Dell's Linux

I was recently informed that Michael Dell actually used VMWare Workstation, and he uses it to run Ubuntu. VMWare Workstation is pretty much used to run OS systems, really useful if you don’t have a burner handy.

After roaming around digg.com, I came across this article and find that Dell, Inc. is considering from a list of choices on what to install in their Dell computers and then releasing them to the public. I wouldn't mind whichever Linux OS they use, but I am curious about Novell/SUSE, openSUSE, and RedHat. Fedora I have learned a fair bit from other people, and Ubuntu I have used a few times.

I have not used a Dell before but I have no doubts that future buyers will find it interesting. These days there are more people converting to Linux and I really don’t see the numbers dwindling anytime soon – especially with the prices rising for Windows Vista. Compared between an overpriced OS and freeware, there’s no doubt that people will be more willing to accept it. I am amazed by how popular Linux has become, and I hope that Dell will be successful in this new venture.

Music

This small article was amusing. You can play it smart by keeping your share smaller than 1,000 songs. However, it is surprising that people have over 1,000 songs in their shares. It makes me wonder just what songs that they have, and if they know every one of their songs - for all you know, you may a copy of that song already in your share and just forgot about it. As for the computer alerting you whether or not you want it overwritten - there are ways to bypass that and still have the copy of that song in your drive - the part about the song having a 1-2 second difference in the illegal copy (like the song being 3:41 and then the next copy being 3:39).

Now what makes people want to do the whole illegal download, thing? Well, there is the obvious part about it – price. No one really wants to take money out of their pockets or bank accounts just to buy the CD.

Another part is accessibility and convenience. Picking and choosing what songs you want in your CD/computer/iPod. With the CDs, you may like one or three particular songs in there, but the rest is just crap to your ears. When you download, you can pick and choose what songs you want, and which ones you do not want – just click on the song, and there you go! Furthermore, the song is right there in the internet, why go all the way to the store when you can download it?

Aside from CDs, people can also download software and movies. There are some who download games, but I don’t know much about how that exactly works – as far as I know, there is this mod-chip that you can now buy for your DS that allows you to download whatever game you want and play it. Now for the software and movies, the same can be said for the CD reasoning – price, convenience, and accessibility. The prices for products like Microsoft and Macromedia are expensive, so you can see why people would rather download the over $100 software. Yes, you could buy freeware instead, but people are fixed into the belief that they would rather have these products. And for movies, they are mostly available on the internet weeks before they are released to the public. The quality is very different from the real-deal, but most people don’t care.

Poor Russian teacher...

It is sad and sort of irritating. The school teacher is prosecuted for using illegal software, and chances are he did not know it was illegal! Even if he did know about his wrongdoing, you cannot really blame him. He lives in a rural town, 1,000 miles away from Moscow. A poor community, therefore they probably had slow computers - at best. And sure, you can say why did they not just use OpenSource programs like Linux for their OS and OpenOffice as a substitute for Microsoft Word and Excel? Well, if even students at State did not know that these programs were available, can you blame a rural community? They are miles away from another city/town, and they are probably hard-pressed enough if they could even afford an internet connection to download these programs.

Well, now that this occurred, there is one good thing to come out of this event - people will surely know that this town exists and there will be sympathizers coming to their town and offering them donations. Publicity can be helpful.

CAPTCHAs

This short article is amusing. As we know, site administrators use CAPTCHAs to prevent automated scripts from performing certain functions. What this article is about, is more tuned into preventing certain people from doing things - such as logging onto the internet.

It's more rooted into entertainment than anything else. Honestly, I doubt people would take kindly to this proposal of preventing people from participating on the world wide web. However, people should try it out - it's amusing to see what happens if you purposefully log the incorrect word into the sentence that the site provides. If you choose to the wrong word, it take you to another page that says that apologizes, but will not welcome you into the internet. And then suggests that you read certain books - the dictionary, English Grammar for Dummies, and How to Spell Like a Champ.