Title: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
Genre: Nonfiction
Author: Julian Jaynes

This book is a big one for me... literally (446 pages excluding the after word). It's actually comprised of three books in one. Jaynes had intended on writing four separate books, but wound up putting three of them together into one. He was to write the fourth book later, but never got around to it before passing away, which is a shame since I think he's onto something. Seeing that the book is pretty big, I'll be reviewing the three sections he called "books" in three individual reviews. This review will be about Book 1: "The Mind of Man".

I found a reference to this book while reading an interesting article on languages. It was written in 1976 and originally quite controversial. Jaynes posited that human consciousness is a relatively recent trait of humans. As recent as 3000 to 3500 years ago. This book was not well received by academia mainly because he touches on subjects that are far outside of his native discipline (psychology). Origin (as I will refer to it henceforth) touches on history, philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and anthropology. A few other "ologies" are thrown in for good measure too.

He starts off with the introduction which is called "The Problem of Consciousness". In this part of the book he takes on all the theories which mankind has worked through to ascribe consciousness as an innate part of man and to try and say what consciousness actually is: consciousness as a property of matter, consciousness as a property of protoplasm, consciousness as the natural outcome of learning, and consciousness as a metaphysical imposition just to name a few. With each of these, he meticulously explains why these views may not be or possibly are not true. Just for an example (a weak one to start off with), he states, regarding consciousness as learning: "And hence a third solution, which states that consciousness began not with matter, nor at the beginning of animal life, but at some specific time after life had evolved. It seemed obvious to all the active investigators of the subject that the criterion of when and where in evolution consciousness began was the appearance of associative memory or learning. If an animal could modify its behavior on the basis of its experience, it must be having an experience; it must be conscious". He then recounts his experiments as a student (and the works of others) with signal learning when he worked with plants and then later protozoa to try and train them with stimuli. He believed at the time that if he could induce learning in these simple organisms, that would prove they were capable of consciousness.

Regarding this he says, "Ridiculous! It was, I fear, several years before I realized that this assumption makes no sense at all. When we introspect, it is not upon any bundle of learning processes, and particularly not the types of learning denoted by conditioning and T-mazes..." Why is this an incorrect assumption? The error "...was, and still is, that consciousness is an actual space inhabited by elements called sensations and ideas, and the association of these elements because they are like each other, or because they have been made by the external world to occur together, is indeed what learning is and the the mind is all about. So learning and consciousness are confused and muddled up with that vaguest of terms, experience".

In spite of a few parts that may seem weak, he persists in the remainder of the introduction and if you keep your mind open to it, you can see where he's coming from. A lot of it makes sense. His end goal with me was accomplished and is summed up by the closing words of the introduction, "We must therefore try to make new beginning by stating what consciousness is. We have already seen that this is no easy matter, and that the history of the subject is an enormous confusion of metaphor with designation. In any such situation, where something is so resistant to even the beginnings of clarity, it is wisdom to begin by determining what something is not. And that is the task of the next chapter.

At this point I was hooked and went onto the first chapter of Book 1 called "The Consciousness of Consciousness". This chapter is quite like the introduction, but instead of trying to work through all the things that people have used to describe consciousness as an unquestionable requirement in humans, he takes the reader on a quest to discover just how many of the things we do day-to-day are not conscious activities no matter how mentally involved they may be. Just as the introduction did he has sections such as: "Consciousness Not Necessary for Concepts", "Consciousness Not Necessary for Learning", "Consciousness Not Necessary for Thinking" and my personal favorite "Consciousness Not Necessary for Reasoning".

A few small excerpts from, Consciousness Not Necessary for Reasoning: "Reasoning and logic are to each other as health is to medicine, or --- better --- as conduct is to morality..." "...Logic is how we ought to think if objective truth is our goal --- and the everyday world is very little concerned with objective truth..." "...My point here is that for such natural reasoning to occur, consciousness is not necessary. The very reason we need logic at all is because most reasoning is not conscious at all".

Then he presents an example: "A boy having observed on one or more past occasions that a particular piece of wood floats on a particular pond, will conclude directly in a new instance that another piece of wood will float on another pond. There is no collecting together of past instances in consciousness, and no necessary conscious process whatever when the new piece of wood is seen directly as floating on a new pond. This is sometimes called reasoning from particulars, and is simply expectation based on generalization..." "...Such reasoning is the structure of the nervous system, not the structure of consciousness".

As a juxtaposition against the introduction where we were told what consciousness is not a property of, this section gets you prepared to accept that many of the things that we view as indicators of consciousness are in fact completely non-conscious activities. My favorite quote from this chapter is regarding reason and logic: "Surely, we exclaim, this cannot be true of the highest processes of intellectual thought! Surely there at last we will come to the very empire of consciousness, where all is spread out in a golden clarity and all the orderly processes of reason go on in a full publicity of awareness. But the truth has no such grandeur. The picture of the scientist sitting down with his problems and using conscious induction and deduction is as mythical as a unicorn".

Chapter 2 is called "Consciousness" and he begins to focus on language, specifically written language, as being a requirement for the the start of consciousness in humans. The very first section of this chapter is about metaphor and how most of the words in any language, if you dig far back enough started out as metaphors. Essentially, when new concepts are introduced, the best way to convey the new concepts is via metaphor. He provides a series of examples and then works up to the idea that metaphor is really the "language of the mind". As he progresses he becomes more specific about language and how the concepts of "I" and "me" fit into our existing experience with consciousness. There is a lot of bouncing back and forth between the history of languages and human consciousness today with the linking entity being metaphors. This chapter is certainly even more information dense than the introduction or the first chapter.

It is in the third chapter that we start getting to why he supposes that consciousness arose in humans 3000 to 3500 years ago when written language first began to appear. He starts by using Homer's The Illiad as some of his supporting evidence: "There is in general no consciousness in the Illiad. I am saying 'in general' because I shall mention some exceptions later. And in general therefore, no words for consciousness or mental acts". He uses the lack of internal motivation in all characters as another piece of evidence. The characters are only made to do things at the whim of the gods: "When, toward the end of the war, Achilles reminds Agamemnon of how he robbed him of his mistress, the king of men declares, 'Not I was the cause of this act, but Zeus, and my portion, and the Erinyes who walk in darkness: they it was in the assembly put wild ate upon me on that day when I arbitrarily took Achilles' prize from him, so what could I do? Gods always have their way.' (19:86-90). And that this was no particular fiction of Agamemnon's to evade responsibility is clear in that this explanation is fully accepted by Achilles, for Achilles is also obedient to the gods".

Just after this point, Jaynes finally gets to the meat of the theory behind Origin. He suggests that the point of view that all men in the Illiad are driven by "the gods" and no sense of individual motive at all was not a mere poetic device. Instead he suggests that at this point in human development most humans were in fact experiencing visual and auditory hallucinations which they perceived as gods. These hallucinations were essential to humans at this time to allow them to function day to day. To give them guidance and structure. This is what he calls the Bicameral mind: "In distinction to our own subjective conscious minds, we can call the mentality of the Myceneans a bicameral mind. Volition, planning, initiative is organized with no consciousness whatever and then 'told' to the individual in his familiar language, sometimes with the visual aura of a familiar friend of authority figure or 'god', or sometimes as a voice alone. The individual obeyed these voices because he could not 'see' what to do by himself".

