Category Archives: Computing

My thoughts and works in computing and programming.

RMS Does Toronto

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Richard Stallman, President and Founder of the FSF

Richard Stallman, President and Founder of the FSF

Yesterday I got to finally meet Richard Stallman (RMS) in person.  And yes, he is a way cooler dude than many in the “open source” gang say he is.  The FSF announced a while back in a press release, that RMS would be speaking at UofT on the topic of copyrights in a networked world.

RMS lectured on the history, current politico-business problems with copyrights and some measures to fix them.  I personally found his points interesting, and I’m interested in trying out some of his ideas.  The brief period of exclusive commercialization and modification authorship rights versus long term exclusive publication rights for non-technical documentation is also pretty good.  Also he briefly touched upon the need for a micro-donation payment method.  Overall, a very interesting and engaging talk to a large student audience.

At the end of his presentation, he auctioned off a stuffed GNU and “Happy Hacking” t-shirt.  Eventually the proposed prices became too steep for even myself, so I this morning I went on down over to the GNU/FSF’s online store and bought both for myself.  Getting back to the evening, I also got RMS to autograph my copy of “Free Software, Free Society“.  I highly recommend reading that book.  Also RMS asked me personally to stop using the terms: open source and closed source.  Not only are those terms misleading but they totally ignore the important issue of user and developer freedoms.  So henceforth I’ll try to use the terms “libre software” or “free software” instead of “open source”.  And “proprietary” for “closed source”.  Also I got meet to Dave, one of the organizers of the event and DrProject developer.  And Aaron one of attendees.

A big thanks to RMS, the FSF and the students who organized this event.

Moving House and Home…

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Please excuse the past few days of silence. But I’ll moving this blog/journal/collection of incohesive rants yet again.

The new home will be at my new brand new domain: https://dorianpula.ca/

Now at the moment of posting this message, the domain is not up.  CIRA, you fail again.  So for the next few days I’ll be working on putting up a new blog on that site, and copying over my content.  I’ll keep this blog up for posterity though.  However I will post new entries on the new site.  Also I might be silent for a few days while I transition over.

The Filter Problem

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Recently, Matt Asay blogged about Clay Shirky’s keynote on Web 2.0 Expo.

I must agree that many problematic aspects of my web experience hinge on the concept of filtering.  Now I realize that ultimately everyone on the web can read my content.  However, I would prefer different people to get different content at different times.  It is not that I have something to hide.  But I don’t want every single one of my contacts to read up on my all blog entries, my personal Facebook updates, my professional LinkedIn account and follow my project progress at the same time.  Why should professional contacts care or know about my relationship status?  Or should my high school buddies to follow up on my professional interests?  I certainly don’t want everyone at work to see know about my side projects or my silly photos from my last vacation.  It is all a question about audience is privy to which information and view from which perspective.

So rather than provide a rich networked experience to all of my audiences, I try to separate my different online parts of my life.  In theory I could flood everyone with so much data to make it impossible to get a complete picture of my life.  But that would inconveinence everyone…  No, what we need to do is to create intelligent filters that provide different lens for different people to see my life through well-engineered perspectives.

Windows? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Windows!!!

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I just read this article on Phoronix on the Phoenix HyperSpace quick boot Linux. So a quick boot Linux partition installed side-by-side with Windows is nothing new. It happened early last year.

Rather what this article shows is the increased awareness of Linux in the vendor space. It also shows that vendors will ditch their loyalty toward Microsoft and the Windows platform, if it suits the vendor. And Phoenix is not a sole rogue vendor. Nokia does it with Maemo on its internet tablets. Dell on select machines and its Mini 9 netbook. Asus and Acer, again two Linux netbook vendors. And a number of other vendors do the side-by-side install too.

Microsoft should be worried. The Vista debacle caused more than just users to get upset for a slow, bloated OS. Vendors got upset, when Microsoft promised a feature and then didn’t deliver half of what they promised. And vendors trying to stay ahead of the curve got burned when a vital feature didn’t appear. Don’t be surprised that vendors will happily pull a Julius Caesar on Microsoft.

Vendors and user both got tired of Microsoft telling them how they should do their computing. The basic beauty of computing is the flexibility and freedom of workflow that it allows for. Imposing limits of the technology for “historical” and business reason is folly in the long run. Also today’s state of the art technology is past the desktop. The desktop has to interact seamlessly mobile handhelds, web applications and cloud computing offerings. Making everything into a desktop paradigm as Microsoft sees things, doesn’t work. It doesn’t cut it anymore. And vendors know this.

Vendors now look to Linux and free/libre/open source software (FLOSS) as a way to simplify development, cut costs and ultimately as a way to go forward. That is the beauty of FLOSS, you have the freedom to take technology where you want it to go. The only constraints on computing technology should be the laws physical universe and your own imagination.

Why Ubuntu is Important for Me…

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So Jono Bacon, Ubuntu community leader (and mister communitizing the community using community tools 😀 )  asks why Ubuntu is important to me.  In my case this would be why is Kubuntu important to me, but then we will be arguing over semantics.

