Most of you have probably already into some internet site today that is either completely unavailable to you or more likely been altered and redirecting you to information about SOPA and PIPA. Some of us that are very in tune with the technology world and especially the behind the scenes process involved in making the internet work were looking forward to today, mostly to see who was going to join in the movement and support and who, especially among the big companies, would not. What is SOPA and PIPA and why all the fuss anyway? Good questions…
I know, I last left you with the intent of posting on a more regular basis. But I think it was that afternoon, or more likely late that evening a long time tech friend got back to me about something I had said about my going through various Linux distributions over the Christmas Holidays. Specifically, said friend was pointing out the error or my conception regards to Linux Mint being a version or two behind where Ubuntu was. I am not sure if that was just because of my previous testing sometime ago or just a complete error on my part, but regardless, it pointed to some additional exploration being required on my part.
Spent a good part of the early morning hours going through things here on Mephistos doing some cleaning up and it made me realize a few things. The kinds of things I was cleaning up was primarily links to other sites and almost all of the things I realized had to relate to just that. Clearly it is not something I had done in a while, as a few of the blogs I was linked to(aside from my own) had completely died, not having had a single post in all of 2011, others had completely changed the focus or were not even a blog any more, and yet others had resurfaced that I had removed some time before. A clean up of links and review of plugins and processes was clearly in order.
I have taken the advantage of the Christmas Holiday time, with some much-needed time away from deadlines and such at the office, to get back in touch with Linux. Actually, let me append to that, I had not left the Linux world, but rather, outside of some short quick glances into Ubuntu 11.4 and 11.10 I was stuck back in a 10.4 world. My personal and work machines were either running 10.4 or dual booting there and Windows XP or 7.0. I do have a couple of machines with Centos and such setup, but honestly, I can not recall the last time that I booted them. So, over the time I have had off, I have installed somewhere in the neighborhood of four distros and played around. But the question of the week is Unity or Gnome 3?
I know, I have had this debate before, but I am still being torn between the idea of which is better – the traditional book, made of paper that is printed on, especially a hard back volume and the e-book reader version that I can get so handily on my Kindle device (or for that matter my iPad, laptop, or even desktop computer). I keep thinking back on all those wonderful years I have had with books, but similarly keep thinking about the pluses of the electronic edition and some of the greener ideas behind it as well. I was especially thinking of this today while watching the Lord of the Rings Trilogy movies this afternoon, based upon probably my favorite books ever, by J.R.R. Tolkien.
