NYTimes ♥ GM

The New York Times ran an article today about GM's enormous fuel-cell behemoth, a hydrogen-powered SUV.

Like other fuel-cell cars, the Equinox generates electricity from a reaction between hydrogen and oxygen, with no smog-forming emissions or greenhouse gases.

Of course, they don't mention where the hydrogen comes from: fossil fuels, notably natural gas, which is burned:

CH₄ + O₂ -> CO₂ + 2H₂

That means that carbon dioxide, CO₂, a greenhouse gas, is emitted to produce the fuel. (The other common source is coal, which is much worse.) The car doesn't emit it – that's taken care of already. And, as a matter of fact, the somewhat inefficient intermediate step of going to hydrogen means that this car burns 30% more fuel than a vehicle that runs directly on natural gas. But you won't see that anywhere in the article, since the Times is too busy making mouth love to a major advertiser.

Granted, hydrogen could be produced through solar or wind power. Someday, maybe, when and if government decides to subsidize that instead of petroleum extraction. It just isn't currently. But to read the Times, you'd think these things were powered by environmentally beneficial fairy sparkles.

Freebird

Today Statistics Canada released new census reports, and the Globe and Mail published a set of interviews with immigrants. One recent refugee from Myanmar living in Newfoundland had this to say:

"I feel very safe. It's freedom," she says. "It's a nice place. I'm not afraid anywhere. I'm not afraid [of] any soldier but Burmese. I still [feel] like a freedom, like a bird fly in the sky."

That and the rest of her story sure puts my bitching about tasers into perspective. What a wonderful place I live, where that's the worst that happens.

SF belongs to the boomers

The SFWA kopyright kops kerfuffle is back in the bloglines again. The details are engrossing and terribly boring, combining the contemporary debate on free speech and free society and the desire to maintain outmoded business models: whether the SFWA should be forward-looking or repeat the mistakes of the RIAA and MPAA. Copyright vs communism. Intellectual property vs creativity. The past vs the future. Yes, all of that. But really, it just illustrates the divide between people who still actually write stuff, and those who are living off work they (or somebody they used to fuck) did thirty years ago.

See, Science Fiction^® belongs to the boomers. They grew up with it first, and by sheer weight of numbers, they own it. They control the meaning of the words, which they have cemented in a museummausoleum where the corpse of the genre rots behind glass. SF is dead, and although some new work exists which might seem to carry on its tradition, it really doesn't matter because if it wasn't written by a baby boomer, it is most unlikely to be blessed by the anointed ones. [For some reason they like Neal Stephenson. And some nanotech. But that's it: it's like nothing has happened since 1985 otherwise.]

The new generation would like to make science fiction be about the future, or at least be an engaging commentary about the present, but the boomers haven't wanted anything at all to change since the early nineteen-eighties, and they're not about to let go now. They hold title to the trademark "SF" and they're not giving it up without being lowered into the crypt (and probably not even then).

Steampunk has escaped the deadly SF label; the rest of the genre's refugees need to build their own brand beyond the reach of the zombie corpse of SF, and abandon the corrupt institutions which shamble on, destroying any chance of a future. The boomers are never gonna let it go. It's dead, Jim.

Shocking

Defenders of tasers invariably trot out the argument that "tasers save lives." Despite the obvious evidence, they are convinced that in every other scenario they would have used a gun and shot to kill. However, actual data shows that 79% of the time tasers are used on unarmed people.

Of course it is easier to electrocute than to negotiate. [Easy, and fun!] Most of the time it doesn't even kill the person electrocuted; they just become a lot more likely to cooperate with whatever the torturer wants. And the mere threat of electrocution serves other purposes as well. After all, police have never been known to torture or rape people, have they? No, I'm sure that just magically stopped happening in the early 20th century.

A civil society which loses confidence in its police force is in trouble. Right now there is an unfair balance of power: police carry a torture implement for which they cannot really be held accountable. Tasers which merely record the date, time, and duration of an electrocution do not also record the circumstances, the identity of the victim, the location or the reason for doing so. As such, they not only hold potential for abuse, they practically guarantee it, and the evidence is there.

Feeling bloated

Do you feel like you're slowing down as you get older? Maybe it isn't just your own metabolism – it could be the software you're using. An excellent comparison of resource consumption by Windows/Office over the past decade is a damning indictment of the horribly bloated and unwieldy state of the Microsoft desktop platform. The old adage that "Andy [Grove (Intel)] giveth, Bill [Gates (Microsoft)] taketh away" turns out to have been insufficiently pessimistic: Bill has been taking more than Andy had to give. The free lunch is over, but some companies are still bellied up to the buffet.

Ban tasers

It has been adequately demonstrated that police cannot be trusted with tasers. They are too dangerous, and police are far too willing to use them. The increasingly common use of these weapons illustrates society's increasing willingness to commit brutal torture.

Now you can watch a snuff film of police killing a distraught man at Vancouver airport with tasers: three officers tasered him seventeen seconds after approaching him, and he died.

It's not just a shame, it is shameful. How can we call ours a civilized society when we permit this?

Lesbian rules & regulations

• Lesbians like kickboxing. There is a strong correlation between lesbianism and Tae Bo.


• Femme lesbians in Vancouver can't talk about anything but shoes.


• Lesbians like Lebanese food. Maybe it's because it sounds like "lesbian" and maybe it's because they like to eat with their fingers.


• When a lesbian student raises her hand in class, she will extend two fingers together.


• Dill is a lesbian spice.


• All indie rockers are lesbians.

Please add any other rules on lesbianism in the comments. Please keep in mind that this is no laughing matter.

Cherry blossoms in amber

Charlie Stross' recent musings about his Japan trip, combined with Cory Doctorow's recent story featuring the Carousel of Progress, reminded me of an evening at the theatre.

In the Gion Corner theatre in Kyoto, Japanese Culture's Greatest Hits are performed assembly-line style twice each night. The facility has a well-worn burnish that somehow holds off shabbiness, but only just. The show is a veritable smörgåsbord with seven courses of traditional Japanese performance art; and like a smörgåsbord, it is all about the variety and quantity, not the quality of any given dish. The tea ceremony was performed with a curious mixture of precision, care, boredom and indifference, and an absolute absence of passion. The floral arrangement segment befuddled me: surely the product is what is appreciated, not the process? The thespians were variously talented and not, and the works presented in pre-digested, bite-sized chunks.

The tableau vivant rolled forward under the muted crackling of the soundtrack, the performances variously talented or not, but all held under the threat of preëmption by a fearsome narration with the comforting, terrifying verbal pacing of a postwar Westinghouse infomercial on nuclear power. The sound system had an oppressively vibrant analog complexity and gave the impression of ginormous drums of magtape rumbling inexorably in the basement.

The presentation was courteous and boring in the way of traditional tourist fare, yet it carried a dark undertone of sorrow, despair, hatred and reproach. The notes and movements seemed cast as pearls before contemptible, invading swine. I loved it.

