I'll present this to you as a problem and I suggest you try to find what was wrong. I found in the end, but it took a very long time.

First some background. An uncle of my wife is a international tax consultant, and has quite some tech to support his business. I once made 400€ to set him up with a backup server (based on consumer-end hardware, but whatever). He's a nice guy, and ever since he discovered that I'm a computer scientist I have become his prime contact for anything IT. He's tech savvy and he pays well, what's not to like? I'd even do it for free as he always has nice challenges, but he insists.

On his network there is one machine that was always troublesome. It's a consumer-end machine that he exclusively uses for his accounting using a proprietary package made in Luxembourg (probably because of the local laws). In the past it acted weirdly, which I traced down to the RAM. After using some of my dumpster sourced sticks, it was ok... For a while, then it failed again. RAM again. Exchanging sticks, again failed. Since the RAM tested okay in my dumpster souced motherboards, I evaluated the cause as being a defective motherboard. As it was a older Pentium D socket 775 class machine, which benchmarks worse than a modern day Atom, I suggested to replace just the motherboard with an Intel D525MW. We did that and it was fine for a while. However, the power supply was already making weird noises and I told him that it's going to blow sooner or later.

Fast forward to Monday. He writes me an email that the machine won't turn on. Obviously, that must be the power supply. Monday I drop by at my parents to pick up two power supplies. A relatively modern one (480W) which had served faithfully in one of my servers and a dumpster sourced 250W powersupply. I was sure I could solve it in a half hour by swicthing power supplies. Yesterday, I went there and immediately got to work.

Indeed the machine wouldn't turn on. I lay the tower on its side, remove the old power supply (which clearly was of dubious quality, considering it weight next to nothing), and install the 250W one. Connect everything. Push power and... it boots. I say: "We're done. See, that was easy...". While the machine is on, I set it upright and .... blam power goes away. W ... T ... F ?!?

Okay, okay, two possibilities. Either that dumpster sourced powersupply really isn't all that cracked up to be, or the the motherboard somehow touches the case when in upright position. I try the 480W powersupply. For easy work, I obviously, lay the case back down. Install the powersupply (well the minimum to test this time of course), power one and yay! Works. I turn it off, connect the rest and put it back in its place... in upright position. Try to power on and... Nope... Dead as a dodo.

Okay, the motherboard might be shorting somehow. It's unlikely because the studs keep it at ~5mm from the metal, but let's try. I remove the motherboard and hold it in my hands. Power it on, works. Orientate it in the weirdest positions I could imagine (shorts in the cable of the powersupply, perhaps). Works. Weird.

At this point, I try something else. I remove the power supply and put it on top of the case, which is now in the non-working upright position. I lay the powersupply flat on top of the case and, it works. Do note that a power supply isn't mounted flat in the case. I rotate it 90 degrees and the power goes away.

At that point something dawns to me. I changed one thing, installed everything back in the case exactly as it was... and now it works.

So, what do you think I changed in the whole setup?

I'd like to start off with stating that I'm not against change. I've used so many user interfaces over the years that I adapt quite quickly. I'm also not against software upgrades, just not the way it's been done by all major players (including open source software) in the last ten years.

Let me start off with an example: Unity. I switched to Ubuntu 11.10 (from the 10.04 LTS) and I gave Unity a shot. I'm fine now with it, but I had to do something I have done many times before. Shut down my "what I know" mode, and adapt myself to the new paradigm. The way I did this was tell myself: it works in a different way, let's just play it with its rules. As a relatively quick learner that works. I had to do this before, back in my OS X period. Coming from a Linux and Windows (NT4) background, I really had to start from a clean slate. Unity was easier in the sense that I tried using it as Mac OS X with the dock on the side and stop using maximizing windows. Doing that works surprisingly well. It works, and apart from a few annoying bugs (?), I most certainly cope. (Why does Firefox insist on starting maximized for example. The auto hide function of the dock should be disabled too, just make sure no windows are under it and you're fine.)

A radical change in using Unity is also depending on your keyboard to search for applications you want to run. Especially those you run rarely. The most important stuff I have in my dock, but I don't see why I'd need to waste space for the nvidia-settings application which I run each morning to turn on my second screen at work. So, I end up typing "nv" each mording in the Dash Home.

Now, of course you have the people saying "just change distro" or "just change your desktop environment". Often the first implying the last. Obviously, I can do that. In 2000 I ran Peanut Linux with WindowMaker on my Toshiba Satellite 210CT. For us Geeks nothing has changed, I can take Ubuntu, drop LDXE on it, or take Debian and select E17. I don't even need to change distro to do that, I know how to do that myself. Thing is, changing disto is easier. It also is not a solution: neither changing distro nor changing desktop environments. So I prefer Gnome2 over Unity. Fine, but Gnome2 will disappear because they moved on to Gnome3 and I don't think the fork, made by some group, will live.

What's the point, you ask? The point is that I'm a nerd, I have lived more years with computers in my life than without. The problem is that I am the support guy and as a support guy I don't want bleeding edge. I want stability, evolutionary change and a predictable roadmap. I want to run the same system so I can support those who actually need support, which would be my mother and my mother in law who are both 10.04 LTS users. Do you have any idea what it means to switch over users like them from Gnome2 to unity? It isn't going to be pretty. You say Mint? Fine... Gnome3 with extensions to make it look like Gnome2, but it ain't Gnome2. It also adds an enormous workload upon installing the machine, if you don't go with defaults. Instead of an hour for installation, plus setting up a few programs, I need to change the distro on a fundamental level, making my installation time much longer. This is also why people change distros, and not desktop environments. Ease... Plain and simple.

