26 posts tagged “linux”

 There comes a time in life when you have to make certain choices. Some choices you can make real early in life, such as your tastes in music, or movies, while others take longer, like your occupation, or who your going to marry (if your going to marry at all.) Now, with technology there are also choices. Which OS are you going to use? What type of media is your digital lifestyle going to revolve around? Now, I've met many different users, who use technology for many different things. gotkube, is a Linux user. He's a coder and an all around media junkie. Although he uses older hardware, he makes up for it by tweaking the OS to perform very well. And then you've got people like Terie, who uses a Mac. The Mac is a wonderful platform, especially now that they've switched over to Intel chips and can now run Windows side by side with Mac OS X. Add in with that an Apple TV or an iPod, and your set, nevermind the fact that you can tweak the OS quite a bit, due to the UNIX foundations of the OS. Finally, you have the wide world and sometimes (not so wonderful) world of Windows. Currently, I'm a Windows user, however, I've been eyeing the Mac for quite some time now. I was going to buy a mac Mini last year, however when considering my options, a PC had more value. That is why I've decided that that when I go for a hardware refresh in mid-2009, I'm going to go for a Mac. Mostly because, for my uses, the Mac is a better solution. It has the iLife sweet as well as some really sweet programs. Granted, Windows does too, but I love the Mac and I really don't like having to constantly upgrade my hardware every six months in order to play the latest games. Part two involves purchasing a Console, either a Xbox or Playstion and a shiny new console, whatever is on the market. Things can change between now and then, but I really think that the Mac is the right choice for me. But that might not be the right choice for you, so look long and hard before making a decision on your digital lifestyle. 

 I'm sad to say this but there are politics in technology. There are politics anywhere you go. Although people try and avoid them, I'm sure, they do exsist. Take for example the other day. I was on a message board and there was an argument over processors. The Core 2 Duo is the king right now, but I'm still an AMD fan, as was the guy who was asking the question. He wanted a recommendation on a certain AMD processor. One of the upstanding members of the community (he really is.) tried to talk him into buying a Core 2 Duo when he clearly wanted an AMD. It's like being a conservative or Liberal in the real world. Your either AMD or Intel and ATI and nvidia. I'm a clear cut AMD/ATI guy. I hate NVIDIA for many reason's that I won't get into in this post. If you want to really UGLY then your either a PC, Mac or Linux User. Again, it's all about politics. Then you have the extremists. That would be the uber-fanboys that basically are like (excuse the LEET speak please) ZOMG! dOOD! New Hardware *falls over drooling* Or the political extremists such as Richard Stallman who want Linux to be called GNU/Linux for his own benefit. It goes from one end of the spectrum to the other. It's sad to see, but it's the truth.
I hope everyone is having a great Easter! Hope you guys get lots of chocolate!
*Pray's that weather will not disrupt celebrations*

 

 Windows Vista is due to be released next Tuesday. I, for one am NOT going to be buying a copy of Windows Vista, at least not yet. Why? Read on.

1.     Reason #1: Let's be a puppet to the RIAA/MPAA!- Microsoft feels this compulsion to please everybody-except the consumer. In XP you could mod your system to play HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. Not so in Windows Vista. If checks your system something like 30 times a second, which will give your processor a run for it's money. Granted they are enabling HD-DVD/Blu-Ray playback, however you need to have a
   

   To Vista or Not to Vista?
   card with HDCP and a display with HDCP. Argh! Why do they make it so difficult?
   
