bye george!

.. .the next 5 billion

“Ultimately our mission is to enable sustained social and economic opportunity for those at the middle and bottom of the world’s economic pyramid—the next 5 billion people.”

source: http://rivet.wordpress.com/2008/07/17/greg-goes-to-china/

WOW! all i can say is `wow` on this mission statement. i mean come on.. . who wouldn’t get wow-ed at it?! it’s pretty impressive ain’t it? that’s pure capitalist thinking and i bet it’s been working so far. well, i know it has been for a while.. .

if what i remember, from what i’ve read, is correct, Chinese students are getting a genuine copy of MS Windows and MS Office (bundled, i guess) for around $10 USD. another WOW! if you are not some tech junkie or can’t even operate a cellphone for texting, $10 is super cheap for a very popular & successful operating system in the business of computing!

so how come this is only happening in China, Bill?

there are lots of underdeveloped countries in Asia that have pirated copies of Windows installed in their computers, i’m sure. why not give them the same chance? if you want your software in everyone’s computer so much, give the people who can’t afford the means to do so.. . not just China.

there’s like 90 million people here in the Philippines. i wonder how many has a pirated copy of Windows installed on his/her machine. you can count me out, i use Linux. and my Windows was genuine, thanks to HP/Compaq. my desktop has a genuine copy courtesy of La Korporasyon. (ssshhhh.. . LOL!) while there is of course a free alternative, training the people and all that, i think, will still cost a lot if we migrate to open-source. and that ain’t gonna happen soon, or never will, especially with the current Philippine political situation .. .

but it would really help a lot if public schools and offices can purchase genuine copies of Windows at very cheap rates. while the money allocated for the ridiculously high-priced operating system and office-suite can go to other projects to help the people.

sad.. .

another reason why i just can’t go back to Windows XP

last week, the Windows XP on my laptop just won’t boot properly anymore. the bootsplash screen loads for a few seconds, then i get dumped back to BIOS. selecting safe mode, last known good configuration, or any other mode didn’t work. i repeatedly did each of the options available to no avail. it was futile.

mounting it on my Kubuntu Feisty, i found out that the ntfs journal logs were unclean. this could mean that, (1) i left Windows XP on hibernate. i do this a lot so i could boot faster into Windows, and Linux won’t mount a “hibernated” Windows; or (2) the disk was not properly unmounted by the system. the latter rarely happens. Windows is very good at shutting down, no doubt about that. so what could’ve happened?

number (2) happened, that’s what. and why? i don’t know. it just happened. no OS is perfect. not even “mighty” Windows. but you know what really pissed me off? Windows doesn’t seem to have a built-in fallback boot mode in case something like this happens. but wait, perhaps now you’re saying “shut this guy up, hasn’t he heard abuot the R (for recovery) option in the installer?” oh please, that option is not even an option. it didn’t do a damned thing. it couldn’t do a damned thing. it wanted me to have the partition checked for errors but how can i do that when i can’t even get to, at least, safe mode to execute the CHKDSK command?! Windows. .. it just totally locked me out.

i had an idea of having another installation of Windows XP boot instead. i got the Windows XP of my desktop PC, placed it on a USB external hard drive rack, changed my laptop BIOS settings to boot from USB first, and presto.. . Windows XP failed miserably on this one!

idea 2: recovery disks. ok so my HP Compaq Presario came with recovery disks. just in case somethig stupid like this should happen. at least that’s what i thought. NO! i couldn’t be more wrong. it’s just a damned installer. and it took almost 2 hours just to install or copy the Windows system files. and what’s worse, it didn’t fix anything. well of course, it was just an installer. it didn’t even bother to correct the ntfs journal. 2 hours of nothing. great!

3rd recourse: reformat & reinstall Windows XP. this option comes with the recovery disk. it will tell you that this is a destructive option which will erase all data in the disk. good! if this fixes it then i’m happy. i solely use Windows to play World of Warcraft. this solution worked magnificently. i’m so glad that Windows has perfected the format & install. this is almost always the only viable solution when your Windows XP gets into problems such as what i’ve just described, or when it gets hit by a worm or virus.

today, the dream comes true!

