Richard A. Johnson

For those of you who have kissed off openSUSE, Novell, and possibly recently Ubuntu for its Yahoo deal (which by the way is with Yahoo, NOT Microsoft), it is time to kiss off other things, such as Amazon. Granted this deal blows to the highest level and just shows how shite Microsoft is, there are many companies doing this same thing with Microsoft, deals like this and others. So while you are sitting there, wearing your anti-Micro$oft (see what I did there? That’s what all of the cool Microsoft haters do) hats, ditch the following product manufacturers:

• Samsung
• Fuji
• Nearly every computer manufacturer
• Asus
• MSI
• Nearly every automobile manufacturer
• More than likely your lovely ISP
• and so much more…

Don’t forget to dismiss your family members who are using Microsoft products too, but not Uncle Ned, he is cool, oh and Aunt Jane, as they at least use Linux. And the next time you get a bill, just throw it out, as it was probably printed from a Microsoft computer. Oh boy, and your government, local police, because they are up to their armpits in Microsoft deals. I wonder if Microsoft touched the snow in the backyard? I think I will get naked and sleep out there tonight. Yuck, the thought of something Microsoft has a deal with anywhere near me gives me the heebee-jeebees.

NOTE: I sure hope you all found the sarcasm, because I am not a Microsoft lover at all. I am tired of their BS just as much as the next person, but I am also tired of the anti-Microsoft extremists and their simple-minded attitudes. It’s fine to stand up against Microsoft, and those who have deals with Microsoft, but just remember, that is a lot of standing, hope your legs and back are ready for it.

Just come across this link on IRC (thanks patriconway). I could do nothing but chuckle. My buddy who is an avid web developer and avid anti-Linux and Microsoft guy, wet his pants from laughing so hard. Here is the breakdown of how IE is better than Firefox and Chrome, per Microsoft of course:

Security

Internet Explorer 8 takes the cake with better phishing and malware protection, as well as protection from emerging threats.

If this were true, then I guess all of those manufacturers out there creating Anti this and that software are going under. Thanks Microsoft for contributing to the destabilization of the economy. Maybe this is true, but only so because IE really has to worry about these sort of things far more than either Firefox and Chrome does.

Privacy

InPrivate Browsing and InPrivate Filtering help Internet Explorer 8 claim privacy victory.

Prove it! Put up or shut up, let us see your code! Until then, this is nothing more than a marketing gimmick which the FCC should attack with their whole Truth-in-Marketing bull hockey.

Ease of Use

Features like Accelerators, Web Slices and Visual Search Suggestions make Internet Explorer 8 easiest to use.

Oh my, just asked my mom how she likes the Accelerators, Web Slices, and Visual Search Suggestions in Internet Explorer 8. Her response? “I use Firefox now because I couldn’t play Yahoo Games with IE 8 and it kept crashing.” I guess if all you have to do is click that funky ‘e’ on the desktop over and over, then that is pretty easy.

Web Standards
No need to quote it, they pretty much say, “Hey, who cares about CSS 3, we are making IE8 world-class with CSS 2.1″ Though they admit that Firefox and Chrome have more support for emerging standards such as HTML5 and CSS3. You know, the future of the web, that’s what Firefox and Chrome care about now. So when HTML5 and CSS3 become mainstream, you IE8 users will be stuck utilizing, yet again, a useless browser.

Developer Tools
No quoting, but IE8 has the advantage with tools like HTML, CSS and Javascript debugging right in the box. Ya, they got Firefox beat out of the box, but Firebug is far superior to their tools, my opinion of course, and it seems like the opinions of others as well. Oh, and I am sure Chrome will have these features in the future, you know, like when it is READY TO BE USED BY THE MASSES!

Reliability

Only Internet Explorer 8 has both tab isolation and crash recovery features; Firefox and Chrome have one or the other.

I guess this is kind of true, as Firefox only has the recovery portion, and Chrome has the tab isolation (does Chrome have crash recovery?). But! Of course there is a but. Using these 2 features as your reliability foundation isn’t saying much. “What mom? You had to click on the ‘e’ again because it just closed?” I really wish she would use Ubuntu!

Customizability

Sure, Firefox may win in sheer number of add-ons, but manyy of the customizations you’d want to download for Firefox are already a part of Internet Explorer 8 – right out of the box.

Weather alerts? User Scripts? OK, it isn’t customizable enough for me, but I guess it is for dear ol’ mum.

Compatibility

Internet Explorer 8 is more compatible with more sites on the Internet than any other browser.

Well, IE 8 is of course 2 browsers in 1. When it doesn’t work in IE8, which is most of the time, you go to “Compatibility Mode” which is IE7 and hope that it works there. When it doesn’t, fire up Firefox, it will work then. This really is a lie of course, and if it were true, it isn’t saying much. What you just said is, “Hey, we have a bunch of uneducated code monkeys writing IE only websites.” I would really love to see the proof in this one.

