The dead hand of monopoly has fallen on our schools. According to this morning's Herald, it seems that supposedly vast Vista profits aren't enough for Microsoft. Now they're taxing Apple computers too.


The schools concerned are apparently in a state of confusion -- and Microsoft has cashed in. "The company offered a less-than-retail deal for schools, and a significant number had taken it up."

Let's see: 25,000 x (a very conservative) $100 per copy for Office =  a $2,500,000 for Microsoft.

Shame. They could have saved their money. For just $5 -- including shipping and GST -- they could have got an equivalent product and installed it on every machine in school. They could have legally made copies and given it to the kids to take home so they could install it there too.

$5 -- including shipping and GST -- is what OpenOffice.org NZ charge for their multi-platform CD that includes Open Office for Windows and Linux. NeoOfficeJ for Mac, and Firefox and Thunderbird for Windows, Linux and Mac.

Nah, why bother? It's only tax-payers money after all. "The problem was over licensing deals said to be worth $100 million over 10 years."

Posted by Geoff Palmer at 2:21 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 19 )

Ooops! Microsoft may well have shot themselves in the foot after last year's mutual patent-protection deal with Novell. What's more their recent round of patent claims against Linux may just be a desperate attempt to up the FUD factor before the gun goes off.

Here -- according to Eben Moglen, the Free Software Foundation's legal counsel and one of the authors of version 3 of the Gnu Public License (GPL 3) -- is how it works...

As part of the Microsoft/Novell deal, Microsoft began distributing coupons that recipients could redeem for a copy of Novell's Suse Linux. But the coupons have no expiry date. That means that if a single user redeems one after GPL 3 comes into effect in July, Microsoft themselves become subject to Clause 11 of the license and any patent claims against Linux users are effectively dead.

Here's how Groklaw's Pamela Jones put it, "And so, as the sun sets over the horizon, we may be bidding a fond farewell to Microsoft's patent bullying. I hope some friendly folks have bought a voucher. If so, you might just want to take a breather before you turn it in, huh? Then it's buh-bye to Microsoft's 235 patent claims, methinks. So nice of Microsoft to distribute under GPLv3. Hugs and kisses."

Posted by Geoff Palmer at 5:11 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 )

I've become so used to wobbly windows now that whenever I use a regular machine I end up feeling cheated if I drag one and it doesn't display a certain sticky inertia. And if I feel positively deflated if I hit Ctrl + Alt + [any arrow key] and a glorious desktop cube doesn't flip me over to the next display face.

What am I talking about? Beryl! It's a fork of the Compiz project -- which I first looked at here, and although it's only at version 0.2 I've found it remarkably solid and reliable.



This is the sort of thing I'm talking about...



...and this. (Click the images for a detailed view.)


You don't the latest PC with a multi-gigahertz engine and truckloads of RAM to run Beryl. In fact it runs surprisingly well on quite old kit. Here's the specs of the machine I used to test the configuration procedure outlined below...

• AMD Athlon 800MHz CPU
• 500MB RAM
• NVidia GeForce FX 5200 (128MB) video card

To start, I added a pristine copy of Kubuntu 7.04 to the machine's existing OS, partitioned as follows;

• 10GB /root partition
• 30GB /home partition
• 500MB /swap partition

(If you don't have that much room on your hard disk you might be interested to note that after installation I'd used 22% of the space I'd allotted to /root and just 2% of the /home space.)


Setting up the Video Card
The official NVidia video drivers require a license agreement so aren't included in Kubuntu by default.They are however available via Automatix - and I've found that's the easiest way to install them.

To add Automatix, visit www.getautomatix.com/wiki/index.php?title=Installation. Ubuntu and Debian users can follow the Easy Direct Installation method. Kubuntu users have to be a little more hands on, cutting an pasting six whole lines into a terminal session.

After you've done that -- and had a little lie down to recover -- kick off Automatix via K Menu > System > Automatix. Choose Drivers and install.

To activate the new driver you need to restart the X (graphics) server. You can do this the brutal way by hitting Ctrl + Alt + Backspace or by sedately logging out of this session and doing an Alt + E from the login window.


