Foreboding sense of Linux

I don't want Linux to be desktop friendly.

There, I said it.

I believe that all of the efforts to make Linux friendly for Joe Sixpack have had a very destructive effect. In order to accommodate the mainstream user Linux is being cheapened. Soon it will be as distant from the user as Windows are now. To make Linux acceptable it will be encapsulated, buffered and then sugar coated. All for what? Why should Joe Sixpack swallow the blue Linux pill when they already have a belly full of the red-mond pill?

Shogun by James Clavell

I just finished the luxuriously long and sensual read, Shogun by James Clavell. This was the umpteenth time I have read it. I manage to wind my way through it about every other year. It is a comfort read for me. I can celebrate the story and the characters. Like any really accessible work of fiction I can see myself in it. I can slip into its second skin and for a few minutes drift in another time and place.

Born under a bad sign...

You know we are all in lot of trouble, Linux-wise, when we need explicit instructions ...

Howto Boot debian in text mode instead of graphical mode (GUI)

I just got a bit harrumphish when I realized that Linux is old enough so that the young'ins don't remember a time before the GUI. The same argument that shied folks away from early Linux is being raised in the face of the latest distros.

I cannot use a PC unless it has pictures and a mouse pointer. That is why I am sticking with Windows er, uh, Gnome or KDE.

- Papa, Slackware: what was old is GNU, again

Curious Clock

...tells unsettling time.

Calculating your "Life-Time": the current time when your life is scaled down to 1 day

LifeTime – What time are you?

My LifeTime

5:24pm

Slackware: Don't take my word for it...

Slackware: There's something totally sane about it

Slackware hard? You set up networking by typing netconfig at a prompt and filling in the blanks. What could be easier? Installing software with pkgtool? Except for the dependency problems, which at least make you more aware of what your system is all about, it's easy and intuitive.

...more aware... (emphasis not mine) IMHO this is the very heart of the matter. Pretty much any OS will let you use your computer but how many allow you to be in control?

I owe, I owe, its off to work I go...

This past weekend I lazed. Actually, that isn't exactly accurate. It suggests that I actively and aggressively engaged in lazing. More to the point I practiced the fine art of being lazy. In the oppressive heat of western Kentucky I laid low. I enjoyed the rigors of horizontal meditation while being bathed in near continuous air conditioning. We all know it is not the heat, it is the humanity.

In between near exhaustive bouts of napping I managed to consume some comfort-pulp-fiction. Now I do understand that there is a new title by William Gibson, Spook Country that is being met with rave reviews. (Why am I not surprised that Frank Paynter knows about the MacGuffin.) But that is not the sort of fiction that floats my boat when I am engaged in the fine art of loafing. Give me Robert B. Parker. Oh yeah.

Reading Parker is like watching television without the commercials and not having to learn how to use the remote.

You have to admit that that is the very depth of decadence. So I reread Cold Service just because I started it while killing time at our local Books-A-Million - one of the few decent places to get a real cup of coffee in this two-bit town. A swing through the new library landed me two more new titles that I hadn't seen - mostly 'cause I don't get out much. Hundred-Dollar Baby has Spenser back in the humanitarian saddle dealing with 'good-girl-gone-bad' April Kyle as she whines and deigns through the high and low life of Boston's upscale back alleys.

Those occupied most of Saturday and Sunday. Then the real work of Labor day began on Monday. A Jesse Stone tale called High Profile. No details to follow 'cause you will just have to read it for yourself. I will say that Parker has done an interesting thing by intertwining some of his more memorable characters into each other's lives.

Love's labors, not lost.

AFCAQTWCA

Any Fool Can Ask Questions the Wise Can't Answer

...and shouldn't have to. We have all had bosses, significant others and or teachers that insisted on asking questions. Questions that were not formulated to be answered but rather for the asking. So that the interrogator can feel empowered.

How often I have heard, "I was just asking..."

Little does it matter that a question asked demands an answer. Seldom is consideration given on the part of the interrogator how disruptive the demand might be.

"I was just asking. Sheeesh, you don't have to be so grumpy."

