A Man and his Penguin

Linux in Big W

Today I went into Big W, and got a pleasant surprise. I couldn't find a  single USB flash drive there that didn't advertise compatibility with Linux.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a single peripheral of any other type that advertises compatibility with Linux, but at least the flash drives are a good start. It was only about two years ago that I couldn't find a single peripheral of any sort that said it was compatible with Linux.

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I've been listening to the Spice Girls again lately. Their ballads - Oxygen and Goodbye especially. It occurs to me that on the Spice Girls' worst album, Rodney Jerkins also produced his very best song (Let Love Lead The Way).

Still waiting for the kids to get off school though...

Messages of thanks

I saw this posted on FS Daily:

This post is for all of you out there
who have developed or contributed to Linux/Ubuntu projects and all of the open
source coders who read this.I do not know where to send a post like this so I hope this one email will find its way in the sea of posts out there.


I thank you to the point of tears. 

Earlier this week I installed Kubuntu
on a refurbished AMD computer I purchased for $184 from a discount
online vendor, it came with no OS. It now runs like a champ. 

We cant afford much and this was my 14
year old daughter's birthday present this past week. She is
overjoyed. And she is already trying to tackle Adept Manager and
exploring Linux; adding bling and her music, of course. 

I cant tell you how much I appreciate
the work you all have done. Its a work of art. If I could thank each and every one of
you I would. 

You have given her the world to learn and explore. 

So if you get frustrated or tired in
your work for Open Source/Free Software, just remember that somewhere in Missouri
there is a 14 year-old girl named Hope, an A-student who runs on the track team,
who is now your biggest fan and one of the newest users of
Linux/Ubuntu. 

Thanks most sincerely,

R.B.A.
Missouri

I was touched by R.B.A's message. So I decided to write back:

Dear Robert,

I'm sure you've received a lot of e-mails thanking you for your letter of gratitude, but I'd like to add my own.

I develop a program for transcoding video to use on the Sony Walkman MP3 players; not a lot of people use it because those MP3 players aren't terribly popular. As such I've let the program's development stagnate a little.

I do also send bug reports to open-source software projects to do my bit towards making other Linux software better. Knowing that there are people out there who are truly appreciative of what us Linux-based developers do, makes it all worthwhile.

Your message gave me the impeteus to fix the two bugs in my program that have just been reported to me. I'm so glad you and your daughter are getting so much out of Free Software, and I wish you both the best of luck for the future.

Chris
Developer of Blacklight Walkman Manager

If Linux is the destination of the computing highway, the EeePC is not the onramp

Asus, who makes the hugely popular EeePC, has just released an edition with an 8.9 inch screen.

Oh, and no Linux.

In Australia, the 8.9 inch edition will be available in department stores, retail chains, and specialist computer stores. The problem is, unlike with the 7 inch edition, this will only be available with Windows if you buy from any retail chain.

Most people who go and buy an EeePC will go to a Myer or Retravision or Harvey's, and therefore automatically get the Windows XP version. This will definitely deprive everyday people from experiencing Linux. It will also have the knock-on effect of increasing virus transmission and damaging the good reputation these machines have due to lower battery life with Windows.

Who will go to a specialist computer store to buy an Eee? "Enthusiasts" and "Tech-savvy" people. I know I shouldn't really complain as at least we still have the option of buying Linux preinstalled, but this now touches on one of my pet hates. The self-fulfilling prophecy of "Only geeks use Linux".

If you want to install an ATI or Nvidia graphics card driver, those hardware vendors expect you to manually install kernel headers, go into the terminal and put in commands to install the drivers. If you want to install Flash Player, Adobe expects you to go into the terminal and type a manual path to your Firefox installation. There's a mentality of "We don't need to make our software easy to install on Linux, because only geeks use Linux, and the geeks won't be intimidated by our installer". It's a self-fulfilling prophecy because if an everyday person tries to install those drivers, they can quickly get frustrated and give up with Linux.

Thankfully, the distributions tend to have systems to make it easy to install those drivers. Restricted Drivers Manager, Envy, binary repositories; if the distributions can write easy installers for those binary drivers, why won't the vendors themselves?

In the same token, if you make your Linux-based laptop readily available only for geeks, then only geeks will buy it. It's also outrageous that the Windows XP version of the 8.9 inch Eee is $50 cheaper than the Linux one!

I was also seriously pissed off at the Asus notebook product manager, Albert Liang. He described the Windows XP version as the "mainstream edition", which IMHO is a direct undermining of the tireless efforts of Linux-based developers to make an excellent and user-friendly Linux desktop. Once again, self-fulfilling prophecy: Linux will never be "mainstream" because we keep saying that it's not. I feel like Liang's statement is a personal attack: I wrote some easy-to-use software that transcodes video for the Sony Walkman, so I guess I'm working to make Linux as user-friendly and mainstream-appealing as possible.

Linux adoption won't increase at a greater rate than before unless something else comes along. Asus' actions have shown that we can't pin our hopes of widespread Linux adoption on the EeePC. If Linux is the destination of the computing highway, the EeePC is no longer the onramp.

Stress

I'm under stress at work :-(

It's very quiet right now in the retail business. My boss has started lecturing all of us about how we've got to "get back to basics". Every single day, we get lectured about it. He listens in on our conversations with customers and tells us that if it sounds like we're going to lose a customer, he'll jump in.

It's very unnerving. When you want to just be sociable and talk, you've got to talk about something completely unrelated to work. If you try to make conversation like "Gee, those Kenwood stereos we got in last week have some good features", it always turns into a lecture about something.

The computer I built for my workmate is still having trouble, even after a BIOS update. Now that it's back here, it's working fine, of course. I have no idea what's going wrong, much less how to fix it. If this goes on much longer I'll just build her a replica of my computer, albeit with more basic graphics and a slower processor.

And finally, yesterday my Dad went into hospital, complaining of chest pains. He's okay, the doctors say he didn't have a heart attack; but it was worrying nonetheless. And he's depressed because now he's not allowed to go to Melbourne, and he'd been planning that trip for months.

Migration 1.0!!!!!

Basic PC hardware: $609

Windows XP OEM license: $150

Your workmate deciding to have Ubuntu on her new computer: Priceless!

Thanks to those who left comments and e-mailed me directly about the last article (words of sympathy mostly!). I quoted my workmate $609 for an Ubuntu machine. She got a quote from Bob-bob-lick-his-knob of over $800 for a handbuilt Windows machine, with pirated XP!

I told her that I simply couldn't install XP, because I didn't have the know-how (I also don't have a floppy disk drive). She asked "With the Ubuntu, I can't use the same e-mail address, can I?". I reassured her that I can set up her existing e-mail address on Ubuntu. Her reply was "Well, what do I need XP for?".

She also wanted to know whether she could "still get Google" on Ubuntu, which of course you can :)

And she went to the bank and got me a $200 deposit. On Sunday morning I'll head over to MCG and buy the parts. In the afternoon I'm going to a barbequeue, but in the evening I'll start assembling the fella and then spend all of Tuesday customising and tweaking the Ubuntu install. I'm thinking I might put the Hardy Heron beta on it, and then when the release version comes out I'll dist-upgrade to it. Hopefully, most of the packages have been frozen and won't be changed at release time, saving me bandwidth.

