Ever try to run OpenOffice on Mac OSX? It's not pleasant. Instead of using the native Aqua widgets, it uses X-Windows widgets, and requires you to run the X-Windows subsystem in order to run.
It works, but it's not terribly pleasant, and doesn't integrate well with the rest of the system. AbiWord, for all of its warts, is significantly better integrated into the OS.
I'm looking forward to the day when OpenOffice has a proper OSX distribution, but for now Abiword is a much nicer open word processor if you're running a Mac.
Yaz.
Re:I will help YOU get a JOB! (Programming puzzles
on
Programming Puzzles
·
· Score: 1
Hey, I like the idea of punishing spammers, but Lycos is playing a game that's very dangerous. They're doing DOS-attacks (by proxy) on servers, and where I live that's actually a crime.
On the original website for this tool, you were asked to select your country from a list in order to download the tool. The list was quite limited -- only some European countries were listed.
I'm guessing this is because Lycos did their research to determine in which countries potential users wouldn't get into trouble if they ran their tool.
In business, approch is everything -- especially when you're dealing with the home consumer.
The problem here is that they went door to door and told people they had detected their access point was open. You might as well just say "I was driving through your neighbourhood trying to hack whatever machines I could, and decided I could make a few bucks by extorting it ouf of you" -- because this is what the people who answered the door will have heard in their minds.
The better way of going about this is to do your war driving to detect areas for a targeted flier campaign that alerts people to the risks of having unprotected wireless access points, and then give them a phone number where they can reach you. As well, you should have a registered business name behind you (as a lot of people will trust a business with a phone number rather than some guy coming in off the street). Then show up in your least geek (or slob) like clothes, with a good haircut.
Well, first off I'm in Canada, so the carrier is probably going to differ from your available choices (as I'm assuming based on your selection of Sprint that you're in the US).
Secondly, I'm currently lookig at the Sony Ericsson T610. From my limited research thus far it appears to be less expensive than a lot of other Bluetooth-enabled phones, and will sync via iSync with my PowerBook.
I would prefer to be able to get a phone without a built-in camera, but most of the current crop of Bluetooth-enabled phones have one.
However, being a primarily data guy, I'm fairly new to the world of cell phones. I've never owned one, and really don't want people calling me wherever I might be. I'm just not tied to the telephone like some many other people in this day and age. So what I'll probably end up doing is going to a cellular retailler and grilling them to try to find the best phone and plan to fit my needs.
With all that said, based on my own research I'm thinking of going with Fido here in Canada, as they have a $50 unlimited data plan, whereas all the other providers have data plans that are more expensive. One of my concerns is to not pay an arm and a leg each month, but I also need to be able to do more than just check my e-mail (in fact, my primary need as a developer will be CVS access. As evil as it is, I can see myself starting to use -z9:) ).
Would be great to connect to a network download some MP3s, check email, makes some calls or read a book.
That's about what I'm setting myself up to do -- I'm going to go with a 100% mobile workplace. I have my Tungsten C with built-in WiFi and my 12" PowerBook with built-in WiFi and Bluetooth -- in the next few weeks I'm planning on adding a Bluetooth-enabled GPRS cell phone with a data service package. It's three devices, but I'll have flexible data access from virtually anywhere, along with phone and fax capabilities.
WiFi is my preference, but there are many time I'm working outside of WiFi range. With the devices I already own, I'm two thirds of the way there:).
The best solution by far that I've found is my Palm Tungsten C running NetChaser. Not only does it detect the networks, it will let you know their SSIDs, the last time you saw them, their MAC address, and a pile of other information. It can alert you by a tone or by using the Tungsten C's vibration function, and can operate with the screen off. It can even initiate a WiFi connection to a selected network.
I've had mine set-up to operate with the screen off, and vibrate when an unencrypted network is encountered. I can walk around with it in my pocket and can silently know when I'm within range of an unencrypted wireless signal (it just logs the encrypted ones without vibrating). At that point, I can either connect from the T|C, or whip out my PowerBook.
It's been fun walking around the neighbourhood with it in my pocket looking for open networks. I seem to hit upon one ever 2 or 3 houses. It's nice to know that if I'm really hard up for cash I can probably print up a bunch of fliers and distribute them around the neighbourhood where there are open access points offering to secure their access points for cash:).
While I'm all for poking spammers in the eye, doing this is going to send the wrong message to the wrong parties.