The purpose of the auditory and visual hallucinations, according to Jaynes, has a physiological basis. He describes the physical structures of the brain and how the left and right hemispheres are joined together by the central commisures. His point is that the vastly larger number of neurons firing on either side of the brain need some efficient way to communicate information to the other hemisphere. After explaining the power of auditory stimuli and how it cannot be shut out, especially if emanating from within and then moving onto auditory and visual hallucinations, he suggests that these experiences are the communications protocol between both halves of the brain.

In a sense, if you look at it from today's computer science and telecommunication fields, hallucinations (if Jaynes is correct) are a form of data compression for both halves of the brain to exchange information. Or at least they were, for the bicameral man. The need for these hallucinations to provide structure and organization in humans went away when consciousness began and humans could begin to function as individuals. Of course, he doesn't believe this happened right away and suddenly everyone was conscious. He believes that this happened over a long period of time and that there are still lingering elements of bicameralism in humans today. He looks at the limited studies of the day on schizophrenics and the voices and visions they experience.

After making this bold statement, he then walks through a few assumed counter-responses and provides his answer why he believes these arguments against him are incorrect. At one point in the chapter he also points to the greek gods in the Illiad and their limitations. They are not supernatural. They are limited by the laws of the natural world. They cannot create anything out of nothingness. They are not at all like the Hebrew god.

The remaining three chapters in Book 1 flesh out the rest of his reasoning as to why he came to his conclusion about humans living without consciousness. He writes more on the origins of language, the experience of modern day schizophrenics (and even a controversial statement that their voices may not be a negative in some cases), his views on how and when language arose, the development from crude burial rituals to religions and then eventually when and why consciousness happened in humans. This all leads up to Book 2 which I will be reviewing when I finish it.

So far, I've enjoyed this book quite a bit. Partially because it pokes holes in well established and very sound beliefs, but also because it's a fascinating prospect and fairly well thought out. Sadly, even with it's current length just for Book 1, my review really can't convey the huge amount of information that is in the book. This is why I decided to break the review up into three parts as I complete each Book. I felt that this would be the only way to even partially express what he does in the book and give it fair shot.

The book was apparently a pretty big hit when it was released originally. I was too young to have known or cared so I'm coming to the party a bit late. When I looked it up on Wikipedia, apparently the book is quite popular with a few people I respect. The most notable being the cyberpunk author, Neal Stephenson. Supposedly a few ideas from Jaynes pop up in Stephenson's "Snow Crash". It's been over a decade since I read that so I can't say I remember any of that, but it wouldn't surprise me. Jaynes' book is really very information dense. It's not a light read either, but it's compelling one.

Up Next: "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Book 2)"

I finally decided to purchase a piece of music (an OLD piece of music from an OLD 60's movie). First I tried Amazon. Is the song there? Check.
99 cents pers song - check.
Requires a VISA account - check.
Secure - check.
International orders - FAIL.

Yahoo! music store.
Requires Microsoft Windows - FAIL.

Apple iTunes.
Requires itunes for Windows. FAIL!

OK so where the heck can I purchase a song online if I don't live in the US? This is nuts. It was going to be my FIRST FRIGGIN' PURCHASE. Screw you, RIAA, Amazon, Yahoo, and Apple. I'm going to remain a pirate again and it's YOUR FAULT.

Oh, look, there's this music store called Magnatune (supported by Amarok!). Let's see if they have the song I'm looking for...

NOT FOUND.

Alright... we can't do it the legal way, we do it ... the only way.
www.google.com...

voila.

Downloading torrent file... done.

Downloading file... aw crap, tracker not available. Let's try youtube now.

SUCCESS!

Any questions?

Genre: Nonfiction

Author: Michael Pollan

As promised, I will be reviewing the book, as I will call it, "In Defense". Before getting to the review though, I want to point something out. It's probably relatively unlikely that I'll post many reviews of "bad" books since my reading time is limited, I'm a slow reader, and so I choose books that are very likely to be of high interest to me. If they "suck" within the first few chapters, I'll probably not continue to read them unless I have a really vested interest in the subject matter or storyline. Onto the book...

My overall feeling while reading the book is that the author *may* be a libertarian. I should say that there are many points on which I agree with libertarians. It's just that there are some fundamental principles on which I vigorously disagree with them on and as we all know... "that's OK" on both sides if we're being sane and civil. The only reason I bring this up in the review is because Pollan definitely seems to have a distrust of nearly any authority, but still grudgingly uses their data when it applies. Again, this is not necessarily bad since his entire goal is to completely flip the reader's perspective away from a lifelong acceptance of the western diet as completely fine.

He starts out the book, right on the cover in fact, with his personal eating policy: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants". While that might sound fairly obvious and basic, it's a policy he formed on his own based on a lot of reading and research. So who is Michael Pollan and what gives him the authority to write this book? He's not a doctor, scientist or nutritionist. He's a journalist with a personal interest in diet. He even briefly touches on this fact in the book just to point out that while there are many authorities on diet in different fields, the fact that the western diet has been linked to the "western diseases" since the 19th century has failed us. The western diseases are; heart diseases, cancer, obesity and diabetes.

He points out that the very people who have been largely responsible for creating and shaping the western diet, even today, do not have enough knowledge about dietary needs and how food really works. There is even a statement that nutritional science today is where surgery was in ancient Greece. He said that he probably would not have wanted to get an operation performed by ancient Greek surgeons, so why would he want to eat a diet created by an industry that is at a similar level of understanding? I didn't forget to say that he doesn't really trust authority much , did I? Silly comments aside, he actually may have a point and his book goes a long way to communicating it.

The book is broken up into three sections: The Age of Nutritionism, The Western Diet and the Diseases of Civilization, and Getting Over Nutritionism. In the first section of the book he talks about "nutritionism" which is a term that was coined in 2002 by Australian sociologist, Gyorgy Scrinis. The somewhat nebulous definition is, that nutritionism is the view of food as the sum of it's nutrient parts rather than as a whole. A more general way of putting it, is that you don't look at all the possible interactions of every component in a food item, but only focus on the known components. The reason this is argued to be negative is illustrated with the story of margarine and the transfat debacle: "...in a 2002 essay entitled 'Sorry Marge' published in an Australian quarterly magazine called Meanjin. 'Sorry Marge' looked at margarine as the ultimate nutritionist product, able to shift it's identity (no cholesterol! one year, no transfat! the next) depending on the prevailing winds of dietary opinion. But Scrinis had bigger game in his sights than spreadable vegetable oil. He suggested that we look past the various nutritional claims swirling around margarine and butter and consider the underlying message of the debate itself: 'namely, that we should understand and engage with food and our bodies in terms of their nutritional and chemical constituents and requirements--the assumption being that this is all we need to understand".

