Miscellaneous Musings of a Misdirected Mind
Sometimes I think, or at least I've been accused of doing that. Sometimes I think too much or too weirdly or just about things nobody else cares about. I've definitely been accused of that. This week, it's a series of shorts. No, not like in "underwear". And not like in "circuit", either. It's just a collection of thoughts that have occurred to me between mid June and today. The topics include open-source software, Model Ts on the Information Superhighway, and lions in my house.
Open Source Software
Commercial software manufacturers want to sell their wares. Nothing surprising there. Everyone who selects an open-source application in place of a piece of commercial software reduces the commercial software manufacturer's unit sale by one. Some of the commercial software manufacturers resort to sowing FUD — fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
They tell you that you get what you pay for. They tell you that open-source software is written by chimps and maintained by monkeys. They tell you that you won't get support when you need it. They tell you that bugs won't be fixed promptly, if at all. Mostly lies, of course.
An example: I use the Filezilla FTP client because it's highly versatile, functional, and works the way I want it to. At least most of the time.
When I downloaded version 3.0.10 in early June, one of the first things I noticed was that the sort-by-date function was broken. Sorting by name worked, but sorting by date produced a list that placed some files in what appeared to be random order. For me, this is an important feature because I want to upload only the files I've changed or added recently and I depend on the sort-by-date function to identify those files.
Assuming that I would find several previous reports citing the problem, I visited the Filezilla section of Sourceforge.org and opened Bugzilla. There were no reports, so I grabbed a screen shot that showed the problem, wrote a quick summary, and posted the bug report. That was Thursday evening.
Friday morning, less than 12 hours later, the bug was shown as resolved:
My Report
Category: Interface bug
Status: Closed
Resolution: Fixed
Priority: 5
Submitted By: Bill Blinn (bblinn)
Summary: Sort on "last modified" returns random results
Initial Comment:
Sorting on "last modified" ascending or descending produces totally incorrect results.
Comment
Comment By: Tim Kosse (botg)
Date: 2008-06-13 14:53
Logged In: YES
Originator: NO
Thanks for reporting. This issue has been fixed in the SVN
repository and will be available with the next version.
Bottom line: If you find open-source applications that perform a task you need, don't let fear, uncertainty, and doubt get in your way. Can I enter a bug report for one of the big manufacturers? Indirectly, yes. If I know the product manager, I can send a note. If not, I can try to report the problem via support channels. Open-source developers often allow anyone to post bug reports. The bug reports are examined, evaluated, and (if legitimate) used to improve the product.
Linux on the Desktop
"There's a strong business case for Linux as an alternative to Microsoft or Unix derivatives." The June 12 edition of Network World quoted Roger Levy, senior vice president and general manager of open platform solutions at Novell, in an article that discusses the adoption of Linux by Wall Street firms.
Among the findings:
- The New York Stock Exchange and its international subsidiaries are adopting Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which will replace Solaris, Sun's operating system.
- Wall street firms require fast and reliable computing. JP Morgan Chase Bank and Credit Suisse have developed an "Advanced Message Queuing Protocol" for use by financial institutions.
- Tabb Group estimates that Linux adoption among the 14 biggest investment firms will reach more than 72% of the server base this year, which is up from 60% in 2006. Desktop adoption is far lower.
- Large companies are still concerned about licensing for Linux because open source licensing requires that users give back to the community any changes they make.
- It appears that investment firms are embracing Linux as the operating system of choice while developing proprietary applications separately.
Driving Your Model T on the Freeway
A message I received recently from a San Luis Obispo County e-mail address noted that a website I had developed several years ago didn't appear when the user typed the Web URL. I tried the URL and it worked. The next message noted that the home page appeared only after several minutes, but that other pages in the site appeared quickly.
So I did what any web wonk would do: I visited the website on my own and looked for things that would cause the page to load slowly. There weren't any.
The site in question was developed in the late 1990s when you couldn't assume that most users would have a fast connection, so the graphics on the main page were limited to about 60K, including the banner and a graphic that showed two children. There were 6 buttons that required 12 images (each 1K in size) so the total page, including text was less than 100K. I could load the page in less than a second. Even someone with a relatively slow modem connection should be able to load the page in 5 seconds or less.
My final analysis was that San Luis Obispo County was doing something that slowed the loading of the page and I asked the user to check the connection from another computer and particularly to check the connection from a computer that wasn't associated with the county.
I do know that not everyone has a fast (cable or DSL) connection, but more than 50% of Internet users do and I know that not everyone surfs the Net on a system with screen resolution of 1024 pixels or higher, but more than 80% do. That's why the TechByter Worldwide website has become wider over the years and why I've included more screen images each year—I know that most users will see the screen as I intend them to and that downloading all those graphics won't unnecessarily burden their Internet connection.
Just as television stations needed to begin broadcasting in color even though less than half of the viewers had color sets, so must website developers continue to follow the trends established by users.
Even those who live in rural areas often can select a relatively speedy connection if they're willing to part with a few extra dollars per month. And if cable, DSL, and WiFi aren't available, satellite service is available everywhere in the US.
