Yeah, I’ve never really liked MSN, but today I finally felt I had enough. 9 out of 10 messages that I try to send never get sent due to “timeouts” or some other cockamamie bullshit Microsoft cooks up.

So, basically, MSN (or Windows Live Messenger or whatever the hell Microsoft has rebranded it as today) is dead to me. I never liked it, I only used it for those people who I consider friends and who insisted on using this braindead protocol for communication. I don’t really care if it’s that I use a third-party client or not, as far as I’m concerned that shouldn’t be an issue and if Microsoft are (once again) trying to abuse their property to lock users in, then I’m not having any of that.

So, if you contact me and get no reply: it’s not me. It’s Microsofts mess of an IM-protocol. Get me on ICQ or give me an old-fashioned phonecall. Either is preferable.

In the future I’m going to merge all my IM to Jabber, but that’ll be a while

… or, how I’d rather have my eyes gouged out by scalding irons than use it again.

I deleted my Windows-partition a few weeks ago when I had finished playing through the games I wanted to try out. Recently I felt another hankering for some gaming-action and decided to reinstall Windows. This time though I went for the 64-bit version of Windows Vista, thinking that I should do it properly. Or whatever. Mostly I just wanted to see if there was such a huge difference in Crysis between DX9 and DX10.

Well, anyways. After moving around some drives I popped the disc in the drive and proceeded to install. The installation is fairly straightforward, essentially as dumb as the XP-install but at least it’s prettier to look at. Partitioning is a bit smoother though, although as usual the way of thinking in Windows is somewhat backward.

After some reboots there was some information that needed to be input. Create a user, etc etc. Then, for some inexplicable reason Windows decided it was time to do the Windows Performance Benchmark or whatever it’s called. Stupid, since I was running on stock-drivers and all that. There’s no way of skipping it though, so I just rolled my thumbs and waited.

Until a minute or so later when it bluescreened. Something about the memory controller. I sighed and waited until it rebooted by it’s own volition.

When it started up again I was greeted by the create-a-user request. However, my chosen username was apparently already taken, so I created another. This time it didn’t do the Windows Performance-whatever thing since I guess it had already been checked off somewhere inside the corridors as “done”. A moment later I was looking at the login-screen. On screen were two icons with my first username and then my second one.

Before I continue, let me say now that I hate that login-screen. First off, it looks like it was designed by Mimi from the Drew Carey Show. It’s garish, it’s loud and it takes itself way too seriously. Secondly, whoever thought it would be neat to have an icon to click on and then forcing the user to type the password is stupid. Logging in takes twice as long since you have to flail your arms around your desk as if you were on fire. And as you will find out, I had to look at it a lot, which annoyed me even further.

I felt adventurous and clicked my original username. You know, the one I created first and then followed with a nice ol’ BSOD. I clicked it, punched the password, was greeted with a message as to how Windows was “preparing my desktop” and then for no good reason the computer rebooted. I sarcastically remarked to myself that it was impressive how Microsoft had managed to emulate the look and feel of a BIOS-bootscreen.

Next time around I clicked the secondary username. This time I was not greeted with a reboot, but instead the desktop appeared. Of course, “appeared” isn’t a proper description. Jerked itself onto the screen is probably a more accurate metaphor. It was in glorious 800×600, and everything was the size of Montana. I downloaded and installed drivers for my Audigy2 ZS and 9600GT and then rebooted. Now the login-screen was in a more human resolution.

I logged in and was greeted with the amusing effect that my monitor went into standby. Weird. It made it rather difficult to troubleshoot as well, since I was effectively blind. After a reboot into Ubuntu and some brief googling I found others with the same problem. Apparently Windows or the Nvidia-driver or whichever sometimes got confused as to what port the primary monitor was plugged in. The work-around was to move the monitor to another DVI-port. I tried it, no dice. On a whim I unplugged my TV-out and after a hard reset (ouch!) I could control my own computer again. Apparently Windows though the TV-out was the primary monitor.

Then the fun really began. I installed some basic applications and for every one of them I was hassled with a barrage of “Are you sure you want to do this?”-type questions. I guess some were UAC-related, others were, well, I don’t know why they insisted on popping up for no good reason. Either way they were extremely annoying. It was a little odd as well when I double-clicked a folder and found myself staring at another bluescreen. This time it was the good old “page fault in non-paged area” which was an old buddy of mine. I think every computer I’ve owned for the last 8 years has seen that BSOD happen.

