Free WLAN in a park / Again books / Linux: 15 years since it began

If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Free WLAN in a park

I am writing these notes in the Esplanade-park in Helsinki. The city has provided the park with a free WLAN. Rather nice. I should have realized this earlier, for this is a fun place to read, write and observe people.

Again books

Some new books again:

• The Coming Economic Collapse: How You Can Thrive When Oil Costs $200 a Barrel by Stephen Leeb, Glen Strathy
• Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape by James Howard Kunstler
• Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World by Richard Heinberg — an excellent summary of the situation, written with less passion than Kunstler's books on the same topic. Highly recommended to anyone who wants to meet our future now and can handle the truth, the fact that we are now richer than we will ever be.
• Home from Nowhere: Remaking Our Everyday World for the 21st Century by James Howard Kunstler

I think it is time not to order any new books for a while. I have now enough material for my series of articles on the interesting times ahead. It will be very hard for us in Finland to cut down our energy usage. We have no choice, though. Sometimes, I get anxious, almost borderline depressed when I think about these issues. I get better when I think that we, my generation and the next one or two, are the ones to decide how the human civlization will continue, or whether it will at all. Not that I would have a big say on these issues, but not trying would drive me over to the darkness of something I do not wish to explore. Thus, no matter what kind of a job I will have, I know what I will be devoting my efforts to.

Confusing enough. I try to retain my sanity and continue to entertain you, my dear readers. And anyway, during the next few decades, there will be interesting and endless immensity of problems for us to solve. No time to get depressed.
Thanks to S for the excellent quote of the day. It gives us a direction.

Linux: 15 years since it began

It was 15 years ago, that Mr. Torvalds posted his famous letter and the first version of the kernel. Since that, Linux has spread and is now the market leader in super computing, and significant player (if not leader) in embedded systems.
To celebrate, COSS and others had called for a celebration, or a series of talks at the University of Helsinki, where it all began. I enjoyed most Jon Maddog Hall's talk. He was entertaining and energetic. He emphasized how free SW frees us from SW slavery, gives us freedom to use SW as we please, to modify it, and to be independent from necessarily transient SW companies. I also agree with his motto: always fight against the work 'impossible'.
See the website for videos of the talks.

Alun perin julkaistu kuukausikoosteessa "Blogs July to September 2006".