From the Eye of the Storm

drgndancer @ 2009-06-18T23:07:00

2009-06-19T04:07:35Z

Just downloaded iPhone 3.0 operating system. Seems pretty good so far, but on my first gen phone it moved all of of my downloaded apps from the second and third page of my home to the fourth and fifth. Needless to say this confused me for a bit. I was actually on the phone with Apple tech support by the time I realized what happened. So if it looks like your apps are gone, check your later pages before you panic.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

Tragic

2009-06-04T23:54:26Z

I am going to have to kill the smaller of my two dogs. She's always been a bit neurotic, and once ate a set of aluminum mini-blinds when she was a puppy (Yes "ate", not damaged, not pulled down... Ate. There wasn't a square inch without at least one hole, and most of the blind bits were torn into pieces shorter than 3 inches). She proved to be one of the rare dogs that cannot be crate trained (or at least after a week or so of coming home to crates lined with a layer of... well.. really gross stuff, we decided it wasn't worth the pain to crate train her), and eventually we were forced to get her a dog of her own. Our Golden Retriever is normally a calming influence and mitigates the worst of her neuroses.

Not today. My wife is out of town visiting her parents, I was at work, and apparently the Golden boy managed to lock himself (but not her) in the bedroom. Being alone must have instigated a panic attack. She destroyed the vertical blinds in front of the sliding glass door. Pulled down every single slat but three, and broke two of those three chewing on them. Most were whole, other than the piece at the top where they used to attach to the hangers, but quite a number had been chewed in half or into smaller pieces. Not nearly as thorough a job as she did on those aluminum ones all those year ago, but more than sufficient to makes the blinds unusable until I can get to Home Depot and get replacement slats.

Sigh.

Looking for ideas

2009-05-18T22:38:29Z

Loooong time no post. So, I want to try and develop an iPhone app to make a few bucks and just get some practice doing development (which I haven't done seriously in a while). So the question I have is: What kind of mobile apps would you like to see. I don't care if you have an iPhone, or even a smart phone, just give me some ideas of things that you'd like to be able to carry around in your pocket. I'm not an expert developer on these things so I'm not going to be able to write a fancy game or anything easily, but I'll take any ideas you come up with. Thanks in advance.

In Memoriam

2009-01-04T15:26:32Z

Skadi- Small friend, Happy purr-box. May Bast watch over you as your journey moves beyond the Veil

You were loved, you will be missed.

Happy New Year

2009-01-01T15:31:05Z

Welcome to 2009 everyone. I hope the new year treats you well. The tail end of 2008 has been tough, but I am really hopeful that 2009 represents a new start. Here's hoping that all of us have a great new year!

Safety and Illusions

2008-11-08T03:59:13Z

People are scared. I just read an article saying that many churches keep armed guards on hand during weekend services. The airports are full of security that would be trivial for a professional to bypass, but which is designed to show "presence". Kids go through metal detectors to get into schools, even in ares where gang violence is unheard of, and danger practically non-existent. People fear gay marriage (how the Hell can two people joining their lives together be scary? Well, for anyone but them...), a black president, a depression. People are scared.

Why are people scared? You can blame the media, the interconnectedness of the world. After all, a lot of fears of school shootings, pedophiles, and internet bogey men are the result of the news broadcasts that imply that these rare problems lurk on every street corner. You can blame churches and religion, instilling fear of the other, the sinner, the one who seeks to tear down society. You can blame the politicians, who tell us that their opponents are not just wrong but actually evil. You can blame many things, and many of them do deserve some share of blame.

Really though I think it's our culture. We have a culture of fear. It's easier to fear things than learn about them, deal with them. It's easier to think that gay people want to convert your kids than it is to understand and deal with the fact that they're just wired a little differently than you are; to think all Muslim are terrorists, than to actually meet and understand a few Muslims. If you fear something, it is categorized and dealt with on an important mental level. It's more efficient to fear all Muslim than it is to figure out which people, some of whom happen to be Muslims, are actually dangerous.

We fear things that we don't understand, but because understanding things is hard we'd often rather fear them than go through the effort. Don't misunderstand me, there is stuff to fear out there. Sure there is. There are bad people in the world. Some of them are black, some white, some Christian, some Muslim, some gay, some straight.

Taking the easy way out, fearing the other, creates two set of problems. It puts you in the sad position of fearing a lot of things and people that don't need to be feared. This hurts the people being feared as well as the people in fear. It also blinds you to people who are bad, and who are not the other. The rapist in your congregation, the Christian terrorist. The ones who seem to fit your world view, but really are dangerous.

Fear is a natural thing. There are times to be afraid. To live in fear though, to always be fearful of someone or something is no way to live. The simplest cure for fear is often knowledge. Meet a Muslim, or a Wiccan, or a Gay person, or a black person. Most likely what you find under the label is a person.

drgndancer @ 2008-11-04T22:06:00

2008-11-05T04:10:32Z

All major networks (including even Fox News) have declared Barrack Obama the winner of the 2008 Presidential election. This makes me Happy. Congrats President Obama.

New job Post

2008-09-11T02:37:17Z

So, I started my new job on Tuesday. I'm really pretty happy about this, although living in a hotel room in Huntsville for the next couple of months is likely to suck a bit. Do to some stupid problems with various computer systems my security clearance wasn't ready when I started, so I haven't actually been able to do my job yet. That came through today, and I should be able to get on my job site tomorrow. So far about all I know is that my job has lots of lovely people in its HR department and the benefits are pretty good. I worked a half day today, because there was literally NOTHING I could do until my new "I cans bes trusted" badge comes through tomorrow.

Huntsville seems nice. The area surrounding Huntsville is BEAUTIFUL, and the town itself seems to have a certain charm. Of course, at the moment I know no one and am trying to explore with little but my GPS system to guide me, but there's an Apple Store and a couple of Irish Pubs, so it can't be all bad. I'm going to try to do some more intensive explorations this weekend and see what can be seen.

