Anyone have suggestions on other browsers that are Trident-based that has native Linux installations? Or is Trident one of those Windows things?

If you are an old-time Linux user, you really will be able to relate.
If you are relatively new to the Linux world, this will help you see what is laid out for you.

by tm_anon July 13, 2009 1:23 PM PDT
@artistjoh
You mention 97% who avoid Linux. I’ve talked with many people online, in person, on the phone and when I mention that I’m using Linux, the vast majority have the same question “what’s that?”.

They’re not avoiding Linux, they just don’t know about it. The reason they don’t know about it is very simple, nobody told them about it.

Now, being an artist, I’m going to assume you have a good imagination. I want you to imagine something. I want you to imagine growing up with Linux instead of Windows. You’re used to finding all your software through repositories, installing it from them, using it immediately, no restart required. I want you to imagine being able to surf the web and ask questions if there’s something you need to do, find out the shortcomings of a piece of software, get help determining the best tool for the job, all for free.

I want you to imagine that you’ve always been able to upgrade your entire OS just by clicking a few buttons, maybe downloading the newest distro, and that, if you wanted to try out a different version, you could compare and contrast and install the different version for free as well.

Now, imagine that one day you decided to try Windows. You install it, look for the package manager so you can download some apps but you don’t find one. You go online, not realizing you need an Antivirus program, and immediately get a virus so, you do a search and try and find out what to do. You look up Antivirus and find AVG free. You have to download from the website, install it, update it, run it, realize how slow it makes your computer, quarantine the file it says to and now you think you’re safe.

You’ve removed the virus from your machine and promptly get one that takes advantage of the new Active X vulnerability and AVG free doesn’t catch it. You’ve also managed to contract spyware and other malware on your computer because you weren’t running an antispyware app and AVG free didn’t catch all the malware trying to infiltrate your system.

You’ve been running Linux all your life, used to being able to surf the web without catching viruses, without catching malware or spyware. However, you give it the benefit of the doubt that Windows is just used more and so the bad guys must just focus on them.

Now, you decide you want some games but you have no idea where to go. With Linux you could just open the package manager, find Games, install some and be playing them at the end of, at most, an hour.

You decide to talk to your friend on IM and see what advice they have so you look in your list of available programs and can’t find the default IM program. Windows doesn’t have one installed, you have to search for them.

You decide you want to write an email to MS to let them know you’re disappointed that your version of Windows was missing such key features as a package manager and an IM client and, since your ISP gives you an email adress, you decide it’s time to set it up so you look for your default email client and find out there isn’t one (Outlook Express has to be installed and does not come as a default program).

Now you’re really mad so you’re going to write a letter. You go to look for your Office App, knowing that any good OS has an Office App installed. After all, everyone needs one of those and nobody would purchase an OS without one, right? Wrong again, Windows doesn’t have one installed.

You look for the Windows forums and ask if anyone else has had these problems. Each person who responds doesn’t know what a package manager is or ridicules you and says that Linux is so hard to use. They laugh when you say that your email client was missing and when you ask why Windows doesn’t include an office app, they wonder what all you were expecting from your OS and tell you that you have to go out and buy one but that there’s a student discount.

Now, imagine that 97% of people you were mentioning having that experience. Linux isn’t a chore, Windows is. Linux has better than “professional” support, it has personal support. It even has the majority of apps necessary installed by default including the GIMP.

People don’t avoid Linux, they just don’t know about it.

The Blender session started out quite late (an hour late, in fact) because of some communication difficulties. On my part, I have forgotten to get sir Dennis’ number and when I asked sir Yosif for his number, it turns out that my phone can’t receive business cards. So I was waiting for more than 30 minutes for his number only to find out that sir Yosif already sent it some while ago. Also, we were having problems with installing Blender on the PCs because of dependency issues and lack of network connectivity. Put it simply, that morning was a panic. Eventually, I got contact with sir Dennis and the session eventually started. The rest of the sessions went by without a hitch, though. Pretty ironic that the only session that we invited a speaker not from our own groups was the only session that was such a mess.

