Aug 29, 2010

The game layer on top of the world

Seth Priebatsch: The game layer on top of the world | Video on TED.com

good talk. In my opinion its important to include games in a lot of things. Games can be a very good motivator for boring tasks like learning or doing displeasing things. I'm sure this one is going to be big in the years to come. But they need to be done right ..

Aug 28, 2010

Good&Bad: Commercial Stuff & Linux

There are a few "new" commercial linux things I wanna point out. They aren't really new but I feel like we are at the start of something here. First hardware with linux preinstalled.

There is system76. They seem to have great systems. Biggest problem there is that they don't ship internationally. I would have bought one years ago if they would. Instead, I had to buy a Dell netbook with Windows on it. Never once booted it up, installed Ubuntu right from the start. Worked very well so far. Back then system76 had laptops with the Ubuntu logo on them, now they only seem to have laptops with their logo. It's a shame, would have loved one with an Ubuntu logo on it.

Even better seems ZaReason and what they offer. I would love to get a Hoverboard X30. In my opinion they should spend a little more money on design. I don't think they look bad, but they could look a bit more shiny. Oh and before I forget about it. The "Open Hardware Warranty" is great, just what I want to have and one of the reasons why I put my desktop PCs together myself.

There are others as well but these two stood out to me. Remember that you can get a linux PC from Dell as well. I am very satisfied with my current Dell netbook. Did come with Windows but works well with Ubuntu so far. Just the WiFi N card (did cost me extra) needs a driver installed. Which tells me to never ever buy anything from Broadcom.

On the commercial Software side there is finally a well looking site that shows you what you can get for linux. The site is LinApp and looks very nice. They have a few great games. And a lot of other software I didn't know existed. In my opinion this is one major reason that linux isn't used (and supported by software companies) more often. There just hasn't been a good place to find quality software. I hope LinApp can fill that gap ...

Aug 25, 2010

Packaging software in Linux (deb)

Ubuntu Linux Tips & Tricks: Is packaging new software hard?

Looks like a good and simple guide to follow for DEB packaging. I just wish there would be a simple wizard styled thing that even automated these few steps. Additionally it should keep a "config" file where it saves my input so I need to set in once for a project. From that point on I just click on "generate deb" and be done with it. Would be awesome! :)

Aug 23, 2010

Good&Bad: Slashdot

The last days I ask myself: What has happened in recent years to slashdot? It has been the best source for interesting news on IT and other Nerdy topics. Nowadays you still have some on slashdot but a lot of good things aren't on it anymore.

It all started about a week ago. I was watching the Linux Action Show (love that show) and they made a few comments in that direction. That got me thinking. Now it seems so obvious to me and I don't know why I didn't see that trend earlier. Likely its because I read slashdot together with a lot of other blogs in my RSS reader since years. So I didn't notice that more and more of the good stories where from other blogs and not from slashdot.

Then the newest Linux Action Show mentioned it again. And I think they are totally right with that. There was a time when it meant something to get slashdotted. This usually meant for most sites that they where down. Slashdot redirected so much traffic to them that the servers just couldn't handle it. I haven't seen that happen in at least a year or two. So I assume they are generating a lot less traffic these days than back in the old days when they still had "News for Nerds & Stuff that matters".

I mean there are things that didn't change like the ugly website style :D. It's been like that as long as I can remember. But then the voting system for news seems new to me. I did see it years ago but never used it or thought about it. But now I think it may be one of the fundamental reasons the news changed on slashdot.

I imagine that in the "early" days there was a very informed audience reading slashdot and suggesting news. From that slashdot emerged as a very good source of news for nerds (and later generally for all tech enthusiasts). Then they switched to this crowd sourced approach to "filter" news. I guess it did work pretty well in these days. But slashdot got more and more popular and more and more people without the needed tech understanding flooded in and voted as well. But they not just voted for what they want to see. They also started to downvote what they didn't understand or just didn't like. I think they should at least remove that downvoting. In my opinion thats just a very bad idea for a site like slashdot (or any other specialized news source that has a lot of opinionated people reading it).

The best thing would be to remove the voting system all together and replace it with a few capable nerds filtering through the news that gets submitted. They should go back to the "old" system that worked well and made them so famous. The crowd just doesn't know about "good" news, they only know about what they like (or dislike). Sadly thats just not the same.

They could influence opinions and direct people to good things that happen in Open Source every day. It makes me sad that they don't use the influence they still have to help Open Source. Instead they are just following the masses like sheeps do...

Aug 16, 2010

Oracle vs. Google, OpenSolaris

I'm asking myself what Oracle thinks is in it for them. I really don't think that even if they win this the end result will be a positive one for them. To my understanding the primary customers of Oracles software are developers and they are pissing of a lot of them right now. They are generating a lot of FUD on their own products.

There are a lot of people blogging about that, and it generally doesn't look like its going anywhere good for Oracle. Even if Google is the "bad" one here it's still a lot of bad PR for Oracle. Bad PR that directly hits Oracles Customers.

I guess it will take years for that lawsuit to settle ...

Aug 9, 2010

Ubuntu Light Themes

An Update to the Ubuntu Light Themes - Canonical Design

I like that a lot. Very nice refinements, can't wait to use that on my desktop.

Aug 8, 2010

Machinarium by Amanita Design

Machinarium Pirate Amnesty

great game for a very low price. only till 12th so go hurry ..