2. Reason #2 I Have no Beef: The Minimum system requirements for Windows Vista is an 800 Mhz processor, 512 of RAM and a fairly beefy graphics card. That's for a Windows Capable PC. For Windows Vista Premium you need  a 1 Ghz  Processor, 1 GB of RAM 128 MB of Graphics memory and a DVD-ROM Drive. That doesn't sound like much but that's the minimim spec. If you want all the shiny stuff in Vista to run smoothly, you need 256 or even 52 of Video RAM depending on how much you multi-task. You can run Beryl in Linux and Core Animation in Mac OS X that doesn't  require a beefy computer. You can run all the shiny effects on a G4 or 486. You don't need a beefy computer.
3. It Took them 2 Service Packs: Remember the days before Service Pack 2? The Dark days of Serivce Pack 1? These days are going to be be repeated With Windows Vista, I for one, do not intend to repeat those days. If it's going to take them another 3 years to make Vista behave, I'm not going to wait that long. Hello Leopord!
4. It's that Edition Thing- You have 1 version of OS X. You have many specialized version of Linux. And you have many, many editions of Vista. Why? IT used to be you had one version of Windows. With XP it went to 3 and now with Vista it went to 6! Who needs six editions of an operating system! XP Pro was good for all and MCE 2005 was great for the media junky! Why do you they need to have an edition for everyone?  Everyone is fine with one version of OS X.
   

Ah well, I'm done ranting for today. Talk to you guys later.

Well 2006 is almost gone and I'm looking forward to 2007. 2006 has been a busy year. New technologies have made there way unto the desktop, mobile and server markets. Intel released it's new Core platforms while AMD is on the verge of it's 4x4 architecture being released. nvidia released it's revolutionary new series 8 GPU, using a new architecture that increases GPU performance many times over.    Apple Computer has made it's much awaited Intel transition, unveiling new notebooks and desktops. Microsoft is on the verge of a new era with the release of Windows Vista within the next 30 days. The world itself has been very busy, with a regime change, the first in the 13 years. Stephen Harper and his Conservatives swept to power in January with a minority. On the international stage, Israel and Lebanon with a 3 month, requiring the mass evacuation of citizens from dozens of nations. 
Onto the Categories:
Technology 

Best Gadget: Sanyo Xacti HD-1A (Previous: Apple iPod/iPod Nano)
With the world going HD it's time for the camcorder world to go HD as well. This thing is tiny. You can fit it into your shirt pocket, it's that tiny. It shoots in 720p. And here's the cool thing: It takes SD cards. A 2 GB card will shoot about 30 minutes for of footage. Now that might not sound like a lot, but when your shooting HD video that's pretty good. So say you get 6 2 GB cards, that's 3 hours of HD video. I can see in '07 the Xacti facing some competition from Canon and Sony, but for now it's the best in it's class.

Honorable Mention: 2G iPod Shuffle

I considered putting this as the Best Gadget of the year, however I'm trying not be biased in favor of Apple, but this second generation shuffle is sweet. It's smaller than the 1^st generation, made of metal instead of plastic and looks much better. I'm considering getting one for my Mom for her birthday in July.

Worst Gadget: Microsoft Zune (Previous: N/A)
Now this may seem biased but I have several reasons for this. First of all, let me state that I love the hardware. It's a nice device. The rubberized plastic is nice and the colors look pretty cool (except for the brown one.) The screen is beautiful. It's bigger than the one on the iPod and looks Nice. The interface is pretty cool and looks very pretty. I believe it gives you the ability to use custom images as the background. Like I said, love the hardware, kudo's to the guys who designed it. But then, Microsoft, being the “Oh we have to play nice with the industry”. Coperation that it is, decided to DRM pretty much everything on the Zune. Say you use the Wi-Fi to share a song, even if it's a song you composed or it's supposed to be shared under Creative Commons applies DRM to it (which is a violation of Creative Commons.) So, in short the Zune had a lot of potential, but that was before Balmer got ahold of it and decided to please the record industry. The status quo is unchanged, iPod is still on top.