I'm speaking of the bandwidth providers who supply bandwidth to spammers, as with this screensaver they get the increase their profits. Isn't this sending the bandwidth providers the wrong message, that it's even more profitable to provide service to known spammers?
I'd think what we want to do is to reduce the profitability of spam at all levels. Sure hitting the spammers feels good, and reducing their profitability is a good thing -- but with this system you're just moving the profit around from the spammer to the service providers that support spammers.
Laws of supply-and-demand would seem to dictate that as spam becomes more profitable for the ISPs, the cost of their service provided to spammers will go down anyhow, while at the same time giving the ISPs a good reason to try to attract more spam-generating customers.
I see nothing good or worthwhile coming of this, no matter how much I've love to see spammers everywhere forced to claim bankrupcy.
It also fits on a mini CD-R, so it can be kept in a pocket. Might want to consider sending a card with one of those inside it.
One thing to note here is that if you use mini CD-Rs and are sending to non-technical people, do them a favour and add a note that they shouldn't use the disc in a slot-loading drive. Most slot-loading drives (mostly found on laptops) can't handle these discs, where they jam and can damage the drive.
There's nothing worse than getting a gift that forces you to send your laptop in for repair.
I mean, seriously. How else would they know who bought it and how to get a name from that serial number?
Standard police methods would find the person(s) involved. The serial number would be used for evidentury purposed to show in court that the bills retreived come ffrom that printer.
However, since 100% code compatibility is required to do a full reimplementation, this essentially would grant them a 20-year monopoly on compatible implementations of VB.
While I agree that this would seem to be the logical intent, I don't think it will actually work this way.
If I were to implement a Linux compiler for Visual Basic code, I'd simply run it through a pre-processor to remove the "IsNot" operator and replace it with the existing IF NOT operator.
Indeed, you could specifically document that the pre-processor exists to ensure that code doesn't infringe upon patents (if such sillyness is ever in fact patented in the US). What are they going to do? Take you to court for writing a piece of software run before the compiler does to ensure the code doesn't have any patent violations in it?
The worst part of it is this code isn't well optimized. I mean you'd hope they'd know enough to not bother to continually loop through the assignments in lines 10 and 20 when they never actually change.
Just goes to show that if Windows were Open Source, this sort of bug could have been fixed long ago. It's probably existed since MS-DOS v1.0, and explains so very much.
I think you can even extend the number of posible categories further:
...or do they perhaps mean people who are experts in Open Source project administration? Many companies look to Open Source their code from time-to-time, but managing the project to ensure its success in an internet-enabled distributed environment is different from administration in the corporate environment. If a company is looking to Open Source a product, they need a special kind of Open Source expert;
...or do they perhaps mean people who are experts in Open Source licensing issues? If a company is looking to start using Open Source tools, particularily for software development, they may want people are are conversant with the ins and outs of the different licenses to ensure they don't waste your time by recommending software with licenses that are incompatible with how you want to use them (thus needing to bring the more expensive lawyers in);
...or do they perhaps need some form of generalist consultant to help them find ways to use Open Source projects and methodologies within their organization?
For any companies looking for any of the above, well, here I am.
Yaz.
Re:Can someone confirm a few things?
on
Firefox 1.0 Released
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Is this browser compatible with banking sites?
Depends completely on your bank. Mine works just fine -- but it's up to your bank to either create a standards-based solution, or one that is locked into IE.
Is it really faster than Safari in Mac OS X?
I'm going to disagree with the crowd a bit and say "yes", but with a caveat.
On my PowerBook G4 12" (Rev. C), FireFox v1.0 feels faster than Safari (in 10.3.6) -- but this could be in part because of the ad-blocking features in FireFox which don't exist in Safari (also the primary reason why FireFox is my browser-of-choice on OS X, over both Safari and Camino), which puts Safari at a disadvantage (as on many sites, it's downloading and rendering more data than FireFox is on the same sites).
I was mearly using that as an example of how extensively I've travelled in the region (which is a reasonable amount, somewhere between 7-10 states across a reasonable segment I think).
Canada is not a state of the US. Canada does not fingerprint people when they come through a Canadian airport. Canada has ratified the Kyoto Protocol.
If you have a beef with the US, then say you have a beef with the US. Don't blame all of North America for the things going on in the US. Neither Canada nor Mexico has any control over these things, and we tend to get harmed by US actions far more than the citizens of other continents do (Iraq not withstanding). I don't care how many states of the US you've been to -- none of them are in Canada (which doesn't have states in the first place).
