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djotaku's twitter feed
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- just started playing Spore. http://raptr.com/djotaku
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Oct
14
Moonlight - what’s the big deal?
Category: Computers, Fedora, Geek Love, Linux, M$, Novell | 
8 Comments
Hardly a day goes by that I don’t see an article on Linux Today about Moonlight and what a horrible person Miguel de Icaza is. So I thought I’d go ahead and do some exploration of what’s going on with Moonlight and Silverlight. First of all, what’s Silverlight? Check out the Silverlight article on Wikipedia. Basically, Silverlight is Microsoft’s answer to Adobe’s Flash. MS is pretty peeved they haven’t been able to get people off of PDF and onto their own format. They waited way too long while the rest of us realized that PDF is great if you want to make sure that the document you create is displayed the same way on everyone’s computer regardless of the fonts they have or which version of Office they have installed. (Or if they even have office installed)
Flash has been around since the dial-up days when most people would get mixed feelings when they came upon a flash website. We knew it would take orders of magnitude longer to load than an HTML website, but it would also look really cool. But Microsoft is once again playing catchup. This time, however, they are using their huge bank accounts to make it look like a really good idea to use Silverlight. Many of the Olympics websites were available in Silverlight. Not only does this get Silverlight into the vernacular during a huge event, but it also gets it installed onto tons of people’s computers. These people might have otherwise skipped websites that required them to install yet another plugin.
Having Silverlight used on such a massive event like the Olympics also helps MS help to convince people who switched to Macs that they are on the wrong platform. After all, all they have to do is release a new version of Silverlight and not release it to the Macs on the same day. Bam, people start jonesing for Windows again.
This brings us to Moonlight, Novell, and Miguel de Icaza. Miguel works at Novell. Novell signed the pact with Microsoft that caused them to become radioactive to a certain portion of the free software community. Not only did it seem like an admission of guilt from Novell, but it also creates two classes of Linux users. Novell users, who are protected from MS lawsuits and everyone else. (Not that I believe for a second that MS has a leg to stand on with those lawsuits) So the first sin Miguel has committed (in the public eye) is to be working at Novell.
Second, he helped to create Mono. Mono is an open source implementation of Microsoft’s .net framework and the main C# interpreter in Linux. There are quite a few reasons why people don’t like this. C# is an example of Microsoft’s embrace, extend, extinguish strategy. It’s basically a bootlegged version of Java because they couldn’t get anyone to use their jacked up version of Java. Why they couldn’t just play nice with Sun is beyond me. They have such a need to control. Reminds me of Apple and the iPhone. So C# is a Microsoft creation. However, it is an ECMA standard (and maybe an ISO standard) so C# isn’t patent-encumbered. .Net, on the other hand, is a MS technology which is full of patents. People fear that MS could one day sue Linux distributions for including Mono because it infringes on their patents. Thus, there are some that have taken to uninstalling all traces of Mono from their distributions. Is this a rational fear? I don’t know. I’ve read stuff that says it is and stuff that says it isn’t. I really like Tomboy and Beagle.
So now Miguel and Novell have created Moonlight - an open source version of Silverlight. This is what has lots and lots of people mad and talking about it. Microsoft has been really, really (uncharacteristically) nice when it comes to Moonlight. They have been providing the Novell team with reference specifications, test suites to ensure compatibility, and binary codecs. Previous MS technologies which have been reverse engineered like CIFS and Pre-2007 Office formats have have no help from MS. So should people be worried?
I guess it all comes down to intention. Why is Microsoft being so nice? How can it backfire? Miguel has been making a very reasonable argument recently. He has been saying that we don’t want Linux users to get left behind again. It took us a long time to get proper Flash support and because of that we couldn’t properly experience some of the web. So why not work together with MS to ensure we can view the inevitable websites created with Silverlight. Seems perfectly reasonable. After all, if Joe Blow decides to make his website with Silverlight, we shouldn’t necessarily boycott his website. Perhaps it’s all he knows how to do. Now lets look at the worst case scenario. Microsoft helps Linux and Mac out by providing Silverlight. “Look,” they say to web developers, “this will work on everyone’s computer and you can do all these cool things.” More and more web developers use it where they would use Flash. Eventually you can’t get on the web without using Silverlight. Then they decide to suddenly stop helping Linux and Mac. Now what? I doubt they would sue us. That’s really the least of our problems. It’s that once again someone helped MS get to the top when they were having problems and then when they achieved dominance, they left everyone else behind.
