Month: January 2008

Lack of Games for Windows good for Linux?

Posted by DarkJedi – January 31, 2008

It is no secret that Microsoft has gotten itself rather involved in the battle of the consoles, which is waging at the moment between Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft, and has been for a while now. What consoles has brought into this world is a new way of playing games. This, however, has also had another effect… The amount of games that is released for the PC has seriously declined and frankly only MMO’s and console-conversions exists now with a few exceptions. Microsoft claimed that they would return the gaming world to the PC with their “Games for Windows” campaign, but as of yet little to no real effect has been measured. Why did Microsoft make this move?

Well, if you read about why the tech-nerds use Windows and not Linux when it comes down to business has to do with games. Linux simply doesn’t play their games. When we are talking about companies it is something else. They want their applications to work, they want support and they want interoperability. For the nerds, however, games means more. The big question then becomes: What happens to the will of switching to Linux if Windows no longer is a better choice for games? If you can get your games on your console why pay for an operating system you could do without?…

I actually think that this will turn more nerds to Linux than Linux could have done by itself. Why keep a dual boot when you have nothing to do in Windows? If you already have the applications you need on Linux, you don’t have to pay for your operating system and you can play all your games on your console… and you don’t have to hazzle with all the ridiculous copy protection schemes ruining your computer, like you do on your PC. When Linux has the applications you need in your daily work why waste time and money on Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office then?

I think Microsoft needs to put some REAL effort into “Games for Windows” …

A free round …

Posted by DarkJedi – January 30, 2008

For those of you that haven’t switched to Linux yet this article will give you a little insight into the free pleasures of software. Unknown to many are the enormous amount of free quality software available on the Internet. I am not talking about pirating as I despise that act from the bottom of my soul. There is nothing worse than a freeloader who hasn’t even checked out the free alternatives. I have seen my share of freely available copies of Photoshop, 3D Studio MAX, Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows in my time. However, when one really wants good software, but doesn’t want to pay the often ridiculous sums of money software costs the real option is to check out the free alternatives.

The natural answer for many, and one you will hear in lots of forums and community sites, is just install Linux… Well, truth be said: Linux is not for everyone! I use Linux, mainly as a developer, but also sometimes as a main operating system. It has gone a long way, but lacks support of many of the pierces of software common folks get their hands on. When they buy a scanner in their local computer hardware store they will be annoyed when the accompanying software doesn’t run on their operating system, and appalled when their scanner driver doesn’t work directly on Linux, using the step by step manual provided by the company producing the scanner. They doesn’t want to search the Internet for a “clever hack”, they don’t want to recompile the kernel in order to get the proper driver loaded, they can’t just “fucking google it”, they need things to work as described in their step by step guide. For the rest of us, however, Linux offers freedom and is to me a valuable platform for developing software.

However, I also run Windows – and YES, it is a legitimate version… And the first thing I do after I have installed Windows, no matter be it on my own machine or that of a friend, is to install a pack of freely available quality software. This software pack will give you the bare necessities that I feel every computer should have – NOT pirated software! If you are a little pirate, holding that most childish of excuses close to your heart, that software costs too much and therefore is morally legal to copy, then don’t read on… Keep living in that little bubble of yours – my writing won’t get past a lost head like that!

If, however, there are a bit of reason and brain cells left that have evolved past the age of seven then read on…

This article is about the software pack I always start off by installing – If you find just one pierce of software in the article that you find useful it was worth the words. Here is my chosen selection:

  • jZip – People who pirate WinZip doesn’t know what they are missing. That bloated pierce of software is the past. This, instead, is a free pierce of software, based on 7zip, which looks good, handles well and does just what you would expect an archive-program to do.
  • VLC – Every computer need a media player and VLC plays just about every format you can find – removing that annoying sport called “find the right codec pack – without getting caught by a virus or trojan”. VLC has a small memory footprint, does what it is suppose to do and works. It isn’t that big, heavy colossous Windows Media Player. It is simply a media player that does what it is suppose to do: plays media. Worth mentioning here is Miro, which is a Internet-Media Player, that is slowly coming of age. I like Internet TV and this application offers me that – even though it still needs to go a bit lighter on the memory and quicker on the load times.
  • Notepad++ is perhaps the most valuable pierce of software in this collection. Working like a charm, fast and has a ton of features – especially for a spare time developer, who gets himself inspired to code in the strangest of times.
  • InfraRecorder – Every home needs a CD Burner… For backup and data movement naturally! This program does what you would find that the best of the commercial solutions does, only free of charge. And it keeps getting better.
  • xplorer2 – No one can live with the built-in Windows Explorer for long. This will do the trick – and do it properly.
  • musikCube – I used to use WinAmp and have done since some early alpha version. Then I saw iTunes and to this day I still can’t see why people like that pierce of crap software, filled with DRM and vendor-lockin technologies of a memory hog. This program is the beautiful, slick mix of WinAmp and iTunes. Of course in Linux I use the best of the best in music players: amaroK, which is simply mind-blowingly amazing. Worth mentioning is the newcomer, Songbird, which is at this moment a slow, big, memory hog, but is, like Miro, moving towards becoming a fine pierce of Internet-software for music.
  • FireFox – What can I say. Having used Mozilla’s solution since the Mozilla Suite Version 0.7 this is by far the most professional piece of free software you can find. It just works. I am using the latest test-version of 3.0 at the moment and it finally looks to overcome the memory “hoghness” that is creeping into FireFox as of late.
  • Thunderbird – For a simple mail solution it works like a charm. The spam-filtering works, the sorting, searching works, archiving works. It isn’t that big hog on your system that Outlook presents. It can be extended like FireFox into whatever you want it to be. I am looking for to seing some fruits of the Lightning project as I miss the calendar-functionality at the moment.
  • Paint.Net – Why am I not saying GIMP here? Well, because it is not my thing. I like GIMP for some tasks, but for standard non-professional tasks Paint.Net offers a clean user interface and it just keeps getting better. Naturally you could wish for more if you, like me, likes to work on graphics. I, personally, would love to see Pixel open sourced or even better Photogenics HDR, but that is not in the cards at the moment. Does this mean that I would go copy a sample of a better and more professional program, like Photoshop… NO! I will settle for what is available. Worth mentioning to those of you who has a digitizer like me is ArtRage, which is perhaps one of the coolest applications on Earth – with the designed user interface and feel of all time.
  • FileZilla – This freely available piece of open source FTP-client and server is up there competing with the commercial alternatives. Works, isn’t hard on your memory… and easy to use!
  • Miranda IM – I don’t like MSN Messenger, Windows Messenger or all those web-based solutions. I want a small memory footprint, looks of functionality I need, multiple protocols for my messenger, ICQ, etc. profiles and great extendability. Miranda IM offers me just that.. Why settle for less?
  • AVG Anti-Virus – There are a lot of other free alternatives, but this one has a small memory footprint so I use it.
  • Spy-Bot S&D – It is good, it just works… It isn’t the perfect application, but for locating and removing spyware it fits the bill.
  • Comodo Firewall Pro – An excellent free firewall.
  • Foxit Reader – I HATE Adobe Acrobat Reader and the tons of useless features and memory consumtion put into that horrific application. It is suppose to read PDF-files, not cook my breakfast. Foxit does the job, fast, small and free.
  • OpenOffice.org – I have Microsoft Office 2003 legally and I still install this. Why? It isn’t easy on my memory, it isn’t fast, but it works for most of my day to day needs and I really like the idea of supporting ODF, which I find an excellent idea in the first place. Once you get to use OpenOffice.org it will slowly grow on you … Of course in terms of OpenOffice.org most things are slow, considering they haven’t spend that much time of optimizing that application. The future, in my opinion, for OpenOffice.org is bright. They have their work cut out for them, but for a free application this provides you with a lot of features you can use daily.
  • Portable Apps – Everyone today has one or a thousand USB-memory sticks. On those you can put your favorite free aplications that can run directly off the stick. No more situtions where you need your own tools. You always bring them. Most of the applications I have mentioned in this article is available in the portable versions that works on this program directly from your USB memory stick. This is really a must have. Keep your applications close to your heart! Never leave home without them :)

That was the basic application package I always install. You can find links to most of the applications from my blog. Funny thing is that if you get used to these applications you will discover soon that most of them are available on Linux, so once you only use these applications you might as well switch :)

Perhaps another article will go into the more specialized applications I use for for example graphics or development.. We will see :)

Enjoy your free meal!

