A Home in Gnome

Well, I just finished installing openSUSE 11 on my computer (well, I still have some issues to tie up, like wi-fi ... ugg ...) - contrary to my usual practice, I installed it with the Gnome desktop environment instead of KDE. My reason was that openSUSE is shipping with KDE 4.0 at the moment (and 3.5, but I want 4 sometime, and it seems like it would just be a hassle to try and upgrade a major version in place), and from what I've heard, though openSUSE has one of the best implementations of KDE 4, its still a bit point-oh in its feature support, and in its applications being updated for it, etc. - my plan is to wait for openSUSE to package up 4.1 before going back to KDE, so, in the meantime, I'm using Gnome. (Why didn't I just wait untill December and get 11.1, you ask? - my package management was completely borked on my previous install, and openSUSE 11 has big updates there) - It has been a bit of an adjustment making a home in Gnome (much more fun than making a home in my new apartment, which is still not quite unpacked :-) ), but my initial impressions are quite positive. - I use Firefox for web browsing, and Thunderbird for email, so that was no change (by the way, there is a great extension for Firefox called FEBE - it backs up and restores all your profile settings - the UI stinks, but I was able to transfer my Firefox over with much less hassle than re-downloading and configuring all my extensions). I've been using Pidgin instead of Kopete for IM, which I actually really like - the UI has a lot of the things I liked from the Google Talk desktop client (my first experience with IM) - its clean, well laid out, and provides exactly enough information). For a music player, Rhythmbox is doing a passable job - I don't like it quite as well as Amarok, but it has promise - the music selection and queueing interface seems a bit like a cross between Amarok's playlist-based model and iTunes search-based model. For a terminal, I've been using Tilda (as opposed to Yakuake on KDE) - both are basically hotkey based terminal emulators, and support tabs - Yakuake does it a bit more prettily, but no big differences. For other software, OpenOffice is, as always, my office suite (tab completion rocks!), but I've added TexMaker this year (you try taking set theory notes in OOoWriter, and trying to inseart a union symbol all the time - LaTeX rocks for that, and TexMaker is a good editor (you can get it for Windows too)). Anyway, if any of you have fuel for a Gnome vs. KDE flame war, feel free to toss it at me, and if you have any suggestions for good Gnome apps, I'd love to hear that too (especially if anyone knows of a graphical Go game - I'd like to learn to play, and computers are good for that).

Really Awesome Wicked Cool

For those of you that haven't heard yet, Google is coming out with a new web browser, and it looks beautiful. Google Chrome [link very well may be broken, but this is supposed to be the official site] is set to release Thursday - its open source, based on Webkit (the same rendering engine that powers Safari - its open source, standards compliant, and, as it is in Safari, gets enough developer love that it works well on the majority of web sites), has an entirely new JavaScript engine (called V8 - its supposed to be super-fast, so we'll see), Google Gears offline integration, and some really neat under the hood stuff, that they've explained in a comic [link has been intermittently down due to slashdot effect - try refreshing in a few minutes] (you'll get most of it if you're reasonably familiar with some programming/system administration concepts). The beta coming out Thursday is for Windows only :-( but they're apparently hard at work on Mac and Linux versions (I hope they actually use the native interface widgets, instead of their own separate theming engine, a la Firefox ... I mean, Firefox is pretty enough, but it doesn't really match the desktop ... (and in that case, I hope they do both a KDE and GTK version for Linux ... that would be really sweet ...))

So my grandparents are on facebook ...

Yes, that's right, my grandparents have a joint account on Facebook. Its either become mainstream and permanent, or rung its death knell. Rather shocked ...

