Patrick’s Rants

I was in the middle of trying to upgrade my spam filters on my mail server when a gem popped into my junk mail folder.

Hello, I ran across your entries and I have a few comments. Firstly, I really liked what you had to say about the kids play area in the mall. We take our daughter there frequently and it is always a problem when older kids are too rough with the wee ones. I was glad to see I was not the only one who had a problem with the lack of concern on the parent’s part. Thank you for posting that.

Well, it starts off nicely enough. That’s how these things work. (more…)

In a post on Dell Idea Storm captaintux writes that Dell has discontinued hardware support for machines running Ubuntu. If it was me, I would cancel the entire order. It’s one thing to not offer software support, it’s another to drop a warranty program for hardware due to the software installed on it.

In case they decide to pull a negative post from the forums, I’m reposting here:

On Friday, my laptop died. It was an Acer. The screen was damaged. Replacement cost of cracked screen is more than halfway to the cost of a new laptop. So I decide I will support the new Ubuntu Dell Laptops.

I go online to Dell’s Website and go to the Ubuntu page. I choose the E1505n. I upgrade to a GB of Ram, I get the Nvidia 256 MB graphics card, I get the DVD burner optical drive. So far so good. I am happy with the default processor and the screen. Now, another driving factor is that Dell has the nifty cool complete care ™ plan. With this bad boy, a random brick can fly through the air, hit my laptop, shatter it to threads, and Dell will cover it. Think of it more as an insurance plan than a service plan. I have a friend with 3 kids who has had to take advantage of it not once, but twice. Both times Dell took care of them no questions asked. Now, the first time the Dell laptop had XP on it…the second time..gentoo. Still, no problems here.
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Tivo apparently doesn’t like the upcoming version of the GPL, General Public License, version 3 according to anInformation Week article.
Tivo is cool and has geek appeal since it is uses Linux-based software. The major appeal for those who want to hack at it - and in this case, I’m using the traditional definition of “one who tinkers with software”, not “one who breaks in” - is that the GPL requires anyone who distributes GPL code to release their source code. This means that if you take GPL code, hack at it and make it “better” or add to it you must release all your changes if you distribute the modified code. Unfortunately, Tivo wants to take code that they got for free, lock it up and sell it to you with no way for you to make changes. Worse is building it so that it doesn’t work if you alter the code at all. That is really not the spirit behind the GPL.

Here’s the thing Tivo: If you want to take our free code and modify it you have to abide by the license in the code you receive. Your company is already in trouble with geeks. A cool appliance device that runs Linux-based software had the geek appeal for a while. Try to shut us out and we build MythTV boxes instead (not to mention the possible copyright infringement suits you will face if you violate our license).

Groklaw.net review of GPL 3.