New Year's Resolutions

1. Excercise
2. Do more exciting stuff.
3. Learn local roads. (Besides the one between school and home.)

Linux (Kubuntu) vs Windows XP vs OS X

Format

• Linux
• Windows
• OS X

Installing the OS

• It works, most of the time, with most hardware.
• It works, almost all the time, with all supported hardware.
• It works, all the time, on Macs.

Look and Feel

• Plasticky, with occasional glitches, but super fast
  
• Programs that use GTK will have buttons and other controls that look like they came straight out of Windows 3.11
• Many themes available: kde-looks.org
  
• Nothing to write home about.
• Third party themes are a pain to install.
  
• It's the gold standard.
• If anything, it may be a bit too much eye candy for some people.
  
• Awesome attention to detail - Notice how dialog boxes have a glowing button and an outlined one? Pressing space bar activates the outlined one and pressing Enter activates the glowing one.
  

Application Availability

• Not that good, since most companies don't develop open source software, but nearly everything is free.
• Super Good. It's ubiquitous, so it makes sense that it has the most application support.
  
• OK. Everything you need is there, except games.
  

Application Installation

• Easy
• Use apt-get, or copy and paste some command line entries from the package maintainer's site.
  
• Easier
• Double click the install.exe
  
• Easiest
• Drag to Applications folder
  

Perceived Application Quality

• Good
• considering it's all free stuff
• Things can be crashy... Perhaps it's because the dynamic libraries they depend on are constantly changing.
  
• Mostly Crap
• Most of the programs that cost money aren't even as good as their open source counterparts (check out the multitude of CD-burning programs).
• However, there are a small number of very high quality Windows-only apps... It's sort of a "long-tail" distribution.
  
• Awesome
• Super !!! 111 One One One 0xFFF !!!
• Even dysfunctional apps appear to ooze with quality.
  

Consumer Hardware Utilization

• Passable.
• Most vendors don't provide open source drivers for their products, so people have to make new drivers, which, from my experience, either work flawlessly, or only provide the basics (3 out of 9 mouse buttons isn't too bad).
  
• Awesome.
• If it doesn't work on Windows, it probably won't sell that well...
• Slick, as long as it's supported hardware. Otherwise, you're screwed.
• Normally, when you install new hardware, you expect to configure it and step through some sort of install process On the Mac, you just plug it in and it automagically knows how you wanted it set up, (most of the time). So you can just use it.
  

Viruses and Spyware

• I've been running without Antivirus for a few days and I haven't noticed any strange events. However, a good virus would hide its presence until called upon to perform its duty. I wonder how I would detect a virus before it's too late...
• Not having both antivirus and antispyware scanning is blasphemy.
• No antivirus, no antispyware, no problem. Again, I wouldn't know how to detect a virus if it somehow infected the system. Oh well.

Community Support

• There are a lot of distros. Fortunately, I chose Kubuntu, which is (allegedly) a very user-friendly distro with a large following. Therefore, getting help was easy.
• Highlight error. Paste it into Google. Instant support.
• Large swaths of Mac users use the same hardware, and the software choices do not vary that much; so, even though the Mac-using population is small, the homogeneity of hardware and software configurations guarantees a sizeable support group.
• Plus, there are sites like MacRumors and ThinkSecret that host forums that serve as secondary support groups.
  

Inspiration

• Inspires one to hack.
• since everything comes with source
  
• Inspires one to try other OS's.
• since it's old and crufty
  
• Inspires one to create good-looking things.
  
• since it's elegant

Trying out Linux

OS Install

I downloaded the Kubuntu CD image from the official site, burned it to a CD, set my BIOS to boot from removable media first. I have a Dell Dimension 9100 and it was set to boot from HD first. The installation seemed to go smoothly. The only option I had to change from the default was the time zone.

Unfortunately, after booting up, I discovered that my display was stuck at a sub-optimal resolution. To remedy this, I used sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg and was able to select the correct resolution for my FP2405.

Additionally, my Logitech MX510's extra buttons were miss-mapped. For example, the foreword and back buttons don't go foreword or backwards in any of the browsers.

Installing and Upgrading with apt-get

Kubuntu includes a apt-get GUI called Adept. One of the first things I did was use the System Update Wizard. I basically just pressed "Upgrade" and everything on my machine was upgraded.

Next, I used the System>Package Manager (Adept) to install the linux-686-smp kernel metapackage, which, I hope, took advantage of the HyperThreading available on my 3.0Ghz Intel P4. This required a reboot.