Yes, the freedom Ubuntu brings into my life is one reason why Ubuntu is important to me.  In general I value things free in nature: free will, free markets, freedom of speech, freedom of association, et cetera.  Ubuntu brings me freedom in the software that I use.  The obvious freedoms stem from the free software that makes the Ubuntu ecosystem: the freedom to use as I see fit, the freedom to study and enhance my knowledge of computing, the freedom to modify to my needs, and the freedom to distribute my modifications.  But heck almost every Linux distribution gives me the same freedoms.

What differentiates Ubuntu Linux from other Linux distributions, are the more subtle freedoms.  I have the freedom to setup technology to work the way I want it to work.  Yet I also have the freedom of having the technology actually work.  I have the freedom to choose between free and *gasp* non-free software.  I have the freedom to access and install applications from one of the largest package repositories, aside from Debian.  I have the freedom to choose where I get excellent support, from the community or from Canonical.  I have the freedom of which architecture I want to run on.  In essence, I have the freedom to use my computing resources as I see fit.  You can’t get this on a Windows PC or a Mac.

The other reason Ubuntu is important is the reason why Ubuntu is so successful: the people involved.  Without the strong, friendly community, the responsive developers and enlightened leaders in and around Ubuntu, this distribution would not exist.  So thank you, all of you involved with Ubuntu.  Thank you for your time, your effort, your contributions and your sense of humanity.

BBLUG in Review

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Ok, so I didn’t expect BBLUG to go off without a hitch.  However it doesn’t seem like a Linux or BSD-only tech group is all that interesting.  I’m still debating whether or not to continue this LUG experiment.  Maybe we can start a computer group, but that is really not my interest nor do I have a ton of spare time for organizing a general group.  I blame it partially on my lack of advertising.  But also maybe the FOSS environment is not as exciting to others as I thought.  KDE 4, Compiz, Maemo, Linux are all interesting technologies, and is interesting to see the how FOSS newcomers react to seeing alternative computing ecosystems.  However computing is at the end of the day an enabling technology.  The technology itself while interesting, doesn’t look as interesting as what you can do with it.

Still… thanks to Rudy and Ryan who came out yesterday.  I’m glad I wasn’t the only person at the meeting.  Next time, lets just go out somewhere to chill.

The First Brampton BLUG Meeting Tomorrow!

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Eugene and I decided to start up a Brampton BSD-Linux User Group (BBLUG!).  This will hopefully grow into a community of open source enthusiasts in the Brampton and Mississauga region.  While we are competing in theory with the folks at GTALUG and WGTALUG, this is more of bring something to Brampton.  I know there is a Brampton LUG group on Facebook.  However I tried contacting them, but it doesn’t look like they are all that active.

So tomorrow @ 8PM, we plan on meeting up in the Coffee Culture for 2 hours.  If you are an enthusiast of Linux or BSD and live in the Brampton area, feel free to drop by.

OK, I should of announced this meeting much earlier.  I’ll try to do a better job of advertising the meetings next time.  I planned on putting up ads for this but… I kept putting it off.  Sorry. 🙁

Open Source Gamer Goes to Ontario Linux Fest 2008

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Last, last weekend (October 25) I attended my first conference, Ontario Linux Fest 2008. And what an awesome event it was! The event turned out be a somewhat low key event. Not a huge number of exhibitor booths, but the Eclipse, Fedora, FOSSology, FSF, OpenStreetMap and Drupal people had setup shop there. The event featured 4 tracks, and a number of great speakers. Got to meet Jorge Castro from Canonical, Ross Turk and Daniel Hinojosa from SourceForge, Jon “maddog” Hall, Jeremy Allison from Samba, Ian Darwin and Bradley Kuhn from the Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC). It is always an amazing thing to meet the people “in the flesh”, who make a difference in the FOSS community, and read from blogs. The seminars were fantastic and inspire me to further my own open source/free software involvement.

One of the organizers, Richard Weait tried to convince me to start up a Brampton LUG. I might try it out, once I have a little bit more time. Nothing fancy mind you, just one night a month at the Coffee Culture, a few ads and a mailing list. We will see how it will go.

Also I got to go out to dinner with Bradley, the Red Hat and FoSSology folks. And thanks to Google for providing yet another free service in life, in the form of free drinks at the reception/ after-party.

So thanks guys for the awesome time. Sorry for not blogging earlier. Life keeps me busy as always. And lets make the 2009 event even larger!

On Hacking with Maemo

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Time is the ultimae in precious and scarce commodities. With work and travelling up North to kayak, I spend most of my spare time away from a workstation. Hence the convenience of owning a N810. I can code and write anywhere!

Ok so I haven’t tried putting gcc or other c development tools on this tablet. While with Jalimo I can run Java code… I’m not sure on the feasibility of running Tomcat. And there is no way Eclipse will fit. Actually Tomcat would need an SDK, so running a full Java web development platform is most likely a no go. Instead I could set up a hosted test server.

Still I can edit the code itself. Originally I installed Vim. Then I tried PyGTKEdior and it works for me. Additionally I installed subversion. So now I can work on justCheckers while on the go.