This summarized what is so wrong with desktop environments: Maturity is considered a bug, not a feature. Let's see Gnome2 is stable, well known and actually works without too much glitches. We can't have that. Throw it away and start from scratch with a new paradigm, full of bugs and with no clear roadmap. From my point of view that is simply not acceptable for the end-user.

Oh, and don't think this is unique to Linux. I give you Windows XP. Say what you want about XP, but from the user point of view, the user interface is well known. From the system administrators point, it is also well-known, easy to secure and thus mature. Let's skip Vista, and go directly to 7. The interface is even more condescending and you have to change your way of working, just like on the Linux Desktop Environments. Instead of using the mouse to start program (which, like it or not, normal users do!), you have to use the search function in the start menu. Also, one of the things you could easily do in Windows XP was show the hidden files and still have a quite oversee-able home directory. Try that in 7, it becomes a mess and it's not something you want to have activated when normal users use it. (desktop.ini? What's that file, I'll just delete it) There are so many hidden folders and hard-links, it's not pretty (Do note the dotfile frenzy in Linux is no shred better). Windows 7 is the first Windows, I actually put the "hide hidden files" in enabled state.

In a similar vein: want to move your My Documents folder from your fancy-ass quick-but-small SSD to spinning rust disk? Without re-installation, it's not possible. Without re-installation, you're doomed to move every "Subfolder" of you home manually. Why? Under XP it was Properties of your My Documents folder and set it to the new location.

These changes are completely unnecessary and change for the sake of change. Yes, I understand that we can't keep XP with the advent of 8GB++ RAM Machines, but really?

So, Mac OS X is immune? Fuck no! My wife's superb iMac runs Snow Leopard and I'm scared shitless to upgrade it to Lion. She is the same category of users as my mother or my mother in law. Now, I haven't touched OS X much at all, but I know one glaring change that made many users bitch a lot: the way the pages scroll. Long-time tradition is that you scroll your scroll-wheel down, and your documents goes down, scroll it up and your document goes up. Mac OS X Lion throws this out and goes for the inverse. That's like reversing break and gas pedal. Yes, I understand why, and it does make sense on a touch device or if you have that fancy new Magic Trackpad. Well, we don't... Sucks to be us, and sucks to be me to try to explain it to my wife when we eventually and inevitably will be forced to upgrade.

Of course, you say, "this is limited to operating systems", just suck it up. Nope, let me present you Firefox. Their new release cycle is insane from a supporting person like me. On Ubuntu, I best stick to what has been shipped. Let's take Windows. If you are like me, but unlike most people, I will run my users as limited users. Say what you want, but taking this stance is the best way to keep your users from getting infected with anything. The downside is: they can't install anything except for the annoying little programs that go around this and install themselves in the users home folder (Google Earth and Chrome, I'm looking at you!) This implies the automatic updates so many software companies seem to love so much (how many have you running?) will not work. So you have to disable them, which I do. It also means that you get a feature freeze which, oddly enough is very desirable. Supporting a known subset of software simply is easier. Given they run Limited User, the risk is mitigated greatly. Firefox was fine, a stable release (akin to the LTS system in Ubuntu) as the 3.6 line and anything else for those who want more. Except Mozilla wants to stop this. We all need to jump on the update-frenzy bandwagon. No! It robs us of stability and predictability. This is clear with all the extensions breaking so often. There still is no Java Console for Firefox 8, and on the Windows 7 machine I discovered this, we have the latest bleeding edge Java.

This brings me to another annoyance: System developers, especially under Windows, still have not understood the concept of multi-user machines where not all users are privileged (and heck, to the example I'll give you this doesn't even matter all that much). Imagine I set up a machine for you, we'll say Windows 7. It's for you, your kids and wife. Obviously, I want all of you to have the best surfing experience and since you are married with that Swedish hottie, and you live in Germany and your kids thus need to write German you want the English UK and US, Swedish and German dictionaries in your browser. Dictionaries are extensions and what I'll describe is true for all extensions. How do you do this? Traditionally, for such a thing, you install these things centrally (%programfiles%\Mozilla\Firefox\extensions) instead of per-user (%applicationdata%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\randomstring\extensions). Try it... Do it... In order to get this working you will have to install it as your user, then elevate to Admin privileges and move the raw folders to the appropriate folders. Oh, and then set the security permissions right please. If you did everything right, those extensions will now be visible for all users. Most people don't know this, so you have extensions/dictionaries installed for each of them, all in different version, all in different state of usage. From a support point of view unacceptable. From within firefox, only the per-user system is supported. There is no check-box you can check if you are in the "Administrators" group to "install for all users".

Do note that OpenOffice has exactly the same problem with dictionaries. Luckily it detects if you are the "Administrator" user and offers you the option. Not so with the "Administrators" group, unless it changed (last I tried was OpenOffice 3.2).

I realize I deviated a bit with the above, but it illustrates another aspect of what is wrong with software these days.

Please, both in the proprietary world as in the free software world: Stop changing for the sake of change, especially in GUIs. Stop forcing upgrades upon us and do a Stable/Unstable distinction (Debian really got it right, but Debian doesn't make a good deskop without a good amount of manual work. Besides, even Debian is going to switch to Gnome3 eventually). Change is not bad, but radical departure is bad. Sometimes a product is just mature, and mature doesn't mean spoiled. It means, you can depend on it being what it is and not changing radically.

Windows XP, for all its failures is unique in the sense that it gave us 10 years of software stability. That was a great period to live in. I fear however, that this is in the past and we're bound to get in a rollercoaster ride.

Today, my mom sent me a picture of my Grandma on Google Streetview. I thought it was photoshopped, as I have an uncle who is an artist and is quite versed in Photoshop. A little doubt still persisted and I checked with Google Streetview to be sure.

