Logitech gives Linux users the finger!

Yet another story of how a big company refuses to give trivial support for a driver developer who would do their work for them. For free! Stupid company.

read more | digg story

Virtualbox redux

So I spoke a little fast. Virtualbox OSE (Open Source Edition) has a couple of glaring flaws. It is missing USB and shared folder support. Boo! Their personal binary version has these features though and is free to individuals. Yay! You choice to GPL or not to GPL.

Luckily for me, Gentoo Linux makes it effortless to remove and reinstall the old versus new.

So to sum it up in a way consumer conscious America understands. Price of Virtualbox to replace Vmware: $0, price of repurposing my Windows key on my virtual machine: $0, price of Firefox and Windiz extension: $0. Normally this would be $189+$149=too much.

How to Diss Windows Genuine Advantage?

Interesting. It seems you can bypass the whole Internet Explorer only updating of XP by using a Firefox extension located at windizupdate.com In fact, it seems to bypass the whole WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) hokey too.

I tried the Windows route on my VirtualBox 1st. I have like 3 legitimate copies of Windows XP around. They are just tied to various boxes; some of which are not even working. Could I repurpose some of those licenses? Nope. Microsoft made sure of that. Most of the disks come from OEMs like Dell which aren’t even true install disks. So they are little better than coasters. This is inane.

So off to google (thanks digg) http://digg.com/microsoft/Need_a_Windows_XP_key_Google_can_help

Now the first key on this list didn’t work. Surprise. It failed WGA. Enter Windizupdate and Firefox. As I type my Virtualbox is updating its Windows XP.

I’m sure I will get my cease and desist letter in the mail soon.

You cheap bastard!

I know. I know. I should just pay a host for a website. But the cheap bastard in me sez I’m already paying for my internet connection, why not host my own. I’m sure it violates TOS (Terms of Service) and all, but if they actually come down on me for the huge traffic swell from the 4 ppl who will actually bother to visit my website (thanks, mom) I’ll relent and go get a host.

Until then, apache2 or lighttpd? Nvu or bluefish?

I’m leaning to apache2 cause it is everywhere. http://gentoo-wiki.com/Apache2_Install
And to Nvu cause it’s multiplatform.

Dyndns.org for the name and I’m good to go.

VirtualBox. Say bye-bye vmware

Installing this now as I am tired of license fees for vmware. So far so good.

I only need Windows XP to do things like update the firmware on my iAUDIO U3 and talk to my Logitech Harmony 880. Will I ever be free of the Microsoft shackles?

Nice webapp. I’ll take 2

Started using www.rememberthemilk.com last night. A ToDo list on steroids. It can go offline and resync up later. Integrates into Google Calendar. Send you a reminder via IM or SMS on your cellphone. Nice job, milk ppl!

Digg-Dugg

No, I don’t have anything better to do today. I posted Phil’s story to Digg. Curious if it will generate any traffic at all. http://digg.com/linux_unix/Logitech_gives_Linux_users_the_finger

Update:

1709 diggs and counting. Made it to the front page! Hope this serves as useful fodder for bargaining with Logitech. Now, I wish I had made the title a bit different. Damn rant modes.

Harmony 880 and Linux. Logitech is another stupidass company.

Just got this in the mail today. I knew it didn’t have Linux support (although Logitech promised it for its Harmony line eons ago), but I just wanted to rant and rave a bit. There isn’t a competitive disadvantage for them at all in making this work with Linux. The burgeoning homebrew PVR market is clamoring for a half-way decent remote, instead of those clunky made in my backyard versions. As I understand it, their damn programming app is even java-based and runs in a browser. Frak! So it would take like 1 Logitech tech approximately an hour to figure out how to make it run under Firefox in Linux.

Stupidass company. </rant>

Update: Some ppl are working around Logitech. Good for them. Go here and here

It seems like the 2nd link isn’t too encouraging. Logitech is basically saying stuff it. I say stuff them!

New to coding. Enter Eclipse

So I haven’t coded since school. I’ve been meaning to jumpstart myself again and have kept track of a few things in case I decided to take the plunge again.

First criteria: IDE. I could do the whole, “look how elite I am, I do everything in vi or emacs”. But face-it, that route requires endless tweaking to get all your plugins right. Geek in me says, suck it up and do it. After spending another 200hrs with vi, you will finally be fast and proficient at it. The lazy Homer Simpson in me says, fuggedaboutit, u could spend 1 hour installing an IDE and the other 199 remaining hours reading useless blogs like this one.

Homer wins this round (for now). Downloaded and installed Eclipse cause it seems to have momentum, plugins for everything, is open-source (or at least free), and runs on all the platforms I care about. So I can reuse what I learn on my Mac @work.

I am pleasantly surprised how easy it was to install plugins for C++, Ruby, and Python.

Push the friggin’ button. Again. again. k, just 787 more times.

MythTV uses a python script to download imdb info. (How do put in a link now? Oh there we go): IMDBpy. However, MythTV is full on-retarded in that it expects you to basically select this function for every single friggin file/subdirectory you want it get info on. Can someone learn to say recursion? With 7.5TB of files to roll through, I will get carpal tunnel before I get a complete imdb index of mah stuff.

So poking around, it looks like the state of indexing stuff is pretty dismal. No, I don’t want to run a MySQL database. First cut, I want relevant metadata in simple files stored under each directory. I can always construct the database from that later.

Damn, looks like I will have to code a bit.