Geek of the Month: Charles Babbage

At the end of each month, I will honor the movers and shakers of our digital world, a supreme individual or group that made our lives better through their great innovations.

I got inspired to write about people that I look up to or aspire to be after I’ve read Bo Sanchez’s article entitled “The Missing Link Of Success: Who Are Your Mentors?”. It talked about the importance of having a mentor, and so, by recognizing my so called “tech mentors” I get to know some things about their lives and perhaps learn the secrets of their success.

A geek is a person who is fascinated by knowledge and imagination, usually electronic or virtual in nature, one who is primarily motivated by passion, somebody whose reasoning and decision making is always first and foremost based on passions rather than things like financial reward or social acceptance. Geeks do not see the typical "geeky" interests as interesting, but as objects of passionate devotion.


The first ever “Geek of the Month” honour goes to the man who originated the idea of a programmable computer. His name is Charles Babbage. This may sound boring as most of you might be expecting names like Mr. Jobs or Mr. Gates. But without Sir Charles, you will never be reading this article today as personal computers may never exist at all. Here are some important facts that I have compiled about the man:

Charles Babbage (26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an English mathematician, philosopher, and mechanical engineer. He was known to some as the "Father of Computing" for his contributions to the basic design of the computer through his Analytical machine. His previous Difference Engine(shown in the photo below) was a special purpose device intended for the production of tables.

Babbage originated the modern analytic computer.By 1834 he invented the principle of the analytical engine, the forerunner of the modern electronic computer. Parts of his uncompleted mechanisms are on display in the London Science Museum. In 1991 a perfectly functioning difference engine was constructed from Babbage's original plans. Built to tolerances achievable in the 19th century, the success of the finished engine indicated that Babbage's machine would have worked. Nine years later, the Science Museum completed the printer Babbage had designed for the difference engine, an astonishingly complex device for the 19th century.


Lady Lovelace wrote that Babbage hated music. He tolerated its more exquisite forms, but abhorred it as practiced on the street. "Those whose minds are entirely unoccupied", he wrote with some seriousness in Observations of Street Nuisances in 1864, "receive [street music] with satisfaction, as filling up the vacuum of time". He calculated that 25% of his working power had been destroyed by street nuisances, many of them intentional. Letters to the Times and the eventual enforcement of "Babbage's Act", which would squelch street nuisances, made him the target of ridicule.

Babbage has been commemorated by a number of references, as shown on this list. In particular, Babbage crater, on the Moon and the Charles Babbage Institute, an information technology archive and research center, were named after him. The large Babbage lecture theatre at Cambridge University, used for undergraduate science lectures, commemorates his time at the school.

Significant Events in His Life:
1791: Born; 1810: Entered Trinity College, Cambridge; 1814: graduated Peterhouse; 1817 received MA from Cambridge; 1820: founded the Analytical Society with Herschel and Peacock; 1823: started work on the Difference Engine through funding from the British Government; 1827: published a table of logarithms from 1 to 108000; 1828: appointed to the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge (never presented a lecture); 1831: founded the British Association for the Advancement of Science; 1832: published "Economy of Manufactures and Machinery"; 1833: began work on the Analytical Engine; 1834: founded the Statistical Society of London; 1864: published Passages from the Life of a Philosopher; 1871: Died.

Other inventions:
The cowcatcher, dynamometer, standard railroad gauge, uniform postal rates, occulting lights for lighthouses, Greenwich time signals, heliograph opthalmoscope. He also had an interest in cyphers and lock-picking, but abhorred street musicians.

Quotations:
Some of my critics have amused their readers with the wildness of the schemes I have occasionally thrown out; and I myself have sometimes smiled along with them. Perhaps it were wiser for present reputation to offer nothing but profoundly meditated plans, but I do not think knowledge will be most advanced by that course; such sparks may kindle the energies of other minds more favorably circumstanced for pursuing the enquiries. (On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, 1832, preface to second edition.)

Every moment dies a man/Every moment 1 1/16 is born.
(A correction to Tennyson's "Ev'ry moment a man dies/Ev'ry moment one is born".)

If unwarned by my example, any man shall undertake and shall succeed in really constructing an engine ... upon difference principles or by simpler means, I have no fear of leaving my reputation in his charge, for he alone will be fully able to appreciate the nature of my efforts and the value of their results.