I'll also be smart enough to keep myself a login account, and go in through SSH whenever necessary to administer the machine. I'm happy for myself, because I'll have another person using Ubuntu; and I'm happy for my workmate because this will end the merry-go-round of trouble she's had with her Vista laptop.

Got about halfway to a migration...

One of the ladies who I work with has been having trouble with her computer.

First, she couldn't get DVD Shrink working on the preinstalled Vista. So I suggested putting Ubuntu and k9Copy on. I did that, and it worked alright. But then, for reasons I'm not entirely sure of, she decided to have somebody install Windows XP on the laptop. All hell broke loose - the person installed a weird pirated mashup of XP and Vista, inheriting the slowness of Vista, and causing instability in Outlook Express. Her DVD burner stopped working, too - not sure if it's a hardware problem or an OS problem.

Bob ("bob, bob, lick his knob") put the idea of building a desktop computer into my workmate's mind. I told her that I could build desktop computers, and I gave her a figure of how much the parts would cost for a rock-bottom, bargain-basement computer. I would build it for her without charging a cent for the labour. I said that it would be running Ubuntu.

At the end of the day, she said that she'd SMS me once she'd made up her mind. I got an SMS a few minutes ago, asking if I could install Windows XP on it.

A Windows XP OEM license is $149. Ironically, Vista is about $20 cheaper. But the biggest thing is that I would derive no pleasure out of the build, if it's running Windows. It would cost her a fair whack of cash more, and I have absolutely no confidence in my ability to install Windows and make it suitable for use (drivers, codecs, useful software etc). I couldn't guarantee that she won't have the same problems if she's using the same operating system, and I can't bring myself to feed her addiction to Microsoft.

What should I do?

We must stop people from pirating our movie trailers!

In another case of DRM madness, Apple is trying to prevent people from being able to store and copy MOVIE TRAILERS.

That's right, the studios hate their advertisements to be viewed by as many people as possible.

Apple's trailers are streaming-only, which makes no fucking sense when they are Full HD at a bitrate of 10 megabits per second.. unless they are advertising solely to the South Korean moviegoing public.

In the original version of this article, I accused Microsoft of doing a similar thing on their website www.wmvhd.com. But in actual fact, although the videos are ".exe files", they're just self-extracting archives containing unprotected WMV HD videos. You can extract them in Wine.

And the quality is beautiful.

Who would have thought that Microsoft would be less obsessed with DRM than Apple?

Blame the Operating System

At the time of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, according to a scare documentary I saw recently, the whole of NASA only had as much computing power as "a modern laptop".

Whoo. Scary. Until you realise that a modern laptop can perform about 90 million instructions per second! A modern laptop would qualify as a supercomputer by the standards of ten years ago!

I've used a modern laptop recently. It took three and a half minutes to fully start up, and just over a minute to shut down. If it's a supercomputer, why is it so slow?

"My DVD drive would not release the disk, the software would not listen to me and close. And Windows would not allow me to do anything anymore including rebooting!

Then all of a sudden, about three minutes into this fiasco, my DVD drive opens!  I quickly grab the disk, close the drive, and flick the surge protector.  I breathe a sigh of relief then start scratching my head in amazement.

I have a Microprocessor in my system that can easily handle over 120 million instructions per second.  If you like to get real geeky with me, consider this.  The Intel processor I'm using is able to calculate the SuperPI number crunching benchmark to one million digits in about 100 seconds.  It takes my Pentium 4 system less than two minutes to figure out this benchmark, and the Pentium 4 is notoriously bad at FPU calculations.  On a bad day, this beautiful system can do some very serious powered thinking, and at speeds that even ten years ago NASA didn't have in their control rooms.

But, the very same system can not "think” through the decision to release the freakin' DVD drive without locking up for three minutes?  How's that possible?  The answer lies not with the hardware but the Operating System that drives the hardware."

I'll let you read the rest of this excellent little article.

If you switch to Free Software, prepare to make sacrifices

You might ask why this post, with such a title, is under the category "Advocacy". Well, if you're reading specifically this category it looks like you're after some persuasion to switch to GNU/Linux. Then there is something you should know about GNU/Linux as it currently stands, and hopefully it won't put you off.

Linux is the ignored cousin of Windows when it comes to hardware support. Out of the box, a Linux distribution supports a huge amount of kit, and Ubuntu supports more than any other distribution. But Windows has hardware support from manufacturers - so any device you buy will pretty much work on Windows as long as you install the driver. You'll have to give up impulse-buying of things, at least until Linux compatibility is actually printed on boxes. You might not be able to buy the device with the best features, and if are, then you might not get access to all those features.

This is even more so with software.

And let it be said that the same applies to Mac OS X, but in a lesser way. Really want that latest Nokia smartphone? It probably doesn't have OS X software for syncing, although there might be something unofficial out there. If you want a brand-new iRiver or Creative MP3 player (fat chance if you're a Mac owner, but still), you'll have to wait until the 3rd-party software for those players is updated to be compatible with the newest models.

With open-source software, it is possible to do lots of things that you can do with proprietary software on Windows. But right now you might not be able to do EVERYTHING. A year ago, I couldn't even encode video properly on Linux, though others could. Now I can encode perfectly and even edit video, thanks to recent advances in the software, but I still can't make DVDs that play reliably. Blu-ray and HD-DVDs can be played on Linux, but it's not as easy as you'd hope.

Prepare to give up some tasks on Linux.

But the good news is that things are getting better. Video encoding software is better now, and I no longer have issues with A/V sync. The advent of Kdenlive makes it possible to do some basic editing and encoding. There are now quite a few playable Linux games, and even Aleph One is now easy to install on Ubuntu (it originally wasn't!). On the proprietary software front, Skype supports video (though not HD video), Flash is as good as the Windows version, codecs for everything except HDD camcorder video are working well, K9Copy has many features from DvdShrink, and Wine continues to get further DirectX support.

This is a good time for Linux users, and it will get better thanks to the efforts of thousands of brilliant programmers and millions of users. But if you're thinking of switching to GNU/Linux, keep Windows around in a dual-boot setup, on another computer, or in a virtualiser; until you know that you can live with GNU/Linux full-time.

I may curse that I can't make reliable video DVDs (well, not yet anyway), and I have given up a golf game, a trucking game, an ambulance-driving game, and free 3-minute calls to anywhere with Gizmo (it never worked on Windows anyway, to be honest). But it's better than the alternative - an operating system that doesn't make sense to me, is prone to all sorts of threats, is poorly programmed, is an immutable "black box", leaves me to the mercy of proprietary software developers, leaves me to the mercy of bugs, doesn't have the workflow and timesaving features that I like, and costs a bundle.

Just make sure you see what you're gaining, as well as what you're losing. After all, Windows will never become FLOSS, and I'm sure it won't become unrestrictive to its users either. But GNU/Linux, with help from open-source and proprietary developers, will definitely close the gaps, so some day you won't have to give up anything to make the switch.

The sooner you start switching, the sooner you will finish switching (becoming purely GNU/Linux). Take it as slowly as you need to. You will know when the time is right to get rid of Windows/Mac OS. I know: You're saying "How can I ever switch over completely? I'm tied to Windows! If I adopt Linux, I'll dual-boot for the rest of my life!". I know that's what you're saying, because I originally said it. Now I'm running Linux as a single-boot. It took two years to get to this point, and I did still have to give up a couple of things, but it's worth it.

