This bear was used by Hannibal Lecter as a child. Lecter cites this bear as his inspiration for what he does. fufufufufufu!

This is what happens when you let Kevin Malone (from the NBC show "The Office") alone with the vending machine. He needs a little help.

Well biology has taught us many things, but I guess if I keep swimming in a regular pool 9 months from now I may be holding a new little bundle of joy. This would then lead some of my male friends to say "whose your daddy baby? You don't know who your daddy is." Nor do I because I believe sex before marriage is wrong. That and the daddy of my future child will be there when his child is born!

This looks like something my redneck relatives would do. They've already had a keg and a dance to "Ready to Run" by the Dixie Chicks at their first wedding, so why not teach the kids how to be drunkards?

Come in with a taurus and come out with a bmw z3....now I wanna go to this carwash!

This is what happens when you use a windows-based system. Humiliation and pain will follow you the rest of your days! Once you get a mac you don't go back.

Bad septic tank system and one drunk Jimmy Dugan will get you this!

This is what Dr. Hannibal Lecter used before he went to jail.

That’s all for today.

Micro$oft pisses me off. In addition to my other rant about Mother Micro$oft, I have other “issues”. For one, starting with Windows 2000, Explorer no longer nicely opens up and displays the contents of your C:\ drive. No, now you have to open it, then click on “My Computer” and then “Local Disk (C:)”. Why, what a brilliant idea – take a one-step process and turn it into a THREE-step process. Why don’t we do this with, say, cell phones? You get a call, so you hit the key with the phone icon, then search down the list until you can find  “My Phone”, and then you can hit “Answer”. Yeah, that would be a good f**king idea, huh? You’d have these assholes that can’t drive without a phone jammed into their f**king ear going all over the road – well, more so than usual – just trying to answer a call.

These morons ruined Network Neighborhood the same way. No longer can you click on the icon and get a list of other computers. No, that was far too easy. Now you have to click on “My Network Places”, then “Entire Network”, then “Microsoft Windows Network” and then, just maybe, Windows will deign to show you what you wanted a while back.

And figure that not only did some dips**t half-wit think these extra mouse-clicks were a good idea, but it probably had to be validated and discussed and approved by a pack of other socially inept, never-had-a-date, got-beaten-up-in-school, Starbucks-drinking, goat-humping, Trekie geeks! That’s a sad commentary on the caliber of people at Micro$oft.

And have you ever tried to do a find in Help? First it wants to build a list of words and asks you if you want to minimize the list of words, maximize the search capabilities, or customize it. Why the f**k isn’t this list already built?!?!? How much bigger than the minimized list of words could the maximized list possibly be? I mean, you’re pissing away 700 megabytes on the fat motherf**king hog operating system, and now you’re worried about a lousy goddamned meg or two? Give me a f**king break!

Then to top it off, even if you choose to maximize or minimize it, nothing happens until you click on “Finish”. The screen with “Finish” has NO OTHER F**KING OPTIONS! None. What the f**k ELSE am I going to do here? I can either make yet another useless, extraneous click or . . . what? Just leave this f**king screen up forever? Act like its my new wallpaper?

Oh, yeah, and before I forget, drop that sugarly sweet, touchy-feely s**t like a syphilitic whore. “My Computer”, “My Documents”, “My Downloaded Porn”, “My Music”. Oh, isn’t that just tooooooo sweet! Of course it’s MY f**king music, asswipe, it’s on my goddamned computer, who the f**k do you think it belongs to? What, does it have to be marked “My Music” to differentiate it from “Fred’s Music”, ‘cause he’s gonna store some s**t on my computer, too?

What is this, do the f**king Waltons work for Micro$oft now? Did they leave their farm in Virginia or West Virginia or wherever the f**k it was and move to the West Coast? Because if you ever watched The Waltons on TV – oh, don’t do it if you’ve been drinking, it’s like eating a Three Musketeers candy bar after an all-night tequila bender. Makes me want to blow my lunch all over the screen. They were so sweet to one another you want to just slap the s**t out of them. Yeah, all of those hillbillys are like that – that’s why there are all the jokes, like the definition of a West Virginia virgin is a 13-year-old girl that can outrun her brothers. Of course, with the Waltons, Sue Ellen (or Mary Ellen or whatever the f**k her name was) was a virgin because she could kick that faggot John-boy’s ass. He looked like he’d go for his little brothers, anyway, instead of his sisters.

