rants
Random rants and thoughts about my activities in and for the Free Software community.
Upgraded to Feisty
May 9th, 2007
Well, at least hibernate now works out of the box. But gaim is a mess and evolution still sucks. Because gaim is such a crashing machine you won’t see me much online on jabber.fsfe.org 🙁 Until some good people include pidgin in official ubuntu reps. Sorry for that. I’ll hang around IRC, freenode.net, as reed.
Next time I’ll seriously consider going for KDE.
I think I have removed all proprietary drivers (I don’t have hardware that needs them anyway) but it was annoying to see that universe and multiverse are not only enabled by default, but proprietary drivers are installed even without a warning. That’s the bare minimum a distro should do.
Going to Cosenza
May 7th, 2007
I’m getting ready to go to Cosenza to the ConfSL conference. The good news is that Marco will come too: he has been developing Advocacy in Milano and I can’t wait to hear comments and suggestions from other members of the Italian community.
Dido, president of Assoli, has also confirmed that he will travel to Cosenza. I can’t wait to talk to him too. Assoli has been working very well in Italy and it has grabbed a huge success. I hope we’ll find projects we can do together.
PS a friend told me that these are my lucky numbers 🙂
09 F9 11 02
9D 74 E3 5B
D8 41 56 C5
63 56 88 C0
Connector for the Free Software community
May 2nd, 2007
Roberto has noticed that within the long list of ribbon campaigns over the internet, there isn’t any promoting Free Software.
I agree with Roberto that there is a need for connectors, especially we need a way to expand the community beyond its current boundaries. I’ve been humbly trying to do this in Italy launching GNUvox and also promoting the Fellowship.
Regarding the color of the ribbon, green is my choice.
And instead of a ribbon, I would chose ‘plussy’ as a connector. The Fellowship as a wider connector?
Didn’t meet in Second Life
April 21st, 2007
I thought it was hilarious: in the end we didn’t meet in SL, we chatted on IRC 🙂 Much better, because my little laptop is really not powerful enough to run the GNU/Linux client. I don’t know who’s to blame: the video card, the OpenGL drivers or the SL client, or all of them.
I met with long time friends Valerio, Paci and Xdatap1 on SLIRC to chat about Second Life. All of them would like to do something in SL for and with Free Software. At the moment I don’t think that FSFE should invest time or energy in SL, for various reasons. But I can always change my mind. What do you think?
Tonight meeting in Second Life
April 19th, 2007
A few Italian free software supporters invited me to a virtual meeting in Second Life. Tonight I’ll be online to chat with them. Join in, if you want. My SL identity is Stefano Brennon, I don’t own property so I’ll probably hang around the IBM facilities.
Getting to Cosenza
April 17th, 2007
For those considering going to Fellowship meeting in Cosenza, the closest airport is Lamezia Terme. From there we can arrange a pickup by car (it’s a 40 minutes ride to from the airport to Cosenza). I’m thinking of renting a car at the airport and to arrive earlier to appreciate the seaside 🙂 Let me know if you want to meet me there.
PS: my left harm is starting to hurt when I type. I hope it’s not RSI.
My new scooter
April 14th, 2007
Keeping it only black was not an option for me. I like green: it makes me happy 🙂 Here is my scooter, pimped simply with a plussy sticker.
Do you want one of these stickers? Come to Cosenza and you’ll get one.
Meeting dei Fellow: Cosenza, 13 maggio 2007
April 5th, 2007
Tra l’11 e il 13 Maggio 2007 si terrà a Cosenza la Conferenza Italiana sul Software Libero, un evento che ospiterà l’edizione 2007 della LUGConf italiana e un incontro dei Fellow italiani (nella mattinata di domenica 13).
Come per l’incontro di Bolzano i temi sono liberi e i dibattiti possibili sono tanti, da GPLv3 all’evoluzione dei DRM, oppure progetti propri della Fellowship come Advocacy. Fate sapere la vostra opinione sul forum oppure via email al sottoscritto.
Un riassunto delle proposte verrà aggiornato periodicamente sulla pagina del meeting.
UK court says ideas in games can be imitated
March 23rd, 2007
I have the impression that this decision will become useful in other fields too. The Register reports:
General ideas and structures behind computer games and programs can be copied as long as the source code and graphics are not, the UK’s Court of Appeal has ruled.
Judge Jacobs said:
"If protection for such general ideas as are relied on here were conferred by the law, copyright would become an instrument of oppression rather than the incentive for creation which it is intended to be," said Jacobs. "Protection would have moved to cover works merely inspired by others, to ideas themselves."
Did somebody say patents? But game rules cannot be patented. There is something useful for our cause here.
The Ball in the Hole
March 20th, 2007
Silvano kysucix will show what you can do with Free Software and a creative mind.
The ball in the hole is easy and fun. Using a colorful ball you can delete your projected image to see what (or who) is in the hole.
See the videos and pictures here. The next exibition will be in Milan (ITA), March 21st @ La Cueva No-Art Gallery. We should keep it in mind for Advocacy events.