Yeah, I know, I’ve been using it for 7 years, and I still find it really, really cool. Today I spent a lot of time actually converting myself to Linux (as opposed to just learning it and using it on the side, as I’ve been doing for the last 7 years). I moved my Thunderbird stuff over to Ubuntu Dapper as well as Gaim. I’ve also dropped Winamp (since there is no Winamp for Linux sadly) in favor of amarok.
On the issue of Media Players, I was originally looking for a player that had a winamp style layout, but also had a Media Library. The only thing I found that came close was BMPx, however, it was much too unstable (it’s not really finished yet, so I don’t blame the authors 
). It does look promising, however, so I’ll keep checking in on it from time to time. For now, amarok has all the features I want (supports ogg, mp3, and wma, not that I have any wma anymore ).
I’ve also finished moving my Firefox configuration over (bookmarks, et. al.). Tomorrow, I plan on making sure that all the media formats that I’ll run into are taken care of (Quicktime, Realplayer, Flash, et. al.). A lot of that will be taken care of VLC Media Player which has a nice Firefox plugin.
A clipping of a comment on the BBC bashing President Bush by a user on Digg.com:
And anyone who can look at a man who graduated from Yale, became a fighter pilot, kicked alcoholism, owned a baseball team, served two terms as governor of a very large state and two terms as our president, and call that man an idiot, is an idiot.
I must say, that sums it up as well as or better than I could have said it. I can’t say that I agree with everything that the President has ever done policy-wise (in fact, I absolutely disagree with his current stance on illegal immigration), but I just can’t imagine what this Country would be like with Al Gore or John Kerry at the helm. Have any of you people ever thought seriously on that?
Just try to imagine what John Kerry would have done after 9/11. After he got through telling the news media that he had a plan, he would probably try to bribe the terrorists in the world with a lifetime supply of Heintz 57 Sauce! And Al Gore is no better: he would spring into action by telling the country that he would suggest putting the terrorists of the world in a “lock-box,” and that in this “lock-box” they would be safe from the other 39 soveriegn nations of the world that wanted to wipe them off the face of the planet. However, this might be a cruel-and-unusual punishment (because they might feel too isolated), so he’s going to forego that plan, and we’ll just have to hope that they decide not to pursue any more flying lessons.
Well, I feel better now.
I’ve done my part in this strange system we call economics: I’ve decided that a product is not worth my time, and I’ve informed the company responsible. This all started with a trip to digg.com. There, I found a link to an article over at scienceaddiction.com. The article covered how the MSN AdCenter product didn’t support browsers other than IE. Since I’m running a small hosting company, I decided it was worth a look. I was appauled to find out that this site filters users using the UserAgent string (a small piece of information sent from your web browser to the site you’re visiting, telling it what browser you’re using).
Upon discovery of this fact, I typed up a small message to Microsoft to inform them of the problem. I’m sure I’m not the only one to do this, but the power comes in numbers. Anyway, I tried submitting this message using the feedback link on the AdCenter page, but this too only supported IE. So, I decided to go to the Microsoft.com main page and submit my suggestion there. Here is the text of the message.
I was a potential customer of your MSN AdCenter product. However, since it does not support my browser of choice (Mozilla Firefox) I am chosing not to sign up. This is a problem for you (Microsoft) since you won’t be getting any of my money. The easiest way to for you (Microsoft) to solve this problem is to code your pages according to web standards, so that you can support the greatest user base.
You (Microsoft) will probably respond in one of three ways to this email:
1. You may throw this email away, and not think anything of it. This would be bad for you, since it would show me that you don’t really care about my opinion. As a result, I would think even less of you (Microsoft) than I already do.
2. You may send me a reply understanding my concern and suggesting that I use Internet Explorer instead of my current browser. However, this would be unwise, because it suggests to me that you (Microsoft) are not willing to change your current business practices to meet customer demand. The result of this would be similar to the previous point: I would think even less of you (Microsoft) than I already do.
