On Sunday, August 5, 2007 Bush signed the revised Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) into law, in which the U.S. Congress spinelessly caved in and gave legal authority to the Bush administration to continue to intercept and spy on electronic communications. Then, on Thursday, August 16, 2007 the whole worldwide Skype network goes down. Coincidence? I think if you use Skype, you should now be very, very, concerned about the privacy of your calls and had better start considering using FOSS alternatives.

What do a super secret ultracapacitor and a recent Supreme Court ruling have to do with providing viable clean electric energy to the masses? Well, if things are allowed to gravitate toward their logical conclusion, they provide the technical and political impetus to finally bring cheap, clean, and renewable power to the people.

The Ubuntu people enjoy giving their releases funny animal names. There have been "warty warthog", "hoary hedgehog", "breezy badger", "dapper drake", "edgy eft", and the coming "feisty fawn". Well, with nothing better to blog about this week, I've decided to provide my suggestions for names. So for this week, and next, I will present my Top Ten Ubuntu Release Names, five this week, and the rest next. Read em and weep!

Pissy Porcupine

My last two blogs dealt with issues that illustrate to me that some people have a functional disconnect with the philosophy, and spirit, of what I feel is really what the Free Software movement should be about. For many "freedom" seems merely to be mostly a slogan, not a guiding principle to consistently adhere to, and a reality to produce. Here's what I think many people are missing.

Do your ever wonder if some self-proclaimed open source projects really 'get it' what it means to truly be about being 'free and open source' versus just using FOSS for other means? Sometimes I really have to wonder, because I keep running into examples where projects touting open source software engage in behavior where they glaringly contradict the holistic and philosophical embrace of its ideals. There's a lot of faking the FOSS going on out there.

Confidential White House sources have leaked to me a secretly included draft section of the President’s State of the Union address. These sources suspect that the Free Software Foundation (FSF), a suspected terrorist group, somehow gained access to the speech and included this section. It was purportedly caught at the last moment by a staffer who was literate enough to understand what she was reading. I release this copy of the rejected section, exposing myself to potentially grave peril, as a public service to our readers.

The Bush administration has already claimed “we don’t need no steenkin warrant” to listen to your phone calls, see what websites you visit, scan your emails, and now, with the revelation of a new “signing statement”, it’s even claiming the authority to read your physical mail.

Yes, our privacy is under assault.

Kwanzaa is an African inspired end of year observance of the Nguzo Saba (seven guiding principles) celebrated from December 26 – January 1. On each day ceremonies take place to emphasize characteristics that represent the spirit of, and adherence to, that days principle. It occurred to me these seven principles beautifully characterize the spirit and essence of FOSS, and can be used to celebrate it too.

While waiting for the imminent release of PCLinuxOS 0.94 I started wishing for a usb flash drive to back up my /home data. I usually just buy the Live CD, but I then started to think, what I'd really like to have is the OS come on a flash drive. No installation would be necessary, just plug it in and use. Then in an epiphany (a flash even), it became clear, the end of CDs is near.

People in this country are pretty funny, they really are.

It’s a damn shame how we exert so much energy for what we want, and considerably less for what we really need. People will queue up for a week, and risk weather and robbery (“Violence Mars PlayStation 3 Launch”) to secure the “opportunity” to spend $500+ of slave labor earned money to buy a PS3 while probably oblivious of how that same amount of money could buy them computing power that could set them free(r).

What we need are more Penguinz in da hood and fewer PS3s.