Mostly Harmless

I can’t help but laugh at the fact that the BBC had to implement Microsoft DRM technology into their iPlayer application. The reasoning behind this…

“The rights holders - the people that make the programmes, from Ricky Gervais to the independent producers that account for up to a third of our programming - simply wouldn’t have given us the rights to their programmes unless we could demonstrate very robust digital rights management.”

…is all well and good. But wait! Doesn’t the BBC already distribute programming in an unencrypted fashion through which it can be readily recorded and redistributed without restriction? (I’ll give you a clue, it’s on the roof…)

So this player developed presumably with license payer’s money is a total irrelevance to me as I don’t run a Microsoft operating system for more than a small % of time anymore. One of the major reasons I gave up the operating system is because it forces you to do things the way the company thinks you should do them, rather than the way that makes most logical sense. Can I get a refund on the bandwidth costs for this as well as anymore reality TV muck you choose to produce? No? Didn’t think so.

A decent digital TV card or box for the PC now costs about £30 - £50, recordings from which can be readily burnt to DVD. Funnily enough the ability for people to record television programming so that they can keep it historically hasn’t cause the market to collapse - the VCR was not the end of media as we know it and neither was the DVD or hard disk drive recorder. The sales of pre-recorded DVD format releases should have proved this beyond all doubt.

I didn’t take Ricky Gervais for a delusional paranoid - but there we go, stranger than fiction.

Rowan :: Jun.28.2007 :: Media, Operating Systems :: No Comments »

Doing an OS upgrade is often troublesome. It is better to back up your data and do a clean install. Most of us don’t for various reasons. I always try upgrades before clean installs - it’s probably a form of self abuse.

This version of Kubuntu has a shiny new upgrade wizard which made this a pretty easy upgrade and would definitely be do-able for the Linux Newbie. However there are still a couple of gotchas that might catch out Mr “average user”.

Following the upgrade instructions here is simple, but could do with being in better English. Screenshots or even a screencast would lessen the opportunity for error. A user who wishes to upgrade may not be wholly comfortable adding a source for example and need a little hand holding.
The upgrade took about three hours to download (2GB) and then about half an hour to apply on my Core2 Duo system.

The only actual difficulty was when mdadm installed. This is probably part of my system because my hardware features onboard RAID controllers, however the only active RAID is hardware only and thus transparent to the operating system. I was asked the question “which arrays should be started on boot?” - the correct answer is none. Answering all or entering devices may prevent your system booting if like me you do not have any arrays. If questions like this are likely to occur, information on how to answer the questions (other than the normal “go read man mdamn” bs) should be readily available to the user when the question is presented.

On reboot, SMB4K refused to mount shares once again as a user, this can be fixed by a quick

sudo chmod +s `which smbmnt`

Aside from that everything seems to work without issue. That’s very nearly a flawless upgrade. I’m impressed.

Rowan :: Apr.25.2007 :: Linux, Operating Systems, Reviews :: No Comments »

Since finally getting round to installing OpenSuse 10.2 on my laptop, I’m going to be trying to live without MS Operating systems on the desktop during working hours. This is something I’ve wanted to do for a while. The reasons are mainly stability, transparency of errors when they do occur and ease of upgrading / adding software.

Featured Linux Distributions

OpenSuse 10.2

Kubuntu 6.10

For completeness, I ought to state that at work we are currently standardising on CentOS for our Cpanel/WHM servers (there are a few instances of Fedora Core hanging around but those are being phased out).

I will also have to run Microsoft OS’s in Virtual Machines for support purposes at work as we need to be able to attempt to replicate reported issues with XP and Vista - as well as keep them around simply to remain familiar. Having these as (hopefully) throwaway virtual instances will aid us in instances where the problem must be reproduced with an esoteric set of desktop software that would be difficult to put in place or downgrade to on a “proper” work desktop.

Whilst I personally believe it’s fine to promote and indeed increase your skills in one technology over another, being too blinkered can lead to a sort of career sepuku No matter how much as a troubleshooter or admin you may learn to love Linux keep your existing skills polished.

Next time

I’ll be looking at the applications on Linux that have replaced their Win32 predecessors.

Rowan :: Apr.15.2007 :: Giving up Windows, Linux, Operating Systems, Vista :: No Comments »

I’m typing this from my Dell M1210 laptop after finally installing OpenSuse 10.2 on it. Not everything works (the webcam may need a little work) but the things that really ought to work out of the box do

• Wireless (WPA-PSK)
• Flash (with sound)
• DNS resolving at full speed thanks to the installer option to disable IPV6
• Fonts available out of the box

There were however a few downsides

• Installer couldn’t cope with the fact that Dell by default use all four partitions and the fifth extended one and suggested deleting everything and starting again
• Despite adding Internet sources during the installation the main, non oss and update repos had to be added manually using Yast after the install was complete

Seemingly we’re getting very close to a desktop Linux, freely* available on the Internet for download that can be installed on a consumer laptop without too much hassle. If we imagine the user wants to wipe all their partitions and not be able to download updates that is…

In all seriousness though, the amount of extra configuration really isn’t anymore onerous than after installing XP (and in terms of downloading updates, is actually easier because constant rebooting is not required). Yes I’ll have to install Nvidia’s drivers to get 3D support, but I’d have to do that on Windows too. It feels slick on the Core 2 Duo and practically everything works.

Maybe when 10.3 is released eh?

*And by freely I mean with mostly everything working out of the box whether or not you’ve had to agree to a tiresome EULA or similar that you didn’t read anyway. (Naughty I know).

Rowan :: Apr.13.2007 :: Linux, Operating Systems :: No Comments »

So I finally got my copy of Vista Business through from Dell for my M1210 laptop after a month or two of waiting - I paid £11 for the privilege and it took an impressive two days to get from the US of A to the South Coast of England. Funnily enough, Vista is only worth $2.70 according to the customs statement.

But I can’t come up with a decent reason to actually install it…

Continue Reading »

Rowan :: Apr.05.2007 :: Operating Systems, Vista :: No Comments »