Pollan spends a good deal of the book in part one pointing to many many studies from the 19th, 20th and 21 centuries, some less well known scientists (who even Pollan asserts have some crackpot beliefs) and plenty of cultures who don't follow the western diet and where the western diseases are nearly unknown. A few of the intriguing bits of information he passes along really captured my interest. For example, at one point he mentioned a few things as an illustration of just why it is that he says nutritional science is primitive. One of those things was a list of all the known chemicals (nutrient or not) in Parsley. He states that nutritional science and the food industry would only single out the carotenes as being the beneficial components of Parsley. Based on that, were they to market a product that contained Parsley and assuming that Parsley became a new nutritional fad (my example not his) the focus would be solely on Carotenes since that is one of the only nutrients that they know well. True or not, they would make astounding healthy claims just to move product, based on arguably faulty science. The startling thing is that all the chemicals in Parsley is actually a pretty long list. It is foolish to assume that only the Carotenes have any value since we don't know what it is about the Carotenes or something else entirely in Parsley as a whole that is beneficial.

Another example he mentions is that most people are not aware of the fact that the GI tract has a large bundle of sensory nerves within it that no one is really sure of the purpose of. (I'd have to check that one deeper to feel confident in stating it as fact) He suggests that if we don't know how food possibly interacts with those nerves, then how can we really have enough science to create safe synthetic food stuffs? Indeed, that is where we are today. The majority of the food stuff that we accept as "food" isn't really food at all. It's mostly made of materials that are highly available (corn, wheat, rice, soy beans) and then "fortified" with unnatural nutrients that the faulty science of nutritionism claims are essential to survival.

There is the example of the quiet 1973 repeal of a fairly important law that the food industry worked hard at eliminating. There used to be a law that any foods that were not natural and were made of chemicals and synthetics had to have the word "Imitation" on the package. The food industry never liked this distinction because it turned consumers off at the thought of buying something that's an imitation. The industry felt that this made their products look inferior next to the "real thing". But, once this law was removed, it opened the door for the food industry to be able to create anything out of chemistry and call it by a natural food name. From there the state of things quickly progressed downhill and our food supply is laden with artificial food stuff masquerading as food. (I know... some of it is damn delicious too.) One example he cites is a particular Sara Lee bread that is 'whole wheat' but 'white'. It is filled with a ton of chemical that really have no business being in a real loaf of bread at all. One of them struck me personally as particularly heinous: a yeast growth enhancer. After what I went through due to a systemic yeast infection back in the 90s and all the hard work I did to get away from yeast and the problems I had, the fact that some of the food I was eating in my 20s may have had this growth enhancer makes me quite suspicious.

He starts section two off with a story about a study done on some Aborigines. The subjects were living on the western diet and had been for some time since leaving their tribal lands. All of them were suffering from type two diabetes. The researchers simply had them return to their tribal homelands and go back to their tribal diet for about seven weeks: "O'Dea drew blood from the Aborigines and found striking improvements in virtually every measure of health. All had lost weight (an average of 17.9 pounds) and seen their blood pressure drop. Their triglyceride levels had fallen into the normal range. The proportion of omega-3 fatty acids in their tissues had increased dramatically. 'In summary', O'Dea concluded, 'all of the metabolic abnormalities of type II diabetes were wither greatly improved (glucose tolerance, insulin response to glucose) or completely normalized (plasma lipids) in a group of diabetic Aborigines by a relatively short (seven week) reversion to traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle".

He then goes on to the subject of a dentist named Weston Price who had noticed during WW I that the incidence of tooth decay in many non-western cultures was very small compared to westerners. He took that observation and over years of study came up with some very interesting ideas about food production. One thing that he believed was that the science being used for fast and voluminous food production was actually lowering the quality of our food. Price asserted that by feeding our plants just the basic three nutrients, and encouraging fast growth, we were stunting the nutritious value of the food. Roots that don't grow deeply enough into the soil won't absorb as many of the nutrients that come from plants that grow more slowly. Plants that grow from the three basic chemicals (which I can't recall at the moment... only Potassium and Nitrogen come to mind) are missing many other nutrients. Price's eventual conclusion was that we should not be looking at plants as individual items, but that we should be looking at food production and nutrition as an entire ecological system including us as part of it.

He even suggested that by feeding the animals we eat with these stunted foods and inappropriate foods, that we were growing lesser livestock. Livestock that are not as nutritious for us. Pollan takes it further by pointing out that today, we feed our animals grain, where as truly free range animals (not on a farm) eat leaves as well. In a later section of the book he makes the argument that going from leaves to seeds is one of the major shifts in the western diet that may be one of the worst aspects of it. Especially in light of the negative properties of grains like corn when over-ingested. Corn is very high in omega-6's. Omega-6s apparently do nearly the opposite for us that omega-3s do...

Finally in section three he gets on to the question of what to do to get away from the western diet without being a "hunter-gatherer". He agrees that it's impractical and unrealistic to be able to eat and live in a primitive way. So in the last and shortest part of the book he builds up to explaining his personal eating policies. He starts with the one that's on the cover of his book. By "Eat food", he means eat foods that can't be synthesized in a lab. Even more to the point, foods that grow on trees or in the ground. By "Not too much" he means to control our portions, and the speed with which we eat. Earlier in the book he also encourages bringing back the social aspects of eating which are not present in today's typical dinner at home for the westerner, but are still a big part of other non-western diets. By keeping our home meals a social activity for family and friends, we will also slwo down the pace with which we eat, which will signal satiation a little sooner than just gobbling a plate down. That will result in eating "not too much". And by "Mostly plants", he expands on this and emphasizes the "mostly" part. He says that important because it allows for you to eat some things that aren't plants every so often. Again, in reading the book I see "mostly plants" as being even more specific and equating to plants that are leaves.

This is only a very very minuscule sampling of what is in the book. There are a lot of very interesting and intriguing facts and statements about food stuffs and how they affect us in so many ways. The book is densely packed with information about the food industry that many of us are just unaware of. It also has examples of other cultures and how their diets might be "high fat" or "high carb" but they don't exhibit the problems that people on the western diet do. It's not really a diet book at all. It almost feels like a very extended version of a 20/20 "expose" from the 80s but of a higher caliber. Definitely a very fascinating read and one that I mostly take to heart.

The one criticism I would level at the book is that his apparent distrust of authority forces him to throw out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak. I don't think a lot of the knowledge of the facts in his book would have been possible without some of these authorities. He does acknowledge that, but he also goes a little overboard in discounting certain aspects of the food production, nutrition, and medical professions. Sure, I am pretty convinced that since profit motive is the main driving force behind the food industry, it stands to reason that some less than perfect food stuffs may be on the market because they're cheap to make in high quantities and very popular. But I also think that some, not all, of the advances are positive. I do agree, however, that the western diet is not really the best one for human beings. Personally, I've been tightening up my diet as I've been hit with various illnesses here or there since my early 30s. With my recent bout of illness and other health issues, I'm looking back at my diet again to see what else can change. Even with some flaws in his book, it's still a decent guideline to developing your own personal eating policies. If there's no other reason to read the book, at least consider looking at it for the bits of 'insider information' on the food production industry. It's your right to know where the food you ingest is coming from.

Genre: Nonfiction
Author: Ruby K. Payne, Ph.D.

Now that I'm on the bus about 98% of the time instead of driving, I've been gifted with some extra time to read real books. Taking advantage of that, I've blown through about five books (I'm a slow reader, but I have very good retention because I try to really sink the stuff into my brain) since January. I'm going to be posting a few reviews of the books because I've really enjoyed them. Let's get onto the review that is pertinent to this entry.

