For anyone who doesn't know who RMS is, he is the founder of the GNU project. He wrote Emacs and the GCC compiler. Much of what makes up a "GNU/Linux" (don't ever let him hear you call it "Linux"), is the GNU tools. Linux itself is just the operating system kernel. Although the OS kernel is a very important part of the OS, a base GNU/Linux system has a ton of software from the GNU project as well. The OS doesn't work without the kernel, and it doesn't do much without the GNU tools.

RMS answered most of the questions as I would expect. The one question that stood out to me, although I haven't made it through the entire list yet, is number 7. The question relates to how the open source world can't create tax software and games that can compete with proprietary software. It's a very good question. RMS mentions that the Free Software Foundation in Latin America does have free tax software. He also says

I don't know whether our community will make a "high end video game"
which is free software, but I am sure that if you try, you can stretch
your taste for games so that you will enjoy the free games that we
have developed.

Now, this is the part that really made me think. I've always been an advocate of free software, but do I really want to rely on free software to produce video games that compete with some of the games I play on PS3? I truly wish that they could make them, because I'd love it, but I don't see it happening. Another major point to that comment is that games have always been the driving force in computer hardware improvements. The computer systems we have right now are only this good because of games.

That may be hard to believe, but for anyone that's been playing PC games for decades, it's common sense. Video games are it. That's what all of this technology was built on. You were either playing games or writing them. Sure, computers have many other useful features, but games are responsible for these beautiful user interfaces and awesome sound.

Games kept getting better. Hardware kept getting better. A huge majority of the research and design came from game sales. All of that wouldn't have happened without proprietary games.

RMS knows that, but RMS isn't worried about games at all. RMS is worried about software freedom and he has many good points. Those same points could be applied to many industries. To me is seems like the old communism vs. capitalism debate. Extremes on both sides suck. It's the happy medium we should strive for.

Reddit’s Interview with Richard Stallman is a post from: SupremeTechs

LXDE seems to be geared toward netbooks and other cloud-client computers. Linux has many light-weight desktop environments, and even though I like variety, sometimes I wish that they would all come together and work together.

This leads me to a pitfall of open source. It's also an advantage. Those are complete contradictions, but there's really no other way to explain it. I lean more toward the advantage side of things but sometimes I wonder if the different projects could be merged as much as they are split.

It seems that it's perfectly logical for developers to split from a project and create a fork, but rarely do two projects merge to form a super project. Perhaps open source in general needs more merging to balance out the massive amounts of forks....just a thought.

LXDE – The Light-weight Linux Desktop Environment is a post from: SupremeTechs

There are many good reasons like the ones he offers. Some people want to game, but game companies just don't make games for Linux because it isn't popular enough. Others need certain programs that are only available for Windows. Whatever the reasons, it's not going to be the "year of the Linux Desktop" any time soon.

One part that really stood out to me about the post was the reiteration that Photoshop was a main reason for not using Windows. I would actually go so far as to say that the entire creative suite is a major reason more people don't switch to Linux completely.

Sure, one could possibly run it in a VM but that's not a good solution. If you need a VM of Windows, why not just run Windows, right? That's the correct reasoning if you ask me, and I'm a Linux advocate. The problem could be that more people are procrastinating truthfully. They simply don't want to switch completely or don't feel comfortable enough in Linux to use it full time. I don't think this is the prime reason, but for some it could be a factor.

Adobe is the problem, at least in my mind. Adobe is the last non-open company. Microsoft office uses an open document format finally. There is a lot of compatibility with Open Office. Most other programs have decent open source alternatives. Even Photoshop has a decent open source alternative in the Gimp, but some people don't think it is enough. Adobe has a lock on a lot of the media on the web right now with Flash, even though there are better alternatives to using Flash, most sites use it.

Adobe is holding back Linux. Rather, our dependency on Adobe products is holding back Linux tremendously. There would be a lot more people to adopt Linux if the Creative Suite was available in it. There would be a lot of people adopt Linux is Flash was no longer the defacto standard for media on the web.

