Thu, 19 Jan 2006
Bling or Blong?
I gave my musical buddy 31d1, some of
my bling.
He is eternally grateful. In the process of our IM conversation, I accidently
called it
blong, thus coining a term for fake, cubic zirconia bling.
posted at: 13:04 | path:
/goofy |
permanent link to this entry
Hipster Radio. Unfortunate Title, Good Music.
It's amazing how some things fall under the radar.
Joe at hipster.org is one of
them. He appears to be
religiously
broadcasting his collection of mp3s, 24/7 without fail. Sweet.
posted at: 12:56 | path:
/radio |
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How Much Do I Pay For My Addiction to Free Software?
I go on and on about the virtues of Free Software and GNU/Linux to my friends.
They think I'm silly or geeky or brilliant or boring for it. Very few think I'm
brilliant, very...few. It doesn't help to be friends with audio geeks and
writers, who have a seemingly natural inclination to the glowing white Apple.
So now that I have been using Debian GNU/Linux for about a year straight
without working on a commercial OS (Windows XP) at home for anything more than
playing games I pick up at Best Buy, I thought I'd figure out how much I really
am paying for my OS of choice when I factor everything together. Then I will
compare it to how much my friends are paying with their hardware and
warzed software they didn't pay for. I love my friends, I really do...
First comes hardware I own:
- Primary Workstation
- Case + power supply: $0. Found in the trash
- Motherboard: $40. Tiger Direct
- AMD Athlon CPU: $40. Tiger Direct
- 512 MB DDR RAM: $0. Found in trash
- 2 x 80 GB hard disks: $80. Bought one, found other in trash
- ATI Radeon 9500 Pro video card: $40. Bought used from a friend
- 17" CRT @ 1280x1024 resolution: $0. Found in trash
- Digital Audio Workstation
- Complete AMD Athlon system with 1 GB RAM + 80 GB hard disk: $550. Bought from corner PC shop
- M-Audio Delta 1010-LT multi-channel sound card: $300. Bought from Sam Ash retail
- 19" CRT @1280x1024 resolution: $100. Bought used from a friend
- ATI Radeon 9000: $40. Bought retail in close out sale
- Development Workstation
- Compaq Pentium 4 PC with 512 MB RAM + 80 GB hard disk: $0. Found in trash.
- 15" CRT @ 1024x768: $0. Found in trash
- Firewall/Router/VPN
- Compaq Pentium II PC: $0. Found in trash
- 2 network interfaces: $0. Found in trash
- Wireless network interface. $0. Gift from friend upgrading
- Periperals
- HP LaserJet 6L: $0. Gift from friend upgrading
- Epson 1200U flatbed color scanner: $0. Gift from friend upgrading
- SMC 8 port 10/100 switch: $0. Trade
- 12 port 10baseT hub: $0. Gift from friend upgrading
- Various lengths of cat-5 cable: $50. Mostly home made or gifts
The total is: $1250.
I should note that I live in New York City and carry a screwdriver around with
me at all times. This is only a small amount of working hardware I find in the
trash. I have been collecting CRT monitors for a while. No one wants them
anymore. They are the most popular trash item I find. And now software.
- Operating system and applications for all workstations: $0. Debian GNU/Linux
- Operating system for firewall/router/VPN: $0. m0n0wall
- Subscription to Cedega to run Windows games in Linux: $60/year
- Associate membership to the Free Software Foundation: $150/year
The total is $210/year
The applications in Debian give me 99% of what I need to do anything I can
think of. The remaining 1% comes from backports or custom builds of source code
not in Debian. m0n0wall is an excellent firewall/router/VPN/traffic
shaper/wireless AP/etc/etc. I do like playing games, Weaning myself off the
Microsoft addiction to be up to date on the latest games is going well with
Cedega. Although the Free Software Foundation is not necessarily a software
development group, they do good things to protect my rights to use my software,
so I like to support them with donations. And finally, Internet connectivity
services.
- Speakeasy OneLink DSL. $1320/year
- AMD Athlon server on 10mbit Internet connection running Debian:
$1320/year
- 718 area code phone number through VoicePulse Connect: $110/year
- Outgoing VoIP->PSTN minutes: $0.024/minute
The total is roughly $2750/year considering my limited usage on outgoing VoIP
minutes
So service is the most expensive investment I have made both for work and for
recreation. Most, if not all of these services are also using Free Software to
power their equipment that gives me service.
I won't take the laundry list approach for the comparison. I'll just ramble on
some more. If you actually read the list above you can tell that I have a much
higher computer addiction than your average yahoo/gmail web browsing folk. I
even have more than your average dedicated blogger or Apple congregation
member. But let's take an example scenario from what I consider an average
professional's computer rig. As I mentioned before, I do work with audio geeks
so I'm including some media production stuff here.
The first necessity is the Apple laptop. Everyone knows iBooks are for kids, so
you have to get a G4 PowerBook. That lands anywhere between $2200 and $3000 for
one computer. A laptop usually isn't perfect. It's nice to have a desktop at
home, especially if you are doing audio production. There are some
very cheap PC desktops out there but they all have Windows XP Home
installed and are quite under powered to make running that OS pleasant,
especially with lots of big commercial applications. So you have to go with a
more pricey model, which will run you anywhere from $1500 - $3000.
For doing media production, Digidesign Pro Tools is the market leader but it is
very high priced and the low end models come with a crippled version of the
software. Let's say you'll start at around $450 for the whole package on the
low end and go up to about $2000 for the high end. And that's just for the
audio interface and crippled software.
Those that "do Mac" get to drop much more cash on the desktop. A G5 starts at
$1999 but that's in ridiculous shape to perform well with OS X. Consider
between $2500 and $5000.
For firewall/routing, there is the venerable Linksys WRT54G, which is hella
cheap and pretty damn cool. But it doesn't do VPN. If you need that, the
cheapest product is the SonicWall SOHO with a limited user licence. That starts
at around $300.
And finally the issue of commercial software. No one I know pays for any of
their software, at all, ever...even if the copyright holders demand it by law.
Unfortunately, the process of obtaining that software can be longer and more
frusturating than figuring out a free alternative. It also produces a strange
version mentality where people are afraid to upgrade because they will loose
their cracks and have to find new ones. I recently ran into someone who was
still running MacOS 9.2 because all her cracked Pro Tools plugins wouldn't run
on OS X. That's dedication!
But this fight is getting boring but part of me did it just to get it on paper. I
actually didn't know if I was dropping too much cash on hardware or getting
played on the Free Software addiction. But now I feel like I made a good
decision. It may be hard to get the photos off the digital camera among other
hardware quirks, but in the end I'm spending less time worrying about my
computer and more time using it.
Peace out!
posted at: 02:29 | path:
/debian |
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