punkcomp @ server4

Hey Shuttleworth, lets get it all working properly first

Mark Shuttleworth, the money and mouth behind Canonical (who just happen to develop Ubuntu Linux,) has put out a public challenge to make Ubuntu prettier than Apple OS X.  While he has done a lot to help spread the gospel of Linux to more of the general public, he doesn’t seem to understand that there are more pressing issues that need to be tackled before worrying about outshining OS X.  Read more about his challenge to developer’s on eWeek.com.

One of the biggest, if not the biggest, problem working against Shuttleworth is the fact that there is no unified interface.  The two big boys, Gnome and KDE, both use a different set of development tools and libraries.  If I want to run a KDE program under Gnome, or vice versa, I have to install a big chunk of the other window manager just for those programs to work.  And of course, they look a bit out of place on the other desktop.  This isn’t even taking into account the other window managers, such as XFCE, Enlightenment, and the list goes on and on.

The fact that most large software companies want nothing or next to nothing to do with Linux also doesn’t help.  Putting aside dependency problems, it can be done, with a pretty installer to boot.  Unreal Tournament 2004 is a perfect example, containing 32 and 64-Bit versions of the software, with a simple but easy installer.  And it still works on a current machine with no or little problem (not any worse than trying to run some Windows XP and before software on Vista, even though Microsoft does have a better track record for keeping compatibility.)  The image of Linux users being a bunch of free loaders doesn’t help, either.  The argument to “just use The Gimp” instead of Adobe Photoshop just doesn’t hold up for most users.

To touch back on something from above, the installer situation also needs to be worked out.  Every distro seems to have it’s own.  Debian/Ubuntu/derivatives with apt-get and the .deb format, Red Hat/derivatives with yum and the .rpm format, not to mention all the others and also compiling everything from source (and not just tar.gz files, I’m looking at you, Gentoo.)  While things such as Synaptic can be nice and easy to use, downloading software can be confusing for new users.  Having to pick from 5 different formats for one piece of software, where the Windows version has one version (an .exe installer) doesn’t help keep new users.

Until the developers start to tackle all these unification problems, and the demand becomes large enough for companies such as Adobe to release Linux versions of their software, out pretty-ing Apple should be the least of our concern.  A single window manager, or at least a single window manager development interface and libraries, would really help not only simplify the Linux user experience, but also would be a first great step to Shuttleworth’s vision of a beautiful desktop Linux.

Posted in Linux | No Comments »

Simple backups with dar and par2

The need for a simple backup lead to the following simple command which uses dar and par2cmdline.  The –create option should have the path modified for the location you want the backup created in, but make sure not to save to a directory that is also being backed up and creating an infinite loop.  The -Z option are files that shouldn’t be compressed during the process (but still backed up.)  Modify or add your own –prune options to ignore certain directories or files during the process.  You can add an -e to perform a test run (with -v to also watch.)

dar --execute "par2 c -r5 %p/%b.%n.par2 %p/%b.%n.%e" --alter=atime --empty-dir \
--fs-root / --noconf --create /media/backup/ARCHIVE_NAME --slice 620M --first-slice 600M -z6 \
-an -Z "*.ogg" -Z "*.avi" -Z "*.mp?" -Z "*.pk3" -Z "*.flac" -Z "*.zip" -Z "*.tgz" \
-Z "*.gz" -Z "*.gzip" -Z "*.bz2" -Z "*.bzip2" -Z "*.mov" -Z "*.rar" -Z "*.jar" \
--prune lost+found --prune media --prune proc --prune mnt --prune sys

This should give a good starting point on creating some easy to manage backups of your system with just simple modifications to match your configuration.  This can easily be include in a script and ran as a weekly (or how often you prefer) cron job.

Posted in security | No Comments »

NYS strikes again at Newsgroups

New York’s anti-child pornography polices have already neutered newsgroups from Time Warner, Sprint, and Verizon ( see last article here.)  Now they have taken aim at AOL and AT&T.  AOL has told The Associated Press they will be banning access to all newsgroups, binary and text, to help stop child porn, while AT&T will be dropping the entire alt.binary.* line of newsgroups.  While there are newsgroups out there that do contain lewd and nasty child pornography, thousands of legit and harmless (and warez -Ed) newsgroups are being taken out in the crossfire.

While battling child pornography is a good thing, this kind of heavy handed behavior and censorship takes away our rights and puts us farther into a nanny state.  A war against newsgroups seems like it should be happening in the 1980’s, not 2008.

Posted in censorship, government | No Comments »

Simple script to help with HIIT workouts

HIIT (high intensity interval training) workouts are becoming very popular, and I’ve started introducing some HIIT style exercises into my workout.  I needed a way to time for the high intensity and rest / low intesity periods of the workouts without having to stare at a clock (which is difficult with things such as crunches,) so I tossed together a simple bash script to help.  The script uses espeak to tell you want to start, stop, and quit.  It uses three simple variables to easily modify your workout.

Download HIIT.sh

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Would you just ignore a body in the road?

This morning on the way to work I noticed a young man laying half in the road right in front of a local church.  I watched as cars just pulled around him on the narrow street while I waited to pull into the church’s parking lot.  I ran over to him, checked to make sure he still had a pulse (he did, a tad slow, but still there.)  His breathing was very shallow, and he was completely unresponsive.  As I waited for an ambulance to arrive, a neighbor of his drove by, got out, and had her passenger drive to his house to get his family.  His cousin arrived, and announced that he has a serious drinking problem, that he had been drinking mouthwash, which there was a bottle of not more than 3 feet away.

So this young man has a problem, sure.  I can understand a lone person not wanting to get out of the car in case this is some kind of ruse to rob them, but at the same time how hard is it just to pull over for a few moments and call 911?  It seems almost everyone has a cell phone yet I watched five cars drive around him just in the time I waited to pull off of the side street.  He wasn’t hidden from view, and the way he was laying in the road almost made it appear he had been hit by a car.  The fact that people just ignored him disgusts me, as while I’m not the nicest of people at times, I’m not going to ignore someone and just let them die.

Posted in social | No Comments »

Expanded wiretap bill passed by Senate

On July 9th, 2008 the United States Senate gave final approval to a bill that will greatly expand the government’s surveillance powers.  The bill was passed by a vote of 69 to 28, and is the largest revamp of federal surveillance laws in 30 years.  One major part of the bill is the fact it grants the phone companies that participated in the National Security Agency full legal immunity, a part of the bill that President Bush deemed essential.

The final product is an overhaul of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).  This is a huge win for the Republican party, as many Democrats such as Hillary Clinton opposed the bill and voted against it while others are wary of the power it gives Bush and the rest of the republican party.  Barack Obama, while saying he doesn’t agree with the entire bill, did still vote for it.

Posted in government | No Comments »