If you ever want to play DVDs on Debian Squeeze

Here's how you do it!

# <-- Are comments. You can actually copy all of this, below the sources.list link that needs to be added, into a bash script and it'll theoretically run.

#Add this to the /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org squeeze main

#After doing that go into the console and use the following commands

sudo aptitude install update

sudo aptitude install debian-multimedia-keyring

#Update list then install libdvdcss2

sudo aptitude install libdvdcss2

#Don't forget to upgrade!

sudo aptitude upgrade

#You're good to go!

If you got any issues with it let me know with a comment on this post since this all worked fine for me.

Revisiting Old Games: Duke Nukem 3D

Remember this?

If you do then welcome, you're probably as old as me although let me tell you I wasn't of legal age to be playing this game which is why I wanted to review it in addition to all the hype that's been recently going on about Duke Nukem Forever and whatnot.

Back in the day being 3D in a FPS involved having a pasted plain "enemy" in front of you that would "rotate" as you walked around which kinda sucked but at least you were indeed walking in a 3D mazed world which defined the FPS genre as we know it today.

Now here's the deal. Back then we had Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Hexxen, Heretic and Quake, to mention a few, which all were as violent as you could get back in the day but the catch was that you were either killing Aliens, evil Monsters, Demons or Nazis... and then came Duke Nukem 3D.

Duke Nukem 3D was crude as hell, in the obscene and morbid sense, and pushed a lot of boundaries back in the day such as kicking the crap out of things, pissing to gain health, dropping cash on strippers so they would show you their pixelated boobs and this was all back in ol' '96.

Playing this game in '96 really made me laugh and at the same time made me think that society was screwed up, really screwed up. Killing pig cops with the word L.A.R.D. on their uniform was interesting, blasting away aliens with a shotgun was also fun, going into a strip joint ensued hilarity, pressing the self-destruct button on everything at the end of each level also made me laugh like that time you blow up a submarine and Duke complains that he should have waited before he did it and obviously the one-liners, ohhh the one-liners!

What else can I say about Duke Nukem 3D?

That you should give it a try by downloading eduke32 which is available for all platforms. Try it out and enjoy it, feel that old FPS love, and laugh a bit damn it and stop taking the FPS genre so serious.

There was a time when an FPS was all about being scared to death while you lurked in the darkness and fired at who knows what, where your heart pumped really hard trying to get the hell out of there alive and most importantly was that you would laugh at the end of the day because you know it was all for the fun of it.

Yeah there's the whole Columbine and that Brazilian dude that went nuts on a Movie Theater but in all due honesty I just got something to tell ya...

Stop blaming it on games and start blaming yourself because you failed to raise your damn kids for letting them play a game that's supposed to be for adults!

The HP Problem or why the All-In-One series made me lose my faith on HP

Back in the day, the first printer I ever owned, was one of the very first HP LaserJet printers, some of the first commercially available laser printers, and it was blazing fast back in the day.

It took some time to print even back then since the spooler would jam up constantly or in times would find itself continuously sending information to the printer until that job was done and I had to print another batch of jobs which would take me around half an hour, man those were the times...

Nowadays I don't own a printer for several reasons.

