So what happens when a government official introduces legislation that would put open-source/free software into full service at the government level, and Microsoft tries to head him off at the pass?
You get this letter, a masterwork of rebuttal and reasoned discourse that should be required reading for anyone fighting against the Microsoft Juggernaut in their workplace.
Peruvian Activism
By way of summing up my KDE efforts this week, I’ve uploaded a new screenshot to my DeviantArt page.
I think my next personal projects will include some long-overdue code tinkering on this website, as well as some artistic endeavours that are taking form in my twisted little brain. But that’s just right now, and we all know how much I love doing real work. I’ll probably just screw off and play Doom Legacy instead.
Wendi and I went to see the Escaflowne movie at the Clinton Street Theater a couple of weekends ago. And yes, I’m so lazy that it took me this long to write up the review.
“Escaflowne” is a movie about giant robots that manages to almost entirely not be a movie about giant robots. A young semi-suicidal girl is brought over to another world, Gaia, where everyone thinks she’s the Wing Goddess destined to summon the Dragon Armor known as Escaflowne to either save or destroy the world. Oh, and this loner-hero named Van is on a mission to kill his brother who usurped the throne or something.
You see, while the plot isn’t what you would call terribly complex, you’re not really given any sort of real bead on the background involved. You also get the impression that there’s an awful lot of backstory and character development that you’re missing out on so that the movie’s running time can be kept short.
Or, put another way, you feel like you’d be a lot better off watching the televised anime series instead of this movie adaptation. (For the record, I’ve only seen two episodes of the American dub on Fox Kids so I really don’t know that much about what the story’s supposed to be about.)
What was good about “Escaflowne,” the movie rendition? Great action sequences. Nice character and machine designs.
What wasn’t quite so good? The sense of missing backstory and character depth. A rushed feel to the sequencing. No sense that the heroine has any impetus for the changes she appears to go through.
It’s not a bad movie. I’m glad I was able to see a subtitled version, since adding a bad dub to an already-underwhelming film would probably have made it unwatchable. On the other hand, it’s not something I’m going to pay to own when it comes out on DVD. Maybe I’ll see about borrowing the series instead…
Escaflowne Movie Site
One might venture to ask, “Hey Karel, so what did you get out of today’s Novell seminar other than a T-shirt, a notepad, a pen, a demo CD and some pastries for breakfast?”
I’m so glad one asked. Novell’s latest version of ZENworks would make my job much more manageable, if not easier. The features I need are inventory, remote control and the ever-lovin’ application distribution. I can distribute apps now with the ZENworks 2 Starter Pack, but that version is no longer supported and has some serious flaws that I’ve been working around for years now.
The bad news is that I could never convince my local bosses to buy ZENworks for Desktops 3.2 or 4.0 when it comes out. The good news is that my boss at Corporate has been asking me about my opinions of ZENworks. Maybe I could lean on him a bit and make one of my dreams come true…
After hours and hours and hours of satisfying prerequisites and debugging compile errors, KDE 3.0.1 is sort-of installed on my Linux workstation at the office.
I’ll wait a while before tackling the rest of it. The base package took over an hour to compile, and I’d like to enjoy the use of my computer for a while before starting another huge session like that one.
If I had anything else of interest to post today, I would. Sorry. It was a Monday at the office, which means lots of small tedious uninteresting jobs that I won’t bore you with the telling of.
I’m a bit embarassed by this: A few years ago I created a skin for the NeoPlanet “browser.” As proud as I am of the skin itself, NeoPlanet proved to be a bloated, buggy bit of fluff attached to a browser I have grown to despise. (That would be Internet Exploder.) Oddly enough, a fair number of people who use NeoPlanet liked my TenchiNeo skin, enough so that it continues to generate email to my Europa account.
In the original description for the skin, I directed visitors to my website at Europa for some additional sounds. I’ve neglected to post that sound package here on the new website until now. I’m sorry about that, folks.
NeoPlanet Anime Skins
