Tag: Linux

More And More Linux Frustration

This is a rant born of frustration. I guess I’m looking for some sort of community consensus – not how I should solve my problem, but how the Open Source community should attack a real problem of usability.

In my heart of hearts, I so want to love Linux. But now, after months of trying, I’m wondering if I’m not ready for Linux, and more importantly, if Linux isn’t ready for me.

Some quick background. I took my last computer course in 1968 (that’s no typo). To my friends, I am tech support. My wife has watched me guide others through menu after menu, all while in bed, with my eyes closed. The computer I’m typing on was assembled by me from parts I specified. The one next to it has just received a motherboard/cpu transplant on my kitchen table.

I am not a technophobe. Still, Linux frustrates me in nearly every possible way.

Over the last week, since rebuilding my auxiliary computer, I have loaded and reloaded and reloaded again. My estimate is a dozen loads of 5 or 6 different flavors of Linux. Each of them similar. Each of them different.

I’m starting to get worried Comcast will flag me for overly taxing their system with all the iso’s I’ve scarfed up.

On some distributions my audio card is recognized. On others it’s not, or is only after some minor tweaking. On one (and I wish I could remember which one) my TV card plays. On others, it’s cryptic error messages – messages which make Microsoft’s error messages seem kind and gentle. On one distribution, the box for the TV is blank, but the rest of the screen is full of noise, which seems to be the disjointed TV video.

The only way to get the printer to work (it’s attached to an onboard print server on my router) is by first making believe it’s attached directly to this computer and then editing the file. Clever.

None of the Linux variants I’ve used knew what to do with the video system on my motherboard – though it’s far from esoteric. I am stuck with a generic VESA driver, which means my system is running slower than it should.

I have tried to fix all of these problems, but let me use the video problem as my example. Doing a Google search for the video chip (KM400 from Via) and Linux leads to some interesting suggestions. There are some that seem to be translated to English from Chinese, but not well enough that anyone speaking English could follow. Others originate in German, then English, and again something is lost in translation. Steps are missing or just hinted at. No two suggested remedies are exactly the same.

As I look through the Usenet responses, it’s tough not to pick up smart ass disdain from many of the cognoscenti! And, I expect to get some of that here.

One of the things that’s touted as a strength of Linux, and weakness of Windows, seems to be the opposite. Windows lives in a standard world. My Linux box does not. Will the Debian driver work in my Mandrake distribtution? Maybe, though probably not.

Does my 2.6 Kernel need different care and feeding than a 2.4? Seems like it. But, I don’t really know what a kernel is, much less why 2.4 and 2.6 eat different food.

My motherboard came with all the Windows drivers I’d need – none for Linux.

Will I have to compile a package? Can I? How do I do it?

I want this to work, yet I feel Linux is fighting me. The Linux community seems anxious for this to work… and at the same time it’s scared that their baby will go mainstream… afraid that someone will do to Linux what they perceive AOL did to the Internet!

I’m not going to give up. But, I am getting very frustrated – very. I can’t believe I am alone.

More Linux Indecision

My Linux computer is a non-critical device. There’s nothing on it I really need. Maybe some day, but not now.

That has given me the luxury to change distributions (the individual flavors of Linux) in much the same way Cher changes costumes during a performance. I would guess, by now, I’ve loaded and reloaded a dozen Linux configurations.

Mostly, I’ve moved back and forth between different versions of Mandrake and Red Hat. Last night I tried “Whiteboxlinux,” which is really Red Hat’s latest Enterprise edition, liberated from any of Red Hat’s licensing. In the world of open source, this is fine and legal.

I am starting to develop an affinity for Mandrake. Their methods of configuration are much more thorough and easily used than anyone else’s I’ve tried. That’s a big deal.

Do I know who I will stick with? No. Do I worry I’ve downloaded so much data that Comcast will come to me and ask me to cool it? Yes.

The one insurmountable problem I still face is getting Linux to load a drive for my particular video configuration. My motherboard has an integrated Via Unichrome KM-400 setup, which is esoteric enough that ‘generic’ drivers go in. The correct drivers would speed my system greatly. If I only knew how?

The chip maker, Via, has a site with instructions. Following those took me perilously close to crashing the whole thing.

