Regular Reminder - Our tools Are Broken: social networking tools and other information infrastructure that are not publicly owned (and by that I mean licensed under the General Public License or Copylefted -see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft) are fundamentally broken. Because anything less than public ownership severely limits the extent to which we can use, fix, experiment, and grow these into useful universal assets .. This is especially true in the long term.
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The list of our broken tools include Facebook, Google search, Twitter, and the operating systems Windows, Mac-OSX, IOS, and bits of Android. Linux is completely ours. Most of Android and the software that serves up and browses the world wide web is also properly public property.
Distributed/Federated social software that could easily replace Facebook and Twitter already exists (see Diaspora and Identica). Publicly owned search engines won't have to start from scratch either.
Its just going to take us some time to realise that all the complaints that we have about our social software - about the abuses of power that extend from privacy violations to the manipulation of search results and manipulation of our social signalling - all of these cannot be fixed until we switch to Free (as in speech) Software.
Showing posts with label opensource. Show all posts
Showing posts with label opensource. Show all posts
01 January 2018
07 June 2016
Are We Shifting to a New Post-Capitalist Value Regime?
RT @mbauwens (Michel Bauwens): Are We Shifting to a New Post-Capitalist Value Regime? https://t.co/l1tn1LEs0R (one of my best lectures)
"We will argue that there is consistent evidence that the structural crises of the dominant political economy is leading to responses that are prefigurative of a new value regime, of which the seed forms can be clearly discerned."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CltUp19s9lc - video lecture. 45mins. worth the watch.
... notes to follow
"We will argue that there is consistent evidence that the structural crises of the dominant political economy is leading to responses that are prefigurative of a new value regime, of which the seed forms can be clearly discerned."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CltUp19s9lc - video lecture. 45mins. worth the watch.
20 November 2013
cinnamon 2.0.12 on ubuntu 13.10
Having in the past few days heard loads of praise of the Cinnamon 2 Linux desktop environment, from both friends and strangers, and now that installing Cinnamon 2 on Ubuntu no longer breaks Unity, I've decided to try it out on my primary Ubuntu desktop.
So, using the method below, I've started testing. A review of some sort should follow...
UPDATE (several hours later):
So far, I'm happy enough with Cinnamon-2.0. It seems to run with a smaller footprint, more stability and more functionality and configuration options than you get with the latest Unity and Gnome-Shell.
I did get a few random lock-ups during early reckless tweaking, but I've seen no recurrences since I stopped messing around with extensions, desklets and applets (some of them still only properly tested with earlier versions of Cinnamon).
Now, after several hours of work, the impression I'm left with is all positive.
In terms of workflow, I did find myself missing a few features of Unity's Dash and HUD, but the old desktop metaphors still seem to work better for me overall. And though this might have more to do with my long term familiarity with those, I also think it has something to do with a general lack of maturity in the newer approaches to the desktop environment being worked on.
Its still early days, but if nothing major shows up, I could very easily stick with Cinnamon as the desktop option I choose most often at login - at least until the others grow up a bit.
NEXT UPDATE (... in the morning)
I think I'm changing my mind .. The new day has found me missing Unity's simplicity and that task orientated Dash and HUD.. Ah well, I'll decide later, but just now I felt crowded and in my own way - I'm writing this after logging back into Unity ... maybe for a long while...
LATEST UPDATE (... two weeks later)
I've settled in to using and liking them both - with Unity ahead in the number of times it gets chosen at login.
So, using the method below, I've started testing. A review of some sort should follow...
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gwendal-lebihan-dev/cinnamon-stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cinnamon
UPDATE (several hours later):
So far, I'm happy enough with Cinnamon-2.0. It seems to run with a smaller footprint, more stability and more functionality and configuration options than you get with the latest Unity and Gnome-Shell.
I did get a few random lock-ups during early reckless tweaking, but I've seen no recurrences since I stopped messing around with extensions, desklets and applets (some of them still only properly tested with earlier versions of Cinnamon).
Now, after several hours of work, the impression I'm left with is all positive.
In terms of workflow, I did find myself missing a few features of Unity's Dash and HUD, but the old desktop metaphors still seem to work better for me overall. And though this might have more to do with my long term familiarity with those, I also think it has something to do with a general lack of maturity in the newer approaches to the desktop environment being worked on.
Its still early days, but if nothing major shows up, I could very easily stick with Cinnamon as the desktop option I choose most often at login - at least until the others grow up a bit.
NEXT UPDATE (... in the morning)
I think I'm changing my mind .. The new day has found me missing Unity's simplicity and that task orientated Dash and HUD.. Ah well, I'll decide later, but just now I felt crowded and in my own way - I'm writing this after logging back into Unity ... maybe for a long while...
LATEST UPDATE (... two weeks later)
I've settled in to using and liking them both - with Unity ahead in the number of times it gets chosen at login.
09 October 2011
Steve Jobs died a few days ago and I wrote the following in a facebook comment thread
In response to all the idolatrous mourning in here, and surely bouncing around in mainstream media right now, (i havent yet poked my head around to see)
Nice design and innovation, but I could have done without most of his contribution toward making closed technical ecosystems and hardware more desired and desirable, and here's why. I fear that it might be us, the consumers of new technologies, that willingly hand over the gains made possible by these technologies, back to monopolies and empire, simply because we are driven by desire for the shinier toy, and the easier playground.
(written on a mac)
In response to all the idolatrous mourning in here, and surely bouncing around in mainstream media right now, (i havent yet poked my head around to see)
Nice design and innovation, but I could have done without most of his contribution toward making closed technical ecosystems and hardware more desired and desirable, and here's why. I fear that it might be us, the consumers of new technologies, that willingly hand over the gains made possible by these technologies, back to monopolies and empire, simply because we are driven by desire for the shinier toy, and the easier playground.
(written on a mac)
28 May 2007
OpenArena
OpenArena is an opensource first person (doomlike) shooter. You can find it in the Ubuntu repository using the package manager, or, for the windows version, check this mirror, or the others listed here.
I've played it a few times, and it plays well - much better than Nexuiz. If anyone wants to run around cool maps shooting at me, leave me a comment.
Nice that its free 'as in speech' software as well.
I've played it a few times, and it plays well - much better than Nexuiz. If anyone wants to run around cool maps shooting at me, leave me a comment.
Nice that its free 'as in speech' software as well.
13 March 2007
Gimmie, a new panel replacement for Gnome, and how to install it in Ubuntu
20 September 2006
linux with the ubuntu philosophy
I spent the last week playing with ubuntu 6.06 and i think i might have gotten myself seriously hooked. it might finally be time for me to stick with linux. The install seemed much easier than the last ubuntu distro i tried, the latest gnome runs much smoother, it took just a bit of poking around to get my nvidia drivers working at full resolution (the forums enjoy excellent support),
18 February 2006
who wants to play?
a good opensource first person shooter nexuiz. anyone interested in joining me for a quick online game, can download the game from that site (its also available in the ubuntu repositories) and drop me a line in the comments.
16 July 2005
wikidpad goes opensource
WikidPad has been opensource for a few months now. the group has settled on using Trac/Subversion along with two google groups (dev and user).
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