Katze mit Wut

So, I figured (Open-) Solaris and VirtualBox are both owned by Sun now, they should go together splendidly.

I opted for the Sun-offering rather than Nexenta etc. since I intend to test some things in a "Sun environment", that is, make sure things work with the on-board facilities. Otherwise "Sun-kernel and GNU userland" would likely have been my preference.

Now, there are two different offerings, mind. The freely available download of OpenSolaris "Indiana", for a start. At 686 MB, this comes without a compiler, any compiler, it seems, and that means, no Sun compiler and no GNU compiler. It seems nice enough otherwise. However if I wanted to install the Virtual Box additions so I could move the mouse-pointer in and out of the VirtualBox window (or even integrate the Solaris instance's windows with my linux host's), the keyboard went berserk (in the guest only, and in X only), so I had to click Install … to mount the image, and then kill X to cd /media/V*; pkgadd -d *.pkg really quickly. On the upside, it came with some sort of graphical package-manager (which possibly allows you to pull the GNU compiler collection).
Addendum: It seems like the keyboard situation can be avoided by connecting using RDP, see below.

Anyway, I needed the Sun compilers, so I had to opt for the Developer Express something offering (what's with these names?), which in theory requires you to register before download. The good news is, if you're already on the Sun payroll, your normal log-in credentials will do the trick. This image weighs 3.7 GB; the minimum disk requirements are in the region of 8 GB, with 20 GB recommended. It includes the compilers (and auto-tools) of course, but it's not just the other image, plus devel. GNOME looks subtly different, I had no trouble installing the VirtualBox additions, and if there is a graphical package manager I haven't found it so far. But then I haven't looked very hard since so far all I needed was to go to sunfreeware.com (or blastwave, whichever you prefer — blastwave and pkg-get actually handle dependencies, so that's probably what you want, more on that later) to install screen "so the pain will stop." Seriously, that should be their tagline. "Screen. So the pain will stop." But I digress.

Addendum: Since I was only changing config-files at first, I only used vim in the first hour. Yes, you know what's coming. Once you try to do real work, you'll find there is no emacs. No, no xemacs either. So I guess I want to install pkg-get after all. But seriously. A "developer-edition" with no emacs? WTH?? So pkg-get (or pkgadm, but PBA that there is another pkgadm in $PATH!) it is! pkg-get -i xemacs, add /opt/csw/xemacs/bin to PATH, then let the configuring begin!

Jemand names Charlotte Roche hat eine Erzählung geschrieben, wo die eine Hälfte "dramatisch überhöht" ist und die andere, was ohnehin jede tut. Das ist ein bißchen so wie, Alle kacken, aber nur Charlotte schreibt ein Buch drüber. Oder auch, Alle kacken, aber nur Charlotte hält sich deshalb für eine Feministin.

So, I'm in the middle of something. DSL goes down for no apparent reason. I don't see any WLAN I could share (and in fact NetworkManager has been behaving very weird since the update; if I don't kill -STOP it, it eats all my CPU — just plain killing it also tears down the net; this problem can be googled — a solution, not so much). So, UMTS. On this, pppd fails, giving unrecognized option '/dev/ttyUSB0'. This is the most obscure way they could find to say, You upgraded the kernel and haven't rebooted yet, so I can't find my shit. So, I reboot. Or, I try to. The upgrade from 2.6.25.3 to 2.6.25.4 plain broke my system (broke as in, EDD check, then BUG: INT14 CR2, dead before I get even the most basic boot messages). It is at this time that I notice that I haven't got a boot-manager installed that won't let me pass kernel options without excessive pain.

Kann Feminismus Spaß machen?, ist gefragt. Und ehrlich, ich finde das etwas merkwürdig gefragt. Macht Kampf gegen Sexismus Spaß? Das ist doch das selbe wie, Macht Kloputzen Spaß? Wenn mans nicht tut, erstickt man halt irgendwann in der Scheiße.

Way back, I got the Motorola RAZR v3, a very sexy phone. It had a stunning design, a nice display, and pretty good sound — and not much else. I've been hoping to upgrade for a while, but the next generation RAZRs took long to arrive, and did not entice me right away — the RAZR's design was so perfect that any change from it seemed to be for worse, while keeping it seemed more of the same. A rock, and a hard place. At the same time, the technology seemed OK, but not all that impressive, and the fact that the interesting features seemed spread out over a confusing trinity of next-generation rather products rather than being united in a single unit didn't help.

One contender was the LG Shine. I ultimately decided against it because its killer feature, its look and metal body, was offset by every review mentioning how it's "all fingerprints" after half an hour (give or take some complaints about the user-interface). I still think this might possibly be a great phone to have, especially if you wish to spend a little less.

Another contender from LG was the Prada-phone which in some ways anticipated the iPhone; with more up-to-date technology (or even just more memory), it might have likewise have been a serious contender. By now, it's sold on shop channel, so any exclusive air it may have possessed is gone.

Speaking of the iPhone itself, I'm pretty sure I'll want one. iPhone 2.0, iPhone 3.0, something like that. This one? Not so much — no 3G, no voice dial, no MMS, crap camera, no flash, no Java, no Bluetooth stereo, no video-recording, the list goes on. Add to that that it comes with a plan and I'm not sure I want one (I'm not even sure when mine expires), and that you can't change the battery yourself, and I'm put out.

Then came the Samsung Soul.

The Good

Well, for one thing, the SGH-U900 (video) is very chic, obviously. This is one seriously beautiful phone — the shell, the (brushed metal) theme, even the touchpad if configured right. The menus are more straight-forward than the RAZR's, the display's resolution is higher of course, and so is the camera's. It has more memory, and can be expanded further. Like the v3, it has the downer of some token plastic in that "full metal shell." And at first, it feels awkward to hold while making a call. But is it the "new RAZR"?

Below the fold: The Bad