Stink. I am starting to question my sanity in buying a powerbook. There’s just some things that aren’t working and most probably are not ever going to work:

Java. Duh. It’s the thing that your mom (and RMS) have been warning you about for the last 10 years. Non-free (open source) software is a problem. Why? Because if you want to run it on something that isn’t supported by the owner of said proprietary software, you CANNOT. Case in point…. I need to be able to run my financial software (Moneydance). I use Linux on a Powerbook (PPC) machine. I can’t download the Java JRE from Sun, since they only provide Java for x86 and ia64 platforms. I could use blackdown‘s JRE, but they only have version 1.3 available for PPC linux. Yeah, right. That’s only… like… 4 years out of date now?? So the only java that I can find for Linux PPC is IBM’s java. And surprise, surprise, when I go to download my financial transactions with Moneydance using IBM’s JDK 1.5 for PPC Linux, I get this:

There was an error communicating with your financial institution. The details of this error are below.
A communication or parsing error occurred. This could be the result of a network problem, a proxy error, or misconfigured server.
Error Description: java.io.IOException: java.security.NoSuchAlgorithmException: Class com.ibm.jsse2.cc configured for SSLContext not a SSLContext

Riiiiight.

And then, of course, along a similar vein is my complete inability to run Flash on my Linux PPC machine. Why? Well, it’s quite simple, really… Flash is a proprietary piece of software and Macromedia/Adobe only allows you to use it on Linux if you use an x86 machine. Stink!!

What the crap was I thinking? Anyone want to buy a 5-month old 15″ powerbook??? =:/