---end---

Thanks to:
http://ei.cs.vt.edu
http://en.wikipedia.org

Hipster In-law

About a week ago, my wife’s mother got herself a brand new 2nd generation mint-green iPod shuffle. I find it really amusing that increasing number of people from the older age group are fast adapting to the latest gadget trend. But this article is not about my cool mother-in-law, it’s about the crappy iPod Shuffle and its software support.

As the only certified nerd in the family, I was asked to load some songs for the new Shuffle. And without any hesitation, I happily agreed to help. I decided to do the syncing before I went to bed as I thought it will only take a matter of time to finish. But I was wrong. At about 11:30 PM, when I connected the Shuffle to the USB port it was not detected by my computer hence it can’t be recognized by iTunes. I visited Apple’s website for support then I followed several troubleshooting instructions. The computer finally discovered the shuffle and I lived happily ever after. Not! The computer did detect the Shuffle but not in iTunes. So once again I patiently searched for help and with a little luck on my side, iTunes finally saw the Shuffle after several tries. I can at last relax and just watch cartoons while waiting for the iPod to finish syncing or loading the songs. Not! The syncing stopped with the following error message “Disk cannot be read from or written to”. So I tried restoring the iPod but now it gives another error message that says “The iPod could not be restored. An unknown error occurred (1418)”. Now I’m beginning to worry as the Shuffle will be needed in the morning for my mom’s travel.

It was already 1am and I’m now using a special tool called Google to look for help. I bumped into several articles telling horror stories about the Shuffle. There was also that website called 1418hell.com. I tried some of their suggestions to help solve the 1418 error but it was no good. I finally just took matters into my own hands and restored the iPod by formatting it first in FAT, not FAT32 and then restored it by way of iTunes. But, I still can’t sync the iPod and it’s now already 2am. I even tried MediaMonkey and a program called iShuffle for syncing but to no avail. Now I want to eat that little shuffle as I was hungry and sleepy at the same time. I uninstalled and reinstalled iTunes a million times because that’s what Apple says until I gave up at around 4am.

I slept tight for just an hour but it was good enough to clear my mind. I realized that the problem could be caused by iTunes; it could have messed up the Windows Registry. So I decided to use a computer with no previous iTunes installation which we luckily have in the office. Problem solved at 6:30 am.


I’m writing this article because I have been wanting to say to Apple to go to Hell. But I don’t want to say those bad words to them because I’m a good boy. I’m just hoping that Apple will fix these issues immediately because iPod, in this case the Shuffle is a great product and bugs like these are inexcusable. I pity those who have just bought their shiny new iPod Shuffle and are very eager to listen to it already but then have to experience the same problem that I had with it. There's nothing I can do but to wish them luck.

Big Heart for a Small Distro

In the world of technology today, products that are fast, lightweight, and reliable are very much in-demand. Like in choosing software and web applications, more and more people prefer Firefox or Google for having these qualities. In computer operating system, there are few tiny Linux Distros with huge potential to succeed. The most popular among them is called Damn Small Linux. And I’m not cursing because that is its real name.

Damn Small Linux (DSL) is a mini Linux Desktop, about 49.5 MB or 51,941,376 bytes to be exact. Indeed the name speaks for its self. But don’t be deceived by its miniscule size, because deep beneath its core is a powerful and complex monolithic Linux kernel capable of performing highly efficient tasks. That is why I always keep a DSL nearby, like the older 3.0 version I already have. I realized that it's about time to upgrade to the most recent stable version of DSL which is 3.4.3. So I did the download then tested it through VMWare. The following is my quick evaluation of this distro:

Test Machine Specs:
Board: Intel D101GGCL
Processor: 3 GHz Intel Pentium 4 with HT Technology
Hard Drive: Samsung 80GB with 10GB allocated to VM disk
Memory: 1.5GB 400 MHz DDR with 512MB allocated to VM memory
Graphics Card: On-board

Intro:
Damn Small Linux is made in the USA by John Andrews and was first released on April 15, 2005. It is based on Knoppix and therefore has a Debian blood. Its primary goal is to provide a capable and easy to use desktop despite the size. Surprisingly, it is highly ranked at number 10 in Distrowatch.com, in fact higher than Knoppix and beating maybe hundreds of other much bigger-sized distributions.

