Log

"This will be the year of Linux on the desktop!". This has been the topic of tech-predicting articles on the web since at least 2001. It's been repeated (and proved wrong) so many times, it's even become an Internet meme. But ladies and gentlemen, rejoice. For the year of Linux on the desktop has arrived! I have witnessed it with my own eyes. How do I know? Because my 60-year old mom is using Ubuntu on her new laptop!

The new machine

Let me tell you how this came about. My mom, who is 60 years old, used to run Microsoft Windows 2000. It was the only Windows version fast enough for her old 300Mhz machine. I sometimes thought about blowing new life into her machine by installing some version of GNU/Linux, but I was afraid it would be too incomprehensible for her. So I always kept her with Windows.

Now, about three weeks ago, my mom decided she wanted a new computer. She found a nice Packard Bell budget laptop for sale at the local electronics store, so she asked me if it was okay. I told her, "sure, looks like a nice machine". A 1.8 Ghz with 1 Gb of memory ought to be more than enough for her computing-habits: surf the internet, watch a couple of movies online, write a letter, chat on MSN, manage her photos, print a document, write an e-mail.

Windows Vista

The new laptop came pre-installed with Windows Vista, the latest 'hot' operating system from Microsoft. "Great", I thought, as Windows 2000 was becoming a bit of a nuisance. I once thought about installing Windows XP on my mom's old machine, but was afraid it might be too slow. Now she could have the latest Windows version with a clean install on her brand new laptop.

Unfortunately, it turned out that Vista wasn't such a good deal as we thought it was. Even though we're talking about a brand new 'Vista-ready' laptop, the horrors of The First Boot where mind-shattering. Mom's brand new, out-of-the-box laptop was slower than her old 300 Mhz machine! The cause? Windows Vista! Sure, it's a budget laptop, and it's not the fastest machine around, and I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't make a great gaming platform, but it sure should be enough to run a simple Operating System!

Another big problem was Vista's new 'security'. My mom is a paranoid lady. If she doesn't trust something, she'll back off. And when she doesn't understand something, she won't trust it. You'll never find my mom entering her address, personal or bank information anywhere on the Internet, for instance. This is probably the reason why she never gets spam, nor has she ever been conned. The problem with Windows Vista is that it alerts the user about everything and then makes them choose. A clever way to delegate the burden of responsibility of security to the user instead of the Operating System. After about half an hour of working with Vista, we must have seen at least fourteen security related pop-ups. I personally couldn't make heads nor tails of the 'possible security problems', let alone my mom. It's common knowledge that when you let the user choose each and every time anything happens, they'll quickly adopt the Don't-read-just-click-okay mindset. Hell, I'm a paranoid security freak and even I started to just click okay without reading any of the warnings.

I tried tweaking and configuring Vista so that it would run faster. I tried turning off the annoying security and placing restrictions on the default account the default user uses. I tried and tried and tried, but all that happened was a botched up Vista that was either still incredibly slow, annoying or wouldn't boot anymore. Enough was enough. Time to pop the big question: "Mom… what about Linux?".

Ubuntu installation

My mom agreed to me putting Ubuntu on her laptop. If it wasn't satisfactory, I'd get some illegal version of Windows XP from somewhere and install that instead. "Can I write email/chat on MSN/manage my digital photographs?". Sure! Everything my mom wanted to do on her computer was easy with Ubuntu, so no worries there.

I started my very first Ubuntu installation (I'm a Debian user) and started clicking 'Next'. Everything in the install worked pretty easy, with some notable exceptions:

• The 'Next' button on the next screen didn't work when I left the mouse cursor on it. I had to move the mouse of the button, then back on it, and then I could click it.
• I couldn't partition and format the harddrive. It kept complaining with some kind of error during the creation of the ext3 filesystem. Turns out I had to reboot the machine after creating the partitions, but that wasn't mentioned anywhere.
• When I brought the machine over to my mom's house, there was a particularly nasty problem where the machine would hang during or right after booting. It turned out there was a bad WiFi network around my mom's house somewhere which caused the machine to halt with a 'SOFT BUG ON CPU#0' bug. Removing all the propriety closed source drivers fixed the problem.

After installation, I tested all her hardware: the digital camera, the wireless mouse, etc. Everything worked like a charm. Watching video on the internet? No problem. Listening to internet radio stations? A breeze! Making sure her own software is up-to-date with the latest bug and security fixes? Easy as pushing a button.

The verdict

My mom's verdict: "This is just like Windows, except faster?! I thought I had to do stuff with a lot of white-on-black text, like I always see you do?! This is much easier than I thought, and I can even watch internet movies!". Don't worry mom. I wouldn't have put Ubuntu on your desktop if you'd had to learn how to use the terminal.

