A Blog of Very Little Brain

Seems like it’s “annoy Erez” week once again.

Ever heard of OpenCity? Me neither. Nor can I learn more of them once I read about the (possibly, I don’t really know) SimCity clone at Linux Games. The reason? I get bumped out everytime I try to access their homepage.
Turns out Opera was set to be identified as Internet Explorer at some point in the past, and now it keeps announcing itself as IE, which is a persona-non-grata at OpenCity’s site. I’m not joking, they practically boot you out and close the window if you go to their site with IE. Only problem is, that Opera have decided to hide that feature quite well (since they realised this was damaging their market share numbers), and I had to search very very hard to find out how to set it back.

Oh, and for kicks, this page didn’t have any browser filtering script, so screenshots are OK for IE, but not the homepage.

In a recent, smug, triumphant, in-your-face, Q&A some guy from Mozilla composed with himself, the following claim has been stated and is repeated here, verbatim, unedited, untouched:

“Ultimately, Debian took a position that was consistent with their own policies, and not compatible with some of the exceptions to Mozilla trademark policies that we offered. While we understand and respect their decision not to work with us under our branding guidelines, Mozilla believes that brands like Firefox are important for consumer protection.“

You read that right. Consumer Protection. For the sake of all that is good and holy. How and when did the cornerstone of Free-Software become Microsoft? Oh sorry. Make that “cornerstone of Open-Source”. After all, they never did care about Freedom.
Consumer protection my foot. The only thing they need to protect their consumers is against themselves, Digital Restriction Management-stylee.

And what about Firefox 2.0? Turns out it has finally got to the stage it should’ve always been at, which is a total and shameless ripoff of Opera. Hopefully by 3.0 they will get multiple tabbing line and finally be usable. You see, the only real reason to use Firefox has been their position as the free-and-open alternative to MSIE. With the new “consumer protection” phase, that position has become null and void. Use Epiphany, use Flock, use IceWeasel, use whatever fork you want. Just don’t believe the Hype.

Oh, and Mozilla? Trademarking your shit won’t work. Check what Oracle just did to Red Hat.

The register with full glory of what codemonkeys’ world really looks like. Amazing stuff.

Also, apologies for the lack of updates during the recent weeks. I’m on the verge, or just beyond the verge of a lot of new things, so bear with me.

I didn’t think reading the “Beez” recent referance to the GNOME/KDE “wars” would benefit me much, as his latest article was called “3 reasons why NOT to use GNOME“, so one shouldn’t expect too much objectivity/rationality from such a writer. I was happy to find myself wrong.

Not only does the Beez rectify himself by distancing his writing from the X Vs. Y hoards, he also acknowledges the simple truth:

“One thing that this war has learned me (sic) is that the smartest people of all are the “civilians”, our users. They just use a mixture of what is there and don’t understand what the fuss is all about. They happily shop in the giant bazaar for whatever they need.“

Truer words were never sounded. I use GNOME, I’ve used KDE on occasion, and have tested Kubuntu as a possible replacement for Ubuntu with every of the past releases since 5.10 (Breezy Badger). I kept returning to GNOME, not because it had more features, or because it had more application, or because of quality, or because of configuration issues or because of support for freedom or because of anything. Simply because I like it better. Like. It’s a nice argument isn’t it? I admit openly that KDE is better configurable, has better apps, better quality, is more mature as a project, and is free, while GNOME has some crappy apps, keeps treating his users like idiots (yes, Torvalds is 100% spot on the mark there) and incorporated Mono (as GTK#), but I still like it better. It might be that this is caused by GNOME being the official Ubuntu DE, which means they have sunk more hours of development, refinement and customisation into it, but it can also be because I simply like it more. I really dunno. But I have this weird nagging feeling that a lot of people are like me.

On the other hand, I also hope a lot of people are like the Beez:

“I repeat it one more time, I really don’t care what you’re running as long as I don’t have to run it.

The North Koreans now have a bomb.

In the comic-book “Doom Patrol”, a man from N.O.W.H.E.R.E., in an attempt to kill Danny the street, locks Crazy Jane in a Tearroom of Despair, where she is told that there will never be any joy, happyness, or hope for her. She tells it she likes it that way, the paradox kills the man from N.O.W.H.E.R.E.

How the hell did I miss this one all these years? And me an avid Morrisonologist?

I’ve mentioned Firefox less-than-total commitment to the Free Software concept in previous posts. It would seem that those guys from Mozilla got the whole deal more than a little bit off. As this article shows, not only does they trademarked the Firefox logo, but also have a clause that stipulating that using Firefox name without the official branding is a trademark violation. Don’t use the Firefox name, you say? Why, thank you, say Debian. Especially since that would release them of the other obligation, that any updates/patches they make to Firefox have to get approved by Mozilla before being implemented. This really gives the whole “FOSS” (Free and Open-Source Software) concept a new twist.

Same issue has been affecting Debian-derivative Ubuntu, who also have been using a customised (albeit ugly) not-trademarked icon for Firefox, apparently against the browser’s license. Debian have already announced that they will re-brand (and most likely fork) Firefox for use in their GNU/Linux distribution, it remains to be seen how would Ubuntu react to this issue.