Installation:
The download mirrors for DSL can be found here. Once the ISO image is loaded, you will have a choice to try several boot preferences. I tried the “dsl-tohd” option which will supposedly install DSL into my VM disk but didn’t. I already expected this to happen because at present, DSL developers are still working on improving hard drive installation. So I just booted DSL without a boot option parameter or in a normal way and was inside its Fluxbox desktop in a matter of seconds with USB, CDROM, audio and Ethernet working.

Look and Feel:
The Dillo browser will start opened by default which gave me the opportunity to read the DSL manual first. The application icons are well-arranged with just a click away to open a selected program. I always love its geeky FWM desktop but it may look funny or difficult to the eyes of some Windows or Mac users. Though it doesn’t have a sleek desktop like KDE or Gnome, its included themes and wallpapers are good enough and its responsiveness is exceptional even in the VMWare environment.

Package Management:
DSL has crammed sufficient amount of pre-installed open source programs inside the live CD. It includes useful applications like MP3/MPEG player, FTP client, web browser, games, spreadsheet, word-processor, text-editor, .pdf reader, DHCP client, PPP, PPPoE, web server, and calculator just to name some. Plus, downloading and installing additional sofware is relatively easy using MyDSL Extension Tool with the help of Debian's Advanced Packaging Tool (APT) and Synaptic. For testing, I downloaded Abiword and it installed successfully without a snag.

Stability:
For a live CD, I would say that DSL is pretty stable and secure. My older version of DSL was very dependable so I would expect this new one to be even better. I tried running several of its applications like Tetris and Firefox and they were going smoothly and flawlessly like in a normal desktop that we are used to, and perhaps even faster at times.

Conclusion:
Damn Small Linux is a very handy tool every computer owner must have. Its reliable ability to allow you to rescue a broken system paired by its high portability made it so much valuable. All in all, it is a damn great distribution worthy to be applauded. Now I’m cursing with excitement.

Weekly Ten (9-25-2007)

10 Latest News, Blogs, Tips, and Reviews that I find Interesting and Useful:



1. Steve McConnell in the Doghouse
I often trot out Steve McConnell's doghouse analogy to illustrate how small projects aren't necessarily representative of the problems you'll encounter on larger projects. Read more @ CodingHorror.

2. Search privacy and Personalized Search
Online privacy isn’t always an easy thing to understand—or to explain. When I recently joined the company, I was happy to learn that Google was continuing with the effort to make our privacy practices (and your choices) even clearer and more accessible. Read more @ GoogleBlog.

3. Hybrid robot
More @ HackaDay.
















4. Strategy Letter VI
IBM just released an open-source office suite called IBM Lotus Symphony. Sounds like Yet Another StarOffice distribution.But I suspect they’re probably trying to wipe out the memory of the original Lotus Symphony, which had been hyped as the Second Coming and which fell totally flat. It was the software equivalent of Gigli. Read more @ JoelOnSoftware.

5. Windows Server 2008 RC0, Vista SP1: Back together again
Microsoft announced on September 24 that it is ready to release to testers both Windows Server 2008 Release Candidate (RC) 0 and Windows Vista Service Pack (SP) 1 beta. Read more @ ZDNet.

6. Friendster Plays To Strengths, Launches In Chinese
Friendster is back, at least in Asia.The social network that was the coolest thing on the block until MySpace came around has been slowly regaining its reputation and users over the years, and now boasts 50 million registered user and 27.4 million monthly unique visitors. Read more @ TechCrunch.

7. Usability test: Does iPhone match the hype?
We all know that in the technology world, the hype about new products often doesn't match reality. So it's fair to ask: Is the iPhone as good as its hype? In particular, does iPhone's much-discussed touch-screen interface really make using the device simpler and more intuitive? Read more @ ComputerWorld.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9037858&pageNumber=1

8. World's Smallest Micro-Camcorder Makes Your Voyeuristic Pleasure Its Command
More @ Gizmondo.









9. OpenProj Review: An OSS Alternative to Microsoft Project
It's great to see a Microsoft Project alternative built with the open source user in mind. In a bit of haste, I downloaded and installed the app to see what it had to offer. What I found was a mixed bag of tricks and treats, no Halloween reference meant to be implied. Read more @ MadPenguin.

10. Shape Your Outer World Before It Shapes You
Read more @ BoSanchez.

Distro War! Sabayon vs. Mint

A lot of people have been pairing and matching their favourite distros with the hope of finding out which is better or superior among their choices; and I'm one of them. I often visit different forums or do a search on Google looking for answers and curious about the real winner among my favourites.

