There have been a couple changes lately in my professional life, namely becoming an Ubuntu member, and now, joining the EFF. Both are important to me, and both are helping guide many decisions in my personal life. You may have noticed the EFF badge at the right in the sidebar. Well, that’s why. There are [...]
If you aren’t aware of the recent scare in the industry, you should take a look. Below are two images that are hyperlinked to their appropriate sites, both with a single focus- to protect your freedoms. Each have their separate campaigns. I would encourage you to sign up at both sites. Vista is bad news. [...]
So I’m about a day behind delivering this story. Sorry about that. Texas and Minnesota are debating making the move to ODF following the example of Massachusetts, for all of the official government documents. This is good news for ODF supporters and fans. Not so good news for Microsoft and Office Open XML supporters and [...]
I’ve blogged about this many a time, and yet, the same chime rings. How many of you are Open Source advocates, yet use proprietary protocols, formats, files, and software? It’s one thing to be anal about Free Software, it’s another to preach the Good Word, and not follow it yourself. Anyway, I’m not putting the [...]
First off, PortableApps Suite. When I stumbled upon this, I was ecstatic! A complete suite of Open Source Software tools for Windows users. Even better- they run right off of your portable USB drive! While the list of tools in the suite is young, and not extensive, it’s enough to get a serious Windows user [...]
Well, I did it. It took some time, wrenching of the teeth, and much wailing. But I did it. I am free. What did I do? I deleted almost 30GB of downloaded MP3′s. Yeah. It was tough, but I looked at it this way: If I am going to be very outward to others about [...]
Good Luck Pete!
Well, it’s rather unfortunate that the relationship between Mozilla and Debian ended this way. The whole argument over a trademarked logo is a little silly if you ask me. I look at this argument, and I see Mozilla to blame. Mozilla: get over it. Open the logo and realize that no one is interested in [...]
Well, I’ve come to a conclusion on my personal conflict with supporting a Linux distribution that uses and ships with non-free software. I don’t have a problem with it. In fact, quite to the contrary. I think it is wonderful that Ubuntu ships it. And I don’t think that Ubuntu stifles innovation, as this article [...]
I came across something that is problematic for me. I guess I really knew it all along, but today it hit home, and I put 1 and 1 together. By default, Ubuntu ships with two repositories that are fully supported: main and restricted. These two software repositories include all the necessary software to get a [...]
You can read all about it here at Groklaw. In a nutshell, the Appeals court held up the ruling that bloggers are journalists and have the legal right to protect their sources. This came via the Apple v. Does litigation. Glad to see that free speech is wining.
Blue Security is no longer fighting the war on spam. Another victory for the spammers. So I guess I get to join the file and rank of “bend over and grab your ankles” when it comes to spam entering my inbox. Downloading filters is what to do, right? Out of sight, out of mind? Out [...]
I am concerned about my freedoms online, and my digital rights. I am concerned about software patents, licenses and other such issues that seem to be plaguing the computing industry like locusts. Unfortunately, I live in a very conservative Republican state. Not much is being done in the right-wing camp about such issues. Senator Orin [...]
A follow-up post is needed to explain many of my positions in greater detail about previous posts I have put on this blog. I will address them in order. -Open Discussion Day This post seems to be the most misunderstood of all. I don’t know if people are just skimming the post looking for highlights [...]
Before I begin going, let me ask a question. Think about it for a second. Should proprietary software belong in open source Linux? Now if you gave that any thought at all, 80% of you are running proprietary software in your Linux box. Whether you are using ndiswrapper for your wireless, playing DVDs and MP3s [...]