Manageability

Neither Firefox nor Chrome provide guidance or enterprise tools.

Umm, OK. Have no idea what they are really referring to, but the suits up at AIG just said, “OH WOW! We gotta get IE8, they said enterprise.” Oh wait, sorry about that, the suits in AIG are all gone, my bad.

Performance

Knowing the top speed of a car doesn’t tell you how fast you can drive in rush hour. To actually see the difference in page loads between all three browsers, you need slow-motion video. This one’s also a tie.

Yay, you just proved that the other 2 browsers are bloated, slow as all hell, garbage. Oh ya, consumers who are out to buy a fast car don’t worry about top speed, they worry about how fast they can get through rush hour. Come to Chicago, your browser will be just like the parking lots we call highways. And here in Chicago, fast automobiles are useless if they don’t get 30+ miles per gallon. We like a bit of efficiency with our speed, and we want to make sure that it will last us a few years too. To bad you can’t say speed, efficiency, and last a few years when it comes to IE 8, or Firefox or Chrome really.

<end satire>

Yes, I just wanted to have a little writing fun right now and maybe put some humor out there as my day in Chicago thus far has been nothing but severe weather I am scared, somebody hold me! What I find interesting is the fact they compared themselves to just Firefox and Chrome. Of course Firefox is #2 in browser land, but what about #3? Isn’t that Safari?

I say we all do our own comparison, really dig into the code and find out who is really the better browser. Uh oh, I just disqualified IE from this comparison, can’t dig into the code and see if they are really telling the truth, or just spewing buzz word here or there. I really wish that consumers were a bit educated and realized that 99.9% of the time, they are being lied to. So, if you just happen to run across this post trying to figure out Accelerators, Web Slices, and Visual Search Suggestions, then let me teach you about alternative choices. There is:

• Firefox (duh, we know that already)
• Chrome
• Konqueror
• and others…

I am sure many of you have heard the quote, “Gentoo is for Ricers.” For those of you who are unfamiliar with the word ricer, here is what Urban Dictionary says about it:

A person who makes unecessary modifications to their most often import car (hence the term “rice”) to make it (mostly make it look) faster.

There is also a list of these unecessary modifications and one such modification is:

• Lots of after-market company stickers they don’t have parts from, but must be cool

Here in Chicago we see a lot of these, and they are typically slammed with stickers, more than the hideous Red Bull Cars we see driving around here quite a bit.

OK, so I am hitting on the stickers portion of this, because yes you can make all kinds of modifications to Gentoo, but they typically are not useless modifications, so lets just concentrate on the stickers. Well, I had noticed at a recent open source event here in Chicago, the people who were using Gentoo on their laptops didn’t have stickers plastered all over them, and those with Ubuntu did. Odd, you would almost think that Ubuntu was for Ricers.

Just to prove this, here is a query I did on Flickr:

• Gentoo laptop stickers
• Ubuntu laptop stickers

And the results:

• We found 2 results matching gentoo and laptop and stickers.
• We found 112 results matching ubuntu and laptop and stickers

What a huge difference!

I meant to blog this back in December after UDS, because I had witnessed more stickers per square inch on many laptops, most notably Jono Bacon’s laptop. People always say I have a lot of stickers on my laptop too, which I do.

Anyways, this useless post was to let everyone know that I have just busted the Gentoo is for Ricers stereotype. Now that this post is finished, I want to see some groovy laptop stickers. Link me to them. I did find one on Flickr with a Notice to Law Enforcement that was totally great, but I can’t find it now.

Seeing as Jorge just posted on his blog, titled Induction time, I figured I would go ahead and respond to it with a blog post of my own so people will understand better.

There are many amazing teams within the Ubuntu community and all of them deserve an honourable mention. However, I feel that if there was one person to choose, that would be easy. It would be me. I have been in this community now for close to 4 years and never has anyone said thank you or congratulations. It is like I don’t even exist. I have done more work in 1 hour than the entire community has done since Ubuntu first came out, yet you don’t see my picture on the Hall of Fame. Call me conceited if you will, but I think I should be the only person on the HOF, and everyone who has an LP account needs to thank me, hell even if you don’t have an LP account you need to thank me. If it weren’t for me Mark would be broke right now. I am sitting here, unemployed, trying to find work, and people don’t care. I have done so much for this community and all I get is a free download? Ooh, free updates! Wow no virus’ to worry about. As I sit here, writing this post, I am looking into my mirror that is above my computer, looking at myself and seeing just how beautiful I really am.

