfathomable reason Microsoft thought teenagers would buy a phone like Kin when they could have an iPhone or the HTC Legend, the Google Nexus One or the Motorola Droid. Even Microsoft's own Windows Phone 7 looks like a better proposition. Then there is the way Microsoft treats it's paying customers. People are tired of the 20 character activation codes. It makes people who have bought and paid for their products feel like criminals. So it's understandable then they might consider switching to Apple or Linux.

And speaking of the competition. When Microsoft's competition does something different, exciting or innovative Microsoft's responses are almost non-existent. Microsoft's answer to the buzz surrounding Compiz on the Linux platform was a new task-bar. Windows that minimise or maximise when you shake them or some such. Compiz in comparison has a multitude of features. Some actually useful in boosting productivity like the Negative, Opacify, Enhanced Desktop Zoom or Add Helper. Basically Microsoft are a company that doesn't have anything new to offer and always seem to be late to the party. And not even fashionably late at that.

It's not that Wall Street hates Microsoft. Wall Street just doesn't see any potential. Investors minds have been made up that Microsoft has run it's course. It's time for a change. For something new. Apple are currently storming a head because Apple has proven it's self to be a company that can diversify to survive and fight it's way clear of bad times. Microsoft innovates by buying up an existing company or product and slapping it's own brand on it. Apple innovates by putting a new spin on existing technologies and products.

Then there is the honesty factor. Investors don't like it when people lie to them. Windows 7 is turning bumper profits. Except virtually nobody in the business sector is interested and the whole of Asia is apparently pirating Windows. So who exactly is buying Windows 7? Are these bumper profits coming from consumers alone? Maybe there's some "Hollywood" accounting going on over at Redmond.

Wall Street doesn't hate Microsoft. It just doesn't care any more.

Ubuntu Tip: How To Synchronise Gnote Between PCs

2010-07-24T10:55:00.000-07:00

In the great Tomboy vs Gnote debate one of the trump cards Tomboy has is it's ability to synchronise it's database of notes with other PCs. Not that it was ever a feature that worked brilliantly. However none the less it was a feature I used and the only reason I continued using Tomboy over Gnote.

How stupid I was?

Ubuntu as many Ubuntu users will know comes with a "cloud" service called Ubuntu One. Which while isn't that great provides us with the basic inspiration for what we're about to do. You see Canonical in their great wisdom decided it would be a great idea to integrate Tomboy with Ubuntu One. Fine. Excellent. If it works. It did for a time for me. Then sort of went a bit crappy. However there are more mature "cloud services" available for synchronising files between two PCs. And that incidentally is all Tomboy's synchronisation feature does so far as I can see. It simply copies files that have been created or changed recently to the PC that doesn't have the new version.

You see all of the notes you create in Tomboy or Gnote are stored in individual XML formatted files. And the Linux file system has a crafty little feature called symbolic links. Combine this with a service like Ubuntu One or Dropbox and all our notes are synchronised automagically so long as we have an active web connection.

Prerequisites:

Tomboy or Gnote. I recommend Gnote. It's lighter and faster than Tomboy.
Ubuntu One, Dropbox or similar service. I would recommend Dropbox.

Setup:

Creat a new folder for yout notes in your Ubuntu One or Dropbox folder.
Copy your existing notes to the folder you just created in your Ubuntu One or Dropbox folder. Tomboy notes can be found in /home/your-user-name/.local/share/tomboy. Gnote notes can be found in /home/your-user-name/.gnote.
Replace the Tomboy or Gnote folder with a symbolic link. Open a terminal window and enter the following command adjust for your own PC;
ln -vsf Dropbox/gnote /home/your-user-name/.gnote
Repeat steps 1 and 3 on the second, third, fourth, etc PC.

NOTES:

It's best to have Tomboy or Gnote already setup and working before you attempt this.
It's also better to avoid using hidden directories with Dropbox. They don't work very well in my experience.
If you're using Tomboy but would like to switch to Gnote that's not a problem. Gnote is a native Linux implementation of Tomboy that is free of all Mono dependencies. Both applications use exactly the same data file formats and both offer almost exactly the same feature set. So all you need to do is copy the Tomboy files to your Gnote folder.

Digg Is Dead

2010-07-24T09:29:00.000-07:00

For quite sometime now I've had a Digg button imbedded in my posts. News aggrigators like Digg are great for driving web users to your blog. However for some strange reason the digg button isn't working any longer. At least not on my blog. All the posts show the same number of diggs. Clicking the button does nothing.

So what is it about the new blogspot templates that are causing this conflict with Digg? Clearly having a button on your blog or website that does nothing looks bad. So For the time being I've removed the Digg button.

Ubuntu Tip: Split Screen In Nautilus

2010-07-24T08:00:00.000-07:00

Way back in the days when I got my first IBM compatible PC running MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows 3.1 there was a feature in the Windows file manager I have really missed over the years since 3.1 became redundant. It's the split screen mode.

Well I shall miss it not a minute more. For Nautilus has just such a feature. Simply open Nautilus and press F3. Each pain can point to it's own directory. Which is handy considering I connect to FTP servers using Nautilus.

Password Protecting A Website

2010-07-21T15:38:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this more as a reminder to myself than for anybody elses benefit. Recently I had a request to add a password protected area to a web site I administer, www.aikido-gb.com. For some reason I had always thought this was quite difficult and needed experience in building on-line databases. It doesn't.

Adding password protection to an area of a website is actually pretty easy. Basically all you need to do is create a subdirectory and to it add two files, .htaccess and .htpasswd.

Setting Up .htaccess
The .htaccess file defines access privileges and the location of the password file, .htpasswd. It should look something like the following example;

AuthType Basic
AuthName "restricted area"
AuthUserFile /the-full-path-name-of-your-webspace/membersonly/.htpasswd
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName secure
AuthType Basic
require valid-user
order allow,deny
allow from all

An important point to note. The variable AuthUserFile must be the full path name of your web space. This will likely not be your domain name. So you may need to contact your ISP to get that information. Alternatively search the ISPs FAQ.

Setting Up .passwd
The .passwd file contains users names and passwords. Nothing else. The passwords must be encrypted. Fortunately there is an abundance of free tools around the web for this task.

userName:passWord

Ditching Ubuntu 64-bit

2010-07-20T12:24:00.000-07:00

Since upgrading to Ubuntu 10.04 64-bit my PC became unstable. Most of the time it was just innconveinent minor things. The clock on the top panel wouldn't display properly. However occasionally the whole PC would freeze. Especially when under a heavy work load. Couple this with the fact that Adobe Flash and Adobe Air have never worked to satisfactory degree. I decided it was time to go back to a 32-bit world.

What I had to consider was what I was losing and what I was gaining. My PC has 8GB of RAM. Normally on a 32-bit system 3.75GB is as much as you get. So I'd potentially be losing half of my RAM. But that was it. None of the software I use is exclusively 64-bit. Some of it is however exclusively 32-bit and there are ways around the 4GB memory cap in 32-bit operating systems.

What I stood to gain was a simpler installation procedure for my 32-bit only software and a more stable operating system. I use the 32-bit version of Ubuntu 10.04 on my laptop with no problems. So I already knew it was more stable.

To get past the 4GB memory cap, I intended to install the server kernel which has PAE technology enabled by default. However I found this was totally unnecessary. The desktop kernel in Ubuntu 10.04 comes with PAE support.

In the end up I now have a more stable PC. A simpler installation procedure for my 32-bit software. I still get to use 7.9GB of the total 8GB of RAM in my PC. Which is actually an improvement over the 64-bit version of Ubuntu. The PC does however feel a little sluggish at times. Particularly when launching applications. But that's a small price to pay for simplicity and stability.

Ubuntu Tip: Gnome Schedule

2010-06-07T13:11:00.000-07:00

Ask someone in the Linux world how do you schedule tasks to activate automatically and they'll likely start blathering about cron jobs. Now cron is a great tool if you do a lot of task scheduling. But for those of us who want something simpler there is Gnome Schedule. In Ubuntu it's bizarrely not installed by default. Why not? It's an insanely useful little tool that's easy to get to grips with. Luckily installation simple.

Open a terminal window.
Type sudo apt-get -y install gnome-schedule and press enter.
Start gnome-schedule from the Applications > System Tools menu.

That's it. All ready to go!

Why Fire Fox is not Doomed?

2010-02-15T14:41:00.001-08:00

Okay I was going to comment on the article it's self. However InfoWorld appear to be afraid of feedback and require some sort of lengthy vetting process after registering. Like seriously!?! What is that all a bout!?!

So Firefox is doomed. I would disagree. Google might cut funding to better support it's own browser. But then again the whole point of Google funding Firefox is to get the default search position in the search bar. So far as I know Google don't intend to exit the search business just yet. So while Chrome is something of a threat or competition at least to Firefox. It's not the end game until Chrome gets significantly more market share.

IE is an immovable object? Clearly Randell is deliberately ignoring the fact that IE is well into decline. It's only actual strong hold now where Microsoft can still feel safe is on the corporate desktop. Everywhere else is up for grabs. Which is why every other major web browser on the market namely Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome are all gaining market share while IE is losing market share. What's more these browsers are gaining as much market share between them as IE is losing. Which means they're taking it from IE.

If that wasn't enough at least 3 or 4 countries have advised their citizens to ditch IE and use something else instead. Then of course there are countries like Brazil where significant numbers of people don't even use Windows let alone IE. They're all on Linux. So IE an immovable object? I hardly think so.

As for the critique of Mozillas intention to opt for smaller updates? This is what the Ubuntu developers do. They focus on one major thing they want to make better and by and large deliver on their goals. That doesn't mean other things don't get fixed or don't change. Clearly they do. But the developers do well out of that intense focus. Which is perhaps something Firefox actually needs.

I also don't think it's fair to compare Mozilla to Microsoft or to compare incremental updates to hot-fixes. First of all Microsoft and Mozilla are two entirely different companies with different motivations and goals. They have totally different business models that dictate how much funding they can dedicate to a single project and how the end product is marketed.

Hot-fixes are also intended to be temporary fixes to tide Windows over until the service pack arrives. Again that's a different coding style from an incremental update. A hot-fix is a quick and dirty patch to fix a problem in the short term. An incremental update is something that is integrated properly to the existing code base. That is what Mozilla does at the moment. The fact that it might want to do less but do it better doesn't mean the product will suffer.

Ubuntu Targeted By Malware!

2010-02-07T15:43:00.001-08:00

Apparently some malware has been found in both a .deb file claiming to install a screen saver and a theme pack over on Gnome-Look. Which is a shame since I use that site regularly to find new wallpapers and themes.

So Ubuntu is now the target of criminals? All the tech press places all of desktop Linux at 1% of the market and claim in the same breath that figure is a generous estimate. Why then are criminals targeting something that has only 1% of the desktop PC market. It makes no sense unless Linux is much bigger than 1%. It would be interesting to find out what has changed the criminals minds. Are Linux users simply too naive? Too cocky? Too arrogant? Too stupid? Clearly criminals now see Linux desktops as vulnerable targets ripe for the picking.

This is both an interesting and frighting development. However we have at least exposed a vector of infection for Linux systems. Anybody could build a .deb or .rpm package file or even a normal tarball. Clearly without the protection of the community maintained repositories these methods of installation are just as vulnerable to misuse as Windows .exe files. Which is something many people in the Linux community including myself hadn't considered. Normally we tell people an installation script requires permission to run. So we're protected. The trouble is I don't think many people give entering their password a second thought when installing from a .deb package. Most of us simply trust them.

So this is a wakeup call to Linux users and in particular to Gnome and Ubuntu users. Be vigilant. Be careful about your chosen software sources. If you're installing something from a web site be sure to scan it first! Linux has a very good anti-virus application available in the repositories of most decent distributions. It's called ClamAV. While this is a command line application there are several front ends available. The most popular at the moment is ClamTK. Use the following commands to install them to your system. Remember you'll need to enter your password when installing software.

Open a terminal window.
Type sudo apt-get -y install clamav clamtk then press enter.
Remember to scan your system regularly.

There are other anti-virus scanners for Linux. They're not hard to install. Most come in .rpm or .deb files. The ones that come as tarballs generally tend to be binaries. So there's no need to compile anything. Check out this article for more info.

Windows 7: Internet Connection Has Died!

