Russia and a National OS. Just another bureaucratic mess?

In response to this post on Slashdot regarding the Russian ideal to mandate everything:

Possibly similar to what I see in the United States. Schools force kids to read great books against their will, rather than ending up with well educated kids, just a lot of kids that really hate to read and will likely not pick up another book once they are out of school.

What is going to matter is implementation. With the reading example, it is intended that kids end up reading really good books, but it comes down to the teacher that often has the biggest influence on what a student ends up with, and how they appreciate it.

Standardization and organization for efficient use of resources to develop a base infrastructure, I believe, is one of the few legitimate purposes of government. Allow for free market competition, but standardize public education and government offices to use an open standards and basic system tools so everyone can play nice. This will expand opportunity for the private sector / free enterprise to build upon these tools. Both the public and the private sector can have influence on the future development and auditing of the tools so that bugs get fixed and if necessary, forks are made.

The problem you identify already exists with Windows. The difference with Linux is that open standards make it much less of a hack job to implement interoperability. Building tools on Windows has you at the mercy of the closed tools you use. If an API is buggy or needs to be changed in some way, you are not allowed to. A free base system gives people options and proprietary software developers on their toes.

If Russia is going to fork Fedora and say "screw it" to the GPL and close source it because they feel like it and make one system everyone will be taught, and stop developing it once it is "good enough", then it will be a disaster. I get the impression that is not their plan; honor the GPL, get help from Red Hat as necessary to train their own developers, become an equal partner with respect to the community and provide upstream contributions, keep the source open and available to the public. This will provide new opportunity in many ways for all people, not just Russia.

I understand where you are coming from, which what encouraged me to respond, but the Russians have never been so insidious or oppressive of its people as Microsoft has been to its user base, unless you think gallop polls are the heart of democracy and liberty... then who knows. A national OS based on Linux is like collecting taxes to build roads, not telling people where they have to drive. Private sector can have their tour buss and taxi cabs, but let that be far different than gated highways mandating police escort.

My feeling with regard to user apathy is to look at the above situation and think "who cares if I get where I need to go?", not to mention all the other great advantages of not having to do any work or remember how to get places.

It isn't the standardization that is the problem, so much as the centralized control of such standardization that creates problems. I am certain the Russian government is going to do a better job of oversight with regard to enabling the Russian people to get the most out of their computing experience than Microsoft.

I look forward to when the United States will consider catching up with the times, but I don't expect much from a country that still regards Ricardian Economics as God's Will... but that's another issue. :)

As far as any perceived irony of Russia and China embracing Linux:

Even worse case scenario, Russia and China want total control over their country, and where they may not be able to have control, the most important thing is to ensure that others DON'T have it. Software freedom will ensure that Microsoft isn't a dictator, and in "oppressive" countries like Russia or China, I am sure their leaders are the first and best to recognize a regime hell bent on global domination and control. Have it their way, they would take credit for giving Microsoft the idea in the first place.

Americans have been spewing their Liberty, Freedom, and Democracy rhetoric so long without any thought to the meaning, they wouldn't know a dictatorship if it kicked them in the face, stole their money and replaced it with "notes" depicting people that used to know what those terms meant.

Too subtle?

Woot to Russia. I look forward to seeing where this goes in many respects.

OS Discussion: What have people talked about by TLD

I've talked about Google Trends before, and controversy keeps being brought up about Ubuntu v. Windows Vista, as well as other combinations. Today I wanted to take another approach. Not what people are looking for so much, but what has been said. I was inspired by an article on Slashdot about the Department of Defense setting up their own site like Sourceforge, which happens to reside at a .mil top level domain(TLD). So I thought, if .mil sites are heavily regulated and organized, what is the trend of references to various Operating Systems? Further, how closely does this relate to other 'special use' TLDs?

Because I really hate when people don't put the raw data or method for data collection with a study, here is the code I used. Sure, I could have done this by hand, but Linux, for me, is all about making things easier.

note: The reason for the sleep 1s; is because of this

echo "Search results for OS's by TLD\n\n"; for j in '+site%3A.edu' '+site%3A.gov' '+site%3A.mil' '+site%3A.org' '+site%3A.net' '+site%3A.com'; do echo -e "\nMatching terms for $j"; for i in 'Microsoft' 'Windows' '"Microsoft Windows"' 'IBM' 'Apple' 'Unix' 'Linux' '"Red Hat"' 'Solaris' 'AIX' 'Novell' '"Sun Microsystems"' 'OSX' 'Fedora' 'Suse' 'FreeBSD' 'NetBSD' 'OpenBSD' 'Ubuntu' '"Windows 3"' '"Windows 95"' '"Windows 98"' '"Windows NT"' '"Windows 2000"' '"Windows XP"' '"Windows Vista"' '"Windows 7"' '"Windows Server"'; do sleep 1s; echo -en "$i\t\t"; lynx "http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=$i$j&btnG=Search" -useragent="Mozilla/5.0 Lynx" -dump | grep Results | sed -e 's/^.* of about \([0-9,]*\)\ .*$/\1/' | head -n 1; done; done | tee TLDresults.txt

Should I have formatted it and saved it as a script? Probably, but that wasn't how it was done. :) I love the terminal. Ooh, and run at your own risk. I got multiple computers banned testing this script.