Best Overall Product: Intel Core 2 Duo (Previous: N/A)
Intel released Core Duo processors just under a year ago and followed this July with the new Core 2 Duo processors. What makes the Core 2 so special? It's a huge leap forward for the industry. For a while, Intel, in the words of Jerry Pournelle: “They had computers could could bake Pizza in” which is not far from the truth. The Prescott chips ran hot. And the next generation of Pentium 4's really didn't help either. So after a 5 year stint with the NetBurst architechture, Intel moved on to a completely new architecture known as Core. And guess who came up with it? The Israeli's. (they saved Intel's bacon.) Instead of running every single possibility through the processor (guessing basically), the new Core architecture runs eveything in Parallel, which makes things much faster. The amount of L2 cache has almost doubled. The max Intel had on it's chips was 2x 1 MB on the Pentium D series. Now the Low end Core 2 (1.86 Ghz) has 2 MB of L2 with the 2.13, 2.4,2.66 and 2.93 Ghz having 4 MB of L2 cache. That's a lot of cache and it makes this chips really fast. Ideal for gaming and video editing. Needless to say, Apple made a good move when they jumped ship for the PPC platform. The Core 2 Duo is a revolution in micro-processor technology.

Worst Overall Product: Sony Laptop Batteries (Previous:Sony Rookit'd CD's)
Sony has not managed to stop it's losing streak. For the second year running they are running the “Worst” categories. Last year they blundered with the Rootkit'd CD caused an uproar. Now they're the faulty Laptop batteries caused a major brouhaha in the tech community with almost 12 million of them recalled. I mean come on Sony, when will you get your act together? They just can't seem to get all of there policies to work together for the betterment of the coperation as a whole. Recently Matsushita has claimed that they have developed a fireproof Laptop battery that will not explode. Well see how this pans out. So for the second year running, Sony has produced a product that is anti-consumer. Hopefully 2007 will be a better year for Sony.

Best Executive: Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical Ltd (Previous:Steve Jobs, CEO Apple Computer)
Shuttleworth, an international Entrepreneur has become a pioneer with the Linux operating system by taking it from the enthusiast market of PC power users and open source advocates such as Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds to people who can't afford Windows. Shuttleworth has funded the development of Ubuntu and it's sister projects and so far it's a major success. Many people who saw Linux as a complex OS only for experienced users. I'm pushing for adoption within both the education system at my church which is setting up a community computer lab. Needless to say that Shuttleworth, a modern Stallman or Torvalds. Shuttleworth deserves his place as Best Executive of the Year for leading Ubuntu to the place it's at now.

Worst Executive:Patricia Dunn (Previous: N/A)
Dunn screwed up royally. If you don't know what happened this summer, Dunn was caught using gestapo like tactics to investigate several HP board members and technology journalists. She used a practice known as pretexting in which the companies she hired to investigate lied to aqquire phone records and other confidential information. Thus, she earns the Worst Executive on this list for 2006.

Best Overall Cooperation: Canonical (Previous Apple Computer)
This year Ubuntu Linux, which is Canonical's main product hit the mainstream with many anti-DRM advocates including Corey Doctorow adopting Ubuntu instead of Windows or Mac OS X. Although Edgy Eft was a bit of a bumpy upgrade, I look forward to Fiesty Fawn next April. Canonical has made Ubuntu a mainstream product in the open source world and the Linux flavour of choice for both beginners and Linux veterans alike.

Worst Overall Coperation: RIAA (Previous Sony BMG)
What's there to say?The RIAA is the type of organization that is the zenith of not consumer friendly. They sue grandmother's who scratch their heads when they here the word “BitTorrent” and “P2P Networks”. They go after people who don't have a computer, much less an internet connection. They favor the DMCA and are against Net Neutrality. What's there to like about them? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

General News

Best Politican: Peter Stoffer MP Sackville-Eastern Shore (Previous: N/A)
My MP is the greatest. I have sent in various letters for a number of causes and every time he has responded with a positive phone call. He really cares about his constituents unlike many MP's in Central Canada. He also supports the troops, health care and many of the things. He has no political agenda and that earns him the honor of  Best Politician of '06. 

Worst Polictian: Belinda Stronach (Previous: Belinda Stronach)
Ms. Stronach ran for the leadership of the Conservative Party in 2003. When she did, I respected her imensley. Her policies where sound and she had a likeable personality. Things have gone down hill since. She jumped ship to the Liberal Party in May of last year and alleged to have had an affair with Tie Domi, star player of the Toronto Maples Leaf's. In short, she's an opportunist and I don't like opportunist's. At least in government. The government is here to serve the people, not your own selfish self interests. She's the worst politician in Canada for 2006, for the second year running.

