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opportunistiK needs help

By Richard A. Johnson on Published: February 25, 2010 at 10:33 pm

This way here, Harald won’t be able to add to his count. Anyways, I am giving a presentation next week for Ubuntu Opportunistic Developer Week, it is on Friday, March 5^th, 2010 at 17:00 UTC. The topic I will be presenting is “Creating a PyKDE App.” I am slotted for one hour to attempt and teach everyone who shows up, how to create an application using KDE’s Python API. Seems easy enough right? It is, but I was thinking I would like to start some sort of application that has future potential, that hopefully an opportunistiK developer or two can take on, and maybe make something great in the future.

So what does this have to do with you? Easy, what would be a perfect application to start and present for this topic? I don’t want to create just a shell for something, I would like to at least have a little bit of functionality to it. Thus far, I have received one idea from @harriseldon on Identi.ca. Feel free to leave comments on this blog, or follow @nixternal on Identi.ca or @nixternal on Twitter and shoot me a message. Thanks everyone!

Posted in Development | Tagged Dear Lazyweb, Event, Ubuntu | 6 Comments

Uh oh

By Richard A. Johnson on Published: February 23, 2010 at 1:54 am

For those of you who have kissed off openSUSE, Novell, and possibly recently Ubuntu for its Yahoo deal (which by the way is with Yahoo, NOT Microsoft), it is time to kiss off other things, such as Amazon. Granted this deal blows to the highest level and just shows how shite Microsoft is, there are many companies doing this same thing with Microsoft, deals like this and others. So while you are sitting there, wearing your anti-Micro$oft (see what I did there? That’s what all of the cool Microsoft haters do) hats, ditch the following product manufacturers:

Samsung
Fuji
Nearly every computer manufacturer
Asus
MSI
Nearly every automobile manufacturer
More than likely your lovely ISP
and so much more…

Don’t forget to dismiss your family members who are using Microsoft products too, but not Uncle Ned, he is cool, oh and Aunt Jane, as they at least use Linux. And the next time you get a bill, just throw it out, as it was probably printed from a Microsoft computer. Oh boy, and your government, local police, because they are up to their armpits in Microsoft deals. I wonder if Microsoft touched the snow in the backyard? I think I will get naked and sleep out there tonight. Yuck, the thought of something Microsoft has a deal with anywhere near me gives me the heebee-jeebees.

NOTE: I sure hope you all found the sarcasm, because I am not a Microsoft lover at all. I am tired of their BS just as much as the next person, but I am also tired of the anti-Microsoft extremists and their simple-minded attitudes. It’s fine to stand up against Microsoft, and those who have deals with Microsoft, but just remember, that is a lot of standing, hope your legs and back are ready for it.

Posted in Linux | Tagged Fun, Microsoft | 11 Comments

Please say Fedora

By Richard A. Johnson on Published: February 18, 2010 at 1:43 pm

Last evening I went over to a family friend’s house to help her with an ongoing problem with her Internet connection. She has AT&T DSL, and every night around 5pm or so, the connection pretty much drops. Getting to a web page is hit or miss, like one in every 10 attempts it will load a page. The pings were good, but getting out was a nightmare. She has a huge laptop running Windows 7 with insane specifications. Great machine. So, I took over my netbook running Kubuntu Netbook Remix (Lucid) to see if the problem was her laptop. Right away I was able to decide it wasn’t her laptop. Further debugging made me realize it was the DSL connection. I connected directly to the DSL modem, no router, firewall, anything in between me and the Internet. The problem still existed. At that time I determined it was AT&T’s fault so we called them up. Initially the phone call was a nightmare.

Typically I am really good at understanding an Indian dialect because the area of Chicago I grew up in was largely an Indian population. The person on the phone was a bit harder to understand and I believe the reason was because they had a mix of the Indian dialect with a distinct southern US drawl. Anyways, after talking to the AT&T tech support person for a few minutes, I started telling him what was going on and what I had done thus far. He asked what version of Windows I was using to test and I told him I wasn’t using Windows and instead was using Linux. I expected the “We don’t support Linux” comment, but was floored when he said, “Please say you are using Fedora.” I chimed in with a “Sorry, using Kubuntu.” He chuckled then said, “Some people will never learn.” We shot little jabs back and forth at each other having a bit of fun while he was doing a modem test. In the end they figured out it was their issue and some AT&T techie will be out there today to fix the issue.

So, if you were that AT&T dude I talked to last night who loves Fedora and despises us Ubuntu fanboys, drop by and say HI! It was a pleasure getting to talk to you for support on the issue, and it is great seeing that there are some tech support people who aren’t afraid to explore other options.

Posted in Personal | 83 Comments