2009-12-06T08:18:00.001-08:00

Okay for some reason the internet connection on my dads Windows 7 computer has just died. Nothing I do makes it work again. Supposedly this was an issue on Windows Vista as well. Clearly Microsoft really has simply given Windows Vista a new coat of paint and then had the cheek to ask full price for it.

Some people have said Windows 7 is just a service pack to Windows Vista. I've even said as much myself. However the longer my family uses Windows 7 the more I find myself having to try and fix the damn thing. I'd say Windows 7 is actually nothing more than a theme pack for Windows Vista. There is absolutely nothing new on offer here. It's not even as stable as Vista. Why is it that a disparate group of engineers and programmers spread across the world can build and OS as good and stable as Linux but yet all the money Microsoft supposedly throws into R & D can't build a half decent desktop OS.

Yes I am pissed off as I write this blog entry. Just once, just one weekend I'd like to have to myself without having to trouble shoot a Windows PC. I don't get these problems with Ubuntu. Which is what I'm switching my family to even if they don't want it. Either that or they can pay for support from a commercial repair service. I am totally sick to the back teeth of Windows. Even after I stopped using it I still find myself fixing the damn thing.

Microsoft should be ashamed of it's self. It peoples money and delivers piss poor bug infested products in return. The Windows 7 Ultimate costs around £400. For what exactly? It doesn't work any better than any other version of Windows. It's shite! A totally useless pile of shite! The sooner the majority of people stop using it. Stop putting up with piss poor products the sooner the rest of us can move on.

That includes the OEMs! Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus, Gateway, Acer and the rest. Stop forcing this crap on your customers!

If anybody tells me Windows 7 was their idea one more time, I'm going to punch them square in the face! It seems fair. They inflicted this suffering on me. I shall repay them in kind.

Will Google Chrome OS Fail?

2009-11-22T15:24:00.001-08:00

It might just be me. I might be biased because I'm a Linux user sick and tired of hearing Microsoft FUD about hardware support in Linux. But it seems to me as though the pro-Microsoft author of this article is suffering from a sever case of the skitters.

I mean isn't the writing on the wall for Microsoft and it's supporters? Linux is not as they claimed dead in the netbook market. It's flourishing apparently. Googles Android was not a failure as many predicted. In fact Googles smart-phone OS is gaining market share with ever increasing numbers of handsets appearing all the time while Windows is losing market share on the smart-phone.

Social media sites like Facebook are becoming increasingly important to mobile devices. So important in fact apps on smart-phones to access sites like Facebook seem to be essential features to just sell a handset. However Randall C Kennedy seems to think Googles web-centric netbook OS will fail? He thinks Linux is fatal flaw number one? A web based interface is fatal flaw number 2 and an inflexible hardware platform is also a fatal flaw.

For those reasons Googles web based OS will fail.

Personally I say he's wrong and here's why. People love Google for one simple reason. Google provides insanely useful services to people all over the world. And from the point of view of normal web users at least, those services are totally free of charge. No costs involved.

The Amazon kindle and it's ilk are the second reason. The fact that you can't upgrade a kindle the same way you can upgrade a desktop PC hasn't stopped people from buying them. The fact that the Kindle doesn't play with an iPod hasn't stopped people buying them. Even the fact that Amazon can and will delete your purchases at will for whatever reason it sees fit hasn't stopped people buying the Amazon kindle and similar devices. All of which by the way run an OS based on Linux.

But it's not the OS that's important here. It's how useful the device is to the consumer and how profitable it will be for the vendors. Get those two things right and you have a product you can sell to people with confidence. I strongly suspect netbook manufacturers will put their own spin on the basic Chrome OS user interface as they have done with Android.

Linux as a "device" OS has in fact been extreamly successful. Linux powers everything from toasters and satnavs all the way up to DVD players, smart-phones, ebook readers and beyond. None of these "devices" seem to be "failing". Consumers don't care that these devices run Linux. They just want them to work. Which is a key point Microsoft apologisers like Randall C. Kennedy always deliberately miss.

People don't care which operating system is on their PC, their smart-phone or their netbook. What they care about is, does it work? Does it let them do the things they want to do the way they want to do them? Google are answering those questions. Microsoft keep serving up more of the same.

Now it's interesting to note that while Chrome OS isn't even completed yet. Microsoft apologists have it marked as a failure. Could this be to distract attention away from the failure of Windows 7 to convert the Windows XP faithful? Windows 7 has been such a great success Microsoft and it's army of apologetic bloggers are already talking about Windows 8 arriving in 2012 (the end of the world apparently) and even Windows 9!

It's time the Microsoft faithfull woke up to reality. Microsoft just aren't going to have it all their own way any longer. At least not by playing nice.

Ubuntu 9.10: 64-bit Installation

2009-11-06T08:06:00.000-08:00

Okay so I've just installed Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) to my desktop. It's not going great.

The first attempt was an "in place upgrade". The reasoning behind this was simple. I had a lot of notes in Tomboy Notes that I didn't want to lose. Previous experience has taught me that Tomboy Notes doesn't deal with upgrades well. However Ubuntu One has a Tomboy Notes synchronisation feature. So the reasoning was simple. Do an inplace upgrade. Upload my notes. Do a clean install later if I need to.

After the in-place upgrade was done I noticed the PC was very unresponsive. minutes pass by while I wait for the top panel menus to respond. I don't know what the issue is. But the 32-bit version running on my laptop doesn't suffer from this problem. But hey! No problem. I thought I'd just do a clean install. Same problem!

Now admittedly I did preserve my home directory. So perhaps there's some sort of conflict with my old settings. So my next plan of action is to wipe the system clean and start completely fresh. If that doesn't work I'll install the 32-bit version. Perhaps the 64-bit copy is experiencing issues? Who knows.

It's not all bad though. I have an SLI setup. Previously this would mean I'd have to use the text based installer. But this time the standard live CD handled my dual graphics cards with no issues. The installer can even deal with RAID arrays like Nvidia Stripe. It will even offer to install Ubuntu to the RAID array.

Considering very little seems to have changed on the desktop, RAID and SLI support in the installer would suggest all the big changes (if there are any) in Ubuntu 9.10 have taken place under the hood.

Edit 08-11-2009: As I suspected some settings from my previous installation were causing issues. With a 100% fresh install everything seems to be working fine. My advice is, do a 100% completely fresh install. Remember to back up your /home directory first and anything else you don't want to lose.

Ubuntu One: First Impressions

2009-11-04T04:44:00.000-08:00

First off, what exactly is Ubuntu One? Well basically it's a file sharing and synchronisation service from Canonical. The basic package is free and provides a reasonable 2GB of storage. Canonical claims it's your personal cloud.

So my first impressions? It sucks. Canonical produces client software for both Ubuntu 9.04 and Ubuntu 9.10. However support for 9.04 seems pretty feeble. There's no Tomboy notes synchronisation for 9.04 as there is in 9.10. Which makes that feature useless if your not the type to dive in and upgrade all your PCs all at once.

Even worse however is the file synchronisation feature. It just doesn't seem to work. This being the basic concept of the whole package anybody would have thought Canonical would have gone out of their way to make this work. But it seems not.

So far I've been able to get files and indeed whole folders to upload my Ubuntu One storage space. But they don't ever seem to download to the other PC. It doesn't matter which PC does the uploading. The other PC just doesn't "synchronise" with my on-line Ubuntu One storage space.

Now the client software isn't the only way to interact with Ubuntu One. There is a web interface. But then again there are loads of places on-line for me to upload my stuff to that I can later download from using a web browser. The point and attraction of Ubuntu One is the desktop integration. Which just doesn't seem to be working properly.

Frankly I get a better service using the 50MB of free web space my ISP provides me with. It's simpler to set up as well. All I need to do is FTP into my web space from Places > Connect To Server. No software to install. No PPA to setup. Just a user name, password and FTP address. It's also 100% compatible with both versions of Ubuntu I'm using at the moment.

Perhaps Ubuntu One will work better when I'm running Ubuntu 9.10 on both PCs.

Ubuntu 9.10: First Impressions

2009-11-02T15:36:00.000-08:00

My first impression of Ubuntu 9.10? A whole lot of people are interested. My first few attempts to download the ISO file resulted in a corrupted ISO. After waiting a few days for the traffic to calm down, I downloaded new ISOs and they work fine.

So far I've only just finished the initial installation on my Dell M1330n laptop. Since I want to take advantage of the new ext4 file system this is a clean install. To get all my applications installed and running I've created a script based on this How To from Ubuntu Forums. Personally I feel strong command line scripting is one of the greatest strengths of Linux. It just makes migrating to a new system so easy.

My laptop is equiped with an SSD. Which is why ext4 is so important to me. So far as I can work out ext4 has supposedly been optimised to work better with SSDs. Boot times are fast. Although I'm not sure if they are a massive improvement on 9.04 which was already very fast at boot time on my laptop.

Speaking of impressive boot-ups! The little animation that appears where the grub menu would normally appear is awesome. If that is the effect using Grub2 has on the overall polish to the OS then Canonical and the Ubuntu devs made an excellent choice here. It makes the OS feel like some sat down and made an effort to polish the final product rather than just make it work.

The new login screen is pretty cool. It functions very smoothly indeed. It was also a bit of a surprise. I can't remember anybody mentioning anything like that would be there. The new functionality (that I've seen so far) is purely cosmetic. However good looking OS that operates smoothly does make using PCs less stressful and irritating. It's reasuring to know that Canonical and the rest if the Ubuntu development team understands little tweaks can make a huge difference to the user experience. The fade to the desktop is very cool. Windows 7 does the same sort of thing. But over all I think Ubuntu does it better with the initial animated logo at the very start, through the updated boot screen to the very smooth new log-in screen, to the desktop. The whole thing just feels more polished than Windows 7.

The wider selection of desktop backgrounds and themes is also a welcome addition. Although I do get the feeling some of the wallpapers were grabbed off the web at random at the last minute. For some reason they just don't seem to fit with the prodominantly dark brown earthy window themes. Just five more minutes of effort could have avoided that. But it's easily fixed.

A big dissapointment was the restricted drivers manager. For some reason it just doesn't seem to work. I had to install my Nvidia drivers from Synaptic manually. Something for Canonical to work on for 10.04.

My next task is to migrate all of my personal data back to my laptop. Which won't be too hard as I don't keep much on the laptop anyway.

Update 03-11-2009: Added link to Ubuntu Forums. Forgot to do that. DOH! http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=766683

Update 04-11-2009: Some videos to make life more interesting.

PC Gamers Need To Vote!

2009-10-17T14:21:00.001-07:00

I've just been to Dells IdeaStorm web site and submitted an idea asking Dell to help the PC gaming industry establish a long term base level of hardware to help bolster the PC gaming industry and pull it out of decline. I'll post the text of the idea below. But first let me say PC gamers need to do something to push the hardware and software industry together to establish a base level of hardware that will support all games at decent settings.

When developers develop for the Wii or Playstation they know it's a long term commitment. The hardware will be supported for at least the next 5 to 10 years. It takes on average 3 to 5 years to develop, test and polish a major gaming title. If not, then longer. Microsoft want to refresh Windows every 2 to 3 years. As we've seen with Vista there is no guarantee of backwards compatibility.

So a game which started development with one Windows platform in mind might suddenly become usless unless the developers alter the game to support the new platform. This is very costly and time consuming. We need a better solution for PC gaming than Windows!

The Dell IdeaStorm post: Establish A Base Level For PC Gaming Hardware.

Ever since games consoles could hold their own against the processing muscle of the PC, the PC gaming industry has been in decline. There are a number of reasons for this. Which I will detail below.

1) The PC as a gaming platform shifts far too rapidly for games developers to keep up with. There is no base level of hardware to target. This makes it very difficult and costly for games developers to develop for the PC.

When a games developer target the Playstation, they know the hardware spec will be good for at least 5 to 10 years. Typically it can take 3 to 5 years just to develop, test and polish a game for distribution. So an unchanging stable platform is absolutely essential!

2) Security is an issue!!! Increasingly modern games are becoming on-line affairs. We no longer pit our wits against AI. We join virtual battle with each other. However PC gamers are at a disadvantage. Windows.

Making Windows secure for on-line activities can be a costly business. PC gamers take a hit in the wallet and performance of their gaming rigs. As though Windows it's self wasn't enough of a resource hog. PC gamers need to shell out for anti-virus software, anti-malware software, spam filters and firewalls.

