Troll of the week #3: something lacking

Here’s a nice troll from a rather funny article entitled “Linux Sucks“:

Anonymous July 18, 2009 10:26 AM
[…]

So again, why would you ever want to use Linux, its old, its clunky, and if you use it you lose the advantage of having windows and all its apps, and massive app base, and you are restricted to only using apps available for linux. Which are few a well lacking in quality. (lets be honest here please).

One day you guys will realise that free is not everything, and if your product is free and crap it wont fly. Linux has been going over 17 years now and UNIX far longer. and Yet still your on the bottom of the pool and you see to be very still ?

the other main problem is the linux “community” its degenerated into a cult, and zealots, who think the universe revolves around Linux.

Pretty good effort, there, buddy. The word zealot is presumably the word of the now, seeing as it’s written endlessly these days. It’s always been a favourite word for trolls. It has religous connotations, which certainly helps people characterise Linux users as crazy bastards. And don’t even think about advocating actually using Linux, of all things. Don’t try that unless you want a “peoeple can decide for themselves stop pushingyourbeliefsdopwnpeople’sthroats” speech. Shut it, you morons. This is the internet. YOU CANNOT EMAIL SOMETHING INTO SOMEBODY’S THROAT. Except cum. Sure, esex is every troll’s favourite pastime. That’s probably why so many people come across this blog searching for “hair in boobs” and “reel life girlfriends”. They want a taste of something they can never have, which is silly because throats don’t have any tastebuds. I want hair in boobs, too. It’s only natural.

But seriously, it’s got to the point now where saying something like, “I like Linux,” you will be interrupted with “–FUCK YOU ZEALOT!!!!!” All right, so I’m over the top. Well fuck you. Nobody told you to read this blog. And on to our next quote,

Well fuck you. Nobody told you to read this blog.

What an arsehole, trolling his own audience like that.

And finally for our last troll, I can’t tell if this one is serious or not, but considering this guy was spamming up the tubes with his bile, I’m guessing he’s pretty genuine. If true, then he’s a cunt. From the Linux Today talkback section of an article on Penguin Pete’s blog, in this exerpt he is defending dodgy business practices:

Starting from Injuns versus Settlers, slavery and a certain protracted bar-fight over whether that ought to be legal, then skipping to the mercantile “robber barons”, strike-breaking, the way US car manufacturers hobbled competition by the nations’ railroads, the waterfront mafia, the way in which Standard Oil used its commercial clout, “Ma Bell”, the development of anti-trust legislation and its use on Microsoft by Judge Jackson (you can Google for it).

If you do, you may find a pattern. Which is that ethics has no place (and never had) in US business or politics. Nowadays it does have a place, which is to serve (nowadays) as a convenient cop-out in case of legal trouble in the form of a “Code of Conduct” (You know, that tome filled with Maoist gibberish that your company adopted along with its “mission statement”).

As long as something isn’t demonstrably illegal *and* so visible as to attract prosecution, it’s something that will be used. Over and over again. And that’s what Microsoft is doing, Ok?

And by the way, since when was using your commercial clout to disincentivize “the channel” or public officials from offering other people’s products “illegal” eh?

I don’t even need to make fun of this one. There is a word that describes the capability to live to a set of principles, and respecting and abiding moral values. Something this guy lacks. The word you’re looking for is integrity.

Linux malware, sure it’s possible

Update 18th July 2009. If you want to read actual desktop environment developers (i.e. people who who know loads more than I do) discussing this vulnerability, then this 2006 thread from a Xorg mailing list may interest you. If you want to see the proof that it actually works, then go right ahead and read on.

I tried to ask questions about this on a forum and got banhammered for it. But never mind. I did a bit of research into it and discovered that a few people have already documented this possible vulnerability, and that it is somewhat legitimate. People love to say that the biggest security threat for computers is the users themselves, which is fair enough. Who needs to craft a drive-by download when you can just get the users to click on naked_chix.jpg.exe all by themselves? Linux makes it difficult, but not impossible, for malware to take hold, but it pays to be aware of the dangers, however slight they may be. I don’t personally believe that there is much of a threat at all, and the particular exploit I’m about to describe isn’t very special or clever, either, and can only affect a small number of people. The only thing that is somewhat interesting about it is that it can get root access without drawing attention to itself.