Have they ever done this before? Sure - providing Internet Explorer for Macintosh then suddenly abandoning it once they had soundly defeated Netscape.
So, what’s the final verdict? What should we do? Generally speaking, I happen to be a computing realist. Although I rip all of my CDs to OGG Vorbis, I have MP3 decoders on my Linux computers because the Amazon format is MP3. I have videos in mpeg, avi and other non-OGG theora formats. I’m able to view the non-OGG video formats on more computers and they encode much more quickly. I use Adobe’s Flash instead of Gnu Gnash because I want my web pages to work correctly. Finally, I use nVidia’s Linux drivers because I want to have the full functionality of my graphics card whether it’s for something frivolous like Compiz or some 3D computer game. And, I do not have any problems with using Mono on my computer. Although I’m not a huge fan of MS, I don’t see how Mono could hurt me. C# is usable by anyone and if Microsoft decides to stop cooperating with .Net, there’s nothing that says we have to continue compatibility. We can just continue with our own version which is optimized for Linux.
With Moonlight, I am a bit more hesitant. Microsoft has a horrible track record of stabbing people in the back. I don’t want to help them once again achieve hegemony on the web and muck about with the standards again. I want sites to be viewable to everyone whether or not they choose to buy a Windows computer. If they choose to exercise their right to use Mac, Linux, BeOS, AmigaOS, Haiku, or BSD, they should also have the right to access the information on the Internet. I think for now I will keep Moonlight off of my Linux computers and even Silverlight off of my Windows computers. Hopefully, I will never need it for some website I love and, therefore, will never install it.
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Sep
4
System Information for Windows
Category: M$ | Leave a Comment
System Information for WIndows (SIW) is a program you MUST have installed on your Windows computer. It gives you all the information you could ever want to know about your computer in a nice easy to use interface. I learned about it in a recent Computer User Magazine. Here are some examples of the information it provides:
Motherboard:
Property Value
Manufacturer ASUSTeK Computer Inc.
Model P4P800-E
Version Rev 1.xx
Serial Number MB-1234567890
North Bridge Intel i865P/PE/G/i848P Revision A2
South Bridge Intel 82801EB (ICH5) Revision A2
CPU Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz
Cpu Socket Socket 478 mPGA
System Slots 5 PCI, 1 AGP
Memory Summary
Maximum Capacity 4096 MBytes
Maximum Memory Module Size 1024 MBytes
Memory Slots 4
Error Correction None
Warning! Accuracy of DMI data cannot be guaranteed
Property ValueBIOS Vendor American Megatrends Inc.BIOS Version 1009.003Firmware Version 101.114BIOS Date 09/05/2005BIOS Size 512 KBBIOS Starting Segment F000hDMI Version 2.3Characteristics - supports ISA- supports PCI- supports Plug-and-Play- supports APM- upgradeable (Flash) BIOS- allows BIOS shadowing- ESCD support is available- supports booting from CD-ROM- supports selectable boot- BIOS ROM is socketed- supports Enhanced Disk Drive specification- supports INT 13 5.25-inch/1.2M floppy services- supports INT 13 3.5-inch/720K floppy services- supports INT 13 3.5-inch/2.88M floppy services- supports INT 05 print-screen- supports INT 09 and 8042 keyboard services- supports INT 14 serial services- supports INT 17 printer services- supports INT 10 CGA/Mono video services- supports ACPI- supports legacy USB- supports AGP- supports booting from LS-120- supports booting from ATAPI ZIP drive- BIOS Boot Specification supported
Property ValueNumber of CPU(s) One Physical Processor / One Core / 2 Logical Processors / 32 bitsVendor GenuineIntelCPU Name Intel Pentium 4CPU Code Name PrescottPlatform Name Socket 478 mPGACPU Full Name Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHzRevision E0Technology 90 nmInstructions MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, HTOriginal Clock 3000 MHzOriginal System Clock 200 MHzOriginal Multiplier 15.0CPU Clock 2999 MHzSystem Clock 199.9 MHzFSB 799.6 MHzL1 Data Cache 16 KBytesL1 Trace Cache 12 KuopsL2 Cache 1024 KBytes
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Aug
27
Review: openSuse 11.0 (and KDE 4)
Category: Fedora, Gnome, KDE, Linux, M$, Novell, SuSe | 16 Comments
I’ve never used Suse or openSuse. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been a “loyal” Fedora user since Fedora Core 1 and I have Ubuntu on my laptop since it had awesome laptop support. I even got some Suse CDs as a prize for the Letter of the Month from Linux Format magazine. However, I never even tried it at that time as I was mad at Novell for the Microsoft pact. I think it lends a lot of credibility to Microsoft’s BS argument that Linux violates its patents.