Little does it matter that a question can be asked without being responsible for the answer. How happy I would be if the interrogator had to pay in some fashion for every rhetorical or self-centered question asked.

The selfish and self-centered formulate questions to gain attention. It takes very little effort to formulate an interrogative sentence. Then when confronted with this antisocial behavior they claim that they were only trying to make conversation. That is like a bank robber suggesting that they are only trying to bolster the local economy by making a mandatory withdraw. I suggest that stealing is stealing.

Anyone have any questions?

Quechup Stains?

Quoth the Head Lemur

Quechup is the Clap of Social Networking. You get it from letting Quechup touch your address book.

Faceless in Kentucky

On the advice of sage council I cut my ties with Facebook. Since then I have felt just a slight tug to find out what my peers are doing. I assume that this 'tug' is the same feeling that keeps others coming back time and again. Undoubtedly it is the same feeling that serves as the adhesive in our larger social orders. I have to wonder if it is the same glue that binds Lemmings as they take their inexorable journey to the edge of the precipice?

All we are saying is ....

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3D Stereogram generator

Thanks Pen-Elayne

Don't trust... who?

John says, "Don't trust the servers."

To analyze the illogic of certain trends, I like to employ a trick I call the "reverse timeline." I ask myself, "What happens if the timeline goes the other way?" In this instance, you'd start with server-based online applications, and then suddenly a new technology—the desktop computer with a quad-core processor and huge hard drive—appears. Now, you do not need to do all your computing online. The timeline is reversed.

Why is it that pundits like this fellow above just insist on purveying an all or nothing perspective? Could it be ... the media? Could it be the fact that we as a society desperately want to see things in black or white? Could it be that 'journalism' panders to this bi-polar disorder?

This polarity is laughable. Individuals who report on it run the very great risk of becoming a casualty of their own rhetoric. "Since the majority of Dvorak's articles deal with absurd and contrived polar extremes he should be completely discounted."

Hmmmmm, that has a curious ring to it.

Quantity vs. Quality

This should be a 'no-brainer'...

Knowledge Retention vs. Critical Thinking

Why do the many and varied Education systems seem to test for Knowledge Retention?

"They respect what you inspect not what you expect."

Heartbroken

.:dydimustk:.

speaks of a journey. He said...

...I have been trying to figure out what might be a better framework for the next generation of Christ followers. I have been involved in this whole Emerg[ing|ent] line of questioning and exploration, and yet it seems many of our attempts to reengage the culture get hung up in christendom models. No matter how cool we are, or how welcoming we make our services, or how politically sensitive we try to be–if our goal is to get people in our doors, I think we have lost sight of the gospel. Jesus asked his disciples to follow him out into the world. He never asked them to bring anyone back anywhere.

...My heart is broken for all my friends and all the people I see every day for whom the church has no value, no purpose. At best, they’ve just never encountered Jesus because the idiots on TV turn them off. At worst, they been judged and condemned by the church–hurt physically and emotionally. That breaks my heart.

...I have written The Broken Heart Manifesto. I have tried to write it in such a way that anyone can take it up, hopefully without any barriers (other than the English language), and allow it to re-form their lives. I an anxious to see what it does to mine. I will be journaling the process, and invite you to do the same.

I am not a biblical scholar. Some would suggest that I am not even a "good" Christian.

The The Broken Heart Manifesto resonates with me because it speaks to reverence for the human condition without all of the trappings of a given religion or "Church" order. In this way it clears away the noise of society and popular culture. This Manifesto speaks to the central value, love, that I as one person must have for all of my brothers and sisters.

This Manifesto is not an imposition of my views on others but rather a view that I choose to accept for myself. What follows are observations about myself. By engaging in this conversation I hope to illuminate my often unspoken feelings and thoughts. By engaging in this conversation I hope that feelings and thoughts of others might be revealed.