The Penguin Strikes Back

I have been happily buzzing along with Red Hat 9 Linux on my ‘auxiliary’ computer. Everything works well, and I was pretty pleased… until earlier this evening:

Dear Red Hat Linux user,

We are approaching the published end of life date for errata support

for our final Red Hat Linux distribution. We’d like to remind you of

this date and the options available to you for migrating your Red Hat

Linux implementations: Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the Fedora Project.

Red Hat Linux 9 distribution will reach its end-of-life for errata

maintenance on April 30, 2004. This means that as of May 1, 2004

we will not be producing new security, bugfix, or enhancement updates

for this product.

There are a variety of options available for migration. Red Hat

offers Red Hat Enterprise Linux as well as the new Fedora Project.

Our Red Hat Linux Migration Resource Center can help you find the Red

Hat solution best suited for your needs:

http://www.redhat.com/solutions/migration/rhl/

The errata support policy, as well as our current errata and

advisories, are available from:

http://www.redhat.com/apps/support/errata/

–the Red Hat Network Team

Great!

Now I’ll have to choose again. I don’t want to be running a ‘dead’ distribution, because any security holes will remain just that… and that’s not acceptable.

I’m leaning toward Mandrake 10 Community, but am looking for any advice I can get. It’s very confusing. I think it’s time to reevaluate the ease of Linux use. This will be fodder for an entry in a few days.

The Penguin And Me

I am in love with the concept of Linux. It’s possible, at the very same time, I’m not in love with Linux itself. I have spent the last 2 days loading at least 10 different configurations of Linux onto the new ‘old computer.’

First, an explanation. Every time I mention Linux I see eyes glaze over. What is it? Why is it there?

Linux is an operating system. It is based on Unix, a wonderful operating system which (I think) was devised at Bell Labs a long, long time ago.

An operating system is what stands between you and your computer. It knows how to wake the computer when you apply power and it provides a handy set of commands and protocols to speak to the computer.

Like French, Spanish and English – each operating system can tell your computer meaningful things, but using different words. And, each operating system understands different words.

Programs meant to run on Windows do not run on Linux (this is a simplification, but the exceptions are really out of the norm right now). Obviously, the opposite is true as well.

So, why run Linux, when everyone else is running Windows?

Not only is Linux free, that is immediately evident. But Linux represents a different way of doing business. In its simplest form, anyone who uses the basic building blocks and adds to them for their own purposes, contributes those additions to all other users. Even without charging for the software, there’s a reasonable business in charging for technical expertise.

Most web servers are run on Linux. Many scientific applications run on Linux too. Google is either running on Linux or something closely related (I can’t remember at the moment).

My hope is to run Linux alongside my Windows machine and use it for utility purposes, including developing new pages for my website, and weather analysis using GrADS.

The problem is, in a somewhat anarchistic community, the various Linux flavors aren’t always compatible with one and another. Not only that, Linux is nowhere near as good as Windows in recognizing the hardware within your computer. So, it is hit and miss as to whether any particular Linux distribution will be able to do anything that another distribution can.

I started with Fedora Core 2. It is the latest rendition of what is the desktop successor to Red Hat Linux. Then Mandrake 10 Community. Later Fedora Core 1. Each time I configured my machine a slightly different way, loading some programs and excluding others.

None of the Linux variants could see and understand the video controller for my computer. I am running video, but not at the speeds I should be getting. Some of them saw my audio card – well, all of them saw it. They just didn’t see it in a way that would make it work. In some flavors of Linux I was easily able to switch to a working audio solution; though I know about the solution only through a lucky find while looking for something else.

All of things things would be fairly painless in Windows.

As I type this, I am loading Red Hat 9. It is an older distribution, one that Red Hat itself doesn’t support any more. There seems to be a lot of software that I want to run which is already packaged for this particular variant. I’m in the final stages, which means over 300 MB of fixes and updates, all of which were downloaded through my cable modem.

Sometime later tonight I will be finished. Hopefully, RH9 will be the answer to my prayers. Otherwise, it’s back to the drawing board and more installs.

One more thing. Here in the Fox household, Linux is referred to as “The Penguin.” That nickname is based on Tux, the Linux mascot, who is a penguin, of course.

Building a New PC – Almost

Why would anyone want three PCs at home? I’m not talking about the machines shared with my family. These are my computers. Granted, two of them are discards; computers deemed too slow by others.