But it’s been a few years and nothing horrible has happened because of the Microsoft pact and it came as a liveDVD in the latest Linux Format Magazine. I was trying to wait until KDE 4.1 came out for Fedora so that could be my first experience with KDE 4, but that’s been delayed nearly a month now (while they, rightly, fix some bugs) so I decided to go ahead with the Suse review.
Suse is the second oldest distro that’s still around. It started off as being based off of Slackware and later on was somewhat based on Red Hat, borrowing rpm and some other technologies. Since then it’s gone off on its own and is now considered one of the big boys. A few years after Red Hat shelved its personal distro and converted over to the community-sponsored Fedora, Suse decided to do the same thing with openSuse. Just like Fedora, they’ve had some uneven releases. However, openSuse 11 is supposed to be their comeback release. Historically, Suse has been one of the biggest supporters of KDE as the default desktop although that has fallen off a little seince they’ve been trying to compete with Red Hat in the business world.
It’s important to note, however, that Novell’s Suse team has put a LOT of work into their KDE desktop. This liveDVD is running KDE 4.0, yet they didn’t seem to have any problems getting icons on the desktop. Lots of people were complaining about being unable to do so in Fedora and other distros using KDE 4. Apparently, they just didn’t take the time that Suse did to engineer a really good KDE 4 release. (Frankly, I’m surprised that Siego didn’t point to openSuse 11.0 as an example of a well-implemented KDE 4.0 release!) They’ve also solved the problem of the ugly black panel that was too large. So, plus points go to Novell’s openSuse/Suse KDE team. They deserve an applause for doing this so well!
Novell has the KDE program menu that has annoyed so many people. One of the things I’ve always loved about KDE was the fact that it had a favorite (or most run) programs section on the start menu. Sure, there are some that believe that if you’re going to run programs that often you should have them as launchers on your taskbar. But that can make taskbars look a bit cluttered. Also, I think the most used program portion of Window’s Start Menu is one of the things they got very right with Windows XP. (I’m not sure if MS innovated that or copied it from somewhere) This menu is a good menu and doesn’t deserve all the hatred it’s received on the net. It just needs a couple of tweaks to make it perfect. The first problem with it is that if your mouse wanders down to the Favorites, Applications, etc portion of the menu, it switches you to that section. I think a click should be required there to keep people from accidentally switching. That was the biggest complaint most people had and it can be fixed so easily. No need to throw the baby out with the bath water. One other thing that was a bit unclear to me was how to go back on the applications hierarchy. The skinny arrow on the left is not noticeable enough - at least not the first time it catches you off guard.
Widgets…it’s one of the biggest, most talked about innovations of KDE 4. There is a lot of innovation going on in KDE 4 and if they can get past the KDE 4.0 stigma, I think they may end up surpassing Gnome with this release. With Superkaramba, KDE has always done widgets so much better than Gnome. Gnome’s desklets always seemed a bit kludgey and tacked on at the end. Superkaramba always felt like it was part of KDE; even before it was added as an official part of KDE 3.5. Now, with Plasma, the KDE team hopes to take them to the level of Apple’s OSX widgets. In fact, OSX widget compatibility is either in KDE 4.1 or coming in KDE 4.2.
Wow! If you’ve only seen the same old screenshots of a calculator, a click and a notepad, you haven’t seen the true power of the widgets. First of all, they have quite a few new ones now. You can see that I have a comic viewer, an RSS feed, and a Twitter feed. All of these came from the default “add widgets” dialog. I’m surprised, especially given the popularity of Twitter, that no one has showcased these widgets yet. I’m thouroughly impressed that we’ve moved beyond simple system monitors and weather widgets (although I’m sure those are coming soon enough!) They’re very easy and intuitive to position and configure. And, one of the problems I always had with widgets on any desktop was that if I had all my programs open, they were less helpful to me. Well, by clicking on the little button by the gecko or the top right corner, the plasma dashboard view is activated. This minimizes your programs and brings the widgets to the forefront. A simple click on the desktop brings your programs back! Couldn’t be easier. They’re also very pleasing to the eye with their drop shadows. They move smoothly and appear with a little fade-in. Very nice.
