GNOME and KDE

Recently I have upgraded my computer to Ubuntu 6.06 LTS whose default graphic interface is GNOME (GNU Network Object Model Environment), and also I have installed in my computer Kubuntu 6.06 LTS whose default graphic interface is KDE (KDE Desktop Environment).

Historically, of both Desktops, KDE was the first one. At that time, Unix, BSD, GNU/Linux and other operative systems depended on X Window System. KDE Project wanted to create a free desktop for Unix based operative systems, but it had one problem: QT. QT was a library which at that time was under a non-free license. The GNU Project, in its aspiration in creating a completely free operative system, wanted to create an alternative to KDE and to QT. That's why it created GNOME, based on GTK (GIMP Tool Kit) instead of QT. Also, to make KDE completely free, it tried to create Harmony as an alternative to the QT library. Finally, in 2000, Tolltrech released QT under the GNU GPL, and Harmony was history. Both KDE and GNOME were both free software in the Unix world, and each competing for quality, usability, user-friendlines, availability of programs, among others.

For a very long time, while I used RedHat Linux, Gentoo Linux, and now Ubuntu Linux, I always always always always preferred GNOME. In some ways I still do. It seemed to me to be very easygoing, simpler, professional, "not too heavy" in terms of the amount of hard drive it occupies or the RAM memory it required. Also it seemed to be better designed to my needs, it was very much complete, and it did not give me too much headaches if I had problems. KDE on the other hand seemed to me have been stuck for a very long while. Although without a doubt it was a lot prettier, I didn't think KDE gave me as much in quality as GNOME did.

Now, the scenario seems to be different. After a very long time I don't use KDE, I wanted to take a very good look at it, test it and compare it to GNOME now. My views about both GNOME and KDE changed drastically.

Let's begin with KDE. Right now, of both KDE and GNOME, KDE seems to be the most complex of both desktops, although it obviously still tries to make everything as user-friendly as possible. The only thing that really annoys me about KDE is aRts, which should be deprecated, abandoned, and substituted with ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture). Presently KDE Project plans to use API. At least KDE lets users change audio from aRts to whatever they want including ALSA. But with the exception of aRts, I'm astounded at the great job made by KDE programmers. Still that interface looks pretty, but it delivers more, and it is very profesional. Let me give you some examples of this:

Konqueror: Forget Nautilus, Epiphany, Galeon, Opera and Amaya. Only Mozilla-Firefox is superior to Konqueror, but let's not be too confident concerning such superiority. Firefox is only slightly superior. In fact, in some areas, even Konqueror is superior to Firefox. For example, I noticed for a very long time, Konqueror did not show some display errors that Firefox failed to display for a very long time. Konqueror also is faster with its download manager, and as far as I know, Konqueror passed the Acid2 test and Firefox failed it. And remember Konqueror is not only a web browser, but it is also a file manager and a document viewer. I love using Konqueror to view PDF files. It can also view all kinds of images, even SVGs with no problem whatsoever.

KGPG: This is another very nice feature. It has everything anyone would ever need to have a graphic interface to manage GnuPG. The GNOME alternative, Seahorse, is not as good. For instance, it does not manage pictures to confirm a key ID, while KGPG does. Also the fact that it is integrated to KDE makes it ideal to be used with KMail, in order to send or receive encrypted messages. It is not too different when we are using Evolution or Thunderbird with Enigmail.

amaroK: There is absolutely NOTHING in GNU/Linux that is remotely similar to amaroK. AmaroK, for me, is the most beautiful program ever created to enjoy music. Not even XMMS comes close to it.

K3B: I remember when I had RedHat 8.0 (if I recall correctly), downloaded K3B, and used it for the first time. It didn't go beyond the qualification of "piece of crap": it crashed constantly, sometimes even shortly after activating it. Now, I think, it is the best CD and DVD burner I have seen.

Quanta+: It has always been a wonderful tool to create web-pages, and it keeps getting better and better all the time. I hope it adds eventually a WYSIWYG interface. If it does, it will rival Nvu, which, by the way, has stalled its development for quite a long time (it has been almost one year it does not release a stable version beyond 1.0). The Nvu people are far busier making the Nvu site being prettier, than actually giving users something better than what we have already.

KOffice: Although I prefer OpenOffice.org and consider it the best free office suite, KOffice would be the second best. And one of its qualities is that it adds some nice programs like KPlato, Kivio, Krita, Karbon14, KChart, and KFormula. Of these, Krita was a very interesting addition. People have been waiting for this KDE substitution for Adobe Photoshop for a very long time. Also, it's integration of Open Document Format makes it compatible with the rest of the office suites (with the possible exception of MS Office). Even though, KOffice has a long way to go, we can notice the obvious improvements.

Kopete: Although it does not offer the variety of emoticons of Gaim and aMSN, it has very nice features, one of the most important ones includes Yahoo! Messenger webcam. People of Gaim, what the heck are you waiting for???!!!

