Sinabro

I think I finally crossed an important threshold.

I can now finally firmly say “No” to people who ask for help with some proprietary software, such as Matlab, Mathematica, or any of the Adobe products.

I can now feign complete lack of knowledge of these products (which is at least half-true—it’s been so long since I’ve used any of those, that I’d have to do some research to “remember” it) and instead offer a free alternative (GNU Octave, Python + Numpy + Scipy, Maxima, Scribus, … ).

I can now prevent myself from empathizing with those who put themselves through hell trying to use a proprietary application. After all, when there are perfectly functional free alternatives around (with which I am more than willing to help), if they would still suffer through a proprietary application, now I can honestly tell myself that it’s their own fault.

I can only hope this isn’t just a phase.

QuestionCopyright.org:

There is one group of people not shocked by the record industry’s policy of suing randomly chosen file sharers: historians of copyright. They already know what everyone else is slowly finding out: that copyright was never about paying artists for their work, and that far from being designed to support creators, copyright was designed by and for distributors — that is, publishers, which today includes record companies….

To read the full article whose first few sentences are quoted above, click here. Otherwise, I encourage you to look around the site, and give this question a serious thought: “In today’s society, do we still need (if we ever did!) copyright?”

Aww… crap.

One of my routine upgrades (the usual aptitude update && aptitude safe-upgrade) upgraded my browser into Iceweasel (a.k.a. Firefox) 3.0.

I’ve heard a lot of horror stories about this new version, but I guess it’s time I made up my own opinions.