I wasn’t particularly impressed by Aero either. It felt too frail, and after having used Compiz Fusion for almost a year I wasn’t very impressed by any of the effects either. I felt rather constricted by being limited to one desktop; often I would ctrl-alt-left to try to find another desktop, then remember that yeah, Windows still didn’t have that feature. I felt that the whole Vista-experience must be similar to being at a brazilian carnival for mentally retarded people. Everything is dressed in bright, gaudy colors while loud music and sound-effects play, and everyone shouts stupid and obvious questions at you.

“ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DRINK THAT? YES/NO/CANCEL. DO YOU WANT TO OPEN THIS DOOR? ALLOW/CANCEL”

And so forth, and so on.

Moving right along. I started installing Crysis. It took forever. I swear, it went less than a quarter of the speed that the same install took under XP on the exact same machine.

To top it all off, I got another bluescreen. This time it complained about something else, I really didn’t pay attention any longer. Instead I pushed reset and booted into Ubuntu, laughing at myself for the folly of even trying this. Tomorrow I’ll instead install XP strictly for gaming, and never again bother with anything else.

Bill, let me give you some advice. I know you don’t give a rats ass about me, but let me suggest that you and your soul-crushing company just bury Vista already. It’s been more than a year, and the Wow hasn’t started yet. It’s been more like “Why?” than Wow. Just bury Vista, pretend it never happened, pay off whatever people are going to sue you, don’t listen to the fanboys, and simply stick your head in the sand over the whole dang thing. Bill, listen to what an old friend of mine has to say:

(slightly paraphrased)

“Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Source.”

The other day Gartner published a warning that Windows will collapse unless something dramatic is done on Microsofts part.

Let me correct that statement: Windows has been collapsing for years, and Microsoft knows it. They also know that they’re screwed either way, and have so far been sticking their heads in the sand trying to ignore reality.

See, regardless of what Microsoft tries to tell you, they’re selling a product that is a legacy-system. They retired most of the Windows 95-codebase after Windows ME proved to be a spectacular failure in every department, but most of Windows XP, Windows 2000 and I would assume quite a lot of Windows Vista’s collective codebases date back more than a decade, back to Windows NT.

Since 2001 when Windows XP was launched, every release since then has basically just been another spit-n-shine polish of the old Windows NT-codebase. Sure, they’ve tacked on some new bits, but the core dates back to around 1996. Don’t be fooled by Vista either, even though Microsoft likes to hint at Vista being a complete rewrite (thus attempting to explain away the extended birthing process) it isn’t. It’s another legacy-OS dressed up with new clothing.

Windows has been falling apart for a decade. The only thing it’s really bored into peoples consciousness is that Windows is unreliable. By extension, this has caused a deep, almost subconscious feeling in the human population that computers are unreliable regardless of what system they’re running.

What Gartner suggests is that Microsoft is going to have to do a complete overhaul of the Windows codebase, or face complete and utter failure in every department. They point to the extended process behind Vista combined with it’s failure to live up to the hype as reasons why this is needed. Vista took a long time to develop. A long, long, long time. It required at least one complete restart of the project (that we know of, there might be others that Microsoft is black-bagging) and yet the reception to the new version can’t be described as anything more than lukewarm. And I’m being somewhat generous in that description.

Why did Vista take so long to produce? Simple. The codebase has become an unmaintainable jungle, and every effort to make it straighten up and fly right is failing. This is also reflected in Vistas much less than stellar performance. Even on powerful computers it limps along and is having a hard time keeping up with it’s much older cousin Windows XP.

Additionally, while a lot of people are quick to defend Microsoft using Windows XP’s success as an example, we need to remember what Windows XP was like when it was young. It was a temperamental beast lacking most of the hype that we were promised. Sure, it didn’t take six years to reach the market. But it took six years and thousands of patches, driver updates and general tweaking to get it to where it is today. It’ll probably take another six years of applying tough love to Vista to get it even remotely into shape.

“Why yes, this is the size of the Windows codebase!”

So, suppose that Microsoft actually bites the bullet and decides to overhaul Windows. It will take them years upon years to rebuild a new codebase that comes even close to delivering what people are expecting these days.

