The WFTL-LUG

1. Your houseplants are alive, and you can't smoke any of them.

2. Having sex in a twin bed is out of the question.

3. You keep more food than beer in the fridge.

4. 6:00 AM is when you get up, not when you go to bed.

5. You hear your favorite song in an elevator

6. You watch the Weather Channel.

7. Your friends marry and divorce instead of 'hook up' and 'break up.'

8. You go from 130 days of vacation time to 14.

9. Jeans and a sweater no longer qualify as 'dressed up.'

And here was I thinking that 2008 would be the start of a great year.. HAH !! It looks like the Flying Spaghetti Monster is conspiring against me yet again !!

As another year draws to a close, it leads one to become somewhat introspective - well it does me anyway...:-)

This year has been, to put it bluntly, a complete bitch for me, both personally and professionally.

Another year down.

As I approach the half-decade mark without Micro.... I must raise my glass of wine to my fellow Linux users in the LUG and say, À votre santé.

May the next year see the march of the penguin into a computer near you.

Troy in New Mexico

It is December 19 and I have been looking back on
the year and I must say "that was some year, 2007
was". We saw the long awaited bankruptcy of SCOx.
But that was not a surprise, it was just a matter of time.

But there were surprises. Here is what I believe
are the surprises:

1. A large retailer would sell Linux computers
WOW!! It took almost a full year for the "WOW to start
now". The Green PC at Wal-mart sure turned a few heads.
To think that the masses would buy a computer running
Linux in a non techie environment like Wal-mart. Who knew??

From Thomas the Tank Engine, a little song . . .

Little engines,
Little engines,
Little engines can do the biggest things.
Little engines,
Little engines,
Little engines can do most anything. (Thanks Marcel-I am a parent too.)

Just wanted to share something that is amazing me.

Before I do, I need to preface it. As some of you may remember, 2 distros signed pacts with Microsoft in a short time. Those were Linspire and Xandros. Since 2004 I have been a Linspire Insider. I also had Linspire as a client writing Channel Training materials for their commercial vendors. I even aided with their involvement in Indiana's One for One Linux pilot by way of creating and executing a 3 day training session to Indiana Board of Education IT pros (Linux boot camp if you will). When they launched Freespire, I drafted the base document that became the Community Board Bylaws and was elected as the Vice Chair of the community board. Those were good times. We believed in something.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a link to the first episode of a BBC two-part series called, "The Codebreakers", whose focus is FOSS, or Free and Open Source Software. Some fascinating stuff here and well worth watching. You can view the second part below.

Want to get sued by Microsoft? Then read on. At the end of this post, you'll have your opportunity. By now, you've no doubt heard the story that Microsoft claims that Linux and FOSS violates at least 235 of their patents. Once again, Microsoft innnovates through intimidation and litigation. Does anyone really think they'll come clean as to which patents Linux supposedly violates? To quote Ballmer, "What's fair is fair." Well, fair comes with a price, even for the mega-rich like Mr. Ballmer. If he honestly means what he says, that is. In that corner wherein our wildest imagination wanders about, can we even begin to conceive that Microsoft might allow their closed source to be examined for the patents it might violate?

In May 2006, the BBC aired a documentary it called "The Codebreakers". This two-part series looked into the adoption of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) and its impact on the so-called digital divide. Some nice history and interesting interviews make this worth watching. Enjoy!

Soon, my pretties, I shall join the lush tropical landscape of Ubuntu, and leave behind the frigid wastelands of Fedora. Long have I camped in the lands of Red Hat, but after using Ubuntu and having things "just work" (like MIDI) without requiring Herculean efforts, I have opted to try Ubuntu on my main machine. Soon... very sooon... :)