Your TV might be defective

Today, the weather meant that two of the TVs at our shop couldn't recieve the digital signals, so I decided to plug an upsampling DVD player into one of the plasmas so they would be displaying an image. I intended to loop out the signal from the plasma to an LCD that was playing up.

But I couldn't do it. The LCD was insisting that there was no signal in. Was the input defective? Was the plasma's output completely buggered? Should I send them back to their manufacturers for repair?

I had the DVD player hooked up via HDMI, so it looks like the plasma had disabled its "Monitor Out" output on purpose to honor HDCP. So yes, the plasma is defective: Defective By Design.

Lots of people have virtually forgotten about HDCP and PCP because they can't currently see any situations where they'd be affected by it. Well, I'm one of the early affected. As a result, one of the TVs here is displaying "No Signal", which doesn't reflect well on us or our products! How on earth do I explain to customers that the TVs are defective (by design)?

Throwaway line

In a huge blog post on Lobby4Linux, which mentioned the Mint Fedora project and was full of all sorts of other drivel:

"Tux is going to take over a town of 1200 for an entire month this spring.  That's right...an entire town.  TV coverage, the whole bit.  The town is going to use Linux for an entire month and we're planning, arranging and documenting the whole thing.

Watch this space for the official announcement after the first of the year."

Now *that* sounds a bit more like it! A much better plan than Tux500, this is going to be immensely invaluable. We'll be able to point to this as an example of "Ordinary people are ready for Linux". The TV coverage will spark interest in Linux. We'll also benefit from the documentation - knowing what to expect with a large migration.

And that will be 1200 less computers to transmit viruses!

I got sent a virus today through MSN. The person whose computer sent it to me knew that they had this virus, but they continued to stay online! I finally sent an SMS to them telling them to fucking disconnect their computer from the internet and not to come back on until their Windows was fixed or it had been booted with a Linux live CD. After all, viruses don't just spread and that be their sole activity. They send spam, join botnets, spy on their users, host illegal websites, open ports in the computer's firewall for other malware to come in, and general cause all sorts of havoc.

Lately I've been feeling really lonely. I'm not in a relationship and I don't have any prospects of being in one in the near future. This sucks. And so many people are ignoring me, it's not funny.

Not ODF - so what?

Recently, Barack Obama said that he'd like to make available all the US government's data online in "universally accessible formats". A lot of people immediately assumed that the format he was talking about was OpenDocument, and got very excited. A second wave of people has pointed out that "universally accessible formats" could be a number of different things.

Does it really matter? Okay, it would be nice to have such an endorsement of OpenDocument, but the "accessible formats" part wasn't the crux of Obama's speech. The crux was that government data was to be opened up to the public, without having to go through the channels and request things under the Freedom Of Information Act!

I don't know about YOU, comrade, but I think free information and a freer society is more important than just the use of a free file format.

Down with iTunes!

Previous communications with the iTunes Music Store Support have not yielded any results in removing the artificial restrictions on the music video that I *bought*. I am completely disgusted with the way your service treats me like a pirate, when I am *NOT*. I simply wanted to convert the video I *bought* into a format that would play on my MP3 player. Therefore, unless this video can be provided to me in a usable format, I want my iTunes Music Store account closed immediately, and the remaining $1.60 on my account to be refunded to me. If you have any questions, I am contactable on the above e-mail address.

Well, they *are* treating me as though I was a pirate. (which, admittedly, I am, but not very often and not for profit). It's probably a long shot to expect a cheque for $1.60, but I'm pissed off and it's just nine cents short of getting another song! The iTunes pricing is rigged so that you always end off with $1 < $1.69, it seems.

As for LG Excellerate, I have used my soon-to-expire points to buy the Borat DVD instead of another DRM-infested product.

My monitor is dying, so I'll have to go and buy a new LCD which will look fuzzy outside its native resolution. Damn.

Prince suing file-sharers

As part of a crackdown on piracy, The Artist Formerly Known As Prince has started sending "cease-and-desist" letters to Youtube, eBay (wtf?) and The Pirate Bay.

Why is this so? It's probably because Prince has seen the dismal sales of his/her/its records and assumed that file sharers are to blame.

Dude, maybe people aren't buying your albums because you're a FREAK and your music SUCKS ARSE. And now even your fans think so. You're a sad act, and I hope your lawyers demanded their pay upfront because by the time this is over you won't have any money left.

I mean, seriously, what person in their right mind would want to buy a copy of "Purple Rain"? I'm surprised people even want to pirate it.

"It's about a bloke in stupid tights singing songs to a dove, with some half-arsed moustache and bum-fluff clinging desperately to the bottom of his chin!" - Mick Molloy

I hope this message to you has made you so upset that you go and sexually abuse some more 5-year-old boys, to cheer yourself up.

The Spice Girls don't want DRM

Well, in reality I don't know exactly the Spice Girls' position on DRM, if they're even aware that it exists.

But you can now buy the Spice Girls' Greatest Hits album from their website; at 320kbps MP3! That's right, no DRM, no conversion necessary! I know that the Girls are with EMI, so even on the iTunes Music Store it wouldn't have DRM, but it's a pleasant surprise for them to be using MP3, as many MP3 players don't play AAC. And the high bitrate is excellent.

Then, the Spice Girls have very loyal fans who will buy the album and won't pirate it. That's something you can't say about the fans of many other groups.

In other news, Blacklight2 is coming along nicely. I removed quite a few bugs and successfully used it to copy existing MP3s to my MP3 player. I also added the (completely untested) Post-Process Plugin (PPP) support. Maybe later today I will write an "EasyTag" PPP, which invokes the EasyTag id3 tagger. And I'll have to test the other functions of Blacklight2.

I don't remember if I mentioned it before, but I solved the synchronisation bug in the original Blacklight, and uploaded the new version to Sourceforge. I'm still using Blacklight1 to encode my video files until Blacklight2 is tested and ready.

Another lawsuit, another sale lost

I bought a DVD on Wednesday of The Idea Of North in concert. My father and I watched it last night - they are absolutely brilliant. It has caused me to remember how I actually found out about them to know that I wanted the DVD.

A few years ago, I read about them in an article in the newspaper. Because I wanted to know more, I downloaded one of their songs off OpenNap. I was impressed, so I remembered them.

When I was in the ABC shop, I saw the DVD there; this was the first time I'd seen anything from them in the shops. So I bought it, knowing I'd enjoy it. How did I know? Because I had heard them through peer-to-peer filesharing.

Okay, recording industry. Sue filesharers and shoot yourself in the foot. And deprive us of finding out about musicians we previously didn't know about. Make us all a miserable bunch of robots if that's what you want. But that's just a dumb thing to do. Stop hitting filesharers, and start giving people incentives to buy, and best still give people free music! Yes, that's right - if you give out a free download to potential fans of the group, then you will reap massive rewards. I can think of a dozen good ways to do this.

And while you're in the mood to change things, why not insist to Apple that you don't want to take any more of their DRM crap, and that you'll pull out of the iTunes store unless they get rid of all the DRM from your tracks and music videos?

But on a positive note, I'm absolutely loving this DVD. So much so that it made me forget to call Angelica tonight :-(

An open letter to Adam Shankman

Dear Mr Shankman,

Let me start by saying how much I love Hairspray. I think it has become an instant classic and I'm so pleased that it's getting the recognition it deserves.

What I'm writing to you about is the way that your work is being distributed. I know it's not generally your concern, but I think this is something you personally should know about.

