Society

On Flamewars

2008-06-19T09:30:37+02:00

It has been mentioned very often, but xkcd captures this idea perfectly: face to face meetings help. (This is no comment on any conversation that might be going on right now, it's just the most recent cartoon.)

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On Flamewars

2008-05-21T08:21:33+02:00

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Dear IRC user

2008-04-30T11:18:35+02:00

Or should I say dear Lucas? Although this is more relevant for the people wanting to talk to Lucas on IRC. I recommend to use the leading edge technology set forth in rfc 2821 and 2822 for this mode of communication. I admit this is extremely experimental technology, but it might be worth looking at nonetheless.

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China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, USA

2008-04-16T08:16:46+02:00

These countries together are responsible for almost 90% of the documented deaths by capital punishment (source: Amnesty International.) Note that the self-proclaimed leader in freedom and democracy is in there, together with some of its allies as well as the country entrusted to hold the worlds biggest sports event.

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Vendor lock-in for children

2008-04-09T08:12:24+02:00

Children should be trained at an early age that the only real OS comes from Redmond. Stupid gadgets reinventing the wheel and then using Windows-only drivers for their non-standard interfaces.

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OOXML

2008-04-03T09:12:22+02:00

The thing to do: require Microsoft and its cronies to write a strict OOXML document parser/verifier and release it under the BSD license as a starting point for other companies' work with OOXML documents. And require them to offer free support to all companies wishing to publish OOXML compliant documents (without any vendor specific extensions) on how to do that with their M$ Office products.

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Educated Artists

2008-03-21T23:07:27+02:00

Many artists use the problems of current society for inspiration. I am therefore optimistic in the sense that if artists are seeing freedom as a serious problem in the post 9/11 world, others outside of tech-oriented circles will finally notice as well. Bruce Schneier pointed out TSA Gangstaz a few weeks ago and now Frontalot's Secrets From The Future (the latter is even offered as an Ogg file, and the lyrics shows surprisingly deep technical understanding, so these guys seem to really care about this issue.)

Anybody working on art related to patent or copyright law? (Not a rethorical question, this blog does have a comments feature!)

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The Inevitability of Victory

2008-03-19T14:22:11+02:00

Notwithstanding my recent nod to a sceptical article about Linux on the average user's desktop, I think that Linux has already won the “war” where it's important, namely in the minds of many people. (Yes, this is a response to Russel's posting with the same title.)

Why? Because, first, many people do indeed see it as a war where there has to be a winner and a loser, and second, when I talk with people who never have seen Linux, or with people who'd never seriously consider switching to Linux (in business or for their home needs), most of them talk about not having tried it yet or it not being ripe yet. So the general expectation is that they'll only stick with (expensive, buggy, hated, ...) Microsoft software until they feel confident about switching. So the task is not to convince them that they should try Linux, but that they might want to try it now. Or at least that they might want to try Oo.org, the Mozilla family of programs, the Gimp etc. on Windows, so that they have an easy time when it's time to change the chassis underneath (is there a Windows port of Digikam?)

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Linux on the Desktop: The Agenda

2008-03-11T07:40:56+02:00

I think that Matt Hartley is spot on on his Top 10 Linux Desktop Hurdles. Commented:

Regression testing is hard. Assuring that hardware that worked will still work in the next version of the distribution is where many Linux distributions fall down. At least I think Debian here does better than some others.
Mobile devices. I've written about this already some months ago. I want to just plug in my smartphone and sync it with my calendar application. I don't think this is too much to ask.
Software compatibility. I don't do video editing and I'm comfortable with the Gimp, but I witness people having difficulties with OpenOffice.org all day. Mostly, it's because either they were MS Office power users and stuff like form letters are different between the packages, or it is because the state issues silly form/macro based MS Office documents.
Wireless. Hmm. I haven't had real problems with Wireless in quite some time. But then, I know that I need to watch what kind of hardware I buy, so YMMV.
Hardware compatibility lists. Debian doesn't have one, so that's apparently a good starting point ;-)
Compiling drivers. I don't understand this complaint. The user should never even come to the point where he needs to compile a driver. But I think here Debian with module-assistant is quite good.
The Patent Trap a.k.a. I Want To Watch DVDs. This is a serious issue, and will probably not be going away unless some heavy duty political stuff is happening. Organisations like PubPat and the new End Software Patents initiative will help. In my opinion, though, these are not taking it far enough. Patents are monopolies granted by the state — in all other areas (post, railways, telecommunications), it has been agreed that monopolies are bad, so why not just abolish the broken idea of patents, too?
Off the Shelf Software. Hmm. My clientele is not the lone Linux user at home but the business user who has an IT support dept, so I don't see this issue for me.

Issues #9 and #10 is just “the community sucks” in nicer words. He's not wrong as such, but I think Matt's view is pessimistic on these.

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iTaser

2008-01-22T15:08:47+02:00

iTaser: I never can remember: Were these the earplugs, and those the 50000V stunners, or was it the other way round?

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