First Birthday!

Sometime today (in the afternoon to be exact, but i'm getting an early start this year) my blog turns one year old!
The bad news, is now its time for me to take this post to do a cheesy flashback re-run of the last year worth posts (am I allowed to do this even after only 5 posts about next to nothing).

Well, I started this morning by updating all of my 5 posts mostly with spelling and grammatical errors fixed, and adding some info to several posts.
Even my original post had never been properly proofread and had many errors this last whole year it was up. After a revision or two it almost reads like English now!

1. My first post is a rant that gives little insight into the real me (wasn't that the point) despite being a claim to try to get in touch with the reader. Okay it did hit on several key points in my life and also give a somewhat general overview. Let me start over, please! This year I plan to take this a little more (or less) seriously and start really reaching out to a new audience (in other words someone besides myself). General overview for those scared to read the whole thing, it covers most of the computer models I've used and when I started using what internet service (sorta). Boring stuff, really.
2. My second post was supposed to thank Blogger in some way for giving me this space to share with the world and make it so easy to use, and so standards complaint, and so wonderfully free of charge without any ads anywhere to speak of (im so good at compliments)! I was trying to make some point about how freedom of speech and some of my favorite radio stations play into all this and ended up with a short post brought to a dead halt with little upkeep.
3. The third post was my excuse to not write much of anything that month. Google and other service providers had started doing business in china. I also made a comment about how a a friend and I were in the midst of a failing business. I felt from early on in between the other person we had to leave behind, and my lack of technical experience, we were going to have even more problems down the road. Unfortunately, back then felt I was just along for an interesting ride as long as I could.
4. My fourth post is proof I could not stay away from tech based chatter for long, even after a couple months without a post. Ubuntu was the new kid on the block and I always love to try things out. This one kinda stuck. Best distro I touched since Debian to date. Cant say it beats it outright, in fact I prefer Debian for many things in many ways for many reasons however, Ubuntu is even easier to use with many things geared towards a desktop which is a big pro for me as my primary personal computer has used GNU/Linux systems since 2003. Also I mentioned something about testing Mozilla software.
5. After practically forgetting I had a blog, my last update of the year came when I read some articles about the Firefox logos, Debian, the GNUzilla project. I quickly posted my comments about IceWeasel.

So far this month my mother and I have been discussing building her a Windows Vista Media Center Type PC. Hopefully I can boot some GNU/Linux stuff on one of her Partitions. We will see once the time comes. Vista is finally on its way more than 5 years after the last version. Is everyone going to rush out and buy it? Im not even trying to push Vista, but she wants windows, so we will see what she gets by the end of the month...

IceWeasel

With many articles published recently about IceWeasel, I wanted to add my own opinion.
There seems to have been some controversy over the Mozilla proprietary artwork and the decision by the Debian and GNU projects to fork the popular Firefox browser. Many other online blogs are talking about IceWeasel and saying some many interesting things (this probably wont be one of them).
Most of the blogs seem to be stating reasons of stopping the GNUzilla project.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but to be honest, I really wish some of these bloggers would spend 10 minutes checking a few simple facts before they post.
My title is a link to Wikipedia's article on IceWeasel where I feel everyone can get a few of these facts:

"The name IceWeasel was coined to refer to Mozilla Firefox during a debate within the Debian Project in 2004 and 2005. Mozilla enforces trademarks vigorously and claims the right to deny the use of the name "Firefox" to unofficial builds. Distributions that do not have this permission must compile the Firefox source with an option enabled that gives Firefox a generic name and does not use the official logo or other artwork. Debian was given permission to use the trademarks, and adopted the Firefox name. However, because the artwork in Firefox has a proprietary license which is not compatible with the Debian Free Software Guidelines, the logo remained generic...
In September 2006, Mozilla backed out of their trademark agreement with the Debian Project, telling them that it must use both the name and logo together, or use neither. The "IceWeasel" name was revived in the Debian community as a possible name to give the Debian version of Firefox, and became widespread in referring to Debian's packages. The Gnuzilla project adopted the name for a Firefox distribution using free artwork, which Debian began supporting."

