undertakingyou

Today is my birthday. Although you might not care, I learned long ago that if I sat there and felt sorry that no-one remembered my birthday, and I didn’t tell them about it, it was my fault. So I am just saying, you know, so that you are aware. I don’t expect gifts, just a hello would be nice.

As I look back on this year in review it has been very, very interesting. Promotion at work, starting my own business, my wife starting a business, home improvements, changes in my role at UTOSF, and then my daughter growing and time still rolling on, what a ride.

I have read over the past several days about facebook and their turning evil. It is all the hype nowadays to say that a company has gone evil when it wants to support hundreds of workers and realizes it needs money to do that, but I digress. There are several articles on it. One from wired, a couple at EFF.org here and here, and one in PC World. While I agree that facebook has changed their privacy policy, wrongfully so I might add, and that they should also set the defaults to share as little as possible to keep face with their old policies, I don’t think it should or will cause the mighty social network uprising everyone is demanding.

Now in response to these changes there have been complaints to the FTC about facebooks stuff, but this will not cause an uprising, it may cause facebook to change some of the defaults that you find in privacy stuff. Nothing more.

The reality is that when you have put something out on the internet you have, in effect, released it at large. This is regardless of whether it is on facebook or not. This is also my complaint about people that privatize their blog so that Russians don’t take pictures of their kids and put it on a billboard. The reality is that any, and I mean ANY information you share with someone, even your closest friend, is bound to get out.  It goes back to my old adage: you can get away with anything as long as you keep your mouth shut.

Lets think about this. How many times have you said something to someone in confidence and then four to six months later someone is asking you how that went. Even when you verbally share information with close friends it gets leaked out. Why would sharing your blog, or anything else for that matter, be any different?

My rule of thumb on facebook, don’t share stuff you care gets out. I don’t care if people know that I live in North Salt Lake. I don’t care if people know that I work for Larkin’s. I do care if they know what I have for dinner every night, or what I am thinking at any given moment, or any of the other stupid things I see as ‘status updates’. Don’t post what you don’t want shared. Don’t post pictures you don’t want shared. Remember, you can get away with anything as long as you keep your mouth shut.

After recently compiling a kernel for a friend I found an interesting issue. Partition selection had not been the best during installation and there was 10G on the root partition. With the installation of this new kernel we had literally 0 free space on the hard drive. When trying to boot I got this error: “gconf-sanity-check-2 exited with status 256” Possibly the first time that I have ever had a cryptic issue with linux. Google searches just turned up file permission issues but the permissions were right. I then deleted the .gconf and .gconf2 folders in the home folder with no change. In the end I moved / to a different partition with some free space and Viola the problem was fixed.

So I was always under the impression that Linux could run with Zero free space and be just fine because swap space has a dedicated partition. Apparently I am wrong. I assume that gconf needs to write things to /tmp and with no free space I can’t. Anyone have any other specific experience with no free space?

I have seen many funeral services in my life. Of the ones I have seen it seems there basically are three kinds. Those that are sad, a lamentation for something taken to early, something stolen from us. At these types of funerals we see the greatest sorrow. Next is those that are quiet. This may sound like an odd term but at these services we either see that no one is there or those that are there don’t care. The services are usually short, and devoid of any sadness or joy. They are something bland and people are glad to have them over and out of the way. The last type of funeral service is Happy. Strange though it may seem at this service a celebration is had for a life well lived. Celebration is also given that the person or thing was worn out, suffering, ready to move on to whatever realm or sphere awaited them. These are often full of laughter, and although there is some sadness, it is usually overshadowed by a great sense of joy.

I am sure that the funeral of Internet Explorer 6 will be something like the last one. A celebration that the old, worn out, overused and under-supported browser will be gone. I know that I will be ecstatic when I can look at my stats and see that the number of IE6 browsers visiting my sites has diminished to the point that I don’t have to support the buggy and hackish code to make things look even semi right.

This has been a long time coming as we have watched IE6 wane. Like the hospital patient that the doctors don’t bother to stop by anymore I am sure IE6 felt this coming. If we watch closely we can trace the timeline of the ever growing demise.

First, Google drops IE6 support. Chine attacks google using an IE6 security hole and France and Germany encourage the discontinued use of IE6. Youtube follows suite and will stop support March 13th. Possibly the last nail in the coffin is Microsoft. Even though the creator of IE says they won’t discontinue the support of IE6, it is subverting itself by encouraging people to upgrade to IE8 with tricks like helping the hungry.