Anyway, here are the results I got (reformatted):

Company / OS	.edu	.gov	.mil	.org*	.net*	.com*
Microsoft	7420000	1320000	64700	64000	30100	548000
Windows	11000000	1620000	65900	171000	48500	893000
Microsoft Windows	596000	84600	5190	4650	3170	59100
IBM	6460000	1420000	21500	40400	5950	185000
Apple	1920000	606000	11500	40600	15200	318000
Unix	7350000	775000	10300	25100	12000	68400
Linux	2130000	693000	5450	104000	51600	254000
Red Hat	796000	201000	2620	3960	1660	17000
Solaris	612000	68700	2560	13400	2320	21600
AIX	328000	68100	2480	4790	1680	15100
Novell	144000	20600	1190	2170	1050	12200
Sun Microsystems	225000	29000	2240	4180	731	16600
OSX	885000	142000	7090	19300	7440	85500
Fedora	788000	21900	680	6810	3620	13800
Suse	283000	19200	359	4630	1880	9230
FreeBSD	356000	9770	177	10400	2420	9910
NetBSD	46500	2520	136	3270	321	1890
OpenBSD	28300	2450	102	2080	437	2430
Ubuntu	486000	29100	49	14200	9340	44100
Windows 3	57500	3410	271	108	165	2290
Windows 98	83800	16000	1260	2790	1440	46400
Windows 2000	231000	45700	3690	3660	1880	39100
Windows XP	1450000	51400	3450	12600	7590	144000
Windows NT	390000	39700	4010	4810	1700	22900
Windows Vista	296000	8880	905	5830	5440	117000
Windows 7	15500	1150	134	1440	3550	61700
Windows Server	54800	8130	1040	1890	1970	29900

(* thousands)

note: eek, formatting didn't come out as expected. Will fix soon.
update: ok, so my html sucks, but the table is easier to look at than before.

Unfortunately have run out of time make any remarks considering the trend, but I see some interesting relationships. Will comment further tomorrow.

The more things change, the more things stay the same

I think this is more a reflection of computer users, or even people, than Ubuntu users. People that know and understand Linux, use Linux. I have used a variety of distributions, but I am pretty happy with Ubuntu. I have used Ubuntu exclusively for only a few years now, but I can still see where I am far behind in my understanding of many things based on the forums I visit. Ubuntu irc had been a fun place I would go to get help, and often spend some time helping others. It was very civilized, though there were a lot of new people. Years later, now, it might be hard to distinguish from 4chan or Barrens chat. I don't go there any more AT ALL.

But honestly, I think this is just what happens when popularity increases with anything. I remember when the majority of people on the Internet (if you would really call it that) were between intelligent and highly intelligent individuals discussing a wide range of topic (though usually leaning towards the nerdy side) in a civilized manner.

Going from telnet to web browsing changed everything! The number of people online was approaching a million! The number of servers you could connect to or 'sites' you could now 'browse to' was skyrocketing! People starting making their own web sites and hosting forums at home, and there were just tons of people all excited to be involved in this new medium, despite the fact they had no idea what they were doing.

And then AOL came along, and Geocities. Soon everyone had a web page for their cat, and flame wars seemed to be the thing in every chat room. It was just like the parlor times a million! This was about the time I stopped going into chat rooms at all, because it was just intolerable.

But eventually we got slashdot, google, ebay, wikipedia, archieve.org, eff, findlaw, loc.gov, youtube, hulu, piratebay, thinkfree, change.gov and so many others both recently and over the years.

I miss the days when every person I knew that had a computer had taken it apart and put it back together many times, they all had some minimal programming skill, and nerdy groups of people would be going around to business or telling our non-nerd friends "you could do that so much better if you had a COMPUTER!", to which they would reply, "that stuff is for nerds, I am doing just fine with my typewriter". "There's nothing I can do with a computer I can't do on my typewriter", and "computers just make it more complicated and expensive".

There was no convincing them. You would try to explain, but they wouldn't listen.

Then one day they would come you you and be all like "Hey, guess what? I got one of those Pentium things! Isn't that cool!" and all you could do is smile and sigh. And after that, it was the endless phone calls for little things that you didn't mind, because it was exactly what you had been pushing for in the first place. But sometimes it made you wonder.

