The Wide Gulf: Techies and Ordinary Users

Posted on January 20, 2009 by ehurst

I seriously doubt any of my clients will ever be “Linux newbies” for the simple reason too many Linux people assume “newbie” means someone who will become one of the techies. That is, the term seems to assume this person will eventually have to see the commandline, and they better get used to it already. This arises from what I believe is a mindset which excludes other possibilities, even if subconsciously. So while I may get them using Linux, calling them “newbies” might be inappropriate.

Once in awhile I run across a Linux techie who actually seems aware of this. They realize there are a great many potential Linux users out there who will never be Linux techies. It will simply be the OS running on their computer, and that’s that. Today, honorable mention goes to Ed Ropple, AKA FishWithAHammer on Slashdot. Commenting on a Slashdot post noting Canonical is pretty much financially self-sustaining now, Ropple points out what is missing from Linux and Open Source development:

This post is a prime example of why you, and people like you, should not be involved in building user interfaces. That’s not an insult, don’t get me wrong. Techie types are valuable in areas where their expertise is useful. Trying to reason out how people actually use computers — that’s not an area of expertise for most techies. I wouldn’t have most UI designers writing code, either.

The GUI is less flexible, yes. That’s a drawback. But for the majority of people it is far more valuable because it does not require prior knowledge to operate. A button that says “Do Foo” with checkboxes “Initialize ‘Bar’ Subsystem” and “Provide verbose output” is easily grasped by an individual user (especially because it’s very easy to add tooltips to each of these in order to provide more information”. A CLI command of “foo -Bv” is much less easily grasped by an end user who is not already comfortable with the command line.

“Microsoft Word has committed an error and must be closed” is about the most useful information for basic users. What information could you give them that’s actually useful and valuable? The DLL that failed? Why will they care? What error did Microsoft Word commit? Again, why would they care? That information is available for me, as a technical user, if I want it — but I have to click a button to access it and it’s out of the way of those end users.

Users don’t want to know how their computers work. They don’t care about that. Users don’t want to have to learn how the CLI works. They don’t care about that. Users want a quick, relatively efficient system for doing their stuff, rather than doing the computer’s stuff. The CLI is not that system because the benefits of the CLI require more time investment and effort than users want to devote to their computer’s stuff when they could be working on their own stuff. A good desktop environment tells the user nothing that they don’t need to know and doesn’t ask for the user to waste time on the computer’s stuff, as far as that is possible.

Call it “dumbing down” if you want, but a great many users don’t need all the extra information. When told this, techies react as if there is something immoral about hiding details, as if the lack of interest in knowing just what really happened is somehow sacrilegious. It’s not.

Granted, it’s pretty tough to help someone who doesn’t have more details about what happened, but there are ways to generate reports. I don’t mean simply the bug reporting tools which scoop up the crash data and send it off to the coders. All they will do is consider ways to improve future versions. The likelihood that crash report will result in a fix for the user on their current system is about zero. For this reason I seldom attempt to make bug reports. The process of bug reporting compares favorably to kissing the developer’s butt to gain permission to do it, knowing it will never, ever make your life one bit better — unless you are willing to fight the damnably hard process of upgrading everything attached to the next release of whatever we are discussing.

In other words, this thing is so developer centric, they have precious little accountability to anyone outside their little team. I’ve had plenty of really decent human beings discuss with me what I might do to improve my experience with their product — Netsurfer and Elinks come to mind. Friendly response, useful suggestions, honestly answering my questions and making sure I understand. But you will notice those two projects are pretty much “free standing” — they can be built on a wide range of systems with varying releases of the dependencies. Less than a year ago, I built Elinks on RedHat 7.3, and it worked fine.

Why is it the developers working within really big projects — GNOME, KDE — and stuff which relies entirely on either one, can’t be bothered with such courtesy? What is it about those big projects which requires users to crawl on their faces just so they can support the project, a project which will do nothing for them in return? Do the bigger projects simply draw a different kind of developer? Are the smaller ones led by people who can’t tolerate that atmosphere?

I wish I knew. I also wish the bigger projects included more people who thought like Ed Ropple.

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Linux Elitism: It’s a Fact

Posted on January 19, 2009 by ehurst

(NOTE: This post is getting hits almost three years later. Many Linux fans still don’t get it. More explanation can be found here.)

