Encephalosponge » Soaking Up Life

Ubuntu (say oo-BOON-too) has launched a new website called Brainstorm. It’s based on Dell’s “Ideastorm” model, and it allows users to vote on what the newest features implemented in Ubuntu should be. Sweet!

Well considering the amount of talking I’ve done about “free software” and “GNU/Linux” over the past few weeks, it’s about time I explain myself. During the past 6 months or so, I’ve learned a lot about a little thing called free software. I’d like to take a few minutes and explain what free [...]

Cory Doctorow says “Intellectual Property” is a silly euphemism. (good read)

Finally, someone has developed a plug-in for OpenOffice.org that will allow you to open Microsoft Office 2007 documents in .*x format (e.g. .docx, pptx, etc.). If you’re not familiar, OpenOffice.org is a free software office suite that operates similarly to Microsoft Office except that it’s available on all operating systems, you don’t have to [...]

Sadie bought me Across the Universe on DVD for Valentine’s Day. We finally got around to watching it last night, and I have to say I was pleased. Of course, I doubt it would’ve taken much on their part to please me. The movie centers around a few main characters, most notably [...]

This comic from xkcd always pops into my head randomly. And now I’ve found this one too. Man I’ve gotta check out Free Culture.

If you’ve got about 30 minutes and are interested in GNU/Linux, have a look at this video, a speech given by Jon “maddog” Hall about Linux. Also, if you haven’t heard of blip.tv, check it out. Finally, for those of you who are confused by all this “free software” and “GNU/Linux” talk, an [...]

I read a very interesting article today, linked from an article on ifacethoughts (a blog I read). The article itself is about undergraduate Computer Science majors, but I felt like the premise goes far beyond that specific example. In reality it speaks to the terms of higher education in general, and I’m going [...]

Hi. I know most people think that doctors make a lot of money and therefore don’t need to worry about the cost of their education. However, in reality I (like most med students) am likely going to graduate over $200,000 in debt. Your reaction may be “yeah but you’ll be making the [...]

I realize we’re into February already and it’s a little late for New Year’s Resolutions, and I don’t even normally do one. But regardless:
By 2009, I’d like to be completely Windows-free.