A funny new website

Some clever indivdual has made a satire website poking fun at Brian-with-a-y's Proprietary Comic Book reader. This person must agree with me that the last thing that Linux needs is more non-free software. I have no issue with making a comercial app but I think that it is immoral to create proprietary software. And I have let Bryan know that if he offered it ender a GPL compatable license that I would buy it eventhough I have no use for it. So with out further adeu http://platypuslinux.org/

Finally got another HPR ep uploaded

It took me forever but I have another episode uploaded to Hacker Public Radio (HPR). I have two more in the pipeline one is for my series CopyFight and one is about my bashpodder/dropbox setup. I'm having trouble with the bashpodder one because I loose my train of thought so I'm gonna script it out, and I don't have the CopyFight ep done because I'm having trouble reading legalese out loud... but ill put my nose to the grindstone and get those out

Once a wanker always a wanker

This is an age old spat but about 4 months ago I called "Merlyn" a wanker and he has now proved my point.

Dave Yates and some other Linux Podcasters are creating a planet to aggregate all of the Linux Podcasters blogs. This whole thing has been built in a mailing list. Because of this project I have proof that Merlyn is a wanker. Here was his one and only reply to the list.

I'm getting a "you have mail" notice from this thread about every five minutes
for the past 4 hours. I don't think that's necessary any more. Please remove
me from future postings.

If you want to include FLOSS Weekly in your roll-up, go ahead. That's really
all you need from me.

--
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095

Smalltalk/Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See http://methodsandmessages.vox.com/ for Smalltalk and Seaside discussion

and here we're some funny replies... I have removed the posters name (if you wrote it and would like to be known let me know)

linuxplanet.org is a totally cool name. Forget "podcast"

...Oh let me just make sure Randall isn't in my replyToAll list..i don't want to bother him, I know he's a busy guy. -klaatu

Busy guy is one thing to call Merlyn. I can think of a few others.

I also have some hosting space if needed. And, I'd be happy to set up a Drupal backend.

I know this isnt an elegant post but I thought it was really funny so here it is

Camerahead Project Dramatizes Surveillance

A while back i made a post (link) about how a stupid it was to tell me that you are watching me shop for my security and how absurd that is, but the ACLU Washington has taken it to another level...

Vegimite

Peter64 of http://peter64.org sent me three jars a vegimite to terrorize the people at Ohio Linux Fest with.

you can see the pics here http://www.flickr.com/photos/threethirty_rlug/sets/72157607137142845/

Trying for an all Free computer

Recently I decided that I should try a little harder to not have any non-free packages on my computers. So I installed Gobuntu which is as Canonical describes as:

Gobuntu is a GNU/Linux operating system, derived from Ubuntu, that endeavors to adhere to the Free Software Foundation's four freedoms and intends to provide a base for other free software platforms to build upon with minimal modification required. It does this by only including open-source non-restricted software. This means there will be no firmware, drivers, applications, or content included in Gobuntu that does not include the full source or whose license does not provide the right to use, study, modify, and redistribute the body of work.

and on my laptop has worked out great. I have an all centrino setup so all of the drivers are free. The only non-free packages I have installed are FireFox and Flash. Before any one gets a going here is what the FSF has to say about the Mozilla Public License:

Mozilla Public License (MPL)

This is a free software license which is not a strong copyleft; unlike the X11 license, it has some complex restrictions that make it incompatible with the GNU GPL. That is, a module covered by the GPL and a module covered by the MPL cannot legally be linked together. We urge you not to use the MPL for this reason.

However, MPL 1.1 has a provision (section 13) that allows a program (or parts of it) to offer a choice of another license as well. If part of a program allows the GNU GPL as an alternate choice, or any other GPL-compatible license as an alternate choice, that part of the program has a GPL-compatible license.

So if you don't wanna count that then the only non-free software I have on there is Flash.

The same is true for my desktop excluding one giant pain in the ass... the nVidia GLX driver. I must say that this is a point of sadness for me. The only bloody thing (other than Flash) that keeps me from total software freedom is driver... ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhH! With the nv driver I was stuck with the ultra high resolution of 800x600, which is not gonna work, I lived with it for a week and just can't do it. ATi is releasing documentation in the next 6 months or so, and once a free-driver is out from that, i will be making the purchase of a new graphics card. Good job nVida fscked again!!!

So now when I am a pompous ass about software freedom you know that I am eating my own dog food (except flash)