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Penguin Pete's Blog
"Evil" and Technology: Not a Black and White Issue 
(unknown author) via Penguin Pete's Blog on Sun, 09 Nov. 2008
So, the other day, I'm in a lengthy discussion with an acquaintance, and as usual the conversation gravitates towards technology. I made my usual elevator spiel about Linux and BSD and FOSS, why I use it, blah blah. No, I say, it's not because "Microsoft is evil" that I use Open Source, but because Open Source is good.
Then the conversation veers - "Let me ask you a question about evil.
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I Have Never Been This Shocked
(unknown author) via Penguin Pete's Blog on Wed, 05 Nov. 2008
I still can't quite let myself believe that Barack Obama won. Isn't this the part where they pull some recount monkey business out of their hat? But McCain conceded! He wouldn't do that if he was planning to steal the race, would he?
Well, my
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Blender 2.46 Tutorial - Boning
(unknown author) via Penguin Pete's Blog on Mon, 03 Nov. 2008
It occurred to me that with all my graphics tutorials, I have never done any Blender ones. This is because, like everybody else including half its user base and even possibly a few of its coders, I barely understand Blender myself. However, I've gotten stupidly overconfident enough to think I can pull off at least one tutorial. So this will be about boning.
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Why I Am Not A "Linux Advocate"
Penguin Pete via Penguin Pete's Blog on Mon, 27 Oct. 2008
At first, you might mistake me for a "Linux advocate". I'm running a site about Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), of which Linux is counted as an example. I certainly bring up Linux and the programs that run on it a lot.
Yet my purpose here is actually not advocacy for a particular system. In the first place, I do cover BSD, Solaris, and other FOSS systems also. Many of what will ru
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Real Friends Don't Have To Brainwash You
(unknown author) via Penguin Pete's Blog on Wed, 22 Oct. 2008
I haven't paid enough attention to Carla Schroder lately. It is such a tragedy, because she's normally a smart, geeky writer who has published some real get-your-hands-dirty Linux-tinkering articles. I find myself admiring her when she posts a pithy HOWTO or examines a dark corner of the Linux internals not commonly explored. We need more of that.
And then just when I'm about to link to
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My FOSS Graphic Application WishList
(unknown author) via Penguin Pete's Blog on Sat, 11 Oct. 2008
Dear Santa/Fairy Godmother...
There's a number of new graphics applications that I've been searching all over for. They may or may not have been invented yet. So I'm posting this little list, to the purpose of either...
discovering through some reader's comment that such a creation exists, with link and recommendation,
inspiring some development team out there t
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Monty Python and the Quest For the Holy Programming Language
Penguin Pete via Penguin Pete's Blog on Sun, 21 Sep. 2008
There's room for a movie with that title. "We ride for Hackalot!" Cue epic journey across hill and dale, following many a wizened oracle squatting by a campfire tantalizing us with half-made-up legends. It exists! I've seen it! The Holy Programming Language! It's right over that mountain, past the Valley of Dead Platforms, through the Forest of Disgruntled Bloggers, into the Maw of the Propriet
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The Top Six Stupid Things People Have Said About Google Chrome
(unknown author) via Penguin Pete's Blog on Tue, 09 Sep. 2008
I have to conclude that the best way to make an idiot of yourself in public, besides actually getting naked and setting yourself on fire, is to become a tech blogger. The world of computing technology news is 90% made-up, with everything being rumors, vaporware, over-reactions, over-corrections to over-reactions, FUD, speculation, and completely blind guessing. And of course, as a blogger masoc
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Argh! Microsoft Notepad CRLF! Argh!
Penguin Pete via Penguin Pete's Blog on Tue, 26 Aug. 2008
GNU/Linux/Unix users, and even Mac users, hate Microsoft Notepad. If you must use Windows, could you at least replace it with - I don't know - anything else at all? Because Microsoft Notepad is to text what Internet Explorer is to HTML.
See, Notepad has the line-break formatting bug. If you write a text file on anything but Win
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Why Social Bookmarking Will Always Suck
Penguin Pete via Penguin Pete's Blog on Sat, 16 Aug. 2008
You see it over and over again. You find out about this new social site that's just starting up. You join it. And it's so unbelievably cool! It's down-home and quirky and attracts that great eclectic mix of oddballs just like you, and you all chat it up and love it. Then time passes.
