My friends will kill me

February 24, 2009 at 7:15 pm | Posted in Hacking, History, Patterns | 11 Comments
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Its been more than a year (since 2007) that I am using a a Linux distro running on text-based system configuration. The idea was difficult to adopt in the beginning but it look intelligent to me. So friends here is my Linux box running on Arch . There is no way you can edit any network or printer configrations from the Administration menu of GNOME in Arch. If yuo want to configure then go edit the text file. My colleagues who are still using Ubuntu struggle with the unknown and unrasonable problems everyday but they stick to Ubuntu, its Administration menu, the GUI based system to configure the system settings and they are stil there. Even after several years of usage they get mentally handicapped when some problem arises. They ask stupid questions to each other. Here is some conversation:

Ubuntu User 1: My system is not booting properly in Ubuntu. What should I do ?

me : whats the problem ?

Ubuntu User 1: I don’t know, Ubuntu is showing some error.

me : What kind of error. Is root file system geting mounted.

Ubuntu User 1: I don’t know.

me : Let me check

Ubuntu User 1: Don’t worry, I will reinstall Ubuntu.

Later I found out, fsck was showing some error on mounting /home partition and was throwing the user into maintenance shell to do fsck but he kep on pressing the Reset button instead.

Ubuntu User 1: I have Ubuntu but I need to play 3D games. Ubuntu does not play them as good as Windows XP.

Ubuntu User 2: Install Sabayon, you can play good games on it.

me : What playing games has to do with either Ubuntu or Sabayon (or even Debian) ?

Ubuntu User 2: Debian does not have any games.

me : Debian has largest collection of packages among all the distros. You only need to install a game using apt-get. Even if the package is not there, then you can download and install it.

Ubuntu User 2: With Debian I have to configure GNOME manually to run, eve after install it. I don’t want to configure GUIs.

me : Debian comes auto-configured. You just install something, e.g. X, and it configures it automatically.

Ubuntu User 2: No, Debian does not play games.

I really don’t understand this, if there is Open Source game, and the package is not available for Debian then you can compile it form source. But my friend does not say that he can’t compile, he says “Debian does not run games”. See the difference ?

Ubuntu User 1: I will not use Fedora, my sound system does not work in Fedora. It works in Ubuntu. So I will use Ubuntu.

me : your statement does not make any sense. Both Ubuntu and Fedora are Linux distros, you can check the sound module of your card and load it in Fedora.

Ubuntu User 1: you don’t want listen to me. I said, there is no sound coming in Fedora.

me : you need to run the lspci to check for what hardware you have and the see lsmod on Ubuntu to know the name of the kernel module being used for sound. Also check for Linux kernel version.

Ubuntu User 1: I will ask some one else who can solve my problem, you just don’t understand it.

Ubuntu User 2: Why go so deep into Linux. He can just reinstall Ubuntu if he gets problems.

… and they got angry. No.. I am serious, they are angry now.

I can show you thousands and millions of Linux users like this, who don’t want to know how to solve problems . First I thought, they don’t like the black screen of command line (I too don’t like it) or even the white background of X-terminal (which I do like), then I thought no one likes to type some words, you just need a mouse click and even these days companies are creating mouses with which we can type characters using clicks. Then I came to know the problem is more fundamental than Linux issues. The problem is of pain, finding the cause of some problem is a painful process (whether Linux or real life), even when you want to build a new house or put the wash-basin at some place in yoru house , it takes some amount of understanding and familiarity with how the houses are constructed and used by people. Putting time into understanding the house when your retired Father is finally building his sweet home , takes energy and the ability to take pain (mental exhaustation ?). All of colleagues are not running away from Linux, they are running away from pain the Linux gives. No one wants pain, everyone wants joy. Yeah.. me too. I want happiness and peace of mind.. the joy of life. The why do I believe in struggling with problems in Linux for days and nights when a 45 minutes Ubuntu reinstall will solve the problem. Why do I get into pain ?

