The Mighty Linux Blog

I Got a Nice Letter Today

2006-03-29T15:53:00.000-05:00

Today I opened my mailbox and, what did I find? I found a letter from Microsoft. I opened it up and found a nice little sheet of paper about a class action lawsuit against Microsoft. They are going to pay me for each copy of Windows/Office that I bought from 1994-2004. They will pay me:

$12 for every copy of Windows 95, 98, 98 SE, or Millennium
$5 for every other version of Windows (including MS-DOS)
$5 for Office, Excel, or Word

Also attached was a list of products that I already registered with them. I haven't registered all of my copies with them, but I did register 1 copy of 95, and 2 copies of XP. Right off the bat, I can think of another copy of 95, a copy of 98, another copy of XP, and 2 copies of Office. In total, that's $68 right there.

It's about time Microsoft paid me something for all the hours I've had to fix Windows because of problems that are their fault in the first place.

I never thought I'd say it, but... thanks Microsoft!

ajaxWrite

2006-03-23T12:58:00.000-05:00

Today, I just discovered this really nice web based word processor called ajaxWrite. It is a web application that has a native look an feel (and speed), can edit word .doc files (although no OpenDocument yet) and looks really nice. It's relatively new, so there are bound to be bugs in it. If you have Firefox 1.5, try it out.

NetworkManager

2006-03-21T12:24:00.000-05:00

One cool new feature in Dapper is a neat-o little tool called NetworkManager, which is geared towrads laptops with wireless connections. It's not so useful for desktops, but on laptops it will be quite useful.

If you download a Dapper Live CD, you will notice a little icon in the notification area, which will either show some bars (if you have a working wireless connection), a blinking computer icon (if you have an active ethernet connection) or a little computer with a warning sign if you have neither.

In a nutshell, NetworkManager is a daemon that sits in the background and monitors your wireless/ethernet connections. It will automatically connect to wireless networks, and if it detects an active ethernet connection, it will automatically switch the wireless interface off and turn on the wired interface seamlessly and transparently. So, if you have a laptop that you bring to an office (and connect via ethernet) or connect to a friend's wireless network, it can proove quite useful. It works quite well on my desktop and laptop.

Dapper Delayed

2006-03-21T12:02:00.000-05:00

Now it's official from Mark Shuttleworth: Ubuntu Dapper has been delayed until June. Off the bat, this may sound like a bad thing, but I think it is a good thing. You can read the official announcement here, but I'd like to highlight a few positive improvements that I think are worth the wait.

devote an additional three weeks of bug-fix-only quality assurance time to the release for the core development team
devote additional developer time to UI polish that we believe will make Dapper stand out as a high-quality desktop operating system for large-scale deployment
ensure that Dapper will be LSB certified at the time of release
ensure that the new graphical Live CD installer receives very widespread testing

I already think Dapper is impressive, so with an extra 6 weeks, it should be even better (but what will the release be? 6.06 seems more appropriate for July).

New Idea

2006-03-20T17:44:00.000-05:00

I've been using CastPodder (formerly iPodder, but for Linux) for a few weeks now and I really like it. It has a nice, clean GUI, I can keep it running in the tray, and it works really well. I used to use bashpodder, and since switching I have been missing that level of customizability.

And today I had a cool idea - create a little bash script (with some Xdialog GUI goodness) that will offer to copy songs to an iPod after you download a podcast. If you select yes, it will copy that song to the iPod. If you select no, it will keep the podcast info and transfer it the next time you click yes.

Simple, yet effective. I think I'll try it.

Justin Died Again

2006-03-19T11:24:00.000-05:00

Not really. I've been pretty busy lately and I haven't really had the time to blog about anything. So here it is, a huge update post on what I would have blogged about this past month.

Ubuntu Dapper
I think the most notable update is that I have upgraded to Ubuntu Dapper Drake (6.04) and I have to say, it's really nice. Gnome 2.14 is noticeably faster and there is a new Ubuntu "Human" theme. Booting takes about 30 seconds to get to the login screen, which is about half the time of Breezy.

So far, I have only had one problem with Dapper: my wireless card. When I was first installing it, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it had detected my Broadcom-based wireless card and offered to configure it, although this didn't work. I told it not to configure the network and went on with the install.

Dapper comes with kernel 2.6.15, which includes the new and unstable bcm43xx driver for broadcom wireless cards. In order for this driver to work, you need to obtain a bcmwl5.sys file (the windows driver) and use a utility called fwcutter to extract firmware for it. However, due to licensing issues, Ubuntu is not allowed to ship the sys files or any firmware files and because of this, my wireless card did not work. Although, I got the fwcutter program and cut out my firmware and it still didn't work, since this driver is still so new.

No problem, just go back to ndiswrapper, right? More problems. I installed the ndiswrapper-utils package (which, luckily, is on the CD) and correctly loaded the driver, and that didn't work, either. Later, I figured out that this didn't work because the bcm43xx driver was already in charge of my wireless card. So, I did a 'sudo rmmod bcm43xx' to unload the driver and then a 'sudo modprobe ndiswrapper'. This worked, although it still detected my wireless card as "eth0", when it should be "wlan0". Dmesg revealed that it also should be "wlan0", although ifconfig said it was eth0. The experts on the Ubuntu IRC were stumped. I could have left it like that, but the wireless card does not get started on boot and I cannot access my local apache server (yes, http://localhost did not work)

I know there is some way I could have fixed that issue, but I didn't want to waste any more time. I took the wireless card out and did a reinstall of Ubuntu and when it first booted up, I blacklisted the bcm43xx module, shut it off, put the card back in, and booted up again. That time, ndiswrapper worked perfectly and I have not encountered any more problems.

After the wireless issue, everything has been working flawlessly. I even got into some cool remote administration, but I'll get to that later in the post.

Web Blazing
There's web surfing, and then there's web blazing. I happen to live in a lucky area where Verizon is unrolling FiOS internet service. Since 1999, I've had RoadRunner and it's been fine (5 Mbps down, 386 Kbps up). But now, I get 15 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up for the same price. I even got a nice D-Link router (108 MB/s) for free.

And yes, it really is fast. I just downloaded MacBreak off of Libsyn at 1.5 MB/s, and my average net speed is between 1 and 3 MB/s. Everyone is complaining about how the quality in SkypeOut sucks; it was for me too, but now it is perfect. If you happen to live in an area where they offer it, I suggest you get it. It really is that good. (and, as if that was not enough, my real phone sounds better because it too uses the fiber)

Remote Administration
For a while now, I've been using VNC and the VNC Java web applet for remote administration. It's worked OK, although it was fairly sluggish and anyone who turned my monitor on could see what I was doing. However, I have been using FreeNX (all the GPL components of the NoMachine NX server) for the past week, and it is much, much better. The mouse moves as if I was sitting at the real computer and whole windows move with minimal lag (and I don't think that's entirely to do with my faster internet connection).

I avoided NX for a while because there was no Java applet, but I checked their site and there it was... a perfectly good Java client. It has been working flawlessly since I started using it. On top of that, NX uses SSH, so there is strong encryption built in (VNC's encryption is so poor, the password can be cracked in a matter of seconds). Also, instead of simply sending the current X output over the internet, NX actually sets up a separate X server running on the machine which can only be viewed and controlled from the client over the network, which means no one can come by and turn the monitor on to see what I'm doing.

Gizmo
I have a neutral opinion about Skype. I'm glad they make a Linux version, although they have neglected the Linux version for a while and they're still using OSS, which means that nothing else can use the soundcard while Skype is being used. On top of that, they still haven't released video support on Linux (or OS X).

Luckily for me, Gizmo is here and works much better. On top of that, there is a new version that supports ALSA. Finally! I've been asking this since the first time I used Gizmo, and it's finally here. On top of that, it works very well. Sound quality is great, as always.

I've also been able to get Ekiga to connect to SIPphone (the SIP service that Gizmo uses). Since Gizmo is completely based on open standards, innovation like this is possible (take that, Skype).

On another note, Gizmo not only has free voicemail, but now lets you record your own greeting for free. If you're using Gizmo, call 'record' to record your custom greeting.

Skype
In other Skype news, I've finally figured out how to get Skype working well on Ubuntu. Skype has this annoying problem of not closing the sound device once it has used it. This results in only being able to make one call before getting an error and needing to restart Skype. On the Skype forums, someone found a configuration that allows you to run Skype with the aoss wrapper, which enables you to play sound from multiple applications while Skype is on a call. I can report that it works quite well and completely eliminates all of my skype problems. Now I can use up the rest of my SkypeOut credit before transitioning over to Gizmo.

That's about it for now. Stay tuned.

Google Apps for Linux?

2006-02-15T12:06:00.000-05:00

Yes! It seems that Google is rumored to be working on a Linux version of Picasa, a really nice photo management application. When I was using it on Windows, it was really nice and even had it's own IM client optimized for sharing pictures called Hello.

This is a good move on Google's part. The Linux community has been waiting a while for Google to offer Linux versions of their software for a while now and it looks like Google may finally be cooperating.

Notice that I didn't use the word port, because Google is not porting the apps to Linux. Instead, they are using Wine libraries (CrossOver Office, actually) which will be included within the executable to run on Linux. I'd like a clean port of the app better, but this is the next best thing.

Read the article

Newsvine

2006-01-30T19:44:00.000-05:00

I just got invited to try the private beta of Newsvine, and so far I like it. I think of it as digg and del.icio.us meets blogger. There's a lot to it, but it consists of a few different parts: news from traditional sources like the AP, CNN, etc, viewer submitted stories (called seeds), and user contributed stories (called a colums, but really are blogs). They use tags to organize things, and have direct links to the main tags.

It is similar to digg because popular seeds get put on the homepage.

Each user has their own watchlist as well, so you can add your favorite tags right to your personalized home page. You can also comment on articles and see what other people have to say about them.

OK, so this is nothing new. Newsvine is, however, the first service in my opinion to tie everything together well in an appealing way. Up until now, I have been using digg as my news site, Netvibes as my home page, and Blogger to blog (although hopefully I can switch to f2o soon). With Newsvine, I can hit all of these on the same page.

If anyone wants an invite, send me an email at jgrace103@gmail.com. I've got 20 of them right now.

Gaim Humor

2006-01-24T16:06:00.000-05:00

The second beta of Gaim 2.0 has just been released. I have been using and like the first beta, but there are some annoyances and bugs with it (like changing status from away). After reading the news on digg, I grabbed the source and started compiling. I was pleasantly surprised to see this while the configure script was running:

checking for me pot o' gold... no

Nice :-)

Minor Update (Free iPods Anyone?)

2006-01-20T16:04:00.000-05:00

Here's a minor blog update: I've decided to take down the Google AD. It's ineffective and I probably creates more of an annoyance than a nice thing to have. It may come back when I get more traffic or actually start paying for hosting.

In some other news, I'm trying out one of those incentive sites, in this case mp3players4free.com. I already have an iPod (that I'm very happy with), so I'm just going to get a $275 check.

Basically, in order to get an iPod (or iRiver H10/Creative Zen/$275 check), you have to complete a sponsored offer and get five other people to sign up with you as their referral and also complete a sponsored offer. I did the Blockbuster Online offer (I was going to sign up for it anyway :-) ), but there are tons of other offers. There's Columbia House DVD, a few ISPs, webhosting, DirecTV, and BMG Music Service to name a few. You can get away with most of the offers without paying, and a few of them are free (I think the LumiDent one is free).

And here's the thing: I only need 2 more referrals! This could literally pay for good webhosting for about four years. If you enjoy reading my blog and want me to continue, this is the way to support me (and maybe get an iPod in the process). If you're skeptical, there's TONS of proof online, just go out and search for it (the company is OfferCentric).

If you're interested, here's the link.

No, I Haven't Fell Off the Earth

2006-01-19T17:10:00.000-05:00

I've been busy these last few weeks. Now, I'm back and ready to start blogging again.

I'm trying to think of some meaningful posts that will be worth reading.

Stay tuned.

My Opinion on Running as Root

2006-01-02T14:15:00.000-05:00

I think it's no secret that I'm against primarily running as root. I outlined this in my recent post, "Toying with Linspire". Jon left a comment on that. Most of all, he agreed with me, but disagreed about running as root. I started writing a reply, but it got long and I decided that it really deserved it's own post, so here it goes.

Before I start here, let me fully quote Michael Robertson (former CEO of Linspire) from the same question I did before (I cut off the beginning last time).

Jo: On the security front, I noticed during the presentation that you were running everything as root. Is that really a wise idea, to train users to run everything as the one user who can mess everything up whenever they feel like it? Should you not try to teach them one basic UNIX security idea, that you really don't want to run things as root?

Michael: I think, like everything, it's a question of balance. Ease of use, versus security. I defy anybody to tell me why is it more secure to not run as root. Nobody really has a good answer. They say "oh, yeah, it is!", but it really isn't. Here's why: What's the most important thing on your desktop? It's the data. If someone gets access to your libraries or whatever, who cares? Your data is the most precious thing on your computer. And whether you log in as root or log in as user, you have access to that data, technically anyone who's compromising your account has access to your data as well.

