1. The device itself is expensive, $120 is about the cheapest you’ll find it online.
2. DDR ram is very expensive. Cheapest 1gb sticks you’ll find online cost about $50.
3. Sata I is slow.

Now, around 2006 they showed off the I-RAM 2, it was everything that the I-RAM One wasn’t, and they bloody shelved it. It used Sata II (3.0gbs/s), DDR2 (1gb sticks can be had for $25 each), and supported up to 8gb’s of ram.

Now, why might this be useful? Oh lots of applications. Say you’re an independent web developer, you could easily use an 8gb solid state swap space for handling data or streaming media. Next, your HTPC, streaming large portions of the video through that swap. Putting your /var /tmp and /swap on it for large NAS’s. There are many many lovely uses for it, and Gigabyte shot themselves in the foot on the first go around.

One of the biggest uses I could see, is use in a “poor-man’s data-center” Large solid-state storage and server motherboards with lots of ram are bloody expensive and require ECC ram. A Cheap off the shelf unbuffered solution that totals less than $500 is a bloody steal in comparison. (That’s say $100-150 for the device, and another $200 for 8gb’s of ram, at my $25/gb price, for a total of $300-350). Gigabyte simply needs to actually market it as such.

I can think of one huge potential customer, who makes most of their own servers using cheap off the shelf parts: Google.

And one smaller customer who would love to put it to work in his home NAS: Me.

If you are a student, writer, publisher, or what have you, you should *definitely* be using it. Its so much easier to do type-setting its not even funny.

It took me about 2 hours to go through the included tutorial, after-words, I took an 8 page document I had been writing in a text-editor (not a word processor, think notepad) and within 15 minutes I had it sectioned, sub-sectioned, table of contents, bibliography, etc. All consistently typeset. In fact things like sectioning and cross referencing are handled automagically for you.

For example:
    If you create say…

       Section 1: Farms
          Section 1.1: Cows
          Section 1.2: Chickens
          Section 1.3: Horses
       Section 2: Crops
          ….etc.

And then decide you want to make it look more like this:

    FARMS
          Section 1: Livestock
              Section 1.1: Cows
                    Section 1.1.2: Milk or Meat?
              Section 1.2: Chickens
              Section 1.3: Horses
          Section 2: Crops
              …etc.

You do not have to go back and re-indent, nor do you have to renumber all your sections, LyX handles this automagically for you. Also if you put in cross referencing material like (See Section 1, chapter 1,) And then decided to move Section 1 to be section 2, your cross references would change automagically as well =).

Seriously, this will save you so much time its not funny.

To install LyX on Ubuntu simply type in terminal:
  

sudo aptitude install lyx

Same thing should apply to most other debian based distros (That use the 2.6 kernel) check your repository if you use yum or rpm, for MacOSX and Windows install, check the LyX website (use google ya lazy bum)

Because of a bug in the NVIDIA Binary (which supposedly is going to be fixed this september), compiz-fusion crashes pretty much everything on resume.

First: So the first thing you’ll need to do is update your /etx/X11/xorg.conf and add an

“Option “NvAGP” “1″ line in the “Section “Device”"“

Section "Device"          ...          Option           "NvAGP"          "1" EndSection...

Second: Disable warm-booting and vbe post/save options on resume by editing your /etc/default/acpi-support:

...

# Should we attempt to warm-boot the video hardware  on resume?POST_VIDEO=false

# Should we save and restore state using VESA BIOS Extensions?SAVE_VBE_STATE=false

...

Third: Create a file called 25-compiz-kill.sh in your /etc/acpi/resume.d/ After creating it, type in terminal: sudo chmod 711 /etc/acpi/resume.d/25-compiz-kill.sh

#!/bin/bash#/etc/acpi/resume.d/25-compiz-kill.shkillalll compiz.real

Fourth: Create a file in /etc/acpi/resume.d called 99-compiz-resume.sh
            Then type: sudo chmod 711 99-compiz-resume.sh

Edit this file to have the following

#!/bin/bash#/etc/acpi/resume.d/99-compiz-resume.sh

export DISPLAY=:0.0sudo -H -b -u your_user_id compiz --replace &

And lastly, go into compiz-config settings, under General Options, and Display settings, and uncheck v-sync to blank.

And that’s it =) Now it’s important to note that this only works for 1 user. Which is generally fine for a laptop, I wasn’t able to get it to work with the $USER wildcard. If anyone has improvements to this, please let me know. I’m not very good at scripting so there’s obviously a better solution, but this is a very very simple and direct way to do it, so if your more advanced scripts fail, this is pretty much guaranteed to work.

Edit: Thanks to Andy in comments.

