Published by Robert Pogson May 28th, 2012
in Teaching and technology.
I have lived and worked off the beaten track. I know how casual people can be about legally copying or using software. China is reputed to be one of the most disrespectful countries for copyright. Recent numbers by the BSA and China show a decrease in illegal copying but there is a huge discrepancy in the magnitude. The BSA’s numbers are a bit “round” which suggests they may be pulled from thin air. If we correlate use of IE6 (23.8% in China) with illegal copying, China’s official numbers seem more reasonable.
If illegal copying is that low (38%) in China and M$’s revenue is as low (only 10% of usage paid) as Ballmer said, then use of GNU/Linux must be very high…
see China claims piracy at new low • The Register.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 28th, 2012
in technology.
I have long touted the four freedoms of Free Software as the best way to do IT and being good for the economy, enabling everyone to participate. Eben Moglen, guru of Software Freedom Law Center, gave a speech along the same lines but much more eloquently, tying together Software Freedom, political freedom, the economy and innovation. His thesis is that stifling access to code and hardware through various means of lock-down/in stifles innovation. I have seen that up close and personally in schools where a school that could do little more than browse and write/print documents became empowered to actually put the LAN to work connecting all the PCs in the school into one big super-computer for creating, storing, modifying and presenting information. The difference, with the same level of expenditure is mind-boggling. Visitors to schools I have set up this way are amazed at what PCs running Free Software can do.
Check out a snippet
“All of that innovation comes from the simple process of letting the kids play and getting out of the way. Which, as you are aware, we are working as hard as we can to prevent, now, completely. Increasingly, around the world, the actual computing artifacts of daily life for individual human beings are being locked so you can’t hack them. The individual computing laboratory in every 12-year-old’s pocket is being locked down. If you prevent people from hacking on what they own themselves, you will destroy the engine of innovation from which everybody is profiting. The goal of the network operators is to attach every young human being to a proprietary network platform with closed terminal equipment that she can’t learn from, can’t study, can’t understand, can’t whet her teeth on, can’t do anything with except send text messages that cost a million times more than they ought to.” or, better yet, experience the presentation for yourself: Innovation Under Austerity: Eben Moglen's call to arms from the Freedom to Connect conference – Boing Boing.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 28th, 2012
in technology.
Debian is working towards freezing the packages to be included in Wheezy (7.0) in June. I have been using Wheezy for months and find it quite usable although the installer did not work for me a couple of times. With the freeze, the pile of release-critical bugs should become a stationary target…
see Bits from the Release Team: Freeze approaching!.
I recommend Debian GNU/Linux for all IT. It’s a great idea to have people upstream organize a huge set of installable packages and make it work for you. With the APT package-management and other tools any kind of system of any size can be set up and managed quickly.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 28th, 2012
in hunting.
Winter is the chief killer of deer here. A normal winter kills a fair number of deer and particularly the youngsters who have not bulked up and cannot forage/browse in the deep snow. The past winter was very mild, both in temperature and depth of snow. I saw proof of that just now as a doe with three fawns trotted across the neighbour’s yard heading to the bush. Normally, a doe will have one fawn, with two in a good year and three in a fantastic year. I expect deer quotas for hunters will be increased as most of southern Manitoba had a very mild winter.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 28th, 2012
in technology.
Some people think the Android/Linux phenomenon on ARMed CPUs is all about mobility. Mobility is a good fit. Availability of apps is great. The real story, the one we will tell our grandchildren about is ARM taking over on desktop and server. While touch is advantageous for small gadgets and ARM is great for battery-powered equipment, both of these are useful on systems with monitor, keyboard and mouse (or other pointer) and network/storage servers. Because Linux is unerneath, nothing prevents monitors, keyboard and mice from being added to ARM systems except connectors. “Desktop” units are large enough to hold connectors. The ARM CPUs of today are sufficiently powerful for many tasks done by desktop-users and servers.
The huge advantage of ARM for all purposes: small size, low price and low power-consumption apply not just to mobile uses but desktop and server as well. All over the world data-centres have filled their rooms or maxed-out power/cooling supplies. ARM is poised to replace the x86/amd64 fire-breathing sirens. ARM is poised to replace big PC boxes with tiny ones, or be placed inside the monitor, keyboard or mouse. We have already seen a few smartphones and tablets selling with connectors to the real world and a few docking systems for smartphones and tablets are promising. Standardizing any of these and flooding retail shelves with them is all it will take to give Wintel real competition on retail shelves for desktops.
For years ARM itself touted ARM as embedded in gadgets or in mobile devices. Now ARM has realized there is no reason to avoid the desktop and CPUs optimized for desktops will soon be available with the ability to work with more RAM and faster I/O. Even game developers are getting into ARM. Now that M$ and its supply-chain-partners have committed to shipping a desktop OS on ARM, the hardware will be there for the desktop and */Linux will be available to run on those units built but not shipping that other OS because it will be crippled by M$’s policies, not limitations of ARM CPUs and SoCs.
- Robert Pogson
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