The good news - doctors visit yesterday, and got the results from my latest labs. It turns out that going off that evil blood pressure medication was a smart move - my bp is lower now than when I was on it. He asked what I was doing, and I told him that every once in a while I would stop and remember to just "clear my head and RELAX!!! NOW!!!! DAMMI!!! :-)"

No need for meditation or anything like that - just thinking of something better for 30 seconds or so, to "break the cycle." It works.

I've never bothered worrying about cholesterol, but out of curiosity I asked, since it's a problem for other family members - turns out mine is just fine, as is my long-term blood glucose level.

Und now, ve haf zee bad newz! Stupid eye started bleeding again yesterday morning. It's still sore today, so I'm limiting myself to 15 minute intervals, with an hour breaks. Oh well, can't win them all.

Bring Back the 40-hour Work Week

Looks like I struck a nerve with that one ...

(Yes, that's my "other" account. I got tired of people going "Dude!" in their replies.)

We've all encountered those "web designers" who claim that you need facebook, twitter, whatever "social media web integration". And yet, we all know that you can buy facebook fans for as low as 500 for a buck, that you can buy twitter followers, you can buy google+ friends, you can buy web traffic to give any site a temporary artificial boost and make it look like the social media gimmick is working its magic ...

But where are the hard statistics?

Where are the studies that show that spending $X on "social media" gives a ROI of $Y?

And is the ROI better than if you had just spent the same budget on beer for the office party and returned the empties for the refund? It seems to me that, rather than being a way to add value, it's just something that will turn into an unproductive time sink - just like social media in general. Coincidence? I think not.

Does anyone have hard figures - not anecdotal "evidence" - to the contrary?

Trust is a funny thing ... takes time to build up, and only a second to destroy. So, in each of these pairs, who do you trust more, and why? I know, some these are like that definition of conflicted feelings - watching your brand new car go over the cliff with your mother-in-law at the wheel ... others are a Hobson's Choice .... but saying "neither" doesn't count.

1. Paypal [we'll hold back whatever we want when we want] or your bank [thanks for the bail-out, suckers]?
2. Facebook [I sell your data and lock you in] or Microsoft [I want your money and lock you in]?
3. Google [I sell your eyeballs and own your data] or Apple [we'll tell you what you want]?
4. Apple or Microsoft?
5. Microsoft or Sony?
6. GM [thanks for the bail-out, suckers] or the governments that bailed them out [thanks for the campaign donations, suckers].
7. The ER doctor you've never met before, or the salesman referred to you by a close friend?
8. The cashier at the store [I just work here], or the owner of the same store [I own the place]?
9. Dog or cat?
10. Skunk or porcupine?
11. Politician or Biker Gang Member? (warning: this is a trick question)
12. The police and the courts or Biker Vigilante Justice? (see, I told you #11 is a trick question).
13. Someone who uses linux or someone who calls it GNU/Linux? (no, Virginia, they are not the same).

System requirements are very modest - any *nix-ish system, gcc, a copy of the jdk, and a plain-text editor. unjava does not impose any licensing restrictions on programs you create. Examples have been updated.

... and I found out two things:

1. It's still a pain in the eyeballs, but it's now somewhat manageable

2. I have zero interest in wasting another minute of my life with crap languages in crap environments - in other words, no javascript, no php, no dom, no browser. I'd rather hand-code assembler than use a brain-dead language in a brain-dead environment. Heck, I'd even rather use java (though I obviously still prefer c/c++).

Seriously, I'd rather not ever write another line of code than waste my time on a programming "paradigm" that should have followed basic on the trash heap a decade ago.

The FSF is at it again - claiming that usage of the GPL is on the rise, when its' share of the market is declining, both in F/LOSS, and in the larger software ecosystem.

So, time to let everyone in on a little secret - any gpl'd project can be taken closed-source by anyone willing to go through the exercise.

Summary

Copyright law only protects a limited portion of all creative works. What I mean by this is that neither portions of copyrighted works that lack creativity, nor those parts that are "scenes a faire" ("there's only one way to do it") are protected. APIs, for example, are one such "scenes a faire".

Remember the "linux headers" FUD the FSF put out? Even Linus agreed that the headers, simple macro definitions, enums ... they simply are not protected. The same rules applied to Google using Apache Harmony - java class names and method signatures are not protected. They either lack the necessary creativity, or there is only "one way" to do it.

3 steps

1. replace all artwork, comments (comments are expressive, and as such, protected by copyright);
2. rewrite all function bodies that are not "scenes a faire"
3. PROFIT! (maybe).

You can release the result under any license you want - and you don't have to distribute your source. Better yet, you also maintain binary compatibility with the original.

Why?

Business A develops GPL software and sells support. Business B doesn't have the overhead of developing that software, so they spend the money and resources saved on things like marketing the crap out of how they are better at it, and developing a few plugins that require server-side services that only they provide.

So Business A says "the heck with this", does what I propose, forks their own software, and releases a new closed-source version that breaks only Business B's code.

Why wouldn't they?

More importantly, why wouldn't B do this first, as a preemptive strike? Once you have a "good-enough" code base, you don't really need community support for further development. In fact, releasing code "to the community" is now where software goes to die. It's the digital "elephants' graveyard."

There's really nothing legally preventing anyone from doing this and being able to sell the resulting code over and over again. Both businesses and consumers are used to that sort of arrangement.

So, can we expect to see a linux "clone" by the end of the decade? I doubt it - there's no need. BSD already runs linux programs. But I do expect to see closed versions of many open-source programs pop up once a few test cases make the rounds.

