The Beez' speaks..

Fight SOPA/PIPA, change your license

2012-01-20T08:48:00.005+01:00

All over the free world, government laws and court decisions are limiting our access to free Internet. Not that these measures are very useful, most of us hackers are able to circumvent them within minutes. But in essence, these counter measures are simply work-arounds - they do not eliminate the root cause.

The root cause are the big media moguls who successfully lobby our governments and judges to adopt unconstitutional new laws and regulations. Consequently, they are by definition an anti-democratic force. No, it's not about the artists (as a matter of fact, most of them can be considered victims of this industry), it's not about IP (they violate IP laws themselves on a daily basis - just count the lawsuits), it's just about MONEY. Think about it: these industries are obviously willing to trade in our most fundamental civil rights just for a little extra cash. No, they're not the kind of people only a mother can love - they already sold their mothers.

Our politicians are no better. Instead of defying the pressure of a dying industry they have chosen to simply sell out their voters. Often without even having any idea which consequences their decisions may have on their citizens, their own information industry or even the very reputation of the nations they should represent. Ignorance may be a bliss, but not in this case.

So far the community has responded in a variety of ways:

Shutting down their own websites in protest;
Petitioning;
Attacking government and industry websites;
Educating users on how to circumvent blocks;
Developing new ways to make it even more difficult to block free Internet access.

However, there is one card we haven't played yet. The FOSS community has achieved complete independence from proprietary software. I predict the music and movie industry will follow in the next few decades. They won't disappear, but they will have to compete and one day we will win.

In the meantime we will have to ensure that we will continue to have free and unlimited access to the Internet, our information highway. It is no secret that governments and even the music and entertainment industry itself have benefited from everything the FOSS community has produced. And we can stop that.

GPLv3 was created to defeat any attempts to make free software less free. A new license may prevent governments and the industry to make the Internet less free. Simply don't allow them to use our software anymore. Change the license.

I know that it is one of the pillars of Free Software - anyone may use it, no restrictions. But as I said, I don't consider it a permanent measure. Just until every attempt to restrict the Internet has ceased permanently. Just until the right to free access to the Internet is part of every international treaty and constitution.

I don't know about you, but I just don't feel comfortable someone who denies me to exercise one of my most basic rights is happily using my software..

Surf naar de Pirate Bay in 5 minuten

2012-01-12T18:45:00.005+01:00

Voor degenen, die geen zin hebben om een VPN of TOR in te richten en na het effectief worden van de blokkade van Ziggo en XS4ALL toch naar de Pirate Bay willen surfen zijn er een paar eenvoudige oplossingen - zelfs zonder iets te installeren.

De eenvoudigste manier is om gebruik te maken van een zogenaamde "Anonymizer". Dat is een computer, die vanuit Nederland vrij te benaderen is en voor jou contact maakt met de Pirate Bay of welke andere computer dan ook. Een aardige lijst van gratis anonymizers is hier te vinden. Het gebruiken ervan is doorgaans erg eenvoudig: tik de URL in en de computer verbindt je door. Een klein voorbeeldje is hier te vinden. Voila!

Een meer permanente oplossing is beschikbaar voor gebruikers van Firefox. De "Stealthy" add-on tovert een F-117 naast de taakbalk, die bij het opstarten rood is. Klik 'm aan en hij wordt groen. Je kunt dan gewoon weer naar de Pirate Bay surfen. Lukt het eerst even niet, klik dan op het pijltje-naar-beneden naast de F-117 en klik op "Configure". Klik dan het vinkje "Something went wrong?" aan en druk op "Ok". Dat zou het een en ander op moeten lossen.

Waarom ik dit met u deel? Omdat het zoveelste een bewijs is van de debiliteit van zowel de klagers (de media concerns) en vooral ook de Nederlandse rechterlijke macht. "Content" is allang niet meer gebonden aan het medium, waarop het opgeslagen is en ondanks het feit, dat deze ontwikkeling al twintig jaar gaande is, is de industrie er nog steeds niet in geslaagd om een business model te vinden, dat hierbij aansluit.

Nee, nog steeds klampt ze zich krampachtig vast aan een paradigma, dat de facto allang achterhaald is. Een industrie die zo dom is, verdient het gewoon ten onder te gaan. Ter vergelijking: voerden bioscopen in de jaren '50 en '60 processen tegen TV maatschappijen? Laten oliemaatschappijen electrische auto's verbieden?

Naief is dat de rechtbanken van Nederland zich voor het karretje van deze concerns laten spannen en maatregelen eisen, die technisch gezien neerkomen op het slaan van spijkers in een wegdek. Weliswaar zullen er een paar mensen met een lekke band eindigen, maar na verloop van tijd rijdt iedereen er omheen.

Nog triester is, dat dat de rechter aangeeft dat er nog meer spijkers in het wegdek geslagen mogen worden als "dat nodig is". Trekken we deze uitspraak in "extremio ad absurdum" verder dan eindigen we met een weg, die zo vol spijkers zit, dat zij niet meer de functie van weg kan vervullen.

Daarom vertel ik dit u.

The biggest PR clanger in the history of the WWF

2011-04-16T14:51:00.052+02:00

We will, wherever possible, seek dialogue and avoid confrontation.
We will record and respond to criticisms we receive, in order to learn from, and avoid repeating mistakes.

From: WWF Code of Ethics

In the past, the WWF has had its fair share of controversies. Condoning and even promoting animal testing and hunting (the former chairman of the WWF, the late Prince Bernard of the Netherlands, was known to take a shot every once in a while himself), interfering in the internal affairs of sovereign states, deporting indigenous peoples, neo-colonialism, collaborating with large companies like Coca Cola, Microsoft, Proctor & Gamble, Hewlett-Packard and Eneco in order to - you won't believe it - "protect the environment", not being so green all of a sudden when it comes to raising cash, supporting genetically modified crops, manipulating scientific research, and finally: making not very tasteful adds.

With a list of controversies like that you start to wonder how they survived. Well, very easy: by having a very good PR department. Whenever a controversy pops up WWF acts like a turtle. It minimizes communication as much as possible and hopes the whole thing blows over. It tries to silence, marginalize or intimidate its critics, but in such a clever way that it doesn't make too many waves. Disputes between its chapters are kept indoors as much as possible. Bluntly lying - if required - is an accepted practice.

Being one of the opponents in their latest controversy - the infamous WWF format - I experienced these tactics first hand. This is my story.

When the "Save as WWF" campaign was launched, WWF Germany created a Facebook page. I guess they never expected that it would cause so much controversy, because critics like me could vent their objections freely and add all the links and pictures we wanted.

The first indication that something fishy was going on came on December 21st when Jon Fenell reported that some contributions were missing. WWF denied everything, saying that were not censoring the site. They had just changed the settings.

In short, only the contributions of "Save As WWF" were shown by default, which meant that each time you had clicked a link, you would have to reset it again. It made browsing, let's say, a little uncomfortable. WWF pulled off that trick several times, changing layout and settings with some bizarre defaults, although - admittedly - Facebook made changes to the page in the meanwhile as well. The first thing going (of course) was the "links" section.

In the first week of January I released the .wwf toolkit, which the WWF initially seemed to applaud. Maybe later they realized that this terribly simple piece of software allowed conversion both ways or maybe it was because they had tried to make their audience believe that supporting Linux was incredibly complex, I don't know. Anyway, after that everything changed.

Sabine Schikorra-Känder tried to convince me that is was all about cuddly panda bears - and who is against that. Of course, I didn't buy that and repeated my arguments again. Note that my objective was to get the WWF around the table and discuss their actions. Despite the many letters and invitations from various organizations and individuals that never happened, but at that moment I was still optimistic. Sabine Schikorra-Känder remained polite, which could not be said of Romy Mlinzk. She called me a troll and despite my efforts to discuss the issue at hand, she persisted in her behavior.

So I set out to find who Romy Mlinzk was. After working my way through many uninteresting personal pages with many flagrant spelling errors, I found out that she was in fact a professional. Not a very good one though, because she should know as a self-proclaimed "social media expert" that it is not wise to leave so many intimate personal details lingering in cyberspace. But I also found the smoking gun: at the time she was working for Dederichs Reinecke & Partner, the company that handles the social media for "Save as WWF". If that isn't enough evidence for you, here is a message she left admitting she was directly involved with the "Save as WWF" campaign.

There even is a presentation of her on the internet, where she describes her experiences with this campaign in detail and has the nerve to call me her "favorite troll" - obviously miss Mlinzk has neither a clue of what the definition of a troll is nor of what "social media" (her so-called "expertise") are all about: interaction. Even with those who don't agree with you.

Social Media Case "Save as WWF" on Prezi

As if insulting me wasn't enough, "Save as WWF" threatened me the very same day to kick me off their Facebook page. Things were getting ugly. In the final weeks of January I was cranking out new releases of the .wwf toolkit by the minute, getting lots of feedback of obviously satisfied users.

In the meanwhile, the paper industry had launched their own "green initiative" which was a direct response to the "Save as WWF" campaign. WWF Italy started a collaboration with forest managers to "develop awareness on the issues of sustainable management of forest resources" and "promote (..) the purchase of forest products"!

I was quietly hacking .wwf tools to make them work under Windows as one of my users had requested. Since "Save as WWF" had initially shown so much enthusiasm for my initiative, I decided to post several links and pictures at their site - just to see that they disappeared almost instantly! Wow.. I thought they didn't censor or was I being a bit too naive?

So I decided to take my business elsewhere and complain at a site which another user accurately described as "the place where WWF complaints go to die". This is where the WWF channels all criticism. You are kindly treated by a spin doctor who gives you a lot of credit for your remarks, let's you blow off some steam and that's it. I'd rather be talking to ELIZA, she's a much better listener. To give you some idea of how this works, here is a little sample:

Thanks for the heads up on this. We're in the process of correcting it to give credit where credit is definitely due. Apologies for the oversight.

I see you have also posted your comments there. Many thanks for doing that. It is good to have your point of view in there.

But it is great that you air these opinions and get the opposite point of view across. We link to Get Satisfaction from every page on our site - so people can find this string and weigh up the arguments for themselves.

Thanks for giving your input. I know it may seem easy to say, but truly: it is valued and it is heard.

I had also pointed out on Facebook that most users didn't like the WWF drivers, so "Save as WWF" decided to spike the results by asking their friends to push "the green thumb" button, a method well known by the readers of the Dutch "Geen stijl" blog, who are known to sabotage just about every single poll in the Netherlands - and abroad if they get the chance. Not something you would expect of the respectable WWF, wouldn't you?

Until recently, most of the criticism came from information technology blogs and the paper industry. But even advertising agencies have started to pick up the "Save as WWF" debacle. Also the mainstream media are slicing and dicing the initiative, saying the people behind it "have an arrogance that doesn’t help their cause" and that "whole concept of unprintable files is ridiculous" in itself.

The latest scam of "Save as WWF" was exposed by Marco Fioretti who showed that WWF Germany is still frantically trying to save face by slightly modifying publications of WWF International. Still, the influx of "friends" at their Facebook page has been reduced to a trickle. Although "Save as WWF" have promised to come out with a new version shortly - as they have numerous times - the question is: will anybody remember or even care enough to make it worth the effort? Or does it even make it through the virus scanner?

It seems that what has been called "the biggest PR clanger in the history of the WWF" is slowly coming to an end. Finally. Rest in peace.

In the end, where was the FOSS all about, after over 12,000 Facebook friends and these "hundreds of thousands" of downloads? 394 documents. Yes, that's it: 394 documents. Count them.

And yeah, a handful of them are mine. Go figure..

Update: Even though the "Save as WWF" campaign was nominated twice it don't win any of these awards. I wonder why..

Update: Jung von Matt won the ADC Grand Prix 2011, I'm not going to deny that - nor attempt to hide my astonishment. I don't know where these people live, it must be a different planet.

Update: Still, the WWF won't go all the way to preserve forests:

In its first year of existence, the organisation's website netted over $100,000 for rain forest protection through the sale of paid memberships. In their first six months of existence the group received seed funding from the government of Norway. They are the world's first eco-porn organization. However, the organisation's unorthodox methods have made it difficult to distribute the money it makes. The Norwegian chapter of the Rainforest Foundation Fund as well as the WWF both in the Netherlands and in Norway have refused to accept donations from FFF. As a result, F**k for Forest is working on a project to work directly with indigenous communities in Costa Rica and the Brazilian Amazon rainforest.

At least the members of this organization are doing it to each other: not to their donors or indigenous people. The link is environmentally safe: it points to Wikipedia.

Update: Those who think I've simply thrown all the dirt I could find to the WWF, think again. Recently, the German WDR network released a documentary which proved I didn't even have to search that long. It caused a major embarrassment to the WWF in Germany, causing it to lose many donors. Try to print yourself out of that one!

Update: This comment was published here. It is allegedly written by someone working at Jung von Matt. Although I have been unable to confirm it, it gives a unique insight on how these marketing agencies think and operate:

(Disclaimer: This is an idea which originated in an advertising agency from Germany and was later brought forward to the WWF. I work for that agency, but had nothing to do with the project.)

WWF is available for Windows, but it's only prominently presented for OS/X on the website. Of course a roll-out covering all OS's would be great, but that's unfortunately not how advertising agencies work. While the idea is in it's core great for the planet, the motifs are mostly utilitarian. "Clever" ideas like this score high at award shows and push the agency up in the creative rankings. Therefore it's important for the agency to pump out projects like this onto the market, just developed enough to be regarded as a "real" product which can be entered into award shows.

But upon detailed inspection these ideas are often still lacking in execution. In this case it was important to launch as quickly as possible and just having an Mac version (which was easiest to produce) was good enough. Oftentimes that's where development stops and when the awards are won the projects will no longer be cared for. In the case of .wwf the agency had to provide a Windows version just because people demanded it and the WWF probably said so. That's why the layout for the website hasn't changed to accompany prominent buttons for both Mac and Windows versions, but just received a measly text-link update.

This of course is a pretty f**ked up way of seeing things and I totally disagree with it. I have always tried to put real meaning into the advertising I co-create, sometimes successfully, sometimes less so. The big and established advertising agencies have an insanely hard time to part with their (long gone) successes of showing the message on to the consumer. They just don't get that the Internet is a completely new way for people to communicate and that consumers want to be talked to like intelligent people with a will of their own.

But all is not bleak. There is a new generation of insanely talented and motivated people who see the need to change this old thinking really quickly, or risk a great fall.

Anyways, that's the reason why the project feels as if it's not completely thought through and will probably not grow any bigger. At least not as long as someone else than the agency is in charge.

Well.. That explains a lot! The WWF page, their Facebook page and the software themselves have never been updated after they collected their prizes - despite all their lofty promises. Again: as I predicted.

Update: LOL! I announced the minor update of the .wwf toolkit in the "Save as WWF" Facebook page, which hadn't been updated for months. Next day, the "Discussions" tab was removed. Obviously, nobody needs support anymore. You're on your own!

Using original WWF artwork on your Linux box

2011-02-13T17:51:00.008+01:00

Disclaimer: This information is for educational purposes only. If you perform the procedure described here, you assume full responsibility for any and all consequences, including legal action from the copyright holder.

Of course you can create original artwork for .wwf on your Linux box, but wouldn't it be nice if you can use the professional artwork Matt von Jung created for this? But how do you obtain it? Very simple: use the OS/X package. First, download it. Then unzip it:

unzip SAVE_AS_WWF_1.0.pkg.zip
cd SAVE_AS_WWF_1.0.pkg/Contents

The next step is to decompress the .pax archive:

gzip -d Archive.pax.gz

This seems like a dead end, but it isn't. The .pax archive is simply a cpio file:

cpio -i < Archive.pax
cd 'SAVE AS WWF.app/Contents/Resources'

We need the .icns files. That seems like a dead end as well, but not quite. We're almost ready. If you want to extract the icons on your own machine you have to install icns2png, which can be obtained here. Installing it is pretty straight forward:

tar -xzvf libicns-0.7.1.tar.gz
cd libicns-0.7.1
./configure
make
su
make install

It prefers you install Jasper or OpenJPEG, but I didn't have much luck with that. You don't need it either unless you want to extract the high resolution icons. After you've installed it, enter:

icns2png -x wwf.icns
----------------------------------------------------
Reading icns family from wwf.icns...
  Saved 'is32' element to wwf_16x16x32.png.
  Saved 'il32' element to wwf_32x32x32.png.
  Saved 'it32' element to wwf_128x128x32.png.

Done! You can also extract the icons online. It depends on what you prefer, the result is the same.

If you need still another format, use ImageMagick better known to some as convert. Now install the icons in the appropriate directory (that depends on your desktop environment) and you're done. Enjoy!

How to reheat 30 year old spaghetti

2011-02-07T12:52:00.049+01:00

A long time ago, when I was still a student, I got my hands on a very fascinating book called "The effects of nuclear weapons" from the Atomic Energy Commission. It was filled with diagrams and tables and enabled you to calculate the effects of a nuclear attack. After five long hours, I got my first results. And it was 4 AM. I knew when I stayed on working and calculating, I was gonna lose a lot of sleep.

However, it was 1981 and at my college we had a highly modern machine: a real PDP-11 with a massive memory of 256 kB and two (floppy) disk drives. Those were the days of the NATO Double-Track Decision, which large parts of the Dutch population opposed. I decided this program was going to be my contribution to that discussion. I called it TEONW (The Effects Of Nuclear Weapons). It is full of cynic puns against the Reagan administration.

I spend nights digitizing the graphs in that book, and coding them in BASIC V10B-02. I had never heard of structured programming and to debug the program I needed a room as long as the listing. If the program said GOTO 5670 I really crawled to line 5670! I never got all the bugs ironed out.

After I had finished college I no longer had access to a computer, but I printed a listing which I entered line by line in the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. I also added some assembly to mimic the green-on-black terminal of the PDP-11.

When the Z80 Spectrum emulator of Gerton Lunter came out, I took the Betadisk, wrote BDDE (BetaDisk Dump Extractor) and transferred the program to a .Z80 file, which may still be found on the Internet. Ten years had gone by.

The .Z80 file was moved from MS-DOS to Linux. I extracted the code with FUSE-utils "listbasic" and made it run under "blassic". By then twenty years had passed.

In the meanwhile, I had been busy writing my 4tH compiler, which is a highly portable bytecode Forth compiler. A few years ago, I added floating point support. What had begun its life as a little toy was now powerful enough to run a program like TEONW. Thirty years later.

TEONW is a relatively small program, just 13 kB source, but it is such an awful mess that I was barely able to understand and code the entry of the basic parameters: yield, altitude and population density. If I ever wanted to convert this program I needed some help. Badly..

TEONW consists of about 500 lines, each with its own line number. Since it is written in Minimal BASIC, every IF-statement is followed by a GOTO. No ELSE, sorry. In order to expose the structure, I needed to get rid of all superfluous labels, i.e. the labels which were not jumped to by either a GOSUB or GOTO. For that I wrote a simple 4tH program, the "uBasic unlabeler" or ubulabel.4th for short. It parses the BASIC program, makes a list of all GOTO and GOSUB labels and then removes all unused labels. That reduced the number of labels to about 100.

But I had still very little insight in the structure of the overall program. Comment was scarce and terse. Instead of making a flow diagram myself, I decided to let the computer do that for me. If you talk about generating diagrams, you talk about Graphviz. This indispensable tool has saved my life more than once - and it would save it once again.

Generating Graphviz code is trivial. I had written Graphviz converters before and I didn't doubt for a moment that I could pull off this one. 4tH excels in parsing text and I didn't even need a full parser here. Just REM, GOSUB and GOTO. Since 4tH also features a conversion program template, all I needed to do was to fill in the blanks. ub2dot.4th was born.

It is basically a very simple 50-lines program. It keeps track of the line it is parsing and when it encounters a GOSUB or GOTO it generates a Graphviz line. Of course, if no GOSUB or GOTO is encountered, it simply executes the next line. That had to be taken into account as well. But this rule has an exception as well: if the last statement is a GOTO or RETURN, the next line will never be reached from that point.

I generated the diagram from the .DOT source, which resulted in this diagram. The black lines are jumps, the red ones are subroutine calls and the blue ones represent normal program flow.

That may not give you much insight at first glance, but when you look carefully, you see some patterns arise. E.g. the code to present the results of the calculation are at the bottom. You can clearly see the different sections for underground explosions and air blasts. At least it helped to chop up the code into manageable chunks.

Since the underground explosions took the least effort, I decided to code that one first. At least it allowed me to set up a basic structure for the program and test it. But first I had a few design decisions to make.

Since this was an all floating point program I decided to use the 4tH Preprocessor (pp4th). Floating point support is coded in high level 4tH, which is not supported by 4tH itself. This meant the code would be rather unreadable. The preprocessor however does offer special floating point facilities, like the entry of floating point numbers without tedious conversions.

4tH offers two floating point libraries. One is rather bulky and fast with a high precision and its own floating point stack, the other is lean and slow and uses the standard data stack. The latter stores the numbers on the stack in standard form, i.e. mantissa and exponent, which is easy to read - if you know what you're looking at. Another added advantage is that it is easier to convert to the dedicated floating point stack version than the other way around.

Forth is a language that is centered around a data stack. It is considered good style to use as few variables as possible. There are non-trivial Forth programs that use only one or two variables or even none at all! However, given the complexity of the task at hand, I decided to use the stack as little as possible and revert to the BASIC variables instead, 25 in all. I never regretted that decision.

Note I had digitized a lot of graphs and these now popped up as clusters of jump instructions, e.g.:

587 IF J2<=-5 THEN GO TO 2007
590 IF J2<=0 THEN GO TO 690
600 IF J2<=5 THEN GO TO 730
605 IF J2<=12.5 THEN GO TO 770
610 IF J2<=25 THEN GO TO 810
630 IF J2<=40 THEN GO TO 840
640 IF J2<=55 THEN GO TO 880
650 IF J2<=62 THEN GO TO 920
660 IF J2<=84 THEN GO TO 960

These were restored to their original table form:

create calc-under
  620 , ' under>62 ,
  550 , ' under>55 ,
  400 , ' under>40 ,
  250 , ' under>25 ,
  125 , ' under>12.5 ,
   50 , ' under>5 ,
    0 , ' under>0 ,
  -50 , ' under>-5 ,

:this calc-under does>
  >r begin fdup r@ @c s>f f% 10e f/ f<=
  while r> cell+ cell+ >r
  repeat
  fdrop r> cell+ @c execute
;

The second entry in the table is a pointer to function, in short: a jump table. The greatest challenge however, was to recreate the spaghetti program flow in structured programming, e.g. from this:

1592 IF J2>=-5 THEN GO TO 1594
1593 GO TO 1596
1594 IF J2<=0 THEN GO TO 1980
1595 GO TO 1600
1596 IF -J5/(J1^.4)>200 THEN GO TO 1600
1597 IF M(1)>M(2) THEN GO TO 1980
1599 IF M(2)<200*(J1^(.4)) THEN GO TO 1980
1600 LET S5=INT ((((((M(2)/1000)*(M(2)/1000))*PI)-(S4/J3))*(J3*.75))+S4)

To this:

J2 f@ f% -5e f<
if
  height f@ fnegate yield f@ f% 0.4e f** f/ f% 200e f>
  if
    S4 f@ density f@ fover fover f/
    1 m f@ f% 1000e f/ fdup f* pi f*
    fswap f- fswap f% 0.75e f* f* f+ ftrunc S5 f!
  else
    1 m f@ 0 m f@ fover f> >r
    yield f@ f% 0.4e f** f% 200e f* f< r> or
    if casualty-corrections then
  then
else
  J2 f@ f% 0e f>
  if
    S4 f@ density f@ fover fover f/
    1 m f@ f% 1000e f/ fdup f* pi f*
    fswap f- fswap f% 0.75e f* f* f+ ftrunc S5 f!
  else
    casualty-corrections
  then
then

I must admit, sometimes I was so desperate that I took refuse to some unconventional techniques in order to get an idea what for Petes sake I was trying to do - thirty years ago.

When I first ran it, it failed obviously. The tedious task of debugging was about to begin. I quickly decided that I would need some special debugging aids in order to complete this task, so I wrote a short routine in both BASIC and Forth that allowed me to examine the variables at certain stages of execution:

9000 PRINT "yield=";J1;" J2=";J2;" density=";J3;" J4=";J4
PRINT "height=";J5
PRINT "P1=";P1;" P2=";P2;" 210J=";R1;" 42J=";R2
PRINT "crater-radius=";S1
PRINT "crater-depth=";S2;" crater-rim=";S3;" S4=";S4;" S5=";S5
PRINT "V1=";V1
PRINT "V2=";V2;" V3=";V3;" V4=";V4;" V8=";V8
PRINT "W1=";W1
PRINT "W2=";W2;" W4=";W4;" Z1=";Z1;" Z2=";Z2
PRINT "Z4=";Z4
FOR N=1 TO 5: PRINT "M(";N;")=";M(N);" "; : NEXT N: PRINT: RETURN

Now you understand why I was so happy that I kept with the original variables instead of going for the full Forth conversion! All in all the basic conversion proved to be pretty good. Only one piece of code needed a full rewrite.

Am I finished yet? No, debugging takes a lot of time - but I'm not in a hurry. At some point in time I will have enough confidence to send it into the world. Hopefully, I will have given it another thirty years of useful life. Time, it wouldn't have had if I had left it in this state.

And that would have been a pity, because it is the oldest program of my hand that survived this long. The rest was left decaying on an ancient 8" floppy. Missing in action, presumably dead. But even if they had survived, would I be likely to repeat this exercise? No, probably not.

Reheating spaghetti takes a lot of time. It's better to cook some fresh pasta. ;-)

Running shellscripts under Windows

2011-02-03T09:21:00.015+01:00

Although many programmers look down on shell scripts, they can be an effective way to quickly realize the required functionality in a minimal amount of time. Especially if you want to tie several already available utilities together.

So when I set down to make a FOSS equivalent of the abysmal and closed source WWF drivers, shell scripts seemed the way to go. I already got PDFtk, Ghostscript and the Poppler utils, so all I needed was a bit of glue between them.

The people at the "Save as WWF" Facebook page wanted a GUI, so I had to throw one in. That wasn't much of a problem either, because we got KDialog, Zenity and Dialog, which cover pretty much all the desktop environments around. Starting with a skeleton script I had once posted I was able to release the first version at Freshmeat within a single day. Several releases followed after the first enhancement requests came in. Until that day..

A user asked me whether a Windows port was possible. Wow.. MS-DOS batchfiles are so crippled that converting them was not an option and I am unfamiliar with the newer Windows scripting facilities like PowerShell. Since I use Windows very little I didn't feel like learning that one. So I asked myself the question, can I run the scripts within Windows?

Running them within Windows means you have to fool them into thinking they're running in a Unix environment. Since it seemed pointless to let users install hundreds of megabytes just to run a couple of shellscripts I settled for MSYS. MSYS is just a few megabytes and offers almost all the Unix commands and facilities you're familiar with. Furthermore, it does a pretty good job of silent conversion between the Unix and Windows PATH conventions.

The next question was, can I get Windows ports of all the utilities required. The answer is yes, there are ports of Zenity, WGET, Poppler utilities, Ghostscript and the PDF toolkit. All bases are covered, now let's rock 'n roll!

To my surprise the installation script almost worked out of the box. The only thing was that whoami is not part of MSYS. I know that you use id -un nowadays, but that wasn't much help, because although id correctly returns my Windows login, I used whoami to see if the script was running with root privileges. I decided to make my own whoami in /usr/local/bin, doing a simple echo. That didn't seem like much of a problem, because if the Windows user in question wasn't running with admin privileges, he wouldn't come that far anyway.

The second thing I had to fix was the #!/bin/bash line. MSYS doesn't "have" bash, only sh. Since sh is simply a link to bash, I decided to change it to #!/bin/sh. A few unquoted environment variables posed another problem, but that was quickly fixed. Finally, Ghostscript comes with a whole lot of Unix shellscripts, which I decided to use. Unfortunately, there are two annoying problems:

Ghostscript isn't added to the PATH;
The Ghostscript shellscripts assume gs is installed, which isn't.

The first one was fixed by adding the lib directory of Ghostscript to the PATH and the second was fixed by scanning for the Windows executable and create a small gs shellscript in /usr/local/bin. Then it ran like a charm.. from the prompt!

The Windows version of Zenity is very good, installing it is a breeze. It adds the Zenity executable to the path automatically. But in order to make it run as advertised you have to wrap the whole thing in an MS-DOS batchfile. Since the shellscripts are installed in /usr/local/bin I needed that path in the PATH, which you achieve by adding the --login switch to sh.

I decided to generate all these tiny scripts and batchfiles from the Windows installation script and that was the moment I really stumbled into the annoyance of Windows backslashes. The backslash is Unix' escape character, which makes it particularly difficult to handle. To write a Windows batchfile I decided to use the following sequence:

echo -n "bg_start ..\..\bin\sh.exe --login -c wwf2pdf" > /usr/share/wwftk/bg_wwf2pdf.bat
echo -e "\r" >> /usr/share/wwftk/bg_wwf2pdf.bat

The -n switch suppresses the terminating linefeed, while the -e switch enables the expansion of special control sequences. Which in this case results in the familiar carriage return-linefeed sequence.

