“So you say that the big guns are sent to where the big money sends them and so the pages of manufactured history are written?”

Well, as I am Colombian, I watched that episode in spanish, but that is kind of the same message translated into english…

Now, what fdo i mean with all of that?, it’s easy, so the veredict is in favor of the guys with the big money (the recording labels) which are not talking in behalf of the artists but in behalf of their own pockets. Anyway, thatwas just a rant, the piratbyran guys should not be held responsible for the content that is being downloaded, as they are not holding any of it, we could say in a nice way that they only give a service which allows computers to communicate to each other, the way such communication is used is the direct responsability of the users of such service.

Having the piratbyran guys arrested and fined is like suing ebay because some terrorists discussed some bombing plan through skype, as you can see, it makes no sense at all!

Anyway, let’s continue… it is a shame that the world is ruled by old guys who do not understand how the world itself is changing, who still think that physical media is the only way to distribute culture, for them, the only way to get a game is by buying it in a store, that the only way to see a work of art is by going to a museum, or that watching a movie means buying a cassette, renting it or going to the movie theater. Shame on them for ignoring the fact that piracy has existed alongside with culture (just see how cassettes were copied at home in the 80’s – 90’s like VHS tapes or even paintings which have been copied for centuries).

Now, I am just a normal person, like anyone you would find in a street, I have no special knowledge of music busniess or economics for that matter, so I am going to elaborate a busniess model from the perspective of a normal person, and I expect you readers, to give some feedback and show me how this could, or could not work.

I am a garage musician, I know I am talented, as my band is, and I do some concerts along some other minor bands in the city, not for much profit, but for fun and to show my takent to the world. I decide to make the great leap and work to be internationally famous, so we decide to publish our music on the internet; we decide to create an album and we use our hard earned money to have that album recorded in optimal quality in an electronic format (flac could be a great format I tell you!), we make a website and pay for some cheap hosting, as we are only beginning, we cannot expect a million hits per day, you know, we are starting from zero. In such website we put our first album available for free download, we also open a space in sites like last.fm so people can find us easily (In my case, I like metal, and by using last.fm found my favorite band: Celesty), we also let our album open for download via p2p (be it torrent, gnutella like or any kind of protocol), we also let the local word of mouth run amok, eventually our local listeners will help us spread the word of mouth with their contacts, letting more visitors in the website, haiving more listeners, getting some fans, as a side note, we obviously would have a space for feedback, so we could adapt to our fans needs (remember, this is a busniess after all!). After enough people have heard of us (torrent trackers could give a very good show of how many people are interested, as with last.fm) we could be ready to release a new album, this time we could ask for some donations (like 1 dollar tips via paypal) so we could finance the recording. Once we could have it all ready we could release the album, 30% of its content free for download, the rest for cheap downloading (like any music store), we could begin touring, and selling memorabilia, like special editions, pretty printed CDs including signed booklets and Tshirts, etc. It could be easily assumed people would pirate our music, but think about it, it would be free advertisement in a way, so the people who would never buy our stuff anyway could be actually helpful.

Just perpetuate this model and you will profit easily from the memorabilia, the concert tickets, and the music bought from loyal fans. You eould get free advertising and keep an ever growing fanbase. The only drawback is that you must have the most important thing in arts:

Talent

Yes, talent! so the content you create has actual value, so your listeners have a good reason to support you, and never forget, give a space to be in touch with them, to let them know you really are there for them and that you really need them, and you’ll see how your talent is well retributed.

I am a big supporter of independent producers, for example, I am saving up to buy the entire Celesty doscography, since I pirated it (I confess!) because their music is impossible to get in latin america, so they got by filesharing someone who promotes their music for free, and given that they come to latin america, they would have fans who would actually pay to go to their concerts. Same case is for games, I really like what the guys at 2D Boy did with World of Goo, it is a game that irradiates talent and innovation, and they did not limit their user base (did not include DRM at all, plus they made the game for everyone, even linux users!) and so I am ready to buy their game(cannot use a Paypal account from my country) but as soon as I have my credit card available, I’ll make sure to get a copy.

Hope to get some good feedback anytime soon, and if you are interested in some great music or a great game, don’t forget to visit the guys of Celesty and 2D Boy, they are very very talented, and really deserve your support!