Despite all the setback, this year’s KISSS was a success though I’m sure we could have done better. Perhaps next year, we’ll give this event a chance to expand.. let’s just hope there’s no pandemic scare again. haha.

Thanks to Rose Ann and Angelyn for doing their best to accomplish their part.
Thanks to JP, JB, Liz and Angel for helping out.
Photos at Gerry’s multiply.

Finances: The total event cost Php 1950. I sponsored Php 850 for the tumblers and the Php 1100 was spent on food. The Php 1100 will be split among the 3 organizations.

He even managed to forge a connection between this issue and FSF, which says something about his argumentation.

Read and comment.

Attached link to the post leads here.

the_it wrote at Sun, Jun 28, 2009 at 7:36 PM to usapan:

Guys,

Firstly, policy rhetoric is often a very simplified form of the actual
argument for policy, because the political considerations of getting
people to vote on complex issues are, well, political.

To give you an example, the Free Software foundation has been trying to
explain the meaning of free software for more than two decades now. The
simple fact is that there is no such thing as a ten second explanation
for it that doesn’t talk about Unix history – the upshot of this is that
FSF can’t catch up to the huge popular demand for “open source”, and the
primary value people see from Free Software is that it is cheap. A lot
of people don’t have the energy or ability or the desire to understand a
five-minute explanation, let alone a thirty minute discussion. I’ve said
this before: often in politics, if you have to explain your position,
then you are ALREADY LOSING.

I think it takes some intellectual courage to look past some
distressingly simple arguments and try to understand if there is an
underlying issue that is really being exposed. In this particular case,
the question appears to be “ginagamit ba talaga yan sa buhay?”, with an
apparent slant toward removing subjects in the interest of economics. I
understand why a lot of us, who are already culturally elite enough to
even make it to the web and post intelligently, would be appalled by the
nature of this question. I would like to broaden your perspective
regarding the matter.

First of all economics is a serious consideration in schooling. Have you
studied at an ordinary public school? No, not a fancy “science high
school” with gigantic government subsidies that send troops of progenies
to the top universities and colleges in the country. I’m talking about a
regular public high school with section rankings, probably named after
the area or baranggay it’s based on, where maybe half of the graduates
won’t even attend college and go straight to the workforce, where
various pickings from the top of the class end up working as managers in
fast food. What I’m getting at is that some of these places are in
pretty bad shape, and as far as I’m concerned, some of the lower
sections are no better than they were when they finished elementary.
Economically-motivated questions are more than a matter of practicality
for them – at some point you have to consider the ethics of trying to
half-ass a system you cannot maintain.

It is very easy for us to point at economic maneuvering around
education. Many of us are relatively a lot better off than these kids
who live in squatter areas. I will tell you a story – my own
valedictorian, whom I respect, lived in a tiny wooden box of a house (a
large wooden box if you didn’t call it a house). I remember visiting the
squatter area the night of my graduation and eating their pancit. Or
spaghetti – I didn’t really have much of it because my (relatively)
rich-kid instincts told me not to take a lot of food of questionable
hygiene from poor people. For many of us better facilities, teachers who
get paid, lessons worth studying, and classmates who have enough free
time to talk about them are taken for granted. Even the question of
education is so important to us because many of our other needs are
already taken for granted. What I mean to say is that it’s easy to lose
sight of the common folk’s problems – because to us they don’t exist.
The quality of education, facilities, teachers, etc could very easily be
one of them.

Economics is partly to blame for low quality of education, and perhaps
it is the biggest part. Surely thinking of some forms of maneuvering
around the problems of economics is a question worth asking?

That being said, some economic maneuvering can come from getting more
funding, and some economic maneuvering can come from shifting around the
usage of the resources. The OP question is of the second type, which
should ultimately be asked of all parts of the equation anyways. And one
of the most central issues to ask in the use of resources is: “are the
subjects we are teaching the ones we should be focusing on?”

The OP quote goes on to say no, at least for some of the higher maths.
Personally, I draw the line if they cut it below trigonometry, but as I
see it, the argument is not understood, at least judging from the
responses in the original blog. In fact there are some cute summaries of
gems that show that the argument clearly goes over people’s heads:

“But if you take out subjects, there’ll be less schooling!”
“We are already behind in education, you want to take out some more?”