Soon, the round table discussions over new technologies in the library were replaced with sheep-dip seminars (thank you Andy Hunt), row after row of zombies watching someone explain what a mouse was for, and how to put things in the trash. Soon you had all these 'experts' saying that they knew more about computers than anyone because they had taken a class. Oh, the humanity...

So what a surprise that after all these years, we are still seeing the same type of revolution. Yes, I miss the 'Internet' when it was between 10,000 and 100,000 users, but those times are gone, and in the big picture, the new even more nerdy stuff is worth it.

They say that Linux userbase / marketshare (or whatever way Microsoft feels like measuring it one day to the next) is about 1%, but it is easy to see it is the top 1%. Maybe it is just me, but I don't see an even distribution be user base as a whole of computer experts between exclusive Linux users and exclusive Windows users. It is the same one percent 20+ years ago trying to get people to use computers because it was the future. That same group (albeit a new generation) are pushing Linux. The gurus are already Linux users. Who do you think you are recruiting? Ubuntu has made great ground in working its way down from that top one percent to possibly the next 1%. It is going to keep growing, and I can PROMISE you it is only going to get worse. If the goal is Linux adoption, then that is exactly what is going on, but why should the adoption on Linux be any different than the adoption of computers or the Internet was for the general population.

The newbie, beginner Linux user is going to use Ubuntu. It is the pretty flashy cool new thing. And as expected, they are going to flame the boards, and spend way too much time uploading their new theme of the hour to gnome-look.org. The old school Debian users are going to be like "What the hell have we done?", and the Gentoo users are going to be laughing their asses off saying "I told you so", and things will progress, change, adapt, and get better. Computers now do amazing things, and no longer are our libraries filled with people trying to get their Mouse Skills Certification. I swear the bottom 20% only changes as people die off.

The great thing is that Linux will never have to play to the lowest common denominator. Ubuntu may, and that will be its place. To me, Windows has played to the lowest common denominator consistently, and fighting through their sense of what intuition would be for someone that has never used a computer drives me completely nuts. I was discussing this with a friend who has also been studying the Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition (Anyone familiar with the Pragmatic Programmer series should be familiar), and we came to the same conclusion: If intuition is for experts, how do you create an intuitive interface for a novice?

The implications are nauseating.

This is a great reason for there to be many forks of projects any time it is deemed necessary, and distributions that can all be customized for computer users at any level of from novice to expert. That is part of the freedom I think we all hope for. It is also obvious to see that play out between Debian and Ubuntu users. Linux users may be the top 1%, and Ubuntu users make up the bottom 0.8% of that 1%.

So I can't help but point out that maybe the real fear shouldn't be for Microsoft, but for the Linux community, and to use everyones favorite cliche...

The Year of Linux is coming; brace yourself!

Woman struggles with Ubuntu, online classes

The issue is that Windows is easy to get started with, and there isn't a lot to learn. Simple GUIs for everything, and you wouldn't know about any advanced features unless you looked them up and knew what you were doing.

Linux is about productivity first. Linux is easy to use, but not completely obvious. With the power to begin any complicated task just a click or keyword away, it can feel like being dropped into an ocean and being asked to swim. The most extreme example of this type of design where productivity is valued over obviousness or 'intuitiveness' is Blender3D. Blender is a F***ING nightmare to figure a damn thing out. I used 3D studio max and poked around and was modeling simple buildings and funny creatures in a matter of hours. Blender I was just like WTF!?! and by the time I figured out how to draw a simple cube, I gave up. Last summer, I thought I would give it another go after watching Elephant Dreams. I figured, ok, of they can do this, I must be able to do better than a box. I thought: What would be the pragmatic way of going about this. Hmm.. Read the damn documentation maybe? The first thing the documentation covered was that the GUI ia intentionally designed a very particular way and they are NOT going to change it. While it requires a lot of memorization, once you 'get it', it will enable you to model faster than ever. Despite not knowing how to do anything, the GUI didn't seem so 'stupid' anymore. If every little detail was very well thought out, then I needed to give it a chance. I jumped on youtube and did a search for "Blender tutorial". MANY results. I picked a series and followed along. While the controls were not obvious in any way, they were easy to remember and simple to use. Every few videos or so, I would try to figure something out on my own, but usually with complete failure. But continuing with the videos, each 20 minute segment was showing me whole new aspects of what could be done. I got to give credit where credit is due. super3boy did a pretty good job. The videos were a bit on the crude side, and the examples were really simple and drawn out, but considering how effective he was in assisting me with my learning, it was perfect. I even showed a friend that had never even much used a computer but to check email, and within a week we were making beautiful scenes, fun simple games, and such. Water, fireworks, explosives taking out buildings, whatever came to mind could be put together right away as the thoughts unfolded. It wasn't like having to think of one part then work through it and then think about the next part after the first part was done.