Worst Policy: Stay the Course (Previous: N/A)

Up until this past month, U.S. President George W. Bush has kept on his policy of “Stay the Course” in Iraq. That policy, is costing not only American soldiers there lives, but also the lives of Iraqi's. What good has it done up until this point? Hundreds of Iraq's die every day, for no apparent reason. American soldiers die as well, also for no apparent reason. This policy is soon to be reversed as Bush and his military advisors look for other option in and a new direction in Iraq.

Best Policy: Accountability Act (Previous: N/A)
Last January the Conservatives swept there way to power after 13 years of Liberal rule. With it, Prime Minister Stephen Harper introduced the Accountability Act which gave the Auditor General more power to investigate the spending of the government as well as giving protection to whistle blowers and putting a 5 year lobbying ban on ministers. This Act was the keystone of Harper's election campaign ans was a breath of fresh air considering the rampant corruption in government the past few years. The Accountability Act of 2006 is the Best Policy of 2006.

Best News Story:It's a Series of Tubes! (Previous N/A)

People in the tech community will recall that in June Sen. Ted Stevens, while in committee debating a Net Neutrality Bill called the Internet a “Series of Tubes”. The tech community both in and outside of the United States LAMO'd at Mr. Steven's bumble. It remains a frequent joke in the tech community and is my pick in 2006 for best news story.

Worst News Story: James Kim (Previous Hurricane Karina)

Although there are many of these for 2006, this one stands out for me. James and his family got lost on a remote Oregon road. His family survived, but he himself died of hypothermia, trying to get help. This earns James the worst Story of 2006 and a honorable mention on this list.

    Tha's my take on 2006. I'm off to New Brunswick again tomorrow and I'll be back again on the 30th. I might post once or twice when up there, but I might also take a bit of a hiatus from blogging. But I will definitely post before the new year. I hope everyone is having a great holiday and see on guys later.

Virtunate

     So that's the math project done and presented. The presentation went okay, I guess. I had to do it a bunch of times, and I talk a million miles an hour when I get nervous, but it could have been worse. The noise didn't help either. But that's not

what this post is about. I haven't praised any websites lately and I should be. First off is one that I tried using for my Math Project. Spresent is Powerpoint in Flash. It's really simple to use and has some pretty cool transition effects. Some of the limitations are that the only web images that you can drop into your presentations are jpg. This isn't that big of a deal, but for someone like me who prefers the .png format, is it somewhat of an annoyance. Other defencies are that you need to type in the URL exactly (www.spresent.com) as opposed to just spresent.com or the security certificates will screw with the log in process and will not allow you to login. Again, a minor bug, but worth mentioning. It's a nice little web app and it's a wonder why Google hasn't bought them yet. Google already has a spreadsheet program and a word processor, why not a powerpoint like program? With Google you never know though. They could go out and buy it in the next few months.  We'll see
     The other thing I wanted to mention is something I found today while randomly browsing around. It's called EveryStockPhoto and it's like iStockphoto. The major difference is that instead of paying to use the images outside of my Vox blog, the images are licensed under Creative Commons and therefore, are free. Now don't get me wrong, I love iStockphoto, it's great service. But if you want high quality images or a different size you have to pay for it. Not much mind you, just one or two dollars, but it's the Penguin inside of me talking. I like Open Source FREE software. I use Open Office, not Word, I use Firefox not IE (for other reasons) I use GAIM not MSN. I use Thunderbird, not Outlook.  I do use some closed source stuff like Paint.NET, because I can't figure out the GIMP. And Creative Commons is consumer friendly which is better then Copyright, which screws you over even if you just want to promote the person who holds the copyright. But I ramble. 
    I'm off to party tonight, then to a meeting. Have two tests and a small assigment due on Monday, but it's no big deal. See you guys later.  