I have done most of what I could to optimize these older machines. They’re loaded with memory and unnecessary processes are shut down. You still can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear, but you can get a lot closer than most people expect.

The laptop, a Pentium II 300 MHz model, is my road machine. It’s got a wireless card and is often downstairs in the family room (especially if I’m watching TV and playing poker). It is sometimes sluggish, but never enough to be a bother.

The second desktop is also a P-II 300. Well, it was until a few days ago.

I wondered if it would be possible to bring this machine into the 21st century without spending much cash. TigerDirect was having a sale where the net cost (after rebates) of a motherboard, fast processor chip with fan, and memory was only $99.99. I decided to give it a try.

It took about three days for UPS to deliver my package. Looking in the box, everything was there, in its original packaging. So far, so good.

Fearing the 256MB RAM stick that came with the kit wasn’t enough, I went to Staples and bought another 256MB. It was $30, after rebate, bringing me to $130.

What is missing in a deal like this is a great deal of documentation. There were no instructions with either the CPU chip (an AMD XP 2400) or the fan. There was a sticky label on the chip’s packaging saying, in essence, “you break it, too bad.”

Instructions don’t seem like a big deal, but mounting the fan isn’t totally intuitive and a thermal compound paste (included) has to be applied between the fan and chip.

My first step was unplugging the old motherboard, unscrewing and removing it from the case. No problem. It came out really easily.

Since the computer industry standardized motherboard sizes, my new ATX board should fit exactly where the old board sat. It did. A new plate fit between the case and motherboard, allowing the external plugs for video, audio, mouse and keyboard to be accessible. So far, so good.

Each individual peripheral, like a disk drive, has to be wired for both data and power. It sounds tougher than it is. There are distinctly sized plugs for each operation. It’s tough to go wrong, though it is possible if you’re not looking, to put some plugs in backwards.

The manual for the Soyo motherboard was well illustrated and easily led me to the right sockets on the board for all these cables. I did have to call AMD to try and figure out how to set an on-board jumper. I was on and off the phone in two minutes.

AMD, if you’re listening, I’m impressed.

It took a bit over an hour on the kitchen table before I was ready to plug it in. I lugged the case upstairs and plugged it into my KVM switch. KVM stands for keyboard, video, mouse. All it means is I can run two computers from one set of devices. Hitting the scroll lock key twice toggles my keyboard, mouse and monitor from one machine to the other. It’s pretty simple, saves space and lots of money.

The system started to power up, but the normal beep as it’s getting ready to go was replaced by a continuous tone for a few seconds and then… silence. The machine shut itself down.

Uh oh. I took a look at everything under the hood. Something had to be wrong. I didn’t see anything out of place. So, I went to Soyo’s website and searched out my problem.

Someone had described a similar outcome for another motherboard. It hinged on the safety circuitry not sensing the cooling fan on the computer chip. Sure enough, my fan was plugged into the wrong socket.

Though the fan was spinning, keeping things cool, the motherboard’s circuitry though it was just an extra fan, not the one necessary to keep the chip operating. I moved the plug and bingo, it booted.

I spent the next few hours going through a bunch of different operating systems, trying to decide what I wanted. I loaded Windows XP and two different flavors of Linux.

Since I was aiming to keep the cost down, I went with Linux. Specifically, it’s “Mandrake Linux 10 Community,” a close-to-production release. It’s free! I actually downloaded the installation disks the night before and burned them onto Cd’s. Unless you play games or run some very specific applications, Linux is fine. There are browsers, email programs, graphic design software, etc. Most of it them are free.

I find it a little more difficult to get answers to Linux questions, because I know fewer people who run it than Windows. But, I am constantly ‘mitchering’ with my machine, and that brings up situations most users wouldn’t get into.

I went to bed a happy man. My machine was humming along. This ugly duckling was now the fastest machine in the house. Life was good. And then, I woke up.

Hitting the power button brought nothing. No noise, no lights, nothing.

I had built this system in an old case with an older, weaker power supply. I can’t be sure, but my best estimation is the power supply was stressed with this new configuration. As it cooled, it broke down. A digital multimeter across the power pins showed no voltage anywhere.

My goal here was to keep costs down. Now, with the extra RAM, I was already $30 over my original cost. I could have spent $60 at CompUSA or Circuit City to get a new supply, but decided to log onto eBay and see what was available.

