Blogging Ottinger (tim)

Those of us who like spreading (the) good news are happiest when we find more good news to spread. Today I found a number of interesting developments regarding the use of Linux by and for Christians.

One of the more exciting finds of the day is Christian Ubuntu. Now the very friendly and stable Ubuntu Linux has been customized for Christians. This means that there is now a very Christian-friendly operating system that can be installed and used totally free of charge. It includes web content filtering, office software, bible study and much more. It includes the nice Ubuntu graphical installer, so now installing a powerful, free OS on all your contributed church computers is easier than ever. There are no licensing issue to monitor and enforce, no ugly and expensive outside software audits, no upgrade fees, and no per-machine expenses for the OS! Imagine that. You also lose the need to reboot your machine three times day (the the normal Linux user also boots 3 times, but it is per year, and not because of failure).

I was also pleased by the apparent value offered by Quality Christian Web Hosting. For a little bit of nothing, it looks like you get quite a bit of web hosting. If you try this, please post a followup. I can’t imagine a much better deal. $10/mo is incredibly cheap to have administrators managing your site for you, and it’s the more expensive option. I think I’d give it a shot.

I remember the great free software apologetic article The Penguin in the Pew, and now have other entries in its category. One is The Penguin-Driven Church (Mirrored at The Linux Journal) discusses the use of free and open-source software in the church office specifically.

There is a lot of activity also in the podcasting realm. I found The Sermon Cloud podcast repository, a podcasting site called Christian Podcasting .Com, and even a pod point site dedicated to helping people make their own Christian podcasts.

Honorable mention:

• The Christian Open Development Network is looking to build new software.
• What Would Jesus Download is fun and informative.
• the Freely project is still trying to give freely back to all.
• Think Christian has interesting brain fodder.
• Geeks for Christ has a list of useful software items for your church/home
.
• Linux4Christians is still plugging away. It’s fun to visit now and again.
• the church nerd is about using technology in churches.

All together, that is some good news for people who want to spread the good news.

I guess it’s time.

I was copying files to my old Zaurus 5500 and playing them there, which was nice because it plays ogg and mp3, so it’s compatible with all my music. It has a display, and is rechargeable, but its player makes me play songs only from the beginning. Fine for music, but when you have to stop in the middle of a multi-hour Linux Linc Tech Show and then have to restart from the beginning, it’s very annoying. I think it’s going to have to be used for music. It also stinks for video. It’s not really powerful enough to avoid serious video lag. I think its day is done.

So I have this 512MB Creative Muvo with no display. It’s small and it doesn’t do ogg files, but it’s very portable and has the ability to resume a program. Still 512M is not very much. I’ve written some code to generate playlists and to copy playlists to the device, but a drive to Evanston would use up all the storage for me.

I have been using my laptop as a portable media player, sort-of. I’m running XUbuntu and there are a variety of media players. I always have it near, so I can hear my music or watch my DVDs or google videos (or PD movies from http://publicdomaintorrents.com) It holds more songs and movies than my poor 512MB. Amarok does a nice job (as do VLC and XMMS) and I can watch DVDs and the like. It is nice that I can turn it on and leave it between the seats in the van (or in the passenger seat of the car) and the built-in speakers will work well enough for Old Time Radio programs and talk. It’s not a hi-fi system. It is also not as compact and inconspicuous as I’d like, and only has about 5 or 6 hours of battery. That’s great for a laptop, lousy for an mp3 player.

So now I’m looking at current media players. I am going to pass on the iPods because I like being non-mainstream, and would like to put my money into linux-based devices if at all possible. I will consider getting a used/refurbished ipod to run RockBox on.

Whatever I get, I want it to be largish, and to play mp3, ogg, and avi files. I think that watching the latest “Radar Men from the Moon” or B monster movie on a handheld might be cool on some cross-country flight.
I think that I want at least 20GB storage, and a screen I can see. So the next trick is to look for a model that might work.

ZDNet has a ratherextensive listing of players. Xiph has a rather focused listing of ogg players also. A cool rundown of PMP is at PVP 4 U.

