Bernaard sukker. Han har fått seg en Kindle 3 og er allerede avfetisjert fra boken. To dager med Kindle 3, og jeg er overbevist om konseptet. Det som begeistrer meg aller mest er tilgangen til 3G-nettet, slik at man kan laste ned bøker og aviser omtrent overalt. Og man blir ikke fakturert for nettbruken. Hvordan i huleste har Amazon klart å få en slik avtale med glupske Telenor?

Tross alt kan man også surfe på nettet, selv om det kun er tekst som fungerer på Kindle. Skjermen er monokrom og den takler f.eks. ikke video. Refresh rate er ikke den sterkeste siden ved Kindle 3. Men skjermen er genial til tekst.  “E-blekk”-løsningen gjør det til en drøm å lese på den. Det er som å lese fra papir. Dessuten bruker skjermen veldig lite strøm og batteriet varer i ukevis. Dette er tingen for lesning.

Jeg lurer på når noen lager en app som USB-distribuerer gratis internett til laptopen? Og når skal vi få norske bøker og aviser på Kindle?

Open bash (a terminal) and type:

find /music/path  -type f -print0 | xargs -0 -I {} cp "{}" /desitination/path/ --verbose

You must obviously adapt “/music/path” and “/desitination/path/” to your needs. Please don’t ask me to explain the details of this command… (If you are moving your collection to a PS3 then you’ll have to copy all music files to one folder “MUSIC” on an external harddisk or USB pen drive. Then your PS3 will discover the music when the disk is attached to its USB-port.)

However, the CWA 854 does not like encryption, and that was the problem. So now I am sending extremely sensitive information (for example about Trechinsky and van Wunderwelt) over an unencrypted connection. I have to communicate with The van Wunderwelt Committee. It’s really bad that a wireless repeater doesn’t work with encryption. Shame on you, CNet.

So, if you have been as stupid as me and bought a CWA 854 from CNet, then you can make it extend your wireless network by turning off any kind of encryption on all wireless routers and setting the CWA 854 in AP+WDS mode (Wireless>Basic Settings). Do turn on MAC filtering and hidden essid. Keep your essid absurd, like “coldironhands98cc” (find your own absurd one, do not use my example), do not use your name or street address as an essid! These precautions will keep 97 percent of all unwanted visitors away. The last three percent are impossible to keep out, anyway(s).

If you don’t understand what I’m talking about, then you’ve got to give the CWA 854 back to the shop and tell them the truth: This equipment reduces the security of any network!

tar -zxvf en.linuxx86.tar.gz

or whatever the file is named, and enter the unpacked directory:

cd en.linuxx86

2. Run the installation script :

sudo ./setupwfc

3. Restart your Firefox browser and execute Citrix .ica files on web pages by clicking them. Then open them with the application /usr/lib/ICAClient/wfica.

If you right click on ica-files within Gnome you can open them with /usr/lib/ICAClient/wfica.

4. Now, if you would like to mount your local disk in the Citrix machine… Edit the All_regions.ini-file:

gedit ~/.ICAClient/All_Regions.ini


5. Change these lines related to disk U (for Ubuntu!) in the following way:

DrivePathU=/home/you
DriveEnabledU=true
DriveReadAccessU=true
DriveWriteAccessU=true

6. Save the file and next time you start a Citrix session your home directory (/home/you) should be visible in the “virtual” file system.

So, I installed 8.04 (“Hardy Heron”) on my HP Compaq nc6320 – after a happy time with 7.10. Everything went well, as it usually does with Ubuntu, except for the configuration of my wireless network card (the built-in Intel 3945-card). It turns out that Ubuntu no longer uses Intel’s ipw-drivers, but a new completely opensourced iwl-driver, which for some reason fails to do its job. I had to connect/disconnect to my WPA-encrypted wlan a lot of times after each boot to reach the internet. In addition to that the blue light on the wireless button did not work.

1. The solution is to change to the Wicd Network manager, which so far does its job much better than the default Network Manager. The installation of wicd is explained on the Wicd download page.

2. For the blue light on the network button to work, I found out that I had to enable Bluetooth in the BIOS. That’s a bit annoying since I don’t use it, but anyway…

Quite frankly I am a bit critical to the change from the ipw-drivers to iwl, since the ipw-drivers worked fairly well for me, and the iwl-drivers seem to be on a rather early stage of development.

1. Fire up a bash terminal.
2. Type # sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst
3. Scroll down to the uppermost boot entry, and add vga=773 to the kernel line:

## End Default Options ##title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.20-16-generic
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-16-generic root=UUID=83020353-3bdb-46a6-81c6-f521c5492d74 ro quiet splash vga=773
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.20-16-generic
quiet
savedefault

4. Reboot, and you should be fine!

Please note that you must repeat this procedure if the kernel is updated.

Certainly, Linux had what I wanted. The internet developed a large reservoir of instructions on how to do almost everything in Linux, and once again I became the master of my computer, not its slave. For six years Linux and open source software has brought me what I want: An excellent tool to do my job with, a functional access to all kinds of non-drm-media, and something very nice to play around with. However, tempus fugit. XP has been out for years, and finally Windows Vista (aka Longhorn) appears on my brand new HP-laptop. I could simply burn the system recovery disks, delete the whole thing and install Linux, but why the hell, I give Vista a try! And yes, both the world and Windows have changed.

An immediate crisis occur when I realise that there is still no native support for multiple virtual desktops in Windows. That is a problem to me, because I need several desktops. One for surfing and reading mail, one for writing, one for a media player, and one for bashes and system things. Bill, you have to admit that multiple desktops are not only nifty, they are necessary! I don’t know who invented them, it was certainly not Microsoft, but kill your pride and enable multi-threaded brain work!

The media situation is really a dream in Windows Vista. To configure my TV was easy with nVidia’s control panel. (I do think that Ubuntu 7.10 will include a similar tool.) On this point Linux has been a nightmare of editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf and restarting the X server hundreds of times. I was also surprised to realise that, unlike Windows 98, there are no problems playing an encrypted DVD on my box, with one simple click. Good. To import my Music collection and playing it all randomly, as I always do, was very straightforward in Windows Media Player. Good.

Then of course the drm system enables access to online movies and lots of wonderful material. It is certainly nice, although I do have problems with it. It closes a wall around the proprietary operating systems which looks as nothing else than a good old monopoly strategy. Money talks. It would be easy to develop a digital rights protection (drp) system which could be binary distributed to Windows, Linux and Mac users. The long haired freaks in sandals might preach on the evilness of closed source software, but let them preach, I only want to watch all the wonderful movies legally!

The ability to control file and folder permissions properly (I know that it was there in NT and XP) is a huge step compared to Windows 98 (which made my grandmother a potential evil hacker). The multiuser system is satisfactory. Although I do suspect that ordinary ignorant users will create one account with administrative privileges and use it for all purposes. That is a very bad idea: “Hey! Let’s all be root!”

And since Gimp and Openoffice works in Windows I somehow manage to feel home in Vista. But I miss my virtual desktops, and I do not want to use the visually unripe Vista Virtual Desktop Manager. Neither do I feel like buying one of the countless proprietary alternatives. This should be a part of the operating systen, at least as an option.

I have to say that after a week with Vista I think I could survive using it. However, maybe my impression will change after a month or half a year?

208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

These servers respond much faster than those provided by my DSL supplier (NextGenTel, Norway).