Now first off, I would like to share my opinion that Mozilla has every right to trademark their logo and name. Furthermore, I could argue this is something they definitely should do. When I use Firefox, it is nice to know that the code was checked by Mozilla security experts to ensure its stability and usefulness, and has not been tampered with by another party.
On the other hand, Debian has an obligation to use completely free software and make Mozilla software as stable on their distribution as possible. The security programmers at the Debian and GNU projects are also excellent at what they do.
The real questions here are more simple than people want to make them:

1. Should anyone be allowed to create a fork of Firefox?
2. Should a fork be allowed if it only changes the name and logo?

At least one of these questions is a good one. The first question however, I hope most people can agree that anyone can and should be allowed to make a fork of even the most popular of open source software. What is the point of having access to the source code if anyone outside of Mozilla is publicly ridiculed for using it?
Thats right, I hope you can see being open source is what made Mozilla possible in the first place. Did anyone forget Firefox is a fork of the Mozilla Suite? Did you not remember that Mozilla Suite code was carried over from Netscape Navigator. Well its true, Firefox is a fork of other open source code.
Mozilla also did many things to ensure the reuse of this code, allowing forks.
I can also point out IceWeasel is by far not the first fork of Firefox. Many web browsers use the easily embeddable Gecko rendering engine besides Firefox, and several of these browsers are direct forks of Firefox using primarily Firefox code. Several Firefox forks include Camino, SeaMonkey, Flock, and even Netscape.
Now, to try and tackle the harder second question. I must agree here is possibly a great open source debacle. Mozilla is only defending their right to have copyrighted logo and trademarked name (as they should). The reason that other free software projects are afraid to use the logo (and name) is a legal issue, agreed?
I remember a time when I first heard about Firefox and it was not called that at all. It seems Mozilla had named the new browser project 'Phoenix' and they were changing the name to 'Firebird' because of legal trademark issues. Then they had to change the name again from 'Firebird' to Firefox as it is known today, again they changed the name and logo because of a simple trademark dispute. So prehaps changing the name and logo is something you might have to do just to keep an open idea alive? In the case of Firefox itself, the answer is yes!
To take this a step further, several blogs point out how it is really only changing the name and logo and hence should not be considered a fork.
Wikipedia, again, begs to differ:

"Iceweasel is a full fork of Firefox, rather than a renamed package, allowing free software distributions a single point upstream for development, but intends to remain synchronized to the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox releases... Improvements to Firefox will be adopted by IceWeasel, in addition to IceWeasel's own development."

The homepage of GNUzilla & IceWeasel states what these changes are:

Some sites refer to zero-size images on other hosts to keep track of cookies. When IceWeasel detects this mechanism it blocks cookies from the site hosting the zero-length image file. (It is possible to re-enable such a site by removing it from the blocked hosts list.)

Other sites rewrite the host name in links redirecting the user to another site, mainly to "spy" on clicks. When this behavior is detected, IceWeasel shows a message alerting the user.

Even these one or two changes are enough to give IceWeasel the title of a true fork. Other changes are likely in future versions.
My last point is to address bloggers who feel IceWeasel will hurt Firefox market share and help Internet Explorer. This makes little sense to me.
I would have to believe that IceWeasel will be more popular than other Firefox forks such as Flock or Netscape. It could also be argued that other browsers like K-meleon and Opera also hurt Firefox market share. However, I am not clear on how IceWeasel is going to effect Internet Explorer in any way as IE is only on the Microsoft Windows platform and IceWeasel is only available on GNU/Linux systems. I cannot see someone dumping Microsoft Windows for Debian GNU/Linux simply because they want to try IceWeasel.
For people who still feel Firefox is little more than a project designed to beat down IE market share, let me say I have personally always used more than one web browser. I was using several web browsers in Winodws (including Mozilla) before I ever used Linux. Today, if anything, I use even more web browsers in both Linux and Windows. Most computers I use have at least 6 browsers installed as there are features and advantages I like in each. I do plan to use IceWeasel more in the future, but not because of market share or at the cost of using Firefox less, as I plan to continue using a stable Firefox product as well. I currently also have 3 Mozilla nightly builds (Bon Echo, Minefield, and SeaMonkey) on my Ubuntu box and plan to keep testing other nightly builds as they become available. IceWeasel does not change my browsing habbits.
IceWeasel is here to stay, so I hope the open-source community can let this one slide.
As Chris K realistically commented on one blog:

"...Both sides (Mozilla and Debian) seemingly had no choices concerning recent events. Debian’s guidelines insist that packages have the ability to be modified, including icons. From the Mozilla side, trademark law does not allow making exceptions.
IceWeasel actually has some history as an alternative name for Firefox, so it seems to be a logical choice.
I, for one, look forward to using IceWeasel, especially since the alternative would have forced Debian to submit any code changes to Firefox whatsoever to the Mozilla foundation and wait for approval — including security updates.
I think the Debian organization made the only sane choice they possibly could. Frankly I don’t think either organization is thrilled with having this all happen. Chock this one up to Greek Tradgedy."

Well said, Chris, I couldnt agree much more.
I hope I stuck to the facts and did not let my opinions (or alternative browsers) get in the way of the truth.

Ubuntu is based on Debian!

Well it was another day, just like any other (or was it)...?
Heres an update, I have been using GNU/Linux for almost 2 and a half years now and im finally getting a little used to the Desktop Environments and the command line interface. I just recently switched recently from Debian to Ubuntu to give it a try. It sounds more promising than the Fedora core 4 I tried awhile back (on my Compaq Presario in between win 2K and win XP), as Ubuntu is based off my beloved Debian.
Much public interest (including a few friends of mine) have convinced me to switch my main SOYO computer to Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger). I'm also working on a dual-boot of windows XP and Debian on the Presario currently. Besides the easy curve of not having a root user account anymore (everything in Ubuntu is sudo commands) most things seem very much like Debian with a few welcome tweaks, twists, and new artwork. I have already also installed Kubuntu and Xubuntu Desktops and reset the few settings that had apparently been set to default when the settings files not in my /home/ folder were formatted in the root partition in the switch. My fault, but not a big deal to me whatsoever.
I also have been alpha and beta testing Mozilla software like Firefox, SeaMonkey, and Sunbird in both Linux and Windows. I'm trying to get a better understanding of how bugs are detected in software (smoke tests of nightly builds in this case) and learn how software is developed in general.

Been Sick

I'm just now over being sick. Ended up taking a hiatus from my blog as getting sick threw off my schedule somewhat. After not making up for lost time, I finally decided to catch up my post and make at least something of it.
So far this year I started a computer repair business venture with a friend. Things could be going much better, we already had to leave one of the employees behind (not that he was our best tech anyways) and relocate the business several times to the point where it barely has a base anymore. Despite that, we are still making a little progress in a few areas. More on that later....
Microsoft, Yahoo and Google are now working with china in many areas as China moves quickly into the internet era. China already has the second most internet users in the world. I guess when china said that search companies could offer censored search results, or not do business with china at all, it makes sense that they would all comply and try to compete with each other in a new market. It is not beyond any of these companies to conform to governments (even communist) wishes without thinking how this effects Chinese citizens or even the average American opinion. MSN and Yahoo already turned in Chinese people to the government and disabled their blogs for having the wrong opinion or something like that.
Google seems to be a little better, trying to push as much in as little time as any of the 3 major search companies. They are the only of the 3 to let users know when they are being censored compared to no search results being found. Google has also moved the servers from the mainland back into the U.S. mostly to restrict the government of China from spying on its citizens.
Enough of that, this blog thing is harder when you try.

• Non-Recent Update: the business hit harder times when our client stopped sending us work orders, mostly over issues with some lying customers, and the mentioned employee we had to fire.
  

