This weekend I picked up the game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic with a $50 Best Buy gift certificate I received from my grandmother, in hopes of playing a quality role playing game. Sadly, word is there are no new Bard's Tale or Dungeons & Dragons Gold Box games on the horizon. I am willing to overlook the crapola Star Wars theme (Star Wars is sci-fi for lemmings) in exchange for a few weeks of role playing action during my leave of absence from work.

I pulled a GeForce2 MX video card from some luser's system a year or so ago. I assumed this would be the best card for the task. Wrong! Downloading the lastest Linux drivers from Nvidia proved only to be a MAJOR disappointment. I was expecting to download a .tgz file, complete with source code. What I got was a crappy install script with only binaries attached. Binaries? For video drivers? I cry foul. Why let my finely tuned -O3 -march=athlon-mp -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer -mfpmath=sse optimizations go to waste?

VERY reluctantly I installed the undoubtedly crippled drivers. It took no less than two hours to track down and compile all the dependencies it needed. Sadly, when all was said and done the game refused to run under WINE because of all things, the CD protection scheme the game utilizes is incompatable.

The fools at Best Buy would not allow me to return the game being I had opened it. Lucky for them the box did not include Linux in it's compatibility list or I would have had a field day at the expense of the cash register whipping-wench I had to deal with.

Now, I must somehow get this load of crap game working under WINE or sell it (well below what I paid) on Ebay. Utter nonsense. Lucas(ret)Arts are too busy porting their crappy games to the DRM-laden Xbox to support the guaranteed revenue generating system that is Linux. There is little doubt they will go out of business if they do not change their tune – and quick. Transgaming is all the proof they need.

One final thing; why do people like this game so much? Star Wars? What a laugh. Give me Ultima III: Exodus over that "use the force" hoopla anyday.

I thank my lucky stars Christmas is over. I received a SMC Barricade 4-Port 11Mbps Wireless Broadband Router as requested. The benefits of writing down specific model numbers and handing them to luddite relatives are infintite. To the nay-sayers, my sister did indeed like her Think Geek t-shirt.

Now the funny part. My numb-nutted 14-year-old cousin recieved a Microsloth X-BOX. After ridiculing him for the better part of an hour I snuck in his room and replaced his home page with the xbox-linux home page.

His father, my uncle, recieved a Dell Digital Jukebox. While I thought the iPod was the devil, the Dell DJ is a cruel joke of some sort. Not only does it look 100x dumber than the iPod (which I once thought was the dumbest looking thing ever created), it plays only one non-standard, propretiatry file format, M$ Windoze Media. Two words: utter crapola.

Well, time to crack chapter one of Linux Device Drivers, 2nd Edition. Jacob out.

Best OS kernel: Linux 2.6.0

    The code that keeps Bill Gate$ up at night. Once Linux was a toy. Now it is a mature, stable operating system. Not to mention it's the death knell for Apple and M$. While people cannot understand that simple fact is beyond me. Oh, I know why -- those people are lemmings.

Best Linux distribution: Gentoo

    Why would one waste CPU cycles on their Pentium 4 processor running code compiled for a P3? I will not put anything on my systems I do not compile myself.

Best Application: emerge

    Never again will I scronge for RPMs or have an outdated system. Perhaps if such a tool was available under Wind0ze there would be no need for the security patch du jour.

Person of the Year: Linus Torvalds

    Person of the year, this year, and every year. He will undoubtedly be remembered in the annals of history as the man who destroyed the evil empire of Redmond.

Worst Hardware: Apple iPod

    $500 for a yuppie-lemming toy that does not even support open standards. I have been know to flip the bird at anyone wearing white earplugs.

Worst OS: Windows Server 2003

    If you want your server hacked and infected with viruses on a daily basis, by all means go the M$ route. Not to mention you will never see a line of operating system code. Who knows what backdoors and security holes lurk in that crappy code? Perhaps if having the NSA rifling through your data nightly is your forte this server is for you.

