Linux desktop – picture from kde-look.org; click to browse the source

PEN Source is renowned for many reasons, but (monetary) abundance is barely one of them. Abundance, however, due to the factor of cost, can often be perceived in a different way. Many software options are available , even all at once, because licences have a different meaning under ideologies like the GPL.

Practical example: I have about 9 installations on this domain which involve a database and are absolutely free. Also, there are at least 3 statistics packages that cater for monitoring. All of these are free. That freedom gives a sense of eternal ownership — the everlasting affordability and the freedom to modify at will.

The World Wide Web offers many other free applications, either as Web-based services or downloads without restrictions. To take an opposite example, Photoshop requires licences for a desktop installation. Being a desktop-side example, the deficiencies that cross one’s mind is the need to perpetually renew licences and, the lack of portability, and growth that indeed entails a considerable cost.

I was somewhat amused when a fellow Webmaster, who had opted for Windows hosting, came to discovers that statistics must be paid for as a separate commercial package. This come to demonstrate what a role cost truly plays. One has to pay extra just to be able to understand what happens on his/her own Web site.

Often you may find yourself confessing: “Yes, shared hosting on a Linux or Windows server might seem equal in terms of initial cost”. However, When basic extensions and growth come to mind, as well as the possibility of large operating licences and dedicated servers, it become apparent why Windows will struggle to compete. Only the false perception that brands and costly products are best bar none can perpetuate a myth. Heavily-invested-in lies support this myth.

Y habit of playing computer games has slowly faded over the years. There was a ‘hiccup’, however, last year: A particular game that I played very heavily, almost for entire days at a time. The game to blame: Enemy Territory (photographics evidence). Then emerged the effect of obsessive compulsive addiction (see a collection of previous write-ups on the topic). The fact that I installed and re-installed the game twice or thrice meant something. It penetrated the mind and its negative effects are best realised in retrospect.

I use the computer as a tool that simplifies life, whether it is a PDA that rids me from the need to remember or an application that helps me communicate with friends, family, and a variety of new and interesting people.

Computer games have not seen any dramatic change for many years; nothing on par with the exciting revolutions in the 80′s and 90′s at least. CPU capabilities, as well as memory capacity, frequently doubled as Moore’s law suggested and games are of course built to exploit the resources available to the extreme. Apart from graphics cards, hardware has not had the opportunity to extend much. A certain barrier has been reached. Having said that, only a couple of days ago, a graphics card with 4 CPU’s was announced. Issues regarding heat dispertion have been omitted. Will such hardware lead to yet another breathtaking leap in terms of gaming? I hope not. [cynical /]

I have played enough for one lifetime. I feel as though any genre of games and any type of actions or strategic games was played many times already. Rendering more polygons or having a few extra inches on the screen do not help. They do not excite as much as growing up to see groundbreaking resemblances to reality approached year by year.

Final advice, which is motivated by personal opinion: Use the computer primarily for work. If you wish to play, better stand up and enjoy our real world rather than escape by entering the fantasy world of your choice. Nothing can be as stimulating as reality, yet. In circumstances when the reality is harsh, however, I can see justification for gaming. Addiction to games can be harmful nonetheless and is inevitable. Let us be careful.

One of the giants is due to control of home
entertainment, or at least share a piece of the pie

OME time in the past, Google’s media player was mentioned as an interoperable tool of value — somewhat of a milestone even. We now hear about a partnership involving DivX, Pioneer and Google Video.

LAS VEGAS–Video technology company DivX is partnering with Google to make Google Video accessible on a variety of consumer electronics devices, the companies announced Friday at the Consumer Electronics Show here.

Meanwhile, the world is also being informed about Yahoo Go TV (in German). Apple continue with their entertainment industry push for domination. Their video and photo iPods come to mind. Lastly, Microsoft reveal that the XBox 360, which may play HD-DVD owing to a Toshiba alliance, is striving to take control of our living rooms.

Google software gets heavily bundled to Windows

ANY of us were wondering if a Linux distribution would ever come from Google. Google are of course using Linux in house and are dependent on Open Source projects. Unsurprisingly, having accumulated many programs that run on Windows only, they have just assembled a distribution that includes Acrobat Reader, Mozilla Firefox, security software and a large variety of Google software.

So we created the Google Pack — a one-stop software package that helps you discover, install, and maintain a wide range of essential PC programs. It’s yours today – and it’s something we hope you find to be painless, easy, and even fun (if computer setup can ever be called that). And it’s free.

