open open open

When I got my first digital camera about 10 years ago, it came with some pretty neat photo organizing programs. So I spent some time tagging and moving things around and it worked nicely. But where is all that hard work now? Well, time went on, I upgraded the camera, the software was no longer supported and I wasn't interested in spending all my time re-doing my work. I could see where this was going - all my effort was locking me into a camera and software and when the times changed, I would forced to pay more, or depend on the goodwill of the company to continue to support me.

My data, and specifically my data formats were holding me hostage. I see this happening with Microsoft Office. Right now Microsoft is the leader, everyone uses their proprietary formats and if some organization somewhere tries to break the mold, i.e. use an office suite that wasn't Microsoft office, they would be left out of the loop.

There are international efforts going on right now to create an open standard. You shouldn't have to be locked into using Microsoft Office. For example, I'm collaborating with my supervisor for writing papers and I run Open Office on my home computer because it's linux and on my laptop because it was small and free (smaller than Office2007 anyway). However, I am locked into writing in Microsoft Office because my supervisor uses it, and he is locked in because his collaborators use it. And everyone has to continue to purchase Microsoft Office because they really can't use anything else. So you can understand that Microsoft has no interest in participating or supporting international standards.

From a Slashdot post:

Duh. The reason they [Microsoft] want to control the standard is so they can force it to change, again and again.

The reason MS doesn't like open standards is not because they're crazy or evil (which actually they might be, but that's not the reason, here) but because file formats are the key to upgrades.

When you can change a file format so that older versions are incompatible, you can create a situation where 100 million people with word 2009 start getting new files from 1 million people with word 2010. The 100 million people cannot read them. They complain, they gripe, then THEY UPGRADE.

A file format which stays the same breaks this model, and that would reduce MS revenue by a colossal amount. They can't allow that. So they need to control ODF [Open Document Format]so that they can keep changing it.

Of course, Microsoft also doesn't want ODF because then why pay money for Microsoft Office when something like Open Office works fine.

What I find frustrating is that at this point, Universities and Government organizations are spending tons of money to buy Microsoft licenses for Office. Why aren't they considering alternatives? Because we've all locked ourselves into one companies solution.

This doesn't just end at Office products, the same question can be asked for home photo organization. Or home music collections, movie collections, audiobooks etc etc. Put in all the effort to organize it well, label it nicely and hope you can alway use the same program?

The same goes for learning software, especially big programs like Gimp or Blender. Gimp's commercial alternative is Photoshop, and unless you are a design house there's really no need to pay the ~$1000 license to use the software. Gimp probably does everything you want and for free. I initially learned how to use Photoshop (uhhh... a legal copy from a long time ago) and then had to put in the effort to relearn Gimp. I'll not make that mistake twice - for me its been Inkscape instead of Illustrator, Blender instead of Maya. Sure, our department has a site license for Illustrator, but will my next job? Why put in all the effort to learn Adobe products just to lock myself in to their upgrade cycle?

Being tied to their next upgrade cycle means being tied to whatever DRM they choose to implement to protect their IP. Will the next version of Photoshop need a dongle to run? Will you need to keep the CD-ROM in the drive? Does it need an internet connection and must call the Adobe servers every three days or it shuts itself down? (better hope your firewall and antivirus software permits the connection or you know how to fix it). What else is that program doing? Is Photoshop also scanning your computer to make sure the other Adobe products you have are legal? And if not does it call home to report it?

There's tons of great stuff out there that's free and open. The worst case scenario is that the software goes unsupported and if you are completely desperate, you can pay someone to look at the open file format and get your information out.
So check out (a very short list):

• Open Office
  
• Firefox
  
• Gimp
  
• Inkscape
  
• Blender, (Elephant's Dream, Big Buck Bunny, Yo Frankie)
  
• Audacity
  
• Ardour
  
• Songbird
  
• VLC
  
• RockBox
  
• TightVNC
  
• TrueCrypt
  

As media becomes even more integrated, what standards you have will become all the more important. Like those suckers who bought DRM'd music and then the authentication servers were going to be shut down.

If you want to find out more, google stuff like: Sourceforge, good open source free software.

Support for these programs is online in forums. If you have troubles you can usually search and find the answers. Even if you don't know the lingo - recently my search "how do I make boxes disappear when scrolling open office" gave me my answer.

update-- check out the wall street journal story where Microsoft offers financial ...incentives to have people in Africa run windows instead of linux.

update 2-- other cool openness Open Pandora

Dinners

Every time I think I my diners can't get any lamer I have evenings like this: raisins, olives, leftover beans and yogurt. At 10pm. And Bailey's, don't forget the Bailey's.

NAS with Linux

I bought a NAS to a) learn how to use and b) backup all my stuff and c) use when I eventually move (anyone want to buy my computer in the spring?).

Anyway, I got it working with both my linux boxes! Yeah! Well, halfway there anyway. I'm going to write this post so I can use it for future reference and also to solidify the ideas in my head.

The NAS device is running a file serving program that will serve files to windows and linux (Samba). Since I have no windows machines, it would be best if I could use nfs instead but my NAS doesn't have that file server installed.

I connected to the server using the linux program smbmount, though I think the newer way to connect is with mount.cifs.

To connect to my NAS I used (from eeePC forums):

smbmount //192.168.0.XXX/Volume_1 /home/user/MyShare -n -o -username=username, -password=password, uid=user, umask=000

the -n flag is needed because it disables writing to the /etc/mtab file, which is read only. and we have the uid=user so it makes the user your logged in as the owner of that mounted folder.

If you don't supply a password you will be prompted.
This assumes you have created user accounts on the NAS (which I did).

And from another webpage:

umask 000 (or 0)

   rwxrwxrwx
mask   ---------
what comes through rwxrwxrwx (directories)
   rw-rw-rw- (files)

Which means it gives the user who is mounted to the device full control of the directory that was mounted for them.

To unmount: smbumount /home/user/MyShare

Of course, this means that each time I open my computers, I need to manually mount the NAS. I can do this automagically with fstab, and mount my drive permanently (which I haven't done yet).

To complete the info in this post, to get the IP of the NAS I had to log into my router and see which IP it had been assigned. In the future I can make this easier by reserving a permanent IP to be assigned to the NAS.

Yeah, looks difficult. Well, they provided the for dummies does it automatically software but it only installs on windows. I guess they figure if you run linux you can figure it out.

Evolutionary timeline for kids

I liked dinosaurs when I was kid, but to be honest I was curious about the older weirder things. I would have thought this was very cool, a kid friendly timeline showing not just the dinosaurs but all the way back to the beginning.