MSN is terrible (a rant on IM tech in general)

I have come to the conclusion that the MSN Messenger protocol is terrible. This because there is not a single implementation of it that works nearly as well as any implementation of the competing protocols - even Windows Live Messenger drops the connection or fails to sign in sometimes, and that comes straight from the source. (Incidentally, meebo.com (which is pretty much text-only) is fairly good - its been a while since I tried Trillian, but I don't remember any problems with it either (though it is also limited in feature set)). I've tried aMSN - it's got the same problems, but worse. Kopete, my primary messaging program, logs into my GTalk and AIM accounts almost instantly, but usually requires two or three pushes to log into MSN (and even then, takes a few seconds). Now, considering these experiences, I put the blame for flaky MSN performance on the actual protocol - admittedly, AIM and Jabber (GTalk's base) are more open, so external developers will have an easier time implementing them, but the fact that even the official Microsoft client is flaky lends support to my theory that the fault is in the protocol.
Why does this matter, you ask? I live in Canada - the most common messaging protocol in Canada? MSN. The solution: Microsoft does one of their major updates, that forces everyone to move to the new messenger, or not be able to talk to anyone (it has happened) - this update will include a backend update to a completely new protocol. Base it off something like Jabber (which is open-source, and stable), and open-source the extensions they add to it to support all their features. This should give them a stable base to work from. Also, work with Google - make it interoperate with GTalk (also Jabber based) (IM should be like email or the phone system - any vendor's product can talk to any others - this would be a step in the right direction). (Incidentally, I haven't used it for a while, but I loved the UI on the Google Talk desktop client - if they released a Linux version that could talk to MSN, I'd ditch Kopete in a second).
Anyway, that's what I want to see in IM tech - anyone else have anything they wish Microsoft (or AOL, Yahoo, or Google) would do?

Ninety-six Percent

A quote on Vista SP1, from All About Microsoft:

Ninety-six percent of new system runing Vista have all their drivers just working out of the box.

What about the other four percent? These are new systems.

Update

Hi all - you may be wondering about the change of look - I just figured it was time for an update to the look of my blog - I know its one of the Blogger standard templates, but I think it looks pretty sharp. Ciao

Content for free

As some of you may know, Dilbert.com has done a major redesign, every day's comics in color, animations, all sorts of jazz. What you may not know is they're now giving away content for free - the days comic, the entire archive, on a site with no ads. Now, this is not the main Dilbert site - they are not advertising this (though Scott Adams mentioned it in his blog). But, if you go to www.dilbert.com/fast - you'll see a simple site with the comic, an archive, some nav links, and nothing else, not even ads - content for free, from a major syndicate no less - go quickly, before they figure it out :-).

Messages from the future

You know, if I could get a message from myself, twenty years in the future, and it told me that I never owned a car - I'd believe it, I think. (Providing the message from my future self could authenticate its sender reliably - I strongly doubt the feasibility of time travel) - But about the car - I wouldn't mind owning a car, I have my license, I like driving, and I fully expect to own one at some future date - but I wouldn't be surprised if I never owned one. Back home, I could always borrow my parents - living in a university town, foot and public transit suffice to get me around - a car just isn't worth the expenditure. I can see that not changing though - gas is only getting more expensive - unless a viable alternative to petroleum-fueled internal combustion engines emerges, owning a personal automobile will soon become infeasibly expensive. Its going to make changes - one of which will be the fall of the small automobile - better dust off your bicycle helmets.

Smells like Microsoft

News came out this week that Apple is using its iTunes software update to push their Safari web browser out to Windows users. You can, of course, opt out, but that's not the point. This is just another example of Apple trying to use its music player monopoly to leverage in on other markets. Buying an iPod basically forces you to use iTunes - that is sketchy to begin with. But using iTunes to push out unrelated software - you just shouldn't do that. The Mozilla CEO compared it to malware distribution techniques, and I'd have to agree. There's a good comment stream here.

A few political notes

So, just quickly, American presidential race - I still want Obama to win, he's got a lot of momentum, and there's rumblings about Hillary's race being in trouble. On the Republican side, McCain has it pretty much wrapped up, though Huckabee is staying in it. The Democrats are going to win the election anyway.