As far as programs go, they have a pretty standard set. OpenOffice.org provides the office suite. Again, like with Mandriva, this is a little bit out of place since they could use KOffice. However, I know that OpenOffice.org has much better compatibility with the suite from Redmond. Interestingly, GIMP and Krita don’t seem to be included - but then again, it’s a liveDVD. I’m sure it’s in the repositories.
In fact, let’s check out Yast, their control center. It appears to control any setting you might want to change. Plus points for them for making it all nice and organized. In fact, they seem to be on par with Mandriva here in terms of everyting you could possibly want in one place. Minus a very small point for it not looking as pretty as Mandriva or even as pretty as the rest of openSuse 11.0. From here we can install programs. Let’s see how well that appears to work.
I have to say that it is indeed ugly to look at. I couldn’t really get a good feel for it as it didn’t have repositories defined. I’ve really become much more of a fan of PackageKit’s interface. (Which I’ll talk about in my Fedora review) More and more Gnome-based distros are moving to PackageKit and I think there’s even a KDE version of Packagekit. It works very well for package management and you can’t argue against the value of a consistent interface across distros.
Some last little things I noticed. Take a look at what came up when I clicked on “My Computer”:
I really, really like this page that it loads up. It is very useful for locating places on your computer AND for getting information. To get the same info in Windows you’d have to open up “My Computer” AND right-click on “My Computer” and click on properties. Here you have some quick links to “Common Folders” and also you can see that it recognized my NTFS hard drives. You also have all the key information you need in order to get help from someone: kernel version, distro, KDE version, graphics card driver, graphics card info, CPU info, and the total and free RAM. Just one look gives you everything you need to know. And I want to finish up with just a quick look at some of the neat finishing touches that Novell has done with openSuse.
Look at that - there’s a little gecko - the Suse mascot on the title bar. This little dude appears on any title bar that has focus. It’s just little touches like this that make the distro seem more professional. I wish more distros would do things like this. And look at this:
Now, this is probably a KDE setting, as opposed to Suse, but good on Novell for leaving it in. There are many things I like about this setup. First of all, the expansion button is not next to the exit button. The number of times I’ve been frustrated by accidentally closing a window when I meant to resize it is just too numerous to count. Also, the up arrow makes more sense to me than Microsoft’s icon. It’s just that we’ve been around with the Microsoft implementation for 20 years.
So, what’s my final verdict? I think Novell has done a really, really good job with openSuse 11.0. Unlike Fedora, they did a very good job with the unfinished KDE 4.0 and turned it into something usable. Lots of visual finishing touches make the distro just feel professional and not hacked together. There are a few rough edges here and there. I also didn’t test out flash, MP3 playback, or DVD playback. I presume these can all be downloaded from some third party repository in some country where they don’t implement silly things like software patents.
Except for the still touchy subject of the Microsoft deal, I’d recommend Novell to someone who was new to Linux but ready to learn. It doesn’t have the same hand-hold style of Ubuntu, so that’s still my top choice. Right now it’s really almost a tie between recommending Mandriva and openSuse as the next best thing after Ubuntu. Fedora is often broken due to being bleeding edge and I wouldn’t recommend it to someone brand new to Linux. Of course, there still is the patent deal and they either did it to make themselves more palatable to companies than Red Hat (thus having bad motives) or they had to satisfy investors (which they legally must do in the USA). So I guess that would break the tie and give it to Mandriva. But Novell has made a top notch distro and if they can get over the negative press from the Microsoft deal (and there are websites like boycottNovell to prevent that), then I think openSuse may end up on more magazine covers and start to steal some of the thunder away from Ubuntu.