Apple has the right idea by not including Flash support on the iPhone. This will help push us away from the closed-standard. I'm for this change.

What’s Killing Linux and Software Freedom? is a post from: SupremeTechs

This is when I started getting furious. The problem is, when you search Google for driver downloads, you will undoubtedly run into nothing but scams. This is the same for Bing and Yahoo. The entire first page of just about any driver download search will have nothing but scams. By scams I mean people trying to get you to download software that costs money, just so you can download and install FREE drivers for you hardware that you've already bought.

So, looking through these scams I realized that there are at least three different pieces of software everyone is trying to sell. The first one I ran into was Driver Detective. This seemed to be the most spammed software out there. Tons of fake sites with fake "Thanks" comments on them, but no true download for your driver, blanket the first page of search results. These sites don't actually have the driver, only a download link for the DriverDetective software. Whether or not the driver detective software works isn't even the questions. The tactics used to sell this software make it nearly impossible for even a very computer-literate person to find the driver they need.

It's days like this that make me appreciate some of the OEMs like Dell, which make it very easy for customers to find drivers. Undoubtedly the adsense to the right of this post will have links to driver software, but that is expected, those are ads. They clearly say so. They are required to disclose what they are selling.

If you run into this problem, here's probably the easiest way to find the correct driver for your system. Open up device manager. This is usually accomplished through the Windows Control Panel. Once there, find the problem device, with the exclamation point beside it, and right click on it. Choose "Properties". Go to the details and look for the VEN and DEV ids. These should each be four characters long. Pull up http://pcidatabase.com on your browser. Search for those ids. You should get the manufacturer and device from that. This will at least help narrow down what driver you need. Get the drivers from the manufacturers website. Don't even bother Googling it.

Driver Scanning Scammers is a post from: SupremeTechs

At first I thought it was pretty funning. You can read all about it here:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/blog/2010/06/officially-our-bestever-cease.html

After reading the entire thing, however, I now believe it was a viral marketing campaign. It's purely genius too. Make up a story like this, and then post it on tech news sites like Reddit, Slashdot, and Digg. This quickly made it to the front page of Reddit, and Thinkgeek probably received hundreds of thousands of unique visitors instantly.

Now, this could be totally legit, but even if that is the case, this is still an amazing marketing gimmick. This is how you get rich on the internet. You have to draw attention to your site, and then monetize that extra boost in traffic.

ThinkGeek using viral marketing is a post from: SupremeTechs

I've recently discovered a new television show from Great Britain called, The Wonders of the Solar System. In it, Professor Brian Cox seems to pick up where Carl Sagan left off. It's the closest thing I've seen to Cosmos so far. However, I would critique that some of the camera work is just too "modern", and by that, I mean that they zoom/pan around Brian Cox way too much. This is a trend in cinematography that I just can't stand. Other than that, the show is great. I feel that Cosmos was a bit more ordered and historical. It seems to have a clear path which Carl Sagan took the viewer down. This new series seems a bit more chaotic.

I think it could use more direction, but it's the best modern day version of Cosmos around.

The New Cosmos is a post from: SupremeTechs

Jobs makes his second hint in the interview of his distaste for bloggers. His first happened earlier when they were discussing Gizmodo's blogger who published pictures of the new iPhone. One could tell that he was a bit bitter about that situation, and he made comments that showed that in his opinion blogging is not journalism.

I totally agree with this point. Blogging isn't journalism by default. As the interviewers pointed out, however, many journalists have turned to blogging as their medium of choice.

During the discussion of the iPad, Jobs points out that he doesn't want to see us become a nation of bloggers. He states that he wants to help publications like the New York Times and the Washington Post sell their news.

