I disliked Ubuntu Gutsy when it was released and I have to say I dislike Hardy as well.

When I recently rebuilt my main machine, I installed Hardy hoping to give Ubuntu another chance. I used to be a huge Ubuntu fan unfortunately, the fandom stops with Feisty.

Bonus to Hardy, that annoying tracker does not install and hog my system by default. The most annoying thing? Lots of support for lots of hardware was dropped. Winfast & Hauppauge TV Tuner cards which have worked wonderfully in linux have all kinds of special issues in Ubuntu starting with Gutsy. MythBuntu equals a big pain in the neck.

I have heard from others who are leaving Ubuntu since the last few releases. Reading through the support forums and the bugtrackers, the community has reverted to the old standard of either not replying, treating people like they aren’t worth the effort to explain things to, or assuming their position on the issue is superior. This is why linux users have always been avoided, because they act like elitist.

Ubuntu is supposed to be user friendly and for new linux users. How can you possibly promote that if the community snubs the newbies.

One thread that struck me was about the fact that there was no GUI disk management installed by default.  The very first response to this posting was “no one should need to manually manage disks…” WTF? Seriously?

There are several cases when you need to manually manage disks: 1) the LiveCD does not mount local disks, 2) If you add a new disk to the system. How many people who aren’t major geeks know how to manage their disks from the command line? I know several people I consider pretty geeky who don’t even know how to do it in Windows.

There are apps you can apt-get to enable a GUI access like gparted, but you have to know what it is called & how to install it ~or~ the right search terms to google to learn how. How many newbies are going to know how to do this or not reach maximum level of frustration with this? Ubuntu doesn’t have a utility that kicks off on boot if you have added new hardware either.

Ubuntu is really losing it’s way, and I have to say I cannot recommend it anymore. I am back to vanillla Debian and maybe dabble some more in Arch. Do you have a particular distro you absolutely adore? Let me know what you are using and why you love it and I will give it a whirl.

I know, this has nothing to do with gadgets or computers but many supporters and pro-open source users are especially fond of ways to be green and I am certainly one of them. On those grounds I wanted to make sure that you stop by Wal-Mart on April 19, 2008 starting at 8am local time and pick up your free reusable shopping bag. Wal-Mart is giving away one million reusable bags as part of Earth Month. I have a love hate relationship with Wal-Mart but giving away reusable shopping bags earned this PSA.

And you thought Facebook’s Beacon was intrusive? How about Beacon for the real world? While I agree that there are many good and valid uses for RFID I am not in agreement that the regulations or security are in place for it just yet. Point?

According to a Press Release from Rep. Jeff Morris (D - Mount Vernon) a new law in Washington will hereby may malicious RFID scanning illegal (this seems like a no brainer to me) such as for the purposes of identity theft. The law states that it would be a Class C felony to “intentionally scan another person’s identification remotely without his or her knowledge and consent, for the purpose of fraud, identity theft, or some other illegal purpose”.

The bummer side? The opt-in requirements for retailers to provide consumer protection by not scanning a customer, their ID, credit card, shoes, products, or whatnot without their expressed permission has been left out of the language due to heavy lobbying by corporations.

I find this completely unacceptable and think the consumers need to do a little mass lobbying of their own. Please consider contacting Rep. Jeff Morris or his staff to voice your support of the opt-in measure even if you aren’t in Washington. His contact information is available on the original press release.

Additional Reading:

• RFID Hack Hits 1-Billion Digital Access Cards Worldwide
• RFID Position Statement of Consumer Privacy and Civil Liberties Organizations

Flickr image from midnightcomm under CC

I asked my Twitter friends today “What computing tech/hardware/software apps are the bane of your existence & make your life *harder*?” Here are the results:

lucidquiet “I hate Windows and I hate Java and I hate all programs that FORCE me to use Windows” — @linuxchic (”ditto” — @lucidquiet, me).

feedback87 @linuxchic lol oh man windows. you cant live with it but you cant live without it

zemote @linuxchic you can’t forget active X, that is the bain of my existance

beaker133 @linuxchic I work on a win98 box. enough said

beaker133 @linuxchic plus barracuda firewall, and in house test machines that i fix before fixing customers crap :)

Penguin @linuxchic Internet Explorer, and anyone who uses it as a primary browser.

techpickles @linuxchic Windows, and most things Java (I’m looking at you Eclipse!)

