How precious.

People giving birth to lots more people even though the planet is overly congested. This leads to global warning and hostility among overcrowded or hungry populations. But… when it comes to animals, well… some have decided that you might as well just assassinate them just to make more space and clear up some room for people. Utterly appalling.

Adopt this dog or we’ll kill it

[...]

Those among you who remember when it was all fields round here may also recall the famous January 1973 cover of National Lampoon which carried a pic of someone holding a gun to the head of a rather worried looking mutt and the headline “If You Don’t Buy This Magazine, We’ll Kill This Dog”.

[...]

The fund’s Alex Aliksanyan told Reuters: “This is happening … in our country, in our back yard. It’s been kept underneath a blanket of niceness and sweetness. So we said, ‘Lets put the truth in front of the consumer – either do something about it, or at least realize you’re a partner.’”

How about birth control? How about going back to fostering nature? Our existence is not a race for expansion of human population size. The planet cannot contain this.

OW here’s a company that has so far shown that you can make a lot of money without annoying the community, without doing proprietary stuff (RHEL code is still available if you jump through hoops), and without strutting around in suits, commissioning ‘studies’, and making kitschy adverts.

If you think that Red Hat’s business is plateauing, you’re focusing on the wrong area. It’s not about middleware (e.g. JBoss). Global Desktop is coming next month and Red Hat already has an agreement for deployments (Australia at the least, probably with H-P and other OEMs/ VARs). If Red Hat can do on the desktop what it has done in the server room, then the future is bright for digital independence. Ubuntu (Canonical) also leaves me optimistic.

For the record, this is not “O/S war”. This is not a “my dick is bigger than yours” thing. It’s about freedom, which isn’t the case in an Apple vs. Microsoft debate (both are proprietary and lock-in oriented). Microsoft sees Linux as war and treats it in this way using propaganda (blatantly anti-Free software advertisements). It’s time to demand change.

I’ve given Sun a lot of pain because of their attempt to steal Linux’s thunder, but let’s never forget all the wonderful things they have given us — from OpenOffice.org to Java, which is now Free as in “free speech”.

Nothing fancy to see here, but it’s an important lesson for people to take.

HERE are many signs of change. Things are changing in terms of inertia. In the past few weeks, Linux and Free software have gained tremendous advantages, notably:

• AMD/ATI drivers going open source (at least partially)
• H-P expanding distribution of their Linux offering
• ODF policies being finalised in Holland and in Russia

On the other hand, foes of Linux, open source, and other embodiments of digital freedom have suffered major setbacks, notably:

• SCO admits it is falling into oblivion
• OOXML is not accepted by the ISO
• The European Court of First Instance imposes penalties that paint Microsoft as the monopoly abuser that it is, leading to or (at least spurring) similar action elsewhere in the world
• The OSI rejects Microsoft’s application

These are great time for those wishing to see a culture released from digital shackles. Proprietary software will remain a 3-little jug of Coca Cola on a table at a fine restaurant while a diversity of wines (Free software) will inherit the vacuum left in industry. Great times are ahead, but as this Dilbert shows, there will be a lot of FUD and corruption from those who resist a transformation. A lot of stereotypes and myths (funny comic that one!) will be used to slow down adoption of the disruptive technology. But it’s inevitable. Disruptive technology always wins.

Keep your eyes open is the best you can do to avoid being misled.

Towards the end of the following program, Charlie Rose speaks to Steve Ballmer. Ballmer (Microsoft’s CEO) insists that Microsoft merely innovates while making IE virtually impossible to remove from Windows.

The following grilling shows that this type of thing was done by design.

The same charade goes on today. Google is only one among the suffers of restricting choice.