Context: I use Linux. It’s the best there is, particularly for the way I work. I thank God for Linux every time I put my fingers on the keyboard, even though I know a huge number of Linux developers and packagers don’t care about God. Perhaps that’s part of the problem, but I’m not in a position to say. What I know is the folks behind Linux are quite elitist in at least one sense of the word: They are only interested in dealing with their own kind, and have no interest in what most computer users want.

Jeremiah T. Gray says Linux is not elitist. However, he refuses to actually answer the question. Linux as a community is exclusive, though not uniformly be intention. If it were a conscious choice it would be easier to prove it, but I believe we can make a case for disputing with Mr. Gray. As my friend, Jonathan Brickman says, Linux is elitist because the Linux community refuses to acknowledge the vast majority of computer users want something a little different than Linux people want. So much so that trying to adapt Linux to serve that market is a major problem. He should know; Jonathan has been working very hard at finding a way to make a Linux distro which actually meets that demand, and the existing corpus of Linux product is fighting every step of the way.

I’m not in a position to prove this by massive user surveys. I’m not sure that would serve any purpose, since it would surely result in skewing the sample, as the subjects would have to be self-selecting. Rather, I base my argument on the only thing I have which no one can attack: My experience serving hundreds of clients who are running Windows, and a few running other things. They all know I prefer Linux, and most of them probably understand why, because I’ve advocated for Linux since I first began using it. The one thing sticking out in my mind after the last decade or so is my clients’ lack of interest in upgrading. The first response spilling out of the brains and mouths of the Linux community is how wrong this is. Fine, make all the technical, or even moral, arguments you want about how wrong it is for people to avoid change. That’s a good excuse for refusing to deal with the very real human race out there who need you most. I contend, from the billions of folks out there who actually use a computer, it’s a tiny slice who are willing or interested in upgrading and changing what they use. Sure, they may wish for this or that small feature change, but if that change came at the cost of having to learn it all over again from scratch, most would say, “No.”

My friend, Mark Falcon, lays out an example of breakage typical with Linux upgrades:

[Y]ou can imagine my frustration when I found out that my VectorLinux of 5.9 will be replaced soon by the latest and greatest update. Now I will give them an A for effort because they provide a program that allows you to save your “stuff” to be used after you reinstall but that doesn’t cover all the customization you do. Things like background pictures, number of desktops and their names, iptables changes you have made to get things like VNC and file sharing working, and on and on the list goes. I’m sorry but I’m tired of updating.

This seems to be the norm for Linux distros, not just Vector. I can’t say what response Mark may have gotten from his complaints on the VectorLinux forum, but I’m willing to bet they were unsympathetic. Indeed, when I have broached the idea with various other Linux distro representatives, and folks who spoke for various projects used by just about every Linux distro, it ranged between, “Sorry, that’s the way it is,” on one end, and words of hostility unprintable on the other end. There is no room in their minds for the concept of a stable release, with some maintenance to keep it working and secure. There is no maintenance at all. There is only the push to the next version.

The next version is seldom a trivial upgrade. If only a couple of projects here and there did this, no one would complain much. Instead, it seems there is no project doing it any other way. Worse, a vast sweep of product which is called “Linux” is all so deeply interlocked, you rarely ever get to upgrade just one thing. This is the source of the phrase “cascading dependencies.” Every project is related, and all are moving forward. To update any single element of the whole requires updating almost the entire system itself. Every fix is rolled into an upgrade, but God forbid anyone should ask for a fix to be applied to a previous release. If you aren’t mentally programed to upgrade continuously, either from the source or through the packagers for your distro, you aren’t part of the community — you don’t belong.

The vast majority of computer users can’t fathom such a mindset, and can easily explain the problems with it. They want something they can install, run for as long as the hardware works, and only apply a few patches and updates. They don’t want to upgrade, and I believe they shouldn’t have to. There was nothing inherently broken on some really good releases of certain Linux distros back in 2000, for example. There are machines which kept running those distros for a good long time. In fact, so powerful is this concept, the two largest commercial Linux firms (RedHat and Novell) focus their sales on releasing distributions they support for seven years. Because this is where the mass demand is, those two go through the hassle of hiring developers who will work out how to apply patches back to older versions of software so it won’t disturb a working system. This is what most of the world expects.

Does the Linux community want mass adoption? I have to wonder if that isn’t just an excuse to whine, and I consider Mr. Gray’s piece dangerously close to that. If the folks developing Linux aren’t going to meet the masses where they are — it’s called “serving the customer” — they can’t pretend to offer them anything. Linux will remain an exclusive club of snotty elitists to the extent they refuse to consider stable releases and long-term support.

