BLOGical Thoughts

I have decided to go to LinuxFest Northwest in Bellingham, WA next month. I almost went to last year’s LinuxFest, but something got in the way. This year, I have almost the entire year planned out, and this was included in my plans.

The only problem I have had with this decision is trying to find out exactly where in Bellingham the thing was being held. Usually when someone does an event like this, they provide the following on the site home page: who, what, when, where and why. The ‘where’ portion on their web page just says Bellingham, WA. Well, Bellingham is a big town – couldn’t they narrow that down a bit? Instead of my having to spend 20 minutes on their web site trying to find out that it will be held at Bellingham Technical College? That information was in a tier 3 page, with an unobtrusive link only from the Logistics page.

Despite my problems with their information about where the LinuxFest will be held, I am sure I will enjoy it. I intend to take my teardrop trailer over there and camp out at a campground close to the event. I hope the weather is nice.

I may end up at an auction tonight. I have been monitoring their web site for months now, and this is the first time I think I may actually participate. I have stopped by there on the way home from work several times, when a picture on their web site grabs my attention. The pictures have always been more interesting the the actual items, but maybe this time will be different.

Silly sign of the day:

Free/Open Source Software

• Virtual Linux
• Time For Ubuntu to Fork Evolution
• Selecting an Open Source Operating System
• Beginner’s Guide to Git
• Valve Is Not Commenting On Steam, Source Engine For Linux
• Why Use GRUB2? Good Question! (part 3)
• Commercial Gaming, Coming Soon to Linux?
• The Linux Foundation Store: Linux gets silly
• Ubuntu Server: The Linux OS Dark Horse
• Prototype $200 Tablet Runs Android, Chromium OS, Linux

“It’s Mine, and You Have to Pay (and Pay and Pay) For It”

• Leaked Documents Show UK Web Censorship Proposal Written By Record Labels
• Obama Reiterates Support For Finishing ACTA
• Because Only The Record Labels Are Supposed To Get Away With Not Paying Their Musicians…
• Pink Floyd Beats EMI in Creativity Flap
• European Parliament slams digital copyright treaty
• Is This The Most Exciting Time Ever For Book Lovers?
• Keeping the Score
• Brazil Moves Forward With Plan To Ignore US Patents And Copyrights After US Refuses To Abide By WTO Ruling

Local and Other News

• Five Lies About the American Economy
• Where’s The Outrage Over The Gov’t Brushing Mass Privacy Violations Under The Rug?
• One-third of orphaned Zeus botnets find way home
• Lithium or hydrogen bike? Choose your steed
• Design firm accuses Mozilla of UI plagiarism
• Assemblyman seeking to ban all salt in restaurant cooking
• 0-day exploits for IE flaw another reason to switch to IE8
• Ultimate Laptop Buying Guide
• 10 ways you might be breaking the law with your computer

I am going to take my quad-core computer to the NILUG meeting on Saturday. I have installed four or five lightweight Linux distros on it as virtual machines, so I can demo each of the environments. These distros are particularly effective on old machines with limited resources. Most of the distros will run in 256MB of memory and with less than 5GB of hard disk.

The whole purpose of this exercise is to show people that there are alternatives to Windows 98, etal, for their old computers. Those alternatives are modern, fast and virus-free.

I got a phone call from the DMV last night. It turns out that the license tags for my Dodge Stealth, which I thought I had lost, had never made it to me. They were returned to the DMV last June because of insufficient address concerns. Since there is only one Michael Burton in Hayden, ID and I’ve been here for 26 years, I can’t think of what the idiot at the Post Office was thinking. Or not thinking. Anyway, I have to pick the tags up today so I will be legal when I use the car to pull my teardrop trailer to Bellingham, WA next month.

Silly sign of the day:

Free/Open Source Software

• GNU/Linux: Rebuttal: Linux on the desktop: Still not happening
• The Linux community is fragmented, or is it?
• Best Linux Distro for Web Server
• Turn your old computer into a music server with VortexBox Linux
• Happenings: FOSS at CeBIT 2010
• GNOME Developer Kit Slimmed Down
• Linux Arpeggiators, Part 1
• Window Maker Desktop: Lightweight Linux Minimalism
• Can free software drive the fourth paradigm?
• Unified network administration using eBox

“It’s Mine, and You Have to Pay (and Pay and Pay) For It”

