The whole debate over digital rights management (DRM) has morphed into a titanic clash between opposites. On one hand are those who claim that defending intellectual property (IP) is essential for our society to work, and on the other side are those who claim IP is bunk and defend piracy as vigorously as they campaign against DRM.

Open source gets caught in the middle because while its basic premise, free software whose innards anyone can see, is sound, inevitably open source software also includes a certain amount of cloning of proprietary methods. Open source people often as if they're giving away IP, and think others should too. There's some truth in that.

Giving away IP enables people to build a next generation based on what you've done. If you come up with a killer application, like Photoshop, and develop it to maturity, and then someone clones it with an application like GIMPshop, you may be disappointed but no one can argue that you created a new market lead and now there's a need for something to leapfrog it. Of course, this only goes so far, since Photoshop is nearing the point where new features aren't occurring because new graphics technologies aren't.

But, if we make giving away IP mandatory, it could undermine some things we take for granted. For example, open source did not innovate office suites or photoshop-like applications. Would there have been the focus to do so? Similarly, there are few open source equivalents for the high-level development environments favored by programmers. It's possible the profits of these are needed to fuel a big enough entity to address all the details of their production.

Another way of saying this is to ask, If you were dorking around in the lab tonight, and you discovered a new algorithm or chemical formula that could save everyone time and stress, would you release it to the public for free? After all, this is your wealth and retirement we're talking about here. If you release it, you go back to work the next day and every day for the rest of your life. If you patent it... you could end up in a nice house on a nice street with a big bank account, and no job.

I view this as the hard question of IP. Is it true that once we go open source, we've rejected the profit model and should consider ourselves basically communist, or is there middle ground? I like to think of open source as a middle layer in a complex ecosystem in which IP plays a vital role.

I wrote this little piece about where technical writing should go if it wants to stay relevant in a time of increasing bureaucracy, regimentation of language and buzzword-happy managers. Bolg recently published it, so I present to you my nonexistent readers a brief excerpt:

With the transistor revolution of the 1970s, two crucial changes occurred. First, the computer migrated from the machine room to the desktop. Second, high schools got more lenient at the same time users became more acquainted with television media. This new generation were shaped by seeing machines used before understanding the principles behind them, which laid the ground for the interface revolution to follow.

On the heels of those developments, a second computing revolution occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Both the graphical user interface (GUI)-based operating system and the world wide web took existing technologies and put them to new use. This usage redefined the comput from being being a calculating machine to an information browser. This role shift entailed thinking about interface in user-centric contexts and resulted in both these revolutions.

Usage exploded since the layperson could now interact with a computer as they would a video game, vending machine or automated teller. This in turn spurred a network revolution. Since the computer was viewed as an information browser, it needed connections to information, so the network became the computer. These influences caused the computer to become increasingly powerful, standardized and ubiquitous.

The standardization affected technical writing...

You can read the whole thing at Technical Writing in Transition.

Is it just me, or is there a rise in labeling stuff that offends community pretense as "FUD" or "Troll" or "Flamebait"?

It reminds me of little kids bullying on the one guy whose mom got him a pink lunchbox. It's OK to call him any bad name, but if you say he might have a point, you have joined him in the circle of those who are bad.

If you're serious about open source, or even just about using computers, you get agnostic on this kind of religion. Firefox sucks. IE does as well, but Opera doesn't. Start thinking instead of bleating.

If anything, you empower those who are creating real FUD because they can post a comment "IE does OK with tables" and watch it get modded down, called flamebait or FUD, and followed by angry misspelled messages, and then they can turn to other people and say, "See? I told you these F/OSS people were angry basement dwelling losers who can't tell the difference between a good app and a crap one."

Maybe they're right. I still stick by my lack of religion. If a product is good, I'm going to use it and because I believe in good tools, I won't shut up about it even if you mod me -5, FUD Flametroll.

So I'm working at this place which is having a holiday Christmas party. They promise:

5:30-7:30 Cocktail Reception
7:30-9:00 Buffet Dinner
8:00-12am DJ, Dancing and Karaoke
7:30-9:30 Photographs

Does anyone else think this sounds like hell? What should I do?

It's a large corporation with probably 500 people, about a third of whom are developers, and the rest are various and sundry consultants, administrative staff, lawyers, salespeople, therapists and nuns. Actually, I don't know what they all do.

I'm not an antisocial nerd, but I'm also a geek, and I'm passing up on either some quality programming time, or quality family time. Still they tell me this is the way to advance my "career" toward "success" which means that I can afford a big house in the exburbs, and I'll never live near a busy street, raging ghetto, fast-food restaurant or discotheque again. But.. but... my instinct is to flee from this awkward-sounding social disaster.