She's been working on it for a few days now. Of course, there's some stuff she still needs to learn, simply because the programs are different then what she's used too, but she's coming along just great. My mom already used Thunderbird and Firefox for her emailing and browsing. She's picking up the other new programs fairly quickly.

Would she have been able to do the installation herself? Well, probably yes, if it wasn't for the problems mentioned above. That's more than I can say for Windows, cause she's never been able to install that herself.

So there you have it! Linux on the desktop. 2007 was the year. Kudos to all who predicted it.

In a nutshell, because living abroad I know first hand what the world thinks of America and it is not a pretty picture at the moment. I want people to think of America as the land of freedom and democracy, not the land of arrogance and blind revenge. I want to be proud of America again. The U.S. media do a spectacularly bad job of informing Americans about what is going on in rest of the world. After Sept. 11, the U.S. could do no wrong. The entire world was on America's side. The invasion of Afghanistan was seen as completely justified. After all, the Al-Qaida leadership had to be decapitated. No one questioned that.

But Iraq was a completely different matter. Bush, Cheney, and Powell said they had conclusive proof that Saddam had WMD and could attack at any instant. The rest of the world wanted to see the proof. No proof was forthcoming. The answer was "trust us." We now know there were no WMD. There weren't even factories or labs to produce them. Saddam was an evil dictator with evil fantasies but he was no threat to America. Yet former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said that the planning to invade Iraq began the day Bush was inaugurated. The administration simply misused the horror of Sept. 11 as a convenient excuse for doing something that was already in the works.

Let me tell you a short story. When I was in elementary school, the school was plagued by a bully. He was the biggest, strongest kid around and would beat up anyone he didn't like. We were all exceedingly polite to his face, but hated his guts behind his back. One day he was chasing some poor kid and he tripped and skidded a considerable distance, scraping his face on the rough asphalt of the playground. He was bleeding and in pain, screaming for help. But nobody came to help him. We all just walked away. George Bush is the world's playground bully. The world sees him–and by inference, America–as arrogant, self-centered, and mean. I spoke to Americans from dozens of countries at the DA caucus. Everyone told the same story–the world hates America. When talking to foreigners, I can tell them about the Bill of Rights or freedom or World War II, or whatever I want, but all they see is this big, stupid, arrogant, playground bully and a stolen election in Florida last time. I think America deserves better. I want America to be respected in the world again, and John Kerry can restore the respect America deserves.

Don't believe me that the world hates us? The Guardian, one of Britain's most respected newspapers, ran a column by Charlie Brooker last week ending with this paragaph: "On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed …" Then it gets so bad that I refuse to quote it. Maybe Brooker is a nut and maybe it was a joke, but the fact that a serious newspaper would publish this piece shows how deep the hatred of George Bush runs. And this comes from our closest ally. Imagine what people in Spain or Indonesia or the Arab world think.

– Andrew Tanenbaum, http://www.electoral-vote.com

It's true. Everyone I know hates Bush and the U.S. in extension. Further more, I'll personally never set foot in any of those fascist states until they get at least a basic level of human rights.

I never take pictures of where ever it is I'm spending my time, mostly because I was there at the time so I don't need pictures, but it's still nice to post some that others made. So, here are some pictures of Lowlands 2007.

Starting early with a nice cool brewsky:	Guy-wire tripping fest: (no tents were harmed during the making of this photo.. I think)
Lazy bums chilling out:	Me (on the right) trying to look intelligent and failing miserably:
Some of the people in our group:	Nice weather:
Absolutely charming:	"What do you think you're doing?!":
Also charming:	Gangbang whore. Even more charming..
"Party's over; beat it! Or we'll sick the dogs on ya!":

A big thanks to Jessica and Linda for the pictures. Look here for more photos.

See you next year guys!

I'm back from Lowlands 2007, and it was absolutely fantastic; like always. Three days of music, beer, meeting nice people, eating great food and more beer makes you wish you didn't have to go back to work. Unfortunately, I've got to do exactly that tomorrow-morning. It's gonna be a rough day.

I wasn't particularly satisfied about the line-up at Lowlands this year. In fact, there where only a handful of bands I wanted to see, and most of those weren't especially good either. Some I'd already seen before, such as After Forever. I've seen After Forever about twenty times so far, now that I think about it. This time though, they where missing one of their guitar/grunters, which was very noticable in their music. Then again, looking at Floor Jansen is always a joy, and more than made up for their sub-par performance.