Now it's true all this software can be had for free. But the free versions are always crippled in some way. They're never as fully functional as their paid for equivalents. Even worse! Some malware has now started pretending to me anti-malware! Gamers who get duped risk losing their passwords and privet details. Including payment details. Credit card numbers, bank account numbers and the like. The potential for fraud here is massive!

The solution is quite simple and one the likes of Sony has been using for years now. Don't use Windows for gaming. The Sony Playstation doesn't use Windows as it's OS. But the games run just fine all the same. The graphics are excellent and the games have on-line connectivity. Nobody seems to be worried about viruses or malware.

Dell already supports Ubuntu. The World of Goo and the Penumbra Trilogy both run flawlessly on Linux and sold well. It might be an old game now but Doom 3 runs perfect with no loss of detail or functionality. Clearly Linux can handle complex and demanding on-line multi-player games.

A secure PC platform for gamers is essential! That security shouldn't bring with it a performance cost. Gamers should not be installing additional software just to make their gaming rigs secure. Linux is the answer.

3) Performance and Stability. Anybody who has played a game on Windows knows the frustration of BSODs at just the wrong moment. It's unacceptable. All gamers also know the reason they need PCs with fans so loud they are in danger of suffering industrial deafness is because Windows needs a reasonably beefy system just for its' self if its' to be responsive and sprightly.

Adding a demanding game with high resolution graphics and a web connection adds a load Windows often just can't handle. So Windows throws it's hands in the air and hides behind a BSOD. The problem is resource management. Windows just can't do it well enough.

Linux on the other hand does a much better job out of the box. No tweaking. No over clocking to squeeze some sort of performance out of the processors. No industrial refrigeration required. That doesn't mean Linux can run Halo on the BBC Micro. But it does mean more of the systems resources are freed to help the game run smoother with greater stability.

But even Linux software crashes sometimes. So what then? Well Linux crashes in a graceful manner. Normally the app will simply shut down and the user will return to the desktop. In very bad crashes the user will be kicked out to the log-in screen. However the system will almost never lock up completely in a BSOD like scenario no matter how badly the game is written.

A robust OS like Linux is essential for high-end demanding games. Linux is that OS.

Dell needs to serve its' gamers better. Help the PC industry establish a base level of hardware by producing a gaming rig and commiting to that hardware spec for 5 to 10 years. Preferably 10 years.

Choose hardware that is Linux compatible. The XPS 700 series is already Linux compatible. This will allow the industry and gamers to choose their OS. Gamers who want more security and performance can choose Linux. Gamers who want to be compatible with yesterday can choose Windows. Or we can dual boot and be compatible with everything.

Don't be Gartner Sheep!

2009-10-17T13:03:00.001-07:00

Okay I'm confused. But since when was it written in law that people or businesses absolutely had to refresh their hardware? Surely it's good business sense to only buy what you need? Right?

Apparently not. Gartner has decided it's time we all bought new PCs. Why exactly? Well obviously because Microsoft are bring out Windows 7. Since nobody bought Windows Vista it's time we upgraded right?

Wrong! The time to upgrade or refresh is when you can predict your current IT investment is no longer going to meet your needs. How close you can wait until that time comes depends on how large your organisation is and how efficently it can move through the refresh cycle. A single person working self employed can make the transition in as little as a few hours. Larger business will take days to weeks. While other will take months or even as much as a year or more for full deployment of a new operating system.

So given that this guilt trip induced refresh can be so costly in terms of money, lost man hours and man hours expended on the refresh, what is the single most crucial question to ask? What's in it for me? What will Windows 7 deliver that other operating systems can't? Is it security? Better resource management? Cloud connectivity and integration?

Do you really want to trust a Microsoft cloud solution after the Sidekick debacle?

One of the most recently touted selling points for Windows 7 has been it's ability to run Windows XP software. This might come as a shock to some. Windows XP runs Windows XP software! But if you're running a business and you're gullable enough to follow the fasion trends the like of Gartner demand then at least look around before commiting all your money to Microsoft.

There are alternative options out there. Some other operating systems also run Windows XP software. Intall WINE on an Ubuntu desktop or laptop and it'll run most XP software just fine. It might struggle with MS Office. However OpenOffice.org comes pre-bundled with Ubuntu. For free!

So please do consider refreshing your hardware and software. But when you do. Ask yourself what your business really needs. Do you need Windows 7? Would a cloud solution be better? Could you ditch the Microsoft lock-in cycle all together and use something completly different? What software do you use? What do you use it for? Is it unique? Could you migrate? Would migration save you money? How much money? Will Windows 7 be good value for money? Windows needs licences, Ubuntu doesn't. Can you reuse your old hardware?

Can you save money on an IT refresh during a recession?

Consider your options people! Don't be sheep!

How Bad Is The Malware Issue?

2009-10-11T08:52:00.000-07:00

Okay this is just a quick post to pose the question. Just how bad is the malware problem really? It's a fair question to ask. Indeed a very important question to ask since some pundits claim 9 in every 10 PCs sold in the world has Microsoft Windows pre-installed.

That's a lot of PCs running an OS that is not only the prime target for criminals, but has also been criticised time and again for being too lax with security. As people depend on their PCs more and more for essential basic services in modern life like banking, security becomes a major issue. One that flies in the face of conventional wisdom.

Traditionally home users have taken second place in the security stakes. Especially on the Microsoft Windows platform. Without third-party products, which cost extra to the consumer, Windows is wide open. Windows 7 clearly doesn't address this security issue. If it did Microsoft would be pushing their "Security Essentials" free product. Well at least it's free.

But back to my question. How bad is the malware issue? Well since subscribing to the Avira Anti-Virus update notifications about a year ago I've had 1573 update notifications. The vast majority of which are simply virus definition updates. None of these notifications are duplicates. 1573 from 1st October 2008 until 9th October 2009.

My advice to anybody using the web to do essential things like banking is to use a secure platform. Windows is not that platform. It's just to big a target with too many holes.

Desktop Linux Is Ready!

2009-10-10T07:05:00.000-07:00

For a long time Linux was criticised as being too complicated and difficult for non-technical people to use. Personally I don't think that was ever really the case. I mean if Linux came pre-installed like Windows then the OEM would tweak it and install it to suit their hardware.

However Canonical has gone out of it's way now to prove to bury this myth once and for all. Take a look at the installation slide show for Ubuntu 9.10. Linux is ready for the desktop. It's ready for the mass market. It's ready for anybody that wants to use it. It doesn't matter if it's pre-installed or installed after market.

With respect to the basic installation, Ubuntu is now on par with Windows XP, Vista and even Windows 7. After the compiz effects have been enabled Ubuntu goes well beyond what Windows 7 is offering in terms of entertaining and useful desktop effects. And lets not forget the host of free software applications available directly from Canonicals Ubuntu repositories. Which contain everything from games to office productivity suits to web browsers to e-mail clients to extremely powerful tools for ICT professionals.

Ubuntu is also an OS well suited to "power users" with it's extremely high degree of customisability. There's nothing that can't be changed or tweaked. You can even change the entire desktop environment!

Now since Windows 7 has been available for testing many different sources have been quoting "boot times" of 20 to 30 seconds for Windows 7. It's become something of a selling point due to the fact Vista was so slow and a 6 month old installation of XP crawled along at a snails pace.

Well a default installation of Ubuntu 9.04 boots in around 15 to 20 seconds. From a cold start. Potentially 5 to 10 seconds faster than Microsofts latest and greatest Windows 7. The "boot times" for which by the way are actually restore from hibernation times!

At the time of writing, 10th October 2009, we're about 19 days from the final release of Ubuntu 9.10. Windows 7 will be out on October 22nd 2009. Ubuntu 9.10 has already been quoted as being able to boot from a cold start in 5 seconds when installed to an SSD.

So desktop Linux can now claim feature parity with desktop Windows. And as an added bonus it can also claim faster boot times as well as many other advantages. Linux is ready! Ubuntu is ready!

Microsoft and Apple are not the only game in town any longer!

http://www.workswithu.com/2009/10/09/installer-slideshow-in-ubuntu-910-helps-new-users/

In the time it takes your computer to boot up ...

2009-10-03T12:04:00.001-07:00

"In the time it takes your computer to boot up ..." is a phrase I have heard over and over. What people should be saying is "in the time it takes Microsoft Windows to boot up you could go make a cup of tea, some toast, cook a Sunday lunch and dash out to the shops." This generalisation bothers me. It bothers me because not all computers are the same. They might contain the same hardware. But the software that makes that hardware do useful things makes all the difference.

Even with Linux, which generally boots fairly quickly the hardware and software setup makes all the difference. With an SSD drive at it's disposal Ubuntu 9.10 will boot in 5 seconds. Without the SSD drive it will be more like 10 to 15 seconds. The last time I tested Windows 7 Beta 1 on my Dell XPS 720, which has an Intel Core 2 Quad CPU runnung at 2.66 GHz and 8 GB of RAM, I was still counting Windows boot times from a cold start in minutes. Ubuntu 9.04 boots in 15 to 20 seconds on the same machine.

So bloggers and particuarly Priya Ganapati who is the latest offender to annoy me with this rediculous generalisation. Get it right! If you're talking about Windows PCs then say so. If your talking about Macs? Say so. If you're talking about Linux based PCs. Say so!

This is an important distinction to make. The PC landscape is changing rapidly. New OS players are coming into the market and they're all fighting for their slice of the pie. People tend to look to the media, blogs, forums etc to help them understand and figure out the differences between new products coming to the market. So it's important to get it right. Slow boot times are no longer an issue for everybody.

Apple seems to be able to do no wrong. Even though some of their business practices are worse than Microsofts'. Google is trying to muscle in with Android and Chrome OS. Both Linux based OSs. And of course we can't forget Linux it's self. Ubuntu is making good ground. Canonical, the parent developers of Ubuntu, are gaining support from the likes of IBM, Intel, Dell, HP and Sun Microsystems. All big names with interests in making Linux success.

So in the time it takes your PC to boot. Try and see if you can figure out with OS you're running!

Ubuntu Tip: Simple Backup Command Using CP

2009-09-27T12:30:00.000-07:00

Backing up your computers hard drive is extremely important. Should the worst happen and you lose all of your important data, you need a way back. While there are many excellent utilities in the Ubuntu repositories that handle partial and full system backups. Sometimes a simpler solution is all that is needed.

Fortunately Ubuntu and Linux in general in fact comes with everything you need in the for of the very simple but also extremely powerful cp command. In case you haven't figured it out yet, cp is Linux command line speak for copy. The examples below will show you how to use cp to back up your entire system.

sudo cp -r -u -x -v [source directory] [destination directory]

Example 1:
sudo cp -r -u -x -v /home/ /media/MY_USB_DRIVE

sudo: Gives temporary root privileges.

cp: Linux command line copy command.

-r: Used with cp this switch causes cp to copy directory content recursively. Meaning it will copy all files and subdirectories in the directory being copied.

-u: Used with cp this switch causes cp to only copy files that have changed or don't already exist at the destination.

-x: Used with cp this switch stops cp jumping to other file systems which it will do if it encounters hard links or symbolic links.

This switch also stops cp eating it's tail if you choose to back up your entire system. See examples 2 and 3 below.

-v: Used with cp this switch cause cp to give feed back on what's happening.

Full System Backup With CP
If we wish to perform a full system backup then we might feel inclined to use a command similar to that in Example 2 below. The trouble is without the -x switch cp will also attempt to backup the backup to the backup. Basically eating it's own tail in a never ending loop until all disk space is used up.

This happens because all other file systems are mounted to a location branching from the root file system. So if root is / then home is mounted to /home. Within Ubuntu all USB drives tend to be mounted to /media/a_USB_drive, etc.

However with the -x switch the command in example 2 will not be enough to back up the entire system if there are several storage devices or file systems mounted to different mount points. To get around this problem we must write a small script that will backup each file system separately. Example 3 shows a small example where the root files system / and /home are backed up separately.

Example 2:
sudo cp -r -u -v / /media/MY_USB_DRIVE

Example 3:
#!/bin/sh
#
# cp based backup script.
#
sudo cp -r -u -x -v / /media/MY_USB_DRIVE
sudo cp -r -u -x -v /home/ /media/MY_USB_DRIVE

This script can be created in any text editor like gedit or nano. After the script has been saved it must be given permission to be run as a program. Example 4 shows the command needed to change to the directory/folder where the script is stored. How to apply execute permissions and how to run the script.

