FSF Launches "BadVista" Campaign

Article on Slashdot Saturday on the launch of the FSF's BadVista campaign against Microsoft's new operating system. BadVista's aim is to inform users about the alleged harms inflicted by Vista on the user and about free software alternatives. Quoting program administrator John Sullivan:

Vista is an upsell masquerading as an upgrade. It is an overall regression when you look at the most important aspect of owning and using a computer: your control over what it does. Obviously MS Windows is already proprietary and very restrictive, and well worth rejecting. But the new 'features' in Vista are a Trojan Horse to smuggle in even more restrictions. We'll be focusing attention on detailing how they work, how to resist them, and why people should care.

Quick Update

So yeah, been pretty busy since I started the new gig. Work has been very good, keeping fairly busy and most importantly, it's been rewarding while in the office and once I leave the office, I'm off the clock. What a novel feeling. I could definitely get used to this.

The commute is definitely a drag however. Bright spot is that I only drive for 15 minutes each way, and public transportation does the rest. Catching up on my reading and sleep along the way. Unfortunately, it's so daggone LONG!! An hour on the bus and an hour on the Metro, each way, minimum. I leave the house by 4:40am to get into work by 7am, and leave work by 4pm to get home by 6:45pm. Ugh. Starting January though I'm going to try and start taking the MARC train again. There's a stop right at Silver Spring Metro, right where I work, so that's nice. I can't swing the schedule from Martinsburg though (besides the fact there's no parking to be found, I wouldn't get home till 7:15pm at the earliest). So I think I'll be driving to Monacacy (45-min drive) and then taking the train from there. If I swing it right, and can catch the 4:03pm train out of Silver Spring, I could be home around 6pm. That would be a tremendous improvement, besides the fact that I wouldn't have to switch transports halfway, and I wouldn't have to wait out in bad weather (Monocacy has a covered platform, and I wouldn't be at the one at work very long prior to the train arriving).

So that's work. Home life, even busier, with all the school plays and recitals and the Nutcracker and such. Last performance of the season is tonight, at Carrie's school.

Then we get to really gear up for Christmas... be nice to have sort of an open house before the holidays but I don't see that happening with the time we have... Also it's really important that I get a weekend away with Donna. Time spent together lately is close to nil.

And there you have it. Bored ya to tears yet?

On the gaming horizon, we have the World of Warcraft expansion, Burning Crusade released mid-January, and the newest Command & Conquer is due out 1Q 2007 as well. W00t! I know what I'm spending my Christmas money on...

Every Time You Vote Against Net Neutrality, Your ISP Kills a Night Elf

Perhaps one of the more overlooked problems that could arise out of a bad Net Neutrality decision is the impact to online gaming. In fact, any interactive communications could stand to take a dive (VOIP, streaming video, etc) with the advent of Net Neutrality legislation. RampRate has an interesting look at the possible fallout and where we are headed. From the article:

What will be murdered with no fallback or replacement is the nascent market of interactive entertainment - particularly online gaming. Companies like Blizzard Entertainment, Electronic Arts, Sony Online Entertainment, and countless others, have built a business on the fundamental assumption of relatively low latency bandwidth being available to large numbers of consumers. Furthermore, a large -- even overwhelming -- portion of the value of these offerings comes from their 'network effects' -- the tendency for the game to become more enjoyable and valuable as larger number of players joins the gaming network.

Good News

So I went on my first interview Wednesday, and by the end of the day had a verbal offer, which I negotiated up in salary yesterday enough that I'll be accepting it. It's a position with a contracting company, Keane Federal Systems, who are managing the AWIPS (Advanced Weather Processing Information System) for NOAA in Silver Spring. It's a bit of a hike, but I'll be able to take public transportation again like I did when I worked in Bethesda. And, there's no on-call or work outside business hours as it's mostly testbed support. Very similar to what I was doing at AOL, but much more on-hands like at NEGT. I get to play in a server room again, yay.... Forgot how much I missed the loud hum of multiple servers running...

And yes, I'm still in shock at the quick turnaround, I've never found a job that fast. Sheer luck and goodly amounts of blessing involved there.

Who Knew McDonalds Made Good Broccoli and Cheese Soup?

Well, been a little over a week now of unemployment. Though technically I'm still employed until 11/15, and just on semi-vacation. Haven't gotten a tremendous amount of job seeking done, but got my Monster resume updated, already got one call and a couple of emails. It seems little is posted to Monster anymore, most employers use it as a resume database instead of a job posting one.

So I've gotten quite a bit behind in emails and Slashdot news for the past week. Decided to take a quick break from the job front to catch up and archive some stuff out of my Gmail inbox.

CEO Nabbed for Identity Theft From Own Employees

And you think your boss is a jerk? Check out this VARBusiness story about a tech CEO the feds say was using his employees' personal information to apply for loans and credit cards to the tune of $1 million. Somewhere a whole lot of businesses who bought this guy's managed-services pitch are cringing with the thought of who is taking care of their data now. And 50 employees are gonna have to sweat out their credit reports even as they look for new jobs. Now that's a lousy boss!

Why the World Is Not Ready For Linux

While many users reading Slashdot embrace Linux, ZDNet is running an article on why the rest of the world isn't ready. One note for Linux developers: 'Stop assuming that everyone using Linux (or who wants to use Linux) is a Linux expert.' While a lot of these topics have been brought up as both stories and comments on Slashdot, this article pretty much sums up why Vista could be absolutely terrible, and people would still believe there is no other option.