To answer that question I have to go back to my earlier days, the day before I even installed Linux, the day my friend Dinesh mentioned the word Linux to me. Its all about happiness. So let me answer the question I have aksed: Why did I install Linux, because I trusted my friend, I knew he is intelligent than me, Its matter of friendship, the trust and respect you give to your friend based on his ability to creeate angels and daemons on hardware. Moreover I accepted my incompetence in front of him. Dinesh knew it wil be painful for me (a typical Windows User) to install Linux but he never helped me, he never said that he will want to help me. It was like the Cat’s kid, the Cat does not pick up her kitten when he falls while walking on some fence. She does not help her children because she wants them to learn to face the reality of life (quite in contrast to Human Mothers). I think thats why Cats grow out to be so intellgent. It is natural process of how cats grow their kittens. Kitten feels pain but that is required to successfully walk the fence, he needs training and his Mother gives him proper. Same way Dinesh behaved like. In the World of Linux, he was Cat and I Was his kitten and he handled me well. I am proud of having a friend like him who belives in letting people learn themselves rather than spoonfeeding them, a typical Hacker behavior.

Now when I struggle with the problems for days, then I am learning, I am looking for the final happiness, the long-term hapinnes, rather the short-term happiness caused by reinstallation. My friends have based their Linux learning on short-term happiness, thats the whole point. Their definition of hapinnes and my definition of happiness are different. They want quick-fix (cocaine ?) and I Want to drink Milk for 2-4 years continuouly everyday becayse only after years of this daily routine I will be in a good health. Their source of happiness is 2 hours ( Bade Miyan Chote Miyan ?) , my source of happiness is solving problems ( The Money Masters ?). and thats the source of everyone’s way of living this life. If you are still reading, good and if you are still reading and understand it too, well, congratulations, you can be the one you want to become. As a final note, I have edited the subtitle that comes with Ubuntu:

Linux for Idiot Beings

or need I say: Linux for Windows Beings, for Windows and Ubuntu users don’t have any identity of their own, they have let Microsoft shaped their way of thinking about software. They are no longer original but just copies of the way the Windows is designed.

 

 


Copyright © 2006, 2007, 2008 Arnuld Uttre, #331/type-2/sector-1, Naya Nangal, Distt. – Ropar, Punjab (INDIA) – 140126

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article are permitted worldwide, without royalty, in any medium, provided this notice, and the copyright notice, are preserved.

The Key

January 13, 2009 at 5:54 pm | Posted in community, History | 15 Comments
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I was wandering on #freebsd and #openbsd some days ago and was pretty much amazed when people did not like GNU way. Then I read FreeBSd and OpenBSD FAQs and foud that BSD folks are very keen on replacing any GPLed code in their system with newly written BSD licensed code. OpenBSD even says that GPL is acceptable as last resource.

what the heck ?

I was very much interested in installing OpenBSD and using it as my daily OS but after this I was literally hurt. I decided not to spend any time on BSD, rather using that time to understand the GNU software. The current situation of software demands proper attention, commitment and dedication to copyleft ideals, otherwise proprietary software companies will keep on getting stronger and stronger and will keep on eating the society in the name of business and it will affect the Free Software community as whole, whether BSD or whether GPL or whether Apache people. It will affect all of us, after all we make together free software community). Free Software is about our responsibility to help society grow better , to make technical innovations that will help removing misery and pain from this planet while proprietary software people are totally committed the other way, make money on the cost of society. Earth is the place where out kids grow, where our loves ones and friends live, and where we see people like us trying to help each other, proprietary software supporters, intentionally and indirectly do not want, they want control of economy and by writing BSD code BSD people help them in gaining control over society and hence themselves (Windows has some BSD code), BSD license is like giving someone a sharp knife, telling him that he can use it to cut vegetables and fruit so that he can make his health better but that person uses that knife to stab you , in the face…

What people like me do, we don’t give such people the knife, we give them GPL, they can’t attack us back. Whose responsibility this society is ? Who wants to stand for his country, for people need to grow out of misery and pain and lower level of poor life to get better education, better health and a better future. if software is the tool then who will accomplish this ? If software is the key in creating a society of liberated, educated and technical people who can take leadership and responsibilities in their own hands then what will you do ? .. Now don’t say “Oh.. please, we write software, don’t include politics here”..

