I spent Christmas afternoon working. This was not much of an issue considering Teresa and the girls were in Alabama with her family for the holiday. They wont be back until the after the new year, so I have not been doing much for the past week, and it looks like I will be doing about the same for the next week. I played the hell out of “Dragons Age: Origin”. It is a great game, I loved the story line. I will take the time to play the other starts some time, but just not feeling it now. After beating that I picked up “Dragon Quest: Swords” for the Wii. It is also a fun one. I finished it off also.

With no games on hand calling my name, I took up the Netflix and watch some “Torchwood”. I started off on the Xbox 360, I was playing with Yellowdog Linux on the PS3. I started getting pissed off at the fact that I keap getting disconnected from Xbox Live. Each time I hit the end of and episode I had to reconnect and go through the motions of getting back to “Torchwood” to watch the next one.

I switched to the PS3 to watch more the rest of the evening. As I did I realised another fact about the PS3 that I always liked over Xbox. When watching Netflix on the PS3 I do not need any special account that costs a=extra to watch them. ON the Xbox 360 you need an Xbox Live Gold account which costs about $50 a year. All I needed for the PS3 was to order the DVD form Netflix that cost me nothing.

Not only does it not cost me any extra on the PS3, I don’t have to worry about getting disconnected for “Xbox Live” and having to log in all over again. t is much closer to watching Netflix on PC.

Now the Xbox 360 had Netflix before the PS3, just as they were out on the shelf first, but once again I feel that the PS3 has one uped the Xbox 360. The interface for Netflix is much more intuitive. And the fact that you don’t have to even have a PSN account (which is free) is a plus

When you stack up all the differences between the Xbox 360 and the PS3, I feel that the Xbox is lacking in most respects. A game that will fit on one Blue-Ray, while on the Xbox we are still working with DVDs and multi disk games. The only reason I can see for buying an Xbox 360 is if you want the Xbox Exclusive games. PS3 game even have a higher resale price if you are one of those who sell their games back.

The only real issue I am having with the PS3s that are on the shelf now is that they are slowly taking all the the features I love the PS3 for out to make it cheaper. That is what the Buyers want. They want a less expensive Console, price is the only thing I see that is driving the masses to the Xbox 360. If you are one of the masses out there that still has not gotten one of the current consoles, I would still recommend the PS3 over the 360, but the Wii still out does them both on the FUN levels.

Tags: movies, Netflix, Playstation, PS3, Xbox 360

One of the biggest arguments in the Healthcare Reform is that Healthcare is a right. The right to healthcare is one I am in full agreement with. What I am not in agreement with is government run healthcare. One of the biggest industries in America is Healthcare. It is also one of the fastest growing. For all those with out jobs at this time, there is a great need to people in the nursing profession. If the government goes through with this Healthcare reform it will impose regulations one the healthcare industry that will make these jobs harder to get and possibly downsize.

One of my personal issues with the Healthcare Reform is Insurance issues. First of which is the government run Insurance. Insurance is a privilege, not a right. The health insurance industry started during the American Civil War. This insurance was closer to the concepts used for Auto Insurance today, it covered only emergencies. This insurance, as with auto insurance, did not cover basic care. Insurance was made to handle unexpected emergencies that could cost large amounts of money at one time. Just as you do not expect your auto insurance to cover an oil change, this health insurance did not cover basic routine care.

What the common Health insurance is to day is medical expense insurance. This model started in the 1920 with the concept of pre-paid health care. This later turned into the comprehensive health Insurance we have to day, which covers routine care and preventive care. This system evolved from a per-paid system (which I can understand using) It would have been like a savings account that could only be drawn from for medical. Health Insurance today is a contract between the company and consumer. These contacts include thing to help the consumer and protect the company. One of the items used to protect the company from going out of business, and keep them running for all their customers is the Coverage limit. The coverage limit is similar to a fair usage policy for the internet service providers. The company only has a certain amount of income to provide cost coverage. If you are costing the company more they the can afford, you coverage would be dropped, but this coverage limit is know when you first take out the insurance. The Healthcare Reform wants to do away with the Coverage Limit, this will cause some insurance companies to lose money and go out of business.

Because Insurance is a gamble, no one can be certain of your future health, companies may deny coverage to people that have conditions that they know will continue to cost more over time than they can charge for coverage. These pre-existing conditions are like your driving record, since everyone want to compare Health Insurance to Auto Insurance, If you have a history of accidents you may be denied auto insurance, because you may cost more than they can charge you for coverage. This is common sense when looking at it from the business end of things. If providing your service to an individual will cost you more than you can make from them, you should not provide that person with the service. This is another thing the government Healthcare Reform wants to take away from the Insurance industry.

Another Issue I have with the proposed healthcare reform it the mandate that everyone must have health Insurance. Once again people, including our president, are comparing this to Auto Insurance mandates. If I drive and own a car I must have auto insurance. These mandates vary from state to state, but they all include one thing, liability coverage. This coverage is to protect the interest of others. Liability coverage does not cover you or you property, it covers others for damage caused at your fault. There is nothing like that in health insurance, my health insurance covers me and my family, not you and yours. My liability auto coverage covers you and your car, not me and mine. They are two different things.

