I live in a small town on the sparse side of Oregon... hardly any computer geeks, and no recycling of any kind, let alone finding a use for older computer gear. But thanks to some cool folks at Linuxchix.org, I learned of two excellent resources for recycling or adopting out old stuff.

In recent weeks I have banged on about Open Source, expending two articles on Firefox alone. Open Source applications make their code available to everyone. Disagreements and rabid balkanisation within the Open Source community aside, for our purposes the term might as well refer to free software whose licence allows you to share the source code, alter it, use it, do with it what you will.

A new version of Truecrypt is out with a bunch of new features including the ability to encrypt an entire system partition with pre-boot authentication, and finally a GUI for Linux users.

Well, KDE4 was announced and there was much joy. Betas were released and there was much bitching. KDE4.0.0 was released and there again was much joy (and still a little bitching). More importantly an actual honest to goodness Windows port is released.

Here follows [the] report. I could hardly wait.

This article might seem to be not serious, or even a little bit heretical. Well, so be it. I’ll write what I think I should write and what I see as true. Whether is it the same in your case — dear Reader — we’ll see. First of all, let me ask you a basic question: Which operating system do you use? What are the possible answers? Windows, Linux, Solaris or Mac OS X of course. But let us try to think different for a moment. Maybe it is possible, that this answer would be, for example KDE?

I have a podcast—The Beer Crate, since you asked—which is written and produced using free software, and released under the CC by-nc-nd license. It’s a fun little hobby that keeps me off the street, and gives me an excuse to drink and review beer. But had free software not existed, how much would it cost to produce and host a show using proprietary software? I set out to investigate…

One of my resolutions this year is to try to cut down on the carbon I spend on music. Notwithstanding my purchase of the In Rainbows discbox, I’ve amassed an awful number of discs of metallized plastic in barely-recyclable containers. (I say “barely” because K. got me a pencil for Christmas made out of old CD boxes, and a pen from dead car parts. But there’s only so many pencils the world can use.)