I got Ms. Payne's book based on some interesting excerpts that someone posted in a forum. The excerpts had to do with the different types of speech and how they influence learning and even ways of thinking. The poster quoted some sections from the book which assert that the differences in speech between the general classes of poverty, middle class and wealth have much more impact on the brain than most people realize. This intrigued me. So I put the book on reserve at my library and was quite excited to read it. The book is targeted at school administrators and employers, but I think a lot of people could benefit from reading it.

Framework (as I will refer to the book from here on out), starts out by re-defining poverty as more than just an economic issue. Payne, outlines the various resources that aren't typically taken into account when talking about poverty: emotional, mental, spiritual, physical, support systems, relationships and role models, knowledge of hidden class rules. The lack of financial resources is quite obvious in any discussion of poverty. The emotional is less so: "Being able to choose and control emotional responses, particularly to negative situations, without engaging in self-destructive behavior". Mental resources are also typically left out: "Having the mental abilities and acquired skills (reading, writing, computing) to deal with daily life". Support systems are never thought of: "Having friends, family, and backup resources available to access in times of need. These are external resources". Relationships and role models: "Having frequent access to adult(s) who are appropriate, who are nurturing to a child, and do not engage in self-destructive behavior". Knowledge of the hidden class rules: "Knowing the unspoken cues and habits of a group". In fact, I would say that a lot of people in any class make assumptions (many times they are incorrect) which prevent them from understanding people in the other classes and lead to false judgments levied against those in the other classes. But more on that later.

She also spend a little time making a distinction between situational poverty, where one falls on hard times and drops from wealth to middle class or middle class to poverty and generational poverty. Generational poverty being the situation where a family is in poverty for two or more generations. If you come out of poverty into middle class, you are still, for the purposes of the book, someone who came from poverty. And your children will still have some of the echoes of the effects of poverty. It is not until their children that the effects of poverty will disappear. This fact is largely unknown even to those who carry the traits of generational poverty with them. Interestingly for me, I am the first generation in my family to have lived a fairly middle class life. My daughter will be the first generation to likely not carry the traits of generational poverty.

After Payne defines poverty by way of resources, she moves onto language and story structure and how those things influence thought and actions. The first topic in chapter two is the "Registers of Language". There are five registers in every language: Frozen, Formal, Consultative, Casual and Intimate. Each is defined as follows:

Frozen - Language that is always the same. Examples are, the Lord's Prayer, wedding vows, etc...

Formal - The standard sentence syntax and word choice of work and school. has complete sentences and specific word choice.

Consultative - Formal register when used in conversation. Discourse pattern not quite as direct as formal register.

Casual - Language between friends and is characterized by a 400 to 800 word vocabulary. Word choice is general and not specific. Conversation is dependent upon non-verbal assists (moving hands, facial expressions, gestures). Sentence syntax is often incomplete. "Know what I mean"?

Intimate - Language between lovers. Also the language used in sexual harassment. (ie. "Blow me")

These registers were the result of work done in 1967 by linguist Martin Joos. One thing that he discovered while conceptualizing these registers of language was that you can drop one register in a conversation and still be socially exceptable. But to drop two or more would be seen as socially offensive. (In the middle of a prayer, someone in the room says, "How 'bout them Bulls". That would be a social gaffe.) This, as we shall see, illustrates one of the barriers that most people are unaware of when dealing with people from different classes.

Much of this linguistic work found that people coming from generational poverty exclusively use casual register in their language. The middle class and the wealthy tend to use formal register for the most part. At the most basic and obvious level, this creates a barrier to entry into the professional world. But, it has deeper effects than most realize. Growing up around casual register has impacts on the developing skills of a child. Long-term effects that are quite damaging. In formal register, the pattern of discourse is a narrative with a beginning and end. You start at point A and work your way to point B. The general goal of formal register's pattern of discourse is to get straight to the point. Payne says, "In casual register, the pattern is to go around and around and finally get to the point. For students who have no access to formal register, educators become frustrated with the tendency of these students to meander almost endlessly through a topic".

These differences in language registers between the classes are affected by language acquisition in early development as pointed out by linguist and educator James Paul Gee: "Primary discourse is the language an individual first acquired. Secondary discourse is the language of the larger society". For example, an American who grows up in a home where Spanish is the primary language will need to learn English as a secondary discourse. What Gee discovered is that acquisition of language is the more natural and best method of learning a language, and acquisition is only possible when there is a significant relationship between the role model and the developing child. Getting back to formal and casual register, this means that someone growing up in generational poverty will very likely only learn casual register for primary discourse. This is quite detrimental to any further learning developments.

As mentioned before there is a distinct difference in the pattern of discourse between formal and casual register. Payne provides some diagrams and explanations to try and illustrate the differences. In general, formal register story structure in formal discourse starts at the beginning, works through a plot and then reaches an end. The most important part of this order is the plot. In casual register story structure, "the story is told in vignettes with audience participation in between". The most emotional or climactic part of the story is usually the very first part of the discourse, and characters involved in the story are judged. Two examples:

Formal register:

"James called Bill a jackass. So Bill came over to Jack and punched him in the nose. From there a full blown brawl broke out on the factory floor until security came to break things up".

Casual register:

"Man, Bill popped Jim on the nose and there was blood everywhere! But he wasn't going to take what Jim called him. Jim's such a goddamn troublemaker! (someone interjects, "Bill's a loudmouth! Jim was right to give him some get back") Yeah, whatever. So before I knew what was going on, everyone started taking a swing at Bill or Jim. This wouldn't have happened if Jim would've kept to his self instead of sticking his nose in where it don't belong. It's kind of a shame that factory security came in and stopped the fight. I wanted to see Jim get flattened. That no good sonuvabitch deserves to be knocked down a few pegs".

These differences in register, discourse and story order are largely responsible for establishing some rather important skills in a developing child's mind. Regarding casual register as the primary acquired model of language, the following can be said based on the work of psychologist Reuven Feurstein: "If an individual depends upon a random, episodic story structure for memory patterns, lives in an unpredictable environment (as is typical of generational poverty)... then...

If an individual cannot plan, he/she cannot predict.
If an individual cannot predict, he/she cannot identify cause and effect.
if an individual cannot identify cause and effect, he/she cannot identify consequence.
If an individual cannot identify consequence, he/she cannot control impulsivity.
If an individual cannot control impulsivity, he/she has an inclination toward criminal behavior".

This is just a little sample of what Payne discusses in the book and there are a many more interesting examples and ideas that bear out in my personal experience. In fact, reading the book clarified for me a lot of the reasons why I have such difficulty dealing with people from a solidly middle class background (at least two generations in middle class) and perceive many of them to be arrogant and insensitive. The book also provides some pretty good arguments to counter libertarian assumptions that anyone can do anything as long as they are given liberty. There are definitely things you can't do when you don't have the full set of tools in your toolbox. A lot of middle class people make the assumption that there is a full tool kit for everyone. Make no mistake, I'm not insulting the poverty class and there are always exceptions to the rule. Some people can bring themselves out of generational poverty into middle class. It's rare, but it's possible. Considering that my mom started out as a mountain girl in the Andes with no running water, electricity or cars and was basically living a primitive lifestyle, and my dad was what most middle class people would define as "poor white trash", I'm not doing too badly.

