Communism, cancer and fascists

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s recent comments regarding open source recently, maybe not so recently even, that open source is a cancer, that open source is like communism, I guesshe is right in defending his employer, they pay his bills after all, but to seriously look on open source software, Linux and the free software community like this is appalling, considering proprietary software and formats and the cost associated with proprietary software is a large part of the developing world, and indeed the third world do not have the opportunity to educate their future generations, particularly in respect to computer literacy. Take for example the newly launched Windows Vista, the cost of compatible hardware to run the system is enough to give you a nosebleed, let alone the cost of the system itself, starting at $350 australian for home basic, which you will soon find out is actually very basic, the reason people want it is for Aero, the 3D graphical interface, the cost only goes up, and stops at around AU $700 for the premium version.

Then you have office 2007, which I am told is not back compatible to previous office versions, therefore making any document you create with MS Office 2007 unopenable with, for instance, MS Office 2003, anyone you collaborate with or have a need to forward documents to now has to upgrade to Office 2007 to open your documents. Imagine the cost of rolling that out over a nations school system, particularly poorer nations.

If open Source is communism, which it may well be, considering that everyone benefits equally from it, then proprietary software is no doubt  fascist in origin, giving the select few the right to use it, while the rest are thrown in the technological equivalent of a concentration camp because they refuse to conform to the fascist ideal of what is right.

Makes me wonder what Steve Ballmer’s definition of cancer is, is it something that kills freedom of choice and a fair go for everyone regardless of their socio-economic circumstance, if so he should re-consider what has been said about free and open source software.

By the way, SB, BG and a lot of other people should take a look at the one laptop per child program  and see what our communistic ideals are doing for the third world, and there are other projects doing similar things, things that MS money can’t buy for them.

this just about made my day complete

i found this post by netherwolf at microsoft using the search string “ubuntu” for reasons i don’t even know myself, i just like to know what the opposition is saying about open source and where better to look i guess
it made me laugh so hard, you too can see it here

Dear Microsoft,
Thank you for your gifts this year. I gratefully received Vista Beta 2 x64 and the dead cat head you sent me. I really do appreciate them, but what I really wanted was a x64 rewrite of Windows 2000. I tried playing 64-bit Unreal Tournament 2004 on my box in Vista. It played OK, but it ran slower than it should have and I was disappointed in the lack of OpenGL. Maybe an Athlon 64 3200, 1GB DDR2 RAM, and an nVidia 6200 is old news and last year’s model, but I was really hoping Vista could make it shine. I tried playing UT2K4 64-bit in Ubuntu Linux. I was later found in a coma in front of my computer mouthing “All your base are belong to me.” I tried it again, with similar results. I can’t remember anything about it except for pure 64-bit bliss. This is not unlike the euphoric experience of UT2K4 on Win2K. OpenGL of course. I usually end up on my side in a puddle of my own drool, glibly singing to myself and cheerfully unaware of my surroundings.
I’ve now decided to play UT2K4 in Vista only because it quickly helps me to remember that I have work to do and shouldn’t waste my time on silly games.
The dead cat head has become a good friend to me. I call him Bob.

Sincerely,
NW

All joking and dead cat heads aside…
The nicest thing I have to say about Vista x64 is it’s pretty. Stop. End of transmission. Other than that, um… oh yeah, Services for Unix in 64-bit. Those are good too. But, in general, it’s been something of a nightmare. I think this is summed nicely by the true life experience where I copied over my installation of Musikcube with the latest CVS build only to have to the machine keel over and die. Windows 2000 handled the job with a grunt and sneer, as if I’d insulted it with some menial 5-second task far beneath it’s abilities – which it was. Vista found the job beyond its capacity. Granted, Vista did try to sway me from the task, complaining of the red tape of administrator priveleges and the like; Windows 2000 did the job without hesitation, never supposing that I’d lost my mind and this could be a possible no-no.
The interface is pretty. Really pretty. I don’t give a {coital act} about pretty when I’m working. I need functional. I use Blackbox Lean on my Windows 2000, which, when tweaked right is very pretty, but not needlessly glossy Aero pretty. If I want that, I have Compiz installed on my Ubuntu. Now THAT’S pretty. Note, I haven’t switched to BBLean on Vista because, honestly, after the SCSI Pass-Through Driver fiasco, I really don’t know how much tweaking I can trust myself to do before I REALLY break something.
Vista brings new and exciting features to the Windows family, but as far as the actual software world goes, the Open Source Initiative has already outdated the majority of anything Vista plans to bring to the table. I say majority because .NET 3 and DirectX 10 are solely in Microsoft’s ball-court right now. In all honesty, however, I can seriously imagine using this self-same machine in 5 years from now still running Windows 2000 and .NET 3 as provided by the Mono Project.
So basically, what I’m looking for is a 64-bit Windows with the libraries and drivers to survive the next generation of computing, but with the durability, power, and customization that over-clockers, modders and hackers need to bring out the very best from their systems. Criminy, I’m only a casual modder wannabe, and I’m this frustrated. I can’t imagine what the die-hards must be thinking. Hm… Vista x64… nLitened? Sweet merciful Heaven, I hope so.