Example 4:
First open a terminal window if you haven't already done so and enter the following commands. The actual location of your script is where you chose to save it.

cd /home/aikiwolfie/scripts/ (press enter)
chmod a+x my_backup_script (press enter)
./my_backup_script (press enter)

And that's it. Sit back and watch the backup script do it's job.

OpenOffice: Why Do OEMs Ignore it?

2009-09-19T16:24:00.001-07:00

I was just wondering exactly how much adoption OpenOffice had achieved.
13% of the market sounds good. But what does it mean? And how just what
exactly will the threshold be before the likes of HP, Asus, Acer and Dell decide they can't ignore
OpenOffice any longer?

The following is a quote from the last link in the list.

"The total TCO for implementing OpenOffice.org LandsNet (the entire
public sector) ... OpenOffice.org results in a cost reduction of 91%".

The numbers speak for themselves!

Microsoft Thinks Your Stupid!

2009-09-18T12:40:00.001-07:00

Does anybody seriously believe this child just happened to perfectly copy and paste all the key promotional slogans for Windows 7 into a slide show? My nieces and nephews don't even play with Power Point. They jump right onto cbbc and play games!

Boycott Windows 7

2009-09-18T10:34:00.001-07:00

Digg doesn't like the direct IdeaStorm link. It does go through a lot of redirections. So here it is.

Vote to Boycott Windows 7

Redmond Running Scared!

2009-09-18T10:23:00.001-07:00

Microsoft are seriously pushing the boat out here. But still manage to put the boot into their UK customers. Why is Windows 7 cheaper in the US for students than it is in the UK? If memory serves me correctly Microsoft pulled a similar pricing stunt with Windows Vista. How much longer are people going to tolerate such shoddy treatment?

The price gap can't be explained purely by exchange rates alone. So what gives? Does Microsoft think students in UK colleges and universities are stupid? Are they just sheep to be pumped dry and ripped off? Why is it Microsoft has decided to climb aboard the "rip-off Britain" band wagon? Any company treating you like this does not deserve your money. Vote with your feet and your wallets and buy something else.

You could also head on over to Dell IdeaStorm and show one of Microsofts largest OEM partners exactly how you feel about Microsoft ripping you off. Register an account and vote to Boycott Windows 7. Better yet, if you're looking for a new netbook to take to college. Order one of Dells Ubuntu Linux based models. Which contrary to Microsofts BestBuy indoctrination FUD are fully supported by Dell.

Of course it's only fair we ask the question. Why are Microsoft being so agressive with their pricing of Windows 7? It can't be because of Linux. Linux is free to download, install and use. You can even get your hands on the raw source code if that's what floats your boat. Linux in short is a fully functional and fully customisable all purpose OS. Ubuntu, which is pre-installed on some Dell netbooks is a fully featured OS with no artificial limts imposed on it. In contrast netbooks with Windows 7 will be running the "Starter Edition".

What is the "Starter Edition"? Basically it's cripple ware. Microsoft in one way or another artificially limit the capabilities of Windows to force you the consumer who has already "paid money" for a legal copy of pre-installed Windows to cough up more cash. Hardly seems fair. But Microsoft have been getting away with it for years.

Note: Windows 7 Starter Edition no longer has the infamouse "3 applications" artificial limitation. Microsoft buckled under preasure of scathing critisim by almost the entire technology press and on-line publications, blogs, twitters and whatever else. If it was talking about Windows 7 Starter Edition (other than the Microsoft Windows 7 blog), the artificial 3 applications limitation was torn apart.

I Want To Be Blissfully Ignorant

2009-09-04T17:48:00.001-07:00

Okay I demand to be told what is in the water these people are drinking. I personally feel it is my God given right to be this blissfully ignorant of the world.

Ubuntu Tip: How To Mount ISO Disk Images

2009-09-04T07:42:00.001-07:00

If you use .iso CD/DVD images here's how to mount them from the command line or in a terminal window.

Open a terminal window and type the following commands;

sudo mkdir /media/iso
sudo modprobe loop
sudo mount filename.iso /media/iso -t iso9660 -o loop

Notes:

mkdir creates a new directory. This directory will be used as a "mount point" by Ubuntu to allow you access to the .iso file. In reality any directory can be used. It's good practice however to use a clearly defined location. You avoid problems and keep your file system clean and tidy.
filename.iso is the name of the iso file you wish to mount. Substitute "filename.iso" for the name of your .iso file.
To unmount the file use the following command: sudo umount /media/iso or whatever you called your new mount point.

Five Best Disk Defragmenters

2009-09-02T07:23:00.001-07:00

This article Five Best Disk Defragmenters from Lifehacker which I came across while browsing through digg.com took me back some. All the while Randall C. Kennedy is bitching about GUIs that don't meet his high journalistic standards and Linux design concepts "contaminating" Windows, Windows users are still defragmenting their hard drives? I mean seriously!

I can remember having to defrag my hard drive when I was using MS-DOS 6.22, Windows 3.1, Windows 3.11, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 98 SE and Windows XP Professional. I can remember setting the PC upat night to run it's course and it still wouldn't be done by morning. In the days of MS-DOS to Windows 3.11 I only had a tiny hard drive. A few hundred megabytes of capacity. When I got Windows 95 I moved up to a Quantum Bigfoot 1 GB drive. Which back then was huge! With Windows 98 and 98 SE I leapt up to 8GB and 10GB drives.

Defragging my PCs hard drives back then seemed to take forever. It was something you planned in advance. You'd have to clear your schedule for the week and mark it in the diary before hand. And after all the effort to get your files sorted out into easily accessible contiguous blocks of data, they were all messed up again as soon as you used your PC. Defragging was and still is a truly pointless endeavour. And Windows users are still doing this?

I was of the impression Windows Vista was supposed to have ushered in a new era? Windows 7 was to build on that and make it better? Why then are Windows users still behaving as though they're using MS-DOS? With my current Dell XPS 720 I have 1.5TB of internal storage on the hard drives and an addition 1TB extrenal drive. That's 2.5 terrabytes in total I'd have to defragment if I were still using Windows. The very thought alone gives me hives.

In my opinion defragmenting a hard drive on a PC is not only pointless. It's archaic. It's pre-stone age technology. Nobody should have to do this any longer. There are file systems out there in the real world being used everyday that essentially avoid this problem altogether. I've never defragmented a Linux hard drive. Not when I was using Red Hat Linux years ago. Not While using openSuSE and never while using Ubuntu. It's something I have simply never needed to do. It didn't even enter my mind until i read the Lifehacker article.

Microsofties really need to wake up and demand better from their masters.

Ubuntu Tip: How To Install 32-bit .debs In A 64-bit Ubuntu

2009-09-02T05:31:00.001-07:00

This is a very simple tip for Linux users and in particular Ubuntu users. If you're running a 64-bit version of Ubuntu you will occasionally need to install a 32-bit application. The very awesome World of Goo for example only comes in a 32-bit package. It does however run just fine on 64-bit Ubuntu 9.04.

Simple double clicking on the 32-bit .deb package will throw up a "wrong architecture" error. The way around this is to use the "--force-architecture" switch from a terminal window. See the example below.

sudo dpkg -i --force-architecture Desktop/WorldOfGooSetup.1.40.deb

Before we can do that however there are a few preparations to make. We must make sure all the supporting 32-bit libraries are also installed. To do this open a terminal window and enter the following command.

sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

And that is really all there is to it.

News Just In! Randall C. Kennedy Becomes Even More Pointless!

2009-09-01T16:17:00.001-07:00

Lacking any real news to report and desperately needing to fill a void left by Steve Ballmer after excavating Randalls' sphincter, Randall C. Kennedy has resorted random attacks on everything and anything not of Redmond.

Apple takes the first hit in a childish tantrum regarding Apples' advertising antics. Before they'd even started. It seems Randall has a case of the iGitters. Moving on however, next up for the chopping block was Googles' own Linux based OS. Chrome OS.

The short,snappy and memorable title of this particular blog entry "Will Chrome OS collapse under the weight of it's own Web browser?" would seem to imply Chrome OS is overweight. Morbidly obese one might say. Which is somewhat odd considering Windows not only seems to require a new PC with every iteration. But some how manages to devour the storage space on the hard drive like a fat chick let lose in a cake shop. Windows appetite for devouring system resources is so unseemly Microsoft considered it to be a huge achievement to get a tweaked version of Windows 7 running on a netbook.

Speaking of which. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's noticed netbook specs have been on the up and up. In fact if it weren't for the 32-bit x86 based Atom CPU at their heart they'd be fully fledged notebooks with smaller screens.

Randall can't stop at bitching about Apple or Chrome OS though. Next target is the Linux desktop. The rather ironic title "Will desktop Linux ever grow up?", implies desktop Linux isn't ready to be the headline act. I'm pretty sure Canonical and others would disagree. Sharp in particular has just released a new Ubuntu based MID in Japan. One of the largest economies in the world no less. Brazillian education (52 MILLION NEW USERS) has all but abandoned Windows and Microsoft products entirely and Microsoft for the first time have included HP and Intels' Linux efforts as a threat to their business on their recently filed 10-K report.

Lacking any real complaints about the Linux desktop Randall unwisely decides to pick on X.org. X.org maintain the X server. Randalls gripe with this? The code has a 30 year history! Oh gosh quick we better not use it. Software does after all corrode with time doesn't it? Actually no it doesn't. Planned obsolescence, crap design and a total lack of foresight is what makessoftware bog down over time.

If the code is well maintained and properly looked after 30 years of service is a good sign of maturity and not decrepitude. X has served Linux and other NIXs well over the years. Better still it's going through a major overhaul right now as you read this to meet modern demands. Yes these changes break drivers. All major changes to an OS breaks something somewhere. For example when Microsoft implemented their new driver model they broke driver compatibility with XP. Then broke it again and again and again until their partners got fed up and did things on their own schedule leaving many Vista users with crap driver support for weeks if not months after the official release. ATI and Nvidia were amongst the companies that failed to deliver decent drivers on time. OUCH!

Next up it was Snow Leopard. Randall completely and I suspect deliberately misses the point of Snow Leopard. Unlike Windows 7, Snow Leopard isn't just a cosmetic make over. It's a re-plumbing of all the tubing and technical bits underneath the shiny Apply GUI that Windows and Linux users can't stop trying to emulate with theme packs. While the enhancements to Snow Leopard don't really help existing third party software. All Apple software has been rewritten to take advantage of them and third party offerings won't be far behind.

As a result of Apples tinkering with Snow Leopard, OS X has a smaller installed foot print and runs considerably faster. The net result of Windows 7 is a version of Vista that looks decent, is less secure and doesn't crash as much. BSODs are also still a coveted feature.

Finally we get to Randalls latest Cephalopoda like spaz attack with tentacles flailing every where desperately grasping for a target. "The 'Linuxification' of Windows has begun". Okay then. This "blog entry" has me seriously bewildered. FileZilla, VirtualBox and the Gimp all come under fire. For one reason or another their GUIs just aren't good enough. Apparently all GTK+ GUIs are a complicated ill designed blasphemous disaster. They should carry a public health warning. VirtualBoxs' error dialogues are clearly hazardous to ones health. Of course Windows BSODs are so intuitive. I speak in HEX daily. In fact I refuse to speak anything but HEX codes unless absolutely necessary.

Seriously, does InfoWorld actually pay this man-child to write this tripe? It's not helpful, it's not informative, it's not even a fully formed and thought out opinion. It's just random crap drugged up to draw attention away from the competition and back to Microsoft? Microsoft PR must be cringing right about now. At least they tried to spice up their tripe with some Photoshopping.

Well I have more bad news for Randall. Maybe this will send him completely over the edge. Dell are releasing an Android based smart phone in China. Remember Android is Linux based Randall. Now when will Linux grow up? I wonder? Who Runs Ubuntu Linux?

It really is time to wake up Randall. The Linux kernel is in one form or another embeded in every facet of your life. Remember when you use the Internet or a DVD player or a satnav, you're using Linux.

Windows Vista: Black Screen of Death Fix

2009-08-22T09:41:00.000-07:00

The following are suggested fixes from various sources for the Windows Vista/7 Black Screen of Death (KSOD) problem.

Symptoms:

Windows boots to a black screen with a white cursor/mouse pointer.
Windows "Safe Mode" exhibits the same behaviour.
Nothing else ever loads. Not even a log-in screen.

Solution 1: Delete Some Log Files.