Michael: Then you could say "Well, it's not really about your data, it's that people could accidentally mess things up!". Well, you could accidentally drive into a wall as well, it doesn't mean we should make all cars drive at 10 miles an hour. So, I don't see the added benefit. I DO see it's an added pain in the ass when grandma tries to change her wallpaper, and it tells her "you don't have root privileges". What are you talking about, man? I'm just trying to use my computer, or change the clock, or any one of a hundred other things. So, people always say "it's less secure", but I defy anyone to point out a single instance, and people all go "Well, I, erm, it's theoretical!". There's no one area I think you can point out where a machine that's run with the root user could be compromised. It couldn't be.

Michael: I know the hardcore geeks feel differently, that's fine. When somebody installs Linspire, we say "do you want to set up users, yes or no", we give them the choice, right there when they start up for the first time. If they want to set up multiple users, they're welcome to do that, but we don't force them to. That's the difference we have.

I can think of a few good scenarios where it is a good idea to not run as root.

Take the typical Linspire scenario - you want a cheap computer. Unless you want to buy more than one or already have a computer, chances are this will be a family computer. Having separate user accounts just makes sense, because you will almost always have different needs than Billy, who spends most of his computer time playing TuxPaint and various games. You don't want him getting in and messing with work documents or anything else you may have in your account.

I definitely see Michael's point, but he's missing one critical factor: frustration. If you're running as root and a virus comes by and deletes everything on your hard drive, there's enough frustration that you've just lost all of your data. On top of that, you now have to go back and install the whole operating system over again. Then, you have to install all your programs again. This is a problem that can be completely avoided simply by running as a regular user. If you were running as a regular user, your files would still be gone, but it would only take a couple minutes before you'd be using it again. On top of that, all your programs and libraries are still there. If you're a good user and create backups regularly, it would only be another few minutes before you would be editing your documents and surfing with your bookmarks.

And there's another factor he's missing too: other people's frustration. It is very typical for more than one user to share a PC. If everyone uses the same root account, all of their data would be gone too from the same scenario described above. If everyone who used the computer had separate accounts, the virus would be isolated to the user that ran it. It would not affect anyone else.

Michael does make a good point, though: running as root does make certain tasks easier. Setting the clock, for instance, is one common thing that requires root permission. But he is overlooking a great tool which I, being an Ubuntu user, have come to love: sudo. Sudo can be used with multiple users so that it doesn't require a different password to do root tasks. It also will not ask you for a password more than once within a certain amount of time. On top of that, it can also be configured to run without a password. This isn't as secure, but at least it's controlled this way (and it's probably possible to disallow executions of certain commands, like 'rm -rf /').

I really hope Linspire does something about this. Teaching users that they should run as root is unacceptable. At least, during installation (not the initial setup) they should ask you if you want to create normal user accounts and explain that it is more secure to run as a normal user.

And then they should work on improving their boot speed. That's just pathetic.

My Christmas Gift.

2005-12-25T15:59:00.000-05:00

Feel the power.

Importing into Wordpress

2005-12-24T10:17:00.000-05:00

I'm in the process of importing this blog into the WordPress installation on f2o (you may have noticed that I took the blog down for a little while this morning).

It shouldn't be much longer now...

New X.Org Released

2005-12-22T10:03:00.000-05:00

The X.Org foundation has just released a new version of X.Org: X11R7.0 and X11R6.9, which is the "first major release of the X Window System in more than a decade".

7.0 and 6.9 have the same code, but there is a big difference in version 7 - modularity. As I understand it, you can add on Modules after you install it without waiting for the next release in the long release cycle.

This is cool because it will encourage developers to contribute code and distribute it as a loadable module. There are likely to be a lot of cool things that come from this.

By the time Vista is released, X.Org will probably have so many features that are not in Vista, but wil run on lower end hardware. We can expect to see some really great things from this.

Toying with Linspire

2005-12-21T18:27:00.000-05:00

Arch Linux has failed me again. I have tried messing around with Grub boot parameters, modifying fstab, but still no go. Arch just will not boot up with kernel 2.6.

So, I have a PC doing nothing of particular importance. You know what time it is... time to try out another Distro.

Jon has been having such a great time with Linspire, that I thought I'd give it a try. I had a CD from a while back when they were giving them away for free. It was sitting there doing nothing, so I tried it out.

My initial impressions are mixed. There are some things I like and some things I don't like. That install - it's really easy and pretty, but it needs to be a bit... better. It's fine for a user with a single hard drive, but in my case, there are two hard drives: a 16 GB one and a 40 GB one. Unfortunately, the 16 GB one is the IDE drive so I need to install Linspire on that (the other one is connected from a PCI card). What I usually do is install the base system on the smaller drive and make the other one the home directory. However, on Linspire, this is not possible during installation. I chose advanced, but all that allows you to do is pick a particular partition to install it on and toggle installing Grub to the MBR. There isn't even a partitioner, which is really sad. So, I go back and do the auto-install.

The install took about 15 minutes, which isn't bad, but I've installed Mepis in 10.

Most of my issues with Linspire come after the install.

Linspire takes WAY too long to boot. I didn't time it, but it probably takes somewhere around five minutes. Unacceptable. Then it launched LDM (which is probably just KDM with a nice theme) and that took about thirty seconds to give me the login screen. Also unacceptable. Kubuntu took maybe 2 minutes or less to boot up and get to the login screen.

Once I was logged in, it wasn't as bad. But I had another issue. After the first boot, it comes up with initial setup. At one point, it asks you to adjust your soundcard. I didn't hear anything. I moved the slider up and down, still nothing. The speakers were plugged in correctly, I even plugged headphones in... still nothing. I found out later that the sound does work, but it seems unprofessional to have a problem with the initial setup.

My next issue with the setup is at the end of it. On the final screen, there are a bunch of buttons that allow you configure other parts of your system. Hidden among them is "Add Users". That really should be taken care of during the install, and even if they wanted to wait until that initial setup, there should be a whole screen devoted to it. I'd like to quote Michael Robertson here:

I know the hardcore geeks feel differently about [operating as root], that's fine. When somebody installs Linspire, we say "do you want to set up users, yes or no", we give them the choice, right there when they start up for the first time. If they want to set up multiple users, they're welcome to do that, but we don't force them to. That's the difference we have.

He's lying. There's isn't a portion that says "do you want to set up users, yes or no". There is a tiny icon that says "Add Users" that most people aren't likely to click. As Linux gets more popular and eventually may get viruses, running as root is a deathtrap. A virus could run a simple 'rm -rf /' and everything would be gone.

Ok, I got over that in a few moments. I just clicked on, as I probably won't keep Linspire on there.

You all knew this was coming - that damn CNR! Honestly. I'm not going to pay $20 a year to get access to a service that works just as good as apt-get, only with less programs. In the end, $20 isn't that much, but it's the concept I don't like. Charging for access to free software seems pretty cheap to me. And then, if Linspire is the distro that brings people to Linux, what if they raise the prices? You're trapped. They say that you can use apt with Linspire, but I haven't tried this. I assume it works pretty well, but they generally keep that hidden. If you're sitting at a new install of Linspire, they say that you can use CNR to install programs. They don't say, "Or, if you want a free way of installing packages, you can use apt-get instead..." If you're a newbie, you'll have no idea there are any alternatives and will likely shell out money for CNR.

I wanted to install Gizmo, just to see what CNR is about. I went to the Gizmo web site, and clicked on the CNR link. I got a prompt asking me if I wanted to install it. I clicked yes, and nothing happened. I looked in the CNR window, and it had a page informing me that I needed to pay in order to use CNR. So, I went back and downloaded the DEBs, but Gizmo still won't run because Linspire is missing a shared library (libstdc+6, I think). Without apt, I can't use Gizmo.

There were some (actually, five) programs you could install for free in CNR. One of them happened to be Frozen Bubble. I like that game, and used to play it a lot. I installed it. First, I noticed that the downloading was pretty slow. It took way longer than apt would have. But, after it was installed, it worked well.

Then, I wanted to try hibernating. This is the only distro that Jon was able to hibernate in, so I thought I'd give it a whirl. First of all, it was hard to find where to hibernate on a desktop. I eventually found it from KLaptop which was running in the tray (why would KLaptop even be running?) and I was able to hibernate from there. Hibernation actually took a while. I guess this is partially due to the speed of the PC, but I'm pretty sure that another distro would have been faster. Then it came time to resume - I booted back up, it started resuming. It got to 20 Megs, and froze. I left it there for about 10 minutes, but still nothing. Hibernation worked fine in Kubutu, but doesn't work in Linspire. And that's odd, because Kubuntu came with Suspend1, while Linspire came with Suspend2. I will give it that - Linspire is the first distro I have seen to have Suspend2 support out of the box. If only it worked...

I'm going to say it right here - In Linspire, everything else worked. All my hardware was detected and working, all the software I tried worked, etc. But then again - every other distro I've tried on there also worked just as well (and in some cases, better). CNR is a rip-off, and booting takes waaay too long. Maybe I'll give Arch another try, but I also wanted to try the new version of SuSE. We'll see how this unfolds.

Going With Arch Linux

2005-12-16T18:40:00.000-05:00

Well, Gentoo's been a fun learning experience, but I don't think I'm going to keep it on there. I don't really mind compiling everything from source, but there are a couple things I want binaries for: X11 and KDE. There's no way I'm keeping that thing on for 48+ hours while it's busy compiling. That computer uses up lots of energy (it has 5 fans), is really loud, and I've had problems with it crashing in the past.

So I think I'll go with Arch Linux for a few reasons:

I couldn't figure out how to get Portage to install a binary package
I figured out why Arch didn't work (I had the same problem with Gentoo - When it gets installed, the /dev/discs... scheme switched back to /dev/hda. Odd)
Even though Gentoo is supposed to be quick and clean, Arch still booted up faster.

So there you have it. Maybe I'll try Gentoo again sometime. For now, I'll use Arch. I like the reassurance that when I want to install something, it won't take hours compiling. Like on Ubuntu - If I need a library, apt-get does it in seconds. I'm sure Arch will be the same.

Let's have a poll - If you use Arch Linux, leave a comment here!

HOWTO: Hibernation on Linux (Suspend2)

2005-12-16T15:39:00.000-05:00

I have a guide up if you want to learn how to Hibernate in Linux.

You can leave comments for it here.

Arch Linux and Gentoo

2005-12-13T21:33:00.000-05:00

I had heard so much hype over Arch Linux, so I just had to check it out. Last night, I took the plunge and tried installing it on my secondary desktop.

A couple of things. First of all, it didn't work. I am sure that I installed it correctly, but it wouldn't fully boot (something about VFS syncing, I don't remember). I re-installed it again, and got the same problem. Second, it used this really weird hard drive naming scheme that I've never seen before in Linux. Rather than /dev/hda1, I had /dev/discs/disc0/part1.

Anyway, I figured maybe it was a Kernel problem. There was still hope! I re-installed it a third time, but using kernel 2.4 instead. It worked! I logged in and tried 'startx', but wouldn't ya know it, X wouldn't start (and I know I installed it). But I will say this - it starts up wicked fast. That machine is fairly old. It is 600 MHz with 256 MB of ram, but that thing booted up faster than this machine, partially because I have more running on bootup here, but that definately doesn't account for everything. Props to Arch for being such a quick distro.

Since 2.6 won't boot and I can't live without an X server like in 2.4, I decided to retire Arch Linux.

I had an empty computer just begging for a new distro to be installed...

Why not Gentoo? I had read the docs on it before, and a stage 3 install doesn't require you to compile the base system (which means it won't take 24+ hours to install). So, I'm currently doing a stage 3 install of Gentoo. I'm not finished yet, but I'm sure it will work (and Gentoo also uses the /dev/discs/disc0/part1 scheme; Fedora and Kubuntu didn't).

But I do have to give props to Gentoo for having great documentation. They go over every possible option in great detail, and I'm never questioning why I may have to do a certain task, because the answer is right there in front of me.

I also like that SSH is included on the mini-install disc. I'm able to blog, read the documentation in FF, and install Gentoo at the same time. Life is good :)

Another WordPress Update

2005-12-12T21:20:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the delay, but better late than never (right?)

I have my f2o account and am currently playing around with WordPress on there. I know that I said I would be going with the Sapphire theme, and I changed my mind. I got under the surface and found tons of inconsistencies with it. Rather than spending hours making the site look alike, I just decided to get a new theme. I'm trying out the pool theme now, and I like it a lot. My only complaint was that there wasn't a slogan in there by default, but that was not hard to add in (how does "Attack of the Penguins" sound?)

If you have a spare moment, check it out and possibly leave a comment.

I'm currently seeing what technorati tag options that are avaliable. We'll see how this unfolds.

WordPress Status

2005-12-06T16:14:00.000-05:00

Just a quick update on my status of moving to WordPress.

I found a theme that I like, it's called Sapphire. I like the look and feel of it, but there are also a lot of things that I want to change in it. I'm tweaking it to my liking.

