Wikipedia Exposed

Quite an interesting read imo (don’t forget to start at the bottom of the page – damn blogs).

Relying on a publicly editable document for information on controversial topics never seemed all that wise to me. Nevertless I’ve found wikipedia to be a good place to start when looking for technical or basic stuff (such as when someone starts confusing the RC circuits for low-pass and high-pass filters) and trivia (manimal!!!).

OMG LOL – I should start my own registrar

Quoting from the article:

A lawsuit filed by RegisterFly’s parent company, Unified Names, blames the meltdown on misuse of company funds by President and CEO Kevin Medina, who was fired by the company’s board. The suit alleges that Medina spent company funds on liposuction surgery and escort services.

(my emphasis)

Reasons to Switch from XP to Vista

1) Security;
2) Data Protection (“Previous Versions” from System Restore);
3) Integrated Search;
4) The new explorer;
5) Responsiveness i.e. feels “snappy” (probably because of SuperFetch).

Reasons not to switch:
1) Lack of hardware support (drivers) – which kinda makes vista a Non-Operating System for many (most?);
2) Possible issues with playback of HD content

Other notes:
Requires 1GB of RAM minimum and 2GB for decent performance. Keep in mind also that you need a decent graphics card to get the new interface (Aero).

It’s probably a good idea to run the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor before upgrading to Vista.

Make sure your hardware has drivers available for Vista, preferably non-beta. This is probably not easy for non-geeks. If you’re not sure you can track drivers for your hardware by yourself than ask for help or refrain from upgrading for a while (a year or so should be fine for the hardware that will get drivers, some of it won’t but that’s Windows for ya).

Or you can skip all that trouble and go directly to Ubuntu (not for laptops – Ubuntu’s power management sucks).

Zealots 4tw & FC really did try… NOT!

Two options:
1) Practical/Legal option – ship/sell/make available through third parties proprietary software;
2) Proverbial Head in Sand option – ignore your user’s demands and refuse to provide them with functionality they view (and will continue to view regardless of your actions *coff*rhetoric*coff*) as essential.

Which one would you chose?

The key here is, while some may have very strong feelings against proprietary software, most of us don’t. Personally I’m not a fan of needless animal cruelty but I’m not going to stop eating meat or start opposing medical research that may save human lives (*coff*mine*coff*). The point here is most people are not fanatics. I’m not saying fanaticism in a minority is necessarily a bad thing. But most of us just want things to work.

Now I’ve been a linux desktop user and advocate for a very long time (10yrs) and price was never the reason. Hell! Unlike a lot of people out there I’ve know about – and used – MSDN-AA for years. I’ll use OSS whenever that option is viable. I’ll not turn away from functionality I view as essential for ideological reasons. I want my OS to be capable of playing my MP3s and I want my triple monitor setup to work. If at anytime it came down to choosing between those things and using OSS software, screw OSS. It’s that simple. Same goes for almost every human being on the face of the planet (or in his parent’s basement). That’s not going to change anytime soon. In fact it would never change if it were up to the fanatics. Society itself requires compromise and it cannot be changed from the outside.

As for the reason why I started my post: Eric, it’s about time . And just to clear some doubts that seem to be floating around: Fedora Core IS NOT a desktop linux distro – it’s a Red Hat beta. And Red Hat clearly isn’t targeting desktop users, at least not at the moment. And that’s the reason why they chose not to care about making proprietary media formats usable in Fedora.

Also yeah I tried FC6 – hurray for waiting 30 minutes whenever I wanted to install stuff. Now that’s good cripleware! Again I guess it’s not something important for the paying Red Hat clients. And yeah, downloading a DVD (or going for the even worse multiple CD alternative) was a good way to make sure only the very determined would ever use FC. I give Red Hat it’s props for all the good work it’s done but that’s were it stops. No way I’m willing to believe FC is actually targeted at the common mortal. Ubuntu is .

And don’t get me wrong there’s some stuff wrong with Ubuntu – namely it’s inability to do complex stuff: I’ve been waiting for the security stuff that’s available in FC for way too long now and let’s not forget the recent feisty-wont-get-3d-desktop thing – if stuff isn’t ready, than make it ready. Don’t expect “understanding” from your users when you fail to do so. And off course I resent them for dropping support for PowerPC and generally believe that to have been a bad decision as it will force a percentage of Ubuntu users (and future Ubuntu users) to chose some other distro.

Another question is when will linux get decent power management for notebooks? No one seems willing to make that a priority for some reason I fail to understand. Too much boring work probably…

End Of Rant

Describing Windows Vista (Humor)

Funniest (and actually close to accurate) description of Windows Vista so far (BOFH):

“You should go to Vista.”

“So you like Vista?”

“Not really, no. I run a Vista simulator.”

“Virtual Server?” the Boss asks.

“Nah, I just turned on all the flashy crap in XP, changed the background image, took some memory out of my box and clocked down the CPU. Then broke Media player. Works like a charm.”

Exam Season, AACS, FEUP Blogs

This one is almost over… it’s been… interesting. Trying hard to keep up with the news. The only thing interesting I read was the AACS stuff. Who would’ve thought after so much work they wouldn’t even bother encrypting the USB traffic?

Another recent development that I’ve been keeping up to date with is NeACM’s FEUP Blogs. It’s been talked about in this room (D007 – Chefax/NeACM) for at least a couple of years, it was in development for 6 months and now it’s finally here. It looks really great! At the time of writing, after only a few days, it already has 100+ blogs. Insta-Success!