I'll write more tomorrow actually I actually know what I'm supposed to be doing here :-)

Irony is Fun

2008-09-02T04:07:39Z

the storm is over. We kept power for the whole thing and took no major damage. I'm posting this from my phone because our cable (and hence Internet) died around dinner time. No idea why, I figured I'd call tomorrow. They're probably busy.

drgndancer @ 2008-09-01T14:55:00

2008-09-01T20:02:08Z

Still kicking and haven't lost power yet. The eye is about 30 minutes to an hour away. It's pretty damn yucky out here, but definitely survivable. Hopefully the power stays, I was playing World of Warcraft earlier. Everyone stay safe, we're doing fine here so far.

Blogging from the Storm

2008-09-01T16:05:23Z

Sitting in the house watching the Hurricane go by. So far it's no worse than a sustained, fairly bad, rain storm. That wont last, but so far so good. The wind is picking up even as I'm typing this. Storm is looking like it's not going to hit quite as hard as expected, but it's till going to be a bit of a ride when the eye come by. Hope everyone is well. I'll let you know as soon as we're through. I should be able to update on my phone even if we lose power.

New Job

2008-08-30T16:09:47Z

Well, it hasn't exactly been low stress but I received an offer from a company in Huntsville, AL. I'll be starting Sept 9th, and everything is looking good. I'm pretty happy with the offer, pretty happy with the job, and pretty happy with the area we'll be living in. Huntsville looks like a great place to live with a moderate climate, fairly nice people, and a fair amount of "not like the rest of Alabamaness" I'll be working for a DoD contractor called "Colsa" whom I'd never heard of before this, but it seems like a pretty good company. About my only real concern is that I'll be working directly for a team from different contractors (Boeing and and company called TBE). Worst case scenario I'll work at this for a year or two then try to find another job inside Colsa. We'll see how it goes.

For the time being we're holding tight on Gustav. Lafayette is pretty far inland and a storm would have to be both extremely powerful and pretty much perfectly placed to really impact us. We may pull out yet, but for now we're not planning to. If we do evacuate we'll probably head toward Huntsville and ride the storm out near there. Do some looking around and such.

iPhone 3G, Free Software, and Annoying People

2008-07-12T04:02:12Z

So, as you might have noticed (unless you live in a cave), the iPhone 3G was released today amid much fanfare. A friend of mine posted an article related to the release by a guy named Richard Stallman. Now, if you happen to be knowledgeable about the history and politics of Free Software, you know who this is. He's fairly famous actually. Stallman is the President of the Free Software Foundation and the developer of the GPL (GNU Public License) used by Linux, the gcc compiler, and and a whole host of other software.

When we talk about "Free Software" as it relates to Stallman, the FSF, the GPL and GNU we are talking are talking about software whose source code (the underlying programming language code the software is written in) is publicly available. It may or may not be be "free" in the sense of costing nothing. To use Stallman's own phrase, it is "free as in speech, not free as in beer". I'll warn you now this post is a bit ranty, kind of geeky, and even a little bit political, so feel free to skip it.

So Mr. Stallman wrote about the iPhone. Unsurprisingly he does not plan to buy one. Which is fine. He really believes that Free Software is better, philosophically than closed software, and I can understand and respect that. Richard, feel free to not buy an iPhone. For Gods sake man, stop lecturing me for buying one, and please, please stop misrepresenting facts to "convince" other people not to buy one. I'm going to go through Mr. Stallman's rant, and counter rant to several of his point. Why? Because I have a blog dammit, and I feel was kind of pissed off by the preachy tone of the whole thing. (How can I be pissed off by Stallman being preachy? I don't know. I should be pretty used to it by now).

Very first point:
"Phone completely blocks free software. Developers must pay a tax to Apple, who becomes the sole authority over what can and can't be on everyone's phones."

This is simply untrue. It's a fact that to put apps on the app store you have to pay a small amount of money ($100). It's also true that Apple has chosen to screen apps that they put on the store to make sure that the apps don't impact the business model of the phone itself. Arguably this is a bad thing. Having said that, nothing prevents you from publishing the source code of the applications you develop. Nothing prevents others from seeing that code and perhaps changing that code. In fact (and I'm not totally sure about this, but I don't see how Apple could enforce anything else), nothing prevents people with an iPhone Dev kit from compiling and installing the app on their own phones outside of the app store, as if they were "testing" their own application.

Second point:
"iPhone endorses and supports Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) technology."

I can't deny that iPhone allows DRM. It also allows non-DRM. It's pretty much DRM agnostic. Which in Stallman's world seems to mean that they "endorse and support" DRM. In fact, Apple has been pretty reasonable about fighting against the DRM that most big Music companies insist on, but they're also realists who'd like their music store to have some music on it. If they completely refused DRM they'd have Yet Another Failed Music Service, with tracks from exclusively independent bands (which, don't get me wrong, I like, but you can't make money selling ONLY their stuff).

"iPhone exposes your whereabouts and provides ways for others to track you without your knowledge."

Like every other GPS enabled cell phone on the market. If this is a criteria for you, more power to you, but your phone options are pretty limited at this point. A warrant is actually required to access this information though.

"Phone won't play patent- and DRM-free formats like Ogg Vorbis and Theora."

True. I don't care much, but I can't deny the truth here. I actually wouldn't mind Ogg support, but MP3 works fine too. What the Hell is Theora?

"iPhone is not the only option. There are better alternatives on the horizon that respect your freedom, don't spy on you, play free media formats, and let you use free software -- like the FreeRunner."

This is pretty damned debatable. In fact, later in the article he says: "We have a choice. The FreeRunner doesn't yet do as much as the iPhone and it's certainly not as pretty." The fact is that the Freerunner (while mighty cool looking, don't get me wrong) is only actually being sold in ONE store in the US right now (though it is, in theory, available online. I couldn't actually manage to get one in a shopping cart, but I didn't try very hard. Let's call it "available but hard to get").

I like Free Software. I've USED free Software. I've CONTRIBUTED to Free Software, both in a financial and a testing and developmental sense. I have no problem with Free Software at all, and freely admit that in some cases it is the best solution available. On the other hand, if I have a choice between a working solution, fairly polished and very usable; or something Free which does not actually appear to even be easily available and which even one of its strongest proponents admits lacks functionality... Well, I pick "a". Sorry if it makes me an imperfect human being, but I'll take "usable, friendly, and available" over "less functional, not as pretty, and how the Hell do I get one anyway?"