Funky white girls

Never let it be said that Vancouver has no arts scene (despite the fact that I say it constantly). The Dance Centre is right next to our building, and we even saw something marginally worthwhile there, but when I saw this ad it chilled my blood. You see, this is the creative dance "powerhouse" made up of Amber Funk Barton, Sarah Brewer, and Cori Caulfield, and together they are Funky Brewster Cauling. AAAAAAARRRRRGHHH!!! The picture alone is enough to make my testicles retract to my diaphragm: the Stayin' Alive pose, the lime green bellbottom stretch pants... a bona-fide erectile suppressant. They may know how to dance, but obviously not how to sell their act.

Reclaiming wasted time

By removing Lifehacker from my newsfeed list, I've saved myself fifteen minutes per week of paging past dozens of pointless articles. I had subscribed to this a couple of years ago when I was desperate to improve my time organization & priortization skills, and the site had some practical tips.

However, the site has devolved into a sisyphean wheel of press releases, hints from Heloise, and ridiculously stupid ideas. Most practical tips are used up, and although they are reprinting old articles now, the site has become a time waster. And you know what to do with time wasters...

BlackBerry support in Ubuntu Gutsy

To charge or backup your BlackBerry device under Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon, there is a nice little GPL package named barry put together by some nice folks in Ontario. It isn't part of the Ubuntu software catalog yet, so here are some steps to get this up and running. (Note: the authors give instructions on how to build it from source – take your pick.)

First, you'll need to install an updated version of libopensync0 (0.22). Add the following lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list:

#opensync
deb http://opensync.gforge.punktart.de/repo/opensync-0.21/ etch main
deb-src http://opensync.gforge.punktart.de/repo/opensync-0.21/ etch main

So, go get that along with some other prerequisites:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libopensync0 libglademm-2.4-1c2a libtar

Then, download and install barry.

wget "http://downloads.sourceforge.net/barry/libbarry_0.9-1_i386.deb?modtime=1192146928&big_mirror=0"
wget "http://downloads.sourceforge.net/barry/barry-util_0.9-1_i386.deb?modtime=1192146873&big_mirror=0"
wget "http://downloads.sourceforge.net/barry/barrybackup-gui_0.9-1_i386.deb?modtime=1192146747&big_mirror=0"
wget "http://downloads.sourceforge.net/barry/libbarry-dev_0.9-1_i386.deb?modtime=1192146953&big_mirror=0"
wget "http://downloads.sourceforge.net/barry/libopensync-plugin-barry_0.9-1_i386.deb?modtime=1192147004&big_mirror=0"
sudo dpkg -i libbarry_0.9-1_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i barry-util_0.9-1_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i barrybackup-gui_0.9-1_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i libbarry-dev_0.9-1_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i libopensync-plugin-barry_0.9-1_i386.deb

Note: you probably don't need the libbarry-dev package unless you plan to develop with this stuff, but I installed it anyhow. Won't hurt anything. The libopensync package should enable some sort of integration with your local copy of Evolution or Thunderbird, but I haven't tried it.

After all you can plug your BlackBerry into the USB port and it will finally charge. These packages don't put any entries in the Gnome menu system, but you can run "barrybackup" which will let you back up all data (and restore, if you want).

Smile!

When we bought our house in Toronto two years ago, we decided to get a Murphy bed for the guest room. We wandered around the city looking for the right one, astounded at every turn by the prices they charge for these things. A thousand bucks for a stack of compressed wood? Yup.

When we finally decided to cough up the dough, we were faced with a salesperson who mumbled curses in Russian under her breath, rolled her eyes, and sighed as we discussed options and paid her god-damned salary.

I was entranced.

I got out my phone and pretended to be playing around with it, and surreptitiously captured her image for posterity. (I had used a hack to disable the obnoxious snapshot sound effect. Hello, Motorola, it's my frigging phone, okay?) So here she is to brighten your day, too.

DeAundra Peek

Media superstar (and fellow Cracker Barrel protester) DeAundra Peek gives us Dee-Lite's What is love? in her own inimitable style.

Only heterosexual christians need apply?

I can only assume this headline means something else to the author of this article: Jiibe is eHarmony for Jobs.

Copyright Trolldom

A spat recently erupted between two SF writers, purportedly about copyright. Cory Doctorow posted a paragraph of Ursula K. Le Guin, and she took offense because the single paragraph was a complete story; puffed-up chests and finger-pointing ensued, ending with an apology.

The reason this is trollery is that this story is given away through multiple sources, and Cory Doctorow, by promoting it, was doing her a service. She doesn't see it that way, though, because she is stuck irretrievably in 1950. So she made a stink about it. And Jerry Pournelle and his cronies in the soul-deadening SFWA waded in, carrying pitchforks and baying for Doctorow's blood.

So why does the SFWA hate Doctorow? He writes new stuff that people want to read, he gives it away for free, and has been tremendously successful at it. He also contributes to the influential blog BoingBoing. He does not bow and scrape to the bunch of borderline-fascist ex-authors who run the SFWA, and he has the temerity to espouse socially liberal political philosophies. They hate that stuff. And since UKLG and Connie Willis are the token women in the group, these real men can defend their honour.

A tempest in a teapot, illustrating the fact that a bunch of has-beens feel that the Internet will take away a comfortable retirement based on royalties from outdated, poorly written crypto-nazi bullshit they produced a generation ago. Now UKLG's boring story will safely stay on her site where nobody will actually read it. Great call, Ursula!

Missing the point

Linux increased desktop market share by 119% over the past 12 months – but even so remains at 0.81% of total market share. Some see this as a huge disappointment and evidence that Windows will remain the One Ring.

However, I think a narrow focus on desktop market share is actually quite misleading. New devices with new capabilities are taking over the computing world. 'Most everybody carries a mobile phone, where Symbian and Linux are dominant, and Windows Mobile (which has nothing to do with Vista) has virtually no penetration.

So, if I count the "computers" in my house, there are: 2 linux laptops, two linux desktops, one vista laptop, one symbian mobile, one linux mobile, one linux landline and VOIP phone, one blackberry, one Windows CE and three linux embedded devices. Granted, I am a freak, and that increases the likelihood that I'll have linux devices – nine out of thirteen of them, in my case. But I only chose my OS on four of those nine linux devices, for the other five linux devices there is no alternative. And of course I'm not alone, as the TiVo is a linux device, and the linux-based wrt54g is the most popular router of all time.

Microsoft is innovating with a new category of device, a $10k coffee table. Good for them, it looks very sexy. Unfortunately for Microsoft it also looks dead simple to clone. Where's the new business model to go with it? Being too expensive won't make it exciting for long. Maybe they're hanging their hat on the Zune integration.

Meanwhile, Linux is making its way onto the motherboard (two different ways). Linux and other operating systems are being included in all kinds of new devices. A million iPhones have been sold already, and they run Mac OSX (the same thing that runs on the Mac). People don't think about the OS in these devices, and they don't care. The focus on desktop as the measure of success is so very 20th century.

