Well in this particular case, I was tasked with building an affordable box for a client. The constraints were numerous, but most important was keeping the price below $300 US. I figured this would be fairly easy. I told the client that I would not install XP as it would likely cost her at least $300 to maintain it over the next 3yrs. Besides M$ will not be supporting it much longer.
Vista was totally out of the question, as the hardware requirements would easily eclipse $300 bucks.
This machine was running M$ W2K, but that wasn't the only interesting aspect of the box. I think these machines were the state of the art graphics workstations during IBM's desktop PC heyday. The case was made of solid steel, I'm sure the case weighed nearly 20-25 lbs. The case was equipped with a keylock and alarm micro-switch. I suppose those graphics cards fetched a pretty penny circa 2001. I was amazed at the bulletproof construction. The machine had a DVD-R and CD-RW, I removed both and installed a Liteon DVD-RW DL and removed the skimpy 20GB HD, and replaced it with 160GB HD. The machine also had 256MB RAM, which I did not upgrade. In truth, I was a little worried about not installing more RAM, especially given how relatively inexpensive it has become. Nonetheless, I was on a budget and I knew the client wasn't going to be doing any video encoding, gaming or any other CPU or memory intensive tasks. Besides, I was curious at how snappy X would be with only 256MB RAM.
Going into this project, I figured it would be interesting to try Ubuntu Hearty Heron 8.04. I'd heard so much about Ubuntu, and since I would be giving the box to a client that was totally oblivious to Linux, I figured that I would give them a distro that was a bit more forgiving to beginners. It would also give me an opportunity to take the distro for a spin.
As most of you know, I've been a Slackware advocate for quite awhile. Though, I am running Debian/Unstable (Lenny) on my notebook computer. Upon installing the Ubuntu on the IBM Intellistation, the network card was detected immediately. The e100 module was installed. I also noticed that there was no ncurses install menu. Additionally, it also seems to hide the word 'root' from the installer, as 'sudo' has become the word of the day.
I had become so accustomed to seeing 'root' on my Slackware installer. I wonder why people seem to think root is such a bad word? Perhaps beginners may hurt themselves or some such. I am not sure why this is such a big issue.
Perhaps one of the reasons, I like Slackware is that it maintains much of the traditional *nix attributes, which certainly suits the purists in _ME_.. Perhaps Shuttleworth and his design team thought it best to remove 'root' from the vocabulary, lest they confuse newbies. Sure 'sudo' or super doer accomplishes much in the way of a privileged user.
I'm not going to recount blow for blow the install experience, I will state up front that the install took under 20 min. Certainly on par for most Linux distros. After the GNOME desktop appeared, I noticed that a little tooltip appeared that stated there were 200 updates available. I thought gee, where have I seen this before ;) I suppose that if you're going to entice the M$ user refugee, you ought to give them something that is familiar.
It took me a few minutes to sort out the appropriate setup for the repositories via synaptic. Once this was done and I could get all of the non-free stuff that isn't installed by default (ie codecs, dvdcss, etc), I was off an running. It became much easier to drop down into the CLI and run apt-get. I installed much of the stuff the client would need (ie Open Office, abiword, Firefox, Limewire, mplayer, gxine, xine, AmaroK, gstreamer, j-pilot, Evolution, vlc, k3b, etc.)
I tested the playing of DVD and it seemed to work well. So, I drove over to the client and setup the box. The first curve-ball I encountered was that they wanted to setup the workstation with a Wi-Fi connection, I thought this was odd. I suggested that an direct ethernet connection would be best, as the download and upload speed would be far better. We put the USB Wi-Fi dongle on the box anyway and GNOME network manager worked without much issue. Installed the appropriate WPA key, no worries at all.
We tried one of the knock-off DVD she had lying around and it would not play, so as a sanity check I tried one of my one movies that I had on a USB stick. Sure enough it didn't play, I was missing one codec (.wmv). After installing that I had resolved that issue.
I then spent roughly 1-2 hrs on Linux 101 and explaining that she would never have to worry about installing McAfee or Norton anti-virus ever again. Walked her through Open Office, FireFox, k3b, xine.. She explained that her sons would most likely be using the machine more frequently, as she will be using her office notebook. So, I never trained her sons.
They've had the machine for roughly 2.5 months, I've only received one phone call. The son has a Zune, imagine that.. He wanted to install windows drivers and such. I explained that this would not be necessary. To be honest, I really hadn't done much research on Zune but a quick search revealed this nugget. Apparently Redmond uses yet another proprietary protocol to move media onto its media devices. The good thing about this is that it has been reverse engineered. Apparently people have tried to convince M$ to make MTP a published standard, we'll see how far that goes.
After I ssh'd into their box, I decided to look for libmtp and discovered it was already installed by default. Cool!! So, all he needs to do is plug the Zune and the box and HAL will recognize it has a USB HID.
I've not received any email or calls from them. So, I suspect all is well.
One desktop at a time :)
Before I begin discussing the specifics, I will recognize the loss of a legendary Yankee, Bobby Murcer. When I began to watch the Yanks as a child, I remember all of the teams that he played on. From 77' to 81' Yankee clubs, I always remember Murcer staying out of the limelight (Something Jackson, Munson, nor Gossage could accomplish) of the big city. Nobody could ever accuse Bobby of being a hell raiser. He clearly was a role player and was quite content at being a contributor. When his playings days subsided, he still made contributions to the younger players, particularly Jeter. Though he would later succumb to Cancer, he was always the epitome of courage and valor. Murcer will truly be missed.