I have downloaded the music video for You Can't Stop The Beat from the iTunes Music Store. This was a legal purchase, which cost me almost $4. However, I've found that I can only play the music video within the iTunes program itself. You see, the file has been encrypted so it will only play within iTunes and on iPod MP3 players. I'd like to watch the video on my DVD player and on my non-Apple MP3 player, but this is impossible with the encryption in place.

Apple has told me that they won't help me to get around the encryption. Through doing my research on the Internet, I've found that the restrictions have been placed at the insistence of the movie studios, to stop piracy. This would be fair enough, except that pirates have already put your work onto Youtube, and now the only thing that the restrictions are doing is inconveniencing me, and not letting me use my purchased video the way I want to!

Apart from being highly ironic (a song about freedom being encrypted and locked to a particular piece of software), it is very disappointing for me. I can barely wait for Hairspray to come out on DVD so I can own a copy, so I bought the video clip, only to find that I can't watch it in the ways I want to! It's highly frustrating.

So yeah, I just think you should know about the restrictions being placed on my fair use of watching your lovely direction and choreography. If there's anything you can do about this situation, I would really appreciate it - if not, oh well! When Hairspray comes out on DVD down here in Australia you are invited to my Hairspray party :-)

Yours sincerely,

Christopher Lees

Another semi-form-letter

I have recieved another message back from Samantha:

Dear Christopher,

I understand that you are still unable to reformat all of your purchased items to put on your mp3 player as they are not all showing as eligible. I realize how concerning this may be. I will be happy to assist you.

At this moment, not all items purchased on the iTunes store are available to reformat or download to iTunes plus. I do apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.

Thank you for using the iTunes Store. You are a valuable customer. Have a great day Christopher.

Sincerely,

Samantha

I don't think I posted her previous letter, but it bears a lot of resemblence to this one.  "I understand that <problem>. I realise how <random adjective>ing this may be. I will be happy to assist you." Then, at the end, "Thank you for using the iTunes Store. You are a valuable customer. Have a great day <name>."

Of course, I don't bear any malice toward Samantha. She's got to work within the system. Nobody in their support department would even have access to any Fairplay decryption software. I feel a bit funny tonight (just drank some coffee, that's why) so I'll write back tomorrow night and ask to speak to someone higher up.

DefectiveByDesign.org appears to be slowing down - I don't think they actually remembered about their Stop DRM day, which was supposed to be October 3rd. If you know anyone from DBD, please give them a nudge.

I did download the music video from Youtube, as well as the full 10 minute version that had been recorded on a camcorder in a cinema somewhere :-)  I used Blacklight to put them onto my MP3 player, and then watched them. It's funny, but after I watched the 10 minute version I turned my MP3 player off, and realised I was grinning. Hairspray really does leave you in a good mood, even in low doses.
 

What fitting lyrics

This video that I'm trying to unprotect is "You Can't Stop The Beat" from Hairspray. It just occurred to me how fitting the lyrics are, in relation to my struggle against DRM:

Tracy:
You can't stop an avalanche
as it races down the hill
You can try to stop the seasons, girl
but you know you never will

Maybelle:
You can't stop today
as it comes speeding down the track
Child, yesterday was history
and it's never coming back

In essence, that is what DRM is an attempt to do: Stop something much more powerful than itself. You can't stop the beat!

Encrypted Videos

I used my two Free Song codes from Coke bottles last night to buy some music. A Gene Pitney song and the song "We're All In This Together" from HSM.

While I was there I noticed that You Can't Stop The Beat was released as a music video, so of course I downloaded it. But now I've noticed that it's encrypted with DRM, and I can't burn it to DVD or put it onto my MP3 player!

I am considering my legal options. Did Apple warn me that I wouldn't be able to get the video out of my computer? If not, would they be legally obliged to provide an unencrypted version since I didn't actually ask beforehand if the video was right for my purposes?

Yep, I'm aware that it's probably on Youtube for free. But I wanted a high quality version. And I want to get the video OFF my computer, dammit! I will write a letter to Apple and demand that they provide me with a way to burn a DVD of the video. If they don't, maybe I should call Consumer?

iTunes Plus? DefectiveByDesign.org puts it another way. For Sale: Unbroken Car: "Imagine a used car salesman putting up big signs advertising "unbroken cars." That's exactly what Wal-Mart, Amazon, and Microsoft are doing. Their marketing campaigns are based on the fact that their music is DRM-free." . They don't mention Apple's trailblazing attempts to sell unbroken cars, probably because Steve Jobs makes a big show of claiming that he's against the idea of DRM. Personally, I think Steve Wozniak should be chairman of Apple, then Apple would make a computer that was cheap, flexible, a doddle to use, and didn't support DRM.

I'm just on the iTunes support site right now, complaining to all and sundry (in a nice way, of course). Did you know that if you make a playlist containing DRM'ed music, you can't burn that playlist to CD more than 7 times? Why? It's absolutely zero deterrent to pirates, as they can just burn one copy, then copy the copy. In fact, if I was a pirate making massive numbers of copies, I'd rather use a dedicated bulk CD burning program than iTunes.

Let's hope iTunes Support gets back to me about "how I would go about burning my purchased video to DVD" soon. If I don't get a reply, I'll simply go up the chain of command. I really am thinking of getting Consumer involved.

Proprietry versus FLOSS? No; it's Piracy versus FLOSS.

It suddenly strikes me how many new/potential Ubuntu users ask if the latest version of Photoshop runs on Ubuntu. It seems like there are millions of people who use their home computer for OS experimentation, gaming, and graphics production work all at the same time! And these people who can afford all the latest games can not only afford a $1000 state-of-the-art image editing program, but also have a pressing need to use this rather than the free Gimp.

The answer: Few of these people have bought a legitimate copy of Photoshop. It's all pirated, through and through. Free software contending with illegal software.

It puts me in a difficult situation. I detest people who try to consider their piracy under any other terms. Some of my customers ask "Will it play DVDs bought from Bali?", to which my answer is "Yes, pirated DVDs will play in all DVD players" :-)  So I detest people who look the other way and *think* the other way, but on the same token I copy CDs and DVDs for people all the time and barely think anything of it. I accept pirated DVDs and bootlegs all the time. I used to download music illegally back when it was easy. I've downloaded cracked software. Am I a hypocrite? I'm probably getting close to being one!

I also hate the way the content creators use Digital Restrictions (including serial numbers and phone-home in software), because it's a PITA and it hampers legitimate use of the material. But then, these factors also prompt people to look into alternatives such as FLOSS. That, of course, is why Microsoft don't really pursue Windows pirates very often.

For an article which starts off on this sort of topic and then goes on a tangent, check out this article from IT Wire.

Keep finding those artists

Just because I haven't posted anything about SoundExchange lately, don't think I've forgotten about it!

I received this comment from Fred:

Although the letter you posted dealt with a royalty forfeiture last year, there is another one scheduled for this December.  The only place they talk about this is on their own website.  They have done nothing to publicize the fact.

How much is at risk for artists?

There are currently 8,280 artists on the list.  SoundExchange says the average artist account has $360 in it.

8,280 x $360 = $2,980,800.

Three million is not a bad payday when you don't have to do anything to earn it.

SoundExchange, with it's paid staff of "experts" at finding people, took TWO names off the list last week.  That's the same number you did in your spare time. 