Anyway, the point is, Linux can be over whelming. I know many people are interested in Linux, but watch people who are comfortable with it, and it all just looks like magic. I have been using Linux for several years now, and I still see people do clever things that appear "magical". Maybe that is why Macs are so popular. I don't think there is anything I have ever seen done on a mac that couldn't be copied by a monkey. Maybe that is the appeal. One simple way to do certain things that people want to do with their computer that make them look cool. But while mac is much like a "choose your own adventure" novel, Linux can feel like pencil and paper, but give it a little time and energy, it is more like Harold's Purple Crayon.

I can understand that some people just want the choose your own adventure. I get that. But Linux enables your computer to be a tool, and as with any complex piece of machinery, the novice needs a teacher. Just because its complex and there is much to learn doesn't mean there is anything wrong with the machine. It means people need help. This is why I feel the Linux community is so strong. It is necessary for people to share their knowledge. It requires upstream developers to hang out in their own irc channel. It requires LOTS of third party documentation to address all the various learning styles that may best help people learn.

My local library uses only Ubuntu. They also have free classes on getting started with Ubuntu. I think it is also a cultural thing, because I remember there being very similar classes at local libraries when Windows 3.1 was new. People had no idea what computers were going to be capable of, but saw the advantage of digital word processors over type writers for editing, and businesses were beginning to require basic computer skills for jobs. Linux is revolutionary, and as Microsoft has feared in their internal memos, FlOSS is completely revolutionizing the way people think about computers. The Internet in a very basic way operates around the government; it is not something you can put a wall around because it is designed to work, and circumvent censorship because objectively censorship is identified as a problem within the network and attempts to fix it. Software and just the exchange of ideas operates on a humanistic level above the monetary system where the sole objective of sharing ideas is to be a part of a community of ideas, not trying to scrape together bits of money here and there to get by. Sharing your ideas and having people listen around the world is like printing your own money with whatever value you desire... but guess that it a bit beyond the scope here.

Short of it? Non-computer people and people willing to change need mentors. Start a club. Have a few hours a week or each month where you can teach people about Linux, community center, library, school, whatever; if you believe Linux can really make for a better world. Microsoft will always bribe and pay people to do their dirty work, but a passionate Linux user over a paid Microsoft lacky should be able to win the debate. Each of us just need to make the effort. If you don't really want to leave the house, spend a little time in #ubuntu irc channel. Yes, there are some complete f***ing idiots in there that make you want to just bang your head against the wall till you can peacefully drown in your own blood, but they are making an effort, and if they are willing to be patient with you, maybe they deserve a bit of your time. Hasn't someone else ever done that for you?

The Year of Linux

I find it hard to believe that you have spent more than a few months with Linux to not find many things radically different. A PART of Linux that tries to make itself compatible with people is give them ways to use their old knowledge to do the same old tasks on Linux that they did on windows. To say that Linux is only playing a catch up game tells me you should probably stick with Windows. IMO, I think Macs take the most common thing people want to do and put it into a one-click application. What you can do is REALLY awsome. Just check out youtube to see what people have done with iMovie. In business, the best thing you can do is take one thing and do it REALLY WELL. Try to expand too much, and you will just be beaten out by a large number of specialists. Linux doesn't NEED to attract or prove anything to anybody. It is awesome that people are starting companies and making big money off of Linux directly or indirectly, but that is not the core of what Linux has ever been about, at least for Linus Torvalds as I understand from a number of interviews I have read.

One thing to love and hate about design principles in Linux / FOSS is that it is based on creating the most productive software, not necessarily the most easy to understand or get started with software. Blender I think is the best example of this. There is a LOT to learn before you can do much of ANYTHING in blender. It is confusing and every button and modifier key does something different. The interface is ... well atrocious in many ways. Until you "get it". Once you painfully climb that seemingly never ending vertical learning curve, you are FREE. Forget the mouse and just imagine what you want to see and type it out in a few bizarre incantations on your keyboard. IF you can remember all the crazy commands, Blender is FAST. If you can't remember, or simple don't like working that way, then Blender is not for you. What will not happen is Blender changing its interface to attract a greater number of people. Take it or leave it.

There is also the issue that at the heart, Linux is Free. Many great Windows apps are developed under Linux, or for Linux, then easily ported to Windows. Write an app for Windows, and it works on Windows. Write an app for Linux, and it will work on anything with a microprocessor with the right simple planning or forethought.

My killer, can not live without, Linux application is BASH. I get strange problems in my head where I want to look something up in a way that a regular search engine simply won't do. or some stat problem I want to double check via brute force (cause why not, it is another way to confirm an answer), a method that can not always be done mentally. This is where I jump on the computer, and in a few strange incantations in a terminal, I have just what I wanted.