Installing Beryl

1. Start Adept Manager (K-Menu > System > Adept Manager).
2. Enter beryl in the Search windown and select the following packages;

• beryl
• beryl-manager
• emerald-themes

3. Click Apply Changes and close Adept Manager when installation's complete.

Running Beryl for the First Time

1. Open a console window (K-Menu > System > Konsole).
2. Type beryl-manager and hit <Enter>. This will start Beryl, put the application's red diamond icon into the Taskbar and display any configuration problems in the console window. In my case I got...

The Fun Stuff
Beryl-Manager is the entry point for lots of goodies. Right-click and choose the Emerald Theme Manager to select from dozens of window surrounds, and Beryl Settings Manager to enable and configure more fancy graphics features than you can shake a stick at. I'll let you do the exploring, but here's just a handful of shortcut keys to get you started.

Alt + Tab + any arrow key	Rotate the 3D cube.
Alt + Tab + drag the left mouse button	Free-form control of the 3D cube.
Alt + Tab	Window switcher (between windows on this cube face).
Alt + Ctrl + Tab	Window switcher (between all windows on the cube).
Alt + Mouse scroll wheel	Preview all windows on this face.
Alt + Mouse scroll wheel	Change windows opacity.

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Posted by Geoff Palmer at 5:04 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 8 )

The FUD hit the fan on Monday when Fortune magazine published Microsoft's latest anti-Linux salvo, alleging that the free operating system violates 235 of its patents. Yet again they stopped short of saying precisely which patents have been infringed, but they did produce a tantalising list of where alleged infringements occur;

The allegations and onslaught weren't unexpected. Microsoft's patent-war-by-proxy -- the SCO vs IBM case -- is going appallingly badly for the plaintiff. The original "mountain of [infringing] code" is now down to just 326 lines -- most of them comments, headers or invaluable intellectual property such as declarations like "#define EPERM".

So what is Microsoft playing at? Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt without question, but much of that FUD seems to be clouding Microsoft's own executives. Consider;

Last November Microsoft formed a patent partnership with Novell. This basically involved the former giving the latter large amounts of dosh along with a promise not to sue Novell's Linux users for patent violations. In exchange, Microsoft got a bunch of Suse Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) certificates to give away to their customers, which they did. Ooops!



Even more galling, Dell recently bucked the system by announcing they'll optionally install Windows XP in new machines because so many potential buyers didn't want DRM-crippled Vista. To add insult to injury they're be adding an Ubuntu Linux-equipped line later this year, and Michael Dell himself publicly professes to using Ubuntu, OpenOffice.org and Firefox on his laptop.

But the real nail in the coffin is the number of people who are discovering how good free software really is. Cross-platform class apps like Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org, Audacity, Azareus... (the list goes on and on!) make underlying operating systems -- and expensive office suites -- irrelevant. And that, really, is all Microsoft sell. Or rather, make their money on.

Posted by Geoff Palmer at 8:01 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 4 )

12:40pm May 10
Gulp! An email from TelstraClear arrives advising that my HighSpeed Internet usage has exceeded my traffic allowance by an additional 1,964 blocks. At $2.95 a block, that makes an $5,793.80 in extra charges - and there's still two-thirds of the month to go!

12:41pm
A quick check of their online usage meter confirms it! OMG! When I last looked it was barely at 6GB. I hastily shut down Azureus.

12:42pm
According to the detailed stats, I've downloaded 1,498,554 and uploaded 524,802 megabytes this morning. Well, I knew it was fast but...

12:43pm
A call to TC's Help Desk (0508 888 800) results in a recorded message that there are "issues" with the online usage meter and that "some customers are showing excessive usage".

12:44pm
A cautious return to the torrents with fingers, legs and eyes crossed that I'm not really up for a $6,000 bill.

Posted by Geoff Palmer at 2:29 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 13 )

I've been meaning to do a step-by-step guide to installing Kubuntu 7.04 (aka "Feisty Fawn") for the last couple of weeks, but I see that Rick Lehrbaum on the always excellent DesktopLinux.com has beaten me to it.

It's all there -- including the glories of Automatix2. (Seriously, if you're a user of any flavour or version of Ubuntu and haven't yet discovered this awesome add-on for managing all varieties of non-standard extras, including those pesky multimedia codecs, you're missing a treat.)

There's not a lot on customizing the desktop, but you'll find more on that here, here and here,

So what are you waiting for? If you haven't yet tried one of the best Linuxes around, start downloading!

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