My love affair with a lovely bread maker

Or "Make your own bread at home every day, with a

one-time, $45 investment"

If you told me several years ago that I'd be cooking my own bread, I'd have told you that you're nuts. Being a tech type I can't see myself "wasting time" (even if the alternative is sitting in front of the puter browsing random web sites :) with the sticky flour+water mess. (I used to manually do my own pizza once a month, but stopped because of the mess I created in the kitchen).

But then... I found about these nifty kind of tech toys... BREAD MAKERS!.



And not only that, but I found a VERY AFFORDABLE one (45 greenbacks in the US of A, and ~ USD $76 locally in Buenos Aires in 220v AC version, including 21% V.A.T. -remember the local version has local warranty, and the importer has to make a living as well, so they likelly make around USD $10 per unit discounting import duties).

While the local brand isn't Sunbeam, the Chinese manufacturer is the same. It works great!. In less than two hours after pouring the ingredients and pressing the right keys (make sure you put water first and powder dry yeast last), I have my own hot bread ready to eat (and the smell of fresh bread throughout the house).

The same exact China-made bread maker sold with the
local ATMA brand down here, sold as Sunbeam in the US of A

I've found that natural powdered "dry yeast" is readily available in 10 grams envelopes (keep in the fridge and it lasts several months!) in major local supermarkets like Carrefour, Disco or Coto (sadly the French chain 'Leader Price' across the street doesn't carry the powder version, just live yeast).



For comparison's sake, here's an off-the-shelf piece of commercially made bread:


And here so you compare the size with the machine's container. With the machine I bought, you get a ~680 grams to 950 grams (1.5 to 2 pounds) piece of bread.


What's best is that you pour the ingredients into the removable teflon-coated "cooking pan" (I really really hate teflon, but I have to agree that it'd be almost impossible to create this kind of device without it, and it's almost impossible to know if the commercially produced bread doesn't involve teflon along the way... so in the grand scheme of things, at least I do know what ingredients -or lack of chemicals- I put in my own homemade bread).


After pouring the ingredients, you set the program using the keys, push Start and go away!. You'll know when the bread is ready a hour or so after that because of the beeping, and fresh-bread smell.

The unit at work
(note: light is a flashlight I was holding to take the pic)

Work complete!

Here you can see the cooking pan out of the unit. (I did the first run with the unit standing on the floor and closely watching along the process fearing any spills/smoke/etc nothing happened! :).


As you can see below, the mixing-pad is part of the cooking pan and stays inside the unit, and inside the bread as well, but being all teflon-coated, it doesn't stick to it.

It's easy to recognize pieces of bread made with this unit because of the small hole made by the mixing pad that it leaves at the bottom.

And here, the tasty result!



In short: Highly recommend one of these contraptions!.



Not bad for USD $45 huh?
FC

PS: I'll see if I'm so happy when the first electricity/power bill arrives. This unit uses 600-Watt while cooking, and less than 100 while mixing.

Blu-Ray PS3 wins in dollars/features ratio over HDDVD+Xbox360...

A lot has been written lately about the High-Definition standard wars of Blu-Ray vs HDDVD.

I only have enough money to buy a single console and HD movies player,
so I have done the math using prices from Amazon.com:

Sony PS3 (60 Gb) console: $499
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0009VXAM0

Sony PS3 Blu-Ray remote $24
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000M17AVO

Sony PS3 cordless Media Keyboard $65
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000MFLBBK

Total: $ 589

Storage: 60GB
Full-size wireless Keyboard: Yes
Runs Linux without mod: Yes, [4, afaik] Yellowdog for PS3 , Fedora-PPC, Ubuntu-PPC, Gentoo

vs

Xbox 360 - 20Gb: $349
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000B43OY4

Xbox 360 HD-DVD player add-on: $180
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000JHO4L0

Xbox 360 Media Remote: $20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000B6MLSM

Tiny clumsy Xbox rubber mini-Keyboard: $30
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000UN3UDQ

Total: $579

Storage: 20GB

plays HD movies: YES, but with Bulky add-on

You fund an evil corporation which is also a convicted monopolist: YES
Runs Linux without mod?: NO
Full-size wireless keyboard: NO

Game over, Sony's PS3 wins. :)

Price difference:
Sony's $10 more expensive, big freaking deal. :)

VMware Player FC6 / blag installer for blondes ;)

I'm sick and tired of having to do the work that paid programmers should do.