Use the vista DVD to go to the repair mode.
From the same screen where you do the system restore, there's an option to open an administrative command prompt.
That should open in X:\Sources or something like that
Go to the windows drive by entering C:
Now go to the windows event log folder on your machine (C:\Windows\System32\winevt):
cd c:\windows\system32\winevt
ren Logs Logs_bad
mkdir Logs

This will create an empty folder for new event logs. Restart the system and cross fingers.

Solution 2: Edit The Windows Registry.
There apparently this a problem related to the Remote Procedure Call service (RPC) running under LocalSystem account instead of NT Authority\NetworkService account.

On the affected machine, boot using the Vista Media and Select “Next” and then in the bottom left you will see “Repair your Computer”; select Next and then Select Command Prompt.
At the command prompt, launch regedit.exe and load the SYSTEM hive, follow the below steps.
- Select HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
- On the File menu, select Load Hive.
- Browse to %WINDIR%\System32\Config Folder and select “SYSTEM”
- Select Open.
- In the Load Hive dialog box, type in “MySYSTEM” box for the registry hive that you want to edit.
After the hive is loaded, modify the following key value per the instructions below: You will need to know what ControlSet the machine is currently running on, this can be determined by going to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\MySYSTEM\Select and find the “Current” value in the Right hand side. (Example: Current value is 1 then the ControlSet will be ControlSet001)
- Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\MySYSTEM\ControlSet00X\Services\RpcSs (X is the Number from the Current Key from above)
- Value Name: ObjectNameOld
- Value: LocalSystemNew
- Value: NT AUTHORITY\NetworkService
Unload the SYSTEM hive by selecting the key “MySYSTEM” and then select File -> Unload Hive… menu item.
Exit regedit.exe
Reboot the system normally

Solution 3: Restore The System From A System Restore Point.

Boot to the Vista media.
Restore the PC to a restore point 1 month before the problem occured.
Reboot as normal.

Solution 4: Dump Windows And Use Ubuntu

Get hold of a copy of Ubuntu. Most Linux PC magazines will carry a copy on their cover disc or you can ask a friend to download it for you and burn it to a disc. You will find the Ubuntu download page at www.ubuntu.com Don't worry about payment. Ubuntu is completely free of charge to download and use.
Boot the PC using your new Ubuntu installation disc. Select the option to try Ubuntu without changing anything on the PC. Once the desktop has loaded, navigate to your Windows hard drive.
Copy anything from your Windows hard drive you want to keep on the a USB stick or similar backup device.
Click the install icon and follow the instructions. You'll want to use the entire disc to rid yourself of Windows Vista entirely.

Will Randall C. Kennedy Ever Grow Up?

2009-08-20T11:39:00.000-07:00

Yet another bullshit article promoting Windows 7 by attempting to run down Linux. It's all well and good for bloggers to cry wolf about this or that not working in Linux. But the fact of the matter is it's pointless without detail.

The crucial details left out here are the faulty systems specifications. What hardware was being used? Which version of which Linux distribution was being used?

Details Randall. The devil is in the detail and you've provided none. All you've done is written a generic blog entry ragging on Linux and praising Windows. Is it really so hard to promote Windows 7 based on it's merits? You've joined the pointless masses. Well done!

Now bend over. Mr. Ballmer wants you to pick up the soap.

Another Bull Shit Windows Vista 7 Article!

2009-08-09T12:05:00.000-07:00

I am so getting tired of reading bull shit Windows Vista 7 hyping articles trying oh so desperately to make Windows Vista 7 sound so fantastic when it's just not. I'm tired of the Mac OS X comparison by people who've never actually booted the damn thing up under the conditions they are bitching about!

To these people I say go out and try it. All these "professional" bloggers earn more than enough to be able to afford a Mac. Microsoft made Windows Vista 7 Beta and RC available to everybody that wanted it. So what's stopping them?

Maybe outfits like InfoWorld are scared if they do actual tests they'll need to admit Windows 7 is really just Vista with a new coat of paint. I mean seriously is it blog worthy to ask why battery life is so crap on a Mac when running Windows? What's more what's the point in asking if you're not even going to try it out?

We could do a really simple and cheap test here to find out where to lay the blame. Install Linux. See how long the battery lasts then. If both Mac OS X and Linux hold up and Windows doesn't. Well we know who's building the shit OS then don't we?

Oh right I forgot. Redmond is releasing a new OS. I guess we should all pay attention, lubricate our sphincters and bed over.

And just what is the deal with all the "YOU MUST REGISTER TO MAKE A COMMENT" nonsense? Do I look like I want another password and user name to remember?!?

http://www.dailytech.com/Windows+7+RTM+Gets+Benchmarked+Results+Are+Mixed/article15892.htm

Dell Ubuntu ... What's Going On?

2009-07-24T13:28:00.000-07:00

Dells stance on Ubuntu is supremely confusing. Ubuntu is clearly doing relatively well in the desktop market. There are several smaller vendors building and selling PCs pre-loaded with Ubuntu and doing it well. None of them seem to be going to the wall so they must be doing something right. Something Dell aren’t doing perhaps?

So Ubuntu it’s self simply can’t be the root of the problem.

Which means we need to look at other factors. It was only with the introduction of the Mini 9 Dell started offering Ubuntu as an option side-by-side with Windows. But even then they didn’t really tell people what it was they were offering.

If all you had ever known was chocolate ice cream. Would you try strawberry ice cream if you didn’t know what it was?

Are people overly critical of Dell for hiding their Ubuntu options? I don’t think so. If you were selling ice cream, would you only target people who had already tried it? The fact you’re already selling chocolate ice cream shouldn’t stop you from selling strawberry ice cream.

Almost any other company in the world selling any other product in the world would sell similar products from different vendors side-by-side. They wouldn’t shunt one into the basement.

Now finding Ubuntu based Dells is easy enough if you know where to look and if you know Ubuntu actually exists. But what if you don’t? If all the strawberry ice cream is in the basement and you’ve never even heard of it. How do you try it out? How do you get that first taste?

Lets say you’re out shopping. There’s a nice brightly lit store selling chocolate ice cream galore with all sorts of deals going on. Next to the store are some steps going to a dark dingy basement level with a tiny sign half obscured. It reads “Strawberry Ice Cream here”.

Are you tempted to try the strawberry ice cream?

Windows 7 Vs. Linux: OS Face-Off: The Muppets Return!

2009-05-30T15:33:00.000-07:00

Why does the Microsoft press insist on perpetuating this phoney war? Are they that desperate to stave off the mass exodus of Windows users to Linux? Is there a mass exodus? You'd be forgiven for thinking there was given the way some "journalists" are writing these days trying to trumpet the merits of Windows Vista 7.

Speaking of which. An article from Information Week, the type of article that likes to pretend to be balanced and unbiased, caught my eye. Particularly this little snippet.

... Another issue may be the fact that while it's possible to install 7 on top of Vista and preserve one's applications and settings, it isn't yet possible to do this in Linux.
It is possible to automatically migrate documents and some fairly generic system settings -- Ubuntu does this, for instance -- but not the apps themselves. (For those planning on performing an entirely clean installation of either OS, though, it's a moot point.) ...

What complete and total bollocks! Fair enough. We can't really preserve Windows applications settings yet. But why would we want to?

I'm not sure what the author is expecting Ubuntu to do here. Migrate Windows OS and application settings to Ubuntu? Windows doesn't migrate anything from Linux. It can't even read Linux partitions as standard. And guess what? Windows doesn't even preserve the GRUB boot-loader. Even on Multi-boot systems!

If a user wishes to preserve application settings from Ubuntu 8.10 to 9.04 for example they can. First of all many applications use user specific settings stored in the "/home" directory. The easiest way to preserve these settings is to simply split "/home" off into it's own partition or even it's own hard drive. So when you do a simple upgrade. Everything in your own user account should still be as it was.

Even better though! With "/home" hived off in it's own little world we can do a complete re-installation of the OS and applications and still preserve out local application settings. So what about global settings?

It's quite simple really. Back-up before before you upgrade. That way you can restore your settings after the upgrade is done. This I think is a safer way to do things. Firstly it encourages you to make back-ups which can't possibly be bad. Secondly old global settings for old versions of applications aren't always appropriate for the newer versions.

In fact considering the pace that open source software development moves at. It's probably better to go with the new defaults than try to shoehorn old square preferences into a newer rounder hole. After all bad application configurations cause things to break.

Drivers! Drivers! Drivers!

2009-05-25T05:48:00.000-07:00

Why the hell do "journalists" always pick on Linux for needing drivers to run a piece of hardware? Even when the driver exists they make a big song and dance about Linux needing a "third party" driver to run the WiFi or the graphics.

Guess what people. Windows uses drivers too. Of course the Microsoft-centric tech press that is a cancer on the web likes to pretend all that stuff is produced by Microsoft. WOW do these people have short memories. Remember the Vista fiasco where neither ATI nor NVIDIA amongst others had their drivers ready in time for the Vista release?

As for netbooks. Those that come with Linux come with a version of Linux tailored to that specific hardware set. Just like Mac OS X is tailored to Mac hardware. If Apple can do it why can't everybody? Why isn't Mac OS X being slated in the press every week because it doesn't run perfectly on non-Apple hardware? Why does it suddenly become a major minus point when Linux displaces Windows?

So guess what. If you take something like Puppy Linux and use it to replace a customised Linux distro specially put together to run the hardware on your netbook you might have problems. That's a bit of a no brainer. Of course if these so called journalists were reviewing a netbook running Windows they wouldn't even consider testing the hardware with an obscure unfunded fringe "spare time" project version of the OS. Would they? I honestly doubt it.

Over the past couple of weeks I've seen a disturbing trend developing in the so called tech press. As Windows Vista 7 gets ever closer to release all the Microsoft zombies are falling into line and desperately looking for ways to run down Linux. Which is just sad.

Linux as the underdog in the desktop and notebook markets has done well for it's self. It found a niche where it could grow and prosper and give people a real choice in how they use their hardware. It also allowed hardware vendors to slash their prices. Which in turn turned out to be of benefit to the Microsofties as Microsoft responded in kind and slashed the price of XP licences and then gave XP stay of execution time and time again and it's still not dead even though Windows Vista 7 is well and truely almost here and supposedly netbook friendly.

But no. Rather than appreciate what a little genuine competition targeted squarely at Microsofts core markets has done for consumers and businesses alike not to mention all the meaty tech news that has been generated, keeping the zombies in their jobs. These brain donors would rather agree to the Microsoft EULA which has apparently not just cost them their privacy, the right to use their PCs, netbooks and notebooks as they see fit, but also their souls and any kind of decency they might have had.

To all these people I say shut the fuck up and get a life.

Passed My Theory Test. Again!

2009-04-24T15:27:00.000-07:00

Okay so for the second time I passed my theory test first time with only one wrong answer on the actual theory part of the test. The hazard perception test is completely pointless. Do the test the way the instructions at the start tell you and, clicking once for each hazard you see and again each time the hazard changes priority, and it becomes so easy to trip the nanny alarm that tells you you're just clicking at random. Which I wasn't. Which is why I almost got up and walked out at that point.

I'm glad I didn't though. I passed the test and filled in the questionnaire at the end telling them it was pointless. But it got me thinking about the last time I took my driving test a few years back.

Back then I completed my theory test just fine with only one wrong answer. There was no hazard perception test at the time. It was still under trial. The practical test is where things went wrong. Basically I had a snide bastard for an examiner. He liked to play with the dual controls. Not exactly fair. That really put me off trying again. What's the point when the test isn't fair and the appeals process is practically non-existent? Why waste my money?

Being stuck with a provisional licence does have it's draw backs though. You can't drive anywhere unsupervised. Which means job prospects are limited. So what can we do about cheating examiners?

The answer, rather shockingly is, not a lot. A driving examiners decision is final and it cannot be over turned. The appeals process involves either writing to the area manager or taking the case to a magistrates court. Unsurprisingly the DSA don't make a habit of making appeals easy. In fact it's almost impossible to find any information on-line at all. Perhaps the DSA are petrified that the 49% of drivers they claim fails their practical test first time round will swamp them with complaints? Maybe they're afraid the mythical quota system will be exposed? Maybe they're afraid their examiners will be exposed?

In any case, even if an appeal is succesful, the best we can hope for is a refund and a free resit. Perhaps 49% of revenues being refunded would cut into the DSAs' profit margines too much.

