My Life as a computer geek started a long time ago, when computers only talked to each other via foot-net or if you were in a Goverment Facility. Even then, text based games were very cool, and not too common. I cut my first Linux hacking teeth on a MUD. I had played several up to that point in 1997, but none had satiated my need for Roleplaying and design. Besides, being a programmer from the old, I felt the need to see the guts of the mud.

Well from time to time, I like to revisit the MUD scene to see what new and improved aspects to the MUD genre have occured. I recently looked at Aardwolf mud

They have a large player base, a nice interface for display, and a great tier system, so essentially, you never stop leveling. The only thing I think that would improve the system, from an owners perspective, is In game advertising. IT wouldn’t need to be anything spammy, but would help generate some residual income for the server itself.

As I wander around the areas and set my fledgling new character off on automated quests, I can see that there is many opportunities for Google Ad system to be implemented into the game base.

Over this past weekend, I had a chance to catch up on some overdue reading about industry topics. One of the topics that I read about was the article in Information Weekly that talks about the Windows Empire zeroing its sights in on the Open Source community. It alleges that certain programs and OSes tread on 235 of its patents. This could be a disaster for the entire industry.

I am scared!

If you get a chance, read the article, and let me know your thoughts.

Just found this article looking for the link to the previous article.

WOOHOO!

Tags: linux, windows, microsoft

The Jasper County Sheriff’s Department in South Carolina is looking into new technology that could be more accurate than fingerprints in identifying people.

At Thursday’s regular elected officials meeting, Sheriff Archie Dunn told county officials he and others in his department are traveling to Oklahoma next week to examine systems that identify people using the patterns in the iris of a person’s eye. [Source: Carthagepress]

Finding this ironic as police in different parts of the country are trying to find ways of identifying criminals and people with out using fingerprints. As most of us know that fingerprints can be altered to show no find to a partial fingerprints. Leaving the police department in turmoil trying to identify a criminal and not knowing if the fingerprints have been altered.

On the day that I was reading about this new technology that Jasper County is inquiring about, in our own town we had a police shooting.

A disturbance happened with three people in a red car. The police chase the car to another area. Once they had thought they found the car, they stop the vehicle, get out and four officers shot the young man getting out of his car in the back.

Did they ask questions or just shoot. They shoot, not only one officer but four officers shot the young man leaving stray bullets down the street hitting an innocent by stander and putting a bullet hole in a window of a club that was packed on this Friday night.

I found out more about what happened later Saturday morning. The young man was a personal friend of the family for years as was his parents and grandparents. Ben Sonenberg was shot in the back by police officers that would have rather shot then ask questions.

Now all four officers are put at desk jobs till the investigation is over. Families are asking questions why was he shot in the back when no weapons found on him or in the car. The only thing Ben was doing is holding his cell as he got out of the car, not knowing what was going on. He started walking for the club and police shot him in the back.

Does this mean that the police have the right to shoot then ask questions. Seems to me we hear more and more about the officers are getting gun happy. Maybe is the time for all officers and police department to use a technology that is called ask questions and then shoot. Is it necessary that all four officers have to shoot at the same time? Or as they said they feared their life and lives of people around the area. Did they fear when the stray bullets hit a person and shattered the window of a night club with it filled to capacity?

Tags: police technology, shooting, biometric technology

I’m new to Lockergnome. Old hat to Linux and Windows. (I won’t use terms like winbloze/blows, windoze, micro$oft, microsoviet or any other variants in this post. Perhaps in the future.)

Even though there are now many variants of *nix available on the market, I was never really able to fully commit to a version of Linux I liked. That is until Ubuntu came along. There have been many advances in the last few years that have really improved my liking for Ubuntu and Linux in General.

The main concern, was an alternative to Microsoft’s collection of office tools. OOo has really shone through as an open source project. Even though it is available in a windows environment, using it in the native Linux environment has many benefits. First and foremost, security. This has always been a huge concern, going all the way back to the days of 1996 when I was using Windows 95.

Second, I was able to install Ubuntu from a live CD. Also, updates and new software packages are easily accessible through Synaptic. In Windows, plan at least a few hours on a fresh install for driver install, and software restore. In Ubuntu I was able to get up and running in 1 1/2 hours. That includes base OS, drivers, and software that I need for my business, T73 Software and Design.

Last, and this may sound weird and out there, but here it goes. The last main reason I had for committing my business completely was based on a dream. In the dream Bill Gates had conceived of a way to incorporate Vista and Linux together by using virtualization of the Linux kernel. Several days later, there was an article I read here that told about something very similar. Well I have not been a huge fan of Windows for quite some time, and with them trying to throw their hat into the Open Source arena via virtualization makes me sick. How can they justify that their software is more stable than Linux to even attempt to piggyback a Linux kernel?

Yes. This is the end of Windows for me. I will simply suffer myself not running most games available to a Windows market, which in recent years, has been 75% of the reason to stay with Windows. Can my company survive without Windows? Simply put, yes. However, a very nice package from Codeweavers allows me to run windows native apps on my Linux box in a native environment. Also I have been able to run certain games like WoW in the crossover environment with some success.

I can’t make any more excuses. From the numerous virii infestations and hack attempts to lack luster support for updates, Windows has forced my hand to become strong, live bold, and break free of the stained, broken, and dangerous OS it calls Windows.

Tags: windows, open source, os, linux, virtualization