I have recently reviewed Sabayon 3.3b Mini Edition and Mint 3.0 Light Edition. As we all know, they are two of the most promising and hottest Linux distros today. They are currently ranked number 5 and 6 respectively on Distrowatch.com. I know more and more people have been pairing these two that is why I'm starting a distro war. I'm rating Sabayon and Mint based on the tests I made to find out who has the clear edge.

Distrowar Arena(Test Machine Specs):
Board: Intel D101GGCL
Processor: 3 GHz Intel Pentium 4 with HT Technology
Hard Drive: Samsung 80GB with 10GB allocated to VM disk
Memory: 1.5GB 400 MHz DDR with 512MB allocated to VM memory
Graphics Card: On-board

Tale of the Tape:
Distro Name:---------------------------Sabayon Linux----------------Linux Mint
Origin:-----------------------------------Italy-----------------------------Ireland
Age (Since Version 1):-------------------?-----------------------------1 YR
Package Management:---------------SRC (Portage)----------------DEB(Debian)
Default Desktop:-----------------------KDE----------------------------GNOME
Installation:-----------------------------Graphical(LiveCD)-----------Graphical(LiveCD)

Speed Test:

Installation Time- Winner, Sabayon!
Boot/Startup Time - Winner, Sabayon!
Responsiveness- Draw!

Decoding: In VMware, it only took about 15 minutes to install Sabayon against 20 minutes in Mint. The Boot/Startup Time, measured from Grub to desktop, took 58 seconds for Sabayon and 65 seconds for Mint. It's a draw for Responsiveness due to fact that both distros are light and fast and I can't see a considerable difference between the two.

Aesthetics:
Default Theme- Winner, Mint!
Extras- Winner, Mint!
Artwork- Winner, Mint!

Decoding: Mint is my winner in all Aesthetics Category. The default theme is pleasing to the eye with several extra Mint wallpapers available. The artworks are sleek and polished like its boot-splash screen and log-in menu.

Features:

Pre-installed Applications- Draw!
Available Packages from Repo- Winner, Mint!
Ease of Use- Winner, Mint!

Decoding: The Pre-installed Applications Category is deadlocked because both have several important features installed by default like the multimedia capability of Sabayon and the key softwares found in Mint. The Debian/Ubuntu repositories have all the good and latest stuff available for Mint compared to the sometimes dated Gentoo packages. Ease of Use is hands down to Mint for being newbie-friendly.

Stability:
Hardware Detection- Draw!
Software Maintenance- Draw!
Error Handling- Draw!

Decoding: I can only give a draw verdict in all of the "Stability" sub-categories because I have never used Mint and Sabayon long enough to declare a clear winner. But based only on my initial tests, I found out that both of them are very much capable and are generally stable for productive uses. I hope the readers can fill in the gap.

Final Score:
Mint = 5
Sabayon = 2
*Winner Mint!

Conclusion:
The results are only based on my own opinion and were solely based on the tests I made. Mint may have won the war but the DVD version of Sabayon might have all the necessary weaponry it needs to beat Mint. What do you think?

Computer User Profiling

In software engineering, performance analysis, more commonly profiling, is the investigation of a program's behavior using information gathered as the program runs. Its usual goal is to determine which parts of a program are to optimize for speed or memory usage.





In criminology, criminal profiling, is a behavioral and investigative tool that helps investigators to profile an unknown subject or offender.

I made my own kind of profiling, and I will call it "computer user profiling". I will analyze computer users' behaviour and environment according to their classification. My goal is just for fun and I never did any research or survey for this one. But, I'm using 1/4 of my brain in writing this article to put a little sense to this .

  • The Office Type
They are the kind of users with mainly basic tasks like word processing or just plain internet browsing. Most of them are around 18-60 years old of which, about 70 percent are women.They are using beige-colored PCs with an average clock speed(Intel) of 1 GHz, and are very much contented with their 15 inch or smaller monitors. Majority of them uses Windows but don't know who Bill Gates is. They don't or can't do simple OS maintenance tasks that's why when the "blue screen of death comes", they go straight to a technician.

  • The Artist Type
These users spend their time with the computer mostly for photo editing, sketching or for painting. Their ages are usually around 16-35 years old and about 60 percent of them are men. Their computers have an average clock speed(Intel) of 2 GHz.They use larger display usually 17 inch monitors or bigger and around half have dual monitor setup. Majority have Photoshop installed and most of them may have a little knowledge in computer maintenance. They also back up their files occasionally because they value their saved files a lot.