The first is an obvious tautology that adds nothing to the question.
Yes, if you’re going to play around with subjects you may be taking some
out (which is what the OP stance is). But you could also be
restructuring the curriculum to add things in. Furthermore, we aren’t
supposed to be satisfied with mere /quantity/ of education. It’s quality
that we’re after, quality that may or may not be sustainable with the
current curriculum.

The second is an amusing “catching with the Joneses” take on education
comparative to other countries. It maintains the fiction that we are
living up to some standard, and that this standard will be broken by
some changes. NEWSFLASH: we are _not_ living up to _the_ standards, not
by _those_ standards. Part of the rationale of streamlining is to cut
losses in some parts so that we can raise quality in other, hopefully
more important parts.

I think the more important considerations, rather than above, take the
form of
“X is a needed subject. It is directly relevant to our culture.”
“X is a valuable subject. It provides great value to our culture.”

where X cannot be replaced by some other college-level, but
valuable/important subject such as Logic, computer literacy, or similar
practical subjects/skills such as work ethics, business, Philippine
government institutions, present-day Filipino culture, etc. Or maybe not
- I think many of those skills would be of great value if inserted in
some form somewhere.

But that’s part of the point. There are so many subjects that can
provide special value to our people. Higher maths are often touted for
saying they give us critical thinking skills, which is a great thing to
have. But the same thing used to be said of now-untaught latin, spanish,
and rhetoric. Besides, if critical thinking is so important, then why
don’t we teach critical thinking directly? Maybe then some of our voters
and lawmakers won’t be so stupid when they make decisions about how our
country should be run.

Raise your hands if you know what makes up a company, how to start it,
and what legal paperwork/considerations you have to run through.
Businesses run our country, and almost any country in fact, and very few
of us know how it works and how to work with it, even on the legal side.
Why don’t we teach that? Maybe fewer of our countrymen will end up being
exploited as workers and maybe more will have better work ethics if they
learned it in high school.

As I said, there’s so many subjects that can be valuable. Calculus is
one of them, but it is not particularly special compared to, say,
reading and writing. Even just our work-related reading and writing is
behind. Pick a random HS graduate off the street and ask them if they
know how to make a resume. And then there’s not just literacy, but, in a
progressively computer-dominated world, computer literacy, which we are
also sadly sadly behind in. Doesn’t it sting that some of this valuable
and important stuff doesn’t even reach some of the better of our
brothers?

The underlying question is not about cutting high school out of high
school. It’s just asking what should be put in high school after all. It
doesn’t sound like an intelligent thing to ask, but that’s because
political questions aren’t designed to be.

And that’s something you’d never learn in high school.

Posted with permission from the_it.

by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=4667&tag=nl.e539

[sic]
Could you switch over to being 100% open source? In other words, could you replace your OS and all your software with open source alternatives and still do everything that you do now using commercial software?

Yes, for as a student and for the type of work that I do, I use Ubuntu. The only time I go boot my XP is when my brother wants to play DoTA with me or some other online game I can’t play on Linux. Otherwise, about 95% of the time, I use Ubuntu.

If so, how much training would you and others need, what would you do for support, and how long would it take you?

The shift from IE to Firefox did not cost me anything. The shift from OpenOffice (back then*) required a bit more work on my part but it took me as little as a week. (*It would probably take less now because newer versions tend to be more complete than the previous.) Of course, I am a special case because I’m the type that solves problems by myself so the only support I needed was Google’s.

While you’re thinking about open source, how much cash do you think you could save yearly?

I think this is a point that we can easily underestimate. Of course, a lot of us looks into the price and say “Hey! I’ll be saving P5000 pesos if I switched to Linux instead of buying a licensed XP” but you’re not counting the amount of stress and worry (reformats, viruses, slowdowns, crashes, regular scan and update of AV software, backups, etc) that you will save yourself from. Of course, here in the Philippines, you have P5000 less to save since most of the people get their XP for “free”.

In the end, the answer varies from person to person but, as the article said, if you’re not doing anything special on your PC, switching to 100% Open Source will not hurt you. In fact, you may gain more from it. I know I did.

