Topics

76

General Software Discussion / Ubuntu: Where Did the Love Go?

« on: February 22, 2011, 05:43 PM »

A question from Slashdot commenter inkscapee says it plainly:
"Used to be Ubuntu was the big Linux hero, the shining knight that would drive Linux onto every desktop and kick bad old Windows to the curb. But now Ubuntu is the Bad Linux. What's going on, is it typical fanboy fickleness, or is Canonical more into serving their own interests than creating a great Linux distro?"

Original article on Datamation

77

Developer's Corner / Software is too important to leave to programmers

« on: February 20, 2011, 09:58 PM »

Marco makes the case over at Stop blog that private vs. public demands for software have different needs, i.e., proprietary vs. open formats. Simply put: governments can't ask citizens to buy proprietary software to read public data they've already paid for (through taxes).
http://stop.zona-m.n...e-it-to-programmers/

He gets letters.

• trying to write programs or websites “for everybody” is something that requires a lot of development time; therefore, unless the customer paid to have something viewable with any browser/operating system, you do it. Otherwise, you DON’T. You try to make happy the makority of users and who gives a f**k if not all versions of Linux support Vmw (a video format) out of the box. Sure, that’s ugly to say, but that’s the way it goes
• I don’t even care much for people who use Open Source Software that they didn’t pay and then demand to be treated as those who paid something
• Here’s a (deliberately) stupid example: if I build my own car myself with my friends, in our spare time, I certainly don’t expect the same performances as an Audi

78

Living Room / How the Egyptian Government found an off switch to the Internet

« on: February 18, 2011, 08:23 AM »

Several articles for weekend reading, each interesting.



Egypt's Leaders Found ‘Off’ Switch for Internet
http://www.nytimes.c...1&pagewanted=all

How Did Egypt's Government Halt Internet Access?
http://www.pbs.org/n...11/egypt2_02-16.html

The Exploits of Hackers and How They Have Highlighted the Internet's Insecurities
http://www.pbs.org/w...tline/shows/hackers/

___________________________
Governments really don't like people assembling, and they sure don't like them doing it online. Even US President Obama wants an off-switch at hand "in case of cyberattack." http://www.schneier.com/essay-265.html

79

Living Room / 3Tb Drives are Here! That's 500,000 songs. Enough yet?

« on: February 17, 2011, 06:26 AM »

I'm going to need a lot of floppies to back that up. No seriously, I could use that for my various "collections." Price expected to be about $240.
http://www.linux-mag.com/id/7897/

80

Living Room / Apple: if we get you subscribers, we deserve a cut

« on: February 15, 2011, 09:29 AM »

The crazy just keeps on at Apple.
http://arstechnica.c...we-deserve-a-cut.ars

"Our philosophy is simple—when Apple brings a new subscriber to the app, Apple earns a 30 percent share; when the publisher brings an existing or new subscriber to the app, the publisher keeps 100 percent and Apple earns nothing," CEO Steve Jobs said in a statement.
____________________
"And if you so much as eat an apple or say the word apple or think of apple, send us 30%!

81

Living Room / We are doomed: IBM's Watson debuts on Jeopardy today (14 Feb 2011)

« on: February 14, 2011, 12:42 PM »

I welcome our computational overlords. If you read this before it airs, tape Jeopardy today. IBM eviscerates the humanoids, and frankly, the SOB sounds a lot like that Hal 9000 fellow.



The story
http://singularityhu...y-performance-today/

Game show footage:
http://singularityhu...jeopardys-ass-video/
_________________

82

Living Room / The White House Asks: What's Blocking Innovation in America? Answer: IP Laws

« on: February 14, 2011, 07:43 AM »

The White House is asking us to give them ideas on what is blocking innovation in America. I thought I'd give them an honest answer. Here it is: Current intellectual property laws are blocking innovation.

President Obama just set a goal of wireless access for everyone in the US, saying it will spark innovation. But that's only true if people are allowed to actually do innovative things once they are online.

You have to choose. You can prop up old business models with overbearing intellectual property laws that hit innovators on the head whenever they stick their heads up from the ground; OR you can have innovation. You can't have both. And right now, the balance is away from innovation.

Let's take some specific examples to show why that is so. When Napster first showed up, it was innovative. Heaven knows it changed the world. And instead of letting this creativity flourish, make money, and create jobs, the law was used to kill it. And kill it it did. The law is still trying to kill or at least marginalize peer-to-peer technology, and so it has never been used to the full.
____________________
And Pamela Jones goes on to name names and detail many examples. An educating read indeed.
http://www.groklaw.n...ory=2011021108493059

83

Living Room / I'm so old, I remember when people paid Microsoft to use their software

« on: February 14, 2011, 07:09 AM »

Nokia CEO and recently former Microsoft employee Stephen Elop did the deal for Nokia. (He worked for the company for only two years, but became its 7th largest shareholder?!) Oh well, just another wall to the internet: choose your shackles: Apple, Google, Microsoft, et al. This ain't about software, this is about the future of charging customers for every single move they make with their devices and the right to advertise them to death.



Microsoft to pay out 'billions' as part of Nokia deal
http://www.computerw...s_part_of_Nokia_deal

Nokia CEO Elop Denies Being "Trojan Horse" For Microsoft
http://www.businessi...for-microsoft-2011-2

84

Living Room / Let's face it: the ebook market is FUBAR, thanks to pure greed

« on: February 04, 2011, 02:07 AM »

No matter their few compatibilities here and there, Apple, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble have quickly succeeded in making the ebook market horked beyond recognition with their proprietary formats and [proprietary] hardware. This device can't download that format, that one can't read it even if you do manage to download it, the fonts are skewed on your smartphone, and everywhere everyone's out to drive book prices through the roof. With no delivery costs, built-in DRM (no sharing boys & girls!), there's NO WAY an ebook should cost as much as a physical book in your hand. I at least give Amazon credit for the ability to share books (if only for 14 days). As an experiment, I bought a new hardcover book and it arrived with cheap, newspaper-quality recyclable paper that will fade soon and if you make a note in the margin, the ink bleeds through. The same ebook format only cost $2 less than the $36 hardcover!

Point is, right now is a terrible time to be buying ebooks. Each is trying to make their format dominant, or at the least they are ensuring that the customer can only reliably buy books using their exclusive device from their stores. And if you're looking for books in the public domain, those lists are well-hidden, and finding the books themselves in readable formats is equally difficult. Most publishers don't seem to believe that books actually existed before 1850 (or after 1920). Before you fall asleep, yes, I know this has been argued to death here and throughout the web. But fighting the same fight every year gets old just because a few multi-billionaires need to push the stock price a few more points every quarter. Customers feel like suckers, and it's hard to enjoy your [entertainment] purchase if you know you're getting ripped off. It's the same feeling of eating cold fries -- have you noticed what fries cost! I get the feeling that if any one of these corporations could create their own internet and seal it off from outsiders, they would in a minute if they had enough suckers, yea Apple, I'm talking to you.

Signed,
Tired of being ripped off, picking up the pitchfork
(PS: Sorry for the numerous rants lately, but these proprietary/copyright/trademark/patent things really drive me crazy.)

85

Living Room / Google's overweening conceit (anti-Eric Schmidt rant)

« on: February 02, 2011, 08:37 AM »

Alan Mitchell on Google's Overweening Conceit. A must read for all those who believe in technology solutions. And let me just say: Eric Schmidt: who the hell does he think he is!
http://community.bra...weening-conceit.aspx



Excerpts:
“You are never lost. Now your smartphone knows your position. So do your friends.
 
“Your car. Your car should be able to drive itself. It knows where it is, it knows where the other cars are, it knows where you are going. The car should take you where you want to go.
 
“This explosion of real-time telemetry which is a fantastic explosion of information is the defining computer science data challenge.”

_________________________________
Hey Eric, I know where I am. Why does Google need to know where I am!

86

Living Room / Unable to compete with the Kindle, Apple wants a cut of ebook sales

« on: February 02, 2011, 08:10 AM »

http://www.wired.com...cut-of-e-book-sales/

Apple has responded to the furor over its supposed App Store policy changes that many believe could affect the popular Kindle, Nook and Sony Reader apps. The company claims it has not changed any of its guidelines given to developers, but it indirectly confirms that accessing content purchased elsewhere could be a no-no if that content isn’t also available to be purchased through Apple’s own system. Buzz began Tuesday morning when The New York Times said that Sony’s e-reader app had been rejected, citing Apple’s restriction on in-app book purchases. This in itself was not a new policy — Apple doesn’t allow apps to sell content to users unless that content passes through the official Apple ecosystem, where Apple gets a 30 percent cut. Apple also allegedly told Sony that the app couldn’t access content purchased on other Sony Reader devices, which is where most of the outrage was focused. Amazon’s Kindle app and Barnes & Noble’s Nook app are both popular mechanisms for users to download and read books that they have purchased from the respective stores. Many feared that this supposed change in Apple policy would take their e-books away from their iPads, iPhones and iPod touches.

______________________________________________
If Amazon and Sony don't understand they have the upper hand here, then they're idiots. Apple merely wants to have it all and control it all and make money off of every single point of their gadgets. Why anyone would want Apple's money-sucking devices are beyond me.

87

General Software Discussion / Web images to get expiration date -- no, no, no!

« on: January 30, 2011, 12:31 AM »

Help is at hand for anyone who has ever forgotten about embarrassing images they posted to a social network or website. German researchers have created software called X-Pire that gives images an expiration date by tagging them with an encrypted key. Once this date has passed the key stops the images being viewed and copied. Creators plan to levy a small charge to use the tagging system and put a digital lock on digital pictures.

http://www.bbc.co.uk.../technology-12215921
__________________________________________________________
(But my screenshot of the image will last forever!)

88

Living Room / IBM centennial: 100 years of milestones [video]

« on: January 28, 2011, 09:39 AM »

[via ITWorld]: http://www.itworld.c...ars-milestones-video


Did you know that this year is the 100th anniversary of IBM? Yeah, it slipped my mind too. Fortunately, the company reminds us that in 1911, International Business Machines was created. To help celebrate its 100 years, they've produced a very unique and innovative ideo (see below), which highlights the company's history. They got 100 people who were born in each year of IBM's history, and get them to narrate the highlights. For example, the first guy is 100 years old, and he talks about what happened in 1911. Then a 99-year-old person talks about 1912, etc., etc. It's so fascinating that you'll want to sit through the entire 13 minute video to watch as the narrators get younger and younger. Oh, and you might learn something about IBM in the process. This is Web video at its finest.

If you like the anniversary stuff, check out the Network World's 25 Geekiest 25th anniversaries for a list of things that are only one-fourth the age of IBM.

89

Living Room / Do universities have a claim on students' IP?

« on: January 24, 2011, 02:51 PM »

University of Missouri student came up with an idea in class one day that spawned an iPhone application that has had more than 250,000 downloads since its release in March 2009. The app created by Brown and three other undergraduates won them a trip to Apple headquarters along with job offers from Google and other technology companies. But the invention also raised a perplexing question when university lawyers abruptly demanded a 25 percent ownership stake and two-thirds of any profits. Who owns the patents and copyrights when a student creates something of value on campus, without a professor's help?



Not happy with overcharging you insane amounts of money, colleges and universities are racing to revamp their policies regarding student ownership of IP (intellectual property). If that's the case, then Page, Brin, Gates, Dell, Zuckerberg, et al. owe lots of money to their... schools?! Bull hockey!!

90

Living Room / How to Get the Most Out of Your Laptop with Linux

« on: January 19, 2011, 04:12 AM »

Linux.com's Jack Wallen provides a guide for getting the most out of your Linux laptop.

The reason Linux has had such a challenge with laptops is simple — most hardware vendors choose devices based on price, not how open the hardware is. The sad fact is, many chipset vendors tend not to release open source drivers or even the specifications so that kernel developers can create drivers for them. On top of that, vendors sometimes change chipsets during a run of the same model — and the pace sometimes means that the current releases of Linux distributions don't yet have drivers for new hardware.

In addition, the seemingly endless number of possible combinations of hardware that come together to make up the laptop landscape and you can see how difficult it would be for a Linux distribution to be able to work "out of the box" with every possible laptop. Until companies that produce the laptops (and other devices) standardize on chipsets with open drivers, this will always be a challenge. That doesn't mean the situation is hopeless, though! Let's start from the top down.

91

General Software Discussion / LibreOffice UI Mockups (with sidebar)

« on: January 17, 2011, 07:58 AM »

Web Upd8 has the latest LibreOffice UI mockups, inspired by the Blender UI. These shots are closer to the Lotus Symphony UI than Blender. Oh well, at least they're taking advantage of widescreens rather than reducing vertical space.






Same as the first, only dark.

92

General Software Discussion / How to choose the best Linux distro for laptops

« on: January 03, 2011, 05:23 PM »

Mayank Sharma helps you pick which Linux distro is best for your notebook over at Techradar.  He covers gaming, movies, and office work and plays it safe among Ubuntu variants, Fedora, and openSUSE. I'd buy a laptop because they're so cheap these days, but I'd never take it anywhere. So I'll keep building my own little desktops on the cheap.

93

Developer's Corner / Every programmer knows there is one true programming language

« on: December 24, 2010, 07:40 PM »

Brian Hayes talks about how we've created one programming language per week since FORTRAN. Holy cow.
http://www.americans...css.print/issue.aspx



If you want to be the complete polyglot programmer, you also have quite a challenge ahead of you, learning all the ways to say:

                      printf("hello, world\n") ;

(This one is in C.) A catalog maintained by Bill Kinnersley of the University of Kansas lists about 2,500 programming languages. Another survey, compiled by Diarmuid Piggott, puts the total even higher, at more than 8,500. And keep in mind that whereas human languages have had millennia to evolve and diversify, all the computer languages have sprung up in just 50 years. Even by the more-conservative standards of the Kinnersley count, that means we've been inventing one language a week, on average, ever since Fortran.

94

Living Room / Why I Don't Want an iPad for Christmas

« on: December 22, 2010, 06:52 AM »

Brett Arends tells us why he doesn't want an iPad for Christmas.



Among the reasons:
1. It'll be cheaper next year.
2. It's going to be better next year.
3. Check out those profit margins!
4. Competitors are coming.
5. No Flash.
6. The cost of the add-ons.
7. The games.
8. The waste.
9. It'll get boring.
10. The whole Apple cult is starting to creep me out.

95

General Software Discussion / Word Lens goes viral

« on: December 17, 2010, 02:51 AM »

Taking us one step closer to Star Trek's "universal translator":
http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=h2OfQdYrHRs



But will it eventually translate a page from a German book into English?
________________________________________
[via engadget]:
Augmented reality and optical character recognition have just come into their own, beautifully intertwined into an instant translation app for the iPhone. Download Word Lens, pay $4.99 for a language pack, then point it at a sign and watch as it replaces every word with one in your native tongue. It's a little bit like Pleco, but without the whole language learning stuff. We just gave it a spin, and while it's not quite as accurate as this video claims, it's still breathtaking to behold -- especially as it doesn't require an internet connection to do any lookup. Sadly, it only translates to and from English and Spanish for now. Still, Babelfish, eat your heart out.

96

Living Room / 5 New Favorite Sites

« on: December 02, 2010, 05:39 PM »

It's the end of 2010 and it's time each of you to share your favorite new sites you've been reading lately. I'm constantly updating my "start page" and if you have time to read when standing in line, waiting on a meeting/flight, etc., here are five I've been surprised by:

• Give Me Something To Read -- The best from Instapaper, which was designed as an iPad app, but works as a standalone page. Install a little java bookmark, and anything you want to “Read Later” gets saved to your instapaper page (and synched to your iPad).  You can create folders for different groupings of stuff. It's a simple, single-purpose page, but it works well.
• Longreads -- What the name suggests: Longer form journalism, magazine stories, and interviews (1500 words+).
• zunguzungu -- From California to Tanzania, here's an excellent blog about how small the world is, and no matter where you are, you're affected. Politics, literature, film, nothing is exempt.
• Five Books -- Five Books interviews a leading expert each day, and asks them to recommend -- you guessed it -- five books on their area of expertise. Another simple idea, well executed.
• Fake Name Generator -- When you need to not give your real name and detailed info about yourself. Gender and country appropriate!

_____________________________________
Mine is focused on reading, but yours will be your interests, of course.

97

General Software Discussion / Microsoft's dropped feature is Linux's gain

« on: December 02, 2010, 01:55 PM »

Microsoft's dropped feature is Linux's gain? Not sure why Microsoft would do this, but the coding complexity of making it work might not be worth the time?
http://www.networkwo...-feature-linux-gains



"Companies usually spend time and money developing new and interesting features to drive upgrades, but Microsoft is taking a different approach with the 'Vail' release of Windows Home Server (WHS): It’s dropping the popular Drive Extender feature that lets users 'pool' hard drives to increase storage. In response HP is kicking WHS to the curb and using WebOS for its MediaSmart systems."

Engadget has a short report, too:
http://www.engadget....der-support-ms-sugg/

98

Living Room / Google's nice ebook about how the web works

« on: November 21, 2010, 12:01 AM »

Google's nice ebook about how the web works, including cute pics by Christoph Niemann. Neat!
20 Things I Learned about Browsers and the Web

99

Living Room / London at 80 gigapixels!

« on: November 20, 2010, 11:03 PM »

London's bird's eye view:
http://www.360cities...london-photo-en.html
_____________________________
"This is an 80-gigapixel panoramic photo, made from 7886 individual images. This panorama was shot from the top of the Centre Point building in central London, in the summer of 2010. We hope that the varied sights and energy of London have been captured here in a way never done before, so that you can experience one of the world's great cities - wherever you may be right now.

"To control this image, use the controls on the screen or click and hold your mouse button on the photo, and move your mouse around. To zoom in and out, use your mouse wheel, or the "Shift" and "Control" keys. Be sure to zoom in all the way to see the full detail of the photo!"

100

Living Room / Still holding out, won't join Facebook

« on: November 18, 2010, 03:49 PM »

I just turned 49 last month and I've had a dozen of my old fart friends ask why I'm not on Facebook. Simple: I don't want to be on Facebook. I don't have anything interesting to share, and frankly, I don't have the time to futz around with another website, updates, requests, "Why aren't you friending me back?" and everything I hate about another medium, the phone. (I've talked on a phone less than a dozen times in the past two years, and most of those were to call my mom back.) My defense is always: I'm too busy, got too many projects going to stop and let everyone know that I:

• Repaired a patch of sheetrock today
• Got a letter from my aunt Ava
• Ate dinner at a fancy restaurant (for me, that's the Tastee Freez)
• Watched more TV
• Played shopping cart chicken with an 84-year old bitty trying to intimidate me at Walmart (Get on your side of the aisle, bitch!)
• Practiced sulking just in case I need that skill in an emergency
• Had a good night's sleep, for a change
• Shook my fist at a dog who wouldn't stop staring at me
• Cussed at my football team
• Cussed some more because it reminded me of how great a cusser my Dad was
• Sang a childhood song that was nothing but cusswords
• Drank some chocolate milk and ate white bread (oh what heaven!)
• Emptied the trash
• Wondered why that whenever I got to an empty burger joint, the next SOB who walks in the door just has to sit right next to me. I hate that!
• Walked outside, farted, and breathed the fresh air (not necessarily in that order)
• Noticed my neighbor used to be pretty; now she's gone to hell.
• Meanwhile, how is it that the 93-year old bastard behind me can outwork me in the yard for seven straight months? Is he on HGH or something?

I'm just afraid if I get a Facebook page, everyone will see what a weirdo I really am. Anyone else not on Facebook for whatever reason?