Can any geeks help?

I've written up a short summary of the origins of technical writing, the challenges it faces, and a possible future for technical writers that involves expanding our profession. The article, Technical Writing in Transition , is on uber-networked technical writer's hangout TECHWR-L, although the full text is posted to User Advocacy and another blog for which I write, Bolg.

Here's a short excerpt:

Among technical writers, the state of the profession is a form of contention in itself. Many argue that assuming change is afoot is to knuckle under to the steady stream of buzzwords and fads that make a few venture capitalists rich while everyone else hits the job boards again. A growing faction of otherwise sceptical writers are thinking instead that transition is upon us, and will reward those who adapt.

To understand this change, we need to track the development of technical writing.

Originally a bizarre hybrid between psychologist, journalist, and instructor, the technical writer compiled scattered notes written by engineers and converted them into manuals that normal people could read and understand. This allowed the product-buying public to use technology with which they had no familiarity.

Technical writing through the 1950s and 1960s followed this pattern. Users were expected to have a high school education including some math and science, so much of the job involved explaining specifics in terms of the general skills with which users were more familiar. Gadgets varied widely and so the writer served an essential role, translating engineer complexity into end-user clarity.

See what you think.

Chaotic humans recently invented an Endless Coffee Pot as part of their senior thesis in electrical engineering. They designed, built, and programmed (in C++) a microcontroller-assisted coffee pot that loads itself with coffee, drains out stale coffee, throws out coffee grounds, and maintains a constant temperature. It has an LCD display and would very easily make a vending machine.

The core component of the entire product is a 'run-of-the-mill' Proctor Silex coffee maker [1] which performs the basic brewing process. The brain of the product is Mini-Max/51C-2 8051 microcontroller board manufactured by BiPOM Electronics [2] and interfaces with all sensors, pumps, and motors through the Custom-Built Integration Board (CBIB).

The Endless Coffee Pot

When I volunteered to sponsor the Houston Slashdot 10 Year Anniversary Meetup, I had no idea what to expect. These are the people who will tear up a message board with hi-tech information and then devolve into a fit of giggles and "In Soviet Russia, disk drive formats you!" refrains.

We converged on Agora in the Montrose district. It's a quiet coffee house that also has some quality beers and occasionally, tasty junk food. Other than intoxicants and junk food, I can't think of a thing nerds require besides Wi-Fi, and at least one participant reported that it was working quite well.

Of the 57 people who said they'd show up, I counted 22, but those were some of the best and brightest and made up in quality what they might not have reached in quantity.

Although the mayhem I anticipated never materialized, the event went well on the whole. Among other local luminaries, Dwight Silverman from the Houston Chronicle made his presence known and showed off his laptop with the recently-installed (and now, reviewed) OS X Leopard running Windows XP and Ubuntu under parallels.

I got a chance to speak to, and enjoy, a diverse group of users all of whom I haven't matched up to usernames yet. There was Brew Bird (I think), a BSD programmer and early ISP pioneer from Clear Lake. Prien 715 spoke articulately about the joy of programming CAD in C++. JGuthrie shared some hints about blogging and not getting caught. I saw Drachenstern leading a small group in discussion of Linux forensics and intrusion. But, conversation was blurringly fast and as the night wore on, increasingly blurry. (If I forgot you, or screwed up your username, please contact me at athloi AT yahoo PERIOD com).

The tshirts kindly provided by Sourceforge/Slashdot were a big success, with people clamoring for one and not content -- at all -- until they were handed out. TechGeek catalogs were a similar hit, with the clod of them I handed over to someone vanishing within a few minutes into jacket pockets.

I can barely remember much of what happened. I remember broken glass, loud music, a crowd of people smoking cigarettes in traffic, and then security asking me was a Slashdot was. In another ten years, I'd like to do this again, especially if I have a top-notch health plan.

