Showing headlines posted by tuxchick

While I was writing last Friday's editor's note, "Linux Should Copy Amiga", I kept thinking what a different story it would have been if Amiga had been released under a Free Software license. I'm sure I'm not the only one with that thought. Then I ran across osCommerce is Dead: Long Live the NEW osCommerce Project. While the circumstances are different, this is also a story of a software project in trouble. But it has a different ending, because osCommerce is licensed under the GPL.

Mark Shuttleworth made headlines not too long ago when he called for the Linux desktop to surpass Mac OS X in both beauty and functionality. While a lot of folks thought that was breathtaking and audacious, I think he's aiming too low. I think Linux should aspire to equal or better the AmigaOS.

Of all of the so-called "innovations" of high tech, I think YouTube deserves to be in the Top 10. Some folks, like the MAFIAA, see it only as a den of thieves, stealing the bread from their children's mouths. But to me it's a fantastic showcase for anyone with minimal tools-- a computer, a camera, a bit of editing software-- to create and share. Naturally the MAFIAA and their ilk can't stand the idea of not profiting from other people's work, but I think it's great stuff.

Last week I talked a bit about the bipolar world of printing on Linux: the best of times, the worst of times; the easiest and the hardest; the most reliable and the most annoying. I raised a number of questions such as why do print jobs disappear without a trace, then reappear days later? Printing multiple copies, if you had hit the print button in frustration multiple times. Is this printer really online and working? Does it have enough toner and paper? If there is a problem, why won't it tell me in a reasonable way? Why isn't there an obvious, easy button for "cancel the print job plz, kthx"?

I spend a fair bit of time being baffled by humanity. You'd think that for as many years as I've been creaking around on this planet I'd have become accustomed to the depths to which some people so readily sink. Indeed, even dive into enthusiastically. But a lot of things still have shaking my head in wonderment. The biggest one is the tech industry's enthusiastic glee for Peeping Tom-ery. It's like a perversion, an insatiable, pathological need to snoop and pry where, according to ordinary courtesy and respect, they have no business going.

Microsoft can't effectively attack the hundreds of community distributions. It can't even target the prime ones like Debian, Slackware, and Gentoo, which are parents to hundreds of other distributions. There is nothing to attack, except with silly trash-talk, empty patent threats, and a lot of deceptive "MS hearts OSS" posturing that fools no one. So Red Hat represents a concrete target. Never mind that killing off Red Hat will not kill off Linux; when a bully wants to mash someone the mashing is all that matters. We expect irrational, destructive behavior from Redmond.

But my affections are wearing thin; after all these years CUPS still does not provide a user- or admin-friendly interface or useful notifications, and setting up automatic driver downloads for Windows clients is still a black art. The printer interfaces in Gnome and KDE are useless duplications of effort that don't offer much that is really helpful, and the KDE printer manager has long been notoriously buggy, though it has improved a lot over time. We miss out on a lot of CUPS' useful functionality, such as printing over the Internet and connecting Windows clients without Samba, because the interface and documentation skip over the gnarly bits of how to actually set these up.

Any political discussion can turn dangerous in a heartbeat, and they usually do, with foaming and fireworks more usual than relaxed give-and-take. So a lot of folks avoid any kind of political discussion entirely just to keep the peace. And this makes sense-- why pick unnecessary fights? Among my little social circle is a sub-group I call the Contentious Old Codgers. These old coots enjoy arguing for the sake of argument, and getting people riled up. They're not interested in discussion or finding common ground because they live for the thrill of combat.

The answer is Yes, it does, though with some qualifications. The short answer: it's all in the implementation. The long answer starts with taking a look at Canonical's successes in opening new doors for Linux deployments.