The BGstart utility is required to suppress the launching of the sh window, which is featured so prominently in some ported FOSS programs. A few shortcuts and we're done. The icons for the shortcuts were converted online. Quickly and painlessly. And then it ran. Or did it?

The backslashes were back with a vengeance. Zenity returns a Windows path, which is gracefully handled by MSYS, but when it was displayed all backslashes disappeared or made the messagebox look very queer.

I never wanted special Windows versions of the scripts, the idea was that one version runs anywhere. So, how could I transparently handle this one? The answer was one single line:

SHOW=`echo "$3" | sed 's|\\\\|/|g'`

This one converts any embedded backslashes to slashes. Why slashes, you may ask. Well, first it settles the matter once and for all and second, it reminds the Windows user he owes this functionality to a Unix script.

Of course, there are many things that could be improved. A true Windows installer may make it all much easier for the casual user, but again, I'm not prepared to put so much effort into a skill I rarely use. Furthermore, if people think it is important they will step up and solve it. Because this is FOSS.

I'm now looking for someone who does the port to OS/X, so we cover the entire spectrum. If only to prove that the community does a better and faster job than a closed source company..

Installing the .wwf toolkit under Windows

2011-01-31T15:18:00.031+01:00

Introduction
Converting a PDF file to .wwf is so trivial under Linux that a bunch of shell scripts is enough to perform that task. When a user asked me whether it could be ported to Windows I was bewildered. Running Unix shell scripts under Windows means you have to trick Windows in thinking it is running a Windows program and the shell scripts in thinking they're running in a Unix environment. But all components were available for Windows, so I decided to give it a try. Note I tried Win98 as well, but that didn't work. You will need WinXP at least.

Preparation
First, you have to download all components:

If you don't know what your Windows directory is issue this at the prompt:

echo %windir%

You can get a prompt by starting cmd.exe. I will refer to the Windows directory as C:\WINDOWS.

Installing WGET
Place the executable in C:\WINDOWS - or whatever your Windows directory may be.

Installing Poppler-utils
Unzip the archive and place all executables in C:\WINDOWS.

Installing PDFtk
Unzip the archive. You will only need the files in the bin directory. Place pdftk.exe in C:\WINDOWS and libiconv2.dll in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32. Be sure not to overwrite previous versions!!

Installing Zenity
Simply accept all defaults, including the path. Install it on the C:-drive if you can, it will make your life much easier.

Installing BGstart
Simply accept all defaults, including the path. Install it on the C:-drive if you can, it will make your life much easier.

Installing MSYS
You may also take the newer 1.0.11, but note that version has packaging errors. Simply accept all defaults, including the path. Install it on the C:-drive if you can, it will make your life much easier.

Finally, a console will pop up, posing you two questions:

Will you continue the postinstallation [YES]
Have you installed MinGW? [UNLIKELY]

If you installed MinGW before (which is a C-compiler) you probably already have MSYS anyway.

Installing Ghostscript
Simply accept all defaults, including the path. Install it on the C:-drive if you can, it will make your life much easier.

The Windows-version of Ghostscript fortunately comes with Unix scripts of the major utilities. They are all located in the lib directory. You have to add this directory to the path so MSYS can find them. That's not very hard. Simply click the "My computer" icon, then click "Control Panel" and finally "System".

Choose the tab "Advanced" and click the button "Environment variables":

Choose "System variables", then "Path" and add the directory in question up front. Usually, this will be something like C:\Program files\gs\9.00\lib.

Installing .wwf toolkit
MSYS has left an icon on your desktop. Click it. Then navigate to the wwftk-1.7.tar.gz archive. You can use cd as usual, no need to change drives. Note backslashes become slashes and drives become directories, e.g. H:\download\wwftk-1.7.tar.gz becomes /h/download/wwftk-1.7.tar.gz. If the path contains embedded spaces, enclose it with double quotes. Assuming the archive is located at H:\download, issue:

cd /h/download
tar -xzvf wwftk-1.7.tar.gz
cd wwftk-1.7/Windows
sh installwin.sh c

If Ghostscript wasn't installed on the C:-drive adjust accordingly. If all goes well, you'll see the following screen:

After that, .wwf tools is installed.

Post installation
You probably want to start the .wwf tools from the screen. All you have to do is to make two shortcuts. First, click right on the desktop and select "Shortcut":

Second, choose "Browse" and navigate to C:\msys\1.0\share\wwftk\bg_pdf2wwf.bat.

Third, choose a name for this shortcut. I prefer PDF2wwf.

Basically, the shortcut has been created now, but it is not very attractive. Right click it and choose "Properties".

Click "Change icon" and "Browse".

Navigate to C:\msys\1.0\share\wwftk.

Select wwf128.ico.

Select the appropriate icon and press "Ok". Repeat the same procedure for wwf2pdf and you're done.

The WWF driver gets competition

2011-01-26T00:39:00.011+01:00

A user on the "Save as WWF" Facebook page asked me whether I could port the .wwf toolkit to Windows. It took some research, because emulating a Unix environment on Windows is very quirky, but I did it. I posted some screenshots this morning, but they were not amused. Within hours they were taken offline, despite their promise not to censor. Obviously, they don't like the competition. And for good reason..

First, the .wwf tools allow you .pdf to .wwf conversion. And vice versa. That is by design. Second, you can choose whether you want that banner or not. The WWF driver always appends that free WWF advertisement to each and every document it processes.

And despite some rumors, it cannot be disabled. That is by design. Third, the .wwf tools produce much smaller files. Finally, it doesn't phone home. Feel free to examine the code.

In the meanwhile, the WWF have acknowledged they are violating the BSD license which comes with the OS/X PDF reader "Skim". They promised a new version. Yeah, right..

Their bug ridden Windows driver is still at v1.03. Release Candidate, that is. I'd rather use a beta of .wwf tools.. ;-)

The .wwf format in practice

2011-01-14T19:00:00.013+01:00

This week I promised myself to put the .wwf format to the test. So, I sent a .wwf file to my girlfriend at work and I distributed all documents at work that I didn't find worth printing in the .wwf format. These were the reactions I got:

My girlfriend wasn't even able to open it, because the MIME-type wasn't known in her Vista installation.
I p*ssed off a very expensive consultant at work who ordered me to send a printable version or I'd have to look for another assignment.
A colleague of mine who prints virtually everything sent it to another nerd colleague of mine who returned a printable version of the document using my "cracking" pages.

I asked them whether they had become more "aware" of the issue at hand. Most thought it was merely a nuisance, others said they would never donate a dime to the WWF anymore.

Update: For some reason unknown, WWF Italy is now collaborating with forest managers to "develop awareness on the issues of sustainable management of forest resources" and "promote (..) the purchase of forest products"!

Update: As I predicted, the WWF violates FOSS licenses.

Update: The WWF have promised to comply to the "Skim" BSD license. As always, I'm not holding my breath. Even with a buglist the size of your arm, their Windows driver is still the same old v1.03 Release Candidate.

How to use the .wwf toolkit

2011-01-07T10:19:00.077+01:00

DISCLAIMER: This software does NOT originate from the WWF. It is neither supported nor approved by the WWF in any way, shape or form.

The .wwf toolkit is a very simple, but versatile piece of software. If you don't want to use a GUI, you can simply run it from the prompt:

Which is fine if you want to include it in another shell script or do some batch conversion. You can add the -n switch to override the default banner settings or -q if you go for the highest quality PDF possible. The flip side of using this option is that conversion is slower, it generates slightly larger files and worst of all: it may not always work for you.

If you want to integrate it in your GUI, you have to install either KDialog (included in KDE) or Zenity (Gnome). I'm (still) using KDE3, but I'm sure there are similar facilities in other desktop environments. The best way to run them from there is to include them in the menu:

Now the only thing you have to do is to select it:

You can also add .wwf as a mimetype and associate wwf2pdf with it:

Now open your filemanager and navigate to the .wwf file in question. Select wwf2pdf and click it:

wwf2pdf will start and create an unprotected PDF file on the fly, which you can open right away.

This way, converting those .wwf files into something useful will take only a split second of your life. Of course, you can do the same thing for pdf2wwf as well.

Legal stuff
A question I've been getting a lot lately is, "do I have to conform to the WWF "terms of use" when I produce a file with your toolkit?"

Well, first of all: I'm not a lawyer, this is NOT legal advise, so you better consult a professional before willfully violating the WWF terms. I can give you a few general guidelines, but the short answer is: yes.

The official WWF drivers for Windows and OS/X are copyrighted material, so if you use them you are bound to the WWF terms by default, because they are part of the license. It doesn't matter whether you agreed to the license or not - the license is the only thing that gives you the right to use the software. Period.

If you use the .wwf toolkit (with all its GPL components), you're obviously not bound to the WWF software license, but you may still be bound to the "terms of use", as I will explain later on.

The files the .wwf toolkit produces are industry standard PDF files. PDF files are an open standard (ISO/IEC 32000-1:2008) and even if the WWF driver would add some proprietary stuff to its files, it isn't included in the files the WWF toolkit creates.

Well, the WWF might argue that the combination of extension and PDF format is their invention and consequently proprietary, but that is a long stretch by any measure. As far as I know no patents have been filed.

The only part left is their copyrights and trademarks. Trademarks are the most troublesome thing here, because it's also the least tangible kind of intellectual property. Even engine sounds (Harley Davidson), smells or colors (BP, T-Mobile) can be trademarked.

As far as I know, there has never been issued a trademark or any other intellectual property protection for a file extension alone. Furthermore, the .wwf extension is already in use and has been in use for a long time:

However, if you include any of their trademarks in your files, you're bound to their terms. That means, the panda bear, the "Save as WWF, save a tree" slogan or their "Save as WWF" tree icons. Note that even a simple uppercase "WWF" is protected, so choose your names carefully!

That is, if they exist. Neither a search with the Swiss trademark organization, nor the German trademark organization, nor the European trademark organization gave any hits for "Save as WWF". As a matter of fact, no trademarks have been entered after August 4th, 2010 for "One Planet MBA".

Matt von Jung, WWF's advertising agency in Germany, has applied for several figurative marks (3020100743719, 3020100743727, 3020100743735 and 3020100743743) on December 18th 2010 at the German Trademark Office (DPMA). Since they are still just applications, the trademarks itself are still unspecified.

Thus, the "terms of use" are in fact a license to use their trademarks. Nothing more, nothing less. The .wwf toolkit license (GPLv3) has nothing to do with it.

There is no © sign or "Copyright" text on their banner, which is required in some countries - but not the US. And here is where local legislation comes in, which makes this issue legally particularly fuzzy, especially when "moral right" is concerned. But again, it boils down to trademarks.

In those countries (where a © sign is required) you could probably get away with your own banner as long as you don't use any of their trademarks, so it is perfectly clear to a casual observer that:

It doesn't originate from the WWF;
The word ".wwf" is only used to identify the file type and its properties.

My advise? The WWF is known for aggressively defending its trademarks, so why take the risk? Most users will never produce files that remotely violate the "terms of use" stated. And if you do, simply don't add the banner. Or even better: make it a PDF. Same thing, different extension.

Admitted, it is rather scary that a company can decide what you can and may produce with their software. Imagine Microsoft, stating in its EULA that you cannot use Internet Explorer to surf to porn sites?

Fortunately, there is always FOSS between you and the proprietary world. And that is a comforting thought..

What the WWF has to learn about FOSS

2011-01-06T11:29:00.024+01:00

The WWF must have understood by now that you cannot enter the realm of software development without finding the FOSS community on your way. Where and when software is concerned, FOSS is a force to be reckoned with.

For example, the French April organization, dedicated to the promotion of FOSS and open standards, sent a letter to the WWF, voicing the same objections as Tracy Anne of LXer and other members of the FOSS community:

Re: request for a meeting concerning your campaign "Save as WWF, Save a Tree"

Madam President,

The April organization is dedicated to the development and promotion of free software. It tries to make people aware of the dangers of leaving certain information and knowledge in the hands of private enterprises. Free software - like GNU / Linux operating system and OpenOffice.org office suite - is designed to ensure that users have control over their own computer.

It was with some surprise that we learned of the WWF initiative to create a new file format, which is just a PDF using DRM to disable printing.

We understand the need of the WWF to draw attention to the ecological impact of computers and even support it. However, we regret the the WWF have resorted to DRM for this purpose. In effect, the WWF format is merely a PDF format with restricted functionality, designed to constrain the user.

DRM is not only ineffective but are also detrimental in many ways (technical, economical, cultural). These issues were recently addressed in an April publication, which I've included.

However, although the goals themselves are laudable, the form this initiative has taken is regrettable for several reasons. The fact that this format is based on DRM, a secret format locked by means of cryptography, makes it impossible to read with free software. Moreover, the WWF disregards users of free software, since the software in question is only available to proprietary systems like Apple MacOS X and has not been released under an Open Source license.

In addition, WWF should note that the lack of interoperability is a major contributor to obsolescence. Obsolescence is in the interest of the manufacturers, since it promotes consumerism, which causes many environmental problems if not properly controlled. This initiative is therefore catastrophic. For example, if I want to read a WWF file and I can not get the software required to read it, the only thing I can do is to buy a new computer that does. Because computers are so quickly outdated and consequently so quickly replaced, the ecological impact of these "gadgets" is particularly detrimental.

Finally, it is regrettable that WWF seeks to address social problems by means of coercive technology. Because DRM is primarily there to enable publishers to interfere with the privacy of their clients.

Because we really want to help you to make the public aware of the ecological impact of computer usage, I propose a meeting in order to discuss the subject. The WWF may approach the Free Software Foundation on an international level. Couchet Frederick, Executive, and the team at April are available for more information.

Madam President, I'm hoping to see you soon.

Yours truly,

Tangui Morlier
Chairman of April

The WWF have promised to publicly address these concerns, but don't hold your breath..

In the meanwhile, there is not much help from the industry either. Rick Brown, senior director, product management, Acrobat Solutions said: "Adobe Acrobat allows customers to create PDF with a range of security permissions, including the ability to disallow printing. The .wwf format is based on the PDF standard and it is great to see WWF leveraging PDF in creative ways. At this point, we don’t intend to support the .wwf file extension."

As if that is not enough, the software itself is giving the WWF headaches as well. In addition to their OS/X driver the WWF recently published their Windows driver. It features the following annoyances:

If you haven't installed .NET v2.0, you will have to install it first.
It requires a certain Windows driver. If it is not installed, it will ask for your Windows CD.
It will install itself as the default printer.
Kaspersky Internet Security will prevent you from installing it, since it triggers a virus warning.
Other unidentified installation errors have been experienced.
It has a problem with large files, printing only the first page.
There are issues with the 64bit version.
Some people dislike the capitalization of the printer: "SAVE AS WWF".
It is unclear whether it phones home. But I wouldn't be surprised.
The size of a PDF file saved with this driver may increase sixfold(!).
Adjustment of the settings to select a different resolution or an alternative color space crashes the system completely.

Consequently, as of January 5th an overwhelming majority of "Chip" readers dislike it. Note that the OS/X version has its problems too.

It seems it will be some time before the WWF will release a Linux version. But wait a minute: Linux is already supported! Yes, a set of simple bash scripts was able to fill the gap, simply because the FOSS ecosystem is very rich already. And it is performing very well.

In a test performed by Hermann Radeloff this file was printed using the WWF driver, which resulted in this file. The same file generated by the Linux .wwf toolkit resulted in this file. In short, a 104 KB file was bloated to a massive 686 KB file, while the Linux .wwf toolkit reduced it to a meager 95 KB. That is: with WWF banner.

So WWF, why not release the mess you made under a free license and let the FOSS community take care of it? Why not work together? Or would you rather persist in continuing this public relations disaster?

Update: Well, it's come to this: the WWF have threatened to kick me off their Facebook page. Obviously, I've gone on their nerves. For those who want to make up their own mind, here is the full thread.

Update: I've just released the .wwf toolkit manual as .wwf. FOSS style. ;-)

Update: Neither a search with the Swiss trademark organization, nor the German trademark organization, nor the European trademark organization gave any hits for "Save as WWF". As a matter of fact, no trademarks have been entered for the WWF after August 4th, 2010 for "One Planet MBA".

Matt von Jung, WWF's advertising agency in Germany, has applied for several figurative marks (3020100743719, 3020100743727, 3020100743735 and 3020100743743) on December 18th 2010 at the German Trademark Office (DPMA). Since they are still just applications, the trademarks itself are still unspecified.

Viral marketing: the truth behind the .wwf format

2010-12-19T17:45:00.014+01:00

What really baffled me the last few weeks is why the WWF insisted on using their driver, although I demonstrated more than once that print-disabled PDF's can serve the same purpose. Why would they alienate the paper industry when there are more than enough really environmentally dangerous industries around. Why would they lie about its effects on rain forests - since most paper comes from tree farms.

Well, it became clear to me when I watched this video:

The driver does not just disable printing it also adds an extra page to the end of the document. They say it's there "just to inform the receiver", but I don't buy it. Marketing, that's what it is really all about. Every time you make and spread a .wwf file, you are making publicity for the WWF. Bottomline.

It gives me an eery feeling. Does it just "phone home" in order to check for "updates" or does it report how many digital advertisements have been spread the last week? It makes you wonder..

Update: According to GizMag the WWF has admitted it is all about viral marketing:

WWF Germany says that the campaign is meant to be viral and an extra page tagged onto each new format document will help introduce new users to the campaign and encourage awareness about how we use paper in our digital lives. If you don't want this extra page added to catalogs, official documents, CV's and so on then you'll need to choose another method of saving files and run the risk that such things may end up in a print queue somewhere.

This also proves the WWF is not too shy to bluntly lie. As I have demonstrated numerous times it is perfectly feasible to create a PDF that cannot be printed.

Update: It's not the first time WWF has launched a disastrous campaign. Remember this beauty?

How to create a .wwf file (without that driver)

2010-12-18T10:45:00.018+01:00

OpenOffice.org
Anyone with OpenOffice.org can make .wwf files without any additional software. Simply choose: File/Export as PDF. Then turn to the Security tab. Fill in a "permissions" password and disable printing:

Generate your file as usual. Finally, rename it to .wwf.

Windows
You can make .wwf files by installing the PDF toolkit. Generate your PDF file as usual. Then open a DOS window and issue:

pdftk myfile.pdf output myfile.wwf owner_pw secret allow CopyContents

For those who don't like to use the CLI, you can download my .wwf toolkit. The installation manual is here.

Linux
You can make .wwf files by installing the PDF toolkit, but note that it is included in most distributions as well (pdftk). Generate your PDF file as usual. Then open a console and issue:

pdftk myfile.pdf output myfile.wwf owner_pw secret allow CopyContents

For those who don't like to use the CLI, you can download my .wwf toolkit.

OS/X 10.6 and above
You can make .wwf files by installing the PDF toolkit. Generate your PDF file as usual. Then open a console and issue:

pdftk myfile.pdf output myfile.wwf owner_pw secret allow CopyContents

There have also been unconfirmed reports that you can create an "unprintable" PDF file by using the standard OS/X PDF printer and simply change the security settings. Makes you wonder why the WWF brought out an OS/X version in the first place..

The .wwf toolkit can probably be ported to OS/X as well. If you want to help, please leave a message in the comments.

How to print (or unlock) a .wwf file

2010-12-18T10:40:00.017+01:00

Online
You can unlock your .wwf files here (up to 5 MB) or here (up to 95 MB). This one is even dedicated to .wwf files, which is hilarious!

Windows
Install Ghostscript on Windows and create this simple batchfile:

set ttt=%1
set tt=%ttt:~0,-4%
gswin32c -dSAFER -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sFONTPATH=%windir%/fonts;xfonts;. -sPDFPassword= -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress -dPassThroughJPEGImages=true -sOutputFile="%tt%_noPW.pdf" "%1"

Save it as crackwwf.bat. Now open a DOS window and issue:

crackwwf protected.wwf

Unconfirmed, but it makes sense. Please put any corrections in the comments. For those who don't like to use the CLI, you can download my .wwf toolkit. The installation manual is here.

If you just want to print a .wwf you have to install GSview as well. Start it, load your .wwf file and simply print it.

Linux
Install Ghostscript and poppler-tools which most distributions carry. Then issue:

pdftops Presseinfo_SAVE_AS_WWF_-_SAVE_A_TREE.wwf crack.ps
ps2pdf crack.ps crack.pdf

You can also download my .wwf toolkit, which comes with a GUI. If you open it with KGhostview you can print it without any conversion at all:

OS/X
The .wwf toolkit can probably be ported to OS/X as well. If you want to help, please leave a message in the comments.

World Wildlife Fund .wwf format cracked!

2010-12-04T12:58:00.084+01:00

(Quick links to printing, unlocking and creating .wwf files.)

I heard about the new .wwf format this morning. It is an initiative of the World Wildlife Fund to prevent people printing PDF files. As a matter of fact, it is an encrypted PDF format with the "printing" flag disabled.

Of course, everybody wants to save the environment. I, for instance, print very little. I have a Linux BeBook to carry my documents along when I attend meetings and my ancient HP Laserjet 4p is on its second cartridge.

But I don't like it when people are forbidding me something. It is sending the wrong message. Just like that 10:10 campaign which suggested that if you don't participate, you're up for elimination.

So I set out to crack it. First step, I simply opened it with KGhostview. You may use any GhostScript viewer for that matter, but this one was simply available. Surprise, I was able to print it right away.

Still, this only fixes the problem for the receiver of the file. If you want to send it to someone else and enable him to print the file, the problem remains.

Simply issue these commands:

pdftops Presseinfo_SAVE_AS_WWF_-_SAVE_A_TREE.wwf crack.ps
ps2pdf crack.ps crack.pdf

The resulting file is a true PDF and fully printable. In the meanwhile, I've embedded this procedure in the .wwf toolkit, so if you happen to use Linux or Windows you're lucky.

Ok, now go figure another way to save the world. This is certainly not a good thing to spend your donors money on.

Update: This WWF gadget becomes more pathetic by the minute. Many wonder why they didn't bring out a Windows version. Easy, the output is generated by the default OS/X 10.6.4 Quartz PDFContext engine. Windows doesn't feature such an engine, so they would have to add one. The few FOSS Windows PDF writers I am familiar with all use the GhostScript engine, so keep your eyes open. We might have a GPL violation on our hands before we know it.

Update: The futility of this initiative is illustrated by this video:

I always loved Penn & Teller!

Update: Members of the FOSS community, who also participate in the WWF, have sent the following letter:

With regard to your WWF file format. You need to be aware that this "file format" is in fact merely an encrypted .PDF file, with the print flag set to false (so the document can't be printed).

What you should also be aware of is that any documents saved in this document "format" are trivially printable.

Yes, trivially printable.

All one needs do is open the document use The Free Open Source Software application GhostScript on Linux, and print the document. GhostScript by default ignores the Print Flag, and allows all documents opened with it to be printed.

You should also e aware that most of the free (as in no cost) PDF viewers for Mac and Windows, use the Free Open Source GhostScript back end, so they too will ignore the Print Flag.

Because your so called file format is in actuality simply a PDF document with a different file extension it is also trivially easy to create documents that look like your so called document format, but which don't function in the same way (ie the print flag not being set to false), which could lead to further degrading of your good name... as if this bit of silliness, and gross waste of your supporters money has not already done so, at least among myself and my friends, who have up until now been strong supporters of WWF

If you really want to make a strong statement about conserving trees, reducing landfill (with toxic waste, like old computer parts) etc. Start promoting strongly the use of Free Software (FOSS) and the Linux Operating System for personal Computers.

Free Open Source Software and particularly Linux based Operating Systems (such as Fedora, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Mandriva, openSuSe, PCLinuxOS, etc) are exceptionally Eco Friendly, because unlike their proprietary counterparts they do not arbitrarily change in ways that require, for example; the purchase of a new computer, thus making the old on redundant, and no longer usable (and eventually having it scrapped, and the parts sent to landfills), because Linux based Operating Systems will still function well, often exceptionally, on computer hardware that is 5 or 10, or even more, years old - that's a lot of computer hardware that would otherwise have ended up in landfills, and it's a lot of computer hardware that doesn't need to be manufactured.

Our (myself and my friends) support of WWF is now, in light of your wastage, and frankly, quite silly solution to reducing deforestation, contingent on your actually doing and recommending sustainable, and effective means of reducing deforestation and toxic landfill.

Please consider this letter carefully.

I honestly hope this is the end of this fruitless initiative.

Update: Obviously, the administrator of the Facebook page cannot distinguish between making it and breaking it. To prove my point, I posted a valid .wwf file, made by using standard Linux tools. "Wired" also mentioned it, not too favorably. Read the comments on that page for yourself.

Update: Proof that the WWF was deliberately out to frustrate less savvy users (Translated from German):

That's what it's all about. Of course you can specify that a PDF cannot to be printed. However, many people are not familiar with this feature. But those who are not computer savvy should be made aware of their choices.

It's about as ethical as a car manufacturer who disconnects a cable to "raise awareness" of carbon emissions. Real petrolheads can reconnect such a cable in an instance while ordinary users are left frustrated. Deliberately preying on the ignorance of people is simply despicable.

Update: People are wondering why I did it and why I'm so persistent.

Everywhere charity organizations like WWF are getting less donations. Consequence is that they're getting more aggressive and are shoving their ideology down our throats.

It may be obvious that the ideas of WWF in this respect and FOSS are incompatible. It is the duty of the FOSS community to expose this scam and provide alternatives to give users back the control over their computers, so they can use it in any way they see fit.

Furthermore, it exposes how the WWF are using their precious funds for a cause that is highly debatable in itself. We hope this will deter other organizations to walk similar paths.

That's why.

Update: There have been unconfirmed messages on the Facebook page that the OS/X version of the WWF driver "phones home". Is the WWF spreading spyware? And if it isn't, why doesn't it ask permission first - like any decent program?

Update: It is confirmed by WWF that the OS/X driver "phones home". Allegedly only to check for a new version. The program did not explicitly ask permission when it was installed, neither did it inform the user in any way, form or shape of this behavior. It cannot be disabled.

Update: The best tip of 'em all. How to remove the driver from OS/X. There's no uninstall option, but it's simple:

Delete /Applications/SAVE AS WWF.app
Delete /Library/PDF Services/SAVE AS WWF

Finished. The world is safe again. If you're lucky.. If not, maybe this helps.

Update: Bad news for the "Save as WWF" campaign. According to Printweek.com it has caused a rift within the WWF itself. WWF International director of corporate relations Maria Boulos warned that the campaign was "misleading" and might "cost them a partnership in France". Boulos requested that the english-language site be shut down "immediately and temporarily" until the necessary amendments could be made.

Update: Yup, it has entered Wikipedia, featuring yours truly. Note I had nothing to do with it. Just added a few missing citations.

"RTL Gemist" kijken op Linux

2010-11-21T11:55:00.021+01:00

Update: Sinds 20 januari 2011 werkt deze truuk niet meer. RTL XL is overgeschakeld op een speciale iPad applicatie.

Sinds de overgang naar RTL XL kunnen Linux gebruikers geen video's meer bekijken van de RTL site. "RTL Gemist" is met een truukje echter wel te gebruiken. Daarvoor hoeft geen Moonlight geinstalleerd te worden!

Als je naar de iPad site surft, wordt je automatisch doorgelinkt naar RTL XL. Dat komt doordat de site de "User agent" bekijkt, die iedere browser ongemerkt doorstuurt. Daardoor heeft de site door dat hij eigenlijk met de Linux versie van Firefox benaderd wordt en reageert overeenkomstig.

Die "User agent" is echter te wijzigen. Download eerst deze add-on, de "User agent switcher". Herstart Firefox en ga naar het menu "Tools". Daar is nu een optie bijgekomen, namelijk de "Default User Agent". Kies "Edit User Agent" en druk op "New". Vul daarna het formulier als volgt in:

Description	iPad
User Agent	Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B334b Safari/531.21.10
App Code Name	Mozilla
App Name	Netscape
App Version	5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B334b Safari/531.21.10
Platform	iPad
Vendor	Apple Computer, Inc.

Laat Vendor Sub gewoon leeg. We zijn nu klaar om "RTL Gemist" te bekijken. Kies "Tools", "Default User Agent", "iPad" en surf naar http://www.rtl.nl/service/gemist/device/ipad/. Als je nu bij RTL XL terecht komt, is er iets mis gegaan. Zie je het scherm in de afbeelding, veel plezier!

Overigens werkt dit truukje ook perfect op "Uitzending gemist" van de publieke omroep. Je Linux bak wordt nu herkend als iPad.

Update: Deze site geeft de video's ook door, ongeveer in gelijke vorm als de iPad versie hierboven, maar dan zonder de hack. Voor zolang als het duurt, uiteraard!

Update: "De Pers brengt vanmiddag een web app uit voor de iPad: www.i-pers.nl (werkt alleen op iPads)". Nee hoor!

Dutch treat: RTL XL's major FAIL

2010-11-20T13:06:00.024+01:00

Recently RTL (a Dutch commercial television network) relaunched their website, moving entirely from classical Windows media to Microsoft Silverlight. On this site, you can not only play clips, but also watch their news reports and various other selections of their programs. Very handy and consequently quite popular. More so because with Firefox and a few additions you could watch it on almost every platform - or even every browser.

