Red Hat, Fedora, and Small Towns

I was visiting $relative's house in a small town, where access to the cutting edge in technology is not the easiest to come by. First, I was surprised to find a digital photo frame (and a big one, at that) hanging on the wall. Then, $relative asked me to turn on the computer so that I could show some recent family pictures to other relatives. I turned on the computer, expecting to find nothing more than the Microsoft Windows XP loading screen. To my shock (which quickly morphed into delight), I was greeted instead by this (note: not verbatim):

GNU GRUB Version 0.97

Please choose which operating system to start:

Fedora Core 6

Microsoft Windows XP

I wasn't sure if $relative used Fedora or Windows, so I left it at Fedora. It stopped at the login screen; by then, $relative came in and restarted the computer (to start with Windows) as $relative didn't know the login information for Fedora, so the question of how their Fedora installation was became moot.
(For those who don't know, up till version 7, the official Fedora releases were termed Fedora Core because the base installation only had the official Red Hat code, while the extra downloadables were community-supported extras.)
This leads me into my next point: RHEL 6 is coming out soon! The great site Dedoimedo has a nice review of a beta release of it (though this beta is fairly representative of the upcoming official release, as far as I know). The review also expresses excitement over the near-simultaneous release of CentOS 6, CentOS being the free-of-charge community version of RHEL, as it brings a stable yet modern operating system to the desktop once more. (Fedora was supposed to be the community version of RHEL when it started, but it decided to go for cutting-edge technologies while RHEL stayed with stability above all else.)
But, Dedoimedo, may I remind you of Scientific Linux. It has all of the stable goodness of CentOS with the added goodies of proprietary codecs preinstalled as well as some useful scientific tools preinstalled.
So let me say that while I am certainly excited about RHEL 6 and CentOS 6, I am really excited about Scientific Linux 6.

A Victory for Software Innovation

A new article (Paul Matthews, New Zealand Computer Society) reports that the latest version of New Zealand's new patent bill has once again excluded software from patentability.
This is a great move in itself, but what's even more significant is that the people leading the charge against software patents are actually the 2 largest software companies in New Zealand. This means that the companies (and not just individual high-profile developers) are the ones who are aware of the counterproductive effects patents have on innovation. If only US software companies were like that...
On a slightly related note, Pink Floyd's former manager has spoken out (Barry Collins, PCPro) against trying to stop online music sharing.
What's significant is that it's coming from the manager of a band that sold music under the conventional labels — it's not coming from an independent musician (i.e. outside the system) like Jill Sobule. What's even better is that the arguments against preventing file sharing are both economic and societal in nature — he knows that the most efficient production point is where the price equals the marginal cost of the good, and as the marginal cost of pretty much any digital software/files is $0, the price should follow suit. In addition to this, he realizes that the law is useless as a deterrent because the idea of copying as being wrong has not entered (and will not enter) the social consciousness; on the other hand, frivolous lawsuits will just make consumers resentful.
That said, I must disagree with what quoted economist Will Page says about file sharing sites damaging legitimate sites like Spotify. Looking at the data of pre- and post-DRM-free iTunes vs. music downloads on file sharing sites, iTunes sales shot up like anything after DRM was removed and all songs were set at $0.99, while file sharing music downloads fell off the charts when this happened. People will obtain goods legally if it is easier/more convenient than doing so illegally, and download data supports this.

An All-In-One RIAA bash

I never thought something like this would happen, but I have seen 3 articles today bashing the RIAA (and one doing so for the MPAA) for different reasons.
The first (Ray Beckerman, Recording Industry vs. The People) summarizes how the RIAA, to get a certain (relatively small, for the RIAA) sum of money back, spent at least 50 times that sum of money on legal fees alone. (They spent $20 million in legal fees to recover $0.4 million in probable lost revenue.)
Well, now we know that the money recovered probably isn't going towards the artists that the RIAA claims are harmed by music sharing.
Actually, on that note, the second article (Mike Masnick, TechDirt) talks about just that. Though the RIAA claims to speak for artists and musicians, the record labels make millions of dollars, while the artists themselves net absolutely no money. I won't go into the numbers here because the analysis in the original article is much more thorough anyway. What I will say is that when labels like Sony-BMG and industry groups like the RIAA claim that piracy hurts the industry, carefully consider who is actually hurt by lost sales (hint: not the artists).
There is a third article (Mike Masnick, TechDirt) that talks about related screwy accounting with MPAA revenue figures. Basically, film companies manage to claim losses on blockbuster movies because a lot of the supposed costs are actually the company paying a studio or themselves (as far as I understand). Thankfully, this can't last because a few companies are now losing lawsuits relating to these bogus claims of monetary losses. Hopefully a similar thing will happen with the record companies.
If you think all hope is lost for artists who can't possibly make a dime under the conventional system, follow the jump to read the solution.

