Microsoft has a new ad that’s basic point is, “PCs are cheaper and more plentiful than Macs.” It features a girl, Lauren, who goes computer shopping, can’t afford a Mac, and is pleasantly dazed by the selection at a local BestBuy, ending up with a $700 HP Pavilion.

I agree (although I’d like to point out that PCs minus Windows plus Linux would be even cheaper).

But now a Mac Fanboy to the nth Power is offering Lauren his MacBook, free of charge,
saying, ” My only concern is that I feel the computer “Lauren” chose will not provide an overall positive experience.”

I’m afraid of that too–the software on Lauren’s computer probably won’t “provide an overall positive experience.” And I, as the resident Linux fanboy, am willing to change that. So I’m offering to send Lauren two CDs: Ubuntu 8.10, and Kubuntu 8.10. If she does the right thing, that computer will last her until it disintegrates, and will remain as fast and satisfactory as ever. And on that day when it does disintegrate, a new one will only cost a few hundred dollars.

My own experience has led me to believe that Linux is as good, if not better, than Mac OS X for the majority of the population, so I’m sure Lauren will be a happy camper. And for all the Mac fanboys about to slit my throat, I have a challenge: Explain to me why Mac OS X is $500 better than Ubuntu*, or loan/give me a Mac to try and convert me. I promise I won’t install Linux on it.

—-

* Yes, Ubuntu. No more “I don’t like RPMs,” or “Fedora in the ’90s was awful.” Ubuntu.

Twitter caused a bit of a brouhaha last November when they replaced their infamous fail whale with a…caterpillar.

They took note though, and now the fail whale’s back. Which is nice–he’s much cooler than some invertebrate, but I’m also sorry Twitter’s down. It should be back up soon though…I hope. Edit: It’s a bit spotty now–alternating between showing the page very slowly, or giving me the fail whale again.

Today, David Pogue (the NYTimes tech columnist) posted this on Twitter–a request for a program that would write the time every thirty seconds until the battery powering it died.

I rose to the challenge and wrote this, in Python:

'''
Copyright 2009 by Timmy Macdonald <timmy@tsmacdonald.com>
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software
Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later
version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS
FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses>.
'''
import time as t
f = file('battlog.txt', 'w')
total = 0
opener = "Testing begun at" + str(t.localtime(t.time()))
print opener
f.write(opener)
f.close()
while True:
    f = file('battlog.txt', 'w')
    t.sleep(30)
    print t.localtime(t.time())
    total += .5
    message = "30 seconds passed: it is now %s and this has been running \
for %s minutes."%(t.localtime(t.time()), total)
    f.write(message)
    print message
    f.close()

Pogue likes it, and since I GPLed it and it could come in handy for someone else, I decided I’d put it up here, too.

—–

David Pogue complimented me in front of 24,645 people!

!

If Twitter’s appearing in the Sunday comics, I think that’s proof it’s moving from esoteric to mainstream.

Twitter on Foxtrot

Gmail now has a Labs feature that delays the sending of an email by five seconds–letting you take back sending it if you notice a mistake. I find this really, really exciting.

Full story.

Edit: I am very, very sorry. As Josh has pointed out in the comments, W7SE is not avaiable in the USA, EU, Japan and Australia–it’s an anti-piracy measure.

I guess I should’ve looked at several sources. Although I’m rather disappointed in PCWorld for not making the above abundantly clear in their dead-tree issue.

Sorry.

In general, I try to avoid ranting about Microsoft.

For this, though, I’m willing to make an exception.

I quote from an April 2009 PCWorld article by Daniel Ionescu:

Windows 7 Starter Edition

This Starter Edition is aimed mainly at emerging markets and at netbook users. With this edition, users will be able to run only three applications simultaneously, but they will benefit from interface improvements such as the new taskbar and JumpLists. In addition, consumers will be able to join a Home Group (to share media files over a local network).

In case you missed it: “users will be able to run only three applications simultaneously.” WHAT!? And another WHAT!? Is this 1990? Have we not realized what a watershed event the emergence of windowed GUIs was? Has the ability to multitask not been at the core of PC use for the past two decades? Yes, three is bigger than two, and it’s a whole lot bigger than one. But I’m still in a state of shock. To be honest, I think I’d rather use XP, tasbkars, JumpLists, HomeGroups (which seems to be inferior than XP’s networking) and bloat be darned. Some people may not feel the same way–I mean it will have been nine years between the release of XP and 7, and I’m sure that there really are a lot of improvements in Windows 7.

But I also find this incarcerating move by Microsoft very hard to justify. I classify it in the same category as that annoying sect of software that charges you for the privilege of using a demo version (Finale, I’m looking at you). Junky, limiting, and expensive.

I suppose people who are truly bothered by this will just get the next edition up–Windows 7 Home Basic (ooh look, it lets you share an internet connection! Wow!). But I suspect that netbooks are going to start shipping with the option of either W7SE or some incarnation of Linux, and only that. I don’t think W7HBE is light enough to run on netbooks, and OEMs and Microsoft alike won’t be too thrilled with providing an XP option.

Despite all that, I’m not concerned. Either it’ll be perfecty adequate for netbooks, fixing Vista’s numerous problems and modernizing XP, or it’ll be terrible, and more people will use Linux (with support for many media formats, powerful networking, and the ability to run an unlimited amount of apps!). To take down a monopoly-holder, you don’t just need to make a better product–they need to make a worse product. So, as Internet Explorer has so proudly shown us, I’m expecting Microsoft will shoot itself in the foot with this move. 2010 may not be the Year of the Linux Desktop (despite what Digg and Reddit might think), but I think it will be the Year of the Linux Netbook.