Getting off track here . . . but the point is that, once again, Micros**t has f**ked things up. At least they are consistent.

November is National Novel Writing Month, and once again I’m embarking on my 4th or 5th futile attempt to complete a 50,000 word draft during these thirty days of N-month. The closest I’ve ever gotten was just shy of the halfway point a few years back.

Each year I have managed to cop out one way or the other, mostly because November might be the worst ossicle month for me to attempt this. You’d think that being marginally employed would allow for plenty of writing time, but the reality of it looks more like this:

- I work two part-time jobs
- I am a full-time parent two three high-maintenance children
- Thanksgiving pretty much severs me from my own time for a few days, especially this year with a wedding to attend the Saturday after.
- I’ve gotten a sinus infection just about every November. Already got this year’s model, the early symptoms of which I convinced myself were that of H1N1 Swine Flu.

This year I actually have a plot and copious notes to work with, and have set myself enough real free time to put in at least two hours a day for all but three days. I’ve even accounted for the demands of helping with homework, after school sports (basketball started yesterday), hissy fits by young & old, the wedding, the cooking, the laundry, the occasional sleep, etc.

The one thing I did not count on was my laptop shitting the bed (I’m tapping this out on the iPod Touch I won in a raffle last year, which had all the conveniences of an iPhone without the nuisance of either being a phone or depending on AT&T). I’ve been using a refurbished Dell for the last two years, a gift from my wife after my decrepit iMac’s monitor developed iAlzheimer’s and cataracts. Ever a Windows avoider, I wanted to switch it up to a Linux installation, but work commitments required I keep the dreaded patchy PoS OS on board (at least it’s XP and not that bad joke called Vista). I did add on an external hard drive with an Ubuntu partition, although I still haven’t gotten it to connect to our home network yet, so it remains more of a neglected hobby so far.

Last week the laptop took a nosedive, freezing up even more than usual and reaching the point of unusability. I’ve been running diagnostic and repair applications all weekend and have barely made a dent. But Sunday I booted up the Ubuntu and mounted the laptop as a drive and had no problems (writing with Sun’s OpenOffice rather than MS Word).

So it’s not the hardware, battered and nigh-obsolete as it may be. It’s fucking Windows. Again.

As soon as I can extract the rest of my documents from the laptop I am putting a magnet to it’s brain and putting the Window partition out of its – and my – misery, then reinstalling the C: drive with Ubuntu. I’ll get it online somehow, and work will just have to cope.

We have all of this technology in our hands and most of us have no clue just how powerful it can be. Human scientists have created some amazing stuff and even those whole call themselves professionals cannot figure most of it out. They get beyond their boundaries of training and they are simpletons!

No wonder there are so many movies about computers taking over humanity. I can believe it!!!

I have been struggling with technological issues for quite some time now.

First, it was my desktop PC, then it was my brand new notebook, now my so-called smartphone.

Smartphone?!?

I think what it really is, is a phone that was created by people who think they themselves are smart, but actually, are quite ego-centric and so malicious that they created the phone as a joke on consumers and are sitting back, right now, in their diamond encrusted lawn chairs laughing at all of us.

I think Bill Gates is doing the same thing. Him and his Vista!!!

I would like to think Steve Jobs is more humble that that. I would also like to believe that when I get my first Apple notebook, my world will be a better place.

I am at a loss! I am searching for a new solution to my problems everyday, and spending hours of my day with fruitless effort is killing me. I’m angry, I want to see my laptop die a destructive painful death, and Sprint to kiss my… yeah, that thing!

Solution #198: Download McAfee, run scan, remove Trojan, connect to phone, no more worries, be happy…

Boohoo… I feel a disappointment coming on…

La Fundación de Software Libre (FSF) lanzó la semana pasada una campaña en contra del próximo sistema operativo de la Corporación Microsoft “Windows 7″, denominandoló “computó engañoso” que cuidadosamente le quita los derechos a los usuarios.

En el sitio web www.Windows7Sins.org, la sucursal en Boston de la FSF publicó los 7 “pecados” que el software privativo como “Windows 7″ comete en contra de los usuarios de computadores.

Entre los que se incluye:

1.Envenenamiento Educativo: Hoy en día la mayoría de los niños cuya educación involucra el uso de computadores, son obligafos a usar el producto de UNA compañia: Microsoft’s. A su vez, Microsoft invierte largas sumas de dinero en mercadeo y relaciones para corromper los departamentos educativos. Una educación que usa el poder de las computadores debería significar libertad y capacitación, no una puerta para que una corporación extienda su monopolio.