The prevalence of bash shows that mere codification of an open standard does not in itself mean that anyone will actually follow it, and in fact this might be particularly apt when it comes to open source.

While bash of course does have a posix mode, since bash is so common as the default shell, its very uncommon to use it, and its very common to use bashisms (That is, bash specific behavior that does not conform to POSIX sh). The segue in Ubuntu from bash to dash, and the numerous broken scripts that ensued is a bit of a testament to this.

In open source in particular, because the code is available, often the superior choice is readily apparent, whatever the standard might be. This can actually provide a wide impetus for open source coders to move away from the standard because of it, creating a new de-facto standard. While with a proprietary de-facto standard there is more impetus to move toward an open standard because of the unavailability of the code, and inability to make easy (or easier) transitions from one implementation to the next.

With specific regards to the shell, the particular problem with it is the ambiguity as to what /bin/sh really means. And the unique solution actually does rely in having an open standards: create a new POSIX standard to remove the ambiguity of /bin/sh.

We allready have the Shebang, and the fairly common editor encoding line afterwards which is frequently implemented in more and more editors.

Why not create a new comment line which simply defines what /bin/sh means in the context of the script? The shell can read that line before executing the script and simulate or redirect the script to that environment. Therefore, all that would be required to transition your scripts to a new default shell is to add the comment line to the script? Versions of a particular shell that predate this implementation would simply ignore it as a comment, and you could hack the script as is done now. However it certainly makes your scripts more portable among different distros which use different default environments to have this behavior.

So that is, in short, my call for a new posix standard for shell environments.

Essentially, unless you’re physically impaired (and maybe even then) you do not need voice control to work on every aspect of the OS, similarly you do not need it trying to parse input and commands all at once. Taking a lesson from Vim, you should have an input mode, a “command mode”, and perhaps a few more modes. So lets go over an example of what the program might do, comparing it to how I do things in deskbar.

If I want to open up my text editor, I hit alt+F3 and type in text, and it brings me up a list of actions: “Lanch gedit, launch scribes, etc.” all text editors, deskbar also gives me a bunch of other options, such as searching online for text, scrounging through my emails, etc.

With a Voice-deskbar like app, I’d say something along the lines of: “Computer: Open Scribes.”, I’d actually recommend something different from “Computer” such as “Linda” or “Serenity” or something else. Basically it’s a reference to tell the computer you want its attention.

Next you’d have a number of modes: Open, Input, Close, Suspend, Turn Off, Hibernate, Search, Find, Locate, Save, Dictate, Delete, etc. And maybe a visual cue to what “Mode” you’re in. This way, if you told the computer to open Scribes (or Tom Boy), You’d then say “Computer: Input.” and from there
it would save what you had said as voice input into Scribes or Tomboy. Telling it “Computer: Dictate” would instead start the record function, and save your voice as a .ogg file.

As a further example, “Computer: Search Yubnub, gis Firefly” Would search yubnub in firefox and parse: gis Firefly in it (which would in turn tell yubnub to search google image search for firefly. Hence Search is tied to the search engine field in firefox. Find would instead run the Find program in Nautilus, locate would instead use locate or tracker or beagle, respectively.

This is a far more useful application of voice control technology, than attempting to navigate menu items and such which would be better done with either the mouse or the keyboard. And I believe this is actually the right path for voice to take in terms of Human/Computer Interface. E.g., stop trying to do that which is better done by either the mouse or the keyboard.

Edit: Also, instead of using say “Computer” or any other voice command to get the computer’s attention, it could be activated via a modifier key. Such as an unused or seldom used media key, etc.

    You may be wondering what the “Start Button” is, it’s actually a program called Deskbar (I’ve just edited the icon file with my own icon)which in many many if not most ways is far superior to the standard category view style of “Application Menu” which happens to be the first icon after the start menu button. The advantage of the category view is that it’s good when you don’t really have any idea what you’re looking for, or what it’s called, in other words, when you just want to browse through your files. The disadvantage is that when you do know what you’re looking for, it’s slower than finding it via deskbar (especially since deskbar remembers the last dozen or so things you’ve done through it). What I percieve as a duplication of both effort and, to coin a term, “visual mindshare” is having to use two different applications to essentially do the same thing: quickly browse through my applications.

    Instead what would be better is to have an alternate “category” mode for deskbar. It could be brought up either through Ctrl+clicking it, or alt+F4 (instead of the default alt+f3), this would bring up a view similar to the standard Main-menu category view.