Lawrence Lessig on corruption

Lawrence Lessig (my favourite lawyer) announced earlier this year that he is moving on from the copyfight to spend the next ten years fighting corruption – in politics, in academia, in the media, in society – using new technology and mass-produced media to expose the effect of money on decision making. Larry's been the main draft pick on my Fantasy Supreme Court for a couple of years. I can't imagine a scenario in which he'd be appointed, but a boy can dream.

Sayōnarā, WebEx

I have cursed WebEx for years:

• every time I waited ten minutes for the crappy ActiveX control or equally crappy Java applet to (fail to) load


• every time desktop sharing loaded but showed nothing


• every time I struggled to export a powerpoint document into its proprietary Universal (?!?) Communications Format with its Powerpoint plugin that never worked

why all that frustration? Just to control what page people look at during a powerpoint presentation, for the most part. Sometimes, rarely, for showing them an actual live application.

As with anything that truly pisses me off, I was once a fan. For one incandescent second in 1999 Webex was cool. But they never improved a damned thing. And fickle me, I've found a new shiny thing: Google Docs Presentations. For creating presentations it isn't much – you'd better not want more than bullet points – but for showing slides to others? Oh, bliss... just fire up the presentation and send the link to the attendees. So create your presentation in KeyNote, PowerPoint, or OpenOffice Presentation, save it in PowerPoint format, then upload it to Google Docs, and you're set. It is a beautiful thing. Bye-bye, WebEx, it was fun for a while.

Fifty year countdown

According to statistics, today I have fifty years left. Wow, I'm not middle-aged after all! Forty is the new thirty!

I've been thinking about my second act lately, and this helps put it in perspective. It looks like I have enough time for two more acts before I get cut down by the reaper (maybe more, if you listen to some folks). Then of course, we could all get swallowed up in the Rapture of the Nerds before that – if we do, I hope it looks better than MySpace.

Wired founder Kevin Kelly came up with this as a motivational tool: he has a countdown on his desktop that tells him how many days he has left. This keeps him focused; everything else can be bought, but more lifespan does not currently scale.

My sell-by date: 28 September 2057. I have 18,263 days left; roughly 1.6 gigaseconds. Stay tuned for the agenda.

(via BoingBoing)

Not invented there

Like many geeks, I'm messing with Ruby on Rails and absorbing REST (which leads to not getting enough rest). I've been working on an ASP.Net project and tried to use a RESTful URL... bad juju. I got it to work under Mono by overriding the 404 error page, but that trick didn't work on Microsoft's server. The suggested solution is to write your own ISAPI filter. Uh-huh, I'll get right on that as soon as I get done knitting my own underwear. So much for that.

Today I came across an article about "Microsoft's Astoria REST Framework". Cool! I went to the official project page to check it out. What's really weird is that the page never actually uses the word REST. They're solving for it, they're implementing it, but they can't name it that? Bizarre. Just how are people supposed to find this thing?

Apparently Microsoft is switching from "embrace and extend" to something far weirder: "grudging adoption without admission"? Or "yeah, we'll do it, but we'll bury it in the FAQ." What's up with that?

A world unwelcome

Tom Ridge told the NY Times “The welcome mat has a little dust on it right now. We have to spruce it up a bit.”

Well, that's an understatement. People I meet go to great lengths to avoid traveling through what was once known as the Sweet Land of Liberty; it has now become a rogue state of the worst reputation. It seems like everybody has a story about being mistreated at the border or the visa office, and people will pay hundreds extra to avoid connecting flights there.

... and the chocolate ration has been increased
to four grams per month!

Aside from having flushed its hospitality industry, The US no longer attracts the brightest and best students and workers; they're now looking at Europe, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Heck, they're flocking to Dubai. You know you're in trouble when you can't compete for labour with a country whose working conditions have been described as "less than human". Richard Florida, who coined the term "creative class", documents this in The Flight of the Creative Class.

For a real-world example, direct your gaze to the building across the street from my office: Microsoft just opened a
global development facility in Richmond, BC. Three hours by car from their headquarters in Redmond, it is designed to allow Microsoft to recruit the best and brightest to work for them and live in an industrialized nation with a functioning civil society. They plan to employ 800 people there. Those would otherwise be jobs in Redmond if the US didn't have its priorities seriously out of order.

Why write HTML for AIR?

I was trying to figure out why anyone would want to write standards-based web pages specifically for Adobe AIR. I'm not talking about Flash/Flex or ActionScript development, I'm talking about using regular HTML, CSS and Javascript to build a website, but then shoehorning it into the Adobe Flash runtime. Why would anyone want to do this?

The stated reason is to ensure that you are providing a consistent experience across browsers and versions, the WORA promise again, but for real this time. That way you can provide the same crap user experience to all users, disabling their scroll wheel and all that great stuff that Flash provides so "richly". Gag.

No, what this is about is locking down web content: keeping people from right-clicking images and saving them, safeguarding the sacred goodies. But first and foremost: disabling Adblock to make sure the punters see the ads. Keeping the geeks from personalizing your pages with Greasemonkey, and preventing client-side mashups. As collateral damage, keeping the visually impaired or blind from using their accessibility tools. But most of all, maintaining control. Control at any cost!

It's the gospel of control that Adobe has always preached, but a way of applying it to a whole other set of technologies: the ones that have formed a generation of software that enabled freedom of choice and diversity of platforms and spurred the development of the web. Adobe's other gospel of richness means two things: your page looks rich (shiny, high in fat), and Adobe builds a monopoly and a position of control that they can monetize someday. And that would make Adobe rich.

Defending his turf

Slashdot referenced an article by Derek Sivers today: "7 reasons I switched back to PHP after 2 years on Rails". CmdrTaco managed to turn a case study on a failed project into an opportunity to badmouth Rails.

I didn't see any condemnation of rails in the article (quite the contrary, in fact). It was more of a case study for Joel Spolsky's classic position: don't rewrite from scratch. As Joel puts it:

They did it by making the single worst strategic mistake that any software company can make:

They decided to rewrite the code from scratch.

Instead, Joel advocates doing what Sivers wound up doing: refactor and fix the existing code.

But of course that wouldn't fit CmdrTaco's corporate agenda: to promote LAMP over a growing upstart, as PHP loses market share month after month to the not-very-comparable ASP.Net (mostly encumbered) and the comparable Ruby on Rails (also free). So he passed along the grossly misrepresentative summary of the article and came up with a similarly misleading title. I guess I expected more from CmdrTaco (a.k.a. Rob Malda): he was once an insurgent in the revolution, but he's over thirty now, and therefore not to be trusted.

Rupert Murdoch is an old man

The purchase of MySpace by News Corp for $580M was a watershed moment: old media realized the game was changing. But they still do not realize how fundamentally, and they do not understand technology.

Rupert Murdoch is an old man. In his mind he sells newspapers; whether Faux News or the Wall Street Journal or Prison Break, it's the same centrally produced flat surface that shows stock quotes, Ed Anger look- and sound-alikes, and pictures of warm jigglies that he has provided to loyal punters for years. So now the idiots produce it for themselves? Great, Rupe and his noxious progeny can just sit back and rake it in.