Also, I have an option to avoid auto insurance if I am not willing to pay for it, or just can’t afford it; I can choose not to drive. There is not option like that for health coverage. This mandate states that you must buy insurance coverage from either a private provider or the government option. If I can not, or do not wan to, pay for health insurance what are my options, chose not to live? I guess I could always choose to go to jail where the government will pay for my health coverage anyway. This mandate would be the first where the federal government has told the American people “You must buy this product.” If that is not a step in the direction of socialism, what is?

I am in agreement that Healthcare Industry needs reform, I have said that many times. I do not feel that the federal Government should force a “One Size Fists All” approach to the reform, It should be handled by local and state governments if is to be a governing issue. I also do not want the Federal Government me what to buy. That is not their place.

Healthcare is a right, no one should be turned away if their live is in emanating danger, and laws do protect this. Health Insurance is a product created by private industry. You have the right to buy that product, but you do not have the right to make me pay for it for you.

Tags: America, Health care, Obama, Political

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,580959,00.html

The display of Christian or other religious symbols by government organizations is not unconstitutional. If the display is unconstitutional, and in violation of separation of church and state, then government organizations should not be able to display a Christmas tree, not just symbols on it. Displaying the symbols is not making any law supporting or hindering the free practice of religion. Why can the American people not see the difference between making a LAW and just a simple display?

Irv Sutley, and athirst and chairman of the county’s Peace and Freedom Party, petitioned to have Angels and Stars removed form Christmas trees in government buildings in Sonoma County, California. If you want to remove Christian and religious symbols, why not petition to have the tree removed. The tree it self is a symbol of a Christian holiday by definition. With out Christianity there is no Christmas. With that in mind all symbols of Christmas are religious in nature.

This man has gone to the effort of forcing the change of city emblems due to the inclusion of religious symbols. My issue with this man’s agenda is the fact the I Feel the forced removal of my religious symbols is hindering my free practice of religion. The constitution says that congress, no mention of state government, can not make any law respecting any religion of hindering the free practice there of. Displaying a Christmas tree or any religious symbol is in no way making any law, and there for should not be hindered in any way.

No person in the U.S.A. should have the notion that removing my religion is any better than openly displaying symbols form many religions. You have the right to display any and all religious symbols. The Government, being made up of the people of America, should have the same right. As long as there is no LAW made, these actions are not unconstitutional. If you don’t want to see religious symbols in government or public places, close your eyes.

Tags: America, Christian, christmas, christmas holidays, Political

I ran into an issue the other day after buying a Christmas Gift for our youngest girl. I picked up the Leapfrog® Scout® dog toy. This is a great thing, it songs and teaches numbers and a few other things. One of the features is that you can program it with your child’s name. In order to do the customization you need a Windows or Mac computer with a standard sized resolution. This is where my problem came up. A few months ago our full-sized laptop died on us, as a replacement ( considering I don’t do much on the computers at home) we just picked up a netbook. The great thing about netbooks is they are cheap (in every sense of the word), you can pick one up for about $300, so that is what we did, and it has worked great for what we use it for, surfing the internet and paying a few bills. One of the biggest issues with the netbook (and why I might not buy another) is that they almost always have a odd resolution setting (1024×600 instead of 1024×768). Well the software for setting up Scout® needs a resolution of 1024×768, and I don’t have that.

I thought about running out and picking up a mini desktop to hook up to the TV, but that is not in our budget right now. The next best thing came to mind, I can run a Windows® virtual machine on my PS3. All i needed to do was install Yellowdog® Linux on it. I am going to run through all the steps I went through to do this. First there are a few things you need:

1. PS3 (any PS3 other than the Slim, they removed the Linux setting in the new Slims) You can pick one of these up at GameStop starting at $250
2. PS3 controller (for PS3 functions)
3. FAT formatted USB hard drive ( only needed if you want to back up you same saves and other data)
4. SB keyboard and mouse (needed for all Linux installation)
5. YellowDog® Linux DVD ISO (6.2 is the most current as of the writing of this guide)
6. Blank DVDs
7. ISO Burner software for Windows, Linux, or Mac
8. Windows Installation CD (I have one laying around all the time)
9. an internet connection for your PS3

NOTE: Before we gat started I want you to know this may be an all day event from start to finish, and a lot of that is waiting for Windows to install. If you do not have the time or patience for the full installation, or a dedicated TV (considering some of us have kids) you may not want to run through the Windows portion of the install. Also I would like to point out that this will not have any 3D video functionality, and will run extrealy slow when compared to a real computer. I do not recommend trying to run windows on you PS3 as its main function. If you are like me how ever and may need a quick (not really for the install) windows box to do something small, this is an option if you don’t want to go out an buy a new PC.

Install Linux on a PS3

The first step is prepping you PS3 for the Linux installation. If you picked up a new/used PS3 you canskip most of these steps. For those of you how want to save all your pictures and games saves you will need a FAT32 formatted USB hard drive. If you are like me you have a few USB hard drive laying around, but none of them are FAT32. This is not as easy of a fix as you might think. Most of us will have a Windows XP or VIsta ( god forbid you have Windows 7) and they systems will not make large FAT32 partitions on USB drives.  You will need a FAT32 formatter, down load one here for Windows. Using this tool you can format your USB drive to use the full size. I recommend having a USB drive at least the same size as you PS3 hard drive, you may have more data on there than you thing.