With that said, Happy April Fool’s Day! So I do believe that everyone who partakes in the community, whether it is doing something like telling your friends and family about Ubuntu, or doing Kernel development, you deserve a spot in the Ubuntu Hall Of Fame. I have a lot of people I would like to recommend, however I need to choose just one at this time. As many of you know I am a part of the Ubuntu Chicago LoCo Team and tried to really make it as successful as possible. A lot of times I feel that I have failed in achieving this, however there was always one person who was there every time to make it work. And because of this, as well as his awesome work he is doing with the Xubuntu team, I have to choose, my good friend, Jim Campbell. Jim has been doing amazing work and really did a fantastic job with putting the Ubuntu Global Bug Jam together for Chicago. Right now he is working on getting the release party in order which means it will totally rock. Jim’s commitment to not only Ubuntu Chicago, Xubuntu, and the Ubuntu community make him eligible, but it is his commitment to excellence that really make him stand out among the crowd. He works hard and he plays hard, and is by far one of the coolest cats you could ever meet.

So as we say in the United States Navy, Bravo Zulu Jim on a job well done!

I received one of those emails today from a friend, you know one of those “pass this on to 3 friends for good luck” deals? Well, this one was actually kind of funny, so instead of emailing 3 of you poor saps, I figured I would pass it on to millions of you These are actually pretty funny, and I know you will get a few chuckles from them, so enjoy!

• If you have sex with a prostitute against her will, is it considered rape or shoplifting?
• Can you cry under water?
• How important does a person have to be before they are considered assassinated instead of just murdered?
• Why do you have to ‘put your two cents in’… but it’s only a ‘penny for your thoughts’? Where’s that extra penny going to?
• Once you’re in heaven, do you get stuck wearing the clothes you were buried in for eternity?
• Why does a round pizza come in a square box?
• What disease did cured ham actually have?
• How is it that we put man on the moon before we figured out it would be a good idea to put wheels on luggage?
• Why is it that people say they ’slept like a baby’ when babies wake up like every two hours?
• If a deaf person has to go to court, is it still called a hearing?
• Why are you IN a movie, but you’re ON TV?
• Why do people pay to go up tall buildings and then put money in binoculars to look at things on the ground?
• Why do doctors leave the room while you change? They’re going to see you naked anyway.
• Why is ‘bra’ singular and ‘panties’ plural?
• Why do toasters always have a setting that burns the toast to a horrible crisp, which no decent human being would eat?
• If Jimmy cracks corn and no one cares, why is there a stupid song about him?
• If the professor on Gilligan’s Island can make a radio out of a coconut, why can’t he fix a hole in a boat?
• Why does Goofy stand erect while Pluto remains on all fours? They’re both dogs!
• If Wile E. Coyote had enough money to buy all that ACME crap, why didn’t he just buy dinner?
• If corn oil is made from corn, and vegetable oil is made from vegetables, what is baby oil made from?
• If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?
• Do the Alphabet song and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star have the same tune?
• Why did you just try singing the two songs above?
• Why do they call it an asteroid when it’s outside the hemisphere, but call it a hemorrhoid when it’s in your butt?
• Did you ever notice that when you blow in a dog’s face, he gets mad at you, but when you take him for a car ride, he sticks his head out the window?
• Why do we press harder on a remote control when we know the batteries are getting dead?
• Why do banks charge a fee on ‘insufficient funds’ when they know there is not enough money?
• Why does someone believe you when you say there are four billion stars, but check when you say the paint is wet?
• Why do they use sterilized needles for death by lethal injection?
• Why doesn’t Tarzan have a beard?
• Why does Superman stop bullets with his chest, but ducks when you throw a revolver at him?
• Why do Kamikaze pilots wear helmets?
• Whose idea was it to put an ‘S’ in the word ‘lisp’?
• If people evolved from apes, why are there still apes?
• Why is it that no matter what color bubble bath you use the bubbles are always white?
• Is there ever a day that mattresses are not on sale?
• Why do people constantly return to the refrigerator with hopes that something new to eat will have materialized?
• Why do people keep running over a string a dozen times with their vacuum cleaner, then reach down, pick it up, examine it, then put it down to give the vacuum one more chance?
• Why is it that no plastic bag will open from the end on your first try?
• How do those dead bugs get into those enclosed light fixtures?
• When we are in the supermarket and someone rams our ankle with a shopping cart then apologizes for doing so, why do we say, ‘It’s all right?’ Well, it isn’t all right, so why don’t we say, ‘That really hurt, why don’t you watch where you’re going?’
• Why is it that whenever you attempt to catch something that’s falling off the table you always manage to knock something else over?
• In winter why do we try to keep the house as warm as it was in summer when we complained about the heat?
• How come you never hear father-in-law jokes?
• The statistics on sanity is that one out of every four persons are suffering from some sort of mental illness. Think of your three best friends — if they’re okay, then it’s you.

The other day I met a friend of mine who is in from Austin for dinner. We are LUG buds, so after a typical LUG meeting we would crash the local Fry’s Electronics. Well, the other night when we crashed Fry’s Electronics, we ran into 2 funny things there.

Yes, programming Ajax will lead to depression!

Yes, this little dog will do it to your USB port, not your leg!