Xubuntu Feisty Beta

In keeping with the tradition that Jim and I have established, though not spoken of aloud, I went to Chinatown to pick up electronics and talk about Linux with friends.

I came home armed with a 200 gig used HD for about 50 dollars, a might good find imho. I started working around 12 or so. One main thing I noticed right away was how long it took to download the .iso, in my case +30 minutes. Also I downloaded the wrong .iso the first time.
xubuntu live booted nicely, installed nicely and, much like any other Ubuntu install I’ve seen, did a perfect job.  It was my first look at migration manager, and I must say, it was pretty spiffy. The hd was wiped before I bought it, but I could tell Migration Manager was good software. As of 5 minutes ago, everything has been cake.

Feisty seems great so far.

Tomorrow, I mess around with applications and testing it more extensively. Stay tuned….

heads up chi-ubuntu

the next Chicago gnu/linux meeting is in a few weeks.

April 14th, at the institute of design. 350 n. lasalle.  3pm. It is the day before my birthday.

I will of course be reminding/bugging you all to be there in the future.

/me waves at the glug planet.

On a side note, if there are  any artists out there who want to do a few hours of work on a webcomic, with all the hilarity and sex that comes with, drop me an email. I’m looking for something past stick figures, but not too far past. white ninja style is more than enough.

eddiemartinez@gmail.com

It’s that simple

If you’re not familiar with dinosaurs or living, THIS is a great resource to start.

My favorite is QQSB.

political DRM

For those who have been on Mars recently, there are some political jobs up for sale in terms of the presidency. Barack Obama is currently in the field for DNP candidacy, alongside John Edwards and Mrs. Clinton. Say what you will about the candidates, but there is/was a scandal revolving around an ad portraying Clinton as Big Brother, meant to boost the Obama camp.

Basically this guy Phillip de Vellis made a mod of the famous Apple ad against Clinton to show the power of computers in modern life. We can argue the point of utopian (literally: nowhere) versus dystopian literature, the role of the citizen in politics (both theoretical and literal), and freedom of speech. That’s not my point, what bothered me most about the whole debacle was this news article.

For those who don’t want to read it all, De Vellis got to know the Obama campaign when his company, Blue State Digital, “obtained a contract to provide technical Internet support and supply proprietary software.” According to the BSD website, they do hosting and support.

What bothers me is that they are using terms like “democritizing tools of youtube”, this one is especially bad: “He even offered to take suggestions for improving the tools because he ‘can pass it along to the team’ “. Spare me. This is more closed source garbage, as there are great OSS companies who could do the work, and probably deserve it more. Also this Phil guy (google for his blog) just plain sounds like an asshole.

Which doesn’t excuse Obama for making all his work copyright, and as a graduate from Harvard Law (iirc), I don’t think copyleft is unknown to him. I don’t care if someone wants to use copyright or left, that’s their choice and freedom, what bothers me is when it gets in the way of my own goals. Slowly we are seeing that Obama dream is just that, IMHO.

chicagolug(.org)

Jim C. and I rocked the Chicago gnu/linux meeting today, representing Chi-Ubuntu you could say.

Needless to say, it was alot of fun, the information was overwhelming and Linux is great.

The rest of you Chi-Ubuntu Loco/Ubuntu-IL members are welcome to come.  And by that, I mean that the group is disgruntled with Nixternal’s lack of attendance.

Did I mention I love the RIAA?

In response to this release from them.

One point I notices right away was this quote: “Moreover, our focus on university students is not detracting from our continuing enforcement efforts against individuals using commercial Internet Service Provider (ISP) accounts to engage in this same behavior. Indeed, we have asked ISPs to participate in the same new process that we have implemented for university network users.”

Isn’t that a conflict of interests? Since when have the lawyers of major record labels been in the business of regulation of the Internet. Although everything is fair is corporate business though. I don’t see a trade group having real legal status to sue people however. Is this being done in civil court, where the admission of evidence is weaker? This is why civil court cases, such as the O.J. murder trials differ from criminal murder trials. Anyone see the issue here?

Later:

Some Honesty…

I’ve spent the last few weeks watching House, md. with my brother, checking out all sorts of shoes, baby sitting, concerts (anti-flag killed it, Explosions in the sky tomorrow), midterms and dodging the police all day and night.

That stuff is no joke, and it’s the most serious skateboarding action you will find.

x-chat kind of sucks. I am going to the Chicago GNU/Linux LUG on Saturday with Jim, if those are the plans. Anyone else going? Anyone going to Flourish?

I’ll go back to sucking at being a geek in a few days.

“Eddie, if you’re so smart… why do you say the stupidest things I’ve ever heard?”

Will Crespo is a good buddy of mine and makes skateboarding a million times better than sitting indoors on a computer.