  • The Multimedia Type
They are the type of users who are usually watching movies, internet TVs, and are listening to MP3s from their computer. They usually are those who love to download music files (legal or not) and video files( porn or not) from the internet. They are around 18-40 years old and most of them are male, about 75 percent. They have faster computers, with average Intel clock speed of around 3 GHz and mostly using 21 inch widescreen monitors. They have plenty of multimedia software installed like crappy iTunes, PowerDVD and MediaMonkey. Most of them can do computer maintenance and troubleshooting because they always get viruses from their downloaded porn.

  • The Gamer Type
The users on this group are spending countless hours playing the latest and most popular games. Their ages are ranging from 15-35 years old. Most of them have computers that are super fast, using dual or quad core processors with the latest GPUs, and their monitors are 19 inches on average. Most of them are using Windows because their games are only compatible with it. They are capable of doing maintenance tasks and even troubleshooting as a result of spending a lot of time with their computers.

  • The Geek Type
These type of users are enslaving the computer for themselves. They mostly tweak it, hack it, and program with it commanding it to perform different tasks. Most of them are around 16-40 years old. They own two or more computers and usually have the latest dual or quad core processors. They have a dual or triple monitor setup with an average screen size of around 19 inches. Their choice of OS is Linux and are very passionate about it. Some are also using Windows but are not that passionate about it. They usually write silly articles like this one.

I wonder what type of user you belong to?
A drug user maybe? (he he) just kidding, and please just say NO to it.

Sabayon, the Gentle Gentoo

Gentoo, formerly known as Enoch Linux is one of the pioneers among the Linux distributions. It is well-known and loved for its speed (the Gentoo species is the fastest swimming penguin), and hated for its unfriendliness with Linux newbies. Thus, many flavours of Gentoo have been created including this highly capable one named Sabayon.

Every now and then, I’m searching for a perfect Operating System worthy to replace my OpenSuse 10.1. I have chosen to try out Sabayon Linux as I have already used Gentoo before and was quite impressed with it. I downloaded the Sabayon x86 3.3b Mini Edition live CD then installed and tested it via VMWare Workstation. Now here is my own view and assessment of this distro:

Test Machine Specs:
Board: Intel D101GGCL
Processor: 3 GHz Intel Pentium 4 with HT Technology
Hard Drive: Samsung 80GB with 10GB allocated to VM disk
Memory: 1.5GB 400 MHz DDR with 512MB allocated to VM memory
Graphics Card: On-board


Intro:
Sabayon is made in Italy and created by Fabio Erculiani. He named it after an Italian dessert called Zabaione. The reason behind this tasty name is yet unclear but Linux users’ appetite for Sabayon can’t be denied as it is currently ranked number 5 in Distrowatch.com. Sabayon’s main aim is to transform a computer into a powerful Gentoo Linux system in less than 5 minutes.


Installation:
The link to the download site for Sabayon Linux is here. There are variety of installers to chose from which includes the DVD and Mini Edition supporting processors with 32 and 64 bit architectures. However, I would recommend the DVD for beginners for a reason that I will disclose later on. Anyway, the installation on my VMware System using the Mini live CD was completed in about 15 minutes with a unique feature that will let you update the installer before you start. Thanks to Anaconda, only few easy steps were necessary for the installation. It would have been a different story if it was done in an old Gentoo way. After the installation, it rebooted smoothly with all virtual hardwares detected. The audio, floppy, cdrom, ethernet, and usb controllers are working well.


Look and Feel:
Sabayon is short of being artistic in this edition. Most themes and wallpapers included are part of KDE by default. They could have added a few extras. Though I like the default Sabayon theme, I'm not that much of a KDE fan. The only good part is that it comes with Beryl which can be easily enabled. So if you have a capable video card, then you are just a few clicks away to eye-candy insanity.


Package Management:
Now here's the sad part for the newbies; The mini edition doesn't come with adequate software applications installed off-the-shelf. There's no Gimp, AbiWord and OpenOffice, just to name a few. Even though you can use a graphical portage package manager with a funny name called Kuroo to add or maintain software in Sabayon, it is not as easy as you think compared with say Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, or OpenSuse's package management systems. That is why I'm recommending the Live DVD installer for beginners because it is pre-installed with plenty of useful applications to choose from for free, of course.


