Friday, October 31, 2008

Halloween Costumes

Friend of mine just sent me a YouTube of some kids Mech costume. Take a look here. :)

OS Upgrades...

A little while ago I bought a second hard drive for my desktop computer. I decided to give the Ubuntu OS a try on that system, more specifically the Kubuntu derivative.

For the most part the experience has been wonderful when I booted over there. The operating system boots way faster then Microsoft's Windows Vista and just seems to make better use of my systems resources over all (IE: No disk thrashing/taking forever to load things). I only run one anti-virus on my Window drive and don't load very many things at all during startup. I did check Vista's MSCONFIG to be sure.

Out of the box with Windows you get an Operating System, Media Player, Web Browser, email client, and a basic paint tool and some other things. With Ubuntu I got all that plus a full office package, photoshop like paint program, and access to tons of games. Plus I also got access to Wine which lets me run some Windows programs in Linux w/out Windows.

There thats my Linux sales pitch, now for what happened to me last night. Yesterday the new version of Ubuntu came out (8.10 I believe). You can either download the CD, buy it, or request a free copy. Unlike Windows, I found a nifty feature that let me upgrade the OS directly over the internet.

So I started the upgrade process and by morning my Kubuntu 8.0.3 install turned in to a Kubuntu 8.10 install. Everything appears to be working, I found no compatability issues unlike with what I found when I went from XP to Vista. The operating system did its job and upgraded the necessary packages to keep my system performing without a hitch.

With the updated Kubuntu I got the newest version of KDE desktop. Oddly enough the new KDE desktop looks a lot like the new Windows 7.0 screenies I saw on some news sites. I noticed the system tray on the new Windows 7.0 screenies reminded me of my Linux desktop with how some of the icons looked Linux'y and were on a Vista like interface. The only difference is the Linux version doesn't make my system choke trying to load different things or search.

Maybe Microsoft will get their OS to the point where it does things without spinning drives like crazy and bugging users with the (C)ancel or (A)llow question all the time some day. :P

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Next door neighbor...

Epsilon Eridani is only about 10.5 light years away. Already it's got peoples attention because it's so much like our own solar system when life first started on Earth supposedly. Take a look at the details here.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Ewwww icky politics!

So Senator John McCain decided to use YouTube for his campaign. A good idea really, but there was just one problem in his plans. Apparently back in the day he voted for a little thing called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and it's come back to bite him in the backside.

Check it out here!

Thursday, October 9, 2008

US National Debt Clock Runs Out...

of digits! Check out the article here. They plan on adding two more digits to handle the United States of America's ever growing debt total.

It's a shame we have to add digits to a clock instead of starting to pay off our national debt. If your curious how much we owe right at this moment. Check that out here. I'm thinking I want to build my own debt clock at some point.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Giant Space Bubble!

Do we live in a giant space bubble? Does this bubble make things seem farther away then they really are? Take a look here!