Other Nice Features: One of KDE's nice features that makes life a LOT easier, is the fact that using Konqueror as a file manager we are able to turn a directory into a compressed file with just a right-click. Instead of memorizing aaaallll those commands to compress files, it is very simple to compress to ZIP, TAR.GZIP, or TAR.BZIP2.

Now, let's take a look at GNOME. This great desktop before v. 2.10 was advancing big time. But something happened along the way when v. 2.12 was released, that made GNOME a bit of a pain in the neck. First of all, they had this odd idea that nautilus would act better if for each directory we click to, another separate window has to open. So, if I wanted to go to a third level subfolder, I had to open three separate windows. NONSENSE! What I did was to place a launch button in the top bar to launch a nautilus browser and not go through separate windows, but to browse the directories and files in the same window.

In version v.2.12 and 2.14 there is another nightmare. Before it was easy to use the address bar in Nautilus, when it was still a browser. In fact, it really made me save a lot of time by just filling in the address where a directory was, sometimes in the very same way we do using GNU Bash (you write the first two or three letters of the directory, press TAB, and the program will fill the rest for you instantly). Now, in v.2.14, where now they have a browser gain, they removed the address bar. This is nuts!!! Apparently in the spirit of making GNOME user-friendly, what they did was to make an address bar where people click on the directory they want to go to. I don't want that! It makes me waste a lot of time. So I can no longer write the address of the directory, I have to waste my time clicking and searching for the directory, clicking and searching, and so forth. Thank goodness that with Konqueror, I don't have that problem. I save a lot more time using Konqueror than using Nautilus.

To end my rant against Nautilus, I really hate loading SVG images with Nautilus. I don't know why it happens that my computer really slows down when Nautilus loads SVG images. With Konqueror, I have no problem at all.

I still ask myself why the GNOME people don't do something similar to what KDE programmers have done. Konqueror is browser, is file manager and document viewer. GNOME on the other hand still needs separate programs to do those tasks.

Another thing I really dislike is that GNOME has not created a program to serve as frontend for compression commands. KDE has this very important feature, why GNOME hasn't?

And ... please... someone make Rhythmbox easier to understand and to use. I have given up the idea that it works for anything at all. AmaroK does a great job, not only in organizing and playing music, but also cover display and even the way it organizes music in an iPod.

Totem is good, but only if it works with Xine. GStreamer is still not reliable to watch video, or to watch movies.

GNOME-Office is also very poor these days. Before it consisted of Abiword, Gnumeric, Agnubis, GIMP, Sodipodi, GNOME-DB, among others. Now it solely consists in Abiword, Gnumeric and GNOME-DB. The GIMP, Inkscape, GNUCash, and other important programs do not form part of GNOME-Office.

Last but not least, before GNOME 2.14, I really enjoyed placing the command space in the top-bar. Why? Because I could just write the command and activate any program I wanted without having to waste time browsing for the program in the menu bar. V. 2.14 really sucks in this aspect, because each time I try to type something, it has to load all the options such as a search for Amazon.com, Wikipedia, Creative Commons, etc. I don't want to waste too much time in that thing loading all possible options!!! At least in KDE, each time I click "Run Command" I get things faster, because it doesn't waste time loading a whole bunch of options I don't want to consider anyway.

There have been few improvements of GNOME I can point to. For example, the disk mounter works very well now, better than ever. But that's about concerning its use.

It is really painful for me to write these things about GNOME, because I identify myself with the principles of the GNU Project, and the motives behind GNOME development. However, it is important to recognize merit where merit is do, and point out those things which makes a desktop a better choice. KDE is now the best desktop available for GNU/Linux, BSDs, and all other unixes out there.

About the Authorship of Some of the Books of the Bible

There was a previous post I wrote concerning accepting new gospels in the New Testament, and some friends of mine were concerned about my statements that we know that the Apostles Matthew and John did not write the Gospels attributed to them. So, some friends asked me what makes me so sure about that, and if I accepted or not the Bible as God's Word. In the case of the latter, if by the question they are assuming that God's Word is to adopt a literalist point of view, they are wrong. There is not one view of the Bible as God's Word, but many, and some of them are not literalist points of view. I adopt a non-literalist approach which does not require me to believe that God indeed said and did each and every one of the words that appear in the Bible in the literal sense. If this is the case, whether Matthew and John were or not the authors of these Gospels is irrelevant, the only important thing is the message in the Gospels.

About the issue of authorship, I'm not saying anything new. This has long been discussed among Bible scholars (and by this I mean serious Bible scholars). Of course, our present theory of how the Gospels were written is a theory, but it is a sound theory which tries to explain why the Gospels are written the way they are. The theory says that Mark apparently was the first to write his Gospel, which would account for its simplicity. Of the three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), Mark is the shortest and is the simplest. It does not have all other doctrinal baggage we find in the other two. It was probably written about AD 70, and some scholars push that further back, but for now, we will accept the conventional date.