And calling Steve Jobs a "snake oil salesman" just seems a little harsh. He never claimed to sell Free Software, Therefore he never lied about selling Free Software.

New Toy

2008-06-12T03:15:29Z

I finally did it. I went to Best Buy this weekend and acquired myself a cute little MacBook. It's one of the smaller plastic models with a 13.3 inch wide-aspect screen, 2.4 Ghz Core 2 Duo CPU, 2 GB of RAM and and an Intel video chipset that can share up to 128 MB of RAM (it's the most "meh" part of the computer unfortunately). I've been using the MacBook Pro that work provides me with pretty much exclusively (my newest personal computer is nearly five years old), but I decided I really needed my own computer. Among other things I've been thinking of developing some cute little app or other to try to sell when the iPhone store goes live, and I can't do that on a computer owned by work :-).

I'm fairly please with the little guy so far. I've got most of the applications I need installed, threw a Windows partition on using Boot Camp, and I no longer have to lug a computer back and forth from work. The smaller screen is sometimes a pain, but in a pinch I can get an external monitor for it and dock it. The portability factor is nice. It's not as small and light as an Air, but it's considerably less to lug around than the Pro. I like the keyboard too, which surprised me because in theory I hated it. When I first saw these "chicklet" keyboard I thought they looked horrible, but in practice I actually like using it quite a bit. Nice feedback.

I wanted a black one, but the black is only available with the most expensive version of the laptop and it's basically $200 extra dollars for the black option (well technically it has a larger hard drive, but there is no way that 90 GB extra hard drive space is worth $200). The best part is that Best Buy was doing a Father's Day special and I got 24 months interest free financing. That's like not even $60 a month to pay it off before I pay any finance charges. I had been planning to use my tax reimbursement thingie to pay for it, but I don't think I'll bother now. That can go into savings.

In Which he Waxes Political More

2008-05-11T16:05:28Z

I am beginning to question Senator Clinton's math skills. Don't get me wrong, I like the woman well enough. I have a preference for Obama as the Democratic nominee, but I was and am perfectly willing to vote for either in the general election. This whole math thing has really got me bothered though. It started with the "Gas Tax Holiday" proposed by both Senator Clinton and Senator McCain. Like most political sound bites, this one sounds good on the surface. We'll just not tax your gas for a few months and save you money to spend on other thing.

Great.
Cool.
Wait... Doesn't that money, you know, pay for something?

Why yes, it pays for the maintenance of roads. Maybe you live somewhere that the roads can go a few months without maintenance, but here in Louisiana we'd probably start losing cars by month two. Yes, I realize that the formula is not as simple as "no gas tax for 4 months" = "no road maintenance for 4 months", but in the end what it boils down to is that our already non-stellar roads will suffer with less maintenance. Senator McCain's solution to this seems to be a caviler acceptance of worse roads, Senator Clinton has a "better idea". She's going to tax the oil companies instead (Out of their "record profits"). Because, you know, the oil companies won't say. "Oh! Gas costs us an extra $0.18 a gallon to make... I know... Let's charge $0.18 more a gallon!" They're really generous those oil companies... They'll just take the hit.

So, the "Gas Tax Holiday" is a mediocre idea to begin with. It'll wind up costing us somehow, we'll pay for it either with worse roads, or just shifting our direct payment to the oil companies (who will then pay the government) rather than the government. For the sake of argument though, let's say that somehow we could do this in such as way that it had no negative impacts. How much money are you actually going to save in a "Gas Tax Holiday"? Well someone here did the math. He posited a person driving the least fuel efficient vehicle he could think of, an H2 at 11 MPG. He then found that the average person drives 6000 miles in a four month period, and discovered that during the gas tax holiday our average Hummer driver will drive 545 gallons of gas. At $0.17 a galon he'll save (drum roll please): $100.

Across four months.
$25 a month.
In a Fecking Hummer!
W00T.

The non-Hummer driving crowd (most of us), will save a lot less unless we drive a lot more than average. So don't spend all of your $17.00 a month in one place. Unless, you know, you need gas, because even with a tax holiday you'll be a an unusual person if that much money is even half a tank.

So, the "Gas Tax Holiday"... Not great math there, but hey, everyone makes mistakes. Then there is the task of counting delegates. I will grant you that statistics is a lot more complicated math than multiplication, but luckily CNN has made it much easier. Go here to see the nifty slider thing that the nice folks at CNN built for us. You slide the little bars back and forth and they tell you about the delegate count for each candidate if they win that percentage of the vote in a given state, or amongst the super-delegates. Now, have fun here. Give Senator Clinton 65% of everything. Assume she's not only going to win every primary between now and June, but that she's going to win big, and the she'll get a significant majority of the unclaimed super-delegates. Guess what? She's still not the nominee. Now go really wild. Give her 70% of all the available state delegates (as a note, short of Sen. Obama turning mass murderer between now and June, there is no possible way she will win that big in every contest.) Obama still only needs 38% of the remaining super-delegates to win...

I will grant you, it is not mathematically impossible for her to win. There is the "Obama turns mass murderer" possibility; but come on now. She needs to beat him by a 40 point margin in EVERY REMAINING STATE to make this even a near thing. Even then she'd need a 24 point margin in super-delegates (Which isn't really all that "near"). 40 points! I just don't know what she's thinking. As a side note... I don't think either candidate has won any contest by that large a margin in the whole primary season (Sen Clinton might have won Arkansas by that much, I'm not sure, she did clean up a very large majority there)

So, yes, math. It's fundamental to a good education, and a great skill to have; especially for the leader for the free world. If, by some miracle, Sen Clinton manages to win the nomination I will vote for her, but right now I'm really feeing that she's lacking this key skill. Only the fact that Sen McCain's math is worse would save her.

drgndancer @ 2008-04-17T12:35:00

2008-04-17T19:39:46Z

I haven't posted in a while, but I heard something on NPR this morning that so made me go, "huh?" that I just had to talk about it. John McCain apparently talked about his new health care plan recently, to contrast it with the Democratic plans. Now this information may have been available before, but this is the first I've heard of it. Essentially, Sen. McCain's plan seems to boil down to "Let the market figure it out". He'd like to move away from employer sponsored health care and instead move to model where everyone buys their own health insurance. His idea here (and if you don't think about the plan at all, it almost sounds sensible) is that people will make better and more informed choices about health insurance when they have a choice.

