Turns out Resistance isn't futile

Yahoo!

Microsoft has officially withdrawn the unsolicited buyout of Yahoo!

quoth the Ballmer:

"...I hereby formally withdraw Microsoft’s proposal to acquire Yahoo!."

and my favorite bit...

Also, after giving this week’s conversations further thought, it is clear to me that it is not sensible for Microsoft to take our offer directly to your shareholders. This approach would necessarily involve a protracted proxy contest and eventually an exchange offer. Our discussions with you have led us to conclude that, in the interim, you would take steps that would make Yahoo! undesirable as an acquisition for Microsoft.

What kind of steps? I just don't know what you are implying.

Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang responded with his own brand of Job'sian Optimism.

Yahoo! is profitable, growing, and executing well on its strategic plan to capture the large opportunities in the relatively young online advertising market. Our solid results for the first quarter of 2008 and increased full year 2008 operating cash flow outlook reflect the progress the company is making....

..."I am incredibly proud of the way our team has come together over the last three months. This process has underscored our unique and valuable strategic position. With the distraction of Microsoft's unsolicited proposal now behind us, we will be able to focus all of our energies on executing the most important transition in our history so that we can maximize our potential to the benefit of our shareholders, employees, partners and users."

I'm proud of you to Jerry. It cannot be easy turning down giant bucket loads of cash. But I'm glad you did.

MrCopilot

Program Note: Everything has changed

I'm Sorry,

No really, I apologize.

I recently succumbed to the call of corporate America. I am now employed by an enormous company in a position that was tailor made for my talents, so much so that I had no choice but to accept their more than reasonable offer of employment.

There are benefits to being no longer only self employed. Chief among them is a regular bankable paycheck. Add to that a nice benefit package and a sane work environment and management style. It also doesn't hurt that I love the work and have an opportunity to shape the direction of new Linux products.

But there are also some disadvantages.

First off, my new employer is located in Lexington a good 3hrs and a time zone away from what I have affectionately started to call home. My residence is dead smack in the middle of nowhere. Way out in the country with horses, cows, trees, grass and cropland as far as the eye can see and beyond. It is quiet and friendly. My daughter attends a lovely little school with hometown pride and personal attention. She is just about to finish her first year there, meeting new friends, joining the band, academic and archery teams along the way. She is none too thrilled about moving again so soon. So we (Mom and I) have decided it would be best if we waited at least until the school year was over before undertaking the move.

This leaves me holed up in a, shall we say, less than reputable one room hotel in a questionable area of town during the week.

Secondly, Did I mention there is NO INTERNET. I mean none. Being away from the wife and kid is one thing but the Internet too, this cannot stand.

I have been on a personal boycott of the cell phone industry since its inception because I refuse to be charged by the minute. The cost of maintaining the wireless network is exactly the same whether I am on the phone or not and I see no reason why I should pay for the privilege of using my phone on a metered basis. So for that reason I have been unreachable away from my desk for the last 10 years. Kind of nice, never being interrupted at the grocery store or while driving. Of course it was less than convenient when the car broke down or while traveling. Alright, alright, I bought a prepaid cell phone for a trip to Florida once, but that was it, I swear.

After being in this self imposed disconnected exile for 3 weeks, I could stand it no more. Walking in and around town I come across more than one billboard for an UNLIMITED cell phone plan. I make a note to check it out. During lunch at work I pop on over to their website. Hmmm, no contracts, Unlimited Voice, Text, Picture, Data and Web for $50/month. There must be a catch, right.

Yes, the catch is a limited selection of phones and a limited non-roaming coverage area. Roaming is not included in the Unlimited Minutes. However I only need the phone here and I have no immediate travel plans. So I stopped in one of their offices and picked up the cheapest phone and viola I'm reconnected. Web access (slightly painful, but considerably better than nothing) and more importantly access to my family as needed.