And no, I'm not thinking about the nice guys at blag Linux which work nearly for free :)

I'm thinking about VMWare, which distributes a "VMWare player" aimed at end-users but makes installation a nightmare full of pitfalls needing patches and lots of manual fiddling.

Don't believe me? Do you think things are "fine" as they are and there's no room for improvement? see the results of this web search on Google and compare it to this one.

In short: I'm tired of having to do the work that paid programmers, many of them surely earning 50x more than me- should be doing in the first place.

Now, to follow the suggestion of Steve from the blag forums, I will just "CHILL OUT , man..." and let you have my script:


... so you will hopefully end up with VMware Player 2.0 up and running in your blag 60000 linux box (or hopefully Fedora Core 6 as well) running the latest 2.6.22-1 Linux kernel and just pressing [enter] a dozen times....


ENJOY:
http://the13thfloor.org/musthave/easyvmware4blag001.tar.gz

FC

Extracting icon from win32 app (or apps) using WINE on Linux

Native Linux apps are of course preferable to running Win32 ones under compatibility libs like WINE.
But when you install one such app on Linux, one of the problems of those apps is what icon to put to the launcher object(s) in our desktop or Gnome panel.

(It's not that I use a lot but the PMView PRO trial and WORDVIEW.EXE PPVIEWER.EXEs from MSFT come to mind (as my winders now runs under Win4Lin)...

I found THIS FREEBIE from MSFT (actually a coding sample from MSDN).
http://download.microsoft.com/download/win95/utility/1.0/w9xxp/en-us/4493.exe

Just extract it with unzip, find icontool.exe, and then run it with wine ./icontool.exe
There's an option in the app that allows to "Extract Icon from EXE/DLL", navigate to your Win32 installed app (usually in your $home/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Application_Name_here), find the EXE, and then use the option "EXPORT AS BMP" to save a BMP you can then use (after conversion to PNG) as icon for your win32 app under Linux. (Save it under /usr/share/pixmaps).

There you have. And if this helped you a lot, remember I always gladly accept $5 Amazon.com gift certificates delivered to my e-mail f c a s s i a @ g m a i l . c o m
:-D

Have a nice day!

FC

JAR is a bitch, and then you die!

[WARNING: This is geeky stuff, if you're NOT a computer geek, then scroll down to the next post. Move along, nothing to see here!]

Instead of the old adage "Life's a bitch, and then you die" I propose a new version: "JAR is a bitch, and then you die".

In case you're living in a bottle or you're not a geek, JAR is the Java JDK tool used to build the compressed ".JAR" (Java Archive) files that contain a Java software application (all the different binary files inside it). It's a tiny command line application just like everything in the JDK that should be no different or more complex to use than ZIP or tar.

However, it proved to be a real pain in the ass and a TIME WASTING EXERCISE, just to update a SINGLE TEXT LINE inside an existing .jar file's "Manifest".

1. What I wanted to do:
Unpack an existing application,
update its MANIFEST file, to include the "Main-Class: ClassnameHere" statement, so I could just start the application by typing

java -jar applicationname.jar
instead of using the author's ancient approach of having to name the "Main-Class" on the command-line every time...

java -classpath applicationname.jar LongNameofTheStupidStartupClass
2. I unpacked the existing application's .jar file just fine with 'unzip', and created a text file with my favorite text editor which read:

Main-Class: LongNameofTheStupidStartupClass

I saved it as "./manifestinfo.txt"

3. So, not having used jar before, I go to a tutorial I find online here

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/deployment/jar/modman.html

which reads

"The basic command has this format:

jar cfm jar-file manifest-addition input-file(s)

• The c option indicates that you want to create a JAR file.
• The m option indicates that you want to merge information from an existing file into the manifest file of the JAR file you're creating."
  

...and thinking I know what I'm doing, I type:

$ jar -c jftpd.jar ./manifestinfo.txt ./ ./ftpserver/*


I get this as a result:



4. I had to close the terminal as I couldn't type anymore (I could type but I couldn't understand anything).

Then I found what I think is a more friendly explanation on how to update the "Manifest" of the .JAR file with new info, over HERE:
http://java.sun.com/developer/Books/javaprogramming/JAR/basics/update.html

(Later I realize that what happened in Step#3 was that I forgot to include the "f" parameter to indicate that I wanted output to a file rather than to STANDARD OUTPUT. What the **** is the purpose of having output of JAR to standard output?? I don't get it).