It's already being done

Sony is making a busybox clone, and there's nothing that can be done about it. So, people have a choice - do it themselves before companies like Sony do it and reap all the profits or stick their heads in the sand. In the age of "good enough computing", if it's "good enough" to clone, it's "good enough" to take private.

I'm wondering if some of the problems I've been experiencing with my vision - or rather, inability to compensate for it any more - are related to the blood pressure medication I was taking. It certainly negatively impacted me in many other ways, and there are still, a few weeks later, some lingering side effects (still overly-tired, for example) ... but... yesterday, the morning started out with pain after 10 minutes, but later in the day when I came back, it wasn't nearly as bad using the computer (after the first half-hour to adjust) as it's been in quite a while.

Today, well, let me sum it up quickly: "I've got the itch to code."

If that's the case, I'll really, really be more than a little p***ed off at the manufacturer - they failed to list the worst (and known - I'm not the only one who's had serious problems with this crap) side effects, or say "stop taking this sh*t immediately if you notice any of these side effects."

I am not amused! If this is the case, there are going to be some serious negotiations going on in the future.

Canonical's Ticking Time Clock
Given Canonical's history of abandoned users and product announcements that come up short in execution, Shuttleworth's most recent goal of 200 million users by 2015 doesn't compute. There's simply no path from "declining OS vendor" to "competing on an equal footing with Microsoft, Apple and Google." It's the sort of rhetoric a CEO would say to rally the troops, but it's become obvious that it's already too late. [more]

I guess you learn something new every day ... today I learned that apparently, as long as it doesn't get out of hand, my retina bleeding once in a while is a good thing - it means that the torsional stress is causing "gunk" (the scientificky term) to detach from the retina, so of course some blood vessels will also bleed, but as long as they eventually stop, it's a good thing ...

... the alternative being that they open the eyeball up and scrape it off. I told him that wasn't an option, and he said that if it ever gets to that point, I might want to reconsider, but that it probably won't. The good eye - 94% chance that it won't, the bad eye, obviously less, but still probably better than 50-50, "depending."

94% - I like those odds. 50/50, not so much. In the meantime, using the computer for half an hour in the morning still leaves me feeling like I've got dirt stuck under the eyelid for the rest of the day. Oh well - it's an excuse to get off it.

With my eyesight continuing to be a problem, it's become obvious that I can no longer even code my own little side project - it just takes too long to "get in the zone", too long (a week or more) between attempts, etc.

That kind of sucks.

Making it worse, unfortunately, is that until I'm "legally blind", supposedly I can work. At what? Nobody's going to hire someone who, from one day to the next, is unable to say that they can or can't use a computer for extended periods of time, and needs 20 to 40 days off a year for doctors appointments and stuff.

Sure, I've been through a lot worse, and survived ... but as the saying goes, that was then, this is now.

Back when I was recovering from the flesh-eating bug that almost killed me and the shrink stopped by and said it must be hard copig, I told him it was no big deal because I'd already been through a lot worse growing up, for a lot longer, and I would get through this too ...

This time feels different. It feels ... I guess the best word is "pointless."

I really wish spring would hurry up and get here! Where's global warming when you need it? Wasted on the polar bears!

In other words, even if Canonical doesn't open-source their code (there are conflicting reports), who cares?

The Motorola Lapdock accessories run their own linux-based OS. All Canonical did was swap that out for Ubuntu. In other words, you can't run Android apps while docked - all you can do is share files on the phone, the same as before ...

Kind of ironic that they can only run the Ubuntu touch interface on the non-touch portion of the combo, hmmm?

One more nail in Canonicals' coffin, as OEMs won't touch this with a 10-foot pole because if they ever design a dock for their own phones (which they won't - the whole smartphone+dock+larger display was obsoleted by tablets), they'll just run Android on the secondary display anyway.

It seems like an eternity ago, but back when Canonical was sending out batches of promo CDs, I figured that maybe something as silly as a properly printed cardboard CD package and a professionally silk-screened CD might make a difference to the masses, because, people being people, they do tend to judge a book by its cover.

So I handed out my share.

While many people popped the CD into the tray and gave it a spin, ultimately only three people made the switch from Windows. One switched to a mac, the other two to opensuse (and those other two are now also looking for a new distro because opensuse has become too flaky for them lately).

Simply put, most people would rather pay an extra $50 or so every few years for a computer with something they're familiar with that is mostly backward-compatible. Or they need a specific program that only runs under Windows. Or they are willing to pay the Apple premium to have a computer that runs twice as long as the average consumer box.

Nothing is going to change that. Canonical will never reach its goal of fixing Bug#1 - Microsoft has a majority market share.

Similarly, Shuttleworths other goal of Ubuntu having 200 million users by 2015 is dead. XP will have a larger market share for years after it's EOLed in 2 years.

Given the continued lack of profitability, dwindling market share, and new products that are obsolete before they make a single sale (UbuntuTV, Ubuntu Webbook), the only question I have is how long before Ubuntu is "Kubuntu'd"?

Oh well, Ubuntu's loss is Mint's gain.

Whatâ(TM)s clear is that over the last few years, many of the highest profile open source projects have chosen the Apache license, including âoecloud computingâ platforms such as Hadoop, OpenStack, Cassandra, and CloudFoundry. Node.js, another of-the-moment cloud platform, uses the MIT License. And even the big-name mobile platforms have joined the crowd. Googleâ(TM)s Android mobile OS used the Apache license, and just this week, HP announced its schedule for open sourcing Palmâ(TM)s webOS platform under the Apache. (license)

People are finally figuring out what the folks behind the *BSDs always knew - that code contributions will still make it back, because there's value in not having to support a custom fork all by yourself. Not to mention that it's also better when you get people to give back because they want to, and not because they have to.