64-bit Flash in Ubuntu

So I upgraded to Karmic and Flash seems odd; it could be because I was running the 32-bit version in 64-bit Ubuntu (via the flashplugin-installer package; it seemed to work fine in Jaunty *shrug*) but whatever the reason, I decided to try Adobe’s 64-bit version of Flash 10.  It works well (seems a bit slower than 9, but at least it isn’t acting up) and installation is really easy!

(0) Uninstall Flash

(1) Download the .tar.gz file from the bottom of this page.

(2) Extract the .so file (double click the .tar.gz and Archive Manager will start)

(3) Put it in the .mozilla/plugins directory of your home folder (go to your home folder, View -> Show Hidden Files, and create the plugins dir if it doesn’t already exist.

Done!  Restart Firefox and test here.

World of Goo Turns 1: “Pay whatever you think it’s worth” this week

I note (via Joystiq) that World of Goo is on sale this week and you can name the price!  If you haven’t gotten it for Ubuntu already, grab it now! :)

Update: The sale has been held over until Oct. 25!

Update 2: Here’s a comment I made on that last link:

—
I sent in an e-mail with an idea, but I haven’t heard back, so I’ll just leave a note here and see what people think:

Basically, Linux is very cool, but suffers from a lack of high-quality games. WoG is a high-quality game available for Linux, but is neither “free” in either the gratis or libre senses of the word and so can’t get redistributed in the ‘brain dead easy’ repository systems that makes distros like Ubuntu a joy to install programs on.  WoG’s sales (quantity multiplied by price) will end up declining over time.  Thus, it should be possible to figure out how much $ it would take now to make WoG gratis (think area under a curve) for Linux in the future.  And I would like to help raise funds for that :)

The thought of a worldofgoo package in Ubuntu’s multiverse repository for the LTS release that’s due in April is so neat!  Open sourcing it would be even better, but probably a lot more $$$ and later in the future, ne?  So baby steps first…

How about this for a price suggestion:

181/4830 responses in the survey mentioned Linux (177) or Ubuntu
There were ~57K purchases, so >2K of those were likely for Linux
The average price seemed to plateau around $2.50
So the Linux share of $ was probably on the order of >$5K
Thus >$250K/yr assuming continued sales at that level.

For the sake of argument let’s say that sales for the Linux port will drop by half every year:

2009: 250K, 2010: 125K, 2011: 62.5K, 2012: 31.25K…

the sum of that series would have a limit of $500K.

If we raised $500K, would 2D Boy make WoG for Linux gratis? :)
—

Guess who wrote this…

“The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. [...] the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstition.”

Answer after the break… Hint: the original was in German.

Delicious Schadenfreude from London

Half a decade ago, M$ was crowing loudly about being the software supplier for the London Stock Exchange; iIt became one of their main exhibits in the ‘Get the Facts‘ FUD campaign:

But then things started to go wrong… And today I see that it ends for them in an epic fail >:)

*** The London Stock Exchange is switching to Linux ***

For less than half the cost of buying the proprietary software from M$, they are buying a COMPANY that is producing the Linux-based solution.

* The cost savings are estimated to be ~$15M per year!

* The speed of the system will improve by ~7x!

* Releases will be much faster too (that sounds familiar ;)

* AND the tech will likely replace the Microsoft offering in other markets too!

To quote the article:

“So, rather than being just any old deal that Microsoft happened to lose, this really is something of a total rout, and in an extremely demanding and high-profile sector. Enterprise wins for GNU/Linux don’t come much better than this.”

Watching Microsoft slowly crumble like this is just so delicious; I am savoring the Schadenfreude right now. Mmmmmmmm… >:-)

Comparing Windows 7 to Linux

Slashdot recently featured a post (mirrored here with working images) that shows what Microsoft is telling retail employees to tell customers to get them to not buy Linux netbooks; it’s the usual sleazy marketing FUD we expect from Microsoft.

Tellingly, Microsoft omits any question of cost; while it pushes the point that ‘Macs are more expensive’ in the Win7 vs Mac section of their online training, it never once mentions that Windows based systems are going to be more expensive than Linux ones; and not just for the cost of the OS (and the hardware needed to run it… which is why Windows Vista never made a dent in the netbook market).  You want Microsoft Office? That’s another $100 at least.  Most Linux distros have OpenOffice.org or some other word processor that saves in an open format preinstalled…

Then there’s the ‘big lie’; “Linux is safer than Windows” is called a “myth”.  I think anyone outside of Redmond can easily laugh that one off.  But more amusingly, they push the fact that Windows has IE8 as some sort of big deal that you’ll be missing if you run Linux! :)  Earth to Microsoft: most people who use IE do so only because it was on their computer when they bought it; most people who actually care about the browser on their system download and run Firefox… which, coincidentally, is what you’ll find on most Linux distros ;)

Microsoft also specifically targets Ubuntu regarding their update process.  I have to say that Microsoft seems to think that the world only wants to run Microsoft apps that can be updated through Windows Update, since my memory of updating other software on my system in Windows is that it was a mess.  Also, Microsoft’s once-a-month Patch Tuesday approach to software updates leaves people vulnerable most of the month; it was designed to cut down on the amount of negative press of patches constantly being released for severe security issues.