You might the recall the ongoing uproar over the BBC's dissing of its non-Windows-using viewers, its defective math on how many Linux users were among their viewers, the nasty DRM-encumbered iPlayer, and their general bad attitude about being willing to buy into DRM-restricted streaming media, even though they are a publicly-funded broadcaster...But thanks to FOSS (as always) there is a silver ray in the gloom-- Ubuntu 8.10 includes the Totem BBC Plugin:

...the main impression I came away with was the breadth and depth of Canonical's vision for Linux. Mr. Shuttleworth seems to see Linux as a launch pad for all kinds of useful tools and activities. Not a prefab path to riches (all that free code!), nor the biggest free candy store on the planet (free as in freeloader, mine all mine!), nor even a way to lock in the suckers and then make them pay and pay and pay, but a platform for building cool productive tools for everyone.

This is one of those heroic days where I keep my nose to the grindstone even though my life is falling apart and I do not want to work-- my dog went missing this morning. Naturally she is not your ordinary run-of-the-mill mutt. Layla is the smartest, prettiest, best dog on the planet, and I say this with a complete lack of bias. See for yourself in this charming photo of Firecracker and Layla taken on our last hike. How can you not love dogs who swim across rivers whether you want them to or not? And then pose for photos on picnic tables?

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history - with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila. -Mitch Ratcliffe

We will never become a truly paper-less society until the Palm Pilot folks come out with WipeMe 1.0. --Andy Pierson

Ken is a well-spoken polite man, but that doesn't prevent him from asking the hard questions that nobody else wants to ask at these industry lovefests, which increasingly appear to be more about newer and more innovative ways to exploit Linux and FOSS. Ken stepped up to the mike at the panel discussion and asked a simple question that visibly discomfited the panel: "My customers can turn on their cable television and in 30 minutes watch five Microsoft Windows commercials. When are IBM and HP going to put the same things on? When are my customers going to be able to see about Linux? Television and radio legitimize the product."

The responses, in my occasionally-humble opinion, were worthy of Redmond itself.

Books, articles, and training courses mostly teach Photoshop as though it were photography itself. Me, I think giving so much as one devalued red cent to Adobe is equivalent to saying "Why yes, I am for corrupt corporate control of everything and vandalism of fundamental civil rights" because of what they did to Dmitry Sklyarov. To this day no one at Adobe has apologized or admitted error; they stubbornly cling to the "we must protect our precious IP" party line. Call me a moldy old hippie, but in my world due process, fairness, and civil rights trump Adobe's precious IP. Which wasn't so precious at all, but closer to laughable.

Some months ago I wrote What's on Your Bookshelf?. Readers chimed in with their own favorite reads: the Iliad, Odyssey, Art of War, the original un-sanitized Grimm's Fairy Tales, Kipling, Divine Comedy, and other cool books. I was pleased to see so much fiction mentioned, as a lot of my friends only read what they have to for work. Which seems like a great way to fossilize the brain and nurture a sour outlook on life.

In part 1 of our little series, True IT Tales of Horror: Dave's Not Here we were introduced to the Precious Progeny Public School District, and learned that the combined efforts of IT staff, a teacher, and multiple administrative assistants are almost adequate to the task of ordering a laptop battery. Today we return to PPPSD to try to liberate the school district from the tyrannical grip of its crazed wax custodians.

Because of Linux I hardly have to lift a finger anymore, and because of it my health is suffering. I rarely hop up and down in a fit of temper, I don't have to drive to the store to buy software, and I don't get the aerobic benefits of spending hours on the phone with tech support, breathing hard and accelerating my heartbeat. I rarely make site visits anymore. I don't even leave my chair...

The computer of the future is almost here. It's a small handheld device with some pretty good built-in muscle and storage, and that depends on the network for most of its functionality. But it won't really be practical until the keyboard goes away and we can talk to our computers.

I have another list, and this is a much more fun list. It is a large list that is always growing. We could also include the free BSDs- FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD, whose contributions to Linux and FOSS are well-deserving of more recognition. This is "What Linux Can Do That Those Big Ole Proprietary Innovators Can't".