“When business, education, and governments are cost conscious, they move toward Linux. Even in times of economic strength, they want control od their operating systems. Ubuntu Linux saves money. The open source nature of Linux allows organisations to control and customise their operating systems.

If desired, commercial support is available from Canonical. Even with that support Linux saves money, and provides a higher degree of control when compared to Microsoft Windows.

Linux has proven itself in pressure-filled situations. The New York Stock Exchange migrated to Linux. Major corporations, from Home depot to Toyota, and governments such as Germany, the Republic of Korea and Mexico are making the switch to Linux. When faced with a Microsoft audit for licences, the Portland Oregon school system switched to Linux. Major movie studios such as Disney and Dreamworks use Linux to create the latest motion pictures. IBM has invested billions in Linux-and frequently features Linux in it’s advertising, even though Linux is freely down-loadable, Wall Street Technology reported that Linux server revenue in 2007 approached U.S $8 billion, and has gained substantial market share since”

Author : Michael Jang (Source : Ubuntu Certified Professional Study Guide)

This weekend I encountered first hand exactly the situation highlighted by TalkTalk in their recent demonstration aimed at the UK Governments naive plan to disconnect persistent on-line file sharers. The problem is that of unsecured home Wi-Fi, and there’s a lot of it about.

I was visiting friends for the evening and as I do (everywhere) popped the iPod Touch out to check for open networks and catch up with Twitter, bingo, there it was – “Belkin54g” (unsecured home Wi-Fi is invariably Belkin or Netgear). What wasn’t so impressive was discovering Belkin54g was the house router and less impressive again was further investigation showing at least half a dozen users brazenly latched on to my friends connection at that current time, how long they’d been enjoying free surfing was anybodys guess and who knows how many more may have had the pleasure. Needless to say  all freeloaders were instantly disconnected, the SSID changed and a suitable WPA2 password applied.

As TalkTalk correctly explain, by simply being unaware of a need to secure your wireless home broadband you open up access for others next door or across the street to latch onto your connection and illegally download to their hearts content, and who would get the blame if there was an investigation? You would, it’s your IP number that’s being used and for home connections you are fully responsible.

The owners of the particular router mentioned in this post are both intelligent professional people who would most certainly never be purposely negligent, as so what this highlights (for me) is a lack of base public awareness for what could become quite a serious situation. Admittedly it’s not really akin to sticking an electric socket on the outside of your house and inviting the rest of the street to plug-in as (unless you’re on a managed connection) no matter how many users are streaming data down your pipe you wouldn’t get charged any extra, but, as shown by recent cases in the US the potential fines incurred by downloading illegally are substantially more than the cost of a few extra watts of electricity.

However, and here’s why prosecuting the public is also is incredibly short sighted, don’t fancy risking it at home? Not a problem, just go to McDonalds and use their free Wi-Fi instead*.

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*Disclaimer – TooMuchGreen do not in anyway advocate downloading illegal material from McDonalds free Wi-Fi or any public connection, nor do we in fact advocate downloading illegal material at all, in any way, shape or form from anywhere, at anytime. The statement is merely presented to highlight the situation of anonymity with regard those who may abuse open wireless.

My good friend Phil (fellow geek, blogger & purveyor of the gadget world) wrote a contemplative post a while back about our relationship with music related physical media in comparison to storage of MP3′s, a subject I also reflect on. I’d replied with a retrospective aside on how we used to play one side of an album then physically turn it over to play the other, a differential listening experience from absently flicking across disjointed audio tracks plucked as we all do today from a monolithic vat of data.

Of course it’s a different world, a different lifetime, a different set of rules and yes, a different listening experience. I’m as guilty as the next man and although I honestly try to keep one foot in the past and commit to staying the duration for a full album with all tracks played in the right order (as the artist intended) I do stray, my conscious commitment has admittedly been well and truly flayed by an abundance of available data combined with imagined false modern day constrains of time for listening to any of it (all of which are completely self imposed these days).

The listening experience is one thing and although potentially disjointed it can be reeled back as was with a bit of self control, however although music is music and you obviously buy your *music* for it’s preferential sound there are other contributing factors which make it all the more special. Phil mentions the build up and anticipation of the release date combined with attainment of the physical product on the day, very true and a I vividly recall teenage excitement on collecting the latest pre-ordered 7″ from the UK-Subs, a Saturday morning purchase verging on the religious and doubly enhanced by the brown paper bag it came in, sealed and labeled with my name hand written on it in biro by an adolescent fantasy in the shape of one of the cool girls from behind the counter of Thirwells record shop in Northallerton High St, it couldn’t have got any better if I’d been handed the crown jewels, but there was more, and it’s the *more* which no amount of  innovative iTunes timed releases, podcasts, pod-concerts or free album downloads from Radiohead will ever replace – I’m talking about coloured vinyl, yes, the absolute unequaled, unrivaled and never to be repeated pinnacle of classic audio collectability.

My first ever self bought music was Cool for Cats by Squeeze on pink vinyl (I proudly still have a 12″ copy) and it went on from there to include full collections (all picture sleeves & relevant coloured discs) from the Clash, The Jam, UK Subs, Sex Pistols etc, in fact most of anything in the charts from about ’78 to 82′ (*My* era). Boy I’d kill to have that collection now but as was the case with my stash of 2000AD comics (issues 1 to 100) they were moved on to make space for, and fund, the next thing, and in this case after records came motorcycles (the 2000AD’s previously went to fund the records).

You see it’s all about the uniqueness of collectability, and that’s what’s missing in the digital age of audio. How could there ever be an MP3 released in coloured data format which you could frame later in life after re-discovering it in your loft, it’s completely impossible, those days seem to have gone and and taken with them the buzz of the collectable special, a collectable MP3? It’s just not going to happen. It’s just all data, lines of code, and with the advent of online storage not even states on our own personal magnetic media anymore, we pull down our steams of 0′s and 1′s from the cloud, listen to a few snatches of a few tracks of something in our iPhone earpiece, switch off and it’s gone again…….what was even there?

It’s true that new technology provides us with a lifetimes collection of music in our pocket, digitally enhanced to sound better with gadgets and applications to stream it to us when we want and where we want but I still lament the loss of vinyl. It’s self admitted mid life nostalgia for a bygone age of adolescent dreamy evenings spent as a 15 year old racking up a stack of 7″ singles on my mono box record player and having all the time in the world to play them over and over again, but equally I miss the loss of  concept for the physically present limited edition gate-fold sleeve you could hold in your hands whilst listening to the audio, mainly for itself but also because there can be nothing to replace it, it’s gone, a full genre of interest and history from my youth is extinct.

Digital music, enhanced it may be and yes, it may also be true it may sound better and with the advent of  iTunes LP can watch video also, however today the music plays from a dull and colourless format.