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.