The problem, according to Sen. McCain, is not that people don't have coverage (wait? what? something like 20% of Americans have no insurance and many more are under insured), it's that their choices for coverage are by and large limited by their employers. If you have a cheap employer, you might pay 75% of your premiums and get crappy coverage. Conversely, my employer might consider health care a priority and I pay might 20% of my premiums for better coverage. I might pay less for better coverage, because my company puts greater emphasis on the benefit than yours. If we were on a level playing field, all just shopping for the best deal, then you would only have yourself to blame for this situation, but right now it's your employers fault.

So on the face of it, there's something here. Like so many Republican free market ideas, there is a certain surface level "power to the people" glow to the whole thing. Hey, it works for consumer products, why wouldn't it work for insurance. Then you think about the idea (or at least I did), and you think, "wait a minute here..."

Insurance through employers (as well as the national health care plans proposed by Sens. Clinton and Obama) work on a a pair of complementary concepts called "economies of scale" and "shared risk". Both of these concepts require large numbers of people to be in groups of some sort to work, and both work better the larger the groups are.

"Economies of Scale" is the same general concept that allows big box retailers to discount their prices so much over smaller businesses. It basically boils down to "the more volume you do, the less you have to make off of each sale." Why? Well it's pretty simple. Ordering big volumes keeps shipping costs down, having a large number of low skill employees keeps labor costs down, square footage is usually cheaper the more you rent, Suppliers will usually sell to you cheaper because they know you'll order again and again. There are hundreds of little ways that these stores can shave a few pennies off of their costs, and in the end it all adds up to lower prices.

Insurance works the same way. It's not appreciably harder to manage a fund that pays for one person's bills than it is to manage one that pays for 1000 people's bills; but if each of those thousand funds had to have it's own manager, vs just one for the 1000 person fund, who do you think has higher labor costs? An insurance company might pay a team of 10 or 20 people to manage all the costs and benefits for a company, say, the size of GM... On the other hand that same insurance company will likely pay around 50 people to manage a similar number of people broken up over 100 or 200 smaller companies with the same total workforce. Start breaking it down to individual people who number in the same range as GM's total work force you're probably talking 100 or 200 people to manage the same number of customers. This is why GM sized companies get better health insurance deals than 20 person law offices, and why 20 person law offices still get better deals than individual people.

"Shared risk" is the other huge concept here. Let's say that I put together a fund for myself to pay for my health bills, all on my own. I put $200 a month into my fund on the theory that I'm young and not likely to get all THAT sick. 3 years from now I discover that I have cancer, and it's going to cost $10,000 to treat. There's not enough money in my fund.. I've bankrupted it, and unless I have some more money lying around I cannot pay for my treatment. Now let's say that I started my fund with 10 friends, and ALL of us put in $200 a month. Each of us has put in $7200, and mine alone wouldn't have covered my treatment. Luckily, the deal was that it was all available to all of us. Now there is $72,000 that I can draw on for my treatment, and my partly $10,000 is a drop in bucket. The chances of ALL of us getting an expensive disease in the same three year period are pretty slim, so the risk is spread out. If any one, or even 3 or 4, of us has to have a $10,000 treatment the fund can handle it... and since we continue to contribute to it after our treatment, it'll recover some or all of what we took out before the next person needs it. We're still screwed if someone needs a $100,000 treatment, but what if we increased our pool to 100 people?

Now the favored way for insurance companies to manage shared risk is by not insuring risky people. As a healthy 34 year old non-smoking male, most insurance companies are happy to have me.. I keep putting money in, but rarely take any out. As I age, they'd prefer to ask me for more money.. after all, I'm that much more likely to need to take out all, or even more, than I put in. If I get seriously ill, they'd prefer to drop me completely, unhealthy people are a poor investment.

The reason that old and unhealthy people can usually get coverage through jobs is simple. Companies won't have it. It would be a logistical and recruiting nightmare to have to charge different amounts to different employees, or worse to have to tell some employees that they can't have the coverage that everyone else does because they're a cancer survivor, or have high blood pressure. They say to the insurance companies: "Look I'm buying [10,20,1000,100000] policies here, most of which will be profitable to you, you have to cover everyone." Faced with the loss of 7, or 15, or 8000 profitable polices over 3, or 5 , or 2000 less profitable one the insurance companies go ahead and take their chances.

Economies of scale and shared risk form the backbone of the current health care system. Sucky as it is, those two concepts keep it from sucking even more. Both Democratic candidates understand this and seek to leverage these concepts to improve the over all quality of health care by increasing the size of the pools. If GM is better able to employ economies of scale than our fictional law office, which in turn is able to do better than a single person, what about a pool the size of the whole population of the country? In theory this maximizes both the spread of risk and the scaled economics. It should (in theory) provide the absolutely cheapest per person cost, because the pool is as large as possible. Are there problems here? Yes. Do the Democratic candidates disagree on some of the details? Yes. But based on how the industry works now, the underlying theory is sound. The most coverage for the most people with the minimum overhead.

Sen. McCain's plan ignores these realities. There are no economies of scale in 330 million people all talking to their own insurance agent about a health plan. Worse, it frees insurance companies from one of their most burdensome current problems... With no one person trying to negotiate fair rates and coverage for all of his/her 10, 20, or 1000 employees, there is no one to prevent insurance companies from insuring and charging as they please. Which means that the weakest among us, the old and infirm, are going to be the first ones with little or no insurance, or else paying through the nose for it.

Elizabeth Edwards, wife of former Democratic candidate Sen. John Edwards, cancer survivor, and current victim of a relapse which is sadly likely to kill her, said it very well. She simply noted that under Sen McCain's plan, she and he would finally have something in common. Neither would be able to get health insurance. You see, John McCain is a cancer surviver himself.

Now I admit that I'm a pretty liberal guy... I'm usually inclined more toward the Dems than the Republicans so maybe I'm just biased here; but I just can't see how any reasonable person could see this as a good idea. It seems, if anything, calculated to make matters worse rather than better. Maybe there's more here that I'm missing, like a law requiring the insurance companies to cover everyone,and placing a ceiling on the cost. If that's the case please point me toward the information, because I can't find it. One of his planks is to ensure access to all Americans, but he doesn't really say anything about how. Even with that, I'm not clear on how he plans to save money while not leveraging the biggest money saver available, economies of scale. I just don't get it...