Apple is a good example of what Microsoft is going to have to do. Apples MacOS was failing miserably when it depended on the legacy of what’s now called MacOS Classic. Versions 8 and 9 were miserable and not well-received by the users. Apple did bite the bullet and did a complete overhaul of MacOS. It took a long time, a lot of work, and a lot of inventiveness but Apple now has an operating system that is flexible, robust, well-performing and scalable. All the things that Windows badly needs. MacOS can be scaled down to run on a cellphone, and it can be scaled up to run on supercomputers.

— Lots of semi-technical mumbo-jumbo starts here—

Along the road Apple had to make a lot of tough choices. Not too long ago there was an uproar about how Adobe isn’t going to ship a 64-bit Photoshop-version for Mac. This has it’s base in Apple deciding to not support Carbon, the API that Adobe has used to make Photoshop under OS X, in 64-bit environments. Carbon is one of the five API’s in OS X, and it was originally only meant as a transitional API. This was since a lot of companies (including Adobe) complained about having to port their existing codebase to Cocoa, the preferred API in OS X. Thus, Carbon was born, with the intention of retiring it when companies had gotten their codebases up to speed. Adobe never bothered, and now that Carbon is becoming history, Adobe has to rewrite Photoshop to use Cocoa in order to produce a long-awaited 64-bit version of Photoshop, which they originally should’ve done years ago. Apple made a tough choice deciding not to support Carbon under 64-bit systems, but it’ll be a choice that will prove fortuitous in the long run.

(Disclaimer: I’m not an Apple, Photoshop, OS X, Carbon/Cocoa or Adobe-expert. So any errors are simply my own)

— Lots of semi-technical mumbo-jumbo ends here—

This is a much simplifed example of one tough choice Apple had to make. Apple realized they’d had to do a complete overhaul, or go under when the ship sank. Microsoft is going to have to do the same thing - a complete rebirth of Windows with a brand-new codebase and a completely new approach to operating systems. They can no longer rely on their old codebase.

The difference here is that Microsoft will probably be screwed no matter what they do. If they decide to do a complete rewrite there will probably be at least a decade before we see a new Windows. Even then I doubt it will be a mature product. Think of it as being in a car-crash, damaging your brain and then having to learn to walk all over again. That’s what Microsoft is going to have to do. They can no longer rely on their previous knowledge (i.e. codebase) and will have to start from scratch.

Apple didn’t really have anything to lose. Instead they had everything to win by doing this. In 1997-1998, Apple was a dying company, desperately trying to find their way again. Microsoft on the other hand has everything to lose, and very little to gain. While they’re busy re-creating Windows from scratch they will lose customers. Apple is coming strong, with fairly innovative and high-quality products, at least considering they’re a corporation with profit-margins. On the other side of the forest are the hungry Free/Open Source systems. Linux is just as scalable, powerful and flexible as OS X - if not more. The big difference is that anyone can install Linux, without paying a dime, and without annoyances common in the Microsoft-sphere. No viruses, no firewalls, no rootkits, no NSA-backdoors into your computer, no EULAs and no trouble.

On the other hand, if Microsoft insists on continuing to re-use the existing Windows-codebase the problems will persist. Windows of the future will be an even worse, virus-infected, unstable thing. Microsoft will spend billions of dollars trying to reign in their legacy-code, spend fortunes trying to get it under control - and fail spectacularly.

Microsoft is damned if they do, and damned if they don’t. Either way, I think that the future of software and computing will be radically different.

I thought up a tricky question for myself. It’s a doozy, and there’s really no good answer to it.

But I asked myself, if I had to decide on the one thing I dislike the most about Microsoft, what would that be?

There’s a lot of things I dislike about Microsoft. Tons of it. If I made a “top ten list of things I think sucks about the beast in Redmond” it wouldn’t be a top-ten list. It’d be more like a top one-hundred list. And even then I’d not manage to fully divulge my distaste for the Borg Collective.

But deciding on just one thing, now that’s tricky. The winner. Numero uno. The big enchilada.

I might say that their products are crap. But that’s a bit like saying the sky is blue or water is wet. It’s kinda redundant. I could say that every time Bill Gates says something, his smug voice makes me want to puke all over him. But that’s more a personal opinion rather than something profoundly sucky. He just happens to have a really annoying voice.

I might point out their predatory, extend-and-embrace practices, their gobbling up of smaller, more inventive companies who we never hear from again. I could point out Microsofts constant dropping of the ball, and always being four or five years late for the party yet pouring money all over everything and suddenly making it seem like they were the hosts of the party to begin with.