Have whatever beefs you want to have with the US. Just don't generalize and blame what the US does on North America. The US isn't the only country in North America (heck, it isn't even the biggest country in North America), and neither Mexico nor Canada have a whole lot of say as to US policy (which is, of course, how it should be).
I've been to North America many times, as far west as San Fransico, as far east as New York, as far south as Cape Kennedy and as far north as Canada. I will not being going back though.
"USA" != "North America". Please don't tar Canada and Mexico with the same brush when they have done nothing to diserve it.
The only problem I ran into was that FireFox wouldn't allow me to select VLC as the helper application when I clicked on the stream link -- it wanted to use iTunes. I let it (as I recently installed the Vorbis Quicktime plug-in), and while it loaded the stream, it wouldn't play (a problem with the Vorbis QuickTime plug-in I presume).
Instead, I copied the URL of the.m3u file, opened VLC, and selected "File -> Open Network...", and pasted in the URL. It loaded and started playing without any ffurther problems.
VLC unfortunately doesn't have a "Favorites" menu of any sort, so in order to use this stream again in the future I had to change the default application for the.m3u file I downloaded to use VLC instead of iTunes. Now I can just double-click on the.m3u file to start listening to the stream.
The CBC's website dates from even earlier than this.
And not only that, but from at least 1996 I used to download WAV files of CBC Radio 1's morning news from their website. Long before most organizations were even thinking about streaming audio, the CBC provided the morning news for download within minutes of its broadcast.
I remember mornings working away in the lab at University, sucking up bandwidth downloading those 10 - 15 minute WAV files so I could bring myself up-to-date with the world while working on assignments.
The CBC has long been on the forefront of journalism and the use of technology in journalism.
I've admittedly been a long time CBC listener. I've been wanting for a long time to get a shortwave radio so I can pick up CBC's Radio Canada International service when I travel outside the country (but have kept putting it off as I haven't had occassion to leave Canada for the last couple of years). The CBC is by far the best news and information service in North America -- they actually take investigative journalism seriously. I'd argue they're one of the best news and information services in the world, up there with the BBC in the UK.
And thanks to the other recent article about listening to Vorbis streams on Mac OS X, I'm now able to listen to CBC Radio 1 Toronto with my PowerBook from anywhere I can get wireless internet access.
(I've had to use VLC to play it back. I have the Vorbis QuickTime component from SourceForge, but can't get it to work with streaming audio. Which is too bad, as I'd love to use iTunes to play back the CBC Radio 1 stream).
Time to fire off a note to the CBC stating my support to ensure they expand their Vorbis usage for streaming audio (and maybe a note to Apple to see if they might start supporting Vorbis in QuickTime).
I guess where I'm going is that, MOL doesn't work here, because all this crap she bought is for Windows, and I don't need to continue this paragraph...
Hey, sounds like it's time for me to start my own Linux distro - M-O-L (Mom-On-Linux);).
Well, for many years my mom was running different versions of OS/2 on her system, because it was what I was running. There was, unfortunately, a short time period where she had a Windows-only scanner where she was dual-booting between OS/2 and Windows 98. She always hated Windows, and spent as little time in it as possible.
It got to the point where IBM's lack of OS/2 support and software was turning into a liability for her. At the same time, she found she wasn't using her scanner much anymore (it was one of those nasty parallel port based scanners that only ever had Windows 98 drivers, and doesn't work under any other OS), so the move to RedHat 8.0 was pretty easy.
Mind you, she does nothing other than run a few software programs, primarily games, and Mozilla, and doesn't ever create any documents, and never tries to install her own software, so it hasn't been as painful a conversion as some people might experience. Indeed, it was painless. The system is completely stable and requires virtually no maintenence as previously mentioned.
Here, Linux has passed the Mom test with flying colours. If it wasn't for the fact it has both nVidia video and an nVidia motherboard chipset that caused me no end of installation problems, I'd probably upgrade it to Fedora.
For instance, I'd switch my Mother to Linux just to degrade her chances of a virus, but 3 or 4 little games she plays; Kyodai Mahjongg (this isn't normal mahjongg) Bubble Shooter (There's a similiar one, but it's got a ways to go to catch up to Bubble Shooter), Bookworm, etc. aren't available on Linux that I know of.