Matthew and Luke do share the majority of what Mark says (although not everything), and they also share a text called the Q document (which stands for Quelle which means "source"). It is apparently a separate text which apparently consists of Jesus' own sayings. Why do we think it existed? Because, sometimes with some more variations Matthew and Luke tell the story almost line by line, word by word. Someone may argue: they were explaining the same events, and that can explain why they were explaining them with the same words. However, this is not the case the vast majority of the time. Take The New York Times, the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and any other newspaper you like. Now, take the stories posted by the different newspaper which report exactly the same events. You will notice immediately that, although they report the same event, the way these ideas are expressed are totally different. The only instance where they will perhaps coincide is in quoting statements, but no much else. This is not what happens in the Gospels. The majority of the time you'll find that they word the events almost in the same way, in the same order and the same manner. Apparently they used the Gospel of Mark as a base, and used Q as base.

Here we have one problem concerning the authorship of Matthew. There is no doubt that Matthew (Levi) was an Apostle (Matt. 9,9; Mark 2,13-14; Luke 5,27-28). Why would Matthew need Mark's Gospel or Q as primary sources of his Gospel? Why not the fact that he was an eyewitness of the events be enough?

There are still more serious problems. Let's say as many have conjectured, that he wrote the gospel originally in Hebrew, and afterwards it was written in Greek. But the use of Mark's Gospel (originally written in Koiné Greek) makes us doubt that. Furthermore, there are passages in Matthew's Gospel that makes us doubt that a Hebrew speaking author wrote it. Let me show this example from Mark and Luke:

When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, close by the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples and said to them, 'Go to the village facing you, and as you enter it you will at once find a tethered colt that no one has yet ridden. Untie it and brig it here. If anyone says to you, "What are you doing?" say, "The Master needs it and will send it back here at once."' They went off and found a colt tethered near a door in the open street. As they untied it, some men standing there said, 'What are you doing, untying that colt?' They gave the answer Jesus had told them and the men let them go. Then they took the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on its back, and he mounted it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others greenery which they had cut in the fields. And those who went in front and those who followed were all shouting, 'Hosanna! Blessed is he who is coming in the name of the Lord!" Blessed is the coming kingdom of David our father! Hosanna in the highest heavens!' He entered Jerusalem and went into the Temple; and when he had surveyed it all, as it was late by now, he went to Bethany with the Twelve (Mark 11, 1-11).

When he had said this he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. Now it happened that when he was near Bethpage and Bethany, close by the Mount of Olives as it is called, he sent two of the disciples, saying, 'Go to the village opposite, and as you enter it you will find a tethered colt that no one has ever yet ridden. Untie it and bring it here and bring it here. If anyone asks you, "Why are you untrying it? you are to say this, "The Master needs it."' The messengers went off and found everything just as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners said, 'Why are you untying it?' and they answered, 'The Master needs it.'

So, they took the colt to Jesus and, throwing their cloaks on its back, they lifted Jesus on to it. As he moved off, they spread their cloaks in the road, and now, as he was approaching the downward slope of the Mount of Olives, the whole group of disciples joyfully began to praise God at the top of their voices for all the miracles they had seen.

They cried out:

Blessed is he who is coming as King in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest heavens! (Luke 19, 28-38).

For now, we see minute differences between them, the only differences being differences of the expression of the people, and things like that. Now, let's look at Matthew's Gospel, it has a glaring difference:

When they were near Jerusalem and had come to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, 'Go to the village facing you and you will at once find a tethered donkey and a colt with her. If anyone says anything to you, you are to say, "The Master needs them and will send them back at once." 'This was to fulfil what was spoken by the prophet:

Say to the daughter of Zion:
Look, your king is approaching,
humble and riding on a donkey
and on a colt,
the foal of a breast of burden.

So the disciples went and did as Jesus had told them. They brought the donkey and the colt, then they laid their cloaks on their backs and he took his seat on them. (Matthew 21,1-7).

Wait a second! The other two Gospels told us that Jesus took his seat just on a colt. Now it happens that he took a seat on them (on the donkey and the colt). And no, it is not a mistranslation, here is the same last sentence in the original Koiné Greek:

ἤγαγον τὴν ὄνον καὶ πῶλον, καὶ ἐπέθηκαν ἐπʼ αὐτῶν τὰ ἱμάτια, καὶ ἐπεκάθισεν ἐπάνω αὐτῶν (Matt. 21, 7).

[If you are unable to see the font I used (Gentium), you can download it here for free, it is under a free software license.]

Now, we know, unless Jesus was physically a freak of nature, that it is impossible for Jesus to sit on both the donkey and the colt. Now if you look at the wording, we know that Matthew copied this passage from Mark's Gospel, but he felt the need to change the event so that instead of "just" a colt, we find a colt and a donkey. Why?