Well, why Niels Bohr (if you have read Science then must be knowing him), a great scientist was flown in a small and risky 2 seat airplane from, IIRC, Denmark to Britain. He literally stopped breathing because of some of technical problem in the plane. British people have to revive him when the airplane landed. It was one of the operation of World War 2. Now why a non-violent scientist came under the World War 2 plan. Its because he was extremely technical when it comes atomic science. If Hitler could have him then Atomic Bombs would have fallen on USA and UK, not Nagasaki and Hiroshima and your people, your friends, your loved ones will be saying “Heil Hitler” instead of “this time I’m free“. Niels Bohr has the tool to a Free Society and same way in year 2009, the Free Software is the key to a free society where no one is judged on the basis of his religion, his race, his color or his cast. In the world of free software we judge people based on their programming skills and we believe that Information needs to be free for society needs to grow and remove the pain and misery from the lives of their fellow people.

I think writing BSD licensed code means helping the greedy business to establish the control over us. Don’ do that, if you love your freedom. I Love the Hacker’s ideals and from experience I can say that Hackers can become great politicians, and great Leaders who can turn the direction from where human lives are heading today to a better and prosperous future where the government will support people to help themselves and then will get out of their way to let them grow. Its the Free Society, where anyone can assume his responsibility for his countrymen then he will lead, GPL is the key in doing that, if you loose it, you loose the quality. you loose the peace that a man wants in his entire life. Accept the truth and truth will set you free.

 

 


Copyright © 2008, Arnuld Uttre, #331/type-2/sector-1, Naya Nangal, Distt. – Ropar, Punjab (INDIA) – 140126

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article are permitted worldwide, without royalty, in any medium, provided this notice, and the copyright notice, are

Way of Life

November 15, 2008 at 12:11 pm | Posted in community, Hacking, History | 1 Comment
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People are wrong when they say GNU (FSF) is just a collection of free softwares, GNU is a way of life. This way of life transcends itself from software profession into one’s personal and social life too. The truth is not that when people come in the GNU community then they become good, that they become the ones who think of society first instead like others who think of their selfish business interests based on the proprietary softwares.

The actual truth is GNU is a place which attracts people who work in the favor of the society, in the interest of humanity. GNU is nothing less than unicef , helping both kids and mature people who have a common interest in making technology better so that that technology can be used to put humanity on the forefront of innovations. When GNU was founded it gave a platform to all the people who were working on different places all across the different nations, to come under one umbrella, the Free Software Movement.

For me, GNU worked liked Red Cross. I have worked for 5 years with Windows, 3 years in college plus 2 more years at home and when today I compare my learning in Windows with just 2 years of working with Linux I see, I am much more of a man with common-sense about software. Windows is an Operating System which kills your senses, and so are all the other proprietary Operating Systems. They kill your senses. It is like you purchased a Motor Cycle and you don’t know where are its spark plug and Petrol Tank. When it stops working, you go to the Manufacturer and he charges you $100 and then tells you that your Petrol Tanks is empty, please fill it and then it will work. It is exactly same in the case of support from Proprietary Softwares. GNU gives you the complete Motor Cycle like as it exists today, you can see where is the engine, where is the spark plug and when trouble happens, you can open them and look for the solution. You can think of the fully-covered machines and then can imagine where our development have been gone if it was like that. The technology must remain open for everyone to study , so that they can spend their time on understanding problems and offering solutions. This is what exactly Free Software community does and I think this is what exactly GNU does. Making money and keeping technology patented are two very-very different things. Corporations are making money on both GSM and CDMA technologies while GSM is open and CDMA is patented. In fact, 82% of the Mobile market is owned by GSM, an open standard. I don’t understand why companies making proprietary software get so baffled when someone talks about Free Software in front of them. For becoming the leader of the market and #1 in business, your competitors need to go out of business. You do that by solving some problems which are unsolved yet, by changing your way of doing business, by offering some service to your customers, services that seem very simple and general but never done, by looking at the domains that are not understood by pointy-haired bosses. Google did that same, it solved the problem of searching, it solved some problems of e-mail. If you will look at the history of corporate you will find many examples conforming my viewpoint.