User Advocacy Slashdot Party Report

Here are your recent submissions to Slashdot, and their status within the system:

2007-10-29 18:15:47 Hackers target IE7 URI flaw (Index,Security) (pending)
2007-10-29 16:56:32 Apple's behavior is repellent (Index,Technology (Apple)) (pending)
2007-10-29 16:09:58 UN warns humanity likely doomed (Index,The Matrix) (pending)
2007-10-29 15:04:24 Criminals turn hackers to get ID info (Index,Security) (pending)
2007-10-26 19:18:21 Computer security frustrated by users (Index,Security) (rejected)
2007-10-26 15:06:18 Wall Street Rises on MS Vista earnings (Index,Microsoft) (rejected)
2007-10-25 19:55:47 Houston Slashdot party at Agora Coffeehouse 10/26 (Index,It's funny. Laugh.) (rejected)
2007-10-24 23:02:18 iPhone uses lame security model (Index,Portables (Apple)) (rejected)
2007-10-24 22:23:01 DRM-free movie released (Index,Patents) (rejected)
2007-10-23 18:45:22 Google pulls a Microsoft with new Google OS (Index,Google) (rejected)
2007-10-23 18:14:27 DRM-free file sharing saves classical music (Index,Privacy) (rejected)
2007-10-23 17:57:08 Researchers invent hand-held supercomputer (Index,The Matrix) (rejected)
2007-10-23 17:10:18 Google needs Mozilla, increasingly (Index,Google) (rejected)
2007-10-23 15:46:10 Regulators avoiding investigating Intel (Index,Intel) (pending)
2007-10-23 15:25:53 10 Things MS can do to fix Vista (Index,Microsoft) (rejected)
2007-10-22 20:04:56 Microsoft prepares tiny version of Vista (Index,Microsoft) (pending)
2007-10-18 14:57:15 Seven states extend Microsoft antitrust judgment (Index,Microsoft) (accepted)
2007-10-18 14:46:25 Web developer salary and skills survey released (Index,The Internet) (rejected)
2007-10-18 14:40:38 Microsoft introduces mashup tool (Index,Microsoft) (rejected)
2007-10-18 14:26:25 Technology makes porn easier to access at work (Index,Privacy) (rejected)
2007-10-18 14:17:29 Light to power nano devices (Index,The Matrix) (rejected)
2007-10-18 14:11:22 Ann Arbor using LEDs to replace incandescents (Index,The Matrix) (rejected)
2007-10-18 14:03:44 OSS used to punish competition is bad biz (Index,Patents) (rejected)
2007-10-15 19:02:44 Houston Mayor endorses green telecommuting (Index,Editorial) (rejected)
2007-10-15 18:18:11 Blog Action Day: the Environment (Index,The Matrix) (rejected)
2007-10-10 21:00:00 Worst thing about Macs: the users (Index,Technology (Apple)) (rejected)
2007-10-10 18:11:46 None dare call it genocide (Index,Privacy) (rejected)
2007-10-09 19:22:33 Design for success by making software last 15 yrs (Index,Linux Business) (rejected)
2007-10-09 19:01:30 Google tools to power virtual worlds (Index,Google) (rejected)
2007-10-09 15:29:59 YouTube a copyright paradox (Index,Google) (rejected)
2007-10-05 15:14:17 Data center costs to rise with wattage (Index,The Internet) (rejected)
2007-10-05 14:49:08 Group says retailers should not store credit data (Index,Security) (accepted)
2007-10-04 17:03:00 Did Israel hack Syrian air defenses? (Index,Security) (rejected)
2007-10-04 16:18:09 Positive moderation: "Post of the Day"? (Ask Slashdot,Slashback) (rejected)
2007-10-03 14:59:57 Setting the record straight on Windows Vista (Index,Microsoft) (rejected)
2007-10-03 14:36:08 Apple considering Intel chips for iPhone (Index,Portables (Apple)) (rejected)
2007-10-03 14:25:46 Windows Vista Reliability and Compatibility Update (Index,Microsoft) (rejected)
2007-10-03 14:17:30 Microsoft futures revenues will be 25% ad-driven (Index,Microsoft) (rejected)
2007-10-02 17:35:48 Most security problems originate in user (Index,Security) (rejected)
2007-10-02 14:31:21 Online videos may conduct viruses (Index,Security) (accepted)
2007-09-27 15:04:19 Serious XSS vulnerability found in Gmail (Index,Security) (rejected)
2007-09-27 14:40:05 85% of hacked sites use default passwords (Index,Security) (rejected)
2007-09-27 14:28:32 Microsoft must abandon Vista to save itself (Index,Microsoft) (rejected)
2007-09-27 14:18:22 FedEx uses Half Life style virtual earth (Index,The Matrix) (rejected)
2007-09-25 19:49:42 Mainstream media finds AOL IM hole (Index,Security) (rejected)
2007-09-25 16:02:13 Intel to downsize staff yet again (Index,Intel) (rejected)
2007-09-24 15:54:16 UN chief screams for global warming action (Index,The Media) (rejected)
2007-09-24 15:20:06 Is Apple going rotten? (Index,Technology (Apple)) (rejected)
2007-09-20 16:05:49 Why a Recession Will Help Google Rule The World (Index,Google) (rejected)
2007-09-20 15:57:01 Google still launching gPhone (Index,Google) (accepted)
2007-09-19 15:47:18 Intel now supports Blu-Ray as well (Index,Intel) (rejected)
2007-09-19 15:34:37 Social networking users fill out false data (Index,The Matrix) (rejected)
2007-09-19 14:56:13 Apple may be next for EU anti-trust action (Index,Desktops (Apple)) (rejected)
2007-09-19 14:47:39 Windows Apps on Linux: WINE or commercial software (Ask Slashdot,Software) (rejected)
2007-09-19 14:27:36 Why Linux is not succeeding on the desktop (Index,The Matrix) (rejected)
2007-09-18 17:08:33 From media ethics to media anarchy (Index,The Media) (rejected)
2007-09-18 15:59:34 27 Tips for a Successful Blog (Index,The Internet) (rejected)
2007-09-18 15:50:27 Tech's brave women who lead startups (Index,The Matrix) (rejected)
2007-09-18 15:44:11 Apple looks out for my best interests (Index,Media (Apple)) (rejected)
2007-09-18 15:36:49 Wait for Vista to be ready, then jump in (Index,Microsoft) (rejected)
2007-09-18 15:28:35 Employee use drives business to accept Web2.0 (Index,The Internet) (rejected)
2007-09-17 21:46:55 Everything you've read about Vista DRM is lies (Index,Microsoft) (accepted)
2007-09-17 15:22:26 Workers cause more hacks than viruses (Index,Security) (accepted)
2007-09-17 14:29:43 Has smart money abandoned Web 2.0? (Index,The Almighty Buck) (rejected)
2007-09-14 22:18:11 OLPC gets price upgrade (Index,Handhelds) (rejected)
2007-09-14 20:38:49 Privacy policy for Sysadmin of the Year contest? (Ask Slashdot,Privacy) (rejected)
2007-09-14 16:27:34 Phone makers collaborate on flashcard format (Hardware,Input Devices) (rejected)
2007-09-14 15:45:45 Standard for server hardware released (Index,Announcements) (rejected)
2007-09-14 15:22:47 OSS browser forces cross-browser coding (Index,Mozilla) (rejected)
2007-09-14 15:10:31 Quicktime and Firefox bugs form exploit (Index,Security) (rejected)
2007-09-14 15:00:29 Man jailed for spoofing Google (Politics,Google) (rejected)
2007-09-12 13:07:29 8 ways a competitor can bomb you out of Google (Index,Google) (rejected)
2007-09-12 12:50:13 Incompetence, not hackers, dooms technology (Index,The Media) (rejected)
2007-09-11 22:10:19 Apple: We Don't Hate iPhone Hackers (Index,iMac) (rejected)
2007-09-11 18:12:33 Hacking the White House (Index,Security) (rejected)
2007-09-11 15:43:10 Web2.0 widgets cool but "semi-useful" (Index,The Matrix) (rejected)
2007-09-10 14:58:15 Comcast shutting downloaders at mysterious limit (Your Rights Online,The Internet) (rejected)
2007-09-07 15:16:20 Alum hacks into university, busted (Index,Security) (rejected)
2007-09-07 14:59:10 Apple obscures giant iTunes hole (Index,Security) (rejected)
2007-09-06 17:28:00 Court decision may invalidate OSS licensing (Index,The Courts) (rejected)
2007-09-05 22:08:22 Abuse of trust threatens Web 2.0 viability (Index,The Matrix) (rejected)
2007-09-05 15:51:59 Firefox security holes still vulnerable (Index,Security) (rejected)
2007-09-04 18:38:22 Linux market share at 1.34%, surpassing Win 98 (Index,Linux Business) (rejected)
