Linux and Violence

Today, On one of the forums I visited a question was asked “Do we really need more and more violence?  Games like that desensitise the young to violence and the committing of violent acts on other people?”

The poster was talking about a request for a game called Urban Terror. He took objection to the fact that the distro might include it into the repositories for the distro and thus pollute young minds.

As the distro puts its forum forward as a family friendly place this poster thought that it was unwise to put a game into the software repositories that promoted violence.

The game in question I have never played so I do not know how violent it is, but his post does bring up a good question, should a Linux Distro limit the software it puts into the repositories because it might be violent and some child could play it?

My personal belief is that parents need to take responsibility of what a child does with a computer. Censoring software because some users deem it inappropriate would put us on the slippery slope of censorship of software.

I as an adult can make my own decision of what is and what is not appropriate on my computer. In saying that it is the parents that need to censor their child, not the software makers, neither is it your favorite distro job to censor what goes into the repo.

Linux Support Forums

I switched to Linux five years ago, back when the Linux desktop was not so friendly to a user.

Today, the Linux Desktop has leaped into the future, I believe the Linux desktop could be come the desktop of choice and be a good replacement to MS Windows.

For the past few years, people have predicted that this will be the year of the Linux desktop, but Linux still has one major and I do mean major obstacle to overcome before it can take the crown away from MS Windows.

With MS Windows Vista, a bloody big flop, Linux has the opportunity to come to the forefront and show what it is made of.

All the disto’s I have used in the past could easily take on and win converts to their flavour of Linux, but unfortunately GNU/Linux falls flat in one area, support.

Oh, there are support forums on the net, but how many times have you gone to one and asked a question only to be told, “this question has been asked before, please search before asking”.

Or plain rudeness by people who don’t like the newbies cluttering up their support forums.

For someone new, turning to GNU/Linux can be a frightening thing, everything works a little different from Windows. So they turn to the distro support forum for help.

If they are lucky, they will find a distro that will help them in their support issues and be polite. Telling a newbie to search first once he has come for help in my opinion is stupidity at its best.

I searched for an answer for close to an hour on a support forum, finally gave up and posted to the forum, only to end up with a mod telling me to do a search first as this question had been answered before.

Well, it did not take me long to tell him that I had searched and could not find the answer but the moderator would not even post a link on his next reply to guide me to the answer. That distro lasted on my computer long enough to find me one with a friendlier support forum.

Too many times, support forums do not see themselves as a window to their distro, it is the forum that will make or break a distro and if your distro is not friendly to the less geeky types that are fleeing windows machines, well they are not going to stay around.

A forum needs to be friendly, courteous, and helpful when a new person arrives asking for help. If you are a mod on a support forum, you have the power to make or break a new person to Linux.

It took me three disto’s to find one that I felt comfortable asking questions on. Is your distro that one? If it isn’t Linux will never over take MS Windows on the desktop.

Canadian Net Neutrality

Net Neutrality in Canada is about to start heating up. Net Neutrality is an issue more talked about in the United States than it is in Canada, but that is about to change.

The CRTC has not yet made any decision on Net neutrality but that also is about to change.

Canada’s largest ISP association, The Canadian Association of Internet Providers, has filed a Part VII application with the CRTC asking it to direct Bell Canada to cease and desist from throttling its wholesale Internet service.

The Canadian Association of Internet Providers is saying that the throttling is so bad it is making it hard for the IPs to manage their networks because of this they are asking the CRTC to order Bell to immediately cease and desist from using any technologies to “shape”, “throttle” and/or “choke” its wholesale ADSL services.”

For more information on this issue read Micheal Geist Blog

Linux Colours

To put it mildly, I hate black. It could be an age thing, who knows, but I really do hate black.

I find it hard to believe someone would choose to use black as a theme colour in a Linux distro but they do.

Today I was going to try out a Linux Gnome Disto. The first thing that I noticed was the screenshots and went and took a look. They were black. To be fair, it is probably as stable and well put together as the KDE version that this distro offers but once again black turned me off.

Now I have tried out and used many disto’s but the ones that caught my attention were ones that have customer friendly colours to them.

Marketing your product means that you should do some basic research on colours.

Just Google and you will find this on marketing colours:

Gold is the color of wealth.

White is the color of pure innocence.

Pink is the color of femininity.

Green is the color of nature.

Red is the color of danger.

Blue is the color the majority of the world population calls its favorite color. It represents to “trust”.

Some sights suggest that black shows sophistication and elegance while others claim
“Black is the color of authority and power.

Black clothes make people appear thinner. It’s a somber color sometimes associated with evil (the cowboy in the black hat was almost always the “bad guy”). In the western hemisphere black is associated with grieving.

Black is a serious color that evokes strong emotions; it is easy to overwhelm people with too much black.”

Vector Linux, Kubuntu, Mint, Xandros, Sabayon, and other Linux distro’s use colours that are what I would like to refer to as marketing colours.

Sabayon Linux in my opinion has one of the most eye appealing Linux web sites I have seen in a long time. The Sabayon distro when it boots up has eye candy galore. The theme matches their web site.

Vector, Kubuntu and Mint Linux both were eye catching to me as well and used some shade of what is referred to as Marketing Colours.

Believe me when I say, I am not knocking any distro that uses black as a theme colour, some will probably love it, some like myself will dislike the colour so much that we will be so turned off by the colour and will skip to the next distro.