Again though, that’s really just stating the obvious.

No, if I have to decide on the one thing that really irks me the most about the Borg Collective, it would be that they for some reason always manage to sell The Next Big Thing rather than some real product.

Last night I was having a hard time falling asleep, and as is customary with me then I start thinking. Roughly 98% of the thoughts sloshing around inside my head are essentially brainfarts, but every once in a while something insightful comes along and shines a light.

Last night I was thinking of that bloated monstrosity Microsoft calls “Vista”. Don’t ask me why I was thinking about it, I can’t give a good answer to that. But while I was lying there in my bed I realized that Microsoft will use their oldest, most trusted tactic to make money off of Vista, even though it was dead on arrival, and even though nothing seems to change this.

This tactic can be summed up in one sentence.

“The next version will fix everything that’s wrong with this one”

That, my friends, is Microsofts oldest and most reliable sales-method. For more than a decade and a half they’ve managed to use this method to sell shitty, proprietary software to a lot of people. They’ve essentially been using it at the very least since the late 80’s. Probably even from the very start of Microsoft.

And when you think of it, it’s actually quite brilliant. No other industry on the face of the planet can use this method.

“Oh, sorry about the explosion in your brand-new car, the one that killed your wife and both your kids. Don’t worry though, the next version will fix that!”

or

“Oops, your house burned down. Well, just have fun in that tent until we release Home 2.0 and then you can pay through your nose to buy the same dang thing all over again!”

If any car-dealer or homebuilder tried that they’d find themselves dangling from the nearest tree. But Microsoft can do it. Microsoft is indirectly acceptable for people losing everything from photos of their kids to data worth millions of dollars every day. Yet they somehow manage to sell the next version even though it’s still vaporware.

Compare Vista with what’s currently known as Windows 7. Windows 7 is the term being bandied about the playground as the next version of Windows. Microsoft makes some very generous claims that it will be out next year and it will be awesome! At least, that’s if you listen to the honeydew that Microsoft pours into your ears.

Vista has floundered in pretty much every area it’s been introduced to. Corporations have wrinkled their nose at it, since it requires a lot of work and a lot of investment in new computers, despite not actually doing anything that corporations need. In fact, Vista is a dead fish as far as most coporations are concerned. XP does most of what they need (i.e. run Office) and that doesn’t warrant an upgrade.

A lot of Joe Generic computer-users out there in the world is rejecting it as well. Even a lot of diehard Microsoft-fanboys are being rather vocal about their less than stellar experiences with Vista. It’s been reported that Vista is a failure compared to what Microsoft was projecting about a year and a half ago. Back then, Vista was the best thing since pre-sliced bread. Now, it’s lying there on the floor, gasping for air.

Which brings me to Windows 7. Of course, it will be named something else when/if it’s released, but for a codename it’s easily the unsexiest ever. Hell, even Vistas codename (Longhorn) was better.

Have you all noticed how Microsoft are revving up their sales-dachshunds and having them yap about Windows 7? I have. And I think Microsoft has opened their vault and brought out ye olde “The Next Version Will Be Awesome!”-sales pitch. Windows 7 is going to be everything that Vista wasn’t. It’s going to be leaner, meaner, modular and bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla.

Whenever I see Microsoft using this technique I somehow wonder if I’m the only sane person in a world gone mad. Am I the only one who has this sneaking suspicion that everything Microsoft produces is intentionally broken, so that they can use this sales-pitch to stay in business? Of course, it’s in a corporations least interest to actually sell products that never wear out, and Microsoft is doing exactly this in the software industry. But it amazes me how everyone has been criticizing their products for seemingly eons, yet when Microsoft shakes The New And Improved Product in their face they can’t open their wallets fast enough.

Why?

Because the Next Version Will Be Perfect.

And so on, and so forth unto infinity. Everyone keeps Bill Gates bank-account well and inflated, while using products that are defective by design.

It was a while since I wrote anything about computers, so I guess it’s about time I got back to being white and nerdy.

