The Silent Number

Top things to do after installing Ubuntu Linux 9.10 Karmic Koala

2009-10-29T12:10:00.007-04:00

So you've just installed Ubuntu 9.10, the cute and cuddly Karmic Koala, but now you're confronted with a most pertinent question, "What do i do now?" Ubuntu is a very complete and full-featured Linux distribution, but no operating system can come with everything you want. There's much more fun to be had in what comes after installing the OS on your machine: now you get to set it up with all the best software it didn't already come with! This list of the top things to do immediately after installing your newly acquired copy of Ubuntu doubles as a general list of great software to try out and use, complete with links to any special instructions on how to set them up, Terminal commands for those who prefer a command-line interface (CLI), and when available, personal package archives (PPA), repositories to keep the applications at their newest version, not just the security updates provided for you by default. Repositories can be added easily by clicking the "Add..." button in the "Other Software" tab of Software Sources and entering the provided APT Line. Feel free to pick and choose; enjoy!

Basic Stuff

Download Mirror & Updates

After every major Ubuntu release (beta, release candidate, and especially the final), the official servers will be unbearably sluggish. To select an alternative server, just launch Software Sources (System ⟶ Administration ⟶ Software Sources) and click the drop-down menu next to "Download from:" and select "Other..." at which point the Choose a Download Server window should pop up. If you know of a fast local server you may select it from the list, or you can try clicking the "Select Best Server" button to launch a tool that will test all the servers for the fastest connection and choose the best result.

Optionally, jump to the "Updates" tab. If you'll always be running the newest version of Ubuntu and are using third-party repos, which we will be, then leaving the defaults should be fine. "Unsupported Updates (karmic-backports)" gives you, as the name implies, unsupported versions of future packages which are still in development which you probably don't need or even want except in certain situations like having a newer-model Apple machine that requires bleeding edge updates. Packages may contain new features, introduce new interfaces, and not be sufficiently tested for inclusion in the 'proposed' repository. "Pre-released Updates (karmic-proposed)" is just the testing area for updates, recommended only to those interested in helping to test updates and provide feedback. Check that Ubuntu is scheduled to automatically find availably updates daily and to download all updates in the background to save yourself some time when it comes time to install them.

Before you go, head over to the "Statistics" tab and check it if it isn't already. This anonymously sends the list of software you have installed and how often you use them to help collect statistics on which apps are the most popular.

When you click close, you will likely be prompted to reload the list of available software. Click reload. If you're prompted with available updates when it finished reloading, follow the instructions to install them. If not, you can always manually check for and install updates via Update Manager (System ⟶ Administration ⟶ Update Manager). You should always keep your computer up-to-date.

Folder and Printer Sharing

If you want to be able to share files, folders, and printers with Windows machines, you'll need the samba package. You can set this up graphically by right clicking on any folder and selecting "Properties" and going straight to the "Share" tab. Check off "Share this folder" and you should be prompted to install the Windows networks sharing service. After that's installed, you'll need to restart and you can click "Create Share" to be able to view the folder and it's contents from other machines through the network.

Like any package, you may also install samba via Synaptic Package Manager (System ⟶ Administration ⟶ Synaptic Package Manager) or command-line (Applications ⟶ Accessories ⟶ Terminal).

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install samba

Time Synchronization

Ubuntu can keep your computer's time accurate by syncing up with atomic clocks through tiers of servers while factoring out communication delays, and adjusting the time in a way that does not upset all the other processes that are running. The protocol for this is called Network Time Protocol (NTP). To set up NTP time synchronization graphically, launch Time & Date, also available through (System ⟶ Administration ⟶ Time & Date). Click the keys to unlock settings. Now, you can select your time zone, and configure it to "Keep synchronized with Internet servers", at which point it will prompt you to Install NTP support. After that, click "Select Servers" and check off the server closest to you.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install ntp

Restricted Essentials

DVD Playback

Most commercial DVDs are encrypted with Content Scrambling System (CSS), which attempts to restrict the software that can play a DVD. You'll need to install libdvdcss if you want to play them. You can do so by first installing the libdvdread4 package via Synaptic Package Manager or Terminal.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install libdvdread4

Then, within a Terminal window, enter:

sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

Restricted Extras

The ubuntu-restricted-extras package includes a bunch of things Ubuntu isn't legally allowed to ship with, namely unrar for unarchiving .rar files, Microsoft TrueType core fonts, Sun Java Runtime Environment (JRE), restricted codecs, and finally Adobe Flash Player. Like the rest of the packages and applications in this list unless noted otherwise, it's available in the new Ubuntu Software Center (Applications ⟶ Ubuntu Software Center).

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

I also recommend you at least give a fair chance to Gnash, an open source flash player on the list of high priority Free software projects. To install, you'll first have to make sure you don't have Adobe's flash player installed via Synaptic or Terminal.

Command:

sudo apt-get purge flashplugin-installer nspluginwrapper

Finally, you can install the Gnash plugin via Synaptic of Terminal.

APT Line: ppa:gnash/ppa
Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install mozilla-plugin-gnash

Eye Candy

GNOME Shell

The upcoming version 3.0 of the GNOME desktop environment which i can't describe concisely other than that it is a new interface for interacting with your desktop. Some people think it looks pretty slick, but i won't weigh in on the issue. If you'd like to try it, there is a version in the Ubuntu repos, but you'll probably want something more up to date. You can build it yourself without too much difficulty, but hopefully there will be a PPA available soon.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install gnome-shell

Advanced Desktop Effects Settings

If you want a Custom option in Visual Effects settings in Appearance (System ⟶ Preferences ⟶ Appearance) for some fancier features to play around with and show off, you'll need Simple CompizConfig Settings Manager, or if you're feeling more ambitious, Advanced Desktop Effects Settings.

APT Line: ppa:compiz/ppa
Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install simple-ccsm

Replace "simple-ccsm" with "compizconfig-settings-manager" for the Advanced Desktop Effects Settings Manager.

Basic Compositing

Some of you may not need or want such superfluous visual effects; perhaps you lack the hardware or restricted drivers for accelerated graphics necessary for Compiz; maybe you just don't want to use something that isn't standards compliant, but still want basic compositing which some applications depend on. In that case, Metacity, the default window manager for GNOME, works great! You can enable it graphically, or with a simple command, but make sure to disable Compiz effects in Appearance.

For GUI lovers, hit Alt+F2 to open the Run Applicatoin dialog and enter gconf-editor to launch the GNOME Configuration Editor. In the left-hand sidebar, navigate to Apps ⟶ metacity ⟶ general and back in the main box check off compositing_manager, and Metacity will immediately start compositing, a much smoother transition than to Compiz. If you're a CLI guy (relax ladies, i did it for the rhyme), you can run a quick command in Terminal.

Command: gconftool-2 -s '/apps/metacity/general/compositing_manager' --type bool true

Extra Themes

There aren't a whole lot of themes that come with Ubuntu, so if you crave more, there are several packages containing additional themes. Hopefully many of these packages can be merged in the future and have a more refined selection. They all must be installed via Synaptic or the terminal but only the themes from the Bisigi Project provided by the zgegblob-themes package requires the PPA. You can download individual themes from various websites like GNOME-Look.

