Irregular Verbiage

If you’re a linux user who has yet to see the pledge, I urge you to sign it. It’s still not ideal though, the fact that to get the full power of a linux desktop on most computers you need binary blobs in your kernel is definately a barrier to adoption.

We’ve just bought an Intel based computer rather than an AMD one because of Intel’s open drivers for their graphics.  Hopefully now AMD have bought ATi we’ll see them open up their drivers but there’s been no announcement yet. In the mean time, hopefully people will buy Intel rather than AMD to keep the pressure up.

I’ve mostly caught up on the things I’ve wanted to read on the internet now after the big Tiscali outage. A whole bunch of technology stuff has happened not all of which I’m ready to talk about on the blog yet. One thing I’m talking about (to any geek that’ll listen) is OpenMoko. It’s a phone with built-in GPS, USB, linux and a stack that’s as open as possible. Price tag is expected to be $350, hurrah for the two-dollar pound.

Although I recently renewed my mobile contract, I didn’t get a new phone, none interested me particularly. OpenMoko on the other hand I’m really enthused by, I’d like wifi and an FM receiver but then I’d like a pony too*.

While scouring the internet for as much info as possible on the new phone, I got side tracked by some interesting posts on the blog of Fabrizio Capobianco (CEO of the cool company writing the email/PIM that will come with the OpenMoko phone). Firstly he argues that the reason that Sun chose the GPL for Java is because Motorola had announced they were working on a Apache Licensed Java ME. Secondly he advocates that OSS companies should dual-license their source. As an example, he discusses Oracle offering support for RedHat Linux.

I hope that history will show that dual-licensing isn’t necessary. In order to dual license, you need to ask for copyright-assignment from anyone who offers contributions which is inevitably going to reduce the pool of volunteers, hampering the growth of the community. Hopefully the Red Hat trademark and their reputation as a clueful company will keep the money rolling in for a long time to come.

* = Well actually I wouldn’t but there you go.

(As usual the opinions here are my own, see the disclaimer at the bottom of the page)

Last weekend, I went to Centre Parcs in Sherwood Forest. It was a chilled out stag/hen night for some friends of mine who are about to get married. I knew almost no-one there but everyone was really friendly and I had a great time.

I found out quite a bit about the people I met and I’ll be a little embarrased if I can’t remember who is who when I go to the wedding in a few weeks. It occurred to me I should write some notes, then I thought maybe I should have a little paper “people” diary. I dismissed the idea of setting up a database as overkill but does anyone use any technological aid for this sort of thing?

This weekend, I downloaded Google Earth for Linux. I’ve played with the Windows version before but as I spend the majority of my computer-time in Linux, I’ve never used it that much. The Linux version seems very similar to the Windows version so I’ll probably play with it quite a bit over time.

Playing with Google Earth caused me to poke around the Google site a bit and I noticed that Google Maps Mobile now supported my (nothing all that fancy) Nokia. I am so impressed. It’s so easy to use.

A couple of weeks back, my girlfriend and I were trying to find a hotel we had a reservation at. We got hopelessly lost despite having looked up directions in advance. In the end, lost and frustrated in outer London we had to phone Em’s Dad and get him to guide us there over the phone. If the same events unfolded next week, a lot of anguish would be avoided.

The mysociety people have just created a set of maps that show lines of constant (travel) time from Edinburgh, Cambridge and London. A website that allowed you to generate similar maps for a location that you gave it would be cool (and really useful when moving house etc.)

(Via Guardian)