Posted in computers | Tagged , | 16 Comments

Progress on the Fitness Trail

Posted on January 18, 2009 by ehurst

Some readers may be aware I had been working on carving a fitness trail through some woods near my home. The plan is to create a large loop over varied terrain, suitable to walking, running or cycling, but too narrow for the numerous four-wheeler recreational vehicles out here. They have plenty of fun trails already, and they aren’t suitable for much of anything else.

Our trailer park is situated on the southern edge of this woodland, and rather near the western edge. My son and I had begun clearing on the east side, but ran into a hitch. Our path circled around a pair of lagoons which serve to purify the waste water coming from the trailer park. Some vandals, most likely rowdy punks living here, did some damage to the water flow controls. Because of the legal liabilities, the management of the park was required to forbid all residents “trespassing” on the eastern side of the park. That meant we had to stop working on the trail there.

However, we were free to continue working to the north, since that part begins on the slender portion of land just west of the park. There are three sections of woodland separated by open areas originally plowed down for streets, as the land was at one time slated for development as a pricey little neighborhood. It has been fallow since then, used by deer, squirrels, rabbits and four-wheelers. The first section we had finished some time ago, and the second was started. For awhile really nasty weather made it impractical for us continue our work. However, just recently we had some unseasonably warm days when we weren’t working, and made some progress.

To our surprise, the second wooded section contained some fairly clear areas, so the cutting was quite minimal. In just two days we’ve carved out a very twisting path over 200 yards in length. We are now just a few more yards from clearing the second patch of woods. In the process, I’ve completely worn out the limb-loppers. The steel cutting faces have bent and curved away from each other. Further, the point of contact between them has worn to the point the cinch bolt cannot be tightened any more. I’m down to the methods I have used from the very beginning two decades ago: machete and ax. That is, in order to maintain the “mulch in place” ethic, I simply hold a branch against some dead log or stump and chop it up in little pieces with the machete.

However, the third section on the north end promises to be quite a bit more challenging, as I have clawed my way through it once already without tools. It will also be the most varied terrain so far, since the path I’ve scouted runs in and out of the woods (to keep four-wheelers off of it) and through a couple of very thick thorn bush patches. It will also cross an area where the original clearing called for some cuts through a stone out-cropping.

Perhaps by the time we get that far and start turning east, then back south, the necessity of keeping residents out of the east side can die quietly. Management is completely sympathetic to our project, and they want us to keep it going.

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In the Prison of Lies

Posted on January 17, 2009 by ehurst

The yard in front of the house had become a mud pit every time the yard thawed at mid-day. There weren’t many rocks around, but he had suddenly recalled small slabs of asphalt working loose up on the roadway, in spite of the repaving being new. The traffic was gone. Nobody drove out here anymore since the bridge collapsed, and there were no funds to replace it. It was probably the same shoddy contract work which produced the new pavement and new bridge. And there was really nothing to see out here, so it was hardly a tourist destination. It had always been a place to pass through on the way to some other place. That’s probably why he could afford the price of the old farm well back off the highway, using the money he had saved while serving in the military.

The cold wind was his only companion as he scanned for the closest loose chunk of the brittle black surface. There, on the opposite side, at the edge of a pothole — a pair of cracks running back from the edge almost met. A couple of gentle taps at first, bumping the outer edge to get a leverage point with the pickax. Then, stepping around to the other side, he wrapped both gloved hands around the end of the handle and pulled. It resisted a moment, then popped up with an odd sound.

It was about three fingers thick, as he had expected. What he had not expected was what lay beneath. Instead of the battered concrete of previous paving jobs, it was almost a thin sheet something not quite cement. It was more durable, showing little of the scratches it should have had from his working with the pickax. His curiosity got the best of him, and he worked loose a few more slabs of frozen asphalt, which he would have eventually done anyway.

Eventually he had uncovered a panel of this odd material. With the edges exposed, he dug around a bit, found it was very heavy, but could be moved. He hadn’t worked this hard since last spring, when the tiny, one-wheeled plow broke and he had to turn the whole garden with a spade. The flat edge of the pickax was almost too thick to wedge it down along the edge of the panel and the ones adjacent, but he finally got it up enough to drag away from it’s place. It was too heavy to actually lift, but some clever twisting and pulling of the pickax and some gravel to make it roll, and he was able to slide it over like a lid.