Greetings pals! Today I just installed Windows vista ultimate edition with service pack 1. In the past, I would say I loathed Windows Vista since it was packed with full DRM stuff, but then I was forced to install it on my sister’s laptop, since she avoids GNU/Linux like the plague, and since I could not get skype to work properly (why this happens is beyond my understanding, it makes no sense at all, I say!).

Checked it shallowly and surprise! it wasn’t that bad… it did what it had to do, what made me think is that although it is somewhat slower, its memory consumption is not so awful… let’s talk in numbers: if it has a base memory consumption of 50%, then no matter what you do, it won’t go further than 75% (unless you are gaming, which I don’t do anymore, save for some games at Kongregate).

Now, in my desktop I was using Windows XP, an immortal and very reliable operating system, but I had to print some document for a friend and I had to do it in grayscale (my color cartridge is not working very well). I had this problem, HP’s latest drivers do not have a grayscale option, my friend told me Vista’s drivers had it, so I took my chances and decided that I would have to install vista so I could have full control over my PC (which I have in Ubuntu, but HP GNU/Linux drivers suck!)

Installed Vista ultimate, updated it fully and after some careful examination I came to the conclusion that Vista is a rip-off of GNU/Linux in any flavor… why?, well now you’ll see.

Now, you, vista user, open the welcome center and let’s work with that for now, you must see that it resembles a lot of OpenSUSE’s Yast administration tool, but wait!

1. System details: Everything in the first screen stinks of Yast!, except the only original thing it has that is the Windows Experience evaluation, but it is not that original since, when you think it carefully, it is just a benchmarking app embedded in the OS, and these have been around for ages, it is not that good either because it does not tell you a thing, just that your GPU, memory or processor sucks big time… it does not show you what it can or cannot do, or which instructions your CPU supports or what version of pixel shader your GPU has… nothing, nothing at all. everything else is just so WinXP, God help us!
2. Migration tools, User management, Internet setup wizard: Really? again, WinXP had all of this, worked exactly the same and didn’t need to rip any other system. Any respectable system should have these, and by the way, GNU/Linux has these, and for example Yast even allows a better fine tuning of these features, specially User management.
3. Windows Ultimate extras: Why should anyone pay like double the overprice (because really, it is not a decent price for a barebones OS) just to get a Texas hold’em game, a robot game and some security hardening features, which, if they care so much about their users, should then include them by default? No, I am actually serious about this.
4. What’s new on Windows Vista?: It seems nothing is new (new for Microsoft perhaps?) but hey, it will be the topic for the next part, so let’s save this for later, shall we?

5. Customize windows: OK, this is a good one, and I repeat…. every modern system has had most of these things way before Microsoft ripped them off reinvented them, but I’ll discuss them part by part.

• Color and window appearance: Just like emerald years before, this allows you to change the window border color and style, oh! and transparency!… c’mon guys, years of research and you got some transparent borders? it took like less than half the time for the beryl/emerald guys to have these, not to mention all the cool effects like wobbly windows, border customization and whatnot.

• Desktop wallpaper: Hmmm Ultimate has a neat dreamscene, that is: you can put videos instead of a wallpaper… boring! I could do this in windows 98 crafting a webpage to render a video I chose, and then putting it as active desktop… in Windows XP I could do this as well using the same recipe, and in Ubuntu or any other kind of distro you could do the same!… this can impress Joe sixpack and Susie soccermom will find this amusing, but not me, or 99,9 of the so called power users (of which, like 12.5% are really power users and the others are actually people who downloaded stuff from Cnet). NOTE: Grandma will not be impressed by dreamscene, as she will say this is the work of the devil or something like that.

• Screensaver: Wooo! Bubbles!… boring, again… *sigh* xscreensaver has a lot more screensavers and they look better… if you want them in Windows just check Really Slick Screensavers (that’s actually the program name), and you won’t have to pay a penny.

• Sounds, mouse pointer, Themes, Screen configuration: Exactly the same as windows XP, no real difference except that there is no green button anymore.

6. Windows Media Center: This existed before, it is just that they added it to the main version (unlike WinXP), looks nice, works nice, but it is NOT nice with your memory. MythTV exists from ages ago, does exactly the same (even more as it is extensible via plugins) and does not cost a penny… Mythbuntu is a readily available solution that works like a charm.

