Geeky Baldisms

Want to learn from my mistakes? Here we go.

First of all, resist the urge to import your Windows machine into VMWare. Unless it's chock full of software you've paid for and that needs to phone home to work, instead I recommend you simply start from scratch.

Case in point: I imported my XP Media Edition machine. Footprint was 70 gigs! And it refused to compact via VMWare tools. It would peg my dual-core AMD machine after running for an hour or so.

I finally blew it away and started over.

I now run XP Pro and my processor usage remains minimal. The machine's footprint, with Dreamweaver MX, Quicken 2006, Paint Shop Pro 7, and Open Office is 4.4 gigs.

Don't have a serial number? All I can say is use your imagination. I did, and worked around it legally, though Microsoft might quibble over the details. Let's just say that if a machine that was licensed for XP Pro NEVER USED it, my conscience is just as clean as it would be in importing a physical machine into VMWare that will no longer have Windows as its OS.

However, don't overlook another easy solution: Windows 2000.

VMWare is an esential part of my migration to Ubuntu, but it's not perfect out of the box.

For example, USB support is not enabled by default for your virtual machines.

There's an easy fix.

Either precede the following commands with sudo, or open a root terminal.

Type the following commands:

So Microsoft wants Yahoo. Should I give a hoot?

Not on the surface. Yahoo lost my interest years ago. The ads, absent from the cool Yahoo of old, became overbearing. So I switched to Alta Vista, then Google, where I remain today as my home page/search engine of choice.

Yahoo has become Grandma's home page, in case Grandma has managed to connect to the web without the help of AOL.

But that doesn't change the fact that Yahoo is the #1 visited site on the web. And giving Microsoft that kind of power is scary.

Microsoft, simply put, wants world domination.

For that matter, so does Google. But I see two distinctly different ways of dealing with customers here. Google wants your web-based business. Will they someday want your business on an unconnected desktop computer? Perhaps. But, by and large, Google has stuck by their "first do no harm" policy. Additionally, Google has supported the WWW standards well. Their Gmail interface, for example, fires up and runs perfectly in a standard web browser without requiring add-ons.

Microsoft, on the other hand, has their own way of doing things. If you want to run MS technology, then, in their minds, you need to be running a MS O/S, MS software, and nothing else.

One of the earliest services set up on the newfangled internet way back when was Usenet. Here's a brief history from Wikipedia:

Usenet (a contraction of user network) is a global, decentralized, distributed Internet discussion system that evolved from a general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name. It was conceived by Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis in 1979. Users read and post public messages (called articles or posts, and collectively termed news) to one or more categories, known as newsgroups. Usenet resembles bulletin board systems (BBS) in most respects, and is the precursor to the various web forums which are widely used today. Discussions are threaded, with modern news reader software, as with web forums and BBSes, though posts are stored on the server sequentially.

Basically, in the days before all of the purty pictures and such that comprised what would be the WWW, Usenet was how ideas were exchanged. And it was very effective in its time.

The whole structure was pretty rigidly organized, with hierarchies as follow:

* comp.*: computer-related discussions (comp.software, comp.sys.amiga)
* humanities.*: Fine arts, literature, and philosophy (humanities.classics, humanities.design.misc)
* misc.*: Miscellaneous topics (misc.education, misc.forsale, misc.kids)
* news.*: Discussions and announcements about news (meaning Usenet, not current events) (news.groups, news.admin)
* rec.*: Recreation and entertainment (rec.music, rec.arts.movies)
* sci.*: Science related discussions (sci.psychology, sci.research)
* soc.*: Social discussions (soc.college.org, soc.culture.african)
* talk.*: Talk about various controversial topics (talk.religion, talk.politics, talk.origins)

In many ways, I'm a computing kid. I grew up in the 60's and 70's, when computers were in the process of becoming a major part of human society. But you needed to be a mathematician in those days (at least that's what I thought) to enter the field. And math and I don't get along.

So I entered into the electrician field after graduating from high school back in the polyester-clad days of 1977.

I worked construction for ten years, then landed a job as an industrial electrician. I really thought I had found my niche.

That all changed in 1993, when I sprang for my first PC. After spending two months playing games, I began tearing it apart to see how it worked.

Seven years later, I landed a job as a geek at the facility where I was serving as an electrician.

Fullfillment at last!

My first online experience was placing a phone call through my 2400 baud modem to a buddy who was much geekier than me. We chatted via Procomm Plus for a few minutes.

First lesson learned, taught to me tactfully: DON'T TYPE IN ALL CAPS. It means you're shouting.

My next online experiences consisted of dialing into local BBS's.

Well, occasionally I have to be reminded that you should just was pick your battles.

I just wasted several hours on a comment board at the otherwise excellent Ziff-Davis website.

The subject was Ed Bott, Windows worshipper, and his gleeful take on how people hated XP as much as they do Vista, and how one day soon it will all be moot as people learn to love Vista.

It turns out that many of his followers share his philosophies.

In short, it's a quagmire that a Linux fan would should stay away from at all costs.

Some people just don't get Linux, FOSS, or the fact that the war for the desktop is not over, it's only begun. And trying to convince them otherwise is like attempting to teach the proverbial pig to dance.

I know that some simply don't pull for the underdog. People who have never been to Florida loudly cheer for the Miami Hurricanes to crush Florida A&M. Yankee fans exist all over the country, screaming for them to get to the World series, ignoring their hometown team that's had some losing seasons lately.

And Microsoft shills love their operating system, and the overall "trusting" nature of Ballmer and company.