I did find out about three new good bands I hadn't heard of before: Saybia, Damien Rice and one who's name I can't remember right now. They're probably pretty popular, and just about everyone knew who they where, except for me. I'm lagging behind a bit when it comes to today's music. Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised with those artists.

Another highlight was the Games In Concert show, which features a sixty-person philharmonic orchestra playing music from games such as God of War and FIFA soccer. The best part was when they played the Super Mario Brothers game sound and showed the famous Super Mario Bros Speedrun on the big screen. The crowd went wild. I like classical music, especially when it's something out of the 'ordinary' like this. Superb.

The weather was also great. A lot of the forecasts weren't very promising, so I was a bit afraid we might find ourselves in a big pool of mud and water (not to mention thunderstorms.. brr), but in the end we had absolutely beautiful weather. Thanks to our group's Weather Oracle, who regularly received messages from The Other Side (the home-front who was F5-ing on the Internet Weather Radar site) that predicted the weather to within two minutes. That saved us from the one and only huge rainfall during the entire weekend. Thanks Roy and Saskia!

When the pictures come in, I'll post a couple here on the blog. I'm already looking forward to Lowlands 2008.

Update: Pictures!

Update II: Found the band name for the third band I liked: Arcade Fire!

I don't buy music CDs. They're more expensive than they should be, and the prices never drop, even if the CDs are old. I don't buy music online either, since it's usually even more expensive than a CD, it has stupid DRM (Digital Restriction Management) restrictions, and you don't even get the nice booklet. How can something that has no costs for physical production, worse quality than the real product and less value for your money cost more than the real thing? I don't buy movies (DVDs) either, because there's all kinds of restrictive stuff on them such as regions and DRM copy restrictions.

DRM that's meant to keep you from copying media is illegal in the Netherlands. We've got a law that says you can make backup copies of media you buy. Fair-use probably also allows me to convert media I've bought so that I can listen to it in my car (if I had one), or on whatever device I happen to have. It's also legal in the Netherlands to make copies of music and movies for your friends. Since DRM prevents these things, it's illegal. Why would I buy a product that is too expensive, restricts my rights and is also illegal?

Instead of buying content, I download it. I download massive amounts of music and movies, and I never pay for any of it. And I don't have to feel guilty about it, because it's legal in the Netherlands. I can download as much as I want, but distributing contents is illegal (unless it's to some close friends).

In the Netherlands, we pay a tax on empty CDs and DVDs. Legislators assume everybody buying empty, writeable media is a criminal. It's not even a case of "Guilty until proven innocent", because there's no way to escape the tax, short of illegally importing empty media from across the border. What if I just want to make backups of my personal files? The money's supposed to go to the record companies. It doesn't always get there apparently, but it's the idea that counts. I don't want my money to go to the record companies, because they're greedy bastards that keep breaking the law and violating my rights. So I don't buy empty media either. I've got a big fat Internet connection and harddisk space is cheap, so why would I keep my stuff on CDs or DVDs?

I don't have to feel sorry for the artists either. They get their money from the tax on empty media. Except from me of course. But if the law can be ambiguous, so can I. Besides, those poor artists should stand up to their record companies and distributors and demand fairly priced CDs and DVDs and renounce DRM.

I've got 8000 pieces of music on my computer. Let's say the average CD contains eight songs. That's a thousand CDs. I'd consider €10,- for a CD that's just been released a fair price. An older CD, say, a year old, should cost a maximum of €5,- to €7,- euro's. So let's say €6,-. Most of my music was older than a year by the time I downloaded it. Perhaps 2% was just released. That would be twenty CDs.

20 x €10,- = €200,-
980 x €6,- = €5880,-
Total: €6080,-

So, the record industry could have had approximately €6000,- of my money in their pocket instead of €0,-, all because they're greedy bastards. Too bad folks, but I don't really feel sorry for you.

Here's what the government should do:

• Remove the tax on empty media.
• Break the Record Industry's cartel
• Demand fair prices on CDs
• Outlaw Digital Restriction Management when it breaks the law.

Armchair-bumm's got something to say about the 'so called Dutchlands'.

Movie transcript:

Yeah, I'm a Dutch person, and I'm from the United States, and I just want to say I went to look up some stuff in Holland, and I was hoping to see some cool Dutch people, and I was kind of like schocked to see that, like, there's not a lot of Dutch people there any more. I was like not impressed, and there's better stuff in the United States then there is in the so called Dutchlands, the like, Netherlands. And I think the society is really sick there now. And all these Indian types and Ghandi types. I wish I'd never would've looked that stuff up, and I was really offended that I saw that in my former home country. And I uh don't think those people belong there in my country.

