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Rosie_Bruce

Listed below are comments made by Rosie_Bruce between Thursday, 18th December 2008 and Saturday, 24th October 2009.

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24 hours with Ubuntu 10:05pm on 24 Oct 2009 That was a fun mini-review. It's really interesting for me, as an Ubuntu user, to see how people with a Windows background approach Ubuntu. I regularly install it on other people's computers so I see a lot of these stumbles in the first few months.

Familiarity is extremely important, I think. If someone is happy with XP, Vista, 7 or OSX and they know the ins and outs it can be daunting to the point where it's not worth changing. I know that feeling because I have it ever time I have to use a Windows or OSX machine.

I tend to say to people who want to switch that they'll spend 3 months in slowly decreasing frustration and at the end of that, they'll probably not want to switch back. The thing is, who has or wants to spare three months? Changing OS is a bit like renting a car in a foreign country where they drive on the wrong side of the road.

Just by the way, I think Ubuntu as it comes is not fit for the average user. I spend several hours (despite having automated the majority of the tasks) preparing a vanilla Ubuntu install for use. Out of the box you can't play mp3s, view flash based websites, play dvds ... the list goes on. The steps I currently take involve adding the medibuntu repositories (for skype etc), downloading 64 bit flash from the adobe labs site, installing every codec under the sun (admittedly OS will do this for you when you hit a file it can't play), installing wine, installing Spotify (which works well) ...

This takes a free OS from being able to deal with open formats to one that can use all the proprietary stuff that people _need_. The world would be better if this was not necessary and that people used ogg or flac for their music, no sites used flash (or silverlight, though that's pretty much the case anyway) etc.

My biggest gripe with Ubuntu at the moment is dealing with Office 2007 file formats (it doesn't very well) and Ubuntu uses Novell's tweaked version of Open Office that supposedly is better with these files.

Anyway, that's the really boring downside of changing OS. I wouldn't still be on Ubuntu if the grass wasn't greener.

I'm looking forward to the fuller review and I generally enjoy your take on things. If you throw the computer at a wall or anything, please take a pic :)
Battle of the smartphones 7:07pm on 17 Jun 2009 The Palm Pre looks very nice too. That said I'm more than happy with my G1.

An on screen keyboard is all very well and the on screen keyboard on the G1 is fine but when I actually want to type something extensive a hardware keyboard is a better and easier to use option.

Maybe I'm not an average phone user, I don't much like passive consumption.
Google, Microsoft and calls of 'web bully' 2:09pm on 18 Mar 2009 It's strange that the BBC tech writers seem to get their directions from Redmond. I thought that it was just the technology side of the BBC which was heavily influenced by Microsoft.

Microsoft have been waging a PR war against Google for some time now. It really picked up steam once their bid for Yahoo! fell through (for which Microsoft must be truly thankful in the present economic climate).

Having one monopoly with a 90% + share of it's markets harp on about another monopoly with a lower share of it's key markets seems a little strange.

In my opinion monopoly is never a good thing but the difference between Google and Microsoft is that Google is commited to open standards and use them freely in their products. There is no lock-in with Google. If you don't like what they do you are free to go elsewhere at any time. This forces Google to actually be better than the competition, not something you can say for Microsoft.

In regard to the Youtube / PRS thing. The PRS are clearly run by people who do not understand that with an increasing cake a smaller slice still works out for the people they represent. But then the PRS are very much a part of the last century. They represent, despite their claims, only the largest artists, ignoring new talent despite profiting from that new talent's plays on places like Youtube.

A few years ago, there was an issue with the imposition of royalties for music videos played on TV. That was sliced through by the larger artists waiving royalties to get back on to the TV. These artist understood that music videos were promotional material and that they were suffering because of an attempt to leverage a royalty. Youtube is a promotional tool for artists and right now, because of the PRS, artists worldwide are losing not just direct revenue but indirect revenue.

It's time for media to learn to live in this century. If they do, there are new profits awaiting.
Negroponte - missionary not manufacturer 2:36pm on 18 Dec 2008 I understand that Negroponte wants to see his project succeed but to do so by gutting it and creating yet another windows laptop with no educational bias, no mesh networking and none of the advanced power management of the Linux version seems like a waste of an opportunity.

Just when the more technically literate people in this country and around the world are waking up to the power of Linux, Negroponte appears to be walking in the other direction.

I don't see the advantage to the kids in the developing world in attempting to create lock in for Microsoft.

Bill Gates said "About 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."

What Negroponte is doing is giving these kids their Microsoft addiction and Microsoft are hoping to collect on that in the future.

I think Richard Stallman's take on this is interesting:

http://www.bostonreview.net/BR33.6/stallman.php

If people are losing interest in the XO, then maybe there are reasons for this and the current competition in the netbook market is one. The Economist has a good article on this

http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12673233

30% of these devices are sold with Linux, and though MSI have noted a high return rate Asus have not. If Linux is good enough for people here why should it not be good enough for those in the developing world?

Negroponte has helped though, whether he thinks so or not. Without the XO it seems unlikely that we would be seeing £200 netbooks here or anywhere. Negroponte's team showed the way, ASUS picked it up and then everyone joined the party.

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