Greedy Business ™ : Money & Control – Part Three

Posted by DarkJedi – January 5, 2008

In this part we take a look at the technologies that the Greedy Business ™ brought into this world and what have happened to them. Then we are going to discuss the future of the Greedy Business ™. In terms of technologies I am of course thinking of Digital Rights Management or DRM, which was an idea for keeping control of exactly what people did on their computers. First of the idea was introduced as a way of ensuring themselves against piracy. Naturally it didn’t affect piracy the least, or it can be argued that it did in fact even do the opposite. Pirates suddenly offered goods that were far higher quality for the consumer than what the Greedy Business ™ did. When the Greedy Business ™ discovered that their technologies didn’t work they found a different usage for this particular type of technology. Suddenly it was suppose to enforce the rights of the content owners, limiting how people used their computers, and then it quickly became a question of time before the Greedy Business ™ saw it fit to sell the rights you previously had for free now for a large fee. That meant that you no longer could make copies to yourself, in example for your car or on your portable music player, and they even went as far as to claiming that it was now illegal to do so. However, technology was not something that the Greedy Business ™ had any comptence at and their futile attempt at has always gone horribly wrong. In a matter of days or often even before released those technologies were already overruled. An example of their complete incompetence in this field can be seen in a recent case from the MPAA, where they released a toolkit to monitor everything on the universities. This toolkit was not only illegal software to use for the MPAA, but also allowed everyone from the outside to see anything inside the universities – a major security hole. They simply lack a complete understanding of the world of IT and could be outmanuevred by a nine year old in most fields of expertise here.

What they completely failed to understand was that DRM in fact had an impact – it was just a negative one. One example is the PC gaming market, which is slowly being killed by DRM technologies. So what the Greedy Business ™ is actually doing with their technology is ruining their future markets and offering an ideal situation for the pirates. Why they couldn’t see this is beyond my understanding. My guess is that they simply wasn’t ready to accept that their old way of distributing, which has not seen change in more than 25-30 years, was threatened and they needed to renew. This is seen clearly in the way the Greedy Business ™ have handled every new attempt at a renewed digital distribution model, which they have been extremely efficient at overtaxing and overlicensing.

While they were busy shooting down every alternative they got and kept throwing bad technologies that took basic rights from the digital consumer it soon became apparent to everyone but the Greedy Business ™ that this might backfire big time. You can’t expect consumers to keep buying your products when you are screwing their rights, their computers, their products and then suing them all the time… Most people would understand that! Of course what you would do if you lived in Nazi germany in the 1940′ies and had such a situation is to create your own news and create fake facts wrapped in propaganda, so that is exactly what the Greedy Business ™ are doing. The funny thing about this propaganda campaign, that is suppose to take the heat out of the consumer backlash, is that it actually admits that the RIAA and the entire music business is not giving the consumer what it wants.

Meanwhile the loathing of DRM continues around the world. Still it is only at the consumer level. Governments doesn’t understand the problem. They can’t see why DRM will never work, as their understanding of IT and technology in general is as fair behind as the Greedy Business ™ are, which means that governments in general buy the crap that the Greedy Business ™ are saying. Even after the complete fiasco of Sony’s rootkit, with another one on the way, they still allow themselves to be taking around the bush by the Greedy Business ™’s lobbyist. Of course you cannot expect every educated human to be as stupid as most politicians and therefore IFPI’s sad attempt at trying to extort the universities into teaching only the view of IFPI is going horribly wrong. They somehow can’t see the problem of making this non factual propaganda in schools as a problem – maybe we should send the entire Greedy Business ™ to China and let them see what the outcome of onesided brainwash is? And it is not the only place where they try to push their incorrect perception of the world and their propaganda into. Report after report, filled with incorrect statistics and erranous analysis on the “losses” caused by piracy comes out of the Greedy Business ™ press month after month.