Feynman lectures for the rest of us

It seems a few people are coming across my blog whilst searching for the Linux-playable versions of the Feynman lectures. Well that’s a shame because they won’t find any here. Or will they!? Bill Gates put a bunch of Feynman lectures online. Of course they require Silverlight in order to play properly. And no they don’t work with Moonlight, either. But that’s okay, because they’re on Youtube. And if you want the more technical videos, you can watch them here. Enjoy the lectures.

Troll of the week #2: you guys need some new arguments

A few contenders this week.The first comes from the comments section of Computer World’s analysis of Google’s Chrome operating system.

Sorry, But Linux IS NOT Going to EVER…

Submitted by ITGrouch on July 10, 2009 – 14:26.

be a dominant OS player on the desktop. Linux as a server OS is robust and works well. However, Linux will NEVER be able to overtake Windows because the average Joe is not going to fuss over kernel recompiles, terminal sessions, etc. to get whatever flavor of Linux working on the desktop. Ubuntu is close, but still, no cigar.

Believe me, I would LOVE to see Linux overtake Windows on the desktop, but no matter how hard one blows the horn, it is not going to happen…period.

What was that? I can’t hear you because I’m too busy recompiling my kernel! Let’s do the motherfucking timewarp cause this guy’s straight out of 1995! Fail troll is fail. The next troll on our list isn’t trolling about anything in particular, he’s just being a cunt.

I think linux fucking sucks. (3.00 / 2) (#6)
by Del Griffith on Fri Feb 08, 2008 at 04:46:01 AM EST

No wait, who am I kidding?  I know it fucking sucks.

If you really want to be a UNIX weanie, just get OSX & be done with it.

Otherwise, get Vista Ultimate OEM, and install the SUA.

Some of us have better thins to do then compile codecs.

You tell em, boy! I absolutely fucking hate having to recompile my audio codecs every time I want to listen to my music. Such a pain! This guy is actually a pretty legendary troll, and he’s well aware of it. So I can’t quite bring myself to hate him. You just know that somewhere in the world, somebody is reading that comment whilst stale Cheetos are crumbling out of his mouth, sticking with the saliva on his chin, and laughing to himself, “Yeah, Lunix users are such fags durrp.” Successful troll is successful. Well done.

Google Chrome OS. And a stupid top ten list about why it’s going to suck.

I wanted to write something about Google Chrome OS. But one quick look at my rss feeds tells me that the world and his wife has already written about it. The tech world has written about this so extensively in the last couple of days (whilst I was gigging) that anything insightful I can possibly write about it has already been said by every blogger from here to eternity. Even fake Steve Jobs is banging on about it. The major press got involved too, with articles appearing in the Times, the Guardian, and on the BBC. But if you want to read a bunch of boring shite from technophobes trying to explain what cloud-based computing is, then be my guest and go and read those articles. Here I’m getting down to the nitty gritty. The no-nonsense guide.

One command installation of Firefox 3.5 in Ubuntu

Psychocats posted a howto about how to install Firefox 3.5 in Ubuntu over here. It’s good, but it’s still not completely hands free. So I decided to make it a bit better. Copy and paste the following command into your terminal for Firefox-3.5 goodness.

Update | 8th July: Watch out, this will download the US version of Firefox only. If you’d rather have a version in your own locale, be sure to follow ol’ Psychocat’s version instead.

Code:

if [[ -e ~/.mozilla ]]; then cp -R ~/.mozilla ~/.mozilla.backup; fi; wget -c 'http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-3.5&os=linux&lang=en-US' && sudo tar -jxvf firefox-3*.tar.bz2 -C /opt && rm firefox-3*.tar.bz2 && sudo mv /opt/firefox/plugins /opt/firefox/plugins.backup && sudo ln -s /usr/lib/xulrunner-addons/plugins /opt/firefox/plugins && sudo dpkg-divert --divert /usr/bin/firefox.ubuntu --rename /usr/bin/firefox && sudo ln -s /opt/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox

All in one!

