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“Opera Software has removed the banners and licensing fee of their Opera Web Browser, and it is now freeware.”

I’ve been playing with Opera in the past, and I liked it a lot, except for those stupid banner ads. Seriously, you leave Internet Explorer, or even Windows altogether, to get rid of adware (banners ads, toolsbars and all sorts of shit), and then you don’t wanna see a good browser, having banner ads built in!!!

Opera used to be a product you would pay for, but now they are making it available free of charge, though it’s still closed source, proprietary, software.
Then you may think “Where do they get revenue from???”, well Opera actually makes it’s browser for a bunch of cellphones and embedded devices, so they will make money by licensing it that way. I think this move will increase their userbase, because I people will now look at Opera with a lot more positivity. Again, you leave IE to get out of the world of adware and spyware, and no one wanna use a browser that actually has adware built in, I certainly won’t.

But all that stuff is for the past, now Opera is freeware and free of any sort of adware and banners… I’ve been playing with the latest version of a few days, and I must say, it’s a great browser!! I won’t hesitate recommending Opera to anyone looking for an alternative to Internet Explorer, another thing I just wanna add, Opera is highly crossplatform, and available of a great variety of operating systems: Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, Mac OS X and Windows.

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“Microsoft is a company with deep pockets, but nevertheless, even we the rich and mighty INQ hacks had to suppress a shudder when it was revealed that the Xbox may have lost Microsoft upwards of $4 billion in four years.”

I know Micro$oft has big-time income each year, but come on, 4 billion dollars is a hell of a lot of money to loose over four years!! At one point Micro$oft was loosing 200 dollars per Xbox they sold!!!

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“Apple and the major record labels have been cruising towards a confrontation over iTunes Music Store pricing for months now, and one label head, namely Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman is responding angrily to Stevie J’s comments last week about “greedy” record labels.”

OK, this one proves that the record companies are a bunch of money hungry motherfuckers! The greedy bastards want either higher prices on iTunes or a share of the money Apple earns by selling iPods!!!

I tell ya all, fuck iTunes, fuck Napster! Get LimeWire, eDonkey and BitTorrent and teach the record companies a leasson they’ll never forget!!!

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“For almost a year now Windows gamers have been able to benefit from the advantages of Scalable Link Interface, or better known as SLI, while up until now alternative OS folks like us haven’t had any such luck utilizing this innovative technology.”

Phoronix has a very indepth article about NVIDIA’s upcoming 1.0-8XXX drivers, which will introduce SLi on Linux!

Link: NVIDIA 1.0-8XXX Series Preview

“The amazing thing isn’t that Windows beat the pants off Unix; it’s that so many of the Unix companies survived until today.
Linux came into the field though with two big advantages over the Unixes. The first was that it was open-source. In the meritocracy of open-source development, the good code survives and the bad code dies.
The second advantage was it had Linus Torvalds.”

Steven Vaughan-Nichols has an interesting article up on eWEEK on why Microsoft won’t beat Linux, and why the did beat UNIX.

I think his points in this article is very very right, and very very very clear. It’s not always the guy with “the best” product that wins the contest, everyone in this industry should always keep that one in mind.

Link: Windows Beat Unix, But It Won’t Beat Linux

MozillaQuest has a recent interview with Greg Mancusi-Ungaro, director of marketing for Linux and open source at Novell, regarding the recent activity around SUSE Linux and the openSUSE project. Greg explains what it is and why Novell decided to open SUSE development to the public.

It’s a good read, if you wonder why this Greg seem so experienced it’s because he came to Novell from Ximian, when Novell purchased Ximian, about two years ago.

Link: A Glimpse of SUSE Linux 10.0 and Other Things Brewing at Novell

Right now I’m using SUSE Linux Professional 9.3, and I’m very very happy with it. And I’m seriously looking forward to SUSE Linux 10.0, which is scheduled for release next month.
Lately, I’ve become really interested in learning about other UNIX-like operating systems, like BSD. When I’m done with my education as a computer technician/administrator I wanna be able to do Windows (If Micro$oft hasn’t lost everything on the Windows Vista/Longhorn flop they’re trying to pull off), Linux and also BSD.
BSD’s past seem very very mysterious to me, and let me tell you, it is hard to understand. But today there are three major BSD operating systems out there: FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD.

The ones I find most interesting is FreeBSD and OpenBSD, both have different goals and focusses on different things.

“FreeBSD aims for high performance and ease of use by end users, and is a favourite of web content providers. It runs on a number of platforms, including i386 based systems (“PCs”), systems based on the AMD 64-bit processors, UltraSPARC® based systems, systems based on Compaq’s Alpha processors and systems based around the NEC PC-98 specification. The FreeBSD project has significantly more users than the other projects.

NetBSD aims for maximum portability: “of course it runs NetBSD”. It runs on machines from palmtops to large servers, and has even been used on NASA space missions. It is a particularly good choice for running on old non-Intel hardware.

OpenBSD aims for security and code purity: it uses a combination of the open source concept and rigorous code reviews to create a system which is demonstrably correct, making it the choice of security-conscious organizations such as banks, stock exchanges and US Government departments. Like NetBSD, it runs on a number of platforms.” – Greg Lehey

I’ve been looking for some good books and good tutorials online for getting started with FreeBSD and OpenBSD (I think I eventually will get to NetBSD aswell, but for starters I wanna focus on the two I find most interesting), and I ran into this little collection of short guides and tips ‘n tricks for OpenBSD.

So far I’ve found it very very handy, and a good read before trying to install OpenBSD, if you want to get into OpenBSD aswell, you should definiteley check this out.

Link: OpenBSD 101

“A bunch of videos and a take on Bill’s pirating ways and programming ineptness. Watching Bill getting Pied and Steve Ballmer acting like he belonged in a mental institution. It’s freakin hilarious!”

I couldn’t agree more, these small clips made me laugh my freaking ass off for like 40 minutes.

Especially Steve Ballmer’s crazy TV add, is so damn funny along with BIll Gates getting “pied”, one note about that one is that a few seconds to the ending of the video, you can hear someone say: “HE’S FUCKING DEAD!!!”.

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Yesterday Nintendo finally reveiled the controller for their upcomming next generation console, Nintendo Revolution. And I tell ya, this is different. I’ve looked at A LOT of fan mock-ups of the controller and nothing I’ve seen comes close to what Nintendo showed at Tokyo Game Show yesterday.

Main Controller Features

• 3D Pointing. Sensors understand up, down, left, right, forward and backward.
• Tilt Sensitive. Controller can be rotated or rolled from side-to-side.
• Buttons Included. Has a trigger on its backside, face buttons, and a D-Pad.
• Multifunctional. Has an expansion port which can be used with different types of controller peripherals. Analog stick with two trigger buttons planned for left hand.
• Wireless. Totally wire-free. Currently there are no details on the max distance, source or power, or otherwise.
• Rumble Built-in. Included as a standard in all the controllers.

Source: IGN

On the DS, Nintendo split the screen in two, with Revolution they’re splitting the controller in two!

You may think “What the fuck are you gonna use this thing for?”, well, imagine a first person shooter game, you could control the player with the left-hand D-pad and aim your gun with the right-hand remote-like controller, you could also use the remote for a flash light.

Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo, also said, during his keynote at TGS, that the Revolution controller is very expandable, in the back end of the remote you will find a little plug for add-ons. During E3 Iwata said that it will be possible to download old Nintendo games off the web and play them on Revolution, for this, Nintendo will be designing a classic-style controller so that those older games will feel more like playing it on the actual older Nintendo console.

Personally I’m really excited about this new controller, when it comes to real innovation, no one beats Nintendo, after all, they has over 20 years of experience with video games!

IGN has some very good in-depth articles about this new controller, go check ‘em out!

Links:
Satoru Iwata’s announcement of the controller at TGS 2005 (Video)

IGN articles:
TGS 2005: Hands-on the Revolution Controller
TGS 2005: Revolution Controller: The Possibilities
TGS 2005: Developers Comment on Revolution Controller
TGS 2005: Feedback: Revolution Controller

“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Mario, happy birthday to you”

Today, the 13th of September 2005, it’s been 20 years since Nintendo released the first Mario videogame, which was called Super Mario Bros.
Oh boy, so much has happend since then! And many things are about to be “revolutionized”

Mario is probably the best known video character ever, I first heard of Super Mario when I was three years old, damn those were the days… Oh, day dreaming again!