My only criticism of the book is that I think it might be about ten to fifteen years too late. I'm noticing quite a bit of bleed over of the hidden class rules (which I didn't touch in this review yet, maybe later) from poverty into middle class. One example is that in poverty class a man needs to be a "lover and a fighter". In middle class a man needs to be a provider and self-sufficient. But these days, the "fighter" part of the poverty class male is becoming more of a societal requirement in middle class. So, I think that while the book is quite accurate in allowing one to "psyche people out", it's also slowly becoming irrelevant as these rules change.

Up next: "In Defense of Food, an Eater's Manifesto", by Michael Pollan

OK I have to get this out of my system. I just want to ask: Why do people keep making AMV's with subtitles and with that stupid "DivX Video" logo on the bottom right?

It's not professional. The heck, it's not even amateur. It SUCKS! Specially if it's not an english fansub.

Here's a hint for you: Cut the bottom part of the video so that it'll display nice on 16:9 displays, and you'll get rid of the subtitles at the same time. Voila!

Of course, there's a little problem with 16:9 fansubs. But look, if you could find a fansub, I'm pretty sure you could find a bootleg around if you put a little effort on it.

And what's with the DivX logo? Did you know there's something called XVid that does NOT add that logo?

Allow me to prove my point: Is there *ANY* fansub in the awesome "AMV Hell" parody collection? No. Why? Because fansubbing SUCKS in an AMV.

Don't believe me, believe these guys.

It's hard for large organizations that move at glacial speeds to compete with individuals taking their content and creating new distribution systems, revenue streams and business models, but the fall of the major record labels taught the rest of the corporate world a lesson. Matt Mason from Torrentfreak did a keynote speech (video) at The Medici Summit, telling us that in many cases, piracy is helping people to innovate and create new legitimate market spaces.

Particularly I found his speech very interesting for one powerful reason: The businesses that fight pirates now, were pirates themselves when they were starting. Including Hollywood and the Music Industry. If you want to convince someone that piracy is not as evil as he claims, show him this video and he'll have his world turned upside down.

# Do not fear the penguins, v2.0.2
# Author:
# Spy der Mann
# License:
# Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License
# If you use this in your works, just credit me with an "original song by Spy der Mann", or something similar.
#
# Recommendations:
# If you want to put music please give it a tune similar to "Tin can hitman" from Robotronica.
# Just a suggestion.
#
# Acknowledgements:
# Thanks to Rick (he knows who he is) for helping me out with the lyrics.
#
#
main(){
        This is the story of an angry Joe user,
        got tired of his vermin-infested computer.
        The crap we call Windows is what he had used,
        but all of its bugs just left him confused.

        Thought was cream of the crop, that's what he had been told,
        but the truth is, buggy software is what he really was sold,
        cheap salesmen from Redmond, the brand gained his trust,
        he would learn the hard truth, but not without disgust!

        He had many problems, things both you and I know,
        the PC kept freezing, video discs played too slow;
        incompatible hardware, see, the network was dead,
        couldn't get it to work, bought a new card instead!

        chorus() {
                Stop getting angry man, stop getting mad,
                It's not in your style throwing chairs at the wall.
                Do not fear the penguins cuz' you too can smile
                GNU/Linux fears no virus that could screw up your files.

                GNU/Linux is open, and it's completely free,
                every bit of it's legal, there's no royalty fee.
                But don't just believe me, you must try it and see,
                join the penguin revolution under Freedom's decree!
        }

        When Joe got to the tubes, his PC felt much slower
        it had caught nasty spyware but he yet doesn't know it,
        but that wasn't the worst, oh no, sir, I'm afraid,
        because much bigger problems were awaiting ahead!

        One day the virus perpetrated an assault:
        His ID got stolen, Ballmer said "not my fault,
        it's the hackers and pirates that are making a brawl",
        better get an antivirus, and slow down to a crawl!

        chorus();

        Joe then decided that he should get an upgrade,
        bought himself a faster PC that could better be played,
        but he had to reinstall: his OS wouldn't start,
        then the registry got broken and he had to format;

        Antipiracy measures got stricter with time
        "I have genuine advantage", he thought he'd be fine,
        the activation had failed him and all had been in vain,
        didn't know that computers could be such a big pain!

        chorus();

        Well that does it, Bill Gates, Joe said in his disdain,
        I'm sick tired of your traits, it's all loss and no gain,
        I still cannot believe I paid for all this bull,
        between software and service, you're no better than NULL!

        Now I'm switching to Linux and I'm not going back,
        One more minute with you will give me a heart attack.
        So good bye Bill and Steve, there's no more soup for you,
        you should get a class action for what you made me go through!

        chorus();

        The first step was the hardest, now, where do we start?
        Which distro to choose, sounds like an arcane art.
        Joe had tried Ubuntu, didn't like how it tasted,
        but a friend recommended PCLinuxOS.

        It was friendly, it was fast, unlike what he believed,
        "there's a world outside Windows and the hell that I lived!"
        it's scary at first, but it's worthy, trust me,
        when you do make the switch you'll begin to be free!

        chorus();
}

After saying I was going to try this for the past five or so years... I finally got FreeNX installed on my new Gentoo appliction server virtual machine. I'm still trying to figure out the underlying components and how it works so I can customize it a bit. So far so good though. It is a good deal faster than VNC which is good news for my thin clients at home (I mean... old laptops) and it also supports Esound (I wish it supported Pulseaudio, but... Pulse supports ESD, so... :). So what does this all mean if you're not familiar with the land of remote desktops on Linux? Read on:

1. FreeNX is a GPLed server that uses the NX protocol created and opened by NoMachine. It is NOT VNC or RDP (MS remote desktop)
2. Sadly, it's not completely clear what it is, other than it is based on X (I think) and uses ZLIB and JPEG compression to great effect
3. It also has support for the Enlightened Sound Daemon which is sort of a virtual automated mixer for multiple sound streams that sends the mix to your sound card. This means that your remote desktop sessions have sound. (I've been doing this for years with raw ESD itself, but NoMachine implements it better than I can)
4. The bottom line is that even over a slow link, like a modem connection, you can get decent response from a remote desktop session. (Sound only works well in the local LAN or if you have an ungodly fast internet connection on both ends)

I tried running a video remotely and it played well with some tearing over my DSL 768k line. And... I'm posting this entry via the NX client right now. :) When I scroll in Firefox, the smooth scroll actually works with no redraw issues at all. The only thing that is noticeable is the JPG artifacts when I'm set to lower than ISDN speed. But it's not THAT noticeable.

For anyone on Gentoo interested in trying it out, there is a writeup at the Gentoo Wiki that tells you all about it. It's not totally clear, but it's enough to get you started. I think that's the main problem with the FreeNX project, not a lot of clear documentation for people who don't have some previous knowledge. One thing that isn't obvious is that when you install, you're installing the FreeNX server, but you're pulling down the proprietary !M NX client in order to connect. I'm not 100% sure on this, but it appears that there really isn't an NX client that in current development in the FOSS world. So you wind up having to use the proprietary but free of charge !M NX. That's OK with me since it seems to work well enough. I'm using the Linux client that is in Gentoo Portage, but there is also a Windows client as well as a Mac OS X client.