Extreme Microsoft Hate

I came across this wee thread over on Reddit. A couple of folk are arguing about who is the worst offender for Monopolistic practices. One chap vouches for Google, the other for Microsoft. Sometimes the sheer vitriol of these arguments has to be seen to be believed. This is the sort of thing that only ever happens on-line. Nerd rage. As far as I can tell, none of this guy’s arguments are wrong, just very angrily put. It’s the sort of stuff that non-geeks will never understand. The eternal war of geek principles. Arguing over who is more evil, I mean, really? Read on to see the argument in full.

Troll of the week

This gem comes from the comments section of Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols‘s recent Computer World article about Linux netbooks being sold at Toys’r’Us:

There is NO profit in Open Source Software
Submitted by Anonymous on July 4, 2009 – 12:40 P.M.

Hey, business idiots, these guys sell boxes. They don’t sell service. They sell boxes that have hardware. They sell boxes that have an OS. They sell boxes that contain software.

If they sell hardware with Windows, they can charge whatever they want for the OS and make a pretty good profit.

If they sell a box with Linux, they are specifically forbidden by the GPL to make any profit on the sale. Read the license.

You specifically said, “I never pay for software or operating systems.” Why should they even bother sell to you? You specifically eliminate their highest sales margine products and ability to make money. They sell to the crowd that allows them to make money, and that isn’t you.

Challange here:

Go create a business based on Linux and see how long you last. Bet it never even gets off the ground.

Best part is that you’ll blame Microsoft for your failure.

An interview with my girlfriend

So I was stumped about something to write about. An interview might be nice, I thought. But I don’t know anyone to interview. Well in the end I decided to interview my girlfriend about a load of stuff. Get the lowdown on her thoughts on how awesome I am, and how much Linux sucks, and what it’s really like to sleep with me. Hah! Read on.

Linux will get lots of viruses one day!

I’ve been seeing this meme quite a lot, lately. It is usually accompanied with, “And anyone who ignores the threat has their head in the sand,” and other platitudes. To any Linux users who might be spooked by this revelation, and to the trolls who spread it, I refer you to Feynman,

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.

Gimping the internet, one step at a time.

So, HTML5 editor Ian Hickson has written the following,

The current situation is as follows:

Apple refuses to implement Ogg Theora in Quicktime by default (as used by Safari), citing lack of hardware support and an uncertain patent landscape.

Google has implemented H.264 and Ogg Theora in Chrome, but cannot provide the H.264 codec license to third-party distributors of Chromium, and have indicated a belief that Ogg Theora’s quality-per-bit is not yet suitable for the volume handled by YouTube.

Opera refuses to implement H.264, citing the obscene cost of the relevant patent licenses.

Mozilla refuses to implement H.264, as they would not be able to obtain a license that covers their downstream distributors.

Microsoft has not commented on their intent to support <video> at all.

HTML5, for those at the back, is intended to be the thing that makes the internet not suck. The intention was to create a <video/> tag, that people could put into their web sites, which would display a video regardless of the browser used, regardless of the device used, regardless of anything. As it stands at the moment, most video content online is served up with Flash. There are also attempts at making a <canvass/> tag, which would allow people to do all of those arty things people also use Flash for. And thanks to the belligerence of the big vendors, we’re now one step further away from achieving that.

So why are they doing this? It’s pretty simple, really: Apple and Microsoft won’t support a codec that makes the web bearable for non-Apple and non-Windows users. Microsoft invented Silverlight specifically for that purpose. They want their browsers to look better than anybody else’s. Meanwhile the free browser makers dare not support anything that means they might have to pay royalties to somebody down the line. What can we learn from all of this? Business is more important than people, durr.