7. Security backup and restoration: Sorry to ruin the party boys but no matter what you do, Apple has the lead with its Time Machine, even GNU/Linux has Back in time, which works really nice!

8. Activate/register/etc: Just get me out of here… a REAL OS does not need such things, as there is no real need for people to pirate it… MacOS does not need activation (well, you can only get it by buying a Mac, but it does not matter ;)), BeOS does not need it, POSIX compliant systems do not need it, Amiga does not need it, Unix does not need it, and so… the only OS which needs registration and activation is Windows (since XP, that is)… cut it off, it is as annoying as a kid kicking your seat in a 19 hours flight, plus, no matter what you do, pirates will ALWAYS crack this stuff, so why bother?

9. Windows live: The only real advantage you get is to use video and audio in MSN messenger chats and nothing more, and amsn already has video support, plus, the pidgin guys are already working to make this happen or so I heard. As for windows writer (which I like, actually) has many fully working replacements in the free world, like kblogger for KDE and drivel or BloGTK for gnome (I used to use BloGTK a lot… perhaps I should get back at it) Perhaps Writer is easier to setup, which is always a good plus.

10. Windows live search: cut the crap, you won’t stop using Google and you know it!

11. Windows One Care: Neither GNU/Linux nor apple users need this, bad luck guys!

Ok, this is it for now, next part will be about what’s new in windows vista (which already exists in the rest of the world)… and some criticizing of windows security.

For a final thought, you see that the only good things windows vista is good at is the things they invented themselves (like windows live), but in the rest of the systems (GNU/Linux in my case) everything was invented before, and now Microsoft charges us for something that we can find somewhere else for free and actually better (eye candy is a good example, and what windows vista actually promised). There is something Microsoft has and that no GNU/Linux distro can offer and is a very convincing marketing, which is equally false since well, all they do is to tell you that Microsoft is the only one around and that it is perfect, and that if you think otherwise, you are wrong; curiously, it is Maddox opening words in his site, except that Microsoft does not make me laugh.

I humbly speak in this corner of the ever growing internet to discuss something that bothers me most…

KDE 4.

Now, why would I talk about KDE4 now?, well my friends, because recently SuSE 11.1 was released and I was utterly dissapointed with it, it looked nice thanks to… KDE4 but printer would not print, cd drives would not be recognized, startup, shutdown and workflow would be slow, bluetooth was a no-no… anyway, haven’t had much luck with SuSE since the 9.3 days…

I said “its SuSE, let us go to the good old kubuntu instead” but no, it was bad old kubuntu instead.

I have never liked the attitude at canonical where ubuntu is all they care for, yet promotion kubuntu like if they really supported it, but I am just a voice… if you need any kind of opinion then go to ubuntuforums and ask in there.

Well, instead of a long long rant I will just make a list of things that made me go back to ubuntu – gnome:

1. Kwin crashed. When KDE session was loading, that is unless I clicked when the loading splash was present, it would make the splash dissappear and I would not see many funny colors and no desktop at all.
2. Bluetooth is completely broken. Thanks to the lord I have no bluetooth hardware other than my cellphone, yet I wanted my cellphone to use anyremote, sync my music with my phone via bluetooth, etc. Por Takmadeus won’t do so because they forgot to fix bluetooth out of pure lazyness (more on that later).
3. Adept sucks. Enough said, it is sluggish, and even if I add the whole repositories somehow adept is smart enough as to not to show what it considers I don’t need, problem is that computers are not very intelligent these days and this joke of a program blocks many software I need as well.
4. Openoffice.org crashes. Just because openoffice.org-kde has some kind of pallette conflict when drawing the windows. The solution is to uninstal it and do your office work like back in the glorious era of windows ’95!
5. Plasmoids do not work. yep, just as you heard it, plasmoids do not work, if you add a plasmoid, it will just look like a small transparent box, it is easy to fix if you look around and find out that there is a repository with all the packages fixed, which sucks because this should be the job of the official staff to keep all these things running smoothly.
6. Multimedia keys support. Finally, they tried to do something, but unfortunately it was not enough, They need an better way to assign the way buttons work, whenever I assigned the calculator button for Tremulous to launch, it would not save the preference no matter what I did, plus the “back” and the” media player” buttons both were treated like the same button, gnome knows they are different, fortunately.
7. Whenever I searched for info on how to fix most of these issues, I found those who asked were treated harshly, told to RTFM, and yelled at because “that debug report doesn’t do sheet!” mostly in the kde bug tracker; I mean, please, keep it civilized people, this attitude leaves a bad impression. In launchpad things were simply not put enough attention, meaning there were many complainers and no package mantainer says a word, not even a “we’re working on that issue”, which left me the impression there is no KDE/Kubuntu real work in progress.