Stability:
Gentoo is considered one of the most stable if not the most stable distro ever. I was not surprised that Sabayon Linux inherited its quality. Though I have not tried Sabayon long enough, I can already say that it can be reliable for a long period of time based on the initial tests I made which includes running several applications simultaneously and probing its hardware support. In addition, I was also very amazed with its speed. It is very fast indeed, with a start-up loading time faster than any other distro I've seen so far.


Conclusion:
Sabayon is certainly not for everyone. But because of its quality, versatility and many advanced features, it is undeniably worth a try. I would recommend Sabayon to Novice users and to those who are bored with their Ubuntu or PCLinuxOS distro. To those who are just migrating from Windows to Linux , in short extreme newbies, don't ever think of touching it. Sabayon may sound sweet, but when tasted it could lead to a bitter experience.

Weekly Ten (9-17-2007)


10
Latest News, Blogs, Tips, and Reviews that I find Interesting and Useful:


1. Top 10 little-known Gmail features
From Google Blog, Bill Kee will tell you about some not-so-secret Gmail features.
2. Classic Computer Science Puzzles
Jeff Attwood is recollecting some classic puzzle games that every computer science student should try play.

3. Hard drive clock (not a lame clock with a hd face)
Go to hackaday.com for more details about this hack.













4. Long Now: The Arguments for Nuclear Power
Tim O’Reilly is sharing some key issues regarding the dreaded nuclear energy.
5. A Response to Bruce Eckel
BDFL Guido van Rossum speaks about the upcoming and highly debated update of the Python Programming Language.
6. Novell takes VMware interface to Linux kernel
SUSE Linux Enterprise kernel is modified to support VMware's Virtual Machine Interface.

7. Google Earth gets assisted by new satellite
Read more from Engadget.













8. Is Microsoft Office 2007 outselling Windows Vista?
Posted by Mary Jo Foley, with her eye focused on Microsoft.
9. Australia readies itself for a Google election
Julian Sonego and Rob Shilkin from Google Blog announced the launch of a Google Australia election website. Australian voters can now have an intimate look at the parties, candidates and election issues, all in one Google location.
10. Three Minutes with Richard Stallman
Open Source revolutionary RMS was interviewed recently by Peter Moon of Computerworld Brazil.

Hasta la vista, Vista

Today, I’m thinking of terminating my Windows Vista partition and reinstall my XP back into my main workstation. I use Vista primarily for its multimedia functions but it’s not doing the job well. Duh! Here is my list of some of its annoyances and setbacks:

  • Irritating User Account Control box that appears every time I want to access programs that Vista doesn’t recognize, even though I have already allowed it to run several times. Computers are dumb enough. Why did Microsoft made it even dumber?
  • Poor GUI like the Power button should have a shut down function by default and not sleep function; it is kind of confusing to many. You will need magic trick from the how-to-geek to change it.
  • Shuts down when clicking the shutdown button, but without asking any question or prompt. I have unknowingly or accidentally clicked the button several times and it’s really frustrating.
  • Slow start-up after installing updates. I know it’s normal but they could have done better.
  • Crappy Local Area Networking. Local computers on my network appear and disappear.
  • My also disappearing DVD drive. I have to shut down and reboot to see it again. The problem started right after I installed Vista and have to edit the registry to see my optical drive. It was fixed but still vanishes every once in a while.
  • Still lacking software and driver support even after 8 months of its release; like My 5.1 speaker system don’t sound that good than it was on XP.
  • VMWare is running so sluggish in Vista. It’s slower than a walking turtle.
  • Are there anymore Ultimate Extras coming? Not that I need it, but can we have our money back?
  • Slow file transfer between my removable devices and computer.

Right now I’m still contemplating on when I will do the annihilation. I heard that there’s a new feature coming up this September 27 of their Windows Media Center which is a part of Vista Ultimate Edition. They said it will let the users watch free high quality Internet TV. So I guess I have to wait and see. After all, it’s only a couple of days away.

I Want my Google Korea, Now!

As some of us may already know, Google Korea had its website redesigned with a look so complex and different from the rest of the world. The reason to this is the lack of Google’s market share in one of the most technically advanced countries on Earth. Well, South Korea, with high-speed internet access, heavily broadcast online gaming and such, caused this redesign; “It was important where our classic minimalism wasn’t working that we adapt,” Google’s Marissa Mayer told Search Engine Land. You can visit Google Korea to see their new animated website.



