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The PC used for the install is an old 500mhz, 8gig, ~200mb ram system built back in 1998. I just happened to to have a Radeon 128 Rage Pro card laying around so i decided to use it.

I also was doing an upgrade from Fedora 1 to Fedora 5 but that ended up being a disaster so i had to do a clean install. Anyway, after the install, the system starts up fine but X Server would not start. Ther error message was that

X Server failed to Start. Device was not found

As suggested by a few people, i updated my kernel but this did nothing. i thought about using the ATI driver but with all the bad things i kept reading about it, i decided against it.

Anyway, first check the config file for X.

The config file is at /etc/X11/xorg.conf

the default setup was

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "sis"
VendorName "Videocard vendor"
BoardName "SIS ........"
EndSection

For some reason, Fedora could not configure the ATI driver and kept using the "sis" driver.

All it takes is opening up that file and changing the "sis" to "ati". Other options for ATI drivers are "r128", for Rage and "radeon" for Radeon drivers. "radeon" worked for me but i had better results with "ati".

type
Startx

to start the X server

Now, if you happen to be having the same problem but have a different video card;

to figure out what video card you have. type the following at a command prompt

/sbin/lspci | grep -i vga

it should print out something like:

VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon R100 QD [Radeon 7200]


That will give you the name of the driver you have. Go to http://wiki.x.org/wiki/VideoDrivers
and find your video card in that list. The name of the driver should be the linked text, eg, for the ATI drivers, its not "ATI" but one of the sub-items(ati,atimisc,r128,radeon). open up the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and edit it.

vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf


mouse down to

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "sis"
VendorName "Videocard vendor"
BoardName "SIS ........"
EndSection

then edit the Driver line (press "i" to edit and when done press "esc" then type ":wq", with no quotes then press enter.)

Start X and hopefully it should work.

Startx

If not you have a different problem to deal with.

Winners..almost

The USPTO has revoked MercExchange's patent on the 'Buy it Now' feature. Ebay was sued for infringement by MercExchange and was ordered to pay damages but no mention was made about an injunction as far as Ebay continued use of the feature. The case is now in the hands of the Supreme Court. As in the case of RIM vs NTP, the USPTO has struck down the patent behind the whole case since it is a 'common' feature. Whether that makes any difference in the Ebay case, who knows.

Losers..sort of

Microsoft lost its own patent fight against Eolas a while ago over its use of interactive content with ActiveX. They have now announced that the next updates on April 11 will carry changes to Internet Explorer that might prove a little annoying to a lot of users and a pain to developers. For interactive content, you will now need to click on the content and then click on a popup notification before you can interact with the embedded content. Just one more click for you before you can start playing your flash game. There are work-arounds already posted on Microsoft's website and other sites.
The real losers in this one would be the few(hopefully) developers who have a lot of content that needs to be updated to work under these conditions. I feel your pain my friends.

To the relief of all Blackberry users, RIM agreed to pay NTP about 612 Million dollars to settle the patent infringement lawsuit that threatened to shutoff the Blackberry services. Who cares..

The point to note is that NTP just convinced RIM to pay then $612 million for nothing. Yes, they own the patents even though that is questionable and the Patent Office does not agree. They have nothing to actually show that this was a workable idea that they had patented. The whole patent system has turned into a joke and a haven for people who prey on others' success. I have nothing against people patenting their ideas and inventions but a few minutes of perusing through the various patents on the USPTO site and you'll see how ridiculous the whole system has become.

That said, you have to give credit to NTP for actually sticking this one out even when the patent office was busy invalidating their patents one after the other.

Persistence always pays off.

I've realized that coming up with ideas is such an easy thing, yet implementing them is a whole new ball game. I have a million ideas about the type of content to put on this site and yet i have barely done anything with it. Besides lack of time, the biggest problem is trying to convince yourself to scrap something you have put a lot of time into and start something else. Hopefully, I'll be redoing the main page to add some original content. I have some other projects in the works that will be popping up as time goes on

Welcome all

Its been almost 2 weeks since i started working on getting the blogs up and running. I still have some minor details to work on but for the most part the blogs are done. As some of you may have noticed, the site's main page is still, for the most part, bare. I worked in a little script to grab some headlines from CNET.com just so there is at least something on that page.

For those interested in getting a blog, go ahead and click the register link, somewhere on the bottom right of the screen, and you should automatically get a blog once you sign up. Those who just want to post comments and replies, feel free to do so. If anybody needs any help or has requests for anything, contact me and I'll try to get back to you as soon as humanly possible