I also tested importing a dummy Blogger blog into WP. The default tool to do this is included with WP doesn't import comments. So, I scoured the internet (actually, a two second google search) and came up with another tool, which was like the first but included comments.

The way to import a Blogger blog into WP is kind of odd and tricky - you have to tweak a bunch of settings in Blogger (like the date timestamp), you have to set up Blogger to FTP the files to your base WP installation, you have to modify your template so it contains one line, and then the script will parse that file and import it.

I've only done it once, but I was successfull the first time.

As I continue to tweak the theme, please feel free to check out my efforts so far. That will not be the final location of the WP blog, it will just be where I will tweak it to suit my needs.

I signed up for the f2o.org account, now I'm pending account creation. We'll see how long that'll take.

Six Months

2005-12-03T21:47:00.000-05:00

Wow, I just noticed today that I've been blogging for six months.

I started this blog and posted my first article on July 1st (2005) and since then, I have posted exactly 150 articles (this will be #151). Do the math, that's a little under an article a day.

After being officially blogging for half a year, I like what I see. And now, I've outgrown Blogger.

You may recall that I mentioned a while ago that I was going to eventually move to WP.com because I was getting sick of Blogger... well, I'm still sick of it and I'm not moving to WP.com. Instead, I got in touch with the guys at f2o.org, and they said they could get me an account (which is nice of them, because new sign ups are not accepted at the moment). Their free hosting package includes everything I need to set up a WordPress blog with a good bandwith limit.

Now I'm just waiting for them to email me back, so hang tight. It shouldn't be much longer.

Who knows, maybe I'll even design my own template.

Another Ubuntu Hidden Gem

2005-12-01T17:11:00.000-05:00

I was happily browsing along today, when my hand slipped on the keyboard and I saw an interesting dialog that I've never seen before. It was a dialog that showed the sound level. At that point I remembered... I have multimedia keys! I had generally accepted that they didn't work in Linux, because the programs that can use them really don't appeal to me. But now, I've discovered that some of the extra keys on my keyboard work. The volume wheel, the mute button, the calculator button, the email button, and the play/stop/FF/RW (in totem) all work under Ubuntu, without any configuration or anything.

This is yet another thing that Ubuntu has done, all by itself, that has never worked in any other distribution. And take a look at the screenshot. Damn, that sure beats the Windows one!

Ubuntu continues to amaze me.

Now I'm going to experiment and try to get some other keys to work.

Gizmo + SIP Adapter = Duh!

2005-11-30T12:32:00.000-05:00

I was browsing the web yesterday when it hit me - I still have that D-Link SIP adapter!

Let me explain. I used to have AT&T CallVantage (home VoIP service). I liked the features, but the quality just wasn't that good so I canceled it early this year. Of course, I kept the VoIP gateway they sent me (a D-Link DVG-1120M).

And today it hit me - use that with Gizmo/SIPphone and have an always-on free internet phone! Why didn't I think of that before? I hooked it up and went under da' hood, only to found that cheap AT&T set a username and password for advanced options so you can't use it with any other VoIP service. That's a cheap way of getting buisness.

I started searching online. I found one username/password for a newer version of my adapter, but that didn't work on mine. I spend about an hour of googling, but I found no other username/passwords.

So, I consulted the SIPphone forums. A fellow user pointed me to a geocities site that had the SIPphone firmware for my SIP adapter. SIPphone keeps it unlocked, so that's good for me. In order to apply the firmware on this (and I think any D-Link device) is to set up a TFTP server and it will download it directly from your computer. Nice, I guess, but I like the way Linksys does it much better.

Included in the ZIP package is a Windows exe, a couple firmware files, and a readme. But, before I could upgrade the firmware, I need the administration panel...

Another user told me that if I did a hard reboot (hold the 'reset' button for over 1 min), then that may reset the password. I just thought "That's so simple, it'll never work" and boy was I surprised when it did. You'd think AT&T would have a more clever factory reset, but they don't. Oh well, I can log in with admin/admin now and get at the administration panel.

I was hoping that if I could get this far, I wouldn't need a firmware upgrade. But now, AT&T has reached an all-time cheapness. The firmware installed on it will not allow you to configure the SIP settings. So, I'm stuck with their service unless I upgrade the firmware for it (which I luckily can do).

No problem, right? Just set up a TFTP server and send it... wrong. I could not actually get a TFTP server working. tftpd didn't work at all, atftpd ran but I couldn't get it working, and tftpd-hpa didn't work. I spent a few hours trying all three of these things, but none of them worked. The only machine in the house that has Windows is my main desktop, but that is downstairs on a wireless connection.

Why is this a problem? My adapter has two ports: one for the Internet and one for a computer or router. Since my main desktop is on a wireless connection, I didn't think it would work because it was behind a NAT.

The obvious answer... forward ports. I'm so stupid. I forwarded port 69 to my computer, booted up Windows and ran the D-Link mini tftp server. To my surprise, that worked right away. I think this is the first time a server has worked perfectly in Windows the first time while I was fiddling around for hours on Linux and still couldn't get it working.

Regardless, I configured it to work with SIPphone, rebooted it and it worked :) Connected directly to the internet, I can make and recieve SIP calls with great clarity (better than CallVantage, though still using the same device).

But after I get something working good, it's time to complicate it.

My first plan was to hook it up to my unused ethernet port on my computer, but that would create a double NAT and probably wouldn't work. Also, it would only work when the computer is on.

So... I picked up an 802.11b ethernet bridge that was laying around (yeah, I have lots of little gadgets) and hooked it up. I plugged the D-Link into my computer directly and configured it to use a static IP and then configured the router to set up a DMZ on that IP. I plugged the box into the wireless bridge, waited a moment (untill it 'clicked', if anyone else has a similar box) and dialed 411. To my amazement, it worked the first time.

With all this success, I discovered a problem. Because this is an old model (like a year), the firmware is also old and doesn't support STUN (for those of you who don't know, STUN is a way for a device or application to discover it's real internet IP addres when it's behind a NAT and can't tell itself). Because of this, I cannot recieve calls. I don't think this will create a huge problem, though, because I am usually the one calling other people.

Stay tuned, more to come.

KDE 3.5 Features

2005-11-29T18:47:00.000-05:00

I just checked the KDE site to see that KDE 3.5 has been released. And along with this new release, there are some cool new features. I'll just highlight them for ya.

Kicker has some nice improvements. The Pager (desktop switcher) now shows application icons so you can tell which application is running on which desktop. Also, the tooltips have been extended (not exactly sure what that means, though).
SuperKaramba is now included in KDE. The last time I tried this, I really hated it. Now that it is included within KDE, it should (hopefully) improve.
Konqueror now includes KHTML improvements so that it can pass the Acid2 test (which was done a while ago, but was not included until now). Konqueror now has Adblock functionality, so you can easilly block out annoying ads.
Kopete got some nice improvements. Now it can handle MSN and Yahoo webcams (yes!). Also, custom MSN emotions are supported now.
KDE now has good support for external media (although Gnome has for a while now). Now if you insert any media device, KDE will present a dialog similar to the one in XP. Definately cool.

I'm looking forward to trying this new release of KDE.

Check it out

Edubuntu Makes Sense

2005-11-28T20:58:00.000-05:00

I'm sure most everyone around here has heard of the Edubuntu project. It is a brother (or sister, who knows) of the Ubuntu project. I think it's cool that they are trying to use Linux and apply it to educational environments. If kids get used to it, guess what will happen when they get older...

I was listening to TWAT episode 29 today, which is about installing and configuring Edubuntu. He explained that Linux just makes sense for kids because it can run on older hardware, runs fast, and is easy to use. But, there was one quote he said that I really like.

Most people are going to give you crap about this, but if they do, explain you're going to need $200 from them to get a copy of XP and $300 for better hardware, and they'll shut up and use Linux.

That explains, in a nutshell, why Linux rocks. Who wants to spend $500 for a fully functional Windows system when they could get a fully functional Linux system for nothing?

Another great quote:

There are two kinds of computer users: there's the people who understand what's going on and there's the people who know where to click the mouse. And making them learn Linux at home and maybe use Windows at school, the kids are learning more things. They're not just learning where to put the mouse, they're learning computer concepts, and that's a lot more important.

I couldn't have said it better.

Gollum

2005-11-28T19:08:00.000-05:00

On digg, I came across something cool: an AJAX browser for Wikipedia called Gollum.

It basically provides a really nice and visually appealing alternative to typing in the whole URL into the address bar every time, like I usually do. It also has some cool features like Bookmarks and an easy way to print the data, which has been absent in Wikipedia.

Check it out some time

Good Ads and Bad Ads

2005-11-26T22:23:00.000-05:00

So you've got a popular (or maybe semi-popular) website and you want to get a little money off of it. The best solution, of course, it an ad on the site. What kinds of ads should you get? In my opinion, these are two types of good ads:

Any sort of text ad (aka Google AdSense)
Any type of ad that does not draw the user away from the site's content

But what about the bad ads? In my opinion:

All kinds of pop-ups (especially the ones that exploit the FF problem)
Flashy animated GIF ads (I deeply hate the flashy "You're an instant winner! Click here to claim your prize")
Flash ads. Not only are they annoying, they sometimes create noise and cause older machines to slow down
Any sort of ad that draws the user away from the site's content
Any ad that gets annoying to look at

There are a lot of honest users out there who want to make some money for their time. I deeply understand that (hey, I have a text ad on this blog). I'll even click on them if I enjoy the content that is on the site. But when the ads start to get annoying and draw me away from the content, that's where I draw the line. I come to a website to look at the content, not be bombarded by pop-ups and flash ads. I don't feel guilty blocking those, but I do feel guilty blocking the un-annoying ones.

I stopped using Adblock for awhile, but I re-installed it today. I'm trying to use it only to block bad ads, and I like what I've achieved so far.

To those of you who use Adblock as well: don't block out good ads! They're not annoying at all!

Not Many Features in XP

2005-11-24T14:14:00.000-05:00

I was reading Popular Mechanics for December, and I came across an interesting article called "Have It Your Way" (anyone who has PM, it's on page 121). This article lists some common programs that you might want to use on Windows to improve performance and functionality. Looking through the list, most of them are present in Linux my default. I'll list them all here.

Virtual Desktop - Included in almost all desktop environments, not in Windows without an XP powertoy
Indexed Music Files - Not exactly sure what they mean by this, but most Linux distros come with a program like amaroK or Rhythmbox that can index your music files.
Whether - This, and so much more, can be added to the desktop with GDesklets (apt-get install gdesklets-data does it).
Tabbed browsing - Included in just about every browser other than IE. PM directs users to get the MSN toolbar.
Calendar - Included in Kmail and Evolution.
FireFox - included in most distributions. The distros that don't include it will probably have another one like Mozilla or Konqueror.
CPU Temperature - Covered in a GDesklet.
Image Resizer - The GIMP does wonders here. Included in most distros. Windows users have to download Image Resizer.
Alarm - Haven't looked into this much, but I assume there is a GDesklet that can do this.
Stocks - Probably another GDesklet.
News - aKregator works great. Included in most KDE distros (haven't looked into GNOME aggregators).
Google search - Default engine in FireFox and Konqueror.

And when you think about it, Windows users have none of these by default. None! 8 out of the 12 conviences listed here are already included in Linux and the remaining 4 are covered by GDesklets, one install of one program.

How do Windows users get anything done...

Microsoft to Mac Users - Don't use IE

2005-11-23T21:00:00.000-05:00

This is really ironic.

For the first time in ... forever, Microsoft gave the message to ditch IE. If you load the MSN home page in IE 5 for Mac, from what I've heard, the rendering is horrid and there is a big message at the top that advises users to go with another browser.

Wow.

Take a look at this. Look at the second result in Google. "If you are using Internet Explorer for Mac, we recommend that you use another browser to have an optimal experience on MSN." This is a first. A MS browser cannot properly render a MS website.

As ironic as it may be, this can be a good thing. With MS pushing away Mac users, they will get accustomed to other browsers and will want to use those if they ever use Windows in the future.

The death of IE will really start innovation online.

CNet Article

Trying Writely

2005-11-22T23:10:00.000-05:00

After Jon blogged about Writely , I thought that I'd give it a whirl, and I'm pretty impressed. Writely is a completely web based word processor. You can edit and save all of your documents online. You can tag them, star them, and archive them when you're done. You can also upload and export the document and save it to your computer. When I first tried it out, they only supported MS Word documents, but as of now, they also support OpenDocument and OOo SXW. I really like that, since most online services opt out of OpenSource and go for the most commonly used standard, even if it's proprietary.

With Writely, you can also share a document and allow a group of people to edit and make changes, which can be useful in certain situations.

Also, a nice feature is the print feature. Normally when you want to print something in a web browser, you click on a print button and it opens up another small window and you usually print that window. In this, however, you click the print button and it immediately opens up the printer dialog box. It's not necessarily better, but it's a nice improvement.

But one of my favorite features is the blog feature. You can post to most common blog services, including Blogger, LiveJournal, and any other blog that supports the xmlrpc standard (another innovation, brought to you by open standards). I like the Writely interface much better than Blogger's (take a look at the screenshot). I think I'll try using it for a while.

