Derrick
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- Joined
- Nov 22, 2010
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We all hear about the Open Source movement, we love the ideas and principles it espouses and the liberties it will surely give those of us who need those liberties.
These liberties extend to far further than just the civil liberties it obviously garners, but to liberties that are far more immediate in their effective outcome.
These liberties include:
· The right to access an operating system without paying a cent for it
· The right to make MP3 (or any wanton format) backups of your music
· The right to make Xvid (or any wanton format) backups of your videos
· The right to view pictures without restriction
· The right to edit and send documents freely without the need to have proprietary software to do so.
· The right to browse the internet on a browser of your choice
· The right to send instant messages on universal clients that talk to all the IM services instead of one at a time
· The right to send email on an open and extendable mail client that doesn’t cost a cent
· The right to encode printable documents in compressed format even PDF
· The right to free encryption tools, which gives you privacy should you need it
· The right to host a free and open web server on any machine anywhere in the world
· The right to host a free and open email server anywhere in the world
· The right to free multiplayer entertainment
Naturally these “rights” are not complete and are also not listed in any specific order of importance. Yes they might not be enshrined in stone somewhere in the Smithsonian but they are MY rights, that I have claimed and that I can give and share for free with anyone I so choose.
That is the beauty of open source and that is what I want to discuss with you today. I would like to share this information with you on the off chance that perhaps you didn’t know about some of the things mention here. Perhaps it can help you find your own little Zen garden of computing bliss in an increasingly digital world. I will also aim to bring something new to the table that even I at the time of typing this text didn’t know. I will use my magic keyboard to find it for us.
Laying the foundation to Zen
Okay, so let us start off with the most important element in your arsenal of computing liberty, namely the OS. The most obvious candidate for a free OS is Linux. It is free, came a long way around the block and is stable. If you find the right distribution for you, there will be endless hours of happiness in your computing Zen garden. For more on Linux and all its wonderful flavors, please visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux
Getting the right vibe
Once you have a computer running with your own choice of OS running, be it Windows, Mac OS X, Linux or whatever you want the machine to envelop your little computing Zen garden with some sweet tunes of love and tranquility. Some folks find this Nirvana in Nirvana, Led Zeppelin, Rob Zombie and other well adjusted and centered musicians, others don’t. Wherever your pleasure can be found being able to convert your CD collection into an easily accessible database of mp3, mp4 or other format well adjusted to the digital world is a must.
I urge you to scatter on over to www.wikipedia.com(another marvel of open information) and visit a page like this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_media_players
That list will show you which are free, which are open source and which are not. It will show you, which work on your OS of choice and so forth. Happy tune time!
Image is everything
Pictures and videos are important in a modern world. You will find that having enough storage for them is too, but that is beyond the scope of my discussion today. What I want is for you to find something that gives you a nice blend of ease of use and capability.
You want something that can play nearly anything and everything that moves or not.
For still images and video viewing you need to look at this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_image_viewers
For encoding I have one clear favorite: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaCoder
That is a one stop shop for encoding recorded video.
If however you want to put some video together then look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_editing_software
Simply look for the word “free” in the document and you will find some pretty handy software.
Make me a flyer
You have a small company; you needed to have some marketing material out YESTERDAY and a simple text editor will not do the trick! What to do? Call Mr. Open Office to the rescue!
Take a flashlight. Take a piece of paper and take a black marker to blacken it. Now take a needle, sharp pen or other sharp pointy thingy and punch out the letters O and S on it. Shine it up into the night sky. Aim for a cloud! Do you hear the buzz and thunder in the distance? That is Mr. Open Office on the way!
Okay, kidding! But seriously, fly on over to www.openoffice.organd see what wonders wait!
Browse and browse away
Did you expect my short little category introductions like the one above this text to make sense? Think again! It is way too early in the day for that to happen. What follows will however make some sense. A good browser that makes you feel comfortable in the shrubbery of your own computing Zen garden is extremely important. Not having it would kind of be equal to making out with a super model with no super model nearby, understood? Things can get weird and cockeyed quite quickly.
You could go and scrounge around in this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers
But I can send you straight to heaven with a one way ticket. Go here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/
Download Firefox TODAY!!! It comes recommended by many!
Message in a bottle
I told you the category titles suck! Instant messaging is the ability to send messages instantly. Isn’t that just fantastic? We all know the likes of MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger. Some folks even know AOL’s little running man messenger. If you don’t know Skype then you need to!
