Living out in the tall timbers has its advantages, the wildlife, the peace and quiet, the isolation.
The isolation is a double edged sword though, in that it is a technology isolation as well. Take the Internet .. please. As a starving student, imagine my excitement after checking ATT's website to find digital subscriber line service was available?

photo by Gary d. Brune copyright (c) 2008

I ordered the equipment, and after three service calls, I discovered my residence was an estimated 0.000 linear feet from the central station. That means service with the consistency of a party line, and a need to use my road tools.
Road tools come from PortableApps.com, are free, legal, and run off a jump drive or any universal serial bus device. Last summer I ran both my weblog, An Internet Globetrotter and my jpgmag.com site from this improvisation,
A long bus ride to Chico State, and I could plug my jump drive into the college's network, use the bookmarks in Firefox for reference, and Thunderbird to collect my email.
When California was growing as a state, The Big Four set up the Southern Pacific Railroad and charged merchants whatever the traffic would bear to haul their goods. Comcast has the major transit service down the Information Superhighway, and they can again charge what the traffic will bear. Internet is still considered a luxury, so there are no lifeline provisions available for poor people.
In addition, contending with Microsoft's crap code in Windows is enough to turn a man bald. I can't afford the toll on the cable road. So it's time to improvise again.

The paradigm is changing, and the personal computing gestalt that I've known for 20 years is about to be supplanted by shiny, cheap hardware and free, powerful software. The result is a future more students can use and afford, not tied to what we know today.

In the beginning there was DOS, and that begat Microsoft, and that begat Windows. At the same time International Business Machines, which decided in the beginning to clone the personal computer, spread the new trinity of plastic, silicon, and magnetic media around the world. With Microsoft and IBM efforts, we have machines people both swear at and swear by, often at the same time.

The first part of this new paradigm is simple; a USB jump drive. With this I can plug into any networked computer here at Chico State. The latest models have up to four gigabytes of space, and larger units are in the pipeline. I paid $50 dollars for my jump drive, and expect to use it all year, if not longer.

I posted this comment yesterday at the Seattle Post Intelligencer at 10/2/07 5:29 p.m. While there I noted a poll being run by PI reporter and weblogger Todd Bishop about which new operating system would people be willing to have installed in their new computer. While this morning Ubuntu is at third place with over 26 percent, last night, with 315 votes, Microsoft's Vista placed third with 24.8 percent, Apple's OS X, Tiger, placed in second with 27.6, and in first place, with 28.3 was -- Ubuntu Linux with 28.3 percent.

Hurray for a decent operating system.

The clock is running, something Microsoft users should be familiar with by now. However in 16 days the latest version of the best operating system in the world will launch its latest free release.

Ubuntu 7.10, codenamed Gutsy Gibbon, is in the wings, and in 16 days we'll be able to order it from www.ubuntu.com. It has the usual assortment of improvements, such as improved graphic control and capability, and automatic printer configuration for any usb printer.

One of the frustrations I've had with Feisty Fawn is its inability to write to NTFS files and directories. They've worked on that, and Gutsy Gibbon will do so effortlessly. With hard drives of much larger size, NTFS makes sense as a good way to protect the larger drives.

They have improvements for their default browser, Firefox, and there is a new edition for Open Office which will download right after installation.

One other important point is that the new kernel allows the processor to use less power, and thus run cooler. With improved graphics capabilities from ATI, Intel, and nVidia, that will allow the computer to be more efficient.

Unlike all the supposed hype around Vista, I can't wait for Gutsy Gibbon, and will order it from its website the moment it becomes available. This is fun to use an operating system that works.
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This posting I originally printed in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on July 17

I type this comment tonight from a Firefox/Thunderbird/Ubuntu 7.04 computer setup which dual-boots with Vista. In the last two months I've had occasion to access Vista three times. Codenamed Feisty Fox, Ubuntu is a much stronger and better working operating system.

The combination of Ubuntu with such programs as Firefox, the Open Office suite, and Thunderbird for e-mail, has put together an unbeatably useful and reliable operation. Free and legal, they do not give an inch of silicon to anything Microsoft produces.

This isn't done though. Working in tandem with PortableApps.com, which installs a suite of programs that runs from a usb jump drive. It includes all the wonderful programs enunciated above and such useful tools as Portable Virtual Magnifying Glass which makes anything on the screen much easier to see. PortableApps runs off Vista or XP

This tandem will get me through my senior year in college with the most fun I've had in many a year. While Vista slogs through 40 million lines of code, I will skate across the silicon using letters with sharp edges. It amazes me that all this is free for the download, and legal to use, but there is nothing Microsoft can do to get me back now.