Well, if we look at the intent of the author, his gospel was definitely directed to Jewish people because it constantly tries to convince the reader that Jesus was the Messiah, that Jesus did fulfil all the prophecies. In fact, we see that in Matthew's Gospel there is more prophecy quoting than in any other Gospel! And here, in this passage we take from Matthew's Gospel, we find a prophecy:

Say to the daughter of Zion:
Look, your king is approaching,
humble and riding on a donkey
and on a colt,
the foal of a breast of burden.

It is an interesting quote for one reason: that's not what the original prophecy said. Here is the actual quote of the prophecy translated directly from Hebrew:

Rejoice heart and soul, daughter of Zion!
Shout for joy, daughter of Jerusalem!
Look, your king is approaching,
he is vindicated and victorious,
humble and riding on a donkey,
a colt, the foal of a donkey (Zach. 9,9).

Now we have two problems:

1. If the author of Matthew's Gospel is indeed Matthew, then we cannot explain how he changed the story from what he supposedly witnessed?

2. If the author of Matthew's Gospel was Matthew, and supposedly knew Hebrew, how could misquote and misunderstand the original prophecy?

Here is what happened. Matthew apparently had a mistranslated passage of Hebrew to Greek which actually said that the king shall enter riding a donkey and a colt. The author of the Gospel of Matthew did not know Hebrew, and relied on a faulty translation of the Old Testament. He wanted to convince the Jews very badly that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, that he actually changed the events so that it fitted his own Greek version of the Old Testament.

That's how we know, for instance, that the Gospel of Matthew was not written by Matthew. There are other indications of the same thing, but this example is enough.

In the case of John's Gospel we have the problem that it shares very little with the Synoptic Gospels, and even the chronology as it happens in this Gospel is altered. For example, the Synoptic Gospels place Jesus attack on the Temple at the end of his ministry before the crucifixion, while John places it at the very beginning. We also see bunches of traditions that do not appear in the Synoptics, so we assume that they are Johanine traditions, certain traditions that indicate how the Johanine communities began in Israel.

Now, there is a problem throughout the entire Gospel. For example, when John the Baptist or Jesus speak, they sound like Greek philosophers. This is no accident. In many ways, the author is placing words in John's and Jesus' mouths. How do I know this? When you have John and Jesus talking to the crowd the same way the author (not Jesus) talks in the Gospel, then we have a problem concerning the quoting. The author of John's Gospel is well versed in Ancient Greek philosophy, specifically Middle-Platonism. The author must have known the philosophy of Philo of Alexandria, one of the greatest Platonists of that period and who had strong influence in North Africa, Asia Minor and Europe. Based on Plato's Timaeus, Philo of Alexandria, who was Jewish, tried to reconcile Plato's philosophy with the Pentateuch and the Old Testament in general. Here is when he creates the notion of Logos (λόγος) an entity which encompasses all the ideas created by God, from which all physical beings participate. He often referred to the Logos with these words: the first-born of all creation, the light of the world, the life of humanity, the image of God, the being through which all the world is created, Son of God, among others. Sound familiar? In fact, the author of John's Gospel uses explicitly the word Logos at the very beginning, which is often translated as Word.

In the beginning was the Logos:
the Logos was with God
and the Logos was God.
He was with God in the beginning.
Through him all things came to being,
not one thing came into being
except through him.
What has come into being in him was life,
life was the light of men;
and light shines in darkness,
and darkness could not overpower it (John 1,1-5).

It is important to notice that John's Gospel has some differences with Philo of Alexandria. For example, for Philo the Logos was not God, nor was he incarnate. For many scholars, his Christology is too elevated within a hellenistic way of thinking to be produced by a fisherman from Palestine.

Of course, the Gospel says that it came from Christ's "beloved disciple". But if we look at the Gospel, we really don't know who he is. There have been several traditions that attribute this to John the Apostle, but this really is not clear. In any case, it can be attributed to a certain John, which can be "the Elder", the one who apparently wrote the three letters we know as 1, 2 and 3 of John. Using the text as reference, we even are able to identify several "layers" of texts, beginning from few basic traditions, up to an elaboration and re-elaboration of these texts in light of conflicts within the Johanine community, until its final form in AD 100-110.

So, it is highly doubtful that Matthew and John wrote the Gospels attributed to them, and understand better my position on this matter.

Literary Genius

One of the things people have said is that The Da Vinci Code is a literary genius because of his impact in society. To be honest, from a literary point of view I liked somewhat that book, despite all its historical mistakes (which are all of them .... lol). I think it is "good", but it is not "genius".

Of course, I'm no literary authority, and I don't read fiction as often as I should. And, of course, in this post I won't pretend that my views are correct Many times I'm just submerged into philosophical, theological, political, historical and science books. However, I have read enough books to know what genius is and what isn't in the literary world. Specially, I've read the classics. Classics are not exactly in pop-culture. I've read some pop-culture fictions like It (which I like very much, but usually King ruins it in the end :P ) or The Green Mile, or Jurassic Park and Rising Sun by Michael Crichton, which are very good. One of the novellas which I like big time is "The Shawshank Redemption" by Stephen King, and loved its interpretation in the famous movie with the same name.