    Next, since I’ve taken to converting a few people to ubuntu I’ve taken to doing a couple of things to make their lives easier as new users. I usually leave a text file on their desktop with some very basic instructions of “what does what” and “how to do this” and “what not to do” essentially. This isn’t like the ubuntu guide, but rather a more basic explanation of what some of those strange sounding programs and such do. Another thing I do is immediately install a few Firefox extensions that will make their lives loads easier, as well as change the default UI somewhat. Have a look at my Firefox UI standard:

   
    While I install about 18 extensions (Linkification, 3 for AdBlock Plus, the theme I use above, delicious, stumble-upon, tiny menu, Perma tabs, All in one sidebar (not shown), Download statusbar, FireFTP, Unplug, Down Them All!, Cute Menus SVG, Link Alert, Colorful Tabs, and Faviconize tabs), most of them address things I think are shortcomings in Firefox’s default UI. Permanent Tabs however, is there to make their lives much easier. I immediately create a few permanent tabs: Google Homepage, The Ubuntu Guide, and The Ubuntu Forums (which I create an account for them as well).

    In the text file I leave on their desktop I also leave instructions on how to remove the permanent tabs…with a caveat to please read them first. I wish the Official Ubuntu Book was free to distribute in digital form, as It would be nice to just have that sitting on the desktop of every new ubuntu install as well.

    In my next post I’ll write down (since I lost the version I had been using) a new “super newbie guide”.

    Lets take a look at Ubuntu Studio for a second, since its a specifically packaged version of Ubuntu designed for multi-media professionals. It’s also supremely slickly packaged, in as so many words: It’s cool. There’s no reason Canonical could not roll out a specific hardware, setup, and support platform just targeted to multimedia professionals. And really, with some forethought and development, there’s no reason they could also not create any number of slightly differently packaged versions of Ubuntu offering an end-to-end business solution for any particular market segment.

    They can in fact, offer the whole banana, and nothing more than is necessary. To give you an idea, imagine the following: Ubuntu Kiosk, Ubuntu Finance, Ubuntu Hotels, Ubuntu CRM. In fact, this may be a much more profitable course of them to take rather than solely focusing on the traditional linux server market, and would allow them to penetrate much deeper into business markets than solely offering blanket “Enterprise” solutions.

    To give you an idea, I’ll use something of my own experience. I work currently as a Hotelier, and not only is there essentially no open source in hotels, much of the software in general is actually quite abysmal (Fidelio Express comes to mind in particular). This especially applies to the software which is available to small-chain or non-chain hotels. The larger hotels use PMS (Property Management Systems) which are developed in house. Hyatt actually is using a 20 year old Unix terminal system (It’s actually quite good). If A company were to develop an end to end, open source, property management system (and custom back end paperwork templates and such in excel), they’d do very well at capturing a large segment of the market, and do well capturing lucrative support contracts as well. Even the large chains would likely probably like to drop supporting their in-house software (which is typically either ancient or new and buggy), and focus on running hotels.

    Now getting back to Dell not selling to businesses yet, well, this is to be expected actually. Redhat and Suse both have a very solid business reputation on the server end, while Ubuntu is both a.) brand new, and b.) something of a risk for Dell. In fact it works out to both Canonical’s and Dell’s advantage to have the starting deployment be in consumer desktops only. Canonical can establish its distro as a consumer and user friendly (to the business world, not to the allready converted) OS, as opposed to the perception of other linux distros being for back end techs. Dell essentially takes no risks by testing out Ubuntu in this way, as there would be no business contracts its obligated to support. If I’m not mistaken, even their support offerings are essentially discounted support contracts to Canonical. It also doesn’t risk unnecessarily upsetting the two business partners it already has in the Linux market, and likewise does not overburden itself with too many distro offerings in the same market segments.

    The point being, is this allows Ubuntu to gain mind-share in a way no Linux (or Unix, or BSD, etc.) OS ever has, as a solution for users, and because of that, they will be best positioned to pursue the course I have outlined above.

    Eventually I got around to doing a little cursory research on Ubuntu, and what really appealed to me, more than anything was the philosophy behind Ubuntu, and that had more or less sealed it. The first chance I got, I had decided, I would install and try out Ubuntu. I wasn’t really aware of what a liveCD was at that point, so my first chance became the cheap laptop I purchased. I decided to wipe the XP partition entirely and install Ubuntu, and go at least 30 days without using windows at all. After a few bumps, 30 became 60, 60 became 90, and generally, even though my desktop was more powerful, my wife and I stopped fighting over the desktop, because I was generally no longer interested in it.

    I should also note I wasn’t impressed with what I was hearing about Vista either, I had friends who were using the betas, and it was using 500mb’s of ram doing nothing by itself. I had heard about the DRM, the price, and the incompatibility. The DRM and the insane price were the real kickers, I was determined not to spend anymore money on windows. Not to go through the pain of reinstalls, etc.