I had considered a mobile broadband solution from Sprint or Verizon but the costs including a ridiculous deposit seemed too high. $250 deposit + $60 a month and a 2 yr contract + the cost of the modem. Then of course I had to ensure it would be Linux compatible (Some are, some aren't.) Versus $115 for my shiny new phone and first months service. Only 50 bucks a month with no contract. No brainer.

Here endeth the Cricket wireless commercial.

So why am I apologizing?

For being a corporate whore?

Nah, lots of us are that and there is no reason to apologize. We all have to eat right.

For giving in to the wireless industry?

I have no regrets, I feel like I haven't compromised my ideals and in fact I am supporting a small newcomer who is actively promoting them. I wish them much success, and if you are in their coverage area check them out, tell em MrCopilot sent you. This will mean nothing to them, but it strokes my ego.

No, the real reason I am apologizing is that I have neglected you, dear readers. Not that I haven't had anything to say these last three weeks. I just feel strongly that my work should be completely separate from this particular web presence. Therefore using their resources to post here feels icky. Even if it is just an email. Plus I really have been very busy both getting up to speed on the various technology I'm now working with and arranging a new life here in the big city.

So you will find nothing here going forward regarding my new employer, it's products or practices.

However, through my job I will be exposed to new things relevant to this blog that I will time to time write about. I would like to point out the obligatory statement, that the opinions expressed here are my own and are in no way to be associated or affiliated with my employer.

MrCopilot

See ya Chuck, Moses dead at 83

Moses dead at 83, seems like only 40 years ago Charlton Heston was freeing his people from pharoah and laying down the law.

Sure he was Ben Hur, John the Baptist and Moses (IMDB) but Heston is most memorable to us geeks for his portrayal in 1968's Planet of the Apes.

Spoiler: This is the Ending.

A few words from an admirer of Chuck's

And finally you can watch for his appearance in Tim Burton's remake. The full movie is here, and I promise Chuck is in it ;)

How'd you like to be the coroner's assistant?

Bill, go in there and pry that gun out of his hands will you?

Too Soon?

MrCopilot

Kubuntu Feisty to Gutsy Upgrade

Last week I did a house full of Kubuntu installs as recounted here.
I went back to check up on the tweens and see if they needed anything. Everything seemed to be going fine, although they needed a little help connecting to a USB drive shared over the network from a Vista machine.

Simple enough add network folder. Guess what, they needed write support and that is unsupported in network folders and Dolphin. Alrighty then. Add bookmark to smb://hostname/foldername. Asks for Username and password and all is good.

While setting this up for them I notice a little game one of the girls is playing. A cute little anime style mmorpg The Mana World. Hmm, I bet my daughter would enjoy that.


I finish up my work and spend the rest of the night playing with compiz on another machine. Wow, after you get it working (no small feat), so purty! But that is another story for another time.

When I arrive home, I "sudo apt-get install tmw" on my Debian machine. I call my daughter in and set her down and she is instantly mesmerized off in a land of maggot slaying, egg hunting stat increasing bliss. Good thing it's spring break, she was in here all night. Look for a full review in the OSGGFG coming soon


OK enough, lets go install it on your machine. I often make the mistake of saying things like just open a terminal and type "sudo apt-get install tmw" to her. You know to show her how easy linux is. So simple a child could do it.

After 2 spelling errors she comes back with "Package Not Found".

That's strange. I follow her in, type it and you know what she is right. Well maybe it is new, we haven't updated in while, so "sudo apt-get update" followed by "sudo apt-get install tmw" followed by hunh, package not found again.

Hold on a sec. Firefox, the themanaworld.org. Sure enough packages for:

Windows installer 0.0.24

Source code 0.0.24

MacOS X package 0.0.24

Slackware 12.0 package 0.0.24

Debian package

Ubuntu 7.10 package

Gentoo eBuild

Fedora package

Oh man, we have Feisty not Gutsy. She says what does that mean? I'll spare you the details of that conversation save for her insistence that she be able to name the next couple.

