"The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the
longest suicide note in history."

This is a quote from Peter Gutmann's Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection.

The original document located here:

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt


I have mirrored the content here:

http://thatlinuxbox.com/static/vista_cost.txt

It was a cool day on our last trip to the zoo, so some of the animals that are normally sleeping were at least moving a little.

The Cheetah:




Don't mess with this guy:




These birds were making the strangest bellowing sounds:




Beautiful stripes:

CalDAV is the Open Standards approach to calendar sharing. It is a little bit late to the game, but adoption is accelerating. Support has been announced by vendors such as Apple and Oracle. The Open Source community has a number of projects underway to utilize this new standard.

General Articles on open calendar sharing:
http://software.newsforge.com/software/06/02/09/2140226.shtml?tid=74
http://ietf.webdav.org/caldav/home.html
http://www.educause.edu/LIVE057
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/blogs/consortium/archives/000445.htm
http://tinyurl.com/ya8b8z

Open Source Projects:
Cosmo (CalDAV server) - http://cosmo.osafoundation.org/
Chandler (PIM / CalDAV client) - http://chandler.osafoundation.org/
Mozilla calendar clients - http://wiki.mozilla.org/Calendar:Home_Page

I gave a presentation at the 2006 Florida Association of Museums Conference (FAM) in July. I gave the same talk at Denison University in October.

Summary:
Avoid vendor lock-in. Preserve your ability to access your own data into perpetuity. Adopt open standards.

The slides are posted on the web:

UPDATE 10.17.2012 - The original links fell victim to Internet Information Decay. I mirrored a copy of the presentation here:

Introduction to Open Standards and Open Source Software (PDF)


These original links to the presentation are (sadly) no longer active:

http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/omt/presenta...ndards.odp (Open Document)
http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/omt/presenta...ndards.ppt (Microsoft PowerPoint)
http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/omt/presenta...ndards.pdf (PDF)

According to the Go Open Source web site, Go_Open was the first television series dedicated to Open Source Software. The television series aired in South Africa as part of a campaign to promote open source. Here is a fast mirror to those videos:

http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/linux/go_open_source.htm

UPDATE 05.01.2013 - The original fast mirror I posted has been taken down. The go_open videos are apparently still available in the Internet Archive at:

http://archive.org/details/go_open_season_1

** update ** We terminated our relationship with this architect. Read the comments for additional information. **


Things are progressing nicely. Our architectural firm is m_gold design and consulting. We are moving forward into choosing materials, getting approval from a structural engineer, etc.

Below is the latest revision of the floor plan produced by Martin Gold's firm (mgold@mgold.org).

The light green area includes a new family room, a studio / bedroom, and a full bath.

The light blue area, which includes a screened deck, will likely be optional components that we will not build initially to reduce construction costs.


The addition in relation to the existing house:




Zoomed in a little bit: