Topics

251

General Software Discussion / Benchmarked: Ubuntu vs Vista vs Win7

« on: February 04, 2009, 05:55 PM »

From TuxRadar.com:
A lot of people have been chattering about the improvements Windows 7 brings for Windows users, but how does it compare to Ubuntu in real-world tests? We put Ubuntu 8.10, Windows Vista and Windows 7 through their paces in both 32-bit and 64-bit tests to see just how well Ubuntu faces the new contender. And, just for luck, we threw in a few tests using Jaunty Jackalope with ext4.

When Windows users say that Windows 7 is easier to install than ever, what do they really mean? When they say it's faster, is it just in their heads, or is Microsoft really making big strides forward? And, perhaps most importantly, when Linux benchmarkers show us how screamingly fast ext4 is compared to ext3, how well do those figures actually transfer to end users?

These are the questions we wanted to answer, so we asked Dell to provide us with a high-spec machine to give all the operating systems room to perform to their max. Our test machine packed an Intel Core i7 920, which in layman's terms has four cores running at 2.67GHz with hyperthreading and 8MB of L3 cache. It also had 6GB of RAM, plus two 500GB of hard drives with 16MB of cache.


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Interesting comparisons. BIG caveat? Don't forget that Win7 is still beta.

252

Living Room / A better way to rate software?

« on: February 02, 2009, 04:19 PM »

Perhaps more efficient. I've had every one of these reactions.

253

Living Room / Man, those British folks sure know how to live

« on: January 31, 2009, 04:53 AM »

From Stonehenge to Windsor to Updown Court, the typical British home is impressive. Those guys can sure build a mean castle, no matter what century it is.



Unlike other "most expensive houses in the world," this one actually has a video tour of the interior and a narrated explanation of the amenities; and while the house is a couple years old, well, it's the only look many of us will get at how the other 0.00001% lives.

254

Living Room / Meme time! Five Things People Don't Know About Me

« on: January 30, 2009, 05:05 PM »

List five things we don't know about you. (picture is gratuitous)

255

Living Room / Cool animated history of the Internet short film

« on: January 28, 2009, 03:27 AM »

History of the Internet is an animated documentary explaining the inventions from time-sharing to filesharing, from Arpanet to Internet. Worth five minutes.

256

Living Room / Drive Dock: Turn bare drives into floppies

« on: January 28, 2009, 03:09 AM »

If you've upgraded the hard drive in your laptop or desktop machine, then you've got a naked, homeless hard drive sitting around in one of your drawers. Put that puppy to use by plugging it into ThinkGeek's External USB SATA Drive Dock and boom, you've got extra storage without the enclosure.


I've got several old hard drives lying around with great stuff on them, and I can plug them into the dock as needed. At $40, it's worth a shot. And just so you know, there are tons of these from other companies on Newegg.com.

257

General Software Discussion / How would you market Windows 7?

« on: January 24, 2009, 08:35 PM »

Microsoft is looking for a marketing manager for Windows 7. Word of mouth is important to establish the buzz of an OS version. (Vista's was "The wow starts now" and that didn't play well, as we know.) But off the top of your head, how would you market Windows 7?


(Sorry, I love this calculator)


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PS: This example does not qualify!

258

Living Room / Gadgets that make you look like a jerk

« on: January 23, 2009, 07:51 AM »

Surprise, surprise, the news channel MSNBC (I think you know what the MS stands for) claims its hatred of Linux. They also threw down some nasties on Apple gadgets. (Trivia: less than 10% of Apple's revenue now comes from computer sales; it's a confirmed gadget company now.)



The gadgets making their list and their snarks:

• BlackBerry (You need an intervention)
  
• Bluetooth (Do you mind? People are trying not to hear about your life over here!)
  
• TiVo (Not a big deal at all.)
  
• Apple's MacBook Air (You're a self-indulgent boob)
  
• iPod accessories (Buying molded white plastic schlock isn't going to hip up your dorm room or office)
  
• Linux (You feel your mastery of computers excuses your inability to control a neck-beard)
  
• Segway (Used primarily by tour groups, visibly embarrassed police or postal officers, and very rich people)

259

Living Room / Obama staffers find no Mac love among White House computers

« on: January 22, 2009, 02:50 PM »

I'm not sure how I feel about this story:

Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history, Obama officials ran smack into the constraints of the federal bureaucracy yesterday, encountering a jumble of disconnected phone lines, old computer software, and security regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts.... What does that mean in 21st-century terms? No Facebook to communicate with supporters. No outside e-mail log-ins. No instant messaging. Hard adjustments for a staff that helped sweep Obama to power through, among other things, relentless online social networking....

One member of the White House new-media team came to work on Tuesday, right after the swearing-in ceremony, only to discover that it was impossible to know which programs could be updated, or even which computers could be used for which purposes. The team members, accustomed to working on Macintoshes, found computers outfitted with six-year-old versions of Microsoft software. Laptops were scarce, assigned to only a few people in the West Wing. The team was left struggling to put closed captions on online videos.

• First, this is the way the rest of us work in the real world. Companies generally do not let employees surf and play freely on their computers. One person where I work recently took down an entire room of networked computers because she had to have her iPod fix and installed a bunch of Apple software on Windows computers.
  
• Second, well over 50% of the workforce uses XP (an 8-year old OS now). Most businesses have skipped Vista as we know. And they still can't afford Macs in the workplace.
  
• Third, most companies do not allow outside log-ins to external email, social website, or IM software. Those are time sinks that no one is going to pay you to do at work. Get caught and you're sacked.
  
• Fourth, at this point in our economic climate, I personally don't think taxpayers should be paying Microsoft for any software, period. Use free, open source software or pay for it yourself. I'm not advocating for Linux; I just don't want my taxes to be used for something it doesn't need.

Are the Obama staffers spoiled, or should they have Win7 and Macs?

260

Living Room / visual: Cool Linux wallpapers

« on: January 13, 2009, 12:54 AM »

Thanks to Tech Source from Bohol, a trio of cool and funny Linux wallpapers can be found here, here, and here. Worth sharing.

openSUSE

Tux world

Tux silver

Bottled Tux's

kubuntu

Lonely Tux

KDE

Slackware baby

xubuntu

261

Living Room / Searchme.com - both interesting and disturbing

« on: January 09, 2009, 09:27 PM »

Here's a 3D search site that's been around for a while called Searchme.com. Go there, key in your name or moniker and see what happens.



I found people I had been related to were dead (news to me!), not to mention a relative who's a very successful college baseball player. They don't just share my last name, Ridling, they're the sons and fathers/mothers of people I know! Apparently, I'm also wanted by the FBI, but they'll never find me, the rat b*stards!

262

General Software Discussion / The Ribbon strikes again!

« on: January 05, 2009, 01:12 AM »

SolSuite Solitaire is the latest app to ruin its UI with a completely superfluous use of the Ribbon where it's not needed. Look how much vertical screen space that fat tub-o-toolbar eats up! Seriously, was this designed for 6-year olds?



Notice they actually have a categorized label of Undo and Redo under two monster icons labeled Undo Move and Redo Move. Gaaah!!! SolSuite, I curse thy name. Better, I'll let Captain Picard express my emotions.

 

263

Living Room / End of year humor (I apologize in advance)

« on: December 30, 2008, 10:41 PM »

   Post 'em if you got 'em!

   

264

Living Room / Microsoft's Pay-Per-Use PC: ...Worst? Idea? Ever?

« on: December 30, 2008, 03:09 PM »

Microsoft doesn't think so, and has filed a patent on the idea.



Basically the idea is this: Your computer becomes a meter. Deposit money (in some form), it will run. Stop feeding it cash, and you computer becomes a brick. As cloud computing overtakes the traditional idea of local computing, then PC hardware should be much like your cellphone: pay for what you use when you use it. And when you need more computing power or you get another machine and continue paying for its use, with little or no cost for the actual machine. $1.25 to surf the web for an hour? $1 to play a game for an hour? To me, this smells like Microsoft is desperate to return to the days of Compuserve, AOL, and MSN, where you paid a corporation for both access and what content you're allowed to see online.

I VOTE NO.

265

Living Room / site:donationcoder.com [your username]

« on: December 26, 2008, 06:54 PM »

Go to Google and type:

site:donationcoder.com [your username].

(Sure, you could use the 'search' feature, but why waste good DC bandwidth?) 

266

General Software Discussion / The OS that won't die!

« on: December 22, 2008, 07:47 AM »

From this report, another 'XP extended..." announcement. I don't know why Microsoft would fight this. If people want to buy an OS -- even an unsupported one -- sell it to them and pocket the cash!

267

General Software Discussion / Is software 'regional'?

« on: December 22, 2008, 07:21 AM »

I have to qualify this as sounding like a dumb question, but can software be regional, such as this program is used more by Europeans and that OS is used more by South Americans, and so on?

What got me thinking about this is common to Linux. For example, Red Hat and Fedora are more popular in the US, whereas openSUSE is popular on the Continent, whereas Ubuntu owns the third world (and all points between), and by country, Red Flag Linux is popular in China; Mandriva in France; openSUSE and sidux in Germany, Windows in India and China (maybe Australia and New Zealand?; we know it owns world market share), and so on. Something else I saw that caught my eye on TV this weekend. In a village of the poorest Africans you can imagine, they had a brand new computer room of about 120 stations, all setup with XP and MS Office. Surprising, so I assumed it was donated given the sheer cost of licensing and hardware.

I don't know of any lists like these. But I'm sure it applies to software apps like [insert software title here].

268

General Review Discussion / Very nice 'first look' review of openSUSE 11.1 (Linux)

« on: December 22, 2008, 06:43 AM »

The latest round of Linux distros (versions) are just about complete, and DistroWatch has a 'first look' review of openSUSE 11.1 in its weekly news section.



I've been working with openSUSE all weekend and I was impressed with every part of it. All the software I could ever want in available. openSUSE is most popular on the continent. Like Fedora 10, I'm happy to see that openSUSE took chances and got it right. (Wake up Canonical, you're falling behind fast!) Even Novell's flavor of OpenOffice 3 is far better than their 2.4 version. Being Microsoft-free, I don't need their built-in proprietary formats. openSUSE's stability and noticeable improvement on speed are welcome, and being able to encrypt your HD during installation is a nice touch. My ATI 4850 radeonHD drivers were installed at setup.

However, here are the caveats: (1) Fedora 10 seems to have done a better job with KDE 4, if for no other reason, more of the desktop's features are available; (2) Fonts were terrible on my 1900x1200 display, but that was easily corrected; (3) Customizing software package installation at setup was tedious, and like the partition view, did not give you a single view of what you were installing; (4) Loved the partition screen, but there really should be a simpler version. You either had to go with their auto-selected choices (which were not previewed), or pick what looked like an expert mode. I was left confused, but somehow I got it right.

As the author states, you really won't go wrong with 11.1, and it's a solid major version you can sit on for as long as you want.

269

General Software Discussion / Is it finally time to abandon IE?

« on: December 17, 2008, 07:02 AM »

Yesterday's BBC story on IE's latest security flaw makes me wonder whether it's time to give up on IE and [permanently] move on to another browser. Said Mr Ferguson: "If users can find an alternative browser, then that's good mitigation against the threat." Further, "An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the local user. As far as I understand it, that means there is a real danger that Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8 users could be opening the door to cyber criminals to allow them to ransack the contents of your hard drive."

What to do?
- Make sure anti-virus software is up to date.
- Run Internet Explorer 7 or 8 in "protected mode."
- Set Internet Explorer zone security setting to "High."
- Windows users should enable Automatic Updates so that they get any patch that is issued ASAP.

Bruce Schneier has long held that Microsoft sees security as a marketing problem rather than a technical problem. How many more chances do we give IE, or is it finally time to switch, given the many good choices available?

270

Living Room / Creative, awesome uses for Google

« on: December 15, 2008, 03:34 PM »

I know people around the world, but I also need to know when they're awake or when their markets open and so on. There are a thousand uses for Google -- and I'm sure LifeHacker has listed all of these at some point -- but here are few you may have forgotten.
________________________________________________
1. As a currency converter


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2. As a dictionary

(This one also works with foreign phrases.)

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3. As an image search, or face identifier


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4. As a world clock, to find local time anywhere


________________________________________________
5. As a weather forecaster


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6. As a measure converter


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7. As a calculator


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More helpful google 'assist' sites:
Simply Google - lets you do anything from one page.
Google Basics - the simplest starting point.
Google Guide - an interactive guide to Google's capabilties, features, and services.
Google Maps Mania - a blog that covers all the cool new Google Maps mashups, tools and applications being created by people all over the world.

271

General Software Discussion / Another 'Lifetime' license bites the dust

« on: December 12, 2008, 03:43 AM »

This one from Slysoft (annotations mine):

Dear valued customer,
     As of January 1st, 2009, Slysoft will change its update policy from free lifetime updates (I paid for it, how was it free?) to an annual subscription fee. All license purchases made before January 1st, 2009 will not be affected by this change; as promised, all licenses purchased before 2009 will still be honoured under Slysoft's free lifetime update policy.
     SlySoft announces this step in advance in order to provide its customers with the choice between the old and new licensing model. Buyers who act quickly can get an additional discount with the current ongoing special promotion. (This change is often made right before the company changes its name and cancels everyone's license!)
     Until Wednesday, December 31 2008 Slysoft offers a 20% discount on all software products -- except upgrades. If you are entertaining the thought of purchasing one of Slysoft's products, now is the right time to act!
     Happy Holidays!
     Gordon Reeves, Customer Care Center

________________________________________
There's still a few heroes left in the 'Lifetime' license club:
(01) XYplorer file manager
(02) xplorer² file manager
(03) Total Commander file manager
(04) UltraEdit
(05) WinRAR
(06) MediaMonkey Gold
(07) WinPatrol
(08) Where Is It? cataloging software

What others are there?

272

Living Room / How will the Earth end?

« on: December 09, 2008, 03:23 PM »

and then there's always this scenario (humorous/NSFW). How do you think it all ends?

273

Living Room / Recommend some music videos to me!

« on: December 01, 2008, 11:21 PM »

Sometimes you're not on your own system and you need a good song... or 20. Do me a favor and recommend a favorite YouTube song of yours, such as this one from U2 with Bruce Springsteen:



I don't care what kind of music. Anything would be nice. Don't laugh, lately I've been stuck on this show, which is a soft landing after a long day:



official version; TV version. Of course, you could always go French or go home with Alizee -- hell oui!

274

Living Room / Why Windows Rules: the QWERTY phenomenon?

« on: November 26, 2008, 05:00 AM »

It's called the QWERTY phenomenon. David Williams nails it again, this time in a column titled, Why doesn't everyone just run Linux?

In one sense, the Redmond monopoly is self-perpetuating. The first reason Linux doesn't have a stronger foothold in the market is because Windows is already there. For most people their first experience with a computer is Windows. That's the operating system bundled with almost every desktop and laptop you can buy from retail outlets.... Consequently, any competing operating system is at a disadvantage from the beginning: unless a person seeks out Linux or is introduced to it in some way there will be no catalyst for change. Even if the computer operator grumbles about Vista's many foibles, they will lump it often not realising that a choice exists.

Technology -- and in this case Windows -- symbolizes the way in which it can all too often serve not as a force for progress but for keeping things stuck as is. Look at the QWERTY arrangement: it has no rational explanation, only a historical one. It was introduced in the 1870s in response to a problem in the early days of the typewriter. The keys would jam. The idea was to minimize the collision problem by separating those keys that followed one another frequently. If you're over 45 you might remember using a manual typewriter in school.

Once QWERTY was adopted, it resulted in many millions of typewriters and -- the social cost of change -- mounted annually with the vested interest, created by the fact that so many fingers now knew how to follow the QWERTY keyboard layout. QWERTY has survived despite the existence of other, more "rational" systems, which we never think to consider. QWERTY works!

The same phenomenon applies to Linux adoption, as David Williams illustrates in the article above. Once you spend time immersed in it, you can't imagine ever going back to Windows. However, I don't think the same applies to Apple, because the transition is made easier, less geekier, so to speak. Many see it easier to switch to Apple than to Linux.

275

General Software Discussion / Add a computer to a cable

« on: November 13, 2008, 10:31 AM »

One more reason I'm having a blast with Linux. (I will get one of these next year.)[via Glyn Moody]:
Here's a GNU/Linux-based computer the size of an RJ-45 jack:



Specs listed for the Digi Connect ME 9210 are said to include:
* Processor -- 32-bit Digi NS9210 75MHz (ARM926EJ-S)
* Security -- On-chip 256-bit AES accelerator
* Memory -- 8MB SDRAM
* Flash -- 4MB or 8MB of NOR flash
* Networking -- 1 x 10/100 Ethernet
* Expansion -- Flexible Interface Modules (FIM) with 300MHz DRPIC165X CPU
* Interfaces:
ooo High-speed TTL serial
ooo Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI)
ooo I(2)C v1.0 bus with 7- and 10-bit address modes
ooo 10 x shared GPIO ports with up to 3 external IRQ options
* Power management -- modes for on-the-fly clock scaling, low power sleep, and configurable scaling/wake-up events (EIRQ, UART, Ethernet, etc.)
* Other features -- software watchdog
* Operating temperature -- -40 to 176 deg. F (-40 to 80 deg. C)
* Power -- 3.3VDC @ 346 mA; 1.14 W typical consumption
* Operating systems -- Digi Embedded Linux; NET+OS (ThreadX-based

Don't miss the pix -- they are almost literally incredible. (via Wind River blog.)