I find this picture of the Eiffel Tower beautiful. A guy named Tristan Nitot took the picture and posted it for people to share and enjoy in a post called “This photograph is free.” He posted it in response to some other guy whose name I don’t know who posted a picture he took entitled “This photograph is not free.” I won’t link to him because I’m afraid he might attack[…] Keep reading →

Usually I prefer using GNU/Linux. Every now and then something in that community annoys me. In the spring the people behind the Ubuntu distribution decided to make a new interface the default without telling me. When I “upgraded” it messed things up, but, with some work, I got it back to how I liked it. This time when I upgraded, they removed my usual interface. After major work, I realized[…] Keep reading →

My post on how Freedombox’s pursuit of perfection is undermining its goals prompted some discussion. Hearing how people the Freedombox community wants to help end up supporting products we see as non-Free jolted my system. I believe constructive criticism helps, but my desire to contribute more led to the offer below. One person’s response got me thinking about how I, as someone who doesn’t write much software, can help. Diaspora[…] Keep reading →

A journalist covering Iran I saw speak last night that got me thinking critically about the Freedombox in a way the Freedombox community would benefit from, in my opinion. Someone asked the journalist what people working for freedom in Iran did about governments having access to data on Facebook and similar tools. Being in the Freedombox community, I anticipated her saying something like it was a big problem and people[…] Keep reading →

I’ll get in trouble for this post in two ways, but people who get it will appreciate it. The first is how I view death. I’m overwhelmingly swayed by this passage from the ancient book called the Zuangzi (spelled Chuang Tzu in the translation below) on the death of a loved one. Chuang Tzu’s wife died. When Hui Tzu went to convey his condolences, he found Chuang Tzu sitting with[…] Keep reading →

In the midst of my series on Communication Skills Exercises, yesterday I worked with the brilliant, talented, and accomplished Nina Paley — free culture advocate, creator of Sita Sings the Blues, cartoonist of the insightful, funny, and subversive Mimi and Eunice, and friendly neighbor. We animated the Freedombox logos John Emerson and I worked on. She also does things like post blog entries titled “I am awesome,” suggesting an obvious[…] Keep reading →

I had heard of the Great Wall of China. Now I’m behind it. They block Facebook, Youtube, plenty of Wikipedia pages (like pages on internet censorship in China), and links to software to get around the firewall. There seems to be a paid service to circumvent it. I can’t say I understand the strategy behind blocking these sites. It seems counterproductive to my concept of what government is for —[…] Keep reading →