APT Line: ppa:bisigi/ppa

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install arc-colors community-themes gdm-themes gnome-backgrounds gnome-colors gnome-themes gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more metacity-themes shiki-colors zgegblog-themes

Electric Sheep Screensaver

Fractal frames can look pretty sweet. Electric Sheep does a number of cool things with them. Primarily, it displays them as a screensaver, but on top of that and arguably just as cool, it downloads new popular ones through a distributed computing network so that the "gene pool" of animations, or "sheep" as they're called, is constantly evolving. You can download a starter pack from http://www.archive.org/details/electricsheep-packs-244 and just extract them into ~/.electricsheep

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install electricsheep

Desktop Functionality

Application Launcher

For a beautiful application launcher, complete with plugins and a dock, you can try GNOME + Do.

APT Line: ppa:do-core/ppa
Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install gnome-do

Universal Applets

After the death of Screenlets and gDesklets, a new widget framework called Universal Applets is being developed with the goal of producing applets that can be dynamically "plugged" into any application. While GNOME Do is definitely superior at the moment, Universal Applets is a promising concept for the future. It's only available in a third party repository since it isn't yet included in the Ubuntu repos and as such isn't listed in the Software Center. It hasn't even been packaged for karmic, but the Jaunty packages, though bug-ridden, work for me.

APT line: deb http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/some-guy:/screenlets/xUbuntu_9.04/ ./
Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install universal-applets

Clipboard Manager

There is an annoying bug from 2004 in which copy/paste doesn't work if the source is closed before the paste. Parcellite is a clipboard manager that works around that problem along with providing some other useful features.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install parcellite

Audio/Video Creation & Editing

Video Editing

PiTiVi is an intuitive and featureful movie editor that was actually designed with the user interface in mind instead of just slopping on one feature after another. It is able to import and export video files in any format supported by the powerful GStreamer framework.

APT Line: ppa:gstreamer-developers/ppa
Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install pitivi

Video Screen Capture

If you want to make screencasts to show off your awesome desktop, Instanbul is a great desktop recording tool which, unlike gtk-recordMyDesktop, uses GStreamer. You can install it through Synaptic or Terminal.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install istanbul

Audio Recording & Editing

Jokosher is a simple yet powerful non-linear, multi-track audio editor. The interface, which was designed from the ground up, provides an integrated environment to create and record music, podcasts and more.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install jokosher

Webcam

If you have a webcam, you need Cheese. It's a Photobooth-inspired application for taking pictures and videos from a webcam also based on the GStreamer back-end.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install cheese

Multimedia Playback

Media Center

Moovida, formerly Elisa, is a beautiful media center which is perfect for setting up a Home Theater PC (HTPC) or TVPC like the Neuros Link and it uses the GStreamer multimedia framework to support playing almost any kind of file.

APT Line: ppa:moovida-packagers/ppa
Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install moovida

Video Feeds

Miro, previously known as Democracy Player, is an Internet television application developed by a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization called the Participatory Culture Foundation whose mission is to "enable and support independent, non-corporate creativity and political engagement."

APT Line: deb http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/pculture.org/miro/linux/repositories/ubuntu karmic/
Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install miro

Media Player

I don't feel strongly about this, but for those of you who are unsatisfied by Rythmbox, the default music manager for Ubuntu, you may want to try Banshee. It's a media player and library for music and videos which has a number of cool features.

APT Line: ppa:banshee-team/ppa
Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install banshee

Web Browsing

Google Chrome

Mozilla Firefox 3.5 brings some major improvements like HTML 5 support, but we all hate how bloated it is. If you want something faster and more standards-compliant, WebKit browsers are the way to go. Webkit is the layout engine that Epiphany and Google Chrome use to render pages faster than Gecko which is used by Firefox. Chromium is only available through the a PPA and must be installed through Synaptic or Terminal.

APT Line: ppa:chromium-daily/ppa
Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install chromium-browser

Epiphany

If you prefer something that integrates more with GNOME, and is in fact the default web browser for it, try Epiphany. You may also add the Epiphany and WebKit PPAs to keep them up-to-date.

APT Line: ppa:webkit-team/epiphany
APT Line: ppa:webkit-team/ppa
Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install epiphany-browser

Learning

Flash Cards

Digital flash cards are even more effective because they can accurately use spaced repetition to help you more efficiently retain information. There are actually two great programs i recommend you try and choose for yourself, Mnemosyne and Anki.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install mnemosyne anki

Brainwave Entrainment

You read that correctly. You can synchronize your brainwaves to that of an external stimulus like sound, light, and even electromagnetic radiation in order to easily induce brain states like sleep for example. Think of it as assisted meditation which is effective at treating conditions like ADD, insomnia, and much more. Gnaural is brainwave entrainment software which generates binaural beats. It is no longer in the repositories and it doesn't have a PPA, but 32-bit users can download and install the .deb from the website while 64-bit users like myself are forced to compile.

http://gnaural.sourceforge.net/download/

Brain Training

If you like puzzles, logic, and brain teasers, you'll enjoy keeping your mind in shape with gbrainy.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install gbrainy

Games

PlayDeb

What good are games when you're stuck with the same versions for 6 months? PlayDeb is a repository of games which provides you with the latest and greatest that are either not at their newest version in the Ubuntu repos, or not included at all! Installing games is extremely convenient by searching through the PlayDeb.net website and installing games with just a click. You can add it to your sources automatically by installing the playdeb package, or manually.

APT Line: deb http://archive.getdeb.net/ubuntu karmic-getdeb games

wget -O- http://archive.getdeb.net/getdeb-archive.key | sudo apt-key add -

Yo Frankie!

This is a beautiful and important Free game— that is, Free software and Free content— which was created to show off what can be produced using Free software. It was made using Blender, mentioned above, as part of the Blender Institute's first Open Game Project, and based off of the film, Big Buck Bunny, which was the foundation's second Open Movie Project. Sadly, it isn't included in the Ubuntu repos, but you can get it with PlayDeb.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install yofrankie

Nexuiz

For those of you who prefer fast-paced first-person shooters, Nexuiz is a very decent Free game every Linux gamer should try at least once. GameStop even held a Nexuiz "PC gaming challenge" in which interactive kiosks were set up in 10 different stores in 8 US cities and users were given 2 minutes to earn the high score for a $100 gift card by doing the most damage possible to their AI opponents.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install nexuiz

Donating CPU Power

Distributed Computing

You can volunteer to participate in grid computing to donate your computer's spare CPU power to charitable projects like protein folding. Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) is a great way to use your computer to give.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install boinc-manager

Images and Publishing

Photo Management

Although Ubuntu does come with F-Spot, it does leave many users unsatisfied. If you find yourself among them, you may want to try a young competitor named Solang, which gained popularity during the mono wars (hopefully mostly over?) as being a mono-free alternative.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install solang

Vector Graphics

Inkscape is a vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X. It's an excellent tool for publishing materials in the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

APT Line: ppa:inkscape.testers/ppa
Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install inkscape

3D Graphics

Not exclusive to still imagery, Blender is an amazing 3D imagery creation suite that has already been used to create films as part of the Open Movie Project.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install blender

Desktop Publishing

Scribus is a desktop publishing (DTP) application designed for flexible layout and typesetting and the ability to prepare files for professional quality image setting equipment like writing small newspapers, brochures, newsletters, posters and books.

APT Line: ppa:scribus/ppa
Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install scribus

Filesharing

Secured P2P

Gnunet framework for decentralized, secure, peer-to-peer networking for anonymous, censorship-resistant file-sharing. You may have heard of Freenet, but you probably haven't seen how they compare.

