fr33domlover [email protected]
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University VS Free Software Hacker
2015-05-02T23:45:41Z via Pumpa To: Public CC: Followers
Been hacking with GNU since age 5 but fear that the engineers with the fancy suits are a step ahead?
Considering to get formal education in software, or just started, and wondering how it works and what it's worth for a free software activist?
Here are my impressions, being a "software engineering" student for the last almost-3-years.
Kete Foy , Christopher Allan Webber like this.
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I'm sorry that much of the forced-proprietary stuff is stressful to you, that would stress me out as well. It sounds like you're close to getting your degree, and it's probably good to stick with it.
I'm not sure, but for now I'm not giving up. Even if just to get to fully understand the problems with academy, be able to criticize from a knowledgeable point-of-view and contribute my conclusions to development of free education.
No matter the university stuff, it sounds like you're very fortunate to have such a strong depth of knowledge at this time in your life! I wish I had done a deep dive sooner into things than I had. And I wish I had taken those math classes when I was in college that you seem to be now.
I suppose depth of knowledge is relative. I myself don't feel I know much about anything, but I'm glad I got some math background. Understanding the basics of predicate logic is useful when trying to design a query language, etc. I hope the same knowledge is available online through free culture materials! Anyway, I'll be happy to help with math stuff if I can :-)
Thanks for the feedback!
Regarding Rel4tion: Glad to hear is looks at least a bit cool to someone. It's still young and far from functional, but I'll make a proof-of-concept as soon as possible...
I feel the same as you. Best phrases in the text:
“we probably need better free education. Free culture materials. Full free courses, video and text, not just Wikipedia articles with complex formulas. But we do already have a lot, and everyone can contribute!"
"I wish to contribute to a world in which those who will come after me won't need the university. I don't have time or deep knowledge to do serious writing and teaching, but I'm happy to help whenever I can, and working on free education is very high in my list of projects.”
I think we can do this helping to write Wikipedia, Wikibooks and Wikiversity.
“All of this leads to the question... will this piece of paper with a fancy signature actually ever affect any important decision or opportunity in my life? Will any potential employer ever judge me by my "grades"? Will I ever end up being a full-time developer in a company? Or will Creative Commons or the FSF or Wikimedia Foundation or Wordpress etc. happen to have an open position which I can fill with my GNU/Linux hacking knowledge?”
In today's society you will need that fucking signed paper. Hope that in future society people won't.Regards, wish you the best of lucks.
Thank you!
I once tried to type using Markdown and LaTeX one of my hand-written notebooks of a first-year math course. Then I tried putting it in Wikibooks instead. Then I realized there's already a lot of this material around in English, so maybe I should keep the original Hebrew text for local students' use.
It didn't go far yet because I'm working on many other things, but I'll see how I can fit in. Another thing to do is local free education. Organize free lectures in the local community.
Regarding the signed paper, should we just be at mercy of corporations, or take things into our own hands? Imagine we decided not to have the paper, or pretend we don't when applying for a job. The employers would be forced to consider people without papers, otherwise they wouldn't find anyone at all.
Sadly, the bigger problem seems to be the respect for software freedom. Papers or not, how many companies are committed to software freedom? Some people say you should focus on your specific libre project, and ignore the fact that most other employees write nonfree code. I don't think I can or want to work in a company like that, or represent it in any way. I'll be ashamed to tell people where I work...
Perhaps it's time I revive my idea of making video lectures :)
Keep up with that positive vibration fr33domlover! It's contagious :)
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2015-04-14T16:04:38Z via Pumpa To: Public CC: Followers
"Truth alone will endure, all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time. I must continue to bear testimony to truth even if I am forsaken by all. Mine may today be a voice in the wilderness, but it will be heard when all other voices are silenced, if it is the voice of Truth." (Gandhi)
Today I wrote some notes, which you may find interesting. In the worst case, I'm making it visible so people can find it more easily.
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My Music Collection is Online
2015-04-09T22:48:39Z via Pumpa To: Public CC: Followers
For several years I've been collecting music from various sources. At some point I stopped collecting, especially when I became aware of free culture, but I still have this collection of around 10000 audio files.
One day this will be in the public domain, and a lot of it probably has cultural significance despite being proprietary music. Also, sharing it can help remove the centralization y0utube and n3tflix are creating.
Currently it's in the form of torrents:
http://rel4tion.org/people/fr33domlover/collection/
Download. Listen. Enjoy. Seed.
If you like this, please please help me seed. My upload speed is low, and is shared with my entire server which is also a personal computer, so it has a chance only if people help seed these files.
NOTE: Most of this is proprietary music. If you're just looking for new music to hear. I recommend libre music, in particular try http://libre.fm.
I'm going to try putting the whole thing in a GNU MediaGoblin instance, http://media.rel4tion.org. Maybe it will help raise awareness to y0utube's problems and suggest MediaGoblin as a good libre solution. Yeah, ironically the music is mostly nonfree, but it's probably what a lot of people listen to, so it will maybe manage to attract them.
Once again - this music is currently mostly proprietary, which is a bad thing. Libre music should be your first priority.
Have fun! Feedback is very very welcome, please share any thoughts here :-)
Christopher Allan Webber likes this.
Won't you have legal problems uploading publicly that proprietary music to your mediagoblin instance?
I enjoy having a very-unpopular website on a small home server. Nobody noticed its existence. I have hundreds of torrent magnet links, including those with the proprietary music. Search engines index the pages etc. but I didn't get a single complaint.
If anyone complains, I'll think how to protect my basic freedom to
cpfiles into/var/www/mediagoblin. It's a totally harmless operation, and I think the copyright laws are nothing but a form of violence, scaring people who just want to share. "If you share this file, we'll take all your money so you won't have food and will die". This is a violent threat like any other, and I don't plan to give in to violence. -
First Note
2015-03-25T13:27:26Z via Pumpa To: Public CC: Followers
Hello world. I created this account today, trying Pump.io for the first time. I don't have any "groups" or "follow" anyone or anything. Anyway, I decided to try making a note.
I'm using Pumpa, a desktop client.
Just in case you're wondering who I am, partial information is at http://rel4tion.org/people/fr33domlover/.
Today's popular social networks have huge problems, even if you ignore the spying, censorship and proprietary software. They create a culture. They affect the way people talk to each other. They make people get addicted to "Like"s. Instead of enjoying their time, they focus on taking pictures and uploading them, hoping for a good daily dose of "Like"s.
I saw signs of these problems in Diaspora* too, but they were much weaker. Maybe a social network can even do things to prevent or minimize these things. Is it possible? If yes, how? And how does Pump.io affect people's habits and inter-personal communication patterns?
It will be a bit hard for me to discover, because I don't expect to see all the people I know face-to-face hurry to make an account here on Pump.io. I also don't have many of these people. But I will observe and hopefully learn and have new conclusions, like I had when I was using Diaspora*.
By the way, at some point I'll try to get the news and blog at http://rel4tion.org automatically inserted into Pump.io. If you know how, or whether it would be a good idea, help is welcome.
See you in the next note.