KDE 4 is the forthcoming series of releases of the K Desktop Environment. The first version (4.0) of this series is scheduled for release on 11 January 2008.^[1]

The new series includes updates to several of KDE’s core components, notably a port to Qt 4. It will contain a new multimedia API, called Phonon, a device integration framework called Solid and a new style guide and default icon set called Oxygen. It will also include the new desktop and panel user interface tool, called Plasma, which will have support for desktop widgets, similar to SuperKaramba or Apple’s Dashboard widgets. The port to Qt 4 will facilitate support for non-X11-based platforms, including Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. One of the overall goals of KDE 4 is to be more easily portable to different operating systems.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDE_4

“zeroing in” hits page 1

weee.. . my blog zeroing in almost always lands on the first page of Google & Yahoo!, The search giants. just type the keyword “zeroing in” and it should be there. how wonderful! it should depend on the data center in Google’s case. but i’ve also tried using IPs from the US & Canada and zeroing in still comes out on the first page. that’s top 10, thank you. i’ve been waiting for this for a long time. funny it should be like this. lately i haven’t been very active with blogging. while i won’t consider myself an avid blogger, i would say that i love to blog or read other people’s blogs.

i don’t know why i came up with a crazy title like zeroing in. perhaps it is because of my strong predilection with the number zero. well it’s more like the numbers zero and one. but zero sounds more cool. i often name my computer, or in chat rooms use the nick – zero (with some variations as this nick is common and is therefore used/registered often).

hmmm.. . i wonder how long it would stay up there? well i hope my blog stays at the first page when the search term “zeroing in” is used.

LOLz!

what’s this self-praise?

congratz to me!

a G kind of Linux

i just heard of this new Linux distro that supposedly sold out @ Walmart.com. it’s name.. . gOS. sounds like a Mac eh? and from the screenshot, it looks like one too! but wait, all over the desktop you can already distinguish familiar icons. going over to the gOS website, you can find more subtle references to the search behemoth and its “kids”. this behemoth is no other than Google. well, the name of the distro itself starts with the letter G. is it really a coincidence that the creators of this Linux distro are in love with the color green or the letter G? i mean if it were not for Google, anyone might think that this Linux distro may have to do with something else.. . don’t you think? yikes, is this another Micro***t?

but enough conspiracy theories already. i incidentally got the ISO from a good friend (the torrent was so fast, it was over in a few hours). the image ain’t that big. it’s small enough to fit into a CD (not a DVD). did i mention that it is a Live CD & installer as well? so i had it run on my PC where it took quite a long time to boot and i was staring at the greenest bootsplash for the longest time ever. wow!

first impressions? very green! ok, seriously, its lightweight. after all it is running on an Ubuntu + Enlightenment desktop manager. the UI is clean. no fancy and annoying shit like what you see on a Yahoo! page. a lot of the apps are Web-based. i mean, the dock lists gmail, googledocs, blogger, facebook, wikipedia, etc.. . c’mon how much Webby can it be? but then again i haven’t really explored everything yet. also i thought that the dock would be like the famous fish-eye dock of Mac but it ain’t . it just scrolls from side to side. which is good! you don’t want people to brand you as Mac copycats do ya? .. .you already have one of your designers who was formerly from the Apple design team.

where do you configure wireless cards anyway?

over all, it’s nice for regular users who are noobs to Linux. yes i wasn’t able to find the console. so bash me! hahaha.. . (by the way, that console-like icon next to an ipod-like icon is not a console shortcut, unfortunately. it’s Xine!)

NWN2 – playing the unplayable

NWN2. short for NeverWinter Nights 2. this is the sequel to the hit role-playing computer game NeverWinter Nights. released last 2006. this game is based on the dungeons & dragons 3.5 edition rules. i won’t say much about this game. except that it’s one of the few games that i don’t wanna miss playing.

supposedly NWN2 is not playable on my laptop. it is a compaq presario v3000 series. the CPU is an Intel Centrino core duo @ 1.667GHz. fast enough. 1.5GB memory. quite much. 120GB harddisk space. more than standard at the time it was bought. the video chipset is an Intel Mobile 945 GM Express Integrated Graphics Controller. sounds flashy, sucks actually! i don’t blame compaq or HP for the video chipset they placed on this machine. this rig was never meant for gaming. but at roughly US $ 1,500, i can’t stand not being able to play my favorite game on my only working computer that really cost me a fortune. why at this amount i could’ve bought 2 decent unbranded desktop PCs with a crazy nvidia or ati PCI-E graphics card!