Silverlight, on the contrary, poses many problems. Few Linux users are able to play anything at all, even after installing the patent-infested Moonlight plugin. But also Windows users are experiencing problems, especially with Firefox and Chrome. The only combination that seems to work reasonably is Internet Explorer 8 with Silverlight 4.0. RTL has acknowledged this, but for the time being, there is no fix in sight.

Since the use of Internet Explorer has fallen below to the 50% mark, they should experience a drop in the number of visitors. That should explain why they are advertising that much. Yes, RTL, I'd love to visit, but don't limit yourself to IE8/SL4 users. They are slowly becoming a minority.

But your troubles are not over. Microsoft's strategy is changing. They are quickly moving from Silverlight to HTML5. So all that money you invested in a top notch website is simply wasted!

Following the "market leader" is not a safe choice anymore, deal with it, you dummy RTL CIO's. Do your own research and look where the market is going. One thing is for sure, it is not going to be Microsoft. Microsoft is already a niche platform where tablets, cell phones and MP3 players are concerned. Microsoft was never a real player on the web. Apache rules and that is the way it has always been.

Microsoft is in trouble. The man that should have given it a new direction has left. The CEO sells 2 billion in stock (remember WorldOnline?). Getting the message? A company in trouble is going to make strange moves. And making your whole technology strategy dependent on it is not a safe bet.

Update: I just found the "dummy" in question: Arno Otto, Managing Director Digital Media of RTL Nederland.

Update: From the RTL XL FAQ:

Warning!
Dear viewer, at this moment we're experiencing some problems with RTL XL, which is not compatible with Google Chrome at the time being. There are problems with the Silverlight plugin. We do our best to fix this error as soon as possible. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Update: I've found a way to watch "RTL Gemist" without installing Moonlight. You can get instructions here (Dutch).

Update: Confirmed: "Due to a technical problem there are temporarily no statistics collected from the RTL streams". If there is a problem that's bad enough, but maybe RTL doesn't want to be bothered with statistics right now. Go figure, if there is a sharp drop in the number of visitors that means their expensive project has failed miserably. Admitting that in the boardroom is hard enough, try admitting that in public..

Update: Another indication that I'm on to something. What does Google suggest when you're searching for RTL XL?

Which translates to "RTL XL doesn't work".

Update: RTL XL now sells a dedicated iPad application for only 79 eurocents. That's not very expensive. But what do the customers think?

I relied on all the rave reviews but it is a setback with a vengeance. Probably the entire RTL editors left a positive review. E.g. a huge picture with just three lines of text, stating: "Click here to view video". You can click all you want, but no video pops up. It seems that the application is still in testing. The live stream is of a very low quality. All in all a waste of money, even for 79 cents. There are plenty of better alternatives to see the news.

It seems my fellow countryman is wrong: it may take some time before my workaround is defeated.

An average Windows XP day

2010-09-11T11:18:00.025+02:00

You probably know by now that I don't touch anything but Linux in my private life. I got a Linux laptop, a Linux mini-laptop, a Linux eBook reader, a Linux television and an Android cell phone. However, in my professional life I do not have that choice.

In the Netherlands virtually every single company uses Windows. Windows is not a very secure Operating System, so everything is bolted down. I cannot install new programs, I cannot kill system processes, I cannot add any buttons or change the menu. The whole thing usually boots from the network. So, don't comment that "this program adds that functionality" or "open up a settings menu and change this or that". It doesn't work.

During the day, these are the annoyances I have to deal with:

Bootup takes up to twenty minutes. It probably has to do with the fact that my entire profile has to be transferred to my workstation. That's stupid. Can't you just mount a /home directory with all my settings already there?
I get a message I cannot be logged in. I scroll down and see that the harddisk is full. I call the helpdesk, they log in and wipe all those useless profiles that have been accumulated over time. Half an hour later they're done.
The desktop comes up, but clicking desktop icons doesn't have any effect. I have to wait for an additional minute or two. In the meanwhile I've started and shutdown my Ben Nanonote over a dozen times.
Finally Outlook comes up. I have to wait an additional minute or two before clicking any folders has any effect.
Firefox comes up, I have to import all Explorer settings all over again. My passwords are lost. I have to reinstall and configure all add-ons all over again, including the FTP accounts of FireFTP.
I don't have any usable "notes" program, so I use the Outlook notes. Which moron designed this? It isn't even a regular window, so I can't scroll down.
Anything that Outlook considers to be a "dialog" blocks Outlook entirely. KMail does that a lot better. Why can't I copy an email address from the recipients dialog?
More Outlook woes. Using Excel to send the spreadsheet as an attachment freezes the entire desktop. I can't even save the file and do it manually. I kill both Excel and Outlook and start all over again.
Opening an RTF file attachment of 2K in Word takes minutes.
Copying and pasting items in a message changes the style over and over again. I change to pure ASCII text again.
Even pure ASCII text doesn't work the way it is supposed to be. More editing.
Clicking the box "The attachment is still open in [bladibla]. Do you want to close the message anyway?" for the zillionth time today.
If you don't get that message you may be even worse off. If you happen to open the attachment, manipulate it, save it and then close the email, you may get the message "Do you want to save it?" If you answer YES, your original attachment is lost. If you answer NO your changed file is lost. Yes, even if you saved it to disk. Which moron thought that was a good idea?
Mailbox full. I have to create a .PST file, copy all my messages there, put the .PST file on my memory-stick, fire up my laptop, import the .PST in Thunderbird, harvest the resulting file somewhere hidden in the bowels of the C: drive, copy it to Pegasus Mail, rename it, transfer all the messages in the correct folders and delete the .PST file.
I copy a template SQL statement in the braindead Notepad editor. Now I have to fill in the parameters. Although my desktop is quite cluttered, I cannot minimize all windows, nor open a new desktop and transfer one of the windows there, nor tell one window to stay on top of all the others.
I've copied one of the parameters, but when logging in to PHPadmin, I forgot all my passwords were lost. Since there is no Klipper, I have to open up my password file (sorry, no KDE Wallet, it's an ASCII file), copy and paste the password in the appropriate box, open up the message again and copy the parameter again.
When selecting a file in the file dialog, it has forgotten all my settings. I want a detailed list, sorted by modification date. I'm not even mentioning the fact I have to resize the window each and every time, nor that it seems to forget all the time what my default directory was for that program.
While editing a Word document, it changes styles all the time for no obvious reason. I have to correct that all the time. God, I miss WP 5.1..
While creating a table of contents it inserts empty pages. The table of contents itself doesn't honor the margin settings. Trying to correct that, well, you catch my drift.
Word document looks really good now. I save and reload it, only to find that my images are all over the place now, partially overlapping the text.
It fails while trying to generate a PDF file, simply because I have the previous version still open in Adobe Reader.
It seems unable to remember my default printer, not even for this session. When I'm too hasty, it sends my output to the printer in the first floor. Hurray! Fortunately, I'm not working on the top floor of the Empire State Building.
It fails to mount my memorystick, because it overlaps a network drive. Another memorystick works fine. The same memorystick mounts flawlessly on another Windows machine.
Windows seems to freeze for the zillionth time today. I frantically press [CTRL]-[ALT]-[DEL] because clicking the taskbar doesn't work anymore. The virusscanner has obviously kicked in, eating away between 25% and 50% of my CPU. Can't kill it. Work becomes virtually impossible, since the machine takes seconds to comply after each and every command.
Windows asks me for the zillionth time, how it has to open a simple ASCII file. Yes, try to find the appropriate program on the web, you moron. Can't select an alternative editor because it has been installed as an .MSI.
Notepad garbles my file, because it can't deal with Unix ASCII. I have to save it and reopen it with Wordpad.
[CTRL]-T doesn't work in Explorer v6. I have to open a menu, select a new window and enter the link. More clutter on the desktop.
Explorer explains to me for the zillionth time that it is very dangerous to open a .SVG file. I have to open the options, allow it and then it will finally show me what I want. I made a small error and have to open the file again. Explorer explains to me for the zillionth time that it is very dangerous to open a .SVG file, etc.
I press [PRT-SCRN] and try to copy the image in a HTML message. It won't do it. I get some cryptic error message. I open up Paint and try to paste the image again. No problem. I save it as .PNG, include it as an attachment and off we go. When I open the message again to view the image (check and doublecheck) Windows complains it can't open the image, because it is an unrecognized filetype. Maybe I want to look for an appropriate program on the web which I can't install anyway.
After uttering more F-words than an average Jerry Springer episode featuring Gordon Ramsay, my workday is finally over. I try to shutdown Windows. It takes another five or so minutes. Others would probably run away, but I dutifully wait until the thing has closed. The tramway is gone. Now I have to wait in the rain for ten minutes until the next one.
Dripping wet I enter the tramway and fire up the Nanonote. After I finish sneezing it is there.
I wonder what is so "professional" about "Windows XP Professional". Seems rather lame to me. How much was it they spent on usability tests?
Whatever happened to the Windows XP Media Centers? Haven't heard about them for some time..

Update: I got a lot of feedback to this post, both verbally and in writing. Some commenters blame it on the setup of Windows XP in this particular company. But I'm not just writing about performance issues. A better implementation does not fix the usability issues and the obvious bugs (especially in Word and Outlook).

Due to this feedback, I can add the following annoyances to the list:

A document written in Word 2007 and saved as Word 2000 crashes Word 2000 consistently.
Access writes Excel files in a different (older) format and cannot subsequently read them without conversion.
Word 2003 shows only the first 11 pages of a 21 page document. A full uninstall of all addons, registry cleaning and other measures are required before it behaves again as it should.
Reading an alien format into Excel 2000 and subsequently trying to email it leads to a complete breakdown of Outlook.
Word 2000 cannot correctly read an RTF file. Tables get garbled.

Update: a new collegue asked me: "Can I work with LyX here?" I answered him: "Yes, you can. They should be used to it by now. Just don't forget to install Latex2RTF." "Great!" he said "That saves me 40% of my time. That's the time I usually spend to correct the layout." Nuff said. Scrap Word. 40% more productivity gained by using an application that costs you $0. Good ROI.

My life with Ben, episode 3

2010-08-30T19:00:00.013+02:00

In the previous two episodes, I've told you how I've carried the Ben Nanonote along for several weeks, just to see how it behaves in the real world. In short, it has been used as an MP3 player, a small wordprocessor and as a miniature system console.

But since it also has a capable PDF viewer I wondered whether it could free me from printing those papers just before a meeting. You know, these entries in your schedule that you become aware of just five minutes before they start. In the meanwhile you have to collect all the documents required from various sources and locations and quickly send them to the printer since your regular laptop is out of juice or its use during the meeting is - if you happen to work for certain technologically conservative companies - "undesired".

At that moment you will notice that a "printer queue" refers to the number of persons waiting before their print jobs have finished and if it doesn't that's because the device in question is either out of paper or simply jammed beyond repair.

So wouldn't it be nice if you could simply put all these documents on your Ben Nanonote and carry them along? Sure it would. The only thing keeping you from doing that is that your boss probably selected that "other" Operating System and ditto Office suite.

Fortunately, most companies offer PDF printing capabilities nowadays, so you can save your documents in that format. If not, there are several FOSS or freeware utilities you can use like FreePDF, CutePDF or PDFCreator. Note the latter has been accused of installing spyware, despite its FOSS license. If you're using any FOSS productivity programs, you probably have that capability already. Anyway, whatever method you use, generating PDF files is usually a matter of seconds.

The big question is, how do you get them to your Nanonote that quickly. USB doesn't work on MS-Windows - unless you're only interested in charging the battery of the Nanonote - and chances are your uSD card contains only ext2 file systems. But help is underway, because it is possible to read and write ext2 file systems under that "other" Operating System by using Ext2IFS (freeware) or Ext2FSD (FOSS).

Both are very easy to install under XP, but I had a bit more luck with Ext2FSD. Ext2FSD is definitely recommended when you use one of the latest incarnations of that "other" Operating System, because Ext2IFS hasn't been updated since late October 2008.

For accessing the uSD card I use an SD card adapter, although USB adapters are also available. First I installed Ext2IFS, rebooted, inserted the uSD card and started Explorer. Then I uninstalled it and repeated the same procedure with Ext2FSD. Both times I was asked whether I wanted to format my uSD card - which I didn't, of course. Ext2IFS was consistent in its behavior, but Ext2FSD complied when I accessed the drive with MinGW bash. After that, Ext2FSB worked flawlessly, reading and writing the ext2 file system and unmounting it cleanly.

I must note I've been pretty careful, shutting the Ben down entirely before inserting or removing the uSD card. You can probably mount and unmount it while in operation, but because booting the Ben is a matter of seconds I simply didn't want to take the risk.

In a previous episode I already reviewed "nupdf", which is a pretty decent PDF viewer - although not entirely bugfree. It is very well suited for reading office documents, which are usually fifteen pages or less. You can even keep two "nupdf" instances in memory concurrently and switch between them by pressing [CTRL]-[ALT]-[Fx]. However, "nupdf" does not blank the screen automatically (like "gmu"), so you might drain the battery a little bit quicker than usual.

I must admit I haven't tried using "nupdf" for reading entire books, but I wonder whether it is well suited for that purpose. You'll either have to strain your eyes to read the small, grainy print or scroll from the left to the right all the time. Whatever choice you make, I can assure you it is not going to be a comfortable read. Note this is hardly the fault of the developer, but rather a logical consequence of using a device with these limitations for this kind of task.

Still, for a quick peek you can't go wrong, especially since you can keep "hnb" open in another console to make a quick note. If you keep your uSD card synchronized with your desktop, you're prepared to go to any meeting at any time. Never mind the print queues..

My life with Ben, episode 2

2010-08-29T14:18:00.035+02:00

I've had a serial terminal connected to my Linux box for as long as I can remember. My brother worked for a company that was phasing them out at the time, I told him I wanted one (I was always a sucker for useless hardware) so I got one for free. It sat on my dinner table for years and then I switched to Linux. Hooking it up was (and is) quite easy. You simply put this entry in your inittab:

S0:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -L 38400 ttyS1 wy60-25

And make an entry in /etc/securetty. Done. Then I log in and enter:

tail -f /var/log/messages

This may seem trivial, but it has saved my life numerous times, e.g.

.. when X becomes unresponsive because a runaway program is eating up my swap space;
.. when X crashes for some reason and locks up my terminal;
.. when my harddisk is starting to give up and throws all kinds of messages all over the place.

Once I was able to quickly make a backup, losing only a few trivial files. After a reboot the disk was gone forever.

Unfortunately, my old Wyse 25 is slowly giving up. All of a sudden horizontal or vertical bars strike out all the characters on screen and only a sharp tap on the left side of the terminal helps - sometimes. I have been looking for a replacement, but even on eBay they're scarce. Wyse has stopped producing them altogether.

The closest thing you can get are thin clients. Although they're not too expensive they're a hell to setup properly. Note I'm not a network expert and I really don't need a GUI. All I need is a bunch of scrolling /var/log/messages and an occasional [CTRL]-C halt[ENTER]. In other words, a thin client: that's overkill.

Then I got my Ben Nanonote. The Ben features a serial port, but unfortunately you need to solder your way into that. That's a tall order from a guy who can't even properly glue the poor things feet back on without making the device an inseparable part of his body. But the Ben also features an Ethernet-over-USB gadget. I could use that one to connect it to my OpenSuSE machine.

Ok, it probably can be done, but I got two problems here. One, I don't know much about networking. Two, I'm paranoid where security is concerned. I saw sshd was running, so I tried to login.

ssh root@192.168.254.100

Surprise, it didn't work. A quick look at dmesg showed me why:

SFW2-INext-DROP-DEFLT IN=usb0 OUT= MAC=xxxx SRC=192.168.254.101 DST=192.168.254.100 LEN=52 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=27103 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=49762 DPT=22 WINDOW=5840 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0 OPT (yyyy)

It was killed by the firewall before it even got there. I never like fiddling around with my machine - especially when I barely know what I'm doing - but I gave it a try. I started YaST, selected "Security and Users" and then "Firewall". Then I selected "Interfaces" and placed "usb0" in the DMZ.

Now I had to allow Ben to use ssh. I selected "Allowed services" and then "Secure Shell Server".

Finally, it was time to wrap it all up and try again. I finalized the configuration and was presented with a screen, showing all my changes.

When I tried to login, it still didn't work, but at least I got through.

SFW2-INdmz-ACC-TCP IN=usb0 OUT= MAC=xxxx SRC=192.168.254.101 DST=192.168.254.100 LEN=52 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=460 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=49763 DPT=22 WINDOW=5840 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0 OPT (yyyy)

Finally, I turned to /etc/ssh/sshd_config and changed a few settings. Now, this was dangerous territory..

Port 22
AddressFamily any
ListenAddress 192.168.254.101

Then I restarted ssh.

/etc/init.d/sshd restart

But all I got was:

bind: Cannot assign requested address

Duh? Ok, to cut this story short: I went from 192.168.254.101 all through 192.0.0.0, but all with the same result. Finally, 0.0.0.0 worked. Don't ask me why..

I went to Gibson Research Center to test the outside defenses. All ports still on stealth. Fine. I know my ADSL modem has a firewall too, but you can never be too sure..

So, this is how my Ben Nanonote became a console. If my Wyse 25 finally goes to that big computer center in the sky, the only thing I have to do is to order another Ben Nanonote and hook it up.

Sure, there are still a few things left to figure out. Sometimes I have to go through the entire firewall dialog, because it seems to have "forgotten" all about the DMZ. The connection with the Ben is not set up automatically at startup and finally, a professional would have made a far more better job of setting up the entire configuration. But it works! And that's good. I hate repairing filesystems.

My life with Ben, episode 1

2010-08-28T10:47:00.049+02:00

I've been using (and abusing) my Ben Nanonote daily now for several weeks, simply to find out whether this little machine is just a little gadget or really a useful device. In the meanwhile, I found out several things:

The feet will come off, so maybe you'd better fix that before it happens, because the changes are you'll never find them again. Using it without feet is not an option, because it will wobble. Which is very uncomfortable and irritating.
When the screen fades to white, it hasn't given up. Relax, hook it up and it will recharge. The battery is dead, not the screen.
I will boot the Nanonote when I'm on the tramway and it will usually still have juice when I get home eight hours later, unless the screen has been heavily used - at least that is the impression I have. I haven't tested this under controlled circumstances yet.
Unlike the iPad, it does have multitasking. You can switch between consoles by pressing [CTRL]-[ALT]-[F1], [CTRL]-[ALT]-[F2], [CTRL]-[ALT]-[F3], etc. Even when you're using a graphics application. However, if you try to use two heavy-load applications at the same time (e.g. Gmu), strange things may happen, including a spontaneous shutdown.

So, you may ask, what am I using the Nanonote for all day? Well, first of all, Gmu makes it an excellent Ogg player. The Nanonote comfortably fits in ones pocket and has an excellent sound quality. The uSD card provides lots of space, so you can take all of your favorite songs along with you. Second, the "hnb" (a sort of KJots) is always just a few keystrokes away, so you'll never have to search for a piece of paper while on the phone. You can even create a spreadsheet using "sc" or 4tHs own "Tiny Commandline Spreadsheet".

I clearly stated "create", not "maintain". Why? Well, IMHO the screen of the Nanonote is just too small to manipulate large amounts of data. You simply don't have any overview. E.g. a line is only forty characters wide, so you can only see three columns at the time. I haven't worked with such small screens since the ZX Spectrum. And even in those days, I didn't feel a spreadsheet was a viable option on that machine.

Don't understand me wrong: it's alright to set up a spreadsheet while "in the field", but at some point in time, you want to transfer that file to a full blown workstation and continue work there. Fortunately, "sc" allows you to export a spreadsheet to a CSV-like format. "TCS" even supports exports to .FODS (OpenOffice), .XLS (MS-Excel), and .KSP (KSpread). "TCS" will be part of the up and coming 3.61.0 release of 4tH.

The same applies to wordprocessing: you simply don't want to maintain a large document on the Nanonote. But what you want to do is to create a document while on the road. I'm a regular columnist of the Dutch "IT Infra" magazine, so I really want to use these lost moments to do some work.

And there the trouble began: there is no wordprocessing package available for the Nanonote. Just a few editors. However, while looking for a "curses" based wordprocessor I stumbled upon "txt2tags", a formatting program written in Python - which is supported by the Nanonote.

The big advantage of "txt2tags" is that you don't have to bother yourself with technicalities like setting margins or papersize, you just type and add formatting instructions like section, bold, bulleted list, link, image, etc. When you're done, you simply render the document in the required format, like HTML, TeX, etc. Very much like how my favorite LyX works.

Now the quest for a suitable editor began. Fortunately, a list of suitable editors was available, most of which were already available on the Nanonote. "vi" was out of the question, because - although I like it for editing source files - it doesn't give me a wordprocessor feel. "nano" just fell short, especially the Nanonote implementation. So I decided to use "joe". "joe" has a "Wordstar" legacy which I do not particularly like (I'm still trying to get the knots out of my fingers while trying to type [CTRL]-[ALT]-[SHIFT]-K-Y-0) but it would have to do. There were three things I wanted to archieve:

Wordwrap and reformatting paragraphs;
Highlighting of tags;
Rendering of the document within the editor itself.

Wordwrap and reformatting
You can customize "joe" by creating a .joerc file within your $HOME directory. Note you have to customize "joe" completely - you can't just single out the options you want to set. The nice thing about "joe" is that you can customize it for particular file types. My "txt2tags" files all have a .t2t extension, so that wasn't too difficult:

*.t2t
-rmargin 39
-wordwrap

That did the trick! I could simply type away without scrolling to the right, so all the text remained on the screen. If I had created a gap while editing a quick [CTRL]-K-J would fix the formatting. Mission completed!

Highlighting of tags
This proved to be a bit more difficult. I created a ~/.joe/syntax directory and placed the txt2tags.jsf file there. I edited .joerc accordingly:

*.t2t
-rmargin 39
-wordwrap
-syntax txt2tags

Nothing. I turned to the Nanonote mailinglist for help and David Kuehling and Mark Adrian Bell came to the rescue. Mark had been able to activate syntax highlighting by using Davids own "joe" package.

So I uninstalled the native "joe" package and installed Davids. Nothing. Nada. No highlighting. I asked David for help and he figured it out: the -highlight option was missing. He found that one out by incident when using another .joerc file. I would never had thought that because the -lightoff option was disabled.

And that is the problem with "joe". IMHO it is not sufficiently documented. You can surf the web for hours - like me - without finding any useful information. Sure, if you just want to make a quick edit there are lots of tutorials. But if you really want to do some serious customizing, you're very much on your own.

Rendering of the document
Integrating the "txt2tags" program was the last step. The only help you can get is the glossary here and a few odd examples scattered around the web. Fortunately, you can type in the commands at the prompt after typing [ESC]-X. I finally decided on:

:def render savenow,if,"!joe(sys,\"[path]txt2tags \",name,rtn)",then,msg,"*ERROR* file not generated",rtn,endif

This will save the current file, call the "txt2tags" program and print a message when an error occurs. I just needed to bind it to a key (I choose [ESC]-C) and that was it.

render ^[ c Compile
render ^[ ^C Compile

Now it seems quite easy but I hammered away for hours at the prompt before I got it right - sort of. Rendering is not particularly fast, but for short documents (about 500 words) it will do just fine.

Wordprocessing on the Nanonote
So now we're in for business. I will just scratch the surface, because "txt2tags" is very well documented.

The first three lines are reserved to the title, the author and the version. If one or all of these are missing just leave them blank. The next lines can be used for the configuration area, e.g. the format you want to render the document in. In the Nanonote implementation, the %!target: tag is required. You can put any supported format there, like tex (LyX) or html (OpenOffice). If you want to generate a Table of Contents, you can add:

%!options: --toc

After that your text follows. Simple tags like "**", "+", "//" are used to indicate bold, bulleted list, italic, others can be used to indicate numbered or unnumbered section headers. You'll get the hang of it soon enough, it's very intuitive.

When you're done, you simply hit the [ESC]-C key and within a few seconds you're done. You can now transfer it to your main machine by using the uSD card or scp. Done.

This is how it looks in OpenOffice:

And this is LyX:

Well, that's it for now, but I'll be back soon with some more unexpected uses for the Ben Nanonote that go beyond the "Barbie notebook for little girls with too much money". Have phun!

Pure fun, but not for the faint hearted

2010-08-08T16:23:00.058+02:00

Several weeks ago I found out that my 4tH compiler had been ported to the Ben Nanonote. Well, that happens quite a lot. It's small, portable and even cross-compilable so that shouldn't surprise anyone.

Curious as I am, I tried to find out what a kind of computer that was. In short, it's a Linux computer the size of a pack of cigarettes. It looks like a toy laptop, but it isn't. It's fully functional. And best of all, it was only $99. I decided I had to have one.

Unpacking and installing
It took me a while to find a Dutch dealer, but I found one. I ordered one online and a week later I found a small package in the mail. I opened it and found:

The Nanonote itself;
A USB cable;
A battery;
A manual;
An odd rubber thingy.

The manual isn't worth much. It's small and over half of it is dedicated to a GPL license. No, if you want to find out something about the Ben Nanonote, you got to have a working Internet connection and surf down here.

First thing you have to consider is that the USB cable is of special quality. Unless you're sure you've bought a state of the art cable, don't use another cable in connection with the Ben Nanonote. Second thing, reserve a USB port for the Nanonote. Don't use a USB hub! This is very important.

Ok, now we got that settled, hook it up to your Linux machine and boot it. Now type:

passwd

And enter the password for root on your Ben Nanonote. Then open a console on your Linux machine and type:

su
ifconfig usb0 192.168.254.100
exit
ssh root@192.168.254.101

Now accept the defaults and enter the password you've just given. Hurray, you're connected with your Ben Nanonote! First, find out what version you're using:

dmesg | less

If the first line doesn't say:

[ 0.000000] Linux version 2.6.32.10 (mvogt@buildhost) (gcc version 4.3.3 (GCC) ) #1 PREEMPT Tue Jun 15 17:53:33 CEST 2010

You're in for a treat: updating the firmware. It's no walk in the park, but it can be done. The documentation lists three methods:

Using a shell script and the USB cable;
Using the prompt and USB cable;
Using the prompt and a mini-SD card.

I tried all three and only the second worked. However, this requires a special program called usbboot. If you're using a Debian based distribution this is not too hard, but my OpenSuSE isn't. First I had to install the confuse library from source. Then I had to unpack the tarball. After that usbboot was functional.

Now the trick is to get the Ben Nanonote into USB mode. Fortunately, pressing the power button in conjunction with "U" worked for me. If not, you have to short a few pins (!) in the interior of the tiny machine. That's what this strange, rubbery thingy is for!

I followed the instruction to the letter (even copy and pasted them at the prompt), but for one odd reason it wouldn't take:

nprog 2048 openwrt-xburst-qi_lb60-root.ubi 0 0 -n

I still don't know what caused that - it may have been a user error, but fortunately this worked:

usbboot -c "nprog 2048 openwrt-xburst-qi_lb60-root.ubi 0 0 -n"

Applications
This firmware makes a world of difference. Sound works and with it, a lot of applications that are just plain fun like "Doom" and "Gmu". Note that for patent reasons "Gmu" only works with Ogg-Vorbis files. If you got a large MP3 collection, this is a quick fix:

sox mp3file.mp3 oggfile.ogg

Copying files to you Ben Nanonote is very straight forward. If you don't want to swap mini-SD cards, simply enter:

scp [myfile] root@192.168.254.101:[directory]

Another indispensable program is "Nupdf". It does quite a decent job of rendering PDF files on the tiny machine. Just don't press [enter] because that gets you in a menu that is very volatile. If that happens, leave it as soon as you can before the thing hangs.

Therefore it is good to know that you can shut the Ben Nanonote down by simply pressing the power button for a few seconds. If that fails, you have to reset it much like the EeePC 701, i.e. by putting a toothpick in a hole. Of course, issuing:

halt

Is so much more elegant and professional.

Programming is not bad at all as well. Python and Lua are included by default. 4tH is another obvious choice, more so because it is adapted to the tiny 320x240 pixel screen. Office applications are a bit rarer, but if you are determined to type away on this calculator style keyboard, try "sc". It is a console based, vi like spreadsheet. Wordprocessing is a bit harder, but I found the tandem of "nano" and "txt2tags" quite usable.

Finally, I'd love to have a ZX Spectrum emulator for this machine! It's perfectly suited for this kind of keyboard and screen size. Unfortunately, although it is stated that Dingoo binaries are compatible, I wasn't able to make one single ZX Spectrum emulator run.

However, there is a DOSBox emulator for the Ben Nanonote, so I brushed off my Z80 emulator and installed it. After some tinkering, it ran!

But there are some serious drawbacks. First, there is no sound. Second, you can't type any numbers. Third, a lot of keys are missing from the Ben Nanonote, so you can't quit the Spectrum emulator once you've started it. Finally, it is SLOW. The ZX Spectrum emulator says it's running at 112%, but believe me: it is much slower.

Also, DOSBox still emulates a 80x25 screen which pretty much means everything is illegible. E.g. Wordperfect 5.1 runs perfectly. You just can't read anything..

Finally, I really advise you to disable "gmenu2x". It uses a lot of memory and is hardly useful. My Ben Nanonote really was sluggish while it was loaded, up to the point where the kernel killed it - and "hotplug" along with it. A full list of packages can be obtained here.

