Ubuntu is released every six months on a time-based schedule. The version number is based on the year and month of the release. Version 12.04 is the sixteenth release since the original launch of Ubuntu in 2004. Ubuntu’s audience grew at a rapid pace and quickly elevated it to the status of the most popular Linux distribution for the desktop. The distribution has since been expanded to support servers and mobile and embedded systems.
We’ve become accustomed to a new way of being “alone together.” Technology-enabled, we are able to be with one another, and also elsewhere, connected to wherever we want to be. We want to customize our lives. We want to move in and out of where we are because the thing we value most is control over where we focus our attention. We have gotten used to the idea of being in a tribe of one, loyal to our own party.
The movable-type printing system invented around 1040 AD helped to revolutionise the world by making books and other written material easily available. It is one of the most important inventions of mankind, increasing literacy and allowing money to be printed. But few people in the world still make the characters for such printing presses, even in China, where the system was invented.
We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, “O me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless… of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?” Answer: that you are here; that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”