APT Line: ppa:teamgnunet/ppa
Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install gnunet-gtk

Direct Connect

A great way to share files for students in college networks is using direct connect; sadly, there is no DC client designed for GNOME, nor is there an available port of Shakespeer from Mac, so it seems like the best option is DC++

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install linuxdcpp

Usenet

Although it isn't free, Usenet downloads are crazy-fast and files show up there first. Possibly even more noteworthy, however, is that for whatever reason it remains unregulated by pirate hunters. Read this guide for more info, but install LottaNZB for your client instead— they're working to replace HellaNZB with SABnzbd for their back-end.

APT Line: ppa:lottanzb/ppa
Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install lottanzb

BitTorrent

Although Miro can already handle torrent files, you probably want a dedicated BitTorrent client, and although Transmission can do the job, you might want something a little more comprehensive. I'm sure you'll find that Deluge is a feature complete yet lightweight application.

APT Line: ppa:deluge-team/ppa

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install deluge

Time Managment

Alarm Clock

If you keep your computer on at all times and want to toss out your boring alarm clock, or even if not, Alarm Clock provides a lot of nifty scheduling and alert options.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install alarm-clock

Time Tracking

The Hamster Time Tracker applet helps you track and analyze how much time you spend on different tasks and activities with a graphical overview to make you feel bad for all that time you waste. It can only be installed through Synaptic or Terminal.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install hamster-applet

Communication

Empathy Instant Messenger

Horray! Empathy is now included with Ubuntu, but if you want the latest version with additional features like geolocation and audio/video chat for MSN, you'll need to add the Telepathy PPA to your software sources.

APT Line: ppa:telepathy/ppa

Microblogging

Gwibber is a cute little microblogging client for those of you who frequently use sites like Twitter, Identi.ca, Jaiku, Facebook, Digg, and more.

APT Line: ppa:gwibber-team/ppa
Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install gwibber

Security & Privacy

On-The-Fly Encryption

Many people use TrueCrypt believing that it's FOSS, but although the source code is available, it's development is kept secret and it isn't considered Free Software by the FSF nor Open Source by the OSI. ScramDisk for Linux (SD4L) is a great OTFE alternative that also supports TrueCrypt containers. Unfortunately, it is not yet included in the default repos, and there isn't a PPA either, but you can download a .deb to install from their website.

http://sd4l.sourceforge.net/

VPN Access

If you'd like to make sure all of your internet traffic is encrypted and anonymous, you can pass it through a proxy by using a Virtual Private Network service like IPREDator. We can't kill the music and movie industries if they can make money just by suing all of us!

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install network-manager-pptp

Onion Routing

If you don't wan't to pay $5 a month for a VPN like IPREDator but still want to be able to use the web anonymously, you can try The Onion Router, more commonly referred to as TOR, but it is significantly slower and requires additional setup. Although it was in the Ubuntu repos, the version in there was dangerously out-of-date it's just been removed, so you need to use their repository.

APT Line: deb http://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org karmic main
Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install tor tor-geoipdb

Firewall

If you feel the need to have a firewall, Firewall configuration is a graphical front-end for Uncomplicated firewall (ufw).

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install gufw

Antivirus

You generally don't need antivirus with Linux, but if you'd like to play it safe, you can install the ClamTK Virus Scanner, a graphical front-end to ClamAV.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install clamtk

System Utilities

LiveUSB Creator

Optical storage disks like CD's are inconvenient and get scratched up, so why put your installer on a USB instead? UNetbootin allows you to do just that, using any Linux or BSD distribution.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install unetbootin

Backup

I don't have any strong feelings as to which backup utility you should use, but i have learned the hard way that you should always have a backup. Back In Time should do everything you need.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install backintime-gnome

Partition Editor

You can partition you other storage drives, your external hard drive, you USB drive, your iPod, and basically any other writable storage drive you can plug into your computer using the GNOME Partition Editor. It does the trick on Ubuntu installation disks, and it can sure do the trick elsewhere.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install gparted

Virtual Machine

If you want to be a good user and get testing on the next version of Ubuntu, that's 10.04 LTS, the Lucid Lynx, but you want to do it safely, get VirtualBox. There's version that is fully open source (vboxgtk), but you'll likely want the proprietary features too. It's installable via Synaptic or Terminal.

APT Line: deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian karmic non-free
Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install virtualbox-3.0

64-bit Specific

Flash Player

The 32-bit flash player runs terribly on 64-bit systems, and if you don't want to use Gnash, Adobe has released the only 64-bit version of Flash Player 10 for Linux! It currently isn't in the repositories because it's still in alpha, but it's so much more stable than even the final 32-bit version. To install it, download the .tar.gz file at the bottom of this page:

http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html

Next, extract the file to your home folder; then just enter this into a terminal window:

sudo cp libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/

Windows Media Audio 9

I've looked and looked, and without the Fluendo GStreamer plugin there is no way for 64-bit Ubuntu to play WMA 9 files, and video files that use it will have no sound. You can purchase a copy from the Canonical Store, or download it illegally from The Pirate Bay:

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4900791

Explore, Customize, Personalize!

Now it's time to play around with all the new apps you have and make your desktop, well, yours. You can try experimenting with a cool panel-less desktop; you can experiment with all your new apps; you can try different themes and modify them in Appearance; you can set your preferred applications and explore all your system preferences. My desktop background comes is by David Revoy of Durian, now called Sintel, the Blender Foundation's latest Open Movie Project.

Don't for get to show off your shiny new Ubuntu installation to your friends, spread Ubuntu, and donate to your favorite projects!

How To: 64-bit Google Gears for Ubuntu Linux!

2009-10-28T04:22:00.001-04:00

All the guides which dominate the top Google search results are now, as i recently discovered, completely obsolete! As you probably know, Google Gears is not officially supported for 64-bit Linux, but being Free and open source software, somebody else can port it for them. The other guides out there describe how to download a .xpi Firefox browser addon from whoever, but they're old versions of Gears. If you've installed from those guides, i'm sure you've gotten the available update notification over and over but trying to update fails because although there's a new version of the official Google Gears, there isn't for the 64-bit copy you have.

With the latest version of Ubuntu, Karmic Koala, installing gears for 64-bit Linux just got a whole lot easier. Would you like to know how already? Are you sure you're ready for this? Here it is:

sudo apt-get install gears

or just click here to install it. Yes, that's it! It's already conveniently packaged for you. You can even download the .deb from http://packages.ubuntu.com/karmic/gears but due to dependencies, it won't likely be useful to you unless you're running Ubuntu 9.10 anyways.

It's useless to me, though, since this will only benefit Firefox 3.5 (and above) users. I've switched to WebKit browsers for the sake of speed and standard, but even Chromium still doesn't support gears yet, so i'm pressing on without precious offline mode for now.

Yo Frankie! Now available for the masses in Ubuntu Karmic

2009-10-17T12:24:00.003-04:00

Thanks to the wonderful people behind PlayDeb, a very important Free game (free software and free content), is now available for Ubuntu 9.10. I say important because it's the Blender Institute's first Open Game Project made specifically to stimulate the development of Blender and provide beautiful example of what can be produced using only free software. It's based off of the film, Big Buck Bunny, the foundation's second Open Movie Project.

It's important not only as a beautiful Free game, but also just just as much so as a solid development model for Free content, proving that Free games, like the rest of the Free software world, can (and will) succeed! Blender's open movie and game projects are successful, even in a relatively small time frame and with their relatively small team, because they have proper art direction and a sound funding model. I hope we can see more projects materialize soon using similar methods.

Until now, people had to either build it themselves or download a .deb file from GetDeb which never worked, at least for me. Now, anybody running Karmic can install it through the PlayDeb repository!