It would in my opinion be smarter to stick with tried and true marketing colours, especially one that would be acceptable to most of the users you are trying to attract.

What ever colour you prefer, it all comes to personal choice, to me marketing a distro, I would use any colour such as gold, red or especially blue to attract the most people to my distro.

Have a great weekend.

Devnet - PCLinuxOS Seperate

Devnet, who is well known in the PCLinuxOS forum and Linux world has departed from PCLinuxOS.

What brought on this sudden departure is not known at the moment, what ever it is he will be missed by the people on the PClinuxOS forum.

Devnet was responsible for starting many projects over at the mypclinuxos.com and I had the chance to work with him on the PCLinuxOS Magazine that he helped to create and launch.

I wish him the best.

Creative Labs Revolt

A full-scale customer revolt among buyers of Creative Labs’ sound cards is happening over on the Creative Labs forum site.

It seems that Creative Labs threatened legal action against Daniel_K, the Creative Labs fan who fixed the company’s broken Vista sound card drivers.

Daniel_K’s expertise allowed him to enable advanced features in sound cards that Creative advertised as Vista-compatible, but which did not perform as well under that operating system as they do under Windows XP. After tolerating the distribution of his unofficial drivers for a time, Creative’s vice president of corporate communications, Phil O’Shaughnessy, ultimately asked him to stop, and accused him of “stealing their goods.” O’Shaughnessy also wrote that whether or not it cripples its Vista drivers is a “business decision that only we have the right to make.”

What has upset the Creative Labs user base is that it has chosen to cripple features in its Vista drivers and feels its a business decision.

Creative Labs needs to learn that their customers are the reason that their company exists, if this is a business decision, not allowing hardware to operate to its full capacity then they need to rethink their business model.

Computer Crapware

Sony’s electronic blog says that have the message about charging a fee to take off trialware, or crapware if you prefer.  There has been a lot written on blogs through out the net about this issue and Sony answered customers complaints by dropping the fee.

What needs to be talked about more, is not the unwanted software that is loaded on computers when you purchase them, but the unwanted operating systems that the manufacturer installs on the computer.

Everyone that purchases a Laptop or desktop and  does not want, need or use Windows is forced to purchase MS Windows when purchasing a new computer. This is something that needs to be changed. Having to purchase a PC with Windows installed is ludicrous.

MS Windows is not part of a computer it is an operating system.  We should not be forced to purchase an operating system that you have no intention of using when you want to purchase a new PC.

It is time for the PC manufactures to give the public what they want, a completely clean PC. No MS Windows, no crapware, period.

Call to Boycott Trend Micro.

Open Source software is under attack again.

As a end user of open source software, I as a user look at these legal wranglings with concern. I believe the end user should have complete control of what, when, where and how software is used on my computer. Software patents have been used by large corporations to intimidate and bully developers into line.

Companies use the court systems to intimidate and bully to keep their market share. Their are large corporations that have deep pockets that abuse the legal patent system to their advantage, somehow, everone who uses free and open software, developers and IT personel should take notice and join in this battle. The first thing someone can do is join the boycott.

For more information follow the Links below:
Press Release ScriptumLibre, Februari 8, 2008

Barracuda Networks Defends Free and Open Source Software from Patent Threat by Trend Micro

PCLinuxOS, It Just Works

PCLinuxOS
When I first told friends that I was using Linux I got asked one of two questions. One was why and the other was isn’t that for geeks?

The why question was easy to answer, Each time I up graded to the next window operating system it always needed more ram, a larger hard drive, and a more powerful CPU. Not wanting to add to my computer collection, I started surfing the net to research Linux. I downloaded what are known as Live CDs. These are iso files that you convert when your burn them to a CD that will boot and run Linux from your cd-rom . I actually tried six different distributions of Linux, they all have there own flavors and amount of expertise you need to know to use them.

If you use the other operating system and tired of spy ware , ad ware, and the need to always buy virus software and realize you need to upgrade your computer to use next release, that you will take a moment and consider PCLinuxOS instead. It will run on older and new computers and has plenty of features. You will be surprised when you install PCLinuxOS, not only is it an easy install but it comes with every program you need to get down to work. Also has a repository that has a lot of other programs to download.There is good information on Linux in the Wiki, even explains how to download software to be able to view DVDs in Linux, it is illegal in some countries so find out your legal liability if you do use the information.

PClinuxOS is an easy Linux operating system for a MS Window users to switch to. It has been created with that objective in mind.

So take a few minutes and follow the links at the bottom of the page and see what PCLinuxOS has to offer. You can use it on as many computers that you would like. No more restrictions put on you, use how you want, change how you want, and even give it away to friends and family. Upgrade to PCLinuxOS and say good-bye to spy ware, ad ware, and virus threats, as well as defrag and all the chores you need to do to keep the computer operating. You can install PCLinuxOS on the same computer as the os you are now using if you have favorite programs you must keep. Install and see for your self, PCLinuxOS it just works!

By the way, did I mention it was Free!

Welcome

Welcome to the Canadian Watchers blog. 

It is on this blog that you will find information, opinions and comments on Canadian issues.  This blog is an extension of the Canadian Watchers web site. By adding a blog we hope to give our visitors a chance to give us feedback and their opinions on what is happening in Canada, BC, and around the world.

We hope that you will come back often.

The Watcher