Business means making money, by either hook or crook. Unfortunately, general public does not want to understand this, an average man avoids an understanding of his surroundings all the time. He spends 30 years in his job, yet never tries to understand why he is there doing his boring job. He never asks himself what will happen to the company if no one does his kind of job. He never tries to understand his place or the place of his seniors in the company. If one tries to do so, he will get fed up by the so less power he gets in his current job, he will get impatient by thinking if his job and comparing it with what he can do, what he could have accomplished in last 5 years. Many people are afraid of doing business in first place, that fear is nothing, the fear of loosing is just plain nonsense because if you don’t get any risks, if you don’t have any insecurity, you won’t get anything worthwhile (e.g. having 10 million dollars in your bank account is one worthwhile thing, while the other worthwhile thing from my view point is I can buy nutritious food and make my body strong) . One can also make money by not harming the society. One can make money by making the society, the surroundings a better place to live. There is no need and there is no point in using political tactics to gain power in business. It is like that we have create a different type of business-model while keeping it more-profitable than current models. Besides that when one works in interest of his people, he will not know, how many people will be helping him. There will be communities working day and night to support such a business. One of those organizations is GNU.

GNU is not only about software. Its about making lives better. The people from the Free Software Community are not the onle ones who can become great Hackers (a.k.a great programmers), they are also the ones who can become great politicians, innovative businessmen and global leaders. I know most readers will not understand that. GNU uses software as a primary way to express itself. How do you express yourself ? GNU is about living for a cause, GNU is about Freedom, GNU is a about living your life the way you want, the way you truly are, not the way some boss thinks you are. GNU is the way of life, GNU is inside you, GNU is a mirror all you see in GNU is just own reflection. GNU is not only about software, its about Freedom of your inner self from all the chains. GNU just hands you a tool that sets you free. GNU is a way of life.

 

 


Copyright © 2008, Arnuld Uttre, #331/type-2/sector-1, Naya Nangal, Distt. – Ropar, Punjab (INDIA) – 140126

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article are permitted worldwide, without royalty, in any medium, provided this notice, and the copyright notice, are preserved.

Do you have Loveware ?

October 16, 2008 at 6:32 pm | Posted in community, Hacking, History | 1 Comment
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Its been a longer time since I read about The GNU Project or The Conscience of a Hacker. In year 2005, in the month of March, my life was hit to a great degree by a piece of text I found on some weired, strange and difficult to learn text editor knows a Emacs. I hit some combination of keys to get help and got a project description including autobiographic expressions instead of help page. I read it, I read it and I read it again and again and it took me. I was enlightened . It had to be 4 more days and then next 6 months before I was going to be enlightened again 2nd and 3rd time, again by 2 piece of text respectively. I can’t forget these 3 days for all of my life. GNU Project and GNU manifesto showed me something I never knew existed and Hacker’s Manifesto showed me my own reflection, the beliefs, the fundamentals of life I was living for. As my responsibility to fellow Hackers . I am posting the complete text of GNU Project and A Hacker’s Manifesto here. They were not written by me and hence I don’t own the copyright of them. If you want to do something with them, please do some Googling ask the appropriate persons. I call them Loveware, a word I invented myself, primarily inspired from Infoware as for people who oppose love there is nothing more fatal than a man in love who has taken the stand and same way these 2 articles are revolutionary in Software. Great Programmers do software because they love programing, they love Hacking, they love information. Same way many of them love these articles, including me. I call it Loveware, for it is the only Love I found except of my family and Martial-Arts. Hacker say Impeach God and May be the source with you. I go one step ahead, God is an unpractical concept and Lets only live with the source, why we need to “may” ?

If you really are a programmer and live and breathe software, you need to go ahead and spend next hour in reading these 3 articles. It is the only reason I have provided their links. So, now I should ask, what exactly is Loveware ?

The GNU Manifesto is Loveware, The Conscience of a Hacker is Loveware. The Hurd is a Loveware. When Paul Graham writes about Lisp, it is Loveware. When Bruce Sterling authored The Hacker Crackdown. It was Loveware. Love lies inside a Hacker’s heart, it lies inside everyone who loves programming, who loves to explore. It sets you free and Loveware is which makes the environment surrounding software folks different from all other professions.

 

 

Copyright © 2008, Arnuld Uttre, #331/type-2/sector-1, Naya Nangal, Distt. – Ropar, Punjab (INDIA) – 140126

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article are permitted worldwide, without royalty, in any medium, provided this notice, and the copyright notice, are preserved.

