Back from vacation at Disney World and Tux Racer is all over.

So I’m back form vacation and what did I see Tux Racer at every Arcade in the Parks. That’s right an Arcade version of our favorite bird….and it sure was fun to play.

Does Trent Reznor get it? Or how to piss off the RIAA.

Well it’s been all over the place today the new Nine Inch Nails record the slip was made available by Trent Reznor, the creative force behind NIN made the post on dig himself after all. This is just the latest in high profile artiest (like radiohead) that have started to experiment in new forms of distribution for their works. Don’t forget you can still pick up free tracks from Trent’s work ghost as well. So is this guy out to change music distribution single handed, or has he just made all the money he needs and feels like thumbing his nose at the establishment. I mean come on this is NIN we’re talking about.

I’m not really sure where all this is going, I do know however that times are a changing and I’m sure not the first person to say this, but licensing like creative commons covers everything from books to movies and even graphic art. People still need to make money but they are doing it in new and creative ways. How we get paid for the products we produce will change. Will everything we own be covered in ads, will you get services along with your product, free music with that concert ticket that happens to be encoded holographic memory. Who knows. I’d say 90% of the software I use is open source, I pay for my use of open source software by promoting it with the zeal of an evangelist on the pulpit (and when I can a donation or two). I can see fans of NIN having more money to spend on tickets for that concert tour that was announced just a day before the release of the free record today, what can I say Trent sure knows how to market and piss off the RIAA.

Trent just encase you ever read this I like 1,000,000 and Discipline… Oh and thanks for the free music you rock.

The Rocketers find Open Source Rocket Software

Behold the proud rocketers of New Mexico.

Here we prepare the launchpad, please note tangled wires.

No skimping on safety as Senior launch coordinator is as far as he can get from launchpad.

A perfect launch if you squint you can see the second stage separate

Top of the line 10 year old recovery vehicle

Had a great time spending the afternoon launching rockets, so we decided if we could find some open source software to help us reach for the stars, and we did.

Lawndart is an open source model rocket simulator for Linux.

Go get a rocket and go have some fun.

What can you do with open source software?

So here I am setting at my computer working, playing, and creating. I’m updating a web site using a great tool for the job Kompozer after I’m done with the updates I need to ftp the changes up to my web host using another fantastic tool FileZilla. Enjoying music all the while as I work, I use XMMS for that. I need to change some graphics time to fire up gimp. Just got though reeding an email, thunderbird is perfect for that. Plus I’m writing this on wordpress. I run all of this on Ubuntu. So tell me why in the world would I do it any other way? This marks my first full year off of Windows and I could not be happier. Oh and when I’m done working it’s time to fire up Beyond the red line the fourth mission is still kicking my butt

Murphy’s Law

Today at this very moment I should be in a car driving the 4 hours it takes to get to Las Cruces, New Mexico to speak at the Southern New Mexico Technology Symposium, as you can see I’m blogging and not driving. Why you may ask? Well I had plan to take my own car and head on down the road. Then it was suggested that since I was going to be representing my employer “The State of New Mexico” I should take one of the cars that are available to us, made sense to me. Now my commute to work is about 40 minuets, on a good day, and like most in this part of the country we have two cars. One nice car ,that I have no problem leaving town in and a 12 year old car, that I barely trust getting to work in.

So I reserved the car according to procedure 3 days ago, made sure I had all the paper work up to date and even picked up the keys the day before as I was picking the car up around 4:00am, oh but not the 1st set of keys the spare set. Someone had the car checked out but I was assured that it would be waiting for me in the morning…. Well, guess what no car and I’m in the old clunker and it would be 40 minute drive back home to get the good car by the time I got to Las Cruces the symposium would just about be over.

I’m really bummed, I gave my word to the organizers of the symposium and I had to spend time this morning apologizing my ass off, this was no bridge I wanted to burn. Public speaking about open source and Linux is really something I believe in, this is not going to be a good day.

