Microsoft’s attempts to be Open Source with Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool

Unfortunately they forgot to mention the Open Source bit and blatantly ripped the code from somewhere else and inserted into their own without reference to the GPL.
Internetnews.com reporting on Rafael Rivera Jr’s blog that broke the news.
“Microsoft did not offer or provide source code for their modifications to ImageMaster nor their tool [as required] according to GPLv2,” Rivera’s post continued. Additionally, Microsoft inserted some of its own proprietary licensing language into the migration tool’s license — also in violation of GPLv2, he said.”

Here is a photo comparing the code.

Now this suggests 2 things

1) Microsoft are prepared to steal code and or evade a legal licence something you or I would be punished for.
2) They concede that Open Source is the best way to go

Now i,m pretty disgusted that a large corporation that will do anything to protect its own work should be so willing to steal someone elses, I mean isn’t that what Proprietory software is about? and aren’t MS the biggest supporters of that?
Its Theft and its Underhand and Dirty and they should be prosecuted for this.
By the way It is well worth noting Bradley M. Kuhn’s comments as he is one of the few people who specialise in this type of law.

Just coz Microsoft got a big deal with the CIA doesn’t mean they can do anything they like, whats that? they can? oh, OK

Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool Image Master
Technorati Tags: Windows, 7, USB, DVD, Download Tool, Image Master,

Windows Update burns down Coffee Shop – Oh all right, its not quite like that.

Yes, so, in Santa Rosa a coffee shop is badly damaged by fire and allegedly Windows Update is to blame !
Now I picked up this news over at ComputerDefense.org but following the link to their source reveals no story now, so what happened, anybody got any info on this?

Ebay.com running slow ?

I was investigating why the Ebay.com web servers seem so slow and whilst doing so obtained some interesting advice regarding DNS.
I usually use the DNS servers at NTL/Virgin 194.168.4.100 or 194.168.8.100 but have also tried OpenDNS 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220. However I was intrigued by these 4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.2 that I found.
Well i’m pleased to report that everything seems to have had a slight performance boost, except Ebay which is what I was trying to fix. Any ideas/comments as always more than welcome.

They Shoot, They Score, They get a wacking great PRS bill

I’m not a football fan but I think this article regarding Oldham Athletics 600% increase for playing extracts of music when a goal is scored might be relevant to the whole FREE software or Creative Commons concept.
This obsession with royalties really beggars belief sometimes. I can appreciate as an artist you might like to be rewarded for your work but would you really expect to be paid every time a goal is scored and a snippet of your song is used? Each time that snippet of music is used it boosts the popularity of you the artist establishing you more in peoples minds, this in turn no doubt leads to increased sales of your work, something i’m sure you respect. So why the PRS wants to try and ruin it by increasing the fees 600% ! I have no idea, it’s just stupidity.
So here we go once again, I do know why they have done it, its about MONEY. Its not really about the artist, its not really about the football match, its not even really about the music, its about a big business wanting to be bigger in its quest for domination in the market.
Wether or not you agree with the PRS seems irrelevant now as all they are doing is making themselves look completley out of touch, imposing this unfair increase and having no regard or understanding for the situation is not doing them any favours at all. However with any luck this will produce a negative portrayal of the PRS and may well have an interesting effect, ie: they will start LOSING MONEY, yes, bet they understood that.
Stupid stupid people, PRS you scored an OWN GOAL.

Oldham Athletic | News | News Update | News Update | ARE YOU A MUSICAL GENIUS?

Technorati Tags: PRS, Oldham Athletic, FREE, Creative Commons

Who needs Windows when you’ve got Doors !

Scary WINE-DOORS web page

To be fair if you are new to Linux and saw this screen you could be forgiven for screaming, throwing your hands in the air and running out the room, not necessarily in that order. So we’ll do it the Jazzy Jeph way (read v. easy).
First go HERE and download either the .deb file for Debian/Ubuntu or the .rpm for Fedora and er, Fedora. Double clicking the .deb file for me loads the GDebi package installer and then, just because you are all watching, tells me ;

Well OK thats cool, close GDebi and open Synaptic package manager, type setxkbmap into the search box and, lo and behold its installed already I love linux me……
Then confirm by issuing the setxkbmap -help command in a terminal just to confirm its there;

Right, so I check the dependencies list at the bottom of the download page and realise I didn’t install WINE first, DOH., but to be fair I thought WINE DOORS installed WINE as well
Now, it doesnt actualy say that this is the problem but it did say setxkbmap wasn’t installed when it was so maybe its a bit confused, bless it’s little cotton socks.
Download WINE, no, use Synaptic it’s easier, oh wait cue for an apt-get;

Oh of course you need to become root for a moment so use sudo

Oh and close Synaptic, im not having a good day, maybe its because i’m blogging and trying to teach at the same time and listen to “Keys” by “Monk Hughes & The Outer Realm” from “A Tribute To Brother Weldon” (listen to it you’ll see why)
OK you’ve assumed root, closed Synaptic and tried again and of course it works this time. Lets try WINE-DOORS again, nope still unsatisfied dependency. I’ve installed WINE-DOORS several times on different machines so i’m at a loss here. I’ll research it but in the meantime if any body would like to illuminate me it would be much appreciated.
Installing Wine-Doors | Wine-Doors

Are Microsoft and Ebay ignoring illegal OEM software sales.