Here is a list of instant messengers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_instant_messaging_clients
What is interesting to note is that you can set up your own network, just for your friends or family. Have a look at Jabber. If you have the time, play around, have some fun!
JABBER: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Messaging_and_Presence_Protocol
Email galore
No, it is not a small town in India; it is the ability to (these days) gets loads of spam and a little bit of email from friends and family. To do this properly you need a good client with some cool anti-spam and junk filtering capabilities.
I have a recommendation or two, but get yours by looking at this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_e-mail_clients
I recommend this baby: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/
Send me that page please
So you found a nice website article or perhaps even an image that you want to send to a friend or list of friends via email. The problem is that the idiot bosses of these friends, family or associates have banned images via email or limited the size of such files. Worse still is sending a simple link will not suffice as the poor sods have found themselves behind a firewall that restricts web access to all but said idiot bosses.
What to do?
PDF Creator is the answer! Print any page, image or whatever can be printed into a PDF file and ship it off via email. I have yet to find the company that blocks PDF documents. I am sure some idiot boss out there has done it, but I haven’t run into him/her yet.
Get it today! http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
Be kind and share information!
Give me a shot of privacy and a glass of security
Sometimes people want to say things that need to stay private. Mostly this will fall in the realm of company secrets but I am sure there are scenarios where sometimes a little assured privacy is a good thing. If not privacy then at least the assurance that the communications comes from who it says it comes.
Encryption facilitates this.
I recommend you look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy
You got served
The joys of having your own web space are numerous. Having some on your desk getting served from there as well, even more so!
This is just fun and for serious web hosting, dedicated lines and so forth become essential. There is however some uses for hosting on your own even on a DSL or similar connection. Those reasons you can make up for yourself. It is an adventure in its own right.
For web serving: www.apache.org
Also look at this: http://www.w3.org/Servers.html
For email serving a good recommendation would be: www.sendmail.org
Also look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mail_servers
Let’s get it on! You and me!
Having fun in your computing Zen garden is essential for bliss. I have recently discovered BZ Flag and can recommend it to anybody looking to have some multiplayer network and online fun.
www.bzflag.orgis the place to find it.
For more games (multiplayer and not), have a look at this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabetical_list_of_open_source_games
That is it for today! Have fun!
Technorati : open source rights email apache sendmail firefox thunderbird mp3 mp4 avi divx
These liberties extend to far further than just the civil liberties it obviously garners, but to liberties that are far more immediate in their effective outcome.
These liberties include:
· The right to access an operating system without paying a cent for it
· The right to make MP3 (or any wanton format) backups of your music
· The right to make Xvid (or any wanton format) backups of your videos
· The right to view pictures without restriction
· The right to edit and send documents freely without the need to have proprietary software to do so.
· The right to browse the internet on a browser of your choice
· The right to send instant messages on universal clients that talk to all the IM services instead of one at a time
· The right to send email on an open and extendable mail client that doesn’t cost a cent
· The right to encode printable documents in compressed format even PDF
· The right to free encryption tools, which gives you privacy should you need it
· The right to host a free and open web server on any machine anywhere in the world
· The right to host a free and open email server anywhere in the world
· The right to free multiplayer entertainment
Naturally these “rights” are not complete and are also not listed in any specific order of importance. Yes they might not be enshrined in stone somewhere in the Smithsonian but they are MY rights, that I have claimed and that I can give and share for free with anyone I so choose.
That is the beauty of open source and that is what I want to discuss with you today. I would like to share this information with you on the off chance that perhaps you didn’t know about some of the things mention here. Perhaps it can help you find your own little Zen garden of computing bliss in an increasingly digital world. I will also aim to bring something new to the table that even I at the time of typing this text didn’t know. I will use my magic keyboard to find it for us.
Laying the foundation to Zen
Okay, so let us start off with the most important element in your arsenal of computing liberty, namely the OS. The most obvious candidate for a free OS is Linux. It is free, came a long way around the block and is stable. If you find the right distribution for you, there will be endless hours of happiness in your computing Zen garden. For more on Linux and all its wonderful flavors, please visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux
Getting the right vibe
Once you have a computer running with your own choice of OS running, be it Windows, Mac OS X, Linux or whatever you want the machine to envelop your little computing Zen garden with some sweet tunes of love and tranquility. Some folks find this Nirvana in Nirvana, Led Zeppelin, Rob Zombie and other well adjusted and centered musicians, others don’t. Wherever your pleasure can be found being able to convert your CD collection into an easily accessible database of mp3, mp4 or other format well adjusted to the digital world is a must.