These complaints, among any others made kubuntu look like some kind of beta release; regarding the broken bluetooth, after some looking around I found out is due because “he does not have the
time to put towards porting to 4.x”, excuse me? then why not assign someone else?, bluetooth is a very important component of the system, some people even have all their peripherals working via bluetooth, so they don’t matter? I mean, they guy has all its rights to not to have enough time, but then it is responsability of KDE as an organization to ensure that this issues will be dealt with, and they have plenty of paid developers to do this. This again leaves a bad impression.

Canonical, I know your flag product is Ubuntu, ad that’s fine, but trust me, it is of no use to do releases that actually look and work and pre betas, if you are going to do so, it would be better if you did nothing at all and just not release kubuntu, but this kind of releases are a disrespect for users and community alike. Following that train of thought, I ask of you that you get bluetooth fixed in Ubuntu intrepid as well, I cannot connect foo!

Now, it is not my duty to tell you how to think about all of this, but I thought it would be just fine if I told you which is my position regarding this situation.

My view of OfficeOpenXML is that it was a necessary technology step for Microsoft, yet even if their previous document API was a little outdated, they could have saved energy, money and problems by adopting a international standard (ODF is already approved in that way).

Really, ODF had been a long time around, it has survived time’s test, it is an official standard and is extensible enough as for everyone to use and modify, including Microsoft. The problem is money, you know, they have to release editions of their software on a periodic base so customers pay them money, it has happened in Windows, it happened in Office. Itis not the problem, gaining money from what you do is the basis of economy.

Now, the problem is simple. Microsoft has deliberately ignored their customers, they have deliberately chosen to ignore the fact that they have been a success (be it because of features, which I don’t think, opportunity and marketing) and in the process got people used to a way of doing things. now with this generation (coincidentialy related to Ballmer’s rise to CEO), they just decided to do things in other way, meaning they made the system confusing and added no real value to it.

As I am a man of example, I will talk about Office. So many years with a menu bar, the icons always placed in the same layout, you could use office 97 and then go and use office 2003 with no real difference, but then with office 2007 well, it might look pretty, but it has the same functions, exactly the same functions all the previous versions had, but now you have to look, and look and look around in order to find what you need, because you cannot do your mechanical task anymore.

Now, with the ISO debate. There was no real need for another document format, releasing a 9000 pages description is ridiculous, forcing me to buy a product I don’t want because it is standards compilant is ridiculous, reinventing the wheel and forcing me to learn how to write a simple letter is ridiculous. The ISO ginoring so many appeals from diverse organizations and governments is ridiculous. It takes the intellingence of a 5 year old kid to know this process was as irregular as it got.

There is no standard if there is only one way to be compilant with it, that’s called lock in. For an example look at html, it is the standard API for describing pages, it tells your browser what to show, to see html content you have many options: firefox, internet explorer, safari, seamonkey, etc. With OfficeOpen XML you have just one: MS Office 2007, now, that is what I mean by vendor lock in.

Well, I always thought that the ISO was a respectable and objective entity, with this they show they are not. Just my two cents

Well, last night I was curious about the iPhone 3G, because I wanted to know what did it have to offer over the traditional iPhone, and then I came across a page named DefectiveByDesign.org, where they were discussing why was it so important to not to get one. As the iPhone and DRM and that stuff is out of this post scope, I suggest you follow the link I left if you are curious.

Well, I followed a small link somewhere in that page which pointed to openmoko.com and I thought “hey, isn’t this?.. ” and there I found this:

Interesting cellphone indeed! has everything your sony ericsson, nokia or motorola has to offer (except a camera, I cannot find it in the description) but has this interesting feature and that it is open source, yes ladies and gentlemen, this runs in linux, which is great since with time its value will rise and rise given that the options available for this system are virtually endless.

