My Side of the Line

I. Creativity Drain II. F/OSS and the Government III. Wow! Ow! Wee! I. Creativity Drain This year's Band Festival is in a few days and my band (me) is only half-way in preparation. I have to admit, I haven't been that motivated with this music thing. I feel like what we're doing is going nowhere. It's been a year and we're still doing covers and no demos. Specially that this covering thing doesn't show our creativity and originality. Plus, we have one cheesy song. Ugh. Anyway, here's a spoiler from yesterday's practice. Please do come on the 11th, 18.00 onwards. II. F/OSS and the Government There's been a very long thread in PLUG's mailing list about Ubuntu's founder visiting Manila. The heat on this topic is if the government [officials] will move to FOSS if the cost is near-zero. This is an issue in the Philippine LGUs and practically any office because the officials will have a hard time to "pad" the cost for their "personal" consumption. There have been optimistic comments and pessimistic ones. Heck, it even reached one-liner semi-dissing. But here's one that would be really nice to quote.

I am pointing out an exception... I work for a local government unit. My boss (a mayor) believes in open source and that's why we are migrating our desktops to Ubuntu Linux and giving away computers to schools with Ubuntu Linux installed on it. I must admit that my boss is not one who can be called an "honest politician" if ever there is one. But heck, he believes in open source. It all started when I was able to save his precious data on his laptop when the Windows registration key got messed up and sort of "locked" his laptop. I was able to save it using Ubuntu Live and from then he asked me install Linux and asked so many questions about Linux and Open Source. To my surprise, he asked me to migrate our desktops to Ubuntu Linux and all new PCs must be a Linux box. He also started to advocate the same even in the recent LeGov - EU Conference where he was one of the presentors. And when other LGUs visit us, he will almost always discuss about open source and would relate that with open source... it would be a better world cause it teaches us to share. As a result, other LGUs are asking us how to migrate to desktops to open source. I know this is not much, but still is an exception to the general perception that all government offices and units will never embrace open source. Generalization really sucks. And yes, he is already asking how to get that $100 laptop.

Our government officials really need this IT literacy training. I remember FSAP being a part of training executives in the private sector on IT. How about an IT seminar for our government officials so they could catch up? I've been watching this OS war and both sides are just as good. Windows has been the best option for desktop computers and those who aren't that computer literate. GNU/Linux, on the other hand is the best solution for anything that's server related. That's why there's the saying, "Linux is not Windows". Linux isn't meant for desktop use but you could use it on a desktop but Windows is somehow more efficient at it. Windows isn't meant to be a server OS. Servers don't need fancy UIs, something prone to viruses or worms and doesn't need frequent restarting. III. Wow! Ow! Wee! This is old news by the way. It was lunch time and Ramel came over and told me about this stampede. A friend from the States mentioned it too but I wasn't aware of it. Man, the Lopez has so much money. I think if we put the money of the Lopez, Yuchengcos, Ayalas, Lucio Tan and Henry Sy all together, it would equal to the country's value. But then again, who could buy a country? Anyway, people flocked to go to this event for the show 'Wowowee'. I just found out that this show replaced the network's less annoying noon-time variety show. I don't find people singing out of tune entertainment so this really isn't my kind of show. Now, the objective of this show was to help the less priveleged. I don't think this is right. In fact, they're making it worse by condoning the people's attempt in getting the easy way out of poverty. I'll just give you an old saying so you'd get my point, "Give a man a fish and he will learn to eat. Teach a man to fish and he will learn to eat the rest of his life". Or it goes that way. This shows are a waste of time and I could blame them for people getting dumber everyday. It's totally pointless. Way to go Wowowee.

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