This will by all means have an impact on many workstations. It can give a boost to a variety of Google application and their close ally Firefox is included. The bundling of Firefox is indirectly related to Dell’s distribution in the United Kingdom.

Notice the hypocrisy in this item however:

 
This was the experience (Windows installation) both Sergey and Larry had a year ago…
 

Both Larry and Sergei are Open Source advocates and most likely Linux users too. I guess this did not fit contextually and it conflicts completely with previous rumours about a Google PC that runs the Linux kernel.

Editorial: Editor’s Note: Google May Hold Big Key to Desktop Linux or “Why Google should port their applications to Linux”.

Giving the more professional look to your text

HIS blog item revolves around a wonderful Perl script which can revolutionise the layout of your plain-text messages, giving them looks reminiscent of that found in professional literature. The tool is called the Paragraph Adjuster with Hyphenation and it is of course free.

To give an example of its use, a file I created in ~/Main/Programs/Scripts/indent.sh contains the following:

perl ~/Main/Programs/paradj/paradj.pl --width=74 -h -n -b
     ~/in > ~/out
kedit ~/out

The first command invokes the script from its path and passes it some arguments, which are personalised. The input come from the file in and output is sent to a reserved file (out) which acts as a common container and somewhat of a placeholder. The last command makes the output available to me (on screen) to copy and then paste, often to be used in newsgroups, mailing lists, and rarely in E-mail too.

The script is based on a Perl module that was inherited from T_EX. The L^AT_EX family is rather presentation-aware and smart in terms of its fragmentation decisions. It ‘knows’ when it is reasonable to hyphenate and where added spaces for justification are least distracting. Maybe the same applies to indentation. There are many options in the script, which control the tendencies, the priorities and thus the behaviour of the output.

The command example above hopefully illustrates how simple it is to use the script, as well as invoking it rapidly, without too much manual intervention and input/output ‘piping’. I have also set up a shortcut (CTRL+ALT+7) to convert in to out and then copy and paste onto the required place, so indent.sh need never be called from the command-line.

Example from my most recent use of the script:


The  short  answer:  Windows has  got  itself
trapped. Over the years it has adopted overly
permissive  and  lenient mechanisms that  ne-
glected security. Security seemed like a cost
hat  hindered functionality. Unauthorised in-
stallations and lacking verifications are one
example. ActiveX controllers are another.


Notice that all text lies within a rectangular block. This needs fixed-sized fonts, which cannot be guaranteed by all recipients or readers. If sent to a recipient and read by a mail client, feed reader, newsgroups reader, browser, etc., it may be displayed in whatever form the user prefers, even proportionally-differing font sets.

Women’s perception of the Web differs

EX as in “gender”, that is. In an writeup titled “Men Are From Google, Women Are From Yahoo”, a certain difference in browsing habit is highlighted. It claims one is be able to tell apart the two genders, whose exploration of the Internet is driven by other motives.

Men and women have different motivations for doing what they do. According to a recent report from Pew Internet and American Life, women view the Internet as a place to extend, support, and nurture relationships and communities. Men tend to see it as an office, a library, or a playground–screw the community, this is about function not family.

Do men hunt and women nest as Jerry Seinfeld once said? Is that why women settle for whatever is on TV while men strive to find out what else is on TV? This is by no means a chauvinistic statement. The woman’s ability to concentrate on the familiar leads to a loyalty which is most rewarding.

AKING of efficient algorithms and use of more compact data representations have a cost in terms of complexity. They lead to greater coding and programming time, yet there is plenty to be gained.

Broad-scale example: writing of a good search algorithm makes it hard to understand, let alone algorithms that discriminate data. There is a reason why the Web was made available and practical throughout its decade-long extension.

One would say that the Web has been open. Its pertinent objects were also broken down rationally. It was also because not all pages and graphics are bitmaps, but instead the Web exploits wavelets that are based on mathematics or defined a palette and then use some conventions to refer to it.

Moreover, rather than poster-like Web sites, where everything is hard-coded, there emerged a language called (X)HTML which is concise, descriptive, and unambiguous. There are protocols which define how it should be rendered so a description — a code that is — makes it laborious to implement. Construction of pages becomes arguably easier and the end product much more concise, in terms of its size. Versatility (or flexibility) is yet another matter.

The take-home message: complexity in implementation or even specification takes its toll, but entails true benefits. ‘Lazy’ programming leads to inefficiency, whereas tactful complexity pays off in the long run.