• Questions and Challenges For Defenders of the Current Copyright Regime
• The Weakest Link Redux
• Amazon.com’s 1-Click patent confirmed following re-exam
• Vancouver man files first ‘Avatar’ rip-off lawsuit
• Piracy Rises In France Despite Three Strikes Law
• When RealNetworks Settled on DVD Copying, We All Lost

Local and Other News

• Ionia kindergartner suspended for making gun with hand
• Enhancing Democracy by Banning Speech
• No More Social Media For American Idol Contestants
• Zeus botnets suffer mighty blow after ISP taken offline
• 10 Reasons Why Security Problems Persist at Microsoft
• Twitter Fights Phishing, Malware with Link Scanning Service
• Former TSA analyst charged with computer tampering
• No-Fly List Includes the Dead

I added two new podcast feeds to my hpodder client and it wanted to download 47 ‘new’ podcasts. So I am firing that program. I have downloaded gpodder and I will use that instead, starting tomorrow morning. I have already imported most of the feeds I had in hpodder, but there are a couple more I need to add.

This weekend will be busy. There is a North Idaho Linux Users Group meeting in Post Falls on Saturday, where we will continue helping the uninitiated with the mysteries and goodness of Linux.

On Sunday, I will go over to the Spokane County fairgrounds to attend the Spokane Rock Rollers Gem and Mineral show. They hold a pretty good show, so it should be very interesting. This year the only thing I could use would be a slab saw, but they cost a lot of money, so I won’t be looking real hard.

Sometime this weekend, I will also need to back up the NILUG web site and upgrade its software. I will probably change the web site theme, too.

Silly sign of the day:

Free/Open Source Software

• Manage your projects with KPlato
• Open Source Saves the Day (and Lots of Dosh)
• Nautilus Image Converter
• Ubuntu’s new look
• Why I don’t use Apple products
• The Linux desktop is already here
• Ubuntu 10.04 To Hang Onto Old Intel Driver
• Atol Delivers Flawless File Management With No Frills

“It’s Mine, and You Have to Pay (and Pay and Pay) For It”

• A Look At Twelve Years Of Dangerous Unintended Consequences From The DMCA
• Music Biz Hopes To End Piracy By Tempting ISPs With Millions
• US Government Working With Pharma Companies To Raise Drug Prices In Other Countries
• Joint European Parliament ACTA Transparency Resolution Tabled, Vote on Wednesday
• Can You Still Say DRM Is Effective When It Creates Security Vulnerabilities, Performance Degradation, Incompatibilities, System Instability And ‘Other Issues’?
• HP sues four ink cartridge companies
• Pink Floyd sues EMI over iTunes payments
• Jonathan Schwartz: What He Couldn’t Say (on Patents, OpenOffice, and Bill Gates)

Local and Other News

• Billions of photos online, Billions of privacy offenders?
• Microsoft Warns IE Under Attack on Patch Tuesday
• Hayden shooter escaped, considered dangerous
• Vodafone ships malware infested mobiles
• Hard drive evolution could hit Microsoft XP users
• The Secret Origin of Windows
• Supreme Court Takes ‘Informational Privacy’ Case

I am thinking about taking a Linux certification exam. To that end, I am reading up on the kinds of things they will ask on the exam. A lot of that is boring, as I already know it. The book I am using has over 1,000 pages and I am on page 64, so it will take me a while to get through it all. We will see how persistent I am.

I have another book that is about the same length, which is devoted to certification. It’s an O’Reilly book called “LPI Certification in a Nutshell”. Maybe that’s the one I should be reading. Not having an ebook reader has certain advantages, and devoting my time to something more constructive is one of them.

As I predicted, since I removed the snow plow and changed to summer tires, the weather people are now predicting snow. Typical of the weather to do this.

Silly sign of the day:

Free/Open Source Software

• Google Summer of Code 2010 in Starting Blocks
• Elementary Gnome Theme Updated, Now More Gorgeous Than Ever!
• Get started with Omnis Studio
• Ubuntu Lucid gets social
• Set Up a VNC Linux Server in 5 Easy Steps
• Improving in the MonoDevelop user interface
• FBReader – e-book reader for Linux desktops
• Open Source Business Conference: 5 Trends Worth Watching
• New Project Puts Open Source Spin on Data Center Design

“It’s Mine, and You Have to Pay (and Pay and Pay) For It”