3. You could realize that the web standards are not dictated by a single company (like you) just because it happens to have a large market share of web browsers. Web standards are developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (http://www.w3.org/), and most other web browsers support these standards to a reasonable degree. This might lead you (Microsoft) to change the way you develop your own pages, so that you can reach a greater number of people, as more people could view and interact with your pages. If you were to take this action, the result would be much different than the previous two points: I would reconsider signing up for this program, and your revenue might increase as a result.
I hope that you will make the decision that is best for you investors, as they are counting on you to make sure that you maximize the revenue in the markets where you exist.
Thank you for your time.
I thought it was quite diplomatic, but you be the judge.
Yes, today I had the last of my exams. As for the classes that I can calculate a grade, I’m in the clear. As for the others…We’ll see what the verdict is in the comming days.
I’d like to take this opportunity to say that I’ve learned something from every one of my classes this semester: some more than others. I think the most helpful class was Digital Electronics. There, I learned the basics of electronics that I’ve been missing most of the time I’ve worked with computers. The chance to do layout was especially helpful, but I think that in the near future, I’ll be sticking with programming.
Calculus II has been helpful as well (the second time around for me). The first time I took the class, I didn’t really understand a lot of the concepts I was expected to know. That was mostly my fault. I didn’t put the effort into it that I needed. This time, I got most of the important ideas, and I think I’m a more rounded mathematician in the process.
As for the rest, I’m sure I learned something; I’m just not sure what that something is at the moment. I’m sure it will come to me after my brain has had a chance to rest.
I don’t know if I’m the last person on the planet to discover this tool, but I’ve discovered the Open Clip Art Library. This searchable repository of free clipart is stocked with almost 7000 public domain pieces of clip art! This is incredibley useful, as you can use the art in your own designs.
I found this site as a result of my work on a banner for the MyWebsiteStinks Secure Portal. Which brings up another topic. My asteemed admins are helping me do some web design right now. We’re creating the MyWebsiteStinks Main Page, and the Secure Portal. These will be the places that people that own sites on the server can go to do various administration tasks. So, stay tuned in the next few months to hear more on that.
OK, that’s the end of this abbreviated blog post.
I’m on a new server now. Actually, it’s been almost 2 months; I’ve just been too busy (read: lazy) to update my blog. I actually own the server, and I’m paying one of my computer science professors to host it for me in his data center (well, it’s a kitchen with a high-speed internet connection and a server rack really ). That brings me to the shameless plug portion of my post:
If anyone wants a website, I have plenty of room on the server for more websites. In fact, I’ve heard that a server slightly less powerful than mine could host around 70 websites rather comfortably. Of course, I’m not going to put that many sites on my server (at least not without a few more upgrades ). Hosting on my server costs just $5/month. The nice thing about my hosting is that as more people join in with the hosting, I use that money to buy more bandwidth for the server. That means that everyone benefits from more people hosting on the server.
Currently, the most popular site being hosted with me is mounty’s corner. This is the only one on the server that is even comming close to using it’s monthly bandwidth allotment. mounty’s corner (capitalization is intentional) is the blog of a good friend of mine. In fact, he’s helping me manage the server. He’s quite the geek, and if you feel the leading, head on over to his site and laugh a little.
Well, that’s all I have for now, and I hope you’ve found this advertis……errr…..post helpful.
That’s a question that has recently been brought to my attention, and at first I wanted to say ‘YES!’ because so many companies use them. However, after reviewing the appropriate US Copyright Law, I have come to the conclusion that EULAs are not legal (maybe the term ‘valid’ would be more applicable). The part that sums up the whole argument for me is the fact that you are in fact the ‘owner of a copy of a computer program.’ That’s right folks, when you go by that new copy of Windows XP Pro (for all $249 non-academic price), you actually own a copy of the software, not just a license to use it, as Microsoft would have you believe.
Now, the thing that got me going on this was the fact that the Mac OS X license agreement states that you are not permitted to run the software on non-Apple branded hardware. I, as a purchaser of a boxed copy of Mac OS X, don’t think they have the right to put that kind of a restriction on me. Especially when copyright law clearly states that I am allowed to copy ‘that computer program . . . as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine.’ Notice those last two words: ‘a machine.’ Notice that it does not say ‘the machine that you bought it with’ or even ‘a machine specified in the accompaning software license agreement.