Well, to you I say… glad you moved to the U.S, and I, uh, like, uh, like, like uh… hope you stay there and don't you's ever comes back here now ya hear? Dumb racist pig. At least we've still got basic human rights here in the Dutchlands.

^{Via GeenStijl.}

Here's a quick list of the Firefox extensions I'm currently using:

• CookieSafe
  Deny/allow cookies per-site.
• DOM Inspector
  Inspect the DOM tree. Useful for debugging Javascript stuff.
• Download statusbar
  No more Downloads pop-ups. This extension puts all your downloads in a bar in the bottom of the window.
• Firebug
  This extension shouldn't be missing from your firefox plugins list if you're a web developer. It does too many useful things to list here. Just get it.
• FireFoxMenuButtons
  Add menu-buttons to the Customize Toolbar for often-used menu items.
• FlashBlock (disabled)
  Block Flash from playing unless you click on the flash movie. This helps a lot if your browser crashes a lot due to Flash. My firefox never crashes, unless I visit a site that requires Flash.
• HTML Validator
  Shows a little icon in your status bar that shows if the current site validates as valid HTML. Doesn't require an internet connection but uses HTML Tidy.
• Link evaluator
  Check if all the links on the current page are valid.
• Live HTTP Headers
  Spy on the headers sent and received by Firefox.
• Media Player Connectivity
  Play media in stand-alone movie players. Ideal for Linux where media players can't be embedded.
• NoScript
  Disable/Enable Javascript per-site. Good for security.
• ScrapBook
  Keep offline copies of websites.
• Tab Mix Plus
  Extra Tab settings.
• URLParams
  Allows web developers to easily modify HTML forms (including hidden fields). Ideal for quick and easy testing of web forms.
• View Cookies
  Display cookie information in the View Page Info dialog.
• View dependencies
  View all Link Rel elemens in a page, such as images, CSS, Javascript, etc.
• View Source With
  Edit Forms and stuff in your favorite editor. Also doubles as 'Open with…' functionality.
• Web Developer
  Handy tool with lots of stuff for web deverlopers.

During this Challenge of the Month: Don't use refined sugar.

According to my friend Wouter, refined sugar is basically pure poison. Refined sugar is the sugar you buy in bags to put in your coffee, tea or whatever. It's bad for your teeth and bad for your body. Sugar breaks down vitamins and other stuff your body needs and gets from the food you take in.

Since I only put sugar in my tea (used to be in my coffee), it shouldn't be too hard to stop using any sugar. All I need to do is acquire a taste for sugarless tea which, according to another friend, isn't that hard. So it's been decided: no more sugar.

Previous challenge: Coffee

I stopped drinking coffee almost completely. Every once in a while (when visiting my parents or when I've been out to dinner) I have a single cup. About one in 1.5 weeks. That's just fine with me.

During this Challenge of the Month: Don't drink any coffee.

I drink too much coffee. And I really mean too much. About twenty mugs a day during weekdays; five a day on the weekend. It's an addiction, plain and simple. When I stop drinking coffee, I'll get a headache for two days. Recent scientific research has shown that two cups a day is good for you, but I'm not buying it. Most of the media-quoted 'scientific' research I've seen in the last couple of years has been flawed beyond hope.

So I've decided: No more coffee. As with any addiction, I don't believe you've fully overcome the addiction if you completely stop using whatever 'drug' it was you where taking. It's all about moderation, and you've only conquered your addiction if you can use the previously over-used drug in moderation. In light of this, I'll note that I consider it okay for me too drink, say, one cup of coffee after I've been out to dinner (which happens maybe once every two to three months). Let's see how it goes.

Notice: This challenge actually goes for both the month May and June, but whatever.

When it comes to computers, I'm what I call a 'tweaker' (no relations to tweakers.net, thank you very much). I spend a lot of time getting my computer setup, my directory structure, my documentation, my configuration, my everything just right. This can often take up a lot of my time, but I think I more than earn that back because it makes my computer and the tools I use easier and faster to use.

Now, I was thinking. Why not apply the same tweaking principle to my own life? I mean, I've got more than enough personal flaws. I smoke too much, I drink too much beer, (used to) drink too much coffee, I don't exercise, etc. So I decided to start a 'Challenge of the Month'. Here's how it works:

On the first day of each month, I'll set a goal for myself. Something that will make my life better, no matter how trivial it is. 'Stop drinking coffee', 'Visit all your friends at least once this month', 'Shave every two days'. It doesn't matter what it is, as long as I consider it a 'tweak' of my life. I'll try to keep up the challenge for the duration of the month, with the hope (but not guarantee) that I'll keep on doing it after that month.

So, from now on, each month I will write on this blog about the outcome of the previous challenge and post a new challenge for the next month.