Club Linux Coffs Harbour

My old Dell Inspiron 8500 beast has carked it, so I'm in the market for a new lappy. I'll do my usual humming and hah'ing for a few weeks then eventually by some other boring hunk of plastic and wires. In the meantime would anyone like to entertain me with suggestions of what I should buy? My needs are pretty basic up to a point. 90% of the time I'm in a web browser 9% of the time I'm editing text/code and 0.9% of the time I'm watching Dr. Who, The IT Crowd or some other teev.

Oh the irony of reading about this on a Microsoft site - link
This bit was particularly interesting -

Microsoft Netherlands spokesman Hans Bos noted that its Word documents were still allowed as equal alternatives to ODF for the moment, and added he expects the company will soon receive approval for its Open Office XML to qualify as "open source."

But he said the company was worried about and opposed other aspects of the Dutch policy.

Specifically, he said, the provision that government agencies should prefer open source was overly proscriptive.

Overly proscriptive?! Now hang on a minute....

While Windows, Macs, and GNU/Linux all support long file names (some platforms for longer than others), exactly what "support" means differs in each case. This article explains the differences and suggests some good habits to get into when naming files.

I've just read on Slashdot that it's been thirty years since a certain William Henry Gates III wrote his Open Letter to Hobbyists, saying to his users that "most of you steal your software".  I personally have trouble imagining gangs of 1970's computer nerds in black balaclavas jemmying open windows to fill their swags with spools of magnetic tape before disappearing into the night.

Of course Gates was using the word "stealing" as a metaphor for another, wholly unrelated illegal activity: copyright infringement.  What I want to know is, why did he stop there?  There is a whole world full of sins that you can arbitrarily conflate.

If Gates can chide copyright infringers for stealing, why not stop the next fare-evader you see leaping the barriers at a train station and tell them off for having a bonfire during a total fire ban?  If you catch someone crossing the road against the lights, be sure to lecture them on the evils of supplying alcohol to people under the age of eighteen. 

If we follow Bill's example, we can all contribute to making the world a little more surreal.  And if you choose not to, the rest of us will call you an inside trader.  Or a bigamist.  Or a drug dealer.  Whatever.

Ubuntu have compiled a useful "List Of Open-source Programs for Microsoft Windows Operating Systems", highlighting the best one or two applications for each category of software. As most of these run on both Windows and GNU/Linux based systems, this list has the dual purpose of helping your friends break the non-free software habit, and also serves as a handy reference for people looking for best-of-breed software regardless of their operating system.