5. So I type

jar cf jftpd.jar ftpserver/*
and IT WORKS!

But I forgot about the new manifest info... so I type:

$ jar umf ./manifestinfo.txt ./jftpd.jar
...and I get this beauty:

java.io.IOException: misplaced continuation line
at java.util.jar.Attributes.read(Attributes.java:374)
at java.util.jar.Manifest.read(Manifest.java:182)
at java.util.jar.Manifest.(Manifest.java:52)
at sun.tools.jar.Main.update(Main.java:481)
at sun.tools.jar.Main.run(Main.java:184)
at sun.tools.jar.Main.main(Main.java:1022)
[fcassia@m6810 tmp]$

WHAT THE F#CK IS GOING ON NOW????????

6. You know what was the problem? the file "manifestinfo.txt" had TWO BLANK SPACES before the text "Main-Class: ..." and TWO BLANK LINES below it !! (I pressed [Enter] twice).

Apparently, JAR FREAKS OUT (this is JAVA 6.0 update 2 JDK's JAR, for crying out loud!).

7. I removed the two leading spaces and trailing blank lines and guess what? IT WORKED!.

[fcassia@m6810 tmp]$ jar umf ./manifestinfo.txt ./jftpd.jar
[fcassia@m6810 tmp]$

8. Done.... BASTARDS!!

9. Another Golden Rule when dealing with JAR:
JAR NAME APPARENTLY ALWAYS GOES LAST.

So, contradicting what would be the 'zip' usage of "hey zip, I want to update THIS ZIPFILE with THIS_DATA" (zip something.zip newfile.txt) in JAR is totally the opposite way: "hey JAR, I want THIS NEW FILE into THISJAR" (jar umf newdata ./intothisjar.jar).

GRRR

And finally, found this thread
http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=549376

See comment #11:
"The JAR tool is rather finicky. I have found that each HEADER:VALUE pair must be separated by a newline but not more than 1 newline. When I tried putting blank lines in the MANIFEST, I would get "Error: failed to load Main-Class attribute...". Sun needs to update their tutorials or fix this problem with the JAR tool's manifest parser."

FINICKY? That's being mercyful...

and then comment #15:

"One diference between unix and windows' file system is that text files in unix always have a final linebreak at the end of the file, while windows doesn't need to.

Java, being developed by Sun primarily for the unix comunity requires that the
manifest file ends with a new-line.

no new-line, no manifest file."

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Want more? See the comments on page #2 of the above thread at Sun.com, discussing the "joys" of the "jar" command:

===================================
Does this instruction really work???

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/deployment/jar/appman.html

They specify the following command:
jar cmf MyJar.jar Manifest.txt MyPackage/*.class

When I tried that with my classes and files (with different names, of
course), it didn't work. What worked for me is equivalent to the
following:
jar cmf Manifest.txt MyJar.jar MyPackage/*.class

The order is simply permuted. Maybe it's just Apple's Java
implementation. Is this what you were asking about?

-jonnie

==================

The Tutorial is wrong. It should be jar cfm, not cmf.
The order of the command must match the order of the parameters.

==================

Thank you. That is good to know.
===================================

I REST MY CASE:

JAR IS A BITCH, AND THEN YOU DIE

FC

A red mouse pointer in Linux - The REALLY Important Things in Life ;)

For the moment -and for the last year or so- I'm running the free Linux distro "blag" from the UK. It's based on RedHat's Fedora Core 6 project, with a lot of stuff removed so that it fits on a single CD, and also a nice look, with custom visuals/login screen/backgrounds.

What it lacks, apparently like Fedora Core 6, is a set of NICE COLOUR mouse pointers. blag includes the default black cursors dubbed "bluecurve" and a white colour variation of the same. I didn't like those. I wanted a big red mouse pointer in Linux and the Gnome desktop.

Well, to make a long story short: I pulled my hair reading all the contradicting and conflicting info on changing mouse pointers. Most of the stuff on the net is seriously outdated. For instance you often find results from XFree86 lists several years back saying that Linux mouse cursors can only be black and white.

Here's how to install beautiful RED mouse pointers in blag 6K, and Fedora Core 6.x or higher for that matter:

I have settled on one of two choices: "red mix" and "Komix". I'll let you guys decide which ones are better...