2. Invasión a la privacidad: Microsoft utiliza software con nombres como “Windows Genuine Advantage” para inspecionar el contenido de los usuarios en sus discos duros. El acuerdo de licencia que los usuarios aceptan antes de usar Windows indica que Microsoft tiene el derecho de hacerlo sin necesidad de informarlo.

3. Comportamiento Monopolista: Casi todas las computadoras al ser compradas tienen Windows preinstalado (más no por opción). Microsoft establece requerimientos a los vendedores de hardware, los cuales no ofreceran PCs sin Windows instalado en estas. Incluso los computadores disponibles en otro sistema operativo, tienen Windows preinstalado al inicio.

4. Limitación de los usuarios: Microsoft intenta regularmente forzar a sus usuarios a actualizar, quitando el soporte para versiones antiguas de Windows y Office, y aumentando exageradamente los requisitos de hardware. Para mucha gente, esto significa tirar a la basura ordenadores completamente funcionales sólo porque no llegan a las exigencias de las nuevas versiones de Windows.

5. Abuso de los estándares: Microsoft ha intentado bloquear la estandarización de formatos de documentos libres, porque estándares como OpenDocument Format (ODF) pondrían en peligro el control que tienen ahora sobre los usuarios por medio de los formatos propietarios de Word. Se han dedicado a una conducta deshonesta, incluído el soborno de funcionarios, en un intento por detener estos esfuerzos.

6. Imponiendo el DRM: Con Windows Media Player, Microsoft trabaja junto con las grandes compañías de contenido multimedia para crear restricciones en la copia y reproducción de contenido multimedia en su sistema operativo. Por ejemplo, a petición de la NBC, Microsoft pudo impedir que sus usuarios grabaran los shows de televisión a pesar de que los usuarios tenían derecho a grabarlos.

7. Amenazando la seguridad de los usuarios: Windows tiene un largo historial de vulnerabilidades de seguridad, permitiendo la propagación de virus y que terceras personas tomen el control de los ordenadores de la gente para usarlos en redes para el envío masivo de spam.. Debido a que el software es secreto, todos los uaurios dependen de Microsoft para que arregle estos problemas, pero Microsoft tiene sus propios intereses sobre seguridad en mente, y no son los mismos que los de sus usuarios.

De acuerdo con el director ejecutivo Peter Brow ”Windows, por algun tiempo ha sido una plataforma DRM,  restrigiendo al usuario de hacer copias digitales de sus archivos”. Y si la confiable tecnología de Microsoft’s fuese implementanda en la manera que la compañia lo desea, el vendedor pudiese llegar a tener “un malicioso y completo control sobre tú computador.”

El grupo también ha enviendo una carta a los altos ejecutivos del las compañias que encabezan la lista Fortune 500, argumentando que las compañias se beneficiarian ética, técnica y a largo plazo financieramente, como parte del impactó que causaría cambiar de Windows y Microsoft Office a alternativas libres como Linux y OpenOffice.org.

Fundada a mediados de los 80’s por el hacker-activista Richard Stallman , la FSF argumenta que el software libre y el código fuente es un derecho moral.

Incluso con DRM, los usuarios que utilizan Windows mantienen más libertada y privacidad que los “estupidos” que usan servicios como Google Docs y guardan sus datos alli.

“Esa es la forma más reciente de quitarte la libertad,” he said. “Eso no es sobre software libre, es sobre estupidez.”

Por último Brow acotó “No estoy esperando que magicamente una ola de compañias cambies de XP a Linux,” he said. “Pero nos gustaría que tuviesen ese dilema en mente. Con suerte, algunos lo reevaluaran y diran NO A WINDOWS 7.”

Artículo completo: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/170842/windows_7s_deadly_sins.html

Hey Turtlegeeks. If there are any

I reinstalled my PC. It was awesome

I was like… Install… WINDOWS!! Which sucks, rlly… Had to do it 5 times before it worked. Then, I was like… Install… Ubuntu! Didn’t work… Well then, Fedora!! Did work

So, now I’m posting from Fedora. I like it, really. I have Windows right there -> (you can’t see it, but I can). In a “virtual machine”. So, Linux pretends to be a PC and Windows sees that and is like “yeah… I’m on a pc yeah…” However, my Virtual Windows just crashed while trying to record audio in WLM. Ah, itze working again.

