From a distance, indistinguishable from a troll. Or was it? The internet makes anonymity, and anonymous meanness, so easy that soon we don't trust each other at all, and so miss the things we might actually want to read or hear.

I've noticed this on several high-profile forums recently. They're starting to look like forums, but the quirky comments that could change the direction of conversation is gone. Entropy wins at a crawl. I don't think you can blame Slashdot editors for this one.

I think it's a sea change of mistrust, a species which has made life so easy with its technology that it no longer invests much effort in honest discourse. And so we enter a kingdom of lies, where anyone who tells the truth will be assumed to be a cynical liar and not just a pithy cynic.

I am increasingly tired of the term "open source." It doesn't convey what is most important about OSS and FOSS software, which is that others are looking over the code.

In the same way scientific journals are verified, the code on F/OSS projects is by others looking for examples, hacks and weaknesses. This is the main strength of F/OSS.

Too much emphasis on the open source and free nature of it means people see it first as freeware, and second as a viable alternative method of debugging our software (at least, until AIs get good enough).

F/OSS's main weakness is that it tends to pump out clone applications following what major manufacturers like Adobe and Microsoft have done. Calling it peer-reviewed code points out the real difference.

I am a hacker, enter my world...
Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me...
Damn underachiever. They're all alike.

I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head..."
Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike.

I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me...
Or feels threatened by me...
Or thinks I'm a smart ass...
Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here...
Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike.

And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is found.

"This is it... this is where I belong..."

The Hacker Manifesto (1986) by The Mentor

Didn't write it, but remember when it was first posted around the Houston and Austin underground bulletin boards.

Like most of you, I have a day job, although I'd like to be so rich I didn't have to, some day. At my day job we have meetings. Meetings are basically a cheap way of disguising our inner animal, which wants to growl at others. If we just did that, meetings would be tolerable, but instead we've got several tons of politics and politeness to mask the fact we want to fight it out.

At last week's generically named meeting in which we decide strategy even though it was originally called as a meeting series to decide on client representation issues, I brought up the idea of switching our designer workstations to RAID and removing the CPUs to a nearby room, running them remotely. I did this because our designers complain (rightfully, with my full support) that two things afflict them in life: periodic machine crashes, and the loud noise of their Dell computers. In my view, it's a legitimate request, and I made a good case, until I mentioned that I'd seen how to do the remote linking on WikiPedia.

"Oh no, Wikipedia," says one of our management people. "You were going well until you mentioned that."

As it turns out, I looked up something today on Wikipedia, and did get burned, although I'm the only one I know. I'm not going to reveal which entry it was because I want to see how long it takes someone to fix it, but I think it's off their radar so it could be years. This prompted some thoughts on wikipedia, since I really like it as a resource and have used it for years, being a resolute early adopter. My friends all know I'll check it first, then branch out to other searches, and so far I remain a fan.

But if I were to change wikipedia, I'd make it more like the F/OSS movement. Open Source Software projects are projects. Each application might be an analogue to a general topic in wikipedia, with each entry related to that being part of the project. If I'm doing an entry on lizards, there are going to be several subconcepts: types of lizards, medical concepts about lizards, lizards in popular lore, and so on. These will each require several dictionary entries each, making "lizards" a project with many small projects. In the F/OSS world, someone would lead the "lizards" project, and developers would get delegated to each single entry beneath it. The difference between this and the current wikipedia model is that when any entry beneath "lizards" would require more entries, like an entry on medical data derived from lizards, it would get assigned a project manager or lead developer like happens in F/OSS projects.

True open content isn't paranoid, and it's not up for any idiot to edit, either. Wikipedia isn't opensource in the same way OSS is, it's opensource in the way a graffiti wall is. If OSS developers ran an encyclopedia, they'd assign developer project managers to each entry and the entries would be actually informative, unlike Wikipedia's mishmash of gossip, plagiarism and political revenge fantasies.

Before you "switch," try simply configuring your PC correctly. More on that in a minute.

Apple has always offered linear integration. One company makes the hardware, the software and the operating system. You think Microsoft is controlling? Apple are downright Nazis. It's probably a better business model, but it's also one that's sort of dated, because back in the 1980s when it was common people couldn't build their own machines. And with Macs bursting into flame constantly, or failing repeatedly, as I've observed over the years, I'd rather build a PC. There's ups and downs, but you're the one who's going to pay to find all new software, learn the new OS, and so forth.

