Lemme just say a big hand for Tex, and the boys in the band they’re doin’ all the work!

Read an excellent history-type article on the Apple vs Microsofy lawsuit of the late 80s. At least Microsoft owns a lot of patents and has a lot of copyrighted stuff, but doesn’t go on suing it’s compititors, at least not yet — it does, however, bad-mount a lot. However, can we just assume then Apple was the one that started this whole ugly game of ownership rights? I dunno, and to an extent don’t care, cuz I’m not an expert and dont have the knowledge. At the end of the day if I’ve the “freedom” to do stuff with my computer without it insisting how I must use it, I’m a happy rider.

Meanwhile, the full version of PCLinuxOS 0.93a, code named “BigDaddy”, was released early this week, and I installed it over the PCLOS MineME base I was running and can’t be any more pleased with it. Like always, Texstar has made sure that all the plugins just work and made it even more of a for-the-lazy-bums-type operating system which just works. Texstar was an early 3rd party packager for Mandriva, then Mandrake, and forked away as he made more and more changes to his likings. Because Mandrake is GPLed software, it was possible, and I as an end-use have this excellent piece of sofware to work in me puter.

PCLOS is just brilliant! It was like when I first tried a computer I was on Windows and it was easy to learn. But over the years I didn’t have a clue on how to maintain it property without it disrupting the way I wanted to work — sorry I am still not a geek. As I looked for another option, GNU/Linux was as easily availble. It was definately tough to learn, but as I leaned the basics it became so freaking easy to maintain. And then… along came PCLOS into my life last year. It was like forget learning if u can’t be arsed by it and just use it. Initially based on Mandrake it comes with all the great GUI admin tools, however, without it’s bugs to hinder your work. Thats what I call “radically simple”.

Thank you Tex and the Ripper Gang! Adios!!

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Stuck here out of gas… out here on the Gaza Strip…

This is a song about a superhero named Tony. It’s called Tony’s theme…

BITE ME!

“You fucking die” I said, to her
I said “YOU FUCKING DIE”, to her
Huh? What?
No, no! I was talking to Kim
I said “you fucking die”
No, I was just- we were just goofing around
No, no. It didn’t have anything to do with anything
She said: “Don’t tou- anybody touch this is my stuff”
And I said “You fucking die” like that
I was finishing her part for her
You know what I mean?

Oh BTW, that’s Pixies bassist and Breeders guitarist Kim Deal. I read this interview when I had just got into the band and rememember liking the following part especially…

She’s the one who got me interested in music in the first place. She came home from a drive-in movie and she was on acid and she had seen this Led Zeppelin film, The Song Remains the Same.

So I was standing talking to her in the backyard smoking a cigarette when you’re not supposed to. And she told me about this movie, and it was really interesting. So we decided that we were going to be rock stars and sing, and be just like in the movie.

The ’she’ person here was Kim’s sister. Adios!!

The Cowboy from Hell.

Pantera Guitarist Dimebag Darrell was an insane guitarist. Wasim is a Pantera nut and I loved to hear him talk about Dimebag. (I use past tense cuz I haven’t seen Wasim for months.) He had a collection of videos and live concert footages, including one deadly (as Wasim prefers the term when relating to somethin kick ass) Russian metal concert that was a riot.

I’m not that much of a fan of American metal bands — like Metallica, Megadeth, et. all — but this Pantera thingy is seriously “deadly”, especially the guitar riffs and the drumming. Drummer Vinnie Paul was his brother.

I’m still more or less confused with what exactly is referred to as shredding. I thought this Dimebag guy mostly shredded, but the Wikipedia entry says otherwise. Anyway, as I was reading about him, I feel insanely stupid that I don’t get what most of the technical stuff mean. Here’s an excerpt…

However, Darrell is critisized for his technical abilities, usually undermining them or blowing them out of all logical proportion. To begin with, Darrell is considered a very technical picker, he’s considered one of ther more technical of the guitar pact, with his flawless guitar playing, the records of Dimebag playing sloppy in a song, even playing covers of other artists such as Michael Angelo Batio or Van Halen, are almost technical picking. Although Dimebag rarely tried to shred on Pantera records, his picking ability is comparable to the likes of Marty Friedman of Megadeth in a few of his solos, something Dave Mustaine claimed. Despite this, Dimebag shows little technical knowledge of other techniques such as finertapping, sweep picking (although he does occasionally use some of the more technical lines) and most of the others. Another point to emphasis critisicm on is the fact that many people considered the fact that Dime’s “tweener” solos were very experimental and creative, with wild effects and screaming wahs, a good quantity of solos were used as fillers, just for the inclusion of a guitar solo in the music. Dimebag Darrell Also had a strong legato technique and occiasonally made use of the harmonic minor scale in such songs as Primal concrete sledge, domination(solo) and a few others.

