Paw Prints: Writings of the maddog

Mar 31, 2013 GMT

March 27th was Document Freedom Day. In the crush of other events that day I was not paying as much attention as I should, and it took an article from a friend of mine talking about Office Suite compatibility to focus my attention.

Of course compatibility between office suites is a big hindrance from a lot of people using an office suite like LibreOffice in their business. When you send a document to someone and they can not read it, or you get a document from someone and you can not read it, that is a problem. That is why it was nice that LibreOffice... more »

Feb 27, 2013 GMT

Recently Yahoo! announced that they are going to require their telecommuting employees to find an office near them and report every day to that office instead of telecommuting, which had been the practice of a large number of employees for many years.

The reasons given were many, ranging from “Yahoo! re-inventing itself and needing to have people in the office to share ideas 'around the water cooler'” to “improving morale”.

I have worked for many companies over many years.

My first "real job" in 1973 was at an insurance... more »

Jan 13, 2013 GMT

Last night I was about to watch the movie “Les Misérables” in my favorite movie theater when (during intermission) I flipped open my cell phone to read the news of Aaron Swartz's death. I do not recommend watching that movie after reading news of a young (26 year old) hacker and Internet activist committing suicide.

***warning*** movie spoilers following:

For those of you who have not seen the movie, the stage musical, or read... more »

Jan 10, 2013 GMT

On January 2nd Ubuntu announced that they were going to support a phone, and the announcement has been met with both congratulations and nay-sayers.

The people that congratulate Ubuntu and Canonical are talking about how manufacturers and carriers will now have a clear path to creating a highly branded interface to differentiate themselves from the other manufacturers and carriers.

People that are nay-sayers usually talk about how Canonical is “late to the market” and “do not have experience dealing with carriers”.

I would... more »

Dec 24, 2012 GMT

It is the Night Before <your favorite holiday name> and all through the house, geeks are panicking because they STILL do not have some Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa presents for those they love.

Do not panic. With Free Software you can fix it all in a couple of hours.

First of all you need to design some nice cards for those on your list.

Go to the Internet and find some appropriate images for your particular holiday. Make sure they are covered by Creative Commons licensing or otherwise are in the public... more »

Oct 17, 2012 GMT

Recently I was talking to a high-ranking government official about the choice of using Free Software instead of closed-source proprietary software.  In this letter I mention "Microsoft" a lot, since most people know them, and they make a wide variety of products.  However, you could just as easily substitute almost any closed-source vendor and have the same message.

One of the people who was copied on the letter, thought it was worth sharing with others, so here is the letter (somewhat edited) for my blog:

Dear... more »

Sep 15, 2012 GMT

Today is Software Freedom Day, and as part of that I would like to discuss what Software Freedom means to me, and to talk about one of its greatest defenders, Richard M. Stallman.

Recently Richard has come under “discussion” about his remarks regarding Valve putting their games onto Linux...er, ah GNU/Linux. Richard seemed less than ecstatic about it. His concern was that closed-source games coming onto Linux would reduce the drive to create games based... more »