Keep looking.

Fred Wilhelms

8,280 artists. When we say "artists", we really mean "solos and groups". There could easily be 20,000 people who are owed royalties. More, even. And bear in mind that many of these artists might be earning a meagre living, may be retired, or may have died and left their families with very little. They need those royalties. If you can contact an artist, PLEASE DO.

The list of unpaid artists is at: http://63.236.111.137/jsp/unpaidArtistList.jsp (don't be scared by the IP address, I got this link by following the links from www.soundexchange.com).

If you can donate a couple of minutes of your time to choosing some artists off the list and contacting them about this, I would really appreciate it.

Virgins have it tough, don't make it difficult on them!

In this morning's paper, there was a little article about some theatre director who was doing a play about "first sexual encounters", offering free tickets to people who could prove to a hypnotist that they were virgins.

Said this guy: "There are more virgin-tickets than there are virgins in New York".

This idiot should go back to his previous unpaid job, manning the other end of gloryholes, because virgins have it tough enough without cocksuckers like him making fun of them. Virgins are missing out on sexual experiences, usually through no fault of their own. They know they're missing out. They know they are different in this shallow world. It's just nasty to rub it in.

You know what? I've had opportunity to lose my virginity. I could've raped a girl. I could've gone to a brothel. I could've taken advantage of vulnerable people who I knew. I'm a better person than to do those things, and I've been unlucky in relationships, so if you want to make fun make sure you do it behind my back, or you'll find some steel-capped boots suddenly lodged in an unfortunate place that you can't see without a mirror.

When I finally have sex for the first time, it will (with any luck) be with someone who I know and like, and who likes me too; it won't be an isolated incident, it will be within a relationship. And that's how it should be.

Contacted some artists

I went through the "Zydeco" album that I have and contacted all the artists on there who were on the list and who I found a means to contact.

I will go through a number of other world music albums and try to find other artists. This is very important for two reasons:

1. Gives the royalties to the artists who have rightfully earned them
2. Deprives the RIAA of some of the funds needed to prosecute people who decrypt DRM'ed files for legitimate purposes.

Once again, I implore you - if you know of any of the artists on this list, please try to get in touch with them and tell them about SoundExchange!

UPDATE: I just contacted another artist.

How the RIAA raises funds to fight P2P

http://www.charliegillett.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3033&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0&sid=d278bc4735414053d835203a0235cc20

Hi all,

My friend Fred Wilhelms, an attorney in Nashville, has been battling SoundExchange on behalf of recording musicians. SoundExchange has appointed itself the collector and distributor of royalties for digital media such as satellite radio, internet streaming, etc. The problem is, SoundExchange has done an extremely poor job of distributing funds and has used FEMA-style efforts to locate musicians: abandonment of the task. Royalties not claimed by December 15 will be forfeited.

Thanks to Fred's pressure, today SoundExchange finally published the list of artists they have not yet located, nearly 9000 musicians many of whom you will know. I was floored to see so many folks I know, and I'm sending this in hopes you can help alert them they are due royalties.

PLEASE LOOK THROUGH THIS LIST and contact artists, artist managers, labels, or artist heirs with whom you have contact. The list is a veritable Who's Who of World, Canadian, Cuban, Hawaiian, Tex Mex, blues, traditional, jazz, Americana, songwriters, and folk music. It'll leave you breathless, in fact (SoundExchange claims to not have found a way to locate the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, for example).

I'm forwarding Fred's letter along with the url listing musicians whom SoundExchange owes money. Please distribute this widely; feel free to post on listserves if it hasn't appeared.

Susan Martinez

---

I've been circulating the following message. Feel free to forward it to any mailing lists, message boards and telephone poles in your neighborhood.

Fred

AN URGENT MESSAGE TO RECORDING ARTISTS

SoundExchange is the entity that collects and distributes broadcast royalties from digital distribution of music. This includes streaming Internet broadcasts (not downloads) and satellite radio services. These royalties have been payable since February 1, 1996. If your music has been played on the Internet since that date, you are entitled to a share of the royalties.

On December 15, 2006, any royalties that are unclaimed for performances up through March 31, 2000 WILL BE FORFEITED.

If you, as an individual or as a member of a recording group, are not registered with SoundExchange by December 15, 2006, you will lose all rights to your royalties earned before March 31, 2000.

There are thousands of identified artists who will lose these royalties unless they act before the deadline. SoundExchange has listed these "unfound" artists on their website.

http://63.236.111.137/jsp/unpaidArtistList.jsp

Take the time to read the list. If you are on it, follow the instructions for filing a claim. It costs you nothing and it does not take much time. If you register now, you will receive the unclaimed royalties and will received future royalties automatically.

Friends and families of recording artists should also check the list. If you know anyone on there, PLEASE LET THEM KNOW IMMEDIATELY. You will note that there are a number of deceased performers on the list. If you know any surviving relatives, let them know about this.

This money belongs in the hands of the artists who created the music.

Fred Wilhelms

SoundExchange was set up by the Recording Industry Association of America.

The "December 15" was last year, so several hundred thousand dollars of royalties have been "forfeited", and the money used in anti-piracy threats. It is clear to me that SoundExchange did not make any credible attempt to notify the artists. A number of the artists were contacted by people who read and posted to the world music forum I have linked to above who don't even have industry contacts. Yes, ordinary people using Google had better success finding contact information for these artists than SoundExchange did with all its industry contacts.

It's not too late. Although royalties from before 2001 have been stolen to pay for the RIAA's lawyers, royalties from 2001 and later are still able to be claimed from this den of vultures. If you know any past-or-present recording artists please get them to look at this list! http://plays.soundexchange.com/jsp/unpaidArtistList.jsp

I have just contacted Chris Ardoin and NuStep (nee Double Clutchin') about their royalties, as I noticed them on the list. It wasn't difficult at all to find them - there is an e-mail address for their manager, a (dead) e-mail address for the group itself, and a Myspace profile which was last logged into TODAY. It is a disgrace that the RIAA has been allowed to steal this money - it's like Robin Hood in reverse.

Breaking news: Hell has frozen over

Satan has today announced that Hell has frozen over. His announcement came after Mel C's shock announcement that she was rejoining the Spice Girls in a reunion, and after Mr Christopher Lees of Perth registered an account with Denden Forums.

----

If there's one thing that was less likely than me temporarily putting my differences aside with Denden Forums, it was that there would be a full Spice Girls reunion. All the same, it's a little disappointing - neither album nor single was promised, and they have surprisingly missed out several Spice hotspots. Canada, France, and Brazil are absent from the list of tour dates when they REALLY shouldn't have been; and Beijing, Hong Kong and South Africa have been included when I don't think the Girls actually have any fans there.

----

For the Ubuntu users among you, something interesting happened today. I went to a guy's place to fix up his TV, and noticed all these computers and computer parts lying around. I ask about it, and he's big on building computers from parts. While he was talking to me, I noticed a CD-R with "Ubuntu" written on it behind him. So I ask the question ("Have you used Ubuntu?") and he says that his friend has installed it, and that he is going to install it, having been impressed with the Youtube videos of Beryl (or should I say, Compiz Fusion?).

I've promised to help him if he runs into any trouble (gave him a couple of tips already), and he's promised to give me a spare Nvidia graphics card for free!