But classics are classics. Most people think classics as being something passé, something that should stay in ancient history, it's old, decrepit, in other words ... "who reads that anymore?" People miss the point that classics are classics because they last forever. Practically all of them deal with universal subjects, mostly ethical, human, religious, and existential themes which appear over and over again throughout the world and thoughout the centuries. And the literary genius in the truest sense of the word is in how are these subjects presented in these classics.

Take for example one of Sophocles' tragedies: Oedipus Rex. Suppose that you have never heard of it, read it, or watched it in your life. You watch it in the theater or read it for the first time. The thing is that you might have clues here and there about what is going to happen, but you have no idea what exactly is going to happen nor how will it happen. And of course, you enjoy the tragedy, and sympathize with Oedipus' own outcome and how destiny fits in with all of this. Now read it or watch it a second time. The experience you will have will be very different. Yes, you will sympathize with Oedipus, but this time, you notice more things you didn't notice before, because you did not know the outcome. Now, you notice, during the dialogue that Sophocles purposely uses ambiguous language to refer to Laius' killer, whom we now know is Oedipus himself. We notice that Oedipus talks about one killer, while the others talk about a multitude of murderers. This is filled with irony because Oedipus really does not know that he is the killer. Take, for example, this dialogue between Oedipus and Teiresias when Oedipus suspects him as the murderer and demands an information he's witholding:


TEIRESIAS

I say thou art the murderer of the man
Whose murderer thou pursuest.


OEDIPUS

Thou shalt rue it
Twice to repeat so gross a calumny.


TEIRESIAS

Must I say more to aggravate thy rage?


OEDIPUS

Say all thou wilt; it will be but waste of breath.


TEIRESIAS

I say thou livest with thy nearest kin
In infamy, unwitting in thy shame.


OEDIPUS

Think'st thou for aye unscathed to wag thy tongue?


TEIRESIAS

Yea, if the might of truth can aught prevail.


OEDIPUS

With other men, but not with thee, for thou
In ear, wit, eye, in everything art blind.


TEIRESIAS

Poor fool to utter gibes at me which all
Here present will cast back on thee ere long.

Notice the genius in this dialogue. Oedipus accuses Teiresias of being blind, and at the very end, Oedipus ends up blind, he takes out his own eyes! In other passages, Oedipus promises to punish the Laius' murderer with death or with exile, and later Teiresias will say to Oedipus that his only danger is himself. And you can read this on and on and see how rich is this play in irony, metaphors, and how things are intertwined with each other. This is literary genius! This is a classic! This is not like your usual book which you read for the first time and excites you, and then you read a second time and you're bored because you already know what is going to happen anyway. This is a play where you discover more and more things the more you watch it as a play or as you read it.

Another example of literary genius, for me is the Divine Comedy. First of all, take into consideration that all the three parts of that book are written in verse. Unfortunately most translations take away the beautiful poetic style by practically turning it into prose. Secondly, when you read the entire book you are aware that you'll find there all the knowledge, wisdom, beliefs, customs, and historical circumstances of the Middle Ages. This means that practically this poetic work presents the reader with almost all what the Europeans knew at that time. Now try to imagine how would it be to write in verse a book that would practically include all 21st century knowledge about philosophy, science, history, politics, fiction, non-fiction, religious beliefs, way of life, geographical knowledge, and so on. Only when you think about it, you never cease to admire such a literary gem.

Obviously, the most fascinating part of the Divine Comedy is hell. Who doesn't like hell? And people take it to be merely a religious thing, to be talking about circles of hell, the devil, punishments, etc. But when you really read hell and purgatory, you realize something very interesting. Of course, the way hell is structured it refers to the seven capital sins. Capital sins, for those who don't know, do not necessarily mean "mortal sins", but sins which we fall into quite often. And it describes in a gross manner the huge tortures these souls have to endure. There is an existential aspect to this: morally speaking we know that what we do is sinful, and we enjoy sinning in such manners; however, even when they please us, that sin is a burden on the soul. How many times we enjoy overeating (which is my case), but we know it is not right, and we suffer emotionally because of what we do? The same with envy, the same with greed, and all the other sins. And we could continue analyzing hell, purgatory and heaven in such a way, condemning vices and praising virtues. A path that leads from pure hell and suffering to heaven, a place of total peace (which makes it for many people the most boring part of the Divine Comedy).