I can’t wait.

I’ve come across the Linux Hater’s Redux blog before, and not really thought much about it.

But now they’re talking about me, and, in true Internet style, I feel obligated to talk back.

An excerpt:

Lusers have been flipping out over someone suggesting ten ways Ubuntu could improve. Most of these suggestions, especially the inclusion of a media center are pretty good [f]ing ideas, which means lusers are going to get pissed over anyone bringing them up. A particularly freetarded response tried to take the author to task for his suggestions and just ended up making a fool of himself. Most of his nipticks boil down to ‘oh, there is this utility you can install that kinda sorta does what you want, but you first have to know that it exists and then jump through hoops installing and configuring it’, or ‘that feature is in development and will be available in Zesty Zebra’ or ‘media center, we don’t need no stinkin’ media center!’

First quote–using external utilities: I’ll admit that did come up a lot (though it wasn’t all of them), but I kind of feel like he’s missing the point of Linux: Tiny core, powerful plugins. Maybe he’d like me to send him a remastered .iso called “Ubuntu Bloated Edition: All the Pretty, Mildly-Useful Junk you could Ever Want”?

Second quote–it’s in development: Wasn’t that the point of the original post? To get features into development? What does LHR want–one day Ubuntu doesn’t have something, the next day POOF! there it is? And by Zesty Zebra he must mean 2009 (which is a much snappier release cycle than whatever he’s using…).

Third quote–we don’t need it: Watch your quoting, man–I said I don’t want a media center, not we don’t need a media center. I, Timmy Macdonald, really couldn’t care less about media centers, and feel like their inclusion in a vanilla Ubuntu release would contribute to bloat. See my first point. However, I also realize that some people do in fact want a media center, and, instead of saying they should install one themselves, suggested Mythbuntu (aka “Ubuntu-With-A-Media_Center”). Isn’t that a perfectly reasonable compromise?

This article came up on Digg today. It sounds like pathetic whining from a Mac fanboy–most, if not all, of it is patently absurd.

Feature 1: Weather on the desktop. First of all, there’s a taskbar icon for this. Second of all, I’m sure there’s a screenlet too. How much do you want?

Feature 2: Wallpapers that change over time. They already exist–natively in KDE, and there are several utilites for GNOME. And this is really the DE’s problem–not Ubuntu’s specifically.

Feature 3: Icon functionality. A lot of icons are already functional–I, for one, am a huge fan of how the icon for documents is the document itself. And really, who cares about how much space on a previously burned CD is being taken up?

Feature 4: Visual folder hierarchy. I feel like similar functionality can be achieved with the little file trees, but I begrudgingly admit that off the top of my head, I can’t think of how to do that in Ubuntu. There’s probably a utility that does it, if you know of one, say so in the comments. But again, who really needs this? I’m not sure I’d be willing to give it space on my HDD, to be perfectly honest…

Feature 5: Icons with messages. We do have a wide array of “emblems”, and you can also add specific notes under properties. Again, I feel like this is close enough to be a non-issue.

Feature 6: “A task bar more clean and orderly Icon”. I’m not one for making fun of people’s foreign language ability, but…I’m assuming this means “Clean and more orderly taskbar icons.” Um, unlike certain Redmond-based OS’s I can think of, we Ubuntu users have complete control over how our taskbars look. If you don’t like the arrangement of the icons, delete some, add some or move some.

Feature 7: Pre-installed media center. If Ubuntu came pre-installed with a media center, I’d have a fit, and then I’d remove it. But if you’re into that sort of thing, there’s Mythbuntu. Problem solved.

Feature 8:Animated post-installation introduction. This is in development.

Feature 9: Any other feature you can think of yourself. I feel like this is just a cheap writing trick since nine sounds a lot bigger than eight. Ten would’ve been nice, though…(I won’t be so bold to say that there aren’t ten features Ubuntu lacks, but…:) )

So I’m unimpressed. Ubuntu already has the majority of those features (or a close-enough analogue), that guy failed miserably in doing his homework before posting that, and even the things that Ubuntu doesn’t have are Linux/GNOME/KDE/Nautilus/Dolphin deficiciencies, not Ubuntu problems. I’m sorry that there are people like this on the Internet (but then again, what else is new?) but I’m very sorry something like that has 460 Diggs, and counting, and made the Linux/Unix front page. Chalk one up for FUD.

—-

Edit:OK, now I’m angry. That post was some lame-o who took this “liberal translation” in Spanish, ran it through Google Translate, and posted it on his blog. The Spanish translation (which was actually done by hand (I know Spanish, in case you were wondering)) came from this, the original post (in English, no less). That claimed it had ten features (which resolves the questions I had about number nine), but the counting went 1, 2, 3, 5, 6-10. So it was really nine (talk about cheap writing tricks–miscounting!?!?!). The Spanish translation is completely understandable, but I can’t get over how LinuxPoison ran that through Google Translate and posted it–not even taking the time to fix obvious Engrish cases. And they’re making money off it! Unbelievable.

I’ve started learning curses, in part because I needed to learn something new in Python, and I’m GUI-phobic, and in part because I have a secret love affair with terminals

So I’m going through this tutorial (written in part by Eric S. Raymond, no less), and when I get done with that I’ll look at the actual Python documentation. I don’t know why, but the ESR tutorial has an error: It says that to restore the terminal to normal, you need one of these at the end:

curses.nocbreak()
stdscr.keypad(0)
curses.echo()

However…that doesn’t work. So I learned on the Ubuntu Forums that the real way of restoring the terminal is:

stdscr.getch()
curses.endwin()

I’ll post if anything exciting happens, either from a functional or educational point of view…