Yes, we can do that too will always be a catchup came cause who knows what Microsoft will convince people they need next. That can't ever change unless Microsoft stops being main stream. This will be a cultural change. Linux is about the bringing the power of the computer to the users fingertips. Windows is more about meeting the needs of "Ohh, Internet, I want to do that!". We are just in a time where there are still so many people in that latter category. Linux is just a kernel, but it is also just a tool. There will always be new things added to Linux that people need for themselves that others will join in and contribute to, but gearing itself towards "sacrifice anything and everything to get the maximum number of people to use it" will, I pray, NEVER be the heart of Linux.

Specialist circumstances need specialized software. Web Server, embedded systems, data centers. Linux provides the tweakability to do killer things REALLY well. You just can't do that in Windows, certainly not in the way that a trained Linux specialist can really make things work.

The Year of Linux was 1996.

Just read the Halloween Documents to confirm that BY MICROSOFT! At this point in time Microsoft identified Linux as an undefeatable adversary due to the NATURE of its distributed and community development in addition to the well made tools available for the system. It was an expert system for expert people that Microsoft would never be able to get rid of in any legal or moral way. Linux took over in the above named markets and have never fell.

The one thing that was argued was that Linux could never be a viable Desktop solution. Microsoft has powerful ground here, but OpenSuse introduced a great desktop system that showed that the FOSS community could reach out beyond people that could make contributions. That was in 2004.

So with those milestones long behind us, what do you want? What is this Year of Linux? Mass use? Well, the Internet is built on Linux / BSD, so everyone that uses the Internet is using Linux, strictly speaking. The LAST place for Linux to have a "take over" is on those nodes, the workstations, the home computer, something the complete novice can "do the Internet on". So at LEAST call that the Year of the Linux Desktop.

Microsoft has a plan to stay in business. It is called FUD. Microsoft is in large part successful for the same reason 23% of Texans think Obama is Muslim. In this case, it doesn't matter. I have Linux, and Linux does everything I need. I discourage many people from using Linux because Linux will present their computer to them as a tool to extend their mind and express themselves in new, powerful ways that may have been previously unimaginable. Most people DON'T WANT THAT. I'd argue that it is because most people don't understand that it is a possibility. As I said before, they just want to do the Internet and the email. For them the computer does things (hopefully) that you tell it to do. It is not an extension of their mind, not in the way that an ">expert would harness their computer skills.

People won't change, but society will change as new generations of computer users are born into it. As this takes place, as it obviously has been, the software will be there, and it will be Linux.

By this measure, the Year of Linux will be when general education teachers in public schools assign FOSS development as a part of every regular class. When C (or whatever language of your choice it) will be considered as equally important to teach along side English.

This is realistic, but no less than 30 years away because most teachers over 30 these days hardly know how to turn their computer on. It will take the children born in the last 10 years that grew up in todays technologies to be the majority of teachers in schools and administers on the Board of Education.

So to see that end, all we need to do is keep doing what we are doing now. It will always be transitional. Microsoft will always make Linux out to be insignificant. The only difference in the future will be the number of people still listening.

What do you listen to?

The FOSS business Model

There are many objectives and purposes of FOSS, while boxware has only the purpose of selling units. That is tough to compete with because boxware, from an investor perspective (person investing in the company selling it, not the ones buying it) it is successful when they sell so many units, and fail if they sell too few. Very straight forward.

FOSS in every way is more complicated. Investors of Red Hat want to see subscriptions sold, but that also depends on who you would call an investor. Many people profit from Red Hat's work, and any FOSS progress is perpetual. Red Hat will always live on in a way because of its nature. People can always expand and support Linux no matter what happens, By contrast, whatever way it could happen, if Microsoft one day went belly up, EVERY investor, stock holders and users are totally burned.

So another contrast. The purpose of Windows is for the software to be sold. The purpose of Linux / FOSS is to be productive. FOSS doesn't need to be profitable by the box as much as it needs to be useful, and proprietary software doesn't need to be as useful or productive AS MUCH as it needs to sell box units.

When we are talking about a movie company, there are two routes to go. Movies are not FOSS, remembering that the last 'S' means software. Movies make more sense under a CC license if you want it to be that type of free, but that is something else entirely. FOSS v. proprietary for a movie studio is the argument of whether or not the company is going to use make all their own software (very impractical, they are not a software company), or pay someone to give them the software they need. On a larger scale, individual companies can make their own software (again, makes no sense cause not a software company) or movie studios as a whole can pay one big company to provide for all their needs. In a way this can make a lot of sense, but has certain limitations when it is proprietary.

