I did a “guest author” thing for the HeliOS blog that was published this morning.

Blog of HeliOS

Thanx to Jeff & Ken for cleaning up my ramblings.

Small supply but check ‘em out… Help HeliOS provide computers to kids who otherwise have limited access to them and get a cool T-shirt at the same time.

http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/2010/05/get-your-shirt-together-with-helios.html

A quick comment / suggestion: Give up 1 hour each week when you would normally be a) watching TV or; b) playing a game. Use this time to watch a video or two at a website called, well you know the three letters it starts with and the punctuation required to get to the dot com site of “TED”. There’s some fascinating talks given folks who are on the leading edges of their fields. What you get from just watching one of the talks (many topics) will be well worth the hour of “Housewifs of Someplace” that you missed.

PS: I’ll be doing some overseas travel for work soon so I might just post something from and about my new temporary locale.

A excerpt trying to explain the purpose / mission of Mozilla’s new “Drumbeat” efforts:

In a nutshell: make sure the internet is still open, participatory 100 years from now.

Of course, this vision faces many challenges. Current examples: control over our digital identities and data is centralizing; and the growing mobile internet is far less open than the one on our desktop. At a more basic level, few people take the time to consider the internet as a public resource. They simply take it for granted, like air. Drumbeat is about gathering a critical mass of people to address challenges like these.

Sounds like a noble, and supportable effort to me.

I suspect this comes with the realization that Mozilla’s Firefox browser is likely to dethrone IE* at some point in the not too distant future as the most used internet browser. It may also be a response to “what do we do from here to keep an open source community motivated when you are no longer the underdog with a better product.”

* Some statistics this may have already happened. Possibly as early as January of 2009… see HERE. However, at least THIS market share study says it has not yet happened.

If you would, please take that time to watch at least the interview with Ken Starks, head of the HeliOS project. If you’re in the greater Austin area (or not) please consider helping this work continue.

HeliOS

And Don’s FOSS video starring me! OK, well not “starring” but they did let me yak a bit.

FOSS

Having seen Micro$oft pushing busts for theft of intellectual property (Win and Office) in Beijing first hand I found it amusing that now they’ve been ruled against for the same sorta thing.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/17/microsoft_china_font_ip_infringement/

Yes, Tightwad Engineering (TWE) has combined forces with HillBilly Enterprizes, LLC (HBE) and SkipsJunk to develop another new hi-tek device:

http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/2009/11/stunning-breakthrough-in-wireless.html

The DSWD-v1 and -v2 have been revealed!

Have a USB wireless w/o an external antenna that you wanna use for a longer range, semi-stationary wireless link? Our precision designed parabolic dish kit should be on the market soon for under $12 (using ur USB stick). A complete kit that includes a 200mw high power USB stick, the DSWD-v2 parabolic and USB extension is expected to hit the market for under $39.

Have fun.

PS: I also must credit these krazy Kiwis as I do believe this is were I stole the idea from:
http://www.usbwifi.orconhosting.net.nz/

The Indian (Hindu) Holiday that most approximates Christmas in the US in terms of it’s ‘largeness’.

It is a celebration of good over evil and time to bring light (good) into your home. Sweets and Gifts prevail much like our Christmas holiday.

Ever wonder what the difference between software labeled as Open Source Software (OSS) and that issued under the Free Software Foundation’s (FSF) GNU GPL? RMS’s explanation HERE.

ITworld had a real short article on the same topic HERE.

Celebration of Gandhi’s 140th Birthday and a national holiday in India today since he is often credited as being the major force behind the Independence of India.

From a radio announcement by the then Prime Minister upon his death in 1948:

“The moral influence of his personality and of his gospel and technique of non-violence cannot be weighted in any material scale. Nor is it’s value limited to any particular country or generation. It is his imperishable gift to humanity.”

A short biography HERE.