One nice thing is that I can write extra articles and save them incase the likely event happens that I get lazy and want to update my blog. Just click'n blog from Writely, problem solved.

More to come!

Skype vs. Gizmo

2005-11-21T12:20:00.000-05:00

User Interface - Gizmo wins
Ok, let's face it - Skype's UI isn't as good as Gizmo's. I find the Skype UI to be clunky, unresponsive, and ugly. Furthermore, you need QT libraries to run Skype and only GTK to run Gizmo. I like Gizmo's UI much better, even though some parts of it don't work yet.

Call Quality - Gizmo wins
I also found that Gizmo's call quality was slightly better than Skype's. Maybe this is just because I was talking to someone about 80 miles away with a Broadband-to-Broadband connection, but I'm not sure. I think that Skype's protocal is designed for slower connections, thus doesn't sound as good as something optimized for Broadband.

Configuration - Skype wins (badly)
Gizmo can't win in this arena (yet). I know that the Linux version of Skype has much less configuration options than the Windows version does, but Gizmo has none at all! None! This means that I can't use my USB headset because there is no place to specify an alternate sound device.

Call Completion Rate - Skype wins
I have had so many problems using Gizmo. Whenever I recieved a call (my friend has the Windows version), I would get a dialog which I would accept, but nothing happened after that. I saw the text "Incoming call from..." in the statusbar, but that changed back to "Ready" in 5 seconds. If that happened (which it did every time), we'd both have to close and re-open Gizmo. I also noticed that Gizmo ties up the sound card after the call if that happens, which is really bad. I have to call my friend in order for it to work.

Piping Through aRts - Skype wins
I like aRts. It works pretty well and I can hear audio in multiple apps at once. 'artsdsp' works great with Skype, but doesn't work with Gizmo. I can hear the other end talking, but they can't hear me. If I exit and start normally, it works again.

Overall Functionality - Skype wins
Skype is overall more functional that Gizmo right now, but that could change soon. Gizmo (for Linux, at least) is currently in beta and Skype has been stable for a while now.

So there you have it. In my comparison, Skype wins. But I do really like some parts of Gizmo. I love how they decided to use only open standards and support SIP and Jabber. We can expect great things to come from Gizmo in the future. But for now, Skype it is.

Google, You Dissappoint Me

2005-11-18T13:18:00.000-05:00

I've been reading lots of websites and blogs lately about Google's lack of support for Linux. As far as search goes, nothing beats Google. But, they haven't ported any of their applications to any other OS than Windows (with the sole exception being Gmail notifier for OS X). GMail Notifier, Desktop/Desktop 2, Pisca, Hello, Web Accelerator, Google Earth, and Google Talk (although I do approve on their use of Jabber) are all avaliable for Windows, but none are for Linux. I would really love to have Google Earth and Google desktop on Linux, and possibly Pisca. But this isn't going to happen. Not anytime soon.

And get this - there's a rumor that Yahoo will be porting their Desktop to Linux. Let me say this again - Yahoo. Launch doesn't even support FireFox, and they may be releasing their Desktop search for Linux. Unbelievable.

Maybe we're getting through to Google - Here's a letter from Google:

Dated October 26, 2005 DiBona is familiar with these complaints, and indicated that they are usually made by users dissatisfied by the lack of applications like Picasa, Earth, or Desktop being available for the Linux platform. DiBona emphasized that all of Google’s software are undergoing ports, so ultimately these tools will be ready for Linux, too.

We'll see how long "soon" is.

Sony's In Trouble...

2005-11-17T10:08:00.000-05:00

As many of us have heard lately, Sony's rootkit has been causing a lot of controversy over the past few weeks. It really restricts your freedoms to do what you want to music. But not only that, but people have made viruses for it. Viruses! All people want to do is play their music, and they are immediately vunerable to new viruses.

And it looks like MS is doing something smart. They're going to release a tool to get rid of it.

But that's all besides the point. A couple of days ago, people found LGPL code in it (from mpglib - I think that's from LAME, but I'm not sure). Yes... they used Open Source code and failed to even mention it.

But now, they've found proof that they also used GPL code in it. They found code from drms.c, a program written by DVD Jon and Sam Hocevar.

Sony, get a clue. Not only have you surpressed freedoms by not allowing us to do what we want with our music, but you have also used free software without even bothering to mention it.

Let's boycott Sony!

FeedBurner Digg Splicer!

2005-11-16T14:43:00.000-05:00

FeedBurner just added Digg to it's list of Link Splicers. Being a fellow digger, I enabled that feature. Now, if you subscribe to the blog feed, you'll also get the interesting stories that I've dugg. So if you're bored and I haven't posted anything, look at the feed. Chances are there'll be something interesting to read there.

Ad-Supported Windows? No Thanks.

2005-11-15T09:42:00.000-05:00

According to CNET, Microsoft may be planning on releasing ad-supported versions of their products. In particular, they were thinking about ad-supported versions of Works, Money, or (possibly) the whole OS.

To me, this seems like a desperate attempt to get people back over to MS's proprietary formats. I don't know if you have ever used Works before, but it is a complete piece of crap. Not only is it a horrible word processor, but it can't view nor edit MS Word files despite the fact that Microsoft created the format. To me, that is pathetic.

And an ad-supported version of Windows? Definitely not. Having ads in an individual application is one thing, but having to view ads whenever using the computer is just absurd. Why would you put up with that if you could pop in an Ubuntu or Kubuntu CD and try a great, fast, fully-featured free and Open Source OS without even needing to install it? Whoever doesn't is just being stupid.

Whoa, Talk About Speed!

2005-11-14T20:28:00.000-05:00

I finished compiling the Kernel and following a couple of HOWTOs. Yesterday, I was able to hibernate and resume successfully using Software Suspend 2 with NVidia drivers. Thanks to everyone in the Ubuntu community who made those HOWTOs possible.

Everything was working well, but I wasn't too impressed with the speed of hibernation. It took about 30 seconds to hibernate and slightly less to resume. I went back to the HOWTO, and re-read a section where it instructed you to compile proper support for your IDE. I didn't find mine on the list (I have an Intel ICH5 SATA). I had compiled in SATA support, but apparently that didn't help because I was getting around 5 MB/s read and 6 MB/s write.

I started googling for answers, and found a site that had some info on my specific IDE chipset. It said that the Intel PIIX driver worked with my chipset. I recompiled the Kernel with that driver included (this time it only took a few minutes) and wow! I rebooted and it started up quicker than it ever did! It now hibernates in about 5 seconds and resumes in about 6. I looked at the speed, and now I have a whopping 51 MB/s write speed and 48 MB/s read speed. Hibernating is faster than it has ever been on Windows (take that Microsoft!) and now everything in Linux is faster.

Enter 'gloat' mode :)

That Was Quick.

2005-11-13T19:02:00.000-05:00

And, suddenly, Hibernation no longer works. I installed the nvidia-glx package and activated it, and hibernation doesn't resume anymore.

I discovered that Ubuntu doesn't use SoftwareSuspend2, but instead the original SoftwareSuspend that is included in the kernel. From reading a bit, I've found that version 2 works much better. I also found a guide on the Ubuntu forums that I'm currently following to get hibernation working with the proprietary NVidia driver.

We'll see how this goes.

A Cup of Ubuntu

2005-11-12T18:02:00.000-05:00

Well, I tried Kubuntu and wasn't too impressed by it. I really like it on my other desktop, when I didn't have any real goals for it, but I was expecting slightly more out of it here. It worked OK, but I couldn't find any hint of Hibernation... anywhere.

So, I installed regular Ubuntu, and I'm really liking it. Hibernation works great. I also discovered that Ubuntu uses the original version of Software Suspend, as opposed to the new Software Suspend 2 that I was trying before. It seems to be working fine, but if I come across any problems, I'll install the newer version.

And I've also learned to appreciate Gnome. Up until now, I've basically had the opinion that Gnome went in the wrong direction when they moved the main menu up to the top of the screen. But, it doesn't bug me. At all.

I'm also noticing that Gnome has some nice bells and whistles that I haven't had with KDE before. For example, when I insert a DVD, it opens up Totem. When I insert a regular CD, it auto-mounts it and opens it with Nautilus.

On Fedora, I really hated Nautilus. But on Ubuntu, they've changed it around so it is much more usable. I still favor Konqueror, but I can now actually imagine using it.

But, my life is still not complete without KDE. So, I installed "kubuntu-desktop" and now I have Kubuntu and Ubuntu together in one. I'm going to try to use Gnome more and see what happens.

Stay tuned.

Time For Kubuntu?

2005-11-10T15:12:00.000-05:00

Well, XFree86 has crapped out on me. I tried installing KDE headers to compile an application, and in the process it needed to upgrade XF86 and install X.org. Why, I don't know, but I let it continue. I clearly remember what happened before when I upgraded and swiched the X server to X.org, so this time I told it to use the XF86 server instead. Well, today I booted up to a text login prompt. I logged in as root to see what was up. Running "startx", I get the message telling me that /etc/X11/X is not executable. I changed into that directory and tried a ./X, but I got the message "/etc/X11/X - no such file or directory".

At this point, I don't know what's going on. I'm guessing that "X" is a symlink and it links to somewhere that I don't know.

Well, I guess Kanotix had it's run. I'll probably make a couple more attempts to revive it, but in some aspects I'm glad that I may have an excuse to try another distro.

Lately I'm getting all hyped over Kubuntu. I installed it on the MythTV box (now, we have a TiVo) and I really like it. That computer is lacking in speed and decent ram, but Kubuntu still runs really well on it. When I first heard about Ubuntu, I was a little concerned that it was incompatible with the Debian package repositories, but after trying it out, I found most of the applications I need are in the Ubuntu repositories. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that's because people can contribute to the multiverse repository.

One thing that I'm really looking forward to using Kubuntu is Hibernation. I never got SWSP working on Kanotix, and now I'm probably not going to. I know Ubuntu has hibernation built in, and I'm pretty sure that Kubuntu does too.

So, I'm probably going to end up putting Kubuntu on here.

Stay tuned.

Less Filler, More Content

2005-11-09T15:37:00.000-05:00

You've probably noticed that I haven't been posting as frequently as I have been before. This is because I'm trying to avoid 'filler' blog posts and actually post articles that are worth your time to read. I'll try to average an article every two days.

More to come!

The New Users Guide to Windows XP

2005-11-08T14:41:00.000-05:00

So, you've decided to buy a new computer running XP or buy an expensive upgrade to it. Good move! You will now be able to unlock features that have been avaliable in other OS's for a while now. But don't let that get you down, because you will have them now too!

So, you're sitting in front of a fresh XP installation. Time to start using it? Nope! You need to upgrade to SP2 immediately. If you've been able to obtain a CD with SP2 on it, you're lucky. If not, you'd better have broadband, because it's a 80 MB download. After that, it'll probably take an hour or so to install.

So, now you've installed SP2 and did a reboot. Now, more updates! Go to Windows Update and get all avaliable updates. Chances are, you'll need to go there at least three different times and reboot after each one. This process will probably take at least an hour, depending on how many bugs MS has decided to fix.

Go grab a cup of coffee, the fun has just begun.

So, now you have a fully patched system. Time to use it? Not quite. Now, you have to go out to the store and purchase Norton AntiVirus, which is around $50. Once you've bought it, drive back home and install it. 10 minutes and a reboot later, it should be installed.

So, now you have a patched system with AntiVirus. Nope, still not done yet. MS decided not to include any sort of protection against spyware in the OS, so you'll have to do that yourself. Go out and download Spybot, Ad-Aware, and MS AntiSpyware. It's best to have all three, because there's always something one has that the other two don't. To be safe, install and configure all three of them. Make sure at least one is always running in the background.

Once that's all done, go to the security center and make sure that automatic updates are enabled and a firewall is installed. The default XP firewall is pretty crappy, so it wouldn't be a bad idea to get a real one. ZoneAlarm offers a free firewall that works ok, so you can go with that. Install it and reboot. Otherwise, read on.

Now, at least four hours into this fiasco, you are finally ready to start using your system. In XP, there is very little software avaliable at first, and the applications that are there are of poor quality. So, go ahead and spend the rest of the day installing the rest of the applications that you need.

You have now wasted a day of your life.

But, the war's not over. There are periodic tasks that you must preform

You need to make sure your AntiVirus and AntiSpyware apps are always up to date
Every week, you need to analyze the hard drive and defragment it if necessary
Every month or so, you need to run an AntiVirus scan
Every month or so, you need to run a spyware scan
Every month or so, you need to go to Windows update and get all avaliable updates
Every six months or so, your Windows install will likely get screwed up and you need to repeat all of this over again

Have a fun time with Windows XP!

SCO Wants Linux 2.7 Info

2005-11-07T17:07:00.000-05:00

SCO has done it again. Now they're asking Intel for info on the mysterious Linux 2.7 Kernel. The problem is that it doesn't exist.

From the Inquirer:

There is no 2.7 kernel, and it never really made it past the discussion stage. That doesn't seem to be an impediment for lawyers in search of a case, though.