Finally, I should mention a sneaky sleight-of-hand Microsoft doesn’t want you to notice: when dissing Linux, they mention “Because there are different ‘flavors’ of Linux, you can’t learn one version and be sure you know them all.” [1] yet at the same time, they say “Most customers have used Windows before.  Windows 7 offers many new features, but it still provides the same great Windows experience they’re familiar with.” What they fail to mention is that most customers have used Windows XP before.  Switching from XP to Vista usually involved a steep learning curve since Microsoft seemed to have made ‘change for change’s sake‘ all over in Vista.  The XP to 7 learning curve should be similar; I seriously question whether it would be easier for XP users to migrate to Vista/7 rather than Mac OS X or Ubuntu.

[1] an aside: all the Linux distros packed onto netbooks these days are GUI-based; how hard is point-and-click?  Also, since Ubuntu is the ‘leader of the pack‘ when it comes to desktop Linux distros, it’s what people are most likely going to run into when they try ‘Linux’…

In short, if you know someone is going to buy a netbook and you know more than they do about computers, go with them and make sure they don’t get suckered into buying a Windows lemon if that’s not what they need.

World of Goo for 64-bit Ubuntu

Just a quick note; the World of Goo DEB from version 1.40 was 32-bit only.  I just downloaded the 1.41 DEB and it has *both* 32 and 64-bit support! Thank you 2D Boy! =D

Dell’s Ubuntu Netbook FAIL

So I headed over to dell.ca to look at their netbooks with Ubuntu and this is what I just saw:

The “Ubuntu” netbooks don’t get a discount, but the XP ones do (so you save nothing… oh and no free movie on a flash drive either) AND…

…here’s the kicker…

they come with XP anyway.

Seriously (I clicked the link to check).

Dell, I should buy from you WHY?

Update Aug. 24: Dell updated the site so that there’s now a “Mini 10v Ubuntu” but its still the same price as the (discounted) “Mini 10v XP”.  Why does Dell have to play shell games with the prices?  Grr!

Update Aug. 25: More Dell Ubuntu Netbook FAIL!

Disturbing Income Distribution Inequality in the US

Apparently in 2007 the top 10% of wage earners (those over ~$110K) were paid HALF of all wages and that during the Bush years, “the top 1 percent captured two thirds of income growth”

Seriously, remind me why most people should have to pay any tax at all…

When an 800-pound gorilla loses weight

Most of us have heard the one about the 800-pound gorilla:

Q: “Where does an 800 lb. gorilla sit?”
A: “Anywhere it wants to.”

This translates well to Microsoft; consider their market capitalization as their ‘weight’; at its peak about a decade ago, Microsoft briefly spiked to over $600 Billion. At the time, IBM sat in the 100-150 range and Apple was stuck ~25.

But I’ve been thinking about the long-term trends and they’re not good for Microsoft; they’re currently sitting in the 200+ range, but IBM, Apple and Google are each ~150 right now. Consider this graph (that I made based on the instructions here) which lists the market cap for the first of each month (for less data points ;) starting in 1999, through to Aug. 2009:

At this rate, Microsoft could be worth less than any of those three in the not too distant future…

July 2009 Browser Stats

I note that NetApplications, W3Counter and StatCounter all have their global July 2009 numbers up, so here’s a table:

	NA	W3C	SC	range

IE8	14.58	12.46	12.65	12-15
IE7	23.09	24.74	27.62	23-28
IE6	27.21	15.21	19.82	15-27
-------------------------------------
all	64.88	52.41	60.09	52-65

FF3.5	4.54	6.56	5.44	4-7
FF3	16.21	23.03	22.93	16-24
FF2	1.45	1.81	1.81	1-2
-------------------------------------
all	22.2	31.4	30.18	22-32

IE+FF	87.08	83.81	90.27	83-91

C2	2.37	3.11	2.85	2-4
S4	2.22	3.11	(<3)	2-4
O9	1.73	1.18	1.86	1-2

One will note that there is quite a bit of difference in the IE:FF ratios; NetApplications has the highest at about 3:1, while W3Counter has the lowest, at about 5:3  Another difference is in which browser version is the most used; NetApplications says IE6, while StatCounter says IE7 and W3Counter has IE7 less than 2% ahead of FF3.  Thus we are reminded that any individual source is not necessarily accurate and will have its particular biases so we should be careful when quoting exact figures; ranges and overall trends would be better.

Update Aug. 7:

W3Schools put up the numbers for their site and the trends are:

IE8 is rising, but not quite as fast as IE7 is falling.

IE6 continues down its path toward extinction.

Firefox and Chrome are still rising, together at about the same rate IE as a whole is falling.