There are a couple of interviews with Mark Shuttleworth recently.

"I'd love to work with Microsoft" - Duncan McLeod spoke to software billionaire Mark Shuttleworth last week about his Ubuntu Linux deal with Dell, the Microsoft software patent fracas, and his desire to return to live in SA. This is an edited extract.
(An edited interview with the complete one available on mp3)

Mark Shuttleworth Talks Dell, Hardware, Ubuntu 7.10 & More - Mark Shuttleworth has flown into space on a Soyuz TM-34 and founded Thawte Consulting that later sold to Verisign for over $500 million, but he is now known most for being the founder and leader of the Ubuntu Linux distribution. In addition to Ubuntu he also established HBD Venture Capital and is involved with several other free software projects. Earlier today we had spoke with Mark Shuttleworth to discuss the latest happenings in the Ubuntu world including Dell shipping Ubuntu PCs, getting open-source drivers from hardware vendors, and what is coming down the road for Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon.
(This is the one where he refers to Linux as "a bit of a dorky teenager" on page 3)

Jack Higgins - 06.10.2007

Dooley has good taste! 

On the basis of the belief that all human beings share the same divine nature, we have a very strong ground, a very powerful reason, to believe that it is possible for each of us to develop a genuine sense of equanimity toward all beings.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama

From Open Source Law publications:

Brenden Scotts reply to the May 14th, Fortune article Microsoft takes on the free world

Software Patents: Microsoft jumps the shark (pdf)

Pete Jordan (aka Dishwasher Pete - myspace | wikipedia) has a new book out and there is a review on MotherJones with a short interview.

Scroll about halfway down the page to check out the Toilet of Modern Art.

http://www.phototravels.net/vienna/vienna-hundertwasser-photos.html

Minimoto Madness

Dick Locher - 06.12.2007

via tuxmachines.org

Because your kids won't ever know it. Don't believe me? Here are the two major turning points, all in one week's news:

Time Warner, one of the largest cable Internet providers in the United States, is now shaping traffic.

Wait, let me put it in another words, so you understand how majorly abhorrent this event is.

Traffic shaping is a fancy computer term that means your ISP (Internet service provider) is deciding which kind of traffic gets to your computer first. In other words, they are now breaking your Internet connection on purpose.

You think that's fair? Haha, Big Telco is only beginning, man. Wait till you read about the following event.

AT&T (the other big broadband provider in the States) has announced today that they will block copyrighted content in their network.

In other words: unless your use of the Internet is an "approved one", you can forget about actually using it.

Read on ...

Think about a dog barking.

Think about the term bow-wow as related to a dogs bark.

Where did that come from?

via DesktopLinux

Linspire Inc. on June 13 announced an agreement to license voice-enabled instant messaging, Windows Media 10 CODECs, and TrueType font technologies from Microsoft for its Linux distribution. Additionally, Microsoft will offer protection to Linspire customers against possible violations of Microsoft patents by Linux, Linspire said.

In his June 14 weekly Linspire Letter, Linspire CEO Kevin Carmony stated, "This agreement will offer several advantages to Linspire Linux users not found anywhere else, such as Windows Media 10 support, genuine Microsoft TrueType fonts, Microsoft patent coverage, improved interoperability with Microsoft Windows computers, and so on."

Read on ...

The Road Less Taken
Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

FYI - It's Flag Day

Old Glory

Who Designed the original flag?

Why are privacy and advertising strange bedfellows? - Linux Journal

In A Race to the Bottom: Privacy Ranking of Internet Service Companies, Privacy International spray-paints the facades of landmark companies that line today's Main Street on the Web. The painted colors are assessments of each company's performance on privacy issues. Though the rankings are colorful, what they say isn't pretty.

Read on ...

This Digitally Mundane Life - John Dvorak, PC Magazine

I wonder if anyone will ever do a study of how technology has actually harmed the quality of life of the average person who has fully adopted the digital lifestyle. This isn't to say that the word processor and the information Web site haven't benefited us all in lots of ways. I'm talking about the fact that, with the computer in particular, you have to take the good with the bad - and it is starting to look mostly bad.

And by bad, I mean time-wasting. Seriously time-wasting. Do we really need to send e-mail correspondence to the same person sometimes three or four times in one day just to say that you agree with something? And of course to even find this correspondence we have to wade though an inbox full of e-mail junk.

... Want to waste even more time? Become a blogger. The mechanism is easy and it's cheap - free, in fact. While you are blogging you can check other blogs and create a network of the banal. This is a great use of your time, no? "Today I ate a cheese sandwich. No wait, it wasn't like the cheese sandwich that other blogger ate 10 years ago. Really, it wasn't."

Hey, wait a minute, he's talking about me.

Banal? I ain't no stickin banal!

Oh, well maybe, my byline is "just another persons waste of time" afterall, isn't it.

By the way, my cheese sandwiches are toasted!

