Finally, I get my retribution. Microsoft is banned from selling MS Word and/or any applications that can open DOCX/DOCM/XML files in the USA!! Whee!! The ruling that made Bill Gates Steve Balmer pee in his pants came from a judge in Texas – a landmark for GNU/Linux, I might add.

i4i Inc – a company operating from Toronto, is the root cause behind M$’s latest fitfall. The firm succeeded in winning an injunction against M$, concerning gross violations of its XML patents. To quote from the ruling, the judgement  “prohibits Microsoft from selling or importing to the United States any Microsoft Word products that have the capability of opening .XML, .DOCX or DOCM files (XML files) containing custom XML”. The incident is reminiscent of the old IE frazzle has kicked Microsoft out cold! The breather for this monopolistic giant is the mere 60 day time window to implement the injunction.

So, does this mean M$ is goanna be the next dead duck?

Not really.

M$ has the money and muscle power, not to mention access to all the movers and shakers. The doyens of the company are taking the news in the stride and have decided to fight back against the small-time company i4i with all might. It’s going to be tough time for i4i, which  might, in all probability, go the Netscape way – to dysfunction, considering the might of the corporate conglomerate pitted against it. However, it must be said that i4i has some brave dudes out there who’ve achieved great success against M$ – a victory none else has been able to secure. If things go the way they are actually supposed to be (provided i4i gets a super-awesome lawyer and/or protection from M$’s corporate espionage  – if any), we might see the first days of M$ doom. I’m goanna celebrate that with crackers!

Image Courtesy: XKCD

All this brings out the main reason why I all of us GNU/Linux enthusiasts hate M$ Windows – Their highly monopolistic, derogatory and user-hampering principles!! It’s a fact that M$ pays the highest paychecks to its employees and harbours the world’s most brilliant Computer Scientists/Engineers. Yet, just see the countless bugs in Windows Vista!! If a group of ‘hackers’ could collaborate and create a very user friendly operating system that has all the goodies of Vista and consumes a tenth as much memory (Kubuntu 9.04), why can’t M$ do the same? The glaring answer is there in the question itself! The bugs are deliberate. Had M$ been as stable an O/S as GNU/Linux, a major chunk of the antivirus/’protection’ software companies would go bankrupt! Unless M$ finds a solution to the countless bugs in its software and do some serious rethinking about its policies, it’s a downward lane for the company. The indicators have already started pointing to that fact.

As far as I’m concerned, I’m content with my OpenOffice 3.0 and Kubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope!

People are often deeply attached to inanimate objects, very personally. They’d love such objects like a real human being, giving it all the attention they’d give to their sibling or a close relative!

My object-of-attraction is my PC!

Not very long ago, I’d written a post bidding adieu to my PC – the good ol’ venerable, P4MONSTER. Almost as if in divine intervention, exactly two weeks after the post, the PC was born again! Mind you, even the vendor had  written it off, returning it as it was, even refusing to buy money from us for ‘repair’ (I doubt if they’d bothered even to touch the cabinet once, for fear of worsening is ‘unwieldy’ symptoms!) Well, after I got it back subsequent to  my S6 exams, the PC magically started working again (only in Kubuntu, this time – Windows XP would crash with the display disintegrating to a motley assortment of colours and/or a BSOD within ten minutes of switching on). Having chosen Linux over windows permanently, long ago, lack of a Windows O/S wasn’t really a problem – until Linux started displaying what was a Linux equivalent of a BSOD, a few days back! Besides, even my Linux installation had problems, it had just 1.2 gigs of (fast-depleting) free space, worsened by the lack of  SWAP (virtual memory).

Day before yesterday, frazzled by the inadequacies, I pulled out the hard-disc, reformatted it and reinstalled Windows XP (thanks to Akhil Chettan) and Kubuntu. When the BSOD resurfaced within minutes, I chucked a 256 MB stick of RAM and tried again. Lo and behold, this time, like ol’ times – my PC returned to its good ol’ blazing speed, all set to rule over for at least an year!

As I’d written in the older post, I’ve a lot of emotional attachment to my P4MONSTER – a bond now resuscitated by its rebirth! Apart from the random virus attack (long back when Windows was my sole ‘vista’), it has never let me down! Even today, its modest hardware config is more than enough for my survival – to watch the occasional movie, do the random audio edit, write the much-needed blog post, listen to my favorite play list, and of course, read, read and READ till dad kicks me out of my room!

P4MONSTER is my second computer – the first one doesn’t even exist now, it was sold the day P4MONSTER stepped into my place. 25th March, 2004 was the day it became my buddy. Things weren’t rosy at the beginning, for,  I was stuck with a meagre 128 megs of RAM in the beginning (Dad read 512 as 128  – thanks to my LOVELY handwriting !). God, that was hell! I couldn’t even play a decent PC Game, despite the super-awesome 2.8 Ghz HT processor – I was stuck with the crappy piece of hardware (RAM)  for over a year. Yet, I tried to make do with incorrigibly slow start-up times, thanks to which, I’m accustomed to slow PCs now! The next year saw me fish out two thousand bucks from my pocket money for an extra 256 DDR1 (which was the stick that went bust recently. )

The RAM stick was the first among a huge array of accessories. To date, I’ve bought two optical mice (Dad destroyed one, in anger!), one keyboard, A DVD Writer and CD Writer (after my original LITE-ON COMBO Drive crushed a CD while burning it!), 512 MB RAM (borrowed from Abhi chettan) and my prized possession Creative SBS 2.1 speakers! Measly, compared to what today’s PCs have to offer, but more than enough for me!

I’ve a lot of pleasant memories about P4MONSTER – most of them being connected to the internet. I was among the first kids in my area to get broadband. BSNL had just rolled out the flagship DataOne and I was among its first 2000 customers for sure. I made the most out of 2-8 unlimited download (during my 12th boards and entrance exam holidays, nonetheless). DataOne has played a great role in kindling by blogging instincts! But, the dream got bust after my dismal entrance exam results (I got an extra zero, after that 200 rank parents were expecting! ), I lost DataOne and entered a dismal phase of my life (a year and a half, to be precise) without internet. DataOne returned to my life, later, in October 2007.

As of now, my buddy’s about 5 years and 4 months old. High time to get a new PC, yes. But I’m waiting, cause I don’t wanna abandon my MONSTER.  Even if I buy a new PC/Lappie in the coming weeks/months (hopefully, not years, the P4MONSTER shall remain close to my heart!

P.S.

If that was too geeky, please excuse.