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Days later you receive an email from your reputable vendor that your RMA refund request has been denied, because you installed Linux on the laptop. You contact your vendor's customer service group, and are again told, "No refund. You installed Linux."

Steve Jobs once again weaves his magic spell, and the world is all agog over the announcement of Apple's latest gadget, the iPad...The Free Software Foundation is unimpressed: "*With new tablet device, Apple's Steve Jobs pushes unprecedented extension of DRM to a new class of general purpose computers*"

User interfaces are the last great Linux problem. What really makes Linux user-friendly-- is it limited options and loads of eye candy? What about functionality, and depths of riches to explore?

You just can't make this stuff up. This alleged news article at Technology Marketing Corporation (there is a clue in the site name) makes grandiose, breathless claims about Ubuntu..

Remember Apple's famous 1984 commercial? That is one of the most brilliant TV commercials of all time, which isn't surprising- Ridley Scott directed it, and legendary advertising agency Chiat/Day produced it. It is a superb piece of filmmaking that still gives me chills, even in the lo-fi YouTube version. And then the spell wears off, and I realize Orwell was a prophet, the commercial bears no relationship to the product, and the athlete wearing the Apple shirt should have a penguin logo on it instead of the Macintosh logo.

After weeks of research, and pondering, and gazing sadly into my shriveled bank account, I finally took the plunge and bought a hotrod triple-core AMD Phenom CPU, and a beautiful Antec Solo quiet computer case.

In the olden days of personal computing, we were on a continual hardware upgrade path seeking better performance. Now our low-end PCs would have been supercomputers ten years ago, and they're still bogging down. Is there no end in sight?

Hardly a day goes by without yet another news story about creative uses of copyright, the DMCA, and generic attack lawyers to stifle free speech, criticism, and competition. It seems that money can buy all kinds of creative "justice." For example, in the increasingly bizarre Apple vs. Psystar drama, in which Psystar commited the awful crime of selling a tool to help customers install Mac OS X on the hardware of their choice, Apple have prevailed yet again in court, and Psystar cannot do this anymore.

Many things money cannot buy; I think most of us have left jobs, even when we thought we couldn't afford to, because we just couldn't take it anymore. It's no different in FOSS. Sometimes all it takes to keep someone going is a kind word, a friendly gesture, a simple thank-you

Are fairness and honor strictly FOSS values? Are we smelly FOSS hippies anachronisms in a world of predators and parasites?

Too many wrongly characterize the debate as "security versus privacy." The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny, whether it arises under threat of foreign physical attack or under constant domestic authoritative scrutiny, is still tyranny.

I couldn't resist...

Whatever you call it and however you want to implement it, why not do-it-yourself? Linux has everything you need. It means being responsible for your own security, hardware, and uptimes, bandwidth costs. It may be that using a hosting service is more cost-effective. But there are plenty of DIY options, and you keep control in your hands.

The Internet and Google have made FOSS developers lazy because they have made it too easy to abdicate the job of proper documentation to "The community." Telling users and potential contributors to use Google, mailing lists, and forums is not documentation. It's a way to guarantee having fewer users, unhappy users, and fewer contributors.

As much as we warn about privacy, security, and reliability problems in cloud computing, it's coming and we can't stop it. So do we join the cloud party? Heck no.

Another week, another round of tinkering and messing around with Linux doodads. The Ubuntu Koala text installer has a years-old bug, and Fedora 11 LiveCD has a showstopping installer bug. Never a dull moment in computer-land!

This column is a bit premature because I haven't had time to set things up and test them yet. But I'm excited about getting started, so here are some preliminary notes on multi-track recording in Linux using a Firewire device. I scored a nice deal on a Focusrite Saffire Pro 26 Firewire recording interface. My studio PC does not have Firewire so I also bought a SIIG PCI Firewire 400 card and a 6-pin to 6-pin cable. Focusrite is a good supporter of the FFADO project, which writes Linux drivers for Firewire recording devices.

According to the device matrix in the open source HPLIP project this machine is completely supported in Linux. However, I have a different definition of "support" than HP-- theirs seems to be "A determined and stubborn Linux guru can make the darned thing work if they try really hard."

I think Darl more than earned his pay. He sued his own customers, Daimler-Chrysler and Autozone in 2003. These suits went nowhere and Daimler-Chrysler was dismissed in 2004. Also in 2003 he went after Novell and IBM, and both suits are still dragging on. Red Hat sued SCO in 2003, and the case has been stayed until SCO v. IBM is resolved. Keeping three major actions going with no basis whatsoever is quite an achievement, and he was also the primary public target (cannon fodder, if you will) for everyone who knew the whole thing was bunk.

While I completely support SourceForge’s decision to remove MikeeUSA’s code for violation of their Terms of Service, I can’t help kinda feeling sorry for the guy, because apparently he didn’t have any other copies. Let’s face it, he’s not a very experienced developer, and he can’t be expected to understand advanced topics like, oh, keeping backups, especially since he spends so much time on his activism, which no doubt distracts him from real coding.