My jaw dropped wide open when seeing the actual Google Streetview picture. I posted links to the actual address to select people on Facebook and G+, because obviously her address would be published. Probably not the best idea.

Since I still want to share, I'd say: enjoy!. It's a screenshot I made myself.

Yes, that is actually my grandma... My *awesome* grandma...

If you don't believe me you can contact me, and I'll give you the actual location. Just promise me then that you won't share the address.

I know, I haven't been very fond of Unity. As a matter of fact, I still don't really like it and there are improvements that could be made. I still bit the bullet and went with Ubuntu 11.10 on my work laptop? Why? Because yesterday my laptop refused to boot. The harddisk decided to have some mechanical failure somewhere between yesterday and the Monday before: I was sick due to a quite heavy Gastroenteritis last week.

First thing, organize a new hard disk. While I was away running down the electronic stores, I asked a co-worker to burn me the latest Ubuntu 11.10/amd64. The rest of the day, I passed installing the system, and setting everything up for my work environment. As I didn't have a possibility to read the old disk, I started from the assumption that everything was lost. I had a backup at home, so I wasn't all that worried.

Still, I decided to give Unity a shot. First thing first, you do need a good machine to run Unity as conceived by Canconical. This is a Core2Duo P8600 with NVidia graphics (Quadro NVS 160M, according to lspci). I had tried 11.10/Unity on my old latop which is a Turion X2 TL-50 with ATI Xpress 1100, and it's too damned slow for Unity. This is mainly due to the ATI chipset being grandfathered and not getting any decent drivers anymore. Also, I used it with a trackpad. The last thing is important: the longer "mousing ways" strain you when using a trackpad, but at work I use a mouse and there it doesn't bother me all that much.

The second thing, I decided after my initial Unity experience was to give it the "Mac treatment", which means: stop using maximized windows. Maximized windows are simply a pain in Unity. If you don't use them, you'll do fine. Next up is to take care that you never ever, under any circumstances, put something under the "dock" (dash?). If you do that, it will autohide, so if you need it, it will take a few seconds to reappear. That is very annoying. This is, by the way, the same reason that maximized windows suck so much. No dock.

When you adapt yourself to that line of thinking, Unity becomes usable. That said, Unity needs a lot of resolution. One could argue the icons are too large, so you cannot fit everything you might need in it.

Two very positive things on Ubuntu 11.10:

• The top bar, while being very uncustomizable, is duplicated on your second monitor. So if you need anything from up there, you actually have less mouse movements to do. Remember, you can get your email, IM, RSS by default in there.
• The backup tool looks nifty. I'm running one now, but from afar it looks a bit like a time machine clone. Very good for the normal user. Yes, I do know how to use rsync, don't worry.

What I like much less is that you "feel" (yes, yes, I know cold hard data is better) slower. I cannot say if it's just the system, or due to Unity. Furthermore, am I not convinced that the current NVidia drivers are top-notch (NVidia is usually quite good on Linux). Just right now Movie Player (that's Totem for you folks, I really need to install VLC), decided that it was going to hijack my second monitor and set it to "mirror" instead of Twinview. How that's even possible, is beyond me. The NVidia XServer Settings applet also manages to kill Unity from time to time. Sure, that's not really Canonicals fault, but it's annoying when it happens. I'd rather use the native monitor section application anyway. I don't think that possible, except if I'd try Nouveau or something.

All in all, I'm not all that negative any more about Unity.

Still, don't even think of trying this on slow machines and especially not on netbooks. Which is odd, as I understood Unity was "born" for that market.

There is one thing I want to say that bothers me: It's this new philosophy of putting applications in PPAs (Personal Package Archives). It is very much a hybrid form between "Windows thinking" and "Linux thinking". The mantra these days is pretty much "Just add this PPA". It's just too close to "Just download and install this exe". I don't like it. I did install two PPAs (indicator-cpufreq and indicator-multiload), but I really do think these belong in the main repository. Sure, these are little things, but I really don't know what exactly I added to my system, now do I? It gets worse. I have an application called "IBM Storage Manager" to work on our SAN. It's a Java application and it "needs" Sun/Oracle Java 6. You want Java from Sun/Oracle? Oh, add this PPA. I will tell you what: unless that PPA is on an official Oracle/Sun site, I tell you: No fucking way in hell.
IBM Storage Managers seems to run on OpenJDK, so for now I don't need to install it. I really should try the BladeCenter management consoles. They are Java-Applet based. That might fail spectacularly too.

Hi jawtheshark,

Your request to join the Desura Linux Beta has just been accepted by Henley. To install Desura and start browsing, buying and playing native Linux games, follow the link below:

http://www.desura.com/install

We employ a "buy once play anywhere" policy, so any Windows games or Humble Indie Bundle games you have activated will show up when you login. If you are a developer or publisher you can add games, mods and addons you are developing. Looking forward to seeing your feedback and enjoy the beta, we've got plenty of updates coming!

Regards, The Desura Team

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Yay!

In Time of Scrimping, Fun Stuff Is Still Selling... WTF?!?

I know, I'm old fashioned and people like me break the economy of over-consumption. I save, like many generations have done before me. For me, it is absolutely inconceivable buying luxury items when you're having financial trouble. That's the times you tighten the belt and do with less.

I must truly be from a different planet.... Well across the big pond, but I wouldn't be surprised if my fellow Europeans aren't much better.

Every time you talk about Windows 7 (and you know my opinion on it, it's Vista a bit polished), you hear the fanbois cry up that it detected everything for them and they didn't have to install a single driver (except perhaps graphics drivers, but that's the same everywhere). Well, my first experience was on brand new hardware and it definitely didn't. My brothers new PC, and getting the -older- Wifi card to work was like going to Hell and back. I probably journalled about. Why, yes, I did, but I failed to document the process of the wireless PCI card installation.

