Pat’s Blog

So NBC and Microsoft are streaming a ton of the events using their proprietary Silverlight technology. The Mono project has a port called Moonlight that supposedly works with Linux. Going to the NBC Olympics site you get a popup saying only Windows and Mac with Silverlight are supported. No problem. just install the Agent Switcher add on to fool the NBC site right? Nope. The only way to watch streaming Olympic content on Linux is using VLC and the Sopcast P2P client. You can go Here for instructions. Use at your own risk. This sort of crap is a perfect example of why we need a truly open and Free internet with open codecs under no one’s control. So Microsoft isn’t evil anymore?!?!

I was alerted by ClaudioM on the techshow IRC that there’s a major issue with the Nvidia 8400 video card. Sure enough Dell talked about the issue a few days back. I called Dell’s sales support this morning and they had me cancel my order and I redid it with the Intel x3100 video card. To make up the difference for the coupon code I bumped my RAM to 4 gig. Here are my updated specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T7500 (2.2GHz/800MhzFSB, 4M L2 Cache)
4GB, DDR2, 667MHz 2 Dimm
Intel x3100 video card
160GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
8X DVD+/-RW
Intel 3945 WLAN (802.11a/g)
Dell Wirless 355 Bluetooth Module
56 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery
Biometric Fingerprint Reader

So my Freedom loving index rating has improved by +5. Virtual RMS will be happy now.

Well the old Walmart piece of shit made by Chinese slave labor laptop has been driving me crazy lately. It’s been slowly flaking out over the last 6 months or so. Recent random reboots from overheating have been pushing me over the edge. Beside the reboots I’ve had the following issues:
the battery doesn’t hold charges
the CD burner doesn’t work anymore
after an hour or two I get pixel snow randomly on the screen

I bought the laptop in 2005 for about $500 expecting to get a year’s use out of it. I got close to 3 years use so overall it did the job. For the past six months I’ve been researching my next laptop purchase. I wanted something with decent horse power and not too heavy (former Dell Inspiron 7500 brick owner). I pretty much narrowed down my choices to a System 76 Darter, a Lenovo T61 Thinkpad and a Dell XPS1330M. System 76 stopped selling the Darter so that was off the table. The Lenovos come with SLED pre-installed. Not a horrible Linux distribution but not my first choice. The Dell comes with Ubuntu Hardy Heron pre-installed (my current favorite). I know several people running Linux on the Dell XPS 1330M and they absolutely love it. What finalized my decision were the awesome coupon codes that lowered the price by several hundred dollars and no interest for 12 months using the payment plan.

The specifications of the laptop I ordered:
Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T7500 (2.2GHz/800MhzFSB, 4M L2 Cache)
2GB, DDR2, 667MHz 2 Dimm
128MB NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS video card
160GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
8X DVD+/-RW
Intel 3945 WLAN (802.11a/g)
Dell Wirless 355 Bluetooth Module
56 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery
Biometric Fingerprint Reader

With shipping and tax it came out to $1,210. I can’t wait to get my hands on this thing.

Its been a while since I posted any Apple related stuff. A couple good articles. This article from the FSF talks about why the iPhone is incompatible with freedom. Spot on. If you want a cool device to listen/watch media, play games and hack I highly recommend the Nokia N800/N810 device or the Openmoko Freerunner phone. Unlike Apple those guys encourage Free 3rd party application development and will not brick your device for hacking it. This article talks about El Tunes which is a gstreamer based plug-in that will allow owners of DRM laced music LEGALLY PURCHASED from iTunes to play on Linux computers. In typical Apple fashion they tried to shutdown El Tunes. Personally I don’t own any media purchased from iTunes but I can understand why someone who has would want to be able to play it on their Linux computer. From what I’ve ever read Apple will NEVER port iTunes to Linux. So instead of thanking the El Tunes guys Apple does their typical cease & desist routine. Say no to Apple, iTunes and the iPhone!

I took the week off from work but have been running around with the kids doing stuff. It’s always good spending time with the family. Found one of the best packages in the Maemo Diablo repos today. I installed WorldTV99 which is basically a listing of tv stations from around the world with video streams viewable in mplayer. It’s freakin awesome! I also noticed Blob Wars is available as well. I’ve turned into such a Nokia N800 fan boy over the last couple weeks. It really is a great device.

Got a bunch of apps running on my Nokia. First I got Xmame along with Xmaeme(gui frontend). All of my ROMS work minus Paperboy. I installed Pidgin and it basically works just like the desktop version. Likewise Streamtuner is just like the desktop version. Vegalume is a nice Lasfm client. Finally I installed Gnumeric and Abiword for my document needs. They both work very well. Ermning lets you sync your Google Calendars with your N800/N810 calendars. Good times indeed.

