Related link: http://osdir.com/PNphpBB2-viewtopic-t11-.phtml

A lot of Linux distribution reviews are centered around the ease of installation, new applications or versions of included, and generally how the reviewer ‘feels’ about it.

Naturally, this is somewhat flawed by bias. While this is part of a review process wouldn’t these reviews be better served with some number comparisons?

What are your thoughts on how to more quantitatively benchmark linux distros?

Related link: http://www.kleptones.com/pages/downloads_hiphopera.html

Remember Grey Tuesday? No? DJ Danger Mouse combined the Beatles’ White Album with Jay Z’s Black Album to make the Grey Album. It was hit across the P2P networks once word got out.. except with Sony Music/ATV Publishing. And now The Kleptones look like a fresh target.

Waxy.org, Andy Baio, has received a cease and desist order from Disney the owner of copyright for a bunch of Queen songs… that’s right. Party on Garth!

He was linking to (and looked like he was hosting) copies of The Kleptone’s - A Night At The Hip-Hopera. A brilliant mashup of dusty Queen songs and various hip hop artists I’d never heard of before. And they’ve ordered him to stop it!

I found the album, from waxy actually, and have been enjoying the album for at least a month or so. I feel compelled to share this list of new mirrors that have sprung up. One of which is me.

So, it looks like the fight is on again for people to be able to sample other’s work to create new derivative works. What baffles me about this is that the album was never for sale and if anything it would drive sales of the originals.

I emailed Eric Kleptone, no idea if that’s his real name, but he says they’ve not received their cease-and-desist yet & he’s preparing for the worst.

Related link: http://www.datalibre.com/

James Tauber’s site, which he refers to as a blog/wiki hybrid, spits out an xml feed for rssreaders, as well as a fully xml formatted document of the blog in full. He also claims to have an XML (Atom) feed for the entire content of his site though I can’t find it yet.

It is critical, I think, to the DataLibre idea of anyone being able to use your data that the entirety of the documents be published in a form someone can pick up and use. It is not enough that you have an rss feed with snippets of writing which is what rss feedreaders use generally or that your CC license is in RDF.

Microsoft has, I think, easily handled “open source” with it’s campaign of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt), but could it handle dealing with all of us on different fronts?

The reason I pose this is that Microsoft’s PR machine is now in gear trying to cope with Firefox. Check out this great quote:

Microsoft’s security and management product manager, told attendees that IE undergoes “rigorous code reviews” and is no less secure than any other browser.

“Because IE is ubiquitous, you hear a lot more about it, but I don’t think that Internet Explorer is any less secure than any other browser out there,” English said.

This is really more desperate than pathetic isn’t it? Ok, it’s both, but the point of my post here is to pose the question of whether Microsoft’s PR FUD machine could deal with fighting on as many fronts as we all have the potential to open. I have the feeling that we could easily scale to this while the fact that MS would be engaging is a bigger message than whatever they could say in response.

Ok, ‘open source’, Servers, DBs, Browsers, Email, Accounting, Media Players, etc etc etc…

Related link: http://osdir.com/PNphpBB2-viewforum-f2-.phtml

OSDir once had a forum section, but it was somewhat short lived. In hindsight it was too much, at once, and without a clear focus.

Given some time to ponder this I’d like to begin again in what I think is a much better arrangement. I do some work with Java.net & their forums have been successful. They have a weekly discussion topic which is very focused. This, I feel, is a good way to start a discussion board in a world where everyone has carte blanche forum boards.

In addition, since we started our screenshot service we’ve been looking at a way to open discussion about these new beta linux distros & apps. We will start a discussion for these as well. There is certainly lots to discuss in this area so we’ll open this up for conversation.

It’s my hope you find this interesting and engaging, that you find a few friends here, that you find valuable conversations, and contribute to them as well. Enjoy!

And so, the first topic of discussion: What would your ideal “Intro to Open Source” presentation look like?: I attended the worst “Intro to Open Source” presentation of my life last night at a local business event thing and hence the topic.

I think there may be good reason for a few, on topic, open source presentations that advocates around the world could use to do a good & interesting presentation that hits the major points depending on who the audience is.

So, if there were going to be such a thing.. what would you include, not include, do, not do, etc etc?