It's pretty simple to use once everything is configured. (You need to create an SSH key that is dedicated to the NX client and then import the public key onto the machine you'll be connecting from) You just enter your server connection info, set your screen size, choose the kind of system (OS) you'll be connecting to and the kind of session you'll have on that system (*nix only) and connection speed, then log in. Here's an excerpt of what you can do from the project Wiki for FreeNX:

Consider logging in from remote (eno2001: say... your machine at work):

        * You start a new session (unix-kde or unix-gnome)
        * You work with it and it runs fast (and even faster than VNC or shadow ;-))
        * You decide that you want to go home now, so you press ctrl+alt+t (if in fullscreen mode) or close the window

The session is now suspended and awaits you resume.

Okay, you go home now:

        * You login into your desktop and you have another fresh new session
        * You startup nxclient
        * You connect to the nxserver running on 127.0.0.1
        * You have your running session with all open programs again and see like a wonder the desktop stretches until all programs are fitting on screen again.

So now you have a 1600x1200 sessíon. (eno2001: They failed to explain whether this is a resizing of the desktop image or a real change in the size of the desktop itself. I haven't yet tested this) Once you finish working with it, you suspend it again:

        * Fullscreen
                    * click on the magic pixel, the window is minimized, right click on the taskbar and choose close
                    * press ctrl+alt+t
        * Windowed
                    * close the window
                    * press ctrl+alt+t

A dialog comes up that asks you if you want to terminate or suspend the session, you choose to suspend it.

I'm impressed so far, but I really need to figure out the components and break it up into something more usable for my needs. Hopefully this might replace VNC for a few things that I do where I need snappy response from the remote desktop...

This was originally posted to my Multiply blog last week and got more responses than I expected. Hopefully some of you here will find it of interest:

OK. I'm going to be 38 at my next birthday (March 2008). I've come to the realization that because I've been buried in crap at work, my time and abilities to explore the features in software and on the web have become limited. Back in my teens and 20s, I would take an application and learn nearly every menu function, play with every setting or option and generally tried to get the most out of the software that I could. These days I just use the basics + a few keyboard shortcuts here and there. I also spend about 50% of my time at the CLI. Now, not being one to think I'm "old" necessarily, I want to get back to learning more about applications, but not necessarily reading manuals, multiple web sites and forums and so on. I'm looking for tips. Especially really obscure but useful ones if possible. Not just for me either, but also for others who are reading this and might find quick tips very useful. I would like this to be multiplatform so no fighting about that. Windows, Linux, Mac and dead OSes :) are all invited. My desktop platform is Gnome running on Gentoo Linux, so I'll likely be focusing on Gnome stuff. Also, no disparaging comments about what other people consider helpful (unless they're really fucking stupid. Just kidding). If possible, format your subject like this for "quick reference": Platform:Application:Tip Description. Example: Gnome:Nautilus File Manager:File Association I'll post my tips below as I can think of some.

I'm about 50% of the way through this big mail migration project I've been going on abot for a while. I started in earnest in the middle of November after budget cuts, bureaucratic delays, hardware being out of stock, etc... (I suggested we do this move over two years ago and was told, "we'll think about it") So it's finally, "bye bye iPlanet and hello Zimbra" time. And I have to say that Zimbra got it right in every possible way so far. I posted some of my early Zimbra experiences on one of my recent Slashdot journals, so I won't go into that here. Same thing for the incredibly "too useful to be ignored" VirtualIron virtualization product that now uses the Xen microkernel. If you want to hear those comments look at my Slashdot journal that touches on it. What we're here for today is the GNU 'screen' utility which I'm sure some of you must be familiar with.

Way back in 1997 I was running my own Quake server for LAN parties with my friends. One of my frustrations was that I had to leave a Putty session open and connected to the server at all times because there didn't appear to be a way to background the server and then reconnect to it later. I posted about this somewhere and someone said "use GNU screen". I took one look at it, didn't get it and didn't bother to look at it again for some time. I think sometime around 2001 I had a need to run a process in the background that I could come back and interact with. This time it was for work and I couldn't just walk away from the problem. Someone in another forum recommended GNU screen again. So I read the man page with little more interest and then tried it out. In short, the most basic use for it is to be able to run a virtual terminal session that you can disconnect from and re-attach to. Another way of putting it is that it is like VNC for the command line. But in reality it's so much more than that.

First steps:

If you're new to 'screen' you'll wonder why the hell I'd want to use something like this when there are things like xterms, gnome-terminal, konsole and the like. The only way to really understand is to try it out for yourself. An excercise (make sure you have 'screen' installed on your box first):

1. Pop open a terminal window and type 'screen'. This will launch the application and you'll see a prompt just like you usually do. It will probably look like nothing happened. That's OK. Just have faith.
2. Now start a process that will continue to run in screen. ping an IP on your network or the internet, or run 'top'. Those should illustrate the basics nicely.
3. Now that you see something running and constantly updating on the screen, press this key combination: Ctrl-a d (That is Ctrl-a first then an individual 'd'). The process you started will appear to have quit. But it hasn't...
4. Now press Ctrl-Alt-F1 to get to the first virtual console on your box. Log in as the same user that spawned the 'screen' process and type 'screen -ls'. Look for the screen PID number in the output.
5. Once you have the PID, type 'screen -R pid'. This will re-attach you to the process you left running from the terminal emulator in X earlier. If it was 'top' you should still see it updating.
6. Stay attached to this virtual console, then press Alt-F7 (assuming that your X server is on VT7) to switch back to X.
7. In X, bring up a GUI terminal like xterm, gnome-terminal or konsole and enter the following: 'screen -x pid'. Make sure to use the same exact PID you used before. You should see your process running, and you're also still connected from virtual terminal 1 as well. The -x option allows you to connect to a screen instance that already has someone else connected. It's a great way to train someone or classroom full of someones, or to handhold someone who is trying to troubleshoot a problem.

These are just the bare basics of 'screen'. It can do a lot more if you delve into it deeper, especially if your a CLI rider like me. (Funny about that, I used to say that Unix was dying back in 1994 when I got my first Windows box) Read on for more fun with 'screen':

The Scrollback Buffer (Copy mode):

How many times have you been at virtual console #1 through #6 and had no access to X (it's borked or something) and when you have a bunch of text fly past you during a compile or other heavy text stream you think, "I wish I had a scroll bar right now". Well, wish no longer. 'screen' might not give you a scroll bar, but it does give you a very nice scroll back buffer. Assume that you're already in 'screen' and that you had that text fly by and really want to see what went past you. Assume that you're not in a GUI.