So if you have any driving test stories. Feel free to post them in the comments.

Portable Ubuntu Screencast

2009-04-08T09:45:00.001-07:00

Nice little information video. Well presented and well done. But I'm missing something here. Why bother running Ubuntu inside Windows Vista or Windows 7? Why bother with Windows at all?

I've been testing the Windows 7 beta for a while now and I'm just not that impressed. To begin with it was fast and responsive. But since installing a few applications and using for only a few hours a week it's started to get sluggish. Start up is sluggish, application execution is sluggish, shutdown and reboot still run fine.

I'm just not seeing much improvement over XP or Vista. Certainly nothing worth another £300.

For people that want Linux. Just run Linux on raw real world hardware. It's faster, more stable and more secure.

Microsoft "Pays" Lauren To Buy A PC

2009-03-30T10:07:00.000-07:00

"According to Brad Brooks, corporate vice president for Windows consumer product marketing at Microsoft, the agency told recruits it was a market research firm and didn’t mention it was working with Microsoft. The recruits were told they could keep whatever money they didn’t spend on a PC so they had incentives to look for good values."

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/03/26/pc-to-mac-im-cheaper/

Seems like Microsoft not content with duping passers by with it's Mojave campaign have now turned to effectively paying people to buy Windows PCs. By proxy of course. Heaven forbid their marketing people should ever break the habit of a life time and be honest with people.

So if Windows is so bad Microsoft have to pay people to buy it pre-loaded with a new PC, why would anybody buy a Windows PC voluntarily. I mean when you have a near monopoly on the market and still struggle to shift your product there must be something wrong.

Powered By Linux: Avira AntiVir Rescue System

2009-03-15T13:30:00.000-07:00

I absolutely love this. My favorite anti-virus company has brought out a free product based on Linux that repairs Microsoft Windows systems. More companies should do this. The Linux OS is free. So long as the product is free they're unlikely to hit any licensing snags.

Why give away freebies like this? The same reasons as always. Freebies attract attention and consequently increase mind share. Which in turn generates sales and also reduces the number of infections in the wild. Which in turn reduces the risks to your users.

Avira AntiVir Rescue System

Avira AntiVir Rescue System is a Linux-based application that allows accessing computers that cannot be booted anymore. Thus it is possible to:

* repair a damaged system,
* rescue data,
* scan the system for virus infections.

http://www.free-av.com/en/tools/12/avira_antivir_rescue_system.html

Carnage In The Drive Bay!!!

2009-03-08T07:36:00.000-07:00

Recently while installing Windows XP to a virtual machine my Windows disc exploded in the drive bay. This wasn't like previous DVD drive failures I've had in the past where discs were destroyed. There were none of the usual grinding or squealing warning signs that tell you somethings not right.

It just exploded! BANG! And I was sitting there thinking WTF!?!

The DVD drive continued trying to read the disc until I instructed Ubuntu to eject it. As it was Ubuntu the system didn't fall on it's arse for a simple DVD failure. It just soldiered on! When the drive tray slid out the crunching started and the tray got stuck. So there was nothing for it. Open DVD drive surgery had to be conducted as soon as possible.

This is where I have to congratulate Dell on their choice of DVD drives. Normally when opening a CD or DVD drive I run the risk of losing a finger or two because they normally aren't designed to be opened up at all. This Dell drive was different. The top and bottom covers were held together by four simple little screws. There was none of the usual mental finger lacerating origami that hold other drives together. Just four simple little screws.

My Windows disc was totally destroyed. It had fragmented into tiny wee pieces. Some of which I managed to jigsaw back together. Just for fun. Some of these bits are warped out of shape. So they no longer fit together exactly as they once did. And even with most of the bits in place there are still sizable chunks missing that can't be filled by the bits I have left. They aren't in the drive either. So I guess they've been vaporised!

Now my Windows disc is dead, my PC repair services are severely limited. I only ever used it for repairing other Windows systems. Which happened a lot. Maybe Microsoft are using specially weakened discs? Maybe that's just being too paranoid. Maybe Ubuntu had some weired auto-immune defensive reaction to the Windows disc infecting it's DVD drive. Either way the proprietary nature of Windows has left me with a problem. I have noway now to recover a F.U.B.A.R-ed Windows installation. And since Microsoft insist on using DRM features on their discs I don't have a back up. I can't help but wonder how many other people have found themselves in similar positions?

My PC is out of warranty. So I might not get a replacement disc from Dell. Although someone at Dell is kindly looking into the matter for me.

The DVD drive it's self seems to have survived it's ordeal. It's now working fine again. I tried it out with a crap DVD I didn't mind being destroyed. Steven Segals "Marked For Death". Which it seems my PC likes since it didn't destroy it.

The World Of Goo!

2009-02-15T09:19:00.000-08:00

Not many quality games that aren't Quake Arena clones appear on the scene for Linux and even fewer that work properly on 64-bit Linux. At least that's the impression I get. So it is with genuine gratitude I thank 2D Boy for the awesome World Of Goo!

Getting The World Of Goo up and running wasn't too difficult. 2D Boy provides the game all nicely packaged up in .deb .rpm .tar and other formats. Since I'm a Ubuntu user I choose the .deb download. It cost me $20-dollars or £14-odd after pay pal did the conversion. I'm in the UK.

Since I'm running 64-bit Ubuntu I couldn't just double click on the .deb package once it had downloaded. Instead I had to break open a terminal session and install it from there. Some people might be horrified by this. But installing from the command line was how we did things back in the good old DOS 4GW days. It's not hard!

All I needed was one command.

dpkg -i --force-architecture [packaged name goes here]

The game installs just fine and runs perfectly. All the icons are in the right menus even. The World Of Goo is the first game I've bought since the sad excuse for a PC port that was Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. I'm glad I did buy it! It's awesome!

One really important thing to mention though. This game has no DRM. So don't be a turd and rip off the company that made it. BUY the game! It only costs $20! Follow the link to get your own copy!

Windows 7 Falls From Grace

2009-02-05T15:19:00.000-08:00

I'm actually enjoying this stage in the Windows ~~Vista~~ 7 saga. A lot of juicy details are coming to the surface and a lot of people are starting to express disappointment at the dumb limitations Microsoft are imposing on the various different versions of the OS.

For example! The "light" Starter version which will be OEM only will limit the number of running applications to just 3 user applications. I'm betting Microsoft won't be cutting down on the 20 plus process that spied on user in Vista. But this does beg the question why?

Fair enough netbooks aren't that powerful. But are people really likely to try and run a net book like a full blown PC? What does this mean for road warriors? So you'll be able to have a web browser running while using Word and Excel but no e-mail? Or maybe you could have your E-mail, Word and Excel open but no web browser that you might just need for research. I don't think Microsoft have thought this through.

Microsoft just lost the netbook market.

Of course when Microsoft have customers like this commentator it's no wonder they're losing touch.

"By othercents on 2/4/2009 6:53:04 PM , Rating: 2

I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate on my netbook and I consistently run 8 or 9 apps without a problem. The lightweight version isn't really needed. Plus how many people actually know how to launch more than one app at a time?

Other"

And Linux advocates get accused of being patronising and treating newbies like idiots?

http://www.dailytech.com/Windows+7+Has+Six+Editions/article14152.htm

Some follow up info.

As I suspected Windows Vista 7s much praised ability to run "just fine" on a netbook is coblers. As with Windows XP, the Windows 7 "Starter" and "Home Basic" versions that will be found on netbooks are seriously cut down quite literally to their most basic features.

Presumably that means you will at least get the boot screen before the blue screen.

http://www.dailytech.com/Questions++Answers+Windows+7+Editions/article14162.htm

Microsoft Is Suicidal

2009-02-03T16:57:00.000-08:00

After all the "push-back" Microsoft got about UAC it's seems it has decided to leave it broken and abandon all efforts to make their OS more secure. Rather than actually fix UAC Microsoft just turned down the default protections. Making it useless!

If there is anything worse than having no security on Windows it's having useless security while at the same time claiming the system is secure. Microsofts attitude to security absolutely stinks. They have acknowledged this fault and said it won't be fixed because it exists by "design". Just like Microsoft intentionally made UAC annoying.

Is it just me that's thinking Microsoft is suicidal?

http://www.dailytech.com/Windows+7+UAC+Leaves+Door+Open+for+Attacks/article14127.htm

Windows 7 is really Windows NT6.1

2009-02-01T06:15:00.000-08:00

If you're a Windows user planning on buying Windows 7 to upgrade your Windows Vista installation you should really stop and think for a moment. During a discussion following an earlier post I was lead to a Wikipedia article that assigns a version number of 6.1 to the Windows 7 OS. Which to me lends much credence to the conclusion many have come to that Windows 7 amounts to little more than a service pack to Windows Vista.

Basically Windows Vista users need to mount a campaign to force Microsoft to release Windows 7 or rather Windows 6.1 as a service pack. Because that is exactly what it is. Microsoft are ripping people off by changing the name from Windows Vista to Windows 7. Just like the infamous Mojave experiment, the name change is nothing more than marketing to dupe the public into buying something they effectively already have. Microsoft should at least be honest and call it Windows 6.1.

What's In A Name

2009-01-31T04:17:00.000-08:00

How did Microsoft come up with the name "Windows 7" for Windows 7?

Microsoft I think claimed that's what it is. The 7th version of Windows. But I'm finding that a bit hard to believe. It's not a 7th generation product unless it is of course nothing more than a re-branding of Windows Vista as I have said all along.

Apart from the look and feel of Windows 7 and the behaviour of the UAC crap. There is some good evidence that Windows 7 is just a re-branding exercise. Which if true means Microsoft and it's partners shipped an "alpha" level product and charged full price for it. The evidence is all in the name and the existence of the Mojave "punking" experiment conducted by Microsoft.

So what was Mojave? Well basically it was Windows Vista with UAC turned down or off running on a PC specially configured to be Windows Vista friendly. Microsoft invited "random" members of the public to try it out to see what they thought telling them it was the next generation Windows product. After which Microsoft interrogated it's lab rats until they ponied up the Vista marketing slogan "WoW".

So how do we get to Windows 7 and how does Mojave point to Microsoft and it's partners being lying thieving scumbags? Well all we need to do is examine the Windows family tree from Windows NT4.x on wards since this is the granddaddy of all modern desktop and server Windows operating systems.

So the order goes:

Windows NT4.x (Windows 4),
Windows 2000 and Windows XP (Windows 5),
Windows Server 2003 (Windows 6),
Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 (Windows 7?),
Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 (Windows ... err ... 7?).

Either somebody over at Redmond can't count or Microsoft are coning the public. Remember the "Mojave" experiment?

IF Windows 7 really is Windows 7, Microsoft have some explaining to do. Especially since they've released "Windows 7 Beta 1". The implication being Windows Vista wasn't even "beta" software. It was still in "alpha"!

Which in turn means we still haven't seen a release candidate for "Windows Vista ... err ... Windows 7" and Dell along with all of the other Windows PC builders have some refunds to pony up since they shipped a product that was clearly not ready for market and resulted in at least a large and vocal minority being forced to endure all manner of issues.

Windows ~~Vista~~ 7 really could be a time bomb waiting to explode in the face of the Microsoft kickback crowed. Especially since Microsoft will of course be expecting us all to pay full price for Windows ~~Vista~~ 7.

Windows 7 is just the same smoke and mirrors game as Windows Mojave. Personally I think all Windows users should teach Microsoft a really hard hitting lesson. Send the message ripping off your user base, your customers is totally out of order. Boycott Windows 7. Hit Microsoft where it hurts.

NOTE: I have left out Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Millennium Edition along with their various incarnations like OSR2 because they were supposedly a parallel code path to NT4.x that basically ended when Windows 2000 and Windows XP were developed from NT4.x.

Quick edit: Just found this link when submitting to Digg.

The Joy Of Old Friends Getting In Touch

2009-01-28T14:04:00.000-08:00

Recently an old friend of mine got in touch. I think it's amazing how such a thing can totally lighten the mood and turn a bad week into a good week. So if there's someone you haven't spoken to in a while. Give them a call or drop a line. It's so awesome!

Thanks Mel. You is awesome!

Apple Now Rule The World

2009-01-27T21:24:00.000-08:00

Apple either now rule the world or they have killed multi-touch enabled devices manufactured by anyone except Apple. The patent granted recently to Apple is exactly why I hate patents in general and especially software patents. They don't protect IP. Apple didn't invent touch and it didn't invent multi-touch. It didn't even invent gestures (I hate gestures too btw). The really sad news is Apple has already shown signs that it is becoming a patent troll.