Cross compilation
There is a nice page about setting up cross compilation. I really have to advise you to use this one and not some others you may find on the web. Except for one thing. Don't issue this command:

scripts/feeds update -a && scripts/feeds install -a

It will take much longer before you have a working environment and it bombed out while building Qt4 with me. You can always add additional packages by marking them <*> and issuing:

make

Still, I wasn't able to make 4tH pop up in the menu of "menuconfig". Fortunately, there is an alternative way to cross compile for the Ben Nanonote. It worked for 4tH, but I must admit I haven't been able to cross compile much more.

Conclusion
I must admit I've been very frustrated at times. And sometimes, I still am. But there is something about this tiny machine that makes you love it, no matter what. It's very sturdy, although a foot has fallen off and I reconnected the rubber USB protection several times. I reset it, yanked the battery out of it, reinserted the mini-SD card time and time again, but it kept on working. The power button has been abused a zillion times, but it doesn't give up. It's really a brave little machine.

But all in all, it's not a consumer device. If you expect the thing to "just work", don't buy one. If you expect it to be useful out of the box, don't buy one. If you expect perfect end user documentation, don't buy one. E.g. documentation said I could mount the mini-SD card line this:

mount /dev/mmcblk0 /card

But it actually is:

mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /card

That's typical. But if you want the tiniest webserver you've ever seen (it supports Apache and PHP), do buy one. If you have no fear of trying things - and failing while you're at it, do buy one. If you want a piece of hardware that will really touch your friends, do buy one. They will be amazed, laugh, because there's nothing similar on the market.

Support is there, you can't get any closer to the developers than here. And they'll help you. But this device will require some effort from your side. And if you give it that little bit of effort, I don't believe it lets you down. It's much too cute for that..!

Update: Yes, you can use it as an MP3 player. You can connect a 3.5 mm jack headphone and it easily slips into your pocket. The sound is plain beautiful and it will easily play for 10+ hours. And in the meanwhile it is open to other tasks.

No, you don't need to do any soldering unless you want to use the RS232 interface. Shorting the pins for usbboot is temporary. And unless you've blasted the bootloader, you won't need to do that.

Update: You can switch between consoles by pressing [CTRL]-[ALT]-[F1], [CTRL]-[ALT]-[F2], [CTRL]-[ALT]-[F3], etc. Even when you're using a graphics application. ~~However, you cannot start two graphics applications at the same time~~.

Update: Jirka correctly stated that running two graphics applications at the time is possible. However, any console switch in combination with "gmu" gave rise to erratic behavior, including a spontaneous shutdown of the Nanonote. Two concurrent "Nupdf" sessions gave no problems whatsoever. So while a console switch is possible while in graphics mode, "caveat lector" remains sound advice.

Update: My Ben Nanonote scared the hell out of me today. I left it open all day, including a graphic screen. When I went home, the screen turned milky-white within about a second and stayed that way. Pressing the "off" button didn't work. Resetting it didn't work. Jerking out the battery didn't work. The screen stayed milky-white. At that moment I wondered whether the screen had given up, but may be I was still able to hook it up to USB.

When I got home, it didn't react to nothing anymore. I was prepared to send it back. When I hooked it up to my main computer, I wasn't able to connect it to USB Ethernet, but it booted at least. A Nanonote reboot fixed that, however. It turned out, it was just out of juice. After a few hours of recharging it worked perfectly. Had the screen simply turned black, I wouldn't have worried.

All in all, it simply confirmed its reputation: it may not work the way you expect it to, but it will survive. Keep up these quality requirements where the battery, ON/OFF button and reset button are concerned.

Mark Shuttleworth's business concept is flawed

2010-06-13T19:00:00.020+02:00

Last week an old discussion flared up once again when TildeHash published "Meritocracy vs. Democracy", a long lament for.. the position of a few buttons!

This may baffle some oldtimers, since it is an issue that is fixed within a few minutes by:

gconftool-2 --set /apps/metacity/general/button_layout --type string "menu:minimize,maximize,close"

So why this uproar? Why are some many people so upset by a simple design issue?

Note this isn't the first time Ubuntu hit the headlines in the most unfavorable way. A rather ugly battle was fought last March between Caitlyn Martin and Sam Varghese over.. a broken printer driver! Although I'm usually as pragmatic as Sam - I gambled, I lost, now revert - I'm glad I kept out of this discussion since both parties resorted to some vicious "ad hominem" attacks.

However, a pattern seems to arise. Strangely enough, some people thought that a simple poll could change Mark Shuttleworth's mind and were obviously appalled when it didn't. Jim Morrison said it all: "You can't petition the Lord with prayer" and that applies to the concept of the "benevolent dictator" as well.

The only conclusion I can draw is that the audience that Ubuntu attracts are not your usual "computer-savvy" user who has no problem reinstalling something, switching distros or even forking a distribution. They obviously seem to want something that just works, which is not the product Mark Shuttleworth supplies.

Ubuntu has a horrible track record where reliability is concerned. More than once, people were left with a broken installation after an update or upgrade. For that reason, I don't touch it. I simply lack the time to hunt down and track bugs. I need my machine each and every day to do the work. For that reason, I stick with the distro I installed until the hardware breaks down. That's not too big a problem: if I need something I download the tarball and compile it. If it doesn't work, I uninstall it and revert to the original package.

So why is Mark Shuttleworth's business concept flawed? Well, first it is based on Debian's unstable branch. Read my lips: it's called "unstable" for a reason. You might call that conservative, but if you need a product that "simply works" it's not the way to go. True, LTS versions are based on "testing", but that still isn't "stable". Second, since Ubuntu users seem to be less geeky than others you have to take them into account. That means you can't get away with a commandline fix if you go into a direction they don't like. You have to get it straight away, because they can't fix it.

Is this concerning me? No, I'm "computer savvy" enough to keep my machine in working order. And since I require high availability I won't touch Ubuntu with a pole. Furthermore, KDE is a second rank citizen in Mark's universe and that's my desktop environment. In short, I never liked Ubuntu and don't like it any better now.

But if users turn away from Ubuntu it will hurt Linux in the long run, because all these guys seem to think that Ubuntu equals Linux - which is simply not true. A customer lost is twice as hard to get back than a new one. Their experiences will echo all over the net for years to come. So maybe it is time for the community to fill that niche, make a new distro which has a radically different philosophy based on reliability and user acceptance. My best bet is Linux Mint for several reasons. As DistroWatch put it:

This [Linux Mint] is one project where the developers and users are in constant interaction, resulting in dramatic, user-driven improvements with every new release.

Need I say more?

So instead of whining, why don't you all jump on the Linux Mint bandwagon? I'm sure they are only happy to accommodate you all. It shouldn't be too difficult, because it is derived from Ubuntu. Again, I'm not running it - but that shouldn't keep you from finding out what FOSS is all about: choice.

FAQ
Don't you know that Mint and Ubuntu are close cousins?

Yes, I know: I wrote it, can't you do me the courtesy to read it?

Why do you consider Mint a safer choice than Ubuntu, when they're close cousins?

Because of their policy. They do not follow Ubuntu blindly, but only release when they're satisfied there are no show-stoppers. Furthermore, they don't promote updates or upgrades. Instead, they want you to do a clean install. I consider updates and upgrades too risky, especially for a newbie. It should be discouraged and that is exactly what Mint does. Consequently a running machine keeps running and that is what the doctor ordered. If you had followed the link, you could have figured that one out yourself. Or do you think that underlining words is just neat?

Those who do and those who don't

2010-04-24T20:06:00.005+02:00

In essence, I'm a simple kind of guy. The deeper meaning of fashion eludes me completely. If it's good this year, it must be good next year. And if it's improved next year, I don't expect the old thing to see again the year after simply because it's "fashionable" or "retro" again.

That's why I always seek out the brands and models that remain unchanged for years, so I can get whatever I need for the next ten years to come. I don't have any trouble buying a pink laptop and a black mouse if the price is right and the specifications are good.

Basically, I don't give a sh*t about what people think. If a pink laptop makes me gay, fine. You're not in my bedroom, I know what's true and your opinion is worth, well, do I have to spell it out?

Since I'm a simple guy, I use simple concepts. In my world there is no room for trying. Either you do or you don't. You either stay on your feet or fall flat on your face. I have no time or need to occupy myself with your inner workings. If you doubt, do it in your own time.

The reason for that is very simple as well. Doubting is an activity and people cannot concentrate on two things at the same time. I'd rather have you concentrate on doing the thing I ask from you than doubting whether you can do it. If you can multitask, fine, but do the thing you're supposed to do.

The very thing that always comes along with not doing things is excuses. I'm always astonished with the creativity people show when inventing excuses. It's simply incredible. If they had used that same creativity to do the things they were supposed to do, we wouldn't have this conversation.

The point is, I'm not interested how you feel. That's not why I hired you. I've hired you to do things. Your feelings are a private affair, they don't interest me. As long as your grand mother hasn't died it shouldn't be a major influence. Fortunately, you have only two grandmothers, so you run out of excuses pretty quickly.

Of course, there always will be children. Children get sick, have sex, experiment with drugs and do all those things you did when you were young. It may be a major concern to you, but still that's not why I hired you. If children constantly prevent you to do the things you're supposed to do, take care of them, but don't lean on my payroll. I didn't conceive them and they're not on my payroll. It's a private matter and consequently your matter.

So because you aren't heard, you turn to these sites where they claim that matriarchy may save the world, but as long as you can't save the project that you're involved with, that is of little concern to me.

Yeah, you may call it "backlash", which means criticism you don't have to respond to. But I tell you this: if you can't address criticism – whatever source it comes from – you ain't worth anything. I can take on your matriarchy claim anytime, because you simply don't deliver. I'm not afraid of you and you can post your fallible comments any time. Gimme what I want. Gimme what I need. There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who do and those who don't.

German firm presents an iPad killer

2010-04-13T18:32:00.030+02:00

Usually I don't write posts like this. But because all the information we have right now is in German, I thought it was a good idea to spend a few lines on this new development.

First, relax. The new baby of Neofonie is called "WePad" and it's an Android device. Or, as the developers put it:

The WePad is an open platform and everybody can contribute. It's based on established technologies like Linux, Android and Adobe AIR. Every developer in the world can create applications for this device. And you can also use existing Android applications.

It also features multitasking, a webcam, a 16:9 screen, Flash, two USB ports and can "play anything you throw at it". Some sources claim you can also make phone calls, but I have no confirmation for this. You can find the full specifications here (German).

Prices start at 400 Euros for the 16 GB version and 550 Euros for the 32 GB version.

Update: The "WePad" is only a day old and the first scandal is already there. According to the Austrian website "derStandard.at" there were some problems shortly before the press conference, so Neofonie decided to fake the whole thing:

The authenticity of the tablet computer is questioned. Contrary to the statements of the WePad creators, the tablet computer ran Windows during the press conference - and not Linux - when it was presented in Berlin last Monday. This was confirmed last Tuesday on Facebook by one of the WePad developers, Helmut Hoffer von Ankershoffen.

He wrote that he became the device only shortly before the press conference began, due to delays at the customs. The WePad developers decided to run Microsoft Media Player, which merely showed a video in an endless loop. Neofonie, where Hoffer von Ankershoffen is managing director, was not available for comments.

Last Monday the WePad was shown to the public for the first time. Tore Meyer of 4tiitoo, a touch screen expert from Munich, has also participated in the development of the WePad. The WePad should be in the German shops by July, but last Monday the company was unable to show a functioning prototype.

Putting a viable iPad competitor on the market now seems away further than ever. Hoffer von Ankershoffen had promised that the WePad would offer its users "Openness, fair play and no barriers". The German tablet computer comes with two USB ports, a webcam and slot for European cellphone cards, features not found on the iPad. Hoffer von Ankershoffen stated that the entry model would cost around 450 Euros and a more extensive one 570 Euros.

This report has been confirmed by "Handelsblatt", which also states that Neofonie has confirmed the fake. Furthermore, "Handelblatt" reported that although the WePad features a multitouch display, a cursor could be seen on the screen.

In any case, the video below clearly shows that one of the creators does not allow journalists to operate the device, nor does he want to demonstrate it any further.

Further proof comes from "Androidpads.com" showing a screenshot with an allegedly Windows message box:

Update: Well, it is official now! It was a fake. Neofonie has now promised to organize a small meeting on April 26 where selected journalists and members of the Android community can test a real WePad - with Linux.

Update: Several sources (including LXer contributors) have uttered serious doubts concerning the WePads Atom processor. The website "TecZilla" shares those concerns. Overheating, overpowered and a low battery life are a few of them.

In the meanwhile, Neofonie has released a video that should prove the WePad is for real. Well, see for yourself:

"n.tv", a German language CNN-like news channel, has offered to test the devices (if any are available) before another disastrous press conference is thrown. The next one is scheduled for April 26..

Update: Neofonie's WePad tablet was shown to German journalists on the 26th of April and seems legit at first sight. However, it appears to be a bit underpowered as some commenters on LX-er already expected.

If there are any further developments, I will add them to this post.

Free Software is a democracy, NOT!

2010-03-20T12:17:00.007+01:00

My own project, although not a big one, has been around for over fifteen years and a small community has been built around it. Numerous improvements have been made and when I look back and contemplate what I actually wanted to make, this is quite a different beast.

As a developer you want your product to be useful, not only to yourself, but also to your community. It may be a vanity thing, but that's how it works. It is one of these things where a human character flaw works out just fine. Suggestions became features, bad extensions became fundamental changes, experiments became main branch.

But these were also feature requests that were not implemented, not that that were too outrageous or too time consuming, but because I didn't like the direction where they would take the project. You can fire away anything you like, but let's be clear: there is only one man who calls the shots here. Me.

Ok, your feature request got turned down. Big deal. Flame away, stalk me, start marching by my window, I don't care. It's my project, my software and I decide what I'm gonna do with it. And BTW, it's a waste of energy. You'd better use that energy for something more useful. It's simple. Fork!

I think - or better said: sincerely hope - that my community doesn't recognize the image I've projected in these last few lines. Because that's not the way I want to work. As a matter of fact, there were users that wanted to take the project in a different direction and consequently I designed a framework which made it easy to fork and merge. Because they were not unreasonable and neither am I. But that's just me.

When I slowly constructed my project and my community I delved deeply into the way FOSS works. I learned a lot from Linus and the way he makes his kernel tick. He doesn't know where the project is going. He doesn't care about deadlines. It's finished when it's finished. On the other hand, if he doesn't like something, it doesn't get in. He is the benevolent dictator.

That's why I don't understand why InaTux gets so upset. FOSS is not and never will be a democracy in the sense he (or she?) understands democracy. Design decisions are not made by simply voting them off - and certainly not by its users. If you don't like where a project is going, start your own or vote with your feet. Lots of people whine about the number of distributions, well, now you know why that is a good thing.

If you don't like where Ubuntu is going, install another distribution. Nobody is saying that you should stick with it. It's easy. Fire up your favorite browser, surf a little, pose a few questions here and there, push a download button and you're done. And changing distributions is a heck of a lot easier than changing Operating Systems.

If too many people start doing that, Mark Shuttleworth has two options. Either he creates the perfect distribution for Mark Shuttleworth or he starts asking himself the right questions. A customer lost takes twice the effort to reel in than a new one. He's making money with that, I suppose. I'm not. I only got my vanity to consider..

InaTux is just beating around the bush without hitting anything. Linus listens - but sometimes not. He created the kernel - and anyone can fork it. Like Mark Shuttleworth. And due to the license he can take Ubuntu in every direction he wants to. Even if it doesn't boot at all on any computer. It says nowhere in the license he has to listen to anyone. Not to me, not to you, not to InaTux. Like it or not. "I'm root, I can do anything".

Those are the facts of FOSS life and that is the bottom line. The rest is merely academic babbling. I didn't like where KDE 4.x was going - and with me a lot of other people. The KDE developers listened - and sometimes they did not. Fact is, I'm still working with KDE 3.5.x and I still have no plans to upgrade. When I have to install a new version of OpenSuSE, I'll probably give it a try - and if I don't like it I'll take my business somewhere else. If that happens, I'll probably state publicly why I didn't like it. Aaron J. Seigo can dispute that, but he can't make me move. Hey, I'm not working with Microsoft products here which are chained together with a whole line of subtle dependencies. I got a choice. It's a big bazaar out there.

So next time, InaTux, I want to read how you moved to another distribution and why. Or I want to read why you stuck with Ubuntu. That will be a whole lot more interesting than your endless and fundamentally flawed whining.

The data cruncher rides again

2010-02-06T10:35:00.010+01:00

As you may remember from my previous post, I simply wanted to import three spreadsheets into an MS-Access equivalent, use the "Query By Example" (QBE) mode to create a simple report and export the result to another spreadsheet. I did the whole thing in MS-Access as well and it took me about twenty minutes. The spreadsheets are relatively small: 2367 rows, 5149 rows and 27804 rows. Last time we saw how OOo Base 2.4.0 fell through. Not that it lacked functionality, but because it was so badly executed.

This time I decided to give Kexi 1.1.3 and Knoda 0.8.3 a go. Not that I really needed to, but just to see if they were up to it if I needed to execute another odd job like this. The first part concerned reading the spreadsheets. Both packages do not support MS-Excel files out of the box, so I needed to convert those to CSV. That wasn't too hard. OOo Calc did the job. Reading them was quite similar in both packages, since both provide beautiful wizards which make it quite easy. However, I was unable to set the primary key and I knew I had to pay for that once I executed the query.

In Kexi, I decided to open up the design table window and set the primary key. The program warned me however, when I did that I would lose all my data. Well, that was not an option. So I decided to skip that and get right to designing the query using the QBE window. I was unable to specify an INNER JOIN or OUTER JOIN, so that was a bummer. When I opened up the SQL window I saw why: it had created an old skool JOIN. These kinds of JOIN create a Carthesian product and use the WHERE clause to select the appropriate rows. Well, it could work. As expected, it ran for a while and then came back with 2690 rows. That was not quite what I expected. I expected 5149 rows. I decided to leave it there and continue with Knoda.

It is a shame that Knoda hasn't been developed any further, because it was a nice package. Nobody seems to know what has happened to its creator Horst Knorr. The last modifications are over 900 days ago, so consequently Knoda has not been ported to KDE 4.x. Anyway, I decided to use the dBase driver and read in the CSV files. I quicky found out that was not quite what I wanted, since every field with a name longer than 10 characters was ignored. Then I picked the SQLite3 driver. Reading in the data was much slower now. The largest table was progressing very slowly. I got nervous. In half an hour I had to catch the tramway to go to work.

(I know I have to explain this to my American audience. If you use public transport in Europe, you're not necessarily poor. I don't even have a drivers license. That doesn't mean I'm physically or mentally challenged in any way. I just means I never needed a car that badly that I thought the investment in time and money was worth it.)

So I decided to leave the thing be, take a shower and come back afterwards. Dripping wet I checked the screen. 67%. I dressed while keeping an eye on the progressbar. 96%, 97%, 98%. Come on! 99%, 100%! I quickly shut down the computer and ran outside.

Several hours later, I fired it up again and continued. The QBE was nice, I could even set the JOIN properties. I could not switch to the SQL window, though. That was only possible after I saved the query - and then I couldn't get back to the QBE window. Neither could I select multiple fields and drag them to the query bar. There was no way to make aggregations by using GROUP BY or COUNT(). Still, it did the job. Since I was unable to set primary keys, it took a while, but Ok. It came back with 5156 rows. That were 7 more than expected, but wait a minute: I was working with the uncorrected datasets. I knew that there were 7 duplications I had corrected in the report I had created yesterday. Alright!

(Yes, by this time I had already reported these inconsistencies to the Configuration Administrators and told them to figure out what was wrong and correct the appropriate entries in the Configuration Management System. I know what an "exception" is and I've been in this ballgame for twelve straight years, thank you.)

Then I had to export the result to an MS-Excel file. Knoda doesn't support this format, so I decided to export it to CSV. It took a bit longer than expected, but there it was in all its 1.2 MB beauty. I fired up OOo Calc and opened the file. OOo Calc showed a wizard, I filled in the correct values and off we went. FAIL!! OOo Calc quickly started to eat through my 2 GB RAM and then decided to consume all swap space. I frantically hit the KSysguard icon and then went for the terminal. I had only seconds to spare!

killall soffice
soffice: no process killed
ps -eaf

Help! Fortunately, KSysguard came up and although it was slow I was able to kill OOo Calc. Pfff! That was close!

I fired up KSpread 1.6.3 and decided to repeat the procedure. It didn't even blink. Duh? I saved the spreadsheet in .SXC format, fired up OOo Calc again and read the .SXC file. No problem. It was on the screen in mere seconds. WT.. is that?

The verdict
OOo Base has a horrible way to import and export data. I also think that choosing a Java SQL engine wasn't a good idea. But all in all, it offers all the functionality you need for this kind of job. It's beautifully designed and could be a real replacement for MS-Access, if only it wasn't so badly executed. Yes, it's so badly executed that it becomes unworkable. I'm not prepared to risk a freeze for doing an odd job on OOo Base that I can painlessly execute on MS-Access.

Kexi is nice, but seriously lacking. The QBE does not provide several key functionalities, ALTERing tables is virtually impossible, so it's not really a replacement for MS-Access. I've also taken a look at Kexi 2.0, but I don't see too much improvements in this area.

Knoda lacks several minor features, has its quirks and is not particularly fast (I would call it slow, but that could also be the fault of SQLite3), but it gets the job done! If you don't have MS-Access at your disposal and want something similar to do the job on your Linux machine, this would be my pick. Unfortunately, Knoda is slowly dying and that's a shame! Isn't there somebody who can pick this project up and continue it - or at least salvage the parts that can be integrated in Kexi?

Some final thoughts
What I thought to be a minor job turned into a three day quest to find the best MS-Access replacement. I automatically assumed that there would be a viable FOSS replacement for what I consider to be one of the least interesting and most buggy parts of the MS-Office suite. I was kind of shocked that we don't have it. That doesn't mean you can't get the job done - there is always the CLI of course - but it will take more time than the MS-Access way.

I use the QBE to generate most of the SQL and then edit it later. I find SQL rather verbose and don't particularly like the syntax - it reminds me of COBOL. But since SQL is the standard, it is hard to avoid.

Several readers pointed me to a bunch of major data crunching suites. But I just want to hang up a painting - not drill the Tokio subway. And I have a dislike for Java programs - don't ask me why, it's just a feeling.

I also have to admit I haven't used OpenOffice too much until now. I write my documents with LyX, hardly ever use spreadsheets and didn't have much use for OOo Base. To me OpenOffice was a way to view and modify MS-Office documents - keep a link with the madding MS-Office crowd, if you prefer. This was the first time I gave it a full workout and frankly: I was shocked. I can't have a program (any program) that brings my rather reliable machine to its knees - for whatever reason. In this small quest OpenOffice did that almost twice. That's disturbing. I find that disturbing, especially since the basic functionality is good and sometimes unequaled in FOSS.

On the other hand, I was pleasantly surprised by KOffice. It may not provide all the compatibility you need with the MS-Office world, but the functionality it has is well-executed and reliable. Next time I need a spreadsheet, but don't need absolute MS-Office compatibility, I definitely will use KSpread.

A data cruncher bites the dust

2010-02-03T19:09:00.010+01:00

I know this post is gonna get me into trouble, but frankly - I don't care. I've been called a zealot, a bigot and lots of other names I didn't know about. I thank the people who threw those curses to my head, because without them I wouldn't have been able to expand my vocabulary with all these lofty insults.

Ok, why this lengthy introduction. Well, it's easy: FOSS programs didn't work for me. Ok, now I've said it. But it's the truth. You have to know that I'm a Configuration Manager and those guys do a lot of data crunching because their main job is to produce reports. And like it or not, but the main format they're processing and producing is MS-Excel. Users that want to have their data imported provide MS-Excel sheets and that's also the format they want to have in return.

The backend is an entirely different story. I've worked with Oracle, MySQL and SQL server backends. I use my own PHP toolkit and changing the backend is pretty trivial. I don't even care whether they're running IIS or Apache, Linux or Windows. Hell, if it doesn't perform there's always more hardware. Not my problem. I'm very particular about PHP for obvious reasons, since I don't want to throw away my code nor want to be tied to a single platform - don't get me started on Mono.

Anyway, where I'm currently working I have an entire LAMP stack at my disposal. Today, my schedule was empty so I decided to work from the comfort of my home. There were several odd jobs I had to do. The first one was to create three Change Requests on the CMDB datamodel. I always use LyX, so that job was quickly done. The next one was to produce two reports from four tables. I had dumped those into MS-Excel using PHPMyAdmin the previous day. PHPMyAdmin may have its quirks, but it works fast and reliable. No problems there.

Now I usually use MS-Access to produce those reports, but I don't have that one on my Linux box. So I decided to give OpenOffice Base 2.4.0 a go. It wanted me to load the spreadsheets in OpenOffice Calc and then paste the sheets into OOo Base. I found that a rather peculiar and somewhat slow procedure, but it worked alright. Making the reports was a little awkward, because I was not too familiar with the program, but went very well. When I was satisfied, I wanted to dump the reports into an MS-Excel sheet. And there it went terribly wrong..

My KDE 3.5 desktop froze. It froze even so bad that I had no control whatsoever. I waited for several minutes. Nothing happened. You have to know that I was a Configuration Manager at a major bank in the Netherlands for several years. I processed datasets with hundreds of thousands of records. This was a tiny dataset in comparison. Just a few thousand records. that's nothing. In the end I killed it - I still have an old skool Wyse serial terminal connected to my machine - and did something I never wanted to do: I put the OOo database on a memory stick and booted my employers WinXP laptop. That's the truth.

I hoped that maybe OOo on the WinXP desktop was a little better. No way. It froze again. I still saw some activity and waited. I waited a long time. It came back with 4096 rows. That's not enough, I needed 5150 rows (including the header). This would not do. In the end, I started MS-Access, read in the tables and produced the report. Nuff said. 20 minutes later I was done. It was infuriating!

First of all, if you spend so much time imitating MS-Access why can't you produce something that doesn't need a DDE server to export its files. It's easy! Even my 4tH compiler offers simple native MS-Excel export functions! Make it CVS, like Kexi or Knoda, I don't care! But just that? Impossible! Who produced that? Sun? IBM? Aren't they ashamed? If I were to work for government agencies that only offer OOo I couldn't get my work done! My goodness.. Microsoft saved the day.. I thought I would never see the day..

In the end, WinXP wouldn't release the memory stick. I found out why when I turned off the machine: the DDE server was still running for some reason. That's Microsoft behavior, folks! No, I won't blame Microsoft for that, I'm sure it was OOo which left that thing running.

On the other hand, I also had to create a presentation and used OOo Impress for that. It worked pretty nice, I exported the thing to PDF (I don't like presentation programs anyway, Acrobat Reader is so much easier) and I was done.

The verdict? I won't touch OOo Base with a pole anymore. It looks very nice, but it doesn't handle real world workloads. I have to try Kexi and Knoda and give this post a followup. I sincerely hope it will be much better than my latest experiences, because I can't allow myself to lose valuable time over this. When I'm working at home, I simply don't have the time for experiments: I need things that just work. Like LyX. Like OOo Impress. The only way to beat the system is to do better than the system. OOo Base just falls short.

Ok, it's true, I admit: I'm a Microsoft cshill. Sigh..

Of ripples in a pond

2010-01-16T12:22:00.008+01:00

Writing an opinion piece is like throwing a stone in a pond: you're bound to produce ripples. Writing an opinion piece is taking sides, otherwise it wouldn't be an opinion piece. It also implies that there is another side to consider. Writing an opinion piece is also an ego thing: my opinion is important.

But the most compelling reason is why should you write an opinion piece? Is it just trolling, getting attention for a cause you don't care that much about, but will give you at least some exposure for your bruised ego? Is it because you want to convince people, change something?

If you ask me, I've been contemplating this for some time and the reason is very clear to me. Comments simply didn't give the cause I hold so dear enough exposure. I was sick and tired of FOSS bloggers and commenters taking a defensive position. I wanted to attack, turn the barrel around. But most of the time I don't even have to act, I react, as you can clearly see for yourself if you go through my posts.

At first, it was because of Microsoft, their business practices and their abysmal products. A little further down the line, it was because of attacks from "inside" the community. I've always loved the basic principles of FOSS, openness (also where communication was concerned), the bazaar, the blunt honesty, the variety and the freedom. I think these are basic values which have to be preserved. Ethics, if you really want to use that word.

Nothing infuriates me more than violation of these basic principles, whether it be "there can be only one" attitudes, FUD (or blatant lies, if you want to) and dishonesty, not living up to your own principles. The latter one forced me to define my own commenting guidelines, which I'm happy to reproduce here:

Don't spam;
Don't be obscene;
Don't break the law;
Don't attack people on their acts and thoughts, if it doesn't have to do with the issue involved or can't be substantiated;
Don't wander off, keep focussed. I'm sure your recipe for Buffalo wings is very tasty, but that's not the issue right now.

Everything else goes. Sure, opening the lines makes you vulnerable. People can attack you close to home, but that is all in the game. It was you who threw the stone in the pond in the first place, wasn't it? Now face the consequences and dance.