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
1. As root, from a shell do
cd /usr/share/icons

2. If you want Komix...
wget http://art4linux.org/pages/download/cursors/Komix-0.1.tar.gz
tar xvfz ./Komix-0.1.tar.gz
tar xvfz ./Komix-0.1/Komix-Red-Regular.tar.gz
tar xvfz ./Komix-0.1/Komix-Red-Large.tar.gz

Go to System->Preferences->Mouse
Click on the "Pointer" tab, scroll down and find Komix_Red below LBlueCurve. Click on that option. DONE!

3. If you want "red mix"
wget http://www.kde-look.org/CONTENT/content-files/5605-cursor_mix.tgz
tar xvfz ./5605-cursor_mix.tgz
Go to System->Preferences->Mouse
Click on the "Pointer" tab, scroll down and find "cursor_mix" at bottom. Click on that option. DONE!
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////




There you have, a nice red mouse pointer that you can ALWAYS see, even with the corner of your eye.
Enjoy!

FC

My first bash hacking in 7 years...

Last time I did a BASH (linux shell) script was, I think, back in y2k. I ran Caldera Openlinux in an ancient underpowered 233Mhz Pentium I, and the desktop was then bloated KDE. Nowadays, I run Blag, based on RedHat's Fedora Core 6.
But now I was fed up with having to manually seek, download and install "pptpconfig" to get a friendly-easy to use PPTP VPN applet. (Blag includes PPTP but for some reason pptpconfig is not included).

So, I spent a couple hours tonight reading -once again- about bash scripting HERE and HERE, and thanks to a great tutorial on Gnome desktop integration at RedHat's site HERE - I was able to code a simple script which downloads the required RPMs from Fedora repositories, calls the YUM system updater, and installs everything required for PPTP VPN networking into blag, creating a default launcher with nice icon in the desktop. It's a pretty simple script, but nobody had done it before. So here it is. I have released it under the GPL, for what it's worth.

WOW,I can still code stupid little shell scripts!. What an ego boost!. ;-)


Specially since my attention defficit personality usually makes me leave my programming projects incomplete at the first sign of trouble... this time that didn't happen and it was kinda fun, reminded me of my first babbling with OS/2 Rexx...

http://the13thfloor.org/blagpptp/easypptp4blag6kv0001.tar.gz

FC

Get 1080i HD upscaling over component video with the Helios H4000 DVD player!

A couple months ago, the nice folks at Neodigits were kind enough to send me a sample Helios H4000 upscaling DVD player for testing.

The small black H4000 over a Philips DVP9680

I'm holding out my review publication on the INQUIRER until I see if they release firmware fixes or not (I already emailed them some of my suggestions).

Another design win: vent holes!

However, that doesn't prevent me from wholeheartedly recommending this DVD player. If all you need is a DVD player for DVD movies and MPEG4 avis (DIVX or XVID) which also is capable of doing High-Definition (HD) upscaling to 1080i over component video, then look no further!.

Surprise: a VGA out!. You can hook it to a SVGA monitor, projector
or anything with VGA input!

The H4000 is well constructed, has an internal 5.1 audio decoder (no need for an external box!), a nice, big remote control with keys that glow in the dark (hurrah!), and ... get this... a POWER SWITCH in the back. This means you can actually turn the device completelly off, it cuts the AC power from the power supply!. No need to waste power in "standby" mode!. It also protects the unit from power fluctuations when not in use.

A built-in 5.1 audio decoder, to boot!

The player works flawlessly. It played every Region-1, Region 2 (Europe), and Region 4 (South America / Australia) that I threw at it. No need to enter region codes, the player arrived as "Region Free"!.

The H4000 hooked to my HD-ready 29" Philips CRT TV
which notably lacks HDMI inputs, so HD over Component
is the only way. To my knowledge the H4000 is the ONLY
DVD player capable of bypassing HDCP and doing HD over CVI.

So, do I recommend it? Yes.

Are there things that could be improved?

Yes. If you plan to use it for mp3 playback or if you have audio in .ogg (Vorbis) format, or if you plan to look at high-quality (2MP and upwards) photos with this player, be advised that these features leave a lot to be desired.

The Helios boot logo. Notice how the Philips TV shows HD 1080i mode!

R.E.M. DVD player in 1080i mode

For instance, photos look as if they are reduced to 640x480 then displayed (with visible dithering). MP3 and general data cd-r or dvd-r file browsing is limited because it doesn't support long filenames (Joliet). The names are shortened to the first few characters.

That's why I'm waiting to see if they fix these issues via a firmware update.