His decision to try Ubuntu came after using Windows Vista. No surprises there, really; he hates being locked into Microsoft and its stolen technology, and at one point showed me an Amiga lying under a coffee table, that apparantly still works and could still be useful. Remnants of a time before the Microsoft lock-in.

Motorsport pwns linux

Some misguided soul has decided that Linux should be promoted at the Indy 500 by sponsoring a car. So they are taking donations in the hope that they'll get enough money to become a major sponsor.

The following is the message I sent to him (every bit of it is true):

Mate, this is a waste of money. I used to work for a Betta Electrical store. Betta Electrical sponsored the V8 Supercars - well, they actually sponsored Craig Lowndes' car (Team Betta Electrical). This was the only advertising they did.

Did this lift Betta Electrical's profile? No. Since Betta Electrical didn't actually advertise in the usual ways, non-revheads saw the company as being irrelevant; and since the company's public profile was so low, suppliers didn't consider the stores worth supporting.

Betta Electrical went broke late last year during the racing season. The suppliers lost money, the stores lost money, and the racing team lost its major sponsor overnight.

Mate, it costs a lot to sponsor motorsport, and unless your product is directly related to cars, it's a complete *jup jup!*ing waste of time and money. I'd rather the money went to real advertising or to hiring developers to reverse-engineer proprietry drivers. I really mean this - not one person will switch to Linux because it has been mentioned in a car race. Not one single person came into our store because it was mentioned in the entire racing season. If you think motorsport is the best place to invest Linux users' money in, then you need a reality check, and I hope this e-mail provided you with it and that you'll be refunding these people's money.

-------------------
If you're thinking of donating toward this sponsorship, PLEASE don't. Not one person will switch to Linux simply because the name and the logo is painted on the bonnet of an Indy car. If you already have your wallet out and want to put some money toward something Linux-related, please put it directly toward your favourite FOSS project or toward some Free Software Day activities.

Didn't have to restore

I didn't end off restoring Joey's computer, but he was impressed with (a VERY old version of) Beryl. I also gave him a Dapper Live CD.

But anyway, his computer really was running very slowly. The games were basically unplayable.

Quote:

Joey: "I brought all these games."
Me: "Okay, I'll just restart into Windows."
Joey: "Why?"
Me: "Well, those are Windows games you've got there!"

Also, my friend Shiv from India finally got his Dapper CD. He put it in on Windows and started installing the open-source programs on there, under the impression that they constituted Linux.

After I set him straight, he started trying to boot it. For some reason, it wouldn't boot with the default parameters. But he had said "I'm running Linux now" when in fact he was just running Gaim on Windows, which made it more difficult to diagnose the problem!

And then he started saying that it was asking him for his language, keyboard type, and location, and that there was an error message after that point. I thought he was using the installer on the Dapper CD, and he said he wasn't. I finally figured out that he was trying a Breezy live CD that a friend had burnt for him.

Let's hope he can get the disc going. It's probably just a case of using the special boot options.

Copland: Coming along nicely. I have started work on the HFS browser, and an "About" box for Copland. I also released the code for the AiffInterchange program. Plus, I found out the greatest thing for the XorgProfiles program - /proc/cpuinfo actually contains information about what Powermac is being used! For instance, it tells me that I'm running a first-generation iMac with a "750" processor (G3) running at 333MHz. Absolutely correct. This program is going to be a cinch, as long as I can get around to writing it. I have the feeling that it's not going to make it in time for Copland Community Preview.

I'm also a little worried about disc space, so I'm going to build a first ISO without LinBolo, PearPC or Sheepshaver. However, I am thinking of packaging LinBolo and Aleph One and putting up my own little repository for Copland - all the programs Mac users would appreciate that couldn't fit on the disc.

Isn't it cool that Marathon Aleph One still maintains a classic Mac OS build? I played it with the Marathon 2 demo levels the other day. There haven't been too many visible changes - just higher resolutions and different-looking menus, but now SDL has been used and the game is fully cross-platform. I've got a feeling that they tweaked the game engine a little to make the aliens tougher, which is certainly welcome!

We Look To China

               

As scary as it sounds, China is vital for Desktop Linux.    

I've been saying for over a year that Australia should stop pandering to the Chinese, that Australian companies shouldn't outsource their work to China, and that crappy Chinese products are a danger to our health (it seems like every day, there's a recall notice in the newspaper for yet another imported plastic toy).    

Unfortunately, I have to be pragmatic. I bought a new mouse today, and that is made in China. The CD pens I also bought are made in Taiwan. The big CD wallet I bought yesterday to house our new collection of DVDs is made in China as well. In my job, I often have to sell cheap Chinese shit ("yeah, it's really good! The display panel is actually made by Samsung"), and then cope with customer complaints when it breaks down.    

Another way I have to be pragmatic is when I say that China holds the key to getting Desktop Linux to the masses.    

The first hardware devices to publicise their Linux compatibility were cheap Chinese crap. Flash drives, memory card readers, etc - things that use the standard Mass Storage driver included in every operating system since 1998. This was done because of China's impending movement toward Red Flag Linux. (FYI, the name alone makes me sick). Then, some of the brand-name devices of the same class also printed Linux compatibility information, because they were made in the same factories as the China-owned stuff, and the factories told them that it's certified to be Linux-compatible.    

The hardware that is made in China will increasingly be made to be compatible with Linux, so it can be used with Chinese systems. The result, of course, means better hardware compatibility even for brand-name devices.    

Even that will not put Linux onto too many more desktops. The reason why we must look to China is this:    

China has a large number of hardware hackers. Right now, they are focussed on making copies of consumer electronics (e.g. they made a cheap, yet supposedly high-quality copy of an LG phone before LG even released it in China). These sorts of people could, and probably will, build an attractive, high-quality-yet-low-cost computer to run with Linux. They will start making them for their own domestic market, and since they'd be cheaper and more attractive than Lenovo and other Chinese brands, they'd be more popular. Obviously, the machines will come preinstalled with a Linux distribution and contain fully-compatible hardware. Microsoft wouldn't be able to use any market forces against them, as the machines would never come with Windows (or could be made-to-order with pirated Windows, which MS doesn't mind in China).    

When that happens, we could get a company to export the machines from China to other parts of the world, replace whatever Chinese distribution with something more popular in the Western world, find a department store that does not currently sell computers and arrange a deal with them. For instance, Big W and Target here in Australia sell cheap computers (Big W's are brand-name ones, Target uses "iCom"). We could try arranging a deal with K-Mart, and really *sell* the machines to them - they'd be able to price their machines lower than the competition due to no Windows licenses, allowing them to compete on this playing field. We could also *ahem* overstate how many people currently use Linux.    

Okay, so there's not a huge liklihood that we can pull all this off. But we're the open-source community, capable of adapting to anything. We could start distributing through electrical stores that currently can't obtain computers at competitive prices (Betta Electrical and Best Buy Electrical, to put in a plug for my workplace :-).  We could distribute through mail-order, using word-of-mouth and personal recommendation to promote the machines.    

But even if this particular plan doesn't work out, I'm still sure that we will, regrettably, look toward China for help with the Linux Desktop.    

 

-------------------    

Interesting idea I had: Rather than write a GUI frontend for Hfsutils and Hfsplus, why not write a Fuse module in Python that is a very simple wrapper for those command-line programs? I'll see if I can write such a thing (for limited purposes only; you couldn't open a file directly on the HFS drive, for instance, you'd need to copy it off first). If you've written Fuse modules before, please contact me.