The FOSS solution says use this open model, build upon it as you need, BUT if you share that code or want to sell it, you need to "share-alike". This means that movie studios can meet their own individual specialized needs, and have the benefits of a community that is 'invested' in having quality software. There is also the motivation and hope that if you choose to share parts / tools that are good for you, others will build upon it and improve upon it making it the best software possible.

So if 100 movie studios work together sharing their best in-house tools for making quality movies, then many things happens. You have great software everyone can use. The software is superior than what any one company could develop. The tools are more flexible than could have been possible by one company, and profitability will come down to the ability for companies to utilize that software to make a good movie. Software engineers got paid for their work, the software is very valuable, but 'worthless' as a stand alone package. So now the questionable investment is whether or not it is going to be worth your money to invest in someone looking to make money contributing to such a project that is not directly involved in the movie production itself. Red Hat is such a company (for another industry, of course), but when such business models 'fail', the ability to quantify the failure financially for that company is 'simple' (sort of) but not for the software as a whole, something MUCH more complicated.

But again, the only thing special here is that when proprietary boxware fails, it fails for EVERYBODY and entirely. FOSS just can't be judged the same way, even if it is something very difficult for people design a business model around.

And I'll just say it now before anyone needs to point it out, I do casually program and use Linux but I am not a software engineer, and certainly not involved in the industry beyond consumer and fan. This is just my observation and opinion as an outsider with a strong belief (even if a naive one) in FOSS.


Note: As usual this was an inspired post as linked above. The original article regarding the subject matter came from here.

Afterthought from reading this post:

What good does FOSS adoption mean if there's no money exchanging hands?

Cause sometimes software is made to be used. One way you could measure FOSS profitability (albeit unfairly) would be to add up the profits of all companies invested in FOSS, like IBM, Sun, Pixar, HP to name a few. These companies don't ONLY use FOSS, and they don't give away all their software secrets, but they ARE big investors in FOSS, and FOSS is a big part of what they use to be profitable while contributing to it.

So maybe FOSS profitability is a lot like the restaurant business; Never trust a skinny chef :)


And why not one more. This post kinda pissed me off.

One thing i think we will see FOSS project's movng away from is giving away the software. if you GPL something, it doesn't mean you have to give it away, it just means who ever you sell it to gets the source code along with the program.I could for example write some software, sell it to others and then give them access to the source where only paid customers could make commits and see the source. source is only required if you distribute something....

I have said this so many places, but I think it needs to be said again given your post. I don't think you GET free software. I know this is separate from the article, but you fail to see the primary goal of free software and why it works. Sharing code makes better software. THAT'S IT! It was never about making profit directly off the software. Profit is made from productive USE of the software. What people want to try to do is take this great, powerful, and successful thing Linux and make profit off of it directly, like business people have tried to do with everything forever! Free software is just really hard because its nature. And as many commented, and my interpretation of what you said, people are not going to turn free software into proprietary software. Hmm... I take that back, noone is going to turn GPL software into proprietary software. DAMNIT, technically, you are right, it is called Mac OSX. Personally, and let people flame me for saying this, exactly the fears you are expressing that will be the death of FOSS are exactly what has happened to BSD. This is why I think the BSD Free model is going out because people are recognizing that for free to stay free comes at the price of making sure it stays that way. That is what GPL is all about. Torvalds disdain for GPLv3 I think reveals some reveals a lot about how the classical belief in free software is dead as people are forced to take harder and harder lines on free v. proprietary, where before it was just about free, and not necessarily what happened to it.

Fallable brute force '8 Queens' puzzle in C

Yay, so got this to work today. Used bash to make it loop and show how fast it could find solutions. Once it took just under 1.5s. It usually takes longer :) For archival purposes and sharing, this is what I did.

queens.c (gcc queens.c -o queens)
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#define SIZE 8

void clear_board( void );
void print_board( void );
int mark_square( int x, int y );

int board[SIZE][SIZE];

int main( void )
{
srand( time( NULL ) );
int i;
clear_board();

for(i=0; i <= SIZE; i++)
{
 if ( mark_square(rand() % SIZE, rand() % SIZE) == 1 )
 {
  clear_board();
  i=0;
 }
}
print_board();
return 0;
}

void clear_board( void )
{
int row;
int col;

for ( row = 0; row <= SIZE; row++ )
 for ( col = 0; col <= SIZE; col++ )
  board[row][col] = 0;
}

int mark_square( int x, int y )
{
int i;