1. Press Ctrl-a ESC to enter copy mode
2. Now use the up/down, left/right, page up/page down keys to move around in the buffer. Go up as high as you can (I believe the default limit is 1000 lines, but you can change that by starting screen with the -h argument: 'screen -h 4000') and marvel at this ability. ;)
3. But it gets better... You can do forward or reverse searches within this buffer by using / or ? respectively. Example:

This search will find any occurences of the word error from your current position to the bottom of the buffer: /rror
This search will find any occurences of the word error from your current position to the top of the buffer: ?rror

4. And even better... While you're in copy mode, you can also select and copy text to screen's paste buffer. Move your cursor to where you want you selection to start and press the space bar. Then move to the bottom of what you want to select and press the space bar again. This will place a copy of the selected text in screen's paste buffer and exit copy mode. To paste what you selected: Ctrl-a ]

Logging Your Sessions to a File:

1. Press Ctrl-a : to enter into screen's command mode. This will provide you with a prompt in the bottom left that is simply a colon.
2. Specify the path you want screen to log to using the 'logfile' command. If the file doesn't exist, it will create a new one.

Example:

logfile /tmp/mysession.log

3. Turn logging on: Ctrl-a Shift-h
4. Do your stuff...
5. Turn logging off: Ctrl-a Shift-h

This feature has come in very handy for my work recently...

Multiple "windows":

Within one instance of screen it is possible to have more than one terminal and switch between them (kind of like Alt-Tab to switch between various windows in a GUI). Here's how:

1. Start a screen instance with a useful name and a good scroll back buffer:

screen -S MailMigration -h 5000

2. Name the first "window" by pressing Ctrl-a Shift-a then deleting the default "bash" in the bottom left and replacing it with something useful. In my case I've named window 0 "iPlanet".
3. Now spawn a new "window" by pressing Ctrl-a c and then give it a useful name. This is "window" 1 and in my case I've named it "Zimbra logged in as zimbra user"
4. Spawn one more window again using Ctrl-a c and give it a useful name again... My "window" 2 is called "Zimbra logged in as root" (Yeah I know... not the place or time)
5. Now that you have three "windows" with useful names, let's look at them. Press Ctrl-a " and then use the up/down arrow keys to move through the list and select the "window" you want, then press enter. You can verify that these are all different windows by doing something different in each and then switching between them.
6. One more neat trick... you can quickly switch between the current window and the previously selected one by pressing Ctrl-a Ctrl-a This is immensely useful if you're having to compare things between two systems and don't have any option to do it from the GUI or just want to be able to pick up where you left off later by reattaching to the screen instance.

A Small Sample of Really Batshit Insane Stuff You Can Do With GNU screen:

If you have a detached screen running something that you would like to interact with but don't really need to connect to screen to do it with, you can use the -X argument followed by the internal screen command you want to execute. In my case, I have mplayer running within a screen session happily playing a playlist for my alarm clock in the morning. I want to send it a "space" bar without having to attach to screen to actually do it. So I have my script do this:

screen -p0 -X eval 'stuff \040'

In my real script I've named my screen instance by starting it with:

screen -S Alarmclock

So to send the space bar to the detached screen, I actually do this:

screen -p0 -S Alarmclock -X eval 'stuff \040'

The -p0 is needed to say, send it to screen's

The -X eval 'stuff \040' causes screen to intercept that command, process the 'stuff' command which then sends ASCII char 040 (the space bar) to mplayer. I'm using this to create a "snooze" feature in my alarmclock script (don't ask just assume that I'm insane).

There's a hell of a lot more, but this is a small sampling of how GNU screen just rocks. :) Feedback?

Side comment: I have to wonder how long it will be before Microsoft "innovates" something like this but missing about 90% of the features. They've been making moves to try and lure people away from *nix (like PowerShell) so I imagine that if people see the light about 'screen' and it becomes more popular, MS will try and duplicate it. And get it wrong. Again.

I was reading a page on LinuxGamers about installing DirectX 9 under WINE. It listed some steps on how to make DirectX work with Wine. But here's the problem: Other users listed compatibility problems in the same blog, and unrecommended the measure. (That blog article was a link to the full DirectX 9.0c on Linux article)

So I thought: Perhaps there could be a legal way to make Microsoft release their DirectX9 source code to the public domain? Because:

a) it's NOT a core component of Windows, but more like an Add-in.
b) It creates an unfair competition situation between Windows and Linux, specially when Microsoft is a monopoly - therefore, releasing the source code will leverage the market and promote a healthy competition situation which will encourage innovation.

Think about it, Microsoft was successfully ordered by the European Union to release some of their communication protocols specs. Why not do the same with DirectX? (Because it is, in a way, a communication protocol).

Of course, the ideal case would be asking game manufacturers to make all their games cross-platform. But I wonder if they'll really listen, and who's going to backport the old 3D games to Linux? Who's going to pay for them?

Another alternative would be to start an open source project called "Direct-X-Platform" or something, that would be essentially a cross-platform version of DirectX9 that can be installed either on native Windows, or Wine, or even native Linux! (think about it - directx.so - wouldn't it be interesting?). But, can it be done only knowing the DirectX specs and not the source code? I'm thinking... if MONO is dotNet for Linux, why not have a similar project equivalent to DirectX?

Updates:

* Apparently there's a sourceforge project called DirectX for Wine, but the website seems outdated. Is the project still active? It seems not, but Wine has a status and to-do page dedicated exclusively to DirectX.

* A couple of months ago, a student began the implementation of DirectX 10 in Wine.

It seems the project is being HEAVILY developed, so what they need now, is our help!

OK. I'm joining the world of people who use mass transit. Mainly because my car cracked in half. But also because of the green (environmental) and money saving aspects of it. So... anyone here have any tips to make the transition smoother?

I should probably explain a little more about what happened... I was out the other day with my wife and daughter doing some errands. While we were out I noticed that my car (1998 Nissan Sentra) was making this odd squeaking noise when I'd turn right in it. I'd heard this kind of thing before and guessed it was a CV boot, maybe a tie rod or ball joint. So I took it into the shop we go to for all of our ill cars. These guys have always been on the level with us and have given us quite a few freebies for small work. I told them what was going on and they said they'd take a look at in on Friday.

So Friday afernoon my cell rings. I was actually expecting work since it's encroached onto my personal time so much for the past half a year. I was a bit relieved to hear that it was the service station. The guy said he had some bad news. I figured... this car is nearly nine years old, I don't think anything will be bad news as long as it's under $1500 to fix. He explained that the car is a unibody and that it appears to have suffered a major fracture due to rusting from the inside of the frame on the right hand side of the car. Seeing that the body is all one piece, there is no "part" to replace and it's not really safe to drive.

I drank that in for a minute. Then I thought of how lucky I was that I didn't wind up in a horrible wreck. I was even doubly lucky since I've carted my family around many times in that car on the freeway. So he tells me a bit more and I ask him what my next step would be. He said, he wouldn't suggest selling it. Nor would he suggest donating it to anyone. Trade-in is a possibility. And scrapping it is probably the best option. So that's the route I chose. Scrap it and be done with it. And since he whole gas powered automobile thing is in flux right now, I'm going to wait it out on buying a new car. Hell, I live within 15 minutes of the downtown area I work in and rarely need to go far in general. We still have my wife's car if I need to be at one of the rare meetings in another city. So why not take advantage of that closeness to work, and the mass transportation system?

I'm sure someone will tell me I could have just gotten the same car with a dead engine and replaced it with my working one, etc... I'm not a car guy, and to be honeest, I've been researching alternative transportation for a while. I keep hoping that someone will release a fully electric plug-in automobile that is safe and street legal and can go at least 150 miles on a charge at a maximum of 60 MPH. So far, no takers. The closest is to get a hybrid and then get the plug-in modification done. That's basically a replacement of all batteries and installation of a charger.