Wrong. First off, the trendsetting liberal élite fears and loathes Murdoch and his company. Second, others understand deeply that it is not about The Simpsons or American Idol, it is about a platform. Facebook understands this, which is why they're seeding $10M in development on their platform. No equity stake required.

So why should hardworking ramen-suckers build an environment to build an empire for News Corp? I haven't seen a reason yet. Facebook may not be Mother Teresa either, but they're at least giving ten million more reasons to build on their platform.

The unreliable narrator

Two of my top ten books of the last decade are Cheap Complex Devices and Acts of the Apostles by John (Compton|F.X.) Sundman. These are two of the richest and most complex pieces of fiction produced in a contemporary, technically proficient vein. He has written only two books, but he has a mastery of literary structure that takes you by surprise. They mangled my mind.

I suggest starting with Acts of the Apostles (ded tree, free pdf). This is presented as a very straightforward Neal Stephenson or Crichton thriller, like Snow Crash or Sphere. Very readable and engaging, with a few tech industry in-jokes to make a nerd feel like a war veteran (DEC, Microsoft, Sun, and their respective personalities appear under aliases). It's been described as “What Tom Clancy would write if he were smart.”

After you've enjoyed that you can graduate to Cheap Complex Devices (ded tree, free pdf). This is not standard genre fiction, and you might not be sure what you're dealing with. The author's notes, the stories, and the meta-story combine in your head to produce an interference pattern. Which of the three versions are you supposed to believe? Perhaps none of the above. I can't compare this to anything I've read before or since.

I first bought Acts when I saw the story on Slashdot back in 2000. Then I bought it again two years ago. Both are available for download, but you may find you want the real thing (CCD is a little different in print). They are self-published, and the author provides quite a backstory – but can you really believe him?

Maps for the rest of the world

Google Maps now includes map data for 54 more countries, including many in Latin America -- and of great interest to us, Mexico.

Years ago we bought a street map of Veracruz. The maps are terrible... Mexico does not have a great tradition of map use. Mexico City has the excellentGuia Roji (as do Guadalajara and Monterrey), but the rest of Mexico gets by on blurry, out-of-date maps. If you could even identify minor streets it was a major victory.

Here's our neighborhood in Veracruz, Colonia 21 de Abril. Our house is at Florencia Veyro 264, between Echeven and Sánchez Tagle, just above the "V" in "Veyro".


Apparently the map provider hasn't put street number information into these maps, and driving/walking directions are not yet supported. But even so, this is a wonderful thing. Hooray Google!

Perfect fit

The buzz is that Microsoft is buying RIM, maker of the BlackBerry mobile device.

I think this makes perfect sense. Blackberry is ubiquitous, practical, and ugly. The development platform is terrible – if you were there for DOS, the Blackberry will seem eerily familiar. The operating system crashes regularly. Wonderful error messages like: "Null pointer exception" and "VM: too many threads" are common.

Ugly though it may be, it is very popular (heck, I have one). Microsoft has to have this. Their mobile platform is dead in the water, and this is where the market is expanding. I suspect that Microsoft was waiting for RIM's recent patent difficulties to blow over – the last thing a convicted criminal organization needs to do is buy more trouble.

So there will be a marriage, and many children. Sometimes ugly parents produce beautiful children. Just not usually.

Who's your daddy?

Windows Update isn't asking anymore. Even if you configured it to ask you before updating anything on your system, it updates the update mechanism without asking you, and without telling you. There's no telling what exactly the (unavoidable) update mechanism does, either.

So, your computer now belongs to Microsoft: they decide what software runs on your machine, and any notion of control of your own computer has been rendered quaint. In a way, I understand their position: they get all of the blame when viruses and worms exploit known bugs for which people haven't applied their updates. But my sympathy is running out because somebody put all of those bugs in Windows in the first place, and three years after their security audit the bugs keep coming – even in their newest versions.

Now that Microsoft has softened you up to expect that they can (and will) patch your system without your knowledge or permission, there's a great precedent for doing it for other reasons: to repair their DRM when bypassed, to disable your computer when they think your Windows license is invalid, or to start advertising on your desktop. They're going to monetize that big installed base they have, and they will do it any way they can. Just so you know who's in charge: on Windows, it isn't you.

Celebrity encounter

I've been a Todd Haynes fan since Poison. I was living under a rock when Velvet Goldmine came out, and didn't see it until two years ago, when I bought the DVD.  I watched it... more times than I can recall, and soaked my head in the soundtrack.

As I was going through this obsession, every day on my way to work I'd pass a commercial real estate sign with an agent's name: Kurt Love.

Kurt Love.

Every time I read that sign, the name reverberated in my head, in Toni Collette's voice. This, generally, as I'd be listening to the soundtrack. I'd say it to myself, dramatically: "Kurt Love."

What a cheeseball.

So a couple of months later I was with a group of people evaluating office space.  We went to some boring glass cube perched on the empty plains of Siberia^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Mississauga to look at another spray of veal-fattening pens in neutral corporate-approved colours, sniff the washrooms, and pretend that any of this mattered, as the only important criteria were the price and that it have enough parking to encourage and abet the continued slow suicide of our civilization. We met with the suits (corporate real estate agents still dress up), and one stuck his hand out at me. "Kurt Love."

I froze. I swear, the sound cue actually went off in my head: the intro to "T.V. Eye".  I gaped. He didn't look like Ewan McGregor.

Somehow, after a subjective decade of embarrassed paralysis, I recovered enough to blurt out my own name and shake his hand. But I couldn't stop staring at him, like he was a major celebrity that I ran into at Costco.  The only thing I could think of to say to the man was "are you really Kurt Love?"  Thankfully, I was able to exercise restraint.

Diane Finley: Conservative glamour queen

"Canada's New Government" (which has been in power for almost two years) is all about controlling image. Note the spectacular Diane Finley. Yes, yes, I know, she has a condition that requires her to wear dark glasses. But does she also have a condition that makes her curl her lip like Billy Idol? Furthermore, does the Conservative Party have a condition that makes them unable to judge the suitability of photographs? Or do her staffers just hate her? What other possible reasons would prompt someone to post a photograph like this on the front page of her ministry's website?

Building Pidgin on Ubuntu with all the fixin's

I had a heck of a time finding the packages I needed to install so that Pidgin would compile with all of its extensions and protocols – particularly screen saver integration for "away" status. Hopefully a good version will be included in Gutsy. These are the components I needed for building Pidgin 2.10 under Edgy. (Why am I still on Edgy? Because distribution upgrade didn't work from Dapper to Edgy, so I mistrust it, and I haven't set aside a morning to upgrade.)