For $20, including shipping, I bought a 420 watt supply to replace the 230 watt model I’ve surely fried. It’s coming from California, so I’ll be without this machine for most of – maybe all – of the next week. My $100 machine is now $150.

Still, if the power supply is the problem, and if it boots up right away, this will be a great investment. For $150, a computer someone wanted to throw away, will be a screamer. And, I did it myself. It’s no big deal.

Modernizing My PC

I have two desktop PC’s in this room. The first – the one I’m typing on now – is a box I built myself after spending weeks pouring through every computer publication and website known to man. The other is an older, slower machine they were throwing away at work. It has hosted at least 10 different flavors of Windows and Linux and is constantly in a state a flux.

The CPU – the brains behind the computer – is an Intel Pentium II-300. By today’s standards, it’s old and slow. Here’s the dirty little secret – if all you’re doing is word processing and web browsing, it’s perfect.

Shh, don’t tell.

It is my auxiliary machine and I do use it a lot, sometimes for photos and video, so it would be nice if it were a little faster. Last night I found what I hope will be the solution to this problem.

Tiger Direct is advertising a motherboard/memory/CPU/cooling fan combo for $99.99. That’s an unbelievable deal and will give me a spare machine that’s faster than anything else here.

If you’re not a computer geek, a motherboard is the circuitry that ties together the computer chip (CPU) and everything else. Different motherboards have different functionality. This is pretty much a Swiss Army Knife, with video, audio, network connections and a host of other features right on the board. Previously, these demanded separate cards.

Usually, video on the motherboard isn’t my favorite way to go. It’s is often slower and less well thought out than stand alone video card which plug into a slot on the board. Since I’m not a game player, and video speed isn’t paramount, it’s a very small trade off.

This motherboard uses an AMD Athlon XP 2400+ CPU. When most people think of computer chips, they think Intel. This AMD is a virtual work alike. Other than cost (AMD is cheaper) I can’t see any difference – and I’ve been using AMD chips for years.

The plan is to remove the motherboard from the auxiliary machine and replace it with this one. The case, power supply and disk drives will remain the same. Everything should just plug in.

It really is very close to getting a brand new machine for $99.99. Of course that $99.99 is after rebates, but I’ll be diligent.

Earlier today, having already decided this would be a fun/good thing to do, I went to a local computer show in an elementary school gym. I couldn’t have matched this deal for less than twice the price.

This is a project I’m looking forward to. Ripping a computer apart and rebuilding it is something you don’t get to do every day. Hopefully, when it gets booted for the first time it will understand my angst and go right to work. Otherwise, I will be forced to threaten it with water. PC’s are scared of water.

Some Things Never Change

Every week I have a quiz in both of my Mississippi State University classes. Every third week, it’s a quiz and a test based on my homework.

The idea is, you do the homework every week as you watch the lecture and read the textbook. Yeah, right.

This precedent was set in the first grade back in 1956. I was cruising along in Miss Thompson’s class at P.S. 201. Even then I realized something catastrophic might happen. Maybe a meteor? Possibly the plague or dengue fever. Who can tell? Why do your work early? You might get off the hook – and it would all be in vain.

Last night I got home from work around midnight, washed up, had 2 cookies too many and went to my office. There was plenty of time to do the work, so I fired up the laptop and played a little poker while I answered emails and poked around on the desktop machine.

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this, but normally there are three PC’s in my office. Two are really dogs – old machines with limited resources that used to live elsewhere and were discarded by others for hotter models. The laptop and my homebuilt machine run Windows XP, the second desktop machine runs Mandrake Linux. Sometimes I’m on all three at once.

I played an $11 ‘sit and go’ no limit Hold’em tournament at Pokerstars. The cards were awful. I held on as long as I could, but only came in 4th – meaning I lost the $11.

It was around 1:30 AM when I started my school work. This semester I am taking Synoptic Meteorology and Satellite Meteorology.

The first quiz went very quickly. The first test slower. By the time I finished, everything, it was 6:20 AM – a terrible miscalculation.

Because these get graded at noon each Wednesday, I already know how I did – which was fine. That’s not the point.

Why do I continue to procrastinate? What is it within me (and it’s been inherited by my daughter) that wants to put everything off until the last minute? It’s not like it wasn’t going to be done. Doing it – doing it well – was a given.