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Aug
21
64 Studio Review
Category: Debian, M$ | 7 Comments
Many people know the mantra - if you are a gamer or office worker, you use the OS from Redmond. If you are a creative person such as a musician, video editor, etc you use a Mac. Geeks use Linux. But more and more people are moving away from Windows and seeking either Macs or Linux. If you switch to Mac you have to spend a ton of money and if you switch to Linux, it’s free and you can use the hardware you already have. But what if you’re a creative person? Can you only go to a Mac? Lots of people want to allow the creative people to come to Linux so there are more and more Linux distros for the creative types. This month, in Linux Format Magazine, 64 Studio was bundled on the disc. It doesn’t run as a liveCD or liveDVD so I’m running it in VirtualBox. As you can see here, it is a Debian-based distro:
I haven’t installed Debian since Debian 3 when I installed it for my print/file server (luigi), so I’m not sure if the GUI installation begins this way, but strangely it appears to use the ncurces installation.
All the detection stuff continues in the ncurses screens. Eventually it gets to the partitioning section. It gives me two choices, Guided or Manual:
I go through all of the defaults including putting everything on one partition. No biggie since I’m not planning to keep this forever as my studio box. So it starts the partitioning and that takes a little while. Then I set up my timezone, root password, username, and user password. Finally it starts to install. I think this is quite a bad idea for a Mac replacement. There isn’t anything hard about it or bad about it, but then again, I’ve been installing Linux distros for something like 5 years now. (wow!) It’s just not pretty and Mac users like pretty. I suggest moving to Anaconda or whatever it is that Debian’s using nowadays.
At first it died on ef2progs. I restarted my installation. (This isn’t necessarily their fault - might be a VirtualBox issue) Once that was over and it rebooted, I was greeted with a very plain GDM screen. In fact, I was floored at how plain it was for a studio-based distro.
So I logged in. It took me a while to figure out what the background was. (It is a guitar string up-close, isn’t it?) It’s also, interestingly enough, they put Gnome on the bottom. Since people using 64 Studio are probably coming from Macs, this seems to be a very interesting choice to me.
The preferences are in a really weird place compared to Ubuntu and Fedora. (And most other Gnome-based Linux distros that I’ve used) Usually they’re under the System menu, which has made a lot of sense to me. You’re changing things about the system. Here’s what it looks like:
Also, it’s strangely just coming out of the Gnome foot. Will people know to just click on that? I guess with the Macs I’ve used there’s the apple, but again, that’s at the top with Apple. So there seems to be some kind of inconsistency where they are making it like apple where there’s just a little icon in the corner, but then they put the menu on the bottom. (Which isn’t even standard for Gnome!)
On to applications. Under internet they have Iceweasel instead of Firefox and Icedove instead of Thunderbird. It’s the exact same program, but with different art and a different name. Makes sense since it’s based on Debian. I thinkperhaps they could use a little README file on the desktop explaining this to anyone coming from Mac or Windows so they know it’s the same thing as Firefox.
They have some very interesting choices for the office programs. Abiword provides the wordprocessor and Gnumeric provides the spreadsheet. OpenOffice.org is nowhere to be found. It makes sense because 64 Studio is meant to be a creativity distro instead of a generic destkop distro.
When it comes to the applications included to make this a studio distro, they’ve got quite a few programs under graphics.
So they have some of the usual subjects like GIMP, Scribus, Inkscape, and (depending on the distro) Blender. But they also have some programs I haven’t seen before such as K-3D, KToon, Stopmotion, and Xara Extreme. Of course, Xara and Inkscape cover the same territory and the only reason I’ve ever heard for using Xara on Linux is because you’re used to Xara on your other platform. I decided to see what K-3D, KToon and Stopmotion were about.
Up there you can see the startup of K-3D the first time I open it up. Just on my absolute first impressions it appears to be designed to have a much friendlier interface than Blender. It looks a lot less intimidating and you can see the shapes you’re going to create without having to right-click or something like that. I’ve been using Blender for about 2 years now and now I find it very easy to use and quite natural. But the first time I ever started it up, I closed it about five minutes later, frustrated. I clicked a few buttons and came up with this. I tried to render and it didn’t work. But I didn’t feel like taking the time to figure it out.
I couldn’t quite figure out how KToon was supposed to work, but no biggie. It’s nice that it’s there. Here’s the Stopmotion GUI:
Stopmotion looks very interesting. It appears as though you hook up your webcam (or other type of camera that you can tether to the computer) and then you hit the camera button over and over to capture each frame. Sounds very, very tempting to try out and I’ll probably be installing it on my Fedora and Ubuntu computers. Of course, under sound and video, there are a ton of applications, such as a synthesizer. Unfortunately I couldn’t try it because the sound wasn’t working. I’ll chalk that up to VirtualBox.
