Man Tries To Live an Open Source Life For a Year 332
jfruh writes "Sam Muirhead, a New Zealand filmmaker living Berlin, will, on the 1st of August, begin an experiment in living an open source life for a year. But this is going way beyond just trading in his Mac for a Linux machine and Final Cut Pro for Novacut. He's also going to live in a house based on an open source design, and he notes that trying to develop and use some form of open source toilet paper will be an "interesting and possibly painful process.""
While you're at it... (Score:5, Insightful)
...if you try, why not go a year without DRM [yearwithoutdrm.com]?
Er, wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
I really don't want to know is how one programs in toilet paper. Worse, visions of managers telling me I have to eat more taco bell because my... production... is too low. Oh, the puns, the humanity. -_-
More seriously, it would be more accurate to say that he is trying to live a lifestyle in which only products that are part of the public domain or the mechanisms by which it operates must be made available for inspection, and any changes documented and also similarly made available, without cost. Considering how I have even found 'patent pending' stamped on spoons and forks (really, I mean... really?)... I don't imagine he'll be able to survive the year. At least not without a lot of rationalizing and hair pulling.
But while the experiment will probably ultimately fail, it will at least show beyond any doubt how deeply corporations have penetrated into every faucet of daily living. It is simply not possible to live in modern society without giving the devil his due.
In other news (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Er, wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course it's virtually impossible to do this perfectly, it's like trying to live Biblically. Sure he's using a Linux computer, but that's only software. Are all the components open source? I doubt it. Similarly he's using a camcorder that tries to use as much open source as possible, but realistically it's not really kosher.
Why use toilet paper at all? Just wash yourself with soap and water. It's what a lot of folks in Asia do and it's just as hygienic (probably more so) than paper. The toilet would need to be open source too, which points to a composting toilet unless you fancy firing your own porcelain.
Where do we draw the line? A lot of things aren't exactly secret knowledge, but require a big company with money to manufacture. For instance, common steel nails have an ISO (or similar) standard size. If you wanted to you could make your own, the exact dimensions are publicly available, but it would take a hell of a long time. Power generation is another one, unless you build your own turbine, grid power is definitely closed source. Even then, batteries? Nuh-uh. But then, a lead acid battery isn't exactly complicated, so arguably one could draw up a schematic, it's just a matter of finding the chemicals.
I would be very interested in a repository of open source designs for home living, I'm not sure one exists. There are projects like Open Source Ecology that are trying to make a civilisation starter kit, but that's a bit low level. I want to be able to go to a database look for a design for, say, a four poster bed or a spoon.
Re:food? (Score:4, Insightful)
No most crops are still non-gmo, well lab gmo. We've been modifying livestock and breeding plant species far beyond anything natural for centuries and playing with genes before we knew what genes where.
GMO is generally scary because it is done in a lab with white coats. The white coats apparently add the danger.
OSS the saviour (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:food? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm far more scared of Monsanto than I am of white coats.
Re:no woman (Score:2, Insightful)
No woman for this guy. I guess they want the finer things in life!
You need to get out of the basement more. Women don't want the finer things in life. They want the finer people in life. Most women I know who married a rich guy feel they married beneath them. They went through relationship after relationship, meeting asshole after asshole, and finally they decided that if they couldn't have someone who was intelligent, kind, humorous, and compassionate, they'd settle for getting knocked up by some rich guy... at least their kids will be provided for, and there's some chance of being loved in return then.
So, your evidence that women want finer guys and not rich ones is that the women you know who married rich guys claim that although they were totally selling out and marrying for money it is OK because all men are assholes anyway? Of course they feel they married beneath them. They chose to marry someone for economic reasons rather than the quality of the person. Or maybe you meant to say "Women want the finer people... but when it comes down to it, they would rather settle for the finer things and rationalize that it is OK since all men are assholes anyway."
Re:food? (Score:5, Insightful)
Grafting does not influence the genome or the genome settings. You could even argue, that the grafted plant is not a single individuum, but in fact two plants, or even more, if you graft more than one scion on the same stock. My parents once had a pear tree with at least five different scions. So grafting would be akin to have two (or more) copies of the same program with individual settings coupled together. I even have a setup like that running at a customer site, where a minimal Lotus Domino installation at one server works as connector between a non-IBM-software on the same computer and the real Domino server. The minimal Domino is grafted onto the original Domino installation.
Re:While you're at it... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yep, still not nearly as bad as Apple is today though. Not even in the same league, a new league that Apple created.
Re:Also a few things to keep in mind (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a big problem here though. When they've hooked up with the "alpha male" assholes, they have kids with them. When they finally dump them in their 30s or so, and then want to be with the "nice guys", 1) many of the nice guys have already married other women, possibly not very attractive ones, because they "settled", 2) some of the nice guys have become angry and bitter after years of rejection, and aren't so nice any more, 3) many nice guys don't really want to take over as the father of some asshole's kids, and it's worse when there's shared custody and the asshole guy is constantly in the picture, and finally 4) now that the woman's in her 30s or 40s, she either can't or doesn't want to have any more kids.
So the nice guy is apparently expected to take over as father when the kids are entering their rebellious teenage years, devote all his time and money to raising some asshole's kids, and not have any of his own.
Maybe this is why some societies still have arranged marriages.