Fresh from the last round in which they claimed victory, the SCO boys are on the attack.

So what does SCO use for evidence that IBM contributed to something that does not exist? Aliens? Area-51 technology? Time travel devices that haven't been invented yet? The cat told them? Whatever the case, you can read all about it on Groklaw (go to the real article)

Way to go SCO.

DSLinux

2005-11-06T14:55:00.000-05:00

We have our first entry into the contest! Kenneth Coble has submitted this great article about DSLinux. Heck, if they get Linux perfected on it, maybe I'll get a DS and use it as a PDA.

It didn't actually take me long to think of a "worthy" post to enter into the MLB's contest. All that I had to do was think of what technologies were exciting me at the moment. And as I have become wrapped into the world of WiFi nothing has me more excited than the up and coming DSLINUX!

Don't get The name confused with DSL wich is Damm Small Linux. Although it will be Damm Small, it's not quite the same thing. This distro is going to run solely on the Nintendo DS handheld system.

If you haven't seen the DS let me give you some brief details. It sports dual screens, the bottom screen being a Touchscreen! It has microphone capabilities, built in 802.11 B wireless, and nice emulated surround sound. It also has some decent graphics processing due to dual arm processors that come close to the graphical powers of the Nintendo 64 of the olden days.

This isn't meant to be a replacement for the DSLinux website. I won't be delving to deeply into the Technical details, but I am going to entice your imagination a bit.

Just think a few of these possibilites over. NFS wireless transfer via adhoc or infrastructure with multiple Nintendo DS systems over a WiFi or "Ni-Fi" setup. Touch pad support, period! Dual Screen Xmame? Homebrew Linux apps for the DS (aside from the existing text games).

Im not sure where it stands and I know that the PSP has its own respective team working on PSP-Linux, but I've always been a Nintendo supporter and there are just too many innovative features in this handheld to ignore. At the very least DSLinux is a cooler name.

I wonder if we'll start seeing DSLinux boxes soon rated N for nerds only :)

DSLinux Site

Comment Moderation On

2005-11-06T08:41:00.000-05:00

Blogger has a new comment moderation feature. This means that when someone submits a new comment, it emails me and asks me if I want to publish the comment or reject it.

Word Verification had it's run, and seemed to work well, but got annoying for me after a while. I'm going to give this a try and see how well it works.

Also, I added Head Change to my blog list. Check it out when you get a chance.

More Get The Facts Bull S***

2005-11-03T18:36:00.000-05:00

"By choosing Windows Server over Linux for our new SAP APO solution, we'll save an estimated one million dollars in software, staffing, and support costs over the first four years. We needed performance, security enhancements, and reliability at a reasonable price, and Linux would have presented additional risks in all of those areas. It may be the new thing from a technical perspective, but Linux doesn't cut it from a buisness perspective - I need a proven IT environment that I'm sure we can support"

--Rick Dempsey, Cheif Information Officer, Rayovac

WTF??? Linux would present risks in performance, security enhancements, and reliability? What planet are they on?

Yeah, they'll save One Million because MS is paying them to do these stupid, false, and pointless ads. Any real techie knows that Linux blows Windows away in areas like Security and Reliability.

Technorati Tags: microsoft, linux, get the facts

New Logo

2005-11-02T21:40:00.000-05:00

I found a new logo for the blog that I like. I think it somewhat fits in with the blue theme, and still looks pretty cool.

Let me know what you think.

Microsoft: "Firefox support is coming soon"

2005-11-01T21:40:00.000-05:00

I just heard on digg that Windows Live beta has been launched. Windows Live currently is a start page, similar to Netvibes.

I went to the page and was surprised to see this text at the top:

Firefox support is coming soon. Please be patient :-)

Hmm... Since when has Microsoft released a new web application and actually planned towards FF support? Hmm...

Actually, the site now seems to work perfect with FF. I haven't noticed any real problems. The only "problem", if you consider it a problem, is with the sidebar. "hide sidebar" seems to be misplaced and doesn't do anything.

Microsoft Checks Me Out...Again

2005-11-01T16:35:00.000-05:00

You may (or may not) recall before when we got a hit from Microsoft. Well, it's happened again.

Someone at Microsoft came to my blog not just once, but twice. How did they get here? Technorati.

Using Technorati's new "Blog Finder" utility, they found my blog under the name "windows vista". They came to the blog home page, and you won't believe what browser they were using. Firefox! Yes. Firefox. Sounds like someone working for Microsoft doesn't feel safe using IE! We don't blame you.

So they came here and saw my latest post about the XPS format. Then, they clicked on the "Comments" link, since there were two comments.

After that, they left and came back (once again, from Technorati) and viewed the home page. Then, they left.

And this all happend about 15 minutes ago (at 3:37)

Oh, on a completely different topic, a Google search for "mighty linux" brings up my WP.com blog first, and then this blog. That's really odd since this blog has been around longer, is a Blogger blog (Google owns Blogger), this is updated much more frequently, and this has a higher PR (but the other one is not doing that bad, 3/10). Really strange...

And Yet Another Microsoft Proprietary Format

2005-10-31T21:42:00.000-05:00

Now, Microsoft is developing their own proprietary "XPS" format, which is the MS proprietary equivalent of PDF. Users will be able to export documents to XPS in the new release of Office.

Good luck Microsoft - go ahead and attempt to replace a widely used format with your new proprietary format, which has no real advantages over PDF.

Technorati Tags: microsoft, office, xps

Google Improving OpenOffice?

2005-10-31T14:48:00.000-05:00

It seems as though Google is going to hire a few people to improve OpenOffice.org.

I think this is a good move on Google's part. Not only are showing their support for free software, but they are also improving a program that is directly competing with Microsoft. Who knows, with endorsement and help from Google and the continuing work of the community, OpenOffice could become the de facto standard. Heck, it should be.

Technorati Tags: google, openoffice, openoffice.org

An Interconnected World?

2005-10-29T14:49:00.000-04:00

I picked up the Wednesday paper this week to get the Technology section (yes, I'm that much of a geek that I buy it only on Wednesday just for the Technology section) and there were a couple of articles about wireless connectivity.

And there was also an article that made it to the front page - Halloween costumes for iPods and cell phones! What retard would spend $40 to dress up their iPod in a pirate costume for Halloween?

But I digress. Back on topic...

The two articles in the paper: one is about wireless grids, and the other is about WiMax.

The wireless grid concept is simple: connect to device after device until you can reach your destination. Whether that destination be the internet or your TV screen, it seems like a good concept. This also, in turn, creates a very de-centralized network, which I think is a good thing.

If this idea does make it into the mainstream, it could be on most devices that support Bluetooth or WiFi (or possibly WiMax, I'll get to that later). You could turn your computer on in the morning, and log onto it from your PDA when you leave the house. After you're gone, your PDA can piggyback device after device until it finds one that it close enough to your computer and makes the connection. If they perfected the software, you could go around town and still have a connection to your home computer. And, with updated wireless connectivity, probably with little latency.

But the best part about this - they would have to make a Linux version, whether it's proprietary or not. Linux is on too many portable devices to simply ignore it. And in the future, it will most likely be on a good percentage of all portable devices (take that, Windows Mobile!)

Now about WiMax - I haven't read a lot about WiMax. All I have known about it up until now was that it is much faster than WiFi and has an incredibly huge range. Now, I have some more info about it, and it's something that I'd like to see around here in the future. For those of you who are like me and don't bother to read:

WiMax = "Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access"
WiMax has a max range 40 miles
WiMax has a max speed of 70 Megabits per second (dang!)

So, if they could roll out just one WiMax tower in a city, everyone within it would have free internet at insane speeds.

But, what if we could combine these together? WiMax and wireless grids could become a good pair. You could drive up to 40 miles away from the tower (although, probably not quite 40 miles) and still be connected. If you drive out of range, you could start using wireless grids and connect to device after device until you could tunnel through to the internet. If you eventually drive out too far and there's another tower that is closer, you could piggyback other devices and connect to that tower instead.

Go far enough into the future, and everything from TV's to clocks could have built in wireless and support wireless grids. Everything would be wireless and you could control them all at once from some 'command center'. And with a future like that, proprietary standards have no place. Everything must consist of open standards for everything to be that interoperable.

That future sounds good to me :)

Technorati Tags: wifi, wimax, wireless

A World Without Open Standards and Free Software

2005-10-25T15:59:00.000-04:00

Could you imagine what a world would be like without open standards? If simple things we use now, like HTTP, didn't exist, what would the world be like?

You'd turn on a computer to be greeted with a choice of several different operating systems, because some can do tasks that others can't. You choose one and boot up into it. You try browsing a few different websites, only to hit a roadblock when one of the sites uses a protocol that your browser doesn't support. No problem, a quick reboot later and you're in a different OS that has a browser that supports that particular protocol.

So now you want to check email. Well, you have five different accounts, which are completely incompatible. Another reboot later and you're checking your email on two of the accounts. No new mail. Another reboot, and you're checking the remainder of your email. You've got mail from a friend... he wants to chat with you on IM ASAP. You have 10 different IM services, and it just so happens that the OS you're using supports the one your friend has.

So you're chatting, and he tries to send you a picture from his digital camera. As it turns out, his camera is using an image format that your OS doesn't support. So, you reboot into the same OS that your friend is using and can finally look at it.

Now you need to get some work done. All of the office suites are split between three different OS's, and the printer is only supported on one of them. Getting work done requires reboot after reboot. You could have gotten everything done faster using pen and paper.

OK, so maybe all this is an extreme exaggeration. But still, the world still has problems like this today. How often has it happened that you want to IM a friend, and find out that he/she is using a different service? How often has it happened where you came across a media file that you can't play? In these proprietary areas, we need to push open standards like Jabber and OGG forward so the world can be more compatible. We can't live in a world under Microsoft control.

BashPodder GUI

2005-10-22T15:33:00.000-04:00

Jon informed me today that he's doing an episode about Podcatchers on his GNU/Linux User Show, and as part of it, he's doing a segment on Bashpodder and will mention my GUI. To make things easier for everyone, I thought that I'd post directions on how to use it here so Jon can just send people here to get info about it.

For those of you wondering about Linc's BP GUI, let me explain something: he has a version and I have a version. I wanted an easier way to use BashPodder, but had a horrible time trying to use his GUI because of the way it's set up. I really hate it. Because of that, I made my own version. I did not simply modify his version to make it work better and take all the credit, the code is mostly my own. I looked at his code mostly for refrence, but I can assure you, I'm not just copying him.

First, thanks to Linc for hosting it (You Rock!). You can download it here. Running it is pretty easy, just follow these directions:

Make sure that you have Xdialog installed. If you have Debian, you can just do an 'apt-get install Xdialog' to install it.
Extract the files. You can use a graphical tool like Ark, but if you don't have one, simply open a terminal (you'll need it later anyway) and issue this command:
```
tar -zxf bpgui.tar.gz
```
Now, open a terminal if you don't have one open and change into the bpgui directory:
```
cd bpgui
```
If you have used BashPodder before and already have a bp.conf file, then you can copy it into the bpgui directory and the script will offer to convert it so that it is compatible. If not, just ignore this.
Now comes the fun! Run the script:
```
./bpgui.sh
```

Using the program is pretty self explanatory. First, add podcasts if you don't already have them. If you converted an old bp.conf, go to "Modify a Podcast" and set all the titles the way you like. Once all that's done, simply select "Scan for New Podcasts". Your podcasts will be saved in /home/(your username)/Podcasts.

Hope this helps!

Flock Fun

2005-10-22T11:15:00.000-04:00

Well, I now have the "Developers Preview" of Flock, and there are some things that I really like about. Basically, it's a revamped version of FireFox but with lots of cool stuff added to it.

I think that it's going to make my life a lot easier, because it has Blogging, del.icio.us bookmarks, and Flickr built right into the browser... which means that I can blog about anything I want whenever I want. I'm using it's WYSIWYG editor to post this. I've heard that it produces horrendous HTML, but I want to see how horrendous :)

It has a really nice feature, called a Shelf. You can drag links, pictures, text, etc into it and save it for later. It's nice for saving links and text to blog about later.

I haven't used it a lot yet, but I've heard it's full of gaping holes. This is to be expected, since it's the first relsase. I'm really looking forward to when this becomes stable.

But this can be useful to other people. Think about how many people blog, use del.icio.us, or use Flickr? Ok, now how many of those people are using IE to do everything? We can use this to convert people off of IE and get them on something free.

(oh, and I like the local Favorites too - they have tags :) )

Technorati Tags: flock, firefox, mozilla

Page Rank, Kernel Compiling, etc

2005-10-20T16:04:00.000-04:00

I just read Jon's blog post about his Page Ranks, so I thought that I'd check out mine. I remember that when I first started this blog, it was 0 (duh). I installed the Google Toolbar, and found out that I have a rank of 5/10. Not too bad.