What software patents do is allow companies to take other peoples IP that was invented aeons ago and levy a tax on it. DailyTech has more details.

Why I don't blog very often.

2009-01-27T13:00:00.000-08:00

When I started this blog I was going to gather up all sorts of of awesome Ubuntu tips and tricks and stuff. But the fact of the matter is blogging on a regular basis requires that you actually have something to say. Which for what I was going to do means research. That equates to work. Which I don't feel like doing right now.

But here's an example of blogging on the cheap. Talk some shit about one OS kicking the other to the curb. I mean really worth while journalism there from Robin Harris of ZDnet. I'm so glad he made that contribution to the billions of worthless web pages out there. I guess it gives me an excuse to add some more crap to the pile.

Someone please tell this idot Windows 7 is only out in beta at the moment. Linux isn't suddenly going away because Microsoft supposedly have 80% of the netbook market. Which I doubt. GNU/Linux was born into a world of Microsoft domination. That is its' natural habitat.

Windows on the other hand traditionally has a tough time competing with it's self. Especially when there's little to no obvious gain in an upgrade. Which is a problem for Windows 7. It might be leaner than Vista but it looks pretty similar on top. To use the touch screen tech, you need to fork out for a new display and I doubt anybody is going to buy a new OS or a new PC just to get a new taskbar.

I mean WOW! Microsoft stole the Linux taskbar and now Linux is dead!!! OMFG!!! RUN FOR THE HILLS!!! .... Okay I'm done taking the piss.

Windows 32-bit Installed!

2009-01-24T13:49:00.000-08:00

Well I got 32-bit Windows 7 installed. Not the 64 bit I wanted but Windows is Windows. And that's really my impression. Windows 7 with a library of third party software is just a barren OS. Sure you get Windows Media Center Player whatever. You get Paint. Wordpad. A few games and some essential utilities.

Basically there is nothing here to tempt me away from Ubuntu. Which has a whole library of quality software available to it from the Applications > Add/Remove menu option. The only thing resembling a free programming language was the power shell. Which doesn't really qualify as a development environment. It's a good step to at least include a programming language. Remember Steve Ballmers "... developers, developers, deveoplers ..."?

Basically there really isn't much to look at. Which is sometimes good. Everybody hates pre-installed trial ware. But trial ware isn't what I'm looking for. I'm not even looking for pre-installed software. I'm looking for a Linux style repository of usful stuff. Something to get me started and up and running. And there's really nothing but Paint and Wordpad. Is this the WOW factor? WOW there's nothing here!?! Maybe I've been using Ubuntu too long and I'm being unfair?

I said I'd be looking closely at the taskbar. I did. It didn't do anything special except tell me to find anti-virus software on-line. After it told me it couldn't find a network connection. For some reason it kept wanting to configure a wireless connection. It also had no driver for the VirtualBox OSE virtual network adapter. So no internet. Which I actually didn't mind when I saw the state of the IE8 interface. Even though there wasn't much to it, it still managed to look cluttered.

The installation process it's self felt like it took forever. But I think it was actually about half an hour. There were about two or three reboots. Don't know why Windows still needs to reboot during installation. But it does.

Note to Microsoft: Sort your damned OS installation routine!!!

After each reboot there was an annoying blank screen which will have any non-technical user bricking it and thinking somethings wrong. The reality is nothing is wrong. Windows 7 just arrogantly refuses to tell you what it's doing. Not a good sign me thinks.

After the installation is all completed you finally get to the desktop after some more labourious desktop configuration. Why doesn't it do that at install time? Anyway in my VM Windows defaulted to 800x600. But this was easily switched to 1024x768. I could have gone higher but decided that was enough for testing. Interestingly at one point Windows told me I had less than 64MB of video memory. But when reconfiguring my desktop it told me I had 128MB of video memory. Clearly a bug to be fixed. But I have no internet in Windows. How do I report it? DOH!

Screen shots will be posted shortly.

For the record. I still don't understand why the 32-bit version works and the 64-bit version doesn't. And the basic Vista theme sucks.

Back to the Future with 32-bit Windows

2009-01-24T09:39:00.000-08:00

Some people have suggest over on Dell Forums that 64-bit Windows 7 might be having trouble installing on a 64-bit virtual machine because the host OS, Ubuntu, isn't a Microsoft OS. Hmm ... could be the reason. So I'm now downloading the 32-bit version.

Since it's a virtual machine, performance isn't really something I'll be looking at. Although I will be watching the boot time. A fresh installation of Windows XP boots in a decent-ish amount of time. A couple of minutes. Ubuntu boots in less than 30 seconds.

What I'll be most interested in is seeing things for my self that many people have said are carbon copies of features from other OSs. So I'll be looking very closely at the taskbar. I don't have a touch screen so touch isn't even a consideration.

As you might expect I don't have much in the way of Windows software laying around. I've been a full time Ubuntu user for a while now. I'm sure I'll find something though.

Windows Vista 7 Beta: Face Plants Instantly!

2009-01-22T09:14:00.000-08:00

I tried Windows 7 Beta for the first time today. I set up a VirtualBox OSE virtual machine with a 20GB hard disc, 3GB of RAM and 128MB of video memory. My host system is a Dell 720 with an Intel Core 2 Quad 2.66GHz CPU, 8GB of RAM, 2xNVIDIA 7900 graphics cards in SLI and 1.5TB of hard drive space running Ubuntu 8.10 64-bit version.
I doubt I should be having problems installing this Windows 7 in a virtual machine. But I do. It face plants instantly. The installer iso loads and then tells me to insert the installation disc. Clearly I'm missing something here. Here's a screenshot.

Then of course there's the whole download process. Why was all the registering necessary? It's an open beta supposedly free for anybody to test until the 1st of August 2009.

It probably goes without saying I'm not impressed. Ubuntu 64-bit runs fine in a virtual machine. I don't see why Windows shouldn't. Clearly I need to go back and look at the instructions again. But this is poor form from Microsoft. The stupid thing won't even install. Is this really beta software?

Getting Serious About Blogging ... NOT!

2009-01-11T10:00:00.000-08:00

2009 was going to be the year where I got really serious about blogging. Until I decided to share the LOL Cats RSS feed with anybody with nothing better to do. Besides, there's far too much fun to be had to sit around wasting time writing about it all!

http://feedproxy.google.com/ICanHasCheezburger?format=xml

Microsoft Wishes We hated Everything Not Microsoft!

2008-12-13T13:50:00.000-08:00

In a bizarre turn MSNBC has a published a list entitled "Gadgets That Make You Look Like A Jerk". The Black Berry, Sony TiVo, Apple MacBook Air, iPod and Linux all come in for a bashing. Even the band Mars Volta were trashed for some unknown reason?

When talking about Linux they claim it's "a pain to use". What's so hard about booting from a CD clicking one little icon to run the installer, filling in your details and letting Linux do it's thing? Gnome might be a little different from Aero but it's not that hard to use.

I mean when you see a menu at the top of the screen with the title "Applications". What do you think you'll find in that menu? Can it be any easier than that?

This is obviously a very desperate move by Microsoft to try and discreadit some of the competition. Some how I don't think Black Berry users are about to jump ship just yet.

Microsoft Fudge

2008-12-06T12:52:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I've posted anything. So what's changed? Well Windows 7 is practically completed. Something some might pat Microsoft on the back for. After all it's like at least a year ahead of schedule? Well not me.

A quick brows through the various blogs around the net covering Microsofts' latest and greatest OS make one thing undeniably clear. Windows 7 is nothing more than a re-branding of Windows Vista. Something Microsoft beta tested with it Mojave project. Well it seems the beta testing is well and truly over.

The question now is is it fair to be so harsh on Microsoft? After all a new version of Ubuntu is released every six months and the development ethos is to do less but do it better. The answer is a simple yes. Here's why.

Microsoft as a commercial computer operating system developer has a near monopoly in the desktop operating system market. This ensures Microsofts' income will always be in the "billions" so long as it holds on to it's market share. So Microsoft aren't hurting for resources to throw into product development. They can afford to pay beta testers and programmers to do the grunt work of ironing out the bugs and smoothing everything over to guarantee a flawless user experience on supported hardware. But the reality is anything but smooth and flawless.

Microsoft with their near monopoly on the market can coral and influence other companies. Basically Windows should be guaranteed hardware support. But it's not. All the messing around with Vista held things up which meant not everything was ready on Vistas release. Even though Microsoft has seemingly changed very little to the underpinnings of Windows 7 some incompatibilities in software have crept in. Hardware interfaces with the OS via software drivers. If there are broken applications already showing up, what else is broken?

Windows isn't free. While apparently very little changes from one version of Ubuntu to the next, the distributors can get away with this for two primary reasons. It's free and users know what to expect. Considering the differences between Windows Vista and Windows 7 are set to be minimal, one has to wonder how much Microsoft are going to charge for Windows 7? A copy of Windows Vista Ultimate still costs well over £200 from Microsofts own on-line store. We also have to ask what exactly is changing in Windows 7? What are we paying for with this latest upgrade? If the Touch UI from Windows Surface that Microsoft have grafted onto Vista is the big feature then we're basically getting nothing.

How many folks currently have a touch-enabled PC display? Yet again Microsoft have failed to realise that OS upgrades shouldn't mean hardware upgrades. My current display, a Dell Ultrasharp 27", cost me around £900 as new. So if Windows 7s' pricing policy follows that of Windows Vista I'll have to fork out well over £1000 for the privilege of reaping the benefits of Windows 7 and I won't even have bought a new PC.

My prediction is Windows 7 will be another own goal for Microsoft. Like it's predecessor, Windows Vista, Windows 7 will be popular on new PCs only. But not because people actually want it. Because they simply won't have a choice.

Fusion power seeks super steels

2008-09-10T13:57:00.000-07:00

I noticed this article on the BBC news page. You can bet it'll raise the question from all the conspiracy theorists. Why don't more skyscrapers collapse during fires then?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7607473.stm

Microsoft: Windows 7 for servers to be minor release

2008-09-03T15:30:00.000-07:00

"Microsoft said on Monday that the server version of Windows 7 will not be a major release and will bear the name Windows Server 2008 R2."

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39463010,00.htm

Well that's a shocker! Over on Dells' IdeaStorm forum I've been warning people for months Windows 7 has become nothing more than a re-branding of Vista. This would seem to be the first concrete evidence of that prediction. But then again Microsoft has already said Windows 7 will now be using the Vista kernel and the Vista driver model. Re-branding exercise? You bet it is!

Disney World: The Land of Waiting In Line!

2008-09-01T17:20:00.000-07:00

Okay I just spent a whole week in Disney World. It was awesome! But only because my girlfriend was there to. The Disney part wasn't as good as it should have been. It could just be that Disney are victims of their own success. But it seems like most of what we did for the week was wait in line and avoid the shops selling tacky souvenirs.

At least two thirds of the buildings in Disney World are shops selling Disney merchandise. Disney World isn't a theme park. It's an expansive open air shopping mall that sells nothing but Disney merchandise.

If it hadn't been for the fast pass system we'd have spent even more time waiting in line. If that wasn't bad enough the rides are all too short. You wait for well over an hour in some cases for a ride that's over in seconds. Literally 2 seconds. Summit Plummet at Blizzard Beach is one such example. Great ride. Long cue. Over far too quickly.

basically more rides are needed. Yes that will draw in more punters. But they'll be more widely dispersed around the parks. And the bus transportation system? Needs huge improvements. More buses would be a good start.

On a brighter note, the Magical Express was excellent. Disney World actually laid on a Magical Express coach just to take my girlfriend and I back to the airport in the wee early hours of the morning. Just for the two of us. That i can't fault. Neither can I fault the friendliness of all of the Disney staff. They were all top notch. From cleaners to dancers and actors.

Dell Studio Hybrid!

2008-08-02T06:33:00.000-07:00

I like the styling of the Hybrid. It's almost like my stackable multimedia rack idea over on IdeaStorm. Okay I might be stretching that a bit. But it's almost like it.

I like the interchangeable sleeves. The fashion conscious will love that feature. The slot loading DVD drive is another nice touch. In fact there are quite a few storage options packed into the hybrid. Including USB ports for flash drives and an SD card reader.