I’ll probably never learn my lesson. I just want to learn my reasoning.

Who Is Your Tech Support?

A few years ago, my friend Kevin gave me a bumper sticker, “Friends Don’t Let Friends Do Tech Support.” Yet that’s what home computing today is built on.

Try getting support from someone who sold you hardware or software and you’ll find you’re the last person they want to hear from. Have you ever tried to get in touch with Microsoft?

To much of my family and many of my friends, I am tech support. Don’t understand what’s wrong, call Geoff. That’s good and I enjoy it… though it seems a shame that the company’s responsible aren’t carrying their own weight in this regard.

Who do I go to? For Linux and OS related problems, it’s my friend Bob in Florida. For Windows and hardware related problems (and, thankfully, I seldom have software problems I can’t solve on my own), I go to my friend Kevin.

I saw Kevin tonight.

This afternoon, as I was attempting to print 25 sheets of something for Helaine, the Epson Stylus Photo 785EPX connected to Steffie’s computer (but which I print to through our home network) decided to ingest about 25 sheets at once. As the paper jammed into a space much smaller than it could be compressed, the printer started to whine. Gears meshed. It wouldn’t stop. I swear the printer was crying.

I unplugged the it and removed the paper without much problem. But, when I turned the printer back on, I got a paper jam error message. Uh oh. I absolutely knew there was no paper there because the sheets that had been caught had come out whole, though somewhat creased.

After scouting around the net, I realized it was probably the paper jam sensor, not a jam itself. Three choices, new printer, printer service (at most of the cost of a new printer) or do it myself. I didn’t have much choice but the latter.

Being technically inept when it comes to mechanics, I called Kevin on the phone and asked real nice. There was never a question, because Kevin’s the kind of guy who would give you the shirt off his back and because he really enjoys the challenge of fixing something that’s not really built to be fixed.

I am so upset I didn’t bring the camera, because this printer is a mechanical work of art. As you peel away the layers of a mechanical system, you can quickly see how much thought went into doing it right. The cable runs were neatly held in place by guides. Most terminated in nicely keyed plugs. A few didn’t have plugs but seemed to end with exposed connectors and were stiff enough to insert cleanly in sockets.

The cover came off fairly easily. That didn’t get us to the problem. Next, a rear assembly which drives the paper as it is pushed into the path. Kevin saw this mechanical marvel intuitively and was immediately able to know how it worked and why everything was where it was. There were a few times when I pointed the way, but mostly it was Kevin.

The ability to see how something works is a gift. I think I have it as far as software is concerned. I can look at a program or even look at its code and understand what the programmer was trying to do. Kevin can do that too, and take it one step further by understanding hardware.

The problem was a tiny lever which was supposed to be held taught with a smaller spring. The lever blocked a light sensor from seeing an LED. That’s how it knew if the path was blocked by a paper jam. But, the spring, held by tension alone, had disconnected from the lever.

It required removing three separate assemblies and then, putting them back together. On the first try a cam wasn’t set right. The printer powered up to the sound of plastic gears gnashing. Kevin and I looked at each other. This could be the end of the repair.

We quickly figured out what the cam was supposed to do and where it should be on power up. Bingo! The printer fired up quietly and the indicator for a printer jam stayed dark.

Because we didn’t have the drivers for the printer, that’s as far as testing has gone until right now.

I’m going to plug it into the computer.

The computer has recognized it and is loading the drivers. Success. Now, to print.

Wow. No smoke and a perfectly executed print job.

Kevin would be a great friend even if he couldn’t fix anything. But, he can.

What I’ve Been Up To At Work

The past few weeks have been spent getting ready to use some new equipment at work. Our very dependable, SGI based, Liveline Genesis system has been replaced by Weather Central’s :Live.

Actually, replaced is not a good word, because :Live is really an add-on which extends the system. We’re still producing some graphics in Genesis but it now it doesn’t go on-the-air.

The SGI system we were using has to be at least 10 years old. These systems run slow by today’s standards. Our hard drive was only 4 GB! From time-to-time I had to go in an mercilessly blow out perfectly fine work created by the other guys in the weather department because we just didn’t have enough room.

Computers and homes are very similar in that you can never have too much closet space. And, of course, the hard disk is the closet of computing.