Maybe it’s a bit of a badly edited material, however, most of it seriously goes over my head. Adios!!

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You Got No Right…

Where the fuck did the seeder go? I shoulda downloaded it this morning only, but no I needed some free bandwidth over no big deal. The tracker site is happily showing me as the only, single leecher. Me? I’m an abandoned “leecher” now? Here’s the shot cuz it’d dissapear later…

What about all the times I’ve seeded stuff up to 10 times the download? Leecher huh? You bet I’m not taking this lightly, especially now that I’m abandoned and stuff. What the heck am I supposed to do with this 34.5% of an iso image thingy? Anyone wants to trade? Noone, see? Enough already you KATE OS guys…. fix the damned Web site for me to use the traditional ftp way of doing things. Adios!!

Update @ 2323hrs: When I maximized the client to kill it, I noticed this…

So I refreshed the site and saw this…

Seems the Swiss dude got scared of me yelling and swearing and decided to come back and seed.
Lesson learned: When u can’t have you way, swear and yell your way out! Yay!!

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Stealing Stealing…

I was desktop wallpaper hunting, and I stole this from Umma’s Scotland 2002 gallery…

Click on image for a fuller size.

That is the Fraser Castle (Don’t ask me what that is). I only wish the car wasn’t there. It’s looks damn cool alright, otherwise. Adios!!

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It’s a Long Way to the Top…

What’s up with the Kate OS Web site? It isn’t loading since last night at my end. Tuxmachines.org put out a very impressive review of version 3.0, however,  DistroWatch.com still insists the latest version as 3.0 beta (live) and beta1. Thankfully, LinuxTracker.org has a BitTorrent tracker, though with only one person seeding currenty. When I tried it eary in the morning, the satus sat on unreacheable for an hour before I gave up. Now, the status has changed to an invalid response and seems it’s downloading the thingy. Like I care what the status is as long as it’s downloading somethin, though I would’ve preferred to see an OK instead.

But, what if I really like Kate OS? What’s gonna happen to Zenwalk then? I can’t keep two XFCE desktops over no big deal. The impressive thingy about both of these distros and their XFCE versions are that they provide the lastest 4.4 beta2 instead of the 4.2 stable thingy like Vector Linux. And another thingy I have been noting lately is all of these mini-distros, which default to an XFCE desktop, are all very beautiful. Likewise, I’m not surprised by their recent climbs in the DW hits-per-day rankings. Vector has always been popular and in the top 20 (currently at 15). However, Zenwalk all of a sudden is on 17 since version 2.8 was out last month. Lets see what happens to Kate once their Web site starts behaving alright. Adios!!

Update @ 0126hrs: Guess what? After having used KTorrent 2.0 betas and then RC1 since June, I was kinda feeling out of place with the stable 1.2 in PCLOS. So before heading off to the forum to bug tex to update it to RC and how I think it’s not really that unstable, I refreshed the repos data only to be surprised to notice this as the about dialog when I restated the application…

So, I headed off to the KTorrent Web site and seems they’ve finally released a stable 2.0. The interface did change a bit from the beta to RC, but on the surface I don’t notice any further change from RC to stable. And I know ya’ll are into that Azureus thingy for your BitTorrent needs, but I like KTorrent cuz firstly, it don’t depend on the shitty Java and thus very light-weight, and secondly, it has the search thingy integrated — which reduces the steps to save the .torrent file first and then loading it into the torrent client. Anyway, following is a screenshot of the status ‘invalid response’ thingy I was talking about earlier…

Any BitTorrent technology expert out there could tell me what the heck does an ‘invalid response’ mean when the tracker is working alright as seen from the fact that I’m connected to the seeder. Adios!!

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Can I Sit Next To You Girl?

Phir Milenge as a feature film was rather good — Shilpa Shetty, and also Abhishek Bachchan, in perticular. Although based on Philadelhia’s plot, it didn’t derive at a similar conclusion cuz the Indian law substantially differs from that of the US. Likewise, Shetty did sue the firm she was working for upon being fired, however, she didn’t win the case. Overall, rather tight editing made it a very good Hindi film I’ve seen in a long while — maybe since Waisa Bhi Hota Hai Part II.