Check it out here: http://www.playdeb.net/updates/Yo%20Frankie!

Sometimes even Googlers fall for Google scams!

2009-10-16T17:21:00.003-04:00

Take a look at what a Googler just sent me:

Subject: Check this out
------------------------

From: [info removed]
Date: Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 17:02
To: Danny Piccirillo [email removed]

http://www.news3insider.com/finance/google-hiring-you.html

Cheers,

[name removed]

----------
From: Danny Piccirillo [email removed]
Date: Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 17:03
To: [info removed]

...scam?
--
☮♥Ⓐ – http://www.google.com/profiles/danny.piccirillo

----------
From: [info removed]
Date: Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 17:07
To: Danny Piccirillo [email removed]

Wow, I'm afraid you are right. Duh...

[name removed]

----------

10 Free Google Voice Invitations (first come, first serve)!

2009-10-13T16:18:00.001-04:00

Grab 'em while they're hot! I have ten free Google Voice invites here for whoever wants them, and i still have three invitations leftover for my (as of yet, very slow) YouTube contest! I actually spent money on eBay just to share the love with you =]

https://www.google.com/voice/inv/RGDwjMLkJdJv1wC7Rq-qTtKl2I4bf58e2266cb9a63
https://www.google.com/voice/inv/RSMDjTMw9NS-77KTXBVJ92kKcI4bf58e2266cb9a63
https://www.google.com/voice/inv/4rSfPDM_sPP4vQCJgGGjLLDC5I4bf58e2266cb9a63
https://www.google.com/voice/inv/2g4XcLRKnqRKszWVxL1C_91jNIfcdc038b0535fd59
https://www.google.com/voice/inv/Wb_J7fjcsM1f9kMRjRFxc4wL_Ifcdc038b0535fd59
https://www.google.com/voice/inv/VqVLKrKhdWQ5glTqShbHcgCbzIfcdc038b0535fd59
https://www.google.com/voice/inv/HrvjwlsLPzbNPR2DB6L7FPdJXIfcdc038b0535fd59
https://www.google.com/voice/inv/JC86xdBCNCRzZQ7N_FtFHWb45Ifcdc038b0535fd59
https://www.google.com/voice/inv/ZJrm7fr79DD7d3s1V7czb_b5vIfcdc038b0535fd59
https://www.google.com/voice/inv/vTS2Jf7lH93RQwkMJ9bdCqclBIfcdc038b0535fd59

10 concerns with Google Wave

2009-09-30T18:53:00.018-04:00

I'm a longtime Google lover and am just as excited about Wave as everybody else; ever since the release of Gmail i've been wondering why Google doesn't do something exactly like this. That being said, i'd like to bring up ten short, sweet, and to-the-point concerns i've been wondering about that are worth some consideration. Please forgive me in advance if i'm speaking too soon; i'm still waiting for an invitation of my own.

Complexity
Wave is advanced, but will users be able to grasp it fully? Even email is confusing to some people. Google usually does an amazing job at designing user interfaces, but i wonder if Wave will feel heavy due simply to its complexity.

Overall Stability
Google Wave, the client, seems to still be buggy and slow according to many people. I'm sure they will work it all out, but if it's this hard for Google to implement their own protocol, that might be saying something about the future of it.

Desktop Application
When will someone create a desktop client? I hope they haven't made it too hard to do so.

Social Networking
Many people say it will be the Facebook/Twitter killer, but let's keep in mind that, just like email, Google Wave is a communication platform which makes it a very closed network. Is it possible for Wave to replace the functionality of social networking sites that require information such as groups to be much more publicly accessible? Perhaps it is possible through applications, which might be a better model anyways.

Instant Messaging
Wave is a much better communication method than email and IM because of both it's structure and instant character-by-character transmission, but how will that affect other networks like Jabber (XMPP) which is used for Google Talk? Will applications like Pidgin and Empathy be able to implement some sort of IM-only Wave protocol support, or will other networks be able to integrate well into Wave?

Multimedia Content
Text is wonderful, but much of our communication is shifting towards audio and video calls online, and although there are Google Wave applications that support it, it doesn't look like Wave itself will handle it in and special way.

Spam
Has it been considered? I'd like to know now that spam won't end up being worse on Wave than email. Although it is more difficult to spam wave currently, in the future those technical obstacles may have been overcome, and the problem could be worse than today.

Identification
Email today is used for ID on almost all websites. How are contact ID's managed? Google has been playing with tools like OpenID, OAuth, and WebFinger; will those be incorporated into Wave?

Data Portability
This is less of a concern for two reasons. One because Google's Data Liberation Front seems appropriately considerate of us being in control of our own information, and two because if the next and last concern is a problem, it might far overshadow this one.

Competition
Google Wave is much more advanced than email, and that complexity makes it harder to implement. This might drive power upwards, and be very anti-competitive. We could be limited to a few Wave providers, and we might all just have to use Google for the applications they have.

"It's a strange irony that today's Google Wave news was followed by a real Tsunami. I'm hoping Google never releases Armageddon."
--Some Twitterer

Still, email is out of date, and i hope that all of these concerns will soon enough be crossed off and Wave will successfully take over as the next generation of online communication. Are you ready to surf the web on waves? Sorry, i had to.

Dropping Compiz for Mutter (Metacity 3) compositing?

2009-09-22T20:35:00.000-04:00

I'd like to ask the Ubuntu developer community to consider freeing up valuable CD space by removing Compiz and just using Mutter (Metacity 3) compositing in the default installation for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, Lucid Lynx. From what i have read, the core of Metacity is a lot better than that of Compiz, but some work is needed first to avoid making the change a regression. While Metacity does still lack the huge amount of features available through Compiz plugins, only the few basic essential ones are needed anyways. Extra effects using Compiz can still be easily installed just like everyone did before it came prepackaged with Ubuntu. Once Metacity compositing does everything that Compiz does under the "Normal" Desktop Effects setting in Ubuntu's appearance preferences, then we'll have reached the feature parity we need.

Metacity provides a number of benefits over Compiz. It doesn't depend on accelerated graphics so users that don't have the necessary hardware and drivers for Compiz can still use it and enjoy the applications which require compositing, although it would be nice if Metacity was able to take advantage of accelerated graphics. This does make it ever so slightly more CPU intensive than necessary for users with decent 3D drivers, but it is less resource intensive as a whole, and for the majority of users, the memory consumption is what they notice when Compiz is enabled.

Unlike Compiz, Metacity is actually standards compliant, so it doesn't malfunction when using certain applications. A smooth and consistent desktop shouldn't have any of that. Compiz deviates from the Unix philiosophy and, as Dylan McCall posted to the Ubuntu developer discussion list, many of "Compiz's effects are entirely out of scope for a window manager and rely on horrible, kludgey, unsightly workarounds. All of Metacity's effects are in scope and only exist if they're going to work consistently. Everything else, for example fancy window previews on the window list applet, can and should be implemented by the individual child applications."

He adds that switching between Compiz and Metacity produces an inconsistent user interface which is pronounced by the fact that depending on your hardware setup, Ubuntu will fall back onto Metaicty if it can't enable Compiz:

...users get confused when they switch between Compiz and Metacity, because the two have profoundly different feels, and in some cases different key bindings. Metacity uses workspaces, while default Compiz uses viewports (and a different number, if I remember right). One follows the extended window manager hints spec to precision, another has quirks.