The Year, it is New

2008-01-01T16:00:57Z

May it be happy for you!

::Giggle::

OK, so I'm easily amused, have a happy New Year anyway.

Linux-The Free

2007-06-23T04:09:55Z

Talking about "Linux" is a bit like talking about "Wicca", or "Paganism". There are an almost infinite number of flavors, rabid fanboys (and fangirls) abound, and no one ever seems to agree on anything; but underneath all of that is something really worthwhile. Linux comes in a number of different releases or "distros", each produced by a company or team that may or may not be out to make money. The reason that this happens is that Linux is not technically an "operating system", it's a kernel. For those without a computer background, consider a kernel to be the smallest and most important building block of an operating system. It's what allows the rest of the operating system, and in turn the user space programs, to interface with the underlying hardware. Everything else in the operating system layers on top of the kernel. This being the case, keep in mind that anything I say in this post may not be true for some particular version of Linux. It should all be true for most of the major distros, or you should be able to replicate anything I talk about with a minimum of effort.

Linux is "free". This has nothing to do with cost (although you can find a number of distros that don't cost anything), but rather with the fact that the kernel source code is freely available. This may not seems terribly important to a non-technical user, but it has a lot of advantages for developers. Usually the source code for most or all of the applications is also available. Some Distros are really into the "free" thing and won't accept "binary only" contributions, others are more interested in selling you an overall product so they care less about the origin of every little piece. In either case nothing stops you from installing any software you want.

Linux has a number of strengths: It's extremely stable on reliable hardware, was born and bred for networking, It tends to be fairly secure out of the box, and its cost can be quite low (nothing). You might note, if you've been paying attention, that these strengths very closely mirror Window's weaknesses. This is generally a point of pride for Linux distributors. Unfortunately I can't claim that Linux is without its own weaknesses. It has sometimes serious software and hardware support issues, it can be very confusing to configure, some things still requires the command line to do, and taking a broken Linux box to your local "computer guy" isn't necessarily going to help you out much.

From a purely technical point of view, Linux is an excellent operating system. it is strong in all of the areas that a "git'er done" technical user expects. Assuming no hardware problems it is nearly impossible to crash a Linux system (programs crash, but not the operating system), because of the way is protects kernel memory from user space applications. I've seen Linux systems run at 100-200% loads and remain stable.
Linux originated as as server operating system, and thus is very network aware and has lots of security tools built in as a rule. Linux even has firewall and routing capabilities built into its kernel. It is quite possible to use a low power linux box as the firewall/router for a small to medium network to protect all of the other machines from Internet attack (I did this for an number of years until I decided that a little Linksys router took up a lot less room in my office.) It is high customizable and modifiable, which programmers often like, and can be as pretty or starkly usable as you choose.

If the ability to securely and reliably operate were the only things that defined a "good" operating system, then Linux would have very little competition (and what competition it would have would be from other even less well know Unix based systems), but unfortunately, people also have to be able to use the system. Linux has come a LONG way in usability since I first installed a system 10 years or so ago, but there are still issues.

The most glaring issue is hardware and software support. Lots of hardware remains unsupported or partially supported on Linux. It should be stressed that this lack of support is not the fault of Linux developers or the Linux community. Vendors often refuse to release either drivers or the specification that Linux programmers would need to write their own drivers. This puts Linux at a big disadvantage against Windows (which always has drivers) or MacOS (which is put on custom built hardware). Various printers, wireless network cards, scanners and a host of other devices simply won't work or require lots to tweaking to work. Software is a similar story. While you can usually get Open Source equivalents to software packages (OpenOffice.org to replace MS Office, GIMP for Photoshop, Firefox fo IE, etc), they steepen the learning curve. Now you have learn a new OS and all new apps. Plus some stuff has no equivalent. World of Warcraft keeps me in the Win/Mac world at least part of the time.

The good new is that all of this is improving, the bad news is that it's happening slowly and often in spite of rather than because of the vendors involved. There are systems to allow you to play Windows games in Linux, or run MS Office, or whatever, but that still isn't the same as having a native version. Similarly there are several systems to fool hardware drivers into thinking they are talking to a Windows kernel. None of this fixes the underlying lack of vendor support. Linux is in a bit of a vicious circle right now. Vendors don't want to spend money to support it because of a lack of install base, but the install base grows more slowly than it could because of lack of vendor support.

Linux also has some issues with usability. This has improved immensely from when I first started, but is not yet perfect, or even as good as Windows. You often have to drop to a command line to perform administrative tasks that fall outside of the abilities of the GUI admin tools. Such changes are not hard if you know what you are doing, but not many people do; and even those with a technical background might feel less comfortable on a new system. Many of the tricks and tools available to make some of that semi-supported hardware work require complicated command line magic for instance. You also aren't going to find a Linux expert in every IT shop or local PC fixit place. So when you do need these complicated command line tasks done, you have to look them up and type them in yourself.

As I mentioned earlier, Linux is extremely configurable. Some argue that it is too configurable. With nearly every detail of the user experience subject to change and customization, there is a very real chance that my Linux desktop will resemble your Linux desktop so little as to make them unrecognizable as the same OS. This is non-ideal on corporate desktops where IT would really like to be able to FIND your network GUI SOMEWHERE please. Not to mention the fact that it can get confusing to do simple things like change a desktop behavior because there are so many different options (Just what is the difference between "focus on mouse" and "focus on click"? and how does that relate to "mouse on top" vs "click on top"? Ah the wonders of Linux). We can hardly ask the Linux programmers for fewer options, and I for one prefer this way; but some people are confused by all the possibilities.

Linux is an exceptionally powerful OS, and it gets easier to use all the time. Many if not most of the remaining issues are not the fault of the developers working on the OS, but neither can they be ignored. It is a shame that so many vendors still fail to support Linux as well as they could or should, and it makes the OS less powerful and useful than it could be. There are still issues with configuration and you need to drop into the command line more often than seems reasonable for "normal" users. On the other hand if you can get past the initial setup and get replacements for all of your software, You have one of the most stable and powerful systems in the world under the hood.