Fairly recently I had the good fortune of being able to upgrade my aging and ailing computer. Even though it has served me well for almost a half decade (!) it started to show some cracks in the makeup. Often it had problems booting. Disturbingly often I was met with a black screen when I turned it on, only hearing the fans spin up but nothing more. Sometimes it would restart itself, usually when I was asleep but also sometimes when I was using it. Add to this that pretty much every time I turned it on I had to restore my BIOS-settings since the motherboard interpreted these false-starts as a problem and reset the bios to default, safe values.

It was no surprise that the computer needed upgrading, something that I originally had put off. My original plan was to flat-out refuse to upgrade my computer until I could afford a Mac. This turned out to be a bit unrealistic, and since being Windows-free for a year sorted out my biggest desire to get a Mac (i.e., not having to deal with Windows) I thought that maybe an upgrade of my PC was in order anyways.

Additionally, you get an almost silly amount of computing power for relatively small sums of money these days.

My new components got ordered and arrived a few days later. I went for an AMD Phenom, 4GB of RAM, a BFG Geforce 9600GT and stuck it all on a nice new shiny Gigabyte-motherboard. The Phenom is a quad-core processor, meaning it’s essentially four processors on one chip. I also knew about the so-called TLB-bug which AMD disclosed a while ago, and even though less levelheaded people than me were screaming bloody murder I felt that the hoopla was greatly exaggerated. So far I haven’t had any issues that I directly can relate to the TLB-thing, and I’m running my computer with the bios-fix for it disabled.

Which brings me to why I’m writing this.

Since I now had a rather nice machine I felt that it would be wasted if I didn’t try out the current crop of games. That meant installing Windows, which I somewhat reluctantly did on a separate harddrive. It went as well as could be expected, and once it was installed I got heavily reminded of one of the reasons why I really, really dislike Windows as a concept and as an operating system:

As a user you have no control other than what Microsoft decides to give you. Even that little control is unreliable and not something to count on.

One of the games I wanted to try out was the new SimCity game. I installed it, and when I tried starting it nothing happened. No error message, no crash-report. Nothing. Zip. Nada. Void. Null. It was as if I’d never clicked the icon.

And I had no way of figuring out what was wrong, because Windows intentionally limits the amount of control you as a user have over your own computer. You have literally no way of figuring out what’s happening behind the scenes of that awful GUI that Microsoft insisted Windows XP needed to have.

In Linux it’s easy. You run the app from a terminal, and it will output what’s going on. If it dies, you can use this to figure out why the app crashed, or even why it didn’t start at all. The same method in Windows will give you nothing.

Another fun moment is when that fullscreen game dies on you. It just freezes, and you sit staring at a pretty yet dead screen. What now? Yeah, normally you would press ctrl-alt-delete to bring up the task manager, but this is a broken method and doesn’t always work. Sometimes Windows just refuses to let this method work, for whatever reasons it might have. The only thing to do then is reach over and press that nice little reset-button on your computer. Then you can feel your life drain away while Windows does scandisking all the while accusing you of not shutting your computer down properly, don’t you know that you should always shut your computer down properly, you silly little user?

In Linux, the GUI is called X11, or X for short. When an application makes X freeze (yes, it happens even under Linux that apps crash or freeze) what do you do? You press control-alt-backspace and X restarts. That’s it. No cold reboots of your computer. No bad sectors on your harddrive. No hidden accusations that you’re a dumb person who needs to be punished.

And, if the worst of the worst happens and the ctrl-alt-backspace thing doesn’t work there’s always a fool-proof way of safely restarting your computer without resorting to pressing the reset-button. This method is called the Magic SysRq-Key and is a part of Linux since several years.

The magic-what key?

Take a gander at your keyboard. You will most likely find it above the number-keypad to the right. It’s labeled “Print Screen” and underneath that label is the second label: SysRq. Most computer users will agree that it’s probably the most useless button on the keybard. Well, at least until Linux found a use for it.

The story behind SysRq is somewhat convoluted. The version I’ve heard was that in the mid-80’s when IBM reigned supreme over the PC market together with Microsoft, Microsoft was planning for a new version of DOS. Apparently this version was going to be the coolest thing since sliced bread, and Microsoft insisted that IBM put an extra key on the keyboard to fully comply with all the awesomeness they were going to put in this new version of DOS. IBM complied and added the SysRq (short for presumably “System Request”). As for that legendary version of DOS that supposedly would change the way we compute… well… the world is still waiting for it.

