I've been running Linux since 1994? It is an extraordinary piece of collaborative software.

Unfortunately, the patent and copyright system has resulted in key areas of software service to become owned by a few companies.

The example is the open source software Openshot. The application looks and runs just like it did 5 years ago. From several tries, I am not getting results.
In contrast, my son's girlfriend uses the proprietary software from a big San Jose outfit and she grinds out professional quality work without much difficulty.

Copyright and patent combine to prevent copying, imitation and reverse engineering. Openshot, Audacity and Ffmpeg look like usable programs. But after five or six tries over ten years I say they stink. Are they corpses propped up by the software theft cops to justify the proprietary tricks embedded in programs like Autocad?

Despite the accomplishment of Linux, let us call the entire pile of proprietary software and the genius of non repairable inkjet and xerographic printers as the twentieth century's glittering heap of garbage.

This is an 1890's era paper by Arrhenius. Good reading.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rsc.org%2Fimages%2FArr...

Thousands of people burning more energy to go to a concert?

We need to change our gaze,

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.lowco2america.com%2F...

Another way of looking at this Slashdot post about "longest lasting computer" is what kind of computer setups are repairable and enjoyable. I bring this up because I think that the 'tons of consumer crap computer and printer culture' is winding down. Think of the amazing technological accomplishment of inkjet and xerographic printing... and the way Hewlett Packard forced the entire industry (afaik) into a deliberate land of consumer waste.

My oldest system is a Gateway 'top of the line' gaming case computer. It has elaborate cooling and multiple connector cables. I have a 5 1/4" floppy drive that I am going to install one of these days. It is slow to boot but and the Samsung display does not strike until the office warms to 60 degrees F. With a 512 M solid state disk it clip clops along nicely. The downside of the Gateway is it burns 130 watts.

Glad to hear you are starting a new Linux box. A few years ago I set up an AMD Ryzen 4000 series Thinkpad Laptop, about a $900 proposition. Meanwhile I am running a 12 year old Gateway 5064 "gaming" Desktop machine. The Gateway has it's maximum ram plus a 500 GB SSD solid state disk. The old timer pulls 140 watts and it's Samsung LCD display has a hard time striking below 60F.

The Thinkpad pulls 40 watts and it boots faster than the Gateway. But is it $900 better? Not really. What it boils down to is the Gateway with USB keyboard and mouse and a 'free' flat panel display is holding on to first place as my every day computer.

A few more comments. Do not go for a dual boot with Windows, Use the new setup to review and fix your security. Do get a 2 Gb USB disk drive. It is easy to copy your entire home directory to the Disk drive and then unplug the disk drive, neatly wrap it in aluminum foil and you'll be ready for both a ransom attack and an electromagnetic pulse solar storm.

There is a change happening in the Linux desktop computer culture. From the Canonical Ubuntu web pages, it is clear that Canonical is chasing a smart devices market. Seizing market share with a Ubuntu variant is their business goal. The developers are converting applications to the snap package system and they are doing whatever they can to fit Ubuntu into the new smart devices market.

Meanwhile, the developers don't have time to deal with problems that are popping up on old hardware as new software inadvertently breaks when running on old hardware.

I have a 12 year old Gateway. About a year ago the built in sound card, a motherboard based Soundblaster stopped playing music with a "Dummy Output" message.

I tried to "roll back" from Ubuntu 20.2 to Ubuntu 18.4. I did recover sound from the motherboard and now have another 6 hours of fiddling to get Evolution re-configured.

Hello everybody. I write a blog www.lowco2america.com.

In my blog named above I am beginning to put together the framework for a 10 year all out effort to reduce America and the world's greenhouse gas emissions.

1. Use the American emergency management system (IMS, used to coordinate hurricane and disaster responses) with 6000 (growing to 60,000 ) and more local emergency action teams.
1a. Measure local CO2 emissions, use Himari satellite CO2 measurements. With multiple measurements begin a smooth structured decline in greenhouse gas emissioos. Do feedback guided science on the GHGs and Do humane and enjoyable programs for humans so the world can gently and sanely reduce GHG's.
2. Use an instrument of payment keyed to the concept of "not emit fossil fuel CO2" to switch off fossil fuel consumption. Use the "power of free" pioneered by Google in swiftly building a constituency.
3. Have a structured ride system so it is practical to hold a job and commute without burning any fossil fuels.
4. Gradually develop the ability for everybody to disconnect themselves from the public utility for a day or two without fear or trouble.
4A the goal is for 1 or 2 metric tons of CO2 emission per year per person in the USA
5. Apply multiple substitution strategies to reduce stratospheric jet air travel by 90%.
5A Must reduce the water vapor and GHG content of the Arctic and Antartic. Really we need a dry and cold stratosphere and mesosphere.
6. Keep the existing employment, and businesses in operation. Includes maintain pensions, unemployment, schools, medical systems and colleges,
7. Launch local and regional sports,, gardening, recycling, house reconstruction, arts, music, opera and dance to keep everybody constructive, busy and mentally healthy.
8. Restructure the 24 hour per day unlimited commodity energy system. Provide at the meter box a user controlled switching power supply.
9, Make it a world that is interesting to live in, where people benefit from helping each other.

I have been studying a number of problems and social conditions that drive the American energy consumption and global warming gas emission problems.

My blog is titled "Low CO2 America" Right now I am struggling to write two blog post about how the CO2 reduction teams are equipped and what programs shall be attempted first.

Have you heard the advice: Divide a large problem into small pieces. Solve the small pieces with an eye to address the large problem?

I have been working on the global warming problem at my website: www.lowco2america.com

My latest writing is I am using ideas from Cybernetics, Command and Control in Animal and Machine by Norbert Weiner at this URL:

hhttps://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.lowco2america.com%2F2022%2F01%2Fcybernetics-how-do-we-get-fastest.html

Do visit and do leave a comment, thanks.