I'd never buy a Dell, and recommend finding a local geek who can hand-assemble you a PC. Many of the PC problems I've seen come from a few factors: flaky motherboards, unstable configurations or hacked-together power supplies. Don't do it. Get a solid machine, with a good motherboard, even if you have to cut precious gigahertz off your chip speed to afford it. In the long run, you'll thank me.

Linux is great once you get over the fact that no one is compelled by business need to make it run on anything. It's more for a hobbyist than someone who wants a computer to just work. You will spend more time maintaining your computer on a regular basis, and while some of its functions are superior, many are not, especially for desktop tasks. And on top of that you have the overhead of switching.

Before you do anything, it makes sense to make sure your PC is configured correctly, because Best Buy/Dell won't do it for you. Owning a computer is a responsibility like owning a car or a rifle.

The Windows security problems are overstated. Turn off additional protocols, remove extra services, firewall your machine and use the Opera or FireFox browsers, and you will have no problems. Curiously, all of the people panicked about their security issues have taken none of these steps, but have Norton AntiVirus installed and consider it a magic shield.

It takes a maximum of two hours to fix these issues, while switching will take you a minimum of forty hours. It might be tempting to lash out emotionally at Microsoft, but they'll just replace your pampered consumer butt with someone from a far-off land.

From Dwight Silverman's blog

I use both free software and proprietary software, and have done so since the early 1980s.

I do not trust freetardware, as FSJ would call it, because so much of it is not created from the hacker mentality but from a corporate-style mentality. People want to claim holiness, hipness or a future career reference from it.

When I think back over the best software I've used, much of it has been from each of the three categories: shareware/freeware, proprietary, and open source/free open source. I don't believe in the division of the world into "open source" and "closed source," because some of the best innovation has been closed source.

At the end of the day, the quality of the software depends on the team that puts it together and how well-designed it is. The reason I use Windows professionally is that it reaches my audience. Most people use Windows because it installs on anything, getting software (even free software) working on it is easy and fast, and there's a huge installed user base that doesn't accuse you of being a n00b if you don't know where the printer driver control panel (or .INI) is.

One reason many of us view the Linux community as a failure is that it has not grasped what desktop users want, and instead of working to make what they use better, it has created an inferior alternative. OpenOffice is inferior in function to Microsoft Office. I realize that's not Politically Correct to say but it's the truth, and yes I've used both extensively.

I use Linux for many of the servers I install, when FreeBSD is not available, but it is of limited use on the desktop. Most of the FOSS software is not so good, or buggy, and support doesn't exist, which can make it MORE expensive than buying $500 of Microsoft. I like Linux. But unlike the F/OSS community, I'm a realist and I use the tool that fits the task.

Buggy software, or unsupported software, can take something precious from your home life or business: Time. If you install OpenOffice, and find out after three days of frantic Googling that it cannot do what you need, that's three days you don't get back. If you earn $200 a day, and Microsoft Office can do what you need or you can find out on day one that it cannot, it might well be cheaper to use Microsoft Office. F/OSS developers often want to produce free software, usually a clone of an established package like Office, and not support the rest of the software business, like support and quality documentation.

If F/OSS developers want to gain more prominence, they should stop coding for the sake of their own egos, and start coding for the end user. The best software is designed for user needs first, and secondarily to be convenient or image enhancing for developers. I think most of us out here in the "real world" are not against F/OSS, but we need to see signs of recognition of reality from the community and its products before we're willing to let them near our lives or businesses.

Posted in Dwight Silverman's blog

I'm going to divide all future tech-related articles into two categories:

1. Advances in knowledge.
2. Gadgets and configurations.

I don't think it's unfair to say that the Quantas airline providing inet access article is #2, or all the iPhone articles, or the "I installed Linux on my dead sister's iPod" articles, and so forth.

This bloglet isn't a slam on gadgets, but a reminder to all of us that programming, hacking and being good technical people can easily become absorbed by the quest for knowledge about gadgets and other reconfigurations of extant knowledge.

Critical thinking: it's underrated. It keeps you honest, so that you don't confuse bias with interpretation.

