Jad's Thoughts

Dear Microsoft :

It’s over. Our relationship just hasn’t been working for a while, and now, this is it. I’m leaving you for another Operating system.

I know this isn’t a good time–you’re down with yet another virus. I do hope you feel better soon–really, I do–but I, too, have to move on with my life. Fact is, in the entire time I’ve known you, you seem to always have a virus or an occasional worm. You should really see a doctor.

That said, I just can’t continue with this relationship any longer. I know you say you’ll fix things, that next time it’ll go better–but that’s what you said the last time–and the time before that. Each time I believed you.

Well, not any longer.

You cheater!

The truth is there’s nothing more you can say to make things better. I know about your secret marriage to patent. You say you two are not seeing each other anymore, but I just don’t believe it. You say you can live without patent, and I’ve heard that patent can live without you, but I know that’s simply not true.

What about HTML e-mail in Outlook? Every time there’s a new letter in the Inbox, you rush over to help Windows render it. And what about HTML within Word? There you go again. And don’t get me started with those late nights you’ve spent rendering thumbnail images in Windows Explorer. You’re all over Windows and, what, you just expect me to turn a blind eye?

You’re no longer fit

For another thing, you’ve gone and gotten all lazy and out of shape on me. When was the last time you picked up a new feature? Two years ago? Three? While you rest on your laurels, while you spend your days slapping patches on the various flaws that seem to pour out as though your source code were a colander, the Internet has changed. A lot.

Last Christmas, I gave you a free RSS reader, Pluck, and you seemed to like it, with new feeds popping up from time to time keeping you fun and relevant. It gave me reason to think maybe you and I could work things out. But, in the end, it just wasn’t a true fit; it wasn’t really a part of you.

When I mentioned wanting to view more than one Web page at a time, you just laughed, said it couldn’t be done. Well, I knew that wasn’t true. Opera, Netscape, and now Firefox, they can all do it. You simply don’t want to discuss change.

And when you do, it’s only because of someone else. A certain someone else: Windows. Don’t deny it. You didn’t think twice when Windows XP SP2 offered you its shiny new pop-up blocker. Or gave you new firewall protection. I know Windows has promised to block buffer overflows, too–but I’ll believe it when I see it.

Yet what have you done for me lately? I don’t want to keep upgrading my operating system just to keep you around. Talk about baggage.

This is it

I know, I’ve tried breaking up before, and I’ve always come back, but that’s because I couldn’t find the right operating system to move on with. I want an independent one, one that stands on its own without a codependent company. What I want is an OS that’s strong and secure, one that handles the latest content and won’t crash. I want transparency. I want code that actually means something.

I have found just that.

With Ubuntu Linux, at least I know where I stand. The code is open source, built from the ground up, clean–not recycled. No more hidden agendas. At least when there’s a flaw in Ubuntu, apt alerts me. It doesn’t try to hide its mistakes, waiting until the second Tuesday of the month to offer me a patch for some flaw that’s been out there for six months already.

And you always seem to walk out of the room whenever Linux stops by. Why? What are you afraid of? Honestly, a grown company like you afraid of a little operating system? I think this snobby behaviour speaks volumes about what’s wrong with this relationship.

So this is it: Good-bye. I know you’ll do fine without me; you always have. I’m sure there’ll be someone who’ll find you to be cute and interesting. It just won’t be me.

NOTE: it seems I have made a mistake by not mentioning that this article is modified one to fit Microsoft windows and Ubuntu based on Robert Vamosi article on Zdnet.com
I do appologize for Robert Vamosi and for the readers.

Regards.

[tags]microsoft, ubuntu, breakup, letter, linux, windows[/tags]

Linux has become quite ‘mature’ as an end-user operating system, so I find these stories about being ‘weaned’ off Windows to be ridiculous.

[tags]linux, quote[/tags]

There was a partnership made this week that is probably scaring the pants off of Bill Gates and the people behind Internet Explorer – Google is shacking up with Mozilla to form Googzilla! Well, not exactly, but close enough. Just as Mozilla makes Internet news of securing almost 6% of the web browser market with FireFox – which has been downloaded an estimated 19 million times, Google starts offering positions, free lunch, and in-house dental benefits to the top Mozilla developers Ben Goodger and Darin Fisher.