I spent the most time figuring out which packages would contain mono.pc and gstreamer0.10.pc – once I figured that out it went a lot faster. Hope this helps -- it probably isn't everything, but it's most of it. Start with a nice howto, and use the stuff below to turn on the other options.

sudo apt-get install libstartup-notification0-dev libperl-dev libnm-glib-dev libgadu-dev libsilc-dev libhowl-dev libavahi-compat-howl-dev libsqlite-dev libnspr-dev libdbus-glib-1-dev libdbus-1-dev libgtkspell-dev libmono-dev libxss-dev libebook1.2-dev libedata-book1.2-dev libsqlite3-dev libgstreamer0.10-dev tcl8.4-dev tk8.4-dev libmeanwhile-dev liblaunchpad-integration0 libnm-glib0

./configure --enable-gnutls=yes --enable-mono --enable-nm --enable-consoleui --enable-gevolution --enable-gstreamer --enable-plugins --disable-schemas-install --enable-screensaver --enable-tcl --enable-tk

LaCheese Gourmet

We had a gourmet experience yesterday, at the intersection of U.S. Highway 29 and I-94: we lunched at LaCheese.  We had seen the sign on our way to my folks' house, and had screamed in delirium, and my mom said that my cousin Mary had been talking about it as well (that sign is apparently quite the freak magnet).  So we got to meet the inventor of chili cheese fries, and we beat a fellow hipster to an irony-drenched saturated fat-fest.
The hostess was very friendly, though a bit deaf; when we asked for menus, she directed us toward the washroom.  It turns out that the adjacent gas station has no washrooms, as there are signs within the restaurant admonishing non-customers to buy something.

So we got seated and checked out the menu: pizza filled a third of it, and the most intriguing item was "LaCrust": cheese-stuffed double-layered pizza.  My mom asked for a salad (not on the menu) and the hostess (also the cook, bartender, and part-owner) offered to make her one with her ingredients on-hand: which turned out to be iceberg lettuce. I got a pepperoni pizza (playing it safe) but didn't go for the special: second pizza half-price, third pizza free! It was toaster-oven-bar-pizza, in the grand tradition of Tombstone. Mom and Dad got hamburgers (freshly microwaved) and Adolfo hit the jackpot with LaChicken.  Dad also ordered the MexiFries, which our hostess told us they had invented one night from ingredients on hand: french fries, taco "meat" and melted cheez goo. (Delicious, for the record.)

Colour laser printers not anonymous

We have a lovely new colour laser printer. It is pretty sweet... except I can't use it anonymously. If I print something that annoys somebody, like maybe expose corporate or government corruption, or express an unpopular or dangerous political opinion, it can be traced back to me.

This is done with little yellow dots scattered across the image. You can't see them easily. They are intended to fight counterfeiting of currency; there is no law mandating this; some (not all) printer makers do it to mollify governments. And hey, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that counterfeit currency is a bad thing that hurts us all. But to solve that problem I'm not willing to end privacy and anonymity of the printed word.

So imagine that I do want to use my printer for anonymous communication. Say I call my printer manufacturer to ask how to turn off the narc bits: chances are, I'll get a visit from the goon squad to ask me what my intentions are. And chances are I'll get added to a list of "troublemakers".

That sounds like good company. Count me in.

Hot AIR

I went to a promotional tour for Adobe AIR today. The logistics of the event were a disaster: held on the roof of a bar on one of the hottest days of the year, in a room far too small for the number of attendees (crammed in like sweaty pickled herrings), with a weak projector giving an invisible presentation. Why they encouraged people to bring their laptops to an event like that I have no idea... Anyhow, I can forgive a disastrous event, but in this case even the most lavish event wouldn't have turned my head.

AIR promises to finally deliver on the elusive goal of "write once, run everywhere." The approach is to use the ubiquity of the Flash plugin to turn the browser inside out and run the WebKit engine everywhere, so web developers can just target one browser engine. The engine will be able to access OS-specific APIs as well, which makes it not the same everywhere, but never mind that. It also includes SQLite for a local store (just like Google Gears). It is the converse of Google Web Toolkit which abstracts the differences, but runs everywhere; it is similar to Silverlight but with the advantages of hordes of existing Adobe fans.

It is telling that in this effort, like with Flash, their Linux support is an afterthought (just as is "accessibility"). This explains their target market. Modern, freely available web tools allow for effective cross-browser development already, and weaving together a site with Flash and dynamic HTML works for most. But just as a caged animal returns to the cage after being freed, the Adobe faithful will gladly accept their shackles again and pay for access to AIR that others breathe for free.

The Happiest Gay Couple in the World

Years ago, there was a series of animated shorts about Rick & Steve, the Happiest Gay Couple in the World. They were great... little filthy-mouthed Lego people filmed in stop-motion, having drama and laser vaginal rejuvenation. The writing was awesome, with dialogue cut from every queen's daily life, and dead on in its send-up of the hostility implicit in our everyday human relationships.

They've just been re-done as a season of half-hour episodes by their creator, Q. Allan Brocka by MTV for its Logo network. My friend Meiro Stamm composed and performed the music, and showed me some of the episodes – wonderful! Although the figures still resemble the Lego characters of our youth, they don't look exactly like them (thus avoiding attention from the litigious Danes at Lego) – but the series retains all of the sass and irreverence of the original shorts. MTV censors apparently couldn't wring the humour out of Mr. Brocka.

They are showing some clips on happiestgaycouple.com (if you live outside the US, you'll have to download the video instead of watching it online <eye-roll>). It shows on Logo on Tuesdays at 10pm. Apparently no distribution deal in Canada yet, but I've already ordered the DVD.

Stop password nagging in Ubuntu

Finally... turn off the Gnome Keyring in Ubuntu that nags you to enter your password again immediately after logging in. This has bugged me since I started using Ubuntu, and I've tried to turn it off before, but couldn't make it work. Finally now there's an easy(-ier) way to do it.

Ubuntu Forums: Stop having to enter keyring over and over again

Developers vote with their feet

Market share of developers working on Microsoft Windows is down twelve percent since last year, from 74% in a 2006 survey to 64.8% in a 2007 survey. Linux jumped 30% from 8.8% to 11.8%. That's a scary trendline for Microsoft and everyone who has their trailer hitched to their semi.

Use of the Ruby language is expected to grow 50% over the next year. Note that almost all Ruby on Rails development will target Linux (as per manufacturer recommendation), and there's no economic reason to run it on Windows. There is virtually no desktop software written in Ruby.

The shift to web-based application development is picking up serious steam. A tiny minority of Windows defectors might target Linux desktop software, but most of them are targeting Linux as a web hosting platform. For example, most people who work at Google target Linux servers and generic browser clients, although the Picasa and Google Earth teams include Windows alongside Mac and Linux in their target platforms.

These developers that are abandoning Microsoft are not switching teams: they're switching games.

Critical Mass

I participated in Critical Mass this evening: a bike ride where approximately 1,800 people take over the city streets. It was a lot of fun, with a great sense of community and wonderful, safe views of the city. It's the only way to see the city by bicycle in total confidence, and without polluting.

