[digital:meditation]

Something worth reading on crn.com, a news site mainly focused on providing system and tech resellers with product and company newsflashes: On a three-page article there’s a fairly verbose comparison of Windows Vista to Ubuntu GNU/Linux 8.10, focusing on various aspects including system security, software and vendor support, application availability or (unavoidable, it seems…) installation, and in the end the paper comes to a “bottom line” which seems surprising in some ways:

[...]
Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop Edition easily ranks higher than any other Linux desktop OS we’ve looked at in the Test Center. Head to head, Ubuntu simply beats Vista on so many important points that Windows is no longer the simple, reflexive default. We’re calling this one for Ubuntu, plain and simple, because it’s a beautifully done operating system, it functions as advertised, it’s easier on the client side to get up and running and it costs less. Application support is still a big deal working against it.
[...]
One point to remember is that the Test Center doesn’t dislike Windows Vista. It works fine (with enough CPU strength and 4 GB of memory installed). It just works less fine than Ubuntu 8.10.
[...]

Windows no longer being the simple, reflexive default? No matter whether 2009 will be the year of widespread GNU/Linux desktop adoption (or even domination), it seems this is a pretty good starting point after all…

They did it again: Announcing the 17th Klub Moozak events, Clemens and his co-workers once again honoured my visual doings by using one of my pictures for the announcement flyer again:

Thanks for that as well as for the credits, I surely like it… :> By the way the “blank” version is here, CC-licensed as all my stuff. Well, as stated before: Seeing ones pictures used for something like this is even better knowing it is used for something rather good, given the music involved with (Klub) Moozak events usually seems to be rather interesting (listening to Strangelet at the moment which I also got to know following one of the KM event announcements). Hope for more of this, and still pondering a trip to Vienna right for that. :)

Der tagesspiegel berichtet über den Status Quo im Umgang mit Online-Musik, testet verschiedene Werkzeuge und Plattformen und resümiert:

…
Die meisten Songs gibt es im Internet bereits jetzt ohne Beschränkungen. Doch damit sind längst nicht alle Barrieren beseitigt. Dem Nutzer steht teilweise ein regelrechter Hindernislauf bevor.
…

Insgesamt ein lesenswerter Artikel und ein schöner Punkt, wieder einmal auf Creative Commons hinzuweisen. Entsprechend lizensierte Musik findet sich u.a. unter Jamendo, bei orangemusic, blobu.de oder creativecommons.org. Zwar finden sich an all den Stellen weniger “große Namen”, sondern vielmehr unbekanntere und/oder Indie-Artisten, aber schließlich ist dies keine Aussage zur Qualität von Musik, oder? Wer doch einen etwas größeren Namen will, für den bleibt immerhin “The Slip, das bislang aktuellste Album von Nine Inch Nails, als CC-kompatibler Download. Und während der Beschallung mit diesen Klängen bleibt dann auch Zeit für die Lektüre von “Was ist CC?”, um zu lernen, daß Creative Commons mehr als kostenlose Downloads und “Selbstbedienungskultur” sind. Die Bilder auf [z428] stehen übrigens auch unter einer CC-Lizenz zur Verfügung.

Listening through the Parallel Fronts sampler a while ago, I stumbled across Spin Provider for the first time and kinda liked what I heard. Just by now I found that, some days ago, these folks obviously released another full-length album, titled ‘Radio “Totalitarianism”‘, to be found for download on archive.org and in several other places. Considering Spin Provider an “underground act”, the quality of ‘Radio: “Totalitarianism”‘ is exceptional, and knowing the songs are released under a Creative Commons Attribution license eventually makes it even better. Again, listening to the creations a “musical world” which, even though geographically rather close, seems pretty far away and next to unknown is quite inspiring and astounding. Gonna keep an eye on that band.