Once you have the hard drive formatter you need to plug it into you PS3, there should be a USB port or two on the front (if there is only one you have a PS3 Slim stop and get you money back). You can used the Backup utility under the system settings to back up all you data. If you only want to back up some of the data feel free to navigate through to the data you want and just copy it to the USB drive ( this can be tile consuming if you are backing up a lot of music or photos). The backup utility does not backup Trophy data, you will need to sync it with the server or you trophy data may be lost.

At this point you can follow the directions in the official install guide. I recommend using the 10G partition of the hard drive for Linux and the rest of the drive for PS3. You can always add USB hard drives to the Linux system. If you are planning on using your PS3 for Linux(window) exclusively, then feel free to set it up with the larger porting for Linux. I used the default Office Productivity setup with the wired network to start with. Do not try and set up the Wifi connection at this time if you are planning on using Wifi, it will not work out of the box.

VNC Remote Desktop

COnsidering the amount of time Windows takes to Install on the PS3 I recommend setting up VNC for remote desktop access from another computer. This will allow you to use the TV while doing some things on the PS3, this is a good move for any parents of small children or TV addicts. VNC server comes preinstalled on Yellowdog®, but it is not configured or running.

for VNC to work you must have your network configured and working. If you are using the Firewall (iptables, they are the same thing) you will need to open a port to allow VNC viewer to connect. The first ting we need to do is configure the VNC server.

1. open a terminal window.
2. “su –“ to root (you will need a root password)
3. nano /etc/sysconfig/vncservers
4. change ther VNCSERVER=”1:root” (were 1 is the display (port) and root is the user account for that port. Note: I do not recommend using root account because VNC is not a secure protocol. you will want to creat a suer account for VNC to use, I named mine VNC
5. ctrl+o  then “enter” to save
6. ctrl+x to exit nano

You will need to add port 590x (were x is the display number listed in vncservers file) accept to the firewall if you are using one. You can do this by using the firewale configuration tool or by editing the /etc/sysconfig/iptables and adding “-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT –p tcp -dport 5901 -j ACCEPT” to the imput section of the file.

You also need to setup the user account to work with VNC.

1. open a terminal window.
2. “su –“ to root (you will need a root password)
3. cp –r /root/.vnc /home/(useraccount)
4. chown (useraccount):(useraccount) /home/(useraccount)/* (this is to be sure that all files are owned by the user)
5. su (useraccount)
6. vncpasswd (this will set a login password for the VNC connection.
7. nano /home/(useraccount)/.vnc/xstartup
8. you need to uncomment the two lines with unset and exec. if you do not do this you will not get the desktop functions and might as well just SSH.
9. save and exit.

Now that all this is done you will need to start the VNC service. you can either to this through the service tool in the GUI or “service vncserver start”. The Service tool allows you to set the service to start on boot. If you want the service to start on boot and you are using the command line do “chkconfig vncserver”. The last thing you need to do is restart the firewall, either through the service tool or with “service iptables restart”. If you are not using the fire wall you can skip that step.

Now you can use the VNC viewer to work with the PS3 desktop from any Windows, Linux, or Mac. The TV is now free again for watching of the cartoons and movies. I highly recommend using VNC to remote the Windows setup because it will take several hours.

QEMU and Windows

The next thing do to is install qemu. qemu is a tool to emulate the PC processor. The PS3 uses a PowerPC (or ppc) processor. this does not work the same as you x86 processors. becuse of this you ac not use Wine to run your windows programs on you PS3. to install qemu simply open a terminal window and log in as root, the use the “yum install qemu” command. You will need to be connected to the internet for yum to download and install qemu.

You will need to create a disk image for windows to load on.  you want to create the image while under the user account that you want to run windows, I also put this under my VNC account.To do this use “qemu-img create -f qcow c.hd 1200M”. you can modify the size of the image by changing the 1200M section. this section uses M for Megs and G for Gigs. I recommend giving two gigs to windows.

Once the disk image is made insert you Windows install disk into the PS3. use “qemu -cdrom /dev/scd0 -boot d c.hd”  to start the installation and get ready for the wait. The installation take a long time to load, simply follow the onscreen instructions for installing windows. I recommend having something to do while waiting for windows to install. The complete install process took about 5 hours on my PS3.

Once the install is completed you can start Windows with “qemu -cdrom /dev/scd0 -boot d c.hd”. I don’t recommend using this as a primary means for windows. the system runs slowly and is not capable of running any games or other process intensive functions. If you really want to rung windows go buy a real computer. As I said, I am only doing this to get the resolution requirements for some programs I needed to run to fix a Christmas gift for my daughter. I really do not thing the results are worth the time required, but I guess if you want to say “Ya, I run windows on my PS3.”  go. for it.

Tags: linkedin, Linux, PS3, Windows XP, Yellowdog