The problems with the SGI system were legion. It never handled the look of fonts correctly. Its interface, developed in he dark ages of computing, was anti-intuitive and often different in different parts of the system. It took long amounts of time to render animated segments, like a satellite loop or fly through, before they could be shown on TV.

On the other hand, it was nearly bulletproof. The system hardly ever crashed or locked up.

Because the SGI system was based on the Irix operating system, from time-to-time you’d have to delve into the **ix environment to attack a problem. It is a bit scary to do, because it is so foreign to most computer users. Over the years, as I have become more conversant in Linux, another **ix language, Irix has become more understandable.

Every time I have a problem, and work with one of Weather Central’s tech support people, I wonder how they do this with computerphobes? Often we can skip the first 5 or 6 steps. Imagine trying to describe this obtuse text oriented operating system over the phone!

The new :Live system allows us to show animations with no rendering time (though files still have to load from the hard drive to memory, which does take some time). It also integrates multiple layers of animation and still images, which makes it much more flexible. The most interesting part is the ability to stand in front of my green chroma key wall and use my finger as a mouse, drawing or placing objects on the TV screen in real time (or :Live, I suppose).

Right out of the box, it looked much sharper, cleaner and modern than what we had been doing. Simple things, like forecast pages, now run with animated backgrounds. Maps and icons look crisp. The satellite imagery is a little blockier and pixelated than what we were using, especially when viewed at a regional or tighter level.

Because the commands to create each graphic element are programmed in quasi plain text, I have started to write some new ‘scenes’ to suit our needs.

The downside is, this is a Windows based system – Windows 2000 to be exact. It has crashed more than once. So far, not while on-the-air, but awfully close. It also seems to have memory leak problems, not a surprise in a Windows environment. That means, if you run a sequence through, to check it out, you may be pushing the car closer to the edge of the cliff with each mouse click.

I already see some changes I’d like added to the system, which is probably a blessing and curse to those who designed it. I will help them make it better, but probably at the cost of being a pain in the ass.

At the same time we added :Live, we’ve also begun running our own, locally produced, high resolution, computer forecast model. I’ll get into that later.

Spam Mail From Some Flounder?

I have noticed a new trend recently. Some of my spam is non-English!

Xenophobic? Not exactly… well, sort of. The web runs mostly in English, and since this is where the “money * people” equation gives the highest result, it is where commercial email is aimed.

Over the past few days I’ve received email with Chinese characters (which my Linux machine does a better job with than my Windows machine) and today Russian. Granted, because I’m using popfile, and because I seldom see anything but the subject of my spam mail, this might have been going on for a while without my noticing.

The Russian mail looked interesting, with a photo of a man and well formatted Cyrillic text. I ran it through Babelfish to get the general idea.

Уважаемые избиратели!

Не верьте клевете в адрес партии Яблока. Это происки Кремля и дельцов из СПС. Демократическая партия Яблока была есть и будет последовательной в своих действиях. Это не всем нравится, но мы будем продолжать борьбу. Я призываю Вас отдать свои голоса именно Яблоку и кандидатам от Яблока, для того чтобы не допустить в думу оплаченных депутатов от партии Кремля.

Мы заранее приносим извинение за то что воспользовались таким способом информирования. Но Россия как никогда сейчас в опасноси и мы будем надеяться на взаимопонимание с стороны наших избирателей.

Ваш Сергей Митрохин,

Заместитель председателя Российской Демократической партии “Яблоко”

Сергей Митрохин зампред партии “ЯБЛОКО” обращается в прокуратуру и в ЦИК по поводу клеветы в СМИ.

Российская демократическая партия “ЯБЛОКО” направила в Центральную избирательную комиссию и в прокуратуру обращения по факту клеветы депутата Госдумы Леонида Маевского и по фактам нарушений предвыборного законодательства в ряде российских СМИ.

Генеральному прокурору РФ Владимиру Устинову направлено заявление о возбуждении уголовного дела в отношении Л. Маевского, распространявшего в своем выступлении на радиостанции “Эхо Москвы” заведомо ложные сведения, порочащие честь и достоинство руководителей и членов “ЯБЛОКА”. Л. Маевский утверждал, что члены партии и ее руководители оказывали содействие и поддержку незаконным бандформированиям и чеченским террористам. В частности, Л. Маевский сказал, что некоторые из участников бандформирований являются членами “ЯБЛОКА” и помощниками депутата Сергея Митрохина.