2007-08-31 17:35:29 54% of CEOs dissastisfied with innovation (Index,Businesses) (accepted)
2007-08-30 21:13:21 AutoPatcher.com community fights MS takedown (Index,Microsoft) (rejected)
2007-08-28 21:21:05 Google accused of aiding far-right in Germany (Your Rights Online,Programming) (rejected)
2007-08-28 20:33:36 The war to be PC maker #3 heats up in China (Index,Businesses) (rejected)
2007-08-14 16:20:47 Macs "easy" to hack because not updated li (Index,Media (Apple)) (rejected)
2007-08-14 16:10:35 Yahoo edges out Google in customer satisfaction (Index,Google) (accepted)
2007-08-06 19:23:11 Millionaires feel poor in new age of wealth (Index,The Matrix) (rejected)
2007-08-06 16:16:12 Social networking sites full of security holes (Index,The Matrix) (accepted)
2007-08-03 19:01:35 How to hack IRS? Call and ask for classified info (Index,Security) (rejected)
2007-08-03 14:20:17 Wikipedia in mass panic over Colbert jab (Index,The Matrix) (rejected)
2007-08-03 13:39:35 Germans reject file-sharing paranoia (Your Rights Online,The Courts) (rejected)
2007-08-03 13:26:14 World's large PC makers gear up for China fight (Index,Upgrades) (accepted)
2007-08-01 17:30:04 Web 2.0 bubble may be worst burst yet (Index,The Internet) (accepted)
2007-08-01 16:27:52 Microsoft taking over SOX with XRBL via gov't (Index,Microsoft) (rejected)
2007-07-27 15:14:32 Report warns against well-meaning net censorship (Index,Censorship) (accepted)
2007-07-26 16:09:13 BMC software moves to Open Source (Index,Software) (rejected)
2007-07-25 21:56:25 VIA to compete with AMD and Intel @ 1333Mhz bus (Index,Intel) (rejected)
2007-07-25 14:35:09 Gibson: Google is interactive fiction aid (Index,The Matrix) (rejected)
2007-07-25 14:15:07 Computer program learns baby talk in any language (Index,Programming) (accepted)
2007-07-24 21:39:11 Apple stock falls on lower iPhone sales (Index,Media (Apple)) (rejected)
2007-07-24 21:07:29 Linux blind to average user's needs (Index,GNU is Not Unix) (rejected)
2007-07-24 17:47:09 No lack of talent, but lack of recognition in IT (Index,Media) (rejected)
2007-07-24 17:26:57 IEEE group settles on new Ethernet standard plan (Index,The Internet) (rejected)
2007-07-24 17:02:58 Intel open sources multicore code tool (Index,Intel) (rejected)
2007-07-23 23:24:31 Domain name goldrush returns (Index,The Matrix) (rejected)
2007-07-23 15:10:30 Should Newspapers Become Local Blog Networks? (Index,The Media) (rejected)
2007-07-23 14:49:26 Vista surging ahead of OS X (Index,Microsoft) (rejected)
2007-07-19 13:02:10 How exclusivity contracts define games (Games,Businesses) (pending)
2007-07-19 12:40:45 Corporate America embraces F/OSS (Index,Linux Business) (rejected)
2007-07-19 12:24:07 Apple patents the portable user account (Index,Desktops (Apple)) (rejected)
2007-07-12 16:26:06 Old Media and New Media come together (Index,The Media) (rejected)
2007-07-12 14:49:00 Microsoft "Cloud OS" announced to develope (Index,Microsoft) (rejected)
2007-07-12 14:08:37 Cellular networks should be open, says major news (Your Rights Online,The Courts) (rejected)
2007-07-12 13:57:12 Mainframes still popular for their stability (Index,IBM) (rejected)
2007-07-12 13:40:22 CEO online rants influence rival's stock price (Index,The Matrix) (rejected)
2007-07-11 21:55:49 US military leaks its secrets online (Index,Privacy) (accepted)
2007-07-11 15:35:24 Googling "how to crack a safe" pays off (Index,It's funny. Laugh.) (rejected)
2007-07-11 15:22:08 Intel lags on energy efficiency (Index,Transmeta) (rejected)
2007-07-11 14:58:58 Microsoft uses Server 2008 to boost Vista sales (Index,Microsoft) (rejected)
2007-07-09 21:23:02 Solaris to get Linux features (Index,Linux Business) (rejected)
2007-07-09 20:38:13 Blogs obsolete for in-depth content (Index,The Internet) (accepted)