Meanwhile, Yun Hota To Kya Hota, released on July 21 and directed by Naseeruddin Shah, also looks quite interesting. Anything that has Irfan Khan, Paresh Rawal and Konkona Sen Sharma should be worth it, tho it’s also worth taking a note that such promising future actresses like Ayesha Takia is also there.

However, Yun Hota To Kya Hota… What If? is the first Hindi film that makes an effort to present the 9/11 tragedy that struck America and had repercussions the world over. Although the penultimate portions of the film may appear similar to United 93 [released in the U.S. in April this year], the fact remains that Yun Hota To Kya Hota… What If? is a genuinely different attempt as it packs in a lot in those two hours, besides the devastating tragedy.

The vital question is, does Naseer’s directorial debut make a solid impact as a movie? Yes and no! Yun Hota To Kya Hota… What If? works because three of the four stories are interesting to watch, but the film runs out of steam towards its climax. The ending looks so abrupt that you are taken aback when the end titles start rolling.   >>more here

Okay, I admit I needed a filler that had some relevance to liking a random picture of Ayesha Takia’s. But madcap… she’s a bimbo. So? Does that mean the kid is any less cute and that I can’t link to her? … But… Hey, stop throwing expert comments, this is my site! Adios!!

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The species have amused itself to death…

My cousin bro mentioned Orkut today… and I thought of saying hiya(s) and stuff in his profile. Then I thought of playing around with the thing and went community hunting. It’s pointless cuz I don’t even use it. And I better not be community hunting on music, especially when the search term’s Pink Floyd.

I came across a ‘Pink Floyd in India’ group and there’s a forum post on the subject of ‘Gilmour or Waters’. Good that I’ve to be approved by the admin before I can comment cuz I had got that itchy trigger finger to dive into another pointless, all-out war on the Gilmour fanboys. OK so I wont go back there perhaps, but these Gilmour fanboys are irritating or what? They know zilch and yet always seem to go blah blah blah… or more… blah blah blah blah. Lets quote some dumbass ‘madness’ dude here…

Gilmour no doubt… Waters was never a Floyd man… for me the band is far, far superior to the band members put together… Waters never respected this fact… his In The Flesh proves this point… on the other hand Gilmour put his life at stake & reformed Floyd with Pulse… he rocks for sure… and I strongly believe Floyd’s popularity multifolded only after Division Bell… Where was Waters then eh…?!

Hell yuh! Lets sell out in the name of popularity. Britney Spears was also so damn good, eh? I don’t even get what’s his point when he says “his In the Flesh proves this point” on how Waters never respected the group. Come again? I see Waters half the times in sidelines and the focus in on another band member in the DVD. Put in that PULSE thingy and all I see is Gilmour all over the screen (and even in the fuckin living room). And this one says “on the other hand Gilmour put his life at stake & reformed Floyd with Pulse”??? Really Gilmour put his life at stake to cut an album/tour or what? And this guy better gets his Gilmour facts right at least. A Momentary Lapse of Reasons and the following live album Delicate Sounds of Thunder came out 7-8 years prior to that, hello? I don’t see a point arguing with a dumbass like this madness guy.

Now lets have what another guy has to say…

Wanted to mention this but in recent times Waters has shown a marked interest in regrouping as Pink Floyd. Gilmour has had a “NO … period” for the idea.

If you’ve seen / heard the Live 8 concert, Waters is heard saying “It feels great to be playing with you, sharing the same stage … to be counted amongst you” (may be slightly rephrased) – duniya gol hai… life has come a full-circle for him.

I also heard that Waters was aiming to tour with Mason (and who knows, use the Pink Floyd name?). Seems his income is trickling.

Ah, yeah? How come I as a Waters fanboy could possibly have missed that? Shame on me! Seriously, where do they pick up these lame stuff? He did say somethin like it was great to be back with the band, playing and stuff before Wish You Were Here. However, when the press got too excited about a possible reunion, Waters was quoted as dismissing any intentions. (I guess even Rolling Stones published an article.) Oh and who used the name Pink Floyd to earn his bread again in the 80s? Last I read, Waters toured under the banner of ‘Roger Waters’ (multiple times). I bet some other crook was touring under the banner or ‘Pink Floyd’. Damn! Who was it?

Anyway… but, yes I give up. I finally see the light and agree with people who say stuff like “The Division Bell is deep man.” But, hey… Hit Me Baby One More Time was even more popular than Coming Back To Life. Doesn’t that make Britney’s stuff so much more “deeper”?

Perhaps, this is the worst side-effect of selling out your band: you drag a whole lotta new fanboys who understand shit about what the band stood for and go all blah blah blah… and more… blah blah blah blah. Adios!!

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