What he saw underneath froze him colder than any winter wind which blew across this rolling plain. It was the top of a car. It had been crushed flat, but not like the ones you could find in derelict salvage yards down toward the now empty town. This had been pretty new, but squashed by something with cleats, like a bulldozer. Because of the haphazard folding of the top, there was a portion where a section of the front seat was exposed — and finger bones.

At first, he was shocked, then wondered what sort of skulduggery got somebody killed this way and buried under a road project. As the days slipped by while he collected more slabs of asphalt, as much out of curiosity about his find as actual need, he reassembled the chunks into a very nice patio and drive. All the while, he managed to lift more of the strange panels and the numbness set in as he found more cars. Apparently they had been smashed in place, because they neatly filled the space under the panels. The cleat marks indicated multiple passes over the entire road bed, which had been filled and built up over these crushed cars, three across. All the while, he kept detecting a faint odor his unconscious mind recognized, but not as a normal smell of human burial, with or without proper mortuary processing.

One night, he woke with a start, covered in sweat and tears. The smell. In his dreams he saw the helicopters dropping canisters over the Afghan villages which had the misfortune of being inside enemy territory. The containers dropped to about 20 feet above ground, shattered into fragments and releasing a heavy, descending mist. Wherever the mist drifted, flesh quickly fell away from bones and the screams died away surprisingly fast. In a few hours, it was safe to send ground teams through with no apparent ill effects to collect what few weapons and intelligence items might exist. Only that odd, faint smell lingered.

All those crushed cars with skeletal remains, the symbol of crushed lives, used to fill a low spot for a road. What lies had been told to explain their disappearance? Whom could he tell? Whom would he ask about it? And who would believe it?

That very night found him struggling in the blistering cold to lever all those panels back into place.

Here in the US, we are so deeply surrounded by lies, it’s hard to explain. Sometimes it is the facts which are outlandish.

The very ground under our feet, as it were, hides a vast cavern of hidden truth. We can’t imagine how bad it really is, because all the noise we hear, and the sights we see, coming from those we trust to tell us what is going on is staged half-truths. While most news reports are factual, it’s what they leave out, buried out of sight, which makes it all a huge lie. It’s huge, too audacious to imagine. We pass over it every day without wondering what’s hidden, because everything conspires to reduce our skepticism. About the only way to find out is to find ourselves with a target painted on us.

No one in this world is innocent. All are fallen. If every law and rule were enforced, every breathing human would be under sentence, even in the earthly sense. When we view the justice system from a broad scope, we find the only real purpose is keeping the people cowed before government. Should it be human frailty causes no real harm to anyone else, but simply presents a challenge to government prerogatives, those sentences are harshest. Those who fall under such harsh justice realize clearly the word “justice” is a complete misnomer. These will tell you we are all in prison already.

You are told stories by the press and mouthpieces of the system how justly these wretches deserve their punishment. It seems plausible, until you become one of them, and discover how completely false is the image painted. And to all appearances, the people who paint those false images truly believe the falsehood they promote. So twisted is the mind which serves the system, it is utterly alien to those of us outside it. When someone who has frankly done no injustice to others finds himself crushed under the system, there is nothing left but to embrace the identity of criminal. A few will embrace true evil, but most simply realize it’s another name for “slave.” The difference is, they sense the chains, while most of us do not. They can do nothing right, so there’s nothing to gain by being careful to avoid confrontation with the State. The government mouthpieces call this “recidivism.”

For those who simply cannot believe this has become the reality in the US, you are the most pitiful of slaves. When the mindless bulldozer of the State runs across your life, it will probably be too late to realize. It was never about the needs of the governed, but the convenience of the bureaucrats who cannot imagine the needs of others. This is not simply an anarchist point of view, since I certainly have a clear idea of government as God intended it. Indeed, my objections are entirely biblical. The biblical response is not so much to fight back, but also not to condemn those who do fight back.

America, the largest prison on Planet Earth.

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Cycling Is Fun Again

Posted on January 16, 2009 by ehurst

For the past few weeks I’ve been having some trouble riding. Aside from frequent harsh cold snaps, I’ve been having some pretty bad swelling in my right knee — the one that has been rebuilt.

I prefer to use natural remedies, but sometimes that’s not the whole answer. So along with the Glucosamine and Chondroitin cream, and the Peaceful Mountain ointment, a little Ibuprofen helped take down the swelling. So today’s 10-miler into town was pretty nice in terms of my legs, and I had no trouble getting back the same way.