Another of my favorite classics is Don Quijote de la Mancha, a masterpiece of the Spanish language. What is Don Quijote about? Miguel de Cervantes criticizes a lot of chivalry novels and writings. And how does he do that? He presents this person, Don Quijano, who became crazy from reading all kinds of chivalry novels and wants to be a knight himself. All he does is to imitate exactly what he has read. Of course, there are no castles, there are no ladies, there are no kingdoms (the fairy tale kind), there are no giants, no gnomes, no anything! So what does he do? He makes them up: the windmills are giants, the owner of a brothal is the king of a castle, and other crazy stuff. For those reading it at the time, they would be laughing like crazy seeing how the chivalry novels were being satirized in Don Quijote. It would be no different than watching the movie Spaceballs, or Airplane II, or Duck Dodgers in the 24th and 1/2 Century, making fun of movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Buck Rogers, Star Wars and Star Trek.

But we have to add something to this genius. First of all, we must notice something very interesting: During all his crazy stuff, Don Quijote gradually becomes less crazy and more sound, until he finally is disappointed and dies; and Sancho Panza increasingly becomes involved in Don Quijote's way of thinking. Many have referred to this as the sanchization of Don Quijote, and the quixotization of Sancho. A second point we must notice is how much Cervantes exploit the lunacy of Don Quijote, even to the point of the absurd, but an absurdity that really makes you wonder! For example, when Don Quijote treats prostitutes like royal maidens: aren't prostitutes women which despite their profession, deserve better respect? When we see Don Quijote trying to help a young man being beaten by his master, is Don Quijote really doing justice by just threatening the master? Obviously no. But how many times do we try to solve problems at such a superficial level? And the incredible thing we find in many of the chapters is that within his lunacy, he can come up with genuine words of wisdom which would not arise if he was sane. Third, we must notice that Don Quijote is not the only story being told within the novel, but there are also within it short stories. So they become little novels inside the big one. And the incredible thing is that in these short stories, Cervantes uses a lot of literary devices which makes it very allegorical. In one of the short stories (I don't remember which one), the way he presented those characters seemed to recall the way Joseph and Mary in Matthew's Gospel were looking for a place to stay.

Finally, one thing we notice is a comment made by Miguel de Unamuno, a great novelist and philosopher. Unamuno said that the first time he read Don Quijote he laughed big time, the second time he read it, he smiled, and the third time he read it, he was crying. When we first read Don Quijote we think of it as a comedy about a crazy guy who wants to go out and look for silly adventures. But again, it is not the same attitude when you already know the outcome. Of course, when you read the end, your heart tears itself apart, because Don Quijano really died sad, even when Sancho was trying to revive his old delusions to make him happy. If you read Don Quijote for a second time, you are not reading a comedy anymore, but a tragedy. You see now that Don Quijote is paving his way to a tragic end. You don't laugh anymore when he attacks the windmills, you don't laugh anymore when he believes he is attacking bags of wine, or even when he continually invokes Dulcinea (his eternal love).

In the case of thrillers I love the Sherlock Holmes stories, but I also love Gabriel García Márquez's Crónica de una muerte anunciada (Chronicle of a Death Foretold) based on real events. What makes this novel so very interesting is that from the beginning you know several things: you know who was killed, you know who the killers are, and how they killed him. So we say: there is no mystery in this novel, so why bother to read it? Very simple: it was a murder which everyone knew was going to happen, except the victim! And the novel has no chronological direction, so it goes back and forth continually. The novel is about how people came to know about the crime, and why did nobody tell the victim that he was going to be murdered. In this process, you get to meet the characters, they genuinely have much literary content, we know how they thought, why they did not tell him, what did they do. Furthermore, we know how the characters relate to each other, we know their custom, where they lived, their uses and customs, etc. This is a work of a genius!

Now .... let's take the Da Vinci Code. There is no room for the reader to really discover things the right way. In fact, sometimes the reasoning shown in the novel are so counter-intuitive that it really frustrates the reader's imagination. For example, in the murder we see a pentagram drawn on the victim's chest, and some things written in blood which suggest Satanism, and yet Langdon interprets it to be a symbol of the feminine despite the fact that evidence shows all the contrary. Of course, Langdon makes a very big mistake interpreting it that way (of course, he does not make a mistake in the novel when he says this because of plot purposes), because symbols should be interpreted according to one's time, not their ancient meaning. Originally the chi-rho symbol used by Christians today, originally was a pagan symbol; but if you see that symbol all over churches in Western society, it would be a mistake to interpret it as the symbol of the sun-god. Today it clearly means Christ. In real detective novels, like those of Sherlock Holmes, the detective has another point of view from the police because the way the victim is does not coincide exactly with the explanation given by the police or other characters. Usually the explanation given by the detective is far more plausible and fits better with phenomena. In The Da Vinci Code, we find that the interpretation of the French police is indeed correct, and nothing really suggests the contrary, but Langdon then interprets it another way. Of course, if this was not so counter-intuitive, the author would not explain it to us in so many words.

