Wake Up…

Some of these female singer/songwriters from the 90s used to make good music. Guess it took just one song on the radio to get into them such as Alanis Morissette’s Hand In My Pocket, or Shawn Colvin’s Sunny Came Home, or even Jewel’s Hands.

Or you know the ones on the Hard Rock Cafe Live show (at 2300 hrs on TNT, every Saturday night) with Melissa Etheridge, whose albums I couldn’t ever find in stores. This specific show was rather good and many of the performers were those I’ve never heard of before — like Bush, and many others whose names I don’t even remember now. Whatever happened to the radio and TV shows? Now listening to albums like Jagged Little Pill reminds me of those shows.

The radio shows that I used to listen to was this one every morning at 8am and this female jockey was rather good as she would tell us about the albums and things related to the song or even her own personal recollections. Then the evenings were good too. And yes of course there was this Wicked Hour Show. What happened to those shows and those programs is what I wonder now after six years. First it was the TV that got corrupted with MTV Most Wanted hosted by that idiot VJ we had named Shehnaz. Yea, so I liked Maria and Mini Mathur, but they were at least fun and smart. Shehnaz was just plain dumb and irritating. Maybe Most Wanted should never had got rid of Rahul Khanna? OK, he hosted that show when I was like in 6th grade or somethin and I probably don’t even remember whatever he talked about and the songs he played. Then the show that followed at 6pm had this real cool and funny VJ. I’m not sure if it was on [V] or MTV. But I remember there was this one time, thats when the Val Kilmer movie Saint was released… and he kept raising his eyebrows to some background sound pretending to be the Saint.

Anyway, probably they were also just pretty faces, but at least they knew music. Then came Shehnaz, Peeya and the rest of the gang who were just plain DUMB. Meanwhile, the radio was still airing variety and it had intelligent people hosting the shows. Well, until 12th grade at least cuz after that I moved to Kolkata. And to be honest for a city that has so many musicians and stuff like that, the radio was total crap. But that wasn’t the worst part. To my surprise when I moved back here after three years, the radio that I remembered had transformed into something of a Hit Machine. So rather than play new or just variety stuff, it only played the same big hits throughout the day. Obviously, most of the old jockeys had left too by then to be filled in by the dumb-asses. And maybe that’s why we’re now surrounded by a generation of so-called music lovers who depend on the media to tell them what they should be listening to rather than make their own fuckin minds. And thus we have folks who are pretty pathetically Shehnaz*ified.

Anyway, so what do you say when you chance up on this co-worker, who just grabs your mp3 player and puts it on asking what the hell she is listening to? So, I reply…

Tool.

What?

It’s a band called Tool… the album is from the mid 90s…

Don’t you have any decent metal in it?

Like what?

umm… like Metallica, or Linken Park?

Don’t really listen to em much.

But you should. They are so popular. I love them. They are just so popular, you know?

OK

Yeah, like nobody listens to Tool. Who listens to Tool?

I need to care? What do u listen to?

You know good bands like Guns N’ Roses, Pink Floyd, and you know…. yes, like I said Metallica and Linken Park.

You like Floyd??

Yes, I love em. You know they are like so popular.

OK

So, maybe those aren’t the exact words. But she was so stuck on that “popular” word that she didn’t even think of needing to provide any other reason for liking those bands. Not that I believe Tool is like the ultimate band there is, but I was listening to them a lot last year around this time, and incidentally AEnima was in my player that day on me way back home.

Anyway, this girl, who was also a sub and had joined a couple of weeks before me, and I hardly ever conversed. But discovering someone I never thought of digs Floyd should have got me excited only to be put off by the word “popular” repeated to many times to justify what she listened to. I dunno how old she was — probably my age or a bit younger — and I have no clue since when is Floyd a popular band around here, apart from the university campuses probably. But there she was digging Floyd and probably only cuz they were supposed to be “popular”. Oh well, good to know that. See ya around. Adios!!

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Tommy can ya hear me?

Tomboy is good fun! Today while searching for this thingy in it came across the following… 

Due to the fact that the Microsoft server administrators have to recover from crashes weekly, they are much faster that the Linux server admins who have a hard time remembering what to do after long vacations due to lack of administration needed. – Gunman67

Dunno from where I lifted that, but it’s funny. So, u can bet ur ass how GNU/Linux admins aren’t really worth ur penny if u wanna spend money wisely enough that is.