It didn’t hurt my friend didn’t want me to show up until after the thermometer rose above freezing outside. I suppose I could handle riding down as low as 20°F (-7C), and have done it, I’ve had aluminum bike parts break at that temperature in the past. Perhaps they were already near the breaking point in terms of wear, or maybe they were just cheap junk. Maybe the fact I’m 230 pounds (104kg) doesn’t help those parts much. Still, it’s risky business riding out that cold, and we’ve been that cold or colder too many hours the past few weeks.

It means being particularly careful with the feet, hands and face. I generally avoid closed surface clothing like nylon because I would sweat even as I’m freezing. I just layer on the cloth and wear heavier jeans. On the feet are genuine leather boots with wool socks. They’ll get cold, but even wet from perspiration, wool keeps warm for a long time. Gloves are easy in my case, since I have good stuff from my days in the military. For my ears, I wear a stocking cap under a knit head band. Below 30°F I wear a polypropylene mask over my face, up to my eyes. It means I can’t wear any glasses because it redirects breath moisture upward to fog them, but it’s a worthy compromise. I also slow down a good bit when it’s that cold.

The one good part is no more flats. After adding thicker puncture resistance tubes and protective strips between the tire and tube, I’ve not had to worry about anything but air pressure. So with the pain under control and weather more reasonable, it’s been rather pleasant.

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Why Must I Say This?

Posted on January 15, 2009 by ehurst

It’s been a long time since I ran into this issue. I’m fending off the aggressive commenting by a particular gadfly using an IP in Finland. As with all such folk, this one takes offense at my suggestion his pet deity (Debian Linux) is something less than worthy of worship. Since I am such an awful person, nothing I say will ever be correct, as s/he and s/he only holds the truth on this topic.

Sarcasm aside, let’s clarify: This is my blog.

In case that doesn’t register, let’s go a step farther. This blog was established as a place to express my personal opinions on things. How it is my opinion on anything matters much to others is beyond me, but a couple of people have asked me to do this. Frankly, I don’t really expect too many folks to read this blog. The subtitle should make it clear I don’t take myself that seriously. You are welcome to see what comes from my fevered imagination, and maybe even to comment. What you aren’t welcome to is my soapbox. When I say your comments are off-topic, they are off-topic. If you seek to disrupt the proceedings, you’ll be blocked by what few measures I possess.

If you really must state your opinion, go and start your own blog — it’s free. WordPress has been very nice about allowing the world some access to their servers, and I can’t imagine anyone with a Net connection can’t somehow create one of their own here, or on many other free blog space providers on the Net. Feel free to link back to my posts here and say any number of nasty insulting things you like. I have no quarrel with that. By posting my thoughts on a publicly accessible format like this, I make myself a target. However, I reserve the right to deny you the privilege of posting such things here.

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In Over My Head: Blinux

Posted on January 15, 2009 by ehurst

For the past couple of years, I’ve been doing what little I could to assist a friend of mine going blind from Macular Degeneration. He managed to obtain some help from the Veterans Administration, so it’s not as if we are wrestling dragons. They gave him a computer loaded with lots of assistive software costing way more than average folks could ever afford. In the process, I have been exposed to some issues for which I frankly have no talent. As long as he can see some of what displays on his huge HDTV monitor, we can get by working together. When that, too, slips away from him, I’m not sure I can do much for him except simply do it all for him by running it hands-on.

The experience has caused me to explore Linux for the Blind, or “Blinux.” This more than just screen readers and magnification. I took the time to play with the version of Orca bundled with CentOS 5 and it’s quite disappointing when compared to the expensive ZoomText my friend uses. Those who are completely blind have long had better resources, taking advantage of the superiority of Linux on the commandline. If there is ever a real “Brotherhood of the Commandline” it would surely be blind Linux users. Apparently their number one tool is Emacspeak. Having sampled some of the Emacs world, and hating it entirely, I realize I won’t be getting too familiar with Emacspeak. There are other tools, and new ones appear every year, it seems.

There is something about this whole issue which is burned into my soul: Awareness of a disability is most of the answer. With my friend, it’s a challenge for him to embrace what is happening to him. He is so used to operating visually, and frankly pretty lazy at that, he struggles to develop any sort of habits based on non-visual cues in his environment. Because of the peculiar collection of experiences in my life, I have a pretty strong awareness of such things, and have done my best to explain those habits to him. It doesn’t help he feels he is losing mental acuity because of his age, past 80 years. I suspect he surrenders too easily, but I surely understand where that comes from.