    Now to describe the first few days: Everything except one thing worked, right from the install, all the drivers, etc. I was impressed with the number of programs that came installed by default, all for free. The only problem I had was that I had a broadcomm wireless card, that took me about a week to resolve. Mainly for two reasons: A.) Broadcomm does not play nice with linux. B.) I had never ever used linux before. I was a little timid with the command line, and a little clumsy as well. I *did* however get it working. Interestingly, when a piece of hardware didn’t work in windows, I was used to a.) Reinstalling windows, or b.) buying new hardware.

    Incidently I eventually did buy a new wireless card, one with more features, but also because broadcomm card drivers do not survive upgrades well (this is again, the fault of Broadcom, and not Ubuntu or GNU/Linux).

    After getting the wireless to work, it was smooth sailing. My work even already had a samba server, and I was able to figure out how to configure the printers to work off my laptop in about 10 minutes. I got a 3D desktop, a bunch of powerful tools, irc client, multi-chat client, etc. All for free. And I learned more about computers in the first 6 months of using Ubuntu than I had in the previous 8-9 years of using windows.

    Another thing that struck me, is that when a program did have an error, for the first time in my life I actually submitted a bug report, primarily because I had faith that it would actually get fixed. In fact, I’ve submitted bug reports and *seen* them get fixed. To top it all off, the Ubuntu community is the friendliest and most helpful community I’ve ran into on any computer related issue, and they actually make an effort to make instructions “newbie friendly” and non-technical where appropriate.

    A small note about the 3D desktop. It’s actually more powerful than Vista’s Aero effects, and I was able to get it to run on an old Intel Extreme     Graphics II, with 32mb of Video memory, my laptop also originally only had 512mb of ram (I have since upgraded it to 1gb). Vista requires a minimum of 2gb of ram and a 128mb video card to run smoothly. Also my Ubuntu, with several *hundered* programs installed, only took up about 6 gigs. Vista with almost nothing installed takes 24gbs of space. Ubuntu’s default install (which still comes with several hundred programs), takes up only 3gbs.

    Since then, I’ve only had a few minor problems. Once I freaked out because I had lost X (the window manager) I thought I had tanked it, but I used my other computer, and found out, even without X, I could fix my problem. I fixed it, and then immediately installed irssi. Irssi is an irc client that needs no window manager, straight from the console. I think this should actually be installed by default, so that newbies can get live support if they lose X, just my $0.02.

    Also, once I accidently updated to the new distro the wrong way. This was a total meltdown, lost X, lost the console, everything, my drive wouldn’t boot. I freaked, I thought I had corrupted the disk, or at least had to do a complete reinstall, and I had forgot to backup anything. I had homework due later that week on the computer. However, I was able to use a live CD, log back into my hard drive, and repair my bad upgrade. It took me 1 day, without ever having done it before.

    Now a short while later, my wife’s windows desktop (it had become hers by this point) finally totally and completely tanked. The XP disc I had was scratched up and no longer good enough to do an install. She had resisted using linux again and again until this point. I was too broke to spring for another copy of XP, and in any event, I had told her, that since I was no longer using windows, I was going to be less and less able to provide support for later versions of Windows if she continued using it, which would mean more downtime, and more expense. So she agreed to let me install.

    The install on that machine had a little problems with the psuedo-hardware RAID I had, I eventually just disabled it, and she uses the second disk as a backup now. It also had some weird instability during the install process (this was on Dapper Drake), I had to keep moving the mouse about to keep it from locking up (I haven’t had this problem since after dapper drake). She was apprehensive and a bit frustrated for the first few days after I got it installed. However, now she’s thrilled, she plays Second Life, edits things in GIMP and Inkscape, posts to her blogs, chats using Pidgin, browses the web using firefox, etc. And she’s never had to do a system reboot, or run anti-virus, spy-ware removers, etc. She even uses some of her windows apps that she’s still tied to in Wine, which she even learned how to do herself. And she’s been using it less “hardcore” and for less time, than I have.

    We are now a windows free house, and the moment Dell started selling laptops with Ubuntu preinstalled, I bought one, and she got the older one. The Dell Ubuntu has *zero* “issues” with hardware. And it runs beautifully, and its slightly cheaper out the door than a comparable windows version with XP or Vista Home Basic, and much cheaper by far for each other version of windows. And cheaper still when you discount all the proprietary software I haven’t bought.

    In fact, even though Ubuntu has never cost me a dime, and nothing on it has. I am so impressed by it, I have joined the Free Software Foundation, and purchased things from the Ubuntu Store. I’ve passed out LiveCd’s to anyone who wants them, and given advice and support for free. I’ve even been *paid* (without asking for it mind you!) for installing Ubuntu on friend’s computers because they were so impressed.

And that is my Ubuntu story.

Edit: Stupid me, evidently you just have to restart it after adding a blog.