More Blog

Days have gone by and writing even the first post on my Blog took much longer to complete then I originally hoped, crushing any dreams I might have once had about making daily blog entry's. Let me just quit my job and then I should have plenty more time. Whatever.
Seriously, however, I never really explained why I started this blog anyway or why its here (or did I?'). I would like to start this post with a quote from Blogger.com about what a blog means (at least to them):

"A blog is a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world. Your blog is whatever you want it to be. There are millions of them, in all shapes and sizes, and there are no real rules.
In simple terms, a blog is a web site, where you write stuff on an ongoing basis. New stuff shows up at the top, so your visitors can read what's new. Then they comment on it or link to it or email you. Or not.
Since Blogger was launched, almost five years ago, blogs have reshaped the web, impacted politics, shaken up journalism, and enabled millions of people to have a voice and connect with others. And we're pretty sure the whole deal is just getting started."

First off, let me say the open philosophy they present as the whole reason for giving away webspace just totally rubs me the right way, but I think they also touched on a few key points.
Freedom should be about the freedom of speech, religion, journalism, even the writing of open source software if one should choose and (of course) freedom from those things if one so chooses.
Weblogs are another small but critical form of speech and press. Open journalism and independent media are quite important to me as I personally listen to Pacifica's KPFT here in Houston. They are one of 5 stations that make up the Pacifica Network.
Commercial Free, Public Sponsored, or at least College radio stations tent to be my favorites.

First Post Ever (happy blogday)