Mom-On-Linux (MOL) has had some major advantages. If her system needs maintenence, I can easily do it remotely through SSH, can can even export X apps (it helps that we're both on the same broadband network, mind you). Plus, as she doesn't have root access, she can't mess anything up. And wheras I had to watse a few days the last time my brother got a major virus infestation on his Windows laptop, Mom's machine is completely immune.
Mom's happy because she gets to run the games she likes, run Mozilla, and check her e-mail. I'm happy because the machine hums along problem-free without my constantly receiving calls from her asking for assistance or for routine maintanence.
(Mind you, since I bought myself my Apple PowerBook, and shoed her a picture of the new iMac G5, I think she's wanting an "upgrade":) ).
Slashdot Mirror
Define "we".
Ever try to run OpenOffice on Mac OSX? It's not pleasant. Instead of using the native Aqua widgets, it uses X-Windows widgets, and requires you to run the X-Windows subsystem in order to run.
It works, but it's not terribly pleasant, and doesn't integrate well with the rest of the system. AbiWord, for all of its warts, is significantly better integrated into the OS.
I'm looking forward to the day when OpenOffice has a proper OSX distribution, but for now Abiword is a much nicer open word processor if you're running a Mac.
Yaz.
312211
Yaz.
On the original website for this tool, you were asked to select your country from a list in order to download the tool. The list was quite limited -- only some European countries were listed.
I'm guessing this is because Lycos did their research to determine in which countries potential users wouldn't get into trouble if they ran their tool.
Yaz.
But that will only allow you to catch the exceptional ones, and they are few and far between.
Yaz.
In business, approch is everything -- especially when you're dealing with the home consumer.
The problem here is that they went door to door and told people they had detected their access point was open. You might as well just say "I was driving through your neighbourhood trying to hack whatever machines I could, and decided I could make a few bucks by extorting it ouf of you" -- because this is what the people who answered the door will have heard in their minds.
The better way of going about this is to do your war driving to detect areas for a targeted flier campaign that alerts people to the risks of having unprotected wireless access points, and then give them a phone number where they can reach you. As well, you should have a registered business name behind you (as a lot of people will trust a business with a phone number rather than some guy coming in off the street). Then show up in your least geek (or slob) like clothes, with a good haircut.
Image is everything ;).
Yaz.
Well, first off I'm in Canada, so the carrier is probably going to differ from your available choices (as I'm assuming based on your selection of Sprint that you're in the US).
Secondly, I'm currently lookig at the Sony Ericsson T610. From my limited research thus far it appears to be less expensive than a lot of other Bluetooth-enabled phones, and will sync via iSync with my PowerBook.
I would prefer to be able to get a phone without a built-in camera, but most of the current crop of Bluetooth-enabled phones have one.
However, being a primarily data guy, I'm fairly new to the world of cell phones. I've never owned one, and really don't want people calling me wherever I might be. I'm just not tied to the telephone like some many other people in this day and age. So what I'll probably end up doing is going to a cellular retailler and grilling them to try to find the best phone and plan to fit my needs.
With all that said, based on my own research I'm thinking of going with Fido here in Canada, as they have a $50 unlimited data plan, whereas all the other providers have data plans that are more expensive. One of my concerns is to not pay an arm and a leg each month, but I also need to be able to do more than just check my e-mail (in fact, my primary need as a developer will be CVS access. As evil as it is, I can see myself starting to use -z9 :) ).
Yaz.
That's about what I'm setting myself up to do -- I'm going to go with a 100% mobile workplace. I have my Tungsten C with built-in WiFi and my 12" PowerBook with built-in WiFi and Bluetooth -- in the next few weeks I'm planning on adding a Bluetooth-enabled GPRS cell phone with a data service package. It's three devices, but I'll have flexible data access from virtually anywhere, along with phone and fax capabilities.
WiFi is my preference, but there are many time I'm working outside of WiFi range. With the devices I already own, I'm two thirds of the way there :).
Yaz.
The best solution by far that I've found is my Palm Tungsten C running NetChaser. Not only does it detect the networks, it will let you know their SSIDs, the last time you saw them, their MAC address, and a pile of other information. It can alert you by a tone or by using the Tungsten C's vibration function, and can operate with the screen off. It can even initiate a WiFi connection to a selected network.
I've had mine set-up to operate with the screen off, and vibrate when an unencrypted network is encountered. I can walk around with it in my pocket and can silently know when I'm within range of an unencrypted wireless signal (it just logs the encrypted ones without vibrating). At that point, I can either connect from the T|C, or whip out my PowerBook.