There's a Lion in My House
Have you seen the Norwegian lion and her 4 cubs? If not, go here now. Keep in mind, though, that Norway is 6 hours ahead of Eastern daylight time and 7 hours ahead of Eastern standard time. If you visit in the late afternoon or early evening, it's late at night in Norway and the room will be dark. Try early morning in the Eastern time zone.
OK. Now that you've visited the site (Did you watch for less than an hour?) it's time for my story. I'm involved with an online discussion list for editors. In the first half of June, one of those editors posted a message to the chat area of the list. It included a link to "lion cam" and I eventually got around to clicking the link. I saw a sleeping lion and a couple of cubs. Then one of the cubs woke up and started nursing.
Over the next several days, I watched the cats sleep and eat. I watched mama cat groom the kittens. I watched the kittens wander around and bump into each other. I saw exactly what was happening a quarter of the way around the planet as it was happening.
Web cams aren't new, but this was different. I couldn't see any baby lions at the Columbus Zoo because we don't have any baby lions. And even if we did, I would get to see them for a few minutes or maybe half an hour. After that, I would wander away to look at something else. But I can see the lions in Norway anytime, day or night, and watch for as long as I want. In the image at the right, 1 of the 4 cubs is sleeping on the left side of the screen.
It's like having baby lions in the house without having to deal with super-size litter pans and the hazards created by a full-grown lion who might not understand that you only want to look at her kittens.
This isn't the same as going to the zoo, of course. The image is fuzzy, but it's closer than I would probably get to see a lion at the zoo. I don't have to get in the car and drive anywhere; the lions are available at all times. When the federal government created what was destined to become today's Internet, probably nobody thought of it as enabling people around the world to watch lion cubs in Norway, but I'm glad it turned out that way.
Below is an image of mama lion and one of her cubs (curled up at the right).
Let Gmail be Your E-mail Archive
For the past several months (since March 5, 2008) I've been automatically forwarding all of my e-mail (including spam) to Gmail for archiving. This started when the office started blocking ports 25 and 110, which effectively closed down access to my personal e-mail accounts. This was resolved within a day or two through the use of port forwarding, but I decided to keep the special Gmail account anyway. Because everything, including spam, gets forwarded to it, I have both a complete record of all messages I've received, even after deleting them from the local machine, and a 30-day summary of spam trends. Both of these are useful.
Here's how it works:
Including e-mail forwarders for special addresses, my personal accounts, business accounts, and TechByter accounts, messages from about 30 different addresses are accumulated on the TechByter server at Blue Host in Orem, Utah. The messages are all forwarded to my Gmail account, so this includes (at the current rate) about 7500 spams per month.
Spam Assassin strips out most of the spams and passes the messages along to my e-mail client, The Bat, which then filters the messages into several dozen mailboxes depending on the address of the sender, which address the message was sent to, and information in the message headers or subject line. It looks a lot more complicated than it really is.
I like the ability to keep an eye on trends in spam, but the additional advantage is that every message (around 10,500) I've received since March 5 is archived here. No matter where I am I can look for a message in the archive if I have access to the Internet and a Web browser.
A new feature makes this even more useful. If I want to reply to a message from Gmail, I can tell Gmail which address to use as the sender's address and the reply-to address. That means that if I reply to a TechByter message from the Gmail account, the reply will come from TechByter and not from Gmail. To use this feature, you need to provide Gmail the address you want to use and then reply to a confirmation message. That keeps people from creating a message that appears to come from, for example, Bill Gates.
If your e-mail provider offers the ability to forward mail while retaining it in your POP3 or IMAP mailbox, you may want to look into setting up a special Gmail archive account.
Nerdly News
When It's Illegal to Hold a Phone and Drive ...
A law went into effect on July 1 that requires motorists who must talk and drive to at least have a hands-free phone. Since then, the California Highway Patrol has issued about 150 citations per day. That may sound like a lot, but keep in mind how large California is, how many motorists there are, and how many of them have cell phones. The number is really quite small. The CHP says that it issues about 3300 speeding tickets every day.
A ticket for violating the hands-free law can cost around $100 for a first offense.
The law in California mandates that drivers 18 and over must use a hands-free device or a speakerphone if they want to talk on a cell phone in the car. Drivers under 18 are not allowed to use any electronic equipment while driving. Incredibly, California's new law doesn't apply to text messages. That's still allowed, although it likely will be outlawed next year.
Bigger Littler Drives
Seagate would like to put a terabyte and a half on your desktop. Not all that long ago, a terabyte and a half would have been the size of your desk. And just a few years before that, a terabyte and a half would have filled your office.
Seagate announced three new consumer-level hard drives this week, saying they are the industry's first 1.5-terabyte desktop drives. Also included in the new product release is a half-terabyte drive for notebooks. Seagate says it has been able to increase the density by using perpendicular magnetic recording technology. PMR packs the data bits together sideways instead of using the traditional longitudinal recording.
The Barracuda 7200.11 will be available in a 1.5TB capacity starting in August. It's a 3.5-inch drive with 4 375GB platters that spin at 7200RPM. The drive will have a 3Gb/second Serial ATA interface with a sustained data rate of up to 120MB/second. That's only slightly faster than the current drives.
Prices? They haven't been announced yet.
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