Linux uses the SysRq-key in a very neat way. It allows you to send low-level commands straight to the kernel. These can be a variety of things, such as telling your computer to unmount all filesystems, ask all running processes to shutdown nicely, or to tell the computer to restart or shut itself down. Harnessing the power of the SysRq-key means a Linux-user will never have a corrupt filesystem, since even if everything he or she sees locks up, the SysRq-key will always obey the commands it is given.

Windows has nothing like this.

When the fecal matter has hit the oscillating unit in Windows, that’s were you’re stuck. Either that or pressing reset and getting implied that you’re a substandard human being who can’t even handle the most basic procedures of computing.

The control you have over Windows is an illusion. It’s a gilded cage without any real control, other than the control you have over the reset-button. When applications fail there’s no way of finding out what’s wrong except to be a programmer and have some complicated set of debugging gear running. Even then there’s no guarantee you’ll figure out what’s wrong.

I resolved my SimCity-issues. How? By completely uninstalling the game, making sure there were no traces of it left anywhere, then reinstalling it. I did this three times and finally it worked. I don’t know what changed, but something did and now it works. I most likely have no way of finding out either what was causing it.

This is just me needing a place to vent about two dumb things. Don’t worry, I’ve got something more philosophical lined up and ready to write about, but in the meantime I need to let off steam about two things.

—

The first dumb thing isn’t a thing, but a man. That man is named Anders Wahlberg and is in charge of IT in Hörby municipality here in Sweden. He recently got named CIO of the Month, and pretty much immediately after having been interviewed several commenters raised the issue that Hörby is exclusively Microsoft-dominated and also that Microsoft sits on the committee that decides on this matter. Many found this rather interesting, also considering that for some reason Hörby has been actively testing new and unreleased Microsoft-software, among them the new Windows Server 2008.

He responded to the criticisms. Or well, first he said that the comments were stupid and that he wouldn’t respond to stupid comments, then he responded anyway. One of the chief criticisms was why Hörby hadn’t invested in Open Source rather than proprietary software. Anders responded that:

Working with IT in a municipality is about finding systems to manage sensitive information, such as patient-journals and information about students in schools. It’s not a game, you can’t rely on open source alone. So we had to choose between Novell and Microsoft. We chose Microsoft.

(Translated by me)

He further goes on saying that the tesing of Windows Server 2008 was because he wanted to keep his IT-crew on their toes, and made some sweeping claim about them always being interested in new software and always ready for a challenge.

Allow me to retort.

First off: not only CAN you rely on open-source alone - you SHOULD rely on open-source alone. Free/Open Source Software might look like a toy because of it’s perceived lack of monetary value and percieved lack of accountability. Many naive persons believe that since there’s no company behind it, there’s no responsibility for the software. This is an illusion that Microsoft is very happy to propagate and nourish. In the real world, Microsoft themselves is very quick to not give you any help at all, unless you have a very, very expensive service contract with them in which case they will jerk you around unnecessarily long and then give you no help at all.

FOSS is accountable. It’s completely transparent and verifiable, as well as modifiable to better suit your needs. There are no guarantees about what goes on behind the pretty Vista-facade, or what happens behind the scenes in your Windows Server 2008. It’s my firm opinion that government counties should invest in Free Software rather than closed, proprietary software. It will save them headache in the long run, and end this stupid tradition of giving money to Microsoft.

Secondly, I’ve known a lot of sysadmins in my days, and if there is one thing they don’t like it’s getting new stuff dumped in their lap and expected to play around with it. Sysadmins are by nature conservative and believe that if things aren’t broken there’s no need to fix it; this goes double in the UNIX/Linux-community. Only the most naive, freshly-baked MCSE will still be willing to play around with new software.

Sysadmins are always overworked and under-equipped. They rarely have the time, interest or motivation to play around with new things when they already devote most of their waking time making sure that the ship doesn’t all of a sudden spring a leak and sink without a trace. Even when they sleep, they often dream of datacenters going down in flames because they weren’t there to make sure the fecal matter didn’t hit the oscillating unit. I imagine that admins in datacenters based on Windows sleep even less and are even more neurotic, since Windows by nature require several times more cuddling with in an Enterprise-environment.

So Anders, I’m completely convinced that you’re just another Microsoft-podperson and I take no stock in anything you say.

—

The second dumb thing actually is a thing. It’s the new phone from SonyEricsson, called the T303. I don’t know if it’s been released yet (and I really don’t care either way) but after reading the specs for the thing it just seems very retarded.