Is this the year of Linux on the desktop? Hell no

I’ve been around the webweb, and I’ve seen a whole butt-tonne of reasons given as to why Linux has persistently failed to gain traction with every-day users. The language is always the same, whether it’s from Linux or Windows advocates. Joe Sixpack, my grandma, power-users, blah blah blah. First of all, this stuff is so god-damned clichéd that it’s now lost all meaning.  You see it an awful lot on places like the Ubuntu forums. Ubuntu is a self-styled OS for noobs. Its slogan is, “Linux for human beings,” which is obviously a smooth way of saying, “Linux for ex-Windows users.” The forums are filled with people complaining about how much Linux isn’t like Windows, how it’s too difficult, how average morons will never be able to figure it out. And then the long-term Linux users retort with anecdotes of babies using it because it’s so god-damned easy. Flame wars ensue.

Joe Sixpack must die, and so should your fucking grandma. These two people are always called in whenever anyone has anything brain-meltingly ignorant to say. Joe Sixpack is a strawman of epic proportions. He’s so stupid, he probably needs reminding that he needs to breathe in order to live. “I don’t have a problem switching my computer on, but until manufacturers make them easier to switch on, computers will never appeal to Joe Sixpack.” Who is this brain-achingly pathetic individual, any way? It’s the fallacy of assuming that every single person in the world is pig-ignorant and to all intents and purposes a mindless drone. It’s elitist bullshit. In real life, nobody is so fucking retarded, not even retards are that fucking dumb.

Any way, the things people come up with which would make Linux more appealing is usually along the lines of

• Make installing really-new software easier!
• Make drivers more commonplace!
• Make it so the average noob never has to use the terminal!
• Make Windows applications run in Wine easier!
• A prompt offering to install media codecs when you play an mp3 for the first time is too difficult for people. They need it out of the box, like Windows!!

Never mind how retarded most of those ideas are, or how true or false they are. The point is all of these people are completely missing the fucking point. Do you know how many Windows licences are due to sales of those pretty boxes you see in computer shops? It’s about five per cent, apparently. The rest of the licences are due to OEM installations and bulk licence sales for businesses. That means the vast majority of people only use Windows because that’s what came with their computer when they bought it. On the other hand, 95% of Linux users actually had to make an effort to use it. I have two computers with Linux installed on both of them, yet both of the things have Windows activation keys taped on the side. Is it any wonder then that there are so few of us Lunix users? Microsoft owes its dominance entirely to pre-installs, and anyone who doubts that is a fucking moron.

So what is the solution to getting more people using Linux? It’s simple. Have it installed on the god-damned machines in the first place. Don’t have them available only as an online option. Don’t install a shitty distro that doesn’t even work properly, either. Actually have Linux machines up and running in the god-damned shop, right next to the Windows machines. Have a sign up telling people, “No. Your god-damned Windows applications won’t work on this. Linux has its own applications you idiot,” to stave off the morons who think it’s a cheap version of Windows.

People will see these machines and then they will buy them. You will get a lot of people returning them because “ZOMG I can’t play Crysis with this!!!eleven” You won’t sell quite so many, because people like to go with what they know. But the fact is, Linux usage will increase enormously overnight. So many of the bullshit problems people complain about with Linux can be solved with pre-installs. I mean, hey, have you ever installed Windows lately? The actual retail edition, and not the optimised disk image that came with the computer you bought, I mean. It ain’t fucking pretty. Shit won’t work without the drivers. MP3s and DVDs don’t work out of the box, either. If the average Joe fucking retard Sixpack can’t figure that shit out on Linux, how the fuck is he going to manage with Windows? Any way, guess what will happen when enough people have bought these machines. Hardware and peripheral manufacturers will be falling over themselves to provide support. Why? Because they’d make a butt-tonne of money, that’s why. And then all of a sudden, Linux computers all of a sudden become a viable option all of a sudden all of a sudden.

A solution, then, for getting more Linux users. Is this happening? No. So is this the year of Linux on the desktop? Hell no.