TForce PreRunner powered by GM

From Autoblog:

Power for the PreRunner comes from none other than GM's LS2 small-block. TForce crew member Matt Riggle told Levine that the team chose the 375-hp, 400 lb-ft powerplant because of its reliability, as well as its ability to run on regular Pemex gas that's much cheaper than facing fuel.

For the record, Toyota does not sponsor team TForce or its hopped-up PreRunner, but you can imagine that choosing a GM engine over one by Toyota because of reliability isn't exactly what the folks in Aichi, Japan like hearing.

Golden! Heh heh ^_^
Maybe it has something to do with the Tundra's engine camshaft failure? I wonder if the tailgate is also lifted from a GM pickup, oh right they don't have tailgates on them.

America gone mad!

"Dunkin Donuts has pulled a commercial featuring pitchwoman Rachael Ray wearing a scarf because Michelle Malkin and other conservative observers thought the scarf looked too much like a keffiyeh, what Malkin describes as "the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/28/dunkin-donuts-pulls-ad-fe_n_103859.html

Is this what America have become? A bunch of xenophobic assholes? Damn you Michelle! You scumbag! You are embarrassing us and portraying us as a bunch of unenlightened rednecks! This is certainly not what conservatism is about!
For starters it doesn't even look like a keffiyeh, but then again that b**** Michelle probably never seen one, and more than that it is so trivial, there are more things that we should worry about.. LIKE THE F***ING BUDGET! and the failing education system.

This youtube video is pure awesomeness!

Waiting for 0.3.5 ...

I've been waiting for this release for quite some time, it was supposed to be out in April, then was delayed to May but ... yeah I guess it wont be out for May either..
The last release of ReactOS I played with was 0.3.3, and it installed properly and everything, but couldn't get it to connect, for some reason it didn't recognize the network hardware or something, so it basically was useless beyond the initial install and playing around with the OS for a while.

0.3.3 screenshots:




Any way, I've finally decided to download 0.3.4, instead of waiting for 0.3.5, not expecting much I installed it, I noticed some differences during the setup process, well actually one, and that is a language option as soon as the setup process starts, plus it seemed to take longer than 0.3.3 did. I was wrong on the not expecting much part, 0.3.4 actually works, networking works, Download! connects to the server and downloads the program you've selected, and the program installs, though sometimes the OS crashes after an install.

0.3.4 screenshots:



One of the things I love about ReactOS is how fast it installs and boots, it installs and boots faster than Win98 and WinXP on the same specs, if you check the system requirement you'll find it to be very lightweight. 64MB of RAM is more than enough for basic usage of ReactOS, and the system installs with a very minimal footprint, just the basic essentials, no web browser or any additional clutter. The Downloader offers optional downloads among them are web browsers, mail clients, office suites, games and utilities. Another thing I've noticed is the very fast search, something Microsoft hasn't thought of until Vista, and virutal desktops something Vista doesn't have.

There are though various stability issues, the OS tends to crash after installing a program, sometimes stop responding during an install, and launching the Task Manager crashes the OS, and some features are missing all together, though all of this is expected in an Alpha, and I just can't wait for the stable release to officially replace Windows.

For your own good!

Don't you just hate this phrase? I do! I hate totalitarian regimes (whether it is a government, a school administration or parents at home) who decide for you what is good and what's not! Thank you but no thanks, I can make my own decisions, I don't need people deciding on my behalf, I can figure things on my own. Nothing makes any of you more capable than me in making decisions that affects me, I know me more than any of you do!
Tyranny can take many forms, from banning access to some specific commodities, to dictating how and by what amount they can be used.

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
—C. S. Lewis

Microsoft starting to play nice?

Microsoft finally decided to add support to ODF natively, due in an Office SP early next year, not only that, but also allows users to choose ODF as their default format for saving office files. This I didn't see coming, nor Microsoft recent decision to help develop the next version of the ODF standard. Are we seeing a change in heart? A more open and inter-operable Microsoft that embraces standards but doesn't extinguish them? I sure hope so.

Microsoft using money to lure people to its search engine?

This is a new attempt by the software Goliath to rival Google and Yahoo, offer cash rebates on purchases done through Windows Live Search. And the idea for this? Not from Microsoft of course! The idea actually came from Jellyfish.com which Microsoft bought last year.
If you can't innovate I guess you'll have to buy those who can. And while I'm at it, Microsoft is still trying to buy Yahoo!, well not all of it, now they want to buy stakes in it. I guess if you can't beat them, buy them!
This is extremely dangerous, Microsoft has deep pockets, and with the slowing economy a lot of people can use a little cash saving on their purchases. If this works out for MS, innovations in search engines will come to a halt, as it is with any area MS dominates.

Another issue.. Forking!

This blog entry is quite old, but exemplifies one of the core issues with GNU/Linux and that is binary compatibility between distros.