In other news, I compiled the latest Kernel. Now, I have 2.6.11 (the default Kanotix kernel) and 2.6.13. The reason for the recompile was a couple of things. Firstly, I want apmsleep to work. It claims that APM was not compiled in the Kernel. And I also wanted to get Software Suspend working (yes, Hibernation). So, I downloaded the source, applied the Software Suspend 2 patch, made sure that APM was enabled (and just for the heck of it, I included it as part of the Kernel rather than a Module) and recompiled with the help of a guide that I found. It's now working fine, but I'm not using it at the moment. Why? The Ndiswrapper module is not installed, which means that I'll uninstall the current version and compile the newest version by hand. I'm just too lazy to do that right now.

Check back for updates in the near future.

VNC Working Like a Charm

2005-10-17T17:32:00.000-04:00

I just discovered the wonders of VNC, and is it wonderful.

For a while, I was looking for a Linux equivalent (I like to avoid using the word "alternative", because that usually suggests that it's not as good) to Remotely Anywhere for a while now, but I never really got around to it until yesterday. I looked into alternatives, and found out that there is a great java applet which can connect to a VNC session from a web page, and works on any Browser/OS combination that has Java.

I have the vnc-java package installed, so vncserver can actually start a web server, but I already have a web server running. So, I downloaded the latest Java app from the TightVNC site (even though that's not the server I'm using) and copied it into a vnc directory in my web server. I set it up with the right screen resolution, and it worked great from my local computer (and others on the network).

With success, I forwarded TCP ports 80 and 5109 to my computer and tried it at work. Success! It worked great the first time I tried it. The only drawback was that it is kind of slow. Between the not so good upload speed of my internet here (around 300 KB/s) and the strict firewall at work, it was kind of slow. But, it still worked great! When I get FiOS service, I'll have 2 MB/s upload speed to use, so that should have a great improvement.

VNC Rocks!

Ubuntu 5.10 Breezy Badger Released!

2005-10-13T12:13:00.000-04:00

Yes, Ubuntu 5.10 Breezy Badger has finally been released. Weren't they just talking about this on TLLTS last night? Yes they were, and it has been released.

Pick a torrent, any torrent and get the latest release of Ubuntu.

Live CD (i386) Torrent
Install CD (i386) Torrent

WordPress.com Invite Contest!

2005-10-12T16:14:00.000-04:00

In a stroke of luck, I have obtained a second invite to WordPress.com, I guess accidentally. But this is good, because I now have another invite to spare, and nothing to do with it... Until now!

I'm going to have a contest here. What is the contest, you ask? All you have to do is write some original content that has relevance to Linux or Free Software. It doesn't have to be a lengthy 600 word piece, just something that has value to it (a few paragraphs should be fine). It can be an opinion on something that you've always wanted the world to hear, something related to current events, whatever.

I will post all submissions here, and I will pick my top two favorite ones and send a WordPress.com invite to both of them. So that means: send something and you'll have a good chance of getting one. This is good too, since WordPress.com invitations are limited now, and there's a long waiting list to get them.

Why WordPress.com? In my opinion, it is the best free blog hosting site that I've come across. All the good features about WordPress (like instant publishing, a nice Dashboard, and even a WYSIWYG editor) but all for free. Not even so much as a text ad, or an annoying top bar that is on Blogger blogs. Blogger users will absolutely love the instant publishing. Blogger publishing gets so annoying. My only issue with it is there is not template editing, but they should soon be starting something like that.

I really get annoyed after giving deadlines. I will probably close the contest when I feel there are enough entries, or when I think it has been long enough. That should give everyone a reasonable amount of time (I'm thinking between one and two weeks). If you want to write something, get it to me ASAP. If you hit a stroke of lazyness and can't write it (hey, happens to me all the time) or are just too busy, send me an email and I'll be sure to keep it open for you to submit one.

Oh, and before I forget, here's my email: jgrace103@gmail.com

(Also, if you have your own blog, why not link to this contest? I'll be sure to thank you when I announce the winner)

Another iPod???

2005-10-12T15:02:00.000-04:00

Man, Apple has just been reeling out new iPods lately. I've been reading that they just had another special meeting today. I think that it's still going on, but they updated the home page, and they have the much rumored Video iPod. They made the whole iPod wider to fit the bigger screen.

While the idea of Video is equally cool, I think that Apple is producing them way too frequently! I had a friend that just went out and bought an iPod yesterday, and now he misses out on the video. That feeling must suck.

Firefox Troubles

2005-10-10T20:17:00.000-04:00

Lately, I've been helping a friend design a website using purely XHTML and CSS (Yay! No tables). It is displaying perfectly in Konqueror, Mozilla, Opera, and even IE (yes, under wine). Firefox seems to be a problem.

Anyone with some CSS knowledge knows that a:link and a:hover control what links look like and what happens when you mouse over a link. In my case, I changed the colors and removed the underline for both of them. This seems to create a problem with FF.

When viewed in FF, the only links that those rules apply to are mailto: links. All other links seem to default back to the FF default. It displays fine in Mozilla, so I know it is not a Gecko problem. Just a FF problem. Nothing I do seems to change those links. I think this is just a problem specific to me, since those are so commonly used in CSS, but still...

Other than that, XHTML and CSS have been quite a pleasant experience. I just started using them, and they make web design so easy. Back in the days of Frontpage, I'd spend lots of time trying to perfect a website. Tables seemed too advanced for me, even with WYSIWYG. With CSS, all I have to do is specify a width and use float and can position content (separated with div tags and unique ID's) where I need them. I even ditched a WYSIWYG editor and am using Quanta, and man is that a good program. It has good indenting, previewing (without saving), great CSS support, tag completing (if I type in a br tag, it adds a / to the end of it) and so much more. I give it five cookies. (Get it? Oh, you're no fun)

But I really like the idea of a single CSS stylesheet that can affect the whole site. That will make changing anything so much easier than editing every page.

What I'm trying to figure out now is how to get a CSS calendar (as in 35 individual boxes). If possible, I want to stay away from layers, since all browsers seem to position them slightly differently. I'm seeing what else is possible.

May the Penguin be with you :)

Digg in Konqueror Too!

2005-10-09T08:31:00.000-04:00

It seems as if I'm on a stroke of luck.

As many of you know, I really like digg as a source of geek news. It displays fine in Konqueror, but the "digg it" button never works. Now, I got it to work :)

Simply set it to identify itself as Firefox 1.0. I noticed that the the link actually changes. Instead of doing a javascript command and the link just being #, the link itself changes to a javascript that Konqueror will work with.

Nice :)

Staples Offering a Linux PC?

2005-10-08T13:57:00.000-04:00

Staples is now offering a computer with Linux (CPUBuilders Linux) preinstalled.

This is the kind of thing we want. We want people to have Linux on their machine. Once more stores start to do this, we're probably going to see more and more software ported to Linux and newere software will be much more likely to be Linux friendly.

Good job, Staples!

Gmail in Konqueror Screenies

2005-10-08T11:25:00.000-04:00

I took three screenshots of Gmail in Konqueror... enjoy.

My inbox right after I archived something (I know there are only three messages there, but you should see all of my archived mail!)

Composing a message. No WYSIWYG, but I never use it anyway. I'm able to upload attachments, and the spell checker does work.

Settings. Works great.

GMail Working in Konqueror!

2005-10-07T21:52:00.000-04:00

Woohoo! I've finally figured out how to use the regular GMail interface in Konqueror. No, not the HTML version, but the full AJAX version that Firefox has supported since the beginning.

Normally, if you load the page with the nocheckbrowser option, Konqueror will display the page, but nothing works... now I found a way to do it, and it's pretty easy.

Go to http://mail.google.com/mail/?nocheckbrowser in Konqueror
Go to Tools > Change Browser Identification > Other > Firefox 1.0

For some reason, GMail works when Konqueror is wearing the Firefox hat, but not when it identifies itself as Konqueror. Weird.

But, equally cool! So far, almost everything I tried has works. Navigation, starring, sending a message (with attachments), and more importantly, Settings which isn't avaliable in plain HTML. The only thing I found that didn't work was the WYSIWYG composer, but that's fine since I never used it anyway.

Now I can cross off one more thing that I need Firefox for.

The MIT $100 Laptop

2005-10-05T16:50:00.000-04:00

And what a sight it is. What if you could get a computer for $100? Not just a computer, but a laptop. Looking at pictures, this thing looks pretty awesome. What are it's advantages? Well, duh, it's $100. But what else...

It uses Linux! Not only is it cheap, but it's penguintastic! (I think I just made up that word)

But what are the laptop stats?

It runs Linux :-)
500 MHz
1 GB Flash Memory (as a HD replacement)
Dual mode display - Color and B&W
Intergrated WiFi with "Mesh Networking"
4 USB Ports
Windup crank, AC, or Battery power
It runs Linux :-)

To quote CNet:

The machines, which will run a version of the Linux operating system, will also include other applications, some developed by MIT researchers, as well as country-specific software. "Software has gotten too fat and unreliable, so we started with Linux," he said.

And how right they are.

Could this be the future of portable computing? I think so. Eventually as computer manufacturing costs fall, we may see more of these. Seriously - give it a few years and we may start seeing these things at Wal-Mart for $30. Heck, traditional laptops may loose popularity among people who just want a portable device for browsing and email on the go.

CNet Article

"This is open-source education. It's a big issue."

Tech Tags: linux laptop $100 $100 laptop 100 laptop

Retards!

2005-10-04T17:40:00.000-04:00

Agh! Cable has really been upsetting me lately. About two weeks ago, I canceled cable since I got satellite (which, I love). First, they billed me for cable after I canceled it. Then, they came out today to deactivate it... and in the process, disconnected my internet.

Dumbasses.

They came back a couple hours later to reconnect it. Needless to say, I'll soon be getting rid of cable all together, when I upgrade to Verizon FiOS, fiber optic internet service, which is avaliable exclusively in this part of town. Seriously! My friend who lives maybe a mile away can't even get it. With 2 MB/s of upload speed, I may even be able to host my own blog...

Cool GMail Feature - Auto Save

2005-10-04T11:10:00.000-04:00

I just found out that GMail has a new feature called Auto Save. Basically, this automatically saves a message you're sending as a draft every half minute or so. This is going to be very useful to me, as I use email a lot, and sometimes Firefox will crash, and sometimes I accidentally close it without sending... but now, I won't loose messages anymore! This rocks.

Made My Decision

2005-10-04T09:49:00.000-04:00

I think that I've made my decision regarding WP.com.

First of all, from using it, I've discovered that WP beats the pants off of blogger. With blogger, every time that I make a new post, modify an old post, change any setting, or make the smallest modification to the template, it has to republish. This can take a long time, depending on wether or not it needs to republish the whole thing. If you change a setting or modify the template, it needs to republish the whole blog, and that includes the index, all archive pages, and every individual post permalink. That means when I do either of those things, it has to publish over 100 different pages. This is my 104th post, so that's 104 right there. If the publishing engine was any slower, no one would use blogger. Once you have a significant amount of posts, you could literally be waiting several minutes just for the whole thing to be done, and that's on a direct blogspot blog. When you want to FTP it to your own site, it could take even longer.

With WP, it gets published instantly. Period. That's why I was able to get all 104 posts over there so quickly - highlight and drag, click a button, repeat.

So, back to my decision - they stated this on the FAQ:

Can I edit my templates?

We are definitely mindful of making everything more customizable for our users, but at the same time we don't want people to have to look at HTML and CSS code, which is antithetical to the purpose of WordPress.com. If you want complete control over your enviroment, you're probably better off running WordPress on a great web host of your own, but if you really don't want to worry about that sort of thing just stick around and we'll be adding more customizability as time goes on.

So, basically when they add the ability to instert custom HTML somewhere besides in an actual post, I'm there. Even if it's just the footer, I need to put in my counter, Technorati code, and probably AdSense. Otherwise, I'm staying here until they can add that.

Zoho Writer - AJAX Office Application

2005-10-03T21:42:00.000-04:00

Yes, I found this on digg.

This seems pretty cool. It's a completely AJAX document writer that somewhat resembles Word 2003. It has a nice WYSIWYG text editor, and it even has right click functions. I haven't tried creating an account, but I believe you can even maintain your own documents. The feature it desperately needs is the ability to print.

Check it out, it's pretty cool.

Google Ads Check Your IP, too

2005-10-03T20:02:00.000-04:00

You may recall that Jon reported that Google Ads check your browser for Operating System info? Well, I guess they also check your IP address for you location as well. I just was browsing his blog, and saw an ad specifically for my home town. There's no way that same ad is there for other people, too.

Oh, and isn't it ironic that Blogger's spell check doesn't know the word 'blog'? I just tried it, and it picked up on 'blog'. Come on, that's just pathetic.

Hey, I Got a WordPress.com Account!

2005-10-03T17:31:00.000-04:00

I've had it for a little while, but I guess I was too lazy to report it here.

But, I did obtain my magical WP.com invitation (a "Golden Ticket" as described in the subject line of the email) and I'm still deciding wether or not I'm going to use it. I really like the WYSIWYG post editor, the ability for seperate pages, instant publishing (I hate the way blogger publishes), categories, intergrated search, and tons of other cool stuff.

