Immigration-Not Technology related at all

This is a letter I wrote to the Chicago Sun-Times in response to several things I’ve seen in the news media recently about ‘my people’ (whatever that means) and the treatment of them by the larger institution we’ll call ‘The Man’ for now.

Reading the news over the past few months, I can’t help but notice the massive amount of anti-immigrant sentiment pouring into the media, be it a story about militias in Texas, fences that stretch halfway to Vega, or raids by federal agents on shopping centers.

 

I wonder where the anxiety is coming from, and it is my hope that an open letter will shed some more light on the issue. Is this current debate about immigrants flowing into an arguably overtaxed system; political refuges, expatriates, asylum seekers alike? Anyone who breaks the law and enters without permission, from either Souther/Northern border? Or simply an attempt by some circles to reject Mexican-Americans from the larger U.S. society as a whole?

trials and tribulations

lspci won’t register my d-link wireless card. The power light is green on the card, indicating to me that the card is registering with the motherboard.

more to come as I fight with xubuntu later.

Ubuntu rocks pt. 2

sudo apt-get install….

Installing lisp on a windows should not be rocket science. I need to get this linux box online asap.

Language Support

http://packages.ubuntulinux.org/edgy/translations/

This is why Ubuntu rocks the hardest.

If you check out the comparison of Linux systems on Wikipedia, Ubuntu is #1 in language support.

What more can you ask for?

Flourish Conf!

Sat. April 7th was the Flourish Confrence at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) featuring F/OSS.

Needless to say, I had a blast. I saw most of the Chicago Ubuntu Loco there (Matt, Nixternal, RJ, Jim C., Chad Sutton, jmmri (sp?) ) and many other people whose names I forget. John Quigley was there but I managed to successfully avoid him and the rest of the Chi-glug for the most part. Just kidding.

Highlights:

Being mobbed by the UIC lug for Ubuntu cds. We passed out over 100 cds, easily that day.

GPLv3 talk with Peter Brown.

Random talk about Stallman being a characther and a half.

Being a geek in general.

My favorite moment was a touching speech Nixternal (Rich Johnson) gave  about “Free” software and the community in general. He also touched upon easy use, where this gem came in.

Nix: “You know I’ had my daughter using Slackware when she was five”.

Random Smartass in the back:  “I’m pretty sure that falls under child abuse”.

All in all, I had a blast and I learned a ton.

-Eddie M.

xubuntu fesity update

So far, in my few minutes of looking at Xubuntu, I have run into two problems. The first is a *buntu issue.

The panel is auto-placed on the top of the screen, which bothers me. I am used to doing everything at the bottom of the screen, the way OSX and Windows do things. In Kubuntu/Ubuntu/Edubuntu, you simply grab the panel and drag the thing to where you want. In Xubuntu, the option is removed. Instead I had to rightclick and specify the location of placement. Not an issue really, just something that bothered me. My mouse is also broken as to not like clicking. Also not an issue. Is this an Xfce thing, or am I retarted?

The next, bigger issue was connecting to the Internet. My modem hates Linux for some reason, so that was a no go. I tried sudo pppoconf until I realized the issue. This will hopefully be resolved with a router that works later in the week.

So far, I’m digging xfce, which runs well on this box. I haven’t had anytime to test any apps because I can’t get them from the internet, but I am looking forward to it. Suggestions for apps to use/try are welcome.

-Eddie

This is bad news

In a conversation with my buddy Justin, he told me that he was running Windows Vista, blah blah. Of course he got it as free as in cost.

This is from MSDNAA, the M$ project to provide M$ software to universities for minimal (reduced) cost. Then they can tweak the code slightly, but of course it is NonGPL. Worse yet, this is a partnership they have with my old college, which runs windows exclusively. I know this because their servers always failed.

My response is not a real response. It is a question. Where is the Linux/Ubuntu equivalent. Why isn’t RedHat or Canotical not setting up similar programs? If there are, and I’m not aware, let me know. I sign up for the promotion of freedom in all it’s forms.

“MSDN provides the easiest and most inexpensive way to get the latest M$ software…” Give me a break. Here is why I use Linux: It works. The architecture/commands are logical. It’s free. It’s free. The community rocks when I have an issue. It’s free. It’s free.

In other news, Flourish is around the corner and Admiral_Chicago is coming in for the conference.

Keep it free. -Eddie