I'd heard of Native Eclipse and wondered if Adept had it. All I had to do was type "Eclipse" into the Adept search box and install everything. Apparently, the GCJ appended packages provide the natively compiled portions of the installation.

Eventually, I discovered Kubuntu-Automatix. This is basically a super-install shell script with a GUI. I used to install common codecs, media players, Firefox + all plugins (flash etc.), SUN Java, MS TrueType Fonts, RAR, ACE, MPlayer, OpenOffice.org 2.0, and DMA (Direct Memory Access - devices can directly shuttle information to memory without using the CPU). This script includes a ton of packages. There are even DVD decoders, (which the installer says are illegal to install in the United States).

Running Linux 5th Edition

I just finished reading Running Linux. As a result, I am hyped up about linux. I think I'm going to install openSUSE or Fedora Core 4 on an old junker and try it out.

Fink

Fink has been building for more than 8 hours now...
287 FinkComman 5.2% 8:05.02 4 96 204 10.2M 12.3M 29.2M 124M

I wonder if killing the process will do any harm...

Interesting

http://ieor.berkeley.edu/~goldberg/art/triangle.html

I never actually thought about that...

I wonder

Have there been any studies on long term exposure to low-power microwave radiation? Is living in an always-on microwave field safe? For now, I'll lean towards "yes," but sometimes I wonder.

One of my professors said I would be academically martyred if I conducted a study on the effects of wifi on long term health and discovered a negative result.

Summer of Code

What a coincidence. Right when I decide to put some more work into the project I started last summer during Google's Summer of Code, I receive a Summer of Code T-shirt from Google...

Trying out new IDE's

I tried out Netbeans 5.0 Beta 2 today. It's pretty good. I especially like their GUI builder.

Update: I've moved back to Eclipse. I can just build the gui in NetBeans and look at the generated code.

I figured

I figured out something about myself today. When someone says something is difficult, I have a harder time doing it because I slow down and become more error prone. However, when I receive no warning of the difficulty of a problem, I usually solve it methodically or with a flash of insight.

During the midterm in networking, I solved the now infamously difficult packet dialation question, which was never directly covered in the course, perfectly. The grader even wrote "Excellent!" on my paper.

During the final for the same class, the teacher told us that number 2 was a doozy. I saved it for last and carefully solved it... twice, and checked my answers between the two versions. I spent over an hour methodically fact checking my assumptions and modifying my answer to fit what I knew about TCP from the RFC.

Well, in the shower a few minutes ago, I realized I completely mis-guessed some of the guidelines stated in the RFC...

I also ended up doing slow start instead of additive increase even when I DREW A GRAPH (which was correct) to help me step through all the events during packet loss.

But that's not all, I also assumed that buffered packets (on the receiver's end) would allow the nextByteExpected pointer to jump over contigous already-received segments of data... although I don't know if that assumption contributed to making my answer wrong.

I thought I was going to get an A in that class too. Ughhhhhhh!!

Update, I got an A-.

Mac Tablet

I was talking to a friend the other day who happens to be a Tablet PC user, and he said he just bought to PC tablet to tide him over until the Apple Tablet release.

Encouraging words...

Cool Plant

Some sort of vine started growing out of my bedroom floor. It wound itself up the cord on my desk lamp, and it's now grown nearly to the bulb. I wonder what it's going to do next. It looks cool, pictures soon.

update: I will get those pictures somehow... (btw, the plant is above the lamp now, and is sort of getting "lost.")

How to integrate Google's Toolbar with Firefox

1. Start Firefox and install Google Toolbar.
2. Restart Firefox.
3. Right click somewhere in the blank space to the right of the "Help" menu.
1. Select "Customize." I will call this window the "Button Pane."
   
4. Drag the normal Firefox search box (which normally resides in the upper right corner) into the Button Pane to get rid of it.
   
5. Drag the buttons you want to keep from the Google Toolbar into their respective positions on the main toolbar (as seen in photo.)
6. Press "Done" on the Button Pane.
7. Right click the empty toolbar space again (like in step 4).
1. Uncheck "Google Toolbar"

Tada! Now you can have Google Toolbar without the extra clutter. I only kept the spellcheck and highlight buttons because I find the (toggleable) highlighting of search terms convenient, and I sometimes experience curious lapses of spelling ability. The Google search box has auto-suggest, which is like a search in itself. It's nice to be able to explore related searches as you type.

Sanity Saver

Project Idea:
The Sanity Saver - a program that will help you plan your academic career in Computer Science/Engineering in such a way that you will avoid taking too many disproportionately high workload courses in one quarter.