Anyway, second Windows 7 experience was on my (brand new) Dell L502x. As I didn't want to use the OEM installation but start with a fresh install, I did a fresh install with the provided (okay, bought as an option) Windows 7 installation CD. That one was harsh, pretty much nothing was detected on it and I got presented with a grocery list of drivers to install.

You'd think that old hardware would be fine, right? For kicks 'n giggles, I took out my old AMD Athlon MP 2400+. That's hardware from 2003. I wanted to do something specific with it and I did, but since it was in the apartment now and I had two 1TB SATA disks lying around and a PCI SATA/Raid controller (obviously not from 2003. The Tyan Tiger MPX S2466 doesn't have SATA), I decided to have some fun and setup a striped 2TB volume and install Windows 7 Ultimate (trial). One good thing about Windows 7, and it's about the only one, is that it's very easy to get the installation media and if you don't enter a key, you get the 30-day trial version. I'd rather have Microsoft provide the ISO and MD5 checksums, but I could get what I needed here. (Also an interesting read, not to extend the trial period, that thing about the ei.cfg)

Now, obviously, I didn't expect the PCI SATA/Raid controller to be detected. Well, at least not in RAID mode. That's fine, given Windows 7 now allows loading of extra drivers from USB and I had them lying around on my fileserver.

So, the thing installs and.... Okay, graphics are standard VGA. Fine, fine, you don't detect a years old NVidia Geforce4. That's okay. I get it, graphics drivers are exempt of the "should be detected" part. However, can you guess which device wasn't found. A device that's pretty important and, believe me, something which is considered bog-standard hardware. No? It didn't find the integrated 100Mbps 3Com 3C905. Can it get any more standard? Really? Microsoft? 3Com, the most common NIC of all times (at least from back then). I simply cannot understand that omission. The XP driver doesn't want to install (no surprise there) and Tyan obviously isn't going to provide drivers for Vista/7 for eight and a half year old hardware. I have no idea where to get drivers. Perhaps at 3Com (Probably not)

Windows 7 may be fantastic (but I doubt it, given my experience), but this is really sad, sad, sad, sad.... Microsoft, disappointing you since 1975....

Anyway, this pretty much stops my experiments dead in the water.

Update 2011-09-25@16h20CEST
With the help of a USB Wireless key, I managed to get on my network. Just because I'm an optimist, I decided to let the Windows driver manager check online for drivers for the 3Com 3C905C-TX NIC. You know what? It fucking finds them at once! Can you understand that? These drivers are unavailable for free download, but Microsoft has them and isn't assed to include them in the default install. Again: one of the most common NIC chipsets in the World! I need to install a network to install my network. Pure insanity.

I also tried finding graphics drivers for the graphics card. Okay, it is a very low end card (but it's passively cooled, that's why I never threw it away): an NVidia GeForce4 MX 4000 with 64MByte RAM. NVidia doesn't provide Windows 7 drivers for it, and it gets detected as Standard VGA. I'll try the "look online" trick again, but frankly... Compiz does run fine on this card.

Vista/7 made so much hardware obsolete, you could consider it an ecological disaster.

You all know I love dumpster diving. The excitement of getting new machines to play with, new hardware to give a life... I think I'm going to stop, or at least stop actively seeking. If I can get some older hardware given by friends or family, I'll probably still take it. The dumpsters themselves, I'll probably leave alone.

There are several reasons. First of all, I lack the time... I wish I had as much time as I used to in the good old days I only had to care about myself.

Second, it really is not economically viable. The typical machines found these days tend to be 2.0GHz++ AMD XP or Pentium IV. Those are capable machines, but think about it. An Atom based machine can be had for 199€, new and with warranty with more memory and dual-core to boot and that in a sleek small case while being energy efficient. Obviously you're going to say... "But, but, a Pentium IV is better than an Atom D525". To which I'll reply: Oh really? I don't think so.. Yes, I do realize those are artificial benchmarks and the the P-IV does that with one core where the Atom needs two cores to achieve the same score. Still, it's more than enough for the daily worker.

Not to mention that dumpster diving is forbidden and I have been caught a few times. It's getting harder and harder because they know me and keep an eye on me. Well, that, or I'm starting to cultivate a paranoia ;-)

I also lack the space... My parents have been nice enough to allow me to have my old wardrobe full of old computer stuff. I've been hoarding, and in essence, never really giving anything away. Sometimes I managed and I made sure it would be good machines, but eventually people buy something new and (as I usually ask), I get the old gear back.

This brings me to the main problem. I have fine machines, but there is nobody to take them. Given the price of todays machines, why would they?

Months ago, I dumped one of my old "giveaway-but-came-back-after-about-two-years" machines on my parking spot in the basement. I had no time, no space and let it sit there. One day, I noticed a note on it, which basically asked me "Hey, this computer is probably defect, I'd take it away so I can use the spare parts". I couldn't go ok with it, as the computer had belonged to a teenage girl and I wanted to be absolutely sure that there was no data left on the disk. I also knew it still worked, and somehow I couldn't just say "Sure, it's defective, you can take it". It wasn't, so I wrote a note: "No, you can't take it, it still works".

However, this gave me an idea. Someone wanted this AMD XP 2800+ machine (even though this person didn't know what the machine was...) and I couldn't justify keeping it. So why not prepare it for that person and give it away to them.... Better, I have more stuff he might like. So, I also gathered materials to build two other machines (A P-IV 2.8GHz and a P-IV 2.4GHz). When I was done refurbishing, I put them on my parking spot behind my car with a sign on each of them with big red letters "Take me! I still work!". I also was pretty nice, as on the printed signs, I added the exact specifications of the machine. Heck, I even included a power cable for each of them!