if ( board[x][y] == 0 )
{
 for ( i = 0; i < SIZE; i++)
  board[x][i] = 1;
 for ( i = 0; i < SIZE; i++)
  board[i][y] = 1;
 for ( i = 0; i < SIZE; i++)
 {
  if (x-i >= 0)
  {
   if (y+i < SIZE)
    board[x-i][y+i] = 1;
   if (y-i >= 0)
    board[x-i][y-i] = 1;
  }
  if (x+i < SIZE)
  {
   if (y+i < SIZE)
    board[x+i][y+i] = 1;
   if (y-i >= 0)
    board[x+i][y-i] = 1;
  }
 }
 board[x][y] = 2;
 return 0;
}
else
 return 1;
}

void print_board( void )
{
int row;
int col;

for ( row = 0; row < SIZE; row++ )
{
 for ( col = 0; col < SIZE; col++ )
 {
  if ( board[row][col] == 0 ) printf( "." );
  if ( board[row][col] == 1 ) printf( "x" );
  if ( board[row][col] == 2 ) printf( "Q" );
 }
 printf( "\n" );
}
printf( "\n" );
}

Note:
Some context, this is my solution to problem 6.27(a) Eight Queens: Brute-Force Approaches, p. 264 of C How to Program, 5th edition, by: Deitel and Deitel. Figure if by chance someone is looking up this problem they would be more likely to stumble over this post :)

Great conversation on "fun with unix"

Anyway, here was my little fun non destructive trick. :)

while true; do
for i in $(w | grep -e pts -e tty[1-6] | awk '{print $2}'); do
sleep .1s;
echo -en "\x1B[$(($RANDOM % 8 + 30))m" > /dev/$i;
done;
done 2>/dev/null

For some odd reason, I could not get this to work properly backgrounded, ctrl-z or otherwise. it would just kill it. Any suggestion would be appreciated.

I call it "Give everyone a really gay day!"

Great people inspired by great people

One of the early things I loved about Obama was his fight for open government. He was the first state senator to have a podcast telling the people he represented what he was doing for them, or at least what was going on.

So I feel lucky to have stumbled upon one of hid podcasts from 2002, being cited by another man I have a lot of respect for, Linux Torvalds.

Some quick citations:
Linus Torvalds talk about Richard Stallman, GPL and Obama on digg pointing to
Black & White By Linux Torvalds detailing how his 17 year commitment to Linux has come from what he loves, not what he hates, arguing that GPLv3 and RMS build on the later. Linus cites a speech of Barack Obama, A Call to Renewal, where he argues for people to see the good in religious and non-religious faith rather than divisions which are really so few when it comes to our desire to find truth, even if it doesn't always feel that way.

RMS is an odd guy, but I see him an iconic. He is that totally weird crazy guy talking about a different better world, completely uncompromising. I watched a video of him criticizing the OLPC where he was ranting about how it was filled with proprietary software that he couldn't remove, but the parts that were removable, he did. Now this may seem odd, cause many know the OS is is Linux based. So what is he talking about? The device firmware. He was upset that there were components in the computer that he wasn't allowed to know how they work. I laughed, but at the same time I understood. He is just the Jerry Farwell of the F/OSS world. As far as GPLv3 is concerned, I think it is a highly defensible position in a world where F/OSS is threatened in many ways. Sometimes it is just really hard to not hate what can be an alternative to what you love. My original switch to Linux was out of hate for the problems I was having with Windows, and was looking for an alternative. I had already done the Mac thing... and there is no reson to rehash that. In the 1 year and 10 months I have been windows free, I feel inspired by every problem I encounter, and accomplished with each solution I find and can share with others. Battling DRM on the other hand, or flat out buggy code, versus under developed code, just make me cynical and depressed. I have since come to LOVE Linux... but I still have a hard time escaping hate toward windows each and every time someone describes a problem that is a fault of its design and methodology or such. This has also come from no longer trying to sell Linux or Ubuntu, and focusing more on free software.

So I am amazed at both these men for their ability to find the message of love to oppose the messages of hate. Obama and Torvalds have had some heavy hitters, people very uncompromising in their position. Something that each of them iterate is that it isn't about converting the radicals, or getting people not to listen to them, it is about providing a better alternative that can inspire people to get involved.

I can't do either of these men any justice, and I would encourage everybody to read Torvalds article, and the transcript of Obama's podcast from 2002. But thinking about their words, I think this is what I find amazing in Lawrence Lessig's speeches. He talks about all the harm done in the world, with respect to culture, but with all of his focus on the simple changes we could implement to make this world a more amazing place.

Obama talks about how we can regress to citing dogma from scripture, but we can do the same thing with our law. We can't just point to law or the bible and say that is all we need. In any debate you need to get to the heart of the argument. I am sad to say that the "Yes on 8" people have put more effort into that. I think as far as pure debating goes, the yes's won, if only because the no on 8 people find the issue so simple with regard to equal rights and freedom what else is there really to say?