If your choices are limited, and you possess enough character to fight for some things, I’m sure you’ll do what you have to do to get what you really want. Each of us has to find our own peace with the tension between how bad we really want something and whether the costs are worth it. Without writing a book on the details, I assert from experience I have more interest in helping my friend than is matched by real abilities. It’s not just Adult ADD, but that’s a big part of it. I don’t shortcut a learning experience for him because it’s easier for me; I do that when I can’t find a path for him to learn. I’m not his coach, and he hasn’t ceded to me any particular responsibility for making him do things he doesn’t want to do. I’m just a friend, so I suggest things I understand. If that doesn’t interest him, then I offer to simply do the work for him. Even if some were to allege he’s not fully competent, I would violate my own convictions to press harder than that. I have my own peace of mind, peace with God, to consider.

One thing stands out in my mind: I can surely appreciate the Linux commandline, and the lack of interest in graphics. More and more I run across websites consisting of one huge multimedia plugin presentation. It makes me downright angry, and few things in my life trigger that response. The awareness of how that frustrates my friend burns brightly, and I know it affects many others. Philosophically, I accept the notion of letting webmasters do what they please, as long as it doesn’t affect my computer. I turn off functions in my browser which hand over too much control to others. Indeed, I usually prefer to view the Net through a plain-text browser. This is how I reduce things to match my limitations. Frustration is hardly strong enough to describe what it feels like when the website in question is the portal to something critical in my life. I have a very hard time believing things have come this far without site developers being aware of blind computer users, and others who experience troubles using those technologies which serve to exclude them. However, I reserve the greatest anger for those webmasters who react ungraciously when contacted on this issue. It makes me long for a stronger community for supporting standards, which would deny such people access to the Net for their servers, because it strikes me personally.

I’m not sure I can do much directly to help the blind Linux users community. At the same time, I feel as if I’m almost a part of it.

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Forcing Upgrades: Not Just Open Source

Posted on January 14, 2009 by ehurst

Just to recap: I’ve stated complaints about the broader Open Source development culture, in which there is a lack of support for older releases which work well. This is matched by entirely too little backward compatibility. All of this is fine if your computer and OS is a hobby, but if you really don’t want to give your life over to the never-ending chase of the latest version, you are out of luck. Almost no developers in Open Source will spare you a moment’s concern. Further, broaching the issue has sometimes resulted in unnecessary hostility from those developers. These same projects openly beg for patches, but won’t accept them if they apply to an older release you may be enjoying. This is not about the stereo-typical crankiness of hackers, some of whom do so well with computers because they don’t do well with people. This is software development which maintains a closed loop inside a rather tight community, and exhibits zero awareness, even hostility, to more ordinary computer users.

Compare this to commercial software development. To be fair, when chasing the almighty dollar, it can easily get worse than with Open Source. With the Linux community, it’s simply a cultural bias, a rejection based on the nature of the beast. Any hostility is probably more a by-product than a root element. However, in the commercial world of Intuit, it’s about rape and pillage. They’ve been advertising a lot on TV lately — when I, who despise TV, can notice an ad campaign on TV, it’s pretty big. It’s really sad to realize so very many ordinary users will experience such expensive sorrows from a company with a long record of consumer abuse. Instead of a casual disregard, they actively plan to hold your business data hostage. There can be no other explanation for smiling sweetly and telling you to hand over your wallet as the price for fixing something which is a known fault in their software. They haven’t fixed it and don’t intend to, since it serves as a cash cow.

Similar allegations might be reasonable for a large array of standard consumer software products. All the more detestable this is since they easily waste more money advertising their products than they would dream of spending on making it better. I recall walking through a particular chain store for a hands-on examination a particular product. Ubiquitous signage and a couple of vehicles out front were promoting something with a green and black logo. A salesman confronted me with the question, “What firewall do you run on your system?” My response was, “IP tables.” He paused a moment, started to deliver his pitch, then stopped himself as he recognized I was talking about Linux. He turned away to pursue another shopper. It may actually be a decent product, but it’s an add-on, compared to Linux (and any other implementation of Unix) in which the firewall is built into the kernel, and requires no extra resources. The Windows OS itself it not a consumer product, but a marketing channel.