Secondly, after having read at least 1/3 of the novel, you know more or less what is going to happen, so there is no real space for the reader to have anything genuinely unexpected. At least when you reach 1/2 of the novel you know that Sophie is related somehow to a secret society, and when you have read 2/3 of the novel, you already know she is the Holy Grail, the descendant of Jesus Christ and the Merovingian dynasty, etc. etc. etc. Maybe there is a spark of intelligence by choosing the name "Sophie" for one of the characters, because it means "wisdom", and it is a feminine concept. But other than that, nothing seems to thrill me. So, when you read the end, you say sarcastically: "Surprise surprise!" And when you read this again, and again, and again, you get bored, because you do not discover anything new, and it is all the same story. Is this a good novel? Well, from pop-culture standards it is. But this is hardly a work of genius.

The Danger of Appealing with Proprietary Software

Recently I've read two articles this week about the use of proprietary software in the world of open-source. As all of you know, I'm of the free software movement, not the open-source movement. I am of the belief that it is unethical to restrict people access to the source code of a program, and specially restrict its use for anything, or to modify it, or share it. Software in principle should be collectively owned. Anything that restricts this is simply evil.

However, in the open-source movement, there is what I believe a very naïve and even misleading belief that free software and proprietary software can co-exist harmoniously. Nothing further from the truth, but that's my personal opinion. It is their opinion also that open-source model works best, not for ethical reasons, but for pragmatic reasons: the bazaar model makes things easier as exposed in Eric S. Raymond's The Cathedral and the Bazaar.

The first article I read was the usual rant of Nicholas Petreley in his article "The Spirit of Open Source" published by Linux Journal. His rant was against us, describing us as "schizophrenic, religious and hypocritical" zealots, because we focus too much on not selling software, instead of "what works". He says that most of us that favor the free software movement get "more ink than the sane attitudes that are more prevalent in the development community itself". He defines the fear of Java as irrational, and still more irrational many of us who favor GCJ as a free implementation of Java. If we look at developers, they like Java based Eclipse as a development environment, and if we look at him we should see that he likes jEdit very much. In fact, he says if there comes a time where Sun Microsystems would ask for money, he would gladly pay it because jEdit is the "best editor in the planet". Then he goes on to talk about QT, and how for us KDevelop is "evil" because it uses the QT library. And it is "evil" supposedly because the company that promotes it, Trolltech, requires that you pay for it if you use it for commercial closed-source applications. GTK libraries are "good" because it lets people use it in another way. Finally, he says he can care less about what motivates people to use Qt, Python, and GCJ (which he considers useless). What he complains against is using an inferior software because it is "good" and not a superior one because it is "evil".

Of course, poor Nicholas does not understand the basics of free software philosophy. What is at stake here has nothing to do with money, it has everything to do with having the right to access the source code of a program, to modify it, to copy it, and to share it. That's our issue!!! Whether you gain money from it or not, that's not an issue for us. First of all, I wish to say that the announcement that Java will probably be released under the GNU GPL will make most of this rant academic. However, I wish to point out something very important. Java is owned by a corporation which tells us that they don't want to release this programming language as free software to avoid "forking". As a corporation, it is quite tempting to use Java to actually ask for money for its use, which would mean that most free programs like Eclipse or jEdit which are under a free software license would end up being restricted by Sun Microsystems. This is simply unacceptable. The idea behind free software (and open-source) is that everyone will be able to use it! Richard Stallman does recognize that "Java is very sexy", but what would be the consequence of actually adopting a proprietary language for programing if our goal is to make them freely available to the public so that the public can do with it whatever he wants? Maybe Mr. Nicholas will have the money to pay Sun to use jEdit, but the question is: Will everyone who wants to use Java to correct bugs, to modify jEdit, be able to pay for it? The answer will be "no" (there is always someone who, for one reason or another, cannot pay). Then the purpose of free software is defeated! Besides jEdit itself would end up paying to use Java, and none of the money Mr. Nicholas would pay in that case would go to jEdit. So much for the "I'll pay Sun, because jEdit is the best program in the universe" argument!

Secondly, because of Mr. Nicholas' lack of knowledge of free software philosophy, he accuses us of saying that QT is bad and GTK is good. Actually the free GPL'd QT is good, because it is free software, just as GTK is good because it is free software. So, none of us believes that KDevelop is evil. That's just all in the mind of Nicholas Petreley. Our rant against Qt began when Tolltech made QT available under a proprietary license. Now it uses two free software licenses: the QT Public License (QPL) and the GNU General Public License (GPL) for those who wish to develop it and use it in free software programs and desktops like KDE. We are not saying that we want QT to be free in case someone uses it for commercial purposes under a proprietary software license. That's non-sense. We are against all proprietary software licenses. I hope he gets the point. That's the reason why the GNU Project ended the development of Harmony, since QT was no longer proprietary, there was no need for a free alternative to QT. The same is going to happen to Java once it is released under a free software license (presumably the GPL).

