Tag Archives: matthew helmke

Freedom of speech and religion in the US.

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I often post long comments on a variety of subjects on other blogs.  Today one of my good friends Matthew posted a very good blog entry.  (See the photo to the right, taken on one of the few days when I had more hair them him.)  Here is his blog entry, if you could read that first it will make mine more logical. I mostly agreed with him and the subject of business came up in my answer so I will repost my reply here for all my business readers.

I once heard a quote that one who believes in freedom of speech “Will defend someone who is yelling at the top of their lungs their ideals in a public place, ideals which you would yell at the top of your lungs to oppose.”  I have thought about this often.  We live in a nation where we should have freedom of speech, and even if that speech is against what I say and think I will support that freedom.

Now it comes to appropriateness of the time and place it is a whole different mater.  I think that there is a huge difference between public and private events.  I thought it was shameful for those few democratic protestors to sneak into the republic convention and protest during the peaks of the speeches.  It was NOT their place.  I also think that if someone goes through all the trouble and expense to put on a parade (Such as a famous church does each St Patricks day.) they own that parade and they should be able to pick and choose who is allowed to be in their parade, not forced to allow a group of Homosexual rights people to basically have a protest in the middle of the parade as a court recently forced them to do.  If the Gays want to have their own parade, I have no problem with that, they can pick a different time or place.   Also if a pastor wants to say something to his church about who to vote for, he should be allowed, unlike todays laws.

On Friday I went to the state fair, there were two different church groups who rented a space there, they decided that they would try to tell people about God.  I also have no problem with this, they used their money, and they were following the rules.  Now was this the best place, I think not, will they actually do any good for the Kingdom of God, maybe they will make a few people think.  For years I have thought that relationships were the best way to win people to Christ.  You simply invite them to events, show them the community and tell them the Gospel and let them decide.  But any decision that is forced is NOT lasting or sincere, and so many Christians like to force such decisions.

If you notice in the quote you have from Thomas Jefferson he says sect.  As you know this is a difference within the same religion.  He could not imagine that our nation would be anything but Christian.  He just did not want one denomination to be favored over another.

I do totally agree that we should not force our Christian ideals on non Christians as a form of law.  There are too many laws in our nation.  We are NOT a free nation.  Anyone who leaves for a year or more and comes back will tell you that.  There are others that are less free but also others that are far more free.

You also had the point of the “Merry Christmas” greeting.  I have found that it is used far less.  The other day I went to Costco they had two isles of “Christmas” stuff, so I decided to look really closely, there was not one item that was Christian based, and not one location did it say the word Christmas.  They are a business, they can choose what to put on their shelves, but me, as a Christian can choose where I will buy my decorations, and even if they have the best price it will NOT be from them.  Two years ago I heard that Macy’s decided to make bring back Christmas and in all of their ads they stopped all of the holiday stuff that others do and actually, to the shock of the left, mentioned Christmas.  And you know what, their sales went way up and they had their best season ever.  These are all private originations, they can choose what they want to say, they will be held accountable by the general public for what they do and say though.

To me the fundamental thing is that we have LOST the conversation in this nation.  People are divided and in most ways very close minded.  The force of the debate on both sides has caused people to become callous to the point that they are stuck in what they think.  A hard attack will just cause people to put the shields up and resist, only a slow, over time conversation based on logic will ever convert most people in this climate.  (This is for every issue, religious, political and even for choice of OS.)

The key to commercial success for Linux

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You use a computer, and read blogs so you probably know a bit about computer and you probably know about Linux. Linux is great, robust and free OS. It runs almost all web servers and websites. Including google, wordpress and billions of others. Linux is very secure, robust, fast and hack proof. It makes great servers because servers are ran by experts. Without Linux the web would not exist as we know it.

Well for over a decade now they have been trying to make it popular for your desktop computer that you use every day as well. One of the best parts about Linux is that anyone with knowledge is free to change and customize it exactly how they see fit, and they have. Almost everything in Linux has at least 3 different programs that do the same thing, but they do it in different ways. People then pick and choose the different parts of Linux and combine them into a complete Operating System. They call this a distribution or distro. There are now 100’s of up to date distros, all with different ways of doing things and different followings. This has helped Linux in the past but in the world of mass merchandising it also has hurt Linux.

The problem is that when a company writes software to work on Linux they must assume things about how the computer is set up. Because there are 100’s of different ways to do this, and only a few million Linux users, they simply don’t bother. Companies that make drivers and hardware also don’t bother. The Linux people thus have to do all of it themselves. And, if they do it for one distro of Linux it probably will not work on many others. So the game makers, and the people who make the huge programs we need to function usually don’t bother making a Linux version. There is no Photoshop, QuickBooks, MSN or Yahoo chat with webcam, or robust video editing software in Linux because these are very complex and would usually be distro specific, and the userbase does not justify the cost.

The strength of Microsoft Windows was the fact that it was closed and controlled. People could not change the OS, all the rules from computer to computer were exactly the same. Because of this people could code for just ONE OS, that they knew would be supported and work for at least a decade. This is exactly what they did, 1000’s of companies started writing. Hardware makers could design one driver to work with the OS and everything was easy, because it was a standard platform, that was predictable. Windows was not the coolest, and it sure was not the most secure or robust, and they charged a huge price for it, but all of this was worth it because it was STANDARD. Nothing is more important than something being standard when it comes to business, and all the geeks need to learn this. McDonalds does not made the best burgers, but I have ate them in 5 different nations and they are all the same. When it is the same it is predictable, and you need that to get investors and make money flow. This is the main reason the Linux world still has less than 1% of desktop computers.

So now what? Well in a dream world someone with great power and clout would take all the best parts of Linux, get a ton of people behind him and release the ultimate distro of Linux. He would promise to not change it for at least 6 months and also promise that anything written for it will work for years on the newer versions. By creating a standard and unifying the Linux world programmers would start making software work on Linux and soon it would gain marketshare. It will be better and be free than windows, and soon takeover the world from the grasp of Microsoft.

Someone else, a tech billionaire named Mark Shuttleworth thought EXACTLY the same way, and he used his power and clout to do it. He calls it Ubuntu. He only release every 6 months, and he has static versions that are supported for two years or more. He then went much farther, he made a community around it. They have great free tech support with forums and chat. As well has many other great features and designs.  My good friend Matthew Helmke is one of the leading Ubuntu experts and forum leaders and inspired me to try it out.

This OS has the chance to become huge. For over a year now Linux has been the top distro, and it growing faster than the rest of the Linux world put together. The standard it presents has already encouraged many companies to start writing software for Linux. Many large games are not tested on Ubuntu. If you use Linux, switch to Ubuntu, for the sake of the Linux world. Raising a unified standard is the only hope that Linux has at commercial success.

I hope this explanation of a very tech thing from a business perspective educated both the techs and the business people who usually don’t understand each other.

I will offer much more of this sort of knowledge in the future so be sure to subscribe to this blog!.

Jason Dragon.