    So tonight, after I studied rigourously for my Math test, may parents took me and my brother out shopping. Why? I guess they

wanted to have a look around and I guess have just get a general idea of what we want on our Christmas List.First Stop, Future Shop. After browsing around and drooling a bit in the HD TV section (there was a Samsung running a tutorial vidoe on a Blu-Ray player, it looked nice. I wandered over to the computer section. They I remembered Boredsvunut telling me about an iMac that she had tried out when she had been there earlier. And that was before the 24" iMac was released earlier this fall. And guess what? There was one on Display. So I wonder over to try it out and, it's better than what they show on the Apple website. The display was huge. Where talking about 2' of screen here. Anyway's the iMac was beautiful. Moreso than Vista could ever be. I mean, OS 9 sucked. But OS X? Beatiful, pure beaty. I also ran into a Guy who was also drooling over the iMac. His first computer was an Apple II. He also supports the Open Source Movement and his favorite Distro's are Mindriva and SUSE. He doesn't like Ubuntu, but meh, there are so many flavours of Linux out there, I could really care less. I really wish I could've gotten the guys name,  he was one of the old school geeks that you see (read: Steve Wozniak circa 1976) The  guy was quite interesting and we talked  for about 20 minutes and advised a couple not to buy a copy of  Microsoft Office for Mac because A) It costs a hourendous amount of money.  and B) There's a new release scheduled for sometime next year and it's better to wait. You'd think we worked there, huh? But anyway, that was the hightlight of my  night,  everything else was pretty un-eventful . But there was one more thing. Tomorrow the Wii launches and outside of future shop,  I saw people who where lined up to get one. THey where outside of the store. Several where playing cards, you could see people  sleeping etc. It was quite amusing. And I explained to my parent what all the hype was about.  I think I got throught  to them , but you never know with technologically illiteratte people.

    You know who really ticks me off? Steve Balmer!  I like Bill, the guy is generous with his vast fortune, but Balmer pisses me off. Why? Read on.
    Recently Microsoft and Novell announced that they where partnering to develop software for the Linux platform. Just as general information, Novell develops of the most popular Linux distributions, SUSE Linux. So I guess Microsoft wants to

develop stuff like Office for Linux. So the entire Open Source community is going "huh?" and scratching there heads. Why? Because Microsoft is traditionally an enemy of Linux and everything it stands for. (Closed Source vs. Open Source) So while the OSS community is scratching it's head, CEO of Microsoft Steve "Monkey Boy" Balmer said that "Linux stole our intellectual property." Uh huh. Right Steve. Suuure. Guess what? I bet ya the Linus came up with most of the Kernel himself? And how does it "infringe on intellectual property"? I mean, the code is open source. Unless you develop the actual language yourself, you cannot patent code. You can't patent Perl, Python or any other code. I mean, how hindering would it be if someone patented HTML  and demanded that someone pay every time they used it? Can you imagine what the internet would be like? My whole point in this, Linux is not Microsoft's Property and never will be. Linux is the property of people not some coperate bozo like Bill Gates or Steve Balmer. It should be interesting to see how this relationship develops over the next little while and if Microsoft makes a version of Office for Linux and even better, to see if they make that version Free.   

     As I have mentioned before I've recently switched to Ubuntu, which is an awsome, completely free Linux distribution. With the operating system comes quite a few handy programs pre-installed, including Firefox, Evolution (Mail), Open

Office, GAIM (IM)  amoung other apps. One of the apps that I would use reguarly if I could master it is the GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) Basically, it's an open source version of Adobe Photoshop. (read:Open Source=Free) So instead of paying over $1,000 for the full version of Photobshop, you can download GIMP for Free. A second thing about the GIMP is the fact that it's open source. Like Linux that fact that it's licensed under the GPL gives you the right to look into the source code and devlop tweaks for it. You can develop brushes etc. for it. I just downloaded it tonight on my Windows Parttion and I'm still learning the ropes etc.  When I get around to learning the basics I'll make something and post on the my next entry.
    One last thing before I go.....I don't remember if I've mentioned Bookmooch before or not but I got the first book that I "mooched" in the mail tonight. It's one of Scott Adams' older Dilbert books Journey to Cubicleville. Some of the jokes are a bit dated (there are some Y2K jokes in it.) but it's still funny none the less. To all the bookworms in my readership I recommend this site to swap some of the books you haven't read for a while for books that you can get for free (you have to pay for postage.) It's free, and so far, I've had a smooth ride with the site.
Tomorrow's Friday, then the weekened. Woot!