On the Canadian front, the election rumblings are dying down, as the Liberals and Tories have made a deal on Afghanistan pull out. It's not set in stone yet, but its looking good. What I think more interesting, is that, in a recent poll, the Greens are polling even with the NDP - I'd like to see them win some seats in the coming election, and I think they may be able to manage it. (The Conservatives are near majority-government level support - not a bad thing - Harper is competent, and has done a good job as PM)

Peace

Reaction: Microsoft's new open-source pledge

So, Microsoft is giving am bunch of stuff away for free - firstly, free development software for students - Visual Studio Pro, SQL Server Enterprise, etc. As a student myself, this is pretty shiny - not sure if I'll take them up on their offer - not much into .NET, and mySQL has got some decent DB software (I like Linux better anyway - really, for anything but .NET, Linux is a better devel environment) - but its nice to know I've got the option. The only kicker I see there is once I graduate, said multi-hundred dollar pieces of software will cease to be free, and if I end up using it, I'll be stuck with old versions.

Other news: Microsoft is making big openness pledge - its opening up API's for many of their big money products, and letting plugins into Office to use other file formats. Now, commentators are flaming Microsoft for this being a low business ploy - the Office announcement came one day before they were being evaluated for (highly lucrative) open source accreditation on their Office Open XML file formats, and the APIs are free only for non-commercial use. Now, Stephen J. Vaughan-Nichols (who, I gotta say, is a bit of a FOSS zealot) said "Microsoft isn't offering open source a new opportunity, it's offering open source a trap." I wouldn't go that far - sure, that means that any commercial open source companies will have to licence Microsoft's technology - I say that's fair - open source is all well and good, but MS has a right to make money on their work. I predict the commercial companies will license APIs for better compatibility, some of that might trickle down to non-commercial implementations. But, overall, Linux, etc. will play better with Windows, etc. but things aren't really going to change - Microsoft will still spew FUD, the FOSS ecosystem will still have flaky and/or hacked integration with the MS ecosystem, and, in general, things won't be different.

This has been long, so, later.

Movie Review - Juno

So, I went and saw Juno a couple days back. I'd categorize it as a quirky romantic comedy about an unfunny subject, teenage pregnancy. Which, I must say, they treat well - without going into specifics, a lot of how things work out in the movie seems believable and more real-world than happy-movie-world. Also, the film is really funny. The style of humor is sarcastic, and relies heavily on odd, funny words and phrases (which is a good thing) (the sequence near the beginning where The Office's Rainn Wilson plays a convenience store cashier is especially good). The entire theatre (moderately well filled for a Friday evening) laughed out loud at multiple points. So, bottom line, the characters were quirky, but believable - you could see them inhabiting your own neighbourhood. The writing was funny, but still treated its less funny subject matter with some gravity. It was funky and funny and good. 3 1/2 stars out of 4.

Election Update - Iowa

Well, as some of you may have heard, Obama and Huckabee won the Iowa caucuses by a significant margin. I haven't really heard enough about the Republican field to decide who I would rather win (but have no real impact on, as I'm not American ...). Huckabee doesn't seem any worse than any of the others (he was a Baptist minister at one time), but the Republican candidate isn't going to win anyway (and pundits more professional than myself are saying that Huckabee's Iowa win isn't all that significant - lots of Baptists there). Obama's win in Iowa is more encouraging - his message is one of unity, and co-operation - something American government sorely needs after the previous administration's polarizing election tactics. Also, relieving my earlier doubts somewhat, Iowa is primarily white, yet Obama won as a black man - perhaps race won't be as big of an issue as I feared. In any case, it was a major boost for his campaign, and a hit to Clinton's and Edwards', the strongest of the other candidates. Anyway, though an election I could actually vote in would be more interesting ... this one's not bad. Later.

Completely off message

I saw this article, titled "Google Looks to Tech that Recognizes Text in Images" and immediately thought "circumvention of CAPTCHA systems" (the wonky security text). Of course, the press release talks about reading street signs from Google Maps Street View, etc. It must be a computer science thing - seeing a system, and immediately thinking how to break/corrupt it - finding the extreme cases (useful, of course, for making software more stable). Any other computer scientists agree/disagree? (yes, I've come to terms with the term "computer scientist" - it isn't so bad as I thought it was at first ...)