• Zune I don’t think so. No ogg, and apparently DRM-ed to the hilt. Wireless capability is appealing, though. If they get it worked out, I might want to get one eventually. I own some microsoft keyboards and don’t feel bad about it. A good product is a good product. Still, even Engadget (MS fanboys that they are) weren’t overwhelmed with the Zune. I’ve heard more bad than good, even from sites that aren’t Apple-happle. I mean “happy”.
• Archos has models that I’m definitely interested in. My friend Sam had one a few years back, and really liked it at the time. The 504 is not cheap, but where else do you find one with 160GB storage? Archos has the Linux advantage, as I believe all their players are running on a linux kernel. Kinda extra sheen of geeky cool for me.
• GoDot has a few players I’m perusing.
• The Digital Cube T43 PMP is another linux-powered marvel. It has a less exciting, slick form factor. It looks like a tiny television set.
• The Wolverine ESP has quite a lot of storage, but we’re still looking at the high end of the price spectrum, I think. How much should I be willing to pay for a portable entertainment device?
• Gamepark Holding’s GP2X is rather exciting to me. It’s linux based, does divx video, ogg, mp3, all the usual suspects. But it’s not a PMP, it’s a handheld game console. I found a US dealer and was a little surprised with the low price. Why haven’t we heard of this before? This bears further investigation
• Samsung Yepp has a few models I’m interested in. I’ll drop a few here (eventually):
  • Samsung Yepp-920GS Napster 20GB MP3 Player looks pretty good, doesn’t do video. Ogg and Audible formats are supported. I’m not keen on the Napster name, it means too many bad things.
• iRiver has many models, and I hear that they tend to work very well with linux.
  • iHP-120 has 20GB, ogg, no avi. Still in the running. Also can run RockBox.
  • The H320 is supposed to be great, but a little on the pricey side. Also reported good Linux support.
  • the H300 is described on a wikipedia page. This seems to fill the bill.
• Winner of the “most likely to be sued for a name change” category is the Innopod, which is only 4GB and only audio, but for all that seems quite nice.
• The Creative Zen Vision is another 30GB monster that looks pretty promising
• iAudio M5 (20GB) got pretty good reviews. No video, but all the music features I was wanting. Hmmm.
• JetAudio also has something called iAudio — hmmm… It has features common to this genre.
• Coby
• MVix
• Meizu has the coolest 2GB player I’ve ever seen. I am talking iPod cool, but with ogg and the like. I won’t have a 2GB player because I want to put a lot of music on, but it’s quite the cool little device.
• Cowon has a large number of low-cost devices. The music players are very affordable. I was impressed with that, but also with how common it was for them to support 0gg. They’re pretty nice-looking devices.
  • I like iAUDIO X5L as an mp3 player with pretty good storage (20GB) for $250.00. Apparently can do some video formats, too. I’ve seen good reviews for the device, and can consider it in the running.
  • The A2 (20GB) looks pretty good too, but it’s really not very cheap.
• Rio has the Karma, which has a kind of functional cool rather than the aesthetic cool you see in some other models. It includes an ethernet port (hmmm) and usb. It has 20GB and a/v out built in as well. The screen size is pretty decent, too.

I don’t know which of these I’d choose right now, or even what I’ll be willing to spend for them (when I get around to buying one) but I think that they’re mighty exciting. I will eventually settle on one.

Most everyone who installs some version of windows clicks on a button indicating that they agree with the terms of an End User License Agreement, or EULA. The majority assume that it’s not enforceable and doesn’t really mean anything, but this turns out not to be the case. Of course, hardly anyone wants to take the hours/days it takes to dig through the agreement and understand it. Whenver I read a EULA it makes me cringe. These license agreements are the best reason to use GPLed software instead.

Thankfully we have people like Ed Foster and Wendy Seltzer. Ed recently published an analysis of the censorship clause for us. It seems that the EULA (and therefore Vista) has some funny conditions that are pointed out by Wendy Seltzer. Is this something you really wanted to sign up for?

Of course, a very good source of information about harmful EULAs is the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s EULA page.

There are a number of new articles about the pact between Novell and Microsoft.

It seems to me that the industry is playing this as a “Linux and Windows” thing, and there’s a little truth to to that. I look at it mostly as an agreement between Novell (one company that sells a linux distro) and Microsoft. The Linux world is not obligated by this agreement, and Novell has to carefully navigate in both spaces to keep the spirit of the open source community while working toward better profitability with Microsoft.

In fact, I can’t sort my feelings out about this, because it seems to be a pointless move to me. Novell gets a big check, M$ writes (for them) a small sum of money, and nothing changes other than a splash in the news.

Novell doesn’t have any new right to put proprietary M$ technology into the Samba stack (or any of the other OSS product), nor does it exempt M$ from GPL or LGPL requirements. I am not sure what all this agreement will really do. It doesn’t really change anything on the proprietary v. free front, and so it can’t change much on the Windows v. Linux front. Can it?

