Cory Doctorow, co-author at BoingBoing, took a stand on net neutrality by declaring his Internet service contract void [via /.]. Bravo! Let’s hope that with many others following suit this sends a strong message to ISPs that we refuse to only view the part of the Internet capable of buying you off.
Is Microsoft Windows “collapsing”? Some are saying it is, and I kind of believe it, although the process is likely to be a very drawn-out death. Experts are warning that the new version of Windows, due out at the end of 2009, needs some major changes in order to keep it competitive. My only hope is that people that are jumping ship take a look at Ubuntu and don’t automatically turn into Apple fans.
I think one of the best examples of how free software can work great (and be even be sold) is Dell’s adoption of Ubuntu. They can take free software (Ubuntu) and custom-tailor it to work on their specific laptops and desktops. They can even custom-compile their own Linux kernels that they don’t contain extemporaneous junk for hardware not in their computers. This could make an overall fast and efficient machine! Their software has to remain free, so people can examine it and suggest ways to improve Dell’s flavor of Ubuntu, tell Dell about something that’s in Ubuntu that’s they’d like to see automatically included in the Dell release (like DVD support), and they can even submit patches to Dell if they know how to code. Plus, if Dell finds a problem and figures out how to solve it, the fix can be pulled back upstream to the regular Ubuntu release. Even more importantly, a user can decide to take Dell’s flavor of Ubuntu and make their own version of it (if Dell does something poorly that they won’t fix it, for example). Not to mention, Dell is a big company. If they’re having problems getting hardware that will work under Ubuntu, there’s going to be more pressure for hardware vendors to support their products freely.
Some people are attracted to Ubuntu and other Linux distributions because many of them don’t cost anything. Thus, a computer can be $100 cheaper to buy because Dell doesn’t have to charge you the $100 for a Microsoft Windows license. What I’d like to see is for Dell to actually charge a little bit of money for Ubuntu. Not $100, mind you, but how about $20-30? I don’t want Dell keeping the profits from this though. Rather, I’d like to see them make some major contributions to the FSF and the Ubuntu project. Or they could make the $20-30 donation optional. The FSF even encourages the selling of free software. This will help foster growth of their system, and it’s a solid investment on their behalf. Plus, I don’t think many users would complain about being charged a nominal fee as long as they know it’s to help support the growth of their new operating system.
I recently read that Jackson Browne released a sequel to his popular album Solo Acoustic, Vol. 1 from a few years ago. It’s one of my favorite albums of the past few years, and this was coming from someone who had no idea who Jackson Browne really was when I first heard it. If you haven’t heard that album, it’s worth the $8.99 on Amazon mp3, so just buy it. His sequel album, aptly titled Solo Acoustic Vol. 2, was released a few weeks ago, and I will need to download it. However, considering what little I knew about Mr. Browne was derived from this album, I decided it would be a good idea to learn a little more about him from Wikipedia. While reading about his fantastic song called The Pretender (lyrics), I noticed a link at the bottom to a YouTube video of him singing it live. It was great.
And then I saw it, right there in the YouTube sidebar. It was a live concert performance of his song Load-Out/Stay from 1978. You don’t understand. Ever since I heard it a few years ago, this has been one of my top 3 favorite songs of all time. And I have a LOT of favorite music. You can see him singing it, right there on stage at his piano. And then it dawned on me. Without the Internet, I would never have been able to see this footage. I’ve heard the song a thousand times, but to see him sitting there, 30 years old with his California hippie haircut, singing it? I’ll let it speak for itself. Sometimes we lose sight of the Internet and what it can be. I think this speaks volumes.
Man I wish they still made music like that. If you’d like to hear more Jackson Browne check out These Days (or the original cut, sung by Nico) (lyrics).
In honor of CSS Naked Day, my website is going naked all day. What does that mean? My website’s style sheet has been removed and all of the content will be displayed as regular old un-styled text, links, lists, and quotes. That means little or no pictures, almost no color, and no formatting. It’s amazing how one little text document can completely change the way a website looks without changing any of its content.
I have known about this since it started a few years back, and I’ve always wanted to participate, especially now that I designed my own theme. The purpose of this day is to remind everyone to appreciate web designers and what they bring to the Internet. Without them, we’d be staring at this clunky looking black-and-white text every day when we get online. I also feel like it’s a reminder of why we should all support web standards. This way designers are free to express themselves artistically and viewers are not required to use one particular browser in order to view it. If there were no web standards, artists wouldn’t even bother making nice designs because only a fraction of the world would be able to view them.
All this clunky text got you down? Refresh yourself with some of the eye candy at CSS Zen Garden and appreciate the artists of the web. Only don’t compare those designs to mine (even on a normal day) or you’ll quickly realize how much of an artist I am not. Thanks to Lorelle for reminding me about today!
Batten down the hatches, there’s a new worm on the loose. It’s creating a very large botnet, which basically means it’s like a virus that installs itself on your computer, but it doesn’t really do much at first. From there it will probably send emails to everyone in your address book trying to infect them. But then your computers just sit there and wait for a signal from a central server that will cause your computer and hundreds of thousands of other ones to crash servers all across the Internet. They’re comparing it to the Storm botnet from last year. Currently few antiviruses are detecting the worm. Glad I’m not on Windows! 
…And it’s the first year I’ll be able to participate. Check back on April 9th for more info and be ready for a whole lotta nakedness. Oh, and for those of you who are wondering, it’s not going to be pretty.
I read an article about the future of book industry and authors [hat tip Sadie]. In it, they describe the ways that authors are suffering from the effects of piracy. Many authors are concerned about their lost profits at the hands of e-Book pirates and they are trying to come up with new business models to embrace this new media while still being able to keep the cash coming in. Fortunately, they seem to have a much better grasp on how to solve their problems than the music industry:
“We have to evolve and create a very different pay system, possibly by making the content available free to all and finding a way to get paid separately.” –Tracy Chevalier
If they can follow this concept through, their industry will survive. I have very little hope for the music industry at this point, so the best we can do is learn from their mistakes. Please read that last link. It’s a great article (actually it deserves a post of its own).