Windows-The Default

2007-06-18T02:58:21Z

I mentioned a few day ago that I might do short series of articles about the "big three" computer platforms from my perspective. As a systems administrator I've been in a position to use, administer, and evaluate all three platforms, and look at the strengths and weaknesses of each. My most recent post was more or less one long bitch about a particular experience with a particular version of Windows. I'm going to try to avoid that here. When I talk about "Windows" I mean the platform, from a management and usability standpoint Windows hasn't changed much between WinNT and WinXP. Unless I mention otherwise, assume that I mean all version when I say something. Vista changed a lot of things, but it too can be brought back to looking more or less like an NT desktop. So without further ado, let's talk about Windows.

Windows is the default desktop of the vast majority of the world's computer users. This fact is changing, slowly, but it remains true that most technical support reps don't ask you what operating system you use, they ask you what version of Windows you use. Many people simply assume that in order to function a computer must have Windows on it. This is, in and of itself, Window's greatest strength (some would argue that it's also a serious weakness, more later). If you buy Windows, or a PC with Windows pre-installed, you know that you have all the support, software, and expertise in the world lined up to help you. You almost never have to worry about whether the local computer support company handles Windows PCs, or whether that new software package comes in a Windows version. "Gee, I wonder if this website was tested on Internet Explorer," is not a question that occurs to people.

Windows has become so popular and so well supported that it is a de facto standard in the computer industry. Other Platforms must work to interact with Windows, not vice-versa. If you have a Mac or a Linux PC you are often a second class citizen in the eyes of corporate IT. Often even if they want to support you they have no idea how. I live in a small city, we have a Best Buy, a Circuit City, a couple of larger local chains, and several small computer stores. All of them support only one type of computer. I had to drive over an hour today to replaced one small piece on my Mac, I could practically walk to a store that supports Windows PCs. It almost doesn't matter what other strengths and weaknesses Windows has, to most users and most support types Windows==Computer.

So given this, Why would you want to use anything else? What possible disadvantages could there be to the most supported OS anywhere? Well, there's price for one. Windows and MacOS both cost money, and Linux vendors sometimes charge for support, but new non-OEM version of Windows are flat out expensive. The prices they charge to system integrators are considerably less so you're protected somewhat when you buy an off the shelf system, but if you want to build your own computer or upgrade from an earlier version expect to pay a premium. At least as it compares to Linux, Windows is also a resource hog and often requires a much more powerful system than you really need just to run the OS. This seems especially true with Windows Vista, as I talked about in my previous post. If price is a primary concern, than Linux is a lot cheaper both in terms of the OS itself and the hardware needed. MacOS is cheaper to buy upgrades for, but since it is tied to its hardware judging those relative costs is harder.

Interoperability is another concern with Windows. Microsoft has designed Windows to interoperate very well with.. well.. Windows (and other Microsoft products), but doesn't really mind much about how it interoperates with other systems. Granted this is not usually a problem for most people, but if you have a legacy backend you can't afford to replace or ("gasp") non-Windows machines on your network it can be a big problem. Microsoft is notorious for claiming to follow standards while "extending" them in ways that breaks compatibility with other systems.

The legendary disadvantage of Windows, of course, is security. A quick look at security websites like Security Focus shows that Windows servers and workstations have far more known holes and exploits than other OSs, and Microsoft server packages are similarly flawed in comparison to their competition. Microsoft is also known for covering up the holes it discovers on its own, using a practice called "security through obscurity". The idea being that if hackers don't know about a hole, they can't exploit it. This practice is largely depreciated in the security community for the simple reason that no one knows whether hackers have discovered a hole until they exploit it. Leaving a vulnerability unpatched until someone finds an exploit is effective only until someone finds one and exploits it.

Many people argue that Windows is no more or less secure than other OSs, but it is a larger target because of its popularity. This makes some sense, but is not much of an excuse. The Pentagon is a "larger target" than the Walmart in Peduca, Kentucky, but no one claims it is less secure. It's also worth pointing out that the Apache Open Source Web Server is actually slightly more popular than Microsoft's, yet still has fewer and less critical vulnerabilities.

Claims that Windows is less stable than other platforms are not as accurate as they once were (though I've heard that Vista systems have been fairly unstable for some). Windows 2000 and Windows XP don't have the rock solid stability that one looks for in a server OS, but they don't really need it either. Windows 2003 server seems stable for the limited uses I put it to. The BSOD that NT and NT Server users and admins could expect regularly puts in a lot fewer appearances these days. On the other hand, given good hardware Windows remains somewhat less stable than its competition. It also requires reboots for an uncomfortable number of tasks. One can avoid rebooting a Linux system for literally anything other than kernel update, Windows seems to need a reboot after virtually any install or upgrade. Workstation versions are also very insistent about reboots after the install of updates from Microsoft Update, and can't be left alone less they make the decision for you in the middle of an important download.

Finally, I often find that even years after networking became an integral part of computer operating systems and use, some parts of Windows networking subsystems seem "bolted on". For instance, when a Mac or Linux computer has a network drive mounted and it loses communication with the server, it will log the problem and either disconnect the drive or quietly try to fix the issue. In the event that the user tries to access the data, the computer will inform the user that it is unavailable. When the same thing happens on a Windows machine, the OS takes no notice of the missing server until someone tries to access it. Once someone does try to access the share Windows will simply... go away. It focuses all of its will and effort on trying to find the missing server, and often can't be reached for minutes or even half an hour. You can work in open applications, but access to the file system through Windows Explorer including the start menu and desktop are gone. This is only one example and there are plenty of others (piss poor built in support for multiple NICs is another). Microsoft still seems to think that the network is less important than the local computer, but this is becoming less and less true.

What is boils down too is that Windows is not a particularly good OS. It's not terrible by any stretch (at least not anymore), but it often has the feel of "good enough". Microsoft knows that they have by far the most popular OS in the world, and they know that more or less everybody relies on their products. Even users that dislike their products often don't realize that alternatives exist, are frightened that they won't be able to learn a new system, or can't migrate because some app or other is Windows only. Microsoft doesn't have to make Windows any better, because people will use it anyway. They add bells and whistles (Aero anyone?), but leave the core intact, because it is easier and cheaper and because they can get away with it. In the end I think the best thing that could happen to Windows would be to loose enough market share that Microsoft is forced to notice a competitor; and make itself into the innovator it always claims to be. </lj>

Windows Vista

2007-06-15T17:42:41Z

Wow! Two posts in a week! What a wild guy.