Start with a Goodger, a Fisher, the Internet?s most talked about browser, and Google – what else can you add to the mix which may send tails spinning in the browser market? How about the fact that Google owns the domain GBrowser.com…. There has been much fanfare in the Mozilla fan camps about the possibility of Google using Mozilla browser technology to produce a GBrowser – the Google Browser. Over the past 6 months, the news and speculation has escalated to the point where even Google itself is acknowledging the whispers among the tech community.

Besides those of Goodger and Fisher, other 2004 hirings at Google helped to fuel the buzz. Among those controversial Google employees are four people who worked on Internet Explorer (one being Adam Bosworth), another one from Java lead developers (Joshua Bloch) and another guy (Joe Beda) who was working on future Microsoft technologies like Avalon and Longhorn.

Google could not have picked a better time to be planning a new browser tool (that is, if they are). Security flaws and adware/spyware attacks have fueled a small but significant switch from Microsoft IE to Mozilla based browsers. Mozilla Firefox now enjoys over 5% of the browser market, gaining 0.9 percent since December according to a WebSideStory study.

Over the past seven months, Internet Explorer usage has dropped from 95.5 to 90.3, a 5.8 percent drop. In addition to Firefox, other browsers are also growing at a gradual rate. Apple?s Safari and Opera grew from a little under one percent to 2.1, a 1.1 percent growth factor.

Adding a Google Browser into the mix not only expands the market but adds a new threat to the Microsoft browser kingdom. Question is, why would Google want to build a browser? Especially with FireFox coming with Google add ons and Google search as its homepage. The answer(s) are endless? branding, more search and more revenue.

Source
Search Engine Journal
[tags]google, mozilla, goozilla, browsers[/tags]

Proceeds of this match will be donated to tsunami victims -SUJ

Amman (SUJ)- Jordan’s national football team were held to a 0-0 draw vs. Norway in the friendly match that took place at Amman International Stadium this evening and of which proceeds will be donated to tsunami victims ?SUJ

[tags]local, amman, jordan sport, norway[/tags]

kernel: The kernel is the core or nucleus of an operating system. Basically, it provides a way for software and other parts of the operating system to communicate with a computer’s hardware.

GNU: Part of Richard M. Stallman’sFree Software Foundation, it was founded in 1984 with the goal of creating a totally “free” operating system in which the source code was available to all who were interested.
This was both a technical and political aim. The first Linux kernel (see above) was complied by the GNU C programming language complier, gcc. Many of the first programs to be bound into the fledgling Linux operating system were from the GNU project. For this reason, Stallman insists that the operating system be called “GNU/Linux”. The distribution Debian GNU/Linux follows this convention, for example, but most do not. Public use and custom has evolved as such so that most simply call it Linux.

Distribution: An operating system based around Linux Torvalds’s Linux kernel. They come in all “shapes and sizes”. Many are meant to be installed and be used by professionals on public Internet servers or on graphics rendering farms and other environments. Others are meant to be installed by the general public as an alternative to proprietary operating systems. Each distribution reflects either the needs of its target market, in the case of the commercial distributions or the wishes of its developers, as is the case with distributions created by individuals or non-profit organizations.

ISO images: This is a set of packages programs created to be eventually burned into (ie. copied to) CDs. A Linux distribution (see above) can be obtained by downloading the ISO images offered by companies and organizations and burning them to CDs.

[tags]linux[/tags]

t just isn’t fair that Windows users get all the viruses. I mean really, shouldn’t Linux users be in on the fun as well? Well… thanks to the folks running the Wine project, Linux users can “catch the virus bug” too — sort of.

Linux just isn’t user-friendly when it comes to viruses. You have to work to find and run them. It doesn’t happen automatically as it does with Windows. The GNU/Linux folks really should improve this glaring discrepancy.

While I have friends that collect viruses, I didn’t need to bother them. I found plenty by looking through my staggering collection of bogofilter sorted mail. I apt-getted a copy of ClamAV, and after siccing it at my spam-and-other-things-I-don’t-want-to-read collection, I yanked out a half-dozen unique, only Windows-compatible, viruses. That “only Windows-compatible” part was about to change.
Klez

Amazingly, Klez ran, but Wine kept on spewing out errors about “ntdll.” After Googling to find out what Klez was supposed to do, I discovered that it’s supposed to scour your system for email addresses, then mail itself out in a mostly un-RFC fashion. I didn’t want to miss out on this, so I added my e-mail address to a .txt file under ~/.wine/fake_windows/Windows/Desktop/ and re-ran the virus. After waiting for a few minutes, and receiving no mail, I gave Symantec’s summary of the Klez virus another look. Klez is so un-RFC compliant that it doesn’t even bother to query DNS for the mail server of a given domain. It just tries “smtp.domainname.com.” My mail server isn’t named smtp.mydomain.com…, but the Panix ISP (where I have a shell account) has such a host, so I edited my .txt file and tried again. After waiting half an hour, still nothing. Was networking working with Wine? I downloaded a copy of putty, and that worked. Panix must be blocking Klez via a Postfix regex or something. I give Klez 2/5 Penguins for at least running, but not doing what it’s supposed to.