I love it! LOVE IT!!!

Goodbye, LinuxTurtlez,
TotempaaltJ

An actual e-mail from Bill Gates to his crew about “Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame”. Cool. He even tells them he’s going to trash them in the Subject line.

Best Quote:

“The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind.” Turns out that Bill has had all of the same problems we have with Windows.

The take away is this, at a certain point, some businesses get so big, nobody can really control them and it’s up to the systems and culture that formed during its growth phase to steer it in maturity.

The same applies to governments too. We’re having quite a usability issue with ours.

It’s a great article. Read it here.

It was during last years journey from Florida to Iowa via a rented Tour Bus that my mother’s laptop finally died. It was a Compaq Presario V2000 sporting an AMD Turion64 bit processor. It came out in 2006 and had all the bells and whistles at that time -flash card slots, WIFI, DVD burner, and a very nice widescreen LCD. Unfortunately, it ran Windows XP, and my parents who are seniors, just couldn’t deal with all the requests for upgrades and found the virus protection difficult to manage. After a year in their house, the computer which ran well at purchase, was gummed up with spyware and took over 5 minutes to boot up.

When I looked at it, I realized the hard drive had failed -possibly from spinning continuously when the computer was on. As I had a replacement 40g hard drive that I had salvaged from a Sony Vaio that just died within a month past warranty, I swapped it out and reloaded Windows and all the drivers from the rescue disks I purchased from the HP support site. This was quite painful, but after I got everything reloaded, the computer ran, albeit sluggishly. I was about to give it back to my mother when suddenly it began to give me the blue screen of death (BSOD).

I looked into the problem and soon found that this particular computer, having a 64 bit processor, required drivers that were compatible only with Windows Service Pack 2 -when updated to Service Pack 3, it crashed. I scrubbed the hard drive and did a complete new install and switched off the update function. Strangely, Windows kept nagging me to update to Service Pack 3, and I couldn’t keep the requests from popping up. Finally, Windows upgraded itself without asking (I think I had stepped away and not turned down a request for an upgrade). This rendered the computer unusable again.

I decided to take Windows off and convert the laptop to Linux. I researched it a bit, and found that Ubuntu plays nice with a wide variety of laptops and I downloaded the OS Install to a DVD on my trusty Macbook Pro. Loading the OS was pretty straightforward. Getting the WIFI to work was a little tricky until I figured out how to download a system applet that lets Ubuntu use Windows drivers for the Wifi Card.

I also upgraded the memory to 2gigabytes. The computer now runs like a dream. It’s so stable, I use it as the “rumpus” laptop for carrying around the house or work. It does everything my Macbook does with regard to basic functions -Office software, photography, Facebook, Twitter, and email. I downloaded the 64bit beta version of the Flashplayer, and now I can watch Hulu without a problem.

The incredible thing is that this computer is about 3-4 years old and it runs without crashing. I have had no need for virus protection software. I purchased an extended battery and it runs 5 hours without stopping. There is no way I will ever purchase a Windows based product again willingly.

Hmmmm……SATAN??!?!!??

A financial firm in Latvia is offering 90 day loans with no collateral except your immortal soul. Kontora doesn’t require a credit check or proof of employment, only a signed document agreeing that the company owns your soul if you fail to pay and that the soul in question is a “previously unmortgaged property.” The loans are also subject to a one-percent-per-day interest rate.

Something tells me Bill Gates might have a problem when that startup loan he took out for Microsoft finally comes due.

(UPDATE: 6/30) Further incontrovertible evidence of the Microsoft/Lucifer connection.

Truth is stranger than fiction. The reason why the PC is still sucessful is still a big mystery. The Mac is better in many aspects including stability, protection from viruses and for those who didnt know the MAC actually runs GAMES!!! now NFS, Sims and bla bla bla have been released on the Mac platform.

Here is another damn good reason to buy a MAC u can run WINDOWS ON IT!!YES THE WINDOWS OS FROM MICROSOFT!!!