Some drivers were inconvenienced, and often lost their tempers because cars were blocked from the street. However, the street was actually being used more by the bicyclists than it was by cars, as the actual human density and throughput was much higher. There is the conception that the road belongs to cars – something that you'll never see in statute, but you certainly notice when you're riding in traffic next to a stressed-out yuppie drinking coffee and talking on his cell phone when he suddenly decides to take a blind right turn, or when you get forced off the road by a twit in a wide-body pickup truck.

Louie rode in the basket in front of me. He was adored by all that noticed him (he's awfully small). Adolfo didn't join me this time, but says he wants to come along next time. He took the picture and video from our balcony as we rode by. The crowd was interesting: freaks and geeks, students and professionals, bike nerds, unicyclists, dope fiends, earth-firsters, ecofeminists, anti-globalization weenies, dreadlocked redheads, and the occasional granny, adolescent, and urban planner.


The police keep their distance, and the only time I saw them was when we had stopped for our victory rally at the middle of the Lions' Gate Bridge. A young man shimmied up one of the cables and hung one-handed from a metal spar, and then climbed back down. The fuzz talked to him briefly. There is no central organization to a Critical Mass event, and everybody takes turn "corking" (blocking intersections) and helping with breakdowns, defusing altercations, and clearing the way for emergency vehicles. It's one of the most interesting social movements that I've come in contact with, and I hope it lives up to its name some day with a critical mass of cyclists on the roads to take back our cities from the plague of automobiles.

Selling Ontario to Atlantans

Somebody asked me how to recruit folks in the Atlanta area to move to Ontario. It was a great move for us – our situation required that we leave the states, as my husband is not a US citizen and we couldn't stay there any longer. So Canada was great for us on that level, and for gay people a whole hell of a lot better place to live in general. Not having to listen to constant anti-gay rhetoric in our daily life is quite liberating, and we don't miss the constant reminders of second-class citizenship in every official capacity, from taxes to insurance to hospital visits. Similarly, Black and Hispanic friends who have left the states for Canada have been generally happy, as have various non-US people who went there to work for a while (particularly Moslems, and some Asians and eastern Europeans, and notably expatriate Canadians sick of the states).

Progressive/liberal straight white Americans like to say they want to move, and I've read stories about them, but I've never actually seen it happen (they're kind of like unicorns). The tax disadvantage is quite profound, with the mortgage interest deduction in the states, the lower federal and state income taxes, sales taxes, etc. The real estate situation in Atlanta is hard to beat, especially if size is your criteria and you don't mind driving for hours a day. Livable communities are a lot easier to find in Canada, but for homeowners the price would be very difficult: Atlanta's in a slump, so they'd have to unload their gargantuan white elephants in a buyer's market, then buy a crackerbox in a seller's market in Ontario (or rent, which isn't so bad). Very few straight white folks would be feel any urge to make a switch at present. The healthcare system is a possible magnet, though Americans have been fed a line of fear on that one too. Perhaps people who want to desert from the armed forces, or skip out on their student loans? Maybe people who don't like having a lot of retail selection but do like paying more? (I'm reaching here. :)

So disenchanted minorities of all stripes, recent immigrants without green cards or citizenship (the process here is much faster and easier), recently graduated international students... there's the sweet spot. Otherwise, I would think it would be hard to sell an Ontario opportunity in Atlanta.

Less gas, more ass

The World Naked Bike Ride is June 9. The event is to call attention to the way we are all indecently exposed to automobile emissions, and how cyclists are vulnerable to vehicular homicide on a daily basis. The Vancouver ride starts at Sunset Beach (Beach and Bute) at 1pm.

Lembranças do Brasil

Three months later, tiny grains of golden sand are suddenly coming out of my ears again. Such sweet souvenirs seldom stay so long. I like to think that they are from Ipanema.

Feature creep and bloated products

James Surowiecki has a lovely piece in the New Yorker this week about feature creep and bloated software. He talks about the "internal-audience problem":

the people who design and sell products are not the ones who buy and use them, and what engineers and marketers think is important is not necessarily what’s best for consumers

The article mostly refers to physical artifacts, and he doesn't call out the major motivation that feeds software feature creep: the desire for annual upgrades. In the packaged software world you have to motivate customers to buy your product again and again, preferably every year. With subscription-based or free software, you just have to keep up with the competition, but with licensed desktop software you are competing against the version they have already purchased. via BoingBoing

Sun gets it

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz gets it: software patents are bad juju, and he's promising to use his patent portfolio to protect Red Hat and Ubuntu from the depredations of the Beast. Here's a guy that understands the business, and although his company has seen some hard times since the party ended back at the beginning of the century, Sun is taking risks and trying hard to ride the free software commodification wave. The earlier you bend to the inevitable the more likely you are to survive. Sun is showing admirable flexibility; sometimes a sharp downturn gives you license to take bold steps that a gradual decline does not.

Nortel's continued sad decline

Once-proud Nortel is back in the news, this time with a funny story about how they have a hard time keeping their former subsidiaries as customers. This is especially funny since Nortel's big successes in the go-go 90s were selling switches to Baby Bells who defected from Western Electric when they needed more switches.

For a while there it seemed like half the people I knew went to work at BNR/Northern Telecom/Nortel, and then just as quickly, none of them worked there anymore. The telecom boom died, and everybody had more than enough expensive circuit-switched almost-obsolete equipment depreciating noisily in their expensively airconditioned telecom equipment rooms – around the same time that people really started using blackberry and VOIP in a serious way. The Bay Networks acquisition never fared well against Cisco. Nortel never managed to come out with anything that resonated in the marketplace again, and their financials reflect that.

The telecom industry has become very rapidly commodified, and Nortel's half-cousin and arch-enemy Avaya has become the standard for awful, expensive local PBX solutions, while Asterisk-based solutions are ruining the party for all of the lumbering giants. Nortel could have ridden the wave of open source to become a new low-price leader, but instead seems intent on circling the wagons and riding its customer base down the drain.

And back to the earliest item: they apparently don't have any competent public relations staff. That's pathetic.

Greenscaping gets a free pass

A polluter bribes a wildlife group to provide PR cover, then pays a newspaper to treat it as great news.

I read in Wednesday's Metro^* that Land Rover built their four millionth vehicle and donated it to the Born Free Foundation (a wildlife nonprofit). This was reported as straight news, right from the teat of the press release, apparently with no other sources, and presented with no other context. The vehicle in question will be used as a "'Rapid Response Rescue' vehicle for deployment across the UK and Europe". Whatever that means – sounds like a lot of driving around.

So allow me to do the "newspaper's"^** job by providing additional context. In the fifty-seven years that Land Rover has been producing its four million vehicles, the climate of this planet has changed dramatically, and the ongoing holocene extinction event has eliminated between 20,000 and 2,000,000 species in that same time. The four million vehicles that Land Rover has produced will vent 228 megatonnes (2.28x10¹¹ kg) of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere (conservatively speaking, as that figure is for average vehicles that run for 240 Mm, and Range Rover sells heavier-than-average vehicles with poorer-than-average fuel efficiency). That single car "donated" will itself vent 57 tonnes of CO₂. As any reporter or editor should know, CO₂ is a greenhouse gas which is demonstrably causing mass extinction. So how can it be that a nonprofit that aims to be a Lorax sells out endangered species... for a free car? And why doesn't the "newspaper" call attention to this screaming contradiction?