In this, Open Source remains incidentally better. That is, no one is after my wallet, and no one promotes their project for material gain. Instead, the Open Source community as a whole seems intent on pursuing some dream, or at least scratching their own itch within the context. We who use Open Source benefit from that scratching. When the motive includes competing head-to-head with commercial products, we get things like Mozilla and OpenOffice.org. Included in that competitive spirit is a certain amount of backward compatibility, which is usually missing from just about all other Open Source projects. Thus, these inclusive projects get the notice because people have discovered it is competitive, even better for some uses, and costs nothing. This causes them to at least consider running an Open Source OS, but something stops them.

That something is lack of support. Sure, we need to educate them as to what they should expect, but there is one thing they will never accept. It’s not money, since we aren’t selling the software, but the other kind of investment — effort to install, to make the migration, to learn a new way of doing some things, etc. These investments often pay too little in dividends compared the awful liability they accept, which means the never-ending upgrade chase. That price is too high.

I care about those people. I want them to have something better, because I know the miseries they experience running Windows. I see it every day, and cannot escape thinking how much better off they would be with Linux. But I know they can’t afford it, unless I can convince a few other folks to work with an ideal restricted to too few Open Source projects — long-term support.

I have no idea how I could convince, for example the GNOME Project, to support fixes for the version I run on CentOS, 2.16. Nobody associated with that project will touch it, despite this being one of the better milestones in the history of the project. Were it just one or two packages, this would be a minor thing. But this is so deeply hooked into the system, it would mean rebuilding more than 50% of the binary code on my system, and guarantees breaking several things I’m using now. “Nobody said you have to use it.” Fine, should I use KDE, which is worse? You can’t tell me the GNOME people haven’t done their very best to make theirs The Standard so people would hardly consider running Linux without GNOME. Indeed, near as I can estimate, the GNOME desktop is the default for most Linux distros. The GNOME folks like it that way, and have actively campaigned for it. So while they can claim no one is forced to use GNOME, they know it’s not precisely true. The problem is not using GNOME, it’s how GNOME developers use people. That is, they want your support, but give none back.

The same goes on varying scales with all too many Open Source projects. How do we bridge the gap? How do we get some greater part of the community to reach out to those who can’t chase the latest and greatest upgrade? In my obscure and feeble way, I’m working on making one of the few stable projects a little easier to handle, by seeing if I can repackage CentOS. That’s the shortest path I can find right now. Please, forget my name, but help me help others.

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Coffee Like Paint Remover

Posted on January 13, 2009 by ehurst

Nobody else in my household drinks coffee, but I love it. However, I’d rather do without if I have to drink that paint remover sold by Folgers.

I started drinking coffee when I was 12. Living in Alaska, as I walked home from the weekly Boy Scout meetings, it was a good way to warm up. There was a laundromat about half-way home that allowed us to drink a free cup, as long as we didn’t make a mess. After a couple of weeks, I was hooked. By age 16, I had to have my own pot and started drinking it daily.

Since then, I’ve tasted some of the best and some of the worst. An example of the former is any cup of fresh brew from any of the Dutch railway stations. The government of the Netherlands owns Douwe Egbert, and sells that brand in rail stations, usually instant brewed rather like the so-called pod type coffee makers sold in department stores here. Only the stuff there is too good to describe. I suppose it has something to do with the Dutch practically ruling the seas about the time coffee became popular in the West. As I understand it, the Dutch have a pretty tight lock on what comes out of Indonesia and such.

Our Colombian coffee here in the US is actually the dregs of the market. While there is some decent stuff grown there, for some reason most American brands are just awful. One of my Dutch friends worked in some government office there having to do with tracking shipping, and told me the coffee dealers consider Colombian the “left overs” they didn’t want when the Dutch began gaining control of the market. I sampled some Folgers Custom Roast (“Mountain Grown” in Colombia) this week, and I could not take it. If we were reduced by economic troubles to only that brand, I’d stop drinking coffee. Something that bad could make you hate coffee. For just a few cents more per can, you can get at least Yuban, which isn’t so bad. Even that cardamon coffee from Palestine I once tasted is better, and I don’t like cardamon at all.

Anybody want some Folgers? I got a great big canister full.

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How Will We Survive?

Posted on January 12, 2009 by ehurst

Economics: The study of human habits, particularly in the aggregate, regarding the exchange of things of value.

For the sake of discussion, let’s assume the worst. Governments collapse with the economies and utter anarchy takes over. Split out security concerns for a moment, and lets look at the collection of things we need to consider for mere survival itself. You have to breathe, eat and drink, and remove waste. You have to meet weather conditions and face all those natural threats to health which have nothing directly attributed to human decisions. Further, we invariably live in family groupings, for any number of reasons. Indeed, an isolated nuclear family has little hope of surviving in these conditions. At a minimum, you will want an extended household encompassing not less than some 20 people. The most basic fact is, you can’t do it alone for very long.