RaggedEdge @Linuxchic: Siemens APT, it’s a DOS program, it sucks, it runs in 640K low memory with a special graphics driver loaded high.

RaggedEdge @Linuxchic: Can only use the serial port to download programs to a special controller, takes 45 to 50 minutes for big programs.

RaggedEdge @Linuxchic: During about half of the downloads, it locks up, thus requiring to start over. Fun when a whole brewery is waiting on you.

btn @linuxchic - Anything that requires me to fire up Windows in VMware - even worse if it requires me to actually boot the machine into Windows

feedback87 @linuxchic got to be twitter so far lol you?

vgan @linuxchic I nominate Altiris and Iron Mountain Connected Backup (Server and Clients). Citrix Metaframe XP would be a runner up.

linuxchic My most hated? Windows is my default answer. Most hated software varies depending on the day. :P

nikolaidis @Linuxchic: Symantec Antivirus (now known as Endpoint Security).

HighDef @linuxchic No doubt about it; MS Windows is definitely both a standard AND the crappiest piece of crap hindering technological advancement!

danielho @linuxchic Are you goading me into saying that I hate Windows? OK OK, I do!!! Esp. Vista and MS’s idiotic server software. Go certify that!

My family has been passing the flu bug around to each other so I have been mostly offline and playing nurse Mom as well as patient the last several days. Making sure I am not totally out of the loop, my phone lit up like crazy yesterday as I started getting SMS messages and direct Twitters from friends making sure I knew about the deal with Microsoft and Danger Inc. This one plays a little close to my heart as I not only have a Sidekick3 (we actually have several in our house) but I have a developers SDK for the Danger OS.

Danger, Inc. is the company behind the T-Mobile Sidekick smartphone platform. While they don’t make the hardware (the SK3, ID, and previous models were produced by Sharp and the current Sidekick Slide is being manufactured by Motorola) they are the company behind the OS that runs the devices and manage the closed software/ringtone catalog for the smartphones sold only through T-Mobile. Although the Sidekick is in the smartphone category it is more a consumer driven device than a business class phone. Prominent features of the Sidekick devices are instant messaging (MSN, AIM, and Yahoo IM), email (t-mobile branded email addresses as well as the ability to add external accounts with POP), a web browser, a camera, and the ability to purchase themes and customize the phone. It has been marketed to the younger (hipper?) crowd whereas smartphones such as the Blackberry have been prominently used by professional business people.

As a Sidekick 3 owner, one of my favorite features of the Danger OS has been the fact that it is constantly synchronized with the (T-Mobile/Danger) server. As long as there is a data connection available my Sidekick keeps my address book, my calendar, my notepad items, my email, my SMS messages (and my pictures if I am storing them locally rather than on a SD card supported by the device) syncronized. Should my phone be broken, replaced, lost, or whatever the circumstance, I can sign on to My T-Mobile and view my device through a web browser and if I get a replacement SK all my data is retrieved once I insert my SIMM card. I never lose my data. The major downside to the Danger OS is that is an extremely restrictive platform and is not friendly to developers. I had to jump through a lot of hoops to get the SDK and the only way I can get my apps in the download catalog is if they are completely my own, there is no open source build ups allowed. I have purchased a few apps for my SK3 including the Terminal app that lets me SSH in to servers and manage my systems remotely from my phone (although not the fastest method going across the EDGE network). Most apps are more consumer driven including a lot of games, audio mixers, theme modifiers, and diet apps. Besides selling third-party software, Danger’s primary source of income is the recurring Sidekick subscription plan on the T-Mobile network.

According to GigaOM Microsoft shelled out a whopping $500 million for Danger, Inc. My guess is that they want to use Danger’s OS mobile service platform to integrate and deliver Microsoft branded services perhaps in competition with the Google Android platform. While I am sure there are a lot of financial reasons Microsoft purchased Danger, Inc. I am really not surprised that they did from a platform perspective. Microsoft is closed source (even if they have been trying to jump on the open source bandwagon) and Danger is as well. Due to that, I don’t see them as any threat to Android even though we have yet to see the fruits of Google’s labor. Taking two companies that have always done business on a closed platform it takes reworking not only on the business side but also on the software side to open the platform up. I don’t see that happening any time soon but I think if they hope to really compete they would be wise to open it up.