As for me, I don’t want their classic minimalism anymore. It was only good for the Web 1.0, the time when slow dial-up connections are widely used and majority of the users were just beginning to know or use the revolution called the Internet. But folks, we are now living in Web 2.0 and Google should adapt too.

I want access to my Gmail, Calendar and Blogger accounts all in one page, in Google’s home page that is because Google is my portal to the word like most of us do. Some might suggest that I can always install Google toolbar for easy entry to these services or I can just use iGoogle and have a customized page. But for me, I don’t want any more Firefox extensions or toolbars on my browser because it is cluttered and way heavy enough. To name a few extensions, I have Web Developer, SeoQuake, Firebug, YSlow and more installed. As with iGoogle, it’s just a waste of my precious little time.

There are a few Google prototypes that are appearing today, based on the Korean design or identical, but minus the animation; see screenshots below or click on the links here and here to visit the actual site.


They have the minimalistic look but were enough to satisfy my wants. I'm really hoping for a worldwide change in Google's main site design. After all, it’s not that bad to add a little complexity to its good old simplicity. What do you think?

A Date with Cassandra

Before my wife gets mad at me, she should read this first: Cassandra is the name of the latest edition of Linux Mint. It is an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution. Just a little fact, the past versions of Linux Mint have been named Ada, Bianca, Bea, and Barbara; the next version after Cassandra is named Celena which is currently in beta. If you want to know more and why the girls name, read the interview of the creator of Mint.

Cassandra and I got acquainted when a computer from our own disco house business was having some problems. The computer’s OS is Windows XP as it is operated by my brother. My assessment was that the problem is in the hardware so I brought it back to where we bought it and had some parts replaced. Then, it was time to install the OS and test if the hardware is stable enough. The trouble is, I forgot to bring my XP installer. Luckily, I saved an ISO copy of Linux Mint on my iPod. And so I had the chance to test the hardware and at the same time meet Cassandra which then led me to this review of Linux Mint.

Intro:
Linux Mint is an Ubuntu-based distribution whose goal is to provide a more complete out-of-the-box experience by including browser plugins, media codecs, support for DVD playback, Java and other components. It is compatible with Ubuntu software repositories. Currently, it is ranked number 6 in Distrowatch.com.

Test Machine Specs:
Board: Asrock P4VM890
Processor: 2.80 GHz Intel Celeron D
Hard Drive: Sony 80GB ATA
Memory: 512 MB 400MHz DDR RAM
Graphics Card: On-board



Installation:
You can download Linux Mint Light Edition live CD here. Note: If you want features like MP3, Flash and encrypted DVD to work out-of-the-box, download the Regular or Community Edition (thanks to David for pointing that out). The installation on my system was smooth as silk. It is by far my easiest installation ever of a Linux OS. I think anyone can install it because a simple point and click will do the job. The Ubuntu-like-but-easier installation was finished quickly within 25 minutes and without a single hardware compatibility error. After setting up, everything worked well, from Ethernet to Audio and Video.



Look and Feel:
Only one word comes to my mind when I booted Mint, “elegant”. The artwork is outstanding, like the gorgeously minty boot splash image, login screen, default theme and wallpaper. Its Gnome panel’s SLAB menu has a Cassandra logo. I prefer the classic Gnome menu for its simplicity. To those who are looking for some eye-candy, Mint is pre-installed with Beryl. It doesn’t work on my test machine as I only have an on-board video card. Cassandra is not only beautiful but it has sense of humor. Each time you open a terminal, a new quote or as they call it a “fortune” message will appear on top.



Package Management:
Linux Mint 3.0 is loaded with essential applications that worked off the shelf. To name a few, there’s Firefox, Amarok , Thunderbird, Gimp, OpenOffice and more. There’s also an application called Envy that will let you install proprietary ATI driver without difficulty. You can always install additional .mint packages from their software portal using a new feature called MintInstall. Plus, there are plenty of .deb packages available from the Ubuntu repositories.



Stability:
I can say that this distribution is stable enough for daily desktop computing tasks. I have not experienced any trouble while testing several key applications that comes with Mint 3.0 including its multimedia features. I have tested several python scripts I made and they run well. The only problem I encountered was when I tried to activate Beryl which my test machine does not support anyway.

