Bonum Certa Men Certa

Hello World

Howdy, Comrades! It's Shane, guest-blogging from the new Union of American Socialist States (UASS). As many are aware, I haven't contributed much here in the previous year or so - save my last cameo appearance when Roy took a well-deserved break, so perhaps there are some folks here who have never heard from me before.

So, please allow myself to introduce... myself. And, yes, this is a completely personal entry - no news or anything, so if you are uninterested you can save yourself a few minutes. I just would feel weird if I started broadcasting into everyone's RSS readers and they have no bloody idea who I am. As I have said, I am here in America - Lawng Eyeland, New Yawk, and am currently employed by my local school district as a Custodial Worker (essentially a Janitor/Maintenance position), having left the IT world behind me some 5 years ago - I worked for a large software company that I consider slightly more evil than Microsoft. Seriously.

A couple of years ago, I purchased a "unique fixer-upper opportunity", the worst house <strikethrough>on the block<⁄strikethrough> in the neighborhood, and have taught myself how to renovate and repair it for the last few years. Now, I am going back and redoing much of it, just properly ;^ ) Honestly, it's probably the 2nd best house on the block these days, and I am pretty proud. Also, I am apparently one of the few Americans who hasn't received a foreclosure notice yet - and I am pretty proud of that, too.

In regards to establishing my Geek-Cred, I am a GNU/Linux user for some time now, and try to give back by setting up EDU-Nix.org which distributes a Slax-based Live CD (and soon a Live USB, which is much more practical we have found) that is geared towards school students. Mainly, I work with a couple of teachers in my school in tweaking and creating some district-specific vocabulary lists and such for use with the KDE EDU Suite, as well as the Tux4Kids stuff - which is wildly popular with the students (Tux Paint in particular). I even try to push OpenOffice.org sometimes, but that hasn't quite taken off - except for the export to PDF functionality, which raised an eyebrow or two - "What do you mean, it's free?". Occasionally, I get to updating the site and making a more generic version of the CD/USB we work on available for download, something I am hoping to do more often as winter sets in here.

Anyhow, I started BoycottNovell.com a few days after the announcement of the deal - it was not a hasty decision on my behalf, partly because I knew deep down that although I was deeply disturbed by many aspects of the deal and felt compelled to speak out, that the time necessary to do it well was something that I lacked. Shortly after beginning the site, I tapped Roy to help out - and boy has he - it's fair to say that this is 'his' site now, and I am just the man behind the curtain raking in all those Adsense dollars that cause controversy from time to time - some of that dollar-fifty a day likely comes from Microsoft and/or Novell ads, sorry it's true. It's a little funny, because I never see the ads - and judging by those paltry click numbers for such a popular site - neither do many of you ;^ )

One thing I have always hoped for with this site is that it would host some insightful discussions regarding the "deal and its subtle (yet severe) implications", and have absolutely abhorred censorship in any way - whether they be Microsoft ads or a differing opinion from a visitor. It's with that in mind that I have released the 50 or so non-spam-seeming comments still in moderation, mainly from someone called 'eet' - I don't get it, but whatever - Shane is a pretty odd name, too. As always, I hope we can keep it somewhat civil and relatively mature here, and maybe even on-topic sometimes (this off-topic post aside, I guess). In my opinion, it's unreasonable to embrace the community development model for software problems, but not for sociopolitical ones that affect our community - by having these discussions, hopefully our understanding of these situations can grow and maybe we can even come up with a solution or two.

I truly hope that the next few days bring us a juicy story; last time I was here, there was the OpenOffice.org fork controversy and Red Hat and Novell were hit with patent infringement suits shortly after Mr Ballmer predicted just such an occurrence - it was kinda eerie. Then, I was really floored when it was announced that Microsoft was extending their covenant to GPLv3 software, once such was shipped in SLE. It was a busy few days, I had fun.

Well, it's good to meet you (or see you again, for some readers) and I hope that I can be the capable fill-in that the site deserves for the next few days: I think of myself as Joan Rivers filling in for Johnny Carson, but without so much plastic surgery. Well, I did have some work done, but I digress...

Oh, and since someone griped last time, I have never promised to do-no-evil on Saturdays - that's Roy's gig - if Novell or anyone else in the "Linux Ecosystem" irks me, I am not going to hold back just cuz it's the weekend. hehe

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