Several people on my f-list and on goddessmusings's f-list have made posts in the last month or two about purchasing new PCs, thinking about purchasing new PCs, or upgrading PCs. Most of them have had to do with, or will have to do with, Windows Vista. Microsoft's latest operating system offering has the press divided on whether it is the best or worst thing to happen in the recent history of computing. I've seen some serious and very worrying complaints about its DRM (Digital Rights Management, the stuff that tries to make sure that only you can listen to that new song you just downloaded from iTunes) model. I've seen claims that it is a huge resource hog that will bring even lower end new hardware to its knees. On the other hand I've seen some very nice reviews of the look and feel and usability, and some people seem to really like it.

Now as many of you know, I am a systems person by trade. My primary workstation right now is a MacBook Pro Laptop provided to me by my job. I've previously used Windows up through XP extensively and am a competent, though not certified, admin of Windows machines. I am also a skill UNIX/Linux sys admin, and am currently employed as the senior systems administrator for a data center full of powerful Linux supercomputers. All of this to say that I know something about the computers. We get along.

So, if you care, this is my experience with Microsoft's latest, and theoretically greatest, OS. I'm one guy. This was one machine. Your milage may vary, but it makes this experience no less painful. Windows Vista is "teh sukc".

One fine afternoon a few weeks ago, my dear wife and I ventured into the deepest darkest pits of the Best Buy laptop section in search of a new... err... laptop (good place to look I know). After looking over the options, we decided on a new HP desktop replacement . You've no doubt seen the type. It has a big screen, wide aspect ratio, full sized keyboard with a numkey pad. The system specs were good: Athlon X2 CPU (Dual core), 1 GB of RAM, pretty high end hi-def sound, and an Nvidia gForce go video card. It uses shared video memory, and the RAM was a tad slim, so I sprung for another 1 GB memory DIMM too. It turns out that the system only has two memory slots and they were both populated with 512 MB cards, so I was only able to get it up to 1.5 GB with the upgrade. Eventually I'll probably acquire another 1 GB stick to bring it up to 2 GB, since it will be used at least partially for Photoshop.

Being a new laptop, our purchase came pre-installed with Windows Vista. Being in the profession I am, I'd read plenty about Vista, and while a lot of it was bad, some of it was good. Most of the "good" was about the ease of use and other design factors, and this was a computer for a non-geek. goddessmusings isn't an inexpert user, in fact by most standards she is an expert user, but she is still a user. Since Vista was supposed to be easy to use, I thought we'd leave it.

As soon as we got home I tried to install the new memory, but I didn't have a laptop screwdriver handy and the screws were too tight for my little jeweler's screw driver. No big deal, 1GB is plenty of RAM for most purposes, I only wanted the extra for when she started using Photoshop. I decided I'd go get a screw driver the next day and install the extra RAM, meanwhile it was software install time.

First and most important software to install was World of Warcraft, the MMORPG we're both addicted to. This is not an easy process. The game comes on 5 HIGHLY compressed CD's, the expansion pack (which HAS to be installed, because our accounts are upgraded and can't run on without it), is another 4 compressed CDs, and then there's a few hundred megs worth of patches to download. It takes a few hours to do. The results were highly disappointing. The game was unplayable.

The thing about WOW is that it's not a new game, and it was never intended to be a resource hog. We're not talking Quake 4 here. I used to play it pretty happily on the laptop SGI gave me which had an older P4, 512 MB of RAM and a crappy Intel video chipset. On this brand new, pretty well equipped machine it ran like a three legged dog. Even at extremely low resolution and with most of the bells and whistles taken out it was jerky and uncomfortable to play.

I decided not to install any other software until I could work this out (smart in the end I think). This system monitor showed that even at idle, Vista was using nearly 50% of the RAM, so I decided that the first step was to do the RAM upgrade. I ran out to buy the screwdriver and popped things open. At this point, as I've already mentioned, I found that I could only upgrade the system to 1.5 GB, not 2 GB. Still, 1.5 GB of memory is more than respectable by current PC standards, especially in a laptop. The upgrade reduced Vista's memory footprint to only 35%, but had little effect on game playability. This was disappointing. Here we have relatively high-end hardware trying to perform a relatively low-end task (OK, Word or Powerpoint would probably have been fine, but I was pretty concerned about a Photoshop image manipulation), and not handling it well at all. I'd already checked for updated graphic drivers and all the usual "fixes" for poor performance. I had two options left. "Downgrade" to Windows XP or return the machine as a lemon.

I decided to try XP first. I have a few OS CDs wandering around, so at least I didn't have to actually spend money on a copy of the "lesser" OS for this little experiment. I'm led to understand that some of the computer manufacturers will actually give you a copy of XP (the license for Vista that you paid for with the computer is actually downgradable) for little to no money, but this is something you'd have to check out for yourself. I didn't worry myself about it, because I didn't need to.

I went to HP's website and downloaded all of the XP drivers for the laptop. I put them on the portable hard drive where all her data was already backed up. I completely reformatted the drive and installed a clean copy of XP. Finally I downloaded all of the patches from the Microsoft Update service (a process that took several hours and several reboots.) Before doing anything else I installed WOW (another couple of hours).

My hard work payed off. The system now played the game as one would expect it too. Full resolution, with all the visual toys turned on, and no jerkiness. goddessmusings is happy, whatever "ease of use" benefits she may have hoped for from Vista were certainly not worth the performance hit. We've installed most of her software at this point, and everything runs as one would expect from a reasonably high end new system. Life is good.

Perhaps you might tell me that I didn't do enough to troubleshoot the performance issues. Perhaps you might tell me that I shouldn't have chucked an entire OS just because it ran one app poorly. You might be right in either case. On the the other hand, I spent a fair amount of money on a computer that I expected to last my wife for several years, and it couldn't even run a two year old, moderately taxing, app out of the box. It might not have been the OS. It might have been the drivers, or maybe HP shouldn't have bundled Vista on a machines with only a gig of RAM. I don't know and quite frankly I don't care. There's really no excuse for an OS using 50% of the a brand new computer's RAM. There's really no excuse for a brand new computer performing worse than a two year old machine, which was relatively lower end to begin with, in any application.

