January 2007 archive

Six Month Anniversary and Spam Milestone

"Moving to Freedom" is six months old! I haven't made a huge amount of progress on my goal of moving to free software, but this blog has definitely helped keep my mind on it, and I think I'm going to make it eventually.
The writing of the blog takes a lot of time that could be [...]

Ray Kurzweil: Information should not be free?

Just getting started on Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near, and enjoying it so far, although this is a speed bump:

The biggest obstacle here is the understandable hesitation of publishers to make the electronic versions of their books available, given the devastating effect that illegal file sharing has had on the music-recording industry.

I thought the problem [...]

Meet the New 'Move Notes', Same as the Old 'Move Status'

I wasn't really sure what to do with the "move status" page as originally started, so I'm trying something new.
As I start using GNU/Linux more, I still have some apprehension about being able to do all the things I was able to do in Windows, but now I'm seeing that I'll get there. For [...]

Caught in Google's Web?

I've been reading Robert Cringely's PBS.org column for many years now. I like the way he writes about technology, although many of his articles are more esoteric than I care to get in to (or am able to understand). I really enjoyed today's piece on Google: "When Being a Verb is Not Enough: [...]

Arlo and Thoreau, Undying Adventure on a Neighborhood Walk

We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return-- prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them [...]

GNU/Miscellany

Even though it's hard to set aside the urgent need for a backup plan, I dabbled a bit in Ubuntu tonight. One thing I had to do was set up an alias for ls -l. Having used HP-UX at work for years, my fingers want to type ll to get a "long" dir [...]

Windows Baggage: Failing to comprehend 'network drives' in GNU/Linux

Update! I figured some things out. See related posts below.
A big challenge for me in moving to GNU/Linux from Windows is not only migrating all the data that I rely on and finding free software replacements, but figuring out how to do the equivalent of all the administrative things I need to do.
When [...]

Techdirt doesn't get the Children's Machine (aka the $100 laptop)

I've been reading Techdirt for a few months and usually find the entries there to be thoughtful and insightful, but I wouldn't use those words to describe this post about the Children's Machine. The post and many of the comments make me sad.
If you're not familiar with it, you can read about the Children's [...]