If that isnt enough for u to get convinced ur a hypocrite

I spent my entire adult life using Windows until I was saved by Linux in late 2006.  That was when I discovered Ubuntu’s Edgy Eft.  Ubuntu was still very much a work in progress at this point.  It was relatively unknown except to uber-geeks who love the terminal commands and customization.  But in the world of Linux, it was one of many.  That changed thanks to agreements with the likes of Dell, who made it possible to order their machines with Ubuntu installed.  My experience with Linux was definitely a positive one.  There were a few hiccups but overall, I enjoyed my Ubuntu OS.  Fortunately, my computing experience was heightened last Christmas with my MacBook, also my first Apple computer.

Apple to me, and for a long time, was for fanboys alone.  It was for those that have been using Macs for ages.  They knew what Lisa and Newton were and what each OS X feline name was.  I mean, I’ve had two iPods but never a Mac.  All that changed when that savior Ubuntu computer began to slow down and fast.  I was offered a present for Christmas and I couldn’t pass it up.  It was an aluminum 13″ MacBook and I’ve never looked back.

Steve Jobs, you are a genius.  I am a fanboy now.  This computer runs virtually flawless.  Everything is integrated with everything else.  And with the iPhone 3.0 coming in summer, I intend to grow my Apple family.  I understand why my present came at a premium.  Macs are superior computers and are sexier to boot (no pun intended).  Thank you.

Awaiting 10.5.7 and then Snow Leopard in the summer.

TAGGLINE: BUY A MAC AND iPHONE: COMPUTER NIRVANA

So, a few weeks ago I got a new computer, and on it I installed Windows Vista. I got Home Premium, since I find I don’t actually use a lot of the features found in the higher-end versions. So while yeah, I coulda probably gone with Ultimate, I just didn’t see the point.

I also went with the 64-bit edition. My reasoning there was basically RAM support. 32-bit Windows can’t use over 3GB of RAM. Officially it’s supposed to be 4GB but there’s some weirdness involved to where Windows will only actually let you use 3GB for applications, the rest is “reserved” or something. And, well, I got 4GB of RAM. And in two years I’ll probably be putting in yet more RAM. That’s the way I do things. The incremental upgrade is why my trusty emachine ended up lasting me as long as it did.

Hardware driver support in 64-bit Windows is vastly improved over what it was years ago when Windows XP first came in an x86-64 version. My motherboard chipset, including the Ethernet interface, SATA controller, etc., all have 64-bit drivers. So does my video card. Everything else is covered by the generic drivers Windows ships with. Oh wait. I almost forgot one.

I have a Linksys WMP54G v4.1 PCI WiFi card. (The model number and version are there so they can be googled, so you can see the same stuff I found.) Linksys does not provide a 64-bit driver on their website. I ended up downloading a random driver someone in a Linksys forum said worked, and it got me online. Of course, once I connected and ran Windows Update, lo and behold a driver update was pushed out to me. How fortunate!

But that’s when the problems began. Randomly when I was playing WoW, the game would freeze. Like, we’re talking full hard-lock. No mouse movement, the sound card just replays the last few milliseconds of sound from its buffer over and over again. Eventually it got to the point where it would happen whenever I logged into WoW, but only on certain characters. My mage, I could log onto fine. Same with my priest. But my death knight and warrior, I couldn’t. I did, however, take note that my DK and warrior were in Stormwind, heavily populated.

At this point I thought something was just screwed up in WoW or something. I’d installed and uninstalled a bunch of crap over the course of the two weeks of having a new computer, and the registry was clogged with all kinds of random BS. Heck, there was even stuff in the desktop context menu that was still hanging around.. from a program that I’d uninstalled when I discovered it didn’t do what I needed it to do.

I tried to just fix WoW first. Ran repair.exe, tried manually cleaning the registry, couldn’t fix anything. So then I thought, well, maybe I have bad RAM, that would cause my computer to crash out like that. I got memtest86, slapped that on a CD, and ran it. Found zero errors. So back to square one.

I was getting annoyed and losing hope, so I did what I decided needed to be done anyway– I formatted and reinstalled Windows Vista from scratch. I told myself I was going to do it /right/ this time. I came up with a game plan, and stuck to it. I was going to install the stuff in this particular order, reboot at these times, and when I got done, everything should theoretically work.

And everything did work. Until the very last item– install World of Warcraft and get all the patches up. The install, from all three DVDs, went off without a hitch. But then, when I opened it up for the first time, it started downloading the patch, through Blizzard’s bittorrent-like P2P downloading interface. It got about 3-4% in, and the machine hardlocked. I pushed reset, ran WoW, and it did the exact same thing. I couldn’t figure it out. I wasn’t even intensively using the computer, or the RAM, at the time. Note that up until this point I’d only experienced these crashes when running WoW, and I thought it had something to do with how much the game exercised my hardware.