Because of that, switching the window manager should not be considered standard operation. I definitely don't think it is acceptable to dump it as a prominently displayed option as if it is something user friendly to do.

Dylan brings the future of Gnome into consideration as well:

One obvious next step in GNOME's evolution as a desktop environment is the more rigid integration of the window manager with everything else. For example, GNOME-Shell is based on a heavily modified Metacity. In the future a lot of cool stuff will depend on Metacity (or whatever it comes to be called later on). It would be a shame to miss it.

Overall, Metacity is actually prettier, gives the desktop a smoother feel, provides better consistency, and takes up less system resources making Ubuntu feel faster, but some work is still needed before Compiz could be dropped. Can we commit to making this a long-term goal and put it on the roadmap?

Calling all FOSS Game Artists and Free Content Producers!

2009-09-14T07:41:00.000-04:00

The first Ubuntu Gaming Team meeting was a huge success! With over two hours of discussion going strong, we covered a lot of ground. One of the major topics for out next meeting, and our most ambitious project, is coordinating the creation of a distributed content development platform. For this, we will need lots of input from FOSS game artists and free content producers like the Blender Open Movie Project.

The meeting will be on 9/27 @ 19:00 UTC in #ubuntu-meeting
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/GamingTeam/Meetings/Minutes/2009-09-27
Please contribute to the agenda!

Lack of good content is the #1 impediment for FOSS games. Most developers are not artists and the challenge of content creation is much more difficult than code. The need for FOSS content is the same for code, but current platforms that exist for code do not offer features needed for content. Code is all text and much easier to handle, while content is difficult as you cannot “diff” a picture or a blender file. On top of that, while distributed code development has been refined since computers were invented, content is a much newer ground, especially to apply FOSS distributed development to, and it simply hasn't received any of the focus and effort that code has.

We need input to help agree on a base for the platform and what features are most needed. Additionally, we might like to look to Canonical and/or the Blender Institute for support as they will benefit most from and be willing to contribute to such a project.

Sorry Reddit, i was called out on my blogspam in person!

2009-09-10T01:17:00.000-04:00

I just got back from the Boston sub-reddit meetup, and it was incredible! I expected us to have a table with maybe 20 redditors tops, but we had an entire room reserved for us and upwards of 40 people showed up! Great success and thanks to everyone who came-- we must organize another one of these in the future.

Anyways, while i was there, a couple guys recognized my handle, and called me out on spamming their, and related, sub-Reddits with my blog posts. Not in a horribly confrontational way at all-- it was very entertaining actually-- but i made this promise to them on my way out, and it extends to all of you as well: i will not be submitting any more links to posts from this blog on Reddit. I'd gotten a little carried away with submitting many of my posts at once across multiple related subreddits, so i'm sorry about that! From now on, i'll only be depending on ~~you guys~~ my agents to submit my posts for me.

Myths debunked: YouTube, please use Ogg Theora for HTML 5

2009-09-08T06:23:00.018-04:00

It's incredible how many people are sympathetic towards Google and Apple's opposition of Ogg Theora within the HTML 5 codec debate. Of course, nobody expected anything else from Apple, but Google, really? Outside of YouTube, Google seems to be very supportive. YouTube may still be somewhat separated from the rest of Google. The site still looks more like it did pre-aquisition than it looks like a Google project. The Google Chrome web browser, a "pure" Google project, supports Theora, and a blog post Google made on the Ogg Theora book sprint which specifically makes mention of HTML 5 leads me to wonder if they might actually be planning on supporting it. Then again, this claim by a Googler on the WhatWG mailing list makes me worry:

"If [youtube] were to switch to theora and maintain even a semblance of the current youtube quality it would take up most available bandwidth across the Internet." --Chris DiBona

All right, it's time to fight back against this FUD and address every argument made against Ogg Theora for HTML 5 and YouTube. The whole point of the HTML 5 video tag is to eliminate the need for proprietary Flash plugins so are we really going to replace one proprietary piece of technology with yet another piece of proprietary technology? What would be the point of that? Have we not already seen enough of the problems posed by relying on proprietary standards? Then again, HTML 4 didn't mandate support for JPEG and PNG, so gaining support doesn't necessarily depend on becoming the official standard.

Video quality (and high definition)

Firstly, even if Ogg Theora's video quality was less than ideal, this is a web standard we're discussing here. It isn't about the highest quality format of the moment. The purpose of a standard is to allow everyone to take part and rely on it. A patent encumbered format does no good for this. Freedom and transparency are essential for a standard. We wouldn't have the world wide web or TCP/IP networks if competing companies were in a constant battle trying to outdo each other's protocols and hardware. Nobody is forced to use the HTML 5 standard; if Apple is so afraid of Theora's success, they can go ahead and use their format of choice or continue to rely on Flash.
Secondly, Theroa will continue improving, and will improve faster if it gains more support. Open formats like this can evolve for a reason. Video quality will improve, just like the HTML standard itself has grown and changed. Agreeing on an open format for a standard is done to promote mass adoption which allows for widespread use unencumbered by patents and without similar restrictions. If a proprietary format is used, who will improve upon it? Only the ~~intellectual~~ imaginary property "owners" will be able to, and that doesn't mean they ever will. Theora might not be the very best right now, but it will be.
Finally, although Theora is not yet at the same level as H.264, claiming that its quality is so inferior is a lie. Not only is it not far behind, but it is already better than what YouTube currently uses. What about high definition, you ask? Although it is still not ideal for HD content, being slightly behind H.264, Theora roughly equals YouTube HD video quality already. Most of the problems it had were inherited from the codec it is based off of, and those problems are disappearing thanks to support from from the Mozilla and Wikimedia Foundations with the upcoming version 1.1 of Theora. This is the overhaul containing a major rewrite bringing big improvements and lots of new features like two-pass encoding and adaptive quantization. Theora has a balance between quality, performance, size, and simplicity which makes it ideal for web video.

Patents

To refuse to implement a royalty free codec under the guise of "patent safety" is ridiculous. Apple wouldn't bundle Samba with OSX if they were that afraid of patents. Yes, submarine patents could possibly exist, but then again they are always a possibility, and not just for Theora, but for many formats. The algorithms Theora uses are not new. If, down the road, some patent-troll does in fact appear, whatever patent they hold would likely expire when brought to light.

Hardware Acceleration

Yeah, yeah, Apple is understandably against using Theora becuse of this, but this isn't much of a reason against it becoming a standard. Again, keep in mind the most important thing is not the absolute best quality and performance, although Theora is already pretty good as it is, but rather freedom and independence from proprietary technologies.
Most of the affordable portable media players, "MP4 Players", support Vorbis without advertising it. The sole manufacturer of all the chips simply included it. It might take a while, but hardware support for Theora will come, and we could see it sooner if it became more popular. There is already an open source VHDL code base for a hardware Theora decoder in development and it's worth mentioning that decoding Theora is less CPU intensive than decoding H.264.

Dirac, On2 and other Open Formats

Dirac is for high definition video archiving, not streaming. Nothing is wrong with other open formats, but Theora is already the best candidate with the most support.
Google did recently acquire On2, a company which owns more advanced codecs, and actually created the codec which Theora is based off of. There is speculation that Google will offer them as free formats, and as awesome as that would be, we can't really act on what they might do.