However, if all you want is a DVD player that does HD 1080i or 1080p upscaling via component video outputs, this is a must, get one while you can!.

See also my INQ article:

Big fat "HDTV-ready" CRT lack HDMI
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=36644

Vista Aero even on old PCs, with Visiontek's 256MB, X1600 PCI graphics card

This card supports dual displays, and HDTV TV-Out!

The nice folks at VisionTek sent me one of the company's X1600 PCI graphics adapters for review.

While I AWAIT (until hell freezes over?) for Microsoft to ship me a sample media evaluation copy of Vista, I want to give you a sneak peek of this impressive graphics card.

Front View. Yes, it' s PCI bus!.

In a nutshell, if you need to use Vista (I prefer Linux, yet I understand that people have no choice for work reasons), and want to experience "Aero" (the 3D interface eye candy), I suggest you get one of these cards. At $210 [Updated June 1st : $154 at TigerDirect, here!], it' s a LOT cheaper than replacing your whole motherboard, graphics card, and probably RAM as well.


I have used it and it works very well. Vista Aero works beatifully, on my 2.4 Ghz P4 (800Mhz FSB) in the Supermicro P4SCA mobo. 3DMark scores and screenshots will be published on my INQ review. I would have published this months ago if it wasn't for the Vole. [Hello? Anyone reading?].

In short, if you have a machine with no AGP or PCI-X, just plain old PCI bus, I suggest you get one of these cards. I had no previous experience with this company, but from the way they communicated with me, the firm looks top notch!.

www.visiontek.com, and also www.froogle.com. Use Google, it is your friend!.

Joe from Neurostech thinks I'm a big thing (I'm not) - Still, thanks! :)

Joe Born from Neuros Technology wrote something nice about me on his company blog. It's good to see a small company like his listening to constructive criticism from a computer geek like me.

Still... I kinda blushed when I read him calling me " prominent South America blogger...".

No, I don' t mean I want it removed. No, please keep it there. I always need an ego-boost.

Gee, thanks Joe!. :)

FC

Sun kicks Microsoft's .Net in the teeth and makes history: Java is "Free Software" with GPL license

Sun made history today and ensured the long life of Java by setting it free, releasing it under the Free Software Foundation's GPL license.

You can read my thoughts about the move, over here.

Contratulations to Sun!.

FC

Linux software naming is getting out of hand

I' ve been using computers since I have memory. It all started with a TRS-80 Mod III, so I have quite a lot of memories from every OS and software configuration, from CP/M, Commodore's Basic, AmigaDOS, Workbench, DR-DOS, Windows 3.1, OS/2, the Workplace Shell, Linux 2.2, Windows 98, Windows NT 4.0, Win2k, WinXP, Gnome, JDS Linux, Solaris x86, etc...

So... I have little space in my brain for new stupid acronyms and silly product names. Lately, I've grown increasingly fed up with the silly 3-letter or at best 4-letter names of open source utilities, APIs and products. When they don't name something 'ufck' (I made this one up to mean 'ugly f*ck'), they make up completely bogus names just because they sound 'nice' and giving no idea of the function of the software.

Increasingly rare exceptions are 'gconf-editor' -Gnome configuration editor- or 'gpdf' -a PDF viewer-, or 'system-config-soundcard', which needs no further explanation, and are a rare pleasure.

But that's not the trend. The trend seems to be to 'never name something for the function it does'... no, some developers would never name something 'runasroot' or 'gnome-visualprompt' or 'filesystem-hook', or 'linux-hardwaredetector', no, they create things like Gksu -about whose naming I complained over here, or the Red Hat "new hardware detector", dubbed "Kudzu", the name of which I keep forgetting and just refer to as "that RedHat thing with Japanese sounding name that detects hardware changes".

And if that wasn't enough, here comes yet another Open Source piece of code with a japanese sounding name that is also similar to Kudzu, just to destroy and wreck any chances I could have of remembering which one is the one: Dazuko, the 3rd party library for file-access control.

Couldn't they just name it linux "fileaccess-control-api", "open-filecontrol", "open-file-access api", "log-filesystem-access"?? No... DAZUKO. Sheesh!

I don't know, maybe I'm 32 and getting too old to remember this craziness of Gksu, Kudzu and Dazuko...

What's next? Keiretsu for a calculator?

FC

AMD is in a unique position to push a Windows-Free alternative to Wintel's VIIV

David Berlind of ZDNet asks in his blog "If you could ask AMD anything, what would you ask?"

