Freedom, Free Software and Free Society

Yesterday, Portugal celebrated the so called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnation_Revolution">Carnation Revolution</a>. Since then, this day has often been called the “Freedom day”, because during the revolution, the Portuguese regime went from an authoritarian dictatorship to a democracy. Thirty four years have passed since Portuguese fought for their freedom, as in many other societies freedom is now taken for granted. Though most freedom is not within the grasp of our eyes, and so the majority of people don’t know that many other freedoms have been taken from them on the last decades. Quoting Richard Buckman and Joshua Gay: <blockquote> The waning days of the 20th century seemed like an Orwellian nightmare: laws preventing publication of scientific research on software; laws preventing sharing software; an overabundance of software patents preventing development; and end-user license agreements that strip the user of all freedoms—including ownership, privacy, sharing, and understanding how their software works. </blockquote> Proprietary software means, fundamentally, that you don’t control what it does; you can’t study the source code, or change it. It’s not surprising that clever businessmen find ways to use their control to put you at a disadvantage. Microsoft has done this several times, but they are not alone. Of course, Hollywood and some record companies plan to use “trusted computing” for <acronym title="Digital Restrictions Management">DRM</acronym>, so that downloaded videos and music can be played only on one specified computer. All these maneuvers are taking away your freedoms. If we don’t watch ourselves, our free society will bounce back to the authoritarian dictatorship’s times, and your computer will start to obey not you, but the “trusted computing” software installed. And the dangers are greater each year. If you want to keep your freedom, you must be prepared to defend it. Today you can avoid being restricted by proprietary software not using it. If you run <a href="http://www.gnu.org/">GNU/Linux</a> or another free (as in free speech) operating system, and if you avoid installing proprietary applications on it, then you are in charge of what your computer does. By doing this, you are fighting for your freedoms, and contributing to a real free society. You can learn more about the Free Software movement at their <a href="http://www.fsf.org">website</a>. 102 freedom-free-software-and-free-society

2008-04-26T07:32:00-07:00

Freedom, Free Software and Free Society Andy Jeffries, a senior <a href="http://www.php.net">PHP</a> web developer, wrote up an interesting article on <a href="http://andyjeffries.co.uk/blog/why-i-think-ruby-on-rails-is-an-ideal-web-development-environment.html">Why I think Ruby on Rails is an ideal web development environment</a>. Although he is Zend Certified Engineer for PHP4 and PHP5, he decided to try the hype and immediately loved it. He lists several features that makes RoR, (quoting) irresistible. From the list, the ones I like the most are: <ul> <li>Console for Quick Testing</li> <li>DB Migrations</li> <li>RESTful Resources</li> </ul> Oh and he has an interesting quote about <a href="http://www.djangoproject.com">Django</a> <blockquote> Out of all the new frameworks, I decided to look at Rails because it seemed to have most of the hype (don’t get me wrong, frameworks such as Django have excellent potential, but I went with the one most people were talking about). </blockquote> Maybe <a href="http://code.google.com/appengine/">Google’s AppEngine</a> will help you :-) 101 why-ruby-on-rails-kicks-ass

2008-04-16T02:25:00-07:00

Why Ruby on Rails kicks ass Sorry… couldn’t resist… <img src="http://0x82.blog.s3.amazonaws.com/15042008/fail.jpg" alt="" /> (photo taken from <a href="http://www.globalnoticias.pt">Global Notícias</a>) 100 pose-fail

2008-04-15T07:17:00-07:00

Pose fail Continuing the stats gathering, I now suggest another metric: the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vrms">Virtual Richard Stallman</a> that “analyzes the set of currently-installed packages on a Debian-based system, and reports all of the packages from the non-free tree which are currently installed.” <h3>Laptop (Ubuntu Hardy)</h3> <pre> $ vrms fglrx-control Control panel for the ATI graphics accelerators human-icon-theme Human Icon theme linux-generic Complete Generic Linux kernel linux-restricted-modules- Non-free Linux 2.6.24 modules on x86/x86_64 linux-restricted-modules- Non-free Linux 2.6.24 modules on x86/x86_64 linux-restricted-modules- Non-free Linux 2.6.24 modules on x86/x86_64 linux-restricted-modules- Non-free Linux 2.6.24 modules on x86/x86_64 linux-restricted-modules- Non-free Linux 2.6.24 modules helper script linux-restricted-modules- Restricted Linux modules for generic kernels skype Skype - Take a deep breath sun-java6-bin Sun Java(TM) Runtime Environment (JRE) 6 (architecture sun-java6-jdk Sun Java(TM) Development Kit (JDK) 6 sun-java6-jre Sun Java(TM) Runtime Environment (JRE) 6 (architecture tangerine-icon-theme Tangerine Icon theme unrar Unarchiver for .rar files (non-free version) vodafone-mobile-connect-c Vodafone 3G devices Internet connection assistant xorg-driver-fglrx Video driver for ATI graphics accelerators 18 non-free packages, 1.1% of 1586 installed packages. </pre> It’s an Ubuntu machine <h3>Desktop (Debian Unstable)</h3> <pre> $ vrms No non-free packages installed on nox.local! rms would be proud. </pre> I am proud too :-) 99 virtual-richard-stallman-non-free-software-stats

2008-04-15T02:25:00-07:00

Virtual Richard Stallman (non-free software stats) <h3>My desktop.</h3> <pre> $ history|awk '{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}'|sort -rn|head 127 cd 115 ls 30 dig 23 wine 23 vim 23 rm 16 sudo 16 mv 14 mplayer 11 python2.5 </pre> (so wine, pr0n and python…great!) <h3>My personal server</h3> <pre> # history|awk '{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}'|sort -rn|head 58 vim 34 ls 34 mutt 31 dig 20 ps 20 apt-get 18 dpkg 17 tail 17 route 16 su </pre> (Debian! Debian! Debian) <h3>My laptop</h3> Well.. laptop is sleeping :-) 98 shell-stats

2008-04-13T05:27:00-07:00

shell stats