Another aspect to the purchase shows that Microsoft is making a move towards the consumer smartphone marketplace. While they have the Windows Mobile platform it has been primarily in the business smartphone class. With the recent Zune changes, the Zune marketplace, and the continued success of the XBox platform, I would not be surprised to see a continued move towards the consumer market with modifications in the smartphone platform area. Hopefully they don’t try to make the Sidekick into a Zune phone any time soon but no matter, with all the smartphones integrating full keyboards like the SK3 has and even the Blackberry now including a camera, I am moving out of my SK3 within six months or so anyway. Microsoft can have it.

Apparently the ELSPA has decided to take a page out of the books of the MPAA and RIAA and make up crazy statistics to boost their cause (as well as their pocketbook).

From Escapist Magazine:

John Hillier of the European industry group Entertainment & Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA) has claimed that 90 percent of Nintendo DS owners in America are using pirated games.

Not only does that number sound ridiculously bloated, but that would mean that nine out of ten DS owners in the US are using illegal games on a modded DS. According to those numbers I would then have to assume most of my friends that have the Nintendo DS are pirates especially since they are technical types who are more into modding their tech. Out of the 25+ people I know with a DS, not one of them are playing pirated games and no one is using the R4 chip as stated later in the article.

Speaking to the Sunday Post about the R4 “pirate chip” for the DS, Hillier, manager of the association’s Intellectual Property Crimes Unit, said, “In America it’s thought 90 percent of Nintendo DS users are playing pirated games because of R4s. Takings from Nintendo DS games in the U.S. are lower than any other console and no doubt it will have a similar impact (in the U.K.).”

See there, “in America it’s thought”… THOUGHT - in other words, we make up the numbers because people aren’t buying the sucky games we sell for bloated costs. I am applying for a high ranking job in one of these companies because I can make up ridiculous numbers for shock value  therefore justifying my expenses and salary (see resume under skills and qualifications: grossly inflate statistics to scare consumers into sending us money).

How many awesome games have come out for the DS? Animal Crossing WW was a big hit, that cooking game, Brain Age… just because your sales are down, does not mean people are stealing rampantly. Apparently the new business model is to support an old failing business model by screaming piracy and collecting unearned profits from people too afraid, too monetarily restricted, or too uneducated to defend themselves from the false prosecution. See also patent trolls and other such business models that requires little actual innovation or work but has the potential to reap big rewards. This is a modern scam artist tactic under a big corporate umbrella of legitimacy.

Pirate:

• commandeer: take arbitrarily or by force
• Piracy is robbery committed at sea, or sometimes on the shore, by an agent without a commission from a sovereign nation. Although the terms are often used interchangeably, the difference between a pirate and a privateer is that the privateer was commissioned by a government and the pirate was non-commissioned. (See Privateer)

Who’s the pirate now?

I posted a few Tweets today in reference to video games, specifically:

It’s funny to say ouch when you get hit in a video game since it doesn’t really *hurt*
~and~
Show of hands, who else yells or such in the *heat* of video game play?

This is when you see how entertaining Twitter can be! Here are the replies those tweets generated:

ldmosquera: the measure to which you say “ouch” in a videogame, is the measure to which it successfully captures you. So it’s all good.
bblboy54: *raises hand*
miyako_houou: I will at times make some sort of weird vocalizations like a dying whale or somesuch if I’m really close to dying, rarely though
jeffisageek: i am raising my hand
linuxchic: Video game that made me yell the most: MicroMachines for NES…no brakes! :)
popefelix: You should hear how loud I get when I’m playing GTA
ldmosquera: I don’t yell, but I enjoy games which silently scare me to death. Also applies to movies. Immersion FTW!
warmaiden: I do. And my siblings. So far back as I can remember. Atari!!
dlpasco: Doom 2, followed by Half-Life
ldmosquera: Scariest games I’ve played: Undying, System Shock 2, Doom 3. The original Alone in the Dark was a living agony to play too.
sbspalding: what about Ecco the Dolphin. Most frustrating game ever programmed.
linuxchic: I have to say E.T for Atari 2600 wins most frustrating game ever programmed since it was *impossible* to win.
bblboy54: as a kid I still had hours of fun with ET for atari but I remember wondering what the point was :)

What about you?