I mean, who in the blue blazes comes up with the great idea to make a phone WITH NO MEMORY and then slap a camera and MP3-player into it and market those two as “features”. Well, alright, the phone has memory - 8 megabytes. With no slot to add flash-memory to it. So those 8MB are what you’re stuck with, and that’s expected to not only hold stuff needed by the phone (such as contacts, phone numbers, ringtones) but also whatever you photograph with the 1.3mpix camera and music you want to listen to.

To quote Ellen Ripley: “Did IQs just drop sharply while I was away?”

I just had a minor epiphany.

Me and Ash just finished watching Death At A Funeral (hysterically funny comedy, definitely recommended) and sat down for some brief mail/blog-checking before bedtime. Normally this includes wading through tons of spam, dutifully sorted as such by SpamAssassin. I get maybe 700 and up to 1000 spam-emails, so a good server-side spamfilter is really a necessity.

The spam I get consists of the usual nonsense. Nigerian kings claiming to need my help, shady people claiming to be online pharmacies equipped to supply me with drugs to enhance my, well… equipment. You know the drill. One of the more common topics of spam also seem to be software. Or rather, supplying me with high-quality commercial software at bargain discount prices. I’m completely convinced however that these sellers actually sell shitty pirated copies at outrageous prices, but none the less it’s a common theme.

The software offered is almost always the same. Microsoft Office, various Adobe-applications, 3D Studio Max and Autocad. The usual fare.

They also offer me Windows XP, in all kinds of real as well as imagined flavours. But the epiphany was that I’ve never seen one of these crap-emails trying to sell me Vista. I wonder how that might be interpreted?

(admittedly, I don’t spend much time actually reading these emails, so it might be that I missed the torrent of mail trying to sell me Vista. We’ll never know.)

Hur många här känner till Microsofts OOXML-format? Inte många, skulle jag tro. Men faktum är att det är viktigt att känna till det.

OOXML är det format som Microsoft använder i senaste Office-versionen. Det är precis som det mesta Microsoft producerar inte bakåtkompatibelt och inte heller kompatibelt med öppna format. Trots namnet (Office Open XML) är det ett slutet format som Microsoft nu bränner mycket krut på att få som en internationell standard.

Tydligen är det inte bara krut som bränns på det. Pengar bränns också, och Microsoft har genom fula metoder sett till att Sverige kommer att rösta för detta korrupta format.

Några dagar innan hade SIS egen arbetsgrupp på tolv personer plötsligt utökats med sju nya företag och samma dag som omröstningen skulle ske hade gruppen fått totalt 23 nya medlemmar. Alla hade de betalat 15.000 kronor för att bli medlemmar i gruppen plus ytterligare 2.000 för medlemskapet i SIS.

Jepp. Microsoft betalade massor med pengar för att få in sina allierade i omröstningen. Av alla företag som fanns med i omröstningen var det bara två som inte var Microsoft-partners.

Är det bara jag som tycker att detta är extremt korrupt? Jag vet att jag inte vill stå bakom Microsoft på något som helst sätt, och definitivt inte deras korrupta format. Läs mer om allt som är fel med OOXML på No to OOXML.

UPPDATERING: SIS har nu ogiltigförklarat omröstningen. Först trodde jag att de tagit sitt förnuft till fånga och insett att den var ogiltig eftersom i princip alla företagen var mutade, men icket. Den ogiltigförklaras eftersom ett av företagen röstade två gånger! Så får man ju inte göra. Men det är tydligen okej att muta de som röstar. Här är SIS pressmeddelande - obs, PDF!

Technorati Tags: korruption, microsoft, ooxml, fusk, omröstning, SIS, standarder

Helt orelaterat till det föregående inlägget kan jag nu glatt meddela att jag inte längre har Windows installerat.

Jag har ju varit i princip helt frälst i Ubuntu sedan Januari då mina “experiment” inleddes. Det som började på prov blev standard rätt fort, och under våren har jag bara bootat om till Windows en handfull gånger. Dessa gånger har alltid blivit så kortvariga som möjligt och har alltid kommit till när jag känt ett sug efter nåt gammalt spel; ett sug som gick över i samma stund som jag kom in i Windows och startade spelet.