Why so long? Because there is a lesson to be learned: Renew your DHCP address everytime you change your settings. It was the only thing that kept me so long. That’s why I never reach the gateway nor do I get DNS addresses, it’s because I never ask for it everytime I change it.

For a second there, I thought it had something to do with my Ubuntu.

It would be a list off the top-of-my-head so pardon me if it’s not comprehensive.

Windows

• Change default (blank) Administrator password into one with more than 14 characters with special characters
• Install the latest Firefox
• Change security settings in Firefox: Master Password (same rules as above), No History, No Forms, Always clear all private data except saved passwords, change save download folder
• Disable unneeded services
• Install Billy (and never use WMP)
• Install OpenOffice

Linux

• I’ll update this space, I never seemed to do much else after installation other than changing Firefox’s settings.

*my Windows needed a reinstall.. all my games crash now and I’m preparing for a drive overhaul for my Linux

Then, when I started the course, the only javascript experience I had was the simple banner changes we did when I was still in fourth year high school and that was also getting rusty. Heck, I did not even know what XML, JSON, and whatnot were. When I first encountered JSON when we did a sample javascript app on zembly, I remember regarding it as “a mass of text with double quotes and brackets” and XML as “a lot of custom tags”.

Fast-forward to the present, I recently did a “hack” on converting Amazon‘s XML data returned by the AWS itemSearch method into a custom JSON object through Yahoo! Pipes and zembly.

Yahoo! Pipes is really an excellent service. It reduced my development efforts to almost nil. I used the pipes for calling the Last.fm api (which is not yet supported by zembly as of the moment) and processing it before passing it on to zembly. It was really easy to follow the program logic because you can really visualize which one goes where and so on. I actually did the same method to get data from Amazon to convert into a JSON object in zembly through my own service.

The only thing I’m worried about is that I hardcoded my API keys into the pipes (through a private string). Not a really big problem now, but when I think about it from a bigger scale, this should be fixed if I want to make my pipe a general one. I was wondering if zembly had a method to get a certain API key from the keychain without resolving to Owner.Keychain (since I am assuming that only authorized associated services will be able to access the correct key)? This way, I can just pass that method (say Owner.Keychain.Yahoo) to a pipe that will also ask for an API key as part of its input parameters. But now that I think about it, aren’t we passing around the API key in plain text if we did this? (Which really defeats the purpose of “securing” it, IMO.)

Update: Here is my project (still unfinished, butt ugly ATM but I’ll get there). What I need for now is an API that would allow me to search for and embed music into the site. If they have the code for a player, much better for me.
That’s what I originally had in mind (as opposed to what you could find on the project page) and I thought I could do it through Last.fm‘s API but I read somewhere that they stopped supporting single track playback sometime around last month. Bummer.

From there, I got in the Linux Mint forums and started reading about their plans on Fluxbox edition and found an interesting lightweight music player/manager (I’m a sucker for lightweight apps) and after reading a review (with lots of screenies) on it, I thought it was promising. Downloaded the package and went on to build it from source but it requires alsa-1.0.15. Not a problem, I can just satisfy that dependency. Little did I know that I’m coming close to breaking my ALSA (and spend an hour or two fixing it).

Googling, I found this script to update ALSA to the required version. I let the script execute and then after a few minutes, my laptop rebooted. When it got back up again, lo and behold, my alsamixer is gone and my volume controller on Xfce can’t find an audio device. So, I spent about 15 minutes finding out what was the problem, reading a couple of threads until finally settling down to reinstalling ALSA manually. (instructions on their website) After about 15 more minutes, I managed to fix it, but not totally. my volume controller still can’t detect a device, and my laptops function keys does not work any more. I’m going to try and fix them perhaps at a later time. Nonetheless, I am a bit pissed because I broke something that was perfectly fine.

And you know what’s frustrating? I tried recompiling the consonance again, it still would not accept. It insists that it needs 1.0.15 eventhough I have a higher version (installed 1.0.18). Oh well, it’s a bit waste of my time but I guess I still learned a thing or two.

On a side note, I found a lightweight alternative for Yakuake: Tilda.