I may get some flak for this from the open source community, but I'm just curious about other's thoughts on this as well as to be able to share my own.

Anyway, I know there are many open source and free software advocates who are completely, 100% against proprietary software and refuse to use it or install it. So I ask this question. Suppose that there is a great new application, a great new piece of software that came out that was amazing. It did everything and more that you want this app to do (It can be any app, with any functionality). The downside? It's proprietary, BUT they released a native Linux / BSD version of the software so you can easily install it on Linux without the use of Crossover, Wine, or anything else. Now also suppose that there is no true open source alternative to this application. No open source app comes close to what this app can do.

Before I ask the big question, let me just go over my thoughts on the matter.

Personally, I would have no problem using this software even though its proprietary under Linux. I believe that even by using and installing proprietary software, you're not really harming the open souce and free software movement, especially when there's no real alternative to the proprietary piece of software. The open source and free software community provides a great alternative to many many proprietary apps and even operating systems. This said, proprietary software is in itself, not inherently "evil" by any means. Some may say that a certain Redmond, Washington-based company is "evil" but can you really speak for all proprietary software companies as a whole because of one bad apple (can you really label any group evil because of ONE person?). In the end I see nothing wrong with proprietary software being installed on a Linux PC, deep down the OS is still open source, and still free. What's wrong with using all the tools available to you to get the best experience and the best productivity out of your computer? I mean in the end of the day, I'll always try to stick with open source software, but if there's a notably better way to do something that requires something proprietary, so be it. My use of the proprietary nvidia video drivers on my desktop is a perfect example. The nv driver isn't bad by any means, but I just have not seen it being able to match the abilities of the official drivers.

So what are your thoughts? Would you be completely against using proprietary software on your Linux desktop, or would you be willing to use proprietary apps as needed? Would you still consider using the proprietary application if it cost money?

Tags: thoughts, opensource, freesoftware, linux

I talked about Pandora Radio a couple of days ago and what it brought to the scene, so I thought today I'd compare Pandora to the better known Last.FM service.

Last.FM is a social internet radio station where you can interact your friends and share what you've listened on Last.FM. The choices in your station are often generated by what others deem similar to the band you inputted to start the station. Users can tag the songs noting styles and similar bands to help generate the station you want to listen to. The one thing that Last.FM has over Pandora is the desktop client and the ability to tie in programs like iTunes into your recently listened to list. Last.FM is also better for learning about and hearing new unsigned bands. Last.FM allows for bands to upgrade to an artist account to post their songs on the service for others to listen to. Because of this its a great service for new bands to get their music out there for the masses to hear.

Pandora, while having some social aspects to it, doesn't yet match the full social experience that Last.FM gives, but thats fine, it brings a lot to the table on other fronts. First, Pandora bases your station on similar sounding artists from your choices rather than what other user's are suggesting. This provides a more accurate playlist when compared to user tagging which could be completely off from what you want on your station. Pandora also allows you to put multiple artists into your stations for the algorithm to create your playlist, and it even allows you to do mixes from multiple stations if you want a little more variety. This differs from Last.FM where as far as I know you can really only choose only one band to base the playback on.

Both stations are great services and provide a good selection of songs and artists. I don't think either station is dramatically better than the other. Both have their strenghts and weaknesses, and both have their advantages over the other. So right now I would have to call the battle a draw with both being the winner. Both have iPhone apps for users to stream the music from the cell data network. Both have a pretty extensive library, and both generate pretty good stations.

So, which is your preferred internet radio station? Is it Pandora? Is it Last.FM, or is it one not mentioned here?

Tags: thoughts, music, pandora, lastfm

So many people can get caught up in the operating system war that they may forget that multiple operating systems can coexist side by side. Many times people are so pro-Windows, or so pro-Linux, or even pro-Mac that they believe that their operating system has to be the end-all winner in the computer world.

Ubuntu just 2 weeks ago released their first version of 2008, Ubuntu 8.04 keyed Hardy Heron. I now have it installed as the primary and only operating system on my file server and have it set up for dual booting on my desktop along with Windows Vista. So far I have nothing but kind words to say about it as it has run very smoothly for me. In fact, it's the first version of Ubuntu that installed properly and just worked on my new Desktop hardware that I got back in December for Christmas.

My server since switching over to Linux from Windows has only ever really used Ubuntu starting out with 6.06 and then 7.10 and now 8.04. For me, it is stable, efficient, fast, and properly integrates with my entire home network pretty much flawlessly. It is the only operating system to date that I've worked with that can reach 30 days of uptime without a restart and still work without hiccups. I've even got it up to 100 days before and it probably would've lasted longer had my hard drive not died and my need to get into the box. And now that whatever issue my desktop was having with Ubuntu 7.04 and 7.10, has been fixed in 8.04 so it now "just works" on my desktop too. In fact, as I've said earlier, if it wasn't for games, I'd be booted into Linux a lot more than I am now.

