April 2007 archive

The Freeness of Free Software

I hope you don’t feel neglected, dear reader. I spent the weekend learning how to do something and am working on writing up a howto for it. It may not be something my regular readers will have an immediate need for, but I suspect it will be popular with the Google crowd.

I’m uncertain how to balance technical “how to” type articles with other more narrative/opinionated posts. Tutorials tend to draw searchers in and it’s rewarding to me if people find them useful, but I don’t think they serve subscribers as well. Then again, it’s a mystery why so many people want to follow what happens here at all. :-)

Generally I like to get editorial opinions from the blogs I follow, and therefore tend to think that others may like more of …

bash shell script: copy only files modifed after specified date

Updated, 27 September 2007: See notes below…

I’ve mentioned a few times lately that I’m working on my backup plan for GNU/Linux. I started by looking at great free software tools like Samba’s rsync and GNU Tar, and I don’t think I need to look much further than them. There is also GNU Cpio, which I haven’t really investigated yet.

I may have more to say later about my rsync and tar adventures, but for today here’s something I came up with to emulate a feature of a tool I had in Windows that I couldn’t find how to do with existing tools in GNU. The xcopy DOS command lets you recursively copy files modified after a certain date by using the …

Friday Photopost: Minneapolis, Minnesota

“Pacing in rhythm… Race the oncoming night…

Headfirst humanity… Pause at a light… Then flow through the streets of the city.”

I’m not much of a photographer. I like taking pictures and sometimes get lucky on a shot. I see now that I really missed on this one. I was only looking at the buildings and cut off the people at the bottom of the picture. I think if I would have panned down to include the curb it would have been a much better shot. (Let’s include a vertical for comparison purposes…)

Three things worked against me: One, I was hurrying to catch a bus. Two, as usual, I felt self-conscious about taking my camera out and shooting away like …

Brasero does the CD burning job in GNOME

Update, 7 July 2007 Maybe Brasero is more for the basic jobs. K3b will do more for you…

My system76 desktop machine came with a CD-RW/DVD-RW drive that I’ve finally got around to trying out. I wasn’t too concerned about how it would work with GNU/Linux, since I suspected CD and DVD burning should be relatively well-supported by now. Of course, you never know until you try.

I’ve been chugging along with getting my backup regime in place and it’s only a matter of time before I’ll need to start making DVD backups on my GNU system. I’d taken a peek at the built-in burning software in Ubuntu, and it hadn’t looked very impressive. I was looking forward to diving in and resolving my uncertainty about CD/DVD management, …

A Charismatic Operating System?

Ray Kurzweil occasionally uses imaginary conversations as a device to discuss ideas in his books The Singularity is Near and The Age of Spiritual Machines. They usually involve people from the future and the past (Ned Ludd, for example). Here is a more contemporaneous dialog between himself and a pretend Bill Gates from Singularity:

BILL: What would the principles of the new religion be?
RAY: We’d want to keep two principles: one from traditional religion and one from secular arts and sciences—from traditional religion, the respect for human consciousness.
BILL: Ah yes, the Golden Rule.
RAY: Right, our morality and legal system are based on respect for the consciousness of others. […]
BILL: And the secular

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