---

Love hurts

To love is to endure emotional pain
With great investment of personal caring and affection
comes the potential of disregard and detachment

Inherent in the belief of love is the desire to be loved;
we should be loved equally by those that we love

In choosing to love we accept in equal measure the pain
of being unloved

Unconditional love is the act of endless giving.

bhmt01

BOYCOTT Open Source Violators

Open Source developers do not expect remuneration for their efforts. This is implicit in the Open Source agreement. Then the only recourse available to them in the case of [alledged] Open Source License violation is for the public to actively and aggressively BOYCOTT the violator(s).

Model train software spat threatens future of open source

By Kevin Fayle in San Francisco

Throws copyrights from the train

Analysis A dispute over some open source software used for model railroads resulted in an important decision last week, involving the scope of open source licenses and the remedies available when they are violated.

The decision has triggered alarm in the open source community, with a prominent open source licensing advocate charging that the court fell asleep at the switch in its legal analysis of the case.

[. . .]

Interpreting open source licenses as contracts removes the possibility of injunctive relief preventing license violators from further copying, modifying and/or distributing source code. Such a remedy is available for copyright violations, but not contract breaches.

For broken contracts, the remedy is damages - whatever it would take to put the plaintiff in the position he would have been in had the contract been fully performed. Since this is usually money, many providers of open source software would get the shaft, since they don't expect any remuneration for the copying of the software.

[. . .]

A.) Read the entire article

B.) If it is to work (without the support of the legal system) then it is up to us, the community of users, to insure that the integrity of Open Source is upheld.

C.) BOYCOTT Open Source violators.

Slackware: what was old is GNU, again

I shouldn't be too snarky. This article, Midnight Commander in Action, is very comprehensive and well illustrated.

I just got a bit harrumphish when I realized that Linux is old enough so that the young'ins don't remember a time before the GUI. The same argument that shied folks away from early Linux is being raised in the face of the latest distros.

I cannot use a PC unless it has pictures and a mouse pointer. That is why I am sticking with Windows er, uh, Gnome or KDE.

MC is the very reason that I have such an allegiance to Slackware. From the first day MC, or should I say mc has been my best Linux friend. Allowing me to traverse the file system. Providing easy access to compressed files. Copy, move and rename at a keystroke. MC even gave me access to the mystical chown/chmod attributes with just a couple of keystrokes.

All of that brings me to this insight... Slackware, in its most fundamental state, is not about the end-user experience. Slackware is about Linux, the kernel, running the on a computer platform.

Quick, someone get the men in white coats and butterfly nets. Papa has really lost it this time.

While we wait for the funny-farmers to arrive let me meander on ... To over-simplify, Slackware is old school. Slack came out of an era when only mainframes ran *nix and users all enjoyed the same interface: green characters on a black CRT display. The Slackware distribution sought to emulate that stable, robust mainframe experience while running on a PC.

I will surmise that Patrick Volkerding sought then, and still seeks, to provide an environment in which the Linux kernel runs as well as humanly possible. I would even go so far as to suggest that this is his first priority. I predicate my assumption on the premise that if the kernel runs well then everything that runs subsequently will do so at an optimum level.

Modern Linux distros and modern users have succumb to the Madison Avenue ploy of selling the sizzle while Patrick Volkerding and Slackware are in the business of selling the steak. Users are welcome to enjoy any GUI sizzle that they like when running the old-school prime-cut Slackware.

Windows: Perception, perspective and definition

Having recently been tasked with responsibilities that include MS-Access, MS-IIS and MS-SQL I have a new found respect for the Windows "program".

Windows is a program that I run in order to provide access to the other 'services' that operate in the Windows environment. This is a subtle rhetorical point but it helps to clearly define my perception of the Microsoft "OS" and associated programs. I employ Windows as just another application suite. So much so that I have to specifically choose to run it. For me Windows is not the ubiquitous underlying foundation for my computing environment.

I suggest that if this is my perspective then sooner than Microsoft is comfortable with the general public's perspective will also be changing. I would further suggest that as the public becomes more reliant on hand-helds (cell phones and to a lesser extent PDAs) then the perception will change radically away from the Windows paradigm. Windows will become the archaic interface that we used to use when we were stuck in front of our desktop PCs.

For now I can affirm that when dealing with the Microsoft suite of programs then Windows is my first choice. For the rest majority of my computing needs I enjoy the comfort, speed, and robust nature of ... Linux.

