I’m highly amused by this video of Microsoft CEO and all around fucking demon from Hell and perennial shithead, Steve Ballmer getting eggs chucked at him while giving a talk at a university in Hungary. He actually ducks for cover and cowers behind the podium.

I’m just bummed that he managed to not get hit with any of the eggs.

This morning, I checked out Netflix’s new Video-On-Demand (log-in required) service and find myself fully and completely hating it. It’s a joke, except I’m not laughing.

What would have been an awesome service for me, a paying customer is completely useless. To use this service they call “Instant Watching”, I must use Windows XP or Vista, Internet Explorer 6+ and Windows Media Player. I’m not surprised that support for Linux is non-existent, but what about Mac?

This is a service I would have like to be able to use. I do have a Windows partition I could boot, but I’m not going to. I never use it. It’s a hassle. No. Windows sucks. Internet Explorer… forget it. I use Linux. No support for it? Fine, I’m used to that, but what about this nice, huge-screen G5 Mac sitting in my living room? This is what they tell me:

Your system is not compatible with instant viewing
Your computer’s operating system is not compatible with instant viewing.

Try again from a computer running Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista.

To watch instantly, you need a computer with the following configuration:
Minimum Requirements

• Computer running Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or higher, or Windows Vista
• Internet Explorer version 6 or higher
• Windows Media Player version 9 or higher
• An active broadband connection to the Internet
• 1.0 GHz processor
• 512 MB RAM
• 3 GB free hard disk drive space

Recommended in addition to minimum requirements

• An active broadband Internet connection of at least 1.5 Mbps
• 1.5 GHz processor
• 1 GB RAM

There’s no love for anything but Windows and I call foul. Microsoft DRM is buggy bullshit and I don’t understand the point of having it in the first place. Yes, doing a bit of work, a person can record streaming media to disk and share it, but honestly, that same person can just rip the DVDs that Netflix sends out in the mail, possibly with better results. Slapping DRM around it and limiting use to one operating system is a joke. It excludes customers and creates an unnecessary hassle.

I hope this changes, but I doubt it. I’m really disappointed in Netflix. This is not a “service”, it’s an embarrassment. If this is the way they plan on doing things, they’re no better than Walmart and they can kiss my ass.

Yesterday, I was given a free CD of the band, “Velvet Revolver“. Pansy-ass cock-rock is absolutely not my thing, but I figured I’d listen to it just for kicks. As I was peeling off the plastic wrapping, I noticed that SONY/BMG was the publisher of the album. Antennas fully perked, I checked out the fine print and sure enough, I had one of those completely fucked up, root-kit installing, DRM-up-the-wazoo CDs of doom and destruction.

Now, since I run Linux, I’m immune to the evil these CDs inflict. On the flip side, I may be immune, but it doesn’t really matter since the CD won’t even play on my computer since I don’t use Windows or Mac which work with DRM. As a result, this CD went straight to the fucking trash bin. No way am I going to sell it or even give it away. It’s fucking poison and the only reason I’m not rip-shit mad about it is that I got it for free and I could give a rat’s ass about the band.

Call me crazy but I’m sure as fuck not going accept or pay money for a CD that will infect my computer with DRM enforcing software and leave a back-door that can open me up for a viral infection and compromise my personal data just to listen to a fucking music album. Furthermore, I’m not going to use an OS who’s terms of use stipulate that in order to use my computer, my rights go out the window and I have to drop panties and bend over my keyboard and self-sodomize myself with my mouse in order to appease the corporate gods because while I may have purchased my computer, the operating system and the CD, they own my soul and have patents on my DNA and therefore all rights and ownerships are forfeit.

Fuck that shit with a rusty screwdriver.

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Jesus bleedin’ nuts! I’ve got reader-submitted questions coming out of my ears. I’ve had to backlog a few, so don’t worry, I’ll get to you. This next question is right up my alley.

Clutch wrote:
Q:

Here’s a question that may actually be within your realm of experience; I have a bunch of images I’d like to resize, smaller, for uploading. Is there an easy way to do this to many images at once, say, in photoshop? Or perhaps another, preferably free application I could get my grubby little hands on? Thank you, oh wise and gratuitous davebgimp!

A: Easy as your mom! I’m going to answer this a bit backwards by first addressing the issue of software. Yes, you can do this in PhotoShop or the slightly neutered and cheaper PhotoShop Elements. PhotoShop’s a great program. I use it daily at work, but it costs an ass-load so most people end up pimping out Grandma to buy it or they steal it. Personally, I think that for most users, especially those who are working primarily in an RGB (red, green and blue) color space — web publishing for example, it’s not necessary.

Another option is to take the free route. There’s a few more steps involved but it costs several hundred dollars less… actually it costs nothing. There’s an Open Source, free image editing alternative called GIMP, which stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It’s available cross platform, so is accessible to anyone. I use it at home on Linux and having used PhotoShop professionally and otherwise for the past six or so years, I find it meets and exceeds all my home-use needs. Experienced PhotoShop users making the switch might get a bit annoyed at first, as I did, at the learning curve involved. I chalk it up to the fact of using one program exclusively for so long and getting used to the tricks and shortcuts and then trying out a new application with different tools, names and ways to get things done. But once I got past this (it was a quick transition), I found myself impressed and not missing much. If you’re new to either program, I highly doubt you will share this temporary and arguably unnecessary frustration.

The GIMP does have limitations in it’s lack of CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black - a color space normally used with professional printing and presses) support and a rather huge learning curve if you want to install some plug-ins and know nothing about compiling from source code. Unless, you’re designing for print on a professional scale, you won’t be missing the CMYK support though. I have heard that there’s a CMYK plug-in available, but as of the latest version, the color space is not natively supported. No biggie for me or you other average home users. As far as having to compile programs for GIMP plug-ins, if you’re using Linux, you either know how to do this, or could stand to learn for your own good.

You should at least check out the GIMP. Since it’s free, you don’t have the problem of shelling out for a program that updated with a new version almost yearly (which means more $$$ or more pirating if you want to keep up with the latest). GIMP will always be free of charge and there’s plenty of documentation, tutorials and communities to help you get the hang of it, or you can always ask daveb.

Now, on to the first half of your question. I’ll explain how to do batch resizing with both PhotoShop and the the no-cost method. Let’s start with PhotoShop.

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