Truly, I am excited to see this spiraling death of IE6. I understand that some of the market share that the browser still has are people in large corporations. Where upgrading or using something else just isn’t an option and their IT staff just doesn’t seem to care. Maybe they are all fixing the PC Load Letter ticket requests or cleaning viruses. Who knows.

I read this on SlashDot today:

“Galen Gruman writes about the dark side of the recent flood of Android smartphones: versions run amok. ‘That flood of options should be a good thing — but it’s not. In fact, it’s a self-destruction derby in action, as phones come out with different versions of the Android OS, with no clear upgrade strategy for either the operating system or the applications users have installed, and with inconsistent deployment of core features. In short, the Android platform is turning out not to be a platform at all, but merely a starting point for a universe of incompatible devices,’ Gruman writes. ‘This mess leaves developers and users in an unstable position, as each new Android device adds another variation and compatibility question.’ In the end, Google’s naive approach to open sourcing Android may in fact be precipitating this free-for-all — one that might ultimately turn off both end-users and developers alike.”

Two thoughts on this. First, I think it is wonderful the limelight that Open Source software in general is getting by the surge of Android based phones. Not only are they usable (at least the one that I have and the ones my friends have) but they are easy to use and offer a myriad of features that people love.

Second, I think Mr. Gruman must be new to open source in general. The entire Open Source movement is based upon need, not dictation. Let me explain. Out of all chaos comes order. Through the infinite branches that emerge from the free system common features and needs stand out. Eventually this causes a standard to be created. Not because of fiscal decisions made in board rooms, but because of the actual needs of the group.

I find it fascinating that with all the historical evidence that the open source system works people will put it down as naught. The theory of evolution is based upon the same thought of free systems. Let me walk through it again. There are an infinite amount of variations on one theme. As the needs of environment dictate certain of these needs stand out more prominently, they are more needed for survival. The other features that do not promote survival die off because of under use, not being passed on, etc.

We see this point made in the software world on a continual basis. Remember Netscape? Or the more recent demise of IE6? These did not embrace the features needed to survive and as such have been left out as refuse.

In the end, people will not abandon the google platform, but from the trials of daily use we will see great standards emerge.

I was surprised to get this email, looking like it was gmail:

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I have talked about buying undertakingyou.com for a long time. Finally did a couple of weeks ago, and I must say, it is actually really nice to have the new stuff. WordPress is great, although I probably don’t have to try hard to convince you of that. The migration from blogger was pretty smooth. Although all tags were converted to categories and I had to recreate them all.

Other new things are my new URL is being hosted on xmission’s new Stackable service. It is pretty cool and I will blog about that another time.

The theme on the site will be a work in progress. If you have any suggestions please comment and let me know.

So I got an email a while back. I had a user that needed to have a word processor. I told them to download OpenOffice.org. She said that when she talked to other people they didn’t want to use the free program because “. . . it was too hard to use.” What does that mean? It is nearly the same in functionality. You see something, click on it. You type and words flow onto the screen. What do you mean it is to hard. My co-worker then said this: “Since I’ve never used it, I don’t know what that means. Possibly that they haven’t taken the time to learn it???” Not possibly, surely.

As a follow up that same user needed a spreadsheet on her home computer. I had her download OpenOffice.org and install it. She is as happy as can be. Office suite that is fulfilling her needs and didn’t brake her bank account.

FOSS FTW.

So, I was talking with Davey Larkin the other day and figured out the real difference between FOSS and proprietary software: Solution VS. Toolbox.

Really, lets take for example photos. In Apple I can use iPhoto. That is it for any kind of photo management. It is part of the Apple iTakeover. With Linux though you can used FSpot, Gthumb, flPhoto, kPhotoAlbum, digiKam, imgSeek, Desktop Flickr Organizer, or Album Shaper. Admittedly I haven’t tried all of them. But I could if I wanted to.

Again, proprietary software gives you a solution and says, this is what you use. FOSS gives you a toolbox and says, “have fun”.

So, it happened again to me. I get an email that says “please check the attached flier” and there is a Word document in docx format attached.

Any time that I tell people that Word documents are the worst possible attachment I get this puzzled look and a “Why?” After I explain that there is no guarantee that others will have Word, or the same version of Word, and that there is no Guarantee that they will have the some fonts and that in the end your preciously made flyer ends up looking like crap. I then get another puzzled look and a “What? How do I send it then?” I then tell them that PDF is the way to go and then you have to explain how to make the PDF. Thus far I have found it easier to just tell them to never send me emails again and that we are no longer friends.

So, how can I say, “Your attachment sucks” without going through the pain of becoming their new support guy?