Another way to look at this is the energy utility company is corralling the public into a state of being consumers, consumers only. For a utility, to capture all the solar electricity made by solar panels has been going on for about 10 years. The deal is the homeowner gets "free solar installation" and the homeowner signs a electrical rate contract for some duration.

The result is, the utility service area acquires a natural monopoly. There is no longer "free electricity" the same as there never is "free gasoline". What could you do if you had 1 kwh per day of 'co2 emission free electrical energy' to give away. The mind draws a great blank, yes?

I looked up the RMI link. This is an electric utility lobbying group. Under the banner of a California group "Peninsula Clean Energy" the same discontinue natural gas hookups ordinance was launched for Half Moon Bay and the nearby coastal communities.

Notice, the RMI phrase "...works to transform global energy systems across the real economy."
This group is not doing a darn thing about reducing the total tons of fossil fuel CO2. What they are doing is public utility assets and liabilities manipulation. As soon as a branch of the utility owned gas line becomes depressurized, the utility declares that string of pipe as unsafe due to water intrusion. In the accounting department, each 50 feet of abandoned gas line is an asset abandoned. So the accountants write off the dollar value of the loss in 2022 dollars, or maybe $6000 per gas meter. But the public utilities commission regulates rates, not asset values. Bingo, the Utility has got $6000 removed from the balance sheet, and the customers need more electricity than ever before. See, RMI is an advocate for "the real economy". They are saving their institutional fanny, not yours.

RMI is a About

RMI is a non-partisan, non-profit organization that works to transform global energy systems across the real economy.
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  non-partisan, non-profit organization that works to transform global energy systems across the real economy.
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Well, I'm 74 and around 1981 I moved from a writer's cabin in Lincoln Heights (overlooking the LA basin) to my girlfriend's apartment in Berkeley. My plan of the time was to 'learn Unix and C'.

You are reading this, you too made some kind of a career decision, possibly a physical move like I did. How are your memories coming along? How is your relationship with this gift of life, gift of a few more years than many of our acquaintances progressing?

Along with Steve Jobs, whose computers I have never purchased (though my kids did) I have seen siblings John and Marie, and former children I worked with as a teaching aide Johannes and Damian and kindred spirits that live in my neighborhood die.

I am going to remember to you a poem. Alan Ginsberg's "A Supermarket in California". We are all wistful consumers now, wandering up and down the Aisles. Wondering are you my angel? Find it on the Internet, and give it a chance to resonate inside yourself.

I am 73 and I actually visited the early Fry's store when there was a big glass cabinet of National Semiconductor integrated circuits.

This is an interesting time for us aging baby boomers. In my estimation, the direction of social thought and action was changed by Greta Thunberg with her United Nations speeches. The indictment of the Internet by Nicholas Carr "The Shallows What the Internet is doing to our brains" is hard to understand because our brains have been altered by the Internet. Additionally the American national political dialogue has been affected by the mentally toxic confusion speech invented and propogated by the former president. Speaking for myself, I have not come across much Socratic dialogue lately.

In my opinion, the Starlink satellite system is a Titanic disaster in preparation. The Russians are listening for sure. Further, Lawrence Ferlinghetti died yesterday. Important lights on the human condition are winking out.

Part of the problem with Internet political ads is their hit and run nature.
How about we make each political advertisement into a web page.
Each web page can be required to have a corresponding metadata page with the date of publication, name of author, search terms used, and full name and invoice number of the organization who paid for the ad.
We are going to deal with the extrapolitical candidate smear by requiring those organizations to also post their ads and their ad metadata.

Facebook already has this material on file.

I am 73, right in the Covid-19 crosshairs, and I am scrambling to put together a chain of atmospheric CO2 monitoring stations and begin recording data before commute traffic bounces back to the levels of a few months ago

www.lowco2america.com

My wife (who unfortunately still commutes 40 miles 4 days a week) and my son both seem to buy groceries shortly before I go shopping. Thanks very much to them. At home, I use lots of soap and water with a washcloth usually twice a day to dissolve the corona viruses. Thanks to Pauli Thorardsen for his extraordinary series of Twitter posts explaining why soap and water dissolves the Covid-19 virus.

I look at the shelter in place crisis as a double edge sword,. I have received a gift of time to work on my CO2 project and I know there is a clear risk of death if I neglect to stay clear of crowds.

For society, I mean all of us, Remember "the power of free and Google?" This is a great opportunity undermine the fossil fuel culture by providing some free electrical energy and some free electrical transportation. This is a good time to recapitalize individual Americans to undertake new kinds of work and creation of some free food, some free transit, and some free transportation. We need to recapitalize America around limited solar electric energy. We need an instrument of payment and exchange that can structure an enterprise as fast as a cell phone text. The new businesses we need are local food gardening, local canning, local plastics recycling amd even a local electric cement kiln.

As others have pointed out, this news item is the perfect thing to justify another billion dollar weapons expenditure by the US.

The underlying antipathy between Russia and the US is nearly 100 years old.

What I suggest is we need to get a dream team of anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists and historians to begin a project with corresponding groups of specialists in Russia to search for ways to de-energize the antipathy between Russia and the US.

The last presidential level political effort to stall this back and forth military duel as far as I can remember was Eisenhower's open skies proposal,

I got this idea while watching the Youtube video history "The wheelchair president." Roosevelt had the background and ideas for a set of positive solutions to World War II,. You can see in pictures of the time, Roosevelt was dying, Truman was left unprepared, and Stalin was a cold strategist, right in theme with the Russian bear, Russian chess strategy, vodka and millions of suffering and dead Russian civilians.