As of late though an entirely different problem is hitting the Greedy Business ™. The musicians, whom they represent, have had enough of suing their own fans and incapacitated fan’s computers with badly made DRM. Sir Paul McCartney has already spoken up, talked about the many problems that the industry is facing and how they acted completely wrong, when faced with such challenges. You can even hear rock stars claiming that the fight against piracy was already lost in 1997, but they are still fighting it like it was 1997 and with that use of DRM they will just create enemies for themselves. With the artificial high prices customers are forced to pay for inferior products, filled with DRM, they will turn to piracy. Especially since pirates have understood how to make it available and easy to get – even for people who are not technic minded. The band, NiN, also agrees that the prices of CDs are simply too high and that people should pirate their songs! This is a bold statement, but there is a hint of truth in it. Compare the investments in making a full motion film to that of making a CD album. There are far many more people involved in the film and it takes far longer, requires far more equipment, and still the price of the two products are almost the same, when comparing a CD with a DVD – why? While it may be a bold statement by NiN Radiohead took it a step further and went public with their latest album without a record label and even let their fans decide what they wanted to pay for the album! Claims are that Radiohead has already earned around 6-10 million dollars on this distribution model – and they don’t have to share it with a thousand and one lobbyist, lawyer or boss at the Greedy Business ™.

Well, why don’t the big four then start to sell music without DRM? According to some stores DRM-free music outsells the protected tunes in a ratio of four to one… Fear, I guess! It took a company in trouble to see the light… EMI, when faced with dire economical problems and no buyer, needed to get a foothold in this new reality. Suddenly they began to understand that the future is digital and depending on CD sales will ultimately fail. Out of the blue comes the initiative… Suddenly Apple is offering DRM-free tunes on iTunes – rocking the boat again – together with EMI. This suddenly gives EMI an amazing sales boost on iTunes – even on old songs. Amazon cannot lets this go by and soon after signs a deal with EMI, where they want to offer high-quality, DRM-free music. Suddenly Walmart enters this arena as well and now the game is on!

Sony BMG is still sitting behind like a stone, refusing to see reality, like they always have. They are still wingshot at the fact that Apple did with ease what they failed at miserably in retail. Their latest attempt at digital distribution with Crackle is way beyond embarrassing and clearly shows why Sony will never become a software-centric company.

Meanwhile the writings continue on the wall with CD sales continuing to decline and digital music sales continue to rise! This causes the Greedy Business ™ to try and blow an ember of life into their dying goldchild, the CD, but this desperate last attempt already looks like a failure on all counts. What Apple and EMI has begun on iTunes with DRM-free music is already starting to have an affect on the big four… DRM is threatened!

Suddenly Universal shocks by not renewing their iTunes contract, but only to test an alternative way of distributing DRM-free tunes without Apple in charge. The real reason they wanted to leave Apple and iTunes behind is that their greed got the best of them. They wanted a cut of every iPod sold… It is not called the Greedy Business ™ for nothing! They just want higher prices and more money – the only reason they went for DRM-free! The chief of Universal shows just how greedy they have become…

In the meantime the CEO of Warner Brothers suddenl and might I add FINALLY, realizes that their anti-consumer campaign might have helped P2P networks and hurt their own business. Welcome back, sleepy head! This is the first step towards DRM-free tunes from Warner Brothers, and it doesn’t take long before they also went the same way as EMI, leaving Sony as the last of the big four to stay behind on the DRM-only wagon!

After being the last company in the universe to see the light Sony BMG finally yields to pressure and goes DRM-free as well. With Sony into the fields of DRM-free tunes the future for DRM in terms of music is suddenly looking bleak. This could mean that Apple will finally have to relinguish some of their power in the digital music distribution domain, which they have controlled with ease and DRM. I don’t know if the big four made their move out of their deeply burried holes too late, but time will tell..

Of course this is only in the music business – the problem of DRM is still a heavy issue in terms of movie and films, where embarassing moments such as this clearly shows why the amateurishness of DRM needs to go on all fronts! They may not realise it yet, but the writing on the wall is clear. DRM is loosing the battle…

What to expect from the future then? Well, the business could start by looking at what is done right for once. Take a look at what function piracy really fulfills, like using it for giving away free samples, which is a cheap altenative to hyping and expensive marketing! The change is coming, and those that aren’t going with it will die! The business needs to go back and treat customers like customers and do like EMI has done – leave the RIAA/IFPI and start offering people what they want instead! DRM will be gone, perhaps already next summer for music… Now what digitial distribution model will be chosen is too early to say, but it needs to be nurtured, not overtaxed or overlicensed. This will be the salvation for the music business and later the movie and game business… The sooner the companies embrace this change and the future we live in the better they will survive. Times will be difficult – the transition will be hard – but listen to your customers and you will survive! In order to earn money in the future you need to release your control…

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