But what's the big problem? You cannot edit the template, which is where Blogger still has the upper hand. This means I cannot modify any part of the template, at all. I can only change what is modifiable in the admin interface.

Well, I'm still evaluating and (manually) transfering posts from here to there. Wanna see it? Come on, guess what the URL is!

For the sake of lazyness, here's a link.

The Best Linux Web Browser?

2005-10-03T15:28:00.000-04:00

Anyone on Linux probably has their opinion of their favorite browser. Without the choice of IE, you have much safer browsers to use. But which one is the best? I'll take a look at what I think are the top three: Firefox (and Mozilla), Konqueror, and Opera.

Firefox: This is probably the most popular browser among the Linux world. The advantages of Firefox include good compatibility with most sites, and stability (it hasn't crashed on me yet, but I don't use it that heavily)

Konqueror: Konqueror is probably the most versatile and feature rich browser on Linux. It has tons of great features, complete compatibility with KDE themes and such, a fast loading interface, and arguably the fastest rendering engine out, KHTML. KHTML isn't as widely compatible on the web as Gecko (for example, WYSIWYG doesn't always work, AJAX doesn't work as well) but it's blazing fast

Opera: I haven't used Opera that much, but I do like some of what I see. I really like it's default theme and button styles, and it starts up pretty quick, but I'm not sure if it is actually that good of a browser in general. Some javascripts don't work properly, and is not as compatible with sites as Gecko. One odd thing I noticed was that it was set to identify itself as Internet Explorer by default.

So, which one wins? I think the winners are Konqueror and Firefox. I don't think I'll use Opera until it gets more compatible, but I am already using both Firefox and Konqueror for my normal web browsing. I try to use Konqueror for everything I can, but for things like Netvibes and GMail, Firefox is the next icon on the Kicker.

Tech Tags: linux internet browsers firefox konqueror opera

ZDNet: What Slows Linux Most?

2005-10-02T18:42:00.000-04:00

What slows Linux adoption most? According to ZDNet, "experts who don't know anything."

Paul Murphy asks a good question today. What's the key factor slowing adoption of Linux?
His answer: experts who don't know anything. He offers two examples, one a bad install by a Windows person, the other an inefficient Internet manager.
Below these examples, however, are deeper problems, problems we've addressed here. A clean install that includes applications, like the one Novell has been working on, would fix his first problem. A manager with a technical Clue might fix his second problem.

Article

Gizmo for Linux - not ready for prime time

2005-10-02T11:29:00.000-04:00

I finally got Gizmo for Linux to install and work correctly. It is currently in alpha, but even so, it lacks the features that the Windows and Mac versions have had since day 1. For example, Gizmo features call recording. I have not found that feature in the Linux version yet. Linux podcasters are probably better off with Skype Skype-rec for recording calls.

But probably my biggest problem with Gizmo is the configuration ? there is none. I can't even find a configuration file for it. This is especially bad for me because I use a USB headset for calling my friends on the computer, which gets assigned /dev/dsp1 after plugging it in. I cannot find a way to change soundcards in Gizmo, and am unable to change anything.

What else doesn't it have?

IM (recently implemented)
'Map It'
A call sidebar
Configuration - none at all

Those are some of the features I like about Gizmo. It seems the only plus to it is the nice interface and slightly better call quality (for broadband, at least).

So, in my opinion, Gizmo for Linux was somewhat of a letdown. It does have hope for the future, though. Hey, it's still in alpha. I don't think people will start using it until it has all the features of Windows and Mac.

Oh, and did I mention - they only release it as a Debian package and a Linspire package?

Tech Tags: linux gizmo gizmo project gizmo linux

Sean Parsons is Back

2005-10-01T18:28:00.000-04:00

I just caught up to episode 101 of TLLTS today, and I'm happy to hear that Sean Parsons is back, and is still alive.

What most of you (probably) don't know is that I used to be a journalist on TheLinuxBox.org (his website) up until May of this year. Sean Parsons just dissapeard without a trace, and none of us knew what happend to him. A couple weeks after he left, his website stopped working. None of us could log into the web interface to post, so we were (and still are) unable to change the site at all.

Today I got to listen to TLLTS and I'm glad to hear that Sean is OK. He explained that his web host changed his contract and gave him 250 megs of space, which is hardly enough for a podcast site. Because of that, nothing could be changed to it.

He also said that he's going to be starting a new site soon and start over, since his old one is out of whack.

I'm going to try to contact him and offer to be a journalist on his new site. I'll keep everyone updated.

30 Gigabyte E-mail?

2005-10-01T17:19:00.000-04:00

I saw this on digg today.

Apparently, there is a new site that is offering a free email account with 30 gigs of storage.

What's my opinion on this? First of all, I'm not sure if this will really make it into the mainstream like GMail did. Honestly - unless you're Adam Curry and have a GMail inbox that is 99% full most of the time, who really needs a 30 GB inbox? Honestly? I use email all the time for lots of uses, and I'm using up 202 MB of my GMail account. That's 8%. I am more than contempt with 2.6 GB.

Even so, users will probably be attracted by it. I don't know anything about the interface, but I can make some assumptions based upon the nature of the service.

There are probably ads, or there will soon be ads (not just text ads)
There are probably restrictions, possibly stricter than GMail
There will probably be a little footer ad sent out in every email - god I hate that!

Other than the storage, it doesn't look like there is anything useful that GMail doesn't already have. In fact, there are features on GMail that I prefer over what they are advertising the service as.

'nuff said.

Tech Tags: email gmail 30 gb

Hacking the Hackers

2005-10-01T09:19:00.000-04:00

I came across this CNN video on digg today. It was shot in a 'hackers confrence'. They even advised you to hold on to your hotel cards, and to not use the ATM in the lobby, since someone already messed with it. Freaky.

Video

(it plays good on Konqueror with the Kaffeine plugin)

TLLTS TV Coming Soon?

2005-09-29T15:37:00.000-04:00

When The Linux Link website was started back in 2001 (at least, according to the Wayback machine) they were planning on doing a magazine or newsletter, but that never really picked up. In 2003, they started doing TLLTS, and just recently finished their 100th episode. Now, what's next? According to Pat...

Another cool export script is converting your video to theora. This will come in handy as I plan to record some videos of upcoming TLLTS episodes. Why video tape TLLTS episodes? Stay tuned for an announcement in the near future!

I hope you only release them in theora :)

Got SharpMusique Working

2005-09-28T21:52:00.000-04:00

I now have a fully functional installation of SharpMusique installed and working well.

To install it on Kanotix, I installed the Ubuntu package with KPackage. Of course there were dependency issues, but all I had to do to fix them and get it to run was a simple 'apt-get -f install' and I was in the blue.

Maybe it's time to buy songs on iTunes now :-)

NewsForge: "KDE 4 promises radical changes to the free desktop"

2005-09-27T17:42:00.000-04:00

I just came across this article on NewsForge about KDE 4, the next generation of KDE.

As the dust settles from aKademy 2005, the annual KDE conference, it's a good time to take a look at what the KDE developers are working on. Though KDE 3.5 isn't even out yet, developers are already working on KDE 4. Plenty of work has already gone into porting existing code to Qt4, the GUI toolkit upon which KDE is based, and KDE developers are working on projects that could radically change how the world's most popular free desktop looks and works.

KDE 3.5 is due out in late October. The 3.5 release will give KDE users and developers a mature, stable, and integrated desktop platform with a wide range of applications.

Its developers see KDE 4 as a chance to experiment and introduce new concepts and applications that do more than build on the strength of KDE's existing architecture. Just as KDE 3 brought major transformations in that architecture, developers are looking to KDE 4 to transform the desktop experience and enable a surge in third-party application development. With a KDE 4 release not likely to happen for at least another year, the developers have plenty of time to experiment.

I now firmly believe that KDE 4 (Plasma) will be the "vista killer". If they can match OS X's speed and simplicity with Linux's 'Linuxness', then people would probably start using it. Why? They don't have to shell out money for overpriced Macs, don't have to pay for an operating system, and will probably be able to use it on a computer they already own, or a low-end new one.

I can imagine computer manufacturers giving you the option of Linux preinstalled with a reduced price in the not too distant future (HP is going to start doing that soon with Ubuntu). If you can give them the same computer for $100 less (or however much Windows costs for new PCs), they'd be stupid not to do it. And once computer manufacturers start doing that and Linux has a respectable market share, more and more apps will be ported and it will be Bill's downfall.

Check out the article, it's a good read.

Oh, and here's a comic.

Tech Tags: linux kde kde 4 kde plasma plasma microsoft windows

What's TiVo Good For?

2005-09-23T18:10:00.000-04:00

Well, I now have DirecTV. I know that I said a while ago that I was getting Dish Network, well they tried to install it but had line-of-sight issues. DirecTV is different, in the sense that it uses two satellite dishes instead of one "Super Dish" that Dish Network uses. They were able to place the two satellites in different places, and eliminate the problem.

But with it, I got the DVR. I had heard about the DirecTV DVR using TiVo, but it was never really advertised like that, so I didn't think they used it. Well, I was wrong. I now have a TiVo unit with a special receiver for DirecTV.

And after using TiVo for a little while, I've realized it's only good for one thing: recording TV. Period. So far, I haven't found any useful feature that hasn't been in MythTV. In fact, MythTV can do so much more that TiVo can, it's not even funny. When you take into account all the features in MythTV like DVD playing/ripping/burning capabilities, intergrated weather, an intergrated web browser, RSS feed support, MAME, MythTV's ability to remotely schedule recordings, podcast support (if you set it up right), and countless other features that you can do with other plugins, why would anyone not want MythTV?

Oh, but I guess I mispoke. There is a great feature that TiVo has called "Suggestions". When it is enabled (which it was by default), it will record shows it thinks you will like if there's free space on the HD (without bothering to ask). The added advantage to this is when you try to record a program you actually want to see, you're informed that it's already recording something. And after a few days of leaving this feature on, the HD is cluttered with useless recordings you'll never watch anyways...
Someone needs to step up and be able to manufacture a cheap MythTV box, because TiVo is still cheap. An 80 hour TiVo is $300, while the cheapest MythTV box I saw would be the $500 one that guy is documenting. I know, if you get a lifetime license it does amount to $500, but you can pay a monthly fee, that's probably what most people do.

(Oh, and did you hear that TiVo is not selling anything directly? They're redirecting users to BestBuy)

Tech Tags: directv mythtv tivo dvr linux

A Cool Start Page

2005-09-21T21:57:00.000-04:00

For a while there's been My Yahoo, there's been Google, and more recently Microsoft's start.com, but I found one that's really cool.

It's called NetVibes. It's a home page that can show you the wether, many website feeds, and can even show you new GMail messages. It also has a similar layout to Google and start.com, meaning that you can drag and arrange the different boxes.

What I like about the feed feature of it is that you can read feeds within a new 'window' on the same homepage, meaning you don't need to go to the actual site to read it's content.

But what's really cool about this is that it's completely done with Ajax. You don't need an account to customize the page, but you can get one to see it from other computers.

Oh, and did I mention, you can even change the title :-)

I'm giving it a try, it's pretty cool.

Signs Can Be Misleading

2005-09-21T14:39:00.000-04:00

I was in the Library today. I passed the computer lab and saw a sign that said, "Do NOT Open Windows". The computer lab is air conditioned, and the windows aren't supposed to be open.

That just struck me as funny :-)

Firefox

2005-09-20T16:27:00.000-04:00

I'm sure some of you read Jon's blog. He recently posted an article on Firefox (that got 15 comments at time of posting this - wow!) and I would like to state my opinion on it.

First off, I respect Jon's opinion, and he does have a good point. With that said...

According to Symantec:

The Mozilla family of browsers had the highest number of vulnerabilities during the first six months of 2005 with 25; 18 of these — 72% — were rated as high-severity. Microsoft Internet Explorer had 13 vendor confirmed vulnerabilities of which eight — 62% — were considered high-severity.

But I have a problem with this statement. While Firefox has more discovered bugs, notice that IE only has "vendor confirmed" bugs. Firefox is open source, so anyone can see the source code and tell wether there really is a bug or not. How do we know that Microsoft is hiding how many bugs there really are? There are probably tons and tons of bugs in IE, but since it is closed source, we'll never know.

But, let's face it - Firefox still has bugs. However, I really have no problem using it under Linux. Chances are that several of those bugs use an exploit to make Firefox download and run a virus. What kind of virus? A Windows virus, duh. What's gonna happen when it tries executing a Windows virus on Linux? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. (before you jump on me about Wine, I have heard that almost no Windows virus has ran successfully using Wine)

I'll admit, I didn't look at any of the bugs to see what they were, but I imagine there are a few that do affect Linux machines. Time to use Konqueror again? Maybe, maybe.

Tech Tags: linux mozilla firefox mozilla firefox konqueror windows virus

Back, and the TagCloud is Going Down!

2005-09-19T20:40:00.000-04:00

Hi everyone.

I'm back from my little trip, and I decided to remove the TagCloud. Jon agrees with me, it basically is a piece of crap and I think that almost no one uses it.