This was about a week ago. Nothing happened. I already feared the mystery computer affectionado wasn't a common visitor of my underground parking. Today, I came home and only one was left. Oddly enough the 2.8GHz P-IV. I guess the person who picked them up didn't have enough space in his car to take them all.

I hope they found a good home... Worst case, some idiot disassembles them and he only keeps the optical drives. (You see, the remaining one only had a CD-Rom... The other two were equipped with CD-RW and DVD-Rom...)

So, unless I really find something absolutely extraordinary, don't count on much dumpster diving adventures. Perhaps I should also change my slashdot signature now....

Update, 2011-09-13@00h40CEST
Had to fetch my laptop from my car because of a larger alert on our systems. Machine number three is gone too.

Unfortunately not in the way most people of my age increase their family size. Not that it's even remotely within the possibilities given my wife has to get regular X-Rays.

As always this requires a bit more explanation as I haven't updated you on any of the events in the last year. Let's first start with the end result and then I try to explain it. I now have a 19 year old on my hands living in my spare bedroom (also known as "my office", which obviously lost all functionality to me). This person is my brother in law and he's one kind of a cookie. You might remember his as a former WoW addict . Don't worry, he stopped doing that kind of drugs. *sigh*.

I'll try to keep this as short as possible. Basically, the first signs of going down the drain was this WoW addiction and I for most part blame mother in law being unable to stand firm to her (then early-teenage) son. You do not write excuse notes for school for you son when he has been up playing WoW all night. What's the only conclusion a young kid can make from such a situation? Basically, "Hey I can do whatever I want"... Resulting in a "middle-school-dropout".

He basically resulted in a youngster completely out of bounds and out of control. Usually, problems increase when these type of people get access to easy money. Well, most of that age don't get all that much money in their hands, right? Right? Well, no wrong. Not in this case. For this you need to that there "is" another sibling. The "is" are in quotes, because he's dead. He drowned in his car. I have never known him,, and from what I gather he had his share of problems, but basically got enough grip on his life to actually have a job and some decent education. Of course, his legacy lives on in a very bad decision he made. A decision he made because he thought "WTF, it's not going to happen anyway". He got a life insurance and due to the terrible divorce their parents went though, he decided that the money would go to my wife in case he would be heavily disabled and in case of death, his 10 year younger brother. Obviously, a 9 year old doesn't get the money, so it was locked by the insurance on an account for when the kid turned 18.

That nobody saw this coming (well, I did... I have warned them before, but regarding this family I feel like Cassandra) doesn't surprise me at all. His mother should have contacted the insurance company and taken steps so that he couldn't get this money at 18, as he was already trouble then. Of course she didn't and what happens when a partying teenage gy gets hands on money? The bad friends he (then undoubtedly already) had, turn to even worse friends.

Last year around March (Guess when he got his 18 years?), he pretty much started to freak completely. I know, because my wife wasn't home yet and I had my own share of problems. I got paranoid calls in the night asking about firewalls and stuff like that, not rational questions mind you. Later, when my wife was just at home, I've seen him in is worst state. He came over to us and I don't remember the reason. He was so out of his mind, including pure paranoia and a train of thought that jumped like a squirrel on acid that I'm pretty sure he was high on Cocaine. All the signs were there.

A week later he was in closed psychiatry. (Now really, haven't I seen the inside of hospitals and psy-wards enough in my life, yet?) I don't even remember how long he was there, but it was pretty fucking damn long. My wife (still highly disabled then) went to visit him every fucking day. His mother or father? Are you dreaming? A few times, perhaps.

I pondered writing a journal about this back then, and decided against it. I can't really remember why, but at the time it didn't seem to be a good idea to post it. I should have, would have made this journal shorter.

At least this stay calmed him down a bit. I had long, very very long conversations with him. Contrary to his father and his mother, I have enough "distance" to keep my calm. So after he got release (and being out of the influence of my mother in law, who is a abusive. Not that she hits him, but it's psychological and verbally. My wife is still suffering from that when she did it to her), he got better. Yes, he lived still with him, but I tried to convince him with the notion that he should keep low profile and not even try to argue with her. He was too late to get accepted by a school, so he worked on and off for the company of my father in law and the company of his uncles. Over that period, everything seemed to get better.

I'm pretty sure he stopped drugs after that except for pot (I'm okay with pot, if used in a reasonable way, as normal people do with alcohol) and alcohol. My mother in law is the definition of vindictive and irrational, so I don't think he has a nice time there. He tried staying at his fathers several times, but that was bound to fail. My father in law has a "new" family, which means smaller kids and I'm convinced that he treated his son as one of them, which you can't do with someone that age.

A few month ago, his mother kicked him out. We hosted him on the couch for a night. The next day he had an appointment with a school to get accepted again. Do you think any of the parents would have gone with him? Don't answer that. I did, I drove him there and went to see the lady from social services there. Everything went pretty well and I did explain the family situation as I saw it as "an outsider" and put a good word in for him. What matter is, he got accepted and he can go back to school in September. Given his age on an "adult contract" which means he's basically got to keep very low profile and stick to the rules at all costs. That night he went back to his mom.

For me, the was up was visible. Of course, it wasn't long before the first cracks in the wall started to appear. Two weekends ago, I get a call, and he's stuck in vicinity of Karlsruhe. He went to a music festival (okay, I'm fine with that) with "friends". Fine... Except of course, everything took a wrong turn from day #1. I'm not going into the details, but he took 600€ with him and he lost basically all of it the first day. Who even takes that much money with him to a festival is obscure to me. His "friends" abandoned him and he was there with basically no money and no ride home. Mother in law when he called her to pick him up? Basically, "Screw you, it's your problem". I can understand a lot, but nothing in my mind can understand a person who abandons her son at 200km from home with no money and no way of getting home. That's where I come in. I spent the best of my Sunday to pick him up and bring him home.