2007-07-09 19:03:23 Neutral net needs twice bandwidth of tiered net (Index,The Matrix) (rejected)
2007-07-06 20:24:47 FTC OKs MS purchase of ad-serving company (Index,Microsoft) (rejected)
2007-07-05 20:03:32 Gadgets "threaten energy savings" (Index,The Matrix) (rejected)
2007-07-05 19:44:22 Singles, not albums, define music industry success (Index,The Media) (accepted)
2007-07-05 19:29:32 Shrink says gadget use "looks like addiction&# (Index,The Matrix) (rejected)
2007-07-05 19:12:46 Paper apologizes for publishing Wiki-fiction (Index,The Matrix) (rejected)
2007-07-05 18:41:47 DirectX10 "wow" limited by current hardwar (Index,Graphics) (rejected)
2007-07-03 20:30:37 Movie industry follows music in falling fortunes (Index,Media) (rejected)
2007-07-03 18:46:29 ASUS grows giant, to split into three (Index,Businesses) (rejected)
2007-07-03 15:30:36 Credit industry opposes anti-ID theft method (Index,Privacy) (accepted)
2007-07-02 17:30:13 Russia waging cyberwar against dissidents (Index,Privacy) (rejected)
2007-07-02 16:08:33 Roswell crash was real, not weather balloon (Index,United States) (rejected)
2007-06-28 18:20:59 Microsoft shuts down Longhorn Reloaded project (Index,Microsoft) (rejected)
2007-06-28 18:00:41 How Apple whipped the press into iPhone frenzy (Apple,The Media) (rejected)
2007-06-28 15:32:49 Dell selling hardware for Google (Index,Google) (rejected)
2007-06-27 20:34:50 Microsoft to sell desktop PCs in India (Index,Microsoft) (rejected)
2007-06-27 20:16:09 Microsoft to offer free online storage (Index,Microsoft) (accepted)
2007-06-27 20:05:15 A warning for Apple from its own history (Apple,Businesses) (rejected)
2007-06-26 19:02:15 US demands digital biometric data from flyers (Index,Privacy) (accepted)
2007-06-26 16:35:42 Illegal software used to justify raid on modder (Index,Privacy) (rejected)
2007-06-20 14:37:22 Dep't of Homeland Security hacked (Index,Security) (rejected)
2007-06-18 14:47:03 Google Video rebrands as video search engine (Index,Google) (rejected)
2007-06-18 14:33:18 American cities may be too big for good wireless (Index,Communications) (rejected)
2007-06-18 14:26:15 Wireless USB chip created (Index,Communications) (rejected)
2007-06-11 19:29:21 Texas makes green computing mandatory (Index,The Courts) (accepted)
2007-06-06 22:44:14 Technology writing influences literature (Index,Books) (rejected)
2007-06-06 13:01:27 OSS can benefit from branding (Developers,Software) (rejected)
2007-05-31 15:50:26 Music industry overstates damages (Politics,Privacy) (rejected)
2007-05-29 14:27:16 Indie software promoting Linux through price (Linux,Linux Business) (rejected)
2007-05-16 19:38:17 Modern society will kill you if it can (Science,Privacy) (rejected)
2007-05-14 18:15:10 Gov't requests sex offender data from MySpace (Your Rights Online,Censorship) (rejected)
2007-05-14 14:32:32 Music sharing a social, not ethical, issue (Your Rights Online,The Matrix) (rejected)
2007-05-07 15:37:01 The Eight-Hour Day: An excuse for poor planning? (Ask Slashdot,Slashdot.org) (rejected)
2007-05-03 15:33:45 Editor forced to quit over criticism of Apple (Apple,Privacy) (rejected)
2007-04-12 17:03:35 Emails can't be erased, says US (Index,The Media) (rejected)
2007-04-10 16:07:10 How to resurrect reputation (Ask Slashdot,Slashdot.org) (rejected)
2007-04-10 14:50:27 Internet use from work may be protected (Your Rights Online,The Courts) (accepted)
2007-04-04 15:41:12 Apple ranked last for environmental practices (Index,Media (Apple)) (rejected)
2007-03-26 21:17:50 Who's buying Windows Vista? (Index,Windows) (rejected)
2007-03-23 20:08:59 California sold Social Security Numbers on web (Index,Privacy) (rejected)
2007-03-22 15:44:36 Who invented the GUI? (Index,Microsoft) (rejected)