People have asked me why I allow myself to be attacked so viciously, but frankly, that is in my own interest. If my reasoning is flawed I can only gain from someone exposing these flaws, or – as my old mentor put it – "If you win a discussion, your ego is stroked. If you lose a discussion, you have learned something". Since I'm a very curious guy I prefer learning something. That is more important than my ego. As a matter of fact, fooling myself by removing good comments would bruise my ego much more. But that is just me.

My opponents in this case use a weird multitude of arguments why it is correct to cut off a line of commenting or simply delete comments. The first is that if you want to comment on their opinion piece, you can create a blog of your own. Although that is completely right, the connection between what you have written and the other side is written is somewhat lost. You're still in your own realm of righteousness, where your ego is safe and discussion is impossible. I know of a blogger that applauded the discussion that came from an article of her, while her own commenting guidelines made it impossible to discuss the issue in the first place because every single opposing view is eradicated.

The second is, that since it is their own personal blog, they have the right to do that. Well, that is an ambiguous statement. I do not dispute the fact that they have the power to do that. But the right, that is another matter. Does a vicar have the right to visit a titty bar? There is no law preventing him to do that, still most people do not agree, because he does not live up to his own principles. So it quickly becomes an issue of a moral right. And since morals differ, so does the outcome of that question. It will only result in an unhelpful "I have - no, you haven't".

That brings me to the next point where they tie in the statement that "freedom of speech is not absolute". That's like kicking in an open door, but why should that apply to you? If you make clear guidelines, you're already restricting "freedom of speech". And that's exactly what the government does. But those guidelines are and should be there to preserve the open discussion, not to make it impossible! A clear indication of that they don't want to be tied to their own guidelines is that they do not define any guidelines, as I have. And for the record: "Everything opposing my view" or "I do as I please" can hardly be called "guidelines to preserve an open discussion". Or be a man, don't beat around the bush and clearly state that you don't want an open discussion. That's not the purpose of your blog, you just want to be applauded - like the chairman of a Chinese party congress.

Finally, they state that it is "just too much work" to comment every comment. Well, if your reasoning was sound in the first place, people won't be able to find any significant holes. And if they come up with additional arguments that you have not covered, make a followup. I've done that in several cases. "Rufus" was one of my favorite commenters, because he was able to force me to make a followup several times. In short, I try to refrain myself from commenting my own blog as much as possible. "Some people have howled in outrage. Their anger makes them nearly inarticulate." Well, since when it that my problem? They just prove my point.

The fact simply is that people who write an opinion piece and don't have a liberal commenting policy are like rascals throwing in a window and then running away very quickly before the owner comes out. They can't face the music, afraid that their fragile reasoning is exposed and consequently their equally fragile egos are bruised. Am I taking the moral higher ground here? If you put it that way, I suppose I am. But you're welcome to test me. Comments are open.

A standard Windows desktop is useless

2009-12-31T13:28:00.000+01:00

As a consultant I've been working on a lot of different desktops. Well, different? Not quite. Almost everywhere I go I find MS-Outlook, MS-Office, MS-IExplorer and Adobe Acrobat reader. Some of these installations even lack MS-Project, MS-Visio and in some cases even MS-Access. If those really were the only tools at my disposal, I would call it working with "stone axes and bear skins". Fortunately, I always carry my laptop with me, which is equipped with the tools that really make a difference like Graphviz, Dia, Kjots, LyX, MySQL, Apache, PHP, Pegasus Mail, OpenProj and my own 4tH compiler. And no, I did not install Linux on this laptop for the simple reason it is not my laptop. I have a cute EeePC 701 running - yes, you guessed it - Xandros.

So what's your problem, you say. Well, first the desktop freezes every now and then, showing an incredible 0% CPU utilization. I hate that, especially if you have to get some work done. If I'm overloading the beast, OK, I understand that. But why is it sitting there doing nothing? Even a few generations ago I was surfing the Internet, burning a CD while compiling some program. 128 MB RAM, PIII. No sweat.

But the fun already begins when you turn on the thing. Ok, it may be getting stuff from the LAN, but why does it boot so terribly slow? I've waited up to t-w-e-n-t-y minutes until I saw the desktop appear! We're not home free yet, we still have to start Outlook. Even KMail on my poor 32 MB, PII didn't take that long. That's all nice when you come in, slightly late, and want to look up the name of that conference room.. A really nice feature of Outlook is that it can't export its messages to a decent format, it only supports .PST instead of mbox. Of course, there is a solution to that. You can abuse Thunderbirds import utility to do that for you - it's a very dirty hack - or readpst. Unfortunately, I can only use the latter one on.. Linux! I can't get it to compile on Windows - my working hours are restricted to useful work.

I have to admit, MS-Excel is a pretty decent program, the trouble is that I only use it to distribute database reports. So, that one is out of the equation. MS-Word is a useless pile of wasted bytes. I'm there to provide content, I'm not a layout artist and I don't want it to be. Every time you change something, the layout changes for some inexplicable reason - and you have to spend valuable time to correct it. I don't have that time. Of course, there are "styles", endless lists of styles that keep on accumulating. Another fun thing is when you embed pictures. They look fine, you save them and when you reload your document they are all over the place. The real fun part begins when your file exceeds a certain size: MS-Word becomes instable and bombs out. Less computer-savvy users have had a cardiac arrest because of that - nobody makes backups anymore. You can often solve the problem by importing it in.. OpenOffice! But I'm not done yet. Often I want to publish a document on the web and behold what horrible HTML MS-Word produces. Lots of it!

No, I prefer LyX. I type, LyX does the layout. Creating a PDF is painless. With eLyXer HTML creation is easy - and boy, does it look good. With LaTeX2RTF I can create those @#$% Word documents the whole world seems to be craving for. I written my entire 4tH manual with LyX, which is over 450 densely written letter-size pages - with graphics. No problem. Making references, bibliographies or a simple table of contents, it's just a few quick clicks away. I fire LyX up, adjust the document properties and I'm away. I type the title, my name, indicate this is the "title" and "author" and begin my first section. Highlight the section title, indicate this is a "section" and off we go. That's how you produce content. Needless to say that once you've put an image somewhere that it doesn't move anymore - and certainly isn't overlaid.

Now let's move to the pictures themselves. In most cases I don't even enter a graphics program. I write some simple Graphviz code - or let the database generate it - and Graphviz does the rest. Most formats are supported, including SVG, JPG, PDF and EPS. When Graphviz can't help me, I turn to Dia. Dia is a classical diagram program with one little difference: it supports many different formats. When was the last time you successfully converted an MS-Visio file you got over the email to anything useful? Yes, it's always the tedious job of sending an email back - with Outlook <snif> - with the request to send an SVG. Pleeeeaaazzee..

The most useful part of the standard desktop is MS-Access. If you do a lot of data crunching - like me - it is a useful workhorse. Buggy, yes. Useful, yes. Unless you start making applications with it. That is not something I recommend. Importing an MS-Excel sheet or CSV and produce a quick join, OK, but don't use it to make applications! Believe me, I learned this the hard way. Your MS-Access database will corrupt at some point in time, giving rise to data loss or bugs that are impossible to trace or fix. Use a simple WAMP installation with a good framework. That works like magic and you can always install your application on a web server if your client likes it - even if it runs IIS.

Finally, the lack of a decent programming environment. No it doesn't have to be big and complicated. My own 4tH compiler only needs 64K. Why do I need a compiler? Simply because some data conversions or extractions cannot be made with a standard desktop. Unless you do it by hand - something I'm not prepared to do. I recently had to convert a text file with full names to a CSV with first and last names. It took only five lines of 4tH and three minutes. Convinced?

The next fun thing is the lack of a decent editor on a standard desktop. MS-Notepad is unable to read Unix text files. End of story. MS-Wordpad does that for you, no problem. But it lacks a very useful and simple feature. No, I'm not talking about source highlighting. It's the lack of a line number display. So when your PHP bombs out with an error, try to find line 83. Good luck! 1, 2, 3, 4 ..

Finally, the horror of MS-IExplorer. OK, it's half usable as a browser, no problems there. The real fun starts when you're a web developer. Although you're writing perfectly acceptable W3C compliant code, it's not rendered as it should be. And according to the users, you're at fault. Now let's start wasting some serious time by trying to fix it. Yes, there's always a fix. Whether your PNG is not transparent or your SELECT list obscures some DHTML popup, believe me, there is always a fix. And like I said, it may take some time to fix it. You're very proud of yourself when it finally works. Until somebody opens up another browser. Or you get a browser update from Microsoft. You think Microsoft is doing much better now? Don't make me laugh. Even Dillo is doing better.

So, welcome to wonderful world of the standard desktop. How much time do you want to waste today?

Guys and dolls

2009-12-25T11:06:00.008+01:00

Carla Schroder recently published an article called "Hug your favorite FOSS contributors today". I have a problem with both that title and the intention. I don't feel like hugging some bearded nerd and if they're anything like me, I don't think they really want to be hugged anyway. Some of them are really grumpy old geeks..

Sure, there are several projects I like and use every day. I even cooperate with some of these projects, but I feel awkward sending a message "I love you, please don't stop". I think the people who run these projects already know I find their products indispensable, because I write about them with every occassion I have. Some of them even publish links to my blog, which is fine. But telling them "I love you". Man, I don't know..

I know my girlfriend thinks it's very important I tell her every day that I love her - which I do - but I'm your average bloke and I feel that if she doesn't run away, I must be doing something good. At least, that's what I've been telling myself every day for the last five years.

I've been in the FOSS business for about fifteen odd years. First I wanted to distribute my software as shareware, but since all these folks gave me all this software for free, that didn't seem right somehow. So, I became a FOSS developer.

Why? Well, I didn't like the way Forth compilers integrated with Linux, so I wrote my own. That's how it is. I had an itch, so I scratched it. Nobody ever thought it was possible, but I did it. And now it was possible, it was blasphemy. Because almost all Forth compilers follow the same architecture which allows instant interpretation. Mine didn't. According to the ANS-Forth standard, it wasn't even a Forth compiler. I was flamed to hell. I couldn't care less.

Up to now, the hardcore Forth sites don't even list it as a Forth compiler, although it is able to compile certain ANS-Forth programs. You think that stopped me? No. It was what I wanted. I wasn't in the business to be liked or wanted, I just wanted to do my thing and nothing was gonna stop me.

Nowadays things are very different and people contemplate about 4tH and accept it as being another player in the field. I rejoice every time a new user joins the newsgroup (all sexes welcome) or examines the possibilities of this tool. But that wasn't why I started it. I'm not here to be loved, I'm here to share an former itch.

I loved the moment a user passed by and told me he had ported a floating point library to 4tH. We spend hours designing a "square root" function and in the end we boosted performance tenfold. I was delighted when a user ported 4tH to FreeGEM and painted some amazing pictures on the screen. I wrote a preprocessor in 4tH, not that I really needed it, but because it was such a neat thing to do. I was really fascinated when I ported Herbert Schildt's "Small Basic" interpreter to 4tH and was able to enhance it beyond Tiny Basic. I really don't need to be hugged, the project in itself is reward enough.

Sometimes I lay down on my bed in the evening and skim the source code I wrote lately. It's beautiful 4tH, it functions perfectly and whether someone uses it of even finds it practical doesn't interest me in the least. It's just my thing and it is well done, so I can go to sleep quietly, knowing that no one will be able to find a single bug.

I know I'll be able to depend on this code, even in a work environment and that's all I need. I don't need the praise of strangers to tell me I've done well. I know. Maybe that is where guys and dolls differ. My father told me this years ago. Men love things. Women love people.

The best helmsmen stand on shore

2009-12-05T12:09:00.021+01:00

Let me make this perfectly clear: I've been in FOSS for over fifteen years. In 1994 I created my 4tH compiler and released it under an LGPL license. Furthermore, I've provided code, documentation and translations to about a dozen FOSS projects. Whether these are important contributions or projects I leave to you, but I think it has been enough to consider myself to be part of the FOSS community. If you're insulting or simply "criticizing" the community, you're insulting or criticizing me.

Bruce Byfield is a technical writer turned journalist and I have to admit his technical articles are very good. As a matter of fact, every time he publicizes one, I wholeheartedly agree with him. But every time he roams away from that path he achieves nothing, but damage to his credibility as a technical journalist.

What most people are still unable to understand is that the FOSS community is the FOSS community. There is no central body that governs it. You can "criticize" it, but most people can and will simply shrug their shoulders and get on with what they're doing. Every time a wildfire breaks out, fierce comments are written, many blogs get updated and nothing really changes. Few people will start using Emacs instead of vi. Few people will wipe GNOME from their machine and start using KDE. The community is much more than just Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds and Miguel de Icaza. It consists of many thousands of tiny, small, medium, abandoned, forked, major and corporate projects.

Bruce Byfield is completely unaware of this too. In his latest misguided rambling 'Open Source Projects and the Meritocracy Myth' he lists a number of major projects with paid developers. As if meritocracy is and should only be applied there.

First, he obviously doesn't understand the full concept of meritocracy. Meritocracy in FOSS is about merits, not just "who is the best". If a paid developer can spend eight straight hours per day and provides most of the code he will obviously rise in the ranks, a fact that is clearly supported by the findings of the FLOSS polls, that infamous report that everybody likes to quote and nobody obviously read. Furthermore, in our capitalist world those who pay call the shots. The privilege that the community has is that if it doesn't like it, it can fork. Something that Eben Moglen recently confirmed.

Second, reducing the community to a few major projects simply doesn't cut it. Thousands of projects are not depending on paid developers. Are those projects not part of the community? Is there proof that meritocracy doesn't work there? "Yes", Bruce says, "talking about some of the barriers to women's participation in FOSS."

Ok, now it's becoming clear what this is all about: it's the whole feminist thing again! I know this trick, Bruce. As a matter of fact, I applied it as well during the previous discussion we had. Simply attack the fundamentals of an ideology and you're home free. Well, not this time, Bruce. You have to be better than that - and frankly: you're not.

Meritocracy is not the guiding principle of the FOSS ideology. It simply works best for these thousands of unpaid volunteers you're so eager to insult and attack on each and every opportunity you get. Proof? Here you got it. Source? FLOSS polls!

So Bruce, what will be your answer? Whine again that Sam Varghese and me "don't like you"? Like Sam said, we never met! I'm merely criticizing you. But before you criticize the community, note you're not part of it. You never contributed anything to it. It's like we Dutch say: "The best helmsmen stand on shore", meaning that those who have the most criticism on how to do better actually don't have anything to do with it.

We tend to use it in situations where some "advise" can better be ignored. Like yours, Bruce.

Update: Recently Bruce published an article titled "When people say it’s not personal, it usually is" on his private blog. It quickly turned out I was one of the people he meant. He accused me of being "obsessive".

The truth is I commented six times on four of his articles on three different subjects in the span of three years - with a pause of one-and-a-half year. Bruce produced about twenty-five articles on the last half year on Datamation alone. I have published about sixty on this blog in the course of three years.

Consistent disagreement? I don't think so. It is obsession or that you can't stand any criticism, Bruce? When I published these figures on his site, he conveniently closed the comments.. Nuff said.

Update: Obviously, Bruce monitors my blog as well. Shortly after I published this update, Bruce conveniently produced this post. No problem Bruce, after Caitlyn's posts concerning this subject I already had my answer ready. I didn't publish it, because I don't want to stir things up in the community. I feel bloggers have a responsibility as well - and they should be more aware of it.

Since I'm not afraid of a discussion, I also offered Bruce's post to LXer (boy, these guys are good!) and LT. Of course, since I'm unofficially banned from LT, Bruce didn't get any airtime either. <snif>! The snapshots keep piling up, Carla.. Don't say you didn't know.

Update: Although I have left Bruce alone for some time now, he continues to think "people are out to get him". Ok, it can't be me this time. I really had to bite my tongue sometimes, but it worked, I did it. Still, when he published this piece - obviously aimed at his other nemesis, Sam Varghese - couldn't remain silent, so I published this comment at his site. I'm not quite sure it will surface there, but here it is:

Well, when you choose sides (and despite your claims you're always "balanced", you do) you divide the world in two parts: those who agree with you and those who don't.

When you take sides, you're bound to have criticism - which may be on the spot or completely beside the point. Apart from some rational arguments, which is which is up to anybody.

However, those people who criticize you are not out to "get you". If you continue to think that, you're showing signs of paranoia and I advise you to get some professional help.

Making yourself into a "victim" all the time will not get you more sympathy or more people who agree with you - because the issues simply remain.

Stop whining and grow up!

Agree with me or not - that is a choice I leave to you.

Update: My comment didn't surface. Why am I not surprised..

Successful women in FOSS and IT

2009-09-23T20:03:00.021+02:00

Education is a powerful way to shape people. I have had the privilege to study for several years and the things they taught me still are the foundation of my actions. One of the things burned in my memory is a lesson I had one beautiful summer day. My professor - who I didn't particularly like - had just explained some theory to us and one wiseguy decided to have a crack at it. He explained in great length he knew somebody that didn't fit the profile. "Well," my professor said "I know somebody too." Since then, individual examples have very little relevance to me. Even the expression "real experiences of real women" is just another emotional outbreak to me.

Sure, it desensitizes a person up to the point that personal suffering doesn't touch him anymore, but it places individual problems in a much larger picture, which - in my humble opinion - is a much better way to solve big problems. And keep track of the long term consequences.

Nobody denies that sexism in FOSS exists. If not, Carla Schroder wouldn't be able to list a set of incidents. The problem I have with this statement is, that now it seems to be exclusively a FOSS problem - how long to you think it will take for Microsofts astroturfers to pick this up and use it against us, it suggests that it is widespread like a malignant cancer, affecting each and every level of our community, it is claimed to be the most important reason that there are very few women who participate in FOSS and - most importantly - after vi vs. Emacs, Gnome vs. KDE and Mono vs. everything else it forms another crack in our community.

Carla Schroder has done anything possible to keep deviant opinions from reaching the outside world. I offered my article to LT too, but obviously, it was refused. Carla Schroder not only violates the ethical guidelines for journalists with this, she also shows she is not interested in a discussion about this subject with the community as well.

Another thing I learned during my study was that in every debate you always reach a point where further discussion appears to be useless. That point is reached when you start to discuss the foundation of an ideology, which is their dogmas. Therefore, attacking the dogmas of any ideology is a fun way to get your opponents red hot. Which happened. Modern feminism has long left the ideas which are still advocated by Carla Schroder. As a matter of fact, I can happily agree with them. A philosophy friend of mine always says: "It takes ten to fifteen years for the general population to pick up new ideas and another ten to twenty years for the politicians and the media to understand the world has changed."

But that is not what I wanted to discuss with you. I wanted to show you some real world examples of how successful women in IT and FOSS in particular think about this issue. These women are not some gray, anonymous, unsubstantiated array of possible FOSS participants, but real life women who have their own ideas and ideals. Was what Richard Stallman did really sexist? Not everyone agrees here:

This blogpost is completely ridiculous! I am woman and I don’t see anything bad in Stallmans comment. It was just a joke, for Christ’s sake. And I can’t see anything sexist in it. But what is really bad is this crazy denouncement of RMS, this wave of pseudo-feminism and political correctness. I really hate these would-be feminists with wacky world-view, their disgusting political correctness and false moralism. They are disgrace for all women.

True feminism had sense in the past, when there were really disproportions between men and women rights. But I can’t see any signs of women discrimination in my surroundings anymore (for a long long time). Of course we must take care to not let that happen again, but not like this! This "new" pseudo-feminism is completely bogus and it hurts us.

It started with Debian developer expelled for joke in mailing-list because of some stupid pseudo-feminists (again, I didn’t see anything sexist in it, it was just parody of spam, a tasteful and funny parody IMHO). And now this unjustified bashing of RMS. I am ashamed that women in FOSS are like that :-(

And what about women considering FOSS to be a "hostile” environment?

Get over it already!

I'm a woman, FOSS user and aspiring to learn software development. The only constraint in my way is time: I have a life to live that includes raising and home-educating a child and running a business.

This and not "sexism" is the same reason why women are proportionately "under-represented" in many professions and why on average they get paid less in most of those professions - the work simply has to compete for time and dedication with other interests.

Girls can do ANYTHING...anything they care about doing that is. Yes, there will be obstacles. That's life. Life is tough.

And even this woman, who took the time to comment my blog is somebody I actually admire and applaud, for the simple reason that she does where so many others do not:

Do you contribute code to free software projects? I do. That's not the only type of contributions needed, though. There is work that matches every skillset out there, we are not only looking for developers.

By the way, I started my geek journey almost 30 years ago, too, slinging COBOL and holding on to Grace Hopper as a source of inspiration. It is still largely a "man's world" but I never minded working ten times as hard for opportunity. It made me stronger and smarter and better at what I do.

Of course, I saved the best for last. This one almost shocked me for the simple reason that she so eloquently said what I wanted to say.. If only I had been a woman.

As I’ve read through a slew of posts and articles on women and IT in the past few months, I’ve discovered two things: First, that they are almost always written by women, and second, they are all just as sexist as they claim the IT environment to be.

You heard me correctly. I said they’re sexist and offensive. And not just sexist and offense toward men, but to women as well: (..) "Engineers have their 'hard-hat culture', while biological and chemical scientists find themselves in the 'lab-coat' culture and computer experts inhabit a 'geek culture.' What they all have in common is that they are 'at best unsupportive and at worst downright hostile to women.'"

This seems to imply that women live outside the geek culture. I know more than a few women who are likely offended by that implication, and I'm certainly one of them. I'm not even sure what that means, and the authors of the report don't seem to elaborate at all on what it is that makes "geek culture" hostile and unsupportive or why this is problematic for women.

It’s a mighty broad brush being used to paint a fairly dismal picture of IT and computer science in general. At best unsupportive? Downright hostile?

Have I been subjected to hostile, demeaning attitudes and behavior from men in the workplace? Yes. But I've been subjected to similar attitudes and behavior elsewhere. It's a fact of life: Some people are jerks. Walk around any public venue for a while and you’re bound to discover that this is true of a certain percentage of the population. It stands to reason, then, that you'd find a similar percentage of jerks working in IT.

Have I met one or two individuals with dismissive, sexist attitudes? Absolutely. But an entire "culture of dismissal"? Never.

That's hardly a reason to condemn an entire profession, nor an entire gender. What’s even more annoying about these reports and articles is that they imply and sometimes outright demand that IT change to suit women. (..)

The premise of these articles and studies is that there is something wrong with IT in the first place. It assumes that because some women chose to pursue other careers along the way that they were driven (probably with pitchforks) out of IT by men and into a pitiful existence as a business analyst or stay-at-home mother.

But a large piece of the story is missing from these articles and research: Are the women who have left IT happier? Do they enjoy what they are doing now more than they enjoyed IT? Are they satisfied?

If they are, then maybe it isn't IT and men that are wrong, but rather those particular women’s choice of career in the first place.

You wanted "real women, real experiences", Carla? Here you got 'em.

Feminism's dirty little secret

2009-09-19T16:22:00.019+02:00

Feminism is an ideology and like any ideology it has three major flaws:

It assumes that we have an unlimited free will;
It assumes that nature is inherently just, it's just us humans who mess up;
It assumes that the world will become just when all people participate, but at the same time it is unable to cope with the people who do not.

Unfortunately, all these assumptions are wrong.

Free will
The battle between nature and nurture has been raging since ages and is still not fully resolved. In the darkest days of "political correctness" scientists were even unable to properly research their hypotheses. Opponents thought it was unethical to even think there might be a link between crime and genetical disposition or that the root cause of homosexuality was completely physical.

Of course, this was not the first time that science and ideology clashed. The Catholic church has particular long and bad track record, the most notorious incident being Galileo who was forced to denounce that the earth moved around the sun. But mankind has moved on and now we are all illuminated, aren't we?

No, we're not. "Political correctness" is the dogma of our time and it may still not be questioned. We have a free will. Our decisions are not influenced by mere hormones and genetical layout. We are all able to freely make our choices, have our own special talents and any differences we perceive in the real world must be attributed to external factors. Well, say hello to behaviorism.

Behaviorism assumes that all we are can be attributed to our past experiences. If boys are taught to play with dolls, they will play with dolls. If girls are taught to play with computers, they will become great FOSS contributors. Behaviorism was very influential in the sixties and it was in those days that they conducted their most gruesome experiments. The most notorious case was the case of David Reimer. Reimer was mutilated shortly after birth and John Money decided it was best if the young boy had a complete sex change and was brought up as a girl. Of course, it didn't work and after desperately trying to assume a male lifestyle, David committed suicide at the age of 38.

Nature is just
Another assumption is that nature has distributed all talents evenly between the sexes. Therefore, any differences can only be attributed to external factors. As much as feminists like to deny it, it is nowadays accepted that there are differences between the sexes.

Let me elaborate on this a little. We're talking averages here. Although on average men tend to be longer than women, it is possible that you meet a certain man that is shorter than a certain woman. Prejudice comes in when you say that all women are shorter than all man and apply this principle to every woman you meet.

Are there any differences between men and women that go beyond the mere physical level? Well, yes there are and it has been known for a long time. Of course, this knowledge is not in the interest of feminists and this movement has done anything and everything to deny it, debunk it or make it known to the general public.

The simple truth is, that an area of the brain called the inferior-parietal lobule (IPL) is typically significantly larger in men, especially on the left side, than in women. This section of the brain is thought to control mental mathematical ability, and probably explains why men frequently perform higher in mathematical tasks than do women. Interestingly, this is the same area of Einstein’s brain that was discovered to be abnormally large. This may very well explain why on average more men are inclined to sit down and crank out FOSS programs than women. That would mean that Bruce Byfield and Carla Schroder are fighting an uphill battle, since the averages will never significantly change. Well, at least not in our lifetime.. Evolution tends to be a rather tedious process.

Sam Varghese mentioned one significant issue that is important when comparing FOSS and commercial software. ICT covers a very wide range of professions nowadays, it's not limited to mere programmers. I don't even have to resort to just "marketing and sales people, administrators in proprietary software companies and the like". There are also female project leaders, female consultants and female ITIL implementers. All these jobs require little or no programming skills. I can easily confirm this since I'm an ITIL consultant myself.

The heretics
Frequent readers of my blog know I'm particularly fond of "labeling" and the label of this week is "anti-feminism".

Well, for the record: I'm not an anti-feminist. I consider myself to be a FOSS proponent and there is only one thing that counts to me: great code. I don't care whether you are black or white, atheist or Christian, male or female. I don't check the "About" boxes before I give my judgment. Great code is just great code. It's what FOSS is all about: meritocracy. Because I'm convinced that is the real driving force of FOSS, not "sexism" as some are trying to make us believe.

As Sam Varghese already noted in his recent blog, there is one significant flaw in the reasoning of my opponents: sexism is the root cause of driving women away from FOSS. Well, if there is any causality between the low number of women participating in FOSS on one hand and sexism on the other hand, simply punch up the numbers. BTW, for the scientifically challenged: examples are statistically insignificant. If you don't, I'll consider it unproven and won't subscribe to this point of view.

I've been earning my living for over twenty five years in this line of work and consequently, I've worked with a lot of women. Some of them were brilliant and I've learned a lot from them. They are strong, talented people who I got to know very well in the course of time. I know they would shrug their shoulders if they read what has been written lately. They just did their thing and no one was gonna hold them back, certainly not an immature youngster or a single sound bite of a cute, old hippie.

No, they have quite some other issues to deal with. Dilbert like management decisions, for instance - which I regret to say, happen only too frequently. Those are particularly hard to swallow - not only for women. Dear editors and journalists, that is the real world. That is what people - including women - have to cope with every day when they try to do their job. That is what stresses them, sometimes to the point that they quit their job or their profession. Write about that, you $%&*!

Nobody denies people the right to pursue their dreams. I have no problem to think of "women" as "people" as some feminists would like us to believe. I'd love to see my girlfriend use my compiler. As a matter of fact: I taught her, but she wasn't really interested. But it has to be her choice, not mine. If she, as an adult, decides to choose another career or hobby who am I to deny her that privilege?

Women nowadays enjoy a freedom that their great grandmothers didn't have. And even in those days there were women like Marie Curie and Aletta Jacobs who just did their thing. Treating women like feeble creatures who are ignorant and cannot make their own choices is a 19^th century mentality. Modern women can have a good education, in some western countries female university students outnumber the males. That is what the feminist movement has been able to achieve.

What it doesn't and probably will never be able to achieve is an equal distribution of males and females in all faculties. The thing is: do we really need to? And if so, why? And if that is so important to women they should take an example to their predecessors like Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper and just do their thing. Write code. Impress me. Just do it! Stop making excuses!

The cause of the low number of women who participate in FOSS is the low number of women that are participating in FOSS! Unless a huge number of males quit making FOSS software, that ratio is not going to change - no matter what.

Just stop bothering and blaming the people who do. Call me sexist if you want (see how much I care), but let me do my thing. We're people too, you know.

From Russia with Linux

2009-07-26T15:01:00.010+02:00

I came across two seemingly unrelated reports, one from the Register, stating that Microsoft will offer a choice of browsers in the EU version of Windows 7 and one from FAS Russia, which began proceedings in a case against several major hardware manufacturers. If this is the shape of things to come, it could mean the OS landscape is about to change.

First, if the EU started similar proceedings, that could mean the end of the Microsoft Tax, which is a good thing in itself. It can simply not be maintained that computer hardware is specifically designed for Windows. If it were, we wouldn't be able to run Linux and since we are, it isn't. If such a policy were adopted, we would get our money back for every piece of unused Microsoft software. No hassle!

