Niels Christian's blog

Recently I installed Ubuntu on my stationary computer. The CPU is a 64-bit thing and the Ubuntu I am used to is a 32-bit edition. So what would be the difference?

First off.. I was not noticing any differences. Everything is the same, anyway so it looks. One major reason to use the 64-bit edition is the possibility to use all 4 GB of memory that my computer has. I have been running Windows XP 32-bit edition on this computer since i got it 6-7 months ago. But 32-bit edition is limited to only use 3.2 of the memory(not sure about the exact number). Thus the full capacity of 4 GB was not used, which I, of course would like it to be. Then the last two months I have been trying out Windows Vista 64-bit edition. It runs perfectly.. except for a random BSOD(blue screen of death, a Microsoft phenomenon which crashes your pc ) now and then, caused by my graphic cards driver. In windows 64-bit you can install and run both 32-bit programs and 64-bit programs, without noticing any difference.

So I tried to install skype on my Ubuntu 8.10 64-bit edition. Downloaded it from the skype.com site and tried to install the package but was surprised that I got an error telling me that the architecture of my machine did not match the package I had just downloaded. I was surprised because I have been used to not care about the architecture of the applications I install when using windows. I did a quick search to find the proper package from the skype.com site but it wasn’t available. Too bad, I had to find another solution.

Since I already knew that skype is part of the medibuntu repository I added that to my sources list. Then I tryed to install skype from the terminal, the usual and easy way it works:

sudo apt-get install skype

And the skype was installed, pretty easy actually.. but confusing that you cannot find the right package from the skype site.

As for why this trick worked out the issue I don’t know. My guess would be that the ubuntu crew has compiled the packeges for both architectures. Perhaps I will figure this another time .

Here is an article from the ubuntu help community that explains something about the different architectures https://help.ubuntu.com/community/32bit_and_64bit.

This afternoon, a boring sunday one of the them, its spring and sun is shining and I am watching TV. There is nothing better to watch than the Paris-Roubaix, which seems to be the sickest bicycle road race one can imagine. You have a bike, the tires are really thin like any other race bike and the race is on cobblestones and the terrain is rough. The distance is more than 250km. Then I wonder where the fun is in this. The bikes have no absorbations from the bumpy roads, so the shakings are really hard on the participants. Also, there are so many crashes, why would somebody risk broken bones and other injuries just to participate. It sure is painful to go through to the finish line, but so much for the prestige in a race like this?

Ok. I admit it, I never really understood any part of any bicycle road race on the professional level.  All races seems to me, judged on the words of riders to the medias covering the races and the expressions on their faces during the race,  to be very painful and no fun at all.

Based on the many hours that TV2 uses to show bicycle races, I think someone must be interested in this sport. Even though its a boring sport taking up to much time in my TV, it does have some tactical aspects to it, but its slow and they are sort of getting nowhere. So why do people watch this, follow the race every year and get excited about the race? And its not only this race, its also so many other races, each race going from one day up to as many as the three weeks tour de france lasts. Each day taking 5 hours. Seems to be waste of time.

I will conclude that though the TV2 set aside so much time for this sport, they are still worng in doing so. There are so much other sports that could be covered, which would be more excitiing to watch. But, who cares, you only watch tv when you are bored anyway, so the fact that whats inside the tv is boring too,  shouldnt really consern me. I guess im just bored that I watch it.