Since my reply requires room for the explanation, here goes my analysis:

Given these facts:

1. AMD is in a UNIQUE position, with its low-power, low-cost CPUs, to challenge the Microsoft-Intel push for Windows Media Center and the insane "VIIV" ""solutions"", that locks consumers into Microsoft's proprietary codecs, and with windows-only DRM-infected "media".

2. AMD is very linux friendly, in fact, MIT's "OLPC" effort is proof that linux+AMD can bring great technological solutions to the marketplace.

3. AMD, along with Sun, could develop an OPEN ALTERNATIVE to challenge VIIV, based on:
a. AMD's low-cost, low-power CPUs
b. Sun's cross-platform java for the media server software on PCs
c. Linux as the OS for the "media players", set top boxes and "entertainment centers".

The only thing missing is the WILL, on AMD's part, to create an open platform, co-develop with taiwanese and chinese hardware makers a "reference platform" and then once the cross-platform, open software side is polished up, sit batck and watch the competition among hardware makers for differentiation and features do the rest.

Prismiq, the company now closing shop after a number of bad strategic decissions, showed the way with its Prismiq Media Player, which 3 years ago won the "best of Comdex" prize. It had great potential and I'm surprised that neither AMD nor Sun saw the potential and acquired the company and its ideas, which would have paved the way for an open alternative to VIIV based on AMD, Linux and Java, which is what I'm proposing today.

Prismiq's mistakes? Let me summarize:.
1. choosing a low-horsepower NEC CPU, and a low-ram configuration on the hardware side
2. choosing to do the back-end software of their media player in cross-platform java, and then attempting to re-code a GUI in C++ for each native platform they wanted to support (Windows, MacOS, Linux).
3. Attempting (and failing) to get a "community" of hobbyst programmers to do #2 above for them, without putting enough resources or paid programmers into the effort.
4. Throwing a lot of money down the drain trying to release a Prismiq video recorder on top of the low-horsepower base hardware configuration (see #1 above).

Despite this, and trying not to lose focus and get back to the subject... THE QUESTION FOR AMD IS:

DEAR AMD...
-AMD is already collaborating with Sun, and have a great relationship with them.
-Sun is promoting an open alternative to windows-only, platform-locked DRM, they call it DReaM, and is based in Java.
-Consumers want CHOICES, and a DRM-FREE (and/or open-DRM, could be up to the hardware makers' choice) solution that is comparable to Intel's VIIV but doesn't lock them to a single vendor or desktop platform would be warmly welcomed into the market.
-There is an open mpeg4 video codec that AMD's alternative to VIIV could use: THEORA
-Your main competitor, Intel, is in cahoots with the Evil Empire of Redmondia to help extend the Windows desktop monopoly to the Home Theather and living room market of consumers....

... SO WHAT IS AMD WAITING FOR TO GIVE INTEL's BRAINDEAD VIIV SOME SERIOUS KICKING and help promote the use of low-power AMD CPUs and OPEN SOFTWARE and CODECS on the consumers' home???

I'd like to hear what AMD execs have to say about this...

FC

Google's Picasa-Linux affair - The whole "WINE is an API" idea is a trojan horse from Hell

"Great Minds think Alike"?

It's amazing how the Web allows people who share a view to get in touch with one another in a short timeframe (aka synergy). For instance, as soon as I wrote my article on Google's infamous "Picasa for Linux" snafu (disclaimer: I generally like Google!, I use almost all of their web services), I received a note from Hubert Figuière a.k.a. "Crazy French", who's also active in the Gnome community, it read:

"I like your Google Picasa article. I myself did post something like that last week, and I got flamed for doing. Nice to see that I'm not the only to think that Google did a bad job."

I specially like one of the comments on his blog:

---

"it is not a native program. It is just a packaging trick. Here is what
dpkg -L picasa shows:
/opt/picasa/wine/drive_c/Program Files/Picasa2/Picasa2.exe.

Obviously you have been fooled. It all just run under Wine like a native Windows application. Wine does not run on PowerPC, for obvious technical reasons."