At the most primitive level, humans harvest their needs from natural sources — hunting and gathering. There will be long periods of inaction, due to the vagaries of natural supply, so storage becomes a concern. Not just keeping stuff, but keeping it from rotting, from vermin, etc. Still, such a life is very time-consuming, and invariably risky even without the interference of external human forces. You seek ways to reduce the workload and the risks.

Because we are humans, bright ideas about survival efficiency are shared and kept. Should any household produce someone particularly talented at thinking up bright ideas that actually work, that household gains a survival advantage against other households competing for the same resources. Unless most of the world population dies off with the governments and economies, you will face competition for limited resources, never mind hostilities arising from competition. Very quickly you realize specialization of skills is valuable, provided you have enough people involved. Someone who is really good at catching food animals can free up a couple of other fellows for farming, building, or whatever other tasks promote survival.

Specialization of labor creates a de facto economy — an exchange of products of labor. Provided we don’t all suffer massive amnesia, we will tend toward this sort of thing without much consideration. Inside a household, it’s instinctive someone will be in charge in some way, and bickering over whether the internal exchange is fair will be squelched. As the size of the group grows, this becomes increasingly difficult to mediate. At some point, the whole settles into a routine, out of some instinct, of discerning the relative valuation of contributions based on how much more do we want of a given product of labor, and how much we are willing to sacrifice to get it. That’s the old “supply and demand” stuff at it’s most basic level.

To survive a meltdown to any degree, you will have to discern opportunities to supply a human need or want, in an environment where you can get something back you need or want. Minimizing artificial concerns which might tend to prevent your adaptation, your acceptance of tasks which produce value but are not in your comfort zone, is an adjustment only you can make. Ridding yourself of fantasies regarding your ability to create a demand which does not exist, forcing people to accept and trade for what you would rather produce with your time, could become the most burdensome adjustment you’ll have to make.

The luxuries we once valued will become dim memories as we struggle to get the bare essentials lined up. If in your daily existence up to now, you have closed off opportunities to develop skills and talents suitable for such dire conditions, you will have a very hard life. It may be a very short one, because we can’t ignore security concerns for very long. Indeed, should things change a great deal very quickly, a primary vocation of value would be providing security. It would help a great deal if people can adjust quickly their notions regarding legitimacy of authority as is commonly perceived today. Instead, consider what you can actually do or not do without painting the issue as one of sacred trust, and forsaking the civil religion which subtly infuses our Western world. Whether someone is “duly elected” or “duly appointed” means nothing when they come to take your stock of food. What matters is whether they can actually offer enough force to carry it through. Civility and trust between humans is a necessity for life, but slavish reverence for “government” is a senseless luxury. I assure you neither the government itself, nor your competitors in survival, will find themselves restrained by such reverence.

While it would be useful to gather physical property which will enhance your chances of survival, you’ll be guessing at best. Nobody but God can tell you how bad it will be. Just the question of whether electric power will remain available is wholly unpredictable, with the probabilities shifting daily as we observe the fireworks of social collapse. Should things really go too far, just keeping a few scraps of your private holdings may become a monumental task. However, in a very broad sense, mere conceptual property will not help you — stacks of paper with numerical values associated based on some imaginary scheme, not to mention even more imaginary electronic data in some computer somewhere. You know, bank accounts, paper currency, deeds of ownership, etc. The system which makes those things valuable is already coming apart. To the degree you have any hope it all, it would be in converting those things into tangible property. Furthermore, you will be required to exercise some discernment in selecting what sort of tangible items will be valuable.

If electrical power becomes scarce, power tools become useless. Electronic devices become even more useless, barring those few which still serve some contextual survival purpose. Those will become even more precious if they have internal power for which there is some hope of recharging. Hand tools and weapons will always be valuable, with those devoted to the most common tasks becoming the most valuable. Anything human powered will be much more useful, including transportation. Conceptually, you would seek to identify things which allow maximum independence in their use. Example: bicycle tires which resist puncture, because you can’t afford to trust the system to keep the route free of debris which might poke holes. You have to consider independence in the global sense, and minimize our exposure to reliance on others. This improves your bargaining stance in dealing with a world suddenly become more hostile.

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