Lesson learned, just stick to your gut and never trust the man, should have took my car like I planned in the first place.

Run your company with free software.

My wife’s been in to photography most of her life (even won honorable mention in this years New Mexico Magazine) and this year she took the plunge and started her own business. It’s really been an eye opener for us and we’re still learning as we go. One of the nice things is how much open source software has saved us money. Being such a small business the profit margins are slim to none. We have utilized everything from imaging and storage software to accounting and database software and all open source. On the blog (see the sidebar) you might have notice I put up a few background images in various sizes for you to download and enjoy and even played around with using creative commons. Which is just one more tool that helps your business by licensing your software the way you want, while saving you the hassle and cost of dealing with it all.

Now, the one thing that gets me is a side project my wife started called Brilliant Bloomers (the fun of manipulating images with Gimp). She is using ebay and man I can’t stand ebay. She’s made sales but at what cost? Ebay is one fee hungry organization. If anyone has any suggestions on an ebay type of service without ebay fees I sure would listen to what you have to say.

Bottom line open source made it all possible and I can’t think the developers enough that have created such top notch products.

I freeking love open source software

Today a colleague of mine asked me if I had a floppy drive on my computer, asking her why I found out she had a old software package she said she has had forever (by the looks of it she was telling the truth) and wanted to install it on her new laptop. The trouble was it was on floppy and came with floppy copyright protection. The software in question was a screenwriter’s application. Not wanting to fight with getting a USB floppy drive I suggested we search for an open source alternative. Now I know nothing about screenwriter’s software and I was amazed by what I found.

Celtx is the world’s first fully integrated solution for media pre-production and collaboration. It replaces old fashioned ‘paper, pen & binder’ media creation with a digital approach to writing and organizing that’s more complete, simpler to work with, and easier to share.

I’m telling ya really nice stuff my colleague said this software blew her old software out of the water.  Oh and it’s for windows, MAC, and Linux go download here. If you win an Oscar be sure and let them know I turned you on to the software.

Open source software I’ve not found nothing it can’t do.

Nice work folks.

Southern New Mexico Technology Symposium

I will  be speaking at the Southern New Mexico Technology Symposium on April 17, 2008 in Las Cruces, New Mexico at the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum. Sponsors include; The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and New Mexico State University, through the office of Dr. Burton, Dept. Head of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. My presentation will cover using open source software in an enterprise environment. The cool part is proceeds from the Symposium, including Booth Space revenue, go towards scholarships for graduating High School Students interested in entering a Science or Engineering discipline.

Red Hat asked the court to limit patents.

I tip my hat to Red Hat.

In a move I wish all Open Source organizations would consider, Today, Red Hat took a public stand challenging the standards for patenting software. In the Biliski case that is now before the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, this patent issue is ripe for consideration.

Software patents might make tons of money for the big boys, but it squashes all innovation. Good move Red Hat.

OOXML wins the ISO standard but we all lose.

So Microsoft steamrolled it’s way into getting the ISO’s stamp of approval, and no one among us thinks how they got it is a mystery.  The most profound statement I’ve heard yet on the fiasco comes from Mark Shuttleworth who said after being asked “Will Ubuntu implement IS DIS 29500 now that it is a standard?”  “If we get close to implementing it, Microsoft would move the goal post, Microsoft doesn’t think it’s bound by the standard.”  Exactly! Mr. Shuttleworth I’ve been trying to make that point for months. It’s not that Microsoft should not strive to create a document standard after all they are the worlds largest software manufacture, in fact they should (the right thing to do). The problem is they want to make it where no one can even implement the standard but them (the wrong thing to do). Monopolies  are against the law for a reason, even in a free market economy. Microsoft should be ashamed of themselves they lied, cheated, and stole to get the standard and we all know it. The question is what are you going to do about. Read of all Mark Shuttleworth’s interview here.