Ubuntu is a Debian based distro, yet is NOT fully binary compatible with Debian. It uses a lot of the same package management tools yet it diverged too far from Debian for it to be compatible.

The average user, or say the average programmer might not be aware of this, he might develop a deb package assuming it will work with Debian, Linspire, Xandros, Ubuntu, and other Debian based distros, the average desktop user is expecting just as much, and before you know it you'll have someone writing why this package doesn't install on this distro.

Now take this small example and apply it on all of the GNU/Linux distros, there is no simple binary package that will install on all, it is a pain for the developer and users. Some people and distros avoid this by compiling everything from source, but that is not a viable solution to a lot of users.

There is no silver bullet for this problem, especially when ego is involved, every distro want to hold on to its package manager, and replacing one package manager with another is a costly and lengthy process.

Why GNU/Linux isn't ready.

In a previous blog entry, I talked about the current state of the computer market, which was more of stating the obvious but for me serves as a start before discussing GNU and ReactOS.

Now onto GNU. So what's the deal with it? GNU started out as a UNIX clone, GNU is Not UNIX. A lot of the userland tools were devloped by the GNU project, but they weren't capable of developing a working kernel. Enter Linux, this kernel became the official kernel for the GNU system, and this kernel was developed to duplicate UNIX behavoir. The combo of GNU and Linux became known as GNU/Linux, a viable UNIX alternative for the desktop and server market, but UNIX was never designed to be user-friendly or for desktop use, and GNU/Linux suffers from the same problem. A great server OS, outstanding availability and robustness, but user hostile, unfriendly and dramatically short on software.

That didn't stop a lot of companies of trying to make UNIX and/or GNU based OSes for desktop use, though the major focus was servers and supercomputers. Community led development focused more on the desktop side, and various windowing environments were developed, most popular of them are KDE, GNOME and Xfce.

There is nothing wrong with GNU/Linux, everything technologically speaking is near perfect. The problem is support and ease of use. That would of been solved 10 years ago if the Free Software/Open Source community cooperated together and tackled the task as professionals! The problem is, they are poorly coordinated, there is too much internal compettion, and there is a lot of lost effort! You'd be stunned by the number of redundant projects that aim for the same goal and fall just short of it. There is no coherence, no consistency and no cooperation between them! It gets so bad, that even on the same desktop environment you'll find inconsistencies from one distro to another! This is my own real life experience! Then add to that the dozen or so different desktop environments, the four dozen or so different apps that try to achieve the same goal using a different approach, the incompatible binary packages and their package managers and you'll start to see why they aren't successful in the desktop world! TOO MUCH WASTED EFFORT ON REDUNDANT REDUNDANCY! What they should do is obvious, get around a round table, get your priorities straight and work to achieve maximum interoperability and consistency!

Of highest priority to me, is having a single unified package manager between all GNU/Linux distro. There should be a single unified standard that governs everything, so every program no matter how large or small should be capable of running on any distro.

Another, though a lot might not agree with me on, is develop a unified consistent desktop environment. I believe in choice, I'm not saying to abolish all other desktop environment, but there is a need for a consistent feel to the OS.

For a more diverse OS world

The current state of the OS world is hopeless, there is basically no competition and no one can just jump in and hope of acquiring any major market share. The choices are limited, and all what you get is more of the same (I'm referring to Windows being the only choice on most hardware), one OS is dominating and has been for nearly 20 years.

We've got:
Windows @ 91.46%
Mac OS @ 7.57%
GNU/Linux @ 0.67%
Solaris @ 0.01%
Other @ 0.29%

This is the problem or the symptom, depending on how you look at it. This all can be attributed to Windows dominance, now instead of pointing fingers and accusing Microsoft of being evil, I want to point it the problem and how this mess came to be, never in history, a single vendor controlled so much.

A brief history:
Blame it on IBM, IBM is responsible for the mess we are in. When the IBM PC came to be, the alternatives were few, everyone sold you their software with their hardware (as Apple continues to do today) and UNIX wasn't a player in the desktop world, it was huge and only ran on minicomputers or expensive workstations (compared to the average personal computer) from companies like Sun.
So what did IBM do exactly?
1) Built its PC from off the shelf components (making cloning them feasible).
2) Opened up the platform, allowing clone vendors to appear.
3) Had Microsoft design the OS for the IBM PC and allowed them to sell it to competitors.

The IBM PC and clones dominated, so did MS-DOS and so did Windows. The IBM PC business model eventually lead to:
1) IBM exiting the PC market it created, the business model that lead to the dominance of the PC clones also lead to IBM losing against the cheaper clones and custom built PCs.
2) The closed business model basically failed and all companies using this business model either exited the market or opened up their platform, except for Apple.