When I booted the computer back up I started playing chess. I love that Microsoft included a chess game in Home Premium. Waaay better than Solitaire. Playing something like chess that actually requires strategy helps to clear my head. So after a couple games, I thought to myself, “Maybe it has something to do with the WiFi card.”

There were a few episodes of Bleach I hadn’t watched yet, and those always have tons of seeds and are a really good way to speed-test/stress-test a network connection. So I popped open utorrent and opened up three torrents, and then went back to chess while I watched the progress on the torrents.

Download speed went up and went fast. I was beginning to get angry, not because the computer was crashing, but because it was FAILING to crash. But then, a couple minutes in, the computer just suddenly crashed.

That, I think, was probably the watershed moment. After I rebooted and let scandisk run completely, I opened up firefox and started googling everything I could think of about my WiFi card. Brand name (Linksys), model number (WMP54G), version (4.1)… and discovered a few things.

First, the card is based around a Ralink RT61 chipset. The driver in the WHQL for this chipset, which comes straight from Ralink, is buggy. If you have over 3GB of RAM on a 64-bit system, Vista or XP, the driver will cause the computer to randomly hardlock when certain types of network operations are performed. These operations include decentralized peer discovery in P2P networks (Bittorrent, also Blizzard Downloader), and some types of online games, especially MMORPGs (World of Warcraft).

I didn’t quite understand everything on those sites ‘cuz damn it, I’m a wirebiter not a software person. But I did understand one very important thing. That being, I had over 3GB of RAM and was using a piece of software known to be buggy on over 3GB. The next logical step was to remove one of my DIMMs and see how stuff worked on 2GB. It’s not ideal, since with only one DIMM I’m now in single-channel DDR mode, instead of that nice happy dual-channel DDR2 wonderland, but at least it proves one thing. All of my stability issues were caused by a single piece of offending hardware, the wireless card.

Thinking in retrospect, I’m starting to realize that quite possibly the reason why the problem seemed to happen gradually had to do with Windows Update pushing the driver. It was several days, almost a week in fact, ’till I went through and installed the optional updates the first time around, and amazingly the unsigned driver I installed to get the thing to work in the first place may have actually been a better fit than the one Microsoft pushed at me. So hopefully, this blog entry helps out someone who has a similar problem, since RT61-based cards are extremely common on the market.

Just a quick random post, just to update for the sake of updating. I’ll write other longer posts to talk about gnome-do, my ikea rapeage,  die-cutting, and reading barcodes on mail. 

So, for now, I’m going to post pictures that I took awhile ago playing with effects. 

lovely, i know.

THE NOSE WILL ATTACK YOU.

wtf happened to my dresser?! O_O

That’s all for now XD

Another random update. My sound on my windows suddenly went kaput. Can’t hear stuff. And i tried to record my voice and it can’t hear me. All drivers seem fine except a base system one. So i tried to dl the chipset driver to fix that but the links for the driver on dell’s site are broken. 

Sometime, i need to wipe out my windows partition and make a virtual machine of windows with virutual box on my ubuntu partition. Or just reinstall windows. BLahhh.

Copio y pego de la página web oficial:

• On NT 4.0 installations it simulates chkdsk of disk drives with errors!

• On Win2K and Windows 9x it presents the Win2K startup splash screen, complete with rotating progress band and progress control updates!

• On Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 it present the XP/Server 2003 startup splash screen with progress bar!

Mas adelante se lee:

Virtually all the information shown on Bluescreen’s BSOD and system start screen is obtained from your system configuration – its accuracy will fool even advanced NT developers.

Sin mas les dejo: EL salvapantallas de la pantalla azul de la muerte de windows, que se baja de acá. (CLICK!)

Enjoy…

When it comes to Linux there are 3 4 kinds of people, those who never heard of it, those who love it, those who are afraid of it, and those who hate it and spread falsities about it. I don’t really care about the first, they probably aren’t really technologically literate anyways, as long as they have E-mail they are content. While the third  group is the result of the actions of the fourth. Let’s hit two birds with one stone shall we?
1-Linux is More Secure Because it Has A Smaller User Base

It is widely argued that Linux is more secure than Windows just because Windows is more popular, so hackers and virus coders tend to focus on the more popular platform. Actually, this is just one side of the story There are so many other things running for Linux security-wise that totally dispels this myth.

