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I was looking through Ubuntuforums.org this morning, laughing a bit at the disillusionment with Edgy, when I found an outstanding apt source for Enlightenment 17. SeerOfSouls provides third party packages for Ubuntu and Mandriva. I followed the instructions on the site and now have E17 running on Ubuntu. It is impressive. More on that soon. I look forward to switching to my Mandriva partition and checking out his 2007 rpms.

Click here for a link to the Ubuntu instructions.

If you haven’t checked E17 out yet, I recommend it. It really is amazing. It has a lot of shiny stuff, but reportedly will run on low end machines. Fancy eye candy without XGL/AIGLX/Beryl/Compiz etc… Elive is a live cd based on Enlightenment that allows you to easily try out E17. People seem to like it.

Side note: Thank you all for the response to last week’s article. More content is on its way very soon.

Forbes magazine is a joke. In an article nicely titled “Toppling Linux”, Forbes goes on a personal attack against Richard Stallman and a fear mongering campaign against GPLv3 and its effect on Linux. They should be embarrassed to print something like this. Richard Stallman, for the uninitiated, is the creator of Emacs—a text editor and lifelong enemy of Vi. He also created the GNU C Compiler and GNU C Debugger. He co-founded the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation (FSF). He was the lead author of the GNU General Public License (GPL), the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). In other words, a big shot in Open Source Software. Scratch that, Free Software as he prefers it to be called.

Known by the initials rms, he is respected, loved by the ladies and sometimes called a pain in the ass. I use Free Software daily, and believe most of it would not be possible without him. He is a vital figure. Every movement needs someone viewed as an extremist. It makes moderate gains possible. He asks for a full arm, maybe we get a hand. He does not deserve the treatment Forbes gave him. Quotes include: “a lesser-known programmer–infamously more obstinate and far more eccentric than Torvalds–wields a startling amount of control as this revolution’s resident enforcer” “He and a band of anarchist acolytes long have waged war on the commercial software industry” “A cantankerous and finger-wagging freewheeler, Stallman won’t comment on any of this because he was upset by a previous story written by this writer.” “in some ways he is downright bizarre. He is corpulent and slovenly, with long, scraggly hair, strands of which he has been known to pluck out and toss into a bowl of soup he is eating.” “Stallman engages in what he calls "rhinophytophilia"–"nasal sex" (also his term) with flowers” “His site also boasts a recording of him singing–a capella and badly–his own anthem to free software.” “He hasn’t hacked much new code in a decade or more.” “Stallman labors mightily to control how others think, speak and act, arguing, in Orwellian doublespeak, that his rules are necessary for people to be "free."” “Long ago Stallman was a gifted programmer.” “Most major tech vendors declined comment rather than risk tangling with Stallman’s enforcers, such as his sidekick and attorney, Columbia Law School professor Eben Moglen.” Would Forbes refer to others in this way? Would they call Steve Ballmer a bald headed, monkey dancing chair tosser? Would they call our president an inappropriate back-rub giving, hillbilly talking chimp? They think it is acceptable to trash rms and it shows they have an agenda.

They are trying to create the famous Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) about Linux. The article describes a nightmare scenario where rms and his anarchists “tear apart” the Linux revolution. It begins with the newest version of the GPL, which they see as so radical it will force Red Hat to hire employees that it can’t afford, it will “Balkanize” the community and help Microsoft. Hilariously, the writer interviews Larry McVoy, bff of Linus himself and darling of the kernel programmers. McVoy tells us that “Red Hat gets a lot of code from people that don’t work for Red Hat.” He didn’t mention that the sky is blue and up is the opposite of down. Does that mean that Slackware gets a lot of code from people who aren’t Patrick Volkerding? He also interviews Simon Lok, of Lok Technologies, who apparently got so scared of the extremists years ago that he dumped Linux out of fear. Mr. Lok diplomatically refers to “Stallman’s bunch” as “jackasses” and “fanatics”. He is also afraid they will kill him. I won’t even get into the inaccuracies of the GPLv2 vs. GPLv3. Unlike the author, I realize I don’t know enough about it to comment. The little bit I do know is that GPLv3 is in draft form right now, so it is a bit premature to go having panic attacks about it. The main people involved are passionate about it, but do not seem overly concerned that the dawn of GPLv3 will be the death of Linux. The debate also coined the obnoxious term "Tivoisation".

What really bothers me about this article is that if someone uninformed about Linux (someone like your boss or parent that you have been trying to persuade to try it out) reads this, it only reinforces their fears. Why try Linux when Forbes is saying that in the near future this crazy hair eating Stallman and his lunatic anarchists will be at your door? He strikes fear into the heart of IBM according to the article. If IBM is terrified of him, so scared they have invested billions into Linux, then why shouldn’t you be? Because the article is complete and utter bullshit, that is why.

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I am not the biggest fan of Fedora, but their latest is out. Apparently the servers are down, so here is a link to the torrents:

Fedora torrents 

I have been pretty sick for the last week, will have some updates to the site very soon.

Thanks.

I stumbled upon (literally) an interesting website/service yesterday. It has the unfortunate name Dropload.com , which has horrible connotations. In a time where we “Google” things and “aim” each other, I’m not sure someone is going to want me to tell them that I’m going to “drop a load” on them. Maybe it is just me. It also has terrible looking graphics, so bad they are almost good. They could use a visit here or even here. It is amazing how two dollars well spent can completely change the look of something. Still, the look has a charm. Do I really need graphics, the shiny table of Web 2.0 to fill in a couple of boxes and click “Drop it” (like its hot, i guess). The answer is no.

The service is simple. You register (of course). Then you simply fill in the recipient’s email address, choose the file to upload and can even type a little note. As I mentioned above, you click “Drop it” and you are done. Your friend, lover, sister, brother, enemy, whomever will almost immediately get an email with a link to the file’s location and a nice little message. The message states that you have seven days to get this, you can only get it once so don’t just play it, etc… It even warns you that if you don’t know the sender, ignore it. The file will be erased in seven days. The service also provides the option to get a notice when the file is retrieved, and offers a virus scanner. All for free. I seem to remember reading there was a 100mb file size limit, but I cannot confirm that anywhere. There is no limit listed on the site.

So who can benefit from this? The answer is obvious. Legal file traders. Have some great new mp3’s released under Creative Commons Licensing? Send away. Want to send your parents the pictures of that rusty trombone you got downtown for cheap? The slow motion footage of the cowgirls in reverse you downloaded off Kazaa years ago? Go ahead and drop that load. I could go all night giving you examples of how to use this, but I am preaching to the internet savvy, I don’t have to tell you how to take advantage of this tool. You all know how to trade non-infringing material.

The downsides? No privacy policy at all to tell you how email addresses will be used. There isn’t anything stating anything, really. Are there filed server logs of the materials? Your guess is as good as mine. That said, it is a helpful and convenient service that is cost free. Unless your inbox starts filling up with spam. Still, there are ways to dodge that.

Overall, how can I not recommend this? Email is a terrible delivery tool for large files. There are other solutions but those tend to be cumbersome. This little website follows the Unix philosophy of doing one thing and doing it well.

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