 

228 megabytes

...That's how much disk space I freed on the iMac's Ubuntu partition, just by getting rid of stuff that I didn't need.

Build-essential? Not planning to compile anything.
laptop-detect? Useless on a desktop machine.
Free Java implementation? I've never even missed Java on my main machine.
Fonts for languages I've never heard of? Why keep them installed?

It's not like the machine was full of junk, either - a default Ubuntu Breezy install leaves less than 100 megabytes free on the partition. AND I'd already deleted some of the default stuff that I didn't need, (but added things like Gift and Ace Of Penguins :-).

What startled me is that there was that much I could safely get rid of, but there was still more superflous stuff that was unfortunately a dependency of a critical component. For instance, I couldn't get rid of all the obscure video drivers, because that would get rid of Xorg itself.

So, why was I removing packages? To speed up the computer and get some more disk space going. Why did I need the computer to go faster? Simply, because my father has now decided to use Ubuntu. I've finally worn him down to it.

Not quite true; somebody sent one of those web Christmas cards to his previously spam-free e-mail account, and suddenly he was inundated with offers of Viagra. There's no up-to-date spam filter for Mac OS 9, so I suggested he use Ubuntu on my computer to check his e-mail, and I would set up SpamAssassin. He decided to use Ubuntu on his iMac instead, so now I'm about to see if I can get SpamAssassin working properly without using Usermin or Webmin.

Whose great idea was it to package Usermin and Webmin for Ubuntu? They are completely useless without an actual root account - the first time I've ever needed an actual root account in nearly a year of Ubuntuing. I'll just hope that the default settings and its integration with Sylpheed Claws works okay.

I'm also thinking of removing some of the Gnome programs and replacing them with lighter equivilants - for instance, getting rid of File Roller and replacing it with xarchiver; getting rid of Gedit and replacing it with Leafpad, etc. Not sure it will work, and besides I don't really need that done. I would have preferred setting up XFCE, but I've already shown my father how to use Gnome.

Breaking news: He just asked me again why I prefer Ubuntu over Windows, and partially answered his own question: "I suppose you're familiar with the programs". Then he added "I'm sure I'll become familiar with them too in time". This is a good sign... until he asks me to put Feisty onto the iMac :-)

What about the IT guys?

Every Tuesday in my local paper, there is a section about IT. It contains IT news and a column from a computer consultant who answers reader's questions.

Today's question was from someone in business. They had 12 computers which were just used for web, e-mail and writing letters, and they had heard that Linux was free and invulnerable to viruses and spyware. The man wanted to know the consultant's opinion on whether a Linux migration would be a good idea.

The consultant answered like a rabid Windows user. To start off with, he said that Linux was still affected by viruses; and that anti-virus software for Windows was good enough. Strike one. Then he said that a Linux migration was a bad idea, because if the company wanted to buy a peripheral for one of the computers, they wouldn't know if the device would work with it. Strike two. Then he said that OOo wasn't a very good substitute for MS Office, because "it can't understand macros" (er, doesn't everyone just turn off macro support in MS Office anyway? Besides, OOo *does* have support for them these days!). Strike three. The final blow came when he claimed that the cost of training staff on how to use Linux and open-source applications would make the venture useless.

To add insult to injury (his own, if I ever get my hands on him!), he reckoned he wasn't "anti-Linux".

True, some of the things he said would be considerations for some businesses, but not for this one. Linux is overkill for simple e-mail, web surfing, and word-processing terminals, but it's still more suitable than Windows. This business wouldn't need VBA macro support. This business wouldn't need accelerated video, or even sound, in their 12 machines, so telling them about the 1% of unsupported sound cards is just FUD!

I know from previous Linux-related letters that he's never used an installed Linux - how else would he be unaware that you don't have to manually install a bootloader? But why is he so anti-Linux? It's not because of ignorance, although I do think he has a lot of that.

No; the answer is: He's a computer consultant without Linux training. If everyone switched over to Linux tomorrow, he'd be out of a job, or he'd at least have to undertake retraining; a tough proposition at what I believe his age to be. He's just afraid of what a Linux future would mean: personal obselesence.

Imagine you're telling a independent computer fixer about why they should be pushing the use of Linux to their customers. You mention that it doesn't get viruses or spyware, it never needs defragmenting, and the security system makes it resistant to human breakage. The computer fixer's answer would be "Well, how the h*ll am I supposed to make a living if the computers no longer need software maintanence? If there's no viruses, if the computers don't get so slow, if the users become smart enough not to break their systems or if the system stops the user from breaking it, then what am I supposed to do?"

That's the problem. Computer fixers won't push Linux because it is something outside their experience, and they are currently making their money from something with built-in problems. Computer retailers won't push Linux, because it's not bloatware that will force consumers to upgrade often. I've been hired as an independent contracter to fix some people's computer problems - problems specific to Windows, where the only non-Linux solution is a stop-gap one.

It's great that there are technical people out there who are spreading the word of Linux, but now we've got to think of ways to engage the people who have the most to lose from a Linux migration. This may mean adopting "arms trader" tactics - tell a number of retailers simultaneously that they sell Linux-preloaded computers, they will undercut their competitors, capture most of the current Linux market, and create a new Linux market all to themselves (we MUST get the Windows licensing practice under control first!).

We could also try and get community volunteers to help out - for instance, run free informal classes for existing computer techs on how to install, set up, and repair Linux systems for ordinary people. Emphasise that the fixing process would be much cheaper for them, as some problems could be fixed through SSH or XDMCP without needing to travel to the customer's house. Emphasise anything else that would provide incentive.

We should think about the people who have something to lose, and make sure they have something to gain.

I'm not going to e-mail the consultant from the newspaper, but I'm sure he knows who he is. This is addressed to him: If you are reading this blog post, please add a comment or message me, and I'll arrange a time to teach you some Linux for free.

Three Things Which Irritate Me

Three things which irritate me (scope creep - the post was originally Two Things Which Irritate Me):

1. On Cnet's Help forums, a newbie is looking to buy a second-hand computer. The catch is, the particular computer has no operating system on it. Somebody suggested putting Linux onto it, and was immediately shouted down ("Newbies shouldn't try to use a Linux OS").

Why not? Why the heck not? Installation wouldn't require any complicated partitioning, just a straightforward wipe of the hard drive. The distribution is likely to configure itself perfectly, because it's running on older hardware and it's a desktop computer. (Once Linux is set up, there's no need for the command line). There's no malware to worry about, and all the software you need is available with just a couple of clicks. The 256 megs of RAM in the computer will be far more effective on Linux than on Windows - I know from experience.

I put in my two cents, but I don't think it did any good. I doubt any of those naysayers has even tried Linux.

2. There are some computers that are STILL being sold with only 256 megs of RAM. We're what, four months away from the release of Vista Home? This is totally unacceptable, especially considering that it's not just one or two machines - it's a whole heap of them. Imagine buying a computer, and then finding that you've got to upgrade it a couple of months later just to run the latest software.

3. How stupid is this: Dual-core laptops being sold with Windows XP Home. In other words, you're paying for dual-core power, but unless you buy XP Pro (or use Linux-SMP) you will never see a performance improvement over the single-core laptops. I'm not sure if I am allowed to swear on a Friendster blog, but that is fracking crazy. What sort of twit would buy one of those?