Ebay are making Microsoft OEM licence sales a joke, now me personally I don’t think you should bother with MS products but if you must, make sure you conform to the OEM licence agreement.
Basicaly if a seller offers you a Microsoft Operating System OEM product without selling you a NEW PC then the licence is invalid and both party’s have broken the licensing agreement.
Mind you you would think the sellers would;
A) Read the OEM Licence agreement (and I mean a recent one)
B) Be contacted by Microsoft or if they are selling on Ebay perhaps someone from there should do something.
Trouble is of course that there is a lot of MONEY at stake and neither Microsoft, Ebay or the sellers themselves intend changing there ways and of course they won’t be forced too because they provide so much money, “Money is the Law” as my mate Dani say’s. Damn Right, it’s pretty sickening though.
Meanwhile they ban my Brother for selling GNU software simply because they cannot comprehend a licence that gives you FREEDOM instead of taking it away.
Next time you, dear reader, are in the market for an Operating System perhaps you should try the GNU way. LEGAL & FREE

tovid or not tovid, make a DVD Movie in Linux tonight, well maybe a bit of tommorow as well…..

Well I say yes, a resounding whole hearted YES.
I needed to make a DVD of HD definition Manufacturers Demos for trying out the Folks new Viera Widescreen.
First I collected all the material I would need from VUZE (Azureus) there is some beautiful demo’s out there including the “HITACHI HD DEMO 1080P 18M” and “Samsung Demo – The Beauty Of Nature“.
I wasn’t sure which tool to use to convert the Matroska (MKV) files and tried Brasero and DVD Encoder OGMRip before searching for advice, from a Linux point of view there was no choice really; DeVeDe or tovid. Well the DeVeDe turned out to be a dead end so I installed tovid with the remarkably easy instructions, well actually I think I had done the sudo apt-get install tovid by then but anyway installed and in the menu it was.

It is pretty straight forward to use simply asking you to set a format (DVD in my case) and selecting your movie files (the MKV’s in this case) I clicked start encoding and, nothing happened, except it had but it’s not obvious, look carefully at the bottom and you will see “Commands left to run”.
If you have encoded files before you will be aware this can “take some time” so I decided this was a cue for me to take the Ebay parcels to the Post Office. I was keen on my return to see my freshly burnt (HD) DVD, um, bit keen I think and went off for lunch. It was done when I got back however I say it was done I had forgotten to tick “Burn to disc” so I had to set it all going again, arghhh
I wont bore you with the rest of the details ( too late I hear you say) sufice to say I launched K3B and used it’s excellent “Make Video DVD” option, I dropped the newly created files from tovid into the relevant “VIDEO_TS” folder and burnt it from there.
Success, yes, sort of, the quality was abysmal and when played back on the Viera the contrast caused the pictures to appear very “washed out”, Hey Ho, as my mate Malc would say, although to be honest its just down to fine tuning now, pretty easy really, for LInux, hey, who said that…..

Using the tovid GUI :simple ( tovidgui -s ) – Tovid Wiki

Why did the Buy It Now option disappear after the first bid?

I,ve been selling on Ebay for a while now and often wondered why my Buy it Now price disappeared when someone placed a bid, after all I had seen auctions with bids AND the Buy it Now. Well the first site I looked at seemed as confused as I was, suggesting it was 1 rule for all of us but ,after a quick Google I checked Ebay itself and discovered it only apply’s to certain categories, aahh, I see.
RESOLVED

Why did the Buy It Now option disappear after the first bid?

Technorati Tags: ebay, buy it now, auction

Handy Table of Device Bandwidths or Just how fast can I shove Data down this pipe

Wikipedia have a rather nice table describing the different bandwidths involved in computing.

Super Slow bordering on Sneakernet; (In fact possibly slower)
TTY (V.18) 0.045 kb/s or 6 Characters/s

Bordering on Runningnet;
MIDI 0.0313 Mb/s or 0.0039 MB/s

Starting to Fly;
SATA 1,200 Mb/s or 150 MB/s
but compared to an old technology like;
Ultra 3 SCSI 1,280 Mb/s 160 MB/s
I don’t know why we got so excited when SATA came out ( I know, Serial design better than Parallel at High speeds)

And for the Future;
iSCSI over 100G Ethernet (And this is a computer bus, not Wide Area Network) 100,000 Mb/s or 12,500 MB/s Super Nice

Part of a Sneakernet pictured below.

List of device bandwidths – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Technorati Tags: bandwidth, sata, scsi, midi, iSCSI, data

How to OWN any Linux box otherwise known as “A Cry for HELP”

Although Linux is known for its security amongst other things it seems to be frighteningly easy to reset the Root password thereby giving you complete access to ALL the files of ANY user on the system, this seems like a major oversight that should have been locked down a long time ago or perhaps i’m missing something if anybody can enlighten me. I realise you could remove the Shutdown/Restart options from a desktop or BIOS lock a computer but surely there must be another way, at least in Windows you have to reboot with a LIVE CD to reset the Administrator password.
Please feel free to share any ideas on this subject.
It was the excellent gHacks website that reminded me of this, you can read more here How To Reset the Root Password in Linux