I urge you to scatter on over to www.wikipedia.com(another marvel of open information) and visit a page like this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_media_players
That list will show you which are free, which are open source and which are not. It will show you, which work on your OS of choice and so forth. Happy tune time!
Image is everything
Pictures and videos are important in a modern world. You will find that having enough storage for them is too, but that is beyond the scope of my discussion today. What I want is for you to find something that gives you a nice blend of ease of use and capability.
You want something that can play nearly anything and everything that moves or not.
For still images and video viewing you need to look at this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_image_viewers
For encoding I have one clear favorite: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaCoder
That is a one stop shop for encoding recorded video.
If however you want to put some video together then look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_editing_software
Simply look for the word “free” in the document and you will find some pretty handy software.
Make me a flyer
You have a small company; you needed to have some marketing material out YESTERDAY and a simple text editor will not do the trick! What to do? Call Mr. Open Office to the rescue!
Take a flashlight. Take a piece of paper and take a black marker to blacken it. Now take a needle, sharp pen or other sharp pointy thingy and punch out the letters O and S on it. Shine it up into the night sky. Aim for a cloud! Do you hear the buzz and thunder in the distance? That is Mr. Open Office on the way!
Okay, kidding! But seriously, fly on over to www.openoffice.organd see what wonders wait!
Browse and browse away
Did you expect my short little category introductions like the one above this text to make sense? Think again! It is way too early in the day for that to happen. What follows will however make some sense. A good browser that makes you feel comfortable in the shrubbery of your own computing Zen garden is extremely important. Not having it would kind of be equal to making out with a super model with no super model nearby, understood? Things can get weird and cockeyed quite quickly.
You could go and scrounge around in this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers
But I can send you straight to heaven with a one way ticket. Go here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/
Download Firefox TODAY!!! It comes recommended by many!
Message in a bottle
I told you the category titles suck! Instant messaging is the ability to send messages instantly. Isn’t that just fantastic? We all know the likes of MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger. Some folks even know AOL’s little running man messenger. If you don’t know Skype then you need to!
Here is a list of instant messengers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_instant_messaging_clients
What is interesting to note is that you can set up your own network, just for your friends or family. Have a look at Jabber. If you have the time, play around, have some fun!
JABBER: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Messaging_and_Presence_Protocol
Email galore
No, it is not a small town in India; it is the ability to (these days) gets loads of spam and a little bit of email from friends and family. To do this properly you need a good client with some cool anti-spam and junk filtering capabilities.
I have a recommendation or two, but get yours by looking at this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_e-mail_clients
I recommend this baby: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/
Send me that page please
So you found a nice website article or perhaps even an image that you want to send to a friend or list of friends via email. The problem is that the idiot bosses of these friends, family or associates have banned images via email or limited the size of such files. Worse still is sending a simple link will not suffice as the poor sods have found themselves behind a firewall that restricts web access to all but said idiot bosses.
What to do?
PDF Creator is the answer! Print any page, image or whatever can be printed into a PDF file and ship it off via email. I have yet to find the company that blocks PDF documents. I am sure some idiot boss out there has done it, but I haven’t run into him/her yet.
Get it today! http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
Be kind and share information!
Give me a shot of privacy and a glass of security
Sometimes people want to say things that need to stay private. Mostly this will fall in the realm of company secrets but I am sure there are scenarios where sometimes a little assured privacy is a good thing. If not privacy then at least the assurance that the communications comes from who it says it comes.
Encryption facilitates this.
I recommend you look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy
You got served
The joys of having your own web space are numerous. Having some on your desk getting served from there as well, even more so!
This is just fun and for serious web hosting, dedicated lines and so forth become essential. There is however some uses for hosting on your own even on a DSL or similar connection. Those reasons you can make up for yourself. It is an adventure in its own right.
For web serving: www.apache.org
Also look at this: http://www.w3.org/Servers.html
For email serving a good recommendation would be: www.sendmail.org
Also look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mail_servers
Let’s get it on! You and me!
Having fun in your computing Zen garden is essential for bliss. I have recently discovered BZ Flag and can recommend it to anybody looking to have some multiplayer network and online fun.
www.bzflag.orgis the place to find it.
For more games (multiplayer and not), have a look at this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabetical_list_of_open_source_games
That is it for today! Have fun!
Technorati : open source rights email apache sendmail firefox thunderbird mp3 mp4 avi divx