MyDoom
MyDoom seemed to be a .zip file, (the file command concurred) but Info-ZIP’s unzip command couldn’t even unzip it. That’s about as un-Linux compatible as you can get. 0/5 penguins.

Sobig

According to ClamAV, I had two different strains of the Sobig worm. Both of them ran. Sobig is supposed to create a winstt32.dat file. There wasn’t a file named that anywhere under my fake_windows directory. It didn’t send me email either. 2/5 penguins, as it’s about as Linux compatible as Klez.
SCO worm

A virus named after SCO that was designed to DoS attack SCO should definitely be Linux compatible, right? The SCO virus (at least according to ClamAV) is actually just a variant on the MyDoom worm, but unlike MyDoom I was able to unzip this on Linux.

Not only does it run, but it actually dumped its payload at ~/.wine/fake_windows/Windows/System/shimgapi.dll! Unfortunately, that’s all it did before it terminated. I mean, if it had kept on running, I might have been sufficiently tempted to set my system clock to February 3, 2004, in order to get in on the DoS fun! It must require Windows to bone-headedly execute its payload. I’ll give it 3/5 penguins for actually doing something. Plus, whoever modified MyDoom like this actually seemed to put some thought into making it more Linux-compatible. That’s what I call progress.
SomeFool

The SomeFool first-generation worm (Netsky.D according to some folks) actually installs its winlogon.exe file under Wine, and, as an added bonus, seems to get stuck in an endless loop, thus really having a negative performance impact on my Linux machine! I’ll give this one 4/5 penguins for not only running and sort of doing what it was supposed to, but actually doing mildly bad things to Linux — at least until I hit Control-C in the terminal from which I was running Wine to stop it dead.

Conclusion

Out of the five Windows viruses I ran under Wine, not a single one was able to send email and propagate itself. When I went out of my way to be part of the Windows community by doing my part to propagate Windows viruses (lots of Windows users seem to think this is important, seeing as how they run random executables and use Microsoft Outlook and Internet Explorer) I discovered that it couldn’t easily be done with GNU/Linux tools. Oh sure, I could manually forward these viruses to the folks in my address book, but where’s the fun in that? Besides, these viruses usually lie in the From: line and use a handful of different Subject: lines. As a GNU/Linux user, I really don’t want to miss out on these important functionalities.

I tip my hat to the creators of the SomeFool virus, for actually (albeit temporarily and minimally) affecting my Linux experience. However, if that’s the most damage I can get by running viruses with Wine under a dummy account, then it’s clear that the Wine developers have a long way to go before Wine is truly Windows compatible.

Source
NewsForge.com
[tags]windows, microsoft, viruse, wine, linux[/tags]

Google Inc. stepped into video search on Tuesday but with an initial focus on indexing the content of broadcast and satellite television.
So far, Google Video does not include video from the Web or provide a way to play back shows. The company retrieves content by recording the broadcasts of television programs.

“There’s a lot of high-quality information on television and a lot of it is not on the Web today,” said John Piscitello, product manager for Google Video. “Google’s mission is to connect people with all the information out there, and searching TV is natural next step.”

Google began creating the index in December, and it has grown to about 2TB of data, Piscitello said. The index will continue to grow as more content sources are added.

He declined to specify the total number of TV sources included in the beta. Along with networks, though, they include the San Francisco Bay Area affiliates of ABC and NBC as well as local station KRON, according to the Google Video Web site.
[tags]google, video, search[/tags]

Why a penguin? things that cannot fly cannot crash.
[tags]personal, penguin, quote[/tags]

Another boot speed test on
P4 2.6, 256DDRAM
47.70sec

[tags]linux, ubuntu, speedtest[/tags]

After 5 hours struggling with my Speedtouch modem to get it into Always on mode, ( so you don’t need to configure ppp0 anymore, just the Ethernet) got Ubuntu up and running on my main box.
anyway, I cant see the light!
nighty

[tags]ubuntu, linux[/tags]