• The Cult of Originality
• Manhattan Woman Sues Netflix
• Alice In Public Domainland; Just Because Something Is Free And Open Doesn’t Mean You Can’t Make Money Off Of It
• Patent Reform Bill Released: More Of The Same
• Tiny Novato winery wins trademark case against Trek Bicycle
• RIAA Claims File Sharers Are ‘Undermining Humanitarian Efforts In Haiti’, But Leaves Out The Facts
• Home streaming is ‘killing music’
• Blu-ray licensing cartel starts operation

Local and Other News

• Microsoft and the Incredible ‘Internet Usage Tax’
• Archiving Britain’s web: The legal nightmare explored
• Microsoft warns of impending patches
• Police get Webcam pictures in school spy case
• Apache bug prompts update advice
• Ars Technica blocks visitors who use AdBlock Plus
• Why You Don’t Want Politicians Doing Your Engineering For You
• More states propose Internet sales taxes

Looking for a replacement for the crappy, Cooler ebook reader, I went over to the Barnes and Noble in Spokane on Saturday to evaluate their Nook ebook reader. There were at least three things I didn’t like about it, so I didn’t purchase one.

The built-in fonts for the device are limited. There are only two fonts, and neither of them can be enlarged a lot. I enlarged to the largest size and I almost could not read the result, as it was too small. That alone would prevent me from purchasing the device.

The Nook is slow. The Cooler was slow to initialize, but the Nook is slow when you turn pages. Way too slow for me.

Finally, the Nook, like the Kindle, is positioned to sell books and periodicals, not just allow you to read them. That is its main object. There are way too many controls on it that require you to connect to a web site and buy something, that something being way overpriced. This reminds me of the printer industry and their insistence that their printer ink is more precious than diamonds.

I also went to a couple of ebook reader comparison web sites and viewed the comparisons. The bottom line is, I won’t be getting a new reader soon.

I started my spring chores on Sunday. I put away the snow plow blade on my truck and changed the tires on my car back to regular tires. This probably means we’ll be getting some snow in the next week, but I will just drive the truck to work if we do.

Silly sign of the day:

Free/Open Source Software

• Importing and Adding Background Music with Audacity 1.3
• Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid) Alpha 3 Screenshots Gallery (Updated with new wallpaper,theme)
• Ubuntu Linux for Mainframes? Not Quite…
• 6 of the Best Free Linux Electronic Medical Records Software
• TSO Explained……
• Five Indispensable MySQL Tools
• Microsoft has stake in Novell fight

I discovered that the latest version of MonoDevelop has the stetic window designer built into it. This is a very good thing. It will allow me yet another way to create open source programs without using commercial software.

I played around with MonoDevelop yesterday and have an idea of what it would take to convert gdvdslides over to C#. There is a major difference in the way that stetic lays out controls in windows, though. You have to use containers to lay out the controls, and sometimes it requires a lot of containers. In Lazarus, the layout is static and you can anchor the control to any of the four edges of a window, so the Lazarus controls can act just like the ones laid out with stetic.

Another major difference is how events are connected. I haven’t played with that yet, but I expect it to conform to the ’signals’ and ’sinks’ method used by the underlying GTK library.

My ebook reader quit completely on me yesterday. Again. I will be looking into a real ebook reader. In the meantime, if you entertain thoughts of purchasing a Cooler reader, my advice is don’t do it.

So, mail delivery has gone from twice daily, seven days a week, down to once a day, 5 days a week. The more days you eliminate from delivery, the more money will be saved, so why not three days a week, or even two days? This is a typical solution to a problem caused by a government-run business. This is what always happens when government is involved in business. Got that, GM? AIG?

Silly sign of the day:

Free/Open Source Software

• Ubuntu dumps the brown, introduces new theme and branding
• 6 of the Best Free Linux Food and Drink Software
• Canonical CEO Elucidates on Lucid Lynx Linux Server
• Igelle DSV: A New Fast Lightweight Linux
• CeBIT 2010: Linux Successes, Challenges
• The Three Giants of Linux
• Getting Loopy: Performance Loopers For Linux Musicians
• Rugged railroad computer runs Linux
• Ubuntu Lucid Lynx changes its spots
• The Linux Desktop Will Have Its Day: Q&A With Canonical Founder Mark Shuttleworth

“It’s Mine, and You Have to Pay (and Pay and Pay) For It”