But, the more important point at hand is that I can now drop my insurance and save about $400 a year on that. I can also drop my parking pass for the garage downtown which is $110 a month (of course bus passes are $45 a month, but that's still a savings). And of course with gas hovering at about $3.00 a gallon and likely to climb to $4.00, I suspect I'll save a good chunk there too. So here's the current plan: go with one car for at least six months and see if it can be done with a minimum of fuss. Meanwhile save the extra money that I'm not spending on parking, gas, insurance and plates, for a down payment on a new car. I already have enough for a decent down payment now. But, we should hopefully get an OK tax refund, which would boost any savings up and put us in a really good position to get a new car. I can then spend some time researching the best options for a real alternative to gas powered automobiles. Ideally, the next car won't run on gas at all...

So there you have it. That's why I'm going to start using either the bus that pulls up to the neighboring street, or the rapid transit (sort of a subway type affair) starting on Monday.

I was writing a comment the other day on GNU/Linux apps and competition against proprietary software. In my signature I have added: "Fight Microsoft. Donate to Wine". But later I realized that, even when it's necessary, it's not the answer for Linux adoption.

Supporting proprietary Windows applications so they can run in Linux is a temporary approach. The real goal is replacing those applications with Free/Libre Open Source Software. We know that proprietary software will always appear, but WINE won't solve things by itself.

Why? Let's suppose WINE reaches version 1.0 and all Windows programs can run in Linux. There will be still a problem: It's not the NATIVE, TRUE way to run programs in Linux. Software developers won't see any incentive to develop Linux versions of their programs. "Why? They can run through WINE".

So the only permanent solution to being tied to a proprietary (or as Stallman calls 'em, "privative") application is to make an equivalent FREE application. And optionally, make it cross-platform so it can compete with the proprietary one. Just like Firefox.

Let's use another example. Ever heard of Krita? It's a painting / image editing application, much friendlier than the GIMP, and with multiple color spaces support (like CMYK and 16 bits color depth). Now this app has the potential to compete with Photoshop, but it's still in early development (i.e. no unsharp mask filter). Oh well, at least it's a start.

Eventually, I think Krita will reach the "competition" status, just like Mozilla did vs. IE. Then it'll be one less reason to stick with Windows.

So what do we need to help Linux reach the people out there? APPLICATIONS! We need to support developers and encourage them to develop clones for existing apps, or at least copy the existing features in them. And how to encourage them? $imple. Give out donations, do bug reports, feature requests and all that.

Sigh, we need a Mecenas to give out money to Open Source developers and start new projects.

I rarely spend much time waxing poetic about software (OK. I did for VirtualIron but it's just too damn good) but I think I need to do this for Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS). I first suggested we migrate away from Sun's horrid iPlanet system to Zimbra about two years ago. Due to various budget issues, we couldn't do it until this year. And for the past few months I've spent a lot of time learning various systems to get this up and running the way I want. There is, of course, the VirtualIron system hosting the VM that Zimbra is running on. I took a few wrong turns before settling on VirtualIron. All the VMs are sitting on a SAN (Hewlett-Packard EVA). And finally Zimbra (version 4.5.9) was installed on both TEST and PRODUCTION VMs.

My first domain migration happened at the beginning of November and it went amazingly smoothly. Of course there were only 64 users, so that was to be expected. The next domain was this past weekend. That took a bit longer to complete with 774 users and a good number of distribution lists. All of the account and mail distribution list data was extracted from the iPlanet server using a custom script wrapped around 'ldapsearch'. That data was converted live to the ZMP format to be used on the Zimbra server for provisioning accounts.

Once I got the accounts and groups in place, I needed to copy their mail. I used the ever ubiquitous 'imapsync' (I owe that guy something.... heading over to the donation page as soon as I finish this post) to copy all the mail from the iPlanet server to the new Zimbra server. it worked like a charm, but I had to wrap an 'expect' script around it because iPlanet would prompt me for the auth admin user password for every user. I'm not sitting around waiting to enter that 774 times!

I did the initial mail sync about three days before migration, and then ran the incremental sync once every day leading up to the final day of migration. Finally, on the night of migration, I made all the requisite DNS and spam filter changes for the domain, performed a final sync (took about an hour) and removed the domain from the iPlanet server. We were now live! That takes care of the general process, but why is it that I love ZCS so much? Let me explain...

First off, after having dealt with raw LDAP for the past seven years and actually getting a pretty decent understanding of it (not enough to create my own schema yet), I'm happy to see that Zimbra found a better interface to LDAP. They are using their SOAP application 'zmprov' to handle everything about LDAP. However, they STILL allow you to deal directly with LDAP by giving you a parameter you can pass to 'zmprov' to turn off SOAP mode! So you can have your cake and eat it to, as it were.

The next big deal for me is that 'zmprov' really is THE tool for doing bulk administration. As nice as their admin web interface is, we all know that GUI and web interfaces are not the medium to use when you want to make a lot of changes to a lot of objects very quickly. One of the nicest things about ZCS as a whole is actually the Wiki that Zimbra provides which explains almost anything you'd need to know about Zimbra. They have a nice reference for all LDAP attributes that you can affect with 'zmprov'. That's how I was able to bulk provision my users with a default password, then force them to change it on first login and restrict them from re-using it as their new password.

Another aspect is that their web admin interface really isn't that bad at all. It gives you a lot of info that is actually... useful! Big surprise there. I'm used to web interfaces that are designed by anyone but the admins themselves. Unlike iPlanet, you can actually see what groups a user is a member of! Not only that, but you can actually add/delete their membership in a group from the user account info instead of having to switch over to the group portion of the admin interface.

My users (...at least initially. More on their issues later) are really happy with the new interface. iPlanet was long in the tooth. In 2001. Zimbra, thanks to the magick of AJAX feels like an application. They are loving the Exchange killer features of Zimbra. (Admittedly I really wanted to do this two years ago but, oh well)

The main "con" right now is that IE6 apparently has a crappy Javascript engine. It's odd that this wasn't apparent during training on the TEST system. But I'm hearing reports that Zimbra is slow. I hadn't noticed this at all, but I can't run IE since I'm a Linux user. So it turns out that IE7 is a partial solution since MS has apparently resolved some memory management issues. ZCS is awesome on Firefox, but that's not a possibility because it can't be centrally managed through AD Group Policy by our Windows admin. He's tried the templates, but they seem to hose up, so he has no willingness to go any further. The answer to the problem is that Zimbra is coming out with ZCS 5.0 on December 17th (at least that's the last date I saw on their site). This version of Zimbra will provide the user with three interfaces that they can choose at login. The full AJAX interface, an HTML low bandwidth interface, and a Mobile friendly interface. I'll have to run a QA test on it on our TEST system first though. So it's not coming soon.

I haven't yet had a chance to compare the current resource usage of the backend server with my baselines, but so far it looks like the server isn't even sneezing at the 800+ users on it. However, I can't wait to get away from the Javascript issues. Most users still assume the server is the problem and not the client PC.