And what always happens? It gets more popular, more people join. And then, as if it were manifest destin
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Another Point of View on That Whole "Rogue San Francisco Admin" Story
Penguin Pete via Penguin Pete's Blog on Sat, 19 Jul. 2008
So, let me get this straight. There's this system admin who allegedly "hijacked" San Francisco's city-wide computer network. To the point where he got fired, arrested, and is now on trial.
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Interface Obsession Syndrome
Penguin Pete via Penguin Pete's Blog on Tue, 01 Jul. 2008
Who has Interface Obsession Syndrome? The computing world, that's who. All of it: designers, users, open source software, proprietary software, web designers, web surfers. Everybody. It's a disease.
Last post, I boldly proclaimed (using my proclaiming voice,
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Can "Work Ethic" Work For You?!?!?
Penguin Pete via Penguin Pete's Blog on Sun, 01 Jun. 2008
A REVOLUTIONARY METHOD TO ACHIEVING FINANCIAL FREEDOM!!!
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You Can Hack An OS But You Can't Hack People - part 7: Left Standing at the Altar
Penguin Pete via Penguin Pete's Blog on Thu, 15 May. 2008
Who's left standing at the altar? Windows users, that's who.
Windows has now become the only proprietary operating system without a free-software or open-source equivalent. Apple has Darwin. Solaris has Open Solaris. Unix has Linux and BSD. Even the extinct systems whose surviving fan base can count themselves in the triple-digits have a free alternative that they're working on. BeOS ha
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You Can Hack An OS But You Can't Hack People - part 6: The Black Hand
Penguin Pete via Penguin Pete's Blog on Tue, 13 May. 2008
Why is this part titled "The Black Hand"? Well, because I started this series using a nations metaphor. Citizens of Windows who expatriate and immigrate to Linux will be "foreigners" in Linux. And, if you check that Wikipedia article on the Black Hand - an example of which is seen in the "The Godfather" movie series - you wil
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You Can Hack An OS But You Can't Hack People - part 5: No Help For The Helpless
Penguin Pete via Penguin Pete's Blog on Mon, 12 May. 2008
Going forward, I'd just like to point out that I don't claim to have all the answers. What I am doing here, is attempting to ask the right questions. How can we even hope to find the answers if nobody can ask the right, logical questions first?
This time I can fall back on a previously-written piece. In "
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You Can Hack An OS But You Can't Hack People - part 3: More Maps
Penguin Pete via Penguin Pete's Blog on Sat, 10 May. 2008
Since Apple's story is the shortest, we'll tell it out of order.
Now, the three computing republics, Unix, Apple, and Windows, had different approaches to autonomy. In Unix, they teetered cheerfully on the edge of anarchy. There was only very little attempt to reign in the free spirits there. In Windows, no stepping out of line was tolerated, but it was necessary to maintain perfect ord
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The Tragedy of Linux: You Can Hack an OS, But You Can't Hack People
Penguin Pete via Penguin Pete's Blog on Fri, 09 May. 2008
This will be a seven-part series.
Introduction:
It's about time I tackled this ugly task. I've been promising a follow-up to Ubuntu is not Linux. Because the broad point that I'm trying to make needs to be hammered down, I will explain it agai
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Attention Firefox Plug-in Makers: GET OVER YOURSELVES!!!
Penguin Pete via Penguin Pete's Blog on Tue, 22 Apr. 2008
Some people came to Linux because they wanted freedom. Some people came because they liked the Unix way. Some people came because they were sick of Microsoft.
Me, 75% of the reason I came to Linux is because it lets me run it instead of it trying to run me.
It has no pretensions. It doesn't think that it's the most important product in the wor
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Image Magick Banner Generator - part 5
(unknown author) via Penguin Pete's Blog on Tue, 25 Mar. 2008
So here we are all at the end of the Image Magick banner generation project. So I was twiddling about typing different little strings into "random_banner.sh" and displaying the results. And then I had the idea to write this script:
"make_banners.sh"
#!/bin/bash
for NUM in $(seq 1 100);
do
WORD1=$(./random_line.sh /usr/share/dict/words)
WORD2=$(./random_line
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