I didn’t get warm fuzzy feelings reading Ballmer’s take on this. To him this is all about competing against an OSS company. He’s not seeing this as a cooperation, so I think maybe the goal here is to get more people to transfer *to* windows rather than to share the space. He was pretty clear about that. I guess those of my friends who trust self-interest above altruism will be relieved. I even saw one of the dreaded three E words in this. I fear that he’s going to do another E,E & E number here, planning careful incompatibility and ways to blame it on Linux. I could be reacting to their past, not their present intent, but it’s what I read in Ballmer’s words. But Ballmer and company have full access to Samba and the other free software already, so what do they gain? They can already improve interoperability without any splashy PR moves.

Maybe what they’re hoping is to recast Linux as the product of a single organization? At one time I remember one M$ exec saying that they were worried about Linux, but that “Linux is just RedHat”, and they know how to beat a company. Maybe now it’s Novell they think is “the linux company”? Maybe not. I doubt that Novell is much of a threat or much of a partner to MS, and not because of competence of course. I believe Novell is pretty savvy. It’s just that I don’t see what M$ gets for the money.

Possibly it’s a way to get the bunny to snuggle up a little closer to the python, but I don’t see that making too much headway. Maybe it’s a way to blame compatibility problems on the Linux side of the house, I don’t know. I guess that might be a kind of PR gamble to try to make the Linux guys look like the bad guys on the compatibility front. I can’t even imagine any great evil motivations here.

If M$ wanted Linux expertise, they could hire a small country full of full-time Linux developers, people with experience in the OSS community, people who work in Samba and the like, and could pay them that same sum for 5 years. They could sponsor the project, even. So why pay Novell?

The best thing that could happen would be for MS to open up their standards and agree to follow the published standards, but I don’t see this happening. The agreement doesn’t make it any more or less likely.

Am I happy about it? I don’t know. I guess I have to wait and see what is to be gained by it, and by whom. My bet is that it will be as lopsided in M$ favor in a marketing and competition sense as it is lopsided in favor of Novell in a monetary sense. Personally, I don’t get it.

wait and see.

My recommendation to all my friends and trusted coworkers, colleagues, and customers:

NEVER register for a website or a podcast.

It’s a stupid invasion of privacy. If they want to be read or heard, they shouldn’t make you pay to do it by giving away personal information. If you want to opt-in a photo or a location flag sometimes, that’s fine. But don’t let them demand it from you.
If you must register, then don’t even go.

I found myself totally frustrated by an article on Linux, and not just because it’s not flattering. I have non-flattering things to say about linux from time to time, mind you. It’s just that this one says some things that seem really stupid.

The main offensive and stupid point is this:

Going hand-in-hand with gaming is software support. Walk around any store selling software and see how much Linux-compatible software you can find.

No, they don’t sell a lot of free games in the local software store. Duh. OTOH, there are thousands and thousands of software packages (over 15K in Debian alone, which includes no commercial offerings) but nobody can make money by stocking the shelves with boxes and giving the contents away for free. Shelf space costs money, mister. If you are waiting for Best Buy to tell you that there are dozens and dozens of free software development tools for Linux, you will be waiting a very long time.

Try this new thing called “the internet”. There’s a radical feature called “google”. You’ll like it. And then install debian and try this crazy thing called “Synaptic”. This is how linux people “shop” for software. All the aisles are packed, and the prices are very reasonable.

The point about games is granted. There are a lot of linux games, but not the popular network-effect games that you find on other platforms. A number of my friends keep a version of windows just so they can play the hot networked games. Something will need to be done here. There are Linux games, it’s not a total wasteland, and some of them seem like fun to me (a non-gamer guy).

• LinuxGames
• Linux Game Tome at HappyPenguin
• Tux Games
• L Games
• Games4Linux

Finally is this little tidbit:

Hardware support
The one area of Linux ownership and use where it becomes apparent that there’s an assumption that everyone who uses Linux is an expert is hardware support. Your average user doesn’t have the time, the energy or the inclination to deal with uncertainty. Also, they usually only have the one PC to play with. Hardware just has to work. There’s a very good reason why Microsoft spends a lot of time on hardware compatibility - it’s what people want.

I agree and disagree. The first disagreement is that Linux supports less hardware than M$. Actually, Linux supports vastly more software than M$ ever dreamed, but as a friend pointed out M$ supports more Intel PC-based hardware than Linux.

But even that is not true. The vendors make their devices work for windows (not M$). They feel that not working with windows means not being sellable on the market, and they’re 80% right. Close enough for me. Because some vendors don’t write versions for Linux and refuse to release specs so that linux programmers can support the devices, we end up waiting for some techie to finally reverse-engineer enough of the device to write a driver for it. It’s painful. But the trick is that microsoft isn’t making those devices compatible, the vendors do that. Microsoft’s deep entrenchment makes vendor compatibility necessary in a way that Linux can not.