Now, for you, the normal guy, the one that does not want to bother with tech stuff but be more informed about the subject, well, it means that your cellphone will be able to hold technically any kind of software and who wouldn’t like to have a cellphone with openoffice.org, or kontact sync, or that ios able to connect to google apps or more? i am sure this would help me to edit my presentations on the go win those times when my EeePC would be cumbersome (cumbersome? not a chance!)

Now, I am not saying this software is available yet but with some effort it should be no problem to port it to the cellphone.

For now I would say it is a very tempting alernative to the iPhone, yet I would like to see more, and that’s why I will try to get one of these ASAP.

To get more information about this: Visit Openmoko

Now any comments would be most welcome.

After waiting for my brother in law to get me an eee pc and not getting it (he could not find it in any store in miami, florida) I decided to search for any provider here in Colombia. After some searching I could contact Omar Berrio (www.omarberrio.com) who had a eeepc 701 black (I would have preferred the green one though). yet, after I got the money and sent it to him, I got my eee pc the following day (sure it was long time to wait :p).

No, ater having turned it on, which took me like 2 minutes from unpack to surfing the web, I could see how it worked, right now I am writing this from it, and I must say I am completely satisfied, everything works out of the box (wireless included), I am still getting used to the small keyboard, but it is not that difficult to use, it has its problems though:

1. small software repository – which sucks because I would like to use the gimp and or add neverputt
2. there is no chance to remove preinstalled packages – I am not really into chemistry and potato guy is definitively not for me
3. voice command could be customizable, so it recognized my sweet voice

Well, after some tinkering I know you can install some software, yet it would be great if you didn’t need to. Anyway, for serious work, this little piece of technology works like a charm, as it allows me to do my presentations, view pdf files, and surf the web (given that a decent wireless AP is around)

It is a shame that I cannot use skype, as I have an account but in here nobody uses it. I will try to have my sister to switch to it, so I can at last give a good use to my webcam

– Too cheap
– Portable :p

It all began with the OLPC XO. I knew about it, and I knew it was very, very cheap but the fact it would be available only for very poor countries made it a no no, I guess that if they acted serious then they would have gotten a good share of the market, not taking in account the systems obvious flaws, yet I would like to state what in my opinion are the pros and the cons of the system

The pros

– Wireless networking: this is a MUST for an ultraportable laptop, plus internet must be available to you nowadays, it became one of those things that became a necessity in our daily lives no matter if you are a CEO of a giant company or OLPC’s target audience
– Wireless mesh networking: This is a great feature and IMO it should be included in every laptop and every ultramobile around, whenever you cannot access your wireless point and you don’t have the time or the disposition to make some wardriving / warwalking, you could just mae a sall intranet to be browsed by all your friends (important in simultaneous work, this would have saved me a lot of trouble / floppy disk mayhem if this was available a few years back)
– 7,5 inches screen: Welll, the more screen space the merrier, actually it has one of the biggest displays available for cheap ultraportables which is a great plus
– Water/dustproof keyboard: You cannot imagine how delicate normal PCs/laptops are, so if you add some resistance to an ultraportable (which I guess is subjected to be deployed in a variety of harsh enviroments) well, we wil welcome it (remember as well that this ultraportable is targeted to children, and they sure know how to wreck delicate technology)
– Rotable screen: from the point of view of a poor university student who needs to do many presentations without a projector, this is heaven.
– Monochrome display option: this saves a lot of battery in those times you need to do a quick check on something in your laptop.
– Crank/Cord charging mechanism: Now that’s a cool idea, I really like the cord approach, it would be a lifesaver in those times when you don’t have a electric output available (classroom?, lights out?)

But my grandmother (R.I.P.) taught me that unfortunately the joy is never complete so…

The cons
– Software, which was mainly directed for those kids, with that selection it would not be very marketeable
– A redhat platafform, even if I respect the redhat devs, I should say that debian would have to be the way to go
– Not folders/files but the “journal” file structure, if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it I say
– 1 Gb of system disk: Wow, IMO that’s limited.
– The keyboard: is way to small

The veredict

Ths is a very nice machine, I would really like to have one in my hands so I could test its capabiities, I really give my ovation to Nicolas Negroponte, because we should remember he is doing this for charity, plus he is not getting any money from the project, and well, with limited resources he had pulled quite a trick. So overall it gets my positive review, yet this is one laptop I would not pay for.