One thing which inspires me:

1. I have a yearning to buy a second-hand computer or a quit model, install gNewSense on it, and don't let a single piece of proprietry software onto it. No Flash, no w32codecs, no Skype, no 3D graphics drivers... not even restricted formats (possible exception: MP3 playback). Linux computing, the way it should be. I doubt I'll ever get around to doing that, but I think it would be a great computer to keep around.

I'm now aware...

...of how difficult it is to give free CDs to all comers.

Was at the shopping centre for half an hour, and didn't manage to unload a single CD. Most people were rude to me, too.

So I went for a walk and just put the CDs into letterboxes. I shall keep a few discs for myself and for people who I actually know.

Giving out free CDs

Today is Friday, 15th of September - one day before Software Freedom Day 2006.

I will be going to shopping centres today and tomorrow and giving out 50 CDs of open-source Windows software and Ubuntu. I will let you all know how it goes.

Doesn't Linux rock though? I can actually burn two CDs at once. It's slow (my system bus is slow), but it works without error. Right now I'm burning one at a time, using K3B (because it has a kind of autoloader feature), and it's fast.

In other news, I downloaded PlanetPenguin Racer, and I really love it. It's such a great game! I wish I'd downloaded it before I started making all these CDs, because there's a Windows version.

Also, I installed and set up Conky. Now I have a colourful CPU and network throughput graph sitting on my desktop. Tip: Don't put Conky directly into your Startup Programs on Gnome. Instead, write a very simple shell script which says:

#!/bin/bash
sleep 10
conky

Make it executable, then chuck it into your Gnome Startup Programs in the Session panel. Well, I'd better go now, as K3B has sounded the bugle to herald another 5 discs copied :-)

(click for full image)

Remind me NOT to use XGL on a production system...

Okay, so this isn't really a "production system", but I'm sick of accidentally killing the XGL server while typing. I was 3/4 of the way through this blog post and accidentally hit "backspace" while pressing Shift.

However, XGL and Compiz behaved themselves during last night's demo, except for the usual issues about darkening the screen during gksudo and the logout menu. Compiz has recently developed a nasty habit of randomly shifting windows off the top of the screen! I figured out how to get them back:

1. Move the cursor to the bottom-left to activate the Expose feature. (which I forgot to show my friend)
2. Click the window's thumbnail
3. It will then move so that part of the window is on the screen.
4. Right-click its entry on the taskbar and select "move"
5. Move the window back where it should be then press Escape to stop moving.

But yeah, my demo went well. I expected XGL to crash my login screen when I logged out; but that didn't happen, and I demo'ed KDE and XFCE. I decided not to show "two DEs running at once", because the demonstration was taking a little longer than I hoped.

It's all good.

Today I had a strange Skype conversation. I got a message from some guy in the UK, asking if he could interview me on the radio. He claimed to be an early-morning radio host for a BBC station, and his show from 4 to 5 am was just calling people up on Skype and chatting to them, to see how far afield he could get.

So yeah, I plugged in my microphone and called him, having no evidence that he was really a radio host. I don't think he was. He coughed a couple of times and he didn't talk like a commercial radio DJ. I thought it strange that an early-morning host would have a producer as he claimed he did.

But I got an idea for an interesting podcast: Call up people on Skype with the same story, and interview them just like I was. Only, pretend to go to a commercial break, and during the break tell the person that their interview wasn't interesting enough, and that you were going to make up some harmless lies and that the person should just "play along" with it.

Then when you get back from the imaginary commercial break, introduce some ridiculous subject like:

1. "During the break, Rosemary told me that she also works at nights as an exotic dancer. So, how long have you been in the stripping game?"
2. "Please relate the story of how you were trapped in New Orleans during the hurricane, and how your dog led you to safety"

See how the person handles the ad-libbing, and you can ask follow-up questions that make the story much more difficult!

Friend coming to see Ubuntu

A friend who reads this blog is going to come to my place briefly and see Linux in action.

I will be demo'ing:

1. Tomboy
2. Beagle
3. Deskbar
4. Virtual Desktops
5. XGL/Compiz
6. Software installation
7. Multiple DEs
8. It's Free

Here's the specifics of this:

1. Tomboy: Creating and linking notes
2. Beagle: Searching for a phrase which is in multiple documents of different types (probably her name as it's already in a Tomboy note and in the filename of an image)
3. Deskbar: Adding the Deskbar to the Gnome panel, using it to start e-mails, search the web, search with Beagle, run programs.
4. Virtual Desktops: Run different types of programs over different desktops and switch between them
5. XGL/Compiz: Wobbly windows, Cube, maximise, minimise, close, make windows transparent, Expose, how to crash X in 5 minutes :-P
6. Software installation: Synaptic for searching, browsing, and how to install and update.
7. Multiple DEs: Log out of Gnome and log into KDE. Explain differences between DEs and that people prefer one over the other. Bash KDE mercilessly :-P  Do a "switch user" and log into XFCE. Switch between the two DEs. Do a Switch User and log into Gnome. Switch backwards and forwards between DEs. More KDE bashing.
8. It's Free: Give her two Live CDs. One Ubuntu, the other I don't know yet; probably something which uses KDE like Mandriva One. Wish I had a non-corrupt copy of PCLinuxOS. Wish I hadn't given away my only copy of SimplyMEPIS.

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In other news, I got this spam from someone I once mistakenly e-mailed:

From : tom_bond@censored.com using getitfree.net <tom_bond@censored.com> Sent : Friday, 11 August 2006 2:46:14 PM To : sg_defender_1@censored.com

hey, go here and we both get a free &lowercase_product_short_name;

pretty pretty please :)


http://www.getitfree.net/xpepsxbqq

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Wasn't it nice of him to offer me a free lowercase_product_short_name?

Halfway converted 2 people

I've also halfway converted two people.

A friend of mine in India is having trouble with his pirated copy of Windows. I told him about Ubuntu, and he said "Linux is famous here". So when he's finished backing up his Windows files, he's going to download Ubuntu and give it a go. I've promised to help him configure it, which I may regret as he has a tendency to ask questions before trying to figure something out for himself :-)

My friend Joe is back in Australia after a long time in the US. His fiance claims to be a nerd, so I've told her about Ubuntu and offered to let her use my Linux box for a while so she can get the feel of it and see if it's something she would like to use.

So, that's not bad!

Oh... I've e-mailed LG and told them that my DVD burner works with Ubuntu, and how to get it working really well. I got a kind of form letter back (which thanked me for my positive comments), but I hope they actually read more than my first sentence and will take the step of investigating product compatibility with Ubuntu further.

For anyone interested, here is my "choose your own Ubuntu compatibility letter" to send to hardware manufactuers:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TellThemAboutIt

My idea was deemed good!

I posted a message to UbuntuPeople.org about how I told the manufacturer of an MP3 player that their players worked with Ubuntu. Suddenly, I'm getting patted on the back for having such a good idea. The others there posted a message to UbuntuForums.org telling people to do the same, and even started a page on the Ubuntu wiki about it!

I feel like a hero :-)

I also e-mailed iPrimus technical support to give them instructions on how one would set up their broadband on Ubuntu... but I got no reply, and the instructions aren't on their website, so it's safe to say that they're ignoring me. Just like how they ignored me when I needed help setting up my broadband with the Mac in the first place! (they gave me the WRONG INSTRUCTIONS, the buggers!)