Hittils har jag behållit min Windows-installation av ren och skär feghet. Likt en rehab-heroinist kände jag ett tvingande behov att ha det nära trots att jag hatade det och inte använde det. Det har alltid varit ett slags reträttväg som jag aldrig använde, och aldrig skulle använda.

Häromdagen tröttnade jag på att Windows och alla installerade program åt upp diskutrymme som kunde användas smartare. Efter lite omstuvning bland det jag hade på NTFS-partitionerna som jag faktiskt ville ha kvar blev det en snabb och smärtfri ompartitionering, och numera är min dator återigen lika Windows-befriad som 1999-2000 när jag också var Linux-exklusiv.

Jag tror inte heller det finns något som kan få mig tillbaka i Windows på heltid. Inte ens på deltid lyckades det, eftersom jag funnit fria alternativ och lärt mig saker jag förut var för feg för att prova.

Så, till alla Windows-fanboys därute: start your engines.

Eftersom det är ett festligt datum idag (07/07/07) lägger jag upp skärmdump:

Jag är ju fortfarande inne på mitt “tillfälliga” övergivande av Windows. Ett experiment som ursprungligen skulle pågå en vecka eller så. Tidsrymden valdes därför att jag inte var helt säker på att jag skulle kunna bibehålla min produktivitet, men också för att jag var rädd att jag skulle “fega ur” och återgå till den trygga om än frustrerande världen av Windows.

Nu har det experimentet pågått sedan mitten av Januari, och faktum är att jag inte känner något direkt sug efter att titta på Windows igen.

För någon halvtimme sedan kände jag ett sug efter lite NFS: Carbon, och bestämde mig därför att faktiskt boota om till Windows. Windows startade, och såklart gnällde den att det fanns uppdateringar att installera. De flesta uppdateringarna var givetvis säkerhetsuppdateringar, sen fanns det nån liten uppdatering för IE7 och givetvis ville Windows installera om Windows Genuine Advantage så att den kunde “skydda” mig från dessa hemska pirater som försöker stjäla deras produkt. Antivirusprogrammet gnällde att det var föråldrat och krävde att jag skulle hämta senaste versionen - det var tydligen för mycket begärt att den skulle uppdatera sig själv med mer än bara virusdefinitioner. Windows inbyggda brandvägg slog av nån anledning av sig själv under uppstarten, fick sedan panik när den insåg att den var avslagen och slog sedan igång sig själv.

Kort sagt, allt var ungefär som vanligt i Windows-världen.

Jag körde lite NFS: Carbon i några minuter, sen kände jag att jag mättat det lilla behov jag hade. Jag kände mig trött på Windows, trött på idiotin med att ha program som måste informera en om meningslösa saker (Popups med “Allting är bra, du behöver inte oroa dig” tycker jag är ohyggligt irriterande) och överhuvudtaget hela Windows-mentaliteten. Jag längtade tillbaka till Ubuntu där jag inte behöver ett antivirusprogram och där operativsystemet egentligen inte behöver en brandvägg eftersom det inte har portar som är vidöppna för vem som helst som råkar gå förbi.

Men jag måste erkänna att det finns en del saker jag saknar från Windows-världen. Jag saknar Miranda, för GAIM är visserligen en kompetent IM, men den kommer inte riktigt i närheten av Miranda känner jag. Miranda är visserligen FOSS, men utvecklarna har flera gånger sagt att de har inga som helst planer på att själva ägna sig åt en Linux-port. Än så länge har ingen tredje-part heller uttryckt ett intresse av att ägna sig åt det.

Det andra programmet jag saknar är Photoshop, men det kan jag nog fortsätta drömma om i resten av mitt liv.

Jag är också lite irriterad över att Nautilus (den del av Gnome som sköter filhanteringen) är så sabla långsam. Det är inte att den är prestandaslukande - tvärtom. Den är bara trög, helt enkelt. Det känns som att Nautilus skulle behöva sig en rejäl genomgång och optimering. Jämfört med utforskaren i Windows är Nautilus enormt trög, även om den är smidig att använda när man lär sig knepen, samt har en hel del tricks som Utforskaren aldrig kommer att få.

Det här är visserligen bagateller. Jag har anpassat mig riktigt bra och känner ingen förlorad produktivitet i Ubuntu. Snarare tvärtom, jag känner mig friare och mer i harmoni med min dator. Ska bli spännande att se vad Feisty Fawn introducerar när den släpps nu i April.