To inaugurate our new fiction and creative works section, Associate Editor Ed Hurst provides a thoughtful dramatization from the Old Testament. The text comes from Genesis 12:1-3. Join Ed in following a bit of the life of the man who would become Abraham, the story of whom begins in media res (already in progress).
When I was younger, it was the Dungeons and Dragons crowd which ran
some small risk of becoming entangled in the fantasy worlds they
created, to the point they could lose their grip on reality. At the peak
of its popularity, I was in the military in Europe. My wife was a
serious hobby seamstress at the time, and a neighbor in the military
housing area begged her to make him a complicated full wizard costume to
add some reality to his gaming. She declined because he came across
entirely too brain-fried. Testimony from others who knew this fellow
indicated he had some difficulty keeping his obsession under control, to
the point it affected the performance of his military duties. He was
over 30, so it was no mere youthful diversion, and his wife complained
often of his neglect of family, too.
It was October 31, 1517. Despite popular characterizations, it was
merely a standard procedure for the young monk to post his debate
proposal on the church door. By no means did he intend to start wars
and create a permanent rift in the Body of Christ. It was simply the
matter he took seriously the words he was being taught in his seminary
classes about what really mattered in this world. Business as usual
grated on his conscience. Nor was he alone in his complaints, so he
hardly expected to become the lightening rod for institutional efforts
to crush every dissenting voice.
It's nothing personal, you see. Human Resource (HR) directors don't
hire people; actually, they hire skill sets. Naturally, that skill set
includes the ability to get along, a skill even the most evil sociopath
can learn. It's not how good someone is, but whether they exhibit a
certain ability to perform. It's strictly dollars for a product, even if
that product is a complex of human interaction. If you could get a robot
to do the job for less money, the robot would be used.
You've installed FreeBSD, and it works fine, of course. If you are as seriously committed to using it as your desktop as I am, you'll want to get the most out it. Let's go hardcore! The key with FreeBSD is optimization -- tweaking the compile process so the resulting binary code runs as efficiently as possible.
Consumer grade machines with 64-bit processors have been around for
the past three years. At first it meant nothing, since the ones you
could buy off the shelf came with 32-bit Windows XP. However, that's
still the case, as 64-bit Windows drivers have lagged for most consumer
hardware. Not so in the Open Source world, where the greatest source of
complaints -- poor or missing drivers for some hardware -- is its
greatest strength in the 64-bit arena.
The telcos have been making threatening noises about Net traffic
passing through their lines. Despite rumors to the contary,
Google
says they aren't negotiating with the telcos. This has been
rumbling around the Net for a couple of months. Recently
Verizon
announced their intent to prevent the proposed "network neutrality"
which currently prevails. So far, it's been voluntary, but Congress
appears set to consider codifying it in legislation. Verizon and
friends are fighting to charge for Net access at both ends. A quick
reading is all it takes to realize this is no more than Google envy. As
one wag said somewhere, if it were really about bandwidth, they'd be
going after iTunes, streaming video and other serious bandwidth hogs.
Instead, they are going after a service which sends little more than
text and a few tiny images, but happens to make millions doing it. This
is transparently petty envy. Perhaps the telcos need to revisit their
economics classes.
In Linux Land, distributions are often divided into categories based
on how they manage software. It's more than just keeping track of what
is installed, but what version. The obvious issue is security updates.
Software is usually offered in packages. Sometimes they are all
self-contained; often there are packages which depend on others. These
dependencies usually make sense, but not always. You don't have to be a
developer to know there is no sense in requiring one package with
another, when the second won't even use the first. Yet I assure you it
does happen. Sometimes it's a simple matter of adding extra packages to
add extra functions. Either way, it helps if the package management is
smart enough to tell you what it needs to run when there's something
missing. There are three main systems for package management.
Helping the Small Office/Home Office user migrate to Open Source is
the purpose of this site. We advocate Open Source primarily for the
sake of freedom (
libre), but we also believe it will save you
money (
gratis). If your business can afford high-end
computing, then go for it. On purely economic grounds, that could be
the best option for some. However, for many of us there is more to life
than that. Ours is a labor of love, and computers are simply one of the
most important tools in that labor. Because of that, we tend to have
smaller budgets, which means older machines and free software. There's
something about quality and excellence which causes us to ignore the
concept of billable hours. We are willing to become low-level experts
in Open Source technology, because it's worth our time. Though we often
find ourselves somewhere between the developers and end users, we are
altogether willing to invite the latter to join us.
First, let me assure you the recent release of FreeBSD 6.0 is worth
it for desktop users. The file system reads a little faster; the
networking interface API was overhauled and supports wireless
connections better. Powersaving features on some laptops are much
better, as well as improved support for PCMCIA cards and touchpad
configuration. However, most of the changes are "under the hood" from
the desktop user's perspective, and it's all good. It is more of the
same "it just works" technology we've come to expect from FreeBSD. You
won't notice most of the improvements because they prevent trouble.