Last Monday (a holiday here), I get another call from him. This time, his mother and her brothers made sure he got kicked out and the police was on the way. I told him to cooperate and I'd come and pick him up at the police station when everything was done. You have to know that since a few years there is a law in effect here that allows battered wives to call the police and escort the abusive husband away with a restraining order for 10 days. As I found out, this law is actually abused for to kick kids out of the home too. Basically, she declared he threatened her with a knife and he claims it's not true. Has this happened? I do not know... I know their fights tended to escalate, but she also is the worst drama queen ever. Anyway, he's banned from home for ten days. Mother in law also has the right to refile in 10 day and then he gets a 3 month restraining order.

I also called his father, or better said his new wife who is one of the most reasonable people in the "family". Basically, I got confirmation of what I suspected. Showing up drunk at work, not notifying when he leaves for driving lessons, spreading an uneasy feeling amongst the (female office) employees. (Hey, waddaya know... a 1.9m 120kg guy who does what he wants *is* pretty intimidating. Not to me though.) Basically, I got a "Good Luck", meaning that road was closed too.

So, I organized a bunk, cleaned out a great part of my office/computer room and set a few rules. The first -and most important- rule was: You now stay here for at least those 10 days. I will not take a "I'll go sleep at friends" as an excuse to leave. The other rules are: you are home for dinner, you do not smoke pot, normal cigarettes are to be smoked on the balcony, you can watch TV and you get Internet access on your laptop (but if he thinks he isn't been watched, he's damned mistaken. Luckily he seriously overestimates my "Big Brother" qualities.), you go to bed when we do and no going out when I have to work the next day. (Of course, that one is still to be tested... I'm not looking forward to the next weekend) The only thing I haven't gotten under control is his alcohol habit. Luckily, we rarely have anything in the house (Hey, I know how it is to have an alcohol problem). The current deal is, he can have two beers an evening if he doesn't drink anything during the day. We'll see how that rolls out, but I did have a very long talk yesterday with him about alcohol abuse. If there is someone who knows anything about that, it's me.

So, we're stuck with him. At least for the next 7 days... I expect longer.

Great way to add additional strain on my relation and suck money that I'd rather have for the house... *sigh*

(As this is too long, I did not proofread... feel free to point out typos and spelling/grammar mistakes)

Addendum
Forgot to tell, yesterday he had driving lessons and those usually are in only one sector of the country. As we live on the opposite side, he got dropped of in his home village. He got a friend to pick up some gear at his moms and spent the rest of the time in the pub. That "friend" was supposed to bring him back to us. Obviously, that "friend" changed his mind and I had to pick him up once again. Brother in law, smelled badly of alcohol and he clearly had the signs of inebriation. He sworn by high and by low that he "only" had one whiskey and two beers. I highly doubt that. I still made him clear that I wouldn't have this and he should have being dropped off in the city and taken the bus home. The gear he took? You'd think a few clothes? Of course, not mainly his gaming machine and affiliated electronic gadgets. I asked him where exactly he was going to put that as our place is limited. Heck, I don't even have a big-ass machine any more, I live on a router-sized nettop! The gaming machine went to our basement and I'm going to try to keep it there. He's got a laptop, that should suffice.

Also, I found out that half of the money of his deceased brother is gone... In one year. I for one, am not surprised.

As I still haven't really decided how I'll finally install the Foxconn NT535, I wanted to give Ubuntu 10.04 LTS a shot. I installed it from CD (for a change, should have gone PXE, but I needed a CD anyway so I could repartition the i7 laptop... Which I still haven't turned on... *sigh*)

Anyway, during install.... Kernel Oops related to wpa_supplicant. This stalled the installation at about 79% and there was nothing I could do to get it running again.

Conclusion: the horrible experience related to wireless is not limited to the latest incarnation of Ubuntu. It's been there all the time. This means, most likely, that the firmware is absolute and utter crap and that's not their fault.

The remaining criticism stays valid, though. It also explains why my Fujitsu Siemens Amilo laptop worked just fine with 11.04, apart from Unity sucking and VueScan not running.

Luckily, I'm the type of person who separates data from operating system, so reinstalling anything is pretty easy.

According to my wife, I spend too much time with my computers lately. So, I haven't done much in the last days... I really should have found me a geek girl, or stayed single. ;-)

• For my Firefox/Iceweasel woes:mozilla.debian.net
• Getting LibreOffice instead of OpenOffice: Installing LibreOffice in Debian Squeeze from Backports without a hitch

Staying on Squeeze, I can run Compiz, run VueScan, the themes are not messed up, etc....

Remaining problem: the internationalization applet... I'll work around that. Interestingly that's called gnome-language-selector, so you'd expect it to be part of Gnome.

First let me tell you that I love Debian. I use it on servers, I use it on my Asus EEE PC 701 4GB (on which I'm typing this) and it's been good. Apart from the EEE PC, my desktops and laptops have been running Ubuntu. The LTS version for my mom and mother-in-law, and the non-LTS on my own machines. Alas, the latest Ubuntu, 11.04 is pretty much the "Vista of Linuxes". This feeling is caused by it not being able to run VueScan while Compiz is enabled (yes, yes, it's proprietary software, but it's the best scanning software you can get on Linux) and of course the whole Unity debacle. On my old Amilo Pa1510, it works fine when using Gnome2, but VueScan is a dealbreaker.