Expect more posts in the not too distant future :-)

Going Away for a Few Days

2005-09-16T13:21:00.000-04:00

I'll be going away for a few days. I should be back on Monday.

May the Penguin be with you :-)

Added Technorati Back

2005-09-15T20:52:00.000-04:00

Well, I can't yet tell which search is better, so for the moment, they're both on. My instinct tells me that Google will probably be more standard and unlikely to change as time goes on (heck, they have the same design they had seven years ago), but Technorati is a little more modern, is completely focused on blogs, and has had a blog search for a while now.

I think the winner will be whichever one updates faster. This will probably give Google the upper hand, since Blogger is a Google service, but who knows, really?

(also, remember to vote in the next entry)

Does Anyone Use TagCloud?

2005-09-15T17:05:00.000-04:00

I'm sure everyone's noticed the TagCloud on the sidebar, as it's been there almost since I started this blog a few months ago.

Anyway, I'm now starting to see the uselessness in it. It does provide a tagging interface, but I cannot specify what tags I want posts to be, and it doesn't update that frequently.

So, I'm thinking of removing it. But you have a say in it. Should I remove the TagCloud?

A New Blog Search

2005-09-14T16:12:00.000-04:00

OK, Google has launched their blog search service, and Blogger has their own interface to this as well. As you can see, they changed the top bar on all blogs.

I updated the search on the sidebar and will be trying out this new blog search and see how it compares to Technorati. I think it will be better, as Technorati takes a while to update and (hopefully) Blogger should update it quickly.

eBay Buys Skype

2005-09-12T16:38:00.000-04:00

We all heard the rumors, now they have announced it. eBay is going to buy Skype for something like $4 Billion. Is this a good thing? I'm not sure. As long as eBay keeps Skype as good and free as it is now, I'll be fine. The second they put as much as a tiny text ad, I'm going to Gizmo.

This is another example of what can happen when a company decides to release their product close-sourced. If Skype had been open, it could have been even better than it is now and we would never have to worry about big companies like eBay.

(oh, and by the way, three different queries are on Technorati's top ten right now about eBay and Skype)

Oh well, hopefully eBay won't screw Skype over.

Tech Tags: ebay skype ebay skype skype ebay gizmo gizmo project

Watch High-Quality Yahoo Videos on Linux

2005-09-11T11:01:00.000-04:00

Once again, I came across this on digg. It's from UNEASYsilence.

Everyone who's tried to use LaunchCast probably knows that it requires Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player. You could probably get away from using WMP with MPlayer Plug-in, but it will not run without IE (I've tried using the agent switcher, and it didn't work).

Now, I'm glad I saw this. If you have the video ID (which is easy to obtain), you can use VLC (I assume MPlayer and/or Xine work too, but I haven't tried them) to play the 700 KB/s video. If you've ever used LaunchCast before, you know that the 700 KB/s is the high quality video, and you can usually only get it by paying a monthly subscription. Now you can play it without that.

Disclaimer: the information and the links here are provided for informational purposes only. I do not claim responsibility for anything done with them. Use at your own risk.

Here's how:

Obtain a Video ID (find a link to a video, but right click and go to properties, and it is the consecutive number in the link)
Go here, type in the Video ID and hit 'Grunt Big for Daddy'
Copy the mms:// link and paste it into VLC using the HTTP method (yes, the mms:// and everything)

That's all.

UNEASYsilence Article

Tech Tags: linux yahoo launchcast yahoo music vlc videolan mplayer xine 700

Windows XP Embedded Shouldn't Be Used

2005-09-10T11:50:00.000-04:00

I saw a show a little earlier today on PBS, called "High Tech Home". I was watching it, and got to a section called "Windows Embedded Devices", and I almost switched the channel.

But, I watched on. They only had two different devices on there, and neither really intrests me. Why would any company choose to use Windows XP in their embedded devices? Not only do you have to deal with licensing issues, and things like viruses, but since you can't see the source code it just isn't practical to use.

Linux, on the other hand, would be perfect. You could modify the Kernel and applications so they would run more efficient and work better, and wouldn't have to worry about paying for licenses, patents, viruses, and any other Windows-based problem. And since they are likely to be designing their own systems, the hardware would be compatible.

Oh, and did I mention, Microsoft sponsored that show?

Tech Tags: linux embedded windows linux embedded windows embedded pbs

Using FeedBurner

2005-09-09T22:20:00.000-04:00

Following Jon's example, I decided to go with FeedBurner for my blog feed. I checked it out, and it has a lot of really cool features. One cool feature is on-the-fly converting to make it as compatible as possible with the client being used (for example, this blog outputs an atom feed; if you subscribe with a client that supports RSS better than atom, it will convert it to RSS on-the-fly)

But some other cool features include the ability to see how many people subscribe to the feed, some cool buttons (you see one on the sidebar now), and tons of other great features that Blogger just can't offer.

If you have a blog, I strongly suggest giving it a try.

I have updated the blog with the new feed, which is now: feeds.feedburner.com/mightylinux. If you subscribe to this blog using it's old feed, that will continue to work, however I urge you to update it with the new URL. The advantage of this is... if I ever switch to another blog service (which may happen), you will still get the feed without having to change the URL. Also, you'll get the cool features like on-the-fly encoding. Something else I may do in the future is furl or del.icio.us, which also is supported in FeedBurner.

So, please update your agregators. Thanks!

(oh, and I also added Rojo to the syndication list)

Now This Makes Me Sick

2005-09-09T15:19:00.000-04:00

OK, this is probably the most outrageous Microsoft story I have heard in a while.

David Zamos, a 21 year old college student, one day bought the student edition of Windows XP and Office XP from his college computer store for a total of $60. He got back and realized he would have to reformat his drive. He didn't want to loose all the important stuff on it, so he tried to return the software to the store. The store cashier told him that they had an agreement with Microsoft to not accept returns (why the hell would Microsoft do that, anyway?).

After that, he tried to request a return directly from Microsoft. He sent it by priority mail, so he knew when it arrived. Bill replied while counting his money, and it only took him 34 days to do that. He was denied.

So what did he do? He did what any other internet user would have done and tried selling it on eBay. Office sold for $112.50. He put up an auction for Windows XP, but that was taken down by a "Microsoft Investor" who accused him of infringing on the company's copyright.

According to eBay, Microsoft's resale policy is "Qualified end users may resell and purchase software through eBay." He had no idea what he did wrong.

He contacted one of Microsoft's lawyers about the case, and he replied stating several lawsuits where large companies pirated copies of their software and sold it. He replied, asking what this had to do with him and never got a response.

Soo, he sent a counterclaim to eBay and reposted the sale (stating the reselling policy in the description).

After selling for $91, he made a profit of $143.50 from both sales.

Microsoft came back at him with a lawsuit, stating "irreparable injury to its business reputation and goodwill", and even accused him of unfair competition (WTF?)

The article goes on, but I'll tell you that they did reach an agreement after a lot of embarrassment on Microsoft's part.

This kind of thing really gets to me. Microsoft operating systems are on over 90% of desktops, and their software is being used everywhere. Why would they waste their time suing the pants off of a college student who simply tried selling unopened educational software on eBay. They're in it purely for the money.

Article

Tech Tags: microsoft windows windows xp david zamos ebay

Why Not to Run Windows

2005-09-08T14:56:00.000-04:00

I just came across this video (yes, on digg) that reminded me why people tend to 'hate computers' and why some of us don't use it. I'd like to quote part of it here (it's from BBC)

Jack wanted to show me how risky it is to connect an unprotected PC to the net. This poor Windows XP machine has no firewall and no AntiVirus software. Connecting to the internet would be like throwing it into a lion pen with raw meat straped to it's hard drive.

So how long would it be before we were hit with something nasty on the net? Hours? Minutes? As it turned out, 8 seconds.

Jack: Well, we just connected to the internet, and we've been hit by the sasser worm. Already.

It gets even better, but I won't ruin it. Go see the video.

Video

Tech Tags: windows windows xp linux security worm sasser sasser worm

New GPL Penalizes Patents and DRM

2005-09-06T13:11:00.000-04:00

According to an MSNBC article, upcoming changes to the GPL could penalize patents and DRM.

From the article:

"Software patents are clearly a menace to society and innovation. We like this to be more explicit. The basic idea is that if someone patents software, he loses the right to use free software. It's like a patent retaliation clause," Greve said.

Stallman will write a draft version of the new GPL by December, after which it will be evaluated by thousands of organizations, software developers and software users in 2006.

Good idea, but will this actually reduce patents and DRM? Possibly, but I'm not sure.

Article

Tech Tags: gnu gpl stallman open source fsf greve

TLLTS, Episode 100!

2005-09-06T11:41:00.000-04:00

If you have any free time tomorrow night between 8:30 and 10, come check out The Linux Link Tech Show's 100th Episode! If you like Linux you'll love it. If you have listened to it pre-recorded before but not live, then you should listen to it live. It's real nice to have IRC to see what other people are saying in real time. They've been doing this since 2003, and currently are the longest running Linux show (I think even the longest running live tech show, but don't quote me on that) and they're doing their 100th episode. And from what I heard, they have a good lineup (and Jon may pop on again :-) )

Listen to the show on Binrev or Sysop using a media player like XMMS or Kaffeine, and be sure to follow along in the IRC. Fire up your favorite IRC client (I use Gaim, but most people like XChat) and join the server thelinuxlink.net, channel #techshow

I should be on IRC tomorrow, my username will be 'justin' (duh)

Congrats to Dann, Allan, Pat, and Linc. This is a real accomplishment.

Tech Tags: the linux link tech show tllts linux irc podcast podcasts

TechPodcasts.com Update

2005-09-06T10:41:00.000-04:00

I just caught the latest episode of Linux Log. First and foremost, it is now called Linux News Log.

I was listening for the beginning introduction, and to start out with, I hate it (Adrian, if you're reading this, do away with it. That rock music is just annoying). But... after that he went through "I'm your host, Adrian...". After a few moments, here is exactly what he says:

Linux News Log is a proud member of the Tech Podcasts network: 'If it's tech, it's here'. Head on over to www.techpodcasts.com. If you like any of my shows, you most certainty will find at least one or two shows there you will like as well. So, great network, been with them since very early on. We're constantly adding new shows, so do feel free to head on over there and check them out.

Wow, what a waste of breath. I timed how long it took him to say that, and it took him a whole 27 seconds. That's an additional half minute that I have to sit there and wait before I can actually listen to the content.

But beyond that, I listened on. The news didn't actually start until about seven and a half minutes into the podcast. This is an example of what I like to call a waste of time. I calculated it, and that first seven and a half minutes of crap is actually about 5 MB. This raises problems. It makes the download bigger, which isn't a problem for people on broadband, but for dial up users this can mean a much longer download. It also takes up extra space. Sure, not a whole lot, but after you have 30 different episodes, that gets to be an extra 150 MB of introduction and crap. Disgusting.

In this whole Linux Log mishap, I've discovered what (I think) makes a good podcast. First of all, they shouldn't be longer than 40 minutes (although there are exceptions). I think that structured podcasts should be in this format:

A quick thirty second introduction (I really like the one on TLLTS)
A 1-2 minute (or so) description of the podcast, announcements, and the upcoming content
The main content
Any final thoughts on the content
A quick thirty second (or so) outtro with the website, email, IM, info like that.

And, of course, there are exceptions. I said that most podcasts shouldn't be longer than 40 minutes, but one exception is TLLTS. I actually try to set aside a full hour and 30 mins. every wednessday to listen to the show live, but most podcasts are pre-recorded.

One of the podcasts that I listen to that I feel really sticks to this kind of format is The GNU/Linux User Show. Keep up the good work!

But I digress. TechPodcasts.com sucks.

Tech Tags: linux linux news log linux log podcasts techpodcasts techpodcasts.com

TechPodcasts.com Sucks!!!

2005-09-04T13:28:00.000-04:00

If anyone here listens to a show like the Linux Log (kinda dry for me, but hey, it's Linux), you've probably heard of the Tech Podcast network. And here's my opinion of it - IT SUCKS. It comes forward as a website that simply provides links to other podcasts related to technology, but it's not really that.

I'll use Linux Log as an example for this. Every show, he has a big, stupid introduction, and he states "Linux Log is a proud member of the Tech Podcasts network: If it's tech, it's here". And if you look on the website, every episode has a stupid button that links to the Tech Podcasts site - like we don't already know that!

But not does it make podcasts do this, but the index (at least for Linux) also sucks. Look, there are a total of two Linux shows there, but there are far more (much better) ones. TLLTS, The Linux User Show, even older ones like The Linux Box and The Linux Show aren't listed there at all.

So what do I think the Tech Podcast site is about? Simply to make money. Their title makes the user think they're a complete directory of high quality podcasts about technology, and there is no truth to that at all. It would be one thing if they did what The Podcast Network did and actually provide hosting for the podcasts, but to make the podcasters make one big, stupid announcement once or more in every show and simply link back to them in return, they're not really holding up their end of the bargain.

Normally I'd link to them here, but I'm not going to. Kiss my ass!

Tech Tags: linux podcasts podcasters techpodcasts linux log tllts