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another great thing also happened, a few weeks ago i took my wife’s stepfather fishing to a spot i know, he brought a friend of his along with him, charlie, a mad keen freshwater fisherman from sydney, anyways, this spot is pretty remote and hard tabbing to get to, about a kilometre down into a gorge……..also while there i found out my phone was not compatible with water……..well it won’t swim with you anyway. anyway charlie emailed me some of the photo’s he took there, ill post em here in a minute. hope there is one of the monster murray cod charlie caught

installing beryl on ubuntu edgy? having trouble?try this.

Edit the sources.list file, e.g. by opening a terminal and typing:

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Add this line:

deb http://ubuntu.beryl-project.org/ edgy main
deb-src http://ubuntu.beryl-project.org edgy main

For the GPG key (to ensure that the packages are authentic) run this command:

sudo wget http://ubuntu.beryl-project.org/root@lupine.me.uk.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -

Update the package list before installing

sudo apt-get update

On the official beryl wiki page there are steps listed to activate AIGLX which is installed by default in edgy, but apparently the beryl team think you have to activate it, i skipped this step because the first time i installed beryl, this is what crashed my system, the second time i installed it it worked, i didn’t use the experimental repositories at all, if you want to follow those steps, get them from the beryl install guide, see the ref’s at the bottom of the page.

Install Beryl

Simply type

sudo apt-get install beryl

You’ll also need themes for the decorations

sudo apt-get install emerald-themes

Starting Beryl

Type, in terminal or launcher

beryl-manager

Change start button without rebooting-windows hack

Credit for this actual hack goes to Sarah over at sarahlane.typepad.com/
However after reading it i realised there was a better way to execute the file change at the end without necessitating a reboot at all.
Thanks Sarah, cool hack.
1. First of all, make sure you download Resource Hacker. You’ll need this to edit resources inside your Windows shell.
2. Locate explorer.exe in your c:\Windows directory. Make a copy of the file in the same directory and rename it explorer.bak.
3. Now launch Resource Hacker. In the File menu, open explorer.exe. You’ll now see a bunch of collapsed folders.
4. Expand the String Table folder and then find folder No. 37 (folder No. 38 if you’re in Windows Classic mode).
5. Click on resource 1033 and locate the text that says “Start.” This is your Start button, and now you’ve got control over what it says! Change the “Start” text to your text of choice. You don’t have a character limit, but the text takes up valuable taskbar space, so don’t make it too long.
6. Click on the button labeled Compile Script. This updates the settings for your Start button. But nothing will happen until you complete through step #20, so keep going!Change your hover text
7. While you’re here, why not also change the text that pops up when your mouse hovers over your Start button?
8. Right now it says “Click here to begin.” no shit! very intuitive desktop

9. Open folder No. 34 and click on resource 1033.
10. Find the text that says “Click here to begin” and change it to something cooler. Might I suggest “get linux.”
11. Click on the Compile Script button to update this resource.
Customize your Start icon
12. For an added bonus, you can also change the Windows icon to the left of the text, too.
13. Collapse the String Table folder and expand the Bitmap folder at the top of your folder list.
14. Click on folder No. 143 and click on resource 1033. You should see that familiar Windows icon.
15. Go to the Action Menu and select “Replace bitmap.” Select “Open file with new bitmap”, and locate the replacement image on your machine. Note: The image must have a .bmp extension and a size of 25 pixels by 20 pixels. Then click the Replace button.
16. Now that you’ve made your changes, save the file in your Windows folder with another name, such as newstartbutton.exe. Don’t name it Explorer.exe, because that file is already being used by your system, so the mod won’t work if you do. Close all open programs.

this is where things get a bit tricky, and where most other guides would tell you to reboot in safe mode, what follows definately works, which is also why windows has to be rebooted after a lot of updates—an exe that already has a process running cannot be replaced until the process is stopped

17. Bring down windows explorer. Use ctrl/alt/delete to bring up the task manager, click on the processes tab and explorer.exe Right click on that process and select: end process tree. This will crash windows explorer for you.(don’t worry it’s not permanent) Remember: DO NOT CLOSE THE TASK MANAGER.
18. Task manager will still be up, click the applications tab, at the bottom right corner of task manager, click the New Task button, type cmd or cmd.exe in the dialog box, the command prompt will appear.
19. In the command prompt window, type cd c:\windows
this will ensure you are working in the right directory.
20. Now type “copy c:\windows\newstartbutton.exe c:\windows\explorer.exe” (no quotes). Type “yes” (no quotes) to overwrite the existing file, then go back to the task manager and click New Task again, in the resulting dialog box type: explorer. exe
When Explorer relaunches, you’ll see your new Start button in all its glory!