Not the actual box. Treat as
placeholder for illustrational purposes.

When you see a great deal, you simply know it! 149.95 dollars will buy you:

• AMD Duron 2.8 GHz Processor with 800 MHz FSB
• 180 Gigabyte Hard Drive
• 256 Megabytes of RAM
• K7MNF-64 nVidia nForce2 Socket A Motherboard
• nVidia nForce2 chipset

[...]

The machine will of course run GNU/Linux. It seems too good to be true, so I remain skeptic. Having toyed with the cart feature, it seems to be genuine though. The site statistics (Alexa, Netscraft), as well as some other available products, seem to suggest it is real.

Noteworthy: get Windows and double the cost of the worktstation…

Related item: Expensive Developers, Cheap Hardware

AST year I got a bit frustrated with the nature of most E-mails that had been reaching my box. I then decided to write a short FAQ (while I was lying by a swimming pool, if I recall correctly). Over time, I found a way of reducing and managing the volume, which often led to unnecessary distractions. I even separated my E-mail into several ‘tiers’, which unlike filters, I find very handy. Some other communication was routed to Wikis.

Over two years ago I came to discover that Knuth had given up on E-mail altogether. I have just come across another nice homepage which expresses the frustration when it comes to badly-formatted E-mails, so I thought I’d share it by quoting:

E-mail is my main form of communication and the best way to reach me is to email howcome@@@opera.@com. I have used email since 1985 and, unlike Donald Knuth, I plan to continue using it in the future. I recommend these rules for writing electronic mail:

1. Write e-mail messages in plain text (not HTML) with around 70 characters per line.
2. When quoting other messages, insert your own text underneath the quoted text so that the logical order of the text is preserved
3. Avoid e-mail attachments: send URLs pointing to your attachments instead.
4. In particular, never send documents in proprietary formats as e-mail attachments. PDF is acceptable if the formatting of the documentis essential to understanding the document.

If you look at the source of the page (either the original or even this short post), you’ll find a nice trick of obfuscating E-mail addresses, which can prevent mass-harvesting by ratbot, for subsequent spamming.

Palm Bliss: An old product of my interest
in themes and templates

UITE often I rave about KDE, as I last did a week or so ago. However, I admit that GNOME is beautiful too, so I have collected a few themes and previews which support its beauty.

• Gentle Gnome mockup
• Glass Icons Theme
• nuoveXT
• Avio-GDM

Lastly, here is a way of making GNOME look more like Mac OS X. I don’t necessarily endorse or praise, but I just love the looks of Apple hardware and software. KDE is able to achieve similar results, I might as well add.

EVERAL weeks ago I discussed some of the problems which Google are having with their cache. The links therein paint a full picture that comprises many speculations. Genuine pages from various Web sites across the Web are being dropped. After a while, some more evidence has been reaching the surface, e.g.

Something really weird happened when I had the password problem last week — I completely disappeared from Google.

As discussions, which are oddly enough being deleted (Google may be trying to hide the existence and scale of the problem) indicate, something quite major is happening ‘behind the scenes’.I submitted a relevant link to Digg. As the thread indicates, Google is indexing billions of spammy pages and is apparently dropping and neglecting genuine Web sites in the process. It is not deliberate on Google’s part, but the outcome are poorer search results and reduced traffic, if you are among the Webmasters affected.

F you listen closely, you can already some squeaks of anguish. Indeed, these are coming from Mr. Ballmer as oinks his way into a nearby office to break a chair. The prospective departure of Bill Gates has been made public, so the future of the company his jointly founded does not look bright.

Despite the many problems that Microsoft is facing, many are eager to stay with Windows and accept the Microsoft waiver (EULA). More recently, privacy of users, as well as rights, have been compromised. It’s high time people took a closer look at the truth behind licensing. Deplorable executives whose misuse of the law has reached new peaks are now beginning to depart. This includes Jim Allchin with a Vista status report that can make anyone gasp. Windows Vista is the result of just 6 months in development.

When Windows Vista finally comes out, Steve Ballmer will no longer be dancing like a ballerina. It is no longer the 90′s (alluding to the in/famous “monkey dance” scene). More likely than that, he will toss a chair with sheer fury, repulsed by the outcome, which is completely unacceptable.

So, what it is that can keep Windows in the game for a few more years? To name a few factors: (1) dependence on a vendor, which leads to exacerbating standards, or (2) unilateral deployment of new proprietary ones. Fortunately, Adobe resist the latter, as well as the former. Moreover, OpenDocument has recently become the one and only ISO standard.

There is yet another snag that will act as a barrier to Windows’ acceptance. Microsoft OneCare’s marketing campaign will have to bash Windows security in order to be sold. It is a necessary ‘component’ that fixes another already-broken product, which ironically enough, comes from the very same vendor.

But not all hope is lost. On the other hand, Linux is gaining steam on a daily basis. I no longer blog as often as I used to simply because I report Linux advocacy items elsewhere. Apart from more obvious advantages that are stability, Freedom, and security, Linux always leaves me wanting more as I know the options for extensibility are there. They just need to be understood and embraced. The Linux kernel is better wrought, yet Microsoft propaganda, trolls and marketing puppets deny it. Yes, for income.

A random photo taken at the gym which I have gone
to for the past 4.5 years (captured in July 2005)

ODAY at the health club, I finally received some more results from the Mr. Fitness competition. I did very well at the fourth stage (among ten) compared to the other nine contestants. I shoulder-pressed 110 kilograms (1 repetition maximum, on a Scott Machine), giving me 2ⁿ place and leaving me in joint in 1^st overall, on par with another competitor. This weight happens to be precisely 150% of what I was able to benchpress, excluding the weight of the bar.

Picture from PlanetQuake

HECK out some of the strangest computer setups you have ever come across. I particularly like the one which demonstrates, side by side, the difference between a dual-head setting and a very large screen. It has recently begun being manufactured for Dell and Apple, but is rather pricey.