From the article:

The one area of Linux ownership and use where it becomes apparent that there's an assumption that everyone who uses Linux is an expert is hardware support. Your average user doesn't have the time, the energy or the inclination to deal with uncertainty. Also, they usually only have the one PC to play with. Hardware just has to work. There's a very good reason why Microsoft spends a lot of time on hardware compatibility — it's what people want.

OpenSourcing Yourself, Are You Ready?

Many people love and use open source software. Open source has made an impact in just about every place imaginable; education, hardware, coke, beer, cell phones, pharmaceuticals, search engines and encyclopedias. However, OpenHuman takes it one step further and invites you to open source yourself to experiment with the open human idea. This may sound crazy and rife with privacy concerns but as the author asks, do you still believe in Internet privacy in the age of blogs, MySpace, LinkedIn, Meetup, and Flickr?

Last up are a pair of articles about NVIDIA's newest graphics card. Droool.....

GeForce 8800GTX Benchmarked

The card does not launch for another week, but DailyTech already has benchmarks of the new GeForce 8800GTX on its website. The new card is the flagship GPU to replace GeForce 7900, and according to the benchmarks has no problem embarrassing the Radeon X1950 XTX either. According to the article, 'The GeForce 8800GTX used for testing is equipped with 768MB of GDDR3 video memory on a 384-bit memory bus as previously reported. Core and memory clocks are set at 575 MHz and 900 MHz respectively.'

Nvidia Launches 8800 Series, First of the DirectX 10 Cards

The new top-end GeForce 8800 GTX and GTS from Nvidia launched today, and Loyd Case at ExtremeTech has done two articles: an analysis of the new GPU's architecture, and a benchmark article on PNY's 8800 GTX. The GPU uses a unified scalar-based hardware architecture rather than dedicated pixel pipelines, and the card sets the bar higher yet again for PC graphics.

The world and his dog has been reviewing the NVIDIA 8800 series of graphics cards. There is coverage over at bit-tech, which has some really in-depth gameplay evaluations; TrustedReviews, which has a take on the card for the slightly less technical reader; and TechReport, which is insanely detailed on the architecture. The verdict: superfast, but don't bother if you have less than a 24" display.

Here We Go Again

So yesterday I called in sick, and received a call in return informing me I was a victim of the latest round of layoffs. So, unemployed once again, this makes the big ole layoff number three.

Funny thing is, instead of an overwhelming sense of dread and depression like the last two times, this time around I am mostly... well... relieved! I actually feel as if this enormous weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. Didn't realize just how stressed that my employment and commute were making me.

So this is for the best. I've been AWOL from my wife and girls for the past year, now I have the time to catch up on things. Hell, I just spent the past two days running errands with Donna, and I am buoyantly happy about just getting to spend time with her.

Oh, and it's not just me, AOL laid off a significant number of Northern Va employees yesterday, including one other from my group.

So there we go. I'm in the job market again, I think I'm going to concentrate on the federal sector this time, but definitely something closer to home. Or, barring that, a well-paying one close to a Metro stop so I can take public transportation again.

Upgrade Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake) to Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft)

Ubuntu 6.10 is the current development version of the Ubuntu operating system. It was released October 26th. The common name given to this release from the time of its early development was "Edgy Eft".

Today I have upgraded my Ubuntu Dapper laptop and workstation to Ubuntu Edgy.
This article uses two methods to upgrade Ubuntu Dapper to Edgy:

1) Using GUI
2) Using apt-get

Upgrading Ubuntu Dapper to Ubuntu Edgy

WoW Burning Crusade Delayed until January 2007

Aaaaarrrrggghhhhh.....

Blizzard today announced that the release date for World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, the first expansion for World of Warcraft, is delayed until January 2007. From the article: 'By adding a few extra weeks to the development cycle beyond its original target date, Blizzard will be able to extend the closed beta test and further refine the new content that will ship with the game.' While disappointing now, what will this mean for the yearly WoW expansions long term? As Blizzard COO Paul Sams revealed plans in August that 'Starting with The Burning Crusade, every year thereafter we plan on bringing out a new expansion set.' 2008, 2009, ad infinitum?

In somewhat related news (and offered as an explanation as to why the testers are dawdling so long), Slashdot reports that the Male Blood Elves, from the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion Burning Crusade, have been made more masculine by their Blizzard overseers. Which totally makes sense, because when we all think elves we think of paragons of masculinity. From the article:

You changed it because your constituency is a bunch of capslock-riding asshats who are threatened by bishy player characters. The reason Blood Elves were Horde in the first place is because everyone was whining about all the Horde races being ugly juggernauts. The point of Blood Elves was to inject some swish into a very physically intimidating set of races. They're not exactly chunky now, and I do not begrudge a game company making prerelease aesthetic changes, but their reasons for doing so are pathetic.

Nice. Before and after photos are available in their post. Though I must admit, I about fell out of my chair after reading a comment, Dear Blizzard,

I feel that the female blood elves wear far too much clothing. This expresses an extreme imbalance in the WoW gameplay. It is completely unfair that male night elves may go topless, while female night elves cannot. This imbalance in gameplay must be addressed, or else i will cancel my subscription.

Sincerely,
Whiny Blizzard Customer