Another Look at this Blog

Some of you may be wondering what all of the various objects on this blog are. I will try to explain this to the best of my ability.
On top, of course, is the title of this blog. Clicking on the title takes you to the main blog page (or refreshes the page if you are already there).
Each post has a date, title, and content. Clicking on the title brings up the full post (with comments).
At the bottom of each post is a link to share the post to various social networking sites. These consist of Facebook, Google, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Slashdot, Delicious, Digg, Blogger, Wordpress, Google Buzz, and Yahoo! Buzz. If you would like to see additional sites included, please list them in the comments section. I would greatly appreciate it.
Follow the jump to read more.

Book Review: "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto" by Michael Pollan

(image courtesy of Wikipedia)

This is actually the book I had to read to get credit for my high school gym class (I did not have to do any of the actual physical requirements for reasons obvious to those who know me personally). It's been a while since I've read the book, so this post will be relatively short.
It's an entertaining read, to be sure, and while I agree with the general guidelines given by the book, I believe that due to the current state of humanity (that is, we have far more people to feed than we did before processed foods came along, so food has to be cheap (and, as it stands now, not necessarily healthy) to maintain the current world population level), implementing many of Pollan's proposals can only be done by the wealthy (i.e. those who can afford to buy organic produce and the like). Also, several studies have shown that organic food is no healthier for one than conventional produce. It seems like what matters more is eating home-cooked food instead of processed/packaged food. Bill Clinton has lamented how in India, people have switched from eating the delicious (in my opinion) traditional meals to eating fast foods like McDonald's and the like, and that this is a major contributor to the rise of obesity and heart issues in India. (I will add that some of these problems already existed in India prior to the advent of multinational fast foods, owing instead to the over-reliance on refined rice as the primary energy-packed food.)
But more than that, I feel uncomfortable with Pollan's outright rejection of nutrition science, especially since analysis of vitamins in food has led to the eradication of many diseases caused by lack of vitamins. While it is true that incomplete science should not be used as a basis for prescribing diets (see, for example, the warnings against saturated fats leading to the prevalence of trans fats (due to overuse of partially hydrogenated oils)), neither should the incompleteness of the science mean by itself that the science should not be pursued further. I feel like Pollan is blinded by his own zeal; where he means to say that dietitians should not enthusiastically convey new studies' recommendations especially when the studies are very focused [on just one aspect of a certain food type], he instead essentially says that the studies themselves should not be carried out at all.

Android, Open Source, and the Free Market

Glyn Moody has a piece on why Android will beat the iPhone.
To summarize, the reason for this is twofold: Android is making its way onto more platforms than just smartphones (it is also making its way into TVs, set-top boxes, GPS devices, et cetera), and there are apps for the Android allowing for the creation of even more apps for oneself or for further distribution, so the app ecosystem can grow much larger.
The latter part reminds me of a quote (which I can't find verbatim at the moment) I read in the book The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford (which, incidentally, I will be reviewing in a future post) that describes how Soviet officials visiting the US observed the production and sales of cars (I think) and wondered who could possibly be planning it all. (The answer, of course, is no one (aside from the company with its production and sales targets, but ultimately, the customer decides).) Similarly, Apple's apps must all be evaluated by Apple and must be in the correct programming language and must be appropriate (according to Apple) to make it into the app store. It is a time-consuming process, as the app must be available to everyone. With Android, however, users can make apps for personal use without any evaluation process of any kind. No central authority determines which apps make it through and which don't. As long as the user has a good idea (for themselves) and some programming ability (though with the App Inventor, even this is not necessary anymore), an app can be born. Sure, there will be a lot of apps of poor quality, but let the consumers, not any company, decide which apps are worth downloading.
The former part reminds me of a discussion I was having with my relatives on when open source should be used as a business model. One of my relatives said that the reason why Sun was financially doing so badly before being bought by Oracle was because they open-sourced their flagship product (Solaris, which became OpenSolaris) despite not having anyone outside the company to make meaningful contributions to the project. The same was true of their SPARC processor line (which was an example of open source hardware) — it didn't really work well with any other existing hardware, so other developers couldn't really contribute to the project meaningfully. Android, on the other hand, is a good example of an (mostly) open source project because it is being ported to so many different kinds of hardware by so many different developers and companies.
Maybe the competition between the iPhone and Android isn't really fair because Android is present on so many more kinds of devices compared to the iPhone OS.
(UPDATE: TechCrunch agrees with me. Sort of. Yay!)

