7 Reasons Why I Stopped Using Ubuntu
I have been using Ubuntu Linux as my main operating system for the past three years. I switched to it because I liked that it was more secure, it ran great, and I could do everything I needed to do quicker and easier than under Windows XP. A bonus was that Ubuntu Linux was free.
That began to change a few months ago and a couple of weeks ago, I finally made the switch over to Windows Vista. I have to say that I am pleasantly surprised with Windows Vista and how well it performs and handles. I think Vista has gotten a bad rap(maybe deservedly so). I’ve been testing Windows 7 and it improves upon Vista and looks to be the OS of the future.
So why did I drop Ubuntu Linux? If you look at the Dapper Drake 6.06 LTS version of Ubuntu, you see a well crafted OS that was entirely focused on bringing Linux to the desktop. It was a huge success. It recognized most standard hardware and other programs just worked with it.
When Feisty Fawn 7.04 came out, Ubuntu solidified its place on the desktop as a quality alternative OS. I recommended Feisty to anyone and everyone. It ran Skype flawlessly, OpenOffice worked great, Flash, Java and Javascript played nice with Firefox, I could surf webpages quickly and easily, I could play all of my music and movies, and I could finish my work in less time. It’s no wonder that I fell in love with Ubuntu.
That started to change with Gutsy Gibon 7.10. It just wasn’t as polished, but still it was ok. Things really took a turn worse with Hardy Heron 8.04 and now Intrepid Ibex 8.10. In fact, I think Intrepid Ibex has to be a bad joke. Let me just talk about some of the problems I have with Ubuntu Linux now. Before you say anything, these are problems I’ve encountered both on a machine upgrade to Intrepid Ibex and a machine with a fresh install of Intrepid Ibex.
1. Skype doesn’t work out of the box with Intrepid Ibex 8.10. Sure, you can do some hacking to make it work, but then you mess up other things. I don’t know why Pulse Audio is being forced down our throats prematurely. It doesn’t work as promised and doesn’t play well with Skype, at all.
2. About 20% of the websites I visit use java, javascript or flash that sends my computer down to a crawl. I got a 1.6 ghz dual core with 1 gb of ram, but I surf slower than my kids do using a Celeron 700 with 192mb of ram under Windows 2000. This is a new problem, it only happened rarely under Feisty Fawn. If I can’t surf the web, then what good is an OS?
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Enjoy The Traffic
I just did some surfing through Youtube and I came across this really funny video of a Toyota car commercial in Mexico City. This had both my wife and I laughing out loud. Hopefully this can give you a nice chuckle as well.
At the end of the video, it says to enjoy the traffic. I really wish heavy traffic was really that much fun.
Create Your Own Custom Facebook Profile Address
I love using Facebook. It’s a great place to keep in touch with friends as well as network with new potential employers, contacts, and clients. The uses you can find for Facebook are limitless. If it involves any kind of networking, Facebook is the place where it can happen.
To take full advantage of Facebook’s networking benefits, you need to get as many people to your Facebook profile as possible. One way is to put a link to your Facebook profile on your business cards. While Facebook does have a public search page for every user, the link on it is very cumbersome and there is no way, within Facebook, to change it to something more usable. For example, my public search page is http://www.facebook.com/people/Jack-Maderas/1022785814 . Not exactly svelte on my business card.
Fortunately, if you’ve got your own hosting, you can create your own custom Facebook profile address with a little .htaccess magic. The .htaccess file resides in your root html directory and it’s responsible for passing commands to your web server, including URL rewrites and redirects. For our purposes, we are interested in the redirects.
Note: If you don’t feel comfortable hacking your .htaccess or if you don’t have your own hosting, check out Making A Custom Facebook URL For The Rest Us
How I did it
My Facebook profile is located at http://unfq.com/facebook . It’s an easy to remember address that I can stick on my business card or quickly jot down on any scrap of paper I can find. To create this link, all I had to do was open up the .htaccess file on my server and drop in this code:
redirect 301 /facebook http://www.facebook.com/people/Jack-Maderas/1022785814
What does the code do? It does a redirect from the /facebook and redirects it to my public Facebook search listing.
Try It Yourself!
Ready to try it yourself? First decide what you want to call the link on your server. You can make it /myfacebook, /notmyspace, /facebook or anything else you want. Replace /facebook in my example with whatever you have chosen for your link.
Next, go to your Facebook profile and click on Setting-Privacy Settings-Search. On the search page, go down to the Public Search Listing and right click-copy link location to get the URL of your public search listing. Replace my search listing in the example code with yours.
Next, open up the .htaccess file on your hosting and add the code that you create from my example to the bottom of the file. Make sure it all shows on one line. Save the file to your server and you are set. Go ahead and test your custom Facebook profile address.
Problems or Comments?
If there are any issues, it’s probably because you didn’t make sure the pasted code was all on one line. Double check that and try again.
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Positive Changes: Getting More Education
It’s the New Year and many people are thinking about ways to positively change their lives for the better, I know I am. I made that decision back in New Year’s 2000 and changing my life for the positive was the best decision I could make. I had been struggling without a 4 year degree for several years and felt like I was hitting a brick wall. I knew that the only way to get ahead was to get my four year degree.
Online degree programs were still in their infancy at the time. There weren’t as many options then, but there was one. It was Excelsior College. They had just changed their name from Regent’s College and were positioning themselves for the boom in online education and distance education.
My situation was rather simple. I knew I needed to have a 4 year degree to progress. I had 84 credits from prior university study so I needed a way to get a 4 year degree. I chose Excelsior because of its reputation. It’s part of the University of the State of New York system and it’s fully accredited by the regional accrediting body ( https://www.excelsior.edu/Excelsior_College/About/Accreditation ). It was actually founded by the NY Board of Regents.
I was in Mexico when I made the decision to go for it and get my distance education 4 year degree. I scheduled 10 tests in just 1 week at the University of Oregon testing office. Each test was like $60 or $70 dollars. I got study guides off the net and did my best to study for all the exams. The Jefferson Library in Mexico City was a great resource in finding material to study.
When I was ready, I flew into Oregon and the next day, I took the CLEP Spanish test(got 12 credits for it) and a Business Math Test. Over the next several days, I finished all of the exams.
After submitting all of the enrollment papers, it took about 8 weeks to get back the news that I had completed all of the requirements for a BS in Liberal Studies. It was real sense of accomplishment to finally have a degree after so long.
Just an FYI out there to people who need to complete a 4 year degree, Excelsior College offers the fastest way for a person to earn a fully accredited 4 year degree. It’s possible to take 2 or 3 exams per day. If you are starting from 0 credits, it’s possible to complete a degree in just a few weeks.
How so? You can take the CLEP Freshman Comp test for 6 credits, take the CLEP General Humanities and General College Mathematics tests for 6 credit each. That’s 18 in total. If you can speak French, German or Spanish, then you can take one of them and if you score high enough, you’ll get 12 credits.
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