Ain't that a scream?

I saw a little van on the freeway last night, labelled Scream Savers. Cute, I thought, and went browsing today.

Much to my amusement, Scream Savers currently only supports computers using one of the Microsoft Windows operating systems. Perhaps even more revealingly, they don’t seem to support OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, ClamAV, and a whole host of common FOSS applications.

The take-home lesson, of course, is that FOSS packages evidently don’t support a profitable level of discontent. How sad.

I’m betting from this specific absence that these guys regard FOSS projects in general as tools of the Devil, a mortal business enemy with whom they are locked in struggle. This is doubly sad from their perspective, because sooner or later, they’re going to lose, and doubly sad from ours because their business is predicated on such a high default level of user discontent, they’re not always going to be around to provide pay-for hand-holding to those people who truly benefit from it when discontent levels fall. They’ll go the way of the dinosaurs, and just as suddenly.

Now, before anybody gets their knickers in a twist over the industry and income (AUD$148 per PC per year + $17 per site + $110/hr after the first hour, I think I need to bump my rates) which that MS-Windows fallout represents, I suggest reading "The Broken Window Fallacy" first.

The problem from our perspective is that they have a strong vested interest in maintaining the broken status quo. Can you think of a way of encourage people in their position to transition a more sustainable business model involving FOSS?

Comments

every-application-is-part-of-a-toolkit at work

I have a LibreOffice Impress slideshow that I wish to turn into a narrated video. 1. export the slideshow as PNG images (if that is partially broken — as at now — at higher resolutions, Export Directly as PDF then use ‘pdftoppm’ (from the poppler-utils package) to do the same). 2. write a small C program (63 lines including comments) to display those images one at a time, writing a config file entry for Imagination (default transition: ‘cross fade’) based on when the image-viewer application (‘display,’ from the GraphicsMagick suite) is closed on each one; run that, read each image aloud, then close each image in turn. 3. run ‘Imagination’ over the config file to produce a silent MP4 video with the correct timings. 4. run ‘Audacity’ to record speech while using ‘SMPlayer’ to display the silent video, then export that recording as a WAV file. 4a. optionally, use ‘TiMIDIty’ to convert a non-copyright-encumbered MIDI tune to WAV, then import that and blend it with the speech (as a quiet b

new life for an old (FTX) PSU, improved life for one human

the LEDs on this 5m strip happen to emit light centred on a red that does unexpectedly helpful things to (and surprisingly deeply within) a human routinely exposed to it. it has been soldered to a Molex connector, plugged into a TFX power supply from a (retired: the MoBo is cactus) Small Form Factor PC, the assorted PSU connectors (and loose end from the strip) have been taped over. the LED strip cost $10.24 including postage, the rest cost $0, the PSU is running at 12½% of capacity, consumes less power than a laptop plug-pack despite running a fan. trial runs begin today.

boundaries

pushing the actual boundaries of the physical (not extremes, the boundaries themselves) can often remove barriers not otherwise perceived. one can then often resolve an issue itself, rather than merely stonewalling at the physical consequences of the issue.

Plantagenet Penguinista

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