So, you might be asking, is there a solution to this problem?
Some suggest that Apple open up its hardware and allow installing OS X on PCs. That's a ridiculous suggestion, half of the Mac experience is in the precision engineered hardware, like the iMac and MacBook Air.
Apple is a hardware company after all.

What about the FLOSS alternatives like GNU/Linux and *BSD?
Varies by distribution. Some of them are almost ready for desktop use, others aren't. Discussing them alone, and why they aren't ready yet, will be left for a future blog entry.

So, what is the solution?
Wine and ReactOS.
Most people aren't willing to make the switch due to software compatibility, a lot of people need their Windows software, others aren't due to familiarity with the Windows OS. Wine and ReactOS tackle these problems.
Wine now runs a lot of Windows programs out of the box, more with various degrees of tweaking and others don't run at all, but considering Wine's fast progress, the list of supported apps increases with every release.

What about ReactOS?
From ReactOS website:

ReactOS® is an advanced free open source operating system providing a ground-up implementation of a Microsoft Windows® XP compatible operating system. ReactOS aims to achieve complete binary compatibility with both applications and device drivers meant for NT and XP operating systems, by using a similar architecture and providing a complete and equivalent public interface.

ReactOS is the most complete working model of a Windows® like operating system available. Consequently, working programmers will learn a great deal by studying ReactOS source code and even participating in ReactOS development.

ReactOS has and will continue to incorporating features from newer versions and sometimes even define the state of the art in operating system technology.

In short, ReactOS is aiming to run your applications and use your hardware, a free operating system for everyone!

Please bear in mind that ReactOS 0.3.4 is still in alpha stage, meaning it is not feature complete and is not recommended for everyday use.

It will be a long wait for us who are looking for a viable Windows alternative and a long wait before every seeing a more diverse OS market.

Flaws in the iPod

I'm a big fan of the iPod, they keep getting smaller and smaller, and better and better, with new features, technologies and more aesthetic designs.

My first pet peeve though, is no quick access to shuffle, repeat all and repeat one controls. In my iPod at least, I have to go all the way back to the Settings menu and then enable/disable shuffle and choose whether I want repeat all/one/off. How I would do it, is simply add access to them by clicking the middle button while playing a song. I wonder why no one thought of this at Apple?!

My other pet peeve, is NO EFFING OGG SUPPORT! I can never understand why they don't want to add OGG support? There are no licensing fees on OGG since it is released under the BSD license, and the format offers great quality and efficient compression. Apple has no excuse in not supporting OGG! I EFFING HATE MP3, not as much as RM but I still do!

Are they enough for me to not get an iPod, HELL NO! So Apple, you don't really have to fix anything, I'll continue buying your hardware..

Visual Studio 2005 running on Wine

Adam Strzelecki managed to get Visual Studio 2005 to run on Wine, there still seems to be some issues that affects usability, as stated in the wine-devel mailing list, but at least now I know that it can run. I've been trying with Visual Studio 2005 for a while now without luck, I'll try to follow Adam's steps and see if it'll work, Visual Studio 2005 (and Windows Mobile 6 SDK) are pretty much the only Windows programs I use.

Hi,
I just want to mention that I've managed to install Visual Studio 2005
completely with WINE.
1) installed "vcrun6" (with winetricks)
2) applied 1 patch from http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8439#c3
(Required for overall installation)
3) applied patched from http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iVersionId=3754
(Required for .NET 2.0 installation)
4) applied "msi: ACTION_RegisterProduct store all InstallProperties"
match from patches list I just sent
(Without this patch Visual Studio 2005 will think that MS XML 6.0 and
some others is still uninstalled!)
Installation goes without problem, however running "devenv.exe" causes
several problems with .NET 2.0 packages and crashes a lot :( too bad.
Most crashes and errors are because of few missing WINE API functions,
and incomplete .NET 2.0 support.
Still I think WINE's close to run Visual Studio! which will be great
news for multi-platform developers.
See attached screenshots from my MacBook Pro running OSX 10.5.2.
Cheers, --  Adam Strzelecki |: nanoant.com :|

XP SP3 delayed!

Microsoft confirmed that it delayed the launch of XP SP3 and have stopped the automatic update of Vista to SP1 and XP to SP3. This all resulted from a problem with the update that will lead to data corruption due to incompatibilities with *drum roll* Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System, as reported here.

It seems Microsoft is unable of getting its own software from different divisions to play nice together, everything seems to be poorly designed and documented, which symbolize an even bigger problem, Microsoft seems to be spread too thin and can't get anything right from the first time, even when it is something they should of got it right!

It seems Microsoft is incapable of properly engineering its software, everything seems to be just mashed together and poorly documented. If there were better coordination between Microsoft's own divisions, this wouldn't of happened!
Microsoft needs to get its act together, before it is too late, its dominance might not last forever.