[Ren]

Ibane's

"

First Post

First, my nickname Ibane, I don’t know what it means, I have not done the cross-checking with all possible languages so I guess it has very singular meanings but I don’t really care. I just saw it and I liked it. The election was based on pure aesthetic, so there is no deep meaning or anything like that.

Lately I am getting deeper and deeper into the open source. My drivers are:

1.- Personal: I have very good relationships with people involved there and they have been the ones to drag me in this new world.

2.- Technical superiority to proprietary software, in most of the cases.

3.- The feeling of freedom that you can breathe there.

I think that Open Source, in general, is  a slap in the face to the current tendency to provide bad quality products to the consumer just because the driver is to get out something quick with the maximum profit without paying attention to quality.

I will go deeper as soon as I am getting better understanding."

[Ren]

"Using Debian…


It has been some years ago when I started my relationship with Debian distribution. I must say that the first moments were painful and not very pleasant. However, after the first traumatic date I decided to give a second chance, with a little help of my friends. The outcome is that now I am one of them, Debian user. I have installed it in several machines and I think that one of the fews ones that it is using this distro without being a top class hacker. I mean, that I don’t enjoy especially to compile the kernel to make my browser works.

Obviously the distro is not meant for the average user. It requires some knowledge and some patience, but once you have passed this stage you enjoy a bunch of good software.

I am trying to use the end user perspective here. I have been using Microsoft products, from DOS to Windows XP (I have not touched Vista yet, and my goal is to do it as late as possible) and the pain has been the dominant feeling. Using Debian, it is not a roses path but what I like most it is the feeling of freedom, that I can almost do whatever I want with barely any restriction, and it is up to me how deep I want to go…

That leads me to the question why open source OS don’t take off, being clearly technically superior and with smoother user experience with distros as Ubuntu. I think that there is no one-single factor answer, but some of them are the fake feeling of being in your own. Buying software from multinational X, it gives you the feeling that you have a place to complain and to unload your frustration, with open source that figure does not exist. Other factor that I can imagine it is the human and natural laziness and fear to freedom of human beings. We are scarce to have the power over the things we use. We tend to rely on others. It is easier to buy something and complain later about it, that to try to learn and to understand how it really works.

I know that there are rivers of ink written about this, but I am just rambling…"

[Ren]

"Shameful poverty

Last night I watched a documentary about the living conditions of the immigrants in the South of Spain. The documentary was not very dramatic and it was even trying to show the kind face of the problem. The documentary was about a group of immigrants from Mali, working most of them without any agreement or rights, living in the street without a proper shelter and things like shower were a dream for them. I have not gone very deep in my analysis of the shame I felt when I saw that in our civilized Europe we allow to live human beings in that conditions. But some questions came up straight to my mind: What for are we paying the taxes and how is this money spent? what are the roles of the more 700 members of the European Parliament?and about the national members? If I need to donate money to some non-profit organization in order to calm my European mind, therefore where is the tax money going. I don’t want to embrace the theory that less taxes, the better…I just want to demand that my money is spent efficiently and on the things that really matter to me, and I can not think about other problem with higher priority as long as there are human beings living in that conditions, but as I said I have not thought deeply and I am sure that some politician will have a very sensible explanation…and I have not studied in the London School of Economics, so therefore I will give some money to one of the 3 millions of non-profit organizations to be able to sleep.    "

[Ren]

"Leaving Facebook…

I did it, I quit facebook. I embraced this social network, Web 2.0 applicaiton or whatever you want to name it almost a year ago. At the beginning I was very enthusiastic about it, I liked very much the idea to get back some contacts that I had lost along my life and to know about them. Also I found interesting the possibility to share ideas, curiosities, knowledge,…with my friends…finding out what books, films, attended events…but lately I got tired and bored of all this ads, and this feeling that behind any interesting application there was something behind that they want to sell to you, and you need to become as active member of the marketing campaign of the application to enjoy it. I guess, I am asking too much, a real social network, where you really share and you don’t become a target for greedy marketing managers.

So by now, I am done with Facebook…not permanently because all we know hot easy is that…"

[Ren]

"Critical spirit

Nowadays the conformism is spread and it seems that the only option that is left is to swallow and to take things as they are. It is really ok to demand more from our governments, corporations, institutions, agencies,…we have the right to demand since we observe laws as citizens. We don’t have to accept dramas like Darfur, just to mention one, we can say loudly that we demand solutions from people who are responsible for this.

I will not take that attitude “There is not much to do, things are like this” "

[Ren]

"Beside the Mediterranean sea

I am beside the Mediterranean, in a very beautiful peaceful night, where the harmony is reigning without stridency. There is something about Mediterranean that keeps me so attached to him. And it is difficult to understand why, because I was born in a city without sea, none member of my family or ancestors have had any relation with the sea, apart from the salt they use for the meals, however, I feel so bounded to this sea. There is something in its blue that keeps me staring at it like small child who is seeing the sea for first time.

I really enjoy getting lost in my thoughts looking at the Mediterranean Sea."

[Ren]

For more Ibane's content: https://ibanejm.wordpress.com.