Now, our Internet connection is suboptimal. It is technically Broadband but not by any real definition of that word. If you go over 50meg in a half hour they throttle you way down to 30kb a second for 2 or 3 hours. Making the distribution upgrade a less than desirable choice for a tiny little rpg.

Turns out though, short of compiling it ourselves that was the only way. (I didn't try the windows package under wine, which probably would have worked.) Besides, any other workaround would not stop this from happening again. She knows these girls and if they have a game that she likes, it would be a lot easier if they shared the same repositories.

So we bit the bullet. Now there are walkthroughs and howtos for this type of thing. Always doing my best to be educational, I send her off in search of a couple and we settled on this one.

Which is a fine article. Even links to a nice screenshot howto for Kubuntu,Of course it doesn't take into account our dreadful download speeds and therefore says nothing about going to bed in the middle but otherwise is a fairly accurate description of how it should work.

Here are the instructions.

Network upgrade for Kubuntu desktops (recommended)

You can easily upgrade over the network with the following procedure.

Follow the pictures at http://kubuntu.org/~jriddell/kubuntu-upgrade

1. Open the Adept Manager by going to KMenu -> System -> Adept Manager (Manage Packages).

2. In Adept -> Manage Repositories enable "Recommended updates", close and reload.

3. If your system is up to date, the upgrade wizard will be offered it via the Version Upgrade button. Otherwise:

   1. Press the Full Upgrade button.

   2. Press the Apply Changes button.

   3. Once the packages are installed, exit the Adept Manager (Adept -> Quit).

   4. Repeat the initial steps (1-3).

Steps 1 and 2 go off without a hitch. Even step 3 eventually reveals the normally hidden Version Upgrade button.

When you click that button a new program is downloaded to a temp directory very quickly gotta watch for it if you wanna know where. Afterwards you are presented with this screen.

Self explanatory right. Click Finish and Adept will close and your newly downloaded Upgrade tool will start. Okeydokey. Click Finish. Window closes Adept stays open and nothing else happens no matter how long we wait.

Well maybe I missed something, I was only monitoring her following the directions after all, lemme in there. I follow the instructions again. I get to the same point and same result. I hear a cute little "HaHa" from over my shoulder.

At this point I have once again shown her how easy this all is. But nevermind I sally forth.
Tell you what, lets open Adept from a terminal instead, that way we can see the output and see where it fails.

Where it fails is some strange looking Python error. Hmmm, further investigation (ie running the script directly from the terminal after running through the above process a few more times to get said script's location.) reveals that it can't connect to the Xserver.

You see the above instructions are assuming that you are running on the root account, using the root's X server. Normally when doing major upgrades of this magnitude this is the preferred method. The fairly simple fix was to type "xhost +" which allows any client to connect to the X server. But she would have NEVER found that. Never.Probably running adept through the run command with kdesu would work as well, but the above instructions were specific. Notice that the newest upgrade instructions for going from Gutsy to Hardy (in Beta currently) are given this way.

After that the upgrade went rather smoothly. Sort of.

At some point there were dpkg errors. Similar to the ones described in the initial Kubuntu upgrade article, with the same fixes run "dpkg -a" and try again. And it happened again. and again.

When all was said and done, we ran adept and were pleased to see the Gutsy indication in the update package listings. clicked tmw and she was happily playing. And it only took 2 days.


As an aside, her copy is a version behind my straight debian copy, meaning her character can't have the same haircut. But that is just plain nitpicking, and I said too bad, go play.

Now I tell this story not to bash Ubuntu, Kubuntu, blahbuntu or any other Linux. Just as a general observation. As far as we've come, we still have a ways to go. Lucky for her, she has me around to figure out these minor inconveniences.

Since the instructions are not in a wiki, it is now recorded here, for anyone stuck.

MrCopilot