Ad Terras Per Aspera

Well, now that I’ve gotten DSL, I code even less now, downloading the latest fansubs. Remember kids, don’t DSL and Anime.

The More You Know ミ☆!

If you haven’t noticed, Breezy has finally been released. In the first 8 hours, the mirror at mnet.net.uk uploaded almost 3500 CD ISOs, and the mirror at acc.umu.se uploaded almost 2225 ISOs. I wonder if this means 5725 potential new users…

You know, the Internet is a great place. Its a place where anyone interested in something can find other someones interested in anything. In this case, many geeks out there have remarked on how much porn sucks (no pun intended). Its all about ignorant morons wearing wife-beaters banging brainless, but living, sex dolls; and I find porn like that to be quite boring, and sometimes offensive, and very far from the erotic display it is supposed to be.

And I’m not the only one out there who thinks that, not by far. There are literally tens of thousands of my fellow geek brethren who think most, if not all, porn is complete shit. And just the subject matter isn’t bad, there are students in film classes all over the world that don’t make the mistakes that porn directors do: bad lighting, bad camera angles, static camera placement; and then the actors and actresses are horrid: their rendition of their lines (if any) are flat and lack emotion, they act like they don’t want to be there, and they simply go through the motions.

What we need, folks, is porn for geeks.

Ernest Cline - Nerd Porn Auteur, (transcription).

Ed Foster tells a story about a tech and his adventures with E-Machines machines and Windows XP,

Because of the new motherboard, of course, Windows XP activation was triggered. “During the requisite call to Microsoft for an activation number, we were told that Microsoft could NOT give us the activation for this particular copy of XP since it was sold through a ’special licensing agreement’ with E-Machines. Even though we had the 25-digit license number, Microsoft insisted we would have to contact the manufacturer for the activation number. Two separate calls to E-Machines elicited the same response. NO activation number would be given since we did not install an ‘official’ and expensive E-Machines motherboard. So the customer is forced into purchasing another copy of Windows XP even though they already paid for the original license when they first bought the computer and have all the required proof.”

In other words, the reader’s customer — who has done nothing wrong other than have a motherboard fail on him — has the choice of paying ransom to E-Machines or to Microsoft to have a functioning OS again. Which led the reader to wonder just what would constitute piracy in such a situation. “We all know there are plenty of copies of XP that work fine without the product activation scheme,” the reader wrote. “Usually these are copies of corporate or academic versions of XP originally sold by Microsoft with broad licenses covering many computers. Is this customer justified in installing such a ‘pirated’ copy of XP on this system? Or should the customer have to buy yet another copy of XP, and presumably throw his old copy in the trash, just because his motherboard failed?”

There is only one proper way to respond to this: Fuck you, Microsoft. Why do you think people are pirating Windows; or worse, switching to alternative operating systems (such as the Ubuntu Linux distro?) Because they are tired of the shit you pull.

For those out there that want to startup a new commerical software buisness, here are three rules you should follow:

1. Do not treat your customer as your enemy, remember that they are ultimately your boss and decide if you get to eat this month.
2. Do not make it difficult to use your product, if they find it difficult to use they will just use something else.
3. Do not abuse the trust of your customers, remember the consumer industry runs on karma and everything you do will come back to you ten fold.

Microsoft has managed to break all three of those rules in just this one instance, and I seriously don’t see Microsoft even lasting long enough to get Vista out the door (which is at least another 4 or 5 years away).

Sorry, Bill, but it seems to be time to look for another job.

As seen on #gnustep:

<bheron> aurynn: OpenSolaris is a joke.
<bheron> No one is really going to use OpenSolaris for serious work.
<aurynn> Not until it gets some momentum
<aurynn> which it is doing
<Diablo-D3> bheron: thats what I’ve been saying
<Diablo-D3> it cant get any momentum
<Diablo-D3> all the clueful developers are too busy working on linux or fbsd
<bheron> I can’t really back up that feeling with hard data, but it’s just a feeling I have.
<bheron> It feels like too little too late.
<Diablo-D3> bheron: its called a gut feeling.
<Diablo-D3> and my gut is saying “too much fucking junkfood, ugh.”
<bheron> Diablo-D3: Yes, that would be indigestion.
<Diablo-D3> I cant help think its partially induced by Sun.

Humans are not good at three things: the first, and most obvious, is that we rarely agree on things and often decide to do things completely differently than someone else; the second, and just as obvious, is that our stomachs aren’t good at dealing with junk food, and we often get indigestion; the third, and slightly less obvious, is we are over optimistic about certain things in our lives due to our ignorance of some things we should know better about.

We can extrapolate the second item into the fact a community digests ideas, thoughts, and techniques the same way our stomachs digest food. Communities, like our stomachs, have a bitter enemy: something that doesn’t quite agree with them, but we keep trying to digest anyhow.

My stomach sometimes doesn’t agree with those little microwavable Totinos Pizza Rolls, yet I eat them anyhow; I know better, I really do, but when has knowing better ever stopped someone? I down a few Tums, and I’m fine. However, the FOSS community has a similar need for Tums (due to knowing better and ignoring that, and we’re probably suffering from a case of acid reflux as well): bad licenses.

We, the FOSS community, have been eating high-calorie meals made of Common Development and Distribution License burgers, IBM Public License fries, Apache Software License shakes, and those tasty little hot Apple Public Source License pies; and we’ve been getting indigestion from trying to integrate code from those licenses into our healthy GNU GPL fish diet.

Sure, we can always pick up eating strict vegetarian meals, but I neither run BSD, nor do I play monks in Nethack. However, OpenSolaris is a weird pairing of diets: you have the high-protein/high-cholesterol fad diet of Atkins, that is, CDDL code and you have the high-fiber diet of BSD code. In other words, you’re going to die of cholesterol-induced massive heart failure while enjoying smooth bowel movements, that is, while producing a load of shit.

So, instead, I run Linux. I get the occasional BSD salad mixed in with my GPL fish diet, and the very rare high-calorie meal of non-GPL compatible licenses; due to this unique way out eating, I stay healthy and fit, and don’t get indigestion.