Allow me to show you something you will never see on a Windoze box.

jacob@mccoy:~$ uptime 12:32:51 up 205 days, 20 min, 1 user, load average: 1.00, 1.00, 1.00

I have done all of my Christmas shopping at thinkgeek.com this year. My Windows-loving sister will be receiving this #!/usr/bin/girl t-shirt whether she likes it or not. I only hope my request for the sendmail Cookbook will be fulfilled.

jacob@uhura:~$ uname -a
Linux uhura 2.6.0 #1 SMP Thu Dec 18 05:36:12 EST 2003 i686 GNU/Linux

I can almost hear the unemployment lines in Redmond, WA filling up as I type. As for Cupertino, CA, those lemmings would work for autographed pictures of Steve Jobs. Well, cultists will be cultists I suppose.

I must apologize for the lack of updates. The delay in 2.6.0 along with all of the mean spirited comments I have been receiving has set me into quite the funk. I have even taken my picture down due to a couple of nasty emails I received regarding my appearance. If it were not for the development of my "fictional" programming language, Loo-Lu, I would be inclined not to post at all.

Perhaps I will go to #Apple and open a proverbial can of whoop-ass on an unsuspecting Mac user to cheer myself up. Yes, that sounds like a plan to me.

test.loo
--------
define animal << >>
define dog from animal
<<
    void speak<void> << write<"Woof\n"> >>
>>
main(void)
<<
    alloc dog as fido
    fido::speak<>
    destroy fido /* poor fido */
>>
--------

jacob@sulu:~/src/loo-lu$ lc -o test test.loo
jacob@sulu:~/src/loo-lu$ ./test
Woof

jacob@sulu:~/src/loo-lu$ ls -l test
-rwxr-xr-x 1 jacob jacob 1598 Dec 15 18:25 test

jacob@sulu:~/src/loo-lu$ ls -l test-c
-rwxr-xr-x 1 jacob jacob 11285 Dec 15 18:12 test-c


I am proud to say that KDE is gone from four out of five of my desktop systems. I am currently hard at work on the last machine. The remainder of my arsenal are servers dedicated to Apache and GIMPS. It goes without saying that the KDE virus never infected them.

Today I have been busy watching Battlestar Galactica courtesy of DVR. Let me just say they should have called it Battlestar Craplactica. The special effects are sub-Star Wars Episode IV level and for some reason the characters all have 1970's haircuts. I was expecting more from a SciFi channel epic mini-series. Color me unimpressed.

Enough time wasted. It's back to Project KDE D-I-E for me.

UPDATE: Time for an action replay from 10 minutes ago.

root@chekhov:# rm /usr/bin/rpm

No DeadHat software on my systems ever again.

This weekend's project is to replace the pile of garbage known as KDE with Blackbox on the remainder of my desktop systems. Where I hail from pretty interfaces are for lemmings who purchase Macintrash computers. Perhaps if every Linux user dumped crappy KDE and Gnome and ran Blackbox + Gentoo, morons like DeadHat would go out of business all the more quicker.

Oh... but... I am sad to report that your attempt to commercialize Linux has failed Mr. Szulik. Now if you will excuse me, I have hundreds of megabytes of flotsam and jetsam to purge from my systems.

I am currently in the market for a wireless router. My bedroom contains no less than ten computer systems, most being the fruit of my dumpster-diving labours. Alas, the wires are becoming quite the tangled mess. Tripping over RJ-45 cables has become part of my daily routine.

I drove all the way to my local Circuit City today in an attempt to purchase a Linksys Wireless-G 4-Port Broadband Router. While browsing their selection of routers, the whipping boy salesman asked if he could be of assistance. I took one look at this guy and knew it was time to play Quiz the Luddite. "Yes," I said, "does this router support the 802.11g standard?" He had to look at the box to verify this. "Yes it does." I then asked, "What is the speed of that particular protocol?" Of course, I knew the answer in advance, 54 megabits per second, but I was certain that this nitwit did not know.

After straining his eyes reading the box for approximately 30-35 seconds, he said, "Um, fast. Hehe." My rebuttal was, "Fast? That is not a metric I am familiar with. Perhaps this 'fast' you speak of is one gauge below 'faster'?" He was obvously baffled and perturbed by my retort.

