The Inflatable Soapbox

Today is the first in a regular weekly series, Tuesday Tech Troubles and Triumphs. I think I’ll probably have more troubles than triumphs to share, so let me start with one I’m having now. A client of mine wants his WordPress archives to be displayed in an expandable/collapsible format in the sidebar. He referred me to this blog on blogspot.com as an example. The code that displays the archives is a widget written by Google software engineer Lexi Baugher. I’ve been looking for a similar plugin, because that would be much faster (and cheaper for him). I’ve found several, including this one by Ady Romantika that would be perfect.

The trouble: they are all only available as widgets and his heavily customized blog is not widgetized. Unless I have a better suggestion from one of my readers, I’ll have to reverse engineer a widget into a straight plugin. I have almost no time to do this. Please comment with suggestions or WordPress plugin stories of your own. Hopefully by next Tuesday, I’ll have turned this trouble into a triumph.

I’ll now tag five unsuspecting techies and turn this into a meme:

Merlin, Merlin’s Minute

Ian, Failure is the Key to Success

Joe, JoeTech.com

Chuck, D is for Dad

Rob, All Things Seen and Unseen

Gentlemen, start your engines.

Anyone who knows me, or knows of me, is aware that I use Free and Open Source Software; painfully aware, in fact. I never shut up about it. The torrent of sarcastic anti-Microsoft remarks must get tiresome. The inevitable lecture on the advantages of FOSS over proprietary systems is endured (usually) with patient grace by my friends and family. Although, I suspect, they stay on my good side so that I continue to provide free tech support.

So why, why am I using a proprietary browser?

It’s simple, really. It’s better. Working on this ten year old Dell PC with Ubuntu 7.10 GNOME desktop, struggling along with 256MB RAM memory and 6GB disk space, Firefox (my heretofore favorite browser) just isn’t cutting it. The memory leaks, freezing and crashing are too frustrating. I’m not a religious man. I’m eminently practical. I use what works. Given a choice, I’ll always choose a FOSS solution. But I will always choose the best solution, for myself and my clients. For a Web browser, that solution is Opera.

‘To describe writing as ” Orwellian ” means that it expresses a pessimistic view of a dull, uniform world where every aspect of life is controlled and organized by the State.’¹ This is certainly an accurate description of my writing on the subject of Microsoft (and corporate culture in general). I consider myself a desktop revolutionary, a guerilla sysadmin, a software freedom fighter. I’m one of a growing number of PC techs for whom the phrase “Format C:” (or, more likely, fdisk /dev/sda) is the answer to the many “How do I fix my Windows PC?” questions we get. Microsoft wants to control every aspect of your desktop, server and online experience. They have failed miserably with the latter two, but have completely dominated – through marketing and unfair business practices, rather than technical superiority – the desktop.Why don’t more people use Linux? It’s more powerful, more secure, infinitely customizable… and it’s free.  What’s the problem?

Slackware was my first Linux, back in 1995. It was the Linux distro in those days, largely because of an easier menu-driven installation process. I think installation is even easier than Windows now.  But there are two areas that are always an obstacle for less experienced users: partitioning and drivers. These areas are difficult not because of any inherent flaw in Linux, but because of the Microsoft stranglehold on the desktop.

If you are installing Linux on a box of it’s own, partitioning isn’t any different than a Windows installation: it happens without user intervention. It’s only because many users are installing on a Windows box and wish to dual-boot, that the Linux installer has to shrink the existing NTFS or VFAT partition and create other partitions for itself. This is usually done flawlessly, provided the user has some idea of what is going on. I would suggest that anyone who thinks this is a defect of Linux try to install Windows in a dual-boot config on a PC where Linux is already installed and see how well Microsoft handles that.

The second issue, driver availability, is due to the lack of response of hardware manufactures to demands from the Linux community for support. Let’s face it, it takes time and money to develop drivers and most companies can’t justify investing in a driver for less than two percent of the desktop market, especially if they will be pressured to release the code as open source. As Linux desktop usage grows, this will change. Indeed, it has already begun. Check out the rivalry between nVidia and ATI for producing the best driver support for Linux users (especially the hardcore gaming crowd).

Unfortunately, businesses are notoriously slow to adopt “new” technology, even when it will save them time, money and the hassle of the Microsoft malware machine. So, those of us who support Windows users must use Windows as well. That is why I no longer support Microsoft products. I will offer help in migrating to a superior platform, be it GNU/Linux, BSD, Mac OS/X, or Solaris. But I will no longer waste my time and effort supporting a system of the clueless, by the clueless, and for the clueless. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

1.  ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ – George Orwell, first published by Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd., 1949
This introduction by Gwyneth Roberts,  © Longman Group Limited, 1983

source: CNNMoney

You don’t think Google is making them nervous, do you? The problem with this deal is that Yahoo is now an old school company. They’re stale, trying to keep up rather than leading the way. And what is this deal going to do for Yahoo? You don’t find any company staler and more old school than Microsoft. But this is how The Beast from Redmond approaches every challenge: if you can’t beat them with technology, buy your way out of it. This is similar to their reasoning for “supporting” Linux. Picture this, if you will: Ford makes an offer to buy GM because those pesky Japanese are starting to make pretty good cars.  Clueless! It’s all about evolution, folks. Look around you and tell me where the 500 lb gorilla is? Hiding in the jungle eating grubs while the higher primates are dining in style and feeling sorry for the poor bastard.

source: InfoWorld

This is because the technologically-challenged twits that make the business calls at large companies feel safe and snuggly in the arms of the Evil Empire. It’s like the old saying, “No one ever got fired for choosing IBM.” Why can’t Novell just deal with this? Because the CXX-level twits at Renault insist on using WinDoze on the desktop. So, “interoperability” is important. Try this for a solution, twits: Use SLED on the desktop and SLES in the server room. Voilà, instant interoperability. And savings. And control. Using Windows is like letting crack dealers sell from your front door: soon it’s their house, not yours.

I think it’s ironic that Ms. Hauser, a mouthpiece for the Dark Side, ackowledges that “Customers have asked for solutions to make Microsoft products work better with other platforms” and, knowing that Microsoft can’t improve it’s own product, offers Linux as a solution.

Sign on Steve Ballmer’s desk: “If it weren’t for idiots, I wouldn’t have a job.”