Sinabro

I am never buying their product (as a researcher, of course—they are way too overpriced for a private citizen) ever again. Their piece-of-shit software does not work on the operating system of my choice, GNU/Linux.

Anyways. Thank God for free software, and the “linux-gpib” project. I finally got it working with their driver, and compared to THREE reboots that NI’s piece-of-crap software recommended, I got their kernel module working without a single reboot, as it should be.

Something from the talk page on GNU/Linux naming controversy:

...Second, since the FSF owns the copyright on most of the GNU code, it
could freely change the license tomorrow to require any operating system
distributed with GNU code to be called "GNU/something".

That’s an interesting possibility to consider. Of course, the probability of that happening is almost as small as Windows ever being released under GPL 3, but if we suppose it happened, will the free software community fork all GNU projects?

That did happen with X and the fork of Xorg, but this is GNU (and, in connection, FSF) we are talking about here, not X consortium. It would be almost like comparing possibility of a coup in the U.S. against the possibility of a coup in Serbia.

I feel slightly safer.

I just changed my Google Account password (along with another important account). This is the password that I used to treat as “secure” for quite a while, and well, it might have been. At least I know for sure that it has never been transmitted in cleartext (I only type that into Google Accounts and trusted resellers, who all use SSL for such connections), but frankly, it has been “shared” with too many entities. I have been assuming that they all encrypt user passwords and take good care of them … but what if they haven’t?

So, I changed my important passwords. I will continue to change my passwords until none of them are identical.

Of course, I have no hope of remembering so many passwords by myself … but I will manage.

From a mailing list I am on (redacted for obivous reasons):

Regrettably I don't know enough about BSD internals to look for the solution
in the previous OS X where it is running OK. What I will do is un-install
Xxxxxxx, download a new distribution, and install it again. If that doesn't
effect a cure, I will have no idea what to do.

Ugh. That’s what we get when the shameless propaganda such as “Mac OS X == BSD” is allowed to spread. Yes, Mac OS X is “based on BSD”, in the sense that it uses tho same Mach kernel, but a lot of things are different, even under the hood.

Here’s the most obvious one: where’s the home directory under Mac OS X? /home? Unless Tiger or Leopard changed this, it’s under /Users or some non POSIX b.s.

People should know that “knowing BSD” != “knowing Mac OS X”, and vice versa.

I took a long and hard look at my music collection. I nuked my old collection (some songs in there lasted for 5 years since my first acquaintance with Napster) about a month or two ago. I then started a new collection with music that I could get gratis legally. Like the Radiohead’s new album. Weird Al Yankovic’s “Don’t Download This Song”. And so on.

But … now that I look at my growing collection (Thanks, opsound), I realize these vestiges of my old self is weighing me down. These music might have been obtained at no cost. But they are not free. We are not free to redistribute them as we wish. We are not free to make derivative works out of it. These works are not free.

I’ve always said that “talent matters not where heart is black.” I do not think these artists really stand against us—after all, it’s only this belief that let me put this non-free music in my collection. But … these artists have not yet stood with us. And therefore, I shun them.

I can now proudly say that my music collection is completely free. All the music and mixes in here are composed of CC-BY-SA works to th best of my knowledge.

Now … if I can do something about my video collection …

Testing the last bit left. If this works, then my site works in its new server as it used to in the old server.

Edit: Of course, all this testing is because I used to run my own custom scripts …

Well, I moved to a new host, and, as a result, had to tweak a few things here and there to get everything working again. This is checking whether my scripts are still working.

A request that I sent to Amazon came back with a response. While their response time was fairly quick, I am actually distressed to see that it seems to have been answered by a person—it sounded like an automated system’s answer. Well, Amazon went down a notch in my esteem of it … although, that’s probably still higher than a lot of other places. Anyways. Here’s the anonymized/redacted version of the e-mail.

Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 19:03:56 -0800 (PST)
From: "Amazon.com Customer Service"
To: "novakyu@xxxxxxxxx"
Subject: Your Amazon.com Inquiry

Thank you for writing to us at Amazon.com. 

I'm very sorry, but I was unable to determine the exact item name
from the content of your e-mail message. 

Please click the following link to write back to us with the exact
name of the item or the ASIN, so that we will able to assist you
better in this regard. 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/contact-us/general-questions.html

When we receive an email from you using the form above, we will
assist you as soon as possible.