РДП “ЯБЛОКО” обращается также в Московскую прокуратуру с просьбой возбудить уголовное дело в отношении главного редактора газеты “Жизнь” и журналиста этого издания А.Попова за распространение аналогичной дезинформации. В заявлении также сказано, что редакция газеты “Жизнь” “неоднократно размещала

The End of the Hobby Era In Computing?

The lead story on Extreme Tech is all about building a computer. Build It: A Speedy PC For $800

I’m certainly not adverse to building a computer. The PC this is being typed on was assembled right here on my office floor from parts I specified. It does everything I designed it to do (though it has incredibly noisy fans to remove its internal heat, and I wish I would have designed that out). And, as a bonus, it actually worked when I plugged it in!

The question is why build… and even if you want to, how much longer will that be possible?

My computer was built to edit video. To that end, I threw in the ATI All-In-Wonder 8500DV video card (on which the DV “Firewire” connection never did work) and a Soyo motherboard with built-in RAID (two disk drives act as one for the faster service necessary for video). The on-board audio conflicts with the video card, meaning I then had to go get another audio card.

It was a great learning experience, but today you can buy machines off the shelf that do the same thing. And, increases in processor speed cover a variety of sins. So a machine not totally optimized for video will still do fine because everything else is so much faster and the disk drives are so much larger.

As I was passing by Home Shopping Network earlier today, they were selling a Gateway PC (I am not a fan of any particular brand. All major computer manufactures are just putting together other people’s parts.) with 17″ monitor and printer for under $1200. The CPU on their machine is better than twice as fast as mine! If you’re interested, here are the specs.

It’s tough to build when a speedy machine, pre-assembled, sells for a price like that.

For hobbyists, like me, there will always be the allure of building the ‘perfect’ screaming machine. But, I suspect within the next few years that won’t be possible either.

I remember in high school, a friend of mine bough a Model “A” Ford and restored it to running condition by hand. What he couldn’t get, he modified. Now, there’s hardly anything on a car you can fix or modify on your own.

Computers are going in that same direction. There are a number of reasons, but the most significant seems to be intellectual property rights. My computer is capable of copying DVDs… even copy protected DVDs. I can do all sorts of other things that upsets other rights holders too!

Just as printer manufacturers have added chips to try and thwart aftermarket ink cartridge manufacturers, PCs will be ‘smarter’ (really more restrictive) in what they let you do. The quaint concept of ‘fair use’ will go out the window, because manufacturers now understand how easily their hard work is ripped off.

Will future versions of Windows be built so it only works with ‘trusted’ hardware and software that can be more closely controlled? My opinion is, yes. Sure, a computer could be run on Linux or some yet-to-be-designed operating system, but that would deprive you of much of what’s available today.

I’m not sure where the ‘sweet spot’ is, balancing the rights of those who produce with the rights of those who use. I suspect that PC’s wouldn’t be where they are today… capable of doing what they do… if the restrictions to come had existed earlier.

Continue reading “The End of the Hobby Era In Computing?”

Slashdot – The Geek I Am

I love slashdot.org. It’s the website with the slogan: “News for Nerds. Stuff that matters.”&#135 There’s lots of attitude… maybe too much attitude at times. There’s certainly a lot of Bill Gates – bad; RIAA – bad; Big Government – bad; Linux – good.

Linus Torvalds, the Linux founder and gatekeeper, is worshiped with the ferver normally reserved Britney Spears or (until this past week) Michael Jackson.

To my friends and relatives I am a computer expert; the guy who’s called upon to provide tech support. On slashdot I’m way below the median in tech knowledge… way below.

What makes slashdot so interesting, and what is difficult to figure out when you look at the site, is that each subject gets about the same amount of space for easily accessible comments (with a little effort, everything is there). It is the vote or moderation of members that decides what stays and what is shuffled off to the back shelves.

So, as subjects get more comments, it is more likely that they will be interesting on-topic comments, and the off topic stuff and flamebait will disappear. It’s pretty ingenious and only works because of the huge size of slashdot’s audience.

In fact, when small websites mentioned on slashdot get swamped with browsers, it’s called being slashdotted.

Though moderation is the major arbiter of whether your comments stay or go, there is also the matter of “karma.” Karma is given based on how your previous postings were moderated, and whether you’ve submitted articles (usually just links to articles published elsewhere) that were added to slashdot itself.