Forbes.com has a special section report on Twenty-First Century Cities

• Two Billion Slum Dwellers - Cities are the future of the world, and slums are the future of the city.
• Snitchtown - In the brave new world of ubiquitous security cameras, universal surveillance is seen as the solution to all urban ills.
• In Defense Of Sprawl - Think the inexorable spread of cities is a bad thing? Think again.
• Megacities Of The Future - The demographic future belongs to cities like Mumbai, Shanghai and Dhaka.
• Ghost Cities of 2100 - Even as the world's urban population explodes, these eight cities face potential extinction

From Wired.com - Steam-Driven Dreams: The Wondrously Whimsical World of Steampunk

Brian Fairrington

Cagle.com has a whole collection of Romney for President cartoons for your viewing pleasure.

By the way, don't get me wrong, I don't thing a mans religious beliefs could or should be the reason to vote for or not vote for a candidate.

That just seems incredible shallow to me.

From ZDNet Australia:

Ubuntu, Red Hat reject Microsoft patent deal

Red Hat, the largest Linux vendor, and Ubuntu-maker Canonical have both rejected calls from Microsoft to forge a deal similar to the one the Redmond giant signed with Linux distributors Novell, Xandros, and Linspire.

Read on ...

To announce the winner of her campaign song contest, Hillary Clinton takes Tony's seat in the diner. She orders for the table. With a special appearance by Bill Clinton. Where's Chelsea? Parallel parking.

http://www.breitbart.tv/html/1902.html

Apple Computer announced today that it has developed a computer chip that can store and play music in women's breast implants.

The iBOOB will cost between $499 and $599. This is considered to be a major breakthrough because women are always complaining about men staring at their breasts and not listening to them.

via mrgreensmistress

The normal lolcats this is not.

New Belgium Brewing's new plant adds capacity

The Fort Collins brewery, the third-largest craft brewer in the United States, also is giving new meaning to green beer, with "environmentally aware" practices such as using wind power and solar lighting.

Read on ...

Proposed Amendment Would Ban All DVD Copying - PCMag

A proposed amendment to the current copy protection license governing DVDs would completely ban all DVD backups, and prevent DVD playback without the DVD disk being present inside the drive.

The proposed amendment was made public in a letter sent by Michael Malcolm, the chief executive of Kaleidescape, a DVD jukebox company which successfully defeated a suit by the DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA) this past March. The proposed amendment is scheduled for a vote on Wednesday, according to Malcolm.

A spokesman for the CCA said he was not aware of the proposed amendment, but added that he could not comment until the CCA had finished its deliberations. A spokeswoman for Kaleidescape said she understood that a final de

Read on ...

 
Mike Luckovich - 06.23.2007

Shut Up About the iPhone, Already! - Wake me up when this pathetic week of iPhone launch hype is over. - John C. Dvorak

What really happened after the Death Star blew up.

http://www.adultswim.com/video/?episodeID=0fd921112e08096673a1100050fb4df1

From No Exit

PC Mags Five Ideas That Will Reinvent Modern Computing

• IMAX At Home
• The Midair Mouse
• The Perfect Machine
• Extreme Peer-to-Peer
• The Man-Made Brain

Read on ...

... I'm sure if there is something out there, looking down on us from somewhere else in the universe, they're wise enough to stay away from us.

- Gil Grissom - CSI

At a time when people are so conscious of maintaining their physical health by controlling their diets, exercising and so forth, it makes sense to try to cultivate the corresponding positive mental attitudes too.

- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, 1963

Even more so now that I think about it.

In 22 seconds, Krispy Kreme can make a enough donuts to form a stack as tall as the Empire State Building.

Just think of all the holes that are left over.  

So Bush and Cheney are having breakfast at a diner in Washington when the waitress comes up and Bush says, "Can I have a quickie?"
The waitress grabs the menu away and storms off, saying "I thought we were done with that nonsense after Clinton left!"
Cheney leans over to Bush and says, "Sir, it's actually pronounced 'quiche'."

New CV from Peacefire.org:

https://www.PaperMuffin.com/

Many more here

Google has finally release a native Linux application of Google Desktop.

From DesktopLinux.com:

This first beta version doesn't offer the sidebar and gadgets, which are found in other versions of the application. Those will come later, according to a Google representative, who stated, "We focused most of our efforts on desktop search. Gadgets and sidebar are not supported, but will probably be added in the future."

The first version supports many popular versions of Linux. It comes in the form of both RPM and a DEB distribution packages. The RPM can be installed on Red Hat, Fedora, SUSE, and Mandriva distributions. The DEB will install on Debian and Ubuntu systems. The program works with both KDE and GNOME.

Officially, Google Desktop is supported on Debian 4.0, Fedora Core 6, Ubuntu 6.10, SUSE 10.1, and Red Flag 5. It should work, however, on any modern Linux that has glibc 2.3.2+ and gtk+ 2.2.0+ installed. For example, it also worked on MEPIS 6.5, even though Google doesn't mention compatibility with that distribution. At this time, it only supports PCs with 32-bit x86 compatible processors.

Read on ...

I have installed it and it shall be interesting to see how it compares to Beagle. One thing I have noted already is that it does index Thunderbird email, Beagle doesn't.