So anyway, to begin with the real important stuff I wanted to talk about: Whatever happened to KG, man? I sorta remembered KG while thinking about something else I can’t really remember. One of KG’s family friends I met in one his cousin’s wedding thingy was this real hot chick (guess that sorta got me excited about remembering KG to begin with?). Now, this hot chick (whatever was her freaking name) was like different than the rest of the bimbos who also quality for the hot-chick crown for the fact that she’s also sorta cool in a way. She acted like boys, only she had long (I mean real long) hair. What’s up with that? That surely disqualifies her as a tomboy for sure. Plus she was wearing this saree thingy. What kinda wanna-be tomboy wears sarees, irrespective of the fact it was at the event of a wedding thingy and all? But she was hot (umm… cool) alright! I mean u know how I’m always uncomfortable with chicks around cuz I never really know what to talk about and wish they’d all just disappear outta thin air or somethin (that usually goes to most of the boys too). But this one was ok to talk to. OK! She’s damn ok to talk to. How about that? Well, fine, she was awesome to talk to irrespective of the fact she had reeeeal long, shiny, straight hair and all. Now, if only I could remember what the hell we actually talked about. I also can’t remember why the hell she was talking to me to begin with. I mean there were obviously some good-looking blokes around and add to that the fact she’s actually taller then me, why the hell was she talking to me anyway? It was the summer of 2002, so I was definitely not into Free Software but rather my only obsession back then was Floyd. I also used to dig W. Axl Rose big time (cuz everyone seemed to hate him?) Anyway, I bet I wont talk to a hot-looking chick (who’s also rather cool) and flaunt my wisdom by saying how I think Waters is the best songwriter ever and stuff like that. Hmm… whatever’s up with that… Oh yeah, her name was Rangoli (what kinda freaking name is that for a hot chick who’s also rather cool?).

Anyway, so it was. I wonder what KG’s been up to? Or maybe he’s one of those Ph.D guys by now? I wont be surprised if that’s what he is now. I mean he was like those booky-types who always crib how they hate whatever subject(s) they are specializing in. But so was KG. You can ask any of those three jerks I’m still in contacts with from school and they’ll all have to say the same shit about KG. The chicks might add KG was cute and all (yea rite, they can share the desk with KG for a 45-minute class and listen to him crib about all things known to us species, and then we’ll talk about how cute he was). I mean KG was weird. You know those mechanical drawing classes? He’d take out the board, clip on the sheet, fix the drafter, umm… ok no more commas necessary. That’s all he’d do. For the rest of the class, he’d just sit idly and talk all sorts of crap things. I mean he was so good at it, he could beat me flat-out when it comes to talking crap. Even Bal and Debs, man. He was that good at it. When I come to think of it Bal occupied the desk behind us and pretended to work oh-so-hard. Dunno why tho, cuz Suchos (his then girl) was in a different section. So who the hell was he trying to impress?

So anyway, forget and forgive fuck I’m outta hear already. I’ve a life you know, so I need to figure the deal with this thing they call NIS, whatever the fuck that does. Adios!!

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Take Cover

…and the Silliest Article of the Year award goes to James V. Delong for writing the best possible article ever to be nominated for this specific category. And he’d like to thank his parents and the publishing company for this terrific mind-blowingly-surprising honor. Adios!!

Girl’s Got Rhythm

First she quotes IDC…

Linux server revenue exceeded $1.4 billion in quarterly factory revenue in 2Q05 as Linux server revenues showed 45.1% growth, the fastest rate of growth since 2Q04. Linux servers represented 11.5% of overall quarterly server revenue – reaching an all-time high.

Then she opines…

I tip my hat to any hardware vendor who can kiss off $1.4 billion of quarterly revenues as too trivial to bother with.

But, you say, those are servers. Everyone knows that Windows servers are teh suck, and Real Admins run Linux, Free/Net/OpenBSD, Unix, or Solaris. Real Admins don’t need sissy stuff like fancy video or multimedia. That’s for dumb ole end lusers.