Here’s how I’ve done:

2002-09-18 18:18:54 NYTimes endorses Open Source and Linux. Yes, endo (articles,news) (rejected)

2003-01-22 04:38:06 Earthquake data (articles,news) (accepted)

2003-08-20 18:38:39 If you know… how can you stop it? (askslashdot,tech) (rejected)

2003-09-25 03:12:13 Do geeks really need planes to fly? (articles,hardware) (rejected)

2003-10-02 06:41:07 Experience one hour in only thirty minutes (articles,games) (accepted)

2003-10-24 04:37:54 AOL tweaking users computers… and not telling (articles,spam) (accepted)

2003-10-24 07:17:56 Here Comes the Sun(spots) – they’re huge (radio,science) (rejected)

2003-10-29 08:10:39 Fire photos – amateurs as the new chroniclers (articles,media) (rejected)

2003-11-03 01:58:19 Is this the future of TV? (developers,tv) (rejected)

2003-11-19 22:37:35 Bill Gates and the Nightclub Video (articles,windows) (rejected)

2003-11-23 20:27:55 Synthesized Singers (articles,music) (accepted)

That’s 4 accepted of 11 received. I would complain, but to quote slashdot, “Note: grousing about rejected submissions is Offtopic and usually gets moderated that way. It happens, don’t take it personally.”

&#135 – Why Nerds is spelled with a capital “N” is beyond me. It’s not a proper noun, it should be “n.”

The Geek In Me Speaks – VI

Here’s the status as I get ready for bed. Mandrake Linux is up and running. The laptop has no sound. There is neither Java or Flash with the browser. The wireless LAN is perfect, though I have no idea where I administer it from. I haven’t tried a wired NIC card yet. Printing over the network to my laser printer works.

I have lost both my taskbar and icons. The icons were part of a bug that I may have fixed. I followed info on Mandrake’s knowledge base. I have no idea why the taskbar disappeared, but not having it makes it difficult to do anything… including reboot. Once I did that, the taskbar was back.

I have installed OpenOffice, Gaim and Mozilla – none of which seemed to come with the distribution natively.

I hope this isn’t too boring.

The Geek In Me Speaks – IV

Overnight, I downloaded the Mandrake Linux distribution. It was around 1gb!

Today, when I went to burn the three ISO files onto CD-R’s, I noticed two were bigger than the CD-R capacity of 700 mb. That couldn’t be? So, I burned away and made five coasters before realizing something was dreadfully wrong.

I posted on Usenet, looking for a solution, and was told I was doing something wrong. After resetting a number of the parameters I’ve never needed to touch in Nero (my CD burning software) and telling the program it was OK to overburn, or put more that the stated capacity on a disk, the ISO’s took.

Now, to install them on the laptop.

I booted from the CD, saw the first screens and then… failure. Mandrake’s installation program told me it wasn’t seeing my CDROM player. Of course it saw the player to get this far, otherwise it wouldn’t know to tell me it couldn’t see it now.

In a situation like this, you’re on your own. So, I went to the Mandrake site, and started searching for my model of laptop. Sure enough, there was a string of messages with the same exact problem and a fix!

Just add a switch with the boot that said ide=nodma (I believe this means the drives don’t use direct memory access, meaning they’re older/slower). But, how does one add a switch? I tried a few different tacts until it finally took.

As far as I can tell, Mandrake is installing. I know it was clueless to my Robanton wireless networking card. I sort of expected that. Supposedly, it will sense other cards as they’re plugged in and install them on the fly, automatically. Sure – whatever.

I am persevering because I’m pigheaded. What I’m experiencing is totally unacceptable if Linux is to become mainstream.

The Geek In Me Speaks – III

Got RedHat 9.0 working on the laptop. It runs like a pig! Contrary to what Linux zealots say, this configuration needs more horsepower than Windows 98 on the same machine.

I was able to get the wired network card working, but not the wireless. Configuring the printer was fairly simple after looking at instructions by the router manufacturer that were intended to get things installed with XP.

While I sleep, I am downloading Mandrake 9.2. From their website, this looks like a promising distribution. But, of course, the proof is in the using.

A very nice blog reader offered my Lindows. I’ve read some very good things about Lindows, but for now, I’ll remain a purist with Linux.