It's been fun walking around the neighbourhood with it in my pocket looking for open networks. I seem to hit upon one ever 2 or 3 houses. It's nice to know that if I'm really hard up for cash I can probably print up a bunch of fliers and distribute them around the neighbourhood where there are open access points offering to secure their access points for cash :).
Yaz.
While I'm all for poking spammers in the eye, doing this is going to send the wrong message to the wrong parties.
I'm speaking of the bandwidth providers who supply bandwidth to spammers, as with this screensaver they get the increase their profits. Isn't this sending the bandwidth providers the wrong message, that it's even more profitable to provide service to known spammers?
I'd think what we want to do is to reduce the profitability of spam at all levels. Sure hitting the spammers feels good, and reducing their profitability is a good thing -- but with this system you're just moving the profit around from the spammer to the service providers that support spammers.
Laws of supply-and-demand would seem to dictate that as spam becomes more profitable for the ISPs, the cost of their service provided to spammers will go down anyhow, while at the same time giving the ISPs a good reason to try to attract more spam-generating customers.
I see nothing good or worthwhile coming of this, no matter how much I've love to see spammers everywhere forced to claim bankrupcy.
Yaz.
One thing to note here is that if you use mini CD-Rs and are sending to non-technical people, do them a favour and add a note that they shouldn't use the disc in a slot-loading drive. Most slot-loading drives (mostly found on laptops) can't handle these discs, where they jam and can damage the drive.
There's nothing worse than getting a gift that forces you to send your laptop in for repair.
Yaz.
Standard police methods would find the person(s) involved. The serial number would be used for evidentury purposed to show in court that the bills retreived come ffrom that printer.
Yaz.
While I agree that this would seem to be the logical intent, I don't think it will actually work this way.
If I were to implement a Linux compiler for Visual Basic code, I'd simply run it through a pre-processor to remove the "IsNot" operator and replace it with the existing IF NOT operator.
Indeed, you could specifically document that the pre-processor exists to ensure that code doesn't infringe upon patents (if such sillyness is ever in fact patented in the US). What are they going to do? Take you to court for writing a piece of software run before the compiler does to ensure the code doesn't have any patent violations in it?
Hmmm -- maybe I should patent this system :).
<HOMER SIMPSON>
Patent-pending,
Patent-pending,
Patent-pending!
</HOMER SIMPSON>
Yaz.
Ah, so is that the secret to getting good health care in the US? ;)
Yaz.
After reading all that, I have the sudden need to go and brush my teeth. Again.
Yaz.
The worst part of it is this code isn't well optimized. I mean you'd hope they'd know enough to not bother to continually loop through the assignments in lines 10 and 20 when they never actually change.
Just goes to show that if Windows were Open Source, this sort of bug could have been fixed long ago. It's probably existed since MS-DOS v1.0, and explains so very much.
Yaz.
I think you can even extend the number of posible categories further:
For any companies looking for any of the above, well, here I am.
Yaz.
Depends completely on your bank. Mine works just fine -- but it's up to your bank to either create a standards-based solution, or one that is locked into IE.
I'm going to disagree with the crowd a bit and say "yes", but with a caveat.
On my PowerBook G4 12" (Rev. C), FireFox v1.0 feels faster than Safari (in 10.3.6) -- but this could be in part because of the ad-blocking features in FireFox which don't exist in Safari (also the primary reason why FireFox is my browser-of-choice on OS X, over both Safari and Camino), which puts Safari at a disadvantage (as on many sites, it's downloading and rendering more data than FireFox is on the same sites).
HTH!
Yaz.
Canada is not a state of the US. Canada does not fingerprint people when they come through a Canadian airport. Canada has ratified the Kyoto Protocol.
If you have a beef with the US, then say you have a beef with the US. Don't blame all of North America for the things going on in the US. Neither Canada nor Mexico has any control over these things, and we tend to get harmed by US actions far more than the citizens of other continents do (Iraq not withstanding). I don't care how many states of the US you've been to -- none of them are in Canada (which doesn't have states in the first place).
Have whatever beefs you want to have with the US. Just don't generalize and blame what the US does on North America. The US isn't the only country in North America (heck, it isn't even the biggest country in North America), and neither Mexico nor Canada have a whole lot of say as to US policy (which is, of course, how it should be).
Yaz.
"USA" != "North America". Please don't tar Canada and Mexico with the same brush when they have done nothing to diserve it.
Yaz.
VLC works for me with this stream.