Here is what I don't agree with. These publications are failing because they have not been providing good journalism. All I see from the media, including news papers, is biased rhetoric or celebrity junk. Bloggers are doing the same, but I've found that in the bee's hive that is the blogosphere, there is actually some good content. Some of that content is much better than the junk our fine journalists at CNN and such have been reporting.

If these publications want to make money, they should advertise. That's where most of their money comes from anyway. They don't make a ton from News Paper sales. They make enough there to pay for the materials and printing costs. Advertisements are where the money is at. They know that. They should just work on their advertising model.

Steve Jobs at the D8 Conference and His Comments on Journalism is a post from: SupremeTechs

I've recently started playing guitar more, after a few years of rarely touching it. For years, that's all I did. Now that I have a wife and a few kids, it's increasingly hard to find the time to play. I had also lost some interest in it. I'm getting back into because I'm learning a new technique that I've never been able to learn before called Travis Picking. Now that I'm concentrating heavily on learning this technique, I'm finding that it isn't too difficult and that it's like learning the guitar all over again.

Setting up the site has helped me realize that there are tons of awesome deals out there though. I guess that stems from the very hard time we are going through economically. There are many people selling their things just so they can pay their bills. If you have money, this is a buyers market all around. There are great deals on many things.

Used Acoustic Guitar is a post from: SupremeTechs

Flash has been used for everything from buttons and banners to games and complete user interfaces. It's a very powerful tool, but it is outdated and is maintained exclusively by Adobe. While the Flash player browser plugin is completely free, the tools to create Flash content are not. There in lies the trouble. Being closed source, Flash depends on Adobe development. There are many people who use 64-bit Linux as their primary OS. Adobe has canceled development on the 64-bit version of there Flash plugin. This means that simple things like Youtube videos won't work on 64bit Linux.

This is why proprietary formats are bad. Hopefully things will improve as more and more webmasters turn to HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript for their Dynamic content needs.

Adobe Cancels 64bit Linux Flash beta is a post from: SupremeTechs

It could be that Firefox utilize memory different, and it may be the new way Windows 7 display memory usage. I still see sluggishness. Thus, my move to Chrome. There area a few different things that could have caused the slowness, such as the added extensions in Firefox. After installing about seven extensions in Chrome, however, I see no performance hit. So, I still suspect that there is an issue with the browser itself. Even with all of these woes, it is still better than using IE. I hate that browser. I don't necessarily hate using it, but it is difficult to write web sites that work well in it along with all other browser. It's the odd ball which never works the way I want.

For web development, Javascript is necessary for client-side scripting. However, Javascript is difficult to debug. Luckily, we have the Firebug extension for Firefox. This is the uber-extension for web developers. I've used it quite a lot, so much so that it has become a necessity. I probably couldn't write Javascript without it. There are also other features to this extension, like being able to examine the DOM and such. Internet Explorer has a similar tool set but it's slow and hard to utilize. I would dare say that there are some IE users who installed Firefox just so they can use Firebug. One setback here is that IE's Javascript engine has certain nuances that do not readily show up in Firebug. So, while you can debug a majority of javascript errors with Firebug, it will miss certain IE javascript issues.

The next must-have extension for web development is the Firefox Web Developer extension. It gives you a host of options to example page elements and CSS rules within the page itself. This plugin along with Firebug have saved me TONS of time, while working on websites.

SEO is important to not only marketers but web site developers as well. Getting a site online is one thing. Getting it to show up in search results is another. A couple of excellent extensions for examining the search engine optimization of a site are the Firefox SearchStatus extension and the Chrome SEO extension for Chrome. The Chrome SEO extension is great for getting a brief synapsis of your site's backlinks, pagerank, and indexed pages at various search engines. Neither of these offer a lot of advice for SEO, but they do show some stats to get your started.

These are only a few of the extensions available for Firefox and Chrome. There are many others. They are a good reason to switch from IE. PLEASE DO!

Browser Extensions For Developers and Internet Marketers is a post from: SupremeTechs