That’s Carla Schroder for us folks. I chance upon her stuff every now and then and I like her every time cuz she gives us a break from the bland stuff that tech writeups are otherwise. You can also read her recent Fedora 6 reviews: Part 1 & Part 2. Here’s quoting her again…

So I says to myself, I says <censored>. Ah well, that’s life on the bleeding edge.

So, that basically sums up a FC6 really. OK no, she has some nice things to say as well. Now shooh! Adios!!

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We’re Gonna Groove?

If you’ve ever heard Bonzo’s Montreux… well, then you should know I wrote that. It’s a completely different matter that Bonzo stole my notes, banged on his drums, recorded a song and became famous. But you know how that lord guy above never misses a thing? As a result, soon Bonzo got like too drunk to ride a motorcycle sanely enough and died in an accident or somethin. Bet that taught him a lesson or two about respecting other people’s intellectual property rights.

Anyway, we’re not gonna groove, so go take a hike. Adios!!

Nowhere To Go!

A few days ago Amarok 1.4.4 was released. With the Last.fm radio integrated a while back what more could we’ve asked for? Ummm… how about an integrated music store? Hey yuh! Magnatune’s been integrated in this release.

In case you don’t know what Magnatune is, well, their tag line says “We Are Not Evil“. And they certainly aren’t and I’ll tell you why. Firstly, no other music store gives you so many choices once you buy an album — from letting you decide in what format you want the song to what price you wanna pay for the stuff (anything between USD 5 and 18). Secondly, they don’t put DRM and support the indie artists. Hey even Brad Sucks is in there. Please visit Magnatune.com for more info on their vision and mission.

Anway, here’s how Magnatune streams work from inside Amarok….

Click for full image!

The first time you run it, you need to click that update button on the bottom left-side pane and watch it download the Magnatune collection database. Afterwards, just like your local Amarok collection, it’ll also be arranged alphabetically. Of course to make your life easier, there’s a genre drop-down menu on top of the collection browser, so you can browse bands/artists by their genres. You’ll notice I’ve Punk Rock selected.

Anyway, so that’s how you can keep trying out new bands and stuff. And yes they stream the full songs and each and every song from an album. So, what if you stumble upon this one band you just can’t get enough of and wanna buy the music?

Click for full image!

As you can see you can simply click on that Purchase Album button on the left-side pane! You enter the basic CC details and choose the amount you wanna pay and that’s it. Oh and another cool thing is, once you buy the album they let you give away three copies to your friends (or enemies if u prefer). Check out the store shitheads! Adios!!

P.S. –> Oh and don’t forget to check out Sonny by The Napoleon Blown Aparts  from their album Thrill Hype. Great song!!

P.P.S. –> Following’s my mail to Magnatune.com sometime back requesting logos and Amarok integration and their prompt response. I posted it from somewhere within the Web site and xxx@gmail.com is of couse me.

From: Teresa Malango    
To: “xxx@gmail.com”
Date: 08-Jun-2006 00:36
Subject: Re: more logos

Hello-
Thank you for your message and support of Magnatune!  Your suggestion about the logos is a good one and I’ll see what we can do. You can link directly to Magnatune shoutcast radio streams off our website at www.magnatune.com/info/shoutcast  but the idea about including this info with the amaroK integration is a good one- I’ll forward it along too!
Best regards,
Teresa Malango
Magnatune
yyy@magnatune.com

On 6/6/06, xxx@gmail.com wrote:

    Hi! I came to know about this company from the amarokLive project. kudos to what all you guys are up to! I was wondering if you guys can make more logos available for us to put on blogs to refer to you guys… the logo has to contain your tag line “We are not evil” or maybe “They are not evil” cuz a thrid party is referring to this. Just an idea…

    All the best for your awesome venture. And thanks a ton for not being evil, also for embracing Free and Open-Source Software.

    just another fan

    P.S. –> Also, is there a streaming radio available? Then that’d be awesome way to tell people more about Magnatune. Maybe it can be based on genres… Genres-based radio is important cuz people should not be distracted by the type of music they aren’t fond of. And it’s gonna be a great way for us to know what kinda music is available in stores. Oh and if the radio is availble please bug the amaroK devs to integrate it in, cuz I dont see it there. Thanks again!