---

Then I received another comment:

---

Fernando,

I think Googlites have made fools of themselves with this Picasa for penguins release. The one thing that may be good is that the WINE project stands to benefit a lot from this ; however, a native application (using either GTK+ or wxWindows, like ... Xara LX (xaraxtreme.org)) would have been a lot better... LX is a good example of a cross platform application that works perfectly. I met the Xara team at LGM (libregraphicsmeeting.org) 2006 in Lyon, France. They took the wxWindows route because, well, it was the easiest, fastest way to port (I bet using WINE never crossed their minds...). 2 years ago they were all Linux-unaware. Google has been using Linux for as long as it exists, and yet... Oh well.
Greets, Francois

---

Not only that, by googling on "Picasa Linux Wine" I landed this morning into this great article on the web site of Australian magazine APC:

Picasa for Linux begs a few questions
http://www.apcstart.com/site/admin/2006/05/168/picasa-for-linux-begs-a-few-questions

So... someone was thinking about the same thing and writing an article about at the same time I was writing mine!!. I call this "collective mind reading!". :-)

I swear to God I had never read it before this morning -and I didn't even know about that Australian magazine, either!. Thank God one of my screenshots I took while writing the article shows the May 28 date, and most of the rest show May 29. That proves that *I* started working on my article earlier than the Aussies!. :-D.

What's that common phrase they say... "great minds think alike"?. ;-)

The uglification of the Sun workstation cases. I want the w1100z´s one back!

I don´t know what the Sun hardware engineers were thinking, but if you ask me, the new Sun Ultra 20 workstation has an UGLY case, unlike its predecessor, the w1100z Java Workstation which was beatiful, in my book.

Such attractive hardware specs (AMD Opteron CPU, etc), with such an ugly case, WHY OH WHY??.

And I´m not the only one who thinks so.... Floyd Marinesc and others at TheServerSide, said:
"It is amazing to me how consistently ugly Sun workstations look in comparison. They must work hard to maintain such standards. The irony I find in this is that I will pay more for good industrial design. (I'm typing this on my Powerbook G4.) I wish Sun would respond to my want to pay more."

I think the w1100z case was beatiful in comparison to the new Ultra 20´s case design.

I hope the Sun guys have a sense of humour, because this is how I predict the Ultra 20´s succesor will look like, given the current trend: :-)

[Click to enlarge]

[Click on the image to enlarge it]

NYTimes´ Pogue is right: people do not "choose" IE

Tech columnist at the NY Times David Pogue writes in his review of the Internet Explorer 7 beta:

"ABOUT 85 percent of the Internet population uses the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser to surf the Web, even though it's relatively ancient, crusty with neglect and about as secure as a screen door. In what other industry would 85 percent of consumers choose such a product — when better ones, also free, were also available? Trick question. Those consumers aren't actually choosing Internet Explorer; in fact, they're not choosing. They just use what came on their Windows computers."

It was about time someone told it like it is!!

However, some folks at the Evil Empire of Redmondia need a reality check.... specifically Microsoft India´s guru Rishi K Srivastava who only weeks ago claimed just the opposite, that the "bundling" had nothing to do with IE´s market share (yeah, right!).

“IE’s success cannot be attributed to its access through Windows. The reason why people are not opting for other browsers is because of IE’s superiority. If you have access to a better product why you would not choose it. IE is much secure and only a large corporation like Microsoft can invest so much into security,”
What a good joke.

See Srivastava... you can fool some people a long time, but you cannot fool all the people, all the time.

The Russo Treatment: Alcatel + Lucent = More Layoffs

Thanks to Forbes Magazine we learn (as if were a good thing!) that the combined company after Alcatel's acquisition of Lucent will put axe-professional Patricia "Pat" Russo at the task of laying off people at light-speed.

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"Patricia Russo, who eliminated 30,000 jobs at Lucent Technologies Inc., says she will move quickly to reduce the workforce when she takes over as head of Alcatel SA after the French company's $13.4 billion purchase of the biggest U.S. phone-equipment maker.

``We clearly intend to have speed as our bias,'' Russo said yesterday on a conference call after announcing the sale to Paris- based Alcatel, where she will become CEO. Russo aims to save $1.7 billion after three years at the enlarged phone equipment company.

Russo plans to eliminate 10 percent of the combined staff, or 8,800 jobs, after reducing the workforce by 50 percent at Murray Hill, New Jersey-based Lucent.

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Will this "promising" merger, and Russo's job end up over time looking like HP's tenure under "Carly" Fiorina?

"Forbes magazine recently listed her among the 15 most powerful women in the world. As early as 1998 Fortune Magazine had listed her as one of the "50 Most Powerful Women in American Business."
http://www.vonmag.com/issue/2005/nov/features/pioneers.asp

Microsoft India exec Rishi K Srivastava: joker of the year!