Workplace Linux

Rory Curtis, a United Kingdom Software Engineer, writing at Linux And Other Rants did a nice piece by interviewing his work mates to get their input on Linux in the Workplace: What the Users Think. I thought I would follow suit and offer my answers to his questions as well.

Q. What motivated you to try Linux?

In a word, curiosity. I had been working with IBM's OS/2 and knew there were PC alternatives. The prospect of a *NIX clone was just too much. I had to give it a try.

Q. What did you think of Linux before switching?

I was the worst sort of noobie - I wanted Linux to be and do Windows. Took me the better part of a year and a half to stop being sooooo dumb. Unfortunately for Linux those were the days when office desktop software was a bit thin. Once I began to work with Linux 'services' then the light went on and I began to see its real potential.

Q. What concerns did you have about switching to Linux?

Pretty much the same concerns that I have had all along: now I have to support two Operating Systems. One that I felt comfortable in and could depend on, Linux. And one that I had to support professionally, Windows. From a Information Management perspective file incompatibilities (prior to OpenOffice and some others) made the prospect of rolling Linux out almost impossible. Thankfully that is behind us.

Q. What were the major issues you faced in Windows?

The 3 "C's" ... Cost, Complexity and Crashes. When evaluating Cost there is the unit price of the OS and then the cost of the programs and applications. Personally I could afford the hardware and the OS that was packaged by default but I could not afford the programs. I ended up with a nearly useless PC.

The Complexity of Windows has really begun to impact its value for me and my users. To attempt to insure a safe(r) computing environment it has been necessary to implement a large number of the draconian measures Windows uses to protect it self. Each time one of these measures in activated the user suffers from another layer of complexity.

Crashes = BSOD ... 'nuff said. (To be fair, Windows XP Pro is much better about this one aspect of my dissatisfaction.)

Q. What are the major issues you have with Linux?

The only real issue that I can cite is that of succession. With the "expertise" (term used very loosely) that I have gained over the years I have implemented Linux in key roles in my network infrastructure. A competent replacement, somebody knowledgeable in Linux, is probably too qualified to work in my market. Conversely, in todays market there are untold numbers of proficient Windows Admins.

Q. What do you miss most about Windows?

Absolutely nothing. I am, however, very frustrated that Lotus Notes has been so poorly ported to Linux.

Q. What do you like most about Linux?

(This is the question that prompted me to do this Q&A thing in the first place.) Linux allows me to stay current with evolving technology AND not go broke doing so. Thanks to the huge effort of Patrick Volkerding I have a great distro of Slackware (v.12) that runs my aging laptop very well. In addition the software meets and exceeds all of my computing needs. Last but not least, it is all legal.

Q. Any other info you would like to share?

Linux is not as difficult as you were led to believe. On many occasions I have had to load Linux onto my family PCs. While my wife and children prefer Windows they have never had any difficulty working in Linux. Aside from some rather esoteric operations (that require instructions in Windows too) I have never even had to explain how Linux works. They just sit down and use it like any other PC.

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I know from my work in Information Technology that Windows will be with us for a very long time. I know from my work with Linux that there are very viable alternatives available.

Rupert Murdoch had to pay for the WSJ somehow

So he raised the daily newstand price to $1.50 USD. Now here in Kentucky, unlike the big city of New York, a dollar and a half is real money ... most of a lunch ... so to spend it on a bird-cage liner is just too much. Sorry Rupert but I won't help you buy the WSJ - you have to do that on your own.

Hugh hijinx

So nice to see hugh back in action!

He gave a gift...

[He]...who knew how to bring about a work worthy of God.

The Man Who Planted Trees

Special Note:

In 1953, Jean Giono dedicated to the public domain his story L'homme qui plantait des arbres. English translations have been made, but copyright was and still is claimed in these translations. As this seemed completely contrary to Giono's purpose, in 1993 Peter Doyle made a new and fully independent translation, and dedicated it to the public domain.

[Note: The "Peter Doyle" link does not resolve. I am currently seeking an up-to-date link.]