First of all, let’s face it, YOU are the weakest link in any OS. The user is the one that wreaks havoc to any OS, with ignorance or miscalculated decisions. Linux users are generally more savvy than the Windows or Mac users out there. We don’t just click on files promising us the latest Hollywood diva nude pictures. Besides, it’s normal practice that Linux users don’t run their systems as root, which is not the case with Windows, this drastically brings down the vulnerability of any system. The question now, will this be the case if Linux gains popularity and more adoption? I don’t really know, but if Linux commanded more than 90% of the market, I believe this argument would be totally false.

Linux with it’s Unix roots is built as a Network Operating System (NOS) and now advancing slowly as a Desktop OS (DOS? ironically). This simple fact helped Linux carry on the legacy of network security model of server/client-user with limited permissions. Whilst an OS like Windows was originally built as a single-user Desktop OS advancing into a NOS and adding security layers on the go.

Finally, just the fact that Linux is Open Source means that more eyeballs can see bugs and vulnerabilities making it easier to patch. Any coder in his/her mom’s basement could issue a fix for the community. It doesn’t need a big fat layer of corporate bureaucracy to issue a fix! Granted that the corporation gives the security flaw enough attention.
2-Installing Applications on Linux is Hard

Well this might have been true in the early days of Linux, but currently it can’t be farther from the truth. As a Linux user, what do I have to do to install an app? Let’s assume I want to this in a a GUI only environment (some get turned off by the mere mention of a command line, for some reason beyond me.) All I have to do is launch the graphical frontend of my package manager (think of it a big ass repository of applications stored on a server some where), then search for the app in mind. Hell if you don’t know the exact name of the application just search for the function! For example if you want to install a Gmail alerter, just type “google” or “gmail”, a plethora of apps will appear, then tick on the one you like and click ok. The package manager will automatically download the required files from the Internet and install it, and place it in your menu!

On the other hand, if you want to install an app on Windows what will you do? Generally you will head to Google and search for the required app or function, swim through hundreds if not thousands of results, randomly choose one which might or might not have what you want. If it does you will be probably asked for a valid email or enter a captcha, then download the file. The file might be huge and if you don’t have a download manager you might lose all what you downloaded because your wireless abruptly decided to disconnect. There are 101 scenarios! If all goes well you double click on the app, click next next, tick on “I Agree”, a couple more nexts and you have the app. Which turns out to be a stripped down trial version, that added a couple of more apps that you didn’t ask for on your desktop and changed a few of your system settings!

Which is easier again?
3-Linux is A Nightmare to Install

Back in 2005 when I first started my Linux adventure, I got my hand on 5 SUSE cd’s from a  Linux Format magazine. Back then I was on XP, I initially wanted to back up my files before I take the plunge just in case. When I looked at the huge amount of files, I got lazy and somewhat careless, and decided just to install SUSE without backing up. 2 hours later I had a magical dual boot system (the whole concept of dual boot was alien to me back then) and all my files were intact!

Why am I telling you this story? Because I think one part of the intimidation of installing Linux is the belief that it might destroy files and end up on an OS that might thats not appealing (hey we are humble to realize it’s not for everyone ) All I am saying it’s piss easy! If I was able to do it with no prior knowledge of Linux then you can too! It just needs some common sense. Trust me!

And if you don’t trust me (I understand you don’t really know me do you?) Why don’t you dabble with Linux using virtualization?

Anyways the whole installation process has been tuned over the years. Distros like SUSE, Ubuntu, and Fedora, are so easy to install it would literally take around 30 minutes to get it up and ready. With almost all the apps a default PC should have. Thing like an Office suite, media player, PDF reader, chat clients…etc Can you really say the same about YOUR system?
4-The Linux Interface is Ugly and Unattractive

Well it depends on the definition of “attractive” doesn’t it? A command line only OS might be a turn off for most people but bliss for some. An interface with wobbly windows, rotating cubes, spherical desktop, fireworks, rain, snow…etc is bliss to a lot and a resource hog to some.

Well Linux provides you both and everything in between! And in a million and one styles!

