Welcome to Eric's Binary World

While in Linux, I use many different Window Managers and Desktop Environments. My favorites are Gnome, KDE, Fluxbox, FVWM-Crystasl, and Window Maker. I will be uploading some screenshots soon.

I host the blogs and web pages of my brothers, cousin, and friend on the same BSD box mentioned above. Check out Eric's Binary World Servers to get links to their pages.

In this connected world, it can be important to know that you are talking to the person you think you are. My GPG Key can be found in the link and you can use it to verify emails I have signed. Nothing in this world is infallible (eg someone may crack my GPG key and impersonate me) but if you get email signed with my key, you can be reasonably sure that it came from me and is not spam or malicious. (At least as sure as anyone can be about anything online) You can also use my public key to encrypt emails you send to me (if you don't want others to be able to intercept and read the email) or encrypt files you only want me to be able to decrypt.

I created a couple of simple programs online. GNaughtyNice takes a Google API key and a word and tells you if the word is naughty or not. Or you can go to my Monty Hall page where you can test the Monty Hall "Paradox" by running through it many times over. A description of the Monty Hall "Paradox" is available off that page.

I have a few other pages here on my Tripod site which I have here rather than on my server because I cannot guarantee my server uptime while tripod has been pretty good about uptime since 1996. These pages include Code I am pushlishing under GNU GPL, a page about The True Cornell Experience, and a bit of our Linux lore - The Gospel of Tux. I publish my code under the GNU GPL because I believe it is important to share my code, no matter how insignificant, with others so they can learn. They can, in turn, share with others. Unlike the MIT, BSD, etc license they can't take my code and then go and make it proprietary. Some people like my position and others believe it is too restrictive. Well, take it or leave it when it comes to my software.

When I became involved in libre software I began to meet and interact with people from all over the world. I learned that there are many people around the world who have sub-broadband connection to the Internet. There are also many others who do not use a GUI and run all their programs from the command line. They surf the internet from programs such as lynx or elinks2, which do not display images. So, for them, I changed my page from this to what you now see before you. Most of the key contents are text even though there are some images here. Most importantly, the links are not hidden in an image map.

I have a very firm stance against Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) and believe that if I go and spend money on music, movies, etc that I should have the rights to do with it as I wish. If I want to put that music on a CD, iPod, or server, I should be able to. While I believe that we traditionally had the ability to share music with others via technology such as dubbing records to tapes, it always has been illegal - it was just ignored in the past. Instead of getting into legal trouble by sharing your music, buy music that is legal to share! Magnatunes and Jamendo sell and/or share music that completely legal to share. Not only is it legal to share, but it's also legal to use in your mashups on youtube and other sites! (Such as vimeo) Here are my thoughts on DRM. Some key points are here: hypocrisy, DRM, it just makes sense, and civil disobedience. For a source of news on the subject, check out defective by design.

I have a presence on so-called "social networking" sites myspace, facebook, and virb. However, I despise those sites and my main purpose in having them is direct people back to my ericsbinaryworld sites. So don't go there looking for anything to be updated in any sort of a timely manner. I didn't hate facebook before, but then they sold out.

Finally, a long time ago in Internet time (perhaps until around 2000) this site used to focus on Final Fantasy 6 and 7. Then tripod unceremoniously deleted all of my pages. I can't seem to find my pages in the Wayback Machine at the internet archive. If anyone can help me find it for nostalgic purposes, I'd be eternally grateful.

X-Eric-Conspiracy: There is no conspiracy

You can click here to email me, if you wish.