Now, some will say something to the effect of ‘you bought the software and agreed to the terms of the license before using it.’ However, I find it hard to believe that I could be bound by the terms of an agreement that I have no ability to reject, after exchanging money for a copy of the software. Now, let’s review: Title 17 of the US Code states that after buying a copy of the sofware, I have the right to install that software on a computer (not specifying any particular computer, so, I take that to mean any one computer). The Apple License agreement restricts that right. I seem to remember something in the Law that states that companies cannot take away consumer’s rights (someone feel free to comment with the specific place in the US Code). So, it seems now that Apple (or insert the appropriate company name here) is the one who is actually violating the Law, not me, the consumer who spent his hard-earned student wages to by the software legally.
As of now, I don’t feel like thinking or typing anymore, but I do want to comment more (and maybe more logically) on this topic. So, I’ll be posting back on this issue further. Now, have fun commenting :).
So, I was reading digg the other day, when I saw an article about a Simcity cloan I thought it would be interesting to try, since I played Simcity/2000/3000 back in the day. I tried the link on the top of the post, but it was already dugg. So, I did little searching around, and to my suprise, I found this. For anyone too lazy to click the link, it points to an official version of SimCity 3000 Unlimited for Linux! I was blown away. Years ago, when I played SC3k, I never even heard of this Linux version, but there it is. I couldn’t do anything with it at the time, as I was at school, behind the horrid internet filter. However, when I got home, I spent some time trying to get the playable demo working. It took a while, but I finally got it (it was compiled for a 2.2 kernel, and glibc 2.1 [Redhat 6.x for anyone that cares]). I was suprised that it was working so well, however it only ran well at 800×600; anything higher, and the music would start skipping.
So, all of that was just a prelude to the really unbelievable part: as I was researching, I found an entry for SC3K in the Wine Application Database. This didn’t really suprise me that much, as I’ve seen many other more-processor-intensive games listed in that same database, but it did take me by suprise that the game was getting a gold rating (meaning it runs nearly flawlessly). I had to try it for myself. So, I dug out my copy of SC3K (yes, legal and all that) and installed Wine 0.9.7 from the Ubuntu apt repository. I simply ran wine on the SETUP.EXE on the disk, and let it do it’s thing. After install, I had to fiddle around with the drive configuration in ‘winecfg’ as it didn’t autmatically set up a fake drive to my cdrom drive, and SC3K won’t run without the disc in the drive. After that, I had the game running! It ran nearly perfect (just a little glitch with the splash screen and the mouse cursor, but no big problems).
It blows me away that a game can run better while in Wine than a natively compiled version (granted, it was for Linux 2.2/Glibc 2.1, but still…). It must have been some good programming on the part of Maxis; so I must thank them for their fine work
Hopefully not my last, but it’s not starting out too well. To start things off, any of the install CDs that I try don’t pick up my plain-jane 3Com 3C905C-TX (while Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, and Knoppix all pick it up). I mean, I would really love to try the wonderfulness of Gentoo (packages custom-compiled for my system does sound great), but if it can’t even pick up my NIC, I’m going to have to settle for the next-best ‘ordinary’ distro (i.e., Ubuntu ). If anyone wants to make suggestions on getting past this little problem (no, I’m not swaping the NIC out), feel free to comment.
EDIT: I would like to clarify by saying that the NIC is actually picked up (and lsmod says that the kernel modules for it are loaded). ifconfig shows that it recognizes the card, but when I try to use ‘dhcpcd’ (the dhcp client on gentoo), it doesn’t get an IP.
Andrew Graves thought I should update the blog, so here it is…
As you can see, I’ve now updated the blog to WordPress 2.0, and a new color scheme (well, it’s actually a ‘different’ theme). I’m using my own blog as a testing ground to see if WordPress 2.0 has any major problems. Baring any, we’ll be updating BJU Bloggers in the near future. If anyone has any suggestions, now is the time.