TerminatorX is a really cool DJ program I discovered. I definitely want to check this out on my Fedora and Ubuntu computers.
So, what do I think of 64 Studio? On the one hand, there doesn’t seem to be much of a difference on the surface between 64 Studio and just taking a vanilla Debian install and installing the same packages as 64 Studio. On the other hand, there’s something to be said about a distro that already has all the packages installed and that you can just hand to a technologically-minded creative person and they can install it and start getting creative with free software. Minus points for not having a graphical installer and minus points for having the menu bar at the bottom. Also, it’s possible that a lot of the benefits of 64 Studio vs Vanilla Debian are below the surface. If they have a custom kernel tuned for creativity and have the jack audio framework all setup for you already, then that’s a huge plus for them. I’d definitely check it out, but you might also want to try Ubuntu Studio to see what they’re up to.
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May
15
Microsoft DRM Metldown Redux
Category: DRM, M$, Music, Others' Blogs | Leave a Comment
As I mentioned here, Micro$oft has provided yet another example of why digital restrictions management does nothing but hurt legitimate consumers. To remind you, this is when Microsoft turned off the servers for its ironically named “playsforsure” DRM system. These songs, which consumers would told, would play for sure on any digital media player containing the proper logo, will no longer play once August comes around and Microsoft turns off the servers which validate you as a non-criminal. I hope there’s a huge outcry that forces them to un-DRM all these songs and sounds the ultimate death knell for DRM.
Mark Pilmgim, Python hacker and author, wrote a piece about this in his blog in which he explains the situation to his father. Here are my favorite quotes.
Bruce Schneier, a famous cryptologist — or at least as famous a cryptologist as cryptologists are likely to get in this century — once described attempts to make digital bits uncopyable as “trying to make water not wet.”
To their credit, if that’s the right word, you can now purchase some music from the iTunes store that is unencrypted and plays anywhere. Apple calls these songs “iTunes Plus”, because it sounds so much better than calling everything else “iTunes Minus.”
To demonstrate the awesomeness of their developer platform, Microsoft opened their own online store, MSN Music, so they could compete directly with their business partners who also offered “PlaysForSure”-compatible music downloads. Because there’s nothing end users love more than fake choices.
At that point — transferring the music files they have “purchased” to another drive or a new computer — the Microsoft music player running on the victim’s PC (like iTunes, but all Microsoft-y instead of Apple-y) will make a call to Microsoft’s validation servers to verify that the music files were legitimately purchased. This call will fail, since the servers are not responding, since Microsoft has intentionally turned them off. The Microsoft music player will then conclude, incorrectly but steadfastly, that the music files were downloaded illegally and that the victim is a filthy pirate, and it will refuse to play them. In this case, the left hand knows exactly what the right hand is doing: they’re both giving you the finger.
Also, he mention that the Electronic Frontier Foundation, of which I’m a member, has posted a letter to Microsoft calling them on this move.
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May
12
Operating Systems and Sociology
Category: Computers, Linux, M$, Others' Blogs | 2 Comments
Penguin Pete has started a very interesting view of what drives people to use certain operating systems. You may find part one a little heavy, especially if you don’t know the history behind it. Basically, Pete has been slammed quite a few times for his blasphemous viewpoint that Ubuntu is a watered down version of Linux that doesn’t always show users the true spirit of Linux. Part two is a witty, well written historical (and fanciful) acount of how we arrived at the current situation. The fractionalization of the three main OSes is the subject of Part Three.
If you’re curious about how we arrived at the current computing environment, I suggest checking it out. Pete’s got a great style and I think there’s a lot to learn.
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May
3
If this story is accurate, then Micro$oft has withdrawn their offer to buy Yahoo! This is great news because I love the guys at Yahoo and the programs they run, such as Flickr and delicious and I love the fact that they use FreeBSD for their servers. You can bet that Microsoft wouldn’t have been having any of that and would have made them switch to the inferior Microsoft IIS. Plus, they probably would have wrecked my Flickr!
Yay for Yahoo! Hope things turn around for you!
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