You can install Compiz, which gives you rotating cubes for different desktops, wobbly windows, animated window behavior just to name a few. You can install Enlightenment, which provides you a sleek looking desktop that you have never seen before. KDE4 is a scene to behold! Anyways I think a picture is worth a thousand words,  here judge by yourself:

Linux and the Compiz Cube It\’s Snowing in Linux Land enlightenment-e17

In fact you can actually make Linux like whatever you want, you can make it even look like Apple or Windows! The sky is the limit
5-There Are No Games on Linux

Actually I am not really a PC gamer, I tend to keep my gaming activities on consoles, but I once installed Football Manager under Linux, worked perfectly.

Seriously, just yesterday I walked into my brother’s room, and  found a collection of PC games on the floor. Me knowing that he uses Linux exclusively, I raised an eyebrow and asked “under Linux?”. He replied positively, “without a hitch!”

Today, there are literally 100’s of games that work under Linux, true they haven’t been ported, but Wine (a program that allows Windows programs to run under Linux) has taken care of that. Just looking at the top 10 list of apps working under Wine, one finds quite a lot of them are games. And a lot of them are VERY popular! Wine could also help in a lot of other games too! You can also purchase Cedega which depends on Wine but makes the experience much more user-friendly. There is a lot of help out there, you just need to open your eyes a bit! And if all fails, virtualization could be a last resort!

Word of Worldcraft Running on Linux using Wine

One could still argue that there are no Linux games, as all that this means that there are no native Linux games. Right? Not really, there are loads of native Open Source Linux games, I can’t really vouch for them, but from the screen shots they do seem cool. Here have a glimpse.
6-Linux Doesn’t Come Preinstalled Like Windows

Whoa! You have been contaminated with a big dose of FUD! Actually Linux comes preinstalled from a lot of different vendors. Some are international brands like Dell and Lenovo. There are also some specialized Linux vendors like System76 or EmprorLinux.

Asus also have created a new trend. Fitting Linux in a new niche market, the Ultra Mobile PC market with the Eee PC. HP, Aspire, MSI, among others are fitting these UMPC’s with Linux.
7-There is No Support for Linux

If you purchased your Linux system from a vendor, then there will probably some kind of support. A quick check on System76 or EmprorLinux would verify that. Also if you bought a distribution from Red Hat or Novell then you will also get support as part of the package.

However in reality, a lot of Linux users are mavericks, they get their support from the Linux community. The Linux community is very supportive (at least that is my experience). The Internet is riddled with forums, guides, howtos, blogs, IRC rooms… etc that would offer anybody an extraordinary amount of help. I don’t think that any other operating system has this kind of community. I am sure when it comes to community other proprietary operating systems do envy us!
8-Linux Doesn’t Have Good Hardware Support

Sometime ago, I blogged about how I suffered to get an HP printer to work on Windows. Long story short, after around 2 hours of trying to get an HP printer to work on XP, I gave up and plugged into an Ubuntu Linux Eee PC, it got recognized in 30 seconds! There are thousands of stories similar to this, just a quick Google would confirm that. Here is an example.

What people fail to realize that in the case of their Windows preinstalled PC’s, they “just works” because the vendors have already done all the work for them. It would be a totally different ball game if these PC’s had no OS on them. Windows wouldn’t come out all that superior, I would even wager that Linux would probably do a better job.

Actually I think that we are at a point where I can say that Linux would work more than 90% of hardware out there! Could Windows or Apple claim that? I don’t know, I stopped being a Windows power user for quite sometime. But what I remember is that a webcam I purchased in 2004 wasn’t “digitally verified” (or something like that) by XP, despite the fact that XP has been around for years!
9-There is No Office Software, or Software At All for Linux

Huh? Under which rock have you been living under in the past decade? Actually there is more Office software for Linux than Windows and Apple combined. It does 95% of what Microsoft Office can do and you don’t need to loose an arm and a leg to get it, its FREE! And let’s face it, most of us don’t really use Microsoft Office to it’s full potential. So why should I pay 100% for only 10% features I need?

As for the rest of software, rest assured that there is replacement for everything you need. And in a lot of cases these apps get the job done in better ways than their propietary counterparts. And before you say: “Photoshop”, you won’t drag me into this conversation, if you are not content with Gimp, you still can get Photoshop on Linux, so please let’s not get into that.
Bonus: Linux is For Geeks!

Ahh, nevermind not really gonna try to refute this one, though I tried to convince people that Linux is sexy, didn’t really do a good job at it! But hey geek is good