now NWN2 was released around mid-2006. i only started playing NWN2 last august 2007. that’s like a year has passed before finally being able to play it! the reason, mainly, is that the specs for the graphics card that is required by this game is up there. read: the latest PCI-E video cards from nvidia and ati. and my old box only had a measly nvidia geForce 2 mx 400 on it. but mind you, i was able to play the original NWN twice on that dinosaur. when i got my compaq presario NWN2 wasn’t really on my mind that time. i just wanted a new computer and a laptop at that. my original choice was an HP dv series that had a NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) Go 6150 graphics card. sadly it was not available in my area. ordering it from the US was too risky. the other reason was acquiring the game itself. let’s just say i was waiting for a free edition of the game.. . if you know what i mean. hehehe.. .

for more than a year i had been itching to play this game. now that i had the resources to install the game on my computer, playing it with a crappy video card was another problem.

the solution?  3D-Analyze by Tommti Systems.  part of what it does is that it will equip non-T&L cards with a software substitute.  such is the case of my crap video card.  it doesn’t have hardware T&L (transform & lighting) so NWN2 detected the lack of feature and stopped me from playing the game.  isn’t that just great eh?!   i’m playing the unplayable on my laptop!

you can download 3d-Analyze here.  run the app, check emulate HW TnL caps and then choose the NWN2 executable by pressing the Select button.  Press Run afterwards.  you should be good to go.

paris hilton gets fat in jail

paris hilton is one sexy and pretty chick. i must admit that. in her reality TV shows, and even in her famous homemade video, she always looked skinny. but in this picture of the hotel heiress, she actually looks fat! man, look at those hips and upper legs. but i can easily remember those legs spread wide apart as she was taken from behind in that sensational homemade video where she was lead actor. oops! LOLz.. . and those legs definitely didn’t look fat. or maybe i was just too focused on something else?

then again it could just be the photo, eh?  what do you think?

this photo of paris hilton was taken moments after she was released from an L.A. all-women’s correctional facility, where she supposedly spent only 3 weeks of the 45-day sentence she got from judge sauer. one of the reasons – good behavior. how she got into prison? umm. .. driving with an expired license. driving under the influence of alcohol. reckless driving.. . ok just read it here.

Open Arena: a completely free game for the FOSS Quake 3 engine

aha! this was what i exclaimed when Open Arena first ran on my Kubuntu Feisty 7.04.

Quake 3 was one of the first commercial Windows games that i successfully ran on my Suse Linux through cedega. i still play it from time to time now. except that i can’t seem to find a free cedega for Kubuntu where i don’t have to run Point2Play. and my Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 now is sort of a work-only station.

so imagine my surprise when i ran across this game the other night. it is very much like Quake 3. but of course! the engine is based from the Quake 3 engine GPL source code after all. it had its first public test release on August 19, 2005. what the.. .?! what have i been doing in the past 2 years?  ahhh.. . playing NeverWinter Nights of course!.. . but maybe it’s only recently that Open Arena has reached maturity. then again i don’t really know and i don’t give a rat’s ass if it is! all i care about is that i got it on my Kubuntu and i am having a hell of a time playing it myself and with my friends!

you can get more of Open Arena at their official website: http://openarena.ws/.

nexuiz: a quake-like open source game for Linux

this game, Nexuiz, adds to the handful of games i play on Linux. i just stumbled upon it by accident last night, after i also discovered yet another kewl game on Linux – Open Arena. Nexuiz is a fast paced, 3D, first-person shooter game like Quake. it has very good graphics and effects. you can play it over the Internet or on the local area network. game types like deathmatch, capture the flag and etc., are available. one can play it in single player mode against bots, as well. it runs natively on Linux. which means that you don’t have to have cedega or wine to be able to play Nexuiz.

i was struck by the graphics quality of Nexuiz. it is almost, if not the same, as Quake 3. i mean come on let’s face it, gaming on Linux is poor. so when i headed over to their official website and looked at a couple of screen shots, i just knew i had to download this game. and after experiencing this game, i wasn’t disappointed at all. perhaps the only great commercial game that i know of that runs natively on Linux is NeverWinter Nights. and it’s the only game that i really consider as a game on Linux. now i have another one! sure there is Scorched Earth 3D, which also runs natively on Linux and is pretty fun to play. but then it is like a kiddie arcade game. yes i can play Warcraft 3, Starcraft or Quake 3 on Linux but i have to run it through cedega. not that i complain.. . but we Linux-users need more games that are native to the system. not emulated. not through some application layer where Windows DLLs and all that garbage are interpreted for Linux.

maybe there are other great Linux games out there that i don’t know of yet. point me to one if you know of any. with Nexuiz, this gives me another reason why i don’t have to shift to Windows just to play a decent game. i had a great time playing it with my friends tonight.

you can get more of Nexuiz at their official website: http://www.nexuiz.com/.