Everyone already has Flash

This is probably the dumbest argument i've heard. Of course, Flash isn't going anywhere overnight, but online video will shift to use the HTML 5 video tag. A quarter of the world's web browsers already support Ogg Theora with no plugins required. YouTube and other sites won't just drop Flash support one day; like Dailymotion, they will begin by offering HTML 5 video in addition to Flash. From there, HTML 5 gives us so many possibilities: no additional software needed, easily created player skins, dynamic content injection, and the ability to manipulate videos, just to name a few.

YouTube already has an HTML 5 demo using MP4 and appears to be preparing to expand it to the entire site. Google could single-handedly make Theora the dominant format for online video distribution and pressure all browsers-- that includes Microsoft's Internet Explorer-- to support it. Hopefully, we can convince them to do so. It's now clear that there is no real reason for them to choose H.264 over Theora, but what reasons are there for them to actively support and push for Theora? Huge positive publicity in the short term and compatability in the long-term. Admittedly, not too much, but Google has always shown great commitment towards open source, and it is strange that the extent of their commitment would be cut short here. YouTube using Ogg Theora with HTML 5 on their site will truly have a huge impact. Come on Google, "Don't be evil".

So far, only one large video host, Dailymotion, supports HTML 5 with Theora, as well as The Video Bay. In addition, there is also Wikimedia Commons, The Internet Archive, and Tinyvid, but it doesn't end there. Ogg Thoera and Vorbis are also supported by big projects like OLPC, Jabber, the Mozilla Foundation, and the Wikimedia Foundation. Their support is vital in showing that these formats are a viable and good choice for multimedia, but we still need the big dogs with the big bucks.

Now, what can we do to push Youtube along with other large video hosts and advertising services to move towards full HTML5 and Theora support? If you use YouTube or another major video host that doesn't offer HTML 5 with Theora, post a video explaining your support. We need organized effective ways for people to convince these sites to publish in free formats. Please post additional ideas and feedback in the comments.

I really hope this is a reference to The Pirate Bay

2009-08-24T17:24:00.004-04:00

The other day i was riding the T into Boston with a couple of friends to get dim sum in Chinatown for the August Moon Festival, and i noticed some small writing on one of the poster ads. "JOEL" was written in pen on his upper arm and, less visibly in the image, a ring was drawn on his finger with the same name inscribed.

Immediately, i was reminded of The Pirate Bay's special logo promoting a torrent containing the 30 songs which Joel Tenenbaum was sued $67,5000, or $22,500 per song, for downloading. The Pirate Bay guys sure had some balls. "This is a Public Announcement from the RIAA" it says. A nice "Approved by the RIAA" logo sits with "DJ Joel" and "The $675.000 Mixtape".

They look sort of similar right? Their faces, well maybe not, but at least their pose and grad student status' are parallel, no? Well, if that was it, it just about makes my day. I wish more people brought issues from internet discussion to the public view IRL, and i'm a big fan of subvertising.

Of course, they also did a special logo promoting illegal copies of Windows for Bill Gates on Microsoft's Global Anti-Piracy Day. I hope after their sale of The Pirate Bay, they'll get to work on some other P2P project and resume challenging copyright, and other intellectual-- ahem, excuse me-- imaginary property.

There is still no Copyleft symbol in Unicode

2009-08-24T16:39:00.000-04:00

Not too long ago, i was using the Character Map application in Ubuntu to search for a Copyleft symbol in Unicode. I was quite surprised to find that there was none. The next obvious step was to Google it. The only relevant information i could find was discussion nearly a decade old on the Unicode mailing list. Two threads from May, 2000 discussed the idea, but as it would appear, never went anywhere. There was some confusing debate which, once everything else was filtered out, boiled down to two main points. Firstly, that the Copyleft symbol might be encumbered, and it would need to be proven that the mark is not a trademark, registered trademark, sales mark, or a copyrighted design. I don't even need to respond to that, just admire the copy i've got here from Wikipedia in the public domain. Secondly, there wasn't enough to show how widespread its use was. It may have been debatable back then, but now Copyleft has spread to popular software, music, video, books, and content of all sorts. Really, how has this not come up again in the last ten years? Can somebody please help write up and submit a proposal for this?

Top 5 things we'd all love to see from System76

2009-08-21T02:03:00.000-04:00

We already love System76 for being truly dedicated to open source and offering Ubuntu exclusively on their entire lineup, so naturally we simply must ask for more! I have five simple, but big requests:

Coreboot
This is probably the hardest to offer, and so i'm willing to wait the longest for this, but nobody has yet been able to offer machines with Coreboot pre-installed. An open source BIOS is the largest obstacle to overcome in offering a computer with entirely open source software, and if System76 can pull that off, i'd never be able to let myself recommend buying from anyone else. LinuxBIOS was one of the top ideas ever on Dell's IdeaStorm, but if they won't offer it, System76 can! Besides, who of us would actually like Dell at all if not for their Ubuntu offering?
A Tablet
The new netbook looks great, but still a tablet would be an incredible addition to the lineup. Currently, the only tablets available with Ubuntu pre-installed are un/re-branded machines which knocks the price up, and although the CrunchPad looks sweet, something from System76 with Ubuntu would be even sweeter! Tablets are a great thing to show off which not only promotes Ubuntu but also kills the myth that Linux does not love tablets. It does.
A Media Center
This idea has the a ton of profit potential for System76 if done properly. I'm talking about the concept of a TVPC like the Neuros Link which sold out so quickly they had to disable new purchases (still can't place new orders at the time of this post) and put the pending ones on backorder. Since most everyone is already paying for internet, there is no reason why you shouldn't kill your purely evil cable subscription. The internet after all, is the largest video library in existence, and if the focus is on streaming media, a hard drive isn't even necessary (the Neuros boots the OS from a flash drive). All that's needed is a slick looking set-top box with all the necessary inputs and outputs for a home media center PC, the minimum hardware needed for HD video, which all-in-all is pretty damn cheap, a wireless keyboard/mouse and remote control, higher hardware options for gamers, an HDD option, and some special software (Moovida media center, Miro video player, and maybe enable special compiz effects for kicks), and that's it! It's all marketing from there, and i think a lot of people would be interested.
AMD/ATI Options
Many of you may oppose this, and many of you will support it, but the simple fact is this: just like anyone else, there are Linux users who prefer Intel, and those who, like myself, prefer AMD. Some of us only care about what works best, while others value which is more open source friendly. You can argue about those things endlessly, but regardless, we do want to have a choice.
More Community Marketing
Com'on, it's free advertising for you guys! We should all be eager to help out System76 as it's one of the best ways to spread Ubuntu, but they could really make it a lot easier for us. The 76er program should be expanded from just LoCos to individuals and no longer require an account. More materials should be posted on the wiki or the Spread Ubuntu site for anyone to print out and distribute. Remember, we love you, so help us to help you!

To add to the incentive for System76 to give us these options, i hereby promise that when they make these available, i will buy them. If you're in agreement, make the same promise in the comments! If someone from System76 stumbles across this, feel free to send me a laptop to use in the meantime since i just graduated high school and could really use one.

Meeting With Mark, Campaigning for a Better Facebook

2009-08-16T02:21:00.003-04:00

Since my blog post and accompanying video demanding that Facebook change the way they treat their users and personal data, i received a video response from someone by the name of Rudy Arnauts who has turned this into a grassroots campaign, Meeting With Mark, to set up a face-to-face meeting with Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg. We're taking him up on his claims that Facebook is becoming more open, transparent, and democratic in how the site is governed. Of course, Facebook isn't the only offender, but it is probably the most prominent given it's popularity and reputation for this kind of abuse, so this may be a campaign for Facebook, but it could really have a ripple effect across the internet. Although Facebook is among the worst sites which actually exploit users for agreeing to their terms of service, most websites have very similar policies. In other words, just because they haven't done too much harm yet, doesn't mean they haven't reserved their right to. If you ask me, this meeting should be big, it should be streamed live, and there should be a live feed of viewers' comments.

