The Ek’s Files

This weekend I took the plunge big-time, completely replacing my Windows XP desktop installation with Ubuntu 7.10. Being a ham, my computer setup is a little more complex than normal because I use my computer to control my ham radio (an ICOM IC706MKIIG) for contesting and for making contacts in digital modes. I use a West Mountain Radio Rigblaster Plug & Play USB interface to control my radio and for sound card and keying interfacing. So, it was with a little trepidation that I abandoned the world of Windows for Ubuntu.

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Well, in a moment of possible lunacy this weekend, I blew away the remaining vestiges of Windows XP on my two PCs and went over to the Ubuntu side. I’d already been running Ubuntu exclusively on my notebook and using that as my day-to-day system for a couple of weeks now. But I had still hung on to my Windows XP desktop system (nothing special–a 1.5GHz AMD Athlon with about 750 MB of RAM and a 40GB HD), in case I needed to go back.

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I walked into a Target store the other day to purchase some cold medicine for one of the kids. In the cold medicine aisle I was greeted with shelves filled not with cold medicine, but rather filled with little cards depicting the medications. I had to take a card off the shelf and take it to the pharmacy counter, where I had to show identification and give my signature before I could have my chosen medication. It seems that the medicine I chose contained ephedrine, and our concerned lawmakers had recently passed the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005 in an attempt to make it harder for criminals to purchase ephedrine-containing medications and turn them into meth. Law-abiding citizens are thus treated as potential criminals whenever they purchase something that has a perfectly legitimate and legal use simply because it’s also possible to use it to make an illegal substance.

After the Dec 2007 shootings at New Life Church in Colorado Springs, I learned that security guards in Colorado Springs were only allowed by city ordinance to carry revolvers, not semiautomatic handguns. I cannot fathom a reason for such an ordinance, other than that it was somehow felt that a semiauto held too many rounds and was therefore a menace to public safety (never mind that people with concealed-carry permits can carry semiautos legally). Thus, we place the security guard at a disadvantage to the gun-toting criminal. That’s so like California, which prohibits weapon magazines that can hold more than ten rounds. So once again, the honest, law-abiding citizen will obey this law and put himself at a disadvantage to criminals who have no regard for the law.

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(Updated 20 Jan 2008–added “sudo ndiswrapper -m” step, and added a note about manual configuration)

As a follow-up to my earlier post on using the Linksys WPC54G v2 with Ubuntu Gutsy, the procedure for using the WUSB54G is quite similar.

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My oldest young’un is a college senior, getting ready to enter the working world as an English teacher. College kids–er, young adults, sometimes exhibit tremendous enthusiasm for expressing ways in which the world would be a better place if only someone would listen. My boy’s lucky enough to be writing a column for his college newspaper (The Daily Nebraskan) which gives him the opportunity to express his viewpoints on a regular basis.

Here’s one of his columns, which I particularly enjoyed…

Sony BMG has thus far been the lone holdout in electing to provide its music in digital form that includes DRM (technology that limits what you can do with the media files you purchase). Now it appears that even Sony has decided that DRM no longer serves its interests. Why’s that? Sony (of Sony Rootkit fame), along with the other major record labels, appears to want you to be able to get music onto your iPod without having to sell their music through Apple’s iTunes music store. Apple, you see, wields enormous power in the digital music distribution world, simply because they own 80% of the market share. Apple has essentially dictated the price and terms for music downloads to the recording labels. Now the labels want to cut Apple down a notch or two by nurturing some competition.

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One of the foundations of the free-market economy is that competition drives innovation and value, and that’s good for the consumers who purchase and use goods and services. By and large, that’s a tough principle to refute. In general, the harder that makers of goods fight for our dollars, the more they’ll offer us for the money.

That’s all well and good when there are multiple producers competing for your consumer dollars. But what about when a company’s only competition is… itself?

Yeah, you know who I’m talking about, don’t you? Microsoft is one example of a company that’s had a virtual lock on many of the categories of software it sells. Take operating systems, for example. Who does Microsoft compete with when consumers are purchasing an operating system? Their market share is so overwhelming that Microsoft’s only competition is itself. You’d think that’d be a good thing for Microsoft. But when does the average consumer purchase an operating system? Generally, only when they buy a new computer. Microsoft makes money every time someone buys a computer that comes with its operating system installed. So new versions of Microsoft products are competing mainly with earlier versions of the same products. Does the consumer benefit from this?

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