Chicago Hardy Party, part 2

Hi All,

As a way to celebrate the efforts of all of us during the Hardy Heron release cycle we’ll be gathering at the Goose Island Brew Pub (1800 N. Clyborn, Chicago, Illinois) this coming Saturday, April 26th.  The release party will start at 2pm, and we have the room reserved until 6pm (one hour later than previously indicated).  You do not have to be 21 to part-ay at this part-ay.  It will be a family-friendly affair unless someone brings a bunch of skateboards and large boomboxes. Note: very likely to happen. Although at that point, fiasco is more likely to be the applicable word than part-ay.

Please come hungry.    We will be able to order food from Goose Island’s bounteous menu, and may also request and consume one or more of Goose Island’s ‘ultimate drinkability’ beers or finely crafted sodas.  This is good stuff.  Charlie Trotter comes here for tips on how to make good Buffalo Burgers and Wolfgang Puck has been known to inquire about how they make their vegetarian chili.  That is what I’ve been told.

For those individuals who may be using pre-civilization technology (i.e., something other than a Hardy Heron release – ha ha . . .  I kid, I kid . . .), We’ll also have a set of K/X/Ubuntu Hardy Heron CD’s available to help upgrade your laptops to the latest 8.04 release of 8.04 awesomeness.  (Just please be sure to back up your data beforehand if you wish to upgrade your machine at the partay.  Upgrades and beer/soda don’t always go well together.)

Some folks are RSVP’ing on the wiki (thanks!) but if you don’t have a wiki account, just let us know and I’ll add your name to the list for you.  For others, the wiki is here:  https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ChicagoTeam/Meetings As my mom used to say, RSVP yourself before you wreck yourself. ubuntu-us-chicago@lists.ubuntu.com

The Hardy Heron development cycle has been a good one, so let’s celebrate our efforts!  I look forward to seeing everyone there.

-Eddie Martinez via Jim Campbell’s announcement to the Mailing List and a blatant copy and paste…

Ubuntu-Chicago Hardy Heron Release Party

Hi All,

I’m glad to report that we have reserved a room at Goose Island Brew Pub (1800 N. Clyborn, Chicago, Illinois) for Saturday, April 26th.  The release party will start at 2pm, and run until about 5pm.  You don’t have to be 21 to enter.  We can do something else afterward if there is interest, but that is our plan for Goose Island.

We will be able to order off of the menu (so people can get buffalo burgers if they want them :-)

Please RSVP on the wiki if you intend to make it.  https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ChicagoTeam/Meetings

The Hardy Heron development cycle has been a good one, so let’s celebrate our efforts!  I look forward to seeing everyone there.

-Eddie M.

ps. EXTRA EXTRA EXTRA big thanks to Jim Campbell for helping setup this meeting and all off his Hardy work this release. He is aiming for Ubuntu membership in the near future, so anyone who reads this should be aware that without his help on this meeting, I would be in major trouble.

Hello World?

If all went according to plan, I somehow or another managed to make myself onto the Planet Ubuntu webpage. Excellent! If not, then I fail at v i+ bzr + cp/mv commands. The first two are new technologies I’ve recently started using, and the last two reflect my recent obsession with dropping away from a GUI into a shell and really exploring the depth and power of the Linux kernel. I am madly in love.

I would like to briefly introduce myself. I have been using Ubuntu Linux since December 2006 when my brother (more on him later) came home and more or less told me outright that Windows was banned in our household. My Win(ironic name, i think)dows partition breaking helped move things along. I became involved with the Ubuntu-Chicago group, as well as the local CHIGLUG group, and switch schools to a private technical institution where I am pursuing a B.S. in Political Science, and a minor in Computer Science. I also work by day at a company handling their computer systems, uploading content to the website, mapping network drives, and other such small tasks. In the long term, I hope to graduate with a solid understanding of societies and the political forces surrounding them (influencing policy is one area I am particularly interested in), as well as a technical understanding of the technologies which surround social change, as a precursor to my goal of pursuing a degree in law. With that in mind, I want to work with OSS companies and softwares, to better mankind through work in Intellectual Property law.