Unfortunately he had to go before I could ask if the router supports Linux. I had something really good planned out for that sequence of dialogue. Maybe next time.

I was in the food court at the mall today. I had just ordered some Taco Bell and while looking for a place to sit I saw two college girls with nothing other than a crApple notebook. I just had to sit near them.

It was one of those stupid white notebooks that look like a cheap plastic toy. The one girl who owned it was showing her stupid friend all the so-called "cool" things about it. She kept opening and closing windows and they were laughing as the windows zoomed open and closed. Then they started talking about the lame IM client built in to the OS. They didn't even realize they were not online. The girl's IM icon was some stupid cartoon character. Needless to say, I was chuckling to myself the entire time.

But, the best part was when the owner told her friend, "this new operating system runs Unix underneath," at which point I let out a loud "HA!". They both looked at me and gave me a dirty look. At that point I got up, proudly displaying my Tux Anti-SCO t-shirt and walked away.

I bet they will think twice next time before bringing their toys to the mall.

I am in the process of collecting 640 spent cans of soda to send to Darl McBride personally, so he may have the well-deserved licensing fee for my Sharp Zaurus. If my calculations are correct, the five-cent refund on each can will add up to the $32 his greedy heart desires. I have so far attempted to collect only cans of Diet Twist Lime Lemon Shasta, for it is as unappealing a flavor of soda as SCO is an unappealing flavor of Unix. I am sad to report that empty cans of the flavor in question are not as plentiful as I originally imagined they would be, thus my dumpster diving efforts have so-far turned up nil. Rest assured I will be scouring the garbage bins of my town for the SCOest-flavor beverages I can find. Stay tuned for more details.

Please join me in writing the staff at Gamespy in order to include Tux Racer in it's PC Action Game of the Year category. It may not be as good of a game as some of those listed (most which work under Wine -- funny Halo by Microsoft will NOT work) but we must show the world the time has come for Linux gaming. What follows is my letter to the editors.

I find it amusing you chose to ignore the excellent Tux Racer in your PC Action Game of the Year category. Funny how you chose to include Microsloft Halo (I smell payoff) and the horrible Deus Ex 2 but you did NOT include ANY Linux-based games. I will have you know Quake 3 runs at least 20% faster on my Linux box than on any Windoze setup.

I spent the entire night trying to convince my friend Edward to switch from Redhat to Gentoo. The idiot CEO of Redhat is undoubtedly receiving slush funds from none other than Bill Gates himself. I am certain Matthew Szulik and Darl McBride are on the same payroll. This is just like M$. They fear the power of Linux (the 2.6.0 kernel in particular) and are powerless to stop it on a technological level so they must make crooked payoffs. Does anyone notice that the closer 2.6.0 comes to release the more of these Redhat/SCO scandals surface? Sigh, I digress.

Edward told me he wanted to really switch to Debian at which point I told him he was nuts. This is the same guy who has a Windows notebook mind you (oh well, better than Apple I suppose... NOT). So, Edward. Have fun with your maligned Debian distro. I for one will not be at the mercy of someone else's compiler optimizations. PS - I will be too busy today trying some new gcc optimizations on my Apache instance to answer your instant messages. Debian, what a laugh.

oh darl
you are like a level-two orc
i step on thee
with my level 2.6.0 kernel

oh bill
you are like a level-three slime
i hack at thee
with my gentoo distro

oh steve
you suck anyway
i rm -rf you
with even crappy redhat

I was hoping my web page would shine some light on the world as to the benefits of Linux and open source. Lo and behold, it seems radical Apple and Windows fanatics have done nothing but attack me over the last few weeks. Needless to say, I have better things to do than argue with them over why Linux and open source trumps even the best Apple and Microsoft offerings.

Perhaps it is the death knell to Microsoft and Apple (otherwise known as 2.6.0 that has them so uptight)? My suggestion to these misguided individuals is to install Gentoo now and get to know it. Better sooner than later. Now if you would excuse me whilst I tweak my 2.6.0-test11 settings.