I was reading, through Dvorak.org, a Mark Perkel rant about open source software.

When I sold commercial software and someone called me needing something fixed or added I usually had it the same day. However in the open source world you have a lot of people who have a highly inflated sense of importance who think their software is the greatest thing that was ever written and it's crap!

But what the open source world doesn't get is that Windows programs actually WORK! If you want to install a windows application you download it, click NEXT, AGREE, NEXT, NEXT, NEXT, FINISH and the program is running. In the Linux world this almost never happens and when it does you're almost sure that something has to be wrong. In Linux you have to edit cryptic config files with poor documentation. Then you try to run the application, get an error, Google the error, and go back and edit again. After many hours you might have it working or you might have to give up.
^

Dvorak elaborates a bit further.

This is totally different from what you get from the Macintosh fan base when they are complaining. The Mac fanboys, as they are affectionately called, tend to love the Mac because it demands little of them, and they like it that way, and they can't understand why everyone doesn't see the light. It's kind of like a religion, or a lifestyle.

The open-source mavens circling the Linux drain actually know something about computers and coding, and they're defending the priesthood, not a lifestyle. If there's a lifestyle here, it's about coke, pizza, and porn, nothing more. The only thing they have in common with the Mac aficionados is a hatred of Microsoft, the evil empire trying to enslave them. And anyone critical of open source is part of an evil scheme.

These guys are not your intellectual or thoughtful types, in general. ^

What I like about Dvorak is that he is an intellectual and a big-picture guy, which means he's an intellectual that's useful (these are not as rare as surmised). He isn't buying into a class conflict between underpaid, underchallenged programmers who are truth be told usually cloning successful Windows software on Linux. He's pointing to the trends in human society at the intersection of technology, psychology and politics.

Programmers tend to eschew big picture guys, like many eschew writers, because they like to indulge in the pretense that programming is more difficult than quality writing or thinking. Given that the sheer amount of bad code out there balances the immense amount of bad writing, and how few programmers can write a coherent paragraph, I think it's a case of different specializations wrecking our brains for anything else. I can train writers to program, if they're natively intelligent, and I can train programmers to write, although it's a more cumulative discipline and may take longer.

I believe in shareware, and I consider open source an extension of the freeware and shareware of the 1980s. What I believe in more than that is quality design. A really good app has a great interface, great code, and great project management in that its designers know the tasks for which it is used and how to optimize it for those tasks. As with any great physical world tool, good design is apparent readily not as much in some shock and awe sense, but a solid sense of familiarity with using it.

The editor Perkel mentions, Textpad, is probably the best designed editor ever to grace a computer. It feels right. It works right. It rarely crashes. It can handle whatever you throw at it.

Because I'm a believer in good design, I know that design and leadership matter more than whether a product is open source, closed source and free, or closed source and commercial. There can be good music that's not on indie labels, and there can be commercial-styled products that are excellent and aren't made for pay. Think outside the box - we hear this phrase so much, we've forgotten what it means. Think outside the rigid categories that imprison us, and design better categories.

I know that good open source software exists. But I've also observed the butthead behavior that Perkel, Dvorak and others document. I have also seen that the loudest voices in the open source community deny this, because they're busy cultivating audiences for their own projects. They don't care about the truth. They want to make themselves bigger by getting lots of you to sign up for their deceitful misrepresentations (Eric S. Raymond, I'm calling you). They aren't doing anything wrong per se in that they're acting like commercial software companies do, which is they're trying to earn a bunch of money and retire to the hills above San Diego. Wouldn't you?

And that, I think, is where my heart, non-scientific as it is, is with open source software fanatics. I wouldn't. I haven't. I believe in something greater, and while I want money, I won't give up some things for it. I wouldn't allow myself to be in porno films for a million dollars. I wouldn't exploit third world workers for cash, although I refuse to buy products from those same states. I wouldn't sell drugs to kids. I would like to make quality products, and I think once the open source software gets over its bad psychology, it will see things the same way.

Cognitive dissonance is what happens when reality is so far from what you want it to be that you create an alternate reality for yourself based on intangible, non-reality-correlative ideas like morality, emotions, or how hip or swift you are. Cognitive dissonance is what grips the open source movement and retards it. If it is to move on toward a better future, we need to learn how to recognize the kind of cognitive dissonance that enables us to call crappy applications GREAT because they're not Microsoft and are open source. Even if these are our virtual friends, we need to let them know that their thinking is marred by bad psychology.

It's one thing to believe. At some point, you have to put that belief into action, and that requires treating your brain like any other technology, and mastering it.

Arkanoid

This and Tetris are two of the only really nerd games ever made. The shooting games are too football, and the intellectual games like Myst are always creepily boring. It's too bad because I was going to work on the website instead.

A New York newspaper in a Texas sandwich shop may not seem all that unreal except for the glances given it by patrons jarred out of their daydream by the object that doesn't fit. The exception. The transplant.

Every time I've traveled lately, I've had an insuppressible urge to transplant objects. Not obsessively, but from a sense of the fun of it. Museum brochures in seedy bars. Newspapers crossing the country to entirely different cities. Replacing my roommate's groceries with brands not found in the USA.

The fragile eggshell container of objects whose familiar appearance reminds us where we are can shatter at a single touch. I wonder what else breaks this way in our protean, mercurial consciousnesses.

Jason was one of the few people to insist that code wasn't good until it was beautifully architected, cleanly laid out, well commented and documented. He was someone who constantly saw new ways to use simple combinations of existing technologies to avoid new irrelevant complexity. He was an artist, a scientist and an athlete.