From the channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/MeetingwithMark

The issue of disabled accounts is widespread as you can see for yourself by searching for terms like "facebook disabled" on not only Google, but also microblogging sites like Twitter, Facebook's help site forums, and even Facebook itself where you'll find dozens of groups with thousands of members all calling out for this to end. People all have important contacts, business relations, and other communication that is lost with their accounts. On top of that, the common practice for big websites is to only offer users a big FAQ style site along with forums for users to help each other, but no real contact with the company: Facebook users are Facebook's customer support.

Once upon a time, i was a loyal Facebook user, but now i'm in this not just to wake up Facebook, but to change the way our information is handled by sites across the web. Facebook has had this coming for a long time. Users don't seem to get angry until it happens to them. We can't blame everyone on the internet for being ignorant about this sort of thing, so we should raise awareness about it, and try to change it. If you want to help, please spread the word, make a video response, whatever-- just get the word out!

P.S. Isn't it time for a competent open source competitor to enter the arena?... =]

Facebook is well aware of our concerns...and is denying them

2009-08-03T01:16:00.000-04:00

The video featured in my last post on the subject seems to be spreading, and someone emailed Facebook about it. Facebook actually responded, and they did so within days, not weeks, not months. They also said that none of it was true. It seems that they are aware that it is an issue, and are ready to deny any claims of it happening, all the while ignoring all of the victims of their automated deletion system. Hopefully this means that we might actually be getting through to them a bit, so please keep up the emails and passing on the video! Here is the email exchange:

From: The Facebook Team

Date: Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 5:49 PM

Subject: Re: PRIVACY: Unfair Policy

To: miket1935@gmail.com

Hi Michael,

The message you received is false and can be safely disregarded. I apologize for any confusion this has caused. If you have any further questions, please visit our Help Center at the following address:

http://www.facebook.com/help.php

Thanks for contacting Facebook,

Marc

User Operations

Facebook

-----Original Message to Facebook-----

From: miket1935@gmail.com

To: info@facebook.com

Subject: PRIVACY: Unfair Policy

Description of problem: I have recently been informed of facebook's policy of deleting accounts/groups without first investigating the nature of who it is being flagged. In this day and age, many of us have a great portion of our lives on our facebooks, and if someone is at risk of having their account deleted ,a warning should be given. In the event a group is to be deleted without investigation of the circumstances behind its flagging, I would please ask that facebook get in contact with whoever is in charge to first warn them of the potential deletion, and provide REASONS behind such deletion. A policy of deletion without investigation is the same as a justice system without trials; ineffective in the long run. I please ask Facebook to reconsider their stance on this issue.

-----End Original Message to Facebook-----

The three ways we should be spreading Ubuntu

2009-08-03T00:58:00.000-04:00

From my experience with the Ubuntu community, our main push to get people to switch to Ubuntu has been convincing and helping them to install it and try it themselves. I don't deny that this is important since at this point almost anyone who can install Windows can just as, if not more easily install Ubuntu, and we want these kinds of people to have experience with Ubuntu, but it should not be our only effort, or even our main one, to spread the love and joy that is Ubuntu.

As a side note to those who prefer other Free operating systems: i promote Ubuntu because it is in the best position to reach out to the masses which will benefit all of us as a whole. That's about as far as my loyalty extends. I'm sure your Linux distro is awesome too!

What percent of Windows users actually install it for themselves? If we spend more time reaching out to the users who don't, those who can install it will do so anyways. That being said, we shouldn't stop converting friends, because those personal connections are what help grow the community, but there is enough noise being made across the web about Ubuntu that if we completely shifted how and who we promote Ubuntu to, we could advance to solving Bug #1 much more rapidly. Individuals and Local Community advocacy groups are already in a perfect position for this.

Sell Ubuntu Pre-installed
This should be the most obvious target for us. We should help provide free marketing to promote companies that supply hardware with Ubuntu Pre-installed, specifically companies that are dedicated to supplying only Linux like System76. Buy a machine for yourself and show it off as much as you can.
Offer paid conversions and support services
Some people say we need to distribute Ubuntu with a price tag to increase its perceived value to potential users, but this is an even better option. While maintaining that Ubuntu costs nothing, we can sell conversion and support services. Marketing Ubuntu as a business can be much more effective. You talk about the same things you do as an activist (freedom, quality, security, and price), while selling a service that makes the unfamiliar software much less alien and intimidating. All you need to do is start offering this service on your own as widely as possible, and join together with others to start a small business around it.
Marketing, marketing, marketing!
Focus on marketing using the same activism tactics you should already be familiar with to additionally promote the aforementioned targets: make videos for YouTube, hit the streets, distribute materials, appeal to businesses, organizations, and educational institutions, contact PC manufacturers and retail stores, get media coverage, lobby your government, get creative!

That's it-- very simple, nothing fancy. This would be a much more efficient distribution of our efforts and a much more effective approach to spreading Ubuntu. Many of us are already shifting towards this trend, but for the rest of us, it is time to realize that we need businesses to be successful and helping them help us is key.

Facebook, Enough is Enough!

2009-07-29T03:28:00.001-04:00

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a59wDQwK6mw

From my YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheSilentNumber

You all told me to fight the good fight so please, contact Facebook! No more accounts disabled because of mass flagging or automatic deletions! Facebook must send out a proper warning, state why the account will be and/or has been disabled, and give users a chance to get them back. This isn't just an issue with Facebook, but they're among the worst offenders. We must not tolerate it! It's our information that we entrust them with, and they must be held responsible.

How to contact Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/help/contact_generic.php

info@facebook.com
warning@facebook.com
disabled@facebook.com
appeals@facebook.com
login@facebook.com
abuse@facebook.com
privacy@facebook.com

Facebook, Inc.

471 Emerson St.

Palo Alto, CA 94301-1605 United States

Phone: (650) 543-4800
Fax: (650) 543-4801

Facebook, Inc.
200 Paul Avenue,
San Francisco, CA 94124

Phone: (415) 467-2300

Also check out: The Ultimate Consumerist Guide To Fighting Back (Revised Edition)

PlayDeb.net Beta 2 Launches!

2009-07-26T18:53:00.006-04:00

I mentioned PlayDeb, from the GetDeb guys, as being something to be really excited about with the upcoming release of Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala. I just checked out the site and their new beta is finally up and running! They currently are only serving Jaunty (which is fine since Karmic is only in alpha) but Karmic support is sure to come.

The new site was designed by the Nexuiz Nijnaz, players of the great cross-platform FLOSS game, Nexuiz. I am a bit disappointed seeing copyright retained on the site instead of using a free culture friendly license like the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license, but it looks like this is just what both the Nexuiz and GetDeb guys do on all their websites and i certainly won't make a big deal about that. The website is wonderful, and they've done a great job. The "Updates" page lists all the available games and allows you to filter them by genre, and install them by simply clicking on an apt:// link.

Each game has a description and screenshot, and many even have videos attached! You can register to rate and comment on games, and if you like PlayDeb, i encourage you to use the donate button on their "About Us" page.

In related news: The Ubuntu Gaming Team just had our first meeting which was very successful and i'll be posting all the details soon!