Now we know that the Bombers had several needs:
Going into the trade deadline, Cashman seemed determined to soothe wounds that were the inflicted by rookie starting pitchers Kennedy and Hughes combined 0-7 start. Quite simply the ballclub needs to get younger and you must groom and nurture the farm system. Both of these young pitchers were sent down to AAA for extra work on their mechanics.
The pick-up of cast-off Richie Sexton addressed the right-handed pop. Recent pickup of Pudge Rodriguez helps to fill the void for a tier I starting catcher. Pudge is a free agent after this season and could potentially walk without much resistance if Posada can come back healthy.
Luckily there are some hefty contracts coming off the books next season (Mussina, Giambi, Abreu) so we could sign Pudge for insurance in the event that Posada's shoulder does not respond to rehab.
Yanks also dipped into the Bucs sell-off and acquired Marte (lefty bullpen specialist) and Nady to provide another right-handed bat. Placing Nady and Pudge at the end of the lineup helps to stretch it significantly. The 6-8 spots in the lineup are no longer easy outs and both players have BAs well above replacement level.
The ballclub was making a run before the acquisitions took place, nonetheless, the team is better positioned to challenge for the AL East crown with these pieces in place. The starting pitching has done great works despite the losses of the Chien-Ming Wang and Phil Hughes.
Bringing back another castoff, Ponson appeared to be fools gold. However, he has been respectable in his seven starts. Time will tell if the rotation can hold up until the reinforcements arrive. If the club can stay within shouting distance of the front running Rays and Bosox, we have the makings of a very interesting division race.
I'm not sold on the Rays, as it remains to be seen if that young ballclub can withstand the dog days of Summer.
]]>Rest assured that I'm fine and I have much to discuss. The automotive space is not a happy place to be right now. Very strange to see your friends and colleagues involuntarily separated from their livelihoods. Some people don't have any other skill set, so it becomes more difficult to rebound. Unfortunately, it is just the beginning. IMHO, the worst is yet to come. Fuel and precious metals will continue to fluctuate for the foreseeable future.
I'll have more to share in the following days.
Enough of the professional stuff. On a business note, I recently converted yet another customer to a Linux desktop. I will reveal that story in a couple of days.
]]>I have no idea why Apache 1.x resolved this syntax without any problems. In fact, I had been using this syntax for several years. Nonetheless, the problem is resolved. If any of care to educate me on the complexities of Apache 2.2, I'm all ears..
I'd be happy to share this info w/my faceless admins :)
In life we often long for opportunities to meet or befriend someone that would leave a lasting impression upon you or others. A person that has an eye for freedom and speaks truth to power. Sure I have read about the lives of Malcolm, Martin and other tremendously consequential freedom fighters. However, I had never met anyone who would later create and foster a movement that would threaten his life. That is until I befriended Arthur Mutambara.
Mutambara taught in the FAMU/FSU College of Engineering, he specialized in Controls, more specifically Mechatronics. I believe he also taught Robotics as well. As part of my Mechanical Engineering undergrad curriculum, I had the great fortune to study Vibrations(or Vibes as many of us called it) under Mutambara. Prior to successfully completing that course, I thought P.I.D only pertained to Process ID. Boy, was I wrong :)
He certainly was not the conventional professor, in that he and I traded Tony Touch mixed-taped and talked about HipHop on regular basis. He offered me Tupac and Ras Kass, in turn I offered him KRS and Freddie Foxxx. We made sure that neither one of us fell into the media propagated East Coast vs. West Coast nonsense. At the time, I didn't realize that we were nearly the same age.
Early on I knew that he was an activist. I asked him what he thought about Cecil Rhodes, as Arthur was the only Zimbabwean that I had encountered that was also a Rhodes Scholar. Needless to say I got an earful and well deserved education. Arthur was very interested in the uplifting of the disenfranchised. Once I had learned that he was embroiled in the politics of his homeland, I knew that he would be a change agent. In fact, it was through his involvement that I became more interested in the developments of Zimbabwe. Mutambara has been critical of the African agenda and the leadership therein. He also takes issue with aftermath of post-colonial African development. Clearly he is calling people to task. I applaud his courage. Yes, also acknowledges the damages inflicted upon the motherland by Imperialism..
It was much later that I learned that his life was in danger, but I knew that he would not be bowed and would not retreat. These are the lessons that he instilled in his students. There is going to be a grassroots effort to help support Mutambara and his family during their time of need. Once the details are known, I will share the details here.
]]>Interesting account on distributed video and the application therein. I wonder if Vint ever considered the benefits of BitTorrent protocol? The idea of having a model that supports one-to-many will not scale well unless you have an infinite pipe. I believe BitTorrent solves this problem. If you're going to advocate Internet access for everyone, clearly the value of mesh networks must be discussed in greater detail. Luckily the crowded address space concern has been mitigated by IPv6, I'm just not sure when the U.S will begin to take full advantage of the protocol. China and Japan seem to have already rolled this out. Methinks much of the bandwidth constraints is propagated by greedy wireless vendors arguing about who owns the pipe. IPTV and other applications are largely niche geek pleasures, due to the posturing and constant bickering of vendors. I suppose State and Federal legislatures are at fault too.
]]>The show notes have not yet been recovered, but I anticipate this problem will be resolved in short order. I always mirror the shownotes on my blog, so you should be able to get the proper synopsis for each show. Just review the podcast category..
As always, if you have questions or would like to send an audio comment about the AG Speaks Netcast, send them here.
Of course, I'll play them on the next show :)
Update:
I would be remiss if I did not thank Odeo's Greg Gershman and Eric Rupert. Both were very responsive and showed good hustle in resolving the channel outages.