The inclusion of a HDMI port is also a nice touch. It will allow consumers to integrate the Hybrid seamlessly right into the home entertainment experience. I didn't notice it on the UK page, but apparently there's a TV decoder option as well. So people can use one machine for watching TV, listening to music, surfing the web, dealing with e-mail, recording/pausing live TV, playing DVDs (don't know about Blue-ray) and playing casual games. Tetris, Solitaire that sort of thing.

The Studio Hybrid only gets Intel X3100 graphics and a 5400RPM hard drive. The Intel graphics rule out high caliber resource hungry PC games. The slow hard drive might impact on recording Live TV. I guess it'll depend on what sort of quality you're willing to accept. But if you're plugging your Hybrid into a large LCD I'd say forget recording from the TV.

Overall I think Dell have made a good attempt here. It's a better option than previous attempts to build a desktop from laptop components. The XPS One and the XPS M2010 are more capable in the graphics department. But they're also tethered to their displays making them less adaptable and less able to integrate into the home environment. They were essentially still desktop PCs.

The hybrid is a device. A set-top box almost.

The final drawback is Windows Vista. Dell insists on selling the Hybrid with Vista because as we all know Dell "Recommends Vista". Which is of course nothing to do with how good Windows Vista is.

Well selling it with Vista means you need to take the most powerful configuration you can afford to get the best performance out of it. If it were being sold with Ubuntu we could get away with maybe 1GB of RAM instead of a minimum of 2GB. For Vista I'd recommend taking the full 4GB which of course will only give you 3.5GB because the "Wintel" feature that's meant to get you the rest doesn't work. But in fairness Dell do point out only 3.5GB will be available.

All things considered the Dell Studio Hybrid is a capable machine that will more than meet the needs of it's target audience at a reasonable price point. It's just a shame about the graphics and hard drive.

Teaching my nephew about Linux

2008-07-31T13:52:00.000-07:00

My nephew has been hanging around me all night. He's been pestering me for a game of the penguine racing game. He'll play it for a while then get bored. What he really wants to do is play with the Fire and Rain effects in Compiz-Fusion. They keep him amused for hours. He loves drawing with Fire.

Of course he can't understand why his grandpa's Windows XP PC can't do those things. He's only 4!

Dell: Microsofts Poodle?

2008-07-30T11:33:00.000-07:00

Using the new "Top Ideas" feature on Dell IdeaStorm I tracked all the top rated ideas from the highest voted to 0 points. From page 1 to page 400. On every single page there were a healthy number of ideas relating to Linux, Ubuntu, OpenOffice.org, Firefox and free open source software in general.

The highest voted Linux/FOSS idea had 151870 points and the lowest had 9 points. I'm sure there are other with negative votes in the remaining 79 pages. But most of those ideas were about Microsoft products. Windows XP, Vista, Microsoft Works and Office. The remainder were hardware related, things Dell just can't do or non-idea threads.

Surely this must tell Dell something about the demand for free open source software on Dell PCs? The highest voted idea of all time here on IdeaStorm is Pre-Installed Linux | Ubuntu | Fedora | OpenSUSE | Multi-Boot with 151870 points. In fact the entire first page is all about Linux, FOSS and no trial ware. That theme continues all the way through IdeaStorm to page 400.

So why then is it that Dell still insists there isn't enough consumer demand to warrant treating Ubuntu as an equal to Microsoft Windows? Remember Dell told it's consumers "if they voted for it on IdeaStorm, they would get it". Why are Dell taking so long?

Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice.org are all free open source applications. Firefox 3 even supports branding! Dell doesn't need permission to distribute these applications. It simply chooses not to. Even though we voted for them.

I'm OLD!!!

2008-07-21T15:42:00.000-07:00

I turned 30 today. So now I'm old. Officially old. But being old is good. I got a digital camera and an SD card to go with it!

Dell Points The Finger

2008-07-20T08:07:00.000-07:00

http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2008/07/18/32-pages-of-paper-in-17-boxes.aspx?CommentPosted=true#commentmessage

The above link contains a post from Direct2Dell. Dells main blogging site. Dell would like to point the finger at HP for shipping 32 pages of A4 paper in 17 boxes. Well no wonder they continued to sell the defective W2600 and W3000 LCD TVs for so long. No wonder it's taking an age to get a product recall put into force.

Dell clearly has other priorities other than providing proper customer service. "We can all learn a lot by listening to customers and uncovering ways we can improve ...". Before we inprove the planet, could just try and get customer service right?

Ubuntu Tip

2008-07-19T12:01:00.000-07:00

http://www.ubuntutips.net/

Looks like a half decent site. It's still in "beta" but there's a lot of good stuff there to help the beginner.

Of course my real tip here for Ubuntu users or indeed any PC user is to use the web to it's maximum potential. There's so much "free" information out there. There's really no excuse save being dead for not knowing how to do things for yourself.

Here's another great page. http://ubuntulinuxtipstricks.blogspot.com/

Select Systems Now Available with Ubuntu 8.04

2008-07-19T11:32:00.000-07:00

Select Systems Now Available with Ubuntu 8.04

About time too. We're really not that far away from Intrepid Ibex assuming it arrives on time. And why wouldn't it?

I am impressed with the inclusion of something from Dells new Studio line. Perhaps Dell are starting to take consumer Linux more seriously. The XPS M1530 is also a welcome addition. I just wish Dell would make Ubuntu available from the OS options list when building a "normal" PC. It would be much better than doing shady back ally deals out of sight of Microsoft.

Recall All Dell w2600 LCD TVs and Displays With the No Power Problem

2008-07-16T11:53:00.000-07:00

http://www.ideastorm.com/article/show/10090584/Recall_ALL_Dell_W2600_LCD_TVs_and_Displays_With_the_No_Power_Problem

This was an idea submitted to Dells IdeaStorm web site by me. The idea is to get hese faulty displays recalled as they should have been all along. Dell has now marked this idea as reviewed in record time. Well record time for IdeaStorm anyway. Which probably means it's not going to happen. We'll have to wait and see.

From the IdeaStorm moderators blog.

REVIEWED: This idea has been tagged "Under Review," sent to the business for evaluation, and reviewed. This status tag will require a response from the business that includes a summary of the review process and any outcomes of the idea discussion.

UNDER REVIEW: Dell is reviewing the idea and evaluating it against criteria that include, but aren’t limited to: market impact, regional demand, feasibility, timing, and vendor/supplier availability, etc. In some cases, the idea review process may take only a few weeks, and in others it make take several months to determine its feasibility and market impact.

Ubuntu Tip - Intel PowerTop

2008-07-14T09:38:00.000-07:00

PowerTop is a nifty little command line application that takes a look at what's running on your PC and can recommend and implement changes to help you save power.

Installation is quite simple. Open a terminal windows and do the following.

1) Type sudo apt-install powertop

That's it. In a terminal window type sudo powertop. Powertop need admin privileges to make changes.

Ubuntu Tip - Say Cheese For Your Web Cam

2008-07-13T15:12:00.000-07:00

A quick and very simple way to get web cams working in Ubuntu is to install a Gnome application called Cheese. Installation is very simple.

1. Open a terminal window.
2. Type sudo apt-get install cheese
3. Let the installer run and that’s it.

This works for Ubuntu 7.10 and 8.04. I’m not sure about earlier versions. But it won’t hurt to try it.

Dell Customer Service - Part 2 - Dell Hell.

2008-07-13T14:52:00.000-07:00

Over the years a certain phrase has been introduced in to the English language. The phrase is “Dell Hell”. It refers to the monstrous task of getting Dell to take responsibility for it's mistakes and problems encountered with it's products and services. In fact the phrase is so widely used many people suspect it's the reason “hell” is banned from Dell Forums and Idea Storm.

In my first post to Dell Your Blog I touched on issues like the XPS 700 upgrades and the missing XPS M1330/M1330n remote controls. Both issues that affected me and my experience with Dell. But happily both issues that were solved relatively quickly. Relative that is compared to the Dell W2600 LCD TV NO POWER problem.

For those that are unaware of this particular issue basically it refers to a situation where Dells W2600 LCD TV fails to power up. Sometimes the TV can be coaxed into life. But sooner or later the TV just dies.

Now most people would expect a TV to last a good few years. Most would accept 5 years of loyal dutiful service. The W2600 was supposed to last around 10 years. But in reality many customers have been lucky to get past 2 and a half years, while some Dell customers have gotten as little as a year.

One single solitary year of proper use from an LCD TV. Oh and Dells customers like me who bought the W2600 paid £800+ GBP. That's $1520 USD on the current exchange rate.

Dells response to this issue thus far has been to repair or replace these faulty TVs with refurbished models. Which might sound like a good deal. But there's a catch. This offer is only valid for up to 3 years from the start of the original warranty. If you miss it, too bad. You're on your own. And Dell hasn't exactly gone out of it's way to publicize this offer or contact customers. In fact this problem has been dragging on since 2002. I bought my W2600 in 2005 and it's now 2008. Count the years slipping by.

So if Dell had known about this problem for 3 years before I bought my W2600. Why didn't they issued a product recall? Why didn't they pull the whole product line sooner? Yes that would have been expensive. But Dells reputation would have been intact. They would have been a company that cared. They would have been a company that put it's consumers first. Instead of a company that seems to be washing it's hands of a problem only they can really fix.

Now if you think a product recall is a bit drastic. Consider that the W2600 is a product with a premium price tag. It's also just one of several Dell LCD TVs to suffer from this problem. Also affected was the W3000 and several other models.

Thanks for reading this blog. Please visit IdeaStorm and vote up or down for a product recall.

Dell Customer Service - Part 1 - Simplify IT.

2008-07-13T14:37:00.000-07:00

Customer service is an emotive issue for many Dell consumers. My experience on IdeaStorm and Dell Forums has shown me that many consumers have encountered problems with Dells customer service. Inconsistent short term special deals, poorly designed marketing and poor telephone support have left many customers feeling disgruntled and ripped off. The following is my opinion of what Dell needs to do to correct these issues.

Dell has made much noise about it's campaign to "simplify IT". What a shame it is then that this campaign was never extended to the consumer market. This is in fact the first step Dell needs to take. Not because Dells customers are stupid. But because communication is so much easier when it is kept simple.

Rather than telling the consumer the potential for the product. Tell them what it is actually for. Tell them what they can actually do with it. Rather than show off all the potential things we could have with the product. Show us what we are actually getting.

Too many times in the past has Dell made promises about products it never intended to keep. The XPS 700 upgrades, the M1330 remote controls and recently LightFX to name a few. Dell needs to focus it's message to the consumer. Dells consumers shouldn't have to campaign to make Dell keep these promises.

After Sales Support

People hate call centers. They make us feel like we're children getting into trouble for doing something naughty. And when they are over seas call centers the language barrier takes the frustration to intolerable levels.

Dell needs to ditch the over seas call centers in favor of more local call centers. Web based support should be utilized whenever and where ever possible. Develop a proper on-line knowledge base. I believe customers actually prefer to solve problems on their own. Ditch the Microsoft Internet Explorer centric support tools. Go with open source technologies for support. Adopt open standards on your web sites. ActiveX does not work for Linux customers! PHP does!

Use e-mail support more often. E-mails give everybody time to calm down and think. Customers can communicate more clearly what they want to say. Tech support can take a little more time to investigate the problem. They can even request log files for examination. Implement an instant on OS like Splashtop. If the main OS goes belly up, then at least the consumer can still get help. There are so many more tools Dell could use but don't use.

Borrow a few ideas from Linux. Package repositories for drivers and pre-installed applications! How much easier life could be if Dell was more imaginative with it's tech support.

The call center in the 21^st century should be the last resort.

Introduction:

2008-07-13T14:07:00.000-07:00

aikiwolfie is the ID, tag, name whatever you want to call it that I go by on-line. I don't actually have a problem using my real name. It's just that I studied IT in college and the need for security was really drummed into us.

My reason for starting this blog is very simple. To have a little more freedom when blogging.

Recently I started contributing to Dells blog site. http://yourblog.dell.com/ But I've found it very restrictive. There's no real blogging interface. Blogs are submitted by e-mail. Unless I'm doing something wrong. Just like all the other Dell sites with moderation. Moderation seems to go overboard here.

Another great site where you can find me is www.martialartsplanet.com.

So I'll be reposting my posts from Dells blog site and I'll hopefully be adding new content here. Enjoy.