But then again, Microsoft would still have an advantage, because it comes preinstalled, which is an unfair business practice. This is where the browser choice comes in. Isn't it much neater to let the customer choose which OS he wants to have by having two Operating Systems preinstalled? It can't be done? Of course it can! I once bought a laptop and could choose between Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. I ran a dual boot system for four years. Don't tell me it can't be done! It has been done.

Surely, hardware manufacturers don't like to do business with a bunch of hackers. From all the possible Linux contenders (Red Hat, Novell, Canonical, Google) I feel that Google has the best chances, simply because it obviously already has had contact with several OEMs following its Android adventure. And it is not afraid to attack Microsoft head on.

We're not there yet, though. The customer has to follow some procedure to get his money back, money for something he never bought. It's like you go to the supermarket, get a cart full of groceries and then have to fill in several forms in order to get back the stuff you never wanted. That's odd, don't you think so?

The easiest way is to let the customer decide when he buys the system. If he accepts Windows he gets a DVD, a license and he can activate it from the privacy of his own home. WGA should prevent any piracy - if it is any good. The licensing costs are added to the bill and that's it. If he takes Chrome - for example - it's free. It's as simple as that.

Be sure Microsoft will put up a fight, because it will:

Make clear to the customer what he pays for and how much he pays for it;
Make it virtually impossible to impose its terms to hardware manufacturers;
Give customers a real alternative, backed by a major company;
Expose the vulnerability of its business model in the 21st century to the shareholders in a way that cannot be misunderstood;
Create a dangerous precedent - if here, why not in the US?

But is this scenario completely unrealistic? I don't think so...

If you are living in the EU, please forward this link (http://thebeezspeaks.blogspot.com/2009/07/from-russia-with-linux.html) to your EU representative in the EU parliament. It might help to give 'em a few ideas.

It might also help to get several translations online. You can be assured that this blog is at your disposal!

The Free Open Source Software Evangelist

2009-07-24T19:59:00.046+02:00

We humans are socials creatures that tend to flock together in groups, bound by a common set of ideas, believes and values. Sometimes there are tensions between groups, just because their ideas, believes or values differ. As long as they are able to settle their differences in a civilized way, nothing much happens, apart from the exchange of a few insults and the flinging of a few stones and sticks.

But as soon as someone starts to claim that he is the real thing and the others in the group are just phonies and wannabes, you're bound to have trouble. History is full of these examples. Catholics called them "heretics", Hitler called them "Untermenschen", Stalin called them "Trotskists" and McCarthy called them "communists". Being one of these unfortunates was enough reason to be burned, gassed, shot, exiled or imprisoned. Sometimes people could save their necks by denouncing the very thing they believed in.

And now it has happened here. Nobody is safe, not even Richard Stallman. Evidence has been found in his very home that he is a sexist and thus not worthy to lead the Free Software World. New leaders have emerged and we're all about to be excommunicated unless we repent our sins and start installing Mono. Because let's get real, that's what it's all about. It's not because we all wear tin foil hats or that we're harmful to the community and should be expelled. It's because we don't like Mono. And we don't like Mono, because we don't trust Microsoft. And we don't trust Microsoft, because.. Well, do I really have to repeat the whole story again? TomTom, is that good enough reason? Viral licenses? DoJ? Billion dollar fines? Hundreds of patent violations? OOXML? Years of FUD? Being paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

The last months we've seen that Mono is still a controversial development environment, despite its technical merits. The main problem is not its license, because Mono is licensed under the GPL. The main problem is that it is still unclear whether Microsoft is able (or willing) to destroy the FOSS ecosystem by pulling the plug out of Mono. If substantial parts of the FOSS ecosystem depended on Mono, it would be a devastating blow. Mono proponents went out of their heads to show us the various benefits of Mono, how beautiful a world would be if it were build with Mono and - to a lesser extent - how unlikely it was that Microsoft would nuke us with their patent portfolio. And then - oh heavenly bliss! - Microsoft promised that it would not sue you if you fully implemented ECMA standards 334 and 335. Rejoice! Miguel praised the gods on Mount Redmond for their gift. We are delivered!

Well, always beware of Microsofties bearing gifts. Only a tiny part of Mono was covered by this promise and the controversy remained. That was the end of it. It was time for a new tactic. If you can't kill the message, maybe you can kill the messenger.

Victim one: Richard Stallman
Richard gave a speech of over an hour and dared to pull in the Virgin Emacs for ten seconds. If he had been excommunicated by the Catholic Church I wouldn't have blinked an eye, but I was quite surprised when I heard he was attacked for being sexist, simply because he had used the word "women". That should have been "persons". Most women start up Emacs first thing in the morning, that's why women make up a staggering 1.5% in FOSS software.

Poor Richard should know that women have been brainwashed since their early youth and are now completely unable to make responsible, mature decisions concerning their life, unless carefully guided by enlightened people and protected from horrible persons like RMS that scare them away for life from a future in software development with one single, well aimed, ten second soundbite. Sexism by any objective standards? Since when are there any objective standards in ethics?

I'm Dutch, I can do that. The only things here that are hotter than political correctness are MC Hammer's trousers.

Victim two: Roy Schestowitz
Roy is being accused of spreading FUD, calling certain Microsoft employees "zealots for hire" and should consequently be sued. And the guy knows what he's talking about, because his daddy is a lawyer.

If you're Microsoft and spend a lot of money on phony research reports for the sole reason of spreading FUD, that's alright because that are normal business practices. If you're Microsoft and you're crying for developers because nobody has any fun developing software for that pile of digital junk they call an Operating System, so you're forced to hire your own community, that's alright because that are normal business practices. If you're Microsoft and wait for the right time to fire your legal equivalent of nuclear missiles - aka patents - that's alright because that are normal business practices.

The problem is when you start doing the very same thing and you're neither a company nor a hired gun. Then you are a zealot, harmful to the community and should be hanged or - even better - lynched by the "real" FOSS mob. You're a backseat driver anyway, so that's no big loss! Praise the lord, the great purge has begun. I love show trials, Volksgerichte, Committees for Unamerican Activities and public executions on Friday!

Well, what other notorious Mono opponents can you think of? Who will be next? Fallen by the hands of people who have no problem at all to publish private emails in order to reach their goal. That have curious allies with questionable job descriptions. If these are the moral standards of real FOSS proponents I prefer not to be one at all. I prefer to stand under the shower until that label comes off.

I'll be a Free Open Source Software Evangelist, a man who may freely exercise his right on free speech, which is protected by any civilized constitution in the free world. Yes, that's what I'll be: a FREE Open Source Software Evangelist. By conviction – and unpaid. And I'll be proud of it.

Update: Mono proponents are now frantically quoting Torvalds to prove their point. Well, Torvalds uttered that statement in response to a question on the recent Microsoft contribution to the kernel, not on Mono and not on Microsoft critics in general. This is the quote in its entire context.

"We put this question to Linus, asking whether this patch was something he would be happy to include, even though it’s from Microsoft. He replied:

Oh, I'm a big believer in "technology over politics". I don't care who it comes from, as long as there are solid reasons for the code, and as long as we don't have to worry about licensing, etc. issues.

In fact, to some degree, I’d be more likely to include it because it's from a new member of the community rather than less (again, I’d like to point out that drivers are special. They don't impact other things, so they get merged much more easily than some core changes).

I may make jokes about Microsoft at times, but at the same time, I think the Microsoft hatred is a disease. I believe in open development, and that very much involves not just making the source open, but also not shutting other people and companies out.

There are 'extremists' in the free software world, but that’s one major reason why I don't call what I do 'free software' any more. I don’t want to be associated with the people for whom it’s about exclusion and hatred.

So it’s highly likely that this code will be merged into the mainline kernel and that’s a good thing. Who knows, Microsoft might even see the light! Linus is dead right. We shouldn’t deny contributions from anyone based on who they are. It should be the quality of the contribution that matters."

Does anybody dare to ask Torvalds if he would allow Mono code in his kernel? Just to settle this matter once and for all?

Update: It seems I'm not the only one connecting the dots here. Note the numerous trolling comments at the end of the article by someone called "Lefty", repeating over and over his favorite quote from Torvalds. It seems we may have victim number three: Sam Varghese.

These are a couple of reasons why the activities of the online terrorists--and I use that term with all due consideration and care--are totally destructive of the real community they pretend to be a part of, but in reality only wish to bend to their will.

Enough is enough. You've demonstrated yourself to be part of the problem here, Sam: you're aligned with the bad guys, not with the folks in the real community who are actually doing the heavy lifting on the software you claim to support so strongly. I'd like to see you seriously think about that as well.

So what, Lefty. Is systematically defaming people no online terrorism or is it the real online terrorism? All three names are conveniently combined in a single quote from "Lefty":

When I talk about the "faux FLOSS community", I'm talking about the folks voicing the most strident complaints over my actions--people like Sam here, people like Roy Schestowitz over on Boycott Novell, all the folks who all but insist that Mono is the Antichrist and Steve Ballmer actually has horns and a tail; folks who, if you disagree with them, seem decide you're demonically possessed in some way, nothing but a "Microsoft shill".

The people who apparently think that Mr. Stallman is completely above any criticism. As I've said, I'm starting to really believe they view what I've done as a sort of heresy. People who will take the low road to try to take care of the folks who run afoul of them--as Sam here has done--in their zealotry for their "cause".

Update: A few posts related to this subject. As usual, Glyn Moody hits the spot and states that the "ad hominem/ad feminam attacks are not just irrelevant, they are harmful". Note his obvious sarcasm by applying over-the-top "political correctness". As far as I know there were no female parties involved.

Update: The plot thickens. Note how "Lefty" lines up with a confessed Microsoft Technical Evangelist. BTW, -1 for Roy for disabling comments on the follow up. "Lefty" also confesses, that Roy's Mono opinion is a major reason for bashing the site and its most active blogger. Matthew Garrett, who recently posted on this blog, is also involved in the defamation of Sam Varghese, who is accused of being a racist after discrediting a known Mono proponent. Note that the post of the Mono proponent Sam criticized was so harmful to the Mono cause that even the guys from "Mono-nono" felt obliged to erase it.

Update: "Boycott Novell" proudly posts that there is one site that comes to its defense. Roy, you may be mistaking. If there is any evidence that you were involved in any of the accusations that were posed against you, you may find me on the other side of the fence. I certainly don't like it when you disable comments.

Update: "Lefty" suggests on his website that Chani published the following text on her blog:

..talking about relieving women of their virginity casts women in a submissive role, with men in a dominant role, and brings up thoughts of oppression and (indirectly) rape. (Yes, thinking about a roomful of guys thinking about taking womens' virginity does eventually lead me to wondering how many of them would take it by force.) It becomes less about the non-sexual meaning of "virgin" and more about all the crazy ideas societies have had about virgin women. And thinking about that stuff would make any woman uncomfortable.

That really looks like something a hysterical feminist could have written, which is certainly not the impression Chani makes. So I decided to dig a little deeper. A week before. A month before. Still could find that darn R-word. Finally, I tried Chani's search feature. Still nothing. That leaves three possiblities:

~~Chani did write it, but removed the post afterwards.~~
Chani did write it, but not on her blog, but in e.g. a private email.
~~Chani never wrote it.~~

Still, what Chani does say on her blog on July 14th is:

I didn’t comment on this little incident, even though I knew I should. I mean, it’s RMS, I don’t really expect him to change. And it's easier to just ignore it and pretend it didn't happen. Thankfully, Lefty tackled the issue for us. Ok, publishing private mail is rude, but I'm glad he did.

I would be obliged if Chani would clear this up. I promise to add her comments to this blog.

Update: Well, Chani did obviously write it, but in her comments. I suggest "Lefty" to update the link so it points to the right place. Still Chani, isn't it a bit over the top? Obviously, not every woman shares your viewpoint. Thanks to an anonymous reader for clearing this up.

Update: Although he comes from "a family of lawyers", "Lefty" admits breaking the law by publishing Richard Stallman's emails. In short, his daddy might have some pro deo work on his hands in the near future if RMS decides to sue him. Go get 'em, Dick!

Update: I've researched some of the comments on "Lefty" and since I have not found substantial proof for the things he was accused of, I've taken the comments offline. I also found a pretty well documented timeline article on the "Lefty-BN" controversy for those wanting to make up their own mind.

Update: Boycott Novell posted a rectification on behalf of "Lefty".

Windows 7 makes me laugh

2009-05-07T21:03:00.006+02:00

I happen to be Dutch and if you're into Linux that is a major disadvantage. If countries were shops, The Netherlands would be a Windows-only shop. There are very few Linux magazines (err.. one!) and even that one I gave up reading, because even the columnists were on Microsofts hands. I happen to do a lot of writing and once offered a major magazine to write Linux articles. "Well," they said "Not many people are using Linux.. We'll call you." I'm still waiting. Consequently, even now there are people who still think Linux is a toy. Fortunately, I read German. If you happen to drive a Mercedes or a BMW, you know these guys know what engineering is. Linux is big over there. You know that SuSE was a German firm?

For most people in The Netherlands, an Operating System means Windows. If it's not Windows, it can't be a computer. So if a new version of Windows comes out, it is major news. I got this video from the site of a major Dutch commercial news show.

Yes, it is Windows 7 for sure. But listen to the background music.. it seems we're presented the best invention of sliced bread! Are you impressed? I'm not!

This is a Linux Compiz video. It has been on YouTube for two years. I don't think it has had many hits since then. Technology has improved, new and better effects are available. It's quite a lengthy video without any loud trumpets, so I guess you'll all be asleep before it ends. But it's neat, flashy and has very subtle background music.

In many ways it's like Linux itself. Humble, inconspicuous, fast and silently doing its job. I like it.

Cross compilers, the new wave

2009-04-13T09:40:00.029+02:00

When my faithful Linux machine silently died under my fingers, I knew I had a lot of work to do. I need a lot of different software and installing and configuring it takes quite some time. A job I'm particularly "fond" of is installing the cross compilers I need for my 4tH compiler. Yes, although I'm a dedicated Linux user, I create MS-DOS and MS-Windows packages as well.

Even if you're using a Debian-based distro this may apply to you, because although several people pointed out to me that cross compilers can be installed easily with apt-get, you're still left with a barebone cross compiler. The fun starts when you want to add a library. But since I use OpenSuSE 11.0 I have no such luck whatsoever. There are several cross compilers available from the repository for a host of different systems, but the ones I need are lacking.

So yesterday I took a deep breath and started installing. First I gave Volker Grabsch's MinGW cross compiling environment 2.5 a go. I had some very good results with his previous version, so I didn't worry too much about that one. The previous version consisted of a shell script, but this one was completely different. The documentation is very terse, so I felt a bit apprehensive anyway.

The first thing you should do is save any previous installation of the MinGW cross compiling environment. Assuming you've installed it under /opt/mingw (any other directory will do as well), you should execute the following commands:

su
mv /opt/mingw /opt/mingw.old
exit

Now download and unpack the tarball:

tar -xzvf mingw_cross_env-2.5.tar.gz

Then we need to transfer the entire directory to its definitive location. I will assume again you use /opt/mingw, but feel free to use any other directory if you like.

su
mv mingw_cross_env-2.5 /opt/mingw
exit

We're almost done. Just change to your newly created directory and get going:

cd /opt/mingw

Now it depends on what you actually want - or need. If you choose to enter:

make

You're in for a long wait, because Volker's tool compiles a lot of stuff. Almost seventy packages, including a whopping 58 libraries. On the other hand it doesn't require any intervention, so you're free to do whatever you like - like watch a movie or go for a night on the town. When it's done you'll find that you've installed a very capable Win32 cross compiler onto your system. Vanilla Debian packages won't provide you with a cross compiler environment as rich as this one.

Volker told me that if you only need the most basic tools you can also use:

make gcc

And add any additional packages you need later on. However, this has not been documented yet, but it will certainly be included in the next version. You can also supply a host of packages on the commandline, e.g.:

make gtk lua libidn

He assured me that you'll always end up with a consistent cross compiler environment. After you're done it just needs a little post-installation. Edit your .bashrc script in order to change $PATH:

export PATH=/opt/mingw/usr/bin:$PATH

BTW, note that any compiler related environment variables (like $CC, $LDFLAGS, etc.) may spoil your compiling pleasure, so be sure to delete or disable those. You probably will have to make a few adjustments to your Makefile:

CC=$(CROSS)gcc
LD=$(CROSS)ld
AR=$(CROSS)ar

You may have to add a few others, depending on your project. All you have to do is type this:

make CROSS="i386-mingw32msvc-"

If you're using configure, all you have to do is:

./configure --host="i386-mingw32msvc"
make

That's it! Don't let any warnings put you off:

configure: WARNING: If you wanted to set the --build type, don't use --host.
If a cross compiler is detected then cross compile mode will be used.

Everything will be just fine. All in all, Volker's MinGW cross compiling environment is a painless road to Win32 cross compilation. Highly recommended.

Now the really scary thing was on: the compilation of the MS-DOS cross compiler DJGPP. You may remember that the last time installation was far from flawless. Well, not much has changed. If you use a reasonably recent distro, this may help you. If not, refer to my previous post on cross compilers.

First download binutils, crx and gcc. Then execute the following commands:

su
rpm -Uvh djcrx-2.04pre-5.src.rpm

Now change to the SPECS directory, which is usually located at /usr/src/packages/SPECS. If not, you will have to find it for yourself. Then continue as root:

rpmbuild -bb djcrx.spec

After that you'll find a neat package in the RPMS directory. Install it:

cd ../RPMS/noarch
rpm -Uvh djcrx-2.04pre-5.noarch.rpm

Now return to the directory where you downloaded the files and install the next one:

rpm -Uvh djcross-binutils-2.19-9ap.src.rpm
cd /usr/src/packages/SPECS
rpmbuild -bb djcross-binutils-2.19.spec
cd ../RPMS/i586
rpm -Uvh djcross-binutils-2.19-9ap.i586.rpm

Return again to the directory where you downloaded the files and install the final one:

rpm -Uvh djcross-gcc-4.3.2-8ap.i686.rpm
exit

Done. That wasn't too hard was it? Well, I tried to compile the source RPM and after four attempts I simply gave up. I couldn't do it. I did a few simple tests and DJGPP seemed to work fine, although I have to stress I still have to test it properly. IMHO it is this kind of installs that give Linux its bad rap in certain circles and I hope the maintainers will get their act together in the future.

The bottom line? By using cross compilers I can create an entire Win32 installation package in the comfort of my Linux machine without resorting to virtual machines or proprietary software. So next time you install the 4tH compiler on your Windows machine, you know it is the first time it dwells in this environment.

Update: I've used the cross compilers in order to produce the release of 4tH v3.5d and they did the job. The MS-DOS cross compiler produced relatively large binaries, but they worked just fine. It was pointed out to me that there is a nice alternative to the MinGW cross compiler environment that also produces an OS/X cross compiler. I haven't tested this one, but since it might be interesting to others, I'm happy to list it as well.

Introducing pointy-haired bosses to FOSS

2009-03-29T14:39:00.014+02:00

Mike Dailey ~~tries to convince us~~ gave me the impression that moving to Linux is an all-or-nothing proposal. That's plain ridiculous. An undertaking of that scale is a gigantic project, which no CIO will endorse. What you can do is introduce FOSS technology in the enterprise, step by step. Once it has proven itself you may take the next step. Since mixing Microsoft and FOSS is a viable scenario you have a multitude of options at your disposal.

Warranty and support
The plain truth is that although most managers may have heard of Open Source, they don't have a clue what it is or how it works. Most of them think it is something like public domain software, stuff you can get for free, without warranty and without support. So the first thing you have to do is to tell them you can get support from reputable parties like Oracle, IBM, Novell and RedHat. If you're not happy with their support, you can change with more ease than you could with closed source software.

Some CIOs are completely unaware that these parties provide updates. They think you have to monitor a multitude of websites or CVSes, search for the newest versions, download a tarball and recompile it. I always tell them jokingly: "Well, I don't know what I've been getting all these months, but it seemed like patches".

Note that very few CIOs know that Microsofts warranty is rather limited. In fact, it is limited to the smallest extent that law will allow.

Code quality
Most CIOs think that Open Source is produced by amateurs, hacking away in their attics and garages, so they have concerns about the code quality. Of course, you can tell them that reputable companies produce a vast amount of FOSS as well, but that doesn't make them any happier. May be this will help. Okay Mike, I got the message: anybody can come up with some stray links. So especially for your reading pleasure I have delved a little deeper into this subject.

According to Carnegie Mellon University's CyLab Sustainable Computing Consortium closed source software contains 20 to 30 defects per thousand lines of code (KLOC). According to Steve McConnell, the best a software company could achieve is 0.1 defect/KLOC. That is, if you apply the highest standards known to man to the software engineering process, which is equivalent to CMMI level 5. And how many companies have achieved this walhalla of software engineering? 21. Yes, you're reading it correctly: 21. Over 99% of the software companies in the world are still in what SEI calls "the anarchy and folklore" stage.

But let's focus on this 0.1 defect/KLOC figure. It is very hard to find how well Microsoft is doing. I've spent hours trying to find any figures and I finally found them: it's between 0.5 and 1.8 defects/KLOC, depending on the methods used.

During a training at SEI, Microsoft engineers managed to get their defects rate down from (hold on to your hats) 25 defects/KLOC to 7 defects/KLOC. At the end of the training, they brought their defects rate down to an incredible 0.06 defects/KLOC. But that was during a training. Not a death march.

But for arguments sake, let's hold on to this incredibly low 0.06 defects/KLOC figure, which even baffles the most sophisticated software companies in the world and turn to FOSS. Coverity, a company specialized in software integrity products, has been evaluating FOSS projects for several years. Here you can see their figures. All Rung 2 projects surpass this 0.06 defects/KLOC standard easily and about 40% of the Rung 1 projects match or surpass the 0.06 defects/KLOC mark. The highest defect rate still matches a CMMI level 3, a standard which 99% of the closed source software companies have not been able to achieve.

So yes, I'm fairly confident about the quality of FOSS software.

Vendor lock-in
Closed source companies have a commercial interest in limiting your choices. They will only allow interoperability if it doesn't affect their sales. Consequently, applying their solutions often results in silos, repositories that function very well in their own right, but don't communicate very well with the outside world.

Mike Dailey can't know this, because it is not his line of expertise, but the information architecture of most companies is abysmal. Too much information is locked up in documents and spreadsheets, information that would better be served by being stored in repositories. The truth is that it requires expertise and a vision that most CIOs simply do not have. It requires an Enterprise Architecture, something I have rarely found in the companies I worked for.

Since the dependence of office suites is so great, replacing them is no walk in the park. Entire applications are built on top of office suites, applications that enterprises are depending on. This gives you very little leverage when negotiating your next deal with Microsoft. You're stuck. And the more software you buy to relieve your problems, the harder it gets to turn around and get away.

Another disadvantage may not be so evident, but I've seen it happen. Some of these applications depend on a certain version of Microsoft Office. They were written by some employee at some moment in time and badly documented, so modifying it is not a viable option. However, if you want to have the next version of Sharepoint you need the newest version of that very same office suite. It's a nightmare: you cannot upgrade and you cannot downgrade. What are you going to do?

Even in a scenario like this FOSS offers a solution. You can always compile an application for your current platform and run it along with your new version. Sure, you may not have any support for it, but your business will continue. The same applies if a FOSS company goes belly-up. With closed source software you need complex escrow procedures to accomplish the same feat.

Finally, FOSS is open by definition. If you want to achieve interoperability, you can do just that, since there is nothing going to stop you. Most closed source software prohibits you to even read the repository. No more silos!

Scalability
When you choose Windows, you have the choice of Intel, AMD and.. that's it! When you choose Linux you have a clear upgrade and downgrade path, from the tiniest netbook and cellphone up to the mightiest mainframe and supercomputer. Just name any platform, Linux runs on it.

Did your boss know that 85% of the worlds supercomputers run on Linux? Did he know that she runs on Linux? Did he know his TomTom (still) runs on Linux? Did he know even his Android cellphone is in fact running Linux?

Licensing
Steve Ballmer has done a good job. Microsoft has always been good when it comes to marketing and spreading FUD. Most managers are afraid to use FOSS, because they fear their custom applications will automatically have to be released under an Open Source license. Of course, this is not true, but you may have to deal with this issue.

It hasn't been done
Most CIOs are unaware that they already use FOSS. The IBM HTTP server for instance is a direct descendant of Apache. There are various successful projects in Europe you can refer to. Recently, French police switched from Windows to Linux. Several German cities have switched from Windows to Linux.

It's just as expensive
Even if that were true, there are various advantages to FOSS which make a perfect business case. Like better interoperability, scalability, no vendor lock-in, which will make FOSS an attractive option. And next time your local Microsoft representative comes along, your position in the negotiations has significantly improved.

Most companies pay too much for their closed source applications, because their Configuration Management is not up to par and collecting data on actual installations is expensive and cumbersome. FOSS licensing is usually much more transparent. And you don't have to be afraid of the BSA anymore.

FOSS in a Windows world
Don't try to transform your Microsoft shop all at once. You won't succeed. A new project utilizing PHP (which is also supported by Microsoft) may be a good start. Some SQL-Server sites can easily be replaced with MySQL. Replacing IIS with Apache and Windows with Linux becomes much easier after that.

Another scenario is replacing Microsoft Office with StarOffice or OpenOffice, without resorting to a completely FOSS workstation. Visio and MS-Project are notoriously expensive applications, but Dia and OpenProj will do just as well. You can easily exchange data by using SVG or XML formats. Again, when most closed source applications have been replaced with FOSS equivalents, moving to a full fledged FOSS platform becomes much easier.

There may remain pockets of closed source and frankly, I don't think you will be able to remove those very easily. The point is, do you really need to. SAP for instance, is an application that runs very well in a FOSS environment, and so does Oracle. The point is you have given the enterprise more choices and tipped the balance in favor of FOSS.

So what do you think, Mike, is the Linux debate really dead? I don't think so. Thank you for proving this.

Update: The rumours of the death of the debate have been greatly exaggerated: a new article has been published by John Buswell, giving an entirely new view on the subject.

Update: Mike Dailey has truly given a worthy closing to this debate. Although I cannot undo my previous post, I cannot honestly maintain that Mike Dailey fits this profile.

Beware of so-called Linux proponents

2009-03-28T13:41:00.021+01:00

Every now and then you stumble across a blog that is run by a so-called Linux enthusiast. Some of them claim to have been using both Linux and Windows for years, so they have balanced and objective view on the advantages and disadvantages of both systems. But when you start to look a little closer, you will see that they spread the SOFUD. Some have a real gift for writing and are so credible that you see no need to investigate their claims.

Mike Dailey, a Cisco engineer, is one of these bloggers. Although he has been blogging for only three months, you will find some very interesting articles here, like "Why Enterprise Adoption of Linux Is Slow", "Why You Shouldn’t Use Linux" and "The Need for Linux, Microsoft and Open Source".

His love for Linux is well known. He tells us over and over again he is a real Linux proponent and wishes Linux and FOSS all the best in the future, which he has well drawn out.

We need Microsoft leading the way because of their market share in so many software technologies, but we need them to stop trying to take over the world and begin to show technical leadership of the industry. Microsoft could easily take Linux and Open Source under their wing, to help this alternative mature and to help guide them down an avenue that is best for everyone.

After j00p34 published his "10+1 things to tell your boss why you should migrate to Linux" he could help himself and had to give poor j00p34 some advise.

Here the author supports the well-known “Linux is more secure” argument. There is no real basis for the opinionated argument as stated by the author, with no quantifiable facts or data to support the notion that Linux is superior in terms of security.

I was eager to find any links in his blog substantiating this, but unfortunately I found none. He continues with:

Any Linux distro, given to an inept admin with lacking security skills, will be far less secure than an out-of-the-box Windows server platform.

Again, I expected him to come up with any significant figures. Nothing. Now have read quite some German magazines and I happen to remember several articles on the subject when Vista came out. Verdict: OS/X was best out of the box, Linux came next and both Vista and XP were last.

His argument "the user is to blame" is a well known piece of SOFUD. It goes like this: even if your house is a fortress, it won't do you any good if you leave the door open. So since people tend to leave the door open, it won't matter whether you use paper or steel doors. Thus, paper doors are sufficient.

Another piece of SOFUD is that there are no figures on this subject. Wrong again. You just have to know where to look. This report from IBM shows that Apache is far more secure than IIS. This report from Google confirms it. It seems to be a common characteristic of FOSS, since this shows that Firefox users are less at risk than IE users. You say this isn't about Linux, Mike? What about this one. Couldn't you come up with something, Mike, or are you just too lazy to research your story properly? Sorry, Mike, please continue..

If you present the “stability” argument to management you must be prepared to present uptime reports and outage root-cause analysis data to back up your argument. If you are experiencing severe outages in Windows servers in the data center your cause likely resides with the skills of your administrative staff, not your server operating system.

Mikey, Mikey, Mikey.. Don't keep on using the same old tricks. First, don't blame it on the admin, and second, don't tell me the data is not available. The whole internet is monitored by Netcraft, showing that your blog is run by Apache and Linux. Fortunately, Nicholas Petreley did the analysis for me, so I don't have to waste any more time debunking your unfounded post:

The average uptime of the Windows web servers that run Microsoft’s own web site (www.microsoft.com) is roughly 59 days. The maximum uptime for Windows Server 2003 at the same site is 111 days, and the minimum is 5 days. Compare this to www.linux.com (a sample site that runs on Linux), which has had both an average and maximum uptime of 348 days.