The Old-Fashioned Business

September 16, 2008 at 4:47 pm | Posted in History, Patterns | Leave a comment
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A long time ago I heard that viacom was going to sue Google (YouTube) for copyright violations. Recently I read about it on web. I also read recently that Symantec has sued Microsoft over Vista. See here, here and here. Then a little googling told me its actually an international business idea. IBM sues PSI, Alcatel sues Microsoft, Google sues Microsoft, Microsoft sues Google. Then I thought of Halloween Documents where Microsoft said that to completely obliterate Open Source Software, they need to target Open Source Phenomenon rather than one or two companies. At least they have the talent to understand that.

Now that really does not make any sense. All companies like Microsoft, IBM, D-Link, Apple, HP and many other biggest Software players in the market all make money using Proprietary formats, they all are in the same business, they all use same weapon to make money, code-secrecy a.k.a software-patents and then they also sue each other over patent infringements. It really does not make much sense but If you look closely over the incidents you will see a pattern emerging out of your browser, telling you something. In World War 2, in the totalitarian government of Hitler, the power means secrecy. How the Enigma cipher worked. How Allies cracked this highly cryptographic machine. Hitler’s war tactics were completely sabotaged when Enigma code was cracked. A totalitarian government has one weapon and it uses it in parliament, in intelligence, in police, in administration, in business, in itself.. this weapon is called secrecy and when it gets broken, its very easy to take them down. This is what happened in Germany in World War 2 and this is what is happening in US right now. Unfortunately the software is working the way, the companies who have monopoly over some products (monopoly on software patent exactly works in totalitarian way) like Apple over iPod, Microsoft over Desktop, Google over web are using code-secrecy as their primary weapon. They all share one common thing, software-patent, dictatorship over the people who use their products on they gonna use them, exactly like how you gonna live if you are a Jew and its 1933 and you are currently in Germany. All of these proprietary software companies have only one weapon, that makes them stand under one umbrella, under one common cause: Code-Secrecy. Even after this they all fight with each other, spend billions of dollars in courts and in settlements out of courts every year. What does that mean ?

That means the owners and runners (and the managers who help those runners) of multi-billion corporate companies have vulnerabilities in their character which can be exploited very well by companies running business without secrecy, making money on Open Source software. I also very firmly believe that those weaknesses of characters can be written down in the form of a Reference Manual which every Open Source business company should read before they start to create their business strategy. Again, the question is not of the cry of a single giant like Microsoft, it is of a process called proprietary software which has gotten hit with Open Source[1]. If these companies want to not only stand but grow in the this highly competitive market then they need to come to one with each other. They need to aid and nurture and help each other otherwise Open Source will keep on hitting all of them every hour, every day, every month every year. Better, they adapt to new ways of doing software business, after all , to grow a business means to change and adapt and take the dollar in return of it :) .

Open Source has put light on the fact that code-secrecy is the old-fashioned way, that market has changed now. The ones who will stand on the new and changed concepts of business are the ones who will be the forerunners of the future. No company, with enough self-respect, wants to be in the business for short-term. Every company desires to have the monopoly over the market. Those who understand the business and foresee the future become the ones nearly impossible to defeat. Take Google, their founders tried to sell their search engine and no one liked the idea. After 10 years, see where the Google is, Google has made so much money in 10 years that took Microsoft 25 years to collect. Business paradigms are getting shifted, ways of doing software business change as fast as a software decade passes. You decide where you want to stand, wither you are the one or not. There is no place for medium-profit lurkers in todays Software world. Either you are in or you are out. You decide. Before you refute my article make sure you read how Red Hat has started into Open Source business. How their founders learned that making money on proprietary software and making money on Open Source software are not very much different when it comes to business. The thing, which they never said, I think is, in Open Source, there is No Fear of losing the code, you have already learn how to manufacture dollars by sharing of code. Sharing of Code is the biggest nightmare of every proprietary software company and this is the tool that their competitors can exploit to maximum extent. This fear is open and free and code-secrecy is the Enigma that can be cracked by some penniless but an individual with a sense for business. you only need courage and logic of business in doing so. Good Luck :)

[1] Its not like that companies whose business is based on code-secrecy will go out of business. They will remain here for a much longer time. My point is over a decade from now, they will no longer be the kings, though they will be cutting millions every year.

 

 

Copyright © 2008, Arnuld Uttre, #331/type-2/sector-1, Naya Nangal, Distt. – Ropar, Punjab (INDIA) – 140126

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article are permitted worldwide, without royalty, in any medium, provided this notice, and the copyright notice, are preserved.

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