If you try Ubuntu, you will likely see all of your hardware supported. Distributions like Debian and the derivatives like Ubuntu and Freespire and many others work very hard to produce good hardware detection and to gather the best drivers from the free software projects. Some of the commercial vendors (Ubuntu, etc) will even bundle proprietary drivers to make your hardware work. I don’t see the problems that I used to see.

But that is a semantic issue. The fact is that your off-the-shelf (or off-the-website) PC may have some components (like WinModems, WinPrinters, some PDA or cell phone sync functions) that don’t work with Linux. Such things you may have to tinker with, or replace with a supported device. This is still a problem.

Otherwise, you would be surprised who is really ready for linux. There’s more of them than you would imagine, and probably several people on the street where you live who use Linux or some variant of BSD (including OS X) full-time. The world isn’t so non-ready as you’d expect.

The oddest little spoof site of the week must be the one for Microsoft Firefox. It’s a view of what it would be like if Microsoft (the evil parody version) were to acquire firefox. Of course, Firefox is open source and can’t be acquired. That’s the cool thing about open source: you couldn’t stop it with an atomic bomb.

The oddest little legitimate music link of the week has to be Phils Finest Hour, Your Girlfriend is a Psycho. My oldest boy and I have trouble getting it out of our heads. It needs a flash video to become the next runaway viral hit, though.

It’s gotten to the point where it’s not enough to take over a PC. Now the virus/worm/malware nuts are only happy if they get the whole PC, so they’ve taken to killing off the competition.

It’s hard to know how to feel about that. On the one hand, I would prefer the malware guys to be killing off the other guys’ malware rather than adding theirs to the pile. On the other hand, I don’t want any malware at all.

This is a very strange world, indeed.

It’s kind of amazing that it seems a hardship to wait for my eMusic subscription to tick over. I am currently on the 40-songs-per-month plan (soon to reduce to 30 - unhappily).

Forty songs is a lot of music. Before I didn’t buy 5 CDs in a given year. They’re too expensive at over 15 dollars each. I might buy two if they’re on sale for 8 or 6, but I’m largely unaware of sales because the CD rack has fallen off my radar. Face it, those things are probably worth a buck or two for material costs and pressing. At four dollars each, I’m betting the industry would turn a bit of a profit — enough to make many other industries jealous. There’s more effort in producing a four-color comic book, and just as much copyrighted material, and those things are a two dollars each. Imagine if the latest Superman cost you $12.00 — who would buy it? I think collecting would be over. Let’s not even talk about the DRM and the unsavory RIAA practices. Just in terms of real value (ignoring rootkits and politics) the CD really is a loser.

But forty songs? That’s at least 3 cds. Three CDs and some extra every single month. I would never buy 36 CDs in a year. But here I am, many CDs-worth richer in music and I can hardly wait for the counter to tick over and give me my download credits for another month. I will be consuming more for-pay music than ever in my life, including those long-ago teen years. Why?

One reason is price. The subscription is very reasonable. For an amount that I won’t spend all at once for one cd at the local Mall Wart, I get my pick of the catalog and 40 songs. It is easy to spend the money when the value is there. I have even developed a new hobby (like I need a hobby) of listening to the other bands in the eMusic catalog, since I’m not investing too much. They’ve rekindled my interest in commercial bands a bit. I am now listening to bands I’d almost forgotten (like Triumph), and sharing them with my kids.

The other reason I’m doing this is that eMusic has good policies. They promise me DRM-free MP3 files that I can copy to my computers and my mp3 players and burn on CDs. As a result, I can listen to the music the way I want to. This is what the market wants. I want it so much that I’m finally buying music again, something I had stopped doing. And unlike eMusic’s larger competitor, I can re-download a file without buying it again. If I lose my player, or my laptop dies, or both get stolen, I can refresh the music collection on another computer and keep going. That is the way to go.

Mind you, I’m still interested in free music. I enjoy the stuff I get from iRate and from the various podcasts (like Amplified), and I am still interested in digging through the catalog at MagnaTunes for stuff I can buy and use (another company with reasonable pricing and good policies).

But I think that some people in the industry are getting the right idea, offering good policies for reasonable prices. This is what the market wants. This is what the savvy services will find ways to provide. This is why eMusic is the #2 for-pay download site, behind only iTunes. This is why I can’t wait to get my next downloading fix, and have over 20 albums listed in my “for download later” music list.

And yet, I have to wait. It can’t get here soon enough.

ps: Doesn’t it seem ironic that a scheme to prevent music playing should be called PlaysForSure? Maybe it should be called “PunishForSure”?