Please be assured that all of us here are working very hard to
provide a thorough, personal reply to each of our customers as
quickly as possible.

We look forward to hearing from you, and thank you for shopping at
Amazon.com.

Please let us know if this e-mail resolved your question:

If yes, click here: 

http://www.amazon.com/rsvp-y?c=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

If not, click here: 

http://www.amazon.com/rsvp-n?c=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Please note: this e-mail was sent from an address that cannot accept
incoming e-mail. 

To contact us about an unrelated issue, please visit the Help
section of our web site.

Best regards,

XxxxxxxxxXXxx X.
Amazon.com Customer Service

http://www.amazon.com

==============================
Check your order and more: http://www.amazon.com/your-account

> Date: Wed Jan 23 03:01:03 UTC 2008
> Subject: Other Services
> From: novakyu@xxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> ---------------
> 01/22/08 19:01:03
> Your Name:Andrzej Novak
> Comments:To Whom It May Concern:
>
> I am currently in the market for a good AMD notebook to replace
> my old and failing one. As I have had pleasant experience with
> Amazon in the past, both in buying new and old books and
> electronics, I was very interested in purchasing my future notebook
> from Amazon, and indeed, I found a great selection of good AMD
> notebooks.
>
> However, I must ask: Do you offer any notebooks without Windows
> bundled? As a Debian GNU/Linux user, I have no intention of using
> Windows or paying for it in the first place. I did see two notebooks
> listed under "Unix", but it looked like one was mislabeled (it
> clearly said on the product page that Windows was bundled with it),
> and the other was somewhat ambiguous (it says it's "Unix platform",
> but these days, everything runs GNU/Linux---I would like to know for
> sure that it will not come with Windows).
>
> Given that other large retailers/manufacturer as Dell and Lenovo
> are starting to offer notebooks with GNU/Linux installed, does
> Amazon have any plans for offering notebooks with GNU/Linux, or, for
> a compromise, does not include Windows or the so-called "Microsoft
> tax" in the price?
>
> As I hope my new notebook will last me longer than my old one (it
> will have lasted 3 years by the time I replace it), I am giving a
> lot of thought to its purchase, and if you could let me know if
> Amazon might offer notebooks without Windows bundled (and on which
> models, etc.) in near future (in a few months is "near" enough for
> me), I would very much appreciate it.
>
> Thank you,
> ---------------

It’s almost ironic.

I never paid for software in my life. I will admit it now. I never bought any software I used, ever.

But then, when I started using free software, and when I started identifying with ideals of free software (well, not as a coder—I am a talentless hack), I started paying a lot more “for software” than I used to. I won’t divulge exact amounts, but let me say that I donate to FSF enough to buy a version of Windows every year (and I plan on continuing to do so as far as I can see).

And, now that I dived headlong into “free culture” (again, not as an artist, because I am a talentless hack), I suddenly want to pay for music that I never paid for (the only time I ever “paid for” music was with the iTunes gift card I got from my Discover card).

But here’s the ironic part—none of these artists who freely license their music … have any way I can contribute to them. I looked for some sort of donation links and such, but I don’t see any.

Well, what a world. People who I think do not deserve my money seem to be demanding it, ever pursuing it, and people to whom I would like to give my money … don’t seem to want it.

Sigh. I wanted to delay buying a new notebook as long as possible, given the grounds that GNU/Linux is gaining (so, in a while longer, there should be notebooks (of the caliber that I would want to buy) with GNU/Linux on it), and given that AMD is not performing particularly well just at the moment (since I am committed to buying an AMD notebook, not Intel).

But I don’t think my situation will allow for that. My notebook LCD, which have been slowly breaking (it started flicker at some point, say, when I open the lid), has broken to the point that small vibrations cause the LCD to flicker, and I am quite afraid that it might get to the point where either: 1) it won’t lit up any more; 2) the vibrations due to my typing might cause the LCD to flicker.

In that case, clearly using the notebook as the main computing device is not … advisable. (I would still love to see it as my home server and so on.)

Well, here’s my preliminary plan—as soon as my plans for the next academic year is set (I hope to remain in Berkeley), I will begin looking for the notebook replacement, for real. This will most likely mean I will gather tech news (such as, whether AMD plans on releasing a significant update, such as a quad core CPU for mobile devices) and start thinking of my whitebook configuration. Perhaps hunting for deals on replaceable parts such as memory.