On my spare time I listen to music very loudly (punk, hip hop, rap, classical/romanticist, avant jazz, what I call “radio rock” and most call alternative rock, metal of course, hardcore, etc.) and I love to skateboard, take photos, read, explore the city with my best friends, and play with my dog. Oh, and my family has hosted over 15+ exchange students in the past few years, so my house is always packed.

I am actively involved in the LoCo project side of the Ubuntu community, as the lead contact for the Ubuntu-Chicago Team, and I try to talk to the US team and general LoCo team as much as possible. As such, I have many many people I am indebted to for all the time they’ve put up with me as I learned my way around the community and the CoC as well as the technology in general. You will notice how much time I spend on IRC when I refer to people by their online nicks, not their real names xD . I hope I don’t offend anyone by forgetting them and they are as follows, with explanations:

Effiejayx my brother down South for keeping me up to date on the S.American news
Tyche a great guy all around from Arizona
Greg G keeping Michigan strong
John C what more can I say?
JJesse an all around great Kubuntu and doc person
Jcastro for helping launch the midwest Quad LoCo team
Jucato for hanging out with me in #kubuntu
Manchicken who rants about free software for hours on end
boredandblogging (who has a better online handle than myself… well no, but close )
Fransisco Athens for letting me SSH into his box for IRC
Jim Campbell an all around solid guy who deserves to be on this planet more than I do.
Kevin Harris for attempting me to switch to Foresight for hours on end (and hasn’t managed it yet!)

I have two more people I want to thank for putting up with me. They are Freddy Martinez, my twin brother and fellow Ubuntu member, and Richard Johnson, KDE/Kubuntu whiz and the best LoCo leader I could try to replace. You read it first here people: twin Ubuntu developers from Chicago invade your Planet and free your computers! A million thanks to Richard for putting up with both of us and making it happen.

-Eddie M. signing off.

ps. I sure hope this works, or else my super long blog post (with too many annoying links!) was a total waste of time.

News and news and more news

The Ubuntu Chicago LoCo will be meeting at the Institute of Design this Saturday, 1pm-3pm, and all are invited. We have a very ambitious agenda for the next meeting and all are invited. 2 hours for a meeting? Why you say.

From 3pm until who knows when, the Chicago Gnu/Linux Users Group (CHIGLUG will be meeting and it should be a great time. I will be giving a fantastic presenation on LockPicking, and John Quigley will be presenting about Kernel Virtualization, as well as Tristan Slougther’s presentation on Haskell.

But it’s not all about me:

KDE4 is out!
Congratulations to Richard Johnson for winning a Golden Pony!
And Mario Limonciello as well!

I have to work in a few hours and school starts back up in a few days. bye all!

-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

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

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.

GAH GFDL

After reading the response Freddy (Admiral_Chicago) left on my post about (Free)dom, I was inclined to post about my preference for the CC, NC license that I use. Please note that this will be the last time I will speak publicly on the issue, or at least make it the main focus of my speaking.

My qualm with the GFDL is not that I like DRM or that I want to restrict anyone to read or see my work. Far from it. Thank you all you Chicago Ubuntu readers who have no choice but to put up with me on the planet. If you want to honor me, by all humble means, I would love for you to do so. My problem, as an author, is that I simply cannot let someone else edit my work. Par my understanding, anyone can modify the work as they see fit.

This is unacceptable in my opinion. I am working on a piece right now (beta) called ‘Chicago, winter nights. Typical night” with the following line:

Cold weather (holiday) lights
pinpoints
of life a the late nights, darkened by steel and photophobic concrete.

