Dear,
[My Name]

eircom has not agreed to block any Internet sites from being accessed by
end-users. As part of the settlement of the above proceedings, it was
agreed that eircom would not oppose an application by the Plaintiffs to
seek to have eircom block access to the Pirate Bay website. The Music
Industry will still have to establish, in the normal way that there is
an appropriate basis for the relief which they seek from the Court.
eircom is not supporting or consenting to the application. The
settlement makes no provision for any site other than the Pirate Bay
website.

• This post is a continuation on the previous one. IRMA is the Irish Music Rights Organisation which represents the big four record companies and their bottom line: never the artist. They have recently tried to regulate the Internet and have forced the biggest Irish ISP: Eircom; to use the three strikes rule and boot people off the Internet… No Judge, no Jury, no evidence of a crime.. Just an IP address and a sanction which you cannot contest.

I always hoped for better for Ireland; but it seems the thieving hand of “rights” organizations which pretend to represent the artist have struck gold. Being able to cajole and bribe the largest Irish Internet Service Provider (ISP) - Eircom; has worked only too well. Although Eircom has said it will only obey by having a court order - it has agreed never to oppose these - which makes it complicit in the act of censorship. My Letter to Our ISP, Eircom, IRMA, EFF:

What are Desktop Environments? Wikipedia defines it as:

In graphical computing, a desktop environment (DE) commonly refers to a style of graphical user interface …… A desktop environment typically consists of icons, windows, toolbars, folders, wallpapers, and desktop widgets. (See WIMP.)

I would add a file manager and browser to this list also! Let’s look at the two most popular consumer Operating Systems (in three variants) and their Desktop Environments:

OS Name Widgets Window Manager File Manager Browser Windows XP Luna Stack Window Manager Windows File Explorer Internet Explorer 6 Windows Vista Aero Desktop Window Manager Windows File Explorer Internet Explorer 7 Mac OS X Cocoa Quartz Compositor Finder Safari 2.X Now take Linux; really a Kernel, but packaged means an Operating System. Which way you package it makes all the difference! You still use the same drivers, the boot process is still the same, but when your machine finishes its boot and launches all that graphics stuff anything can appear: anything. It’s abstraction to have no real graphics in a kernel other than that which are drivers to control hardware. This is very strange to people who think in the Windows way (nb. I used to be one of these). At the end of Windows XP booting I have never seen anything but Luna; and most people don’t know its called that. So it is very strange for people my age and slightly older who grew up over DOS and Windows 3.1/95 line to have this fundamental shift in logic.

Last year was me celebrating four years of using the best operating system out there: Linux and the best distro Ubuntu. Ubuntu was my first foray in to Linux; and I haven’t left it since; although I have tried all the other major distros. I started with the first version of Ubuntu; Warthy Warthog:

Warthy had a text only installer and it took me quite a while to not only get used to the idea of this strange operating system; but the fear of leaving Windows-land where all that power usage knowledge would mean nothing. It meant nothing in terms of the registry and other superficial stuff; but the more I used Ubuntu and Linux the more I liked it. In fact in 2005 I ditched my XP installation altogether. I noticed there wasn’t an Irish Ubuntu users group; so I mailed one of the few people (around 5 I guess) that were around Mark Shuttleworth to set it up and get a website going. It was an ill-advised effort since I was too busy with examinations really to take it on; so I gave it up soon after. But it is still going today, people are still involved.

Recently I downloaded the Kubuntu packages of the new KDE 4.2 beta 2. For those of you who don’t know; KDE is the K Desktop Environment; which includes a window manager (KWin), common desktop applications, its own menu (Kickoff), browser (Konqueror), file manager (dolphin) etc. Basically it is the most popular desktop environment on Linux next to Gnome.

*KDE 4.2 Beta 2 with Kickoff Menu visible

• **What is so special about KDE? **
  The philosophy of KDE is the advanced configuration it allows through its Graphical User Interface (GUI), this is versus Gnome which chooses sane defaults and leaves configuration in hard to reach places and out-of-sight. This isn’t to say KDE doesn’t choose sane defaults; it does and is very user-friendly. KDE has always been the more Windows-like of the major desktop environments and this hasn’t really changed in KDE 4.X series. KDE is available in popular distributions of Linux such as Kubuntu, Mandriva, OpenSuse. The special part about 4.X series is that for the first time for any Linux desktop environment; it is fully cross-platform, easily installs and works on Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS X.

KDE 4.2 Panel; with KOrganizer calendar open

I downloaded Firefox 3.1 beta 2 (after trialling other development snapshots over the last few months) to see Ogg Theora video support is coming on really well. Opera, as well as Mozilla has committed to including this royalty-free video codec for web use. This is really good news; as one Opera Developer said:

Something however is still not quite there about web video. The video solutions mentioned above are proprietary closed solutions that rely on plugins to display in a web page - what we need to make video a first-class web citizen is an easy, open solution to integrate video into web pages, and native support for video in browsers.

• My Current Firefox Extensions: A-Z*
  Adblock Plus; because ads are for people that don’t know how to avoid them! Not only do they stop your banwidth from being wasted; they make a ton of websites more usuable. It takes care of Flash Ads as well as static ones; using a filter that is constantly updated. So even if some of the webs more devious and sneaky advertisers try to circumvent it; AdBlock can have a fix to everyone online within hours. It is definately my favourite extension! I don’t block certain ads like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft (the ones with decent reputations) as that is how the people behind really good websites I frequent make a living. But for all the rest trying to do pop-ups and pop-unders; I am sorry your days are numbered! (Some people higly recommend flashblock but I haven’t had a need to use it with AdBlock Plus yet).
  

CustomizeGoogle adds neat tricks to Google services such as always using a secure connection to Gmail; links to other search engines, page histories, Favicons to search and streaming results pages. Comes in handy once in a while; but I don’t use it daily.

I am not a big gamer; I primarily love systems and how they work. I do own a PS3 (amazing hardware I might add) and I prefer FPS and generally devious natured video games (like the GTA franchise). Does that make me a bad person who wants to kill people? Of course not; nothing could be further from the truth. But some people stick their fingers in their ears and shout “LA LA LA Columbine LALALA Terrorists LALALA Violent Video Games!”. They say it is destructive to childrens young precious minds. The “Think of The Children” argument always disgusted me; its like shouting Fire in a packed room when their is no danger: it is false, just to garner attention and a sickening twisted version of the facts. Are violent video games harmful to kids? Probably; I wouldn’t advocate giving them access since they; just like movies are clearly rated for Adults. *

**Note: This Guide was written for use by my Computer Science class

on Linux (and Mac OS X where noted). I haven’t used SSH on Windows; but hopefully someone can make sure this guide works also on Windows by noting differences). SSH comes with nearly all Linux distros and all Mac OS X releases.
**

OS Specific Colours: Linux - Mac OS X - Windows
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**Download SSH For Windows
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