The only problem I ran into was that FireFox wouldn't allow me to select VLC as the helper application when I clicked on the stream link -- it wanted to use iTunes. I let it (as I recently installed the Vorbis Quicktime plug-in), and while it loaded the stream, it wouldn't play (a problem with the Vorbis QuickTime plug-in I presume).
Instead, I copied the URL of the .m3u file, opened VLC, and selected "File -> Open Network...", and pasted in the URL. It loaded and started playing without any ffurther problems.
VLC unfortunately doesn't have a "Favorites" menu of any sort, so in order to use this stream again in the future I had to change the default application for the .m3u file I downloaded to use VLC instead of iTunes. Now I can just double-click on the .m3u file to start listening to the stream.
HTH!
Yaz.
The CBC's website dates from even earlier than this.
And not only that, but from at least 1996 I used to download WAV files of CBC Radio 1's morning news from their website. Long before most organizations were even thinking about streaming audio, the CBC provided the morning news for download within minutes of its broadcast.
I remember mornings working away in the lab at University, sucking up bandwidth downloading those 10 - 15 minute WAV files so I could bring myself up-to-date with the world while working on assignments.
The CBC has long been on the forefront of journalism and the use of technology in journalism.
Yaz.
I've admittedly been a long time CBC listener. I've been wanting for a long time to get a shortwave radio so I can pick up CBC's Radio Canada International service when I travel outside the country (but have kept putting it off as I haven't had occassion to leave Canada for the last couple of years). The CBC is by far the best news and information service in North America -- they actually take investigative journalism seriously. I'd argue they're one of the best news and information services in the world, up there with the BBC in the UK.
And thanks to the other recent article about listening to Vorbis streams on Mac OS X, I'm now able to listen to CBC Radio 1 Toronto with my PowerBook from anywhere I can get wireless internet access.
(I've had to use VLC to play it back. I have the Vorbis QuickTime component from SourceForge, but can't get it to work with streaming audio. Which is too bad, as I'd love to use iTunes to play back the CBC Radio 1 stream).
Time to fire off a note to the CBC stating my support to ensure they expand their Vorbis usage for streaming audio (and maybe a note to Apple to see if they might start supporting Vorbis in QuickTime).
Yaz.
Hey, sounds like it's time for me to start my own Linux distro - M-O-L (Mom-On-Linux) ;).
(And if it wasn't for the fact I already run an Open Source Project and may soon be starting another one, I might seriously consider it).
Yaz.
Well, for many years my mom was running different versions of OS/2 on her system, because it was what I was running. There was, unfortunately, a short time period where she had a Windows-only scanner where she was dual-booting between OS/2 and Windows 98. She always hated Windows, and spent as little time in it as possible.
It got to the point where IBM's lack of OS/2 support and software was turning into a liability for her. At the same time, she found she wasn't using her scanner much anymore (it was one of those nasty parallel port based scanners that only ever had Windows 98 drivers, and doesn't work under any other OS), so the move to RedHat 8.0 was pretty easy.
Mind you, she does nothing other than run a few software programs, primarily games, and Mozilla, and doesn't ever create any documents, and never tries to install her own software, so it hasn't been as painful a conversion as some people might experience. Indeed, it was painless. The system is completely stable and requires virtually no maintenence as previously mentioned.
Here, Linux has passed the Mom test with flying colours. If it wasn't for the fact it has both nVidia video and an nVidia motherboard chipset that caused me no end of installation problems, I'd probably upgrade it to Fedora.
Yaz.
I upgraded my mother to Linux a few years ago (RedHat 8.0), and she's been exceedingly happy with it. Indeed, Bubble Shooter is one of her favorite games as well, and its developer (Absolutist) does indeed have a Linux version, which is identical to its Windows counterpart.
Mom-On-Linux (MOL) has had some major advantages. If her system needs maintenence, I can easily do it remotely through SSH, can can even export X apps (it helps that we're both on the same broadband network, mind you). Plus, as she doesn't have root access, she can't mess anything up. And wheras I had to watse a few days the last time my brother got a major virus infestation on his Windows laptop, Mom's machine is completely immune.
Mom's happy because she gets to run the games she likes, run Mozilla, and check her e-mail. I'm happy because the machine hums along problem-free without my constantly receiving calls from her asking for assistance or for routine maintanence.
(Mind you, since I bought myself my Apple PowerBook, and shoed her a picture of the new iMac G5, I think she's wanting an "upgrade" :) ).
Yaz.