Well I finally purchased a Nokia N800. Yeah I could of got the N810 for $350 but really didn’t want to spend that much money. I can live without the slide out keyboard and GPS unit. Honestly I rarely drive to places I don’t know my way around. Minus those 2 features it’s basically the same device. I picked up a used N800 on Amazon market place for $150. I received the device on Thursday and spent a good part of the weekend playing with it. I absolutely love it. I immediately upgraded it to the newly released version of Maemo called Diablo. Flashing the new OS was pretty straight forward. I installed Gizmo, Skype, ogg support, Vegalume (lastfm client), Quake, ssh client, voice recording and Maemo WordPy (wordpress blogging client). On my Myth box I exported a bunch of recorded shows via nuvexport to mp4 (400×240@25fps) video. The video files are relatively small (about 60 meg for a 30 minute recording) and are a decent quality. I currently have a 2 gig SDHC card for my media. I hear this device will work with two 8 gig cards in there. I setup my email with my gmail account and got the SIP voip client connected to the Asterisk server. I still have to install xmame and Pidgin. The diablo extras repository is still being populated with packages for the new release so not everything is available yet. So far I’m really digging the N800. Better late than never.

I’ve never been into racing games but my 4 year old son just absolutely loves them so I play them with him. Over on getdeb.net I found a really kick ass racing game that I was not aware of before. The game is called ManiaDrvie and is really fun to play. You drive around on these crazy roller coaster type tracks doing jumps and flips. The sound track is a killer mix of pop punk and metal. We couldn’t stop playing this one. Check it out if you’re into racing games.

It’s been quiet around here the last couple of weeks. Sad news today. The LUG Radio crew is calling it a day after 100+ episodes. We’ll miss you guys! They were one of the better Linux related podcasts out there. Yesterday I watched the Euro 2008 final. Spain finally won a major tournament. It’s first since 1964. Spain is a country with a very long football tradition and it really is a shame that they’ve never won the World Cup. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come in the future. On another note I installed OpenSUSE 11.0 on my testing drive. It’s a very nice release. The boot time is greatly improved and it seems that they’ve finally fixed their package management system. Check it out if you get a chance. Finally I’ve been playing around with PuppyLinux and absolutely love it. The developer has done an amazing job. It’s small, fast, functional AND good looking! A perfect distro if you’re looking to resuscitate some old hardware with Linux.

Lately it seems there’s a lot of hatred directed at Linux. I hear it on certain podcasts, read it on certain blogs and read it in certain articles. Some of these haters are feeling the heat of more and more people switching to Linux. Most of them make their livelihoods sucking on the Windows tit. They feel threatened and scared. It’s the human reaction of your world crumbling around you. I imagine the Romans who experienced their empire being overrun by the barbarian hordes having similar experiences. Panic eventually sets in. Why are people jumping off the Windows ship? Firstly the abortion known as Vista is making a lot of people look at the alternatives out there. It was the final nail in the coffin to people who were tittering on the edge after enduring years of malware, spyware, crappy upgrades and being charged for every piece of crappy and redundant software. So lots of people are moving to Linux. This is great. This puts pressure on commercial software vendors to port their applications to Linux and forces hardware vendors to be more Linux friendly when it comes to their device drivers. There are some negative effects to this migration. Firstly the ranks of Linux fanboys are swelling. This pisses a lot of people off in many ways. Go read some of the comments in digg or slashdot and you’ll get the general idea. Fanboys are the software equivalent of Ron Paul supporters who are in your face and inject their diatribes into conversations that have nothing to do with them. This annoys a lot of people and a backlash is expected. Then you have the Apple dorks hating Linux. They don’t like the competition in courting the masses of Windows converts. They love over paying for the same Intel based hardware that comes out of the same shitty factories as every other piece of hardware out there. They love DRM and the prison known as iTunes. So should you (according to them). The reason why I migrated to Linux is that I became interested in *nix based OSs after using Windows 3. I wanted something better, something more secure, more customizable and overall a better experience. At the end of day all software is imperfect because it’s created by imperfect beings. Linux isn’t perfect but it’s on the right path. It puts you in control of your computer and what you do with it. Some people are perfectly content with being sheep. Some people are content bowing down before the alter of DRM and getting all elitist because they’ve moved to Apple and have some smug sense of superiority because they’ve realized that Windows is lacking. Sorry Apple dorks, OSX isn’t all that great. It’s better than windows but the restrictions Apple has imposed is pretty stifling. I want to control my media and software and not be handcuffed to ANY vendor. Linux is for the people by the people. Companies are realizing this and starting to sell their commercial offerings to the growing Linux community. Linux is the future. Get over it. Linux haters be damned!