It can't just be obvious, or there wouldn't be an opposition. We live in a day where women have the right to vote in the United States, but how do you think Susan B. Anthony was able to argue on behalf of women in a world where there was nothing to compare it to. She had to fight that civil rights movement alone with the people that stood by her. Issues like slavery were not as obvious as we are taught in schools today; that was a major social reconstruction.

There is a lot more I want to say, but this has already gone way off topic, but I will say this: It has given me the hope back that I needed to support Barack Obama and stand by him. I am hurt by some things that I disagree with him on, but this Call to Renewal and his infomercial before he world series tells me we need this type of thinker, and kind of person that has spent more tie talking with families and real Americans than I ever have.

I don't know why he has supported some of the things he has supported, as I have mentioned, but I will trust that he will listen to the people, that that he has made informed decisions, even if not alwas the perfect one. More importantly, I think he keeps a very open mind, at least as open as I hope I can be, or that others would judge me by.

So here on November 3, here is -1 undecided voter. It is my hope that every undecided voter is undecided for the purpose of due diligence right up to the last moment, allowing our minds to be as open to possibilities as we can hope for our future.

Just how fast can Linux boot?

TheWindBlows wrote in response to the linked article...

Wait until 9.04 one of its goals is to boot even faster. Windows 7 boot is optimized and boots at about the same speed Ubuntu boots right now though as far as desktop loading goes I'm not sure that Windows wins in that.

There is a project called fastboot or something that basically puts most all of the init stuff into background at a lower priority and 'cheats' to get to the desktop faster. Looks great to me. My prob is with post and grub. I have a LOT of stuff inside my computer, and it takes almost 10 seconds to just get to the grub menu, and another 15 seconds to get to the desktop. The projects aim is to get those start up things that were put into background eventually started up before they are needed, but not before you are given any functionality over the desktop.

I look forward to it.

One of the questionable things is that networking support won't be up when you get to the desktop, that it will take almost another 5 seconds before it will be up. Soo, I see that as "If the first thing I want to do is jump on the Internet, start up time to web browsing will take almost as long as it previously took to boot. What is the down side here?

Now what I think would be cool is if an onboard Linux could boot up and be used right away, many claiming desktop / web support available within 2 seconds of hitting the power button. What if this could be used while your computer is booting in the same way you use a Live CD while the OS is installing. Then while doing whatever it was you wanted to do, a little message could pop up "Your desktop is ready, would you like to switch now?" This would absolutely rock, and I don't think it would be terribly difficult to integrate.

Why Windows 7 has so little to offer...

... and misconceptions / revisionist history on the 'greatness' of windows XP.

There will never be another system like XP. There CAN'T be. To understand that you need to know what XP was. It was a merge of Windows 2000 and Windows 98. Windows 98 was a 'home user' operating system great for web browsing, games and such. Windows 2000 was a more user friendly Windows NT with some major updates, and great performance as a server / business platform. The problem was that windows 2000 and windows 98 were two completely different operating systems, as different as OSX and Solaris. One was targeted more towards business and the other towards everyone else. A lot of people didn't get this, and were quite upset at the incompatibility of software. "Why can't we just have one operating system called Windows?", thus, Windows XP was born. It took somewhere the best of each, and everything of both and put them all into one system. XP is VERY little more than Windows NT and Windows 98 all in one.

Vista offers nothing significantly new, and I doubt Windows 7 will have much more either except with some hope, FINALLY posix compliance somewhere in some broken weird way, you know, where tools can only be used in a very specific, Microsoft anticipated and approved way. But that isn't any motivation for me since I already have a real posix / iso compliant OS. But it will be nice Windows 7 might give Windows fans a chance to catch up with the rest of the world.

And with regard to the linked article, being better than Vista, putting hype against hype, is a pretty low bar. Will "better than Vista" really be a selling point?

Ok, I can't help it. Ubuntu 8.10 (released today, woot) has been advertising for months, both short and long lists describing the specific functionality and productivity that 8.10 users will gain by upgrading from 8.04. You can actually watch the progress of individual components of the system and their integration by checking out the blue print.

So there are supposed to be some performance improvements, but we can't see what they are, or know how it works, or criticize the method. Linux had a huge debate over the "completely fair scheduler". a LOT of people gave their input on that. How many people audit components like that in Windows? Ok, so personally, I thought XP had a reasonably good scheduler from what I could tell (not including network applications).

My problem is that I am simply supposed to put out all this money for yet another operating system, without really ever getting to know what I am buying... err... licensing to use?

Its not a bad idea, and many people feel like it works for them. It just doesn't work for me. Windows 7 does not draw me at all, and neither did Vista. It wasn't a 'Vista bad' thing for me necessarily, I just didn't see anything that should catch my attention.

Well, at least they aren't claiming "Windows 7 will be WAY better than Windows Me!". But it feels a little too similar.