GPLv3 conference coverage for Wikinews

Any BarCamp folks going to the GPLv3 launch conference at MIT on Monday? I'm planning on covering it for Wikinews, and I could use some help.

Not so fast, you jackbooted thugs

Hello wiretappers. If you are listening, could you please point out to Mr. Bush and the Justice Department that while my general intent with much of this blog is to annoy people (recently, Robert Kuttner, Alan Yates, et al.) through the internet, I am not doing so anonymously.

It seems that Mr. Bush has signed into law H.R. 3402, which has a section 113 that adds this phrase:

(C) in the case of subparagraph (C) of subsection (a)(1), includes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet (as such term is defined in section 1104 of the Internet Tax Freedom Act (47 U.S.C. 151 note)).

to US Code Title 47, Section 223. The act now criminalizes one who:

makes a telephone call or utilizes a telecommunications device, whether or not conversation or communication ensues, without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person at the called number or who receives the communications [through the internet, by language above].

Unfortunately, this is what I do when I get off work. So, you heard it here first-- yes, I am trying to annoy you, but don't worry, my identity is disclosed on the About page. No need to haul me off to the gulag just yet.

Installing Xubuntu on a G3 iMac

I work in a school where we have lots of old iMacs that are barely usable under OS 9.2. The newest browser we can get for OS 9 is Netscape 7.0, which crashes a lot (repeatably on Gmail, for example).

Xubuntu is a derivative of Ubuntu Linux designed for low-end machines. It uses the XFCE desktop. I've just finished installing Xubuntu on a 400 Mhz iMac. It went reasonably smoothly, and now that I know the few tricks listed below, doing it again should be quite easy. The steps:

1. Put the Breezy Badger for PowerPC install disk in the CD drive.

2. Reboot.

3. At the first prompt, type "server" and hit return. This will install everything in normal Ubuntu install except the GNOME desktop.

4. Install the Xubuntu desktop and the GNU display manager using apt-get:

sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop gdm

1. To get the graphical interface working, I had to tweak /etc/X11/xorg.conf a little. The first change was to alter the HorizSync and VertRefresh settings. I also switched from the fbdev driver to the ati driver. The snippet below shows the original settings commented out and the new settings added. (Link to full xorg.conf.)

   Section "Device" Identifier "Generic Video Card"

   Driver "fbdev"

   Driver "ati" Option "UseFBDev" "true" EndSectionSection "Monitor" Identifier "Generic Monitor" Option "DPMS"

   HorizSync 28-51

   VertRefresh 43-60

   HorizSync 60-60 VertRefresh 43-117 EndSection

2. The last tweak was to add a printer to CUPS manually. To enable the web administration for CUPS, I added a root password:

   sudo -s

passwd

In /etc/cups/cupsd.conf, I changed RunAsUser to No, so that CUPS would run as root, and not switch to run as the user cupsys, as I believe this is what disables the web interface:

RunAsUser No Then restart CUPS: /etc/init.d/cupsys restart Here is what ended up in /etc/cups/printers.conf: (Yes, I live in a farmhouse, and I work on Sunday nights)

Printer configuration file for CUPS v1.1.23

Written by cupsd on Sun 08 Jan 2006 07:34:40 PM EST

Info Farmhouse DeviceURI socket://192.168.1.131 State Idle Accepting Yes JobSheets none none QuotaPeriod 0 PageLimit 0 KLimit 0

Overall, Xubuntu is working really well-- much better than OS 9.2. It's only got 64 MB of RAM, but Firefox runs surprisingly well. I plan on maxing out the memory when I get the chance.

The Xubuntu people have been planning on releasing a CD version of Xubuntu coincident with the release of the Dapper Drake in April. I found the XFCE file manager, xffm, to be a little squirrely, and I couldn't get it to connect to our file server through Samba; maybe that will work in the next release, or maybe I will have figured out how to configure Samba. The Dapper release of Xubuntu will likely be based on XFCE 4.4, which will allegedly include the first release of Thunar, XFCE's new file manager.

Hmm. If Thunar is good, I might switch to Xubuntu entirely. So far, XFCE seems like a fast version of GNOME to me, and I spend most of my time in Firefox and a terminal window anyway.

A few corrections to Mr. Goelzer

I am hesitant to go head-to-head with an A-lister like Goelzer, but while I appreciate his recent post complimenting my blog, it had a few inaccuracies.

I wouldn't say that Peter Quinn, the CIO (not CTO) of Massachusetts was forced to resign. He was harassed so much that he felt compelled to resign, but the decision was made to preserve the emotional well-being of him and his family. "Compelled" seems to me like a better description than "forced."

Also, I don't think Quinn's support for ODF is "surprisingly controversial." Rather, I would say that it is less controversial than I expected. We live in a world where Microsoft's "PlaysForSure" certification is not lampooning Microsoft, but actually promotes music that works with their players. Myself, I don't think marking music as playable should be a distinguishing feature.

In other realms, the value of standards is well understood. In mechanical engineering, for example, advertising a bolt as "Actually threads into our nuts" would be seen as ridiculous-- a 1/4-20 bolt should fit into any 1/4-20 nut, regardless of who manufactures it.

An elementary school that advertised that it taught a special made-up language that allows its students to communicate with the rest of its graduates ("Talk to all six of your classmates in real-time!") would find itself short on students.

I'm baffled as to why someone like Microsoft's Alan Yates doesn't get laughed off the stage when he suggests that a choice of standards is a good idea, but he doesn't. The view that Microsoft is a benevolent overlord that protects our computers from nasty h4x0rs and helps us manage our private information safely is repeatably predictable, so the ODF controversy is not surprising.