Ok, I could go on and waste some more time on TCO or code quality - and if you're not nice to me, I might even do that - but I think, I will leave it at this and just refer to a professional that put up the following testimonial on his site:

Migrated a multitude of Windows NT/2000 systems to Red Hat Linux to lower TCO and enhance system stability and performance. Oracle 9i RAC, Checkpoint firewall, IBM Websphere Commerce are examples of systems migrated to Red Hat Linux.

But hey, this is the resume of Mike Dailey himself! Surprise, surprise. I know, Mike, you didn't like me finding that out. That's why you deleted my comments. Next time, be more careful, will you.

Update: Mike Dailey has written a followup on his article called "The Death of the Linux Debate: A Eulogy". He makes some good points there, which I have addressed in my own followup. I have a good idea of what the concerns of management are involving the application of Open Source, since I have to deal with them professionally in what may be the most FOSS unfriendly country in the world: The Netherlands.

Update: Mike and me might be closer to each other than we thought. Please read his excellent comment here.

Update: I had to change this article slightly, because some so-called FOSS supporters don't seem to know when enough is enough.

Update: Mike Dailey has truly given a worthy closing to this debate. Although I cannot undo this post, I cannot honestly maintain that Mike Dailey fits this profile.

Fear and loathing in Holland

2009-03-14T17:11:00.013+01:00

With "Linux's dirty little secret: Uninstall" professional journalism has reached another, unprecedented low. Frequent readers of my blog know I've exposed and criticized IT journalists and editors for years. I'm a customer and I expect nothing less than high quality articles of knowledgeable professionals.

For this, I've always liked German magazines, which I consider to be the best in the world. Nothing simply compares to "iX", "c't" or "Linux Magazine". It's sound stuff of people who know their thing and are not afraid to research it. I've learned a lot of neat things reading their work. Most of the articles are signed with the initials of the writer. These guys take pride in their work and are not out to become pop stars.

That is in sharp contrast with David Ramel, who considers himself to be the new Hunter S. Thompson, the man who invented "troll journalism". Mr. Ramel admits he's a newbie where Linux is concerned, but is not afraid at all to write about it in order to educate us idiots.

Mr. Ramel, let me remind you that there is something like ethics. Yes, you have a B.A. in journalism, so you ought to know all about it. I know, you hardly got your degree at Harvard or Yale, but even in Montana the concept must have crept in by now. Mr. Ramel has no degree in computer science, but in 1995 he was even able to start up Wordstar on his CP/M system.

It is clear that Mr. 'newbie' Ramel has a Windows-centric view on the world. To him, the only way to set up a home network is to use SMB/CIFS, you know that proprietary Microsoft framework that kept Samba developers busy for years until a billion dollar fine from the European Union forced Microsoft to open up. Next time, try NFS and CUPS for a change. BTW, Mr. Ramel hates Apple computers as well (and loved them a few months later). You really have to read his interesting article with all those compelling arguments. His love for Windows XP is.. well, touching.

But that is not the only thing. Mr. Ramel proves he is also unable to cope with the greatest invention since sliced bread: the Internet. "Uninstall Linux" (with quotes) gives me 16,700 hits. "Uninstall Ubuntu" gives me even 24,600 hits. That's a lot of hits for a "dirty little secret". Still, Mr. Ramel cannot uninstall Linux.

If Mr. Ramel claims to be a professional journalist, I'm afraid. Very afraid. Although Mr. Ramel admits in his latest article that he is still a Linux newbie, that doesn't stop him to produce SOFUD - a year ago:

"As for Linux, I've been hearing it's "ready for the desktop" for years now. Well, it's not ready. (..) It might be fine if you're the type of person who used to type "debug" in the DOS command line to make hexadecimal changes to standard operating system messages just for fun, like I did long ago."

Sounds familiar? The sad thing is that Mr. Ramels resume is quite short. He knows nothing but "Computerworld", which has so generously provided an income for Mr. Ramel and his family for so many years. Hopefully, the current crisis isn't a reason for "Computerworld" to reconsider its staffing. I'm afraid, that the current quality of his ramblings could be a reason for "Computerworld" to let him go. Let's hope it won't come that far.

Update: It's even worse than I thought. Currently the first sentence of this blog post contains a link labeled "Fedora Project Wiki" but when clicked you are actually taken to Ubuntu's documentation site. Perhaps this is why searching for "uninstall Fedora" and "remove Fedora" returns nothing? I've had it. Just fire the guy.

Update: "Journalism can be truthful without striving for objectivity" Mr. Ramel must have thought when he added this note to his article:

A page titled "How to uninstall Fedora" was added to the project Wiki after this blog was published.

Like magic, the error of the previous update has disappeared as well. Adding an entry to the Fedora Wiki is perfectionism. Covering up a blatant error without admitting it is just sneaky.

Update: David Ramel posted a reaction to the previous update:

If the "blatant error" you accuse me of "covering up" is the incorrect URL for the Fedora project in the original post, you can see in the comments that I replied to the person who informed of the error: "Thanks for pointing out that URL mistake. I fixed it."

It would have suited him if he had added the correction to his post. Comments are easily overlooked. I have posted the same text to his blog.

Update: My promise to Mr. Bernard Swiss has been fulfilled: I added the "I love Macs" link. Twice.

The ultimate Windows apologists reference

2009-02-09T23:57:00.029+01:00

Every now and then somebody attempts to debunk the usual Linux myths. Having quite some experience in that area I have a good idea of what will happen. If your article is picked up by the Windows community, you will get quite some comments. They usually will repeat the SOFUD and sneer at you and your beloved Operating System.

In order to save them some time and possibly prevent them from causing a devastating BSOD I've decided to collect their comments and publish them here, so they just need to reference this page. Here we go.

1.	You will have to waste hours learning a new OS and applications. (So what is the difference?)
2.	I like Windows, it works for me. (Writing this blog with pins stuck in my face works for me, but I can imagine more comfortable ways to do it.)
3.	You can’t play any games on Linux. (We are not accustomed to use our multihundred dollar equipment for such trivial undertakings. We use it to write kernels, compilers and next generation web deamons. Klondike is all we need for passing the time between compiles.)
4.	You’re pathetic, Linux has a 0.00001% marketshare. If it really were this good, there would be more. (Just too many pointy haired CIOs that believe 'Get the facts' reports).
5.	Amateur applications, there is nothing like Photoshop, Premiere etc. etc. (Most Windows users spend their time cleaning up the skin imperfections of the models on the cover of 'Playboy' and 'Vogue' instead of removing the red eyes on their holiday snapshots. They probably even paid for it. Good point.)
6.	Microsoft spends billions on research. (Which brought us Bob, a talking paperclip and several bad Apple OS imitations.)
7.	All Windows problems are due to bad hardware, bad drivers, bad users. (And you said Linux was a religion?)
8.	I’m a Windows user so I’m too dumb to come up with any real arguments; I’d rather repeat the SOFUD and put my fingers in my ears when somebody makes a point. Lalalalala. I'm not hearing you, I'm not hearing you!

Sigh. No wonder Microsoft is turning to FOSS experts in its search for intelligence..

Jim Allchin: Microsoft is losing it

2009-02-01T00:28:00.017+01:00

The "Comes vs. Microsoft" case continues to provide interesting information. Here is an email from Jim Allchin dating January 7, 2004 addressed to Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.

I am not sure how the company lost sight of what matters to our customers (both business and home) the most, but in my view we lost our way. I think our teams lest sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, how important current applications are, and really understanding what the most important problems our customers face are. I see lots of random features and some great vision, but that doesn’t translate into great products. I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft. Longhorn is a pig and I don’t see any solution to this problem. If we are to rise to the challenqe of Linux and Apple, we need to start taking the lessons of "scenario, simple, fast" to heart.

Note this was sent shortly before the development reset of Vista, which was described in this article, that mysteriously disappeared from the Internet shortly after its first publication. Even the Wikipedia reference to the WSJ is missing.

For those who like to quote Mahatma Gandhi ("First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win") it proves that Linux had passed the "laughing" phase a lot sooner than most assume. Knowing Microsofts business practices, we all know what that means. For those who want to call the FOSS community paranoid, please try again.

Microsoft debunks Linux myths

2009-01-26T10:51:00.008+01:00

Finally Microsoft - in the person of vice-president Jim Allchin, amongst others - speaks the truth. Not because they want to, but because they are forced to. The quotes in this article are taken from the exhibits 7168 and 7175 of the "Comes vs. Microsoft" case, which were published by Roy Schestowitz. Note that these protocols were made in 2002, when Linux was much less mature. The same applies to Windows, of course. It is up to you to decide how much progress each platform has made since then.

Linux is just as expensive as Windows

Cost is a first thing on everyone’s mind right now given the economy and pressure on cost reduction. (..) We really need some here. (..) If the IDC report won’t cut it, then we get another one done. Some customers know that Linux isn’t really free, but we need to help the other customers see this.

Microsoft admits that Linux is cheaper than Windows since it is willing to "investigate" this over and over again until it gets the results it wants. Yes, this was the start of the classic "Get the facts" FUD campaign. It also shows that Microsoft has no scruples whatsoever to buy fake reports or to bribe editors and journalists in order to obtain the publicity it so desperately needs.

Windows is just as capable as Linux

So what I want to know is how, from your perspective, are our products not matching up today; what should we, in your opinion, be doing about it?

Linux is getting in some places based on the fact that customers are trying to scale up and they can’t run applications independently/safely on Windows.

Customers are very smart about the problems (eg., registry issues, lack of support from 3rd parties (..), etc.)

Customers are very disappointed (outright angry!).

Microsoft states several times that their products are seriously lacking in various aspects and Linux is fully capable of filling that gap, since it doesn't have these problems in the first place.

Linux is difficult to use

So is Linux going to be harder? I disagree with you. (..) Click, click, click you’re done. Same thing with Linux.

It’s going to get even easier. It will catch up with utilities and so on. And it’s already there. So I think it’s very close to being there.

Yes, Microsoft says "Linux is easy"! So, don't take my word for it; ask the "experts"!

Windows is just as secure as Linux

What can we do - what’s the number one problem with Microsoft that you have? Security.

And like I said, there’s nothing we can do to - every time we try to - we got the FBI involved, but our hands are tied.

I mean, it’s not like Linux or Solaris or - you pick your system.

Microsoft acknowledges that Windows has a serious security problem, unlike Solaris or Linux systems. In the same sentence they also debunk the myth that Windows problems are solely due to their marketshare. The funny thing is that they try to "fix" their problems by pursuing the perpetrators. Although that is not a bad idea, it won't make Windows any more secure.

Linux is not a threat to Windows

My conclusion: We are not on a path to win against Linux We must change some things and we must do it immediately.

I have more and more clients asking me about it.

Is it something to worry about? I believe so.

We feel a huge threat from Linux.

I am scared.

Your honor, I rest my case.

Why Windows users are still whiners

2009-01-19T19:13:00.008+01:00

"Oh, you Linux lovers are just a bunch of whiners. You can use absolutely zero useful applications on Linux. All useful software is made for Windows, and a little bit for Macs. Linux is dragging along cause of Java and its servers uses. But seriously, get over it. Why not waste your time making the Linux experience better rather than whining like babies about how no one wants to use your supposedly almighty and all purposeful Linux."

Just an ordinary comment on an ordinary website, less than a year ago. This is the sort of comment we, Linux users and developers have to put up with each and every time. Linux is useless, just a toy, no applications worth mentioning. So how have I survived the last ten years, how did I get my work done? Those trolls claim I've been using the CLI! I've surfed the web using Lynx, used Mutt to read my email and typed raw LaTeX in Vi. I've installed Linux by endlessly editing /etc files, writing my own device drivers and compiled and tweaked the kernel until it fit.

This kind of FUD (some use the term SOFUD, "same old FUD") is used until this day. And as usual, we should sit back and relax. Well, not on my watch, so I decided to write "Windows users are whiners". This article repeats the same FUD all over again and provides some arrogant answers to settle this once and for all. It says "Dear developers, you've done an excellent job. It's not your fault people don't want to change. People don't want to change because they want an effortless transition". Because changing Operating Systems takes some effort. You may have to convert or edit some content. Hell, sometimes you even have to recreate or reformat content. If you don't want to do that, that's alright with me, but don't blame it on the system. Linux will never be a Windows clone. If you want a Windows clone, wait for ReactOS.

It is not very hard to find any Windows related pages where Linux is bashed and the same old FUD is repeated until your head hurts. What surprised me even more when I researched this article is that there are enough pages where Windows proponents are bashing each other with the same vigor as Linux. If you don't migrate to Vista or Windows 7, you are a whiner, because your complaints are just not real. You're obviously doing something wrong, using bad hardware or using bad drivers, because this masterpiece Microsoft has produced cannot be blamed for your problems.

If that is the attitude you have towards your peers, what will you do to your opponents? So next time you want to take the moral higher ground ask yourself this question: what have you done to earn that position?

Your average Joe Tuxpack

2009-01-15T18:16:00.015+01:00

Since when are you a Linux user?
Since February 2000.

Was it difficult to do your first install?
Not really. I took a day off to install Linux, a dual boot installation with MS-DOS. At the end of the day about 80% of the functionality I needed was covered by Linux. Nowadays it is much easier to install Linux. It essentially installs itself. It recognizes your hardware and installs the appropriate drivers.

Did you especially select your hardware for Linux?
Partially. Nowadays I do some research before I buy my hardware. Better prevented than cured.

Was there hardware you never got to work with Linux?
A parallel port scanner.

Did you have any prior knowledge of Unix?
Yes, I had worked with Unix before. It helped only a little, since there are so many other concepts connected with Linux. The only moment it was really valuable is when I connected an old Wyse-50 terminal to the serial port.

Have you ever compiled a kernel?
No.

Have you ever written a device driver?
No.

Have you ever compiled a device driver?
Yes once, for a floppy based tape drive. I can't help it, I like old, exotic equipment.

Have you ever compiled an application?
Yes. ./configure; make; su; make install. Extremely difficult. Not.

Does every application have to be compiled this way?
No. When you've done a fresh install of a reasonably new distribution you can pretty much get any application over the net using a GUI. Just tick what you need. The package manager will get the applications you require, resolve all dependencies automatically and install them. You don't even have to click a "Continue" button. If the application is not available, yes, then you have to follow the procedure I described. After about two years your distribution is usually no longer supported, which means newer versions of your applications are not available. You have to follow the same procedure if you want to install them.

Can't you upgrade?
Yes, but it is not without risks. I prefer not to change a running system. Others do a reinstall of a newer distribution. It is a personal preference.

Are you a proficient programmer?
I'm pretty good at C and Forth. I can do some shell scripting, some PHP, some HTML. I can figure out what is going on in most programming languages.

Linux is a FOSS system. Do you have your own projects?
Yes, I have an active project called "4tH". It is a bytecode Forth compiler. I have other projects too, but I haven't updated them in a long time.

You are pretty much a FOSS person. Do you hate Microsoft users?
No!! I've been providing versions of "4tH" for MS-DOS and MS-Windows since the start of the project. I've also created a MS-Windows port for the Arena project. The great majority of FOSS projects support MS-Windows, like KDE4, Gnome, etc. Fortunately, because I use them myself. Note there are FOSS initiatives like Wine, ReactOS and Linux Unified Kernel which most FOSS users do not object at all.

What is your Windows experience?
Personally, I've used Windows up to Windows 98. That is, within a virtual machine, but that seems to count nowadays. Native, I've used Windows up to Windows 3.11. For work, I use Windows every day. The latest version I've used is Windows XP.

Do you hate Microsoft?
I don't hate Microsoft, but I think I speak for many FOSS users if I say we would feel better if its grip on the industry is significantly diminished. Microsofts business practices have been questionable at best and illegal at times. But please don't use the word "hate" anymore. What we feel is an objection, not an emotion.

Are there times you require Microsoft products?
Yes, when absolute compatibility with proprietary MS formats is required, e.g. PowerPoint. Most of the time OpenOffice handles those requirements very well. Internet Explorer runs on Linux.

How much time do you spend on the CLI?
Me, quite a lot. But I do that on both Linux and Windows. My girlfriend hasn't seen a CLI in all her life, including her Linux life.

Is Linux really much more secure than Windows?
Absolutely. People say it is because Linux is such a small target, Windows having a 88% marketshare, but that is just not true. That's just another myth Windows proponents play out each and every time. Compare it to Firefox. Firefox is not a small target, but it is much more secure than Internet Explorer.

What is the biggest hurdle to move to Linux?
The biggest hurdle is that you have to learn everything all over again. You have to learn how to use OpenOffice, GIMP, Apache, Linux, etc. Not everyone is prepared to do that.

Is there something you can't do with Linux?
Video editing is still a minor issue, but everything else can be done with Linux. Note that I compile and package my 4tH compiler under Linux. Those packages have never seen an MS-DOS or MS-Windows machine until you install them.

What do you like about Linux?
It's stabile, predictable, great uptime, wonderful latency, a beautiful, state-of-the-art GUI, no DRM and the license is more than reasonable. That's why I decided to convert all my shareware programs to FOSS. It is my way to give something back to the community. I feel that is better than just to provide return to shareholders.

What do you recommend to Windows users who want to convert to Linux?
Start using FOSS applications. There are plenty of those available for Windows. Use Firefox, OpenOffice, GIMP, Dia, LyX, they're all free of charge. The next time you're faced with buying a new system, buy one that has Linux preinstalled or no OS at all. That will save you at least $100 in unused Windows licenses. You can get Ubuntu disks free of charge or you can download the distribution of your choice from the web. It will have all the applications you need or you can download them from the web.

People might find it difficult to choose a distribution.
I know there are so many to choose from. Safe choices are Fedora, (K)ubuntu and OpenSuSE. There is plenty of support for those. That doesn't mean others are "bad", on the contrary.

What desktop should I choose?
Most users use KDE or Gnome. Again, that doesn't mean others are "bad". Personally, I'm a KDE 3.5.x user. If you choose one environment you still can use applications that are written for another desktop environment, e.g. I use Dia and GIMP although they are written for Gnome.

What if I run into a problem?
Use Google! If you still can't figure it out, you can contact the numerous forums and newsgroups there are for these distributions.

I gladly want to switch to Linux, but there is this single application I need to have.
Try to get it to run under Wine. If not, you can always install QEMU or VirtualBox.

Something else?
We don't bite. We just get irritated sometimes.

The Windows 7 party pooper

2009-01-13T21:52:00.018+01:00

Party pooper
- A person who ruins a party by stopping the fun.

Yesterday I published "Why Linux makes Windows 7 obsolete" . In the meanwhile, I've moderated all comments and the storm seems to have died down. So far it has gotten 22 sometimes lengthy comments and at least two feeble attempts to debunk the story, here and here. Sorry, I couldn't resist the temptation to comment these as well.

I haven't blogged that much lately. Sure, I scanned the headlines every day. KDE4 is coming around nicely, Mono isn't getting anywhere (fortunately), Compiz is still the cutting edge window manager, Vista is getting battered by the press all the time, Linus is doing what he does best, that is making great kernels, what is there to blog about?

And then all of a sudden, Microsoft is rushing out a "new" OS, giving it a new name in the hope people won't associate it with the Vista disaster. Yawn. Rob Enderle, a known ally of the Microsoft Corporation, thinks it is the best invention since sliced bread. Yawn. Ron Barrett however, continues the tradition of Byte by declaring Linux dead. We will all ditch our perfectly good working Linux machines and start an exodus to the promised land of Microsoft, led by the (false) prophet Steve Balmer.

Bad call. Sander Marechal of LXer picks up the story, calls it "the FUD of the week" and dares somebody to top that. Well, I'm not quite sure I interpreted this correctly, but I decided to pick up the glove. In the late hours of January 11th, I hacked together my own piece of FUD and posted it on LXer and Linux Today. It didn't take very long until the first comments came in. In the course of the day it quickly became the best read story of January 12th on both websites.

Okay, that was quite funny and we all had a good laugh. But let's analyze what actually happened. In the past, editors of the "major" websites complained they couldn't publish a story on Open Source without being "flamed to hell" by Linux "bigots", "zealots", okay, what else did they call us? It appears that nowadays Windows supporters are just as touchy. Maybe the Vista disaster has caused this change, maybe it was OS/X, I don't know. The point is, they seems to feel they have to defend their choice. That is quite a change from the arrogant attitude they had before. Some even accuse us of being a bunch of elitist snobs!

I don't mind being flamed, that's all in the game. If you don't want to be flamed don't post a story like this. Ron Barrett got flamed too, obviously, including by yours truly. Still, I'm always interested where these comments are coming from and an even more interesting question is: why? I've found there are several reasons for Windows supporters to comment.

Microsoft munchkins
Unfortunately, this seems to become a common, accepted business practice. The Dutch consumer TV show Radar recently complained that their forums are swamped by people who work for the very same company they endorse, posing as legitimate clients. Microsoft has been doing this for a long time, stating that the company should "use the Internet, to heighten the impression that the enemy is desperate, demoralized, defeated". Do not underestimate these guys. Some of them are quite smart and can seriously debunk your story with some clever FUD.

Microsoft dependent individuals and companies
Some of the commenters have a stake in Microsofts success. They own a company that is completely dependent of Microsoft technology or have heavily invested in Microsoft education programs. In short, if Microsoft fails, they are out of a job or their professional value is seriously deminished. That is one of the worst things that can happen to an IT professional and for that reason, they have my sympathy. My professional life does not depend on either Microsoft or Linux, so I will never be able to fully appreciate the choices they have to make. On the other hand, life is always uncertain in the IT industry so it might not be a bad idea to bet on several horses at the same time.

I started off as an application programmer using Dataflex. After that, I had to learn dBase. A few years later it was MS-Access, quickly followed by PHP. ITIL is having its third iteration and there are other frameworks like CMMI, ASL, BiSL that gain acceptance. Keeping up is retaining your market value. That's why it is important not to close your eyes for the changing market and cling desperately to one single technology.

The lame and the whining
These are individuals who grew up with MS-DOS, moved to Windows 3.1, queued for Windows 95 and applauded the coming of Windows XP. They gradually acquired their knowledge of the Windows platform and don't want to be bothered with a new Operating System or new applications. The Windows way is the only way and anything else is "alien". The "package management" discussion is a good example. They are irritated by all these people who want to move them to a new platform. Some may have tried Linux, ran into some minor problem and didn't care to put the same effort into solving it as they would when they had encountered a Windows problem.

The ignorant
These are the least vocal Windows users. They probably bought a PC with Windows preinstalled and don't even have a clue that you can install a new Operating System. These are the people who return their computer for repair because Windows failed for the simple reason that they cannot tell the software from the hardware. If you burn down Windows you actually tell them they bought a bad computer. These people are the real moneymakers for Microsoft and would seriously benefit from a preinstalled Linux, although some of them put great effort into learning how to use the computer and feel uncomfortable with an unfamiliar Operating system. They are not the enemy, folks!

I do not claim this list is scientific or exhaustive, people may have a multitude of reasons to flame, but these are some patterns that are emerging. Another lesson that is learned is that Linux is no longer the underdog. Sure, people are still repeating some of the old Linux myths, but those are so easily debunked that most don't bother.

Every new distribution release is easier to install than the previous one, supports more hardware and brings more eyecandy. After the Vista disaster, it is harder to maintain that Linux does not support sufficient hardware. Compiz proved that Linux comes with a very beautiful GUI and we're not typing commands in a shell all the time. Sure, Linux users tend to like the CLI, but that is a preference, not a prerequisite. At work, I use Windows XP all the time and one of the windows that is featured on my desktop is a MinGW shell. This forced Windows proponents to say that they "don't need no stinking cube". I wondered what they would have said when it had been the other way around..

Most Windows proponents are particularly sensitive to WGA and UAC. These are particularly weak points of any Vista installation. The FOSS business model does not require a WGA and the functionality of UAC is elegantly woven into the basic design of Unix. Another point is that Linux is free (as in beer) and you have to add a lot of functionality to make it worth to fork out your cash and move to a closed source platform.

Most educated Windows users I courteously meet IRL always feel they have to excuse themselves for using Windows. Linux is increasingly becoming the talk of the town, something you have to try for yourself sometime.

That is a good thing. Bashing Windows on the web is good, because we as a community still have defend ourselves against vicious corporate attacks like "Get the facts" campaigns, but IRL it is not the most successful strategy. Note there are always good reasons for individual persons to use Windows, not every convert is a victory.

We still have to fight many battles on many fronts in order to achieve world domination, but on the publicity front we're not doing bad, as "Why Linux makes Windows 7 obsolete" has proven. It has been an interesting social experiment. You think I shouldn't have? The other side doesn't agree.

Why Linux makes Windows 7 obsolete

2009-01-12T19:52:00.014+01:00

"My conclusion: We are not on a path to win against Linux. We must change some things and we must do it immediately."

Jim Allchin, Microsoft Corporation

Okay it is no secret that Vista has not been able to crack the desktop, either at the home or at the workplace. Not to ignored either is that Linux won some desktops last year (a little over 3%), but let’s not rejoice just yet, Windows still owns over 88% of all the desktops according to leading research. But that may change very quickly. Recently the numbers on Internet Explorer came out. We're getting pretty close to a fifty-fifty shootout between Microsoft and the rest of the browsing crowd.

Yes, Vista has been real good for OS/X and Linux. We saw growth figures of several hundred percents. And no, for those of you who think I was born on a Wyse terminal, I grew up with the Sinclair Spectrum, the PDP-11 and MS-DOS. It was working for a decade in this line of work when I typed my first commands on a VT-100 terminal. BTW, I still got a Wyse-50 terminal connected to my main Linux computer, because I can't do without a console.

To real Linux die hards.. terminals rule. Microsoft has realized at last that the serious Administrator needs the usefulness of using command line input to accomplish tasks. Windows Powershell has introduced cmdlets to improve administration of Windows. That means it has taken Microsoft over thirty years to realize that a real system administrator needs something more than a CLI that has been written by a drunk COBOL programmer on a piece of toilet paper while visiting the bathroom. It is sad to say, but whatever Microsoft forks out, it can never equal the awesome power of a Unix shell. Although tweaked and perfected, the Unix shell has virtually stayed the same. After thirty years Microsoft finally understand the only way to perfect their out-dated MS-DOS batch processor is to discard it altogether.

The argument for ages was Linux was free and so was many of the applications you run were actually developed for Linux. Applications like Firefox, Open Office, MYSQL, GIMP.. Now all these applications are now available for Windows, although they're still easier to install on Linux. Just open your favorite package manager, click the appropriate applications and on you go. In November 2008 PC World made a list of the things they would like to see in Windows. One of the things they mentioned was.. package management! Yes, it's true. Most Windows converts miss their installation packages. The truth is, it is far more easier to mark all the packages you want, let the package manager figure out all dependencies and install them all in one go. That it is not perceived as a superior way of package management is because they are not accustomed to it. Now, all that and a zero price tag. Which OS would you choose? Not to mention that I don't have to deal with General Failure, Major Error, Hauptobersturmbahnfuehrer Gates and other spies on my private property.

Let's go back to the eye candy, the mother of OS/X and the father of Vista. Well, most people are simply amazed when I show them this footage and tell them they can have it on their computer too. Yes, if need be you can even have it on your simple netbook. You know, that tiny, inexpensive device that significantly prolonged the life of Windows XP because Microsoft had nothing else that would run on it.

Of course, you still have the same problems with Windows 7 you had with Vista. Probably your old equipment still won't work. WGA, that tiny little program that points out to you that you have bought an illegal Windows version, is still there. His little brother, UAC is there too. Bill, how many times do I have to point out to you that you cannot backfit a feature when it wasn't part of the original design. Oops, I almost forgot to mention that multi megabyte register you have to clean all the time – until it breaks down completely.

As a matter of fact, Microsofts future is squashed between an obsolete Windows XP and a Vista nobody wants. With many home users getting tired to get and maintain the next pirated version of Microsoft Office and many governments moving to ODF I see very dark clouds for Microsofts main cash cows. It may be clear by now that Windows 7 is nothing more than a refurbished Windows Vista. Aero has been polished a bit more, some of the major resource hogs may have been optimized, but all in all it is nothing more than Vista SP2.

Byte declared Unix dead when Windows NT came out. Some 25 years later, Unix is still very much alive.. and kicking! Guys, you have to come with something more dramatic than this makeover to win me over.

"Geen Stijl" is a communist website!

2008-09-30T18:56:00.014+02:00

"Geen Stijl" is a highly controversial weblog in The Netherlands with a right-wing affiliation. US inhabitants that compare it to "Fox TV" might find it liberal, but trust me. If you move any further to the right on the political spectrum in this part of the world you're either burning copies of "The origin of the species" or wearing swastikas on your sleeve.

Recently "Geen Stijl" published an entry on Linux, saying that "Linux is a kind of communist Open Source Operating System and Hugo Chaves, dictator of Venezuela, understands this". Later on it states that "Everyone who uses Linux supports terrorism, atomic weapons, high oil prices and the destruction of the earth".