It is obvious that Born Free likely has more than a passing interest in the corporate wellbeing of Range Rover. It is also clear that Range Rover wishes to position itself as a supplier of choice to environmentally sensitive gas-guzzler drivers everywhere (tread lightly indeed). So there are lots of troubling aspects to this deal, and the "newspaper" is kind enough to preserve our peace of mind by not questioning them. Even if one were to presume innocence and claim that the "newspaper" is simply incompetent doesn't explain this episode completely.

Which raises the deeper question: why would a "newspaper" present such a piece of bald PR as a news story? Ford (owner of Range Rover) advertises^*** in the publication, and the press release was handed to the editor by the PR department of the dealership/manufacturer and told to run it, which the "newspaper" did unquestioningly. Their reasons for printing this press release nearly verbatim are obvious and two-fold: publishers are beholden to advertisers, and publishers are notoriously lazy about producing articles.

So why the outrage? News media is in bed with advertisers – like, wow. But I call attention to this particular case because it exemplifies how the news media, "environmental organizations" and polluters are colluding to the detriment of our living environment and the destruction of the very things they depend upon to survive: paying customers. The results of the supremacy of short-term corporate profit and damn-the-consequences growth, coupled with a compliant and quiescent public and subservient news media, is a hellishly clear path to destruction.

---

*^Powers, Lindsay. "Four million and counting: Land Rover gives animal welfare a helping hand" Metro News Vancouver, 2007-05-16, p 13.

**^Why am I using "scare quotes" around the word "newspaper"? Because the "newspaper" in question is freely distributed and not taken very seriously, although the circulation is pretty good for these publications. They are an attempt by the failing newspaper industry to maintain some sort of advertising market as they are eaten alive by television and internet news infotainment. The "scare quotes" denote my contempt for this source of "news" as biased and unprofessional, with the article as a case-in-point. But because they have the word "news" in the title, people confuse it with a professional news reporting organ, which plainly it is not since professional news reporting organizations have standards of journalistic professionalism about disclosing conflicts of interest.

***^In this issue there are no actual Ford ads that look like paid advertisements, though there is a Ford vehicle on the cover, and four glowing articles that mention or feature Ford vehicles.

Microsoft: Patent Troll

Desperation is never sexy. It is sad (if unsurprising) to see that Microsoft has stooped to becoming a lowly patent troll. They've been moving in this direction for a while, starting their patent portfolio as a purely defensive measure, but then trying to intimidate the Samba project, then financing SCO to be their stooge in a battle against GNU/Linux. But so far, they had just been using their patent portfolio as a FUD tool. But now they've turned a corner and decided to monetize their paperwork, shaking down big scaredycat organizations. Then they decided to subvert Novell. Now they're setting the stage to take their campaign wider and try to scare individuals.

It's a sad state of affairs for the once-proud company that released great products like Windows for Workgroups and Excel. No, Microsoft was never really innovative, but they were at least competently derivative: at one time they could take somebody else's concept and improve upon it. Remember how they took on Netware and destroyed it (with a better product)? Today all they seem capable of doing is screwing up their products and taking out their frustrations on their customers.

Microsoft is apparently taking theatrical cues from Joseph McCarthy. "I have a list here of 235 patents the communists are infringing." Of course they won't say what they are, because if they do, those patents will be immediately challenged with prior art and worked around by the open source community. Plus, their competitors will unleash hell with their own patent portfolios.

The funny thing is that if Microsoft still had decent prospects it wouldn't dare resort to this sort of two-bit shakedown operation. Microsoft made an empire by appropriating the good ideas of others and incorporating them into its products (then using cross-subsidy and vendor lock-in to exterminate the competition, the tools of a convicted monopolist). By doing so they added value and met the needs of the end user. But they seem incapable of doing that anymore, so now they resort to intimidation. It's a sad end to a once-proud company.

100 yummy web apps

The Freelancer’s Toolset: 100 Web Apps for Everything You Will Possibly Need lists most of the usual suspects (Basecamp, FreshBooks) but some unexpected goodies as well.

Body Text, Body Text, Body Text, Char

Body Text, Body Text, Body Text, Char
Originally uploaded by PaulSherman.

Paul says:

... how many usability issues can you find in this screen grab? Winner gets two crisp United States dollar bills, mailed to them in a No. 5 security envelope with an Elvis stamp affixed to it. (Fat Elvis only, sorry.)

My seven sins:

1) You can't see what you've selected in the collapsed combobox
2) It is hard to differentiate the styles vs indents vs fonts
3) Are there really as many styles as the scroll bar would imply? Egad!
4) What useful purpose is served by all of the styles being the same on every single line?
5) The combobox droplist obscures the entire window. What was I doing?
6) Provided you were able to select the perfect style, how would you ever find that one again?
7) Type-ahead to match in the combobox is useless if they all have the same label.

and a bonus answer:

8) Aiiiieee! Cash through the mail is always a felonious pyramid scheme used to fund terrorism!

Unexpected vacation; media abdication

Check out a satirical comic about Maher Arar's extraordinary rendition by Tom Tomorrow today on Salon.

I was in the states listening to National Public Radio when the Canadian government apologized to Arar for their role in his kidnapping and torture. Anne Garrels read a brief story about the case, saying that he had been deported to Syria "where he was allegedly interrogated." I had a moment of radio rage. Allegedly interrogated? Is that all it was? See, I was under the impression that the "allegations" were of torture. I didn't think there was even any question that he had been interrogated.

But you see, that's the state of journalism today. Even NPR which is supposedly so very liberal, independent and trustworthy has deteriorated to the point where it abuses language to avoid reporting news that government and corporate masters would rather not be heard. It seems like NPR is reporting news, because it still calls itself news and NPR once did something resembling news, but it has become little more than a pack of politicized corporate cheerleaders.

If you have been listening continuously to NPR for the past ten years or so you might not have noticed the change. With a little bit of distance you notice the ever-lengthening advertisements ("sponsorships") for pharmaceutical companies, defense contractors, and agriculture conglomerates (they started out as five-word blurbs, but then they grew inexorably – in length and frequency). The subtle shift in language when dealing with political matters is harder to quantify, but is definitely there. Evidence of partisan skulduggery at NPR is well documented, but you don't have to be a researcher to notice the effects in the types of commentators now invited to voice their opinions. Where opinions were once balanced and questioned, they now reverberate unanswered, especially when they deal with United States foreign policy and international investment, legal and trade agreements.

Media conglomeration in the US has resulted in less diversity of opinion and less real commentary in the official mainstream press. At the same time, public radio has been dragged down to the point where it provides no meaningful competition to commercial media organs. None dare call it conspiracy, because there is nobody left standing to do so. Instead, corporate cheerleaders with airbrushed makeup and great hair read sanitized newsbytes without context, and bejowled father-figures terrify and scold, providing judgments without bothering to inform. In short, certain interests control the medium and the message, and don't bet they're doing it in your best interests.