Finally, GCJ is not as useless as people think. I have it installed in my machine, and it is useless for me with respect to the way Java images are portrayed (or most of the time not portrayed at all). However, thanks to the cooperation between OpenOffice.org and the GNU Project, GCJ works perfectly with OpenOffice.org. So, at least in this, it is very useful.

I do not dislike Mr. Nicholas Petreley, since I agree with many of his rants. I particularly agree fully with his article "The 64-Bit Question", which all GNU/Linux distros should pay attention to. However, if he wants to raise a real question about a real problem about the free software movement, he should first be acquainted with its philosophy before ranting against it.

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The other article which caught my eye was the one written in Tux Magazine (a very good magazine) in its more recent issue. The article is called "Linspire Embraces the Open Source Community with a Proprietary Solution Twist" written by Kevin Shockey (the editor in chief). This is a very important article, even though I do not agree with it at all. In it he expresses enthusiasm for a decision recently made by Linspire, a company which creates a GNU/Linux distro with the same name, to create Freespire, a version of Linspire which is devoid of all proprietary content. The idea behind this is that it will use Freespire for the development community, it will release its CNR (an upgrading program) under a free license, and give users the choice of whether they want their operative system to be made only of free software, or if they want some proprietary programs, modules, or codecs (Quicktime codecs, Java, Flash, Windows Media, Adobe Acrobat Reader, etc.) If the users have that choice, they will approach to a GNU/Linux operative system as an acceptable choice.

This is a double-edged sword. Obviously for practical reasons many of us do actually need proprietary programs in our every day life. For example, I need the nvidia modules and GLX so that it works appropriately with programs which requires OpenGL, I need some of the windows codecs in order to make possible my access to outside sources of information like TeleSur, or I need Adobe Acrobat Reader to actually look at what the readers will see if they read a PDF version of my writings, Flash plugin is indispensable for me to navigate in some sites I really need access to, etc. Of course, I use these proprietary programs the least I can. And I think I'm not the only one to do this. I struggle for OggVorbis to become a standard instead of MP3s, I struggle for OggTheora to be a standard instead of Quicktime, WMV, RM among others. Even I have the custom that when I download MP3s, I convert them automatically to OggVorbis and listen to it in OggVorbis format.

However, most users out there are not into the free software struggle against proprietary software. So, yes, adding these proprietary nice codes will make it more appealing to users. But how will users take it? Will they receive the message that these proprietary programs are something they should get rid of in the end, and struggle for new free software? No. They will receive the open-source philosophy that says: See? Proprietary software and open-source can get along perfectly.

Already we find Shockey in his article falling into that trap. He says:

I agree with Linspire that many Windows
users are looking for an easy “it just works”
alternative, and although media support is
an important obstacle to breach, it is not
the only or the largest hurdle. I wish Linspire
would also announce soon the availability
of Photoshop, AutoCAD, Quicken and
Quickbooks within its CNR warehouse. For
without these applications (and many more)
and greatly increased support for propri-
etary hardware drivers, we’ll still be missing
the lion’s share of the desktop market.
In at least providing a new alternative
to grow the volume of Linux users, I com-
mend Linspire on its new Freespire Project.
With it, we’ll hopefully be able to demon-
strate objectively to companies like Adobe,
Quicken and AutoDesk that there will be
sufficient volume within Linux. Then,
hopefully, these companies will decide to
release a Linux version and fan the fires of
widespread Linux desktop adoption.

The fact that it actually asks for proprietary software packages to be available through CNR, makes one wonder what will happen to the whole concept of free software or open-source. First, we are telling the users that it is ok to have these programs available for them, to have an Adobe Photoshop, or a Quicken, etc. So, why look for the GIMP, or Inkscape, or GNUCash, or KMymoney2, or KPDF, or OpenOffice.org, if I have Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Quicken, Acrobat Reader and MS Office in CNR?

Worse still. If they dare adding all those programs to CNR, then that would mean that users who use the proprietary programs will indeed ask the people of Linspire, or go to communities in Freespire, to support them with these programs, and this will force programmers to actually work less with free software and work more on proprietary software compatibility.

Further still, it will in the end neutralize the development of free/open-source software. Shockey believes this will not be the case, I would not be so optimistic. Most of the free programs we have today were precisely developed because we need free alternatives to proprietary software. Now, if I'm an every day user, who knows nothing about open-source or free software, and I have MS Office, why will I need to install OpenOffice.org? If I have Adobe Photoshop, why will I need to install the GIMP? If I have Publisher, why would I need Scribus? They will not feel the vacuum of a free alternative unless they are made aware of it. And even when they are made aware of it, they could say: "Well... this just works! And I'll continue using it."

So, this is a double-edged sword. On the one hand Linspire, and practically all commercial GNU/Linux distros, want more market. This is good. But commercial vendors are, again, corporations. They are out there for the money! So, if they place proprietary programs to be available to the public, and its market, in the end, will ask support for those proprietary software, it will neutralize the need for free software for that specific market. Be careful where this reasoning is leading to!