So, as you can see, both sides eventually came up with something a helluva lot better than what I’d initially requested for (and I’m sure a lot of others did too!).

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So it was real…

GrokLaw editor Pamela Jones headlined the deal as Novell Sells Out, and here are some more updates from her regarding legal issues concerning the deal. While Bruce Perens also has an interesting piece here. However, since a lot of people are showing their disgust with Novell currently, I’d space u with that and quote somthing quite interesting from Perens’ article’s comments section…

jwwjr: I wonder how Linus Torvalds feels right now. His arrogance toward Richard Stallman regarding GPLv3 has been sickening. Richard enabled Linus, Linus did not enable Richard.
Is Linus ready to be Bill and Steve’s bitch now? Does he care?
Linus is a great programmer and project manager, but in terms of vision and setting strategy for free software (disregarding Mr. Stallman’s philosophical zeal, looking at this on the merits only), Linus is not fit to carry Richard Stallman’s water, and is in fact, dangerous. He doesn’t know the edge of his competencies.

Bruce Perens: Linus is playing Alfred E. Newman, the character from Mad magazine whose motto was “What, Me Worry?”
His response was “Why assume that everyone has to be enemies? Let’s see how this plays out”.
I agree with you, Linus botches strategy outside of software and it would be best if he’d shut up about it.

I’ve even said it before that you can call me a fundamentalist prick but I only care for stuff coved by GPL. I understand there are other “Free” licenses, like the BSD one, that give you many of the freedom w/o putting any restrictions but they do more harm than any good — need I ask you to say hello to the MacOSX kernel? We do need some restriction to protect our freedom. Thanks to upcoming GPL v3, we’ll have some new statements covering patents and DRM issues that were not previously covered. Although, the Linux devs can choose not to accept it and go down the drain for all I care. Adios!!

Resolution?

The XFCE 4.4RC desktop environment on Fedora Core 6, with the Listen 0.5beta media manager in the background. Looks pretty neat, eh? Guess am gonna be on it for a while now. I especially like the floating panel (with my main menu, shortcut icons, system tray, et all) on top, so I can have more free space for my stuff. By default XFCE comes with that panel at the bottom center fixed, and the task bar on top. I was thinking of switching it around the GNOME way. However, while doin so I discovered the floating (non-static) panel feature under properties and think it’s way better and handy this way.

On not so related news: Am I the only one who thinks the headline “Microsoft & Novell Enter Linux Partnership?” reads real funny? What the fuck’s up with Novell there? The CNet blog is based on WSJ reports, so I bet they are not even trying to humor us this time around.

Oh well, play time’s over and goin back to figuring out why the ’send host-name’ thingy of the dhcp shit not working in my client. Think the client puter would rather be known as a localhost.localdomain? There you have the dhcp.conf file just in case anyone has a clue on what the fuck’s the matter with it. Adios!!

The Life and Death of Mr. Badmouth

While Delhi was under attack last night — oh I dunno who it was. Mush, Bush or the Bajrangis? — it gave me a serious headache. Adding to that, with all those things exploding all over the place I’d become partly deaf. It’s times like these that I think why on earth did I not invest on an underground bunker ever.

So, after the warring sides called for truce, possibly in the really early morning hours, I thought of finally sitting back and chilling now. However, what I just heard was the following…

No kind words are coming out of your mouth
Plenty goes in but nothing good comes out
Badmouth, sad mouth, you were an unhappy child
That doesn’t make your lying tongue alright

Wash it out, wash it out, wash it out

Is that really funny or am I just silly? Who the hell is PJ Harvey anyway? OK I’ll leave ya with that. Adios!!

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Stop Whispering

Jess said Robin’s puter is messed up again. So posting pics of the Waters concert will take some time. hmm… Meanwhile, if you’re a sucker for pictures, found the following at Miguel Carrasco’s Real World…

Well, nothin on my puter is from Microsoft. yay! lol!! Anyway, I’m not really that smart to discover cool blogs. Thanks to Puthali for putting the above in the Google Notebook share. Adios!!

P.S. –> And here you can read geek chick Puthali talk about NAM 3.0, whatever that is.

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