The point of focus ‘a the late nights’ is on the fence in my mind. I’m not even sure if this was intentional (that is draft #2 by the way), if it is a typo, if I mean to write ‘and the late nights…’ or ‘(ahhh!) the late nights…

To agonize over a sentence for a full hour, is a very trying mindframe. For someone to come along and change my work, and tell me that my sentence is wrong, is not my idea of freedom. What if I want to sell my work and have to jump through 50 loopholes to do so? Obviously it’s not impossible to do so, but that is a concern of mine. A big one regardless of the basis/legitimacy that it entails.

I’m not against derivative works either. If someone wants to change my story around and release it under the GFDL or CC that is fine. If you try to copyright it, we may have issues. I understand the point that Lawrence Lessig was trying to make in Free Culture about how copyrights and DRM are crippling society. I’m not trying to stop anyone, I just want my own contributions to be highlighted, because as I stated above, it is hard work. I will release a free version of any books I write, or of anything I publish. No DRM on anything I write, you will be allowed to distribute freely. To quote Ian Mackye, “I would rather have 100 people hear my songs then have 100 bucks in my pocket”.

I know Stallman is not after me, I know that it’s the best intentions going into the GFDL, yet I can’t support it, because it has too large a focus on the public domain and too small a focus on the author.

“You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute.” No I won’t. But if I had wanted a co-author I would have sought their help. I didn’t, so please don’t edit my text. I’ll even release all my notes, drafts and rewrites of a piece, but I refuse to release my hard earned license to someone who has done nothing to deserve it. If someone wants to quote me, or make a derivative work in the GFDL, they can, but for my purposes, CC, NC is the way to go.

As always, thanks for reading. If anyone wants to read “Chicago, winter nights. Typical Night” I have two things to say. I have no idea why you would, since I don’t think I’m too hot an author, and let me know where I can contact you so I can send it to you. Hopefully, this is the last I hear about the issue.

-Eddie Martinez

CC, NC

OSS fireworks

After a productive day running around with Jim C., talking about computers, fireworks, phones, the crazy Chavira familty and almost getting into a car accident (thanks to Eric C. for that one) among other issues, I have decided to help out with technology in anyway I can.

I will of course be spending more time in the IRC chans, trying to fix whatever problems I do know how to fix.

I will be trying to help out xubuntu anywhere I can, Jim is going to help me with that.

I will start spending time at Free Geek and doing what I can to work with free computers. I will try to visit the Chicago LUG meetings.

I will be trying to do bug work, documentation, etc. If you guys need anything, just email me (eddiemartinez@gmail. com) and let me know what you need and I will try to help.

These aren’t promises so much as they are goals and attempts at plans for the next few months. Again, if you need help with anything let me know. I need sleep.

-Eddie Martinez.

Free(dom)

In a conversation about non free file formats (Can’t use PowerPoint to do my bio presentation. Sorry…. Can I use Open Office?) with one of my lab partners, she became understandably confused. I noticed a look of dispair rising exponentially as I talked; NFF, DRM, license types etc. can be a bit much at first glace, so I let it slide. Her interruption however, was a slap in the face: “I just don’t get what it’s all about..” Is that how we look as a community to the general population? Geeks rambling on about 2 lines of text in a license or 6 lines of code in a program that we hardly think twice about, until it crashes?

Obviously this is a gross exaggeration of the conversation, as we have moved past that a society in whole, and my arguement is based on an account of my life. 1) Overexaggeration, 2) Story. 2 logical fallicies in one sentence? Wow, if Red_Herring wasn’t already taken, I might consider that as a nick. Actually though, RJ posted a blog that got me thinking quite a bit. In particlar, one sentence stood out:

Well the big appeal to getting a fancy shmancy Mac is the looks and OSX.

Here, we see more of the underlying fundemental issues come into play. Most people, what they are looking for in a computer, is not a super stable, editable, free software. They are not looking for quality or angsting for a quick fix to a pesty bug. “M$ has a majority market share in the new desktop PC marketplace”, Bug #1. Well no, they dont own desktop PCs. They don’t dominate the OS market either. It’s much simpler and evil then that.