1. Prices: At some point the companies that produce printers and the ink thought it would be funny to raise ink prices at obscene levels, so obscene that I've seen cartridges valued in 200 dollars... this is not fair for the consumer and it makes for an unbalanced market.
2. Quality: Printing quality can be horrible. I used to so super draft because I was only doing black and white and that was fine, I could read the paper, and that was the end of it. But when you're printing color, oh boy, it's a whole different story. I've used a bunch of printers in my day going from HP, Canon, Lexmark, Samsung, Dell (I didn't knew Dell made printers by the way so when I saw one I was baffled), Sharp... and a Ricoh. Quality varied between them, some sheets would have ink running all over the place and some other times I would find sheets FULL of ink, everywhere, geez talk about a waste of money.
3. Technical Issues: This, this is what killed it for me. Let us put prices and quality aside, since back then I could afford it, and let us go into what the user really wants. YOU need IT to be reliable, you don't need it BREAKING every time it is critical for you to get a job done, you don't need it to FAIL a job, you don't need it to tell you the whatchamacallitspoolerthingy is not working, you don't need it to give you RANDOM ERRORS on screen and on the printer display, you don't need this at any point. You also don't need cumbersome 1GB software to run it, Windows itself can do all of it nowadays, but HP, this case we'll be talking about the company that I've had the most experience with, decided to make specialized software together with their drivers to bring you efficiency. This software tends to break down at some point and when you lurk the internet it gives you thousands of possibilities. You can go into the HP website and find hundreds if not thousand of patches for every single little detail like a Windows update that won't let you run things. I understand why this happens but for the love of GOD people let us all be reasonable and get on with it, we just need the damned thing to print and not gouge me an eye every time I try and do it!
4. Multifunctionals: The last bit I want to talk about but I need to, I have to, it is a must. Multi-functionals is the last thing anyone needs at home and I'm dead, freaking, serious about it. You can get a scanner and a printer for way less than a multi-functional and you'll save yourself from a lot of hassle. So far and in all honesty I haven't found a situation where you can't just print or scan from different devices unless you are really short in space and if you are, please, do not buy the cheapest multi-functional device you can find in a store. Also try and avoid installing the full software, there are people out there who have managed to obtain the drivers from the installation packages and have spread them throughout the internet and this, in all honesty, is the way to go as again you don't need all the bloat-ware that comes with your CD. You also don't need to be reminded that your printer is running low on ink after X or Y print outs but hey that's just me, if you like being annoyed by a floating box be my guest.

Upgrade is a keyword

I've heard countless times from many customers coming towards me with their computer that it is either last year model, or maybe even last decades model, and that it's slow and it won't do the job anymore.

Mind you, most people think PC's are just a thing you throw away once it doesn't work and that is a horrible mentality as we've mentioned before on this blog that you can do a lot more to get that old buddy of yours to do an extra thing or two.

Here is a clear example.

My sisters old computer was passed to me since she got a netbook, Dell by the way, and I looked at it because she complained it was always slow.

There were several reasons why this computer and I will list them below for your commodity.

1. Unknown software running in the background. See that flashy banner on the sides or on the top, do not click it. You receive random files from people or links telling you to click on them and you decide to install whatever it asks you to, this is wrong and you should ALWAYS read what the prompt boxes always bring to screen. Running Ares and Torrents, definetely a big no-no and a bigger NO-NO with wireless.
2. Clogged hard drive. Full of songs and pictures. Yes I understand we all love music but really people you don't need THAT much music in your computer and I'm pretty sure twenty days worth of music is not something you need for your everyday enjoyment. Movies? Get Media for that like a DVD, Blueray or a USB Drive or if all this troubles you too much get an online backup software that you can access at anytime or get an external or second internal hard drive, your operating system will thank you for that.
3. Processor. Don't expect a Pentium III to do the job of an i3, i5 or i7 and let alone a Dual-Core or a Pentium IV. Old processors are not old, they are just simply part of a family and a generation that have become discontinued because mathematical operations from programming languages become more and more demanding as the industry grows. So if your PC is running a bit sluggish this could be a big factor and if it's ever possible a processor upgrade won't hurt you at all unless the motherboard doesn't support it in which case you're going to need an alternate operating system or...
4. RAM. RAM is an important part of a computer and the more you have the more things you can run and load at the same time without having to hassle your hard drive to get that going. Cut your machine some slack if it's running Windows XP with only 128 MB which is the "legal" minimum requirement which then got moved to 256MB. Add another stick to it, 128MB is decent, 256MB is an improvement, 512MB a blessing and 1GB should be enough to run Windows XP and his older brothers in a decent state or any Linux distribution.
5. Video Card. Surprisingly this can also be a big factor if you're doing media like movies, photo editing or you are a gamer. An upgrade from 64MB to 128MB is noticeable and obviously anything higher than that is better although it could not be good for your gaming tendencies or 3D modelling as it may not support 3D graphics or heavy vectoring. Check the specs on the video card you want to get and see if it'll cut it.

Hope these little tips can help you out on understanding why your PC may not be exactly doing it what you want it to do and that maybe by spending an extra ten or twenty dollars you could get your computer working just fine without a problem.