Bigger News

In case you haven't heard, the RIAA is now suing people for ripping legally purchased CDs. That's right - if the RIAA has its way, you won't be able to listen to your own music on your computer, mp3 player, etc. Now, I believe in fair use - you buy a copy of some media, say a song, and you should have license and legal right to play it on any and all playback device you own. It is yours, for your personal use. If buying a CD only gives you rights to play that CD in some CD player, its way overpriced - the actual disc and packaging can't cost more than a buck or two to produce. Watch this carefully - the recording industry is just trying to suck the money out of your pockets.

Small News

If any of you use iGoogle, they've updated their theme selection - there still isn't a good selection of styles, but there are more options now (the Solar System theme looks neat). Ciao.

Presidential Prognostications '08

Well, just because I like to, I'm going to sit down in my armchair and put on my political analyst hat. What I'm thinking about is the American Presidential election of next year (a subject which I, admittedly, know not very much about, not being American - then again, I also have a more objective outside perspective ...). For starters, the Republicans are sunk. Bush and Cheney have wrecked their support, and I think it would be very hard for any Republican candidate to win. That said, I think Fred Thompson has the best shot of any of the Republican Presidential candidates - never underestimate the Schwarzenegger effect - Thompson played a very presidential figure on TV, and has actual Senate experience ... In the Democratic race, I predict Hillary will win, but would rather see Obama take it. Clinton is a polarizing figure, while Obama seems to have a more co-operative style of leadership. Of the candidates, from both parties, I'd most like to see him in the White House next year. I think that's unlikely however. We like to think we've moved beyond race as a society, but America, especially, has fought a war over it, and had all sort of historical racial stressors. That sort of thing stays in a society, and is not easily gotten over (just look at English and French in Canada - and we haven't been at open war for centuries). I don't think America will elect a black President (though they should). So, my current prediction: The Democratic candidate, likely Hillary Clinton, will be POTUS this time next year. I'll keep you posted (as we may not have a Canadian federal election to keep me occupied until 2009 ...).

Christmas Break

Today's xkcd is super neat, and really captures the experience of going home for the holidays. (if you don't read xkcd, you should, its only the greatest webcomic in the 'verse (and no, it has nothing to do with Firefly (but if the author saw it, I expect he'd be a fan (I just love nested parentheses :-) )))) Just last night, I was at a friend's family's Christmas party, helping him get some stuff running on his new Kubuntu installation - we were in the middle of trying to get DVD playback running when I heard his parents cleaning up upstairs (it was about 11 at this point) and figured I'd better leave - you forget at university, when having friends over that late or later isn't terribly abnormal, that your parents' generation tends to leave at 9 or 10. Anyway, Merry Christmas all, and a Happy New Year.

I have something in common with Bill Gates!

Its a somewhat little known fact that Bill Gates full name is William Henry Gates III. I was curious as to exactly which of his ancestors were William Gates Sr. and Jr. A short trip to Wikipedia later, and now I know. His father, William Gates Sr., was born William Gates III. When he joined the Army to fight in WW II, he changed his name to William Gates Jr., to avoid elitism. Later, when his son became really famous, he again changed his name, to William Gates Sr. (neat, eh? - he was all three). More sanely, his father and grandfather were born William Gates Jr. and Sr., respectively. Since the third William Gates had dropped his 'III', Bill Gates (of Microsoft) got the 'III' suffix instead of 'IV', and is nicknamed "Trey" (for "three") within his family. But still, Bill Gates is (unofficially) a "IV", as am I, BruceIV. Confusing, but cool.

Why is Gmail still in beta?

So, why is Gmail still in beta? Its a mature product. They've just come out with a "new version" with some substantial interface updates (these are being phased in, but fairly quickly) - for anything else, they'd call it version 2.0 - even for a web app, this whole beta thing is ridiculous. A quick check of Wikipedia reveals that it has been out since April 2004, and open to the entire public since February of this year. (which might explain the periodic "Google outages" I suffered last winter - that and YouTube must have put a strain on even Google's servers). Gmail is offered as part of a paid service (Google Apps). Anyway, the entire point of this is, it is ridiculous on multiple levels that Gmail is still in beta. Google, take the silly tag off the graphic, and have a grand unveiling. My two cents for today.