Older blog entries for lsdrocha (starting at number 24)

Does anyone remember who compared proprietary software with a car with the hood wield-shut?

After a while looking for a job, I decided to take matters to my own two hands. I'm openning my own business.

With a (RHCE) friend, we'll do independent consulting under the Wiseminds service mark.

We will work only with OS/FS software.

Of course, this will drain me a lot, especially in the beggining, but well...

The recent announcement, brazillian gov't madea big switch to Free Software. According to a good news site, the migration will hit 80% of installed computers.

This news pleases and displeases me in very different levels.

The adoption of free software solutions will cut some expenses from the federal gov't budget, which is definetly good. This will allow the current gov't to increase their effords/investments to reduce social problems, which is their main goal.

On the other hand, I fear that this choice was based only in economical factors. While I approve this as a citizen, my evangelist side points that this could mean trouble.

This migration will affect (as far as I know) not only back-end solutions, but office solutions too. Without proper care, most users will lost themselves using Linux/OpenOffice and whatever other softwares they get their hands on.

And not just that. There might be some proprietary solutions that still technically better than the open source ones.

Pessimist aside, I hope that this thing goes smoothly and the switch proves to be a well-suited choice and regional government do the same.

May be finally come to an end. I hope so. Been unemployed for 4 months pretty much sucks. I was so down that I couldn't even use all the free time I had for studying and programming.

Of course, nothing is perfect, I'll most likely have to program in Fortran...

So, the war is just to "get rid of Saddam Hussein"? Really? Despite the fact that I'd really love to see this monster gone, this war is obviously more than that.

And to boycott comerce with other nations would be like shooting your own foot. Everybody knows that, in the present situation, USA is importing more than exporting. A boycott would only make things worse for this country.

Of course, if that happen, Bush would probably invade France, Germany and others to protect USA "way of life".

I hope that to be an isolated case, not something happening all over the country. It would kill any faith or hope let in me that USA could, someday, be a part of the world, not the spoiled kid who thinks he own the whole thing.

I was watching CNN via cable when I saw this shocking news. The French and German embassies phone systems were tapped alongside other "suspicious" sources.

Wierd that, in the country of freedom, freedom is regulated according to the government's will.

Man, I still have no job. Worst, no interviews or appointments on the horizon. At the beggining, it was fun, waste my days playing with Linux and code. Now I have no patience for none of this.

On the other hand, a friend of mine (who's a RHCE) was thinking about starting our own Linux venture. Sounds good. Its way better than look for TI opportunities and never find them.

After a few days from the Columbia accident, some things still echo in my head. This thing really sucks, space exploration and everything related is probably the only thing that capture everyone's attention. I mean *everyone*.

Despite the pain of those who lost a relative and/or a friend in the accident, it is very cool to see the crew families reinforcing that they loved their jobs and that the space program must go on. There is a lot of benefits for humankind out there, and space technology must evolve. The show must go on.

I know that is awful to say that, but every big-leap mankind takes still cost human lifes, and it is up to us to make this worthwhile.

But what displeases me most is the fear I have, right now, that Bush manipulates this new burst of patriotism that USA is living to his war against Iraq. I'm not saying that he is doing this, neither that he will, but I surely fear for this. He's the kind of guy that surely would manipulate people's emotions to get what he wants.

I hope that do not happen and, in the aftermath, the accident bring us more knowledge and wisdow about spacetravels. Human life is invaluable and its loss unreplaceble, but if it is unavoidable, then it better bring us more benefits and fortune than just another blood stain for future generations to live with.

May the Columbia crew rest in peace.

Funny thing happen two days ago. I decided to hack html-helper-mode.el and try do do a similar stuff for the Apache-docs project, to make it easier to translate/edit its docs (ok, actually it was for fun...) when I got a call for a job interview. Despite the joy, I felt a little sad, like, I won't spend my days playing with computers/codes anymore. That really bugged me.

Not as funny as trying to explain my girlfriend that "Men hack, women nest", of course.

I'm also playing with some code a friend of mine is using on his job. Is a mix between C and PHP. I realized that I don't suck in PHP as much as I thought.

Since the beggining of my "vacations", I've been swining every day, first thing in the morning. The rest of the day is divided between meals, Civ3, Python and other misc hacks. Girlfriend at night. I wish I was paid to do this, which bring us to the next issue...

Evangelism

I found a brasillian website dedicated to the "death of Linux and the GPL scum". Apparently, the website is maintained by some brasillian programmers who hate the GPL and the Free Software movement. They claim that free software will leave them without jobs and means to support their families. They really miss the point anyway, but the fact is that they seem to close-minded on this that I didn't wrote them a mail or anything. For people who claim to love coding, they should look further into the Free Software movement.

Anyway, that reflects that evangelism in Brasil is not as effective as it was supposed to be. The FS movement here is strong, especially in the south, but I guess it still need improvement.

Misc

There was a little discussion on PontoBR (a brasillian discussion website) recently between people who believes Linux is ready for desktop computers and people who believe that it is not. What really shocked me was the number of people who thinks that Unix-based system should ever be used for personal desktop computers, only for academic, development and networking purposes.

If a system is good enough, safe, secure and stable for this purposes, why not for desktop?

Ok, first post of the year.

So far, I'm still unemployed. Looking for something though, I just sent about 10 CV, and I hope something comes up soon.

In the meanwhile, I have been studying Python and PHP and some MySQL. I spending all morning on the apache-docs, translating everything. A guy contacted me other day and I believe I'll finally get someone to help me on this, especially reviewing the stuff I already translated.

I really want to send all the translation I did to the apache-docs project. I really think it could help, given the amount of repeated, on-the-manual questions I see in forums.

Also, I'm testing/using the 2.5.55 kernel. You know, too much free time in my hands right now.