• EFF: Unintended Consequences – Twelve Years Under the DMCA
• Is Apple launching a patent war?
• USTR Responds To Sen. Wyden About ACTA; Admits It Hopes ACTA Will Cover Patents Too
• RealNetworks Drops Fight to Sell DVD Copying Software
• Rep. Conyers Compares Lack Of A Performance Right Tax To Slavery
• Verizon Case Marks a First for Patent Holder
• LibDems score copyright coup
• If you blog unauthorized “Daily Show” or “Colbert” clips, Viacom will sue your ass

Local and Other News

• Homeland Security wants to pick your brains
• Monster botnet held 800,000 people’s details
• The Wrong Policy at the Wrong Time
• How UK Chiropractors’ Attempt To Silence One Critic Created The Backlash That May Change Chiropractics In The UK
• US urges ‘action’ needed to fight net attacks
• ‘Severe’ OpenSSL vuln busts public key crypto
• Microsoft embraces another Linux company
• Denial of bot net service
• Windows: New, improved & more insecure than ever

I spent yesterday debugging the log file reader I am doing at work. There is still quite a ramp-up for me with Java and the Eclipse IDE. I have the reader running, but it doesn’t seem to be reading log files. I will work on that today.

Next up for me at work is to modify our report program to do more emailing. I will have to dig up some information about this on the Internet. I did some of this when I was working on the program for the latest release, but the new request is more complex and I need to get and store more (encrypted) information about the person who is doing the emailing.

I installed Mono and MonoDevelop on Ubuntu 8.10 yesterday. There was a plugin for MonoDevelop called stetic that I installed, which allowed me to do the kind of window design I am used to doing in Delphi and Lazarus. Way cool. The problem is, the stetic plugin does not sem to be available for Ubuntu 9.04. I am seriously unhappy about that.

I took the night off and finished re-reading War of Honor, so I haven’t done anything around the house that I should be doing.

Silly sign of the day:

Free/Open Source Software

• Get started with Blender
• Open-Source Software: Bad, Evil and Un-American
• Ubuntu dumps the brown, introduces new theme and branding
• Open-source hardware takes baby steps toward the gadget mainstream
• Ubuntuzilla – An APT repository to get the latest updates for Firefox, SeaMonkey and Thunderbird
• Vermont Adopts Open Source Software Policy
• Open source: Still room for the little guy?
• A Big, Linuxy ‘Thank You’ to Matthew Katzer
• Should Open Source Be An Enemy Of The State?
• Hungry? How About An Open Source Restaurant

At work, I started to test the Java log file reader I’ve been writing and found that I no longer have a valid way to do that. In the six months or so since I’ve done any Java stuff at work, I knew there had been changes due to the brand new console we wrote in Air and Flex. But I didn’t expect those changes to ripple in to our manager, which is an entirely separate system (although there are communication interfaces).

So I had to get someone to help me set up my system for the new software. What a pain. And it will all change on Friday, when we transition from CVS to Subversion for our change control.

At any rate, my system should now be set up so I can test the new log file reader. That should be fun…

Silly sign of the day:

Not so silly, is it?

Free/Open Source Software

• OpenSolaris not dead; might not get all new Solaris features
• Linux is doing just fine on servers
• An open letter to Dell regarding Ubuntu, or “go big or go home”
• Revitalise your desktop with Compiz
• CodeWeavers Releases Crossover Office 9.0 for MAC and Linux
• Working with Graphics Text in OpenOffice.org
• Dell Mistakenly Charges $100k For Linux Netbook
• Minting the Girlfriend

“It’s Mine, and You Have to Pay (and Pay and Pay) For It”

• Spanish Indies Challenge Govt On Piracy ‘Negligence’
• Free Is Not An Aberration; It’s Basic Economics
• Apple is suing HTC
• Microsoft wants to put infected PCs in rubber room
• New ACTA leak shows major resistance to US-style DRM rules
• Rare Ruling on Damages for Sending Bogus Copyright Takedown Notice–Lenz v. Universal
• Supreme Court Says Courts Still Have Jurisdiction Over Unregistered Copyrights
• Audiobook DRM versus the patrons of the Cleveland Library

Local and Other News

• Lib Dems seek web blocking: ask them to stop
• Utah A.G. may gain broader power to demand Internet, cell-phone records
• Spain arrests three accused of running huge botnet
• Microsoft exec: Infected PCs should be quarantined
• Microsoft: Don’t press F1 key in Windows XP
• SCO Proposes Selling its Mobility “Business”… to Darl McBride
• Asus Board Unlocks CPU Cores You Didn’t Buy
• Officials Sue Couple Who Removed Their Lawn – The Californicators strike again

I’m not having much luck getting the latest (alpha) version of Lazarus to work. I posted the problem on the Lazarus forum and the suggestions that came back on how to fix the problem did not fix it. I still get a resource compilation error. I even get one on an entirely new project. There is something fundamentally wrong with the Lazarus alpha build.