Groups to actually become useful on YouTube?

2009-07-25T18:40:00.000-04:00

YouTube has had groups for a while, but they're pretty much closed off from the rest of the site and completely useless. There isn't even a way to search through them! Their new channel design layout has two modules that i've noticed: one called "Groups", and the other called "User uploads". When i select one of them, the other one is automatically removed, and neither one seems to actually add or remove anything from my channel page. I'm not sure why they can't both be enabled at the same time since "Groups" and "User uploads" hardly sound like they would be conflicting, but this does suggest that YouTube is actually working on becoming even more social and making groups useful. Does anybody actually have either of these enabled and showing up on their channel pages?

Three Free Google Voice Invites!

2009-07-25T18:10:00.001-04:00

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohlM35b5TLU

From my YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheSilentNumber

Adding onto my YouTube contest, i have three Google Voice (formerly GrandCentral) invitations to give away! One will go to the winner of the contest along with the NVIDIA 8800 GT video card and the other two will go to the first contest entrees that ask.

This is how all help desks should function!

2009-07-24T03:02:00.001-04:00

In an interesting discussion that took place recently on the Ubuntu Developer Discussion list about the scalability of communication channels for Ubuntu, this anecdote came up which i thought was worth sharing. First, part of an email from Andrew Sayers, citing two articles by Joel Spolsky, discussed a more effective way of dealing with issues that come up.

This suggests a solution I've pulled together from a couple of Joel on Software articles: when someone comes to you with a problem, first fix the presenting problem, then fix the second-order problem that caused it, then the third-order problem, and so on back to the original source. Although this significantly increases the amount of work per issue, it's more than offset by the reduction in the number of issues.

Of course, this is a better way to approach all of the problems in the world today, although perhaps starting with the source might be more appropriate in many circumstances. As in Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog (i couldn't resist), when Billy tells Penny in response to her requesting signatures for a homeless shelter, "You're treating a symptom". Onno Benschop posted this response about his experience applying this revolutionary philosophy to managing a help desk for 5,000 seats.

This approach speaks to me in many ways. As the manager of an IT help-desk for 5000 seats in the mid-90's I instigated a regimen where user problems were fixed by users. The way that worked is that the IT professionals were discouraged to just "click and fix" a problem, they had to explain to the user what caused the issue, how they got themselves into the problem, and how to dig themselves out.
This met with lots of opposition.
Users were upset that phone calls took longer than "click and fix".

Management was upset that call queues were escalating and that number of resolutions processed were declining.

Helpdesk staff felt unloved because they couldn't just be a hero and fix the problem.

It has been said that I'm a stubborn person and I persisted. After 3 months, something really interesting started happening. The number of calls to the help-desk started declining. Initially management thought it was because users were so fed up waiting that they stopped calling us. Further investigation indicated that users were having less problems. They were more confident, more knowledgeable and more able to help themselves.

Yes, that's it. This shouldn't be incredibly revelatory or anything, but i hope that this kind of practice spreads. Fixing issues at a more fundamental level and creating competent users/customers just tickles me. Seriously, why can't people stop being so lazy and do things right? It pays off dammit!

I am capitalized and You are not?

2009-07-15T15:23:00.001-04:00

As some of you may have noticed, i tend to leave my i's lowercase instead of using proper capitalization. This is not, as some of you may have assumed, because i never learned to capitalize my i's, but it is actually a habit i had to work to develop. Yes, i used to diligently capitalize my i's, so when i decided to start being rebellious against the English language it was actually hard for me to remember to not capitalize my i's. Now, it's grown on me entirely. To me, it feels and looks more natural, but let me explain why i started doing this.

I simply questioned why we capitalize our i's, and not our you's (yes, as in the word "you", not the letter). Originally, i's were just capitalized for practical reasons, none of which make any sense anymore, and now, there is no logical reason, grammatical or otherwise, for doing so. Of course, English is riddled with irregularities as all natural languages are, so why did i choose to ignore this particular rule?

In addition to the above, English is the only language that does this, and i have to wonder if it may have an effect on the English-speaking world. I sympathize with journalist Sydney J. Harris' sentiment that "It's odd, and a little unsettling, to reflect upon the fact that English is the only major language in which "I" is capitalized; in many other languages "You" is capitalized and the "i" is lower case". It seems a bit self-righteous, doesn't it? Leaving myself lowercase and capitalizing You has been humbling.

For these reasons, i choose to no longer capitalize my i's, and i'll start capitalizing my You's. I challenge You to do the same as an experiment. Then again, if you want to learn a language that is completely logical, there's always lojban. I'll leave you with this fun little poem:

Lets face it. English is a stupid language.

There is no egg in the eggplant
No ham in the hamburger
And neither pine nor apple in the pineapple.
English muffins were not invented in England
French fries were not invented in France.

We sometimes take English for granted,
But if we examine its paradoxes we find that:
Quicksand takes you down slowly
Boxing rings are square
And a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

If writers write, how come fingers don't fing.
If the plural of tooth is teeth
Shouldn't the plural of phone booth be phone beeth
If the teacher taught,
Why didn't the preacher praught.

If a vegetarian eats vegetables
What the heck does a humanitarian eat!?
Why do people recite at a play
Yet play at a recital?
Park on driveways and
Drive on parkways
How can the weather be as hot as hell on one day
And as cold as hell on another

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy
Of a language where a house can burn up as
It burns down
And in which you fill in a form
By filling it out
And a bell is only heard once it goes!

English was invented by people, not computers
And it reflects the creativity of the human race
(Which of course isn't a race at all)

That is why:
When the stars are out they are visible
But when the lights are out they are invisible
And why it is that when I wind up my watch
It starts
But when I wind up this poem
It ends.

P.S. If quizzes are quizzical, then what are tests?

Empathy is now in Karmic

2009-07-15T04:20:00.001-04:00

As of today, the seeds have been switched, and Empathy, the awesome Telepathy IM client withsupport for both audio and video chat, geolocation, Adium themes, and collaboration via Tubes, is now included in the Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala daily LiveCDs. Let's get testing!

Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala current LiveCD running in Sun VirtualBox with Empathy open

My New Domain

2009-07-15T03:46:00.001-04:00

So i decided it was time to take a step up from blogspot, and i registered a domain for myself to use. Although my blogging platform is still Blogger, the blog is now at blog.thesilentnumber.me

I'm also now using a new FeedBurner feed so my FeedCount is reset to zero and those ~100 people that are subscribed to the old one should update their readers!

What kind of bug is this!?

2009-07-11T04:46:00.000-04:00

So, i've been using a sort of messed up install of Ubuntu because i was testing the Jaunty alpha way back when, and never did a clean install once the final version came out. I get some weird bugs every once in a while, but they're minor so i tolerate them (although i will be sure to do a clean install for every new release from now on). I'm never sure if a bug i encounter is an actual bug, or just a side effect of upgrading from an alpha. One of these strange bugs is that, very rarely, when i'm browsing in Midori, although it did happen once in Firefox, a black bar, a few lines of text thick and the width of a web page, will appear. It goes away when i scroll so that the bar is out of view and then scroll back, or if i minimize and restore the window. Anyways, one time, something a little stranger happened...

That's clearly the cutout of a giant star. The black bar was a box covering the entire page except for this huge star. What the hell is that doing there? That screenshot isn't perfect since i clicked something before capturing it which made some blocks go back to normal, but the huge star is still clearly visible. Is this something other webkit-gtk users have experienced and how the hell could that star have gotten there?