It’s spring! Time for the revolution!

I just installed a 50 gig kubuntu 6.10 partition, time to go play with it.

Suckers Intl. Has Gone Public…

Microsoft wants photo DRM

I’m not even going to blog about this one, seeing as how obviously bad of an idea this is. Instead I’ll just quote Dillinger Four.

“I’m so sick that we’re surprised/ Everytime we’re shown that power corrupts/ Thump our chests at the man on the screen/ Cursing the green/ Tell ourselves that enough is enough…

Another day/ Another dollar/ Another way to live with a life so intolerable”

-Fireside Chat from the album Situationist Comedy

“We’ll take what’s left and we’ll sell it/ As little souvenirs, of what before was here/ You know once we’ve done it and we’ll do it, we’ll do it again”

-Music Is None of My Business from the album From God.

Great band, terrible company.

why?

In… 6 hours, a subsection of the paper on stem cells is due to my Biology group with my work. My particular topic is the argumentation for/against stem cell research, from a moral and academic perspective. Those two sections are the most common viewpoints and arguments, though the topic can be analyzed existentially, biologically, philosophically or from a Utilitarian viewpoint, among others.

In doing my research I stumbled across a company: StemCells, Inc. Aside from the obvious creepyness of this company, I couldn’t help but wonder what they were all about. The Inc. states that they are a company, and yes, they are a corporation. Their goal is to develop stem cell technologies, patent and trademark them, lastly entering into contracts with third party companies. Proprietary humans, this is exactly what we need.

I support stem cells on a purely academic level. If you look at the number of stem cells being left to die or killed because they are not needed for research (federal funding is a problem), or simply stored infinitely… Compare that to the potential gains and it seems like a pretty solid deal. True, nothing HAS come of stem cell research yet, but I’m a pollyanna idealist, so I’ll pretend otherwise.

Here is what is troubling me, a line from the company info:

An important element of the Company’s stem cell discovery program is the further development of intellectual property positions with respect to stem and progenitor cells.

….WHAT?!? No! Bad company! NO Intellectual property! Further research shows a heavy interest in IP, copyrights, licensing right etc.

Simply put, this company is evil. It’s not their fault.

The United States Supreme Court ruled in Dodge vs. Ford (1926? I forget the date) that corporations have no LEGAL RIGHT to be ethical in any way shape or form. In fact, their primary and sole obligation is to increase the stockholders’ profit. Ethics are then, illegal. This ruling is the basis of modern capitalism, the structure to which Microsoft, ATI, and countless companies adhere.

Of course my problem is not Capitalism or money (actually I prefer a mixed model form of economy) but companies such as this. Companies which use DRM or other such forms to restrict culture. A company which pays lip service to human growth/advance and looks at their bottom line at the end of the end. There is a good scene in Fight Club about this where one of the main characters (the one who WASN’T brad pitt) is explaining his job.

Simply, he does a cost/benefit analysis of his company’s exploding tires, and considers the interest of his company above the lives of humans. Scary stuff, but real people do it everyday. Life doesn’t have to be a movie for a company to destroy human life.

The fact that Stem Cells Inc. literally does cost/benefit analysis with human life is just scary. I don’t know if I can support stem cell research anymore, quiet frankly.

“The Company also intends to pursue a series of non-exclusive agreements whereby third parties would have access to the Company’s cells for use in gene discovery and use, drug discovery and screening, and diagnostics. StemCells has outlicensed some of its technology to BioWhittaker, Inc. and Stem Cell Technologies, Inc. for research purposes.”

Yea…. give me a break.

-Eddie M. Disgruntled scientist

Windows For The Loss

Please dont kill me, this will be the last blog about Windows being terrible in a while, I promise. For the past couple of years, Windows has kept my music somewhat organized. And while trying to switch to Linux…. hostage. There is a quote on bash.org about such situations.

The past 4 hours or so have flown by as I tried to move my files to Linux. Mounts and permissions and /me is a general n00b at CLI. That stuff is powerful, awesome and much too complicated for my brain.

After long attempts with rr72 and manchicken (excuse the IRC nicks, I have to still learn all the real names) I sent a message to Pyromithrandir (Jonah Berquist, a good buddy of mine from HS who is awesome) and he sent me to…..

fs driver dot org a VERY nifty freeware app for Windows. Essentially, it treats your Linux partitions as storage devices and lets you read/write to them. After which it is all a matter of copy/paste.

Summation… Goodbye Windows partition. Hello KDE. If all goes well, I will have a super nice working Kubuntu partition on this HD by the end of the day with all the important music to go with it. Note that I am referring to my personal computer which sits up in my room, without acess to the internet, solely for the purpose of listening to music. and not my normal web surfing, chatting, typing apps.