The only really bad thing I can say about him, I guess, is the past tense in the above paragraph. You might find his story intriguing, or maybe just enjoy the many free and open source ideas and code he contributed on his website.

Jason Lamport

You're on some website, and you're sure that the text you're looking for is somewhere in the mess of pages. Problem: the site doesn't have a search feature.

Bookmark the following link (right click, "Add to Favorites") and you can search any page by going to that page, and then clicking the bookmark you make of the link below. The script will pop up a small window into which you can type your search term, and then see Google's results for that page.

http://technical-writing.dionysius.com/resources/search-current-site/

Although it is trendy to think poorly of IE these days, and Microsoft's ongoing security woes make me unwilling to run it, I am thankful to it because it delivered me and others from Netscape.

Back in the day, before most of you had put up your first webpages, first Mosaic, and then Netscape, were required browsers. When Microsoft came out with Spyglass-IE, I at first resisted it, thinking myself clever for fighting corporate tyranny.

Netscape however had other plans. As the company got increasingly neurotic from lack of a workable business model, the browser got even more crash-prone and unstable. Even more, it refused to incoporate many of the new multi-media and layout features clients wanted.

Enter IE, around 1998. It was fast, quiet, and crash-proof compared to Netscape. I switched, as did 90% of the other designers I know. Correspondingly, the mass of people newly hooked up with Windows 95-98 adopted it as well. It became the standard, and saved us from having to design pages that worked in both Netscape and IE.

I think this made a good many people mad, and triggered a desire to either compete or destroy this new market dominance. New standards were released and others finalized. Then Netscape spent three years in chaos and was then resurrected as Mozilla, which then morphed into FireFox to get out from the antique bureaucracy that influenced it. The new browser was "standards compliant."

These standards had some issues. First, they were designed in academia far removed from their real-world uses. Second, they held on to certain fond notions of abstraction that the market would not bear out. Finally, they were constructed AFTER most designers had already adapted to the set of hacks necessary to make things work in HTML at the time.

See here for the historial evidence, written by a seasoned webmaster.

If a browser sees a full DTD as the FIRST element of a document, including the W3C URL for the details, then it renders the page in "standards" mode. Because standards are still relatively young, there is some variation from one browser to another, but it's usually minor.

But if a browser sees no DTD, or a partial DTD, then it goes into "quirks mode", which essentially means rendering the page the wrong way, but the way we were used to up until version 6.

Before version 6, browsers were a wild west of competing standards. This was because Netscape insisted on inserting its own HTML elements into the code, and then IE followed suit, until Netscapers began to fight back by declaring allegiance to "standards." For version 6, IE chose backward-compatibility and did it well, and FireFox chose to uphold standards.

Some information on this from a very reliable source.

When Netscape 4 and Explorer 4 implemented CSS, their support did not match the W3C standard (or, indeed, each other). Netscape 4 had horribly broken support. Explorer 4 came far closer to the standard, but didn't implement it with complete correctness either. Although Explorer 5 Windows mended quite a lot of Explorer 4 bugs, it perpetuated other glitches in CSS (mainly the box model).

I think to this day, one reason FireFox lags behind is that people aren't interested in retrofitting things that aren't broke to fit a "new" model. Other reasons for its lag include the perception that its community is unstable, its own security problems, its bloat that dwarfs IE or Opera, and its geek appeal that often misses the reality of common tasks.

I realize the above is heresy, but it's a true history of the Wild West Web in its early days transitioning to maturity, and it's a lot healthier for your mind to know the complex truth than the oversimplified FUD of Microsoft and FireFox fanboys alike.

More info:

Against all of this, the Mozilla browser family -- first Netscape, now Firefox -- has made serious inroads. Netscape was the first major Web browser on the PC (aside from NCSA Mosaic, of course), but over time it stagnated and lost out to IE's ascendancy. In only a couple of years, Firefox has turned that situation around and carved out a significant niche across multiple platforms -- 34.5% and climbing, according to the aforementioned report. That said, as Firefox caught on it became clear that many existing sites had been written to favor IE's interpretations of things and didn't render correctly in Firefox.

From Information Week

With yet another article about corporate interests editing Wikipedia, I have to wonder how much further this extends. It's a variant on the practice of astroturfing, or making corporate propaganda/FUD appear to originate in The People themselves.

But it wouldn't be hard for a dedicated corporate drone to log on to slashdot, start making Linux- and Mac-positive comments, add people to their friends list and then quietly start inserting the dogma of their corporation.

How do we know our trusted users aren't corporate mouthpieces? Or mouthpieces for other lobbies and interests?