Well, Mr Gates has done it again. He’s put his foot in his mouth, showing once more that he doesn’t understand ‘open source’:

“There’s free software and then there’s open source,” he suggested, noting that Microsoft gives away its software in developing countries. With open source software, on the other hand, “there is this thing called the GPL, which we disagree with.” Open source, he said, creates a license “so that nobody can ever improve the software,” he claimed, bemoaning the squandered opportunity for jobs and business. [Editor’s note: Yes, Linux fans, we’re aware of how distorted this definition is.] He went back to the analogy of pharmaceuticals: “I think if you invent drugs, you should be able to charge for them,” he said, adding with a shrug: “That may seem radical.”

Does anyone else feel that he’s really lost with it all, and has no idea?

I’ll admit: In the corporate world, MS will always rule (and as it stands, most of their money is made from that market). The simple fact is it’s what people know, and business can usually just throw money at it - both the product, and the support scemes offered either by Microsoft directly, or by certified engineers.
However, for most other groups in society - education, religious, misc. not-for-profit organisations - MS often isn’t viable. Why do you think so many computers out there are still running either Win98 or 2000?

Russia has recently announched a bold new scheme to deploy computers within schools that have linux (namely, Ubuntu - slightly modified for the Russian Country) in order to make both technology, the internet, and resources which are available on these - accessible to staff and students in their schools.
The thing that ‘thrills’ me the most about this is that they’ve actually looked at all the surrounding implications of this and designed a full support structure- not all that different from most MS stuff.

MS has always been more business orientated, and dealing with market shares… I feel that they’ll slowly lose the edge in most area’s as Open Source + Linux continues it’s rise in popularity.
That said, we cannot excuse the ammount of work that MS did do in the early days - but I really do feel they’ve lost the plot in recent years. We’ll wait and see what windows 7 is doing.

Can I get any geekier.

Seriously?

What a lazy day. I’ve started attempting to recover data from a hard drive with faulty sectors - in 5.5 hours, it’s done 8.5gb out of 35 gb. Fun.

Apart from that, I got a couple new connectors to ‘revamp’ my original project for my multimedia player. That is, right angled stereo plugs. This should mean the cable wont get damaged (as it did a month after I installed the ‘beta’ version :P)

I’ll show photos of it in the car once I get them in the morn.

I’m not sure how true this may be, but its a fair call: Microsoft slowly dying.

I think they’re going a bit far though. Microsoft has always been good with the marketing side of things. They’ll revamp and reinvent. And lets be honest, whilst Open Source is making some good progress, I find it hard to believe that half the world will adopt and change to linux in the next 10 years. Even as enthusiastic and optimistic as I am about it

In the meantime, a school *has* gone down the line of open source / linux (namely ubuntu). Bold move, I’d be curious to see how it all goes for them

So I’ve got a Sony Picturebook PCG-C1XD. It’s got a 400mhz chip (crusoe) and 64 MB of RAM. Very underpowered, I know. And more memory is hideously expensive, due to it’s rarity and propriotory nature.
It runs windows 98 reasonably well (it came with it). It’s previous owner upgraded to windows 2000. That ran ok too.
But many features didn’t work under win2k. And no ammount of reg-haxing, or driver haxing would make them work.

So I turned to my friend, linux.

Yes, many of you have mixed thoughts and feelings. And even I agree it is only now that they’re getting to a ‘reasonable’ state where it can be used on an everyday basis (family still kicking with the setup I made! w00t! ).
Mainly it was because I know that it can utilise resources a helluva lot better than windows (though, i think 98 would be ok - but then there’s the issues with 98, like blue screens and very touch OS - which leads to aforementioned blue screens).

So I’ve been experimenting most of the day with various distro’s and versions. I’ve found a scad load of sites with all the config info on getting basically all the features working (webcam, jog dial and 3button mouse specifically… oh, and function [FN] keys). So, I’m actually looking to compile my own ‘linux distro’. Hell, I’ll even release for all the other poor bastards who are in the same predicament as me. It’ll be a fun learning curve, me thinks!

I think most of the loading issues ive had with ‘live’ discs is due to insufficient memory.
But I had to laugh at the ZenWalk message I just got: “Something went wrong and we can’t continue. This should never happen”.
You’re right. It shouldnt. And it just did. Zing!

I’m also thinking of creating a specific “tech” sub-site so that I can write specifically about my experiences with linux, and other tech-related matters. Hmmz. Thoughts?