My goodness! What are we doing? I have to install Windows right away. But I know my people since I've been one of them for a very long time. And I know they're cheap. "Going Dutch" has not become an expression without a reason. So I decided to check up on things. I went to Netcraft and found this report:

http://www.geenstijl.nl was running Apache on Linux when last queried at 27-Sep-2008 18:54:25 GMT
OS	Server	Last changed	IP Address	Netblock Owner
Linux	Apache	30-Aug-2008	81.173.64.50	GeenStijl
Linux	Apache	4-Jul-2008	81.173.64.50	GeenStijl
Linux	Apache	30-May-2008	81.173.64.50	GeenStijl
unknown	Apache	7-May-2008	81.173.64.50	GeenStijl
Linux	Apache	6-May-2008	81.173.64.50	GeenStijl
unknown	Apache	4-Apr-2008	81.173.64.50	GeenStijl
unknown	Apache	14-Feb-2008	81.173.64.50	GeenStijl
unknown	Apache	4-Jan-2008	81.173.64.50	GeenStijl
unknown	Apache/2.2.6 (Fedora)	3-Jan-2008	81.173.64.50	GeenStijl
unknown	Apache	30-Dec-2007	81.173.64.50	GeenStijl

So, what is the verdict? It simply means that "Geen Stijl" is also responsible for "terrorism, atomic weapons, high oil prices and the destruction of the earth".

Absolutely clueless these people.. Professor Hoxha, I guess it's better to get a real degree and research your story before you publish it. Not only is your FUD harmful to a perfectly decent Operating System - it is completely unfounded as well.

The revenge of the Linux munchkins

2008-08-02T20:13:00.008+02:00

Working with Linux means being introduced to new environments and techniques all the time and sometimes – after you have been working with a particular program for some time – you think: "This can't be true. This thing was getting so many good reviews but for me it just doesn't work."

Nowadays it is quite easy to vent your anger and write an article on the Internet, explaining in detail what has happened to you and why other users should be cautious. If it is a small project you're commenting on you may get a single comment from the programmer – or may be none at all. But beware when you're writing an article on some major project. The munchkins may come and get you!

We have known about the Microsoft muchkins all our lives. Those are people who are paid to scan the Internet for unfavorable articles and use the comment facilities to do what Microsoft does best: spread FUD. As far as I know there is no such equivalent in the Linux world. It just seems like that.

Linux munchkins are a mixture of hardworking programmers, fanboys and trolls and they will do everything to debunk your article with varying degrees of politeness. Let's make it clear that I don't want to deny anybody the right to comment on an article, especially when he is right. But I doubt the usefulness of some comments. Let me give you a small summary.

I just think your being a sensationalist for your own gain.

How about making sure you install the software properly before telling the world.

I agree with many of the posters that reviews like this do not serve the community well. Your mistakes in your initial installation soured the tone of this review from which it could never recover.

For someone who calls himself a "guru" this is no good promotion for your reputation.

I wish bloggers who play at being journalists had enough pride to actually research something before posting.

And the list goes on. Let me stress that most programmers remain relatively polite, it is mostly the community that acts like teenagers with Britney Spears posters above their bed. Yes, such articles may hurt a project. But if the project is sufficiently good I'm sure there will be other articles as well. If not, it may give a project enough stuff to think about and adjust their course. And what kind of impression do you think you leave? At least that we are infighting instead of discussing an issue. Do you think that helps?

But whatever you think of amateur journalists, they are users as well and I think their experiences are genuine. If not, it is FUD and you can flame that to hell as far as I'm concerned. These users spend time installing a program or research their issue as well as they can – and then they write an article. It all takes time, time they spend on their community, a thing we are all part of.

The community will always benefit from blogs. Maybe their documentation needs an addition or clarification. Maybe they picked up a buzz that is important and needs addressing. Everybody makes errors. Programmers, project leaders and bloggers.

If you are a blogger and you made an error do as the professionals do: write a rectification or followup. Make sure your original blog links to it. Work together with those who pointed out where you went wrong. In my experience most are quite helpful.

But those who consider themselves to be part part of the community I'd like to say, note that publicity and a healthy blogosphere are in your interest too. Nobody is interested in "corporate" and biased communication. Real blogs draw much more attention. And decent, to the point comments make it even more interesting.

Hey folks, let's keep it civilized, huh?

Update: Ten days after publishing this blog KDE e.V. endorsed a "Code of Conduct" like Ubuntu had done a few years ago. It stated: "We do not tolerate personal attacks (..) Disagreement is inevitable, from time to time, but respect for the views of others will go a long way to winning respect for your own view". I'm not as arrogant as to think that this blog had anything to do with that. Sometimes two things just happen at the same time. I'm sure more major projects will follow. Regettably we seem to need a code of conduct in order to survive as a community.

How to create desktop icons in KDE4

2008-06-16T20:29:00.005+02:00

If you happened to have read the update on my previous blog, I was contacted by KDE4 developer Aaron J. Seigo. Frankly, he was not very happy with my blog, calling it a bunch of FUD. Well, I'm not in the habit of spreading FUD, I told him, so if my information is incorrect, prove your point and I will rectify it. He told me he would get back to me by Monday and he did.

You can view the screencast he has made available and judge for yourself whether you need to be a rocket scientist or not (as some people have claimed) to get your "Old Skool" desktop back when working with KDE4.

Personally, I'm happy with his clear explanation for now - although it has debunked my previous blog for the most part ;-) If you tend to disagree, comments are always welcome.

Desktops in trouble

2008-06-13T13:13:00.009+02:00

The main reason I switched to Linux in 2000 was the availability of a viable desktop, in my case KDE 1.1. The Linux world was very different back then and I was even forced to install proprietary tools in order to have all the functionality I needed. Nowadays we have Open Office, MPlayer, VirtualBox and apart from some Wine emulated stuff there isn't a proprietary program in my entire system. We are inclined to take all those things for granted. The next version of any program is bound to be better than the previous one, so why worry.

Well, there are some disturbing developments and they are happening in the key components of our systems: the desktop. KDE has spawned a new release, KDE 4.x, and although it looked promising at first, KDE is in trouble. People are not only complaining about its instability (which is not a good thing in itself) but also about the direction KDE is taking. It is a change of paradigm. KDE has always been what you wanted it to be. You could install it as is and just use it or tweak it until you were happy with it. Just about everything was configurable and every possible feature was available. That was what the KDE audience liked about KDE.

But the KDE team has taken another path by banning the icons from the desktop, claiming that all that clutter wasn't neat. The folder view was much more powerful, they stated. I won't argue with that. Maybe that one day the KDE audience will learn how to use them properly and won't even blink when that code is taken from the repository. But I don't think this was the proper time to do that.

The change of a major version number has always been a big deal with KDE. I remember that I continued to use my KDE 1.x long before I finally switched to KDE 2.x, simply because it wasn't stable enough for production purposes. The switch itself wasn't a big deal. Ok, theming was much more difficult than it was back in the KDE 1.x days, but as far as basic functionality was concerned it was pretty much the same thing. Although reports are mixed I don't think that KDE 4.x is production quality right now. Most major distros agree with me: KDE 3.5.x is still an option. Since my hardware is slowly starting to fail I'm afraid I will face that decision as well in the near future. And I've already decided: I'll be using KDE 3.5.x.

If you want to lure your users to a new version the best way to do it is to make sure that everything is the same, but better. The KDE developers have failed to do this and I think that may have been the worst development in the entire history of the project. It's also a breach with the previous KDE philosophy: you decide what is good for you; we won't. Instead of letting the user decide which desktop paradigm he prefers, the KDE developers decide for him. That's a philosophy that sounds familiar. The Gnome boys have been saying that for years. You don't want to tell me that in the end they were right, do you?

Gnome is in trouble as well but for different reasons. First of all, there is the Mono controversy. I could dedicate a blog entry itself on that, but I won't. But it is a major problem. It is no secret that Gnome is closely tied to Richard Stallman and his FSF, so when Stallman himself admits Gnome is in trouble and some parts of it might need to be completely rewritten I guess we have a real issue here. But that is not all. Some people think Gnome has become a dead project, because it has ceased to be "exciting and innovative". Ironically, what is their example? Yup, you guessed right. KDE 4.x.

Now, if the revolutionary features in KDE 4 do not improve productivity and ease of use, then I don't know what else will. Plasma is simply changing the way we perceive a desktop, and I think for the better - the folder view is just one things that comes to my mind, but there are others, like the desktop grid and such.

It is a strange cross-over if you come to think of it. KDE developers are starting to treat their users like mindless children just like Gnome has all these years and Gnome developers are looking at the direction KDE is taking. Is this the prelude to a merger like happened on the 3D desktop front with Beryl and Compiz? A flashy, innovative desktop for dummies?

I know there is an end to the KDE 3.5.x branch and when KDE 4.x hasn't proven itself by then or - even worse - slowly slipped into oblivion for the lack of people using it, I'll be forced to choose a new desktop. I have found myself looking at E17 lately, which is the new generation Enlightenment. It is lightweight and fast and looks pretty neat. But secretly I still hope KDE will get their act together and start to provide what users want. A stable, reliable and configurable desktop. "Klickybunti" is nice, but I also want to get some work done.

Update: I've been contacted by core KDE developer Aaron J. Seigo and he assured me that a classical desktop with desktop icons is still possible. So I've asked him to show me how. If he delivers the goods (and he has), I will publish them on this blog, so it will make a nice tutorial for those who want to have an "Old Skool" desktop and at the same time prove or debunk Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols claims that Joe User will be "utterly bewildered by the process". Well, one thing is for sure: they are still listening.

P.S. Comments are always welcome, but can you please refrain from pushing your favorite alternative?

A day in the life

2008-05-24T13:27:00.005+02:00

You know what the difference is between a professional blogger and amateurs like us? They write about the community and we are the community. We can write about things they will never be able to cover properly: our own experiences. A view from the inside. Usually, it doesn't take too much effort to write a blog entry like this, because I love writing about what I do.

I'm the proud maintainer of the 4tH compiler, which I designed almost fifteen years ago. I became part of the community when I decided to release it as Open Source. At that moment I realized that the Internet had changed the world of software development and shareware was simply 'not done' anymore. A few years later, I switched from MS-DOS to Linux. I had never really liked MS-Windows.

4tH is a very small, very portable Forth bytecode compiler. It is written in the sweetest vanilla C that you can imagine. Even the ancient K&R C compiler of the now forgotten Unix clone Coherent is able to compile it cleanly. 4tH itself produces bytecode that you can run unchanged on virtually every platform available, from MS-DOS to AIX.

There have been many Forth standards. It all started with Forth-78 and the newest iteration is called ANS-Forth. The ANS-Forth standard consists of so-called 'wordsets', which are families of related functions. There are wordsets for 64 bit integer operations, floating point operations, local variables, etc. You can have a standard ANS-Forth compiler which supports only certain wordsets. There is no obligation to support them all as long as you document it.

If your compiler does not support all wordsets the chances are you are unable to compile all ANS Forth compliant programs, which is something you want to avoid as developer. But sometimes the design objectives of your project make it very hard to support certain features. Floating point support is one of them.

If you thought 64 bit operations are hard, because you have to take the carry into account, reconsider. Floating point is much harder. A floating point number consists of two parts: an exponent and a mantissa and is in essence an approximation and not a true representation. During floating point operations floating point numbers are constantly rounded and renormalized, so you may end up with 0.9999999999 instead of 1. Most modern CPUs have a floating point unit, but that is not of much use when you go for ultra portability. In short, I had long given up on floating point support.

That is, until I ran into Brad Eckert's floating point library, which was written in high level ANS-Forth. I had just added 64 bit support - 4tH natively only uses signed 32 bit numbers - so adding his library to 4tH was slowly entering the realm of possibilities. But first, I have to tell you something about Forth and its community. Making a Forth compiler is dead easy, so most Forth programmers have rolled their own. Forth is very easy to extend, so most Forth compilers have their own pet extensions or deviations from the standard. And since I'm a Forth programmer 4tH is no different, so I had to convert the library to make it compile under 4tH. During that process I found that my 64 bit library had some serious flaws, which had to be fixed first. But one afternoon when I was least expecting it 4tH properly divided 1 by 7. And that was it.

Or was it? Brad's library supported only the most basic of operations, that is division, addition, multiplication and square root. No equivalents for LOG, LN, SIN, COS, TAN and friends. That was a shame, because I wanted to port Krishna Myneni's "Star Trek" program to 4tH and that needed some trigonometric functions. From Usenet I learned that when Brad had presented his library to the community he had asked for some support to implement them, but for one reason or another it had never come to that. But still, I wanted those functions. Google learned me that no such functions - which are called "words" in Forth - had ever been published. That meant I had to go to work myself. First question, how do you determine the sine?

That proved to be more complex than I thought. There is no simple formula to calculate the sine, but there are several possible approaches. First, you can use the CORDIC (COordinate Rotation DIgital Computer) method, which requires a table. Second, you can use a table straight away and interpolate the intermediate values. Third, you can calculate an approximation by using the so-called Taylor series. With each iteration the error becomes smaller and smaller until you decide that good is good enough. I went for the Taylor series. However, the Taylor series method has one important limitation: it only delivers good results between minus Pi and plus Pi. Albert van der Horst, one of my Forth buddies on the Internet, thought it was a nice, clean solution - "good enough for government work" - but urged me to include range reduction. I wasted a lot of time on that, but Albert was kind enough to help me out. Thank you, Albert! After that COS and TAN were easy.

Now I became greedy. The oldest surviving program I have written is "TEONW", which stands for "The Effects of Nuclear Weapons". It is based on a report with the same name by the U.S. Energy commission. I had written it in Basic on a PHP-11 when I was a student. At the time, the Reagan administration was planning to station a handful of nuclear cruise missiles on Western European soil in response to the Soviet nuclear threat and like most of my fellow countrymen, I didn't agree. I had written the program to demonstrate what devastation a nuclear missile would cause and ridicule Reagan at the same time. Later, I ported the program to my Sinclair ZX Spectrum and that was it. If I ever wanted to port it to 4tH I at least needed the EXP and LOG functions.

That took quite some research. There were Taylor series for EXP and LOG, but these were only reliable within a limited range of values. By accident I ran into the Henry Briggs method, which allowed me to calculate the logarithm of any base with arbitrary accuracy. I solved the EXP challenge by splitting up the exponent in an integer part and a fraction, approximate the fraction part by using the Taylor series and multiply the results. The Taylor series provide a good result in the zero-to-one range, you see. After that the hyperbolic functions (SINH, COSH, TANH) and inverse hyperbolic functions (ASINH, ACOSH and ATANH) were easy.

Finally, I took a shot at the inverse trigonometric functions (ASIN, ACOS, ATAN). They key function here is the arctangent (ATAN). I used the Taylor series again and applied range reduction. By using the the tenth degree Taylor series I got a good approximation, although the error increases when you move further away from zero. With the arctangent the other functions (ASIN, ACOS) were easy. Hell, let's throw in FATAN2 as well.

Now I had a full set of high level ANS-Forth floating point words, exactly what I had set out to do. They were reasonably accurate, short and comprehensible and would form a nice addition to an already good compiler. Furthermore, I had completed what Brad Eckert had planned to do in the first place. Maybe this was not quite what he had in mind, but still. All source code is covered by the GPL, so the community had benefited as well.

In 1997 Bill McCarthy had asked me to add floating point support. I turned him down for the reasons I explained at the beginning of this blog. In 2002 John Paravantis requested the same and got the same answer. But hey, this is Open Source. If you get turned down, that doesn't mean a feature will never be added. You may have to wait a little while and if you do not want to wait for that long, do it yourself and submit your changes. Or make a fork for all I care.

We, as a development community, resemble the scientific community where people can built upon the work of others. That is why we are able to develop ourselves and our software faster than closed source software. And there are, like in the scientific community, different schools. I think this diversity is an asset. The most important thing is, however, that we continue to share the same ideal, because in the end we all win.

The Grand Unification Theory

2008-05-06T00:21:00.006+02:00

New comment on 'I like my bazaar!':

"As you said the writer is only partially invalid, having such a huge amount of distro's as the GNU/Linux do creates too many incompatibilities at some point, such as the package management systems. I find it stupid to have such a variety, the major distro's could have agreed on a single one or at least create a new one to suit everyones tastes and optimize it.

Also I'm sure some distro's could merge, not only because they could have similar goals but also because bigger developing teams mean faster and better development. The big number of distributions could mean that something may be developed in many distributions at the same time yet the developers are unaware of the fact thus wasting time by doing twice the work they could have done."

Dear Anonymous,

Let me tell you a little story, before you try to explain "The Grand Unification Theory" to me again. 386BSD was written mainly by Berkeley alumni Lynne Jolitz and William Jolitz. After the release of 386BSD 0.1, a group of users began collecting bug fixes and enhancements, releasing them as an unofficial patchkit. Due to differences of opinion between the Jolitzes and the patchkit maintainers over the future direction and release schedule of 386BSD, the maintainers of the patchkit founded the FreeBSD project in 1993 to continue their work.

Around the same time, the NetBSD project was founded by a different group of 386BSD users, with the aim of unifying 386BSD with other strands of BSD development into one multi-platform system. The project began as a result of frustration within the 386BSD developer community with the pace and direction of the operating system's development. The four founders of the NetBSD project, Chris Demetriou, Theo de Raadt, Adam Glass and Charles Hannum, felt that a more open development model would be beneficial to the project.

In December 1994, NetBSD co-founder Theo de Raadt was asked to resign his position as a senior developer and member of the NetBSD core team, and his access to the source code repository was revoked. The reason for this is not wholly clear, although there are claims that it was due to personality clashes within the NetBSD project and on its mailing lists. In October 1995, de Raadt founded OpenBSD, a new project forked from NetBSD 1.0. After all these years, the three flavors of *BSD are still alive. Some users like one, other users prefer the other for reasons only known to them.

Okay, got that? Now let me tell you another story before you go to bed. It is fairly easy to make a Forth compiler. Hence, virtually every serious Forth programmer has written his own. There are fat, tiny, portable, assembler based, meta-, bytecode, native, standalone, embedded, closed source, FOSS and lots and lots of other Forth compilers. They are standard (Forth-78, Forth-79, FIG-Forth, Forth-83, ANS-Forth) or non-standard. There are so many Forth compilers for every imaginable platform, you'd have a hard time to invent another variation. But I did just that. I didn't find a Forth compiler that was just right for me. So I developed my own, back in 1994. And what do you think? After me, others went through the very same process and invented their own.

It is a natural process. Whenever groups are formed, fractions will emerge. And when those fractions unify for one reason or another, there are others who won't agree, stay behind and found new groups. Well, it doesn't happen to closed source companies, you say? Right, but what keeps those companies together? Power. Money. They own you, you know. In Open Source, nobody owns anybody. If you can't find what you need, if you don't agree with somebody, you make your own. There is nothing or nobody stopping you as long as you are willing to comply with the license.

And that is exactly what is happening in the bazaar. Every merchant has its own product and the users decide. Some of us are both merchant and user, so we've seen both sides. Yes, I won't argue that there is a certain rationality in unification, but (human) nature just doesn't work that way. Would you prefer only one kind of car, one kind of television, one radio channel and one kind of cheese, the kind of cheese your neighbor likes and you detest? Of course not! That's why there is a bazaar. And that is why there is more than one cathedral ;-)

I like my bazaar!

2008-05-04T11:39:00.008+02:00

In his article "Why the Linux world should embrace the BSD's", Steve Lake proposed a closer cooperation between Linux and BSD. Although I have the utmost respect for BSD and what its developers have accomplished, I don't see what good it would do. I think his reasoning is flawed and the arguments he uses are - at least partially - invalid.

First, I don't agree that the cathedral is the best development method. There are many good programmers out there and they should not be denied the privilege to submit code. Note that Linus does not blindly insert all submissions. He or one of his lieutenants judge the code on its merits and decide to include it or not. Since many programmers can work on the code it is obvious that development can take place at a much faster pace. Note how the development of schedulers took place. Several different varieties were made, a lot of testing was done and in the end Linux gained overall. That is a far cry from the handgrenade method which Steve suggests Linus uses.

On the other hand, how many ports of Linux were done? It runs everything from mobile phones to mainframes. I don't see cathedral-developed software doing that (I was proven wrong here; there are 58 ports of NetBSD). From a philosophical point of view the bazaar is more democratic, allowing users to participate on every level and determining largely where development is going (Linus has acknowledged that on several occasions). You may call BSD a meritocracy, but you may also view it as a oliarchy.

Second, to me the BSD license equals to software theft. It is well known that BSD software enabled Microsoft to "steal" several key components, without doing anything in return for the community that developed it. Speaking of "sleeping with the enemy".. To use an analogy, the BSD license equals to a naked woman standing in the middle of skid row at night screaming: "Rape me! Rape me!". I don't mind anyone using my code (including Microsoft), but return the improvements that were made to the community or individual that developed it. My software was used in at least two different commercial products and the developers always submitted their modifications, which resulted in several key improvements. BTW, I use the LGPL - I'm not a Stallman groupie.

Third, I have nothing against a cooperation between both projects, but I do see legal issues. E.g. swapping code can be beneficial to both projects. May be the BSD group can live with the fact that Linus will use the GPLv2 for that code, but I'm not so sure that Linus can live with the fact that his code is published under a BSD license. That is what it boils down to in the end, even after accepting that the BSD and GPL communities have very different philosophies concerning development and licensing.

Finally, I'm desperately trying to see what he is actually proposing. What should this "partnership" do? Should it end in a complete merger of both projects? And why? Simply because "there can be only one"? Why not a merger between Microsoft and the FOSS world? Hell, let's turn over all the code we got! Then there is only one that (should) fit all. So, why not stop this silly game and let there be only Microsoft Vista? Aero isn't that bad..

Your answer will tell you why Linux and BSD should exist beside each other, why there are KDE, GNOME and Enlightenment and why the Tiny C compiler was developed (although a perfectly good GCC already existed). It is the classical error of cathedral proponents. A bazaar means choice, shopping malls, not the bleak shops of the Soviet era and - most of all - no high priests and Politbureau's. Being someone who has seen with his own eyes what dictatorship and elitarism can do to people in particular and society in general, I like my bazaar.

Applications are Open Source too

2008-02-15T18:35:00.005+01:00

One of the advantages of combining public transport and mobile computing is that you can spend the time you’re commuting on something useful (if you consider blogging to be something useful of course). I’m using LyX to write this article, but Firefox, GIMP, LaTex2RTF, ImageMagick, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Graphviz, bash, GCC and my own 4tH compiler are installed as well. And no, this is not a Linux laptop, it is a Windows XP laptop. Yes, your deduction was correct, I’ve been providing MS-DOS and MS-Windows versions of 4tH for as long as I can remember, it’s not like Microsoft has recruited me lately. And no, it is not my laptop, it is my employers laptop. Since the Netherlands may be most retarded country in the world where Open Source is concerned it automatically comes with MS-Windows. Fortunately, I was able to install my own stuff as well, because a Windows XP laptop with MS-Office is less than useful to me.

Strangely enough, I get the same remarks from MS-fan boys. They never ask me if there are any useful word processors available (yes, LyX) but if it can run MS-Office. Of course you can using Wine, but there are so many fine other word processors available for Linux. But no, it has to be MS-Word and nothing else. I can understand why. Using another program, even if it resembles the one you’re used to, is like sleeping for the first time at the home of your new girlfriend. When you try to find the bathroom at night the chances are you’ll end up lying face down in the hallway. Of course, in time you will learn to find your way around, but it is frustrating (and humiliating) at first. So when people change Operating Systems the first thing they’ll look for is a way to run their familiar applications. They will only switch if there is no other way.

I remember when I switched from MS-Windows 3.1 to Linux I used Paintshop Pro for a considerable amount of time before I finally switched to GIMP. I used the Linux version of Wordperfect. I updated my diagrams with Novagraph Chartist at work. Finding, selecting and learning Linux alternatives took me a lot of time, time that I could have spent on creating content. Sometimes I was even forced to recreate or reformat content. But once I had familiarized myself with an application I had no reason to switch again. I’m never going to relinquish my LyX, Graphviz or Dia for that matter. In comparison, MS-Visio and MS-Word are applications of a distant past and do not offer me the versatility or comfort I’m used to.

LyX simply works, nuff said. Its format is simple enough to interface with and versatile enough for the most complex of documents. When I insert a picture it stays where I put it instead of jumping to different places or being overlaid with text for no obvious reason. The pages are automatically numbered and adding a Table of Contents is just a few clicks away. Graphviz automatically creates a diagram from a simple definition. I don’t have to place edges or nodes manually and it interfaces perfectly with LyX. Just like Dia, by the way. I must admit, I only use Open Office to read MS-documents, I don’t create too much content with it, but it is a wonderful application. GCC is my compiler of choice, although I rarely need it except to compile my own 4tH compiler, which I use predominantly to write programs. And who doesn’t use Firefox? Only those dwelling in the Valley of the Ignorant.

Some would like us to believe that Open Source applications are lacking in functionality, but I sincerely think they are wrong - or spreading FUD for that matter. I think Open Source offers great applications and I think the community should be more confident and proud of what they have achieved. If you’re using Open Source applications you’re using next generation tools, new and exciting paradigms, which will offer you a headstart once the MS-dinosaur has realized this and has implemented it in its products. And in the meanwhile you will enjoy having the advantage.

I haven’t touched MS-Word for anything serious in a long time - and when I was forced to do it I regretted it every single minute. I’m a writer, not a layout artist. I wanna type, I don’t want to be bothered by adding and maintaining the layout. LyX works like I want to work. This is a chapter, this is a section, this is an enumeration, here comes the Table of Contents - take care of it. And LyX does. ’A’ is connected with ’B’ and ’C’ and ’B’ is connected with ’C’. Put them in borderless, cyan boxes. Now make a diagram. And Graphviz does.

These are the things that make you productive. I’ve never seen anything MS-like do that. They believe in blue ribbons. I don’t. BTW, did you know that you can buy an add-on that makes the ribbon interface disappear and reverts you to an interface that was brand new when the dinosaurs roamed the earth? I guess there must be real market for it.

I don’t even think it is the fault of Microsoft. For several reasons it is very hard to change human behavior. Knowledge is valuable. You don’t change from expert to newbie voluntarily. It diminishes your personal and professional value. People want to get the job done. They don’t have or take the time to learn a new tool, even if this investment makes them more productive in the long run. That behavior is one of the most important obstacles in the adoption of Open Source products. People are only willing to change if their applications don’t change. Most of them don’t know what a kernel is and even less why they should care. As far as they are concerned if it runs MS-Word it’s a kind of ’Windows’.

The Open Source movement can use this behavior to its advantage. If people use Open Source applications they will run Open Source operating systems. It is not a question of ’if’ anymore, but a question of ’when’. So when a friend asks you for a bootleg copy of MS-Word, install OpenOffice or Abiword. You can replace Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro with GIMP, Quark Express with Scribus, Visual Studio with GCC and so on. Now that KDE makes the jump to the MS-Windows desktop the choice of applications has become even wider. And then you wait. MS-Windows will fail at some moment in time and you know where your friend will turn to.

Closed source software is a wonderful thing, especially if you have to pay for it. While ’free speech’ is vitally important, I guarantee you that ’free beer’ attracts more visitors. Fortunately for us, Microsoft made it very unattractive to install MS-Windows. First you either have to pay for it or go through a difficult procedure to bootleg it. Second, their main attraction is not so attractive. Who wants Vista? Not even the most fanatic MS-fanboy wants that on his machine. Third, installing MS-Windows is going through hell. If you have old, vanilla hardware, a modern Linux distribution will probably support it. Pop in the DVD and off you go! Where a MS-Windows installation leaves you with a bare bone machine, Linux will already offer you a wide choice of applications. Applications your friend already knows, uses and loves. You don’t break the barrier by tearing down walls, but by dismantling them stone by stone.

There are developers that refuse to port their FOSS software to MS-Windows. There are even developers that deny others the right to compile their FOSS software for MS-Windows. Personally, I don’t think that’s a good idea. First of all from a public relations point of view. If you want to leave the impression that Open Source developers are a bunch of religious zealots whose next move will be the bombing of the Redwood headquarters, that’s absolutely the way to do it. Second, for what? Those who use or are forced to use MS-Windows and have the required know how will do it anyway. And those who haven’t will be frustrated. Nice going. You lived up to your principles and that’s it. Period. Your little pet project is not the killer application that will turn people to Linux. Tough luck. I’m afraid you’ll have to live with it.

What most FOSS fundamentalists seem to forget is that MS-Windows users can be converted to FOSS users. Even better, a large number of MS-Windows users are FOSS users. The simple fact that someone uses a Microsoft kernel doesn’t mean he has joined the dark side. Most people won’t even care. If there is a good, cheap alternative to MS-Windows they will use it as long as it doesn’t cause them too much trouble. Applications are the key factor here. So instead of trying to force people to change their kernels, we have to ease them into using our applications. Yes, maybe some people will continue to use MS-Windows kernels, because it is easier to run MS-Windows applications on an MS-Windows kernel than it is using Linux and Wine. Yes, maybe Microsoft will continue to earn some money by selling MS-Windows kernels. But in the end, when GCC, OpenOffice, Scribus, Inkscape, Dia, Firefox, GIMP and the new KDE desktop have become the applications of choice, who do you think has won?