“IE’s success cannot be attributed to its access through Windows. The
reason why people are not opting for other browsers is because of IE’s
superiority. If you have access to a better product why you would not
choose it. IE is much secure and only a large corporation like Microsoft
can invest so much into security,” counters Microsoft India Windows Client director Rishi K Srivastava.
http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=120295

This is the same outspoken guy who seems to be BillG's mouthpiece, a caped crusader defending in the media everything the Corporation does. He recently said "Vista is a platform, Google is just search".

Google "not a platform, just search"?. Yeah, right.... then Picasa and all this Google software is a product of my imagination?. Oh, and incidentally:

Microsoft the Vole admits IE mess up
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=30432

Microsoft complains UE is undemocratic
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=30288

New zero-day bug crashes IE - March 17
http://www.informationweek.com/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=183700672&subSection=Viruses+and+Patches

Big Hole found in MS IE 6 - March 21, 2006
http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?NewsID=5608

Mr. Srivastava... I think the joke's on you.

Microsoft ".NET" so good Microsoft not using it for Longhorn and Windows Vista

Slashdot | Analysis of .NET Use in Longhorn and Vista: "Richard Grimes analyses the ratio of native to managed code in Microsoft's upcoming Vista Operating System., and concludes it's a classic example of 'Do as I say, not as I do'

According to the analysis of Microsoft Vista and .NET, 'Microsoft appears to have concentrated their development effort in Vista on native code development. Vista has no services implemented in .NET and Windows Explorer does not host the runtime, which means that the Vista desktop shell is not based on the .NET runtime. The only conclusion that can be made from these results is that between PDC 2003 and the release of Vista Beta 1 Microsoft has decided that it is better to use native code for the operating system, than to use the .NET framework.'"

Intel's VIIV nonsense: Victory of what? Dumb marketing drones?

I understand what Intel is up to... they want to put their kit inside set-top boxes, and make intel kit the centerpiece of the new buzzword: the connected home, the "entertainment center", whatever. In other words, they expect people who are sitting on their favourite couch looking at the TV to shell out a few thousand greenbacks more and enjoy Intel's vision of the "connected home", listening to music, watching video, and the like, all from their INTEL-POWERED computer running WINDOWS MEDIA SERVER, to the TV.

There is a problem with this scenario: instead of listening to what the consumer really wants, which is a digital experience free of DRM-infection, they have partnered with the Beast of Redmondia. But it doesn't stop there... they have come up with this meaningless "VIIV" marketing nonsense that leaves people -ok, at least myself- scratching their heads. And if this wasn't enough, the adverts for "VIIV" have started popping up on the web. I've spotted the first today, while visiting AOL's Nullsoft division to download the latest Winamp 5.2x mp3 player.

Want to know what the ad shows? It looks like this:

Intel's advertising campaign for "VIIV"

in other words, an Asian man (or woman, depending on the randomness of your visit) doing the famous "V" sign with his index and middle fingers, with both of his/her hands at once. Which makes me wonder... is "VIIV" victory of... what?. So far, I conclude it's "Victory of the idiotic marketing drones". ;-)

(Just for the record, the flash file shown on the winamp.com page is hosted at this url).

I don't want to spoil Intel's "VIIV" maketing push, but I'll let my blog visitors know that I've been streaming video files, surfing the web, and listening to music, all from my favourite couch and into my TV, not only from my AMD computer, but my AMD64 computer which is running LINUX as well. All DRM-free, with no stupid and dirty tricks to promote the iNTEL brand over another.

How? with the $125 Prismiq Media Player released in... 2003.



There's a nice community of techies and Prismiq users providing peer-help and developing code for it, over here. Too bad the company responsible for it didn't give it the needed resources to fully develop and enhance the product, so it has been relegated to techies.

Look at Prismiq screen on your TV. Windows and DRM-free...

Another look at the Prismiq screen

It's based on the open source FFMPEG open source transcoder, and a NEC risc cpu with built-in MPEG decoder. Full details on the hardware are over here. Oh, did I mention the PC-side server software is cross-platform java so it can be run on Mac OS-X and Linux as well?. An old FAQ can be found here. If you're a techie with a desire to explore -and beat intel's closed solution- I suggest you grab one while you can. Or experience Wintel's "VIIV"ctory ... over your wallet.