The reason I am concentrating on this new version of the Lazarus IDE is that there are many fixes in it for problems I had to work around in gdvdslides. It certainly would be nice to put drag and drop back in the program.

Silly sign of the day:

Free/Open Source Software

• Is Open Source Software More Secure?
• The ultimate PC repair kit: SystemRescueCD 1.40
• Junior High students in Monza build their own Ubuntu computers
• Hands-on: Ubuntu goes social, gains Me Menu in 10.04 alpha 3
• Installing and Running Linux on Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3)
• KDE 4.4: Does It Work Yet?
• Five Free PDF viewers for Ubuntu.
• Five Tools for Measuring and Improving Linux System Performance
• Vulnerabilities in sudo closed
• MeeGo: The Linux iPad?
• How to Run Fullscreen Games In Linux With Dual Monitors

“It’s Mine, and You Have to Pay (and Pay and Pay) For It”

• More ACTA Leaks; Reveal Different Positions Taken By Different Countries
• Church sues Hollywood for using Rio’s Christ statue in movie
• New music acts to labels: ‘We won’t tweet’
• Biggest-ever ACTA leak: secret copyright treaty dirty laundry motherlode
• Bogus Copyright Claim Silences Yet Another Larry Lessig YouTube Presentation
• InternetNZ to take public message to ACTA negotiators

Local and Other News

• No, Having To Pay To Downgrade From Vista To XP Is Not An Antitrust Violation
• Microsoft warns of zero-day hole for older Windows
• Newborns’ blood used to build secret DNA database
• Microsoft Was Behind Google Complaints To EC
• Microsoft Hoist by its Own Anti-Anti-Competitive Petard
• Hackers expose security flaws with ‘Elvis Presley’ passport
• Forgot your ThinkPad password? Get new hardware
• Four men charged in computerized online ticket scam
• Profile of ex-narc who’s declared war on the “War on Drugs”
• Cyberwar hype was cooked up to sell Internet-breaking garbage to the military

The NILUG technical meeting was very good. I helped two new people put Ubuntu Linux on their IBM laptops. I also removed Lazarus from my laptop and installed the latest version. The only problem with doing that was an error I got when compiling gdvdslides. I will look into the error tonight.

I replaced a 25 year old bathtub faucet on Saturday. It was tough to get the faucet out, but the replacement was very easy to install. And it works better than the original one ever did.

I also re-worked my personal bookmarks page. It still uses collapsing menus, but the coding for that is very different and I like the way they work a lot better.

Silly sign of the day:

Free/Open Source Software

• Ubuntu Lucid Makes Scanning Simple
• 5 of the Best Free Linux Data Recovery Tools
• 20 Breathtaking Ubuntu Studio Wallpaper Collection
• Two Open Source Tools for Photographers
• Tiny Core- A 10 MB Tiny Linux Desktop
• 6 Amazing Gnome Shell Themes (And How To Install Themes In Gnome Shell)
• BBC shuts out open source software
• Amazon Abandons Linux for Windows

“It’s Mine, and You Have to Pay (and Pay and Pay) For It”

• Stretching The FCC’s Mandate: FCC Should Not Be Involved In Copyright Enforcement
• Former Teen Cheerleader Dinged $27,750 for File Sharing 37 Songs
• US Postage Stamp Found To Be Infringing On Copyright Over Statues In US Korean War Memorial
• RapidShare Ordered To Proactively Filter Book Titles
• “Bribed” Pirate Bay Cop Now Heads Anti-Piracy Unit
• Facebook patents user news feed
• International Intellectual Property Alliance – The Disconnect
• US copyright lobby claims free software undermines respect for intellectual property
• Network Solutions Confused About The DMCA

Local and Other News

• Microsoft warns over rogue Security Essentials
• RSA Conference to Spotlight Threats, Security Strategies
• U.K. bill would ‘outlaw open Wi-Fi’
• Dropcam puts home surveillance in the cloud
• SCO Proposes Selling its Mobility “Business”… to Darl McBride