I want to end this post by asking you to subscribe to the RSS feed of this blog and/or follow this blog on Blogger if you have not already done so. Both can be done in the sidebar. I've also added a lot of other different subscription/sharing options, and I would greatly appreciate it if you could subscribe.
What do you think about the Android vs. iPhone rivalry? Is it fair? Who will win? Please leave your thoughts in the comments.

Truly Competitive Cell Phone Markets

I visited a village in India recently and was astonished to find that while the water quality was still as poor as it was 35 years ago (according to other traveling companions whom I shall not name here) and the general state of the village has not changed, almost every house has a satellite TV dish and at least 1 cell phone. It just goes to show that the technology revolution has started to reach even the remotest corners of the world.
The question is, why is this true of villages in India and not quite true (yet) in the US?
A few of my relatives have said that before, the Indian government controlled all telephones (landlines), so people would often have to wait years to be able to get a phone line. Now, however, cell phone companies are private and numerous, so anyone with the money to get a cell phone can get one immediately. The difference between the US market and the Indian market is that there are 3 times as many people in India versus the US, so the market is obviously much bigger; also, there are a lot of cell phone manufacturers in India (as in the US) but there are also many more cell phone carriers (unlike the US, where the market is essentially controlled by 4 or 5 major carriers), so the prices of hardware and plans are much lower and the variety of each is much greater in India versus the US. In the US, it is very rare to be able to buy a phone that is not tied to a particular carrier; in India, though such options do exist, it is more common to buy any phone and then tie it to a carrier later. All of this competition drives prices down, so the customer wins.
Now, if only the computer market could be like that...

FOLLOW-UP: Murdoch's Folly

I know that the original post was many months ago, but it still bears some relevance here.
A few news articles have reported on some ACTA analysts' warnings that ACTA will be detrimental to search engines' businesses.
I can only say that with Rupert Murdoch's moves in the past, I saw this coming. Murdoch has been the only (pre-ACTA) high-profile businessperson to remove the holdings' websites from search engines' indices due to copyright violations. All ACTA is doing is essentially legitimizing this and opening the door to more people removing websites from search indices.
Let's just see how this plays out. I doubt many more people will actually follow Murdoch's suit in the age of Google.

Movie Review: 3 Idiots

I watched this movie a week ago, but I haven't been able to write this review until today.
I really enjoyed the movie just as a funny little film. I also appreciate its attempts to touch upon the controversial subject of stress levels in the Indian educational system.
At the same time, however, I feel like the message (which is to focus more upon learning than upon rankings and to enjoy life a little more) is too muddled through the movie. Rancho, who supposedly loves learning, isn't shown to be very studious at all and is shown to be enjoying life more than he is studying. Furthermore, while it is true that ViruS's teaching methods aren't quite the best, Rancho does not need to talk back to him, humiliate him, and tell him to his face that he is a horrible professor. I love learning. It is hard. It definitely doesn't involve just sitting back and letting everything just come naturally.
That's all I have to say about it. I guess I'll just say that it was a more entertaining typical Hindi movie about a more realistic subject matter.

Linux Mint Based on Straight-up Debian

I had previously reported on this development in this post. I am here to report that these developments are getting closer to reality.
Yes, folks. Linux Mint is actually making larger efforts to move towards a Debian base. In my previous post, I reported that the new Debian-based Linux Mint was for PowerPC systems and used the LXDE desktop. Well, the fact that the linked article reports that this new version of Mint will use a rolling-release model, will use GNOME, and will be for i386 systems means that the Mint developers are really serious about moving away from an Ubuntu base and towards a Debian base. The screenshots look really nice, the installer appears to be much-improved over the standard Debian installer, and it is supposed to be a lot faster than current (Ubuntu-based) releases.
I'm even more excited about what will happen. Does this mean that the new Peppermint OS will retain the Ubuntu base and the Mint tools, while Linux Mint itself will shift to a Debian base (while retaining all of the amazing Mint tools)?