This gets me to my point, Ubuntu, whether you like it or not has catapaulted Linux into somewhat of a mainstream operating system. Yes, it will probably never get ahead of Windows, and with how Mac OS X is growing, it will probably stay behind Apple as well, but does it really matter what percentage of the market share Linux gets?

Open source advocates and the Linux fanboys would say that it does, they tend to want Linux to win completely. They want to see Microsoft pretty much rot in hell. They end up so caught up in things that they fail to see that both Windows and Linux can coexist. And what would these fanboys say to those who want to play the latest and greatest computer games? Yes there is Cedega and Wine, both of which can do pretty decent jobs at running a lot of Windows games, but not all. And to get some of them to work can require a significant amount of tweaking and careful configuration that some users may not have time to do, or simply may not be saavy enough to do.

While I would love to see Linux gain market share, I realize at the same time, that at this point in the game, Linux can be very tricky for many to use. Yes, Ubuntu makes the setup and installation quite simple that a lot of people could have success in doing it, but what about trickier issues that may arise? For the most part, I have had a good deal of success with driver support out of the box for my hardware, but what about those that may have some hardware that doesn't have proper driver support? The "easy" to set up, just got a lot trickier, even on Ubuntu. Sure, the Linux gurus and even those with only moderate experience would probably be able to solve those issues, but what about the "even you mother could use it" crowd? And this is where Linux still has its pitfalls, on the surface, Ubuntu is very easy and very smooth, and a lot of people may never have to get into the nitty gritty of the operating system. Even most configuration will work fine using the GUIs that now exist. But not everything goes that smoothly which is what can make Linux tricky.

Ubuntu and Linux in general need to be able to improve upon its base and allow for those trickier situations to be handled in a more "ease-of-use" manner so that more of the general users can figure it out. Linux has a good group of followers and many I've found when going to message boards and forums for support to be very friendly and helpful to help me solve the problem, but not everyone wants to have to go there because a lot of solutions can require some heavy terminal useage that may scare the non-geek crowd.

In the end, as much as I hate to say it, Linux is not for everyone, at least not yet. It is becoming a better alternative to Windows than it was say 5 years ago, but it is still not completely ready for mainstream useage yet. Us Linux fans can only hope that it steadily improves, where maybe one day, it will truly become a viable alternative to the ever-prominent Windows operating system.

Tags: thoughts, linux, opensource, windows, ubuntu

Well this week started out rough, and at least is ending on a slightly better note. I finally got my website up and running again after hours of getting pissed off at why it wasn't working. Stupid configuration issue.

Anywho, i've been playing Brawl and so far its about what I expected from it. I think it was a little overhyped, but its definitely a good game, and one I would recommend to anyone who has a Wii or wants a good party game. Online multiplayer isn't the greatest...still has a few too many bugs, but I guess I'm spoiled by what XBOX Live brings to the table. It seems that Halo 3 has been the 360 game of choice as of late. Surprised not many of my friends are playing Vegas, but with Vegas 2 coming out on Tuesday, I guess I can't say I'm that surprised. Don't want to get Vegas'd out before the sequel comes out.

Rainbow Six Vegas 2 I'm definitely looking forward to. The original was in my opinion one of the best, if not THE best strategic shooter for the 360, and maybe even one of the best beyond that but I'm not going to get into that right now. The seamless co-op will definitely be a thing of beauty to actually be able to play the full storyline with a friend. That was one of my beefs with the original, albeit a minor one, that you couldn't play the true storyline with a partner. Sure you could run the maps, but no cutscenes, none of the true story of the game itself. As I look over at my game shelf, I just realized I still never beat the original Vegas...oh well, one day maybe. I still like the multiplayer aspect of the game though, not fast paced shoot 'em up like in Halo or CoD4, but an actual use strategy and cover to defeat your enemies. I will definitely be giving that a try.

Tags: thoughts, gaming, brawl, vegas

Okay, after a 3 day downtime from a damning configuration error, darkernemesis.com is back.

For anyone that is interested, the problem I was having was that URLs weren't being read properly so individual entries, albums, and photos, and a schloo of other pages weren't working properly. I kept getting an error that simply said "No Input File Specified". Descriptive, isn't it. I thought so. After 3 days of using Google and support forums to try to solve my problem, I figured out that I needed to set one variable in the php.ini file.

So, if anyone is experiencing the same issue (PHP5 as CGI) and are using the php explode() function to parse their URLs to make them more search engine friendly, and are frustrated with not being able to figure out what is causing the problem, add the following line to your php.ini file:

cgi.fix_pathinfo = 1

Not that anyone cares, but it solved my problem, hopefully it could theoretically fix yours too.

Tags: life, website, thoughts, help, cgi, php