With the advent of my i7 laptop (which has arrived last Monday, and which I still didn't use or configure) the landscape of machines changed. The Amilo will be decomissioned, and my desktop (a Athlon64 X2, with 4GB RAM) will be refurbished for my mom. As I recently bought a Foxconn NT535, which is a tiny Atom-based computer, I decided to make that my primary desktop. I originally bought is because it was so tiny and find a future use for it. Since you can mount it on a computer screen using the VESA mounts, I decided to make it my primary desktop because it's insanely quiet and will save a lot of space.

I tried Ubuntu 11.04 on it and, it's an absolute nightmare. It doesn't work well at all, I get kernel oopses related to the wireless. So, I thought: Ubuntu is pretty much Debian with a few tweaks, I can do it myself.

Now, those "few tweaks" seem to be a lot more tweaks than I expected. Originally, I planned to make a journal entry on how to make Debian Squeeze as close to Ubuntu LTS, as you can using standard packages. I must now admit, that was pure hubris.

So, I install Debian Squeeze (using PXE, as always) and hand-pick the packages to make it close to what Ubuntu LTS is. I have a preference to use software in the repository and I really don't mind using Iceweasel and Icedove instead of Firefox and Thunderbird. I'm really fine with that. Thing is, Iceweasel is at 3.5.xx. It's very slow to start and even longer to quit. I know the stable branch of Debian, that's unlikely to change. No problem, I thought by myself, I'll upgrade to unstable, where it will probably be at 3.6.xx or higher. That's what Ubuntu LTS ships with. After the upgrade... it's still Iceweasel 3.5.xx. Ouch.... This tells me that Debian an Mozilla really should bury the war axe and at least agree to have Firefox and Thunderbird in the non-free repository. I realize that Debian has only limited resources, but that's not really acceptable for the so called "bleeding edge" branch which Sid should be.

With all this misery, I installed the latest Thunderbird and Firefox from Mozilla in /opt and was done with it. Of course, the responsibility to stay up to date, now falls on my shoulders.

Furthermore, running Compiz on Debian Unstable gives me very weird effects. Theming doesn't work well any more. That's okay, just use metacity... which of course would solved my VueScan problem in Ubuntu anyway.

My wireless doesn't work either, which is no real problem, because I wasn't going to use it. However, in that case, I could just have blacklisted the module in Ubuntu to avoid the kernel oopses, to get exactly the same result.

Then there is the little things, like a nice theme. On Ubuntu I used Radiance (the "white" version of Ambiance). Such a thing doesn't exist in Debian. The nicest theme in the repository is called "Shiki", but it comes only in a dark version. Also, in some programs the menus are black, in others they are white. It's weird. Weirdness I can live with but, still.

Ubuntu also has some very nice applets that simply aren't in Debian. Software center is one, but I can live without it. There is one insanely useful configuration applet that I miss a lot. You use it exactly once after installation of Ubuntu, and I'm sure you can work around it if you know which packages you need. This applet is the "Internationalization/Languages" applet. It allows you to change the language of the user interface, which is the part I don't use, but it also allows you to specify the spelling and grammar aides you want on your system. Simply, click the languages you need (Being, Dutch, French, German and English) and tell it to install the grammar and spelling packages, which will result in support for these languages in OpenOffice/LibreOffice, the Mozilla suites, and anything that uses these libraries. Which packages I need to install to achieve the same under Debian is absolutely daunting to me.

It's very clear: Canonical adds a lot of value to Debian, and you only realize it when you actually use Debian. The problem is the future. If Canonical continues down the drain, as 11.04 suggests, the added value will be destroyed by the bugs and annoyances in the distribution. On the other hand you have Debian, which is even on unstable behind times and need so many tweaks to make it a nice experience, that it's a near impossible task for people with limited time and knowledge. (I'm sure I can manage, but really, this already took so much time).

The way out? Probably scratch the current installation and try Ubuntu LTS. It will give me a few years leeway, but then? What then? It's a short term solution.

What is clear is that the i7 probably won't get a Debian installation.(I'm sure wireless won't be supported either, and that's not acceptable on a laptop). 11.04 is out, as VueScan won't work. Waiting for 11.10 is a bit long, and no guarantee there will be acceptable fixes.

It also puts me in a bad position for the Ubuntu machines of my mom and mother in law. I could just give them an Ubuntu LTS and have no problems whatsoever... It's clear that I can't do that with Debian, at all, unless I accept the older browsers and perhaps sites that will complain because they don't know this Iceweasel thing. Hello support calls! Let's just hope that Canonical gets their act together before the next LTS. Otherwhise, I see black for Linux on the Desktop for non-geeks.

I've been registered to the "promotional offers" newsletter from Dell for years. Usually you get a code for 5% or 10% off and that's why I keep them. You never know you need a computer and why pay more, right?

Sometimes, they send a promotional code that can give you a saving of 5%, 15%, 25% or 50%. Of course, I never expect the damned thing to actually give 50% and every time I tried I hit the 5% or 15% and then I simply discard the shopping basket.

Today I got one of these offers again, and as always, I try for the 50%. So, I select a XPS15, configure it with a Quad i7, set the screen to Full HD, and some little gimmicks left and right. It's a promotional one, apparently original price is 1388.99€, a discount of 339.00€ is applied anyway, resulting in a price of 1049,99€. I'd never shell out that kind of money for a laptop these days.

Then I apply the code... 50%!!!! Holy fuck!. A Core i7 for 525€

Now I sit here fighting with myself whether I should really leave such a deal...

My wife and I have been client with the P&T Luxembourg Financial Services since ages. (I don't know how it is in non-EU countries, but in many EU countries, the Postal Services has a banking branch). They are great because having a current account there costs nothing, using their e-banking costs nothing and pretty much 80% of all payments can be done using them as most people have an account at P&T Luxembourg. It's also mandatory for state servants to have a postal account as wages are only paid on such accounts. The downside is that you don't get any interest with them, but frankly, it's not as banks give much interest on current accounts these days.