Dear World (Web),
Welcome to the first post on my very first attempt at a blog!
Another new year is upon us, and that means its time for me to try things that I was reserved to do last year (I am a professional procrastinator). One of the things topping my list was to start a weblog. I had a few reasons for starting a blog, I might even have a reason for waiting this long.
First, however I would like to take this post to introduce myself for readers who may not know me, or friends who might be bored and never knew my history with the internet....
I was born in the early 80's and have currently lived my whole life in or around the in Houston Texas Metropolitan area, mostly on the south-east Galveston side.
My main interests revolve around the politics of technology & science when related and compared with spirituality & humanity. Er, Sorta.
I have grown up with a sense of justice and pity. I am pro-life, yet I must admit choice comes first. I am sarcastic yet serious. I am humble. I try my best to respect all life, and many things considered not. I hope and pray for truth, choice, knowledge, and freedom (speech, press, information, health, shelter, food, water and anything else I missed) everywhere for anything. Stop the Hate. Stop the War. God Bless the World (Web). No Exceptions! Anyways, enough of that.
My life has seen (and basically revolved around) the rise of the digital age. One of the main reasons 'digital' is now a household name is the rise of certain microprocessors (namely x86) and personal computers (PC's) over the last 25 years or so.
In the early 80's, the first computer I got to play with was the Commodore 64 my father bought for the family. Simple commands would RUN programs on 5.25in. floppies and there was even a modem and printer attached. Did I mention the computer was mostly built into a heavy keyboard? Not bad for the time (it preceded the Apple II) however, it pails in comparison to the Open Standards, Software choices and Performance advantages of more modern less console-like computers. Not to mention it was anything but graphical (16 colors). It did 8-bit processing pretty fast on a processor with approximately a 1MHz clock cycle and had a whopping 64KB of RAM. Modern computers in comparison currently work with 64 bit processors running around 3000MHz with about 1,000,000KB of RAM. My point, it was the first computer I played with and it was a first step in the 'Personal Computer' age soon to follow.
Growing up I forgot about computers for many years until middle school. I had a friend, and his dad built computers as a home buisness. My friend loved MS-DOS and was starting to use MS-Windows (3.1?) on computers he would help his dad build. He had his own computer we could play with. So I was back around a command line, and I would watch him type some commands to run a game or install and remove software. I had not played with DOS yet, I guess I was waiting for my own computer at this point yet, even then, I noticed the technology was moving quite fast.
Instead, I began reading books and reading up on the subject to try to persuade my mom into buying me one. I played with computers at friends houses and even at the local library and public school. Around five years of reading and begging went by before my mom and I started shopping for a computer. By this time I had already learned enough by reading (and playing with the computers at the library & friends houses) that I knew even more about computer hardware at this point than most of my friends who already had their own computers.
My mother and I drove out to a Compaq wholesale warehouse on the north side of Houston to try and buy a late model refurbished computer. We even had one picked out but when we found out how much they were the selling the refurbished 17" CRT monitors for (I think it was about $300 high priced for a new, even back then), we backed out at the last second.
Several months went by and the holiday season of 1998 was upon us. On the last day of that year we went to circuit city and paid too much for a Sony Vaio. I think it was a PCV-E302DS model. I do know it came with a 350MHz slot Pentium II, 64MB of PC133 RAM, a 10GB HDD and a DVD-ROM drive (we could not afford the one with a burner back then). Im sorry to admit, even in early 1999, me and several friends were using AOL dial-up. I honestly kept it for about 2 months before I gave up and switched to another dial-up service called PDQ (gone the way of the Dodo) for $9.95 a month instead of $24.95 for AOL and it was somehow slightly faster and better quality service overall.
I moved out of my moms house for the first time(s) over the next couple of years and had my first tastes of broadband internet (cable in my case). I could now download 1MB files in seconds and play new online video games such as Half-Life and Counter-Strike with low-latency lag-free bullets flying. It was truly a great time. I was truly hooked. I could surf around a dozen sites in the time it used to take me to load just one. (am i sounding like a commercial for DSL or is it just me)
Moving back in my mom's house (with a girlfriend) meant paying rent. However, with rent came the right to beg for more 'goodies' around the house. This time however, I didn't want cable TV, I wanted cable internet! My brother on the other hand still wanted cable TV, so we soon hammered out a deal and had both.
More time went by and I was ready for a new computer. I wanted a nice motherboard with DDR RAM support and an AGP slot. I got a Barebones System with a SOYO KT333 Dragon Ultra Platinum Edition. I started it with a Athlon XP 1700+ however it currently runs with a Athlon XP 2600+ upgraded from 256 to 512MB of PC2700 and a 100GB HDD. My old Sony Vaio was upgraded to 128MB of ram (later upgrade included 256MB and a 500Mhz Pentium) and dontated to my brother as a gift. (mostly so he could start enjoying the internet I already loved)
Shortly after building this new computer and installing Windows XP on it (about 6 months worth of XP) I decided I had enough of (stealing) Microsoft and Windows for good.
A new friend helped convince me to install Debian Sid GNU/Linux and my newest SOYO Box and my computing life have never been the same. I learned about UNIX and other things pre-windows such as Macintosh. I also learned about End User License Agreements (EULAs) at this point and quickly learned to applicate both the usefulness and politics of open source (free) software. Best of all I suddenly have back my good old friend the command line in my life. Besides learning some new bash commands, I started learning some basic HTML tags (still working on that) when helping a friend or two on a website (or 2). With Debian, I had found new power, knowledge, and potential like never before, not to mention much improved security and stability over windows XP, and all Free Software. The only thing is I had to leave all the crappy M$ programs like Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player behind (ill try not to cry).
Well that brings us up to quite recent. About 6 months ago I got my 3rd computer. It was a used Compaq Presario 5000 series with a Duron 1.3GHz but I upgraded it from 128 (i think) to 448MB of PC133 RAM, 20GB HDD, and it also has a Geforce 4 MX440 (upgraded also to an ATI 9550SE) for some video games I still play on Windows XP. Then another friend gave me a Compaq Deskpro 2000 with a 200MHz Pentium and I upgraded it to 128MB of RAM and put Windows 98 SE on it. One if not both of these computers will soon get GNU/Linux instead of Microsoft Windows.
I felt the need at this time to let the world know more about myself and my experience working on computers, switching to open source, opening minds and letting the penguin(s) out of the bag.
Welcome to a new year, a new blog, and lets open a free future!