I never fail to be amazed how simple changes in the configuration of a system can make life better. For example, has anyone ever thought of putting a volume control on a browser, so that I could turn off or turn down the ads that randomly spew strange voices and stupid music into my airspace? Apparently not ;)

I try not to be a skittish, paranoid consumer, although the way people are motivated by money and have no souls makes me paranoid (apologies to Thomas Pynchon, natch). However, whitepages.com has added a neat feature that piques my paranoia. It reveals the frequency of searches for first names, and the first and last name and location of the person most recently searched for -- I can't put a finger on why this is a bad idea, but like domain slammers watching whois results, it opens people up to predation. Here is an example of a first name search, and here is an example of a last name search.

I'm striking out the phrase "working" in my usage, unless I'm referring to an actual task being performed. For what most people call "working," I'm going to say "at job." As one highly perceptive writer notes, about 1/5 of our time "at job" is productive time "working." The rest is divided into two segments:

• Bureaucratic time. Waiting on others, following procedures, sitting in committees and meetings, making phone calls, filling out forms, searching for people, interviewing people to find out what is BS and what is anything close to truth.
• Goofoffery. Websurfing, email checking, bank phoning, girlfriend/boyfriend IMing, nose-picking, etc.

As a contractor, I've always worked under the premise of being like the air cavalary in "Apocalypse Now": get in, get the job done, and let the good times roll as soon as possible afterwards. Instead, most full-time workers have a mixture of entitlement and resentment in their outlook, so they camp out at work for more hours than needed and become proportionately less effective, but justify it with the number of hours they spend there. It's a self-creating cycle, an Ouroboros of our neurotic fear of appearances.

In celebration of this realization, I'm leaving at 3pm today to unrepentantly escape the pretense of slaving away until 5 pm on nothing I won't forget by Monday at 9 am, and spending the time instead with a young lady who has earned and deserves my time (and much better things, to be honest, but don't tell her that).

Why we read Slashdot at work: the human politics of the situation make work boring, because we are always waiting on external authorities, and so it stultifies our creative drive. We find ourselves acting to please others, and to pacify public perception, neither of which has anything to do with the hack-wisdom of something: how well does it work?

But if we speak out, we get fired, and then we have to go home to our wives and kids and explain that we're broke, so we stay quiet and nod and pass along inferior and dangerous products, and check Slashdot whenever we can.

In this sense, Slashdot is a guardian of the soul... it keeps our inner worlds alive while our outer worlds are conformity to the accumulated fear of others.

Just a grim observation on a dying society during a tedious Thursday here at work!

As major tech writing outlets have noted, Greening is popular in the technology world at this point as we struggle to both have our tech and not destroy the world (further) through global warming. It might make sense for Slashdot to have a Green category for article submissions, although I don't know who to contact about this or how to articulate it.

I'm finding that despite all the Web 2.0 hullabaloo, there's a decrease in niches for people to hang out in the small. You can go to MySpace with 90 million "friends" (who you know as well as "Tom" no doubt) or jump on an IRC channel or video chat, but these are such abstract and impersonal relations I get nothing from them. You meet people and know they like waterskiing, the first season of Lost and long walks on the beach, but do you know them in any meaningful way?

So we're experimenting. The first is a simple Houston BBS to see if people in Houston are out there looking for a chance to talk and swap tips on living in Houston. The second, Technical Writing Links, is an experiment in shared knowledge with the idea that we can make manuals and documentation better by pointing to successful examples and fine craftspersonship in this area.

Most things fail, and maybe this will, but it's better to try than to be afraid of failing.

My main concern in life, as a developer and a writer, is to make technology that people can actually use. To this end, I've created User Advocacy, a blog for technical communications and user interface design.

Now you might be saying, Why would you bother with this silliness when the real work occurs in development? That's a good question, and the best answer is that in my view, technical communications is part of development, as much as programming the interface is. The lesson we learn from Apple's success, and Windows' continuing GUI development, is that a good interface is necessary to get the rest of us online and using machines productively. Technical writers and communicators and user interface designers make developers look good by making the product more likely to be powerful in the hands of a user.

Part of this includes educating users about how to use technology, including the concepts behind it. There's too much ignorance all around. Look for more updates here, especially as Slashdot's notoriously tolerant moderation relaxes on some of my replies to threads of this nature.