As folks who read this blog know, I’m always checking out new ways to access, sort through, catalog, and otherwise enjoy my music files. As a long time Mac user (at least since they dumped their old OS and started using BSD), iTunes has really been the slickest, easiest to use and most fully functional music player available to me. But Apple’s incessant attempts to impose more ingenious and arguably ever more diabolical forms of their DRM (digital rights management) upon me in order to limit what I can do with my own music have basically forced me into an as-yet unending search for a better, free and open solution.
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Things have changed a great deal since 1982. These days, having a computer is almost synonymous with having access to the internet. In truth, a computer that cannot access the internet today is almost quaint. Sure the average Linux distribution comes with enough software to run an entire office out of the box, but if you can’t communicate with your customers via email, fill in forms at online websites, or look up information on the web you’re SOL.
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The first open phone is already out (for developers) called the Neo Freerunner. By “open” I mean that the OS is fully documented, and customizable by those with the skills to modify it. It is using Openmoko which is the competing open mobile operating system (OS) to Google’s Android mobile OS (still no phones with that yet as far as I know). Both projects are leveraging the linux kernel which makes this exciting to me. You can use the new $400 device (which is currently sold out) on the AT&T network, but its mainly going to Universities for use in computer science classes right now.
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ThinkPad R32 2658-N3U
Original description: P4-M 2GHz, 256MB RAM, 30GB HDD, 14.1 XGA(1024×768) TFT LCD, 8x-3.3x DVD-ROM, Modem(CDC), Ethernet(LOM), Li-Ion battery, WinXP Pro, Wireless upgradeable

I like to try out laptops once in a while and put Linux on them to see if how easy it would be to do everything I need to do without paying a Microsoft or an Apple tax. Since I “switched” to a Mac (from Linux) in 2002, I still use Linux at work, and have a family PC set up with Linux and I’ve been thinking it might be time to switch back. I’m not a big fan of Apple’s move to Intel, and while Macs are really slick, setting up house in Linux is a lot more fun. This is not a comprehensive report, but just my personal notes as I attempt to use the machine.

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I’ve been using gnupg for years. It’s not that I have lots of super secret spy stuff to communicate to nefarious characters around the globe, but rather that when I send something personal, I’d like to keep it that way if possible. Like a lot of folks I have about a zillion passwords and authentication keys now to all the different websites and programs I use, online or otherwise. Like most people I used to keep all those passwords in a list in a text file someplace (usually right on my desktop!), but I decided a few years back to start encrypting it. I spend most of my day in a browser or in an email client, so years ago I chose to use gnupg and thunderbird with the enigmail add-on to sign and encrypt my email messages. I admit since I started using gmail more often I haven’t been signing my emails as much as I once did. The firefox extension firegpg allows you to use gnupg in gmail, but it’s just not as slick as enigmail is in Thunderbird so I eventually uninstalled it. Over the years I have accumulated a hoard of emails that can only be read when I click the nifty ‘decrypt’ button and enter my passphrase correctly. I’ve got lots of cool stuff squirreled away there including some emails from Wil Wheaton and other less well known folks on various arcane topics. Things worked so well for so long that I had totally forgotten that I set my key to expire in 5 years. Then, one day last week - it did!
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After I came back to work after the holiday, there were several mysterious system failures to investigate. The solutions ranged from the ridiculously simple (it was unplugged) to the arcane (no display, no boot-up, no beep codes). Unfortunately this last was on a fairly important machine used for software development in the engineering department. It took just a few minutes to eliminate most of the possible causes for this problem (tightening cables, unplugging USB devices, reseating memory, etc.) and I soon had the machine booting into Windows but the system process was running at 99% and it was basically unusable. The user claimed that there had been a Windows update on the last day before holiday and I suspected that the machine had been turned off in a rush mid-update (or there was some virus at work). I certainly couldn’t prove either yet, and it didn’t matter. The user notoriously forgets to check in code and it was imperative that I get all data off immediately and over to a working machine so work could continue, plenty of time for post-mortem after the user was back in business.

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I’ve lost count of the number of times parents have asked me how to block internet use on their home PCs. Usually it’s because their kids have been caught visiting sites they shouldn’t have been allowed to go to and the completely clueless parents had no idea what their kids were doing until it was too late. Why anyone would allow their kids totally unsupervised acess on an internet connected machine is beyond me, but it happens. I hear some of you yelling, “Get to point Nate, what did you tell all those people who asked?!”

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