So the famous Richard Stallman (rms) came to speak at Rice on Tuesday. Thanks to my roommate Ivan, I was able to make sure I had time for it in advance.

He gave what would seem to be a fairly standard talk on his philosophy and ethics of Free Software (as well as how we should all support this endeavor). Because I hadn’t heard the whole thing together as a whole, I thought it was really interesting to get to hear all this from him.

Now, I’m in COMP 140 (a new introductory computer science class at Rice) this semester. Online, one of my two professors for the class posed these questions online, “Everyone who uses free software loves it and there are legions of dedicated people contributing to the free software movement. But should, as Richard Stallman proposes, software be fundamentally free and open? Shouldn’t software developers be financially compensated for their intellectual creations or is there some larger societal need that is more important?” I responded just a little bit ago (and I probably wouldn’t have if it weren’t for the extra credit involved, since I need to work on a lot of other stuff, too). This is what I wrote:

Software does not have to be necessarily free, as defined by rms. Although free software benefits all of us, allowing software to be copyrighted and giving the author freedom should still be permitted. Both free and unfree software may benefit users (to highly varying degrees) and in different ways. Many have always argued that the market simply cannot support the development of free software if software were free, but there are certainly instances today of companies investing their resources in developing free software—for investment and eventual profit. The games industry has yet to embrace the free software philosophy, but it is economically possible; a very large group of highly interested gamers can pay companies money to develop free software. This seems unlikely now, but what would be needed is a shift in culture and circumstances to force people to do something like this. Even so, multiplayer online play for games could still be paid for by advertisements or monthly fees to play on the server.

In any case, totally abolishing current models of software distribution by law seems fairly radical. After all, copyright, to a certain extent, is embedded in the Constitution and defended by Jefferson, again, only to a certain extent (yet even so, most people and politicians would hardly care either way). Thus, copyright, and not just copyleft, should be allowed a continued existence in the context of software. I still, however, believe that modern copyright and software patents are far overreaching and too restrictive. Entrenched corporations holding their copyrights tend to become blind and forget about true innovation, since it becomes increasingly trivial to their short-term profits (see Lawrence Lessig’s The Future of Ideas). Even if all software doesn’t have to be free, copyright reform continues to be increasingly necessary as corporations and their lobbyists accelerate their copyright extensions and restrictive amendments to the law, taking away already existing freedoms from users.

So I don’t really agree with rms on all points, but I certainly support his crusade to some extent, hate DRM (yes, digital restrictions management… I found it funny how he never mentioned what the acronym originally comes from as set by corporations, “digital rights management”), and all that good stuff. But as a proud Mac OS X and Quicksilver user, I highly value practical software (not necessarily not free), yet I am also highly interested in supporting certain ideals, like liberty. I’d like to add a disclaimer to what I’ve just said, though; my opinion on this matter is certainly subject to change.

I also really want to explore and write more about this topic, but alas, not now… There are many other things I’d have liked to blog about before writing this, but I already wrote that response for my class, so I figured I might as well post it here. I guess I’ll write next about Taiwan and my experience there.

And finally, without further ado, here’s a picture with me and rms himself, but not in his saintly Church of Emacs outfit. Haha…

Well, everyone knows Firefox 3 is out by now (since Tuesday). Unfortunately, it’s not so big an event for me, because although I use Firefox for Windows on my desktop, I use this MacBook for most things, and I use Camino on here.

I am, however, glad that the latest milestone of Firefox was met keeping lowering and optimizing memory usage and speed in mind, because that was the original reason for its existence. I remember up until version 0.9 that Firefox was particularly speedy until they added a ton of features—not that these features are all bad, though, I just wished they’d stayed true to their roots. Now they finally have.

I still believe Camino continues to be faster and better on OS X simply because it’s native, while Firefox is, by nature, not native. I did download Fx 3 for OS X though and am actually keeping it on here this time because the web design and development tools for use with Firefox have become increasingly incredible (and I’ve forgotten about them). And although I’m not going to be using Fx most of the time, I’m glad open source has in some way become mainstream, with the official twenty-four hour release download count of Fx 3 exceeding eight million, as well as the development of a speedy Gecko 1.9, to be included in the next major version of Camino.

\o/

MacBook Air hands on #1, originally uploaded by Dan_H.

The new MacBook Air, announced at the 2008 MacWorld keynote last Tuesday the fifteenth, is, in short, pretty awesome (and really pretty).

I’ll now go over a few things I deem more important and relevant (especially with respect to my white MacBook) than other things about this. I’m not going to talk in detail about the illuminated keyboard, for example, because even though it’s really cool (and I’ve always wanted a keyboard like that), it doesn’t “make or break” the Air. If you want to know more, though, I recommend and encourage you to check out John Gruber’s fairly thorough and decent review.

So without further ado, here are its dimensions:

• Height: 0.16-0.76 inch (0.4-1.94 cm)
• Width: 12.8 inches (32.5 cm)
• Depth: 8.94 inches (22.7 cm)
• Weight: 3.0 pounds (1.36 kg)

This is already pretty impressive. My white MacBook weighs five pounds, so a decrease to only three is actually really good. Mine is also one inch thick (”thin”), but the new Air is only .76 inch at its thinnest.

As for the screen, it’s 13.3″ widescreen just like all white or black MacBooks. I find this is a really good size for a portable. It’s enough to handle everything you need (especially with Exposé), and it’s not oversized by any means.

With the design of the Air, Apple decided to save some space with some fairly wise decisions. There is no DVD or CD drive, and there is only one USB port. (There is also no Firewire port, but I’ve never had to use the one on my MacBook.) As an alternative to a built-in DVD drive, Apple now offers a slim USB SuperDrive (DVD writer) as well as an easy way to map a DVD drive on another computer (an iMac, for example) as a bootable network drive. The latter of the two, however, is not really a viable option for watching DVDs, since wireless now is not that fast. I would opt for carrying around a USB SuperDrive. It’s not that big, and it’s not like I actually use my MacBook’s DVD drive most of the time anyway. In any case, I find that, overall, the space-saving design here is great.

The MacBook Air is cool, no doubt.

The real question lies, for me, with whether or not I want to deal with a little extra hassle—limited ports and a loose SuperDrive to carry around when I think I might need it (which, I admit, is not very much of the time). For now, I think I find my white 2.0 GHz Core Duo MacBook sufficient and practical. The built-in ports and DVD drive are almost always fine; I never really have to worry in any way about them. Sure, the standard MacBook is not as light and thin as the new Air, but it’s already pretty thin (one inch!) and not heavy at all. So, for now, I think I’ll stick with the MacBook where I’ve already put my money. In the future though, the new Air is definitely an option (a really cool one), especially if its price drops, which I’m pretty sure it will.