     Argh. So the days are getting shorter and the nights longer. Where getting less daylight now. Damn, I hate HATE Canadian Winters. Why do you ask? Well let me count the ways. For one thing, the lack of daylight. You get up in the morning, go to school, don't get to see much daylight (and the gray walls of my school don't help.) walk home. By this time, it's alreay gettin

g dark. Then it's dark until that time the next day. Second thing, weather here sucks. And the scho ol board doesn't really realize that. They cancel all of the schools except for ours. This is when the sidewalks have yet to be plowed and it takes me twice to three times as long to make it to school. That's walking downhill. And after the whole "Christmas! Yey! Joy! Lights!" everyone goes through "Seaonal affective disorder" otherwise known as "The Winter Blues" Second thing, the lack of a holiday between Exam Time and March does not help either. So le'ts recap, you've got the lack of a break from your studies for about 3 months, and the lack of sunlight. That in combination with the gray walls and a substational workload makes school from the months of January to March suck. I mean, up until Christmas, things are good and pretty much stress free, but once you get beyond Christmas, it's like "Wow, you've got another 3 months to go before we see the sun.
    ooooh. So as I have mentioned before, Ubuntu 6.10 wasn't so great. However the next version, 7.04 "Fiesty Fawn" looks to be cool. And the one feature I'm looking forward to in this next release is that Composite desktops are enabled by default. No some of my readership are going "Cut the Geek speak! English Please!". Well you see there is this lovely eye candy called XGL/Compiz which makes awsome eye candy. And another thing that Linux has that Windows doesn't is something called "Workspaces" which allows you to have many things running on multiple desktops. So you could have Firefox running in Workspace 1 and Open Office running over in Workspace 4. (This handy when parents look over your shoulder to see what you're doing.) This is handy even without XGL/Compiz. Now with it you can spin it like a Cube or a hexagon, or an oxtagon or as many faces as you like. There are also rain effects little tweaks that make Windows streach like elastics. Some people are not really happy with the fact that XGL/Compiz might use non-free drivers, which is against the whole Ubuntu Philosophy. But we'll see, *waits impatenially for April 17th*  

Windows, Mac, Linux - What's your preference and why?
Submitted by ramblingsbymark.

    hmmm. This is a bit odd on my part. I love the Macintosh, I used to hate it before the release of OS X. See in Grade 7 and 8 we where forced to use it with OS 9 installed. And it was torture. This was before the days of shiny-happy red and gr

een and yellow buttons to close Windows and such. Plus the teachers really didn't help in that they thought we could do everything ourselves without help. But with the release of OS X I'm now in Love with the Mac. I can't wait for 10.5 Loepoard to be released next year and am hoping to get a Macbook for Post Secondary work.
    I currnently use Windows for most of my work, however, if you have read my blog in the past few days, you know that I recently installed Ubuntu Linux 6.06 Dapper Drake on a partition. Although it was a bit frustrating, I'm cool with it know and I only intend to use Windows to play some of my games. Why do I use Linux? Because it's open source. What's that? It means that you can go into the Terminal (like C Prompt in Windows) and add and take away stuff at your lesiure. Furthurmore, it alllows people to create programs and tweak Linux instead of having to rely on the company that created the program, the community can kind fixes for things without having to wait for the next release.  Since I am still at home  most of my family the rest of my family still uses Windows. However when I live on my own, all of my computers will run either OS X or Linux. Unless Ray Ozzie makes an awsome next version of Windows that will follow Vista (codenamed "Vienna") I will switch to Apple. Windows has been nothing but a pain in the butt since day 1. Sure at one point in my life, I hate Apple and Linux but that was when I was a tech N00b. Now I know better.