Vista is a resource hog, and whether you blame Microsoft or the hardware vendors the driver support is mediocre. At least part of the problem with WOW had to have been the video drivers. Sure Vista was using 50% of the memory (35% after upgrade), but that still left the entire 512MB that my old Dell had as it's complete memory pool available to the app. Something else was contributing, and since it clearly wasn't a problem with the video card itself (the same card performs fine now) it must have been the drivers.

My recommendation is simple. Don't buy Windows Vista if you can avoid it. If it comes on a computer that you buy, find out about replacing it with XP. Hopefully you won't have to buy XP. if you have Windows Vista and love it, I'm happy for you. Leave a comment and tell me about how great it is, just be aware that I won't be rushing to put it back on any PCs I own. Maybe your hardware is better supported than ours, but that doesn't change that fact that our computer was theoretically designed for Vista. It should have been well supported. Politics aside, DRM aside, Vista is an immature OS that was released before adequate support from hardware vendors was available, and it uses an insane amount of resources. In a year I may re-evaluate, but for now I am forced to be harsh.

New Userpic

2007-06-11T16:19:48Z

So I was motivated by the pictures and comments from this article in ArsTechnica to create a new icon. And since I made a new icon I of course had to post to show it off. The article above references the new "Creation Museum" in Kentucky. The intrepid author went forth, visited the museum, and brought back pictures. This museum scares me. It's not that they are Young Earth Creationists, that's something I have some to accept as part of reality. It's that they feel the need to "scientifically prove" that everyone should be a Young Earth Creationist. I want to have a conversation with them, like:

me: So the Bible is the inerrant word of God, Yes?
YEC: yes.
me: And "the Bible Says it, I believe it, that settles it." Yes?
YEC: That is right.
me: So why must you then prove it? Doesn't that undermine your whole argument?
YEC: ...

I mean seriously. Being a Young Earth Creationist makes you a sheep, I can accept if not respect that. Being a Young Earth Creationist that has to prove he's right make you a sheep and a hypocrite. Sigh.

Anyway, I'm not totally pleased with my icon. The colors on the text are wonky. I've used GIMP on Windows and Linux and been very happy with it. It's not quite as powerful as Photoshop (from what I'm told) at the top end, but for everything I do graphically it has been fine. The Mac version is not nearly as nice. It's an X11 app, so it doesn't use the Mac default "menu at the top of the screen" setup, but it also doesn't have menus on the windows for each graphic like the Linux and Windows versions do. Everything "menu" related has to be done through the right-click context menu. This is pretty cumbersome IMO. I also had a lot of problems with color that I don't remember having in the past. From the palette box all of the text on all of the frames should have simply been white. Instead the text is in various shades of orange and yellow. Even more annoyingly, when I pasted the individual frames into the master for the animated GIF, the colors in the frames changed again.

Is this just because the development on the Mac platform is not as mature, or is it something with the platform? I don't know. Maybe it's me, I'm no graphics artist, but it sure seems like it was better on Linus and Windows.

Not Begging for Money

2007-03-14T17:06:12Z

Well, it's been an interesting week so far. I sent my Mac in to Apple for repairs on Monday so I've been working on a sub-par PC at work, and my old laptop (recently reinstalled with Fedora Core 6) at home. This means I've had NO World of Warcraft machine for three whole days (sob). Strangely this has not resulted in a huge increase in my productivity. At any rate my Mac is on it's way back to me and all should be well soon (I hope).

I tested for my Yellow belt in Shotokan yesterday. I passed. So far the curriculum at the school I joined is not terribly challenging, but Lafayette seems to have a grand lack of martial arts schools. Other than the one I joined there is a Tae Kwon Do school that is fairly out of the way for me, and a "Christian Martial Arts" center which I think it safer to avoid. I watched the higher belts test last night, and the later material seems to improve, so I'll hang around for a bit. I really wish someone would open a Shaolin-Do school here. That was by far the best school and system I've studied. Of course in a classic "you don't know what you've got till it's gone" scenario, I didn't really work as hard as i could have while I was at the school in New Orleans (in my defense I was in grad school and working at the time, but still.) For now I'll stick with the Shotokan people and see where it goes.

More begging

2007-03-10T17:02:11Z

This is not typical I promise. The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer "Run for the Cure" is this weekend and I'm running in it. This is NOT the thing I was talking about earlier and there is NO required minimum donation for me to participate, I'm just providing this link in case you have some great desire to part with money in a tax deductible way. I hearby promise that there will NOT be any further requests for donations in this journal for at least a month or so. Anyway, here's the link.

Walk for the Cure

2007-03-09T21:47:21Z

How is everyone out in LJ Land? So here's the thing. goddessmusings, talona and I are considering doing this 3 Day Walk in Dallas for breast cancer research. It's a great cause and all, but as part of your participation they want you to raise $2200 in donations. That's a lot of bucks. So before I shell out $90 in registration fees, I thought I'd do a little informal begging sample. Essentially I'm just wondering if any of you would be willing to contribute a bit. I understand that several of you know the girls as well, so don't worry about whether you'd have to give all of us money. This is totally informal and obviously non-binding... just curious.

No Child Left Inside

2007-03-01T15:08:42Z

He Lives!

Yeah, I haven't posted much lately. I'm thinking of doing one my "force myself to post everyday for a week" deals. I tend to keep up better for a while after those. I've been moved to put forth the incredible effort required to type these words by an article sunfell posted regarding a movement to return children to nature. It's apparently a pretty broad movement, or at least lip service is paid to it by a broad base of people. I think the idea of getting kids outside more and (even better) into real natural environments is a great one, but I don't think we need to overlook the rest of the human race. All of us could probably do with a little more outside time, or better, time out of our subdivisions and interacting with actual nature. The World, whether you consider it a beautiful creation, a living organism, or just a happy accident, is a place that we are all hardwired to like. Get out there an enjoy it occasionally! (and bring your kids)