Conclusion:
All in all, Cassandra (Linux Mint 3.0) has left a mark on me that I’m thinking of someday replacing my wife’s Xubuntu laptop with Mint. It is undoubtedly worthy to be ranked among the top 10 Linux Distro and I will highly recommend it to those who want to try Linux.

Linux Mint, “from freedom came elegance”. I love their slogan.

Weekly Ten (9-9-2007)


10 Latest News, Blogs, Tips, and Reviews that I find Interesting and Useful:


1. Rainbow Hash Cracking
Think you have a secure password? Well think again, Jeff Attwood will show how your passwords can be easily cracked using Rainbow Tables.
2. iPhone - Everything that could go wrong did
Computer Zen Scott Hanselman shared all his frustrations of his new iPhone.
3. Collect, share, and discover books
Adam Mathes’ post from Google Blog announced some great new features of Google Book Search.
4. Wiimote firefighting robot
Know more about this hack and visit hackaday.com.














5. 10 Awesome Firefox Extensions for Developers and Bloggers
From AjaxNinja, check out some Firefox extensions that are very useful to web developers. In fact, I’m using some of them.
6. Novell Turns On the Silverlight
Microsoft extended its Novell relationship, again, this time to bring their most hyped Silverlight software to Linux.
7. Find a needle in a feedstack with Google Reader
A new important feature of Google Reader is introduced. I’m thinking of abandoning my current reader right now.
8. Which OS You Use Can Depend On What Looks Good
Serdar Yegulalp of information week, explained some key reasons why people still don’t want to use Linux.







10. The Best Is Yet To Come!
Another inspiring post by the man himself, Bo Sanchez; A must read if you are feeling down.

An iPhone with No Phone


Big news; to go with Apple’s annual tradition, today, Steve Jobs introduced a new iPod named “iPodTouch”, shown on the photo. I’m not kidding and you are definitely not dreaming. It does look like an iPhone but actually a fraction smaller and slightly thinner than the iPhone. Most of its multimedia features are identical to that of iPhone but it is the first iPod ever that has internet capability with its Safari browser via wi-fi. Its multi-touch screen’s size is same as the iPhone but it comes with 8GB and 16GB storage models to choose from. Some other features of this new iPod are not that spectacular as I have already heard about it on the iPhone. It’s basically iPhone, iPhone, iPhone, but with no phone functionality.








Other important products that Steve have announced today are new line-ups of iPod Nano and iPod Video which he appropriately called the iPod Classic because as he said, “it is the original iPod”; makes sense hehe. I love their new design (click on the images below for a larger view). It looked fatter but the metal enclosure is sleek. The new Nano, with 4GB and 8GB models can now play video on its 2-inch screen. Meanwhile, the iPod Video now has a 160GB model and has a much improved battery life (that’s what Mr. Jobs said). The screen size is still the same as the older 5th generation models but the new one has a new UI (User Interface).





My Verdict:
If you already have an iPhone and wanted to buy a new iPod, don’t buy iPodTouch. I would recommend buying the new Nano or the Classic model. If you don’t have an iPhone and an iPod and planning to buy an iPod, please don’t buy iPodTouch. Just buy an iPhone, it is a phone with iPod + ability. For Filipinos wanting to buy an iPodTouch, just say no. Wait for the iPhone which is coming early next year with surely affordable prices. But if you lack patience, just buy a Nano today.




Visit www.apple.com for more product info.

Clear and Present Danger: Chinese Military Hacked into Pentagon

The Chinese military hacked into a Pentagon computer network in June in the most successful cyber attack on the U.S. defence department, say American officials. Read more from FT.com for details.

Now that was some serious Chinese hacking, showing the whole world that the U.S. is not invincible. I remembered watching Die Hard 4 while reading the news. A movie for the geeks, it depicts a group of American super hackers taking over several U.S. technology infrastructures thus endangering the whole world. Thanks to Bruce Willis with the help of other über geeks, the movie had a happy ending.

But unlike the movie, a disastrous ending could happen in real life. The suspects were Chinese, in particular their own People’s Liberation Army. Think of the potential chaos that could happen if these people can take control of the US nuclear warheads. Now I don’t mean to bad mouth China but I’m talking here of possible US enemies that might have the capability to do what these smart Chinese have done.

This is certainly a very clear and present danger.