Their web banking also worked perfectly fine with alternate browsers on alternate platforms. (Not that I have to complain about my other bank, where the same applies). Now, recently I got a letter announcing their "new and improved" web banking service. I was already a bit miffed, because it clearly stated that it would move in the mid-term to LuxTrust which is the most useless thing the Luxembourgish State came up with. Basically, it's a certificate authority (Good!) in private hands (Bad! Of course, granted defacto monopoly status by the State. Ugly!) which is supposed to bring secure transactions to all citizens of Luxembourg. You're supposed to get your own certificate, signed by them, so you can handle anything related to the state (I don't know, like requesting a birth certificate and stuff like that) securely and banks are strongly encouraged to participate. Obviously, the semi-state-dependent P&T does participate.

I have absolutely no problem in getting my own certificate to prove who I am. It's a fine system. What is not fine is that they fucking charge money for that. Sure, it's only a mere "63.25€" for their cheapest option. So, I go from "no-cost" to "must-pay-for-stupid-certificate". Sure, it comes down to about 12.65€/year, which is the price of a credit/debit card on your account. It is not much, but I think it's a pure ripoff.

Furthermore, notice that I said that the P&T's banking worked on all systems. I have absolutely no indication that the WebTrust thing with run on my operating system of choice. None at all. The only Linuxes that are supported are Debian 4.0 (Etch) and Redhat 4.0. That's not even the current Debian Stable, because that one is called Squeeze, and in between there was Lenny! A quick glance on Wikipedia, reveals to be that Redhats current Stable is at 6.0.

Of course, the software from Redmond and Cupertino is supported. Why and I not surprised?

Did you notice the column "Java" in the supported systems table? I have the vague impression it's all Java based. Applets... 1995 called and wants their technology back.

This brings me on the topic... I logged into the P&T "new-and-shiny-improved" system today. First of all, I got a nice screen with compatible systems and needed to click through that I was sure whether I wanted to continue because my system wasn't supported. Great, now they start to complain about my system. I took the "old" authentication system (which, as I understood will disappear mid-term. I obviously can't test the LuxTrust version, as I refuse to pay for it) and got presented with... an Applet! WTF! It was signed so I got a scary Java message complain about that. Seriously? For the basic authentication you used before? Worse, when it came to type in the codes, I had to use a fucking virtual keyboard. What?!? Seriously?

The good news is that the rest of the site seems to be a standard web-application.

This is seriously bad news for alternate-OS citizens of Luxembourg. We'll get cut off. Worse, it's bad news for ALL citizens of Luxembourg because you'll sooner or later get this scam forced upon you and getting another fee squeezed out of you for nothing at all.

If you didn't notice: I'm seriously pissed off. Especially, because my other bank doesn't do this shit nor does it participate. They issue you a certificate, free of charge (well, I guess it's covered in my three-monthly account fees). Yes, it's software, but I can import it in any browser I want, copy it wherever I want. If I lose it (for example on a USB stick) it it's no big deal as an exported certificate (p12) is encrypted and password protected and I have another copy at home. Only pluses. It's perhaps slightly less secure than a hardware token, but it works, is simple and is free.

I weep for the geeks in my country. Politics taking over technology always ends up in tears.

If you have ads enabled on slashdot, you might have noticed abroadband.com. Basically, it's an Australian service that promises wireless broadband for 0,59€/MB pretty much anywhere you are in the world. At first this might seem expensive, especially if you have a cellphone plan that includes unlimited usage within your country. These exist where I live, especially for iPhones and go for a 50€/month, but the "unlimited" part is obviously only in Luxembourg. Pass the border and you're in for some financial surprise. Regardless, I find a 50€/month plan excessive. My plan is 0€/month and 0,09€/min and 0,09€/SMS. We rarely pass the 25€ mark per month with two cellphones on the plan. Data, is expensive... I calculated it roughly as being 2€/MB. Since we don't have smartphones, it's no issue.

So, from my point of view, the abroadband service is a pretty acceptable offer for low-usage and especially "on vacation" usage. From my experience, wireless access in hotels is mostly paying too and their rates aren't exactly cheap.

I ordered the stick + SIM option, which I got in the mail this morning. You first need to activate the service and it would have been nice if they had told that you needed your order number to do that. Anyway, first attempt was on Ubuntu 10.04 on my work computer during lunch. The stick was not detected, but after some googling, I found that you needed to install a package, namely "usb-modeswitch". After that it was detected correctly as a Huawei E173. Alas, no way to get it running using the gnome network applet.

Tonight, I felt bold and fired up the Asus EEE 701 4G (which is the most likely candidate for on-vacation usage) running Debian Squeeze. I think the "usb-modeswitch" comes with the "Laptop" meta-package. Basically, it was plug-in, enter PIN and go online. Well, not really online as I first needed to do the registration with abroadband. Interesting, factoid: the gnome network manager (which works fine with LXDE, thank you very much) marks the connection with "R" so you know you're roaming. With this stick you'll obviously always be roaming, but I like the little touch.

As said before, during the registration, I needed the order number. I had it at hand, since I was at home, but for someone activating the service while on vacation it would be much less fun if you didn't have the required information. Apart from that it was painless.

After registration, you have to wait around five minutes.... and yes, it works. Slashdot.org, Google (I go over Austria... Okay, not complaining), Last.fm (not too long, that would get expensive), ssh to my servers. The only thing that didn't work was facebook. Why this is, I have no idea.

It's obvious I won't use it very often, but is a great option to have as a backup (if the DSL goes down, for example) or when I'm really on vacation.