Another ode, in the Key of 36

Could everyone with brains 3ven hesitate? Horrible legal strategies, yes. 0verrun 4thright 8usinesses which ought've 8een 4sighted. Keep cognizant good knowledge will win over 0bstructions.

For the visually impaired, ⠼⠚⠼⠊⠠⠋⠼⠊⠼⠁⠼⠁⠼⠚⠼⠃⠼⠊⠠⠙⠼⠛⠼⠙⠠⠑⠼⠉⠼⠑⠠⠃⠠⠙⠼⠓⠼⠙⠼⠁⠼⠑⠼⠋⠠⠉⠼⠑⠼⠋⠼⠉⠼⠑⠼⠋⠼⠓⠼⠓⠠⠉⠼⠚ means ⠠⠇⠼⠊⠼⠋⠠⠕⠼⠑⠼⠙⠠⠅⠠⠋⠠⠝⠼⠋⠠⠕⠠⠛⠼⠚⠠⠎⠠⠉⠠⠎⠼⠙⠠⠉⠠⠉⠼⠙⠠⠺⠠⠅⠠⠎⠼⠓

Ode to corporate censorship

Dream 1 approach for 2ippering every 5ingle 6ood 5ecret. 1et 7oose a 7eopard 2 0bliterate, 2 alleviate losing control constantly. 0r 8etter 7eave alone 6enerous 9oodthinking citizens 4 ever 2 9ratify 6entlepeople.

update: This guy does it better:

Guy Kawasaki: Starting Up

Guy Kawasaki has some really good things to say about startups. His nine rules on how to innovate are good, and there's a video that covers similar themes (with slides). Thanks Derek!

Microsoft follows Adobe to open source

Microsoft has (not quite yet) announced that it will release source for Silverlight, following Adobe's recent move with Flex. Since Microsoft is only planning to support Windows and Mac for the runtime, Adobe has a slight advantage with the huge, lucrative Linux market [har]. Adobe's big advantage is that they are two years ahead and not Microsoft. Microsoft's big advantage is [er, wait, give me a minute, I'm sure I'll think of something... oh!] they 0wn your Windows box and can nuke the Flash player from orbit with Windows Update [diabolical laughter here]. They can't do that, though... it'd piss off their customers, and I guess they care (though they have a hard time showing it).

No Flash player on amd64 linux

The Adobe Flash player is only available in 32-bit binaries for Linux. Because the Flash player is proprietary, you can't fix this yourself. Although Adobe has released the Flex libraries under the MPL, that doesn't do us much good if we can't actually run anything. There's a petition circulating with over 10k signatures asking Adobe to flip a switch and fix this. No youtube on my living room TV unless I reinstall with a cramped 32-bit OS. Update: turns out you can install a 32-bit version of Firefox and the 32-bit flash player, or use ndispluginwrapper. Either way, it's a pain in the ass. Come on, Adobe, get with the program.

---

Update:

This is now available as flashplugin-nonfree in the universe repository on Ubuntu. It works, too. Thanks Adobe.

Ubuntu on Dell

It's now official: the rumours, buzz, and conjecture were correct, and Dell Computer will be shipping Ubuntu Linux on their machines. This is the cannon-shot, folks.

With official vendor support on the desktop Linux will get the sort of sustained device support it needs to be truly practical. Ubuntu is a great distribution: I've used it now for a year and a half, and it keeps getting better and better. There are a few details about which models. I'm wondering whether they be providing open source drivers (or just keep pushing non-free BLOBs).

For Ubuntu, today feels like 1990 all over again, when Windows was new, exciting, and fresh, and had a future ahead of it. The vendors are lining up behind it: first Sun made Ubuntu the first distro to get all of Java included as a first-class citizen, and now a hardware heavyweight is on board as well. Microsoft must have some friends or allies, but it's hard to see what leverage they have when customers are rebelling at the prospect of moving to Vista, and hardware vendors are once again giving them XP.

Vista drops another one

Adolfo's continuing voyage into the land of Windows Vista produces the usual endless frozen windows and similar boring frustrations, but every now and then it comes up with something truly inscrutable. Today it squeezed out another little gem:
"What am I supposed to do about this?" Adolfo asked. "What does it mean? Do you understand this?" "Well, yes, I think so, but I'm a developer," I replied. "Well, I'm not a developer! How am I supposed to understand this?" I smiled. "I told you so," I said helpfully.

There are two things that amuse me about the phrasing. First, the accusatory tone of the dialog box is great: "OK, mister wise guy, now you did it, you tried to copy a file without its properties. Let's see you get out of this mess." The second is the window title: "Property Loss". Is he already screwed? Does that mean he can take a deduction on his taxes next year? [I could argue that buying a Vista PC should qualify him as a disaster victim.]

What I suspect was happening was that he was trying to copy files to a network attached storage device that won't let him preserve ownership. Well, so what? It's a computer, it should figure out what to do. Twenty years have gone by, and Microsoft is still using "Abort, Retry, Ignore?" Granted, they have at least swapped out some words, but it's the same error message. And yes, the dialog box is prettier under Vista. I look at this dialog and say "this is what the Mac would look like if it were designed by chimps."

2.54 cm of anger

Hedwig and the Angry Inch has arrived in Vancouver. We went to see it on Saturday, and it was pretty good – especially Edmonton Block Heater which played The Angry Inch. The Media Club is a pretty good stand-in for Bilgewater's, and if you get there early you can get a sofa up front. Until May 12.

Canadian immigration

Adolfo and I get a lot of questions about Canadian immigration. We first came to Canada on a NAFTA work permit based on letter by my employer (issued in less than an hour at the border), and once we were here we applied for permanent residency. The process took 21 months from the time we arrived until we got our residency cards.

Canadian immigration is pretty straightforward, as the basic federal system works on a point system: you get points for education, work experience, youth, children, and language abilities, and once you cross a threshold (barring any criminal or health problems) you're in. That's the process we followed. There are also programs where some provinces (not Ontario) can select you based on specific labour needs they have: construction (and everything else) in Alberta, construction in British Columbia, etc. With these programs there are few prerequisites, and you can come to Canada very quickly. There are also numerous work visa programs.

We worked with an immigration lawyer when we came, and it was very helpful. If your case is in any way problematic, or you are under time pressure, I highly recommend consulting a professional to understand your options. You may wish to work with a lawyer in the province where you plan to settle, as they will probably be the most familiar with the provincial nomination programs.

Our lawyer was Peter Rekai in Toronto. We found him and his staff to be very knowledgeable and professional; and another friend also had a very good experience with him. I have also seen